@Ron: You wrote: Even just this week, I heard about the …

Comment on Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull by Sean Pitman.

@Ron:

You wrote:

Even just this week, I heard about the discovery of self aggregating, non-living “cells” without even any DNA that can act in non-random, seemingly goal driven behavior and replicate themselves, and we already know that DNA exists in stellar nebula even before the sun is formed, so it seems like a pretty simple step for the DNA to find it’s way into one of those non-living cells to create a bacterium.

Care to provide a reference for self-replicating non-living cells? – without DNA or RNA? There is a limited ability for pre-formed RNA molecules to self-replicate portions of themselves. There is also the ability of certain polar molecules to form little spheres with open central areas. But, this isn’t really self-replication based on coded information.

Also, while various amino acids have been detected in nebula, neither proteins nor DNA have been detected. It is simply hypothesized that individual amino acid building blocks would have to give rise to proteins and the basic ingredients for DNA would have to give rise to the informational complexity of DNA itself (Link)…

These imaginative just-so stories do not take into account the statistical odds against the mindless formation of high levels of functional informational complexity. There is no such demonstration known to modern science. Period.

You ask when creationists will given up and simply accept the reality of neo-Darwinism given that certain abilities for change within living things have in fact been discovered. I ask you the same question: When will you given up on the notion that any mindless mechanism can produce much of anything beyond very very low levels of functional complexity? – given that its never been observed and the statistical odds that it will ever been observed suggest effective impossibility?

I also heard they discovered in a lab a single celled yeast that turned itself into a true multi-celled organism with tissue differentiation, multiple differentiated organs even with programmed cell death as part of its development. So how do you incorporate those findings into a creation model?

All that happened here is that yeast that was able to aggregate were positivity selected. No novel genetic information which was not already present within the gene pool was evolved – to include the ability for pre-programmed cell death. There was no new “tissue differentiation” nor where “multiple differentiated organs” evolved.

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/5/1595

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
Consider the following comments from the E.G.. White Estate regarding the origin of disease, suffering and death:

Suffering, other than sickness due to neglect of physical laws, is also caused by Satan and not the deliberate intervention of God. On many occasions she reinforced the teaching of Jesus on this point…

Her teachings regarding the cause of death, as well as suffering, flowed from the big picture of the great controversy between God and Satan:

“It is true that all suffering results from the transgression of God’s law, but this truth had become perverted. Satan, the author of sin and all its results, had led men to look upon disease and death as proceeding from God—as punishment arbitrarily inflicted on account of sin… Sickness, suffering, and death are [the] work of an antagonistic power. Satan is the destroyer; God is the restorer.”

Ellen White, The Desire of Ages, p. 471. and The Ministry of Healing, p. 113

http://www.whiteestate.org/books/mol/Chapt7.html

So, again, neither the Bible nor Mrs. White see diseases, like childhood leukemia, as being the result of a deliberate act or intervention of God…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

Where talking about the ability to detect the need to invoke intelligent design to explain various phenomena that exist in nature – regardless of if the intelligent agent is God or your wife or some alien from Zorg.

The loaves of bread that Jesus made by Divine power were the obvious result of intelligent design. They looked like regular loaves of bread that your wife might make. No one could tell the difference by looking at them if they were placed side-by-side. Yet, one loaf would have been made by God and the other by your wife. The fact is that God can make what humans can make. What would be obvious, however, is that both loaves of bread required intelligence to produce. In other words, they weren’t the product of mindless process of nature or natural laws that had no access to deliberate intelligence.

In short, just because your wife’s intelligence is “natural” doesn’t mean that all natural processes have access to intelligence or that every natural phenomena requires intelligence to explain beyond the basic non-intelligent laws of nature.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

So, you think that if God is directly responsible for the death of anyone that He is therefore the direct cause of all sickness, disease, death, and destruction? Every natural disaster is God’s doing? – a miracle of Divine design and creative power?

Do you not see the difference between the miracle of something like Lazarus being raised from the dead and a tornado wiping out an entire town the other day in the Midwest?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Recent Comments by Sean Pitman

After the Flood
Thank you Ariel. Hope you are doing well these days. Miss seeing you down at Loma Linda. Hope you had a Great Thanksgiving!


The Flood
Thank you Colin. Just trying to save lives any way I can. Not everything that the government does or leaders do is “evil” BTW…


The Flood
Only someone who knows the future can make such decisions without being a monster…


Pacific Union College Encouraging Homosexual Marriage?
Where did I “gloss over it”?


Review of “The Naked Emperor” by Pastor Conrad Vine
I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.

Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).

Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.