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From: Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Ool - out at first base?
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2024 14:31:44 +0000
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On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:04:28 +1100, MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 14/12/2024 10:34 pm, Martin Harran wrote:
>>> There's nuance here.
>> Again you make no attempt to address my actual question.
>> 
>>> As I've said here many times before, there is the
>>> error of prematurely invoking divine action.
>> That is exactly what ID does and you seem pretty much on the same
>> track.
>> 
>>> When that is done, it is
>>> shown to be error by subsequent scientific advances. That's an appeal to
>>> the god-of-the-gaps.
>> And God-of-the-gaps is exactly what you are offering here, no matter
>> how you try to dress it up, until you offer some sort of tahyway from
>> the protocell to God..
>> 
>>> However, consider this scenario. Let's say there were 500 years of
>>> active OoL research from this time on. What if (say) little further
>>> progress has been made. In fact, the greatly enlarged body of
>>> understanding and experimental results in this area have revealed that
>>> (say) the barriers to the naturalistic formation of a viable protocell
>>> are far, far deeper than than is regarded today.
>>>
>>> What then?
>> Nothing different - how long we don't know something has no impact on
>> the answer. The fact that it took thousands of years to figure out
>> that the sun is just another star didn't change the fact that that was
>> exactly what it was.
>> 
>>> Well, a person living 500 years from now still has a personal choice to
>>> make:
>>>
>>> Option 1. They may choose to say, "We just don't know, but keep looking;
>>> I still have no need of that God hypothesis."
>> Why would they refer to the 'God hypothesis' at all? I use quotes
>> because it's not even a hypothesis until you outline a pathway that is
>> at least possible if not plausible.
>> 
>>> Option 2. Or they may choose a provisional position like this: "On the
>>> basis of the accumulated scientific evidence, I'll take a closer look at
>>> the God hypothesis, though continue looking for a natural explanation."
>> People who would go for that option would likely already be
>> considering the 'God hypothesis'
>> 
>>> Of course, different people will make different choices in this scenario
>>> for many different reasons.
>> The reason is almost inevitably whether or not the person nis a
>> religious believer.
>> 
>> Can God and science be reconciled? Yes they can, no doubt about it in
>> my mind but not by turning the God that people generally worship into
>> some kind of designer fiddling about with protocells. Christians
>> believe that man is made in God's image; what have protocells to so
>> with that image?
>> 
>> 
>>> My contention is that option 1 is actually a*more* reasonable and valid
>>> application of science.
>>>
>>> Moreover, I contend that we are much closer to this point than 500 years
>>> away.
>
>Christian de Duve put it this way: "Science is based on the working 
>hypothesis that things are naturally explainable. This may or may not be 
>true. But the only way to find out is to make every possible effort to 
>explain things naturally. Only if one fails - assuming failure can ever 
>be definitely established - would be entitled to state that what one is 
>studying is not naturally explainable."
>
>That seems close what to what I'm proposing. Thoughts?

First of all, I note that you left out the first sentence in that
quote - "Intelligent design is simply not a scientific theory" !

I'm not conversant with de Duve's ideas but I don't see him suggesting
that you can just jump from "not naturally explainable" to "Goddidit"
which is what you are trying to do. There are many possible reasons
why we might not be able explain something in natural ways - limits on
human intellectual competence is just one, lack of tools and equipment
is another. There is, of course, always the possibility that God did
indeed do it but if you are going to make a case for that, you have to
be able to offer some ideas about how or why he did it that way and
the strength of your argument will be directly proportional to how
tentative or how strong your ideas are. You are offering nothing so
that means your argument is worth nothing.