On Mon, 14 Apr 1997 12:00:14 -0400, Pim van Meurs wrote:
[continued]
>SJ> What information engineer would attribute the development of
>code and code- content to chance? Such a postulate would be
>refuted immediately in all other areas of science- except the
Neodarwinian biology....But biology retains this plain nonsense in
the sole interest of materialistic philosophy." (Wilder-Smith,
A.E., "The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution", 1981, p8-9)
PM>Not even the evolutionist would attribute this to chance only so
>the question is merely rethorical and does not address the real
>issue here that there is a guiding mechanism in evolution (natural
>selection).
No. Wilder-Smith is discussing the origin of life-before "natural
selection" came into existence:
"One way out of the problem would be to extend the concept of
natural selection to the pre-living world of molecules. A number of
authors have entertained this possibility, although no reasonable
explanation has made the suggestion plausible. Natural selection is
a recognized principle of differential reproduction which
presupposes the existence of at least two distinct types of
self-replicating molecules. Dobzhansky appealed to those doing
origin-of-life research not to tamper with the definition of natural
selection when he said:
`I would like to plead with you, simply, please realize you cannot use the
words "natural selection" loosely. Prebiological natural selection is a
contradiction in terms.' (Dobzhansky T., "In The Origins of
Prebiological Systems and of Their Molecular Matrices", 1965, p310)
Bertalanffy made the point even more cogently:
`Selection, i.e., favored survival of "better" precursors of life,
already presupposes self-maintaining, complex, open systems which
may compete; therefore selection cannot account for the origin of
such systems.' (von Bertalanffy L., "Robots, Men and Minds", George
Braziller: New York, 1967, p82)"
(Thaxton C.B., Bradley W.L. & Olsen R.L., "The Mystery of Life's
Origin", 1992, p147)
PM>The lack of understanding of evolution and thermodynamics is no
>excuse for these anti-scientific comments.
Pim, to date it is *you* who have shown the "lack of understanding
of evolution and thermodynamics"!
>PB>I agree with many that creationists often over-reach with the
>2nd law argument, wanting to apply this to the entire process of
>evolution (when the machinery is present), the fall, and so on.
>SJ>Agreed. This gives Darwinists the opportunity to counter-attack
>and thus to evade the main problem - the origin of "the machinery".
PM>'Darwinists' do not care about the origin of the machinery
>whether it be creation or naturalist processes. They look at the
>available evidence of 'evolution' not abiogenesis and explain this
>in naturalistic terms. However this does not mean that there is no
>effort to explain the origin of life as well in a scientific
>manner.
First, you just tried to use a "Darwinist" solution to the origin of
life, namely "natural selection"! Please clarify.
Second, "Darwinist's" routinely discuss "the origin of the
machinery", as part of their defence of Darwinism. For example,
Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker, devotes a whole Chapter (6 "Origins
and miracles") containing 27 out of 334 pages (or about 8% of the
book), to the origin of life.
Thirdly, if "the origin of the machinery" was by "creation" rather
than "naturalist processes", then it is possible that "creation" was
the solution to other intractable difficulties in the *development*
of the "machinery". I repeat what Johnson said:
"If Darwinists are to keep the Creator out of the picture, they have
to provide a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life."
(Johnson P.E., "Darwin on Trial", 1993, p103)
>PB>Still, to ignore thermodynamics is to ignore a problem.
>"Morowitz has estimated the increase in the chemical bonding energy
>as one forms the bacterium Escherichia coli from simple precursors
>to be...thermodynamically equivalent to having water in your
>bathtub spontaneously heat up to 360 oC," (Thaxton, et al., 1984).
>SJ>Yes. They point out that this is "happily a most unlikely
>event"! :-) But this is a good way of getting these obscure
>numbers across to laymen to show the extreme implausibility of
>spontaneous generation theories.
PM>Of course this is based on the erroneous assumption that
>spontaneous generation lead to a giant leap and generated the
>Escherichia Coli in one step or DNA in one step. While such
>arguments might appear to be scientific to the laymen, scientists
>have since long come to understand the logical fallacy in such
>arguments. It appears that rethoric rather than science is the
>only argument against evolution or abiogenesis given the simplistic
>and unrealistic assertions made above.
Well then, please explain how "DNA" or indeed "abiogenesis" occurred
step-by-step, *before* there was natural selection:
"The basic difficulty in explaining how life could have begun is
that all living organisms are extremely complex, and Darwinian
selection cannot perform the designing even in theory until living
organisms already exist and are capable of reproducing their kind.
A Darwinist can imagine that a mutant rodent might appear with a web
between its toes, and thereby gain some advantage in the struggle
for survival, with the result that the new characteristic could
spread through the population to await the arrival of further
mutations leading eventually to winged flight. The trouble is that
the scenario depends upon the rodent having offspring that inherit
the mutant characteristic, and chemicals do not produce offspring.
The challenge of chemical evolution is to find a way to get some
chemical combination to the point where reproduction and selection
could get started." (Johnson P.E., "Darwin on Trial", 1993,
pp103-104)
>SJ>The problem for the materialist is that the more one gets away
>from simple self-assembly scenarios, the more it looks like what
>Hoyle calls a "put-up job". IOW, if natural laws are eventually
>discovered (a la Prigogine, Kauffman, etc) that predestine
>non-living matter towards life - and none have yet been found -
>then it will be one further example of fine-tuning of the initial
>conditions, which is part of the argument from design.
PM>Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Actually "Absence of evidence" *is* "evidence of absence". It may
not *ncessarily* be "evidence of absence" but it is *prima facie*
"evidence of absence". Otherwise, what would be "evidence of
absence"?
PM>Much headway is made in understanding the self-assembly scenarios
>both in theory as well as in experiments.
Please give details of what this "Much headway" is. Thanks.
>SJ>What the materialist really needs is something fairly ordinary
>that flows naturally from the normal laws of physics and chemistry,
>eg. Darwin's "warm little pond" with chemicals + energy. Anything
>that is too sophisticated sounds like prior planning.
PM>While it might sound like prior planning there is no evidence
>that it need to point to such. Arguments from incredility are in
>general considered to be anti-scientific. Combine this with a
>subjective term as 'sounding sophisticated' and one has a recipe
>from argument from rethoric.
Pim, your whole post has been one long "argument from rhetoric"! How
about including some *evidence* to back up your assertions?
>SJ>Anything that is unsophisticated but requires bringing together
>of all the components in the right place at the right time in the
>right order, sounds like intelligent intervention.
PM>Again, it might sound like such but need not be.
At present the only known natural cause that can "bring
together...components in the right place at the right time in the
right order" is human "intelligent intervention". If "components'
were brought together "in the right place at the right time in the
right order" *before* there was human "intelligent intervention",
then the most reasonable explanation is that it was effected by
supernatural "intelligent intervention".
>SJ>I believe the case is closed for Intelligent Design in the origin
of life.
PM>We agree and disagree. The case appears to be closed and the
>results point to no necessity of Intelligent Design. The case for
>ID is based upon arguments like:
>SJ> If there was something simple and plausible that does not
>require intelligent design it would have been discovered by now.
PM>Which of course is not dissimilar from arguments that might have
>been heard in centuries ago when people claimed that the earth was
>the center of the universe. Science luckily has advanced us beyond
>these arguments of incredulity towards arguments from facts and
>data.
Fine. Please post the "facts and data"! To date all I have seen
from you are "arguments of" *credulity*!
>SJ>"The authors have made an important contribution to the origin of
>life field. Many workers in this area believe that an adequate
>scientific explanation for the beginning of life on Earth has
>already been made. Their point of view has been widely
>disseminated in texts
PM>Adequate no, but much has been learned in the last few decades
>about this topic and much science has been performed to address the
>origin of life.
Big deal. Performing "much science...to address the origin of
life" yet it still remaing not "Adequate" is evidence that
"science" is on the wrong track.
>SJ>and the media, and to a large extent, has been accepted by the
>public. This new work brings together the major scientific
>arguments that demonstrate the inadequacy of current theories.
>Although I do not share the final philosophical conclusion that the
>authors reach, I welcome their contribution. It will help to
>clarify our thinking.... I would recommend this book to everyone
>with a scientific background and interest In the origin of
>life...." - Robert Shapiro, Professor of Chemistry at New York
>University. Dr. Shapiro is coauthor of Life Beyond Earlh.
>(Thaxton C.B., Bradley W.L. & Olsen R.L., "The Mystery of Life's
>Origin, 1992, back cover)
>SJ>I would challenge non-theistis like Pim to read it.
PM>With what purpose? So that I understand that science has a long
>way to go towards fully understanding the origin of life on this
>earth? No big news here.
The "big news" is that as Thaxton et al point out, it is not what
"science" does not know, but what it now *does* know regarding "the
origin of life":
"Notice, however, that the sharp edge of this critique is not what
we do not know, but what we do know. Many facts have come to light
in the past three decades of experimental inquiry into life's
beginning. With each passing year the criticism has gotten
stronger. The advance of science itself is what is challenging the
nation that life arose on earth by spontaneous (in a thermodynamic
sense) chemical reactions." (Thaxton C.B., Bradley W.L. & Olsen
R.L., "The Mystery of Life's Origin", 1992, p185)
PM>On the other hand science has made significant steps towards such
>understanding, despite Steve's strawman argument that science should
>have understood fully the pathways by now.
Why is this a "strawman argument"? Unless one knows in advance that
there *was* a naturalistic origin of life, the fact that every
"naturalistic origin of life" scenario has failed, is good evidence
that there was *not* a "naturalistic origin of life"!
PM>I do support the book's contribution towards an understanding
>that science has not fully explained the origin of life (yet) and
>that many of the hypotheses still have problems and inadequacies.
The fact is that "science has not..."explained the origin of
life" *at all*, and has no prospects of doing so:
"...an outsider can be excused for feeling a sense of shock when he
stumbles across pessimistic reviews of origin-of-life research in
the professional literature, such as one written by Klaus Dose, a
prominent worker in the field. In his assessment of the state of
the problem, Dose pulls no punches.
`More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the
fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better
perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on
Earth rather than to its solution. At present all discussions on
principal theories and experiments in the field either end in
stalemate or in a confession of ignorance.' (Dose K., "The Origin
of Life: More Questions than Answers," Interdisciplinary Science
Reviews, 1988, 13, p348)
(Behe M.J., "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to
Evolution", Free Press: New York, 1996, p168)
Your "(yet)" seems to suppose that Science has unlimited time and
funds to pursue "the origin of life" forever. In fact, it is
entirely possible (if not probable) that because of over 40 years of
continual failure in its main goal (there have doubtless been some
side benefits), funding will eventually dry up for "origin of life"
reasearch and the best and brightest new researchers will be
reluctant to enter such an unpromising and unrewarding field. When
the current crop of researchers who started their work in the
1950-60's retire, it is possible that science will *never* "explain
the origin of life".
PM>I just hope that the book also addresses that little progress has
>been made in the theory of intelligent design and the origin of
>life in the time science has advanced it's knowledge and
>understanding of these origins.
Actually "the book" is part of *the beginning* of "the theory of
intelligent design and the origin of life", so it goes without
saying that "little progress has been made" to date.
PM>If as I understand from Shapiro's comments the authors of the
>book conclude that inadequacies in theory or hypotheses points
>towards a total failure of science then I have to agree with
>Shapiro's comments about not sharing the final philosophical
>conclusion reached.
Why am I not surprised? ;-) For Shapiro it appears that *no* amount
of "failure of science" would change his faith in naturalism:
"After presenting a very readable, very devastating critique of
scientific studies on the origin of life, Shapiro proclaims his
steadfast loyalty-not to the goal of "explaining the physical
world," but to science:
`Some future day may yet arrive when all reasonable chemical
experiments run to discover a probable origin for life have failed
unequivocally. Further, new geological evidence may indicate a
sudden appearance of life on the earth. finally, we may have explored
the universe and found no trace of life, or process leading to life,
elsewhere. In such a case, some scientists might choose to turn to
religion for an answer. Others, however, myself included, would
attempt to sort out the surviving less probable scientific explanations
in the hope of selecting one that was still more likely than the
remainder.' (Shapiro, R., "Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the
Creation of Life on Earth", 1986, p130).
Shapiro goes on gamely to say that things don't look quite so bleak
right now, pretty much contradicting everything he had written to
that point. He can rest secure in the knowledge that there will
never be a time when all experiments have "failed unequivocally,"
just as there will never be a time when the existence of the Loch
Ness Monster has been absolutely ruled out. And the time when the
universe will have been fully explored is comfortably far off."
(Behe M.J., "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to
Evolution", Free Press: New York, 1996, pp234-235)
PM>I also do not understand the term 'non-theist' in reference to my
>beliefs. Are you suggesting that I cannot believe or do not
>believe in a deity because I believe that science can find a
>scientific explanation for the origins and evolution of life on
>this earth?
I assumed that you were a "non-theist" by your response to the
following:
-----------------------------------------------------
From: "Stephen Jones" <sejones@ibm.net>
To: "evolution@ursa.calvin.edu" <evolution@ursa.calvin.edu>
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 97 22:25:24 +0800
Subject: Re: Morphologically intermediate species 1/2
Pim
[...]
SJ>"I am not sure where you are coming from in this debate. Are you a
>naturalistic or theistic evolutionist? Apologies if you have already
>stated this and I have missed it."
PM>No I have not introduced myself. My name is Pim van Meurs and I
>am an oceanographer. My viewpoint is naturalistic rather than
>theistic, being the incurable scientist.
-----------------------------------------------------
Perhaps you would clarify what "naturalistic rather than theistic"
means if it does not mean "non-theist"?
Regards.
Steve
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