Intelligent Design Question

no, it isn't. Science is finding out the truth. If that truth is that something is impossible, then so be it. Science says that cows popping out of thin air is IMPOSSIBLE.
philosophy and religion are the ones that say anything is possible. Science says: This is possible, this is not. This always happens, this sometimes, this rarely happens, this never happens.

 

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then what does this say for evolution? didn't i "pop out of thin air". according to evolution that is what happened life "popped out of thin air". in order to discover truth you must consider possibilities, that was my meaning.

 

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No, you didn't pop out of thin air, only creationists say that.
again, THE ORIGIN OF LIFE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH EVOLUTION.
as for the origin of life, if you would have read my posts you would know that life didn't just pop out of thin air, I won't go through it again. If you want to read it it's there.

 

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my mistake, i should have said abiogenesis. isn't that what abiogenesis is? life "popping out of thin air"? the fact(theory?) is the solution remains aloof about abiogenesis. and as long as it stays unsolved there are other possibilities.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: no.
read my posts.

 

no. I already proved to you that there are no other possibilities.
You're getting the concept of abiogenesis confused with specific hypotheses of how abiogenesis occurred. Ask any real scientist and every single one of them will tell you abiogenesis occurred. The only difference in opinion is EXACTLY HOW it occurred.

abiogenesis is THE ONLY possible way (scientifically speaking) that life could have emerged. not knowing when, where, and how doesn't make the concept false.

 

i am not saying it's false. but you yourself said nobody knows how, and how is the real question isn't it?

 

Yes we do know how. What is it that you do not understand?

If creationists want to just say that there's a "guiding intelligence," then everything that an evolutionist says, a creationists will say: "But that's just a guiding intelligence." Circular argument. It's then just an argument over the use of words - semantics - and both refer and mean the same thing. Just an argument over words. So what's the point?

 

if we know how then why hasen't science been able to recreate life in the lab? the simple matter is we have no proof, evidence maybe, but no proof. i am really confused. science says theory when it's a fact. they say theory when it isn't proven. i am a lay person i can tell you how the common man views this situation.why doesn't science distinguish between fact and theory? it's afact that 3+2=5 but yet science says theory. theory to me means it has not been proven.

 

leopold99:

The above has nothing to do with evolution.

Which is rather fortunate, since proof is for mathematics and alcohol, not science. Science relies making inferences from facts, evidence, observations and experimentation.

To be honest, I can't blame you for being confused. Creationists take advantage of your confusion, and capitialize on it.

Here's the beauty of it. Evolution is BOTH theory and fact. Evolution is a fact, because we know that it has occurred in the past, occurs presently, and will occur in the future.

The THEORY of evolution explains HOW evolution occurred, occurs, and will continue to occur. The theory of evolution explains the MECHANISM which allows for the fact of evolution.

A wonderful analogy is gravity. While gravity is a fact, we also use gravitational theory to explain what causes gravity, and how gravity causes interactions between objects.

For more information, I suggest you read Stephen Gould's informative essay, "Evolution, both Fact and Theory." What I have said above is pretty much a very basic summary of his article.

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_fact-and-theory.html

A theory is NEVER proven. You're labour under the misconception that 'theory' and 'fact' are hierarchal rungs on a ladder, where 'fact' is at the top. Not true. In science, the word 'theory' has an entirely different meaning from when it is used in everyday speech. In science, a THEORY is a robust, falsifiable, natural explaination of a large body of evidence and facts, and observations (including observations of results from experiments).

No, it's absolute knowledge that 3+2=5, and science doesn't say otherwise. You can have absolute proof in mathematics, you can't have absolute proof regarding postulations on the workings of the natural universe. Facts and observations in the natural world aren't 'absolute knowledge', but they approach the probability of 1 of being correct.

The reason for this is simple when one thinks about it. If we are to have infinite certainty, we need to perform an infinite number of trials.

For example, I make the statement that 'iron always expands when heated'. While this statement is well supported by all current evidence and observations, the fact is that I can never be sure, since in the future a piece of iron may be heated, and actually contract. According to all available evidence and atomic theory, it's EXTREMELY unlikely, but not 'absolutely impossible'

 

Creationism is completely and utterly wrong. Saying that "God" created the universe does not solve the question, it leaves us right where we were before.

It is the equivalent of saying that "some mysterious force" created the universe. How scientific is that? It isnt because it is a superstitious answer to a far more complicated scientific answer.

Inorder for something to be regarded as fact there has to be evidence for the existence of it, once it is proven it becomes scientific.

Take the Raelian Movement, they believe that Alien scientists created the human race, that is just as inconclusive as stating that "God" created everything. These statements have no basis in reality because they do not have evidence.

We can clone life, we have found the ability to manipulate DNA and the fact that humans can do this is proof that Science over rides some superstitious religious belief.

 

I second you recommendation of Gould's essay, but think there are better examples of the meaning of theory that the "gravity case" you chose.

There are some theories of gravity, or at least a Hypothesis - MacM's uniKEF is one, but few would claim either Newton or Einstein's theory of gravity is anything more than a recipe for calculation and quantitative prediction.

A better example might be taken for the not well-understood known facts of thermodynamics, which later became better understood, when temperature was realized to be the average kinetic energy the matter's atoms. The prior phlogiston theory of heat had to fall and did.

However, again, thanks for a wonderful link. Too bad few IDers will read and understand it.

 

i have read mountainhare's ref. and nowhere in it does iy mention abiogenesis. according to some people on this board evolution and abiogenesis is two different things. i do not have a problem whith evolution its abiogenesis i am concerned about. i also have a problem with h.s. txt books not saying science treats facts and theories essentialy the same. science does NOT KNOW how abiogenesis occured. and cloning by the way is not recreating life. and as for hercules and alpha stating this is a science sub forum, i believe the title of the thread is intelligent design a question. i am not trying to argue for or against anything.

 

What concerns you specifically? What is lacking in my earlier response to you?


And we are progressively developing the range of possibilities for abiogenesis. We may not know how it occured, but we certainly know how it may have occured. There are a multiplicity of candidate processes for each of the several steps needed to take us from pre-biotic chemistry to the first bona-fide replicating, metabolising, organism. Because we do not yet know which of these was the actual pathway followed to reach that first organism is no reason to introduce ID.

Is your problem that you have done no reading of the relevant literature and are therefore unaware of the many possibilities which exist, or do you simply reject them all because none of them have been clearly demonstrated to be the prime candidate?

 

well for one i am not a "scientist". for another i was not taught in h.s. that evulotion and abiogenisis are two different things. i always considered facts and theories two different things. when i was in h.s. abiogenisis was not even mentioned just evolution. in my mind if a problem has not been solved then every possible solution relevent to that problem must be considered. if you had 3 or 4 possible solutions to a problem what are you going to do?. you will start eliminating solutions until you are left with one. in my mind natural processes as to how we got here makes a lot more sense than id,creationism,god,the force or whatever. i think the biggest problem lay people have is that it is not stated in our schoolbooks that science just doesn't know how abiogenesis occured.

 

Sweet.
StephenJayGould.org is up. I found this site months ago, but it's been offline forever. I completely forgot about it. Glad to see this. Now I can scour the site for tasties.

 

Well, then they should have a statement in there that says that creationists DO know how it occured!

Baron Max

 

Two possibilities, here. You are correct, you were not taught this - that seems to be an oversight. Secondly, and I suggest more likely, you were taught it, but with very little emphasis, so that you did not notice it. A single sentence in which the uncertainties were implicit may have been all you were given. High school science focuses on the basics and the certainties, not the advanced, uncertainties.

I don't think anyone is saying that they are not, so I am puzzled by this remark. Perhaps you could clarify your intent here.

This is exactly what is being done at present, through research in palaeontology, microbiology, genetics, biochemistry and the like. If anything we are presently adding to the possibilities, rather than reducing them. This is healthy. The problem is a large one and requires the extensive use of imagination to identify and explore the many options.

I still cannot quite agree with you that we don't know how it occured. This implies that we are completely in the dark. The reverse is really the truth. We are blinded by the wealth of alternatives, one, or a combination, of which will prove to be 'the truth'. Schoolbooks probably contain a simplified summary of the pathway considered the most likely at the time the book was written. What's wrong with that? Practically everything taught in school is a gross simplification, because that is seen as the only practical way to teach at that level.

 

They don't know either. They just say they know.

 

Baron Max:

Oh really? What mechanism allowed for the Creation of first life, then? Saying GODDIDIT doesn't answer anything... what mechanism did he use?