In a message dated 10/5/2000 7:37:22 PM Pacific Daylight Time, DNAunion
writes:
> Richard Wein: If they have not been done yet, then it is imho quite
> important that they are done so that they can support what is now merely
> assertions.
>
> DNAunion: Very true. But does this not also apply to the origin of life?
> Why must Dembski have a 100% airtight, completely validated, empirically
> tried and true, perfect hypothesis, generated and completed within a couple
> years, before it is considered any more than an assertion, yet the
> purely-natural origin of life on earth is accepted as scientific fact even
> though it is not 100% airtight, it has not been completely validated, it is
> not empirically tried and true, it is not a perfect hypothesis, and very
> many researchers have been working on it for over 60 years!
>
The reason is very simple. Dembski's argument is based on elimination. And
even more he claims that his elimination filter has no false positives. Since
his assertions not only rest on an infallible elimination but also on the
existance of apparant CSI then it is indeed important for Dembski to do
support his assertions. If your argument is that these gaps in Dembski's
arguments can be be closed then perhaps you are right but so far the ID
argument has quite a few problems to deal with.
> DNAUnionL Sounds kind of unfair: absolute proof required for Dembski, while
> only a couple successes here and there - out of millions or trillions of
> steps - are sufficient to establish biopoesis as scientific fact.
>
Nice strawman.
> >Richard Wein: I know that science can be painful, but in case of a new
> thesis such as Dembski's it is quite necessary that such work is done.
>
> DNAunion: So we can't accept it until it is fully proven? But the
> purely-natural origin of life is elevated to scientific fact on flimsy and
> scant evidence?
>
Nope, there is a lot of "we don't know" there.
> DNAUnion: It all sounds pretty much like double standards. If we are not to
> accept Dembski's work then I suggest fairness dictates that we should not
> accept OOL researchers' work either.
>
Dembski is not making I don't know claims, he is making claims that he is now
asked to support. Is that too much to ask?
> And let us not forget that Darwin's theory was also woefully incomplete when
> he introduced it. If "you guys" had your way (and applied "your guys"
> criteria equally), then there would be no Darwinian theory as it would have
> been rejected at the very beginning because it did not have all the answers
> right out of the starting blocks!
Darwin's theory did not use elimination and did not make claims of
infallibility.
Don't you agree that one should at least be able to support one's assertions?
Especially when ID argument is based on elimination not on positive evidence?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Oct 05 2000 - 22:58:33 EDT