Nav said:
Could you give some specific examples to help clarify here? I think it would really help.
You act like we are practically in agreement on these things, and then you go and make a ridiculous statement like this. Science is not “faith,” Nav. Science is based on evidence. Evolution is science. Now we put those all together and we most certainly do not come to the conclusion that evolution is based on faith.
My point isn’t that evolution on a micro-level is false.
My point is that taking evolutionary theories and saying that they define the origins of life with no other alternatives is a faith based statement. Until we can repeat an event that demonstrates abiogenesis, or panspermia, or any other Neo-Darwinist theory we are left with faith based assumptions that nothing supernatural happened.
We also have no evidence that the world wasn’t created last Thursday, but you don’t see that caveat in every scientific treatise. We have evidence for what happened, and we don’t know all the answers. But we have no evidence for anything supernatural, so it doesn’t enter into the picture. Faith has nothing to do with it, there’s no evidence.
And you don’t need to repeat something (can you create a star going supernova?) to know lots about it. What you are saying essentially is unless someone is there to see the actual event of abiogenesis, we’ll never have proof.
If we create abiogenesis in the lab, I fully expect Creationists to say “It could have happened that way, but A) we don’t know for sure if that is what happened and B) it just shows that you need intelligence to make abiogenesis happen.”
Here is a question for you, what would evidence of the supernatural look like?
Hypothetical:
Something supernatural happened.
Naturalist: We don’t have any idea what happened, but we’ll continue to investigate until we can nail down a naturalist theory that will cover us.
Theist: We don’t have any idea what happened, it could have been supenatural, we’ll continue to investigate for natural causes, since that is what science limits us to, but we may never be able to explain it.
RE: abiogenesis, shouldn’t a scientific theory be falsifiable, and testable? Instead, it seems to me, it is thrown on the table with no evidence except for the presuppostion that life must have arose from pure chance alone.
Abiogenesis has no relationship to evolution. The theory of evolution is in no manner dependent upon the ultimate origins of any particular lifeform.
Science has no means of determining whether a supernatural event has occurred. Asking “how would science prove a miracle happened” is like asking "how do the 10 commandments account for the multiple worlds scenario(s) in quantum mechanics.
Asking science to supply proof that your religion is correct seems, from an outside perspective, both foolish and limiting to your theology.
If science succeeds in creating am abiogenetic event under controlled conditions it would not demonstrate that that is how life actually originated on this planet. It would not demonstrate that that was the only manner in which life could originate. It would not demonstrate that God had no part in the origin of life on this planet. It would, however, demonstrate that no supernatural agent was necessary to explain the origin of life.
How condescending and insulting to naturalists. Care to try:
Hypothetical:
Something happened.
Naturalist: We don’t know what happened. We will investigate by proposing testable hypotheses and experimenting to see whether the hypothesis matches observed results.
Theist: We don’t know what happened. We may find a natural explanation. It may have a natural explanation which we are not able to find. Or it may have a supernatural explanation, though we have no tool other than faith to arise at that conclusion.
Dishonest Theist: You don’t know what happened. Therefore we will cal it supernatural. If you develop a natural explanation, we will refuse to acknowledge it, even if we must misrepresent the evidence, make false claims, or engage in sophistry to attack your position.
Agreed. Now is abiogenesis a scientific theory?
Agreed.
Agreed, never asked for a scientific proof my my religion, or my theology. To the contrary, I’ve alway approached my faith and theology as faith based.
Agreed. Again, is abiogenesis a scientific theory?
Mea culpa, I truly don’t try to be condescending, just seems to pop up now and again, thanks for the correction, I’ll accept your revision.
Would you like to take a stab at a dishoenst naturalist? Or would that be condescending? Or are they extinct?
Abiogenesis is hardly more than our best guess, using deduction and Occam’s caveat against multiplying entities. As theories go, it has little evidence to support it other than deductive reasoning and some molecules that self-assemble. However, even abiogenesis is not something that rules out God, or his taking an active part in causing life to be. It certainly rules out an extremely literal reading of Genesis, but then again so do physics, cosmology, geology and a host of other disciplines.
Sure:
Dishonest naturalist: I know what happened. I will accept no data whihc might contradict my knowledge, even if that data is well supported and the results are replicable.
I can think of several scientific hypotheses of abiogenesis. Due to the inexact nature of the english languag these may be called theories in some circumstances.
None of them, certainly, are supported by enough evidence to consider them widely accepted.
Pretty much my thoughts too, but you didn’t answer my question.
That was a response to Phtalis.
Spiritus, thanks.
John 2:1-11
M: How long does it take for wine to ferment?
M: Of what quality was Jesus’ wine?
M: How long had Jesus’ wine taken to ferment?
M: If a modern scientist were to examine Jesus’ wine and compare it with another wine, would he be able to tell the difference in fermentation time?
M: Could Christ (or God) create something else with an apparent history in a short amount of time?
M: Could He do this with an entire world?
Oh yes they did, Very precisely.
You however, are still to come up with ANYTHING that might support creationism
Didn’t know I was required to do that, since Creationism isn’t a ‘scientific theory’ there is no evidence…
:rolleyes:
wait, neither does abiogensis…
Am I the only one missing something in your logic
It appears that you don’t wan’t to take any notice of the massive amount of evidence to support evolution, beacause it interferes with your wish to believe in myth and magic.
No, I believe at this point he’s stopped talking about evolution entirely. He’s now going off on whether or not abiogenesis is a scientific theory or not.
If someone were to reply “yes” the response will, of course, be “See, all the scientists believe that abiogenesis is just as much a fact as evolution, despite the fact that there is no evidence to support it. Science is a faith!”
When a poster responds by trying to clarify the difference between a hypothesis and a theory, the poster is ignored.
Note: As a beliver in evolution, I’m as tired of this one as Biblical literalists must be of being asked “Is Ghandi in heaven?”
. . . And almost as tired as I am of repeatedly screwing up the code on MY OWN DAMN MESSAGES!!!.
Must remember ‘preview’
Must remember ‘preview’
okay…
I believe in God. I believe that he had something to do with the origin of life on this planet.
I also think that the evidence for evolution describes the change within a species by smaller changes in genes, and/or DNA.
I’m skeptical that the evidence of evolution adequately describes the origins of life on this planet.
I think magic is really 'the hand is quicker than the eye’, and that a myth is a really neat story.
Does that make it clearer on what I believe and disbelieve.
Yes it does. However, as has been pointed out to you before (if not here then definitley over at the Pizza Parlor), evolution has absolutely nothing (zero, zilch, nada. . .:)) to do with the origin of life on the planet.
Evolution, quoting from the Pizza Parlor thread, is "The change in allele frequencies within a population over time. (An allele is one variant of a gene; e.g. the gene for eye color has blue, brown, and green alleles.)
“Evolution” is an observed phenomenon, not a theory. The mechanism by which evolution operates, however, is a theory. Several evolutionary mechanism theories have been proposed over the years, including Lamarck’s theory of inherited voluntary self-alteration and Darwin’s theory of natural selection." Thanks tracer.