Posted on 12/08/2008 8:10:28 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
In Part I of this article,1 I argued as follows:
(i) Autopoiesis (self-making) is universal and therefore essential to life, so it is required at the beginning for life to exist and is thus not the end product of some long naturalistic process.
(ii) Each level of the autopoietic hierarchy is separated from the one below it by a Polanyi impossibility, so it cannot be reduced to any sequence of naturalistic causes.
(iii) There is an unbridgeable abyss between the autopoietic hierarchy and the dirty mass-action chemistry of the natural environment.
In this part, I test the integrity of this argument in the face of naturalistic objections to intelligent design. I then go on to assess evolutionary arguments for a naturalistic origin of life in the face of universally contradictory evidence...
(FOR PART 1 OF THIS INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT PAPER, SEE LINK IN REPLY #2)
(Excerpt) Read more at creationontheweb.com ...
Arguing isn't experimenting, it is philosophy.
Thanks for the ping!
I wasn’t trying to be mean. I really was wondering if it was serious. I should not have even brought this up. It will take at least an entire day to refute this article because I will also have to write down the actual theories that the author completely ignores.
Another alternative is that I can gather references to the primary literature that refutes his points so you can see it for yourself. That will take less time but I’ll have to report back in a week when I have time to go back to the library. I have to finish my finals first.
Does that sound good?
That will take a very long time to present an adequate refutation and explanation for that last part. I will have to report back in a week when I have the time.
Is that ok?
==Arguing isn’t experimenting, it is philosophy.
All scientists make arguments based on the facts. And in this case, the facts are not in dispute. Moreover, as the author points out, the FACT of autopoiesis lies beyond the reach of materialistic explanation, whereas Creation/ID both predicts and explains it perfectly.
Damn, I just gave myself much more work to do. *beats own head with fists*
Take all the time you need. But what I would really like to see is a detailed materialist rebuttal to part I and part II of this paper. It would appear the facts are not in dispute. So the question remains, are materialist explanations any match for Creation/ID with respect to life’s (that’s all life, not just bacterial flagellums, or blood clotting cascades) irreducible structure?
That is merely an assertion, not a fact. He could have saved all of the scientific sounding words and just said "God created everything". It would have been just as valid as science as all the words he uses. It isn't science. It is philosophy based on a metaphysical source. The whole irriducible complexity boondoggle comes down to different people saying the same things in different ways on creationist web sites and in books designed to convince those, like you, that already believe.
Systems are made of components. A cart isn't a wheel and a cart is irreducibly complex. Take away the wheels and it is a box, not a cart. Boxes and wheels however can be combined to make a cart. I have just falsified irreducible complexity, so now you can stop posting this nonsense.
No need. As I said above, I am much more interested in a materialist explanation for autopoiesis.
Materialism and Intelligent Design are both based on philosophy. The question is, which philosophy of science better explains the structure of life.
Science explains the motion of the planets, why elements have the properties they do, how DNA is assembled, etc. It explains everything else, why not life? Besides your first intelligent designer would have had to have self-created. If one class of object can self-create, why not others? ID is even poor philosophy.
Actually, you still need to explain the wheel and you still need to explain the box. They can no more be explained by natural causes than an irreducible lever, cog, or spring can be explained by the natural properties of metal:
In short, your argument fails.
Materialist evolution destroyed.
Evolution by natural selection as a just-so antitheory designs to halt thinking. I just might have to go out and buy Laughlin’s book!
the box is made of components as are the wheels. They reduce to molecules and then to atoms and then to subatomic particles. Instead of being irreducibly complex they are obviously reducible. At each level of stability (molecule for example)they appear irreducible. If youtake away atoms from an ammonia molecule, it ceases to be an ammonia molecule. If you take away the electron from a hydrogen atom, it ceases to be a hydrogen atom. Life is simply a more complex stability level.
Colleges today tend to breed fanatics rather than skeptics, and this is symptomatic of that behavior. You will have reached an real educational threshhold when you are _not_ so convinced that the educational orthodoxy already has all the answers.
So go ahead - see if your confidence that the evolutionary establishment already has answers to this article are well placed. I have quite a few friends who once had just such a point of view (cf. many of the accounts in the recent creationist book Persuaded by the Evidence), until they started trying to prove out their classroom-inculcated beliefs.
Merry Christmas
Sounds like neither evolution by chance mutation nor related to any version of creation. Merely refuting evolution would not award points to creation. I know Polanyi, destroyer of Einstein’s Relativity theory.
This paper will almost certainly grieve the pied-pipers of “Christian” materialism.
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