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To: El Cid; stormer
Well, first of all, and I know you know this, what you call “Darwinism” (or correctly, the Theory of Evolution) makes no statement whatsoever regarding the origin of life.

Actually I don't know that... That's kind of bizarre. An alleged 'scientific description' of the origin of life, but it declares 'off-limits' any discussion of origins? That doesn't make sense.

Of course it doesn't make sense; any more than it would make sense to claim that the germ theory of disease declares the discussion of genetic diseases "off-limits".

IOW it is you not making sense. Every scientific theory has "boundary conditions," a specific domain in which it is relevant, a certain class of phenomena to which it is relevant. This doesn't lead a theory to assert or imply that questions falling outside of its domain are illegitimate. It just means they would need to be addressed by some other theory or theories.

As to why, specifically, the TOE only concerns living things, consider the final paragraph of Darwin's Origin:

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

IOW Darwin's theory, and it's modern descendants, are only applicable to entities with these characteristics:

Growth, development, and one might add death -- because growth and development render the organism dependent on an environment to draw the necessary energy and other resources, and lead to a competition for such resources which allows for selective effects.

Reproduction and Variation -- the relevance of this to natural selection particularly should be obvious, but it's also relevant to other evolutionary mechanisms.

Ration of Increase -- modern biologists usually use the term, "superfecundity," which simply means the tendency, or at least capability, of organisms to produce far more offspring than the environment could support, were all to live to maturity and themselves reproduce. Again the relevance to natural selection should be obvious. This provides the excess of population among which selection "selects". But again it's also relevant to other mechanisms.

So evolutionary theory can only apply to entities which possess all these attributes, and the only entities that do are living organisms. Therefore the TOE of is only operative once living things exist. The TOE cannot explain the origin of life. There is nothing unusual about that. No scientific theory can explain it's own boundary conditions. If it could it would be a BAD thing.

The origin of life as such would have to be explained by some other theory (or theories). Such a theory may -- or may not -- have certain analogical similarities to the theory of biological evolution, but it would be a separate and distinct theory.

469 posted on 07/01/2008 10:26:18 AM PDT by Stultis (I don't worry about the war turning into "Vietnam" in Iraq; I worry about it doing so in Congress.)
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To: Stultis
...Of course it doesn't make sense; any more than it would make sense to claim that the germ theory of disease declares the discussion of genetic diseases "off-limits"...

I think the proper analogy would be to declare that the germ theory of disease declares the discussion of the origin of germs to be "off-limits"...Which, of course, it should not be...

...The TOE cannot explain the origin of life. There is nothing unusual about that. No scientific theory can explain it's own boundary conditions. If it could it would be a BAD thing...

"TOE" will never explain the origin of life -- albeit we are supposed to trust its explanation of the 'development' of life -- thus discussion is not allowed...
I'll pass.

471 posted on 07/01/2008 6:32:51 PM PDT by El Cid (Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house...)
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