Timeline for What is the viability of Intelligent Design as a supplement to chemical abiogenesis and Darwinian Evolution?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
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| Mar 16, 2015 at 18:02 | comment | added | Mark Bailey | @TechZen Evolution is a heavily stochastic process. Don't ruin your credibility. Your previous comment however, was great. I'm not arguing against it, but hoping to complete it. Your understanding of thermodynamics will never be complete enough to conclude with any confidence that life emerged by itself. If you disagree, then "God of the Gaps" is indeed an appropriate concept to consider. If anyone thinks they can jump from a solid understanding of organic thermodynamics to a claim that Life emerged without any Architect or Director, then they are inserting quite a lot into those Gaps. | |
| Mar 12, 2015 at 21:01 | comment | added | TechZen | @MarkBailey - I don't see the relevance of your comments to my argument. You seem to be making a "God of the Gaps" argument, which is tedious. By that reasoning, since we will never know everything, we never know anything. My comment merely focused on what is known about the formation of organic molecules and the thermodynamics of their evolution into living structures. It's not a random process at any level or stage so calculations based on the premise it's entirely random are automatically false. | |
| Mar 12, 2015 at 16:09 | comment | added | Mark Bailey | @TechZen ...and then someone asks how the mechanisms came to be that way, why the universal constants are so tuned to allow the universe to work this way. It's the scientists place to persistently explore and discover more. And it's the philosopher's place to humble the scientist by reminding him how much he still doesn't know, none of which has anything at all to say about what Gods may be. Science is magnificent, but must be careful not to overreach beyond what it can prove. Good science states what we have learned precisely, and leaves the mystery to the mystics. | |
| Oct 4, 2014 at 3:09 | comment | added | TechZen | You can't calculate the probability of some pattern occurring without understanding mechanism that creates the pattern. Calculating the odds that molecules would form into certain patterns, without known the electron dynamics that force atom into specific configurations under specific conditions, would show that every clump of matter in the universe was fantastically improbable. But once you know the rules of chemistry, it looks deterministic,not improbable. The same applies to evolution. Once you understand the thermodynamics, improbability disappears. | |
| Dec 31, 2013 at 21:37 | comment | added | Mark Bailey | The key to the Go/No-Go idea is to somehow prove INDEPENDENTLY that the probably either is or is not within reach of reasonably happening by chance, without Intelligent manipulation. If we knew that it was astronomically improbable even in this vast ocean of galaxies, then the more times we find life, it would only be more evidence that this Intelligence must be out there creating it. | |
| Dec 31, 2013 at 21:04 | comment | added | Mark Bailey | No. You're already presupposing that life arises by random process; ergo finding another instance of emergence proves that such random emergence is more likely than previously assumed. But this is circular logic. If instead, you presupposed that all life was created by Intelligence, finding another independent creation of life would lead you to conclude that this same Intelligence, or perhaps some entirely other Intelligence, has created this new world full of life. If you presuppose nothing, you know nothing new about the Go/No-Go probability, nor the inference. | |
| Dec 31, 2013 at 20:30 | comment | added | user2437016 | If we find life arose independently somewhere else (or even twice on Earth), it would substantially change the range of probability that life could arise by random process. That's the first component I described, which can be answered thru data. I think it's the second component, the inference - which you have a problem with. | |
| Dec 30, 2013 at 21:01 | comment | added | Mark Bailey | Why would finding independent extraterrestrial life disprove ID? If we find ET, it might be vastly different, perhaps not even DNA or RNA based, or based on right-handed amino acids. Or perhaps we could discover something so hauntingly similar that we could almost have expected to find it here on Earth. In either case, I don't see that it offers any evidence against ID, or even against one single Intelligence. If I discover Mona Lisa and postulate that paintings must be created by humans, later discovering The Last Supper or The Persistence of Memory proves nothing to me either way. | |
| Dec 30, 2013 at 3:50 | review | Late answers | |||
| Dec 30, 2013 at 8:37 | |||||
| Dec 30, 2013 at 3:32 | comment | added | user2437016 | Stephen Meyer's explanation: discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/… | |
| Dec 30, 2013 at 3:31 | history | answered | user2437016 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |