Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article

To: MamaTexan
The fact remains, however, that while evolution should cover the gradual changes of a species, it should not try to explain the origins of life.

Ah Captain Obvious strikes again ;^)
Sorry, couldn't resist but that the Theory of Evolution doesn't cover the origins of life is what we tell the creationists at least a dozen times per thread but somehow it just doesn't sink in.

In more general terms the ToE is only concerned with the dynamics of populations of self-replicating entities. How these entities arose doesn't matter because it doesn't affect the dynamics of this system in the least. So as long as there are imperfect self-replicators, you have evolution.

If science is going to operate under the assumption that only what is provable IS science, it cannot prove that life originated by 'accident'.

Well, science certainly does operate under the assumption that only what is observable (proof is for mathematics and whisky) is indeed science. However, observable doesn't mean only directly observable but also indirectly. If it were only the former, science would have stopped before it really took off.

Returning to your example, science can indeed not prove that life originated by 'accident', what it can demonstrate however, is that life could have arisen naturally under the right conditions.
Now, this doesn't prove that creationism is false only that it need not necessarily be true (as far as the origin of life is concerned).

307 posted on 02/20/2006 12:14:33 PM PST by BMCDA (If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it,we would be so simple that we couldn't)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 279 | View Replies ]


To: BMCDA
Sorry, couldn't resist but that the Theory of Evolution doesn't cover the origins of life is what we tell the creationists at least a dozen times per thread but somehow it just doesn't sink in.

The theory of Evolution DID cover the origins of life when I was taught it over 30 years ago.

-----------

Returning to your example, science can indeed not prove that life originated by 'accident', what it can demonstrate however, is that life could have arisen naturally under the right conditions.

Then a theology-philosophy class could cover both theories on the origins of life, and the students can make up their own minds as to what to believe.

327 posted on 02/20/2006 12:29:51 PM PST by MamaTexan (I am NOT a ~legal entity~, nor am I a *person* as created by law!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 307 | 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