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From: MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Ool - out at first base?
Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2025 22:59:31 +1100
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On 4/01/2025 9:33 am, Burkhard wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Dec 2024 4:50:40 +0000, MarkE wrote:
> 
>> On 15/12/2024 1:31 am, Martin Harran wrote:
>>> 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.
>>>
>>
>> No, wrong. Demonstrating an existing theory to be false has no
>> requirement to provide and demonstrate a viable alternative*.
>>
>> Your arbitrary requirement that I "offer some ideas about how or why
>> [God] did it that way" or else I am "offering nothing so that means your
>> argument is worth nothing" says something about where you're coming
>> from.
>>
>> -----
>>
>> * Example of a theory disproved without an alternative being offered:
>>
>> The Caloric Theory
>> The caloric theory posited that heat was a fluid-like substance, called
>> "caloric", that flowed from hot objects to cold ones. This theory was
>> widely accepted because it explained certain phenomena, such as the
>> transfer of heat and the expansion of gases when heated.
>>
>> The Disproof
>> In 1798, Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) conducted a groundbreaking
>> experiment during the boring of cannons. He observed that enormous
>> amounts of heat were generated by friction, seemingly without any
>> depletion of a material "caloric" substance. His experiments
>> demonstrated that heat could be produced indefinitely by mechanical
>> work, challenging the idea that heat was a conserved fluid.
>>
>> However, while Rumford's findings refuted the caloric theory, a
>> comprehensive alternative explanation—what we now understand as heat as
>> energy transfer and the kinetic theory of heat—was not yet fully
>> developed.
>>
>> The Transition Period
>> It wasn't until the mid-19th century, with the work of James Prescott
>> Joule, Hermann von Helmholtz, and others, that the modern thermodynamic
>> understanding of heat as a form of energy was established. Joule's
>> experiments in particular quantified the relationship between mechanical
>> work and heat, leading to the formulation of the first law of
>> thermodynamics (energy conservation).
>>
>> Why This Matters
>> This case illustrates how science can enter a transitional phase where
>> an established theory is refuted, but a replacement theory has not yet
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