Evolution and Abiogenesis

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They are NOT synonymous with each other! I made a youtube video about this in response to a creationist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxl8QVVcexo

/discuss

Yeah, it annoys me when people make that strawman.

What a ramble! So evolution in your mind is a better theory than abiogenesis? And why go on at such length, over 8 minutes?! I understood maybe 25% of that speech.

"My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, a worm that's going to make him blind. And I ask them, 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy."/Sir David Frederick Attenborough/

If Sir Attenborough has his doubts, who are we to question him?

Uhh, yeah. One is observable, proven. The other is speculation, and NOT A THEORY DAMNIT!!



Because there were multiple points I had in mind, I'm sorry I don't talk so well. I'm an aspie, as*hole.



Not my problem.

Anyway, with that out of the way, it bothers me when people think that evolution either:

A. Requires that the big bang and abiogenesis is true, as if they're somehow linked.
or
B. Contradicts religious belief. - Unless you believe the earth is 6000 years old, then you're just stupid (opinion).

To say Evolution doesn't exist is to say "Things don't change over time, and things don't change drastically over extremely long periods of time." and to ignore genetics, biology, and more.

Would you kill over this evolution/abiogenesis stuff, Legato? IMO you've made it way too personal. Relax.

it's not so much that one is better than the other, but that they answer two entirely separate questions. Abiogenesis looks at how life originated; evolution looks at how life changes over time. If there's still any room for gods in the question of life, it's in abiogenesis: we really have very little idea how it happened, still. We have lots of hypotheses, and lots of tantalizing clues, but nothing really, really solid. Evolution, on the other hand, is very well doccumented.

Exactly.

On the abiogenesis subject - Excepting God there are only two logical possibilities:
A. Abiogenesis happened at some point somewhere in the universe, even if life was seeded on Earth by another race or form of life, it started somewhere else.
B. Carbon-based life has always existed as long as there was a universe - less likely imho.

Even if creationists decide that a god sparked life here on earth, then abiogenesis had to have happened to create that god. Or to create that god's creator.

in most religion god is trancendent. he's/she's not part of this universe.

I don't quite agree that those are the only logical possibilities. If C="God created life," then (A||B)~=(~C).

That is, these aren't an exhaustive partition (e.g. maybe non-carbon-based life always existed), and whether they're mutually exclusive depends on how general the definition of "abiogenesis" is. If it's general enough to refer to any time life comes into existence when there was none before, then wouldn't it include the "God" possibility (assuming God isn't living in the biological sense). If it's more specific then it's leaving out some possibilities.

I know this seems nitpicky, but it'd be more prudent to either have an exact partition or state that the ideas are just the ones that have come to mind. If a list of possibilities sacrifices exhaustiveness for specificity (nothing wrong with that per se), then maybe some possibility no one has yet thought up is the correct one.


All that said, I like your video. The distinction is significant and too often overlooked.
Your discussion reveals substantial depth of thought, particularly about the nature of knowledge. It's refreshing.

Why thank you

In regards to my A or B, I stated that those two as the only possibilities were assumed that God does not exist. Though you are right, there are other possibilities, such as a silicon(for example)-based life form made carbon-based life forms.

A question to your equation there, do I understand the verbiage?: (A or B) is not equal to (not C)
If so, I don't quite understand where you're coming from

Yeah, that is exactly what I meant to say.

All I was getting at was that for those to be the only logical possibilities, then negating one ought to be logically equivalent (assuming they're mutually exclusive) to stating that at least one of the others must be true. I.e. (~C)=(A||B) must be a true statement.

If there's no set of logical steps that show that that statement is true, then there may be other possibilities that don't fit into any of the above, that no one has had the insight to formulate yet. One has to be cautious not to mistake the list of all the possibilities we can think of for the list of all possibilities that there are. Sometimes the correct one isn't obvious except in retrospect (which is why pure theorists have work).

Usually sets of all logical possibilities have to have some catch-all statement that's just the negation of all the others, like
{A, B, (~A)&(~B)}, or something of that form. It's nothing too serious, but helps us to remind ourselves that the universe isn't limited by our imagination.

Correct. Abiogenesis = how life began
Evolution = how life developed.

ruveyn