Religion & Ethics: Content from Across the ABC




Date/Time 12 Jul 2014 3:58:18pm

Here goes again. I'll see your tokens of scientific understanding and raise you another.

1. There is, categorically, no theory of abiogenesis. All the hypotheses you mention are not generally accepted because they are way too improbable. Did you mean Urey-Miller? The experiment that everyone now accepts to have used conditions unlike early Earth? The experiment where the amino acids had to be artificially removed as they formed otherwise they turned into toxic sludge?

Your science is in error. Amino acids form peptide bonds and the resulting chains are the basis of proteins and enzymes - not DNA or RNA. DNA and RNA use a totally different chemical base, not found in nature apart from in living things. Are you also aware that water pulls apart peptide bonds through hydrolysis? So much for life starting in the ocean.

2. My point is that science has no insight into design. The design of the keypad I am using does not result from any law of physics or chemistry or from any property of energy or matter. The design is certainly not within the naturalistic framework. You can see where I am leading: the design seen in living things is beyond science to explain.

3. I said worldwide. This does not mean in every single place. Generally the deposits are at the edge of continents, where they would be expected to be following runoff of floodwaters as the landmass rose. The sedimentary deposits cover far greater areas than possible under any current geological process. The fossils show accumulations based on their original geographic distribution.

Radiometric dating yields inconsistent results. Originally it was thought that rates of decay were always constant. This is now known to be false: there at least two ways to influence the rates, either by ionization or through interaction with neutrinos. There may other ways. The discovery of pliable biological material from dinosaur bones proves that the 'millions of years' dating is wrong, as the biological material decays in the order of thousands of years, not millions. Ditto for the resurrection of microbes supposedly 250 million years old. You may have heard of the RATE project, which found that the helium by-product of radioactive decay was present in such great quantities that the crystals could only be thousands of years old, not their millions of years radiometric dates. Lots of other clues too: the ubiquitous presence of radiocarbon in fossils and in diamonds; the moon would have been touching the Earth less than 2 billion years ago. The current erosion rates rule out long ages for continents. Should I go on?

There are no theories, naturalist or creationist, that fully explain the Earth as we know it. But I have one thing on my side: you can think that my way is improbable, but I can show your way is impossible.