Science AND Genesis

[DaveD49]

This is an offshoot from the "Science vs. Genesis" topic but it covers a different main premise. That topic suggested a conflict between the two. My topic shows where there is agreement. I think that everyone would agree that it would be extremely rare for any 4000 year old document, especially one that existed for thousands of years in oral form before it was written down, to agree with ANY modern scientific concept. The very first chapter of the first book of the Bible can be seen to agree with five of them. (Not only that, but the very first Hebrew word of the first chapter of the Bible reveals a stunning prophecy which came true 2000 years later, but that is another subject.) The five modern scientific concepts and theories are the concept of a slowly developing Earth, the concept of "super-continents" such as Pangea, abiogenesis, and evolution. None of these concepts were familiar to the people of the age when it was written.

Slowly forming Earth

Now the earth was formless and void, there was darkness over the deep, and God's spirit hovered over the water. God said 'Let there be light', and their was light.

(Gen1:2-3)

Imagine for a minute that you were sitting on the planet at the time it was first developing from slowly settling dust, moisture and stone. You would be able to see nothing, because the dust and moisture in the sky would block out all to sun's rays. Over a loooong period of time eventually as more dust settled the light of the sun could be seen even though you still could not see the sun itself. I have read where scientists have said that during this period of time it rained for over 10,000 years. We are in what the Bible calls the first day. The sun and the moon do not become visible until the fourth day. (BTW the Hebrew word interpreted as "day" can also be interpreted as "age" or "eon". Look it up.)

Super-Continents

God said, 'Let the waters under the heavens come together in a single mass and let dry land appear'. And so it was. God called the dry land 'earth' the the mass of waters 'seas'

(Gen1:9-10)

As more dust settled, dry land appeared starting in one place with one land mass.

Abiogenesis

This is a discredited scientific theory about the origins of life from the primordial goo, or "dirt", but it seems that the Bible agrees with it.

God said, 'Let the earth produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants, and fruit trees...

(Gen 1:11)

God said, Let the waters teem with living creatures, and let birds fly about the earth within the vault of heaven.

(Gen 1:20)

God said, Let the earth produce every kind of living creature: cattle, reptiles, and every kind of wild beast.

Gen 1:24

Note that in each case it does not say that God "zapped" them into being, but rather caused the EARTH or the WATERS to produce them. Note also the Bible also states

Evolution

Note please that in general the order of appearance of various living things corresponds to an evolutionary line-up. Simple plants, sea life, "great sea monsters", reptiles, mammals and man.

[help3434]

George Wald was a brilliant Harvard professor, scientist and atheist. I have his actual quote from Scientific American: "When it comes to the origin of life, we have only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility…Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved one hundred years ago by Louis Pasteur, Spellanzani, Reddy and others. That leads us scientifically to only one possible conclusion — that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God…I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution.”

Frankly he sounds about as smart as this guy:

if he thinks the discrediting of spontaneous generation somehow disproves abiogenies.

[brunumb]

[Replying to help3434 in post #41]

OH.......MY........ZEUS!!! I am gobsmacked. Are these people for real? Is this what creationists have to fall back on to discredit the possibility of abiogenesis? Either they are being deliberately misleading or they are woefully lacking in intelligence. So sad in either case.

[hERICtic]

[Replying to help3434 in post #41]

Years ago..for fun...any time a creatioinist quoted an evolutionist or an atheist..I would try to find the actual quote. Nearly every single time..it was a misquote or a complete fabrication. We all know creationists do this. Constantly.

DavidD49...the quote you gave regarding Wald is make believe. I found the actual quote in 15 seconds. I will assume it was a mistake on your part. If you're going to give a quote by an evolutioinst or atheist that seems to support creationism...look up the quote. Its simple. Type in the authors name, misquote, quote mine. It happens so often with creationists that many sites exist just to provide the actual quote.

[TRANSPONDER]

Yes, yes; appeal to spontaneous creation as being wrong and therefore abiogenesis is just spontaneous generation and a scientifically disproved belief is pretty crummy, and yet i get the idea behind it. Life cannot come from Non -Life. I get the idea and it was one of the three biggies that were arguments for a god (but mind, it still didn't tell us which one). But that argument is actually wrong, logically, evidentially and contradicted by The theists themselves.

The basic fail is the exclusivism of it - if abiogenesis is wrong, then. yes, there has to be some other explanation. But we don't know what. "Don't Know" is the logically correct answer not 'God'. But it's the same thing again and again, Godfaith means that the way they see it is this: God is the default hypothesis. Unless Abiogenesis is proven, God is the go - to hypothesis. No, that is not how the logic works, it's how godfaith works.

The fallacy with that is 'argument from incredulity'. "I can't believe or imagine how life could come from non - life, so it can't be possible." That is obviously wrong, but that is their argument. And they refute it themselves with 'appeal to the unknown'. 'There may be unknowns out there wot we not not of...'. And the undisprovable unknowns that upset and confound science are wagged about as evidence for the god - claim, which clearly it isn't, but it is is double standards to say that they can be absolutely sure that life cannot come from non -life. also they sometimes deny (really) science with 'limited human perception'. That argument is actually validating science and raising doubts about the god - claim (but as usual Godfaith inverts the logic) it debunks the appeal to what humans think is true 'Life cannot come from non -life'. Sure, that is what see and are used to, but it is a limited human casting doubt on human instinctive perceptions. Science has shown repeatedly that what humans think is not always true.

Finally, there is a hypothetical explanation of abiogenesis. There is a method by which it could happen. True, it has not been done in the Lab; not exactly. Though I remember the reaction of a God -apologist who thought it had been 'Just because they did it i the lab doesn't mean that was the way it happened'. Even proof is rejected, if we are able to produce it. Evidence doesn't count for them, Faith does.

So aside from the peanut butter nonsense as well as the designed banana, and I do not know why people who are smart enough to devise cunning arguments can come up with such dumb stuff, there is no case for a god, let alone a particular god. It is totally unrelated to the claim that science is now validating Genesis and Creationists have almost nothing but denial now.

[DaveD49]

George Wald was a brilliant Harvard professor, scientist and atheist. I have his actual quote from Scientific American: "When it comes to the origin of life, we have only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility…Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved one hundred years ago by Louis Pasteur, Spellanzani, Reddy and others. That leads us scientifically to only one possible conclusion — that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God…I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution.”

Frankly he sounds about as smart as this guy:

if he thinks the discrediting of spontaneous generation somehow disproves abiogenies.

Congrats! The technique you used is called "Reduce to the Ridiculous". The way it works is that if you see something you cannot or will not answer then simply compare it to something absurd, that way the matter in question it thought of by some as absurd as well. Not only that you feel that you no longer have do any real thinking on the subject.

And you are right! Wald only won a share of the Nobel Prize for his team's work in in Physiology or Medicine in 1967, so he must have been pretty stupid seeing that he didn't do it all by himself.

Abiogenesis relies on life coming from lifelessness. It has never been proven by anyone, but it is still relied on by those who do not wish to even think about the possibility of the only other answer. Which is, of course, an outside intelligence guiding the process. And don't think for a second that I do not believe in it, because I do. But I recognize the impossibility of not only abiogenesis but evolution also to happen without an intelligent guide.

[TRANSPONDER]

And what you are doing is...it may not be an informal logical fallacy, but it is a crafty trick...to play the mockery card as a pretext to dismiss the whole argument. That's on top of your appeal to authority. Ok, the fellow is a professor, scientist and atheist. He may have said that there were only two possibilities (though I have learned never to trust what a theist says) (1) but his place as a professor and scientist in one field does not make him an Authority on everything. The two main theories that sprog to mind are indeed Abiogenesis or some kind of creator. Apparently he has never thought o panspermia or ET scientists. They may be less likely, but what is undisprovable, remember, is still as likely as anything else, or that's the way theist logic works.

(1) There we go "One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are -- as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation. - George Wald, Harvard University biochemist and Nobel Laureate, 1954"

https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes ... rt4-2.html

The fellow has been grossly misrepresented by Theist apologists. That is more discreditable than atheists mocking extreme and absurd presentations of Creationist arguments.

[help3434]

[Replying to DaveD49 in post #45]

Well, what was said in your misquote of George Wald https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes ... rt1-4.html was ridiculous. What Louis Pasteur, Spellanzani, Reddy and others disproved was the idea that rotting food generated new life. That in no way disproves pro life evolving into what we now classify as life over a long process.

[help3434]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #46]

Panspermia is not really a true third option though, it just pushed back the question to another planet.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #46]

Panspermia is not really a true third option though, it just pushed back the question to another planet.

It's not one of the more popular options, but when you consider it I'd actually put it no 2 after Abiogenesis as a possible explanation with ET scientists 3rd and Goddunnit an also ran. The main apologetic objection to Panspermia is 'well, where did the life come from that got spread throughout the universe?' The answer is, 'perhaps through evolution on another planet, but just an evolution that was more obvious as to how it happened than it is here on Earth'.

"Panspermia proposes (for example) that microscopic lifeforms which can survive the effects of space (such as extremophiles) can become trapped in debris ejected into space after collisions between planets and small Solar System bodies that harbor life.[10] Panspermia studies concentrate not on how life began, but on methods that may distribute it in the Universe.[11][12][13]" (Wiki)

[DaveD49]

And what you are doing is...it may not be an informal logical fallacy, but it is a crafty trick...to play the mockery card as a pretext to dismiss the whole argument. That's on top of your appeal to authority. Ok, the fellow is a professor, scientist and atheist. He may have said that there were only two possibilities (though I have learned never to trust what a theist says) (1) but his place as a professor and scientist in one field does not make him an Authority on everything. The two main theories that sprog to mind are indeed Abiogenesis or some kind of creator. Apparently he has never thought o panspermia or ET scientists. They may be less likely, but what is undisprovable, remember, is still as likely as anything else, or that's the way theist logic works.

(1) There we go "One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are -- as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation. - George Wald, Harvard University biochemist and Nobel Laureate, 1954"

https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes ... rt4-2.html

The fellow has been grossly misrepresented by Theist apologists. That is more discreditable than atheists mocking extreme and absurd presentations of Creationist arguments.

Taking the advice of one of the atheists above I did go back and check the Weld quote, and yes I see some difference. Here is the applicable quote from the source to which I was referred:

"The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position. For this reason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a "philosophical necessity". It is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated. Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing.

I think a scientist has no choice but to approach the origin of life through a hypothesis of spontaneous generation. What the controversy reviewed above showed to be untenable is only the belief that living organisms arise spontaneously under present conditions. We have now to face a somewhat different problem: how organisms may have arisen spontaneously under different conditions in some former period, granted that they do so no longer."

Essentially saying the same thing, but yes, I can see there are differences, but I think the essential meaning of the quote remains unchanged. But here is the points that you (and others) are apparently overlooking:
1. George Wald was not the topic of my discussion. His name was never even mentioned in my original question.
2. People are writing as if I disagreed with abiogenesis. I don't I just cannot see it happening without an intelligent guide. And as I pointed out, the Bible does not either. Look at how complicated one strand of DNA is. Could this happen on its own? The same hold true for the concept of evolution which did NOT take place over a 3.5 billion year time period often appealed to but rather the cosmically short period of 50 million years and in fact for the first creatures to appear maybe a few hundred thousand years. The Until the Cambrian Explosion the only life on Earth was single celled organisms living in colonies. Darwin himself said that the Cambrian Explosion could be the undoing of his entire theory. The fossil record shows single celled organisms and then suddenly living creatures with eyes and other developed specialty organs.
3. The whole discussion of Wald is a side-bar to serve as a distraction from my main question of how Genesis can be seen to AGREE with these various scientific theories. To focus on this is to focus on minutia. George Wald is not the key to discrediting my question.