Tuesday, May 12, 2009

A forum post

Got a hilarious post from a Christian in my forum over at godriddance (which is unusual, because my forum has been dead for months). Anyway, here's his post, and my rebuttal (in bold):

"1. You mentioned Dr. Miller's experiment. That's a problem in and of itself--you were claiming that as the basis of the entire theory you presented. But Miller's experiment was entirely wrong. I will cover this in several subtopics.

1. His conditions were wrong. How many test tubes did they have billions of years ago?"

None. The chemicals and energy source (lightning), however, were around. I'm not so sure that being contained in glass makes any difference. At least, the chemists performing this experiment didn't think so, and they should know: They're chemists!

"2. The environment was wrong. This is similar to the first: there were no labs, no sterile environments. Everything was just kinda...there."

No sterile environments? Sterility means the absence of living things. Before life originated, I'm pretty sure there was no life.

"3. He had the wrong results. First of all, there were veeeery few amino acids at al. Second, he had the wrong type of amino acids that don't link to make proteins. Third, they were all in tar, which would destroy the acids before they could link together."

Oh no, amino acids were produced in abdundance. Stanley Miller himself said this on the subject:

"The surprise of the experiment was the very large yield of amino acids. We would have been happy if we got traces of amino acids, but we got around 4 percent. Incidentally, this is probably the biggest yield of any similar prebiotic experiment conducted since then. The reason for that has to do with the fact that amino acids are made from even simpler organic compounds such as hydrogen cyanide and aldehydes."

http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/NM/miller.php

Secondly, Miller got thirteen types of amino acids found in life today.

"Even Miller himself admitted this in a debate that an atheist and creationist were having on the topic. The moderator invited him up and he said that he had stopped believing that years ago."

Love to see a reference.

"And even if you do have amino acids, what good is it? You need a good long chain of them to make ONE PROTEIN. And it has already been proven by others that it is statistically impossible (several times the amount that is considered statistically impossible) that a protein could just randomly form. And that, once again, is ONE PROTEIN."

You're correct that you need lots of amino acids to make a single protein. But why must life start out with a whole protein? Why not just a polypeptide?

"And you know what? A protein is nowhere near the most complex molecule in the most simple single-celled organism. And even if all those molecules happened to form, good luck putting them together. On accident."

Correct. But why must we start out with a whole single celled organism? Why not just a self reproducing polypeptide like the one discovered
here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8700225

"I could do this all day, but I won't. The reason people want to be atheists (I am getting this from atheists who are themselves converts to Christianity) is because they have no need for accountability, and that's why you and everyone else who is an atheist is one."

The Reason people want to be Christians (and I'm getting this from Atheists who used to be Christians) is because they are pussies who can't handle life without Jeebus.
: )

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