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.

[highball]

Sorry, wanted to address another point.

Materialism -- that everything is explainable by measurable events -- is considered a valid scientific concept. Do you think it should be, even though the existence of God is by far a more rational explanation for reality?

I disagree with your premise that "the existence of God is by far a more rational explanation" for anything. Far more rational? In what way? You are offering an emotional answer to an intellectual question.

Which God? Which interpretation of that God?

I believe that science should limit itself to the evidence. The only evidence for ID is emotional - they want a Designer to exist.

[js1138]

In practice, science cannot exist if phenomena are caused by a capricious entity. If causality is divine it must also be irrelevant.

[mvpel]

There's a difference between the debate over evolution through natural selection and biogenesis. This thread seems to be oscillating back and forth between the two issues.

[Tribune7]

I meant without. The typo is mine, but the context should have made it clear.

Actually, science would never have developed if the assumption was all was by chance and that truth didn't matter and existance was pointless.

Science cannot coexist with the assumption that God meddles in the world.

Saying that God does not meddle is not the same as saying God is irrelevant. Is it science to claim an answer where there is none, or none testable?

[highball]

Conspiracy theory! LOL!

Political Correctness can be a tool of the right as well as the left. What would you call it when scientific terms are re-defined to conform to a political agenda?

[NC28203]

>>>That depends on your relativistic inertial reference frame, now doesn't it?

Well, given that the story describes creation of life on Earth and was written by folks on Earth for folks on Earth, I'm going to go with the Earth as my relativistic inertial reference frame. You may go with one that allows 13.7 billion years to have passed on Earth while only taking 7 days. How do we test for the location of the author?

[js1138]

No, it isn't. The poster raised an issue, I answered it. Try re-reading the relevant posts.

I followed the links back -- twice now. Your comment about stars being nothing but equivalent to hydrogen bombs is both incorrect and non-responsive to the original post.

The original post dealt with whether a science could exist without being able to reproduce its object of study in the laboratory.

[highball]

There's a difference between the debate over evolution through natural selection and biogenesis. This thread seems to be oscillating back and forth between the two issues.

Yeah, they usually do.

For the record, The Theory of Evolution has nothing to say about the origins of life. They are separate issues.

[js1138]

Is it science to claim an answer where there is none, or none testable?

Of course not, which is the precise reason why ID, in its present form, is not science.

Science will always assume that an answer can be found (for regular phenomena), even if it takes centuries. Any other assumption is anti-science.

Obviously not every forensic problem can be solved. There will be questions about history that cannot be answered.

[JamesP81]

This link has been provided courtesy of Darwin Central, "The Conspiracy that Cares."

Interesting experiment they have there, excepting that it's not even close to AI. Programming a robot to turn on an LED is a long way from making it feel emotion.

They probably used genetic algorithms for the aritificial neurons. As useful as genetic algorithms are, they are just that: algorithms. Their computational power is not fundamentally superior to conventional algorithms.

Making a machine recognize something it's doing and recognizing something another machine is doing is a simple algorithm. It could be done in hundreds of different ways, literally. The easiest way would be to have the software recognize that the data input is, in fact, coming from the robot's own camera.

Try reading that thread's comments. Many of the posters there are heaping the ridicule upon the project that it richly deserves.

This robot does not do anything other than what it's programmed to do. It recognizes it's own actions versus another robot's actions not because it can, but because it has no choice. It's programmed to do that, so it does. I could write computer programs all day that recognize if the program itself performed an operation if another program performed it. In fact, Windows has been doing this very kind of thing pretty much since it's inception. It's part of the API.

[mulligan]

The truth is - neither can evolutionists. There is no science in evolution. It is no more than a theory and a poor one at best, and quite honestly, takes a lot more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in creation by God.

[atlaw]

Your link to "Peer-Reviewed, Peer-Edited, and other Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design (Annotated)" provides an unintentionally amusing insight into the state of ID research.

It begins with the following editor's note, a virtual case-study in the art of misdirection (glossing over the objection to the lack of actual scientific data supporting ID, and then hinting at the existence of a boatload of original research written up in recognized, peer-reviewed science journals before quickly changing the subject to how many scientific ideas originated in self-published books in the days of yore):

Editors's Note::[sic] Critics of intelligent design often claim that design advocates don’t publish their work in appropriate scientific literature. For example, Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, was quoted in USA Today (March 25, 2005) that design theorists “aren’t published because they don’t have scientific data.”

Other critics have made the more specific claim that design advocates do not publish their works in peer-reviewed scientific journals—as if such journals represented the only avenue of legitimate scientific publication. In fact, scientists routinely publish their work in peer-reviewed scientific journals, in peer-reviewed scientific books, in scientific anthologies and conference proceedings (edited by their scientific peers), and in trade presses. Some of the most important and groundbreaking work in the history of science was first published not in scientific journal articles but in scientific books—including Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus, Newton’s Principia, and Darwin’s Origin of Species ...

The actual list that follows this introduction is downright hilarious. For example, it pads the list with multiple annotated descriptions of various parts of the same book; lists twice (and annotates twice for added heft) Mr. Meyers singular 2004 article in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington; lists articles that are claimed to provide "indirect support" to ID (you get yer heft where you can); and ends with a list of articles in peer reviewed philosophy journals.

If you were trying to refute the point that ID is unsupported by scientific data, and has a miserably embarrassing record of research and publication after 15 years of hype, your link failed rather completely at the task.

[mvpel]

The point is that the creation of the universe and the rise of Humanity can take both 12 billion years and six days, according to scientific evidence.

So I personally don't get hung up on the use of the word "day" in Genesis, and I recommend that others don't either.

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

Students and teachers will never be able to discuss the possibility of an Intelligent Designer creating Life, because Judge Jones and the ACLU have said that unguided evolution is the only possibility and competing theories can't be discussed in science class. Sad, really.

Why can't this be discussed in private schools?

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Political Correctness can be a tool of the right as well as the left. What would you call it when scientific terms are re-defined to conform to a political agenda?

Ignorance most of the time. I have certainly been guilty of it. Many non-scientists don't understand that "theory" has a different meaning in science and math than it does in everyday conversation. I had to be educated on that matter. There are also other examples but they aren't the result of political correctness or a politcal agenda.

Those who argue against the evolutionists are generally trying to stop a political agenda rather than impose one.

[NC28203]

>>>There is ample contextual and grammarical justification for concluding that the Hebrew word translated as "Day" in most modern translations could also be translated as "Age".

If one can't define the parameters, how does one test the theory?
If day is not to be taken literally, what does that mean for the rest of the story? Are there enough contextual and grammarical justifications to view the Biblical creation story as a metaphor for why God created the world rather than as a blow by blow description of how he did it?

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

Intelligent design has nothing to do with evolution or creationism.

Ahem. Re-read the decision in the Kitzmiller case.

ID is repackaged Creation Science, which is repackaged creationism.

[JamesP81]

There is ample contextual and grammarical justification for concluding that the Hebrew word translated as "Day" in most modern translations could also be translated as "Age".

Actually, the grammatical justification suggests they were, in fact, literal 24-hour days. See this link.

There are many others describing the distinct differences between historical narrative Hebrew and poetic or allegorical Hebrew.

[Amelia]

I seem to recall touching on these in Science (Sociology) class.

I consider "social sciences" to be more in the realm of "social studies" than in the realm of "science".

[Tribune7]

Surely you aren't suggesting that because some errors have been made in the past, everything done now is an error as well?

It is the motivation for the errors that cause suspicion and I'm not just referring to evolution.

Evolution has a solid foundation. There is evidence to support it. Even as profound a Creationist as Pope John Paul II admitted that.

Evolution -- as to what it claims to be able to explain -- does not have a solid foundation. Even as profound an evolutionist as Francis Crick admitted that.

I disagree with your premise that "the existence of God is by far a more rational explanation" for anything. Far more rational? In what way? You are offering an emotional answer to an intellectual question.

Materialist atheism is the emotional religion. There is a huge amount of evidence for the existence of God via personal testimonies, the historical records of many cultures, and simple cause and effect. There is no evidence that all happened by "natural"events, and those who hold this belief face an inherent contradiction in their logic -- all can be measured/why can't new energy be created/we don't know but when we find out we can measure it.

What motivates materialism is not evidence but a desire not to believe in God.

Which God? Which interpretation of that God?

The most devout fetish worshiping animist from Borneo is more rational than a positive atheist.