It seems to be almost a knee-jerk reaction if you critique the adequacy of the abiogenetic scenario, you’re an irrational ID advovate. But, arguing thus does not automatically validate the other.
This the territory Tour inhabits when, at an ID venue, he nevertheless maintains he’s not neccessarily an ID advocate. It’s an important distinction.
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Quite. It’s quite reasonable to start a section on evolution with a chapter on OoL: evolution is indeed connected to the origins of life, and if you want to present a complete scientific picture of life, you’d better include both. If, however, somebody is using the absence of a good theory of OoL to attempt to undercut the validity of evolution itself, well, that is just not a legitimate argument.
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I think it would be worth seeing the precise text to which @purposenation is objecting. Perhaps it goes to far.
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No, it’s not evolution. Which two do you allege did so?
I think you’re engaging in wishful thinking, just as you did when you conflated allele frequencies with mutation rates.
Some similarities to the progress (or lack thereof) with String Theory on the physics side of things, it seems.
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That seems like a nice attempt to distance origins of biology from the study of biology – the AP book I referenced has a whole section on it – I’ll try to find examples of the types of books I grew up with, I wonder if this attempt to distance biology’s origins from biology increased over time.
Perhaps RTB could do a chart that shows the pessimism index at the Origins of Life conference as compared to the strength of the distancing language used in textbooks. (this is a joke)
My point is that I am guessing YEC/OEC Boomers and Gen Xers in churches every week probably wouldn’t agree that they are so separate. And as I mentioned, some Christians who read these sections may just “throw the baby (evolution) out with the bathwater (OoL).”
I don’t have any quantitative data on this, but perhaps a future question on our research studies.
Of course, even if this is a “misconception,” it’s one that we should be very sensitive to and not ignore and assume it’s not there. And if y’all get folks to trust you, maybe y’all could convince them otherwise.
I personally don’t care what subject matter bucket you put these in, but I’m pretty sure the Big Bang falls in the overall Physics bucket, so seems to me the origins of biology fits in Biology (though I realize it is dominated by chemistry and physics as well). But there would be no physics (in our universe anyway) without the Big Bang. Of course, just like there could have been life elsewhere first, there could have been physics in other universes first or physics of the “bulk” universe first.
All of these, in the mainstream media and in mainstream science and in textbooks, are by and large explained as natural, unguided processes, with one process stemming from the prior. So for this reason, guessing these are all in the same bucket to when it comes to God’s involvement in the minds of YEC (and maybe OEC) but again, I’d need to research this.
Also, y’all seem to assume OoL on Earth is the “start of biological evolution,” however, does this mean you have heliocentric certainty that life didn’t start elsewhere first and is very different from life on Earth? And/or that panspermia is false? If life started on Mars first and evolved before it came to Earth, would OoL on Earth now be part of biological evolution studies? =)
cc: @swamidass
Why not put OoL in Chemistry textbooks? Seems like folks are saying it better belongs there? =)
I think they have improved over time. Sometimes people talk about “chemical evolution,” but I think this is not the same thing as “biological evolution.” The evidential status is just not compatible.
Of course not. I commonly point out that OOL could have happened more than one time, both from an atheistic and theistic point of view. UCD is just a working hypothesis that would be shown false, in important ways, if we found life on a distant star or galaxy.
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Because within the whole study of chemistry, it’s a fairly niche subject. It’s more relevant to biochemistry specifically, and as a result the OoL is discussed in a least some biochemistry textbooks.
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Please post.
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This is the question I ask most people who think abiogenesis and evolution are the same thing.
If the first simple life was specially created and all the species we see today evolved from that first created life form, what would we have to change in the theory of evolution?
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I think that Dr. Tour was referring to controlled temperature changes, not wildly fluctuating ones.
Nothing, most likely. That’s why Darwin didn’t need to deal with the origin of life in order to do his work. He said, in effect, “Give me species, and I can explain how they change and diversify.” It was only later people who insisted, “Give me the simplest molecules, I can can explain how they produced the first species” – and then failed to provide the explanation.
I admire Tour for pointing out how little progress has been made since the time of Oparin, Haldane, etc. toward fulfilling the latter intellectual promise. That doesn’t mean it should be forbidden as an area of research, but it is good when a first-rank scientist keeps other scientists honest by making sure they don’t get away with bold overclaims about what is known.
Thanks for this, Brad. Would you be able to scan the relevant paragraphs, put them in a Word file or the like, and then drag and drop the image into a post here, so we can all read what the textbook says? I share your concerns, but it’s hard for me to say whether the book is guilty of overclaims without reading what it actually says.
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Can you name anyone who has explained how the first life came about?
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You admire Tour for utterly ignoring, not only a field of study, but seemingly the very existence of RNA?
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My point exactly.
You mean, that field of study which has so far hopelessly failed of obtaining its object? He hasn’t ignored it; in fact, his remarks remind it of the rigor that is needed for a real chemical explanation of the origin of life. And no one is more qualified to do that than one of the world’s leading synthetic chemists, who doesn’t work with mere blackboard theory or computer models, like the origin of life theorists, but actually makes new molecules for a living – and very successfully, too.
I hope you aren’t trotting out the “RNA world” fantasy. If so, I suggest you measure the actual accomplishment of RNA world theory, versus its possibly drug-induced imaginations.
LOL. Like it or not, Eddie, you live in the RNA World. You cannot escape this simple yet profound fact.
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You’re not using the term “RNA world” as it is used in origin-of-life speculation. It was the latter usage to which I was referring.
If you live in an RNA World (and, Eddie, you do), then obviously the origin of life is all about the origins of the RNA World. And, like it or not, this is a vibrant and successful field that has provided insights not conceivable at "the time of Oparin, Haldane, etc. "
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