I don’t deny that the meaning of a term can expand. But I was discussing the subject of the origin of life, and when that is the topic “RNA world” refers to what is described in the Encyclopedia of Evolution article I cited. If Cech or anyone else wants to say we live in an “RNA world” and makes clear from the context that he or she is speaking about RNA as it functions in the DNA-RNA-protein context of current life, readers can adjust to that, and so can I, but it does not negate the original meaning of “RNA world” as a hypothesis about the origin of life.
The danger of using the term ambiguously was made plain to me in a discussion I had a while back with John Harshman, who, in trying to “correct” me for something I said about the RNA world hypothesis for the origin of life, sternly lectured me about the relationship between DNA, RNA, and proteins, as if I did not know it. But I did know it; what confused me was not lack of knowledge of DNA-RNA-protein relations, but the fact that he was assuming those relations during the period I knew as the “RNA world”. I was completely thrown by his remarks, as in the hypothetical RNA world, DNA and proteins are not yet in the picture. When I pointed this out, he said something to the effect of, “Well, maybe much earlier in the process [it was RNA alone as you describe]…” and then I realized that he was using “RNA world” to cover not only the origin of life but also much of its later development – without telling me that he had made the shift.
A useful conversational convention would be this: When the explicit subject of conversation is the origin of life (not its later developments), use the phrase “RNA world” to refer only to that period of time in which (hypothetically) RNA was the replicator and the catalyst.
Meyer’s first book is explicitly about the origin of life, not about its later developments. When he discusses the RNA world, and argues that RNA’s capacities are inadequate to account for the origin of life, he has in mind the definition of “RNA world” that can be found on the Encyclopedia of Evolution page I cited. Meyer does make an error (which I admitted as soon as I realized it was an error) in calling peptidyl transferase an “enzyme” instead of a “ribozyme”, but that error hardly affects his argument. Whether you call it an “enzyme” or a “ribozyme”, Meyer’s argument is that in the original situation hypothesized in the RNA world (no DNA-RNA-protein setup, no ribosomes, no cell walls yet, etc.), RNA doesn’t have what it takes to account for the origin of life. He might be wrong about that, but if he’s wrong, the error would lie in his underestimation of what naked RNA can do, not in his mislabeling a ribozyme as an enzyme. Mercer’s 10±year-long harping on Meyer’s terminological error doesn’t get to the heart of Meyer’s argument.
To kill Meyer’s argument dead, one would have to show that naked RNA segments (not segments assisted by our modern cellular context) have a vast range of self-replicating and catalytic powers, enough to account for the eventual generation of DNA and proteins and the eventual formation of the present DNA-RNA-protein system. And Mercer certainly has not shown this. All he has shown is that Meyer made a terminological blunder. I’d be the first to agree that the blunder should never have been allowed into the book – the scientific proofreaders of the typescript should have caught that before the typescript ever got to the final copyeditor. But to howl great war-whoops over this blunder for 10+ years, instead of meeting the challenge of Meyer by showing how naked RNA could have built up the DNA-RNA-protein world we know, indicates a greater desire to score a culture-war victory over an ID proponent than to elucidate for general readers the processes that led to the origin of life.
Much could be said about this, but note a few things. The words “nature” and “natural” have no true equivalents in the Hebrew Bible (or in the Gospels, for that matter). They are loaded up with Greek philosophical ideas which are alien to the Hebraic context. Second, even if we use language loosely to say that in the Hebrew Bible God created “nature” or “natural causes” or “natural laws”, and that many or most events in the day-to-day operation of the world are understood by the Biblical writers as proceeding from “natural causes”, it does not follow that the creation of the original situation of the world was due only to natural causes. Indeed, the most “natural” (there’s that loaded word again!) reading of Genesis and other creation passages suggests that the Hebrew writers did not believe that, but thought of at least the original creation and layout of the world as the result of “mighty acts of God” that could not be explained by “natural causes” but only by the efficacy of his creative Word and the divine Power behind it.
Regarding your remarks about Republicans and Democrats, I think that discussing these things further here would derail the discussion, and that a new topic should be devoted to the issue raised by Rumraket. But certainly it is not only the institutions that you mention that have “fed” people with questionable ideas. Fauci, Francis Collins, Al Gore, and many others over the past decades have done some “feeding” of their own, feeding which in many cases can hardly be considered entirely neutral, non-partisan, or non-politicized. The difference, of course, is that Fauci, Gore, etc. were able to get their ideas directly adopted by people in positions of political and administrative power, bypassing public debate. (E.g., there was no public debate on any legacy TV network or in any mainstream American newspaper [e.g., the NY Times] or at any university campus between Fauci/Collins and the unquestionably academically well-trained epidemiologists from three of the world’s great universities – Stanford, Harvard and Oxford – over the use of general lockdowns [as opposed to more targeted restrictions] in response to COVID.) And no, I’m not going to – on this thread – enter into debate regarding COVID lockdowns; I’m merely pointing out that the “legacy media” have certainly fed the public with “official” and greatly oversimplified narratives regarding COVID, climate change, Russia-Ukraine, and many other things. I fully realize that all of the atheists here and maybe even most of the Christians would agree with those oversimplified narratives, and would support the marginalizing or even silencing of alternative viewpoints coming from highly qualified experts, but the fact remains that on many issues over the past couple of decades, vigorous public debate has been bypassed or greatly truncated as administrations and international bodies have pushed ahead aggressively with their various agendas. The idea that the latte-drinking laptop class is always objective, fair, and neutral, and that the sources you deplore are always biased, unreasonable, and wrong is not an idea that a thoughtful person can take seriously.
I think everyone is lying or misrepresenting to a certain extent, usually by the use of greatly oversimplifying half-truths, and that’s why I continually call here (usually with a response of sneers) for ongoing open debate on all questions. And of course, my many previous remarks on the gross political imbalance among university faculty (which has had a lot to do with the one-sided advice that governments receive from university-trained “experts”) are relevant here. But let’s discuss this idea of “systemic bias” in news media etc. elsewhere.
I’m certainly in favor of all these things, but of course anyone who thinks that the majority of energy currently supplied by fossil fuels can be met entirely by wind, solar, and tidal power is not advocating a “demonstrated effective policy” to fill the energy needs of modern technological economies. Regarding “robust education” I’ve made many suggestions for achieving that, including getting the touchy-feely psychologists, sociologists, radical feminists, and other special interest groups out of the way along with their virtue-signaling “Woke” curriculum, and bringing back the study of core subjects, including grammar, reading comprehension, spelling, punctuation, geography, history (including not just parochial national history but also European and world history), languages (hopefully with a restored place for Latin) and of course math and science – and making this robust education accessible to all by scrapping the current system of public educational taxes (which in the USA allows for shameful differences between rich and poor school districts that would never be allowed to exist in Canada, Australia, Europe, etc.) But again, all of this requires a separate topic.
Finally, thanks for responding to me in a conversational rather than a sneering or sarcastic tone. It’s rare that I get responses like that around here. This place would be much more constructive if certain others here wrote their posts like yours to which I am responding. In that fantasy world (even less likely than the RNA world, I fear), my own responses would be similar in character.