SJ
> If Tedd concedes that it is "obvious" that "Darwinism would not be
> falsified if we found another Earth-like planet with no life...on
> it", then I rest my case.
Chris
The only problem is, you don't *have* a case.
Whether Darwinism would be falsified or not depends on exactly how *much*
the "Earth-like" planet was like Earth. Even then, though we know that life
must arise if the conditions for it are sustained long enough, it is at
least conceivable that the *precise* molecular arrangements that eventually
evolve into life are rare enough that they don't always occur, even on
planets that would eagerly support life once it did arise. I don't think
this is the case, however.
Nevertheless, it is true that it *is* obvious that Darwinism would not be
falsified if we found another Earth-like planet with no life. If the
conditions were *identical* (down to the level of every photon's exact
frequency, etc.), then I'd say that it *would* falsify this one aspect of
Darwinism (or it would support indeterministic interpretations of Quantum
Mechanics -- though I would reject this one small aspect of Darwinism before
agreeing that such interpretations of Quantum Mechanics can actually be
true).
*SMALL aspect!?!? -- you say? Yes. If the conditions were not right on
Earth, then, perhaps they *were* right somewhere else and the life that
arose there either came here or was transported or created (via a machine,
etc.) here. That would not invalidate the basic Darwinist proposal that life
has evolved from the beginning via a process of variation and culling, a
process of information-generation via informational "noise" and
information-filtering by the rigors of the demands made on an organism if it
is to pass its information on.
Perhaps SJ needs to study the theory of evolution before criticizing it so
heavily. Oh, and scientific methodology, and the nature of scientific
theories and knowledge. Oops, and mathematics, information theory, geology,
geophysics, physics, theory of computation, etc. So far, the only things he
seems to be expert in are chess (according to him) and quoting people out of
context. Oh, and leaping to conclusions, misrepresenting the ideas of people
who disagree with him, and inverting burdens of proof. Did I mention that
he's good at taking the utterly unsubstantiated claims made in the Bible as
true while rejecting conclusions for which there are (both literally and
figuratively) *mountains* of evidence (not to mention *canyons* of evidence,
such as the Grand Canyon)?
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