Are ID/YECs right about anything?

I support the right of each of you to believe in whatever 'mythology' from the Iron Age that you choose but you'll have to forgive me if I test my propositional beliefs against the available evidence, what is actually known.

The hurdles involved in understanding how life emerged are formidable (accepted!) but research into the subject continues and it's perfectly reasonable to suspend a definitive conclusion for the time being. It's one thing to say we can't see any path by which abiogenesis is possible but quite another to say that no possible path exists.

And anyway, where does rushing to a conclusion on the subject get us? Absolutely nowhere, despite what some of you clearly think.

Gutter level remarks now? I wasn't sure if I'd bother to dignify that with a reply but whatever.

I hope you realise that I'm a lot closer to the position of the greater majority of well informed, thoughtful people regarding this subject matter? I could pick many books off the shelves of the school libraries in your country and they'd reflect what I believe on a host of science-related subjects.

So I can understand in part why you seem to have such a sore head this morning.

@stephen_33, regarding abiogenesis, once again, science is a statement of our current understanding. That current understanding and sum total evidence does not support abiogenesis. That is no "rush," but a statement of our current evidence from OOL experts themselves. You continue to confuse the scientific evidence (or lack thereof) with scientists' personal philosophical beliefs and assumptions. Failing to distinguish between the two is poor "science." So no, when it comes to abiogenesis, you most certainly are not "testing your propositional beliefs against the available evidence." You are simply adopting the evidentiary unsupported beliefs of what others assume to be true on the "basis" of no evidence at all. Forgive me, if I as a scientist don't assume a hypothesis is true without sufficient evidence to warrant such a conclusion.  

We often seem to misunderstand one another - I was talking generally about 'available evidence' (for example the distribution of species within the fossil record etc.), not specifically about abiogenesis. I accept that research does seem to be at an impasse, so I think we are in agreement on that.

You continue to confuse the scientific evidence (or lack thereof) with scientists' personal philosophical beliefs and assumptions. Failing to distinguish between the two is poor "science" - this again? I've admitted more than once that the obstacles facing researchers seem near-insurmountable and yet they persevere with their work. That implies some hope that a path might yet be found to a naturalistic explanation for life.

Repeating ad-nauseum 'yes, well of course they have to do that because science permits no other course' isn't a reason to waste both funds and careers. If those scientists actually believed their reseach was hopeless then they'd drift away into other more fruitful field of research I think?

But you haven't addressed my point: 'It's one thing to say we can't see any path by which abiogenesis is possible but quite another to say that no possible path exists'

?

I'd make the worst Catholic ever.

   And yet the only opinion you ever have is some re-worded version of "This is what the better people think"

Now that was funny 😁 

You are literally the one who brought up abiogenesis again, so you can hardly blame me for repeating my point in response to your repeated point.

OOL researchers don't actually believe their work is hopeless nor do they believe they are wrong in their beliefs. That's not the issue. The issue is predicating your position on the "position" of experts while failing to distinguish between evidentiary "position" vs philosophical "position."

Listen, if you want to still believe abiogenesis is true (like many scientists do), despite the lack of empirical evidence for such a proposition that is totally fine (we all have beliefs that we can't prove). But then just say that. Don't try to make it sound like you're taking some higher road by 'siding' with experts, when you're just adopting their personal unproven philosophical beliefs and assumptions.

Regarding your last point, speculating about what may or may not be possible does nothing to inform. We can only assess based on the current evidence to date, and based on that current evidence, no, there does not seem to be any chemical 'path' to life from non-life. And let me give you an example of why it seems there isn't:

We have chemical 'pathways' for the natural formation of many of life's building blocks like amino acids and sugars, but there is no known path for the orderly assembly of these building blocks into biologically relevant macromolecules like proteins and RNA. Functional RNAs & functional proteins require specified, ordered sequences of nucleotides and amino acids. These ordered sequences are informational. But the chemical bonds linking nucleotides (phosphodiester bonds) and amino acids (peptide bonds) are identical. There is no way to discriminate between them.

Take for example the DNA strand below. The information is contained in the nitrogenous base sequence A-G-T. But that sequence is assembled by means of *phosphodiester bonds* that link phosphates & (deoxyribose) sugars---all of which are identical. The phosphodiester bonds are indistinguishable, so there is nothing for nature to 'select.' 

What this means is that when it comes to the assembly of the first functional RNA self-replicator (which by itself is still insufficient), there is no known chemical 'path' to such an ordered sequence. At best, there is only 'luck' and random chance assembly. But the chance assembly of a specified biopolymer is not only beyond belief, it is not a chemical 'path' at all. It is nothing. It is just a miraculous chance fluke beyond rational belief that science cannot investigate.

Now that may not bother you (and it doesn't seem to bother philosophers and mathematicians, who believe the origin of life is simply a matter of rolling the dice enough times in a sufficiently large universe), but what a lot of people don't understand is that OOL researchers on the whole actually reject such a 'solution' and find invoking chance little different from creationism, intelligent design, and invoking miracles. 

The OOL research field is predicated on the philosophical presupposition of "the continuity thesis," which, "First...contends that there is no unbridgedable gap between inorganic matter and life. [And] Second, it regards the emergence of life as a highly probable process" that is the normal, natural result of the *regularities* of natural law; not a chance, fluke. The OOL field by and large believes that to relegate the origin of life problem to chance is to abandon a scientific explanation for the OOL. Most OOL researchers are, thus, philosophically committed to "the continuity thesis," and staunchly believe that somehow, some way there must be a natural, "high probability" 'path' from non-life to life.

The only problem is that there is exactly zero empirical evidence that such a 'path' exists, nor do we have any reason to believe that such a 'path' exists. Everything we know about the 'regularities' of natural law leads away from life, not toward it; and no matter how well-intentioned and committed the OOL research program is to "the continuity thesis" and its rejection of 'chance' as a scientific 'explanation,' the fact remains that it seems impossible *not* to invoke miraculous chance events due to reasons like the ones given above that all the chemical bonds linking nucleotides and amino acids are chemically identical and chemically indistinguishable, so any sequential 'order' (on the level required for functional, biologically relevant macromolecules) cannot *not* invoke highly, improbable chance events that the OOL research field equates with creationism, intelligent design, and invoking miracles; a miraculous improbability that the OOL community sees as beyond belief and that renders the origin of life beyond the realm of scientific investigation.

At least the people whose well informed opinion I value are still alive - the people you rely on to provide a model of the emergence of life all died in the Iron-Age!

So you're stating emphatically and without any room for doubt that a naturalistic cause for the very first lifeform is utterly impossible - end of debate. There is no possible path or combination of natural processes that could result in life. There is no discovery in the future that would alter this state of affairs.

Is that your position?

Am I stating that? Is that my position? I think you can answer all your questions by re-reading what I wrote. I've been abundantly clear. I'm also not making any statements of my own, but simply informing you of the current state of our scientific knowledge, which is all we can ever do.

And yet, despite that being the situation, the community of researchers perseveres with its research.

It's either being claimed that those people are wasting their time or it isn't, so which?

Whether they do or don't has no relevance to the point that belief in abiogenesis is just that---*belief* without sufficient evidentiary support---and that science has given us no reason to believe that life can emerge from non-life via natural processes.

And I'm not claiming any more than that! All I'm doing is waiting and watching to see if any chink of light appears in the field of research that offers a new pathway.

What I refuse to do is to draw any conclusion from the void in our knowledge.

You'll wait until you are dead, as will your children and theirs.

I won't die until I've finished living and I don't have children.

   You'll pass to your reward when God decides, not sooner and not later, just like everyone else. And when you do mankind will still not have figured out a way to plausibly deny God's existence.

I know you do, I've said as much about you it is your defining trait, you will put what people think in science over scripture because for some reason you think it is a better source of truth. The truth will never conflict with itself, and you are always finding ways it does.

You can do whatever you want...even trick yourself into believing this is what you're doing while ignoring the knowledge amassed and pretending it's a "void"

Says you while appealing to reason and rational thought instead of limiting yourself to the Bible; and while pretending that you are not reading the Bible with your mind; and while pretending that you are not relying on what Bible translation committees of fallible people think and trusting them to properly translate the text; and while pretending that you are not relying on textual critics who have used reason and rational thought to sift through the manuscript evidence and determine the original text; and while pretending that the Bible is not revised and updated by these same textual critics and translators when newly discovered manuscript evidence requires it (again, perhaps you should review your own practices before making judgments about others).

People leveled the same charge against Galileo for not accepting the "clear truth" taught in Scripture that the sun, stars, and planets orbit the earth and not the other way around....and now the church believes it was those people misinterpreting the Bible and not Galileo who was at fault.