That is too obvious. Women do not work like that. He just needs to tell her that if she can make him say "Oh god, oh god, ohhh" he will consider her point. Make her believe it's her idea.
Agreed, that's the explicit point of the analogies, but the analogy always uses a highly specific complex item (IMO) in order to make it seem even more improbable...what're the chances that a tornado would produce precisely an airplane? I think it generally does suggest a misunderstanding, like a human being was the "desired" outcome and what an amazing coincidence that human beings were produced. Evolution could have produced something completely different and those beings would have been wondering "What are the chances that WE, of all things, would be produced?" It's related (though this has nothing to do with evolution, it's a separate branch of science) to the people saying that the chances of such a perfectly ordered universe for life to arise are close to zero. That is true if reality only had one shot at it. But if universes are being created and destroyed constantly, then only the ones with the right conditions would produce life who could wonder. It's like the lottery winner....the lottery winner can be amazed at the chances that he/she won, but it's not amazing that someone won. We just happen to be in one of the universes with the right conditions....which is the only way it could be. We couldn't have existed to be disappointed in a "bad" universe. That's true of evolution to. We happen to be creatures created who can wonder. If not us, some other creatures and then they would wonder.
I made no comment about evolution. What interests me is that scientists cannot create conditions in a lab where life spontaneously is created.
I know you didn't, but the original presentation made it unclear whether it was tying uncertainty over how life began to evolution. Though, it isn't too surprising to me that they can't create the conditions in the lab. If this happened via abiogenesis, there could have been millions of factors involved and billions of years involved. Not everything in nature can be recreated in the lab--at least at a given level of technology. Scientists are now creating life from inert materials, at the atomic level, something that couldn't remotely be done in a lab even 20 years ago. That isn't "spontaneous" of course, but it goes to show that just because humans can't or couldn't do it in the lab, it isn't/wasn't possible. Nature has a lot more resources and enough time to overcome the lack of central direction.
Spontaneous creation of life in a lab would be huge. It should make anyone believe that life isn't a rare thing (we've found life on one planet/moon out of hundreds in our solar system). They're not creating artificial life in labs from scratch. The most recent thing I've seen is a claim of artificially created life, but they used existing biological materials to create it and more importantly, they used an existing cell to inject the custom DNA. I think we've been customizing DNA of plants and animals for centuries through selective breeding, so doing it in the lab is only a more efficient means to that end, not the creation of actual life.
what, did your friend just point you to a creationist propaganda website and say here, debunk this? that's pretty lame http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/arguments.shtml just point her here and say debunk this - http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html
More recently, they've been building new life from scratch, using the chemical components of DNA. This is very different from customizing the DNA of existing life, which has been done for a while.
The chemical components of DNA are existing biological materials. The DNA (in the recent breakthrough) was completely sequenced by computer.
separate but possibly very closely related. some intert compounds do self-replicate with variation. it's possible the general form of the mechanisms that drive evolution today might have also been responsible for abiogenesis. in fact the point where life "began" may be subjective, or smeared out over millions of years.
It depends on what you mean by "from scratch" then. This is entirely different from customizing existing DNA, as you alleged...it's building new DNA from the components of DNA. The point is that scientists are achieving more and more in the lab in the field of artificial life. Whether scientists can cause abiogenesis to happen in the lab right now is not really a knock against the theory. There are many things that are beyond current human technology that happen in nature.
From scratch would mean from atoms and molecules that aren't from pre-existing biological material. That means not from existing cells (replacing the DNA in them) and creating the biological chemicals to make the DNA from non-organic materials. Again, what's interesting to me about the third point in the OP is that they can't create an environment in the lab where life spontaneously is formed.
Actually most of those are quite easy to argue against. 1. First of all your your friend is confusing evolution with the theory of how life began. Evolution is a theory that attempts to explain the change of life, not how it came into existence. Evolution only covers life forms that already exist. Molecules cannot evolve. 2. Because scientist don't know all the answers to everything in the universe is not a rational argument for the proof of a divine being. We don't know the answers to a lot of shit. It doesn't mean there is a god. 3. Those weren't leading mathmeticians who met with the evolutionist. They were mathmaticians, but leading? Nope. Most "Leading" mathmeticians are doing physics, not calculcating out bullshit like this. Secondly, those who brought their argument forward, their model was flawed. They didn't take into the account chemical stablities which make the possiblity of certain molecules forming as a much higher probably due to the fact that stable molecules have a much higher chance of forming than non stable molecules. They completely missed that in their model. 4. Who the fuck is Edward Conklin, and why does his opinion matter more than anybody else's? 5. Those assumptions about mutation and evolution are incorrect. In fact, for evolution to take place there doesn't have to be a mutation. All that has to happen is that some members of a species are more prone to survive because of a genetic feature they carry. When they survive, and those who don't have the genetic feature die out because of their lack of ability to survive, then soon the whole remainder of the species carries the feature forward, and because they interbreed the feature becomes stronger. For instance it is known that people with Red hair are slowly and surely representing a total lower percentage of the population. Because it is a recessive trait it will be slowly and surely bread to a lower and lower amount of people, by percentage in our society. No mutation is taking place. But one day, we probably won't have people with red hair anymore, or very few of them similar in numbers to Albino's. That is evolution. No mutation required. 6. Really all those transformations must have happened? Maybe some of them. But last I looked there were fish that stored their eggs inside of them and did live birth. Also, just because scientist haven't found any fossils yet, doesn't mean it didn't happen. It also means they may not be right too, because nothing has been proven. Fossils are hard to dig up. Much harder than making up stories and putting them in a book. 7. Mutations take generations and many many years to breed into the population. Most of our laboratories haven't been around long enough to observe such a phenomeneh. This isn't a science fiction movie where they inject something and it turns into a monster 6 hours later. Now all that being said, the important thing is, none of your freinds arguments prove she is right about her side of the argument. In fact, believers have nothing more than a story written in a book to base their beliefs off of. Religions based on deities are all about manipulating weak minded people in the name of power. Eastern religions which are more philosophies than religions, are the only ones that are worth a fuck in my book.
This whole notion of either/or thinking is faulty. In this case the argument can be summed up as If Not Evolution Then Jesus. Does that even make the slightest amount of sense to anyone? If you want to try and convince me that christianity is awesome and god loves me and I should become a believer because nothing else makes sense, then do so in a way I don't find insulting. I once had a man tell me that as hard as it is for a rich man to get into heaven (this is as hard as it is to pass a camel through the eye of a needle) it was that much harder still for a smart man to pass through the gates of heaven. If being smart is a deteriment to being a member of your religion, then your religion is a pile of shit.
Magic elves from pluto haven't been mainstream thinking for thousands of years. What was the original reason for the existence of religion? It's prevalent in just about every society going back those many years.
the point (more or less) was religion makes a virtue out of suspending reason and so tends to appeal more to idiots than smart people.
The point being that people of all sorts of cultures somehow came up with the same idea (religion) though separated by oceans or thousands of miles. It had nothing to do with suspending Reason, since they all (way back when) didn't have the benefit of university educations, laboratories, and the legacy of the inventions and ideas that have come before us. I wouldn't call the guys who built Stonehenge or the pyramids idiots. Though Faith is certainly not Reasoned, and Faith means you accept things no matter what Reason says.
So you are telling me that an argument built around the concept of "Your idea is wrong therefore my idea is correct" makes sense?
