Posted on 08/15/2005 7:01:06 PM PDT by gobucks
The only causes under consideration are Natural.
But aside from this, consider the dictum,"More is in vain when less will serve". This clearly mandates that life processes, including their origin, should be explained according to lesser causes. This is a feat not accomplished, to be sure, but much less in Newton's time than ours, and in the General Scholium, at the very end, he indicates how life processes might be explained by physical principles, by the action of an "electrical and elastic spirit".
True, he does not speak directly to origins, but if we are committed to a physical explanation of the existence, operation, and reproduction of life, how is it that we abandon physicality at some arbitrary point in the past to explain its origin?
What is the MSM? I have seen this on FR a lot but can't figure out what it means.
But is has yet to be shown that less (i.e. natural) will serve. Until that point is reached, the statement does not apply.
This clearly mandates that life processes, including their origin, should be explained according to lesser causes.
I would add the important addendum: IF POSSIBLE.
As for Newton's statement "for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes," a supernatural cause for the may not be superfluous but necessary.
a supernatural cause for the origin of life the may not be superfluous but necessary.
Consider Newton's commitment to a physical account of life processes at a time when virtually nothing that we accept as familiar fact - even chemistry - was known. It seems ridiculous, after the actual secret of life - long sought - has been discovered,( I refer to DNA and the genetic code,) to revert to supernaturalism to explain it's ORIGIN. Especially when we have evidence of the evolution of life processes according to physical law over hundreds of millions of years of earth history.
Here you are ignoring the main point that it is only NATURAL causes that are under consideration in the first place, as Newton clearly stipulates.
He specifies a choice between "more" and "less" only within the realm of natural explanation. An escape to supernatural explanation is "right out". That's like hitting the hyperspace button.
later pingout.
DNA and the genetic code is no more the secret of life than a computer chip and programing code is the secret of computers. These are merely the instrumental causes of a higher designer.
Especially when we have evidence of the evolution of life processes according to physical law over hundreds of millions of years of earth history.
What we have evidence of is a sequence of diverse species. How these diverse species came about, despite claims to the contrary, has not yet been explained by natural causes.
Natural causes might be the only proper subject of the natural sciences, but this does not mean that they are the only explanations of the truth. Logic would imply that there might be truths that are beyond the ability of the natural sciences to discover.
This can be directly refuted by noting that there are millions of separate species propagating themselves, according to physical law, via DNA and the genetic code, whereas there are no such computers or computer chips. Computers, in actual fact, are propagated by human manufacture, whereas life propagates itself, and has evidently done so for ... how many years ?
I say hundreds of millions of years. Where do you draw the line?
The genetic code is analagous to a digital computer in a biological world that works analogously.
So, do you want to stipulate that the blue-green Algae were specially created by some process to be described by you, and that life evolved henceforward according to physical law?
That is exactly the kind of "science" Harvard will be doing.
ping
Yeah, and you would still have a bunch of untested claims. Either you test and research, or you sit on your ass navel gazing. You and Limbaugh may be satisfied with the latter, but most people aren't.
And how is basing anything on Divine intervention science? How do you test for such?
Rush is a science department, Rush needs no "peer review".
main stream media
thanks for the ping!!
And even though I posted the article, being pinged to it is fine by me :)!
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