Friday, October 29, 2010

The discussion so far

John wrote:
AGREED: Heritable variation leads to differential survival and reproduction and population genetic change over time. DISPUTED: These changes over time (beneficial, fatal, and neutral) ALONE are responsible for the origin and total diversity... of life on earth.

Validity for considering ID for discussion: M. genitalium (simplest known self-replicating free living organism) has a TINY genome of 580,000. Probability of random sequencing: FACTORIAL 580K or about 1 in 8 E 3,000,000, X mutation frequency X % fatal mutations X ratio simplest:most complex organism = not enough billions of years. All this AFTER the miracle of “life.”

“Where does such a creator come from?” Where does anything come from? Scientific fact: “out of nothing, nothing comes” ANY existence creates a paradox. Show me what went “bang” and I’ll show you God, the rest is timeline and direction.

I do not so marry my position that belittling the position belittles my person.

Whereupon I replied:
Your description of the ‘creation’ of M. genitalium is fatally flawed, detailing an assembly of the entire nucleotide sequence from randomly assorted nucleotides. What scientists support this mechanism of abiogenesis? Furthermore, it is a straw man attack: evolution presupposes replicating life. Few numbers are used to support your math; ...a logical leap from simplest:most complex organism is made, and without a metric standard.

THEN you say life already existed? This argument is neither realistic nor coherent!

Rumination on why there is something rather than nothing is no argument for ID. My real question was not about the origins of the universe.

If human existence necessitates a more complex designer, does not its existence also presuppose some designer of the designer? What predictions can be made based on ID that would help us understand the natural world? If it’s to be considered in a scientific setting, how can ID be falsified?

1 comment:

  1. My real question here is how ID could be falsified. If it is not falsifiable, I see no point in continuing discussion. If, as is so often claimed, ID is a scientific theory, then it must also be falsifiable.

    Evolution could be falsified by proving that variation does not occur as a result of copying errors; or that this variation has no effect on organisms; or that the variation is somehow non-heritable; or that populations' genetic makeup is independent of their parent generations' survival and reproduction. Or that DNA / RNA is not the mechanism of heritability, or is not subject to copying errors.

    ReplyDelete

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