Creationists' claims prompt scientist to retract 52-year-old article
NEW YORK: In January 1955, Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College, published a paper called "Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life" in American Scientist, the journal of Sigma Xi, the scientific honor society.
In it, Jacobson speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in Hadean time, billions of years ago, when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Jacobson put it, "one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive."
Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, he said in a telephone interview from his home in Tarrytown, New York. But today it is winning Jacobson acclaim that he does not want - from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention.
The article states: "Things grew worse when he reread his paper, he said, because he discovered errors. One related to what he called a 'conjecture' about whether amino acids, the basic building blocks of protein and a crucial component of living things, could form naturally."
"Under the circumstances I mention, just a bunch of chemicals sitting together, no," he said. "Because it takes energy to go from the things that make glycene to glycene, glycene being the simplest amino acid."
There were potential sources of energy, he said. So to say that nothing much would happen in its absence "is totally beside the point."
"And that is a point I did not make," he added.
Another assertion in the paper, about what would have had to occur simultaneously for living matter to arise, is just plain wrong, he said, adding, "It was a dumb mistake, but nobody ever caught me on it." Given his admission of these errors in his original paper, why should we believe his assertions now? This only proves the incredible nature of science. What they assert today will only be retracted tomorrow?
I looked up abiogenesis to see what Wiki says about it and they conclude their introduction with " The current models of abiogenesis are still being scientifically tested."
Incredulous!!! Just how, in a biological world, is abiogenesis going to be "tested?" What laboratory can replicate non life/energy in order to see what happened (supposedly) billions of years ago? Simply the testing, and even the mere observation, negates the scientific accuracy of what happened if we use the evolutionist presumptions of materialsim BECAUSE THERE WAS NO TESTING OR OBSERVING BILLIONS OF YEARA AGO (hence, it isn't replication).
Truly, the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.
Uncle Raisin www.UncleRaisin.com "Raisin" the Standard Against Injustice
Ah, just as I was taught,"master of the unspoken word, slave of the spoken." "Jacobson said he was dismayed to think that people might use his work in what he called "malignant" denunciations of Darwin." Nothing like having one's own religion knocked by what you write.
Say, the site,
http://evolution-facts.org/
doesn't seem to be too bad of site?
1
There are a total of 6 user comments displayed | add new comment |
Jason Lisle | 6/1/2005
COMMENTS | 
"Jacobson said he was dismayed to think that people might use his work in what he called "malignant" denunciations of Darwin." Nothing like having one's own religion knocked by what you write.
