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From: miller@uiucdcsb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: creationism topics
Message-ID: <32500003@uiucdcsb.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Sep-84 01:52:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucdcsb.32500003
Posted: Tue Sep 25 01:52:00 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Sep-84 19:42:10 EDT
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Nf-From: uiucdcsb!miller    Sep 25 00:52:00 1984


     Time for another weekly article by your friendly neighborhood creationist!
First, to answer Steve Wall's question, I believe the person you want is Sir
Fred Hoyle, who in his book "Evolution from Space" calculates the probability
of life evolving on earth at 1 out of 10^40,000.  He's written about this in
other places too, e.g., the 11/12/81 edition of "Nature" states that "The
chance that higher life forms have emerged in this way is comparable with the
chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747
from the materials therein".  Amazingly, he still believes in evolution; though
he feels it came to earth from another planet (which got the 747 I guess).
     Bill Price writes:
>It seems that this difference of viewpoint goes a long way toward seeing why
>the Creationist will respond with anger, rather than understanding, when he is
>confronted with reality.
Gee, and just last week I pointed out that on the net it was *evolutionists*
who were calling creationists: officers of the inquisition, a social holocaust,
one of the greatest threats that civilization faces, metaphysical totalitarian-
ism, Big Brother, Nazis, etc.  It seems to me that it is the evolutionists
responding with anger at reality, not the other way around.
     Patrick Wyant has a very long reply to Paul DuBois concerning thermodyna-
mics and Dr. Prigogine.  However, I don't think Patrick took Prigogine's warn-
ings to heart, i.e., where he wrote "But let us have no illusions.  If today we
look into the situation where the analogy with the life sciences is the most
striking - even if we discovered within biological systems some operation
distant from the state of equilibrium - our research would still leave us quite
unable to grasp the extreme complexity of the simplest of organisms."  Any
model works if you make enough assumptions.  Prigogine errs when he assumes
several highly improbable things, for example:
1 A steady net production of enormous quantities of nucleotides and amino acids
  on the hypothetical primative earth by the simple interaction of raw energy
  and simple gases.
2 A steady net production of enormous quantities of energy-rich organic mole-
  cules to supply the required energy.
3 The combination, in enormous quantities, of the nucleotides to form polymers.
4 The selective formation of homopolymers (such as poly-A and poly-T) rather
  than the formation of mixed polymers of random sequences.
5 The establishment of an autocatalytic cycle.
6 Errors in the formation of the polymers producing a new polymer which directs
  the synthesis of a primitive protein enzyme.
7 The primitive protein enzyme catalyzes the formation of both itself and the
  nucleotide polymer (DNA).
8 The above molecules somehow manage to spontaneously separate themselves from
  the rest of the world and concentrate into condensed systems coordinated in
  time and space.
(ref: Dr. Gish) Note that all of the improbable assumptions must hold; if even
*one* is wrong the system fails.  In view of things like this, I would be wary
of taking Dr. Prigogine's own warnings too lightly.
     Dick Dunn accuses creationists of circular reasoning in their definition
of kinds.  He, of course, assists himself in this accusation by "paraphrasing"
creationists.  All the while, he still hasn't given a "succinct, testable defi-
tion" of species either.  Actually, what we have here is a prediction by crea-
tionists, that kinds most likely share a unique common genetic characteristic,
one that further genetic research into understanding the DNA program should
reveal.
     Ray Mooney still has this silly notion that "creationists...are almost
always in areas not directly related to the evolution-creationism debate".  I
suggested he check out the credentials of the staff members at ICR.  He
obviously did not do that, calling Dr. Gish an engineer.  Sorry Ray, Dr. Gish
earned a BS in chemistry from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from UC Berk-
eley.  He spent 18 years in biochemical research at Cornell Univ Medical
College, the Virus Laboratory of the UC Berkeley, and with the Upjohn Company.
During that time he worked with two Nobel Prize winners and has authored about
40 technical scientific papers.  The most visible engineer in the field is no
doubt Dr. Henry Morris.  But even he has the proper background.  His Ph.D.
(from the Univ Minnesota) was a major in hydraulics, with a double minor in
geology and mathematics.  Who else is better qualified to study Flood geology?
(His resume is quite long and impressive, including 13 years as Chairman of the
Civil Engineering Dept at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute).  There are also
geologists (like Dr. Austin) and biologists (like Dr. Parker) on staff.  And
although he's not actually on the ICR staff (only affiliated) how could I
forget Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith, who has earned not one, not two, but *three*
doctoral degrees (organic chemistry, pharmacology, and chemotherapy).  Not only
was he a professor here at the Medical Center at our own UI, but he has given
several scientific creationism lectures here on campus & one debate (against
two UI evolutionary professors at once).  Did you go, or were you at home
trying to convince yourself how dumb creationists are and how little science
they know?  You might want to check out his book "The Creation of Life" in our
biology dept library, where he goes into the chemical impossibilities of evolu-
tionary abiogenesis.  Now, although it's not necessarily true that a high
percentage of creationists are engineers, it is true that a high percentage of
engineers are creationists.  No doubt engineers have a better grasp of the
concept "a watch requires a watchmaker".  Further, there is less vested in-
terest, indoctrination, and opposition in the subject if you are an engineer.
     Finally, several people jumped on my comments last time about the basis
for morality.  I'd rather not get into that too much here.  It is a subject for
net.religion or .philosophy (which I don't read).  I'm following up on that via
personal mail with several people.  Suffice it to say I was answering a charge
by Phil Polli that creationists are racists, and in that context, the remarks
were appropriate.

A. Ray Miller
Univ Illinois