> LH>Personally, I expect that MN will eventually be successful in
> >"explaining" abiogenesis. But maybe it will fail. In that case,
> >most of the scientific community would restrict MN more narrowly (to
> >sub-processes of abiogenesis) and include a (mechanistically
> >unexplained) infusion of complex/organized chemicals at critical
> >point(s). It would still be science.
SJ> And what if after years of unsuccessfuly trying to explain
> abiogenesis, by MN, the evidence mounts up that life did not have a
> natural origin? Would it not be "science" to believe that life began
> by Intelligent Design?
Yes, I believe it would!
Even more specifically, if scientific research eventually shows that
"naturalistic" abiogenesis could NOT have succeeded on early earth, it
would (IMO) be "science" to believe that life began by
"Intelligent-Design-AND-ASSEMBLY-of-certain-key-components." (*)
I agree with I.D.-advocates that biological life has characteristics which
indicate that it was designed. However, I also think it is important to
split the "intelligent design" issue into two parts: design of the
component pieces, and method of assembly.
I think that the exquisite fine-tuning of the universe's component pieces
(not to mention the fact that they exist at all), so finely-tuned that
they can be combined to create life and ecosystems, is a very strong
argument for "intelligent design." However, I also believe that the data
indicates that biological life was ASSEMBLED via a stochastic process
using the natural properties of the component pieces.
But as I said, if "naturalistic" abiogenesis crashes, I would change my
mind. I would instead say that the data indicates not only intelligent
design, but also supernatural (or advanced technical) assembly of key
components.
[(*) Each scientist would use extra-scientific criteria to decide whether
they believed the intelligence behind the _assembly_ was supernatural, or
merely extra-terrestrial.]
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"LIFE: (noun) Any set of observables | Loren Haarsma
governed by Murphy's Law." | lhaarsma@opal.tufts.edu
(--Phillip Spencer, 1992) |