Re: Revealing thought experiment

On 2/8/2025 2:14 PM, MarkE wrote:

On 9/02/2025 2:38 am, RonO wrote:

On 2/7/2025 4:02 PM, MarkE wrote:

Does the following quotation demonstrate that the naturalistic origin of life involves amplifying a vanishingly small probability (i.e. the probability of spontaneous generation in a jar, with small probabilistic resources of space and time available), to a larger probability (i.e. the universe over its entire history)?
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That is, does it demonstrate that the naturalistic origin of life is spontaneous generation, only with more time and space than Redi and Pasteur allowed?
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"At this point, I introduced Louis Pasteur’s pasteurization experiment, which convinced the world that even microorganisms could not be generated spontaneously.

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At the time spontaneous generation was considered to also be special creation.  It was considered to be God's continued creation.  Pasteur demonstrated that this was not happening.  It had a religious connection.  There was some belief that it might be happening using organic material (plant and animal dead material) and Pasteur demonstrated that this was not the case.  Contamination with existing lifeforms was found to be the basis for the misconception.

 Actually, fair point. Doing a bit of digging, some proponents of spontaneous generation regarded it as evidence of a "life force" in non- living matter (e.g. Aristotle, and John Needham 1745).

The Reason to Believe old earth creationists and, apparently, exIDiots continue to believe that life is continuing to be created.  They used to claim to be intelligent design advocates, and they had their constant "recreation" model for how life has evolved on this planet. Neanderthals are considered to be recreations of modern humans or something like Homo erectus.  Speciation within a genera was claimed to be due to recreation.  The finches or lizards could be recreated to be a little different from each other and could even be able to interbreed. The creator was using the existing genetic template to recreate a new species to be just a little different from the original.
It would be difficult to confirm recreation because the creator obviously does it when no one is looking.  It is always happening, but we only see the results when we identify the new species.  They wanted it to be special creation and not creation through biological evolution.   In some old post I once suggested that they could place hermetically sealed containers on the islands that they thought the recreations were happening and see if anything popped into one.  It is about the only way that you could demonstrate that recreation was happening.

 

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None of this changes the fact that the origin of life on this planet is not Biblical.  It really doesn't matter if life arose by natural mechanisms or not the Bible is still wrong about how it occurred.  You likely do need to have a discussion with Denton as to why he has his Deistic notions.  My guess is that he is only deistic in terms of his god's activity with the creation and evolution of this universe, but he likely believes in an interactive god with the human result of biological evolution on this planet because he still claims to probably be Christian.  He seems to be agnostic only to other people's religious beliefs.
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Ron Okimoto

 Structuralism as a modern incarnation by Denton and others?
 "Form is in this view not shaped by natural selection, but by "self- organizing properties of particular categories of matter" and by "cosmic fine-tuning of the laws of nature".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism_(biology)

Denton likely was not influenced by structuralism.  He just retreated to the Big Bang for his claim of what would have been required to have been designed by a creator, and claims that the creator created our universe in such a way as to make us or something like us possible.  He understands that it took around 8 billion years to produce the elements that our solar system is made of produced by dying stars.  Our earth would eventually form as it did in a place in the galaxy where life could survive and he doesn't require any designer interference in the origin of life, nor the evolution of life on earth.  The other ID perps have never accepted Denton's deistic notions, and Denton quit the ID scam before the bait and switch started to go down.  He probably needed the money and came back to continue the ID perp's effort of using intelligent design as bait.  He has been a prolific author since his return the ID scam, but the Discovery Institute doesn't seem to support those books.
Ron Okimoto

 

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And all students agreed on that conclusion. The following text is a record of my conversation with my students afterward.
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Tan. Are you confident that the experiments by Redi and Pasteur have proved that spontaneous generation is impossible?
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Students. Yes.
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Tan. Sure?
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Students. Yes.
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Tan. Does it matter what sizes the jars/bottles were?
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Students. No.
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Tan. Does it matter how long they waited?
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Students. No.
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Tan. Sure?
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Students. Yes.
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Tan. What if the bottles are very big? I mean very big, really big. Still positive?
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Students. Yes.
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Tan. How about this big? (A picture of the globe was shown.) Still positive?
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Students. Uh… (Some hesitated.)
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Tan. How about this big? (A picture of the visible universe of the Hubble deep field was shown.) Still positive?
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Students. (Silence.)
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How about you?"
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Tan, Change; Stadler, Rob. The Stairway To Life: An Origin-Of-Life Reality Check (pp. 179-180). Evorevo Books. Kindle Edition.
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