Posted on 07/04/2004 5:19:27 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Actually, 601.
How can you believe in an afterlife? Have you proven it with science?
balrog666: Not by biologists.
According to H.H.Pattee, biologists are not concerned with the question. Physicists on the other hand are quite concerned by the question and have indeed broadly concluded that the difference between that which is alive and that which is not is information (Pattee, Rocha, Yockey, et al). Information is defined by Shannon as a successful communication. For instance, when a cell no longer communicates, it is dead.
Many biologists consider physical laws, artificial life, robotics, and even theoretical biology as largely irrelevant for their research. In the 1970s, a prominent molecular geneticist asked me, "Why do we need theory when we have all the facts?" At the time I dismissed the question as silly, as most physicists would. However, it is not as silly as the converse question, Why do we need facts when we have all the theories? These are actually interesting philosophical questions that show why trying to relate biology to physics is seldom of interest to biologists, even though it is of great interest to physicists. Questioning the importance of theory sounds eccentric to physicists for whom general theories is what physics is all about. Consequently, physicists, like the skeptics I mentioned above, are concerned when they learn facts of life that their theories do not appear capable of addressing. On the other hand, biologists, when they have the facts, need not worry about physical theories that neither address nor alter their facts. Ernst Mayr (1997) believes this difference is severe enough to separate physical and biological models: "Yes, biology is, like physics and chemistry, a science. But biology is not a science like physics and chemistry; it is rather an autonomous science on a par with the equally autonomous physical sciences."
"Ultimately there is no right or wrong period. It's all defined by human desire."
You made my point exactly as to the social consequences of athestic evolutionary thought. It produces a society that is totally self centered. I am trully sorry that you cannot grasp this and its danger. However, I must again concede that even if a society devoid of things other than self is a natural, and undesireable, result of evolutionary thought being fully embraced - that does not prove macro evolution to be wrong.
It should however, give "theistic" evolutionists pause about what they are giving "aid and comfort to."
With a side order of bagpipes.
"I agree very strongly with betty boop that the most significant question about the origin of life is where and how biological information began. And with regard to the sun as a possible source for such information, I share her doubts. For one thing, although photons can carry information, what type of information can be generated spontaneously by the sun? And what might have happened at a very unique point in solar history that it could give rise to information in non-living matter such that the non-living matter becomes beneficially communicative to itself and its environment?"
The only way it can be explained is that "life" as we understand it with all its complexities is an inherent property of matter. That given the right ingredients under the right conditions - life will come into existence because that is one of the extended physical/chemical properties of matter. Just as salt crystalls will form, under the right circumstances, so will life.
Of course I don't buy that for a minute, but it is the only way around the problems that the physical sciences see in your posts. Otherwise, it just couldn't happen - unless created. That is why I keep pointing out here that NASA is spending a great deal of effort to find the so called precursors to life at exterrestrial sites. Without saying so, they(many in science) have come to believe in the "intrinsic nature" origen of life hypothesis.
Somewhere in their heads there's a glimmer of awareness that they're stinking up the joint. Or, perhaps it fits in with the attempts of some to portray the situation on these threads as symmetrical.
That too would be a pipe dream. I don't see the evos bludgeoning with their own ignorance, rampantly misquoting, playing "twist and shout", flinging deliberate fallacies about like confetti, or doing much at all besides knocking down one falsehood after another with evidence. But then, we have evidence.
Luke 21:29-31
29 And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree, and all the trees;
30 When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.
31 So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.
Israel (the fig tree which was captive into all nations) "When they shoot forth", summer is now nigh at hand.
I don't know the day or the hour, but it sure looks like summer.
You got nuttin', monkey boy. Except a one-way ticket to hell!
</creationist mode>
They display the howler monkey syndrome in full, a form of red herring, distraction, Ad Hominem, or whatever you want to call it.
Or the year or the decade or the century ...
...but it sure looks like summer.
Or what scientists call "spurious precision."
So in your world is one day like a thousand years or not?
Does your family call you the "stubborn one".
?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
