The question even Darwin avoided

The Sydney Morning Herald ^ | 12/22/05 | Paul Davies

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

WHEN Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, he gave a convincing account of how life has evolved over billions of years from simple microbes to the complexity of the Earth's biosphere to the present. But he pointedly left out how life got started.

One might as well speculate about the origin of matter, he quipped. Today scientists have a good idea of how matter originated in the Big Bang, but the origin of life remains shrouded in mystery.

Although Darwin refused to be drawn on how life began, he conjectured in a letter to a friend about "a warm little pond" in which various substances would accumulate.

Driven by the energy of sunlight, these chemicals might become increasingly complex, until a living cell formed spontaneously. Darwin's idle speculation became the basis of the "primordial soup" theory of biogenesis, and was adopted by researchers eager to re-create the crucial steps in the laboratory. But this approach hasn't got very far.

The problem is that even the simplest known organism is incredibly complex. Textbooks vaguely describe the pathway from non-living chemicals to primitive life in terms of some unspecified "molecular self-assembly".

The problem lies with 19th-century thinking, when life was regarded as some sort of magic matter, fostering the belief that it could be cooked up in a test tube if only one knew the recipe.

Today many scientists view the living cell as a type of supercomputer - an information-processing and replicating system of extraordinary fidelity. DNA is a database, and a complex encrypted algorithm converts its instructions into molecular products.

[RightWingAtheist]

Gee, that's funny, a lot of creationists think Darwinism is more appealing to capitalists and imperialists

[Aquinasfan]

You ever see The Matrix? Not gonna happen...

Nope. It's done its damage on the young skulls full of mush though.

[RightWingAtheist]

I'd say it's the anti-evolution types who are alienating many people away from voting Republican. There are a lot of scientists and other highly intelligent fellows who lean conservative but would never think of voting Republican, just because the party is perceived as being anti-science as a result of the creationist presence.

[metmom]

You guys need to get over the idea that all creationists believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.

[NC28203]

>>>You guys need to get over the idea that all creationists believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.

So we are to take the Biblical creation story literally, just not that literally?

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I apologize for butting in, but I was surprised to find this in the "...So What?" document.

I found this in the first section:

With this in mind, we have supported research that challenges specific theories (such as neo-Darwinism, chemical evolutionary theory and various “many worlds” cosmologies) that provide support for the materialistic vision of a self-existent and self-organizing universe.

If DI has been supporting this kind of research why don't they share it? There's nothing on their website about any original research they've done. And I couldn't find anything on quantum mechanics anywhere on their website.

If they've spent 15-16 years doing research, where is it?

Actually, I would be very happy for someone to put an end to the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. It makes interesting science fiction but I think in the long run it's a dead end.

[highball]

So I think it's pretty well established that darwinism is very appealing to communists and it has been used by them to promote atheism.

So what? That isn't evidence of anything other than people use what they can get their hands on to further their own ends.

Plenty of evil people have used religion to consolidate their own power. That doesn't make religion itself evil either.

[unlearner]

Then their logic is flawed.

Evolution does not propose how life originated. I cannot see how creating life would have any bearing on evolutionary theory.

If "real world conditions" alone can result in spontaneously arising life forms, then my hypothesis is disproved. It will not demonstrate that the first life on this planet was not created, but it will support the idea that it did not need to be created by intelligent intervention.

Again, my hypothesis is testable and falsifiable. It has not been supported by testing yet, so it is a hypothesis rather than a theory.

But it does meet the minimal qualification of being scientific. No other proposal explaining the origin of life makes this claim.

[ElectricStrawberry]

My calibrated clocks are the method I use to scientifically prove time displacement, nothing more. Appearance of my clocks is irrelevant to their ability to keep continuous time. Can't you see that if my clocks were here 2 days ago, that they cannot have been created yesterday? THAT alone disproves the hypothesis that has not been proven. Science does not have to disprove what's not been proven....we can ignore it until proof is given and THEN go after the proof.

Hypothesize all you want...didn't you know that dogs were really cats yesterday?

Don't you see that if everything was created yesterday, your clocks would look exactly like they look right now?

It's not about the friggin' APPEARANCE of my clocks. APPEARANCE is IRRELEVANT. It's about the clock's ability to tell and count the friggin' time accurately. How you can even follow a baseless hypothesis and claim anything is beyond me.

So, your appeal to the present appearance of your clocks to "scientifically prove that creation did not happen yesterday" proves nothing at all, since the evidence would look exactly the same if creation did happen yesterday.

IT IS NOT ABOUT APPEARANCE. You DO know that time passes don't you? I use my clocks to PROVE that time has passed, nothing more. Those clocks were counting the time 2 days ago and accurately counted the time for the next 48 hours, thus their creation COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED YESTERDAY. Proven...signed...sealed...delivered. The hypothesis fails.

Go ahead. Prove your hypothesis. Prove that everything was created yesterday. Until then, you've got nothing but a philosophical discussion that you're trying to pose as scienctific thinking....even logical thinking. Baseless....based on nothing. Nada. Zip.

[NC28203]

>>>If "real world conditions" alone can result in spontaneously arising life forms, then my hypothesis is disproved.

But that would not disprove your hypothesis. How do we know whether or not the designer was involved in this event of spontaneously arising life forms? We can't prove that it wasn't, so it is not a testable hypothesis.

[metmom]

Gen 1:1 says "In the beginning..." It doesn't say that it is part of the first day of creation. The date of creation is nowhere stated in the Bible. That date was calculted by Ussher in the late 1600's and was a result of HIS interpretation of the Bible and it's chronologies. It is not Scritpture and not accepting it is not the same as not accepting the Bible. I'm not accepting *his* interprtation of the Bible.

[metmom]

calculted=calculated

Spell check is my friend, spell check is my firend,...

[ks_shooter]

Scientific theories make predictions based upon experimental conditions. Adherents to astrology read these "predictions" everyday in the their newspapers. These predictions either occur or they don't. Sounds falsifiable to me.

The exact mechanism is not in question, but the results. Scientists do this all the time. Explain how a graviton works, for example.

Is the Theory of Evolution falsifiable? I don't mean proposed neo-Darwinian mechanism of mutation and natural selection. I mean the idea that life arose from non-life and that a single creature is the ancestor of all life on this planet. If so, what type of evidence would it take to prove it false?

It appears to me that the paradigm is structured such the "Theory" of Evolution is actually the "Axiom" of Evolution. Any attempt at a countering theory is declared "unscientific" (i.e. "untrue") and ruled out of bounds. If the descent of lifeforms is assumed a priori, then Evolution is not a theory it is a philosophical assumption.

BTW, the validity of the Scientific Method is a philosophical assumption also. There is no way to PROVE that the same experiment performed 1000 thousand times with the same results will not yield a different result on the 1001th experimental. It is a meta-physical assumption (dare I say faith?) in the inherent rationality of the universe that allows us to take comfort in Science.

[NC28203]

>>>Gen 1:1 says "In the beginning..." It doesn't say that it is part of the first day of creation. The date of creation is nowhere stated in the Bible. That date was calculted by Ussher in the late 1600's and was a result of HIS interpretation of the Bible and it's chronologies. It is not Scritpture and not accepting it is not the same as not accepting the Bible. I'm not accepting *his* interprtation of the Bible.

Ok, but it does say that it took place over a period of six days. Scientific evidence would appear to indicate that it took longer than 6 days.

[Tribune7]

Nonsense. ID is not a scientific theory.

Should we make an assumption in our schools that

(A)God exist?

(B)Does not exist?

(C)Is irrelevant?

[ReignOfError]

Don't you see that if everything was created yesterday, your clocks would look exactly like they look right now? So, your appeal to the present appearance of your clocks to "scientifically prove that creation did not happen yesterday" proves nothing at all, since the evidence would look exactly the same if creation did happen yesterday.

I've said for years now that any question becomes an epistemological question, if you're stubborn enough.

I know the universe wasn't created yesterday, because I remember the day before yesterday. And because there's a pile of laundry in my bedroom that I couldn't possibly have accumulated in a day.

Ah, but what if God created the universe yesterday, filling our heads and libraries and televisions and Free Republic message boards with all the false evidence of the last several thousand years of civilization? Or what if this entire universe exists as a dream of someone who just fell asleep, with all the "evidence" created in an instant, etc? What if we're in the Matrix, and it was just switched on?

That's a favorite argument of college freshmen, with or without chemical stimulation. It's also employed to further the claim that you can't prove anything, so all forms of science, superstition and wild guesses are on an equal footing.

The answer of Western philosophy at least since Descartes has been that we can trust the evidence of our senses because God does not deceive. If you don't trust that explanation, I recommend that you ask as if it does; look both ways before crossing the imaginary street, lest your non-existent self imagines itself getting hit by a non-existent bus.

Science comes up with the best possible explanations for observed phenomena. The explanations change as the observed facts change. It is an empirical pursuit that does not, and cannot, prove any metaphysical point (though it can sometimes provide a materialistic explanation for phenomena that could only be described in metaphysical terms before).

My bottom line is that it doesn't really matter beyond idle speculation -- either everything we observe exists or nothing we observe exists, and our relation to the rest of the world is the same either way. If you attempt to discredit science because all the evidence to support it is based on the fallible five senses, then the same applies to scripture.

[Rock N Jones]

"Since it is known that life arose from non-life"

How so you know this?

[JamesP81]

And they base this conclusion on *what*, exactly?

It's not a conclusion. It's a hypothesis.

And why do you feel that there's something "special" about neurons that would allow them to "enable" thought that an electronic equivalent would not? What about circuits that exactly replicate the biochemical responses of equivalent neurons, signal-wise?

For one, a brain is living tissue, silicon is not, nor will it ever be. Secondly, every single possible state a computer could ever be in can be written on a state transition diagram and under no circumstances may the program itself alter that diagram. Human beings and other living things, however, are quite capable of changing or ignoring their own internal 'code'.

Frankly, the highest level of intelligence computer software has ever demonstrated is that of a virus. A virus lives only as a parasite to replicate itself. Computer viruses do this. However, even computer viruses are not as capable as nature's version. Nature's viruses are capable of mutating themselves into a new form to make themselves more difficult to kill or to make themselves better able to spread to other organisms. Computer viruses don't even do this. When new anti-virus programs are released and new security software put into place, virus writers have to make new viruses as the old ones cease being effective.

Self-awareness in regular electronic computers is as ridiculous of a concept as the Earth being flat. Sophisticated software systems will eventually get to be good enough do a good imitation of thinking or even of human behavior, but it will never equal human behavior, and it will never think for itself. No computer software or hardware will ever 'think' outside of its own programming the way people do.

I've wrote enough lines of code to know how a computer functions. As I've said before, things like Commander Data, The Matrix, or I, Robot aren't going to happen, at least not with solid state electronic technology.

[ReignOfError]

BTW, the validity of the Scientific Method is a philosophical assumption also. There is no way to PROVE that the same experiment performed 1000 thousand times with the same results will not yield a different result on the 1001th experimental. It is a meta-physical assumption (dare I say faith?) in the inherent rationality of the universe that allows us to take comfort in Science.

As I said in my post just now, that is based on the faith that God does not deceive. In any case, it makes sense to act as if we live in a rational universe, because if we live in an irrational one, nothing we do will allow us to understand or predict it anyway.

So even if we believe that science is useless (a difficult proposition to support, given the number of people in the US who aren't dying of polio, malaria and smallpox right now), leave the scientists alone. It gives them something to do and keeps them off the streets.

[js1138]

Should we make an assumption in our schools that ...

Science cannot exist with assuming that God is irrelevant. Even Newton assumed that the laws of nature were established at creation and not subject to constant fiddling. One can believe in miracles, but cannot believe that constant intervention is necessary or likely. The assumption of science is that every phenomenon has an explanation that can be derived by assuming consistency.