The idea is that RNA constitutes a plausible and simpler precursor to the present system where DNA and protein are co-dependent. With RNA performing the roles of both genetic information storage and chemical catalyst.
Since for this hypothesis to be viable RNA must have the functional capacity to actually carry out at least some of these functions, finding empirically in experiments that RNA has the functional capacity to actually carry out these functions is therefore support of that hypothesis.
Since the alternative hypothesisâthat RNA never did these functions in the pastâdoes not require that RNA nevertheless can do them, then the observation is more expected on the reality that the RNA world hypothesis is true than it is on the alternative that it is false, and it is therefore evidence that supports the RNA world hypothesis.
Youâre again demonstrating that you lack a fundamental understanding of catalysis. As @Rumraket wrote, this is high-school stuff.
Yes. Enzymes arenât magical.
No. It does not change the orientation from the orientation that would result without it. This is why I keep asking you to understand what enzymes cannot do.
Chemistry.
You obviously are.
Do you not understand that science works by hypothesis testing? Iâm asking about your hypothesis, that this did not evolve.
I think youâre ignoring high-school chemistry.
I didnât claim it was.
As I wrote earlier, you obviously have no confidence in your hypothesis that the entire system was designed and created at one time.
It wasnât relevant, as I reproduced my entire offer with a link to the original post. This is the third time youâve refused a simple offer. Why? What are you afraid of?
Because it would be a copyright violation. Sending the PDF to you by PM is fair use. This is the fourth time youâve passed. That speaks volumes as to your sincerity.
Youâre projecting. Iâm doing the opposite by pointing out that no intelligent designer, much less an omnipotent and omniscient one, would use a categorically inferior catalyst at the center of life.
NO. A thousand times no. AFAIK, no one has claimed that this confirms it. Unlike you, we donât quit. We work to disprove hypotheses. You appear to be afraid to test yours. In science, predictions are merely consistent with, or support, hypotheses. It takes a lot of fulfilled predictions to gain confidence in hypotheses. Thatâs why RNA World remains a hypothesis, not yet a theory.
Thatâs also not the prediction and youâre going backwards. The scientific question to ask is what would an RNA World have left behind in the modern world? Essential components that evolution canât yank out and replace.
Now your own hypothesis is up to, what, four falsified and zero confirmed predictions now?
Itâs your explicitly stated hypothesis, remember? If it was created all at once, there literally can only ever have been one stage.
As @Rumraket pointed out, you are utterly, completely wrong about that, as the rRNA was synthesized in vitro. Once again, you didnât read a paper and misrepresented a mere prediction of your hypothesis as a fact. Arenât we up to five falsifications now?
You are objectively wrong about this. Will you address it, or will you Gish Gallop to something else? The hypothesis that you lack faith makes a clear prediction of your behavior.
As someone who was a Theistic Evolutionist (which is basically what youâre describing) from his teens through mid thirties, there are a number of scientific reasons why I now reject TE as well as theological reasons.
The primary theological reason is that the main question that was asked of Eve is (everything in quotes is my paraphrase): âDid God really say that?â. TE asks the same question. And whether you think Genesis is literal history or poetic metaphor, I believe it is true. TE says, no, God didnât really say âLet there be birds, fish, animals etcâ, he only said âLet there be lifeâ. So, I choose to combine the scientific evidence of how life operates with faith in what Genesis says.
And it was the âmain questionâ in a context which had nothing to do with Godâs acts of creation! The context was about what God had said that Adam and Eve could eat within the garden. So Iâm absolutely baffled by your point. Nevertheless, Iâll play ball and dissect your claims.
Same here.
Not so at all. TE in no way âsays no.â (Indeed, unless you think the âLet there beâŚâ wordings in Genesis 1 are some kind of magic mantras which must be pronounced in some special wayâin an audible way, in factâand NOT involve proximate causation instigated by an ultimate causation (God in this case), then I remain baffled. Why do you think God didnât use proximate causes, evolutionary processes included, to create every known taxon of life on earth?
Letâs take a look at your inaccurate paraphrase:
Sure he did. And TE says that God did say that. Letâs look at each of the three you listed:
BIRDS: "let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.â
⌠and indeed TE says that God chose to create birds. TE says he did so by creating evolutionary processes which caused some animals to gain the powers of flight and take to the skies. Thus, TE says that God created birds.
FISH: And God said, âLet the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.â 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds⌠and indeed TE says that God chose to create evolutionary processes which caused some animals to thrive in fresh and saltwater environments. Thus, TE says that God created fish.
ANIMALS: Need I repeat the obvious point that TE says that God chose to create evolutionary processes which caused all sorts of animals to thrive in countless environments? Thus, TE says that God created animals.
So does this entire matter come down to you wrongly assuming that TE is invalid because an ultimate cause (God) and proximate causes (e.g. evolutionary processes) are in opposition? Does God create clouds and rain? Yes. Does God create cloud and rain by having created the laws of physics which make evaporation and condensation possible? Yes. Thatâs what science describes and thatâs what most science-literate, Bible-affirming theists say. No conflict there.
So I get the impression that you are getting confused by ultimate causation versus proximate causation.
The question is the same, even if the context is different. And itâs the question that matters.
The evolutionary processes that you are putting your faith in deny that God intended any specific outcome, which is contrary to what is in Genesis. TE doesnât allow intention or or any desired outcome, other than creating the first living organism and then sitting back to see what happened.
The theory of evolution makes no pronouncements on what God intends. It is strictly speaking compatible with the view that God created the universe with an evolutionary process that was not somehow programmed to reach a specific goal, but that God nevertheless knew when he created the universe as big as he did, that humans would eventually evolve on some planet.
An omniscient deity should know from the beginning everything thatâs going to happen, including at the moment of the big bang exactly where and when Homo sapiens would arise. So whereâs the problem?
Are you suggesting that a deity would be incapable of using an evolutionary process with knowledge of the outcome of said process?
Can you describe the process in which a deity could create living organisms with an intended outcome and describe how said process would differ from an evolutionary process?
@theaz101 should clarify exactly what he is referring to here. Is it evolution in general he believes people are âputting their faith inâ? Or Theological Evolution in particular?
To the extent that the evolutionary process rely on random variations sifted by natural selection, it cannot account for the development of new complex systems such as bat echolocation for example. More generally, purely material processes left to themselves are powerless. Jesus himself reveals this in John 6:60â when he says : The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh does not help at all.
That seems to say not even the slightest thing about evolution, bats, or echolocation.
Somehow the flesh seems to help a lot, by the way. Iâve yet to see someone able to survive without a functional heart (or an artificial replacement), for example, and no amount of will or desire on behalf of the person that lacks one seem able to sustain them.
For the record, Iâm not expecting a cogent answer, since I know that creationists donât like talking about what their deity could do or the process they (it) followed.
I have been busier than a one-armed wallpaper-hanger so this is going to have to be more of a hit-and-run than I might wish. And there are still multiple posts/threads referencing me that I need to reply to. But Iâll do the best that I can before my next appointment.
HOWEVER, Giltilâs topic above actually helps me to illustrate my eventual reply to that other thread (involving @Faizal_Ali and @chuckdarwin and @sfmatheson et al) about Godâs omnipotence and the claim that God should provide a translation so âcompleteâ (âperfectâ or whatever??) that no commentary should be necessary.
No. John 6:60 is NOT about material processes per se (and certainly not about science.) That is evident not only from the surrounding context but by simply reading the Greek text. Why is it the Greek text helpful? Because Koine Greek makes a distinction about different kinds of LIFE (with entirely different words) where English does not. To put it another way, if you used Venn diagrams of the semantic domain of the word LIFE in English, it is MUCH larger than the various words commonly translated as LIFE in English Bibles.
@Giltilâs [and @theaz101 ?] interpretation is ruled out by the fact that in John 6:60 the Greek word translated as LIFE is based on the ZAO/ZOE âword familyâ and not the BIOS word family. ZAO/ZOE words refer to the sense of âspiritual lifeâ or âthe best quality of life experienceâ, while the BIOS words refer to biology: actual living-organism life forms like humans and other animals.
John 6:60 uses the word ZOOPOIOUN (âgiving spiritual lifeâ, not biological life.)
Of course, expecting Jesusâ teachings about life in the spirit to resolve scientific questions is, well, bizarre. English translations say it well: Jesus was stating what most Bible readers throughout history thought it said, that Godâs Holy Spirit is the basis of eternal life and NOT human will based on the desires of the flesh.
This is also a great example of why Bible commentaries are necessary for those who are not competent in Greek exegesis. Trying to make an English translation so âcompleteâ that all of these kinds of ambiguities, complexities, cultural-nuances, etc. are all explained would turn that âtranslationâ into at least a paraphrase if not an unwieldy weighty tome. Indeed, the Bible composed of both the OT and the NT would have to be the size of an encyclopedia to capture everything in the original text. That is because a translation cannot be â100% completeââdue to the nature and limitations of human language. So to expect Godâs omnipotence to somehow redefine what language is . . . well, it is a similar kind of logic error as âGodâs omnipotence should make it possible for him to make a married bachelor.â
[My apologies if in my haste I am confusing or mis-referencing @Giltil and/or @theaz101.]
I recognize the enormous consilience of evidence for the powers of evolutionary processes. I donât need âfaithâ in evolution. Evidence provides all of the convincing I need. Evolutionary processes are as real and obvious to me as anything else I learn from physics and chemistry textbooks. Evidence matters.
Moreover, I find absolutely NOTHING in the Biblical text to contradict evolutionary processes. When the Bible speaks of God bringing rains which water crops, I donât see any way in which that contradicts the physics of evaporation and condensation. Likewise, unless someone has a very SMALL concept of God (and his omnipotence and omniscience), evolutionary processes are entirely compatible with Godâs will in diversifying organisms and ecosystems on planet earth.