You Want Answers?

@markmobley writes:

http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/markmobley/~0bFda>> I have answered your questions. Answer some of mine. If materialism is true, where did the material for the Big Bang come from? What about the space that the Universe occupies? Francis Crick thought aliens planted single-cell creatures because naked evolution is so unlikely. That takes a bit of faith, right?

It takes no faith to say "I don't know", we don't know - so what? If I don't know the Higgs energy does that imply God? There have been a billion things we didn't know before that we know now—we used to think gods shook the earth & moved the planets. if you must postulate a god then at least have the honesty to hold it to the same standard of evidence that you demand of evolution. And admit that postulating god does nothing but beg the question and explains absolutely nothing what-so-ever. For, if the universe/metaverse requires a 'god' to create it, how much more necessary is some meta-god to create that god. And if the buck has to stop somewhere then don't invent a useless placeholder for it until evidence demands it. You have NOT established the necessity - all you have is a vast ignorance of the true nature of the universe (ignorance that we all share) And if believers stopped at an abstract god that would be one thing but oh NO, that isn't good enough. it's the god that is on THEIR side in war, that tells them others must die for masturbation or other crocked-up-shit they want to pretend is immoral so they can control the lives of others in ways they have no legitimate business doing.

But I Had A Personal Experience!

Why we cannot rely solely on individual memory to document events.

Remarkable false memories By Daniel Simons

I myself have personally had some pretty amazing experiences and witnessed amazing phenomena as products of meditation (and on occasion, medication). I have SEEN a golden, radiant book with letters of fire burning onto the pages (meditation), I have seen images of the future that have subsequently come to pass (lucid dreaming, meditation), and I have been 'miraculously' saved from physical harm (reality). Be they coincidences, hallucinations, lucky guesses, or who knows, maybe even some quantum process that we don't understand yet. But not a SINGLE one of those experiences is evidence for something supernatural or a soul. The dreaming brain is perfectly capable of generating PROFOUNDLY meaningful and deep, rich experiences that are indistinguishable from reality to the observer. I know this because I practiced at it for many years.

Signs of the Design (Or Lack Thereof)

Rant on ID verses SETI

One interesting thing that came out of the debate between Dembski and Hitchens was when Dembski mentioned SETI in the context of ID, which set off a chain of thoughts in my head.

Consider if you wanted to send out a signal that indicated there was 'intelligent' life here on Earth so that a similarly situated life could detect it when the signal reached their world.

How would you do that? What kind of signal could you send? Or conversely, what kind of signal might we expect?

If, as Dembski suggests, the entire universe is Intelligently Designed, and all of creation bears the mark of this intelligence then EVERY signal from space should be immediately recognizable as a signal of intelligence. So, why isn't the chaotic noise we observe from space considered intelligent?

Obviously, if we wanted to try to send such a signal we would have to send a signal that was UNLIKE any signal we detect in nature. It would have be unusual or unique, it would have to stand out against the cacophony of NATURAL processes in the universe (including those that produce giant clouds of organic materials in space).

So, to me, this is yet another gapping hole in the ID Titanic. Add to this the fact that claim, after claim, after claim of ID has been demolished by the advancement of science. Sorry, but in my play book you don't get to move the goal post a distance greater than the entire playing field.

Some highlights of major failed ID claims:

* Irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum (soundly refuted)

* Irreducible complexity of the eye (not only refuted but demonstrated to have occurred dozens of different ways)

* abiogenesis of pyrimidine ribonucleotide claimed to be impossible (refuted "Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions"; Nature 459, 239-242 (14 May 2009))

* abiogenesis of ribose claimed to be impossible (refuted "Selective derivatization and sequestration of ribose from a prebiotic mix"; Greg Springsteen and, Gerald F. Joyce; Journal of the American Chemical Society 2004 126 (31), 9578-9583)

NO other scientific 'theory' would be allowed to make so many failed predictions and be that wrong and still be considered viable (ok, except the poorly named String "Theory" - which is more of a mathematical framework than a proper theory).

Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites?

Striking evidence for extraterrestrial origins of life: http://journalofcosmology.com/Life100.html

This could be very big news for some branches of science, especially those which investigate the origins of life.

I am cautiously optimistic on this one but, as the article says, they are seeking a broad investigation into the results. This is exactly how science should be done.

There will be some knee-jerk nay-saying. There will be some premature fawning. It will probably take several years before we can make stronger claims. And even then it could be 100 years before we unravel things in detail. The danger here is in over simplifying the questions.

They are dealing with EXTREMELY tiny, fossilized features. Many of these features will have possible non-life origins. If we get extremely lucky some day we might catch a meteor that has a well-enough preserved organism that it can be revived and that would be conclusive (actually, it would be charged with contamination first).

What we SHOULD be marvelling at here is the progress we have made in science and how far we have yet to go. That we have such powerful tools of investigation and minds that are curious enough to plow forward.

If anyone should think that science is all but done, then they aren't looking very hard.

What About God

Let me be really clear here, I don't have a problem with the CONCEPT of a 'god' existing (if a 'god' exists fine -- prove it without resorting to lies, frauds, etc), but I DEMAND proof of EVERYTHING I choose to believe in -- ESPECIALLY when those things have large or profound impacts on my life. And I live as good of a life as I can, the existence or non-existence of a god has no bearing on me. I'm not perfect by any stretch but neither are any Christians and I would say I'm better than most.

Arguments that say life is too complex to just happen because of the nature of 'physics' are ridiculous because they propose that some infinitely complex and powerful agency JUST exists. They just make the problem WORSE, not better [and yes, Kalam, blah blah blah -- mental masturbation and nothing more, you cannot prove reality through logic - the axioms you use in logic are based on our imperfect OBSERVATIONS of reality]. I do believe that with extremely CAREFUL application of the scientific method we can EEK out semi-reliable knowledge of our world. But it is absolutely fraught with pitfalls.

The history of the texts used in the bible show that they are absolutely frauds, there are NO eyewitness accounts and absolutely NO contemporaneous accounts. The Testimonium Flavianum entry on Jesus is fairly clearly fraudulent and even if it wasn't it was written FAR too late and doesn't claim first hand knowledge. Where are the entries by Historians on the THOUSANDS of "Saints" risen from the dead? ZILCH. It is a LIE, a fake, and a fraud. At BEST, some of these people had ecstatic experiences and with their limited goat-herding knowledge they believed them.

For example, there is a lot of evidence that Judas of Galilee existed during this time period -- and absolutely ZERO evidence that the Jesus/Yeshua character of the bible existed. Absolutely ZERO. And interestingly, many of the things attributed to Jesus are DOCUMENTED by historians to actions of Judas of Galilee.

The synoptic gospels are all written 30+ years AFTER the alleged time of Jesus, they are all anonymous and ONLY by tradition attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. NONE are eye-witness accounts. Paul NEVER met Jesus, only claimed he saw him in what was essentially a vision. The earliest quotations from what we now call Matthew and Mark are NOTHING like the modern texts. There are THOUSANDS of errors/differences in the different versions of copies we have. We have NOT A SINGLE original autograph of ANY biblical text. We have only copies of copies of copies of copies. Yeah they are kinda sorta, mostly similar -- but then there are HUGE issues in the gospel accounts. See this video for just a FEW examples: David Fitzgerald Skepticon 3 "Examining the Existence of a Historical Jesus" (youtube).

[even if the texts CLAIMED to be eyewitness accounts there is no evidence they actually are because of the dates written]

So textually, the bible is an absolute mess. And even the more honest of the hardcore biblical scholars ADMIT that the accounts of Jesus are clearly false.

"The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth and died to give his work its final consecration never existed."
Albert Schweitzer(1875-1965, Nobel Prize 1952), Ph.D, Christian theologian and Dean of Theological College of Saint Thomas at the University of Strasburg
The Quest of the Historical Jesus: First Complete Edition, trans. W. Montgomery, et al., ed. John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), page 478
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/

And in some cases critical passages have clearly been added to the texts later (e.g., in 2 Peter).

And claims it has been faithfully transmitted? COME ON! There are THOUSANDS of Christian sects who disagree with each other over what the passages even mean. Which ONE of those THOUSANDS have it right in every regard? Even if one of them had the right of it there would be absolutely no way to know. They disagree on MAJOR issues -- do we have Free Will or not? How do you get to Heaven? Etc It's just utterly ridiculous to suppose anything has been faithfully transmitted.

And then we come to the actual history of the 'Christian' church itself. After 1800 years of slavery, abuse, torture, murder, selling of indulgences (and yes, I know what indulgences are), misogyny, prejudice, suppression of valid scientific knowledge that was viewed as in conflict with the claims of the church, utter destruction of native CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE after CULTURE... it is absolutely filthy and disgusting to me to even SUGGEST that these filthy, disgustingly evil BASTARDS have anything to do with God in any way, shape or form. And they were the SOLE arbiters of 'God' for 1500 years, until the Protestant reformation -- and do not be confused, that did NOT fix anything what-so-ever so don't tell me you follow some protestant branch and that makes everything ok -- it doesn't. Every dollar you give them is a dollar spent in hatred of mankind. They should be WIPED from the face of the earth forever (peacefully I hope -- I'm not an advocate of violence).

So all we're left with is a nice metaphor and a FEW little bits of clear thinking from the bronze age like "turn the other cheek" and "love thy neighbor" (things I almost NEVER see any christian practicing). And these FEW nice little bits are utterly washed out by all the absolutely VILE and DISGUSTING parts of the bible (god COMMANDS genocide after genocide after genocide after genocide, COMMANDS infanticide, COMMITS genocide and infanticide, etc) -- that is NO God that I wish to be associated with, it's disgusting, vile and evil nonsense. The bible says "By their fruit you will recognize them" and you have to be fucking blind not to see the evil fruits of the Christian religion.

Deut 7: When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them...nor shew mercy unto them

And for WHAT crime are the children to be put to death? Allegedly because their parents were committing child sacrifices -- do you fail to see the ignorance of this claim?


There are certainly many very GOOD people who just happen to have fallen for the Christian lies. They are lied to so I don't hold them directly responsible but their money certainly goes to support many agendas that I view as absolutely EVIL.

Whatever you might think about God the use of the Church to deny GOVERNMENT RIGHTS GRANTED EQUALLY TO ALL (e.g., gay marriage) is absolutely DISGUSTING.

For all those reasons (and more, as you see I have MANY thoughts on the Christian religion -- my position is NOT unconsidered) I will NEVER support any Christian church (maybe if Jesus or God comes and talks me into it and even they will have a difficult time). There are MOUNTAINS of evidence they are frauds, evil, liars, and corrupted. No. Thank. You.


I see no evidence for God in the general sense, other than it seems to make some people feel better to think that others will suffer in eternal torment for their sins while the person being comforted invariable will spend their eternity in heaven, DESPITE their own sins.

On the other hand... (and let me know if you cannot use Google and need citations for any of these, I will be happy to supply them but this is already very long)

• There is LOTS of evidence that very complex chemistry happens, even in outer space!
• There is LOTS of evidence that every chemical needed for life to "happen" (and I reject using the word "by chance" here unless you can demonstrate anything in the universe is truly Random -- things happen by laws of physics -- we don't understand those ultimate laws of physics and we may never fully understand them -- but we observe consistently that things happen according to rules and not by Will).
• There is LOTS of evidence that these chemicals CAN hit a point where they being to self-replicate -- even WITHOUT the complex arrangement we have today.
• There is LOTS of evidence that these self-replicating molecules will TEND towards self-replicating RNA and with the right proteins available RNA is converted into DNA
• There is LOTS of evidence that these self-replicating RNA and DNA molecules CHANGE over time in various ways that explain ALL the variations we see today
• There is LOTS of evidence that this happened only once on earth (the possible alternative is that it happened several times but in extremely similar ways)
• There is LOTS of evidence that this CANNOT HAPPEN TODAY BECAUSE THE CHEMISTRY HAS BEEN UTTERLY CHANGED BY EARLIER LIFE -- well it could happen today but the changes are MUCH closer to zero than they were 4 billion years ago
• There is LOTS of evidence that this process involved clay, geothermal vents, ice, lipid vesicles, etc
• There is OBSERVED cases of a single-celled organism evolving multi-cellular forms -- OBSERVED, we SAW this happen
• There is LOTS of evidence in DNA that things have evolved from form to form over billions of years
• There is LOTS of evidence in fossils that MATCH the DNA evidence - the timelines MATCH, the types of mutations MATCH, the rate of mutation MATCHES

There is so much evidence for abiogenesis and evolution that it is almost inconceivable that the theory is incorrect. It is POSSIBLE that it is incorrect and MANY details are yet to be worked out, but I seriously question your credulity at believing these moronic ID/Creation people who have almost NO evidence that matches their claims. And when they stick their necks out and make a claim like the flagellum being irreducible complex they get TORN TO PIECES by the science.

There are hundreds of thousands of HARDCORE scientific, published, PEER REVIEWED papers on these topics that examine in great detail EVERY aspect we have the funds and time to investigate and they ALL align in one direction and it sure isn't Creation.

More importantly -- it is UTTERLY unimportant to me if evolutionary theory is correct or not -- science will progress, we observe, we learn more. Science has NOTHING to prove to me or you because it is YOUR OWN CLAIMS that are in question and YOUR CLAIMS are extremely lacking ANY evidence or support. I don't need science, or evolution, or abiogenesis, or physics, or the Big Bang, or ANYTHING else to REJECT your claims as ridiculous, unsupported, and UNdemonstrated.

And yes, I am 'angry' about the atrocities committed by the Christian churches over the years (and YOU should be too) -- the actions of individual Christians are on their own head -- but the church as a whole is responsible for actions commanded by the church leadership over the years in dogma, deed, Edict or order.

For just a FEW examples: Edict of Milan, Pope Innocent III said "the Jews, by their own guilt, are consigned to perpetual servitude because they crucified the Lord...As slaves rejected by God, in whose death they wickedly conspire, they shall by the effect of this very action, recognize themselves as the slaves of those whom Christ's death set free...", Roman Catholic Papal bull, "Cum nimis absurdum" which required Jews in Vatican controlled lands to wear badges, and be confined to ghettos, Catholic Christians who massacred of Jews in Nemirov, Polonnoye, Tulchin, Volhynia, Bar, Lvov, Crusades, Inquisitions, LIES about condoms in Africa resulting in massive unnecessary suffering and death, fighting against human rights (e.g., gay marriage), promoting poverty and suffering and the oppression of women, etc.

This is an off the cuff rant so I apologize for any errors in the text, feel free to note any corrections or make fun of me.

Abiogenesis, Part I

Abiogenesis, Part I

This is more of a brain dump of what I have learned than anything else, so apologies if I ramble a bit.

I do not claim that science has all the answers here (this is an active area of research). But much like the early Church's stance on the Earth being the center of the universe, abiogenesis research has broken claim after claim made by the creationists about how it "must be" and what science has been able to piece together is a compelling series of events. It takes absolutely no faith to see the incredible progress that has been made in this field over the past 55 years (that is, IF the person bothers to actually investigate this field of study).

The original timescale involved was ~0.7B years in a lab the size of the entire Earth (possibly the solar system) so we have a lot of catching up to do in understanding the most likely pathways that the early Earth could have taken in creating the first organic "life" (some chemical structure capable of self-replication, mutation, and natural selection).

If creationists want to prove that abiogenesis is impossible then only need to find some specific STEP that absolutely cannot have happened naturally. Not a fallacious statistical argument saying that it's just too improbable to believe. An actual chemical combination that cannot possibly happen in nature and the specific, scientific reasons why.

So, what evidence do we have in support of a natural abiogenesis?

Here is a good review for starters: How life began on Earth: a status report

Remember that the DNA/RNA genetic system we have today is just what things have evolved into, don't assume they are required to kick start the process. What scientists generally believe happened was that there was a boot strapping process leading up to that first strand of self-replicating material (be it RNA/DNA or something else).

Peptide chains are simply "shorter" chains of amino acids (aka proteins). These naturally formed chains can perform functions, they can "store information", they change over time, and they can reproduce (e.g., see prion research). Those are all the things required for "evolutionary" processes to work over time.

(1) First of all, Jeffrey Bada's experiment showed once again that a wealth of organic chemistry and amino acids are generated naturally in the early Earth environment. There is also the later Miller experiment about organic chemistry in icy conditions (so it could be that an ebbing between warmer and colder conditions are required). The original Miller-Urey experiment was validly criticised for an inaccurate starting mixture, but even later versions of that experiment had corrected those problems.

See Discover Magazine: Did Life Evolve In Ice

(2) We are now also aware of a large number of exogenous sources of organic precursors (IDPs, Meteorites, Asteroids, Comets)

See Meteorite Crammed With 'Millions' Of Organic Compounds

Murchison meteorite: 14,000 specific compounds, including 70 amino acids, were identified...tip of the iceberg

(3) This soup can include shorter fatty-acid chains (created in geothermal vents on the clay walls) which under certain Ph conditions naturally form into protective vesicles, these vesicles can also divide under mechanical conditions AND they tend to combine with smaller vesicles into larger ones such that the contents are merged as well -- but tend to only grow so large before undergoing mechanical division.

See Autopoietic Self-Reproduction of Fatty Acid Vesicles,

Genetics Times: Researchers Build Model Protocell Capable of Copying DNA

(4) Unlike modern cell walls, these primitive vesicles are porous which allows building blocks in, which combine with other components and then are too large to escape

See Dr Jack Szostak's work

(5) Eventually, some of the peptide chains prove beneficial to the fatty-acid vesicle structures.

See Dr Jack Szostak's work

(6) We know that some peptide chains are self-replicating -- by setting up even a simple peptide chain which can self-replicate we set the stage for evolutionary processes over time to work. And we know that some single RNA strands have been found to be capable of replication as well.

See A self-replicating peptide, Peptide Self-Replication Via Template-Directed Ligation

(7) We also know that the Qb virus can reproduce without a cell if the chemical environment is available.

See The Fifth Miracle by Paul Davies (excerpt)

(8) Finally, we're just now at the stage where we can start building complex life from scratch directly in the lab:

See Chemical Synthesis of Poliovirus cDNA: Generation of Infectious Virus in the Absence of Natural Template

There are, of course, many open questions, nobody is denying that -- but they are just questions and there is absolutely no indication that any of these problems are intractable (including ribose and chirality). Try Google Scholar: abiogenesis ribose

There are 100's of more research papers on the subject, this is just barely scratching the surface.

One of the big problems with religious belief structures which claim revelatory knowledge from God is that it blocks people from even attempting to understand what is true. Where in the bible does it explain the mechanism that God supposedly used to create the universe and to create life? If it doesn't speak to the how, then how do you claim to know that organic life could not have happened as part of the natural course of the universal laws which ultimately drive everything?

You should investigate further: Dr M Reza Ghadiri and Dr Jack Szostak

How do you get to RNA without the mechanisms in place today to create it?

That is now at least a half-solved problem, See Dr. Sutherland's research:

the chemicals naturally formed a compound that is half-sugar and half-base. When another half-sugar and half-base are added, the RNA nucleotide called ribocytidine phosphate emerges. A second nucleotide is created if ultraviolet light is shined on the mixture. Dr. Sutherland said he had not yet found natural ways to generate the other two types of nucleotides found in RNA molecules, but synthesis of the first two was thought to be harder to achieve. If all four nucleotides formed naturally, they would zip together easily to form an RNA molecule with a backbone of alternating sugar and phosphate groups.

And even that may have come from space: New Studies on the Murchison Meteorite Shed Light on the Pre-RNA World

More resources to read:

Reconstructing the emergence of cellular life through the synthesis of model protocells

and

Scientists Close to Reconstructing First Living Cell

Scientific Literature: neurobiological origins of primitive religion

One of the things I hope to do in this blog is expose people to more of the scientific literature.

For starters, I offer "The neurobiological origins of primitive religion: Implications for comparative mythology" by Steve Farmer, Ph.D. There is a tremendous bibliography at the end of the paper with many hours of reading for interested persons but I will be discussing some of the finer points in more detail in the future. Please at least try to give a read, you'll probably be surprised at how much you can at least get the gist of, even if you don't understand every point. And that's ok -- learning is a life long process.

One of things I hope that readers new to scientific literature will do is stop and think for a moment about just how many scientific papers there are (literally millions of them) and what a herculean task it would be to truly become an expert in just one field of inquiry. There is so much knowledge and information out there, it is not reasonable to expect any one person to understand all of it, indeed, it takes about 6 billion of us to understand only a good fraction of it. This is why arguments from ignorance are just not acceptable (and no, making an argument from ignorance doesn't mean that YOU are ignorant, it means that you are basing your viewpoint on an absence of knowledge and evidence).

Think about that when you ponder how it all began and how life started, especially if you are tempted to think "There just MUST be a God, all this couldn't just happen". Just because you don't understand something, and even if no person in the entire world understands it, that doesn't mean that there has to be a supernatural explanation for it! And also remember that by proposing a supernatural God as the explanation for how our Universe began you ponder the existence of something infinitely more complex "just" existing than our Universe.

And there is absolutely much that science does not yet understand about the subatomic world, our world, and the cosmos. But while we may not know some things with certainty, we do have many clues, hints, and hypotheses.

Think about all the things we have learned over the years about our universe. We used to believe the stars were fixed into the "firmament" of the heavens, we had no idea that they were stars much like our own Sun and we had no idea that some of those stars were ENTIRE galaxies of stars. And we had no idea that there was a vast and rich structure to the universe. And we have also learned much about the extremely tiny. First discovering molecules and then the elements that compose them, and then breaking into the details of the Atom and now even far deep into the structures of the subatomic world. We've learned much about Chemistry, especially organic Chemistry. We've learned about how simple gases and liquids (with the addition of some energy from sun, lightening, volcanoes, thermal vents, and even chemical sources) can drive those elements into complex organic molecules. We even know now how almost every single molecule that is important for the beginning of what we call life (which seems to require some kind of self-replicating structure at a very minimum; although we now struggle to draw any sharp line between life and so-called non-life -- we have many strange forms which fall in the gap in between).

So I ask that you suspend belief in a supernatural God for a moment and ponder just how amazing and wondrous the ACTUAL Universe that we experience every day is. It is both breathtaking and terrifying. It has created animals and Humans with the capacity for love and sacrifice but it is also cruel beyond measure and unmoved by Human emotions (unless WE take action). The authors of the Bible were certainly correct to express the idea that we should be thankful for each and every day because every moment could truly be our last - and I think that they were more acutely aware of that than we tend to be today.

To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true. ~ Bertrand Russell

Some research tools you may not be aware of:

#1 Google Scholar

#2 Google Books