Evolutionists Stumped Again: Early Earth Had Oxygen Atmosphere

http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/...45887887309620


Oxygen Production on Early Earth


This is an interesting report:

http://www.livescience.com/othernews...gen_world.html



Rocks older than 2.4 billion years contain abnormal ratios of sulfur
isotopes compared with younger rocks. The only way known to generate
these abnormal ratios are reactions between sunlight and sulfurous
volcanic gas in the absence of an ozone shield that would normally help
screen out ultraviolet rays.

Ozone is a form of oxygen, and if the atmosphere has no ozone, it is
assumed it has no oxygen.

Geochemist Hiroshi Ohmoto, director of the Penn State Astrobiology
Research Center and his colleagues examined rocks from western
Australia laid down as sediments on a lakebed and the ocean floor
between about 2.76 and 2.92 billion years ago. These displayed sulfur
isotope ratios like those of more modern rocks from higher oxygen eras.

"'When did the Earth's atmosphere become oxygenated?' has been an
important question for Earth scientists and biologists, because this
question is closely linked to those related to the biological evolution
on Earth and other planets," Ohmoto told LiveScience. "According to the
currently popular theory, it took the Earth for more than 2 billion
years to develop an oxygen-rich atmosphere."

ET implications

An implication of the new findings is that "an oxygen-rich atmosphere,
generated by oxygen-producing organisms, may be found in young, as well
as old, planets of other stars," he said.

Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Nobody knows exactly when or
how life began or how quickly it altered the planet's chemistry.

The new findings could mean oxygen levels on Earth were uniformly high
since 3.8 billion years ago, Ohmoto said. They could also mean oxygen
levels went through yo-yo fluctuations between highs and lows.
Alternatively, ultraviolet radiation from the sun might not be the only
way that can generate the abnormal ratios of sulfur isotopes seen in
older rocks.
The article goes on to explain that there is going to be a lot of
howling from other scientists about this--and I'm not surprised. They
better be howling--because if it is correct, it creates a very serious
problem.

There are all sorts of interesting implications to this. The scientific
consensus is that an oxygen-rich atmosphere is a sign of
photosynthesis. Planets start out with a lot of methane, water vapor,
and ammonia. Even small amounts of free oxygen (as is released by
sunlight hitting water vapor and disassociating it) rapidly converts
methane to carbon dioxide, hydrogen to water vapor, and ammonia to
nitrogen and water vapor. Eventually, much of the hydrogen caused by
photodisassociation of water vapor leaves the Earth as a continuous
trail. In the exosphere, at the top of the atmosphere, hydrogen
molecules are excited to the point that they reach escape velocity. The
only hope for getting any hydrogen back is from comet collisions.
Eventually, you end up with an atmosphere that is mostly carbon dioxide
and nitrogen--either thick and unpleasant (like Venus) or thin and
unpleasant (like Mars).

If enough free oxygen accumulates in the atmosphere, it forms an ozone
layer that protects plants and animals from ultraviolet light. But it
is generally believed that the quantity of free oxygen required for an
ozone layer is only going to form as a result of photosynthesis, as
plants convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and glucose. No
problem so far--except for the date. If we had an oxygen atmosphere at
3.8 billion years ago, it means that in less than 700 million years, we
went from a dead chunk of stone into a place where some inanimate
chemicals made the leap to photosynthesis.

Young Earth Creationists are absolutely insistent that the Earth is
only a few thousand years old because they know that if the Earth is
that young (possible, but so unlikely in my mind as not to be worth
thinking much about), then evolution is impossible.

Evolutionists have their version of this problem: if there are billions
of years between formation of Earth and the first life, then there is
at least the possibility that blind, random processes could eventually
turn random chemicals into something as complex as life. But 700
million years from a crust too hot for complex organic chemicals to
photosynthesis so widespread that the atmosphere has gone oxygen?
That's a very short time--especially for a blind, random process.

By the way, don't think that life is the same as photosynthesis.
Photosynthesis is a fiendishly complex process (at least at the level
that I learned it in biology at Sonoma State University). Here's a nice
simple explanation. The leap from cells that can control transport of
nutrients and waste products across their exterior membrane and can
reproduce to cells with chloroplasts, stroma, electron transport
systems, thylakoids, enzymes that do ATP synthesis, light-dependent
reactions, light-independent reactions--there's a heck of a lot going
on there. Most of these chemical reactions (perhaps all?) require an
enzyme to make it move forward, and every enzyme requires protein
coding to create it. Every physical structure (thylakoids, stroma,
chloroplasts) requires a substantial amount of protein coding to
manufacture it.

I am prepared to believe (at least for sake of argument) that all of
these complex mechanisms could have developed as a result of blind,
random chance. But what are the chances that all of these complex
mechanisms managed to develop in less than 700 million years? More
importantly, what are the chances that cells that blindly, randomly
developed one of these structures or enzymes were the ancestors of
cells that blindly, randomly developed all the rest of these useful
mutations? I'm hard pressed to see how chlorophyll (which is a
porphyrin ring with a magnesium atom in the middle and some interesting
side chains) is going to do a lot of good to a cell without some method
of taking that energy and passing it through the rest of the process.
By itself, it doesn't do much. Ditto for a lot of the other structures
and enzymes that make up the process.

Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/...45887887309620


Oxygen Production on Early Earth


This is an interesting report:

http://www.livescience.com/othernews...gen_world.html
....
But what are the chances that all of these complex
mechanisms managed to develop in less than 700 million years?
....

Approximately 100%.

Well, actually...what are the chances we understand
enough to bother making all these random speculations
about the distant past? Approximately 0%.

---
No essence. No permanence. No perfection. Only action.

Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/...45887887309620


Oxygen Production on Early Earth


http://www.livescience.com/othernews...gen_world.html


Spot the obvious mistakes

I am prepared to believe (at least for sake of argument) that all of
these complex mechanisms could have developed as a result of blind,
random chance.

Nothing new. Next please

GSP wrote:
Sound of Trumpet wrote:
http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/...45887887309620


Oxygen Production on Early Earth


http://www.livescience.com/othernews...gen_world.html


Spot the obvious mistakes

I am prepared to believe (at least for sake of argument) that all of
these complex mechanisms could have developed as a result of blind,
random chance.

Nothing new. Next please

Are you referring to the fact that chance isn't random -- or at least
not totally random? We are not working with fair dice here, and
any asymmetry is rapidly magnified by evolutionary events.

Perhaps you are referring to the fact that these mechanisms
aren't really all that complex.

Then there's the fact that belief seems like a waste of
effort while the evidence is still spotty.
---
No essence. No permanence. No perfection. Only action.

On Tue, 05 Sep 2006 06:52:35 -0700, Sound of Trumpet wrote:

Oxygen Production on Early Earth

Dear proxy using, copyright violating moron:

Abiogenesis and evolution are two different fields.

--
Mark K. Bilbo
--------------------------------------------------
"As hip as it is for outsiders to blame New Orleans
for everything bad that happened during and after
Hurricane Katrina, the truth is that the people
who lived here were much more prepared for a big
storm than the federal government that promised
us flood protection." [Jarvis DeBerry]

http://makeashorterlink.com/?V180525DC

"Everything New Orleans"
http://www.nola.com

"Sound of Trumpet" wrote in message
oups.com...


http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/...45887887309620


Oxygen Production on Early Earth


This is an interesting report:

http://www.livescience.com/othernews...gen_world.html



So?...

You implying that because there was (some) oxygen some moronic being called
God created the Earth?

THERE IS NO GOD!! Only science.



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Guy Fawkes wrote:
"Sound of Trumpet" wrote in message
oups.com...


http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/...45887887309620


Oxygen Production on Early Earth


This is an interesting report:

http://www.livescience.com/othernews...gen_world.html



So?...

You implying that because there was (some) oxygen some moronic being called
God created the Earth?

THERE IS NO GOD!! Only science.

Do I smell Scientism here?

Do you hold that there is only One Truth and that
Science is its' name?
---
No essence. No permanence. No perfection. Only action.

Sphere wrote:
Guy Fawkes wrote:
"Sound of Trumpet" wrote in message
oups.com...


http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/...45887887309620


Oxygen Production on Early Earth


This is an interesting report:

http://www.livescience.com/othernews...gen_world.html



So?...

You implying that because there was (some) oxygen some moronic being called
God created the Earth?

THERE IS NO GOD!! Only science.

Do I smell Scientism here?

Do you hold that there is only One Truth and that
Science is its' name?
---
No essence. No permanence. No perfection. Only action.

Science is a set of tools for discovering the truth about the universe
we live in. If all we did all the time was to drive nails, I suppose we
might develop "hammer-ism." Some of these tools are so simple that we
use them to find commonplace truths and we don't even know that they go
into the toolbox called science.

There may or may not be truths beyond those that can be discovered by
our science toolbox. As the Buddha said, before idiots made him into a
god, "those are matters unamenable to discourse."

Will in New Haven

--

"You own your actions; the fruits of your actions do not belong to
you." God to Arjuna in _the Baghavad Gita_

Sphere wrote:
Guy Fawkes wrote:
"Sound of Trumpet" wrote in message
oups.com...


http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/...45887887309620


Oxygen Production on Early Earth


This is an interesting report:

http://www.livescience.com/othernews...gen_world.html



So?...

You implying that because there was (some) oxygen some moronic being called
God created the Earth?

THERE IS NO GOD!! Only science.

Do I smell Scientism here?

No, it's called realism


Do you hold that there is only One Truth and that
Science is its' name?

No, there is only one truth, and science is a way of finding it.

---
No essence. No permanence. No perfection. Only action.

Sound of Trumpet wrote:
pseudoscience snipped

Firstly, rocks several billion years old...you know, several BILIION,
or, in other words, a little more than six thousand. Secondly, life
was evolving and slowly diversifying for a very long time before the
famous cambrian explosion, which, basically, was caused by more niches
becoming available, then everything happens, but by then, many of the
divisions between groups of life were already there, different groups
were already becoming seperate.
And evolution, given the right circumstances, happens very fast indeed.