[…]
>>Richard Wein: Effectively this is what has happened in the past. Before
Darwin, a natural explanation for the complexity of life seemed
inconceivable, so most people did accept the existence of a designer. Even
Dawkins says that he could not have been an intellectually fulfilled atheist
before Darwin. But, now that we have a natural explanation, the complexity of
life cannot be offered as scientific evidence for a designer without ruling
out that explanation.
DNAunion: It is more accurate to state that we have a *proposed* natural
explanation than to come right out say that we have one. How has RM&NS
actually been shown to be capable of producing the complexity associated with
the first-ever cell?
Second, the complexity of life *can* still be offered as scientific evidence
for a designer (or designers), it just can't be stated that a *conclusion* of
design based on it is infallible. (It seems to me that anti-IDists always
demand absolute certainty for any ID conclusion, but a purely-natural
conclusion needs only the scantiest of evidence). (Here is a rather
"embarrassing" thing: I just did a spell-check to figure out how to spell
"scantest", and in the process, the program could not find IDist, considered
it to be misspelled, and offered "Idiot" as the only possible correction. Do
you anti-IDists think MicroSoft is trying to tell me something?)
*IF* RM&NS ever demonstrates the ability to create life from scratch (the
ability to generate the complexity associated with the simplest autonomous
life form), then there would be two possibilities (it would seem fairly
obvious that intelligence will be shown to be able to create life before
RM&NS would be). Complexity would still be able to be used as evidence of
design because intelligent agents would still be able to generate such
complexity more easily/quickly than RM&NS.
Look at it this way, PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) were offered as
one line of evidence that there were microfossils of ancient "bacteria" in
the Martian meteorite ALH84001. But PAHs have non-biological sources to, and
are in fact one of the most common forms of carbon in the universe!
Scientific evidence does not HAVE to point in one and only one direction. It
is just that that evidence alone does not decide the case; it must be
supported by other lines of evidence.
>>Richard Wein: […] Given the difficulty of applying the design inference to
living organisms,
perhaps IDers would prefer to apply it to the origin of the first
self-replicating entity. (I think this is what DNAUnion would like.) But it
can only be applied to certain simplistic chance hypotheses, such as a
complex molecule being formed by the random accumulation of amino acids. But
we do not know that this is the only possibility. Cairns-Smith for example
has proposed that the first self-replicating entities were crystals.
DNAunion: I believe I already provided Richard with the following (but it
might have been someone else),
"Cairns-Smith, long before the argument became popular, emphasized how
improbable it is that a molecule as high tech as RNA could have appeared de
novo on the primitive Earth. He proposed that the first form of life was a
self-replicating clay. He suggested that the synthesis of organic molecules
became part of the competitive strategy of the clay world and that the
inorganic genome was taken over by one of its organic creations.
Cairns-Smith postulate of an inorganic life form has failed to gather any
experimental support. The idea lives on in the limbo of uninvestigated
hypotheses." (Leslie E. Orgel, The Origin of Life - A Review of Facts and
Speculations, Trends in Biochemical Sciences, vol 23, No 12, December 1998)
I had another quote that discussed that contemporary OOL scientists as much
as ignore Cairns-Smith "clay world", but unfortunately, cannot find it.
>>Richard Wein: Other OOL researchers are working on other possibilities.
DNAUnion argues that, because we currently have no viable natural
explanations, we must accept ID.
DNAunion: No. I don't argue that you or anybody else *must* accept ID, I
say that I do, as a plausible alternative, and currently better explanation,
for the origin of life.
Also, I, combining your anti-ID position with your saying that we *currently*
don't have a viable natural explanation, get the feeling that you are arguing
that it is wrong to base the conclusion on what is currently known - that in
the future, *surely* a natural explanation will be found. I can't argue
against "vapor" evidence, nor is it my intent to dash your hopes and wishes,
but *hoped-for future* findings should not be used in drawing *current*
conclusions.
>>Richard Wein: But [OOL] researchers do not find the possibility of a
natural explanation to be inconceivable…
DNAunion: Of they don't - it *MUST* have happened purely-naturally: they go
into the whole investigation with that mindset pre-established and fixed.
I believe that if someone who did not already "know" that life arose
purely-naturally here on Earth examined the OOL research, they too would find
it quite unsatisfactory. And since it is plausible that in say 100 years (1)
humans will be able to create life - possibly even robotic life - de novo,
(2) pinpoint an exoplanet that could likely support that (new) life (form),
and (3) send that (new) life (form) to that particular exoplanet; then the
main assumption a "quasi-Directed Panspermia" form of ID requires is the
existence of such an ETI civilization about 4 Gya: everything else then
becomes a "piece of cake". I personally weigh the two positions and find
that based on what I have read, there are fewer assumptions and fewer hurdles
associated with the design model.
>>>Richard Wein: … and frankly I'll put their judgement ahead of DNAUnion's
(or the small minority of scientists who share DNAUnion's opinion).
DNAunion: No problem - everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion.
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