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To: wyattearp
Yes, it is science. It is a well thought out theory that makes predictions, and is falsifiable.

And how would one falsify the proposition that living organisms came from non living matter? I'll tell you how. By observing every chemical reaction in every part of the Universe since the Big Bang went pop. In other word's it is eminently unfalsifiable and by your standards, and Judge Jones' I might add, not science.

By my standards it is science since I see science as simply a search for knowledge and knowledge can be gleaned by investigating non falsifiable hypotheses which by the way abiogenesis is.

Biogenesis, the fact that life has never been observed to come from non life, is falsifiable.

While there isn't a lot of "hard" data to support it, there are a lot of chemical and biological reasons that indicate that it could have occurred.

Could have occurred? Is that science as well?

It has nowhere near the amount of supporting evidence that the TOE has, however.

I'd say that is understated.

940 posted on 07/28/2006 2:46:36 PM PDT by jwalsh07
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To: jwalsh07
And how would one falsify the proposition that living organisms came from non living matter? I'll tell you how. By observing every chemical reaction in every part of the Universe since the Big Bang went pop. In other word's it is eminently unfalsifiable and by your standards, and Judge Jones' I might add, not science.

Whoa, there. Those are not my standards, and do not attribute them to me. You made that stuff up, not me.

It is up to the person testing the hypothesis to show whether it is correct or incorrect, and to do so in a replicable fashion. Case in point would be the Miller-Urey experiments into abiotics. The hypothesis was that the early atmosphere on Earth had a strongly reducing atmosphere, and that organic molecules could form from interactions between chemicals in the atmosphere, and in the sea.

That hypothesis was shown to be correct, and the experiment has been replicated many times. However, one very important part of the hypothesis was that the Earth had a strongly reducing atmosphere. It is appearing to be more and more likely that the atmosphere was neither oxidizing nor reducing, and Miller-Urey does not work under such conditions. If some of the current theories of the early atmosphere are correct it would invalidate the experiment, and falsify the hypothesis.

That is the way science works. You can't just say "I think it works like this, prove me wrong!" If you think something works in a particular fashion, it is up to you to provide evidence for it. This is where Creationism/ID fails. There is no evidence for it. There are no experiments that can gather evidence for it. It is not science.

Could have occurred? Is that science as well?

Absolutely. Nothing is absolute. What we know today may be proven wrong tomorrow. An excellent example is the structure of the atom. At one time it was widely accepted that atoms were very compact. The model was called the "plum pudding" model of atomic structure, because it was thought that atoms were dense like pudding. Scientists conducted an experiment to show that it was true, and discovered quite the opposite: Atoms are mostly empty space.

(They were so surprised by the results that they thought there was something mechanically wrong with their experiment, and they repeated it until they were convinced that the scientific world's view of the atom was totally wrong).

Only a fool would state that a theory was proven to be 100% correct. Many people say that "evolution is both a theory and a fact". Don't misunderstand this. Evolution is known to occur, it can be observed to occur, and it has been observed to occur. That evolution occurs is a fact. That does not mean that the Theory of Evolution is a fact. It merely adds more support to it. Aspects of the TOE could change tomorrow with new discoveries. There is such an overwhelming amount of data supporting it that it is highly unlikely that it will ever be falsified.

Yes, I said "highly unlikely", not "absolutely impossible". No theory is ever absolute. Not ever.

Resources:

Biology (2005): Campbell & Reese, 7th edition, Pearson Publications.

Lecture and Lab notes, Freshman Biology, WSU, 2005.

981 posted on 07/28/2006 4:06:06 PM PDT by wyattearp (Study! Study! Study! Or BONK, BONK, on the head!)
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