Re: Atheism vs other religions
Okay, let's define science and the scientific method for me. Since we're all convinced I have no idea what it is.
Religion proposes itself as absolute. The Intelligent design allows itself to undergo changes to its scientific principles. If the ability to be revised and edited is the only qualification of a science. Then what exactly makes the concept of design unscientific.
Before you make your decision be absolutely sure it does not contradict any of the presently accepted forms of science (excluding creationist scientists)
Formal Sciences - Mathematics, Logic, Decision Theory
Natural Sciences - Biology - Botany, Ecology, Entomology Ichthyology, Zoology
Chemistry
Applied Science
Interdisciplinary
Physics - Acoustics, Aeronautics, Astronomy, Mechanics, Optics, Robotics
Earth Science- Crystallography, Geography, Geology, Hydrology, Meteorology, Mineralogy, Oceanography, Paleontology, Petrology, Seismology, Volcanology
Technological- Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering.
Medical and Health Sciences - Anatomy, Cardiology, Genetics, Immunology, Medicine, Nutrition
Agricultural Sciences - Forestry
Social Sciences - Psychology
Humanities - Antrhopology, Archaeology, Gelotology, Linguistics
Oxford Dictionaries - "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."
Webster
1
a : the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding
2
a : a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study <the science of theology>
b : something (as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge <have it down to a science>
3
a : knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.
This is an interactive logical argument, showing that the definition of science is ambiguous enough to accept the intelligent design. If, and only if, intelligent design is defined correctly by the interpreter.
Scientific Method
Webster - "principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses."
This argument uses empirical evidence to support that design can be tested.
Just to add. Pack mentality is a big issue plaguing human beings. There was a time when nearly everyone accepted the world was flat as fact. Does the fact that many people believe in it really support its
correctitude? Were Darwin and the other scientists persecuted because they outnumbered the believers? They were the underdogs, the ones with ideas. Now you have to be careful when you judge what can and cannot be fact when you are in danger of maintaining the same mindset as a faith based believer.
This argument uses pathos to help redefine what it means to develop a rhetorical argument.
Intelligent Design and Evolution are what is called Interdisciplinary Science. They are taking principles from other fields of science to support a hypothesis. They are not fields science alone, but they are grounded on sciences to answer the same question of origins.
This argument can be easily repeated saying the opposite of everything stated. I hope the is more to the coming counterarguments
Again what I'm seeing is a serious mis-definition of our terms here. Science is taking on a very colloquial definition. I'm not trying to be annoying or condescending when I refer to Webster, but it is imperative that we are speaking the same language especially if we're going to use definitions as a rhetorical strategy.
---------- Post added at 11:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:41 PM ----------
So you are proposing that a current lack of an explanation for natural processes resulting in life opens up the possibility of there being a designer? Even if that actually qualified as a rational argument you would first need empiric evidence of said creator. However that is simply not plausible, you'd actually need to redefine the concept of science in order to fit that in. There is and there can't be such a thing, it will never meet the specific requirements of science. There is no such thing as "theory of intelligent design", at least not with theory meaning "scientific theory". You have two possibilities here. Life forming via natural processes (which has not been proven to be impossible as you claim) or life forming via intelligent design. On the first it is conceptually plausible to make hypothesis which could be validated enough to make it to theories. On the second one it would be a conceptual impossibility. It is true there isn't an accepted explanation for the origin of life just yet however what you propose does not meet and cannot meet the basic requirements to be considered science.
Life and complex machinery are not the same, the analogy is irrelevant. Then again, that has been pointed out before and you are clearly ignoring that. In a scientific context the watchmaker analogy is not even falsifiable, it does not even meet a basic requirement for it to be considered scientific. Its an analogy, its not even a proper argument...
I am not proposing that the current lack of information proves anything. I am saying that atheism should be held accountable for its own lack of information. Apparently you and I have different definitions of complex machinery ("an organization or system by which something is done"/"the working parts of a machine"). Is it too general to define life this way? Is it too general to define cellular organs this way? Is it too general to define multi-cellular organisms this way?
So we can come to an understanding about the watchmaker. An analogy is a rhetorical strategy, not a science. A hypothesis is falsifiable. If the hypothesis is that a watch can form by natural processes if its components are near, could that not be falsified? If we managed to build a watch in a laboratory while replicating the theoretical intelligent interference with origins of life could it not be falsified if it were successful? I'm seeing a lot of desperation for hard evidence in your reasoning and less critical thinking. You are right though, something that is physically impossible is not falsifiable.
Again you can point out what you want, until it is logically reasoned I will not be convinced. You are telling me that all science is falsifiable, but the concept of life forming through natural processes is not? I am simply unable to interpret this in a way that is convincing to me. I'm really getting tired of going to Webster each time you all are trying to form a rhetorical argument with definitions and it is falsified.
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Zimbardo
I have no reason to believe the origins of life prize is false. Can you link me to what you researched?
"The Origin-of-Life Science Foundation
should not be confused with "creation science"or "intelligent design" groups. It has no religious affiliations of any kind, nor are we connected in any way with any New Age, Gaia, or "Science and Spirit" groups. The Origin-of-Life Science Foundation, Inc. is a science and education foundation encouraging the pursuit of natural-process explanations and mechanisms within nature. The Foundation's main thrust is to encourage interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research projects by theoretical biophysicists and origin-of-life researchers specifically into the origin of genetic information/instructions/message/recipe in living organisms. By what mechanism did initial genetic code arise in nature? The primary interest of The Gene Emergence Project is to investigate the derivation of functional monomeric sequencing at the rigid covalent-bond level. This must occur prior to any selection for phenotypic fitness. "
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About discovering an origin to life: This is the criteria.
Just include the following in your answer:
The simplest known genome's apparent anticipation and directing of future events toward biological ends, both metabolic and structural;
Not just the rise of genetic information, but the ability of the genome to give instructions, deliver orders, and actually produce the needed end-products;
The indirectness of recipe-like biological "linguistic" message code _ the gap between genotypic information and phenotypic expression. How did the first genetic information arise in its coded format prior to phenotypic realization of progeny from which the environment could select? If a protobiont's genetic code and phenotype were one and the same, how did such a simple system thermodynamically meet the eight minimum conditions of "life" enumerated below? How did stellar energy, the four known forces of physics, and natural process produce initial information/recipe using direct or indirect code?
The bizarre concentration of single-handed optical isomers (homochirality of enantiomers) in living things - how did a pure population of left-handed amino acids or right-handed sugars arise out of a chemical environment wherein reactions ordinarily give rise to roughly equal numbers of both right- and left-handed optical isomers?
The already sophisticated isotope fractioning by earliest life forms such as those in the Akilia rocks.
Conditions of "life"
Delineate itself from its environment through the production and maintenance of a membrane equivalent, most probably a rudimentary or quasi-active-transport membrane necessary for selective absorption of nutrients, excretion of wastes, and overcoming osmotic and toxic gradients,
Write, store, and pass along into progeny seemingly conceptual information needed for organization; provide instructions for energy derivation and for needed metabolite production and function; symbolically encode and communicate functional message through a transmission channel to a receiver/decoder/effector mechanism; integrate past, present and future time into its biological information content,
Bring to pass the above recipe instructions into the production or acquisition of actual catalysts, co-factors, etc.; physically orchestrate the biochemical processes/pathways of metabolic reality; manufacture and maintain physical cellular architecture,
Capture, transduce, store, and call up energy for utilization (work),
Actively self-replicate, not just passively polymerize or crystallize, passing along the apparatus and "know-how" for reproduction into progeny,
Self-monitor and repair its constantly deteriorating physical matrix of biological information,
Develop or grow from immaturity to reproductive maturity, and
Evolve
Origins of Life
G&S
Hard evidence and logical reasoning strong enough to make even a "pseudoscience" believable is a dangerous combination. It isn't just,
unanswered, it's physically impossible.
---------- Post added September 18, 2014 at 12:02 AM ---------- Previous post was September 17, 2014 at 11:26 PM ----------
That's funny - because evolutionists have quite a lot of evidence to back up their claims. Would be nice to see any from the creationists.
Oh, on that note - even if a god was controlling it, then it would be nice to find evidence that it was the God of Abraham and not a different god (or a multitude of gods).
I am not arguing for a fallacy to 'disprove god'. God being, in my mind, utterly impossible to disprove.
If such a 'fallacy' did exist, then I am afraid to say that it would be unlikely to disprove that natural processes were responsible for the origins of life.
As I said, not possible to prove or disprove - that is why I didn't bother to try.
I will happily await someone finding a way to disprove that life could form through natural processes then.
Not
the scientific community, but The Origin of Life Science Foundation, Inc.
But quite a bit of evidence that various steps along the way can.
This, I am afraid, highlights your extreme lack of understanding about what you are talking about.
This argument really makes no sense at all.
When you refer to the 'scientific method' you refer to it incorrectly 99% of the time.
Again, you have no evidence at all to back up your statement - although I have no solid proof, I do have quite a bit of evidence to show that it is potentially possible.
No one is stating that the scientific community knows 100% how it all happened. That is why there are various theories about what may have happened.
I actually looked up the Origin of Life Foundation, Inc.
Other than a rather crappy website - and a foundation housed in a small suburban ranch home. There appears to be none of this 'lack of bias' which you so adamantly speak of. In fact, Dr. Abel appears to be quite good at sidestepping direct questions, blindly refuting established data, ignoring the fact that the early earth’s environment was arguably not the same as it once was...
His papers have been utterly discredited.
He even dodges simple questions about the size of his foundation (the Origin of Life Foundation, Inc.)...
He seems a thoroughly untrustworthy fellow.
Call me sceptical, but it really does seem like this man, and his foundation, have conflicting interests...
Hardly unbiased I'm afraid...
Which, as we have already established prior, you have no knowledge of how to use/what it is/how to form a hypothesis (or what is required in the formation of one)...
You posted (
yet another) a badly disguised example of the watchmaker analogy - you also forgot to point out/realise that few scientists actually agree with this analogy at all. How it doesn't work and how their main example (the flagellum - which you so kindly talked about below) falls to subdivision of working components.
You are talking about irreducible complexity. I am afraid to tell you that this, if it does exist anywhere, does not fit with the flagellum.
Maybe
this paper from Nature will be of use to you.
Or, if you can not access pubmed articles - what about this
article?
We have seen all the basic components that make up the flagellum as non-combined parts of different cells however.
For all you know,
I am the creator of the universe - I set in motion the laws of nature and sat back to watch it all unfold.
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To add, I do not believe in irreducible complexity. What Darwin wrote about is something that could not have been made by DNA. There is an example called DNA. The data system of the cell is the most contradictory aspect of life forming through natural processes (not in the fact that it is a data system which creationist relate to intelligent life forms recording information like books. But the idea that it is the result of an undirected process is illogical). What I was referring to was the concept of witnessing it and perceiving it to support inductive reasoning.
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I will also add that a lot of my argument is not aimed at kkck. Kkck knows what it means to be respectful and develop a rhetorical argument. Strangely enough, with his respectfulness, I'm almost humbled enough to initially consider myself wrong.
---------- Post added at 12:32 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:02 AM ----------
God and Science is actually a very credible website. I know how biased the creation websites are. I know they work just as hard as the scientists did making those few false skulls of human evolution (their presence does not disprove human evolution. I am referring to the fact that they had to fabricate evidence). I'd say it's a scholarly source, of course, research should never be formed from one source alone to be considered absolute.
Incase you're not convinced they say the same thing about the flagellum
God of gaps
"A common complaint against biological intelligent design arguments is that our understanding of the biology is insufficient to answer the question about a mode by which some "irreducibly complex" system might have arisen through an evolutionary process. The most famous example of this kind of argument is the one involving the bacterial flagellum. This biological rotary engine is a complex association of 50 gene products, the absence of any one of which results in an inability of the system to function at all. Although the system is irreducibly complex now, biologist have proposed mechanisms by which the system could have been synthesized from previously existing structures and enzymes. Although these explanations are not likely to account for the actual way such a system might have arisen, it is possible that better explanations could be revealed through a better understanding of the genomics of different species of flagellated bacteria. As such, the "design" of the bacterial flagellum and other "irreducibly complex" systems could represent a gap in our current understanding of the biology and genetics."
