FacebookTwitter
Hatrack River Forum   
my profile login | search | faq | forum home

  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» Hatrack River Forum » Active Forums » Books, Films, Food and Culture » Abiogenesis (Page 2)

  This topic comprises 4 pages: 1  2  3  4   
Author Topic: Abiogenesis
T:man
Member
Member # 11614

 - posted      Profile for T:man   Email T:man         Edit/Delete Post 
When you see a volcano occam's razor screams that there's some guy with bad legs beating on an anvil. Doesn't mean its true.
Posts: 1574 | Registered: May 2008  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
MightyCow
Member
Member # 9253

 - posted      Profile for MightyCow           Edit/Delete Post 
In opposition to the Intelligent Design Occam's Razor, I would like to put forth the "Won the Universal Lottery" method of creation.

Some insanely unlikely chain of events, which is so statistically unlikely that we have no hope of ever recreating it, came about by entirely natural processes, and that allowed the highly complex and self-replicating structures that we call "life" to begin.

That seems so much more likely to me than any designer, which would either have to have also come about by some method itself, or we have to imagine some supernatural element, which also does not need a complex designer, since we could just say that supernatural but unintelligent laws of nature let life come about.

Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
advice for robots
Member
Member # 2544

 - posted      Profile for advice for robots           Edit/Delete Post 
Orincoro: Nope, you're right. I was reading the thread, BTW, but your post rubbed me the wrong way. And I was getting up to go home and was in a hurry and didn't go back and read what you said more carefully. I did in fact take it out of context. But I maintain I wasn't trying to bring moral law into the discussion. There was not a catechism involved at any point. Thanks for the impromptu lecture on science. It's true that I'm not a scientist, but I have never had the urge to rebel against the scientific method and burn down a physics lab. I have never felt at odds with the scientific way of looking at things. If my brain was geared that way, I might very well have gone down the science track and would be happily banging hadrons together or looking for dark matter.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The Rabbit
Member
Member # 671

 - posted      Profile for The Rabbit   Email The Rabbit         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Heh, no. By construction, living beings grow under conditions in which they are thermodynamically favoured. That's what "thermodynamically favoured" means. What you're actually saying is that this is a much wider range of conditions than is the case for crystals; which is fair enough, but has the same problem as above.
Without getting into semantic arguments about what constitutes "thermodynamically favored", crystals form under conditions that minimize Gibbs free energy of a system. Cells do not. Cell growth doesn't even achieve a local thermodynamic minimum. The chemical reactions required to go from simple organic molecules to basic cellular components (like proteins) are thermodynamically unfavorable even in the cellular microenvironment. They only occur because cellular enzymes are able to couple these reactions to oxidation reactions that are thermodynamically favorable. This route is favored over complete oxidation of the simple organic molecules (which is the thermodynamic equilibrium point) for kinetic rather than thermodynamic reasons. Cell growth is the kinetically favored process even though it is not the thermodynamically favored process. Life is the only thing we know of that is able to sustain this kind of process.

In fact, the ability to maintain a system far from any thermodynamic equilibrium is considered one of the hallmarks of life. Atmospheres that are far from any chemical equilibrium point are one of the key things we look for when scanning the universe for potential signs of life.

Of course this can only happen in a system that has a continual input of energy. On earth that energy comes from 2 sources, fusion energy from the sun and fission energy from elements in the earths core. In a very real sense, life on earth is nuclear powered.

Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
RNA world is also not a falsifiable hypothesis. At least no has yet come up with an experiment that could falsify it.
Discover evidence of a really early organism that works with just DNA (no RNA). Repeat that result enough time and RNA world would be falsified. Note: I don't consider it likely that such evidence exists, both because I think RNA world is plausible, and because even if it wasn't, very little survives from back then. But, we keep finding interesting old things all the time, so I could be mistaken. It doesn't matter, though; RNA world is still definitely falsifiable.

quote:
Every multicellular organism that has been studied is more complex in terms of its genome and its protiome than every single cellular organism that has been studied.
How're you defining more complex, here? Because we've studied plenty of single-celled organisms with more in their genome than multi-celled organisms. Take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sequenced_eukaryotic_genomes . Lots of single-celled eurkaryotes have more genes (sometimes a lot more genes) than fungi, and some even have more than certain insects or nematodes! Since you're the one making the assertion, and I've provided pretty strong evidence you were at best grossly mistaken, please provide some citations to your statement.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The Rabbit
Member
Member # 671

 - posted      Profile for The Rabbit   Email The Rabbit         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
[QB]
quote:
RNA world is also not a falsifiable hypothesis. At least no has yet come up with an experiment that could falsify it.
Discover evidence of a really early organism that works with just DNA (no RNA). Repeat that result enough time and RNA world would be falsified.
Discovery of a DNA only organism would not falsify the RNA world hypothesis. RNA organisms could reasonably be either a precursor to the DNA only organisms or a parallel development which eventually merged to create modern life.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The Rabbit
Member
Member # 671

 - posted      Profile for The Rabbit   Email The Rabbit         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
[QB]
quote:
RNA world is also not a falsifiable hypothesis. At least no has yet come up with an experiment that could falsify it.
Discover evidence of a really early organism that works with just DNA (no RNA). Repeat that result enough time and RNA world would be falsified.
Discovery of a DNA only organism would not falsify the RNA world hypothesis. RNA organisms could reasonably be either a precursor to the DNA only organisms or a parallel development which eventually merged to create modern life.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
Repeated discoveries would falsify it in every scientific sense of the word falsify. The "what if" construction can be used to come up with alternate explanations for every scientific falsification study, ever. Yet we keep doing the things. The reason is, falsify in science does not mean "eliminate every other possibility as a logical impossibility". You know this.

(As a side note, if it was parallel development, then it wasn't RNA world).

Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The Rabbit
Member
Member # 671

 - posted      Profile for The Rabbit   Email The Rabbit         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
Repeated discoveries would falsify it in every scientific sense of the word falsify. The "what if" construction can be used to come up with alternate explanations for every scientific falsification study, ever. Yet we keep doing the things. The reason is, falsify in science does not mean "eliminate every other possibility as a logical impossibility". You know this.

(As a side note, if it was parallel development, then it wasn't RNA world).

I disagree. DNA life and RNA life are not mutually exclusive hypotheses. Discovery of DNA only life, even repeated discoveries would not demonstrate that RNA life did not exist and was not an important component of abiogenesis.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
Now you're moving the goalposts, or weren't precise in what you were saying in the first place.

The RNA World hypothesis isn't just "RNA-based life existed". Indeed, if it were, we'd have pretty persuasive evidence (while viruses may not be life, they manage to operate with just RNA) for it. The RNA World hypothesis (in simple form) is that RNA-based organisms were the origin of life. If we discovered large numbers of extremely primitive DNA-only organisms, the possibility of RNA World would be undermined such that, absent any change in evidence, the theory is untenable vs the simpler theory that DNA-only organisms were the origin of life. That is the definition of scientific falsifiability.

Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Lisa
Member
Member # 8384

 - posted      Profile for Lisa   Email Lisa         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by Javert:
quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
They aren't good enough evidence for you, but that doesn't mean they aren't evidence. I'd say they certainly aren't proof, but they are definitely evidence.

You are quite right, they are evidence.

However, as they are significantly worse evidence than first-person testimony of people claiming to have been abducted by aliens, saying that it isn't evidence is not that much of a hyperbole.

Significantly better, you mean.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Lisa
Member
Member # 8384

 - posted      Profile for Lisa   Email Lisa         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by The White Whale:
quote:
If you didn't have to worry that someone might sneak God in there, logic would absolutely lead you to the conclusion that someone, somewhere, designed us.
Not even remotely true.

Someone who never heard of God (e.g. the bomb shelter guy mentioned above), could look at the world, fossils, and a little bit of scientific knowledge and think:

1) We are pretty complex
2) It looks like things get simpler as you move backwards through time
3) There must have been a point where this complexity started
4) Hmm...I wonder what that was?

The concept of and intelligent designer might appear as a possible explanation, but it would hold no more weight than anything else. And it would get stuck there, because (short of finding this intelligent designer), there would be no further thinking or testing. Other, testable alternatives practically beg for testing and further investigation.

Yeah... I don't think so. It's no different than the pocketwatch thing. You see a pocketwatch laying in the sand, pick it up, examine it, if your very first thought isn't, "Someone designed this with intent," you probably need to seek professional help.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
And then you discover a bunch of pocketwatches reproducing in a colony by the sea, and fossils of much more primitive gear mechanisms, and you prove that there exists a wholly natural mechanism by which the previous gear mechanisms could have changed into the pocketwatches, and then you throw out the design hypothesis (at least, as a supernatural explanation; some would argue that the universe as a whole is the "pocketwatch", but that's a philosophical statement, not a scientific one).

(edit: plus, it is rather more plausible that we're likely to conclude someone seeing a pocketwatch would reach a conclusion of 'designed' because we know for certain a pocketwatch is designed. Or is your assertion that you can so far dissociate yourself from your knowledge about pocketwatches that you are able to make such judgements accurately? That reminds me, I think I saw some studies that showed people crystals that occur completely naturally, and most concluded they were designed; such mistakes certainly occur frequently, such as with those circular sinkholes in cities recently that are entirely natural. Humans beings thinking something is designed just isn't a very good indicator for whether or not something is designed).

[ June 23, 2010, 01:52 PM: Message edited by: fugu13 ]

Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The Rabbit
Member
Member # 671

 - posted      Profile for The Rabbit   Email The Rabbit         Edit/Delete Post 
I'm not moving the goal post, you are.

Your "definition" of falsifiability is way to general to at all useful. Strictly speaking, a theory is only falsifiable if it can (at least in the abstract) be proven false. For example, the theory of conservation of energy is falsifiable because reproducible observation of a system in which energy was either created or destroyed would prove the theory false. To be falsifiable, a theory must be predictive there must be some imaginable experiment which would demonstrate that prediction to be false. In practice, we generally accept "highly improbable to be true" rather than absolute proof.

Furthermore, the RNA World hypothesis is not that RNA-based organisms were the "origin of life". The RNA World hypothesis is that organisms, based on RNA only predate living organisms based on DNA, RNA and proteins and that these RNA based organisms evolved into currently existing living organisms.

The RNA World hypothesis does not presume that the RNA world was the only step in this process, in fact it really is only remotely plausible if a number of other processes that gave rise to cellular metabolism were going on in parallel. Nothing in the RNA world hypothesis predicts that DNA only organisms did not also predate modern life or suggest that they could not have been (or were even highly unlikely to have been) part of the processes which gave rise to modern life.

Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
scifibum
Member
Member # 7625

 - posted      Profile for scifibum   Email scifibum         Edit/Delete Post 
Rabbit, I'm interested to hear you address the objection several people brought up about how you used Occam's Razor. Is a designer really the simplest, most straightforward explanation for anything? What about accounting for the origin of the designer?

We can't rule out a designer, but it seems more reasonable to me to assume that despite our difficulty imagining spontaneous abiogenesis, it could definitely have happened.

quote:
We have yet to find any simpler self reproducing systems on this planet nor any evidence that any have ever existed.
Early evolution into more recognizable systems could have been isolated to one location we haven't yet examined (or that was obliterated).

Abiogenesis of systems that can replicate and evolve into the more complex systems we have evidence of could be so incredibly unlikely and rare that you might see it happen only on one in a billion planets. On those planets, the series of events might be so unlikely that you might see it only once or twice in billions of years, in one place. The anthropic principle means such extreme unlikeliness can't rule out that such events did in fact happen - although the odds against them could certainly explain why we aren't seeing evidence of it in the mere decades we've had the tools to look, and the tiny fraction of one planet that we've examined.

Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
You should read some (more?) philosophy of science. What I described is pretty much the mainstream synthesis of Popperian and Kuhnian falsifiability. Please show me how the following scientific theories are falsifiable by your definition:

Humans and Chimpanzees share a common ancestor.

Mesohippus ate grass.

Or do you reject these as scientific theories?

Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Raymond Arnold
Member
Member # 11712

 - posted      Profile for Raymond Arnold   Email Raymond Arnold         Edit/Delete Post 
Human chimpanzee relations could have been falsified by discovering that their DNA was nothing similar. Given the array of data we have at this point that DOES support the human/chimpanzee relationship, I can't think of anything other than a discovery that fundamentally changes our understanding of DNA that could falsify it. But we're looking at the end result of the scientific process, when the tests have already been mostly done.

I don't know enough about abiogenesis and moleculary biology to really contest the validity of any given hypothesis. I'm fine with high school biology teachers saying "Here's the evidence we have for evolution, which at this point is an established scientific fact barring some major, groundbreaking discovery. And here's some hypotheses for how life may have originated, but we don't really know." And then include "extraterrestrial origin" as one of those hypothesis, acknowledging that that explanation (which essentially includes ID as a subcategory) isn't really an explanation.

Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
Raymond: how would that falsify it by Rabbit's definition? It could have occurred further back in the past, leading to greater differences. That just makes it dramatically less likely compared to competing theories -- meaning your definition seems more in line with mine than Rabbit's.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Samprimary
Member
Member # 8561

 - posted      Profile for Samprimary   Email Samprimary         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
Yeah... I don't think so. It's no different than the pocketwatch thing. You see a pocketwatch laying in the sand, pick it up, examine it, if your very first thought isn't, "Someone designed this with intent," you probably need to seek professional help.

It's all well and good to reference it, but do you consider the watchmaker analogy to lend credence to creationist theories at all?
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Javert
Member
Member # 3076

 - posted      Profile for Javert   Email Javert         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
quote:
Originally posted by Javert:
You are quite right, they are evidence.

However, as they are significantly worse evidence than first-person testimony of people claiming to have been abducted by aliens, saying that it isn't evidence is not that much of a hyperbole.

Significantly better, you mean.
No. I meant what I wrote.

First hand eye-witness testimony from living people is infinitely better than we-don't-know-hand testimony from ancient writings. All anecdotal evidence is horrible evidence, but modern anecdotes are better.

Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Raymond Arnold
Member
Member # 11712

 - posted      Profile for Raymond Arnold   Email Raymond Arnold         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
Raymond: how would that falsify it by Rabbit's definition? It could have occurred further back in the past, leading to greater differences. That just makes it dramatically less likely compared to competing theories -- meaning your definition seems more in line with mine than Rabbit's.

Rabbit's been talking about RNA and DNA and things that I have little knowledge and therefore little capability to extrapolate what she thinks about other things.

Sharing DNA a lot of DNA is strong evidence that two groups of creatures are related. The fact that several essential cell functions use the same DNA across all (most?) creatures is evidence that all creatures share a common ancestor, which along with other types of evidence suggests that Chimpanzees and Humans would be related no matter what. The question of exactly how related they are depends on what specific genes they share as compared with other similar creatures.

I'm not inherently opposed to "a designer of some sort made the initial cells" being a proposed hypothesis until a test is formulated to prove/disprove some of the other ones. BUT if we're doing that, we need to give students the other associated info, which is that all the evidence suggests that this designer, if they existed, never interfered afterwards and have produced a lot of very ineffective (in fact dangerous) biology, in both humans and other creatures.

Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Samprimary
Member
Member # 8561

 - posted      Profile for Samprimary   Email Samprimary         Edit/Delete Post 
How do we make "a designer of some sort made the initial cells" a scientific hypothesis, though?
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Raymond Arnold
Member
Member # 11712

 - posted      Profile for Raymond Arnold   Email Raymond Arnold         Edit/Delete Post 
I don't know, but the point being made (that Rabbit is currently arguing, and again, I don't have the requisite knowledge to evaluate the argument) is that right now there isn't a clear cut test for the competing hypotheses either. As soon as there are, we can start eliminating the ideas from the list. And until we do can do that, eliminating any ideas based on untestability is silly.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Samprimary
Member
Member # 8561

 - posted      Profile for Samprimary   Email Samprimary         Edit/Delete Post 
No idea can be eliminated. None ever. You could propose that Xenu made the first cells by accident when he spilled a Betelgeuseian slushie onto earth. It's an idea! Whether the ideas can rise to the challenge of being a valid scientific proposal is a different matter entirely.

Asking about something's validity as an 'idea' is much different from asking about its scientific, empirical, and rational validity. Everyone can propose any idea. That you can doesn't answer questions like "why shouldn't intelligent design be seriously considered as theory for how abiogenesis occurred."

Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
scifibum
Member
Member # 7625

 - posted      Profile for scifibum   Email scifibum         Edit/Delete Post 
"And until we do can do that, eliminating any ideas based on untestability is silly."

I don't think we should eliminate untestable ideas just for being untestable. But neither should we bother taking them seriously, in the absence of a plausible justification.

Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
Raymond: My assertion is that the standard of proof she's demanding for falsifiability is not met by statements such as that, despite general acceptance that hypotheses like that are part of science. She's demanding that it be possible to come up with a counterexample. The standard you're talking about is like the one I'm talking about, and is met both by the theories I describe and RNA World (when sufficiently specified).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Orincoro
Member
Member # 8854

 - posted      Profile for Orincoro   Email Orincoro         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by Raymond Arnold:
eliminating any ideas based on untestability is silly.

No, refusing to eliminate ideas because they are fundamentally untestable is silly. ID is not a scientific theory, because it does not make useful predictions and is untestable. It is not untestable *just right now* it is fundamentally untestable. It is not science. The idea that life was begun by an invisible and yet all powerful flying spaghetti monster's noodly appendage is precisely as testable as the idea that the Abrahamic God did it. And make no bones, "ID" is Christian Creationism. And even if it were not, "ID" absent any whiff of Christianity is still not at all a scientific theory. It is a philosophical framework, and a shabby one at that.

At no time will humanity every develop some scientific process to prove that God created the universe. Can't be done. Why? Because if the laws of the universe are self-consistent, there is no way a force from outside the universe can change anything, and thus no way we can observe anything outside of it. If the laws of the universe are *not* self-consistent, then our observations of the universe are also not to be trusted. Ever heard of the Heisenberg Principle? It works in that direction too- you can't observe "god" without god affecting the universe you are in, which makes the universe non-self-consistent, which makes science ultimately valueless. If you believe that god *does* follow and is bound by natural laws, then discovering god simply reproduces the same problem of discovering how a self-consistent universe creates a god or life... only now you have to explain both.

And before you attempt an answer at that, do us a favor. Attempt to dismiss from your mind the universe existing as a spherical boundaried ball floating in nothingness, with a god outside of it. That isn't the way it works. Even if there's a bubble, even if there's a god, if both are bound by the same laws, that's one universe, not a universe plus a god.

Other theories are not as silly. The ET origin theory is testable. The test involves technology and knowledge we don't have, but it's testable. It could be answered tomorrow, if aliens showed up, or it could take longer than humanity has for the search. It is logistically impractical, yet it is not fundamentally untestable.

Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The Rabbit
Member
Member # 671

 - posted      Profile for The Rabbit   Email The Rabbit         Edit/Delete Post 
Intelligent Design theories are not inherently non-falsifiable or non-testible. They are only non-falsifiable if they are poorly framed.

Here for example is an intelligent design hypothesis that is both falsifiable and testable.

Hypothesis: Intelligence Design is the only process capable of producing an abstract map with the complexity of the genetic code. (Add something about reasonable probability given the age or the earth and/or the Universe)

This could be falsified by finding a an abstract map with the complexity of the genetic code that was not produced by Intelligent Design.

Test: Create a genetic algorithm involving random mutations and selection and run it until it produces a sufficiently complex abstract map.

Of course there would need to be added tests to insure that the genetic algorithm wasn't some how biased by its intelligent designer. And this would likely need to be repeated with a few different types of genetic algorithms to verify that "intelligence" had not biased the outcome. Nonetheless, this is a test which would falsify my hypothesis and which can be implemented with existing technology, although I'd have to do a lot more work on it to determine whether or not it could be reasonably completed in reasonable length of time (say my lifetime).

Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
dantesparadigm
Member
Member # 8756

 - posted      Profile for dantesparadigm           Edit/Delete Post 
There were a series of experiments conducted by Stanley Miller which took compounds thought to be around during the early Earth, specifically water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen, put them in a sealed glass container, and added an energy source in the form of heat and "lightning". It eventually produced organic compounds including amino acids. Further experiments have produced more complex compounds. That was over a few years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment

I always took abiogenesis as a fact.

Posts: 959 | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The Rabbit
Member
Member # 671

 - posted      Profile for The Rabbit   Email The Rabbit         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
You should read some (more?) philosophy of science. What I described is pretty much the mainstream synthesis of Popperian and Kuhnian falsifiability. Please show me how the following scientific theories are falsifiable by your definition:

Humans and Chimpanzees share a common ancestor.

Mesohippus ate grass.

Or do you reject these as scientific theories?

I've read a vey great deal of philosophy of science. Thank you very much.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Orincoro
Member
Member # 8854

 - posted      Profile for Orincoro   Email Orincoro         Edit/Delete Post 
Really? It surely doesn't sound as if you have, or as if you understood it. Again, this is all very weird, since you've never talked this irrationally before, or really irrationally at all about this subject.

quote:
Hypothesis: Intelligence Design is the only process capable of producing an abstract map with the complexity of the genetic code. (Add something about reasonable probability given the age or the earth and/or the Universe)

This could be falsified by finding a an abstract map with the complexity of the genetic code that was not produced by Intelligent Design.

No, this hypothesis requires that you prove a negative, so while it is falsifiable, it is not testable.

quote:
Test: Create a genetic algorithm involving random mutations and selection and run it until it produces a sufficiently complex abstract map.
And ignore any aspect of the process you don't yet understand- including any natural influences on the process that you have not programmed in because you don't know about them. And run the experiment for 1 billion years. And while you're at it, run the experiment in about a million different locations during that time. With shifting weather conditions, and meteors hitting the beakers, and lightning, and about a million other random factors you haven't thought about. And ignore ET origin, and ignore pretty much *every* *single* remote possibility other than God. Of what use to us is this line of thinking? Even if you established that the chances of life arising by chance even once in the entire universe of 10^22 plus stars is one in a trillion, you cannot prove that we are that one in a trillion chance. You cannot prove a negative.


It's like: "hypothesis: the bible was written by God. Test: place all the letters of the alphabet in a box and shake it until the letters arrange themselves into the Bible." That's a test designed by you to get you the results you need. To prove a negative. Never mind that it would take the box experiment a gajillion years to actually produce the result that falsifies the hypothesis, but that it *could* do so.

[ June 24, 2010, 09:37 AM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]

Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The Rabbit
Member
Member # 671

 - posted      Profile for The Rabbit   Email The Rabbit         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
No, this hypothesis requires that you prove a negative, so while it is falsifiable, it is not testable.
Um, A hypothesis is considered falsifiable if it could be shown false by an observation or experiment. It is considered testable if it can be shown false by an experiment. I have proposed an experiment which could prove my hypothesis false, therefore it is testable.

BTW, I have not responded to your posts thus far because you persist in insulting me rather than presenting rational arguments. In the future, I would appreciate it if you would avoid making personal attacks and stick to refuting the arguments presented.

Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Orincoro
Member
Member # 8854

 - posted      Profile for Orincoro   Email Orincoro         Edit/Delete Post 
Rabbit, there is a possibility that your proposed experiment would immediately falsify your hypothesis. However, your hypothesis, tested in that way, cannot be supported by any test.

You're acting as if it's enough just to frame your hypothesis in a general enough way, so that it can't be dismissed. That's not good enough. The hypothesis is too general, for one. The absence of results could, following your thinking, prove not that ID is the only source of life, but that life *has* no source. A conclusion which is false- as long as we say: "My hypothesis is that it is impossible to produce life randomly," and then run that experiment. Congratulations, you've proven to your own satisfaction that you personally are not up to the challenge of creating condition in which life can occur. Your conclusion that it is therefore reasonable, therefore scientific to ascribe magical causes is jarring. And do make no mistake- you cannot have your cake and eat it too- ID is magical, not natural. You don't get to skate in between the two things- either you accept the universe as defined by a set of laws, known to us or not, or you don't. If you don't, you can throw logic out the window and believe whatever pops into your head- but that's not science.

quote:
BTW, I have not responded to your posts thus far because you persist in insulting me rather than presenting rational arguments.
Whine until the cows come home. I'm surprised at you and I have every right to let you know that. Don't give me some whiny nonsense about me not presenting rational arguments. I've presented plenty. More than you, to be sure.

[ June 24, 2010, 10:43 AM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]

Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Teshi
Member
Member # 5024

 - posted      Profile for Teshi   Email Teshi         Edit/Delete Post 
"We don't know how this happened exactly yet, therefore God."

quote:
One of the foundations of modern biology is that abiogenesis does not occur and no one has ever observed an exception to this law.
I have never heard this. One of the "foundations" of biology might be, 'we don't understand this yet," but I've never heard a biologist say "abiogenesis doesn't occur."

Wikipedia on abiogensis. Nowhere does it say, "this doesn't occur."

Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Samprimary
Member
Member # 8561

 - posted      Profile for Samprimary   Email Samprimary         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
You should read some (more?) philosophy of science. What I described is pretty much the mainstream synthesis of Popperian and Kuhnian falsifiability. Please show me how the following scientific theories are falsifiable by your definition:

Humans and Chimpanzees share a common ancestor.

Mesohippus ate grass.

Or do you reject these as scientific theories?

I've read a vey great deal of philosophy of science. Thank you very much.
Then answer his questions. It should be easy for you, after all.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The Rabbit
Member
Member # 671

 - posted      Profile for The Rabbit   Email The Rabbit         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
I have never heard this. One of the "foundations" of biology might be, 'we don't understand this yet," but I've never heard a biologist say "abiogenesis doesn't occur."
Teshi, Read the section in the Wikipedia article on spontaneous generation.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Orincoro
Member
Member # 8854

 - posted      Profile for Orincoro   Email Orincoro         Edit/Delete Post 
So because spontaneous generation of fully developed animals was disproved 4 centuries ago, and the spontaneous generation of bacteria was disproved a century and a half ago, that naturally leads to the conclusion that abiogenesis could not have ever occurred? You're not in the same ballpark as spontaneous generation.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Teshi
Member
Member # 5024

 - posted      Profile for Teshi   Email Teshi         Edit/Delete Post 
I don't understand, Rabbit. The Spontaenous Generation section is discussing pre-Darwinian theory. The rest of the article goes into detail about possibilities for abiogenesis. I don't see anywhere it says that abiogenesis is ruled out by modern biology.

Clearly, nobody can yet show exactly how it occurred, but that is hardly an argument that it didn't occcur.

Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
Indeed. Abiogenesis is an area with extensive research that has come up with several probabilistically plausible avenues for the origins of life. That's very much the opposite of rejecting the possibility.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Mucus
Member
Member # 9735

 - posted      Profile for Mucus           Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Originally posted by MattP:
quote:
When I look at this, Occum's Razor simply screams intelligent design.
Count me amongst those surprised that you are taking this position, Rabbit. This seems to be a classic invocation of God of the Gaps.

+= 1

Also, so much for stuff like
quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
Bah. By the time the term "God of the Gaps" was coined, it was already a strawman argument.

link
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The Rabbit
Member
Member # 671

 - posted      Profile for The Rabbit   Email The Rabbit         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
Please show me how the following scientific theories are falsifiable by your definition:

Humans and Chimpanzees share a common ancestor.

Mesohippus ate grass.

Well in the Popperian sense which demands that theories be falsifiable, neither one of these constitutes a scientific theory.

The first statement "Human's and Chimpanzees share a common ancestor", isn't a scientific theory and in fact its pretty useless as stated. Presuming evolutionary theory is valid, all living things share a common ancestor. Conversely, if we could demonstrate that Human's and Chimpanzees (or Humans and e-coli) did not share a common ancestor that would falsify evolution.

There are ways that we can rephrase the hypothesis to make it scientific. For example, we could say "Humans are more closely related to Chimpanzees than to e-coli." This is a falsifiable hypothesis. If we compared the human genome to the chimpanzee genome and the e-coli genome and found greater similarity between the human genes and the e-coli genes, it would falsify that theory. Part of the art of science is in framing hypotheses so that they are falsifiable.

One of the really cool things about evolutionary theory is that there are a number of points where molecular biology could have falsified it. If for example we had found that there were different genetic codes for different species, that would have falsified major part of evolutionary theory. But that didn't happen, to a first approximation all living organisms share the same genetic code. There are lots of other points in the history of science where evolutionary theory could have been falsified.

Furthermore, the original classification of species was based on macroscopic features. Hawks look more like eagles than they do like chickens so they must be more closely related. Lizards have more in common with alligators than they do with turtles so they must be more closely related. Evolutionary theory predicts that those species should be at least as similar on the molecular level as they are on the macroscopic level. That has been tested many times and so far has proven correct.

The reason evolutionary theory is so valuable in biology is that it is predictive and that the predictions it makes have lead to really cool discoveries.

[ June 24, 2010, 11:46 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]

Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
quote:
If we compared the human genome to the chimpanzee genome and the e-coli genome and found greater similarity between the human genes and the e-coli genes, it would falsify that theory.
Not at the standard you've requested before. There's the obvious possibility that genetic change occurred at different rates on different branches, among others. Your example would merely add significant evidence the theory was false (especially assuming some general evidence about genetic rates of change), just like discovering organisms whose existence would be extremely unlikely if RNA world were true would add significant evidence RNA world was false.

edit: and Popperian falsification hasn't been the mainstream of philosophy of science for a long time. It has, however, had a very large influence on the current mainstream synthesis, as have Kuhn's ideas, with a lot of current thought ending up focused more on falsification as a result of positive validation of theories leading to the rejection of other theories.

Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The White Whale
Member
Member # 6594

 - posted      Profile for The White Whale           Edit/Delete Post 
fugu and Rabbit, may I pop in and ask for any good books/papers on the development and current state of philosophy of science? I've read some things, but feel like I need to understand it much more thoroughly.

Thanks.

Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
IanO
Member
Member # 186

 - posted      Profile for IanO   Email IanO         Edit/Delete Post 
I’ve been studying this topic for years. And suffice it to say, I have my own opinions informed by that study. But far more important to me are the fundamental paradigms underlying this debate. I think I have a handle on both and I think that there can be mutual respect on both sides without the unnecessary name-calling (‘I thought you were a scientist!’), moral assumptions (‘Atheists don’t believe in a god because they don’t want to be accountable to anyone or want to be able to do whatever they want’), or implications of delusion (everything KoM says on the subject). I’m not saying this has degenerated into anything that bad, but still...

Ultimately, I think it comes down to where we draw the line.

Everyone can look at Stonehenge or the Nazca lines and see intelligence behind the specified complexity in those structures/depictions. And everyone can see the debris pattern of an explosion and see the complete lack of structure or specified complexity. So we all have both ends of the spectrum by which we categorize the source of patterns we see in the world. Scratchings on a wall exhibiting uniformity and repetition in some kind of pattern suggest some sort of informational content, despite our inability to decipher it. SETI receives a pulse from space with temporal regularity (specificity) but little complexity which suggests a rotating pulsar.

Again, 2 ends of the spectrum, intelligence required at one end, none at the other. Everything we discover that we did not create (or didn’t not vicariously observe being created, like my computer or TV) goes on the spectrum according to our own criteria, experiences, beliefs, assumptions or whatever. We all do this. We all draw the line somewhere, for everything not personally known to have been created.

Those who insist on completely materialistic explanations, even when the explanation is tentative or rough at best, are not stupid for refusing to believe in a creator. They just refuse to plug God (or the FSM or whatever) into the gap of everything they can’t give a materialistic explanation to. Scientific progress didn’t really begin until mankind stopped doing that and came up with a way to, step by step, query nature as to how it worked: the Scientific Method (which is arguably the single greatest reason why our modern world is the way it is now). It’s most powerful ability is getting a “yes” or “no” (or sometimes “sort of”) answer from the physical universe about whether a particular hypothesis (or explanation) was true or not. Which is why falsifiability is so important. The physical world has to be able to say “no, sorry, that’s not correct. It doesn’t work/didn’t happen that way” to an idea. (Which is why ID, at this point in time, is not falsifiable and should not be taught as a scientific theory. a point Hugh Ross and Fuz Rana over at www.reasons.org make clear. They are working on a falsifiable theory of ID. And I’m not going to get into that debate, except to say that I appreciate the intellectual and scientific honesty they exhibit.)

Abiogenesis? Development of multicellular organisms? We have a few ideas (Though I find the clay theory to be the weakest). They are kind of rough. But just because it can’t be explained yet fully doesn’t mean that a designer did. A designer invokes an unknown complexity into the equation, making Occam’s Razor useless. How much more complex/likely is a designer than an astronomically highly improbably event, like the formation of RNA? Ultimately, it comes down to this unknown is greater than that unknown. So no, a materialist isn’t bothered by what we don’t know yet. They are excited and see them as ripe fields for study and discovery. There is no need to throw our hands up into the air and say God did it. After all, the scientific method hasn’t failed yet.

On the other hand, those who believe in ID don’t just want to wave their hands over everything they don’t understand and say God did it. Lightning? Zeus is angry. Earthquake? Poseidon is pissed. Crops growing? The gods saw the big sympathetic magic orgy we had in the spring to remind them to make the earth fecund. They appreciate science and what it has revealed. They appreciate the scientific method. And they (or at least most- there are the few, the proud, the willfully ignorant) want to learn more about science and how the world works. For them, it teaches them about the brilliant mind they perceive behind everything.

And they do see a mind. Not because they are stupid or need to (at least most who’ve thought deeply about it don’t.) Going back to that spectrum illustration, they see the scratches on the wall. There is uniformity. There is repetition. There is perceived (semantic) meaning. There is no question that it was created by someone. That informs their experience. If information is specific and complex (from all angles, rather than, for example, the equivalent of the Martian “face”) then, as per all our experiences, it must have a mind behind it. And life- specifically, the information contained in DNA, information that is transcripted into RNA and then translated into proteins than make up literal nano-machines that operate just like human made machines, but on a whole other level of scale and complexity- well, that bespeaks a mind behind the process.

Underlying this paradigm is the question of how likely specified complexity can occur through natural processes. Those who go further and want to quantify this, ask this question. Is there a way to look at some kind of information- by itself- and determine how likely it is that such information came about through natural processes or through an intelligent designer (regardless of who or what that is). Again, go back to a SETI signal- on one end, a repetitious single signal at specific intervals in time, and at the other end, a la Contact, of the first hundred primes. We have information. It appears to have a specified complexity. Is there a way to quantify that so that we can make a reasonable assertion as to the derivation of the information (conscious process or natural one.) Could it be the result of the newly discovered (or conjectured) relationship between quantum shells and the Zeta Function? Or, let’s take a string of coin flips, heads or tails. Is there a way to tell if the coin flips have been rigged (given specific complexity in their context) just by looking them? Obviously a string of “HHHHHHHHHHHHH” has too high a level of specificity. But “HTHHTHTTHTTHHHTHTTHTH” not so much. But what about “HTTHTHHHTHHHTHTTHHH”? 12 H’s to 7 T’s? When coin tosses are used to determine which political party presides over redistricting each year (or something like that) and one party gets it disproportionately more than another, it becomes important to be able to figure something like that out.

Whether formally (the minority using some sort of scientific/mathematical framework) or informally (the majority using “common sense” and “experience”) most of those who believe in ID do so for that reason. The complexity we see in the natural world and it’s uniqueness (the fine-tuning) can only be the product of mind in the same way that a house in the desert, a watch in the sand, or a cell phone in the ocean must be the result of mind. Complexity, ingenuity, adaptability, and intricacy are all the hallmarks of a marvelously designed object. The complexity, the ingenuity, the adaptability, and the intricacy they observe in the natural world tell them the world was designed. And science’s inability to explicate the origin those most fundamental things (abiogenesis, transcription, translation, protein shape-and their requisite conformational change as they interact with their environment, store information, all in a similar way to circuitry- and so on) only serves to highlight, for them this fundamental truth.

On both sides, none are evil. Some are misinformed. Some are myopically stupid. Some are pigheaded and arrogant. And some are genuinely interested in the truth. I think dialog is good and healthy. We can agree to at least be civil and recognize the paradigms by which both sides are viewing the data and yet come to differing conclusions.

Posts: 1346 | Registered: Jun 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The Rabbit
Member
Member # 671

 - posted      Profile for The Rabbit   Email The Rabbit         Edit/Delete Post 
The most interesting thing about the philosophy of science, is that most of it is bunk, in the sense that science is rarely ever done the way philosophers describe it being done.

The Popperian idea of falsifiability is a very powerful idea, but fugu is correct when he points out the most of science isn't really done that way.

Unfortunately, I simply don't have the time to respond to everything I'd like to in this thread. I'm afraid that too much biochemistry/molecular biology is required to really understand my reasoning and I just don't have the time to explain it all.

Many of the objections people have voiced seem to stem from an association of Intelligent Design with "God the Creator" and a strong (and justified) bias against creationism. What people seem to be missing is that "Intelligent Designer" in this case could have been any intelligent being with no greater intelligence than we can observe in human beings, access to powerful computers and a really good synthetic organic chemistry lab. Omnipotence and omniscience are not required for this job, we are very close to being able to do this with current human technology (not quite there but very close). We are close enough that we know that the simplest life forms could have been designed by a being with human level intelligence. We don't know of anything besides human intelligence which is definitely capable of producing simple life forms from non living matter. People have proposed a number of alternatives, but at this point we still aren't sure whether any of those alternatives could have worked. So far research on RNA world theory has focused on demonstrating that a few of the key steps necessary for RNA world are possible. There are still many essential steps which may not be possible. Even if every step is proved possible under controlled laboratory conditions, there is still a huge leap to demonstrating that they did occur in nature and that these steps lead to modern life. Right now there is no evidence for this. As many people have pointed out, there are any number of reasons why evidence might not exist even if its true. Its also true that the tools needed to even look for such evidence are relatively new and that we really haven't looked extensively. Its entirely possible that evidence for RNA could be uncovered. We might even find RNA life forms that still persist in the modern world. It's entirely possible that evidence for the RNA world will be discovered, but right now, there is no evidence for it. (And yes, I'm defining evidence the same as I defined evidence in my argument with Paul Goldner.)

Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Blayne Bradley
unregistered


 - posted            Edit/Delete Post 
"If not God then Aliens" is to me an even weaker cop out, as regardless of who you imagine may or may not have did it doesn't change that there's no evidence for it.
IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Mucus
Member
Member # 9735

 - posted      Profile for Mucus           Edit/Delete Post 
Technically, the Ancients weren't aliens. Merely the first evolution of our form. Just sayin'
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
The Rabbit
Member
Member # 671

 - posted      Profile for The Rabbit   Email The Rabbit         Edit/Delete Post 
I'm posting from Germany which creates a rather unnatural rhythm in the discussion. I'm sorry about that. I'm also sorry I don't have the time to respond to every question.

Those of you who think this is ridiculous and irrational answer me the follow questions.

1. Do you find the idea that there are intelligent beings other than humans in the Universe generally ridiculous? If so, please explain why?

2. If not, do you find it plausible that there were intelligent beings somewhere in the Universe before the first micro-organisms appeared on earth?

3. If you were an archeologist on a deep space science mission tasked with looking for signs of ancient intelligent beings, what would you look for? What type of things would you consider highly suggestive of intelligent action?

4. Does the fundamental core of life on earth (the genetic code and the machinery that translates it) have features that would in other circumstance be highly suggestive of intelligent action?

5. If its plausible that intelligent life existed in the Universe hundreds of billions of years ago, shouldn't we be investigating any thing that might reasonably be evidence of that early intelligence?

6. Is there a reason, beyond prejudice against anything that might be construed as religion, why this hypothesis does not deserve further investigation?

Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
fugu13
Member
Member # 2859

 - posted      Profile for fugu13   Email fugu13         Edit/Delete Post 
If you want a good introduction to thought on philosophy of science (in particular the demarcation problem), start here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/ . Note that they give quite a few names, all of which are very searchable on the same site (that's the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Rabbit: as I pointed out, many scientists are amenable to the idea of extraterrestrial origins for life. Indeed, the idea that it arrived from elsewhere (where it arose naturally, perhaps) is much more plausible, prima facie, than some sort of design process. Much more likely a left behind cell sample when exploring than a dedicated production program.

It is clear you haven't been taking serious looks at links given, though. For instance, we know of self-replicating biological molecules & complexes that are remarkably simple, and can calculate quite high odds of them occurring spontaneously. That's just one step along the way, but it is arguably the most important step. We've also observed naturally occurring lipid membranes that act like primitive cell walls. In fact, we've catalogued a huge number of steps that would be important for the initial formation of life -- a phenomenal number, when you consider that many of them have been observed directly in nature, and we've only been looking for a tiny slice of time at a tiny slice of nature.

quote:
We don't know of anything besides human intelligence which is definitely capable of producing simple life forms from non living matter.
This is hand-waving. There are lots of things we don't know are "definitely" capable. But we have calculated approximate odds given educated estimates on numerous avenues to the formation of life, and many of them seem quite plausible (by which I mean, the odds are non-infinitesimal of them occurring on one earth-like planet -- and there are probably lots and lots of earth-like planets in the galaxy, much less the universe).

And you've been dodging problems since well before this thread started to get particularly busy. I don't think I've seen a reply on your "every multicellular is more complicated than every single-celled" mistake.

You're just not very up on the state of abiogenesis research (you've stated numerous things as true I can disprove -- for instance, that ribosomes would be required; take a look at the first link I sent -- and I'm hardly an expert), and you've decided this makes intelligent design likely. Honestly, its quite remarkable how much we know about possible avenues of abiogenesis, given how far in the past it would have had to occur.

Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Mucus
Member
Member # 9735

 - posted      Profile for Mucus           Edit/Delete Post 
The Rabbit: I would quickly note, you used the loaded term "intelligent design" three times in your OP.

As you should well know, the term is basically synonymous with supernatural creation, for example:
quote:
Creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science.
National Academy of Sciences

That probably goes to the root of why the quite vocal objections. If you had started with panspermia, it would be, well, among other things a much shorter and less heated thread.

Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
  This topic comprises 4 pages: 1  2  3  4   

   Close Topic   Feature Topic   Move Topic   Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
 - Printer-friendly view of this topic
Hop To:


Contact Us | Hatrack River Home Page

Copyright © 2008 Hatrack River Enterprises Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.


Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classic™ 6.7.2