From: brian harper (harper.10@osu.edu)
Date: Mon Jul 28 2003 - 17:08:23 EDT
At 11:06 AM 7/25/2003 -0700, Richard wrote:
>Hi Brian. In post http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200307/0559.html you
>asked:
>
> >Richard, do you believe that science and human reasoning
> >are all powerful?, i.e. do you believe that science is able to
> >understand any natural phenomena given enough time and
> >money?
>
>No. That's why I never suggested any such a thing. My argument has nothing
>to do with our ability to "understand a natural phenomena" per se. It has to
>do with what we mean by *phenomena* in the first place, which I define as
>events we can directly observe or infer from direct observation. Is this an
>adequate definition for science? If not, I would be very interested in an
>improvement.
I hate to get too caught up in words. But let me try to further clarify my
original question based on what you say above. Isn't it possible to have
natural phenomena which cannot be directly observed or inferred from
direct observation? I have to say again that you seem to have a disguised
form of scientism in that you seem to want to define a natural phenomena
in terms of what science is able to observe.
I would also like to try to clarify some terminology since it may lead
to confusion. I welcome clarification if I mess this up. Biogenesis
would mean life from life (generally speaking). Abiogenesis would
be the opposite.
I would tend to agree with quite a bit of what you said. I would
phrase it like this: It is essential in science to make a distinction
between facts and the theories that try to explain those facts.
As always, fact is not used as it is in mathematics. Facts are
very closely tied to observation, but we have to be careful. Is the
orbital period of Pluto a fact? This would fall under the inferred from
direct observation I suppose.
Anyway, the important point here is the separation of fact and theory.
This is what George was doing (in your quote below). Abiogenesis
is a fact. You add to that *naturalistic* abiogenesis. i.e. you have
added some type of theoretical qualifier about the way abiogenesis occurred.
Of course, *naturalistic* abiogenesis is not a fact.
Now I want to go back to your original comment that I had previously
responded to:
Richard==============================================
>I think this is wrong. The fact that it has never been observed in nature or
>the lab, despite great effort, seems like a very good reason to believe it
>is not a natural phenomenon. The more science looks, the more it sees that
>its not there.
====================================================
The origin of life certainly is a phenomena that would fall under the
inferred from other phenomena category. The fact that the earth is
not eternal is fairly strong evidence for the origin of life at some
point in earth's history. But how? That's an interesting question.
I think it is unreasonable to expect the origin of life to occur again
as a purely natural phenomena, outside the lab. Wouldn't you
agree? The only reasonable approach is what scientists are doing
now. Trying to work out some reasonable path connecting the
conditions on pre-biotic earth to the production of organic molecules
to the production of self-replicators etc. This is an enormously complex
problem.
So with this in mind, let me go back to my question. Is it possible that
such a path exists but that it is so complex that it might never be found?
>Please understand that I am not a biologist, nor an expert in abiogenesis
>(which is the proper term for life arising from inanimate matter). But I do
>understand the basic rules of science from extensive training in graduate
>level Quantum Physics with a fair amount of digression into the philosophy
>of science (generated by the problem of the interpretation of QM which was
>essential to the disertation I was working on). Thus I learned that many
>things we talk about in theoretical physics like atomic and subatomic
>particles are intellectual constructs that we create to understand,
>classify, and predict *observations*. They themselves are not directly
>observed, but they are so effective in our understanding of phenomena that
>we generally forget they are constructs and treat them as actual objects,
>when in fact a future theory may do away with them altogether. Thus,
>scientific constructs are always subject to change, whereas accurate
>observations are not.
>
>The key to it all is what is actually observed - and this seems to be what
>is lacking in the question of abiogenesis. You seem to be doing exactly what
>Howard Van Till, George Murphy, and (most elaborately) Jim Armstrong have
>done, which is to reframe my assertion that we lack evidence for the *event*
>of abiogenesis as a natural phenomenon into the assertion that we lack the
>ability to explain a known physical phenomenon.
Let me try to clarify my own position. The event of abiogenesis is a fact.
Some really clever scientists are trying to explain that fact by developing
physical theories. Their failure means only that they failed, it does not mean
that the physical pathways do not exist.
<<sidelight: some would not go so far as to say that the "clever scientists"
have failed. They have not yet succeeded, of course, but this doesn't mean
they have failed. Some would say that significant progress has been made.
I say "their failure" above as a worse case scenario. Its time for IDers to
stop playing on the failures of others. Try to generate your own failures
for a change :)>>
>The reason for this confusion seems to be that methodological materialists
>are so enmeshed in their philosophic presuppostions as to be unable (or
>unwilling) to recognise that their assertion that we *know* abiogenesis
>happened at least once in the past is false. I myself even fell for this
>when I agreed with George when he said:
>1) The best evidence indicates that there was no life on earth ~ 4 x 10^9
>years
>ago and that there was life ~3 x 10^9 yrs ago. Therefore (barring panspermia
>which
>doesn't settle any fundamental questions) biogenesis took place. The
>question is how.
>
>(cf. post http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200307/0541.html)
>
>The error becomes quite obvious when we carefully define the question.
>
>The proper question is not if Life started (Biogenesis), since that is
>obvious to all. The real question is about Abiogensis, which is defined as
>the rise of Life from inaminate matter through natural processes.
>
>Abiogenesis has never been observered in nature or the lab, and we have no
>scientific theory that predicts it.
>
>There are no scientific observations supporting abiogenesis.
>
>This has nothing to do with our inability to explain known phenomena, which
>is what the "God of the gaps" is really all about.
>
>My point is that abiogensis is not known to be a phenomenon in the first
>place. There is no evidence it ever happened.
>
>In service of Christ our Biogenesis,
>
>Richard Amiel McGough
>Discover the sevenfold symmetric perfection of the Holy Bible at
>http://www.BibleWheel.com
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