I enjoyed your article, and it was an interesting perspective. I am a devout Christian, and I know ,not think, I know that God created the heavens and the Earth, that he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. However, let me hasten to add that while I know that God created the heavens and the Earth, and all there in, including mankind, that does not preclude the possibility, or perhaps likelihood, that his creative talents included natural selection.
Frankly, it’s nothing that I’ve ever been perturbed about when someone wants to discuss Darwinian natural selection. I know what I know and I again enjoyed your article.
Feb 14, 2023·edited Feb 14, 2023Liked by Dr Christopher Exley
I'm glad you brought this topic up.
Natural selection has long gone for humans. When we intervened first with plants/herbs, then surgery, then drugs, then the creation of all things unnatural (ie man-made), we also created that decisive step away from the traditional Darwinian path (perhaps in your books the environment was ripe for the rise of technology!).
If we were to apply natural selection today, anyone with appendicitis, major trauma, major bacterial infections, major cardiac/endocrine etc problems, inability to survive giving birth or being born, major organ problems, cancer; none of them would make it. The population of today would be far, far less than half of what we currently have. No antibiotics. No computers. Just natural selection.
Instead, we have selected what we wish to make happen, and I'm not sure that we're very good masters at that!! We're poisoning almost everything in our path, ourselves included, and we don't seem to care.
Honestly, believing in God or not believing in God has very little to do with natural selection, at least IMO. But to be a true scientist, I don't think that a belief in God goes exactly hand-in-hand with it. For the most part, one must compartmentalise one's scientific abilities with one's belief system. The two rarely go hand-in hand unless you are perhaps a Gaian! :-D
I have to say, though, the run-ins I've had with people on substack have invariably been with god-botherers. Their thought processes seem to get 'stuck' due to their belief in God. Maybe people need to believe in themselves a bit more instead of passing the buck to a higher power. Because by practicing that buck-passing on a daily basis, unwittingly people also seem to pass the buck when it comes to politics, education, health and all sorts of other important topics. At least that's my observation.
Indeed our activities are also acted upon by natural selection. Whatever functions in the current situation continues on, regardless of whether we think them to be right or wrong. I was just pointing out some problems with our choices! ;-)
But are we truly natural? Home erectus seemed to be. But was Homo sapiens? We are flesh and blood, true, but with our 46 chromosomes not 48 like Homo erectus, one must wonder how we ended up with that fused 2nd chromosome, our largest one by far. Even allowing for chromosomal translocation, there'd have to be a lot of inbreeding in a small group of hominids to make that work. Which would lead to serious mutations. And yes, potentially chromosomal fusions. But it would also lead to a whole lot of miscarriages and very few offspring. Which is not how you generally get to 8 billion of that species!
I've thought about this a lot and read a lot about this concept over the years. My thinking so far is that I don't think we're entirely natural. Yes, it's a bit 'out there' but it's the only way I can figure that we can get to 8 billion people and still be functional. IF aliens played with our genetics, then we are not natural in the truly 'natural' way, but still natural in that we are flesh and blood. Probably you would disagree with me, and say that even if our distant ancestors were all effectively test-tube babies, we are still natural, and I can also see this point of view. But perhaps if we've had genetic tinkering in our past, it might explain a lot about why we seek out gods (because they effectively made us).
I see no reason why the concepts of science and God need to be conflicting. I am not religious but this concept of the potential of God does not bother me in the least.
It seems to me that you have a lot that you would like to say. Why not put it in a substack. It will have more impact than simply as a comment to my piece.
Please consider the infromation that shows that the claim that natural structures are the result of "random mutations of DNA" and "Natural Selection" are absurd. Elite masons have pushed the fairy tales that we have been taught to uncritically accept. Simple probability calculations prove very definitely that random mutations could never be the actual mechanism. " Whether at the microscopic or macroscopic level, major, complex, evolutionary advances, involving new features (as opposed to minor, quantitative changes such as an increase in the length of the giraffe's neck, or the darkening of the wings of a moth, which clearly could occur gradually) also involve the addition of many interrelated and interdependent pieces. These complex advances, like those made to computer programs, are not always "irreducibly complex"--sometimes there are intermediate useful stages. But just as major improvements to a computer program cannot be made 5 or 6 characters at a time, certainly no major evolutionary advance is reducible to a chain of tiny improvements, each small enough to be bridged by a single random mutation.
I have searched on that topic, do you have a good link to theories on how that works? Of course I am a big fan of yours, so I appreciate your input! I think the simple analysis of the infinitesimally small probability of random mutations actually accounting for the "perfect" structures in the natural world is pretty obvious. LIke taking a box of metal parts and throwing them in the air and they land together in the form of a working toaster. Impossible.
In my YouTube community, it is notorious that so-called professor dave is propped up by YouTube to stir everyone away from the truth.
Your « quick search of the name Dr James Tour » confirms that the algorithm is indeed programmed to retrieve professor dave’s channel. Conversely, when I search for your name Professor, I find hardly anything.
It is no longer possible to do research on the internet without knowing what you are looking for or having very specific keywords otherwise the algorithm will feed you professor dave and the likes.
Lies are presented as the truth and the truth as a lie: a satanic inversion.
If creationists « cannot find space for God in natural selection », it is easy to find Evil in it.
UK Column News saved my sanity in the first two years of the C-19 nightmare we are still enmeshed in. Even though I'm in the US, they were the first alternate news site that I felt I could trust to dig out the truth of things. However, I took notice of the strong opinions and biases there, so I get what you are talking about in your article here.
It is frustrating to try and have a conversation with people whose minds are closed...haven't many of us who are suspicious of the C-19 shot run right into that brick wall with friends and family? Doesn't matter how many scientific studies one has, or what experience/knowledge we might possess.
Anyway, even at almost 70 years old, I still don't know what to believe. But I think that if life did arise from "primordial soup" as Tour scoffs at, couldn't God have been the movement behind the elements in that soup? There doesn't have to be a conflict; egos make it so.
My comment is far past the initial time of this thread. BUT...
I compare the god squad mind set to the, forgive me, political climate in the USA between the Democrat/Leftist/Liberal/Progressive attitude who think that their way is the only way (much like the belief that "god" created and made happen all things life on this planet) to the Republican attitude which seems in more cases to be a little bit more common sense based (although there seem to be just as many idiots for both factions) which tends to be more like the scientific/biological attitude that life, or whatever this is, evolved.
I can accept the dogma of the concept that God did it all but I don't need or want to be witnessed to. So do your thing, with your faith/belief/religion and have a great time. But don't be coming to me and try to convert me to your mindset because I shudder to be so beholding to that superstition when I have my own set of superstitions that may be just a bit more logically oriented and based (at least I think they are).
Science makes sense to me, after all, that baby didn't come out of the womb a 6'1" male with elementary, intermediate, high school and college knowledge already loaded into his computer capacity. He (or she) evolved or grew up and that took at least some amount of time and learning.
"I can accept the dogma of the concept that God did it all but I don't need or want to be witnessed to. So do your thing, with your faith/belief/religion and have a great time. But don't be coming to me and try to convert me to your mindset because I shudder to be so beholding to that superstition when I have my own set of superstitions that may be just a bit more logically oriented and based (at least I think they are)."
I don't know who you are talking to in this reply--certainly not to me, as I wasn't "coming to" anyone with my comment to Dr. Exley's post. I was actually writing to Dr. Exley, so you can take your admonitions back with you to wherever you've come from.
I'm sorry ... I thought your comment was that everything was created by God so therefore there was little opening that science has any place for being reasonable. If I took that interpretation incorrectly then I apologize.
Being a student of the Bible but not a professional clergyman, I can say that in theology, there is much interpretation in reading the Word of God. Generally science, especially archaeology, can be viewed as having confirmed much of what has been written in the Bible. Thousands of years ago the scribes did not have words to describe things that we take for granted. Translations into various languages over the centuries also was a point of imprecision. Clergymen can convince themselves that their interpretation is the only correct one and then allow no further discussion. Egos can get in the way. So, I don’t feel theologically qualified to respond to your issue, but perhaps others can find a place to insert newly discovered biochemical processes.
Mr. Hagelberg. I have long had a point of concern that the "Bible is the word of God". And yet, how many people wrote those sections of the Bible? And how much time passed from one person's interpretation to the next. And given the time frame involved "then" why does that or those ideas have such an impact on "this time" when it is over 2000 years later?
If the Bible is your template for what to do in your life, why then doesn't an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, not still apply and be paramount to how law should be carried out?
Oh well, if it works for you, then it does and I'm okay with that. Carry on....
And now apply that to the work that Dr. Exley has done for over 40 years and then some rich jerk like Bill Gates or Rupert Murdoch or Soros comes around and doesn't like his proven biological yet science based logically tested concepts that are reproducible and solid. So those oligarchs trash Dr. Exley because his findings work AND it doesn't make a lot of cash for those nose in the air pay out and pay off (you'd better genuflect to me) kings.
So, in my not so humble opinion, the oligarchs can just pffffsssssst off! I'm just more invested in Dr. Exley's work because it works!
I too watched the interview on UK Column with Dr James Tour.
At this time on Earth I would love to believe in a higher being who will help us sort out the all-encompassing mess we are in, but that doesn't necessarily make it so, unfortunately.
I found the descriptions in the James Tour interview regarding the degree of complexity within even a basic yeast cell fascinating, but would have liked a link to the calculations which led to such blindingly small probabilities.
The YouTube link by "Professor Dave" I will listen to later, but I am not encouraged by initial searches on his name Dave Farina, where others explain he is not a professor, and here he is being praised as someone who "debunks conspiracy theories".
Very interesting! I will watch out for this bias in their reporting. Have you read Nick Lane's "Vital Question" on the origin of life? I found it absolutely fascinating. I would be interested to know whether you feel it is compatible with your knowledge about chemistry and aluminium. I was brought up in a church going family and although I believe that a higher power could well have directed evolution, there seems to be no doubt that we and other life forms resulted from that process. Having said that, I find that the more I learn, the more I realise how little we humans know. The sum of human knowledge and what the human brain is capable of knowing compared to all there is to know may well be like a full stop compared to the size of the universe.
It meshes with the idea that chemicals and life follow natural selection.
Creationism is not just religious, but also a part of physics, the recently challenged big bang theory and their obsession with dark matter, dark energy, and invented particles.
UK Column has a religious bias. That's why they played games with you.
They try to find an excuse to dismiss, which happened recently to MIRI af, who thankfully linked to you. I liked your research and I'm glad to be a new subscriber!
To me, the only thing natural selection means is that I get to select something or not. To medical terrorists, natural selection means that the average pinhead (myself included) is likely to be de-selcted.
What is your perspective on natural selection in origin of life? Can you further elaborate on the above? I can see how natural selection works once you have replicating life because a species can "ratchet" it's way to better adaptations. When it comes to biogenesis, it is not clear that this mechanism would apply.
When I read your "nutshell" I thought there must be more than this? It seems to me that until you have replicating life, any molecule you get from a "primordial soup" is going to be subject to degrading reactions over a relatively short time. Now you can posit that "gillions" of these experiments are being run in parallel, but you will have many abiotic synthesis steps of this kind until you have replicating life. What we're left with is a kind of "confidence" that somehow science will answer this in the future because it appears that the lab experiments are nowhere close - notwithstanding the confident assertions by researchers (eager for funding) that they'll create life in the lab in the next "couple years."
We are unable to confirm by laboratory experiment the existence of the aluminium semi-reduced radical cation, see my previous substack, but does that mean it doesn't exist.
Personally, I believe, and I’m going out on a limb for this audience, that earth and us, homo sapien sapien are one big experiment by extraterrestrials and that includes DNA manipulation.
And that is the great mystery of the universes. One God, One Creator, One Source, or whatever you want to call it, is the belief system of most beings including those not of Earth.
It's the whole 'created in our image' thing, isn't it?
I'm pretty sure that aliens are in on it somewhere. It may be 'out there' but having traipsed through an awful lot of information over the decades, it's still the most logical conclusion I can come to.
I watched both videos linked above and I found Dr Tour's message compelling while "professor Dave" didn't attempt to answer any of Tour's arguments - to be charitable. One of the main points of the Tour interview (last third of the interview) was that the public has a vastly over-confident view on origin of life (OOL) research progress to date. For instance, one survey says that 80% of the college-level-educated public believe researchers have created simple life in the lab when Tour maintains they are not even close. He lays the blame for the public's mistaken view at the feet of an eager media and more so at the feet of exaggerating OOL researchers. Naturally, OOL researchers don't take kindly to having their life's work being called false - particularly in a very public way. Dr Tour, who has 700 peer-reviewed papers, has published 5 papers challenging aspects of OOL research (not his main gig) which don't receive any engagement by OOL scientists, hence the need to go public. I don't know what Professor Dave's day job is although it could be a self-employed science journalist YouTuber as he has 2 million subs.
I would also encourage anyone interested to take a hard look at just who "told us" about evolution, heliocentric model, vaccine eradication of disease, climate change, etc.. elite masons are the ones who fabricate theories, put them out as unquestioned truth, mark them with their occult numerology, fabricate evidence, stifle debate, etc.. same nasty pattern we see in our current time.
Intelligent Design- I used to be an atheist but now consider myself a follower of all true religions, I believe there is strong evidence for a "Creator" and we can see how the observer affects physical reality in many replicable experiments (slit experiment quantum physics, placebo effect, telepathy, power of prayer, hidden messages in water, etc. )
I enjoyed your article, and it was an interesting perspective. I am a devout Christian, and I know ,not think, I know that God created the heavens and the Earth, that he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. However, let me hasten to add that while I know that God created the heavens and the Earth, and all there in, including mankind, that does not preclude the possibility, or perhaps likelihood, that his creative talents included natural selection.
Frankly, it’s nothing that I’ve ever been perturbed about when someone wants to discuss Darwinian natural selection. I know what I know and I again enjoyed your article.
God bless even if your dubious of His existence.
I'm glad you brought this topic up.
Natural selection has long gone for humans. When we intervened first with plants/herbs, then surgery, then drugs, then the creation of all things unnatural (ie man-made), we also created that decisive step away from the traditional Darwinian path (perhaps in your books the environment was ripe for the rise of technology!).
If we were to apply natural selection today, anyone with appendicitis, major trauma, major bacterial infections, major cardiac/endocrine etc problems, inability to survive giving birth or being born, major organ problems, cancer; none of them would make it. The population of today would be far, far less than half of what we currently have. No antibiotics. No computers. Just natural selection.
Instead, we have selected what we wish to make happen, and I'm not sure that we're very good masters at that!! We're poisoning almost everything in our path, ourselves included, and we don't seem to care.
Honestly, believing in God or not believing in God has very little to do with natural selection, at least IMO. But to be a true scientist, I don't think that a belief in God goes exactly hand-in-hand with it. For the most part, one must compartmentalise one's scientific abilities with one's belief system. The two rarely go hand-in hand unless you are perhaps a Gaian! :-D
I have to say, though, the run-ins I've had with people on substack have invariably been with god-botherers. Their thought processes seem to get 'stuck' due to their belief in God. Maybe people need to believe in themselves a bit more instead of passing the buck to a higher power. Because by practicing that buck-passing on a daily basis, unwittingly people also seem to pass the buck when it comes to politics, education, health and all sorts of other important topics. At least that's my observation.
Are the activities of human beings not acted upon by natural selection. We are 'natural' after all.
Indeed our activities are also acted upon by natural selection. Whatever functions in the current situation continues on, regardless of whether we think them to be right or wrong. I was just pointing out some problems with our choices! ;-)
But are we truly natural? Home erectus seemed to be. But was Homo sapiens? We are flesh and blood, true, but with our 46 chromosomes not 48 like Homo erectus, one must wonder how we ended up with that fused 2nd chromosome, our largest one by far. Even allowing for chromosomal translocation, there'd have to be a lot of inbreeding in a small group of hominids to make that work. Which would lead to serious mutations. And yes, potentially chromosomal fusions. But it would also lead to a whole lot of miscarriages and very few offspring. Which is not how you generally get to 8 billion of that species!
I've thought about this a lot and read a lot about this concept over the years. My thinking so far is that I don't think we're entirely natural. Yes, it's a bit 'out there' but it's the only way I can figure that we can get to 8 billion people and still be functional. IF aliens played with our genetics, then we are not natural in the truly 'natural' way, but still natural in that we are flesh and blood. Probably you would disagree with me, and say that even if our distant ancestors were all effectively test-tube babies, we are still natural, and I can also see this point of view. But perhaps if we've had genetic tinkering in our past, it might explain a lot about why we seek out gods (because they effectively made us).
I see no reason why the concepts of science and God need to be conflicting. I am not religious but this concept of the potential of God does not bother me in the least.
Try being religious and see if there becomes a conflict... ;-)
I will try.
It seems to me that you have a lot that you would like to say. Why not put it in a substack. It will have more impact than simply as a comment to my piece.
Please consider the infromation that shows that the claim that natural structures are the result of "random mutations of DNA" and "Natural Selection" are absurd. Elite masons have pushed the fairy tales that we have been taught to uncritically accept. Simple probability calculations prove very definitely that random mutations could never be the actual mechanism. " Whether at the microscopic or macroscopic level, major, complex, evolutionary advances, involving new features (as opposed to minor, quantitative changes such as an increase in the length of the giraffe's neck, or the darkening of the wings of a moth, which clearly could occur gradually) also involve the addition of many interrelated and interdependent pieces. These complex advances, like those made to computer programs, are not always "irreducibly complex"--sometimes there are intermediate useful stages. But just as major improvements to a computer program cannot be made 5 or 6 characters at a time, certainly no major evolutionary advance is reducible to a chain of tiny improvements, each small enough to be bridged by a single random mutation.
" https://www.math.utep.edu/faculty/sewell/articles/mathint.html
But, random mutations are also guided by natural selection.
I have searched on that topic, do you have a good link to theories on how that works? Of course I am a big fan of yours, so I appreciate your input! I think the simple analysis of the infinitesimally small probability of random mutations actually accounting for the "perfect" structures in the natural world is pretty obvious. LIke taking a box of metal parts and throwing them in the air and they land together in the form of a working toaster. Impossible.
Random mutations may occur at random but the possibilities they may deliver are acted upon by natural selection and so are no longer random.
In my YouTube community, it is notorious that so-called professor dave is propped up by YouTube to stir everyone away from the truth.
Your « quick search of the name Dr James Tour » confirms that the algorithm is indeed programmed to retrieve professor dave’s channel. Conversely, when I search for your name Professor, I find hardly anything.
It is no longer possible to do research on the internet without knowing what you are looking for or having very specific keywords otherwise the algorithm will feed you professor dave and the likes.
Lies are presented as the truth and the truth as a lie: a satanic inversion.
If creationists « cannot find space for God in natural selection », it is easy to find Evil in it.
Yes, I have been censored by Google. I agree that we should all have an equal opportunity to voice our truth.
UK Column News saved my sanity in the first two years of the C-19 nightmare we are still enmeshed in. Even though I'm in the US, they were the first alternate news site that I felt I could trust to dig out the truth of things. However, I took notice of the strong opinions and biases there, so I get what you are talking about in your article here.
It is frustrating to try and have a conversation with people whose minds are closed...haven't many of us who are suspicious of the C-19 shot run right into that brick wall with friends and family? Doesn't matter how many scientific studies one has, or what experience/knowledge we might possess.
Anyway, even at almost 70 years old, I still don't know what to believe. But I think that if life did arise from "primordial soup" as Tour scoffs at, couldn't God have been the movement behind the elements in that soup? There doesn't have to be a conflict; egos make it so.
Thank you for being here, Dr. Exley!
My comment is far past the initial time of this thread. BUT...
I compare the god squad mind set to the, forgive me, political climate in the USA between the Democrat/Leftist/Liberal/Progressive attitude who think that their way is the only way (much like the belief that "god" created and made happen all things life on this planet) to the Republican attitude which seems in more cases to be a little bit more common sense based (although there seem to be just as many idiots for both factions) which tends to be more like the scientific/biological attitude that life, or whatever this is, evolved.
I can accept the dogma of the concept that God did it all but I don't need or want to be witnessed to. So do your thing, with your faith/belief/religion and have a great time. But don't be coming to me and try to convert me to your mindset because I shudder to be so beholding to that superstition when I have my own set of superstitions that may be just a bit more logically oriented and based (at least I think they are).
Science makes sense to me, after all, that baby didn't come out of the womb a 6'1" male with elementary, intermediate, high school and college knowledge already loaded into his computer capacity. He (or she) evolved or grew up and that took at least some amount of time and learning.
Simple but more common sense tried.
"I can accept the dogma of the concept that God did it all but I don't need or want to be witnessed to. So do your thing, with your faith/belief/religion and have a great time. But don't be coming to me and try to convert me to your mindset because I shudder to be so beholding to that superstition when I have my own set of superstitions that may be just a bit more logically oriented and based (at least I think they are)."
I don't know who you are talking to in this reply--certainly not to me, as I wasn't "coming to" anyone with my comment to Dr. Exley's post. I was actually writing to Dr. Exley, so you can take your admonitions back with you to wherever you've come from.
I offer you my apologies after re reading here. My comment was misplaced. It was meant for Mr. Hagelberg. I stand in humble apologies to you Kat!
Thank you.
I'm sorry ... I thought your comment was that everything was created by God so therefore there was little opening that science has any place for being reasonable. If I took that interpretation incorrectly then I apologize.
If I didn't ...well then, I suppose I didn't.
Being a student of the Bible but not a professional clergyman, I can say that in theology, there is much interpretation in reading the Word of God. Generally science, especially archaeology, can be viewed as having confirmed much of what has been written in the Bible. Thousands of years ago the scribes did not have words to describe things that we take for granted. Translations into various languages over the centuries also was a point of imprecision. Clergymen can convince themselves that their interpretation is the only correct one and then allow no further discussion. Egos can get in the way. So, I don’t feel theologically qualified to respond to your issue, but perhaps others can find a place to insert newly discovered biochemical processes.
Mr. Hagelberg. I have long had a point of concern that the "Bible is the word of God". And yet, how many people wrote those sections of the Bible? And how much time passed from one person's interpretation to the next. And given the time frame involved "then" why does that or those ideas have such an impact on "this time" when it is over 2000 years later?
If the Bible is your template for what to do in your life, why then doesn't an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, not still apply and be paramount to how law should be carried out?
Oh well, if it works for you, then it does and I'm okay with that. Carry on....
And now apply that to the work that Dr. Exley has done for over 40 years and then some rich jerk like Bill Gates or Rupert Murdoch or Soros comes around and doesn't like his proven biological yet science based logically tested concepts that are reproducible and solid. So those oligarchs trash Dr. Exley because his findings work AND it doesn't make a lot of cash for those nose in the air pay out and pay off (you'd better genuflect to me) kings.
So, in my not so humble opinion, the oligarchs can just pffffsssssst off! I'm just more invested in Dr. Exley's work because it works!
Hmmm UK Column News - Dr James Tour. Isn’t that a case of Gell-Mann amnesia?
Quite possibly.
I too watched the interview on UK Column with Dr James Tour.
At this time on Earth I would love to believe in a higher being who will help us sort out the all-encompassing mess we are in, but that doesn't necessarily make it so, unfortunately.
I found the descriptions in the James Tour interview regarding the degree of complexity within even a basic yeast cell fascinating, but would have liked a link to the calculations which led to such blindingly small probabilities.
The YouTube link by "Professor Dave" I will listen to later, but I am not encouraged by initial searches on his name Dave Farina, where others explain he is not a professor, and here he is being praised as someone who "debunks conspiracy theories".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nhQ6Zl-4cQ
Professor Dave has few pretentions. One can be fiercely intelligent without a university degree.
The numbers relied upon by Tour are largely irrelevant in the face of natural selection where only the predominant reaction really matters.
Natural selection does much of the simple stuff needed to get from the big bang to now. But there's much more:
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/bringing-mind-to-matter
Very interesting! I will watch out for this bias in their reporting. Have you read Nick Lane's "Vital Question" on the origin of life? I found it absolutely fascinating. I would be interested to know whether you feel it is compatible with your knowledge about chemistry and aluminium. I was brought up in a church going family and although I believe that a higher power could well have directed evolution, there seems to be no doubt that we and other life forms resulted from that process. Having said that, I find that the more I learn, the more I realise how little we humans know. The sum of human knowledge and what the human brain is capable of knowing compared to all there is to know may well be like a full stop compared to the size of the universe.
I believe in nature as god.
It meshes with the idea that chemicals and life follow natural selection.
Creationism is not just religious, but also a part of physics, the recently challenged big bang theory and their obsession with dark matter, dark energy, and invented particles.
UK Column has a religious bias. That's why they played games with you.
They try to find an excuse to dismiss, which happened recently to MIRI af, who thankfully linked to you. I liked your research and I'm glad to be a new subscriber!
To me, the only thing natural selection means is that I get to select something or not. To medical terrorists, natural selection means that the average pinhead (myself included) is likely to be de-selcted.
What is your perspective on natural selection in origin of life? Can you further elaborate on the above? I can see how natural selection works once you have replicating life because a species can "ratchet" it's way to better adaptations. When it comes to biogenesis, it is not clear that this mechanism would apply.
Didn't I write about just that?
When I read your "nutshell" I thought there must be more than this? It seems to me that until you have replicating life, any molecule you get from a "primordial soup" is going to be subject to degrading reactions over a relatively short time. Now you can posit that "gillions" of these experiments are being run in parallel, but you will have many abiotic synthesis steps of this kind until you have replicating life. What we're left with is a kind of "confidence" that somehow science will answer this in the future because it appears that the lab experiments are nowhere close - notwithstanding the confident assertions by researchers (eager for funding) that they'll create life in the lab in the next "couple years."
We are unable to confirm by laboratory experiment the existence of the aluminium semi-reduced radical cation, see my previous substack, but does that mean it doesn't exist.
Personally, I believe, and I’m going out on a limb for this audience, that earth and us, homo sapien sapien are one big experiment by extraterrestrials and that includes DNA manipulation.
...and whose experiment are the ETs? Another set of ETs? How many steps back does it go?
And that is the great mystery of the universes. One God, One Creator, One Source, or whatever you want to call it, is the belief system of most beings including those not of Earth.
It's the whole 'created in our image' thing, isn't it?
I'm pretty sure that aliens are in on it somewhere. It may be 'out there' but having traipsed through an awful lot of information over the decades, it's still the most logical conclusion I can come to.
Those not of Earth..? Who might they be?
Hard to refute, a bit like God.
I watched both videos linked above and I found Dr Tour's message compelling while "professor Dave" didn't attempt to answer any of Tour's arguments - to be charitable. One of the main points of the Tour interview (last third of the interview) was that the public has a vastly over-confident view on origin of life (OOL) research progress to date. For instance, one survey says that 80% of the college-level-educated public believe researchers have created simple life in the lab when Tour maintains they are not even close. He lays the blame for the public's mistaken view at the feet of an eager media and more so at the feet of exaggerating OOL researchers. Naturally, OOL researchers don't take kindly to having their life's work being called false - particularly in a very public way. Dr Tour, who has 700 peer-reviewed papers, has published 5 papers challenging aspects of OOL research (not his main gig) which don't receive any engagement by OOL scientists, hence the need to go public. I don't know what Professor Dave's day job is although it could be a self-employed science journalist YouTuber as he has 2 million subs.
Introduction
Problem 1: No Viable Mechanism to Generate a Primordial Soup
Problem 2: Unguided Chemical Processes Cannot Explain the Origin of the Genetic Code
Problem 3: Random Mutations Cannot Generate the Genetic Information Required for Irreducibly Complex Structures
Problem 4: Natural Selection Struggles to Fix Advantageous Traits into Populations
Problem 5: Abrupt Appearance of Species in the Fossil Record Does Not Support Darwinian Evolution
Problem 6: Molecular Biology has Failed to Yield a Grand “Tree of Life”
Problem 7: Convergent Evolution Challenges Darwinism and Destroys the Logic Behind Common Ancestry
Problem 8: Differences between Vertebrate Embryos Contradict the Predictions of Common Ancestry
Problem 9: Neo-Darwinism Struggles to Explain the Biogeographical Distribution of many Species
Problem 10: Neo-Darwinism has a Long History of Inaccurate Darwinian Predictions about Vestigial Organs and “Junk DNA”
Bonus Problem: Humans Display Many Behavioral and Cognitive Abilities that Offer No Apparent Survival Advantage https://www.discovery.org/a/24041/?fbclid=IwAR3Cc2g5PeyoCilKPHWZ6b8C18D0xedYNScmZJDYbPmPnctgPcpnYpRsF7A
While some may be unconvinced by Darwinian natural selection I have yet to see anything more convincing.
I would also encourage anyone interested to take a hard look at just who "told us" about evolution, heliocentric model, vaccine eradication of disease, climate change, etc.. elite masons are the ones who fabricate theories, put them out as unquestioned truth, mark them with their occult numerology, fabricate evidence, stifle debate, etc.. same nasty pattern we see in our current time.
Intelligent Design- I used to be an atheist but now consider myself a follower of all true religions, I believe there is strong evidence for a "Creator" and we can see how the observer affects physical reality in many replicable experiments (slit experiment quantum physics, placebo effect, telepathy, power of prayer, hidden messages in water, etc. )
Oh please. Belief in supernatural beings, divine purpose and an afterlife are fictions created from our fear of death.
Here's # 11
Psycho-physical reductionism fails.
See Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel.
Thanks, I will check that out.