5/31 \_ Um. The central claim that life cannot arise by a blind process is
falsifiable. If Darwinists succeed in creating a plausible (or
better yet, reproducible) story for life's creation that will
falsify the claim. The argument that something that doesn't make
experimentally falsifiable claims is not science is extremely weak.
It's certainly true, but many things that aren't science make
falsifiable claims. -- ilyas
\_ Is it really ilyas? I mean, it may be theoretically, but not
practically. I maintain my assertion that ID has not produced
any prediction that can be tested. Since you've not produced a
definition of what "life" constitutes, your "falsifiable"
prediction can't actually be tested (though you seem to believe
that RNA alone isn't "life"). -emarkp
\_ I don't really understand. If someone creates a bacterium
in a tube using a 'mechanical process' that would falsify
the claim in a practical way that seems reasonable to me.
I am not prepared to address the complex question of what
life is, but for the purposes of this discussion we can take
'alive' to mean 'a working reproductive cell, a bacterium.'
The latter is certainly a subset of the former.
What do you mean by falsifiable, then? By the way, these kinds
of negative falsifiable claims are very common in AI.
For instance 'a computer program will never beat a human
world chess champion.' -- ilyas
\_ Modern bacteria are themselves the product of billions of
years of evolution. I don't think it's reasonable to expect
to put some stuff in a tube, shake it around etc., and get
bacteria. I personally think it's quite likely that life is
very highly improbable. In any event, just a couple hundred
years ago people still believed in spontaneous generation.
In general I find it absurd when people's response to
something they don't understand is invoking the
supernatural. It doesn't answer the underlying question
anyway; if evolution is a problem because it doesn't fully
explain the first bacteria, then ID is a problem because it
doesn't explain the intelligence.
\_ [nevermind]
\_ This is begging the question. If the bacteria are too
complex to be produced directly, produce an intermediate
step, and then construct a story for how you get a
sequence of intermediate steps that would produce,
over time, and in a completely mechanical way, a working
bacterium. There is currently no such story, but if
such a story were created (by logical argument, computer
simulation, whatever) then that would falsify the ID
claim. This is difficult, but not impractical (serious
scientists are working on this very problem). I still
don't really understand your objections. Also, for the
47th time, I am not defending ID as either a credible
scientific movement nor an alternative to darwinian
biology. -- ilyas
\_ Wrong, as usual. A line of reasoning doesn't
falsify ID; just because you can come up with a
way that something could have happened doesn't mean
that it happened that way. -tom
\_ You seem to be confusing 'cannot' with 'did not.'
It's certainly possible to falsify 'cannot.' It
may be possible to falsify 'did not.' -- ilyas
\_ Correct, but it still puts paid to ID's basic
tenet that 'x must have happened because of y
because x is so complex that it couldn't have
happened any other way.' By creating a plausible
line of reasoning (in this case, how a bacterium
could evolve naturally) you debunk 'y' as a root
cause. Remember "any sufficiently advanced
science is indistinguishable from magic"? Once
you empirically explain a phaenomenon, you place
it into the realm of science and completely
remove all the superstitious voodoo crap. -John
\_ that sounds like something a LIBERAL would say!
\_ So, we can't reconcile quantum mechanics with GR.
Does that mean they're both false?
\_ You made the claim that ID had falsifiable
predictions. -emarkp
\_ Well, so ID is not verifiable but the claim is
falsifiable. How many other scientific realms
work like this? I'm not aware of any. It does not
seem to fall under the realm of the scientific
method. It's just an assertion... even if people
figure out a chain of events leading to replicating
pre-rna/rna/proteins etc. then ID can still claim
this stuff was "designed" to happen.
\_ I am not sure what you mean by 'verifiable,' but
no empirical theory can be definitely concluded to
be true, including relativity, evolution, etc.
This is why falsifiability is important -- a theory
is deemed stronger if it can withstand repeated
attempts to falsify its claims. Evolution itself
had to be modified multiple times in the face of
legidimate (partial) falsifications. To repeat
myself yet again, I am not defending ID as a
scientific movement. In response to your last
sentence, I think the main ID claim as I understand
it has some 'teeth,' and Darwinists would be wise
to neither ignore nor attempt to discredit its
source. -- ilyas
\_ They can't be definitely concluded true but
they can be experimentally verified, e.g.
relativity predicts X we test for X, natural
selection being induced, etc. ID differs in
this respect. That main claim about life
being unable to arise without intelligent
design seems a different sort of beast. Not
the sort of thing one could really teach in
any substantive fashion, other than merely
mentioning it as a belief. It just says that
until we have "hard" verifiable theory about
exactly how cells arose, then we have to
talk about the "theory" that this was
impossible. I dunno, I'll go ahead and ignore.
\_ See below. I think the difference is in
degree, not kind. Claims about the origin
of life are more akin to cosmology or string
theory claims -- falsifiable, but requiring
immense resources for appropriate experiments
to be conducted. This does not invalidate
the claims, it just shows how important they
are. -- ilyas
\_ ^ what he said. I suspect you know what I mean by
"falsifiable" -- a truth claim that can be proven false by
a test. However, just because a hypothetical truth
statement can be falsified it doesn't mean it's useful or
seriously admissible. When ID can suggest an experiement
that doesn't take an infinite amount of time to attempt to
falsify (defining terms and initial conditions, etc.) then
it should be addressed. Not before. -emarkp
\_ Another thought: if the claim is that life can't arise by
chance, I don't see how creating a 'living organism' in the
lab would disprove that. It would have to arise by chance,
wouldn't it? -emarkp
\_ That's a little obtuse, sorry. Miller's experiment was
famous precisely because he created laboratory conditions
which reasonably duplicated conditions that could have
arisen by chance during early Earth's history. -- ilyas
\_ yeah, I'm sure the inability to create life by random
chance in a laboratory has great relevance to
whether it was possible to create life by random
chance on a sphere with a surface area of 200 million
square miles. Tell us about the stars, ilyas. -tom
\_ Tom, you are a dumbass. I said that IF someone
succeeds in doing task X in a lab (or by computer
simulation), that it would falsify claim Y. I
never implied that ANYTHING follows if task X
cannot be done. That's all you. -- ilyas
\_ Right, and since we can't prove that the stars
aren't sentient, they might be. Go tilt
at windmills because they might be giants. -tom
\_ Nice red herring. Do you even know what
falsifiability means? -- ilyas
\_ No, but I know that arguing with ID
people is exactly like arguing with
you; any time you try to pin them down,
they claim they meant something else.
-tom
\_ Well, tom, if you knew what
falsifiability meant, you would see
that during the 2 threads now I haven't
changed any conventional definitions
to suit my rhetorical aims as you seem
to imply. By the way, that's two
red herrings in one thread.
Impressive. -- ilyas
\- The Open MOTD and its Enemies.
\_ I'm familiar with Miller's experiment. However, his
experiment wasn't chance and any ID supporter could
argue that point. Or simply move the bar up and say
that amino acids aren't sufficient. -emarkp
\_ Yes of course. Miller's experiment does not
falsify the 'cannot' claim.
\_ Then what can? -emarkp
\_ I already said, either:
(a) an experiment like Miller's (perhaps on
a much larger scale)
that results in a reproducible cell from
components that are reasonable to assume
to exist. Or:
(b) An accurate computer simulation of the
underlying chemistry, meant to accelerate
the time, if that's what's needed.
At this point scientists haven't even
been able to produce a story in English,
let alone in forms (a) or (b). Whether (a)
or (b) will convince ID people I don't know,
but it will convince _me_. -- ilyas
\_ (a) may not be possible.
(b) why should we trust a computer
simulation? If our model is incorrect,
it won't predict anything accurately.
Also, simulating a large system of
organic molecules interacting is probably
impossible. -emarkp
\_ I was giving the general form of the
answer I would find acceptable.
Obviously one can quibble about
various details of the experiment and
simulation (and people do, and
should!) But those are details. The
important thing, to me, is that I can
see an experiment that _would_ falsify
the claim. It may be too large, too
impractical an experiment, but it is
still an experiment. String theory is
only falsifiable in an extremely
expensive way (you need a really BIG
accelerator), and while it receives
some criticisms for it, it is not
dismissed outright. The underlying
nature of reality is an important and
complex problem, as is the origin of
life. It's not unreasonable that a
falsifiable experiment should be very
expensive or difficult to conduct. If
not, we may have been done by now!
-- ilyas
\_ String theory is a great example of
something comparable to ID. It has
no way to test it experimentally.
Hopefully the attempt to create
tiny black holes will test it, but
even that is kind of iffy.
I'd be satisfied if advocates of an
abiogenesis theory from chance
simply said "this is a guess, that
we may never be able to prove."
Evolution on the other hand is a
different story. -emarkp
[oh, and please format 80 cols]
\_ wtf are you guys talking about. All you need is to 100% prove any
supernatural phenomenon, and you go light years ahead in terms of
making people believe God / aliens created us.
\_ This is probably never going to happen for much the same reasons
that AI doesn't get credit for its successes. Once people figure
out how to program a computer to do task X thought previously
to require intelligence, people quickly give up their intuitions
that task X _does_ require intelligence. Similarly, if someone
reproduces a 'supernatural' phenomenon in a lab, physicists will
get on the case, and things will cease to be supernatural before
long. I think it's mostly a matter of point of view than anything
else. I think even in the realm of scientifically understood
phenomena, the Universe is a magical place. -- ilyas
phenomena, the Universe is a magical place. In a vaguely related
piece of news, someone solved checkers. -- ilyas
\_ shrug, all you need to show me is that you can part seas just
by willing it, feed 5,000 people to satiety with five loaves
of bread and two fish and come out with 12 baskets of
leftovers, or walk on water.
\_ Sufficiently advanced technology, etc.
\_ I am led to believe that this had occurred without
"sufficiently advanced technology, etc."
\_ Valis, Erich von Daniken, etc. :-) -John |
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