[continued]
On Sun, 04 May 1997 20:17:24 -0400, Pim van Meurs wrote:
>SJ>At present the only known natural cause that can "bring
>together...components in the right place at the right time in the
>right order" is human "intelligent intervention". If "components'
>were brought together "in the right place at the right time in the
>right order" *before* there was human "intelligent intervention",
>then the most reasonable explanation is that it was effected by
>supernatural "intelligent intervention".
PM>Wrong again. We can see that in stars the right components get
>together for fusion to happen without the need of an intervention by
>intelligence. There are natural processes which can bring back
>components at the right time and place.
So what? That "in stars the right components get together for fusion
...without the need of an intervention by intelligenceis" not relevant.
"Stars", despite their size are comparatively simple systems. There are
relatively simple physico-chemical relationships that can explain why
"in stars the right components get together for fusion". There are *no*
explanations why the various "components" that make up human speech
and intelligence "were brought together `in the right place at the
right time in the right order". The simple test is that if the universe
were to re-run again, evolutionists would expect "fusion" in "stars"
but they do not expect human intelligence:
"Since human intelligence arose just a geological second ago, we
face the stunning fact that the evolution of self-consciousness
required about half of the earth's potential time. Given the errors and
uncertainties, the varia- tions of rates and pathways in other runs of
the tape, what possible confidence can we have in the eventual origin
of our distinctive mental abilities? Run the tape again, and even if the
same general pathways emerge, it might take twenty billion years to
reach self-consciousness this time-except that the earth would be
incinerated billions of years before. Run the tape again, and the first
step from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cell might take twelve billion
instead of two billion years-and stromatolites, never awarded the time
needed to move on, might be the highest mute witnesses to
Armageddon...Run the tape again, and let the tiny twig of Homo
sapiens expire in Africa. Other hominids may have stood on the
threshold of what we know as human possibilities, but many sensible
scenarios would never generate our level of mentality. Run the tape
again, and this time Neanderthal perishes in Europe and Homo
erectus in Asia (as they did in our world). The sole surviving human
stock, Homo erectus in Africa, stumbles along for a while, even
prospers, but does not speciate and therefore remains stable. A
mutated virus then wipes Homo erectus out, or a change in climate
reconverts Africa into inhospitable forest. One little twig on the
mammalian branch, a lineage with interesting possibilities that were
never realized, joins the vast majority of species in extinction. So
what? Most possibilities are never realized, and who will ever know
the difference?" (Gould S.J., "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and
the Nature of History", Penguin: London, 1991, pp310-311, 320)
On this Gould, Dawkins and Paul Davies all agree:
"PD: ...The question that we have to ask is if the earth was hit by an
asteroid tomorrow and everything but simple microbes were
destroyed and we came back in another 3 or 4 billion years, would we
expect to find homo sapiens here again. Well, of course not.
RD: Of course we wouldn't!
PD: No, of course not. But the question is would we expect to find
any intelligent life and I think most biologists would say no.
McK: Richard Dawkins, I know you're bursting to say something
there.
RD: Yes. It is not in my view sensible to invoke fundamental laws of
physical improvement for the biological improvement of complexity
or running speed or anything else. If you wiped our life and started
again- no, you would not get homo sapiens. I tell you what you
would get, you would probably get a great diversity of living form .
You'd probably get plants, animals, you'd probably get parasites,
you'd probably get predators, you'd probably get large predators,
small predators. You might well get flight, you might well get sight.
There are all sorts 73 of things that you can guess that you might get.
You would certainly not get a re-run of what we've got."
(McKew M., interview with Dawkins R. & Davies P., "Lateline", 19
June 1996, in "The Origin of the Universe", Australian Rationalist,
No. 41, Spring 1996, pp72-73)
PM>The only difference with man as interventor is that man can
>decide which is the right time and place and what chemicals will be
>brought together. In nature there is more an element of chance to
>it while in experiment the same process can be repeated at will
>anywhere, anytime. Only by looking back can we determine which
>processes brought together which chemicals at the right time and
>place. This does not require intelligent intervention though. Just
>chance could be enough for this to happen.)
This is an instructive example of Darwinist reasoning. Faced with a
hard problem (like the coordinated acquisition of all the integrated
components of human speech and intelligence), they chnage the
subject to an easier problem (like chemicals being brought together)
and then they think they have somehow solved the hard problem!
This is just self-delusion.
PM>Only when we look back an marvel at the 'coincidence in time
>and space' could we perceive the need to invoke intelligent
>intervention to explain a natural phenomenon. Just because we
>perceive a need for purpose and reason does not mean that there is
>actually such a purpose behind such processes. Perhaps our
>problem lies in our need for a creator and a purpose.
Equally it could be *your* "problem" that you have a "need for" there
*not* to be "creator and a purpose"?
>SJ> If there was something simple and plausible that does not
>require intelligent design it would have been discovered by now.
>PM>Which of course is not dissimilar from arguments that might have
>been heard in centuries ago when people claimed that the earth was
>the center of the universe. Science luckily has advanced us beyond
>these arguments of incredulity towards arguments from facts and data.
>SJ>Fine. Please post the "facts and data"! To date all I have seen
>from you are "arguments of" *credulity*!
PM>Don't project your arguments on me Steve.
I will, until you stop using the "argument from credulity" and start
posting the "facts and data" you mentioned above.
PM>You claimed that if it could be done it would have been done by now.
No. I said "If there was something simple and plausible that does not
require intelligent design it would have been discovered by now". My words
are still there above - read them for yourself.
[...]
>PM>Adequate no, but much has been learned in the last few decades
>about this topic and much science has been performed to address the
>origin of life.
>SJ>Big deal. Performing "much science...to address the origin of
>life" yet it still remaining not "Adequate" is evidence that
>"science" is on the wrong track.
PM>Perhaps it is on the wrong track or perhaps it has not gone far
>enough. However this is not evidence of failure of science or even
>more relevant insufficiency of science to provide a scientific
>method.
Disagree. If finding naturalistic pathways to the origin of life
would have been "evidence of" the success "of science", then failure
after decades of trying, must be "evidence of failure of science".
Otherwise, what *would* be "evidence of failure of science"?
[...]
>SJ>The "big news" is that as Thaxton et al point out, it is not what
>"science" does not know, but what it now *does* know regarding "the
>origin of life":
PM>Or what it believes it knows?
What is your distinction here Pim? What "science...believes it knows"
is exactly the same as "what it *does* know".
>SJ>"Notice, however, that the sharp edge of this critique is not
>what we do not know, but what we do know. Many facts have come to
>light in the past three decades of experimental inquiry into life's
>beginning. With each passing year the criticism has gotten
>stronger. The advance of science itself is what is challenging the
>nation that life arose on earth by spontaneous (in a thermodynamic
>sense) chemical reactions." (Thaxton C.B., Bradley W.L. & Olsen
>R.L., "The Mystery of Life's Origin", 1992, p185)
PM>Which does not mean that such a challenge is fatal to a scientific
>explanation. Just that the explanation is more intricate than
>expected?
Yes. That's what I said: "If there was something simple and plausible
that does not require intelligent design it would have been discovered
by now". The more "intricate" it gets, the more likely that the
`blind watchmaker' didn't bring about the origin of life and that
Paley's Watchmaker did.
[...]
>SJ>Why is this a "strawman argument"? Unless one knows in advance
>that there *was* a naturalistic origin of life, the fact that every
>"naturalistic origin of life" scenario has failed, is good evidence
>that there was *not* a "naturalistic origin of life"!
PM>Incorrect. The failure to provide a naturalistic origin does not
>mean there was none, just that we might not have looked far enough.
Read what I said again, Pim. I did not say that there was no
"naturalistic origin", but that it was "good evidence" against
it. Please pay more attention to what I actually say.
PM>To conclude further that this shows evidence FOR supernatural origin
>is even more incorrect since there is no scientific method which can
>incorporate such a notion nor is the failure to find a naturalistic
>explanation automatically proof for supernatural.
This is just circular reasoning. The "supernatural" is ruled out
from the start as being outside the "scientific method", and therefore
"the failure to find a naturalistic explanation" is then *never*
"proof for [the] supernatural".
PM>Perhaps we were created by another intelligent race? No need
>for supernatural...And any absence of evidence can always be
>explained away similarly to a supernatural explanation....
Of course. I have said before your time on the Reflector that
intelligent design in living things on Earth could have been effected
by "another intelligent race". Thus scientific materialists will
always be able to explain away "supernatural explanations", if they
want to, by postulating unknown and unknowable extraterretrial
designers. But this is even less scientific than supernatural
creation on your own Occam's Razor principle, because then you have
to explain who designed the designers:
"Francis Crick also thinks that life on earth may have begun when
aliens from another planet sent a rocket ship containing spores to
seed the earth...The primary reason Crick subscribes to this
unorthodox view is that he judges the undirected origin of life to be
a virtually insurmountable obstacle, but he wants a naturalistic
explanation....he could with as much evidence say that the aliens
actually designed the irreducibly complex biochemical systems of the
life they sent here, and also designed the irreducibly complex
systems that developed later....Designing life, it could be pointed
out, does not necessarily require supernatural abilities; rather, it
requires a lot of intelligence. If a graduate student in an
earthbound lab today can plan and make an artificial protein that can
bind oxygen, then there is no logical barrier to thinking that an
advanced civilization on another world might design an artificial
cell from scratch. This scenario still leaves open the question of
who designed the designer- how did life originally originate?" (Behe
M.J., "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution",
Free Press: New York, 1996, p248, 249)
>PM>I do support the book's contribution towards an understanding
>that science has not fully explained the origin of life (yet) and
>that many of the hypotheses still have problems and inadequacies.
>SJ>The fact is that "science has not..."explained the origin of
>life" *at all*, and has no prospects of doing so:
PM>So you claim. But that is a subjective interpretation based on an
>argument from authority rather than based on fact.
No. It is "based on fact" - the "fact" that after decades of trying
with the high power intelligence of some of the best chemists in the
world, with advanced technology that can recreate any imaginable
early earth conditions, "science has not...`explained the origin of
life' *at all*". It is my assessment based on this evidence
moreover that it "has no prospects of doing so":
"A general review of prebiological evolutionary theories in 1988 by
Klaus Dose concluded that "At present all discussions on principal
theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in a
confession of ignorance." (Joyce G.F., "RNA Evolution and the
Origins of Life," Nature, vol. 338, March 16, 1989, pp217-224).
Gerald Joyce's 1989 review article ended with the somber observation
that origin of life researchers have grown accustomed to a "lack of
relevant experimental data" and a high level of frustration."
(Johnson P.E., "Darwin on Trial", 1993, p109)
On the contrary, it is *your* claim that either "science
has...explained the origin of life" or that it "has...prospects of
doing so" that is "a subjective interpretation based on an
argument from authority rather than based on fact".
>SJ>When the current crop of researchers who started their work in
>the 1950-60's retire, it is possible that science will *never*
>"explain the origin of life".
PM>Perhaps. But that still is no evidence FOR a supernatural
>creator.
On the contrary, the *permanent* lack of a naturalistic scientific
explanation for "the origin of life", *is* "evidence FOR a
supernatural creator".
If scientific naturalism claims that a naturalistic explanation for
"the origin of life" would be evidence against a "supernatural
creator", then it can hardly claim that *no* evidence for a
naturalistic explanation for "the origin of life" "would be no
evidence for a supernatural creator".
[...]
>SJ>Actually "the book" is part of *the beginning* of "the theory of
>intelligent design and the origin of life", so it goes without
>saying that "little progress has been made" to date.
PM>So they claim, and I disagree. Depends on the meaning of the word
>progress.
It is you who used the word "progress" first. What did you mean by
it?
>PM>...I have to agree with Shapiro's comments about not sharing the
>final philosophical conclusion reached.
>SJ>Why am I not surprised? ;-) For Shapiro it appears that *no*
>amount of "failure of science" would change his faith in naturalism:
PM>Which for a scientist is laudable. Failure of science should not
>lead to the (ab)use of the supernatural as an explanation. History
>has taught us the follies of such time after time.
What "History" has taught us" is "the follies" of claiming the
"supernatural as an explanation" in the area of ongoing *operations*
in the cosmos. But "History" has *not* taught us the follies"
of "supernatural as an explanation" in the unique *origins* events
in the cosmos:
"...it is far from clear that "God" is being used as a supernatural
concept in any way inappropriate to science. It is possible to
distinguish operation science (which focuses on the regular,
recurrent operation of the universe or, in theological terms,
secondary causes) from origin science (which focuses on singular
events [the origin of the universe, life on earth] which, in
theological terms, are primary causes which are not regular)"
(Moreland J.P., "Scaling the Secular City", Baker: Grand Rapids MI,
1987, p210).
[...]
>SJ>I assumed that you were a "non-theist" by your response to the
>following:
<...>
>SJ>Perhaps you would clarify what "naturalistic rather than
>theistic" means if it does not mean "non-theist"?
PM>My scientific viewpoint is naturalistic. My viewpoint in the
>existance of a deity is theistic in that I do not believe there to be
>a problem for science or theology as long as the two remain in their
>own realm. Science in scientific realm and religion in the personal
>belief of something which can never be proven scientifically.
This is an example of compconditions making it possible for the big
>bang to have happened. Sort of a large experiment left to itself.
This answers Kim McMurtry question about whether deism is alive and
well in the 20th century!
--------------------------------------------------------
On Sat, 3 May 1997 18:49:09 -5000, Kim McMurtry wrote:
KM>I give all of this background to ask: Can anyone offer resources
>for deism in the twentieth century?
--------------------------------------------------------
But you are inconsistent. According to your use of Occam's Razor
principle, why not just say that "the boundary conditions" were
always there as a brute fact, rather than postulate God as a brute
fact?
Indeed, if you accept God as the "providing the boundary conditions
making it possible for the big bang to have happened" (which I
acceptb to), why should He have stopped there? Why should he not
have intervened at strategic points to create life, life's major
groups, and man, especially since the naturalistic hypothesis seems to
have its greatest difficulties at precisely these points?
Regards (or should it now be "God bless"?
Steve
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