Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article

To: donh
The ID label has many disinterested and disagreeing proponents. There is no cohesive, singular ID proposition other than that design of a particular object is recognizable by distinguishing attributes.

What I have been discussing is my simple, ID based hypothesis concerning the possible mechanisms that result in life originating. I am not describing a historical event. I am describing a process. There is little to describe because life has never been observed originating whether naturally or by being assembled.

My hypothetical statement is "due to complexity and interdependence new living things can only arise from nonliving matter via intentional (i.e. intelligent) assembly."

Not every view in the ID camp is verifiable or falsifiable. But my assertion is both.

When scientists are finally able to find any way of creating life, they will be putting my hypothesis to the test, whether intentionally or not. If they discover a mechanism of self assembly, it will falsify my statement. If they intelligently assemble a living organism, it will support (not prove) my hypothesis.

Abiogenesis is not falsifiable. It might be verifiable. The difficulty of verification is unpredictable. Either way, abiogenesis does not qualify as a scientific hypothesis by the most commonly accepted standard of demarcation.
2,778 posted on 12/27/2005 1:52:25 PM PST by unlearner (You will never come to know that which you do not know until you first know that you do not know it.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2772 | View Replies ]


To: unlearner
The ID label has many disinterested and disagreeing proponents.

No doubt, however, the part where ID proposes that life was invented by something smart is what it's named after, and what we are arguing about in a Dover courtroom, and is the subject of this thread.

There is no cohesive, singular ID proposition other than that design of a particular object is recognizable by distinguishing attributes.

Namely, that it couldn't have occured naturally, I presume. Insufferable complexity is not ID, it is a supposed, but remarkably shy, piece of evidence in support of ID.

My hypothetical statement is "due to complexity and interdependence new living things can only arise from nonliving matter via intentional (i.e. intelligent) assembly."

right. insufferable complexity. Or close enough. A close kissing cousin to the brain-dead theory attributed to scientists by creationists, that lightning assembled protists instantaneously in a prehistoric mud puddle. Insufferable complexity is a mirage. At no point in life's history is it likely that anything evolved instantaneously, such as to make these phony insurmountable odds calculations about them meaningful.

Not every view in the ID camp is verifiable or falsifiable. But my assertion is both.

Yea, well, in theory. most any not-obviously self-contradictory hypothesis whatsoever is, in some sense, verifiable or falsifiable. That's insufficient by miles to quality as a science theory to be trumpeted on the cover of a science book.

When scientists are finally able to find any way of creating life, they will be putting my hypothesis to the test, whether intentionally or not. If they discover a mechanism of self assembly, it will falsify my statement. If they intelligently assemble a living organism, it will support (not prove) my hypothesis.

Which, along with a buck and a half, will buy you a cup of coffee.

Abiogenesis is not falsifiable. It might be verifiable. The difficulty of verification is unpredictable. Either way, abiogenesis does not qualify as a scientific hypothesis by the most commonly accepted standard of demarcation.

Abiogenesis is potentially falsifiable much in the same way that propositions such as "Therapsids are the direct ancestors of dinosaurs" are. Woese is sneaking up on life's origin in exactly this manner, by treating the mutational clocks of our smallest ancestors in a manner similar to that employed by paleontologists to investigate the ancestry of dinosaurs: by treating DNA as fossil evidence, of a sort, and making predictions about what will be be discovered that isn't presently discovered, and seeing these predictions either succeed or fail.

None of which, makes abiogenesis a science to presently take terribly seriously, much as is the case with your anti-biogenesis theory. Except that the biogenesis theory might have tangible odds of producing evidence. The theory that biogenesis could not ever occur by any means whatsoever will never produce reasonable evidence, because "any means whatsoever" is an infinite set.

2,793 posted on 12/27/2005 11:01:07 PM PST by donh
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2778 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson