Today at 05:47 AM Aaron11 said this in Post #34
For one, you are trying to apply the rules of science (which I have already said to be over-rated and ever-changing) to God. This is a poor argument because I never claimed the law of biogenesis to be true. Instead I just showed that scientists break their own laws when it comes to evolution.
Ah, Ok, I got your point.
But, I´m sorry to say that, it is false. Science is not about unchanging truth - it is about the description of reality. Laws, theories, hypothesis and assumptions are only a measure of how sure scientist are, not if it is really true.
[B
Secondly, you say that the law of biogenesis must be changed then. That illustrates my point well. I stated that science is ever-changing. People assume that science is necessarily truth many times, and if its ever-changing, then it can not be true all of the time. That is why I said it is over-rated by many.
[/B]
Scientific laws are only "true" in regard to how well they fit to observations. If a confirmed observation does not agree with a theory, the theory has to be adapted.
This does not invalidate science, but in fact strengthens it. Science is not dogmatic. It does not have to deny reality because of existing theories.
And it is not often that scientific laws are discarded because they have been shown wrong - more often it is an expansion of a law to fit new observations as well as old ones.
So it is not that a law like the law of biogenesis is no longer considered true, but that the adapted law is more true.
Also, by saying that the law of BG should be changed to "Life does not come from non-life, except for the first life.", I can only think of two possibilites of your meaning for this. 1. I can think that you mean that God was the first life, or, 2. A cell was the first life. If by this you mean that God is the first life, then you can not place natural laws on the supernatural. If you are saying that a cell was the first life you are doing two things that are questionable. First, you are changing the laws of science to fit your theory, instead of changing your theory to fit the laws of science. Laws of science should be followed before a theory should. Second, you are assuming that the first life (cell) came from non-living matter. If you assume this, then why would there be a law saying that it would not happen again. If a cell came from non-living matter once, why would it never happen again? There is no reason for an evolutionist to think it will not happen again, therefore no reason to have the law in the first place.
Sadly I could not find anything about Pasteurs own words, but most of the sites I found that cited the "law of biogenesis" misrepresented it, and the scientific method.
Most of them stated that "Pasteur has proven beyond doubt...", "The LoB is on of the most proven laws in science" and stuff like that.
But science does not work that way! It is not possible to "prove" a scientific theory, it is only possible to falsify it. A scientific law is nothing more than a hypothsis that has not yet been falsified, and is thought unlikely under current conditions to be falsified ever.
And that is all Pasteur and his colleagues have done: they have shown that some other theories about the spontanueous creation of life were false.
The law of biogenesis works quite well under current conditions, when it is aplied to "life" as it was known 150 years ago. But it stops to work when we ask "So, where did life come from?"
Here we come back to the two options you cited:
1. God did it. Regardless of which God or how it was done, life has a "supernatural" origin.
But that leads to a problem:
Is God life? If yes, then - by the law of biogenesis - he has to come from other life. If no, the LoB is wrong here: life did come from non-life.
So that leaves option 2: life started by some natural process.
You asked why then this law of biogenesis would exist at all: because it HAS it´s use. It IS true, for all observed higher life forms. Flies do not come from dirt - cats do not give birth to dogs.
But as Newtons laws are limited to the macrocosm, and do not apply for quantum processes, the LoB does not apply to the primary formation of life.
You asked: why should it not happen again.
Well, perhaps there is a real answer that I simply do not know. A biologist may have it. But there are two likely possibilities.
1. It can happen only under certain limited conditions. Some theories of abiogenesis assume a very different athmosphere as nowadays.
2. It happens all the time - but for some reasons (to difficult to observe, competetion with existing life, long time from self-reproducing molecules to "animals") we have not yet observed it.
And also, the last thing that you referred to, saying that "There are many theories against the law of biogenesis.", carries no logical bearing.
You misread: I stated "There are several theories
for abiogenesis (meaning: the start of life)"
