Denyse O’Leary, one of the common contributors to the pro-ID blog Uncommon Descent, has a regular competition that she runs every once in a while, called the Uncommon Descent Contest. Inventive title, but that’s beside the point. It’s up to No. 9 at the moment, and with a copy of Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell up for grabs, I’m not surprised it’s lasted this long.
The contest works as follows: O’Leary asks a question to the blog’s community related to evolution and intelligent design. For example, the current question is:
If life can be spontaneously generated, why isn’t it happening now? Conditions for life today are probably as good as they have ever been, and maybe better. For over 500 million years they have obviously been good for complex life forms, and for billions of years they have been good for simple ones.
Comments then flood in, supposedly with answers to this question. O’Leary picks the best answer, and gives the person who provided it the prize.
Of course, I’m the kind of person who doesn’t pass up the opportunity for free stuff (what kind of student would I be, otherwise?), so I gave it a shot, I answered the question. Seemed simple enough – I mean, who doesn’t know the answer? Uncommon Descent seemed to be dropping the ball.
Sigh. That’s the last time I take for granted the intellectual honesty of an intelligent design proponent from the Discovery Institute. What did I expect to happen, O’Leary to suddenly realise the error in her ways? Of course not. Of course not…
This is what I answered with:
The main reason life cannot be spontaneously generated (I’m using that term because you did, not because I think it’s accurate – “life” has a spectrum associated with it) is to do with the existence of bacteria – in short, any complex biomolecules that may be the precursors to some sort of primitive metabolism will be quickly metabolised by the already-living bacteria in the ecosystem. You have to have a sterile environment for abiogenesis to take place.
Of course, this assumes that solutions of precursor molecules still exist that are stable enough to last the millions of years it would take to gradually produce proto-life. I don’t think those exist anymore, or at least not ones that have no bacteria or other living creatures in them.
So, that’s why life does not spontaneously form in the lab or hospital (other than the fact that you don’t run a lab for millions of years). I hope you found that revelatory.
and this is what I got back from O’Leary herself:
naontiotami at 1: You wrote, “You have to have a sterile environment for abiogenesis to take place.”
So it is happening in operating rooms all over North America?
Details please. A Nobel Prize awaits you if you are the first to explain.
It is all very well to say that some special conditions must exist, but how do we know that they ever really did?
I am not sure what the word “revelatory” means. If you mean “shedding light,” no, it really didn’t.
Neither you nor anyone else has a single useful idea about how life began on Earth, but lots of people can explain how it did NOT happen.
Okay, she missed what I said completely, but fair enough. I’ll give it one more shot, I thought:
O’Leary:
“So it is happening in operating rooms all over North America?”
Did you read what I wrote immediately after that sentence? Because that answers your question perfectly. If not, here it is again: ‘Of course, this assumes that solutions of precursor molecules still exist that are stable enough to last the millions of years it would take to gradually produce proto-life. I don’t think those exist anymore, or at least not ones that have no bacteria or other living creatures in them.’
Operating rooms don’t produce life because they have none of the right precursor molecules. I don’t need to identify what *exactly* they would be (eg. amino acids, nucleic acids etc.), but biomolecules, even simple ones, do not abound in sterile, human environments like operating rooms.
“It is all very well to say that some special conditions must exist, but how do we know that they ever really did?”
This is a different question to what you asked in the main post. I’m not an expert in prebiotic chemistry, so I can’t cite papers for you. Perhaps you should do a little research yourself in that area, dig through the literature.
Your other points are irrelevant to the main point of this post, so I’m not sure why you brought them up.
You asked a question, and it was answered. Are you satisfied, within the context of that specific question alone?
Or are there other things that were part of the question that have been hidden from the readers of the post?
Bam. Slam dunk, eh? That’s a book-winning answer, surely.
Clearly, naiontiotam [sic], you are a believer in accidental origin of life, and no impediments will dissuade you.
As a non-believer, I have no reason to believe that your proto-life molecules ever existed.
Look, you can believe what you want, but don’t call it science.
That just complicates things.
That was it, the logically-fallacious straw that broke the proto-camel’s back. So here I am, a slightly annoyed teenager with a bunch of intellectual agression to dish out in one hand and a blog in the other. What else can I do other than write about it?
First off, note O’Leary’s utter lack of acknowledgment that I answered the contest question. She wanted to know why life doesn’t spring up now, at this time in history. I gave her an answer, which I later clarified to make it even easier to understand, yet she ignored it. Nice work, Denyse. Shows you’re really accepting to new ideas.
The compensatory ramblings are something I want to address as well, because you should never leave large holes in your discussions with pseudoscientists. If you do, they’ll use your silence, mocking or otherwise, against you in later stages of the argument. Avoid this, be as thorough as possible.
O’Leary first charges me with the claim that I am a “believer in [the] accidental origin of life”. This is true, I believe that the origin of life was accidental, if by “accidental” you mean “subject to the same natural laws and processes that analogously create mountains and valleys”. I don’t ever claim this with 100% certainty, it’s just what I believe.
However, she then goes on and says that “no impediments will dissuade [me]“. This is untrue, because I’m an open-minded person, but it’s also a worrying statement, because at no point during our little conversation had I rejected any of her claims. She seems to be assuming that I would never listen to any of her arguments against abiogenesis. I may not immediately accept them, but I’m open to anything she’s willing to bring up.
Of course, I’ve never heard an argument against abiogenesis that’s convinced me – they seem to be based on either faulty science or arguments from incomplete scientific knowledge. But that doesn’t prove that no argument exists that isn’t valid and well-supported by evidence.
O’Leary also claims that abiogenesis isn’t a science. Hmm. Why not? Abiogenesis is the scientific study of how life could have arisen on Earth. If that study finds that, for whatever reason, life could not have developed on Earth, then science has still been done. I don’t know what her objection is.
Another commenter on the blog, by the name of bevets decided to respond to me as well:
You seem to be willing to accept the best available answer that complies strictly with naturalism. This is not the same as looking for the best available answer. Suppose I ask you the sum of ‘1+3′ (and you belive all even numbers should be excluded to satisfy the first ammendment). Your answer may be entertaining, but not useful.
Uh, what? How does that analogy make any sense? I exclude non-scientific answers from scientific discussions due to practical reasons. Okay, bevets, let’s say I remove the part of science that says explanations have to be natural. What happens? You’re allowed to chime in on the problem of life’s origin with your supernatural explanation. Fine, sure, you’re at the table. Now, show me some evidence to back up your explanation.
…
I’m sorry, if you can’t provide evidence to back a claim, you don’t get to proclaim that it’s correct. And this is why supernatural explanations cannot be let into scientific discussions – they cannot be rationally justified. I don’t exclude non-scientific answers because I’m a “dogmatic naturalist”, I do it because you can’t not do it.
I don’t think I’ll be commenting again on that post, those involved are too far gone. If ID-proponents start accusing you of things that you haven’t done yet, a wise move is to put the blog down and play with the rational kids. Screw Stephen C. Meyer’s book, I’m not wasting hours of my life debating points that would be obvious to any other person just so I can get a free copy of something that will continue the blunt assault on my rationality.
O’Leary, if you’re reading, note the strategy I lay down here – when you ask someone a question, either accept their answer or don’t, but when you do so, tell them and explain why. Inserting standard ID rhetoric into the discussion doesn’t help anyone. And that is something I dogmatically believe.
Oh god! Not bevets! I ran into him quite a few times on Fark years ago. He is one of the most persistently annoying Creationists out there. His website is one of the biggest quote mines on the internet.
http://bevets.com/evolution.htm
"a wise move is to put the blog down and play with the rational kids"
Absolutely correct. How long did it take you to come to this conclusion?
"I’m not an expert in prebiotic chemistry, so I can’t cite papers for you."
Admitting your ignorance is no way to win a prize.
"I believe that the origin of life was accidental"
A scientist who uses the word belief in regard to their subject of study is
a believer, not a scientist.
I think you have the right side of the argument, but you are doing no favors to your side by
speaking like a partisan and then whining about how your speech is perceived.