|
| quote: | Originally posted by Moti
I'm sorry if some of you found the post a little long. It had some solid points don't you think? Today many scientists are propagating the doctrine that life originates from matter. However, they cannot provide proof, either experimentally or theoretically. In fact, they hold their stance essentially on faith, in the face of all sorts of scientific objections. |
Have you taken one science class? Do you know what science is based upon?
Many scientists are quite unconcerned with the origin of life, esp. that which states life originating from non-life (abiogenesis). So please avoid sweeping generalizations about "many scientists" in the future.
Those scientists that are studying abiogenesis, however, have some pretty descent evidence that highly complex organic molecules were prevalent in the universe at large early on and that formation of higher complexity has been demonstrated in experiments simulating early earth conditions. Here's a good website to start:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/AbbyL...ding-Blocks.htm
Here's some more references to specifics:
Amino acid chains have been observed that can reproduce naturally:
David H. Lee, Juan R. Granja, Jose A. Martinez, Kay Severin & M. Reza Ghadiri; "A self-replicating peptide" Nature 382, 525 - 528 (1996).
Natural selection also happens:
Yao, S.; Ghosh, I.; Chmielewski, J.; "Natural Selection in Self-Replicating Peptides", Peptides: Chemistry, Structure and Biology, 1998, 15, 0000.
Yao, S.; Ghosh, I.; Zutshi, R.; Chmielewski, J.; "Self-replicating Peptide under Ionic Control", Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Eng., 1998, 37, 478-481.
Yao, S.; Ghosh I.; Zutshi, R.; Chmielewski, J.; "A pH-Modulated Self-Replicating Peptide", J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1997, 119, 10559-10560.
RNA could come from peptide nucleic acids:
Böhler, C., P. E. Nielsen, and L. E. Orgel, 1995. Template switching between PNA and RNA oligonucleotides. Nature 376: 578-581. See also: Piccirilli, J. A., 1995. RNA seeks its maker. Nature 376: 548-549.
Also interesting, formamide has been found to catalyze the formation of nucleobases:
Saladino R., C. Crestini, G. Costanzo, R. Negri, and E. Di Mauro, 2001. A possible prebiotic synthesis of purine, adenine, cytosine, and 4(3H)-pyrimidinone from formamide: Implications for the origin of life. Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry 9(5): 1249-1253.
RNA would need neither DNA nor protein to catalyze its own replication:
Jeffares, D. C., A. M. Poole and D. Penny, 1998. Relics from the RNA world. Journal of Molecular Evolution 46: 18-36.
Poole, A. M., D. C. Jeffares, and D. Penny, 1998. The path from the RNA world. Journal of Molecular Evolution 46: 1-17.
Leipe, D. D., L. Aravind, and E. V. Koonin, 1999. Did DNA replication evolve twice independently. Nucleic Acids Research 27: 3389-3401.
Also, a deoxyribozyme can both catalyze its own replication and function to cleave RNA -- all without any protein enzymes:
Levy, Matthew and Andrew D. Ellington, 2003. Exponential growth by cross-catalytic cleavage of deoxyribozymogens. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 100(11): 6416-6421.
All this shows that abiogenesis is really not that difficult to comprehend, and that it is, in fact, possible. However, it is of course difficult to demonstrate and/or to show concrete evidence of such an event billions of years ago in quite the strange and harsh environment the earth was in at that time. Not too many fossils were preserved, really. So you can understand such difficulties in drawing conclusions. However, indirect evidence such as above indicates these possibilities do exist.
But if there are alternative theories, I'd be anxious to see POSITIVE, verifiable, and tested evidence to support such theories, similar to such supported evidence above. As of yet, I have not seen any. Instead, I just see those creationists just fill in those gaps with "godidit", much like you and your grand wizard are doing here.
This is a logical fallacy: Appeal to ignorance or Argumentum ad Ignorantiam:
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html
Why would you fall back on such a fallacy?
Absence of evidence does not give credence of evidence of absence, and hence a "creator" started it all. You have to show positive evidence of a creator in order for me or any other scientist to give merit to such a theory. I believe a "godidit" tag on a molecule or RNA strain somewhere would suffice nicely. If you find one, please let me know.
| quote: | Srila Prabhupada points out that this groundless dogma has done great damage to moral and spiritual standards worldwide and has thus caused incalculable suffering.
Prabhupada is not presenting dogma like the scientists, as he says:
Try to understand the science of God philosophically, intelligently, logically. There is no question of dogma. Everything is nicely explained in Bhagavad-gita As It Is, so you can try to understand. [Srila Prabhupada from Bhagavad-gita Lecture 4.11-18, Los Angeles, January 8, 1969] |
Dogma?
Hello Pot, this is Kettle calling......
There is no dogma in science. Science is based on methodoligical naturalism, which is what the scientific process of observation, hypothical questions, testing, retesting, and drawing conclusions based on those observations. Hence, it changes and modifies itself over time, based on observation. That's science, get over it.
If that's dogma, what is religion?
| quote: | | Here's another little quote: |
Oh goody, more quotes...
| quote: | "The frog in the well" logic illustrates that a frog residing in the atmosphere and boundary of a well cannot imagine the length and breadth of the gigantic ocean. Such a frog, when informed of the gigantic length and breadth of the ocean, first of all does not believe that there is such an ocean, and if someone assures him that factually there is such a thing, the frog then begins to measure it by imagination by means of pumping its belly as far as possible, with the result that the tiny abdomen of the frog bursts and the poor frog dies without any experience of the actual ocean. Similarly, the material scientists also want to challenge the inconceivable potency of the Lord by measuring Him with their froglike brains and their scientific achievements, but at the end they simply die unsuccessfully, like the frog.
[Srila Prabhupada from Srimad Bhagavatam 2.5.10]
|
Old Praba here seems to think that scientists have a concern with God. Praba needs to study science a little more in order for him to draw conclusions about what scientists do.
I'll give you a hint - they could care less about God in their work. Since God has done a lousy job showing Himself in observed, tested, and falsified natural phenomena, why would they bother themselves over Him?
Until God shows himself a little more clearer in natural phenomena, scientists will continue to ignore His "works", and study that which can actually be observed.
| quote: | Note: So the scientists first of all have to be realistic about their actual position. Unless something can be understood by their tiny frog like brains they deny it. First the atheistic scientist’s need to be a little humble, like Einstein, he acknowledged the Supreme Controller:
Prabhupada: The scientists also admit that the nature's law is so systematic. Even Professor Einstein, he agreed, that "As I advance, I see there must be a big brain, God." Is it not? Did he not say?
Devotees: Yes.
|
Einstein was a noted atheist. Many of his quotes on God are taken out of context. Here's some of his more better known quotes on his feelings towards God:
A better quotation showing what Einstein thought about God is the following:
| quote: | "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."
Einstein recognized Quantum Theory as the best scientific model for the physical data available. He did not accept claims that the theory was complete, or that probability and randomness were an essential part of nature. He believed that a better, more complete theory would be found, which would have no need for statistical interpretations or randomness.
So far no such better theory has been found, and much evidence suggests that it never will be.
A longer quote from Einstein appears in "Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium", published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941. In it he says:
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted [italics his], in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.
But I am convinced that such behavior on the part of representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task...
Einstein has also said:
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
The above quote is from a letter Einstein wrote in English, dated 24 March 1954. It is included in "Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, and published by Princeton University Press. Also from the same book:
I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/arguments.html
|
| quote: | | Prabhupada: That is knowledge. Everything is being maintained so nicely and there is no brain, there is no manager? One who says, "God is dead, there is no God," he's a rascal number one.Nothing else. |
Though I myself am not an atheist, I'm not sure I'd be hurt or even taken aback by being called, "a rascal". Just my own opinion, of course.
| quote: | | Immediately take him he's a rascal number one. That's all. |
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAASCAL!!!!!!!
Sorry, couldn't help it. I like that word. Moving on:
| quote: | However educated he may be. Because he does not know the psychology, how we accept the Supreme. Suppose a child has come to London. So he cannot see the Queen. Or even a child's father. So many people are coming to visit London. It is not that everyone is seeing the Queen. But if he says, "Oh, there is no Queen," or "Queen is dead," will it be accepted? Similarly, some rascals who do not know how this universe is being managed, he may say, "God is dead, there is no God," but that will not be accepted by a sane man. A sane man will say, "There must be somebody, the origin of everything."
[Srila Prabhupada from a Srimad-Bhagavatam Lecture, 1.1.2, London, August 17, 1971] |
He seems to intertwine atheists with scientists. I wonder if he knew that there are approx. 40% of evolutionists alone that believe in a deity of some sort? And that doesn't include the cosmologists, astrophysicists, geologists, etc. Believe it or not, it is possible to have a certain belief in faith, and yet be able to study that which is observable, all at the same time!!! Amazing, isin't it? It's like walking and chewing gum, only not quite as difficult!
RRRRRRRAAAAAASCAL!!!
Damnit, I did it again. That's my new word for the week.
Thanks.
___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
Last edited by MisterOpus1 on Mar-29-2004 at 20:00
|
Don't come near. Noise? Big bang, what is that big bang?
