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To: Southack
google "amino adenosine triacid ester" It is a fact of chemistry that self-replication can occur with relatively simple compounds. The problem of abiogenesis has not been solved, but it is absolutely false to assert that known properties of matter make it impossible. Here's the real issue. Do you argue that because we don't have, right now, a plausible natural sequence of events for abiogenesis, we should stop looking? Your statement that it is impossible seems to say do. That is the real problem with ID. Not that it is wrong, but that it asks the wrong questions. Science asks, "Can anyone imagine how something could happen naturally, and can we demonstrate a plausible natural sequence of events?"

ID asks, "How can we calculate the odds of this poofing into existence in one step, under currently known conditions?" The ID question is not science. It is anti-science. It is hostile to inquiry. It is hostile to curiosity. It is fundamentally motivated by belief in original sin, the belief that the desire for earthly knowledge is sinful.

Science at its core is playful, inventive, imaginative and skeptical. Yes, science invents just-so stories. Yes, science publishes wild hypotheses. The difference between science and previous modes of knowing is that science puts its ideas and stories to the test. Testing is never over. Nothing is ever proved. Even great ideas like relativity and quantum theory are known to be incomplete.

But science does provide an enormous level of confidence in the reliability of its oldest ideas. And common descent via modification and natural selection are among the oldest, most studied, and most confirmed ideas in science.

573 posted on 01/23/2005 10:00:46 AM PST by js1138
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To: js1138; Junior; VadeRetro
The ID question is not science. It is anti-science. It is hostile to inquiry. It is hostile to curiosity. It is fundamentally motivated by belief in original sin, the belief that the desire for earthly knowledge is sinful.

Yes. Here are the newest additions to the List-O-Links, the last three are from Junior and VadeRetro:
One Nation, Under the Designer. The true goals of the ID movement.
Discovery Institute's "Wedge Project". Replacing science with theism.
The Wedge at Work. The Discovery Institute's war against reason.
The Wedge strategy. In their own words.

578 posted on 01/23/2005 10:26:08 AM PST by PatrickHenry (<-- Click on my name. The List-O-Links for evolution threads is at my freeper homepage.)
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To: js1138
"It is a fact of chemistry that self-replication can occur with relatively simple compounds. The problem of abiogenesis has not been solved, but it is absolutely false to assert that known properties of matter make it impossible."

It is also absolutely false to claim or imply that I said such a thing was impossible.

Quite the contrary, we are here today, ergo abiogenesis did in fact occur at some point. That's not even debatable (though you attempt that straw man anyway).

What is debatable is whether or not abiogenesis occurred unaided, due solely to natural processes, or occurred due to some form of bias or aid (perhaps even Intelligent aid).

...And for *that* answer we turn to probability math to determine if genetic *sequencing* of any great length can occur without bias or aid.

590 posted on 01/23/2005 11:32:49 AM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: js1138
"ID asks, "How can we calculate the odds of this poofing into existence in one step, under currently known conditions?"

No. In fact, the math that I showed you is valid for incremental sequencing; it does NOT require that a long sequence occur in a single step.

For probability calculations, in fact, the chances of getting a final long (unaided) sequence correct are the *same* whether such a sequence if formed all at once or in stages compromised of the same or other processes.

591 posted on 01/23/2005 11:38:54 AM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: js1138
"The ID question is not science. It is anti-science. It is hostile to inquiry. It is hostile to curiosity. It is fundamentally motivated by belief in original sin, the belief that the desire for earthly knowledge is sinful."

You are confusing Intelligent Design (probably deliberately), with religious Creationism. The two are not interchangeable.

Intelligent Design can predict that an Intelligent agent such as a Man will make a self-replicating biological machine or DNA computer (see earlier posts to this thread for examples). That doesn't mean that God made that DNA computer; that would be the field of religious Creationism.

593 posted on 01/23/2005 11:42:17 AM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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