On 6-3-2009 10:24, Saul Luizaga wrote:
> I'd appreciate links if you have them.

what about simply: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life

This in contrast to Josephs' "magical thinking of modern day scientists"
and "Most modern scientists reject God and in stead embrace a theology 
of miracles. Preaching that life came from non-life. From lightning 
bolts striking a random mixture of chemicals in a super natural organic 
soup. An idea so absurd and laden with magical thinking it is equivalent 
with discovering a computer on mars and claiming that it was randomly 
assembled in the m[?] sea. The theory of organic soup is a silly 
childish myth, only life can give rise to life, only DNA can give rise 
to DNA, the machinery of life."

There is of course the ridiculing of all other less intelligent people 
that is a sure sign that what follows is a strawman argument. And 
indeed, I don't think you can find a modern scientists that thinks that 
life originated from lighning bolts in a mixture of chemicals. That 
refers to the famous http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_experiment that 
resulted in organic molecules, most importantly aminoacids. Note however 
that they are merely building blocks used by life but Miller, nor 
anybody else would claim that it *is* life. In fact nobody knows how 
that came about. So, claiming that you know what "most modern 
scientists" think happened is plain silly and uninformed. We also know 
that many organic molecules form in outer space, a fact that is 
apparently not relevant at this point, though no doubt somewhere in the 
video that will be mentioned.
I have not a clue what the computer is doing in the next sentence so I 
won't comment.
Then there is the claim that "only life can give rise to life" which 
either implies that life has been there since whenever the universe 
begun or that there is none now. I don't believe either of these 
positions, so I believe this is factually an incorrect statement.
Followed by "only DNA can give rise to DNA", which is for the same 
reason nonsense. Besides in order to make DNA you need to have RNA as 
well. Moreover there is life that does not contain DNA but only RNA. In 
fact as you will see in wiki, there are quite a lot of people that think 
it is likely that before DNA we had purely RNA based life and before 
that we might have even had other reproducing systems. Oh and note also 
that we also know that there is more to genetics than merely DNA and RNA.
In short, I don't like his attitude. I know that he is factually wrong 
on almost everything in the first few minutes of this video. (As if he 
has read a few pieces in the general papers and stopped reading anything 
after the 80's.) It also makes me sad that somebody spends so much of 
his time in spreading his own misformed view of science and his personal 
pet-theories.
There may be some more factually correct statements after 2:45, but it 
is not likely that I will find out.

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