Kevin wrote:
>>Those "atheists" who have been able to create life in the lab have also
>>learned that life is an inevitable consequence of the self-organization
>>capabilities built into the physiochemical laws. In other words, life is
>>part of the "design" of the universe. The question then becomes, did this
>>design arise naturally or was it the result of intelligent action?
Chris wrote:
>Since self-organization is a consequence of MANY different collections of
>laws, not just the ones built into the physics of the Universe, my guess is
>that it's accidental. This is also one reason "strong anthropic principle"
>arguments are so weak; we have been unable to find any limit on the number
>of sets of laws that can yield self-organization.
Bertvan:
At least you say it is your GUESS that it is accidental, leaving room for
some to guess otherwise. While the concept of self organization is
interesting, I'm unaware anyone has yet found evidence that it applies to
biological systems.
Kevin wrote:
>>Again, "atheists" accept that these "imperfections" do have purpose,
>>because their research has demonstrated that. Concepts like death and
disease >>are accepted as natural consequences of living systems, and are
investigated as
>>such, rather than as aberations that must be explained away. In fact, it is
>>the creationist position that death and disease are aberations rather than
>>part of natural "design".
Chris Wrote:
>Death and disease do not always have a purpose, but they do seem always to
>have naturalistic explanations. That is, as Kevin suggests, we can predict,
>from the principles of evolution that "organisms" will die and that they
>will get diseases, diseases of at least these types: Those from simple
>malfunction and degradation, those resulting from "infemes" that have
>overall survival value but which have some disease as a side effect, those
>resulting from parasitic "infemes," and those caused by other "organisms."
>("Infeme" is my term for the information stored in genes, memes,
>self-reproducing computer programs, etc. It is a chunk of information
>"seeking" to perpetuate itself. Genes are "selfish," as Dawkins says, but
>their selfishness is secondary to the selfishness of the infemes they carry
>by means of their structure. ALL evolution is PRIMARILY the evolution of
>information-survival, or of infeme-survival.) Memes, computer programs, and
>genetic organisms, not to mention automobiles, watches, and societies, are
>all evolutionary and they can all "die" and they can all get "diseases."
Bertvan:
Since science can only address that phenomena which it can measure., do you
anticipate finding way to measure "information," "memes", "selfish genes",
"infemes", etc., bringing them into the realm of science?
A materialist philosophy claims science can measure everything. Would you
insist a materialist philosophy be imposed upon everyone?
Bertvan