Re: Dembski and Nelson at MIT and Tufts

Kevin O'Brien (Cuchulaine@worldnet.att.net)
Tue, 6 Apr 1999 17:45:41 -0600

>>
>>Even if I knew who they all were, I wouldn't waste space writing out a
>>hundred plus names that no one but me would recognize. Who are the
fathers
>>of enzymology? I don't know, and it doesn't matter. Their research
>>demonstrated that enzymes are catalysts, whether we can name them or not,
>>whether they were ever officially awarded for their efforts or not. The
>>same is true of abiogenesis.
>
>A hundred names won't be necessary. Can you give five references
>wherein a prominent scientist in the field claims that life has
>been created in the lab?
>

That's technically an appeal to authority ("Dr. Benton Quest, an expert in
the field of abiogenesis, claims that primitice living cells have been made
in the lab, so it must be true!"), which is a logical fallacy. I would
rather provide references that, when read, would allow you to come to
understand the concensus that has led abiotic researchers to that
conclusion. But I couldn't do it with only five references; I really
couldn't do it with twenty-five. Your best bet is still to do your own
search. Start with textbooks that discuss abiogenesis and reference books
written by abiotic researchers. These will lead you to more references,
many of them journal articles describing the actual experiments. Or at
least they'll give you a sufficient familiarity with the terms that you can
use them as searchwords in a journal database like MedLine.

Good luck.

Kevin L. O'Brien