["...coyoteman, would be the first to accept that evidence."]
"I have seen no evidence of that assertion.
You did a bit of quote mining here. The following is the entire quote:
If the scientific evidence against some hypothesis was convincing, a scientist, such as coyoteman, would be the first to accept that evidence.
Please note the requirement that the evidence be within the realm of science and be convincing.
["...probability calculations will not determine what is impossible unless the probability is 0."]
"You are correct in this. The probability is not 0. It is merely so improbable, that practically speaking, it would require definitive proof to refute. There is none such.
I'd like to know what probability calculations you are basing your opinion on because all the ones I've seen are grossly inaccurate in their initial assumptions.
["Another problem is the assumption you make that life has to have formed spontaneously, rather than by slowly and incrementally bridging between non-life, pre-life, protolife and then eventually life."]
"What you describe here is the spontaneous formation of life, as opposed to the design of life. You simply restate the evolutional theory as it already is argued. What I assert is that the possibility is so remote as to be impossible.
The incremental nature drastically changes the probability calculations. That is why it is mentioned as often as it is.
"Even using incrementalism, the first steps of life would have required too much specialism of biochemistry, working together toward a purpose, for it to be unguided. Again, you see a clock, and deny the clockmaker. That is unscientific. To disregard evidence is to be unscientific.
The first steps of life? Which steps would those be?
What purpose are you referring to?
Are you saying that there needs to be a conscious decision made for each mutation and selection process?
What is the unit of 'specialism?
If we call the unit a 'spec', how many 'specs' are necessary before we can claim something is guided?
To accept a poorly thought out, unvalidated and strictly unvalidatible interpretation of the evidence is unscientific. That is why Astrology is not accepted as science.
So far your 'evidence' is an assertion that it looks designed so it must be designed.
["The main proponents of ID also understand that the 'evidence' you want to put forward is not scientific..."]
"To claim that it is mere philosophy, is to remove philosophy from science.
So, if I make a claim that it is not scientific I am making a claim that it is philosophy? Why are you making them mutually exclusive?
Science is a methodology. Conclusions drawn from data using a methodology greatly divergent from that of science is not science. It has little to do with making it out to be nothing but philosophy.
"Try doing that in other disciplines, and we no longer see a table as a table, but a collection of molecules, made up of atoms, elementary particles, energy, etc. It's simply not practical. Philosophy and science are inextricably entwined. How can you come to a conclusion, based on evidence, without any philosophy?
I never said we could. However we can not use philosophy as a substitute for the methodologies of science.
["Nor have you correctly considered why we know a watch has a watchmaker."]
"Indeed I have. You have gone far afield of science when you claim that such complexity merely needed the right mix of chemicals, energy and time to form life, the universe and everything, because you do so without anything beyond circumstantial proof, which is open to interpretation.
So, it is your opinion that the interpretation of a large number of independent and dependent streams of data and the conclusions drawn from the convergence of that evidence derived from Cosmology, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Physics, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Genetics, Genomics, a number of fields of Biology, Statistics, Paleontology, Archeology, Anthropology and a number I'm am probably missing is unscientific?
"And you have to really stretch to justify your refusal to simply accept the obvious, that it had to have been created by the purposful actions of a creator, that there is a force in our lives that guides all things.
Do you think I just decided to stop believing in a creator without thinking it through? That is hardly the case. I went through a lot of information, a lot of science and a whole lot of weighing the options before I let the evidence convince me there is no creator. In fact it became more than a little obvious that there is no creator.
However being obvious is not an indicator that something is scientific nor an indicator that it is correct. Your claim that we are being unscientific because we reject the obvious without some testable evidence is, at best, misguided.
"Can you honestly say that the evidence of the origins and present nature of life isn't best explained by a guiding hand behind it all?
Easily.
There is testable evidence for the mechanisms behind the 'deterministic' formation of molecules, the psuedo-random modification of polypeptides, and the efficacy of selection. I see no testable evidence for a Grand Designer.
I do see a tendency for people to jump to conclusions because they see patterns in nature that remind them of human designs.
"You present evidence, but come to all the wrong conclusions. You say it's all happened because, well, it just did.
We say it happened because we are familiar with mechanisms which could easily contribute to life. The origin of life is well within the range of known processes and physical laws. We also understand where interactions are deterministic because of those laws.
"I say all of your evidence explains that life is guided; it explains adaptation to environments by all living things, it explains the complex interactions of molecules in living things, it explains it all except where God came from, which is a matter of belief. The scientific evidence simply supports the idea of Creation."
Yet the vast majority of all life forms that inhabited the Earth failed in their adaptation and are now extinct. The ability to adapt to changing environment and the occasional failure to do so is quite easily explained by Evolution. It can also be explained by a God. The complex interaction of molecules can easily be explained by incremental change through mutation and selection and to a certain degree by co-evolution of active DNA sequences. It can also be explained by God.
The difference is in the testing. Those mechanisms related to evolution can be tested by making predictions which are subject to falsification. Those tests are always designed with a competing hypothesis in mind and formed in such a way that the results will either point to one hypothesis or the other. This requires that the question being asked have a different potential answer from each hypothesis. An example would be - When a specific test is run, hypothesis A, if correct will give one result and hypothesis B, if correct will give another result. Since the God hypothesis can give every conceivable result it cannot be compared to any other hypothesis. It is therefore not scientific.
If we want to test ID then we have to assume the Designer is not God and that the designer will leave testable evidence that can be tested in comparison to other hypotheses. So far no one has come up with such a test for ID. What they have come up with is the assertion that Evolution is false, therefore ID is true. So far all the 'proofs' that evolution is false have been dealt with by science and shown to be specious.
Even if evolution is shown to be incorrect, something not likely to happen considering it has survived 150+ years of falsification attempts, that does not mean that the ID hypothesis is true, there could be some other naturalistic explanation. The realization of this is behind the attempt by IDists to lump all of Methodological Naturalism/Materialism under the banner of 'Evolution' and hope to bring down MN through attacking the small segment of science which they feel, incorrectly, is most defenseless. For some reason they believe that by bringing down Biological Evolution (derived from Darwin's ToE) all of MN will be brought down. However they need more than just one item to bring down Evolution; they have to bring down the confluence of evidence from dozens of fields. They need to bring down much more than just Evolution to bring down MN. They have to show that science does not result in correct answers, which of course means they have to know the correct answers to begin with (as they believe they do). Unfortunately for them, correctness can be tested for, but it requires MN.