Please post so that we can all discuss. I look at it from a different view that you do, I look for encroachment of creationism into secular science education.
What caveats would you want included?
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I can’t remember a single time on Peaceful Science where someone has used Origin of Life research as a defense of evolution. Quite the opposite, I think I would be almost universally acknowledged that biologists know a lot more about the mechanisms of evolution than the mechanisms of the origin of life. The primary connection between the two fields of study seems to be, “we know quite a bit a out how things developed once we got the first living organisms, so it must be that we can eventually figure out how they got there in the first place”
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Sorry, but you missed my whole point and didn’t answer the one question I had asked. This was related to Tour’s presentation and had nothing to do with this forum or you personally.
I’m not sure Id call it a goal. It is more like a fact. You can’t have biological evolution before biology.
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I suppose it depends on what was said.
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I never understand people who complain about high school textbooks. How much time do you think they have? There isn’t time to go through the entire history of OOL research and the pros and cons of each model. And why is abiogenesis included in evolution chapters? Because it’s the start of biological evolution. But evolution in no way depends on a natural origin of life. So calling it an Achilles heal of evolution is kinda silly.
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High school textbooks also leave out a lot positive evidence for abiogenesis. But you don’t hear me complaining about it. Because my family is full of teachers and I know how it is.
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Well now is your chance to understand 
.
Sorry, I’ll try again.
So, regarding the textbook issue, I’m not going to comment much because I’m a chemist who was homeschooled after 5th grade, I’ve never seen a mainstream high school biology textbook. On the other hand, the free OpenStax biology textbook (some of my colleagues have used it for intro biology courses at the college level, and I’m sure it’s fairly similar to many high school texts) has this:
Evolution Explains the Origin of Life
It is a common misunderstanding that evolution includes an explanation of life’s origins. Conversely, some of the theory’s critics believe that it cannot explain the origin of life. The theory does not try to explain the origin of life. The theory of evolution explains how populations change over time and how life diversifies the origin of species. It does not shed light on the beginnings of life including the origins of the first cells, which define life.
Because people naturally wonder, if evolution is supposed to describe how we go from one cell to all the biological diversity we see today, how did that first cell get there? It’s a logical connection in time, but the accuracy or “product” of one doesn’t depend on the other. The task of OoL is “given an ancient, non-biological Earth, how did the first cell form?”, the task of evolution, as I understand it, is “given the first reproducing cell, how did the diversity of life that we see today get here?” Evolution assumes the cell, but it doesn’t itself tell us how it got there.
I can understand your point here I think, and that’s why I said that I think Tour’s “reminder” that scientists shouldn’t overstate things is a good one. On the other hand, I’ve also see popular science articles and science “popularizers” completely misrepresent what scientists actually say. This is rampant in medical and nutritional research. If you go back to the primary sources (the journals article) most often you see much more tentative language. Almost all of the, admittedly limited, OoL journal articles I’ve seen usually say something to the effect of “this is a possibility”, I don’t think anyone is saying “this is exactly what happened and I can prove it”.
Hopefully I did a better job of addressing your questions this time.
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Does it include the recent reanalysis of the Miller-Urey samples?
Some quotes might help here…
Like the one that @purposenation quoted that underlies his conflation of allele frequencies and mutation rates.
I know, but there was a gap between 1952 and the field really getting going in the 80s.
Then I think those critics must be unfamiliar with how much progress has been made. Remember, before the 1950s we didn’t even know if amino acids could be produced in plausible prebiotic conditions. Look how far we’ve come.
I haven’t attended it, but I have to say I don’t believe RTB’s take on things. I find it very hard to believe that all the researchers were milling around the conference with ashen faces, all collectively depressed about how progress in their field is going. This description is far removed from any conferences I’ve been to/heard of, and reeks of spin.
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Because it’s the most obvious way to begin a textbook covering biology - the study of life. It also puts the earliest living things in context. How else could the textbook start?
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John, please stop with this, seriously.
Then you’ve also completely missed my point.
I’m not complaining at all. Two people have claimed OoL is not biology. The textbook says otherwise.
It’s the origin of biology, so it’s relevant for biology textbooks. The process of abiogenesis itself isn’t biological, it’s chemical by definition.
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That’s a bit like saying that phlogiston is not chemistry.
You’ve probably noticed there is also a fair amount of Chemistry in other portions of high school textbooks, as well. There are no disciplines that are completely independent of all others.
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I am happy to listen. What did I miss?
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