How do you get this? The meaning of inertial frames are frames that are not accelerated. How is this obfuscated or equivocated?
Chris Falter:Your rhetoric is one long frontal attack on the integrity and intelligence of a community of tens of thousands of scientists who have worked hard to reach their conclusions. How is that supposed to build peace and relationships in your church?
Not true. I encourage people to study science. I’ve studied science, and was scientist and engineer in the aerospace and defense industry. I have degrees in EE, CS, Math, Physics, and Biology. I’d be delighted for church members to study biology, and apparently you missed the fact that people who are medical doctors, NIH researchers, physics teachers and professors attend my church and the apologetics ministry that has advocated creationism for 15 years and which I now inherited recently as a volunteer co-leader. Lon Solomon himself was a chemistry student and one of his sons is a medical doctor. So where is the warfare rhetoric there? Good science means getting rid of bad science, and there’s a lot of it in evolutionary biology and abiogenesis theory. I’m advocating good science.
You’ve totally misrepresented what I’m saying.
True for biology too, but it’s a lot easier to be an internet gadfly. 
It comes through loud and clear in virtually everything you write.
Please provide some examples of “bad science” in abiogenesis from the peer-reviewed research literature. Not a lot, just a few (less than five) links to the primary literature.
To make this something of a challenge, explain why whatever example you provide is a more glaring case of bad science than this appalling article.
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I have two pieces of advice.
First, state upfront that creation v. evolution debate is not vital to salvation. No matter a person’s view on this matter they are a christian and they are saved.
Second, I would focus more on honestly looking at the facts. In the words of St. Augustine:
Clearing up misconceptions and false arguments would probably be the most helpful.
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Art,
Tour who is a chemist gives a laundry list of problems, and he uses the word “garbage” in this video to describe the state of affairs:
He made a few technical errors like citing eukaryotic cells when he might better have cited prokaryotic cells. Then the was stuff about Jack Szostak that was bit off, but Tour was right to call out a meaningless diagram getting published in Nature. But the problems he cited are exactly those echoed by other chemists.
I’ve thought about sharing tours video to some in my ministry group – and one occasional member of our group is a synthetic organic chemist who works in biology. Other chemists have watched the video and given a positive response.
Tour is a professor of chemistry, one of the tops on the Planet and was obviously a colleague of Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley at the same school (Rice) – and Smalley (the father of nano-technology) has the same viewpoint as Tour. Tour is qualified to say what he said.
So, in other words, you really don’t have any examples of “bad science” when it comes to abiogenesis. (Just FYI, Tour doesn’t either. His theatrics are just this - theatrics. When it comes to the science relevant to the field of abiogenesis, there is zero substance in his presentations.)
IMO, when you make claims like this, you are out-and-out lying about the field. I think you need to add one question to the list you had in the opening post for this thread:
- When you see and hear a YECer lying - plainly, boldly, proudly lying - about science, does this affect your opinion about the church, or your own personal belief in Christ?
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The question I would ask is how useful a God of the Gaps argument is. Should you teach that God is found in our ignorance?
As a counterpoint, I would suggest Dennis Venema’s article on abiogenesis:
That’s gonna be interesting, particularly since there really aren’t any abiogenesis theories, just hypotheses.
We can talk in detail about specifics starting with the work of a professor of molecular biology who is a physical organic chemist who studied at Harvard and teaches in a secular school. She elaborates exactly what Tour is saying. I don’t have the time right now. But it’s a discussion worth having in DETAIL! She has an unpublished book right now but gave me permission to discuss certain segments.
So I could understand her work better, I got a book that Dr. Mantha recommended on P-chem, but thankfully a lot of the P-chem looks like some physics I once studied but need a refresher on. The improbability of abiogenesis seems to be quite defensible.
You are welcome of course to suggest why you think abiogenesis a sufficiently probable event to dismiss a Designe. But a Nobel Prize winner (Smalley) and a respected colleague of several nobel prize winners (Marco Eberlin) share Tour’s views.
@stcordova, I really don’t care about these opinions. You made a specific claim about bad science. Can you back it up by pointing to some peer-reviewed research publications that actually have “bad science”?
I don’t think you can. And I believe you know you cannot. Which is why I believe you are deliberately misrepresenting the field. Here on PS and at your church.
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Although Tour is definitely a skeptic of naturalistic abiogenesis, his criticism of evolutionary theory is not nearly as strong.
His response was something to the effect of “it (evolution) is the only game in town”. It may be possible that he ends up being more of a Behe-like critic of evolution that still accepts evidence for universal common descent.
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+1. This is wisdom.
Warfare rhetoric
I’m not saying that Len Solomon uses warfare rhetoric. I’m saying you use it when you assert a conspiracy theory among scientists. Allow me to remind you of your conspiracy rhetoric:
I am not doubting your sincerity when you make this statement; I am questioning your accuracy.
Misplaced confidence
I see you relentlessly telling PdotdQ that he does not understand reference frames in his own field of study, astrophysics. And here’s your expertise in that field of study in your own words:
You have also earned many rebukes for your poorly informed assertions:
Attack on the Integrity and Intelligence of Mainstream Scientists
Here’s some of the “good” science I’ve seen you advocate here on PS:
- Cahill’s aether conjecture
- Sanford’s erroneous citation of a paper estimating RNA virus origins.
- Judson and Ritter’s 1964 estimate of the age of the geological column, which has since been overtaken by plate tectonics and the identification of processes that add mass to watersheds.
In other words, what you think is good science and what the overwhelming majority of scientists think is good science are completely different.
If your understanding is indeed off the mark, then my critique hits the bull’s eye. The only way my critique could be a misrepresentation is if your constant citations to outdated and refuted papers is indeed good science.
Double Standard in Presenting Evidentiary Bases
Another point: you are determined to point out every place where consensus science has not yet figured everything out. At the same time, when you are honest here on the forum, you admit that the view you are advocating to your class is vastly weaker than that of consensus science:
Shouldn’t this be the headline in your class, rather than a footnote buried off in a forum that none of your students will read? You go at consensus science hammer and tongs in your course materials, and yet the view you promote as an alternative is on an overwhelmingly weaker footing that you fail to mention.
I read your slide presentations you prepared for you class, Sal. Nowhere in that class material do you even hint at the debility of what you advocate to your students.
I also saw nothing like this in the material you prepared for your class, IIRC:
In those slide presentations, you are not giving the class the full truth, because you do not mention these critical perspectives on the YEC and ID positions
Again, this is based on my recollection of what I read a couple of months ago. If I overlooked something in your course materials, please feel free to point it out.
My $.02,
Chris
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