On Thu, 29 Feb 1996 22:06:02 -0500 you wrote:
>SJ>I find it interesting that scientific research into a naturalistic
>origin of life has been unsuccessful for 83 years and not 43 years as
>I originally thought!...when does dogged persistence become
>obsessive folly? 43 years? 83 years? 103 years? :-)
>BH>Hmm... Inquiries into the supernaturalistic origins of life,
>how long have they been going on and with what success? :-).
SJ>What "inquiries"? The "supernaturalistic origins of life" is a
>revealed truth of the Bible (Jn 5:26).
BH>Sorry, I thought for some reason that we were talking about
>scientific evidence.
We were - "scientific research into a naturalistic origin of life
has been unsuccessful for 83 years". There has been no
scientific research into a naturalistic origin of life AFAIK. But
if the naturalistic program to find a plausible undirected
materialistic spontaneous generation scenario for the origin of
lifec onsistently fails, does this not leave a supernaturalistic
Intelligent Designer origin the only alternative?
BH>Are we in agreement that the supernaturalistic origins of life
>cannot be verified by scientific methods?
No. It may be that "the supernaturalistic origins of life" *can be*
"verified by scientific methods". But it is just ruled out of court
apriori by materialist-naturalistic science. My point was that
"scientific research into a naturalistic origin of life has been
unsuccessful for 83 years" and "when does dogged persistence become
obsessive folly?" Johnson writes:
"What Weinberg probably meant to say is that the only way to find out
whether there are any limits to scientific knowledge (or exactly what
the limits are) is to assume that there are no limits and forge ahead
as far as one can go. Up to a point, I agree. Employing the
heuristic assumption that no limits exist is useful to people who want
to push the limits, for the same reason that it may be useful for a
military commander facing overwhelming odds to refuse to consider the
possibility of defeat. If there really is a materialist explanation
for the origin of life, or the human mind, it surely will be found by
a scientist who resolutely ignores the objections of people like me
and persists in looking for it. The danger of heuristic assumptions,
though, is that they so easily turn into facts in the eyes of those
who rely on them. Previously successful military commanders may
convince themselves that defeat really is impossible and continue a
suicidal campaign arbitrarily refusing to credit intelligence reports
documenting the overwhelming strength of the enemy. Behavioral
psychologist may train themselves to think that all human behavior
really car be explained as responses to rewards and punishments.
Economists may become convinced that people really are economically
rational, and particle physicists may flatter themselves that they
really are capable of discovering the ultimate secrets of the
universe. The professionals always tend to exaggerate their
successes, especially when they are competing for funding or public
respect, and they have a corresponding ability to forget about facts
that do not fit their theories. At some point, outsiders need to come
in and audit the books." (Johnson P.E., "Reason in the Balance",
InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove Ill., 1995, p93)
>SJOnce it is admitted that the "origin of life" did not happen by
>"chance", then there is no justification for believe that it was
>"evolution" that "began after the origin of life". It could just as
>easily have been progressive creation, ie. an Intelligent Designer
>guiding and controlling an "evolutionary" process in furtherance of a
>purpose.
BH>Sorry, I don't understand this line of reasoning at all.
If the intervantion of an Intelligent Designer was necessary for the
origin of life, such intervention cannot be ruled out in the
development of that same life.
BH>...After having said this, I think its also worthwhile to point out
>that it is Miller himself who has driven both these nails into soup
>theory....I have come to have a tremendous respect for Miller and I
>tend to get fidgity if someone questions his integrity. Here he is
>doing research that undermines his own pet theory for the origin of
>life and then publishing the results for all the world to see. Not
>exactly a cover up.
>SJ>I was quite careful in what I said. I said "IF THIS IS IGNORED,
>AND LOEB NOT GIVEN HIS RIGHTFUL PRIORITY", then it would seem to
>indicate that here we have a case of paradigm blindness at best and
>fraudulent cover up at worst?".
BH>With the above, my intent really was to move from the specifics of
the >Loeb incident to a more general comment, namely that the various
>difficulties with origin of life research are openly admitted in
>the literature. Also the "not exactly a cover up" was not aimed
>specifically at you. I take responsibility for this misunderstanding
>since I did not indicate my intentions clearly.
That's OK, but let's not lose the main point here. Why has not Loeb
been given his rightful priority? Why is the Miller-Urey experiment
still hailed in school textbooks as the beginning of OOL research? If
this goes on much longer, then it is hard to avoid the charge of a
"cover up" to avoid providing support for creationism, as Gould
acknowledges does happen:
"But most of all I am saddened by a trend I am just beginning to
discern among my colleagues. I sense that some now wish to mute the
healthy debate about theory that brought new life to evolutionary
biology. It provides grist for creationist mills, they say, even if
only by distortion. Perhaps we should lie low and rally round the
flag of Darwinism, at least for the moment-a kind of old-time religion
on our part." (Gould S.J., "Evolution as Fact and Theory", "Hen's
Teeth and Horse's Toes", Penguin: London, 1984, p261-262)
>SJ>IOW, my point was not about Miller's honest
>mistake in translating Loeb's German, but the continued refusal to
>publicly acknowledge Loeb's priority, even after Yockey pointed it
>out.
BH>Perhaps there was a misunderstanding. I think this is a recent
>discovery on Yockey's part. I found no mention of it in his two
>recent articles in <BioEssays> and <J Theor Biol.> On p. 231 of
>his book he writes:
>
> That Gly can be synthesized by corona discharge in an atmosphere
> of CO, NH3 and H2O had been reported by Loeb (1913),
> as Miller (1955) pointed out.
>
>Note CO instead of CO2, so Yockey was apparently unaware of the
>mis-translation at the time his book was written.
OK. But it was known in October 1994, so why did Orgel write:
"By the 1930s Alexander I. Oparin in Russia and J.B.S. Haldane in
England had pointed out that the organic compounds needed for life
could not have formed on the earth if the atmosphere was as rich in
oxygen (oxidizing) as it is today. Oxygen, which takes hydrogen atoms
from other compounds, interferes with the reactions that transform
simple organic molecules into complex ones. Oparin and Haldane
proposed, therefore, that the atmosphere of the young earth, like that
of the outer planets, was reducing: it contained very little oxygen
and was rich in hydrogen (H2) and compounds that can donate hydrogen
atoms to other sub- stances. Such gases were presumed to include
methane (CH4) and ammonia (NH3) Oparin's and Haldane's ideas inspired
the famous Miller-Urey experiment, which in 1953 began the era of
experimental prebiotic chemistry." (Orgel L.E., "The Origin of Life
on the Earth", Scientific American, October 1994, p55).
This continuing silence sounds more and more like a cover-up! :-)
HP>This further illustrates my point about how a mistake in the
>literature tends to get perpetuated. The really amazing thing to me
>is that Yockey actually did go to the trouble of reading the original
>Loeb material in German.
Surely some *German* OOL scholars (of which there are many, eg. Klaus
Dose, Manfred Eigen, Karl Woese), would have read Loeb and realised
his priority? It's hard to believe that Yockey was the first to pick
it up. I suggest that this has been another "trade secret" among OOL
researchers that a comparative outsider like Yockey would not have
been aware of.
BH>In any event, I don't think Yockey is accusing anyone of
>impropriety here. This is not to say that he doesn't make such
>accusations in other areas :). For example, he is appalled at the
>way popularizations present the prebiotic soup story as if it were an
>established fact. He also accuses Oparin of not giving proper credit
>to Loeb for some of his ideas.
Well. Let's wait and see. Perhaps you could ask Yockey what steps are
being taken to give Loeb his rightful priority?
BH>Yockey's main goal in all of this seems to me to be the undermining
>of dialectical materialism. He wants to show that not only does the
>dialectical materialist's dogma fail, their ideas were not even
>original.
Why "dialectical materialism"? I thought that was Marxism?
BH>One of Yockey's favorite examples of this is the character
>Pooh-Bah. The following is copied from one of the posts I
>submitted, something like it appearing in several of Yockey's
>papers as well as in his book:
>
>...You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my
>ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule...."
>Pooh-Bah The Mikado, Act 1, W. S. Gilbert. (1887)
>
>Of course these words in the mouth of Pooh-Bah would not have been
>funny or understood by the audience if they had not been familiar
>with "protoplasmal primordial globules".
>
>This is a recognition that the conditions for the emergence > of
>Pooh-Bah's most ancient ancestors were being discussed by
>scientists and theologians and were familiar to Hooker and to the
>public. The proposal that life emerged from colloids and
>coacervates was not due to Oparin and/or Haldane, neither of whom
>was born at the time.
BH>So, you can apparently change your 83 years to 110+ years if you
>want :-).
No. 83 years will do just fine! :-) IMHO Yockey's point is
meaningless. The ideas of "protoplasm" are very old and could occur
to any serious thinker. I am sure one could find similar ideas among
the ancient Greeks. There is only a tenuous connection at best
between Gilbert's popular "protoplasmal primordial globules" and
Oparin and Haldane's colloids and coacervates.
>BH>But the hydrothermal vent scenario is not dead yet....an
>interesting "dialogue" has developed in the literature between Miller
>and various proponents of vent theory....It will be interesting to
>see how it turns out.
SH>All these naturalistic theories are IMHO "dead"! As TB&O point out,
>even if a naturalistic scenario could be imagined that could show how
>a self-replicating molecular system might have begun, that is only
>half the battle. The same theory must also show how the system
>possessed or acquired specified complexity, ie. *meaningful
>information*:
BH>A minor point, the term "meaningful information" has no meaning
>in information theory :). The terminology I prefer is organized
>complexity. In any event I would tend to agree that the generation
>of organized complexity is most likely the biggest hurdle to overcome
>in origin of life research. Interesting work is being done in this
>area by Stuart Kauffman and others.
Fine. But "meaningful information" is meaningful information to human
beings, even if it can find no place in the materialist-naturalist
paradigm.
BH>What I find interesting is that Yockey actually goes much further
>than Bradley et al in saying that the generation of the information
>content required for life by a gradual process of chemical evolution
>is impossible. Impossible is very strong :). One of his analogies
>is classical versus quantum mechanics, i.e. the gap between nonliving
>chemicals and life is like the gap between classical and quantum
>mechanics.
Yes. I am interested in hearing more of Yockey's argument.
Unfortunately his book is *very* expensive. And its not available in
our public library system.
BH>This is one of the things that I find most interesting about
>Yockey. He concludes that there is a gap beteen nonliving and living
>matter that is impossible to be filled in by a gradual process of
>chemical evolution. If ever there were a place where one might
>conclude that intelligent design is required surely this must be it
>(assuming, of course that Yockey's conclusion is correct). Yet
>Yockey does not conclude intelligent design. Why? An interesting
>question.
Agreed. Does he actually rule out intelligent design? Has it ever been
put to him? If Yockey say that "chemical evolution" is "impossible"
yet he fails to consider intelligent design, is this not a prime case
of paradigm blindness? Why exactly *is* intelligent design not
scientific in OOL, when it is scientific in archaeology and SETI:
"Surely the intelligent design explanation has unanswered questions of
its own. But unanswered questions, which exist on both sides, are an
essential part of healthy science; they define the areas of needed
research. Questions often expose hidden errors that have impeded the
progress of science For example, the place of intelligent design in
science has been troubling for more than a century. That is because
on the whole, scientists from within Western culture failed to
distinguish between intelligence, which can be recognized by uniform
sensory experience, and the supernatural, which cannot. Today, we
recognize that appeals to intelligent design may be considered in
science, as illustrated by the current NASA search for
extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)... Archaeology has pioneered the
development of methods for distinguishing the effects of natural and
intelligent causes. We should recognize, however, that if we go
further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological
origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so
without the help of science." (Davis P. & Kenyon D.H., "Of Pandas and
People: The Central Question of Biological Origins", Foundation for
Thought and Ethics: Richardson Tx, Second Edition, 1993, pp126-127)
God bless.
Steve
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