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The definition and value of science

stevevw

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Scientists these days seem to think that they can claim a grand unprovable model explaining origins, cosmology, or even human nature, is science. That the process and probabilities with which their consistent theories explain things are sufficient grounds for estimating a thing to be true.

When did the empirical method and facts give way to speculations?
This is a metaphysical claim and not a scientific one. The science method is limited to measuring only naturalistic phenomena in quantitative terms within a closed physical world. Therefore It leaves a lot out regarding how we can know reality if reality also includes conscious experience and other ways of knowing. So methodological naturalism is more about epistemology (about how we should know reality) and from that its a short step to make ontological claims about reality, That's more a belief based on an assumption about what reality is. As science has been so successful it has gained popularity and become a dogma similar to religious belief.
To what extent is science relevant to life, what is it helpful for, and regarding to what can it be ignored?
Science is good at describing the the world/universe in physical/naturalistic terms. But I think think this is a description of some sort of interface that we create to help us live ion the world. Being an interface its like a surface representation of a deeper reality that we cannot comprehend. Quantum physics seems to support this. What that deeper reality is we are still trying to work out.

Maybe its got something to do with conscious experience where our experience can reveal more transcendent truths that has influence on the world. Maybe its Mind or Information itself which are fundamental. This seems to be a common thread throughout our history where we try to articulate this deeper reality in religion, art, stories passed down throughout time out who we are and our place in the scheme of things beyond what we see. I don't believe this appeal to something beyond what we see is an illusion or imaginary but something real and part of being who we are.
Should we mainly ignore it on origins but pay attention when it speaks of viruses and vaccines for example?
Science gives a description and doesn't tell us what is. So ideas like who we are, where do we come from and is there anything beyond what we see are beyond science. But as the world is so obvious too us and science is so good at mapping that out for good reason its easy to step over the line for people to claim that science is revealing reality itself and whatever it reveals is reality.

I don't think we can separate philosophy from science because we cannot separate the scientists from the science method. Everything is conscious experience and of Mind. Science is based on the assumption that there is a real world out there beyond our Mind. But we cannot know this because we cannot get outside our Minds. Everything is in the Mind and our conscious experience is all we have. So the only thing we know is real is our experience of the world and I think this tells us something about the world beyond scientific materialism.
Since science can neither prove nor disprove theories of origins like the Big Bang, Abiogenesis, and the grand theory of common ancestry why do we spend so much time discussing these life-irrelevant theories and so little simply marveling at the wonder of life, the universe, and everything?

Original comment from which this thread originated:
I once read that we don't perceive the world as physical objects. We first see meaning in the world and that is how we map it out. So an object like a cup on a table is seen as its meaning, it represents something deeper like food for life. Its not the object of a mountain we see but its majesty and as an obstacle and that's why people want to conquer them. That's why reality is not just about 'matter' but also about 'what matters' to us. This is just as powerful as the idea that reality is material objects as far as understand the world and ourselves.

What I think is interesting is that as we have advances we are narrowing down things to the big questions like how did the universe and life come about. But at the same time I think this is where science is limited. In fact science has revealed a strange world at the point near something from nothing which steps beyond classical understandings of the world and now it seems are forced to introduce counter intuitive ideas about explaining these findings.

So in some ways we need science to bring us to these limits for us to begin to be open to alternative ideas about what makes up reality.
 
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The Barbarian

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You are describing the "worship of science" so often complained about by puzzled scientists. They all understand the epistemological limits of science, but many laymen do not. We often see creationists attempt to copy the wording of science to lend authority to their ideas. Science envy is pointless and counter-productive. As you point out, science can't put ontological meaning into our view of the universe. There are other means to do that.
 
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Mountainmike

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Interesting post. Let me respond in pieces.


It's true that many (but not all) in the sciences will indeed personally think of some theories, even sometimes some less well supported by unique evidence theories, as if more reliable, like known fact, than they ideally should. But, also, some don't do that.

So, for example, while a highly tested (in hundreds of tests/observations over almost 100 years) theory like General Relativity (GR) could reasonably be thought to be a correct (won't be shown largely false ever) theory in a (rather wide) domain, perhaps even everywhere outside of a black hole for example....
...in contrast to a highly tested and well supported theory like GR, some other theories are much less tested and should not be given any special credence other than merely being a theory that is a candidate, among competing candidates, to some day join the small set of highly tested and supported theories. Now, some will give too much credence to those not-yet-tested enough theories, as if they are more reliable than we've established... But many won't make that mistake. So, you have a mix of attitudes.



Well, in the most general definition, science is merely the process/work/effort of trying to understand how nature works. To find the laws of nature. (Or, in contrast for complex system modeling where a system (such as the working of the human brain for example) which isn't possible to completely understand just by known theories, to find strong factors that seem reasonably useful for being reliable to work often.)

So, science being simply the effort to understand how nature works, it's what you do when you try to adjust how much watering to water your yard in the summer, for example. You are doing science when you do ongoing experiments to find out how little water is enough to maintain what level of green.



Sure. For example, there isn't yet any convincing example of abiogenesis I've seen/read about. Show me one, and then I'd take it more seriously....meanwhile, it's merely a group of speculations/speculative theories. (but on the other hand, a big picture view about abiogenesis has more to say I think and I put that in post #3 just below this one)

In contrast, physics is much more able to get to the heart of things in a meaningful way, because we can devise experiments where we isolate a variable quite well, singling out just 1 or a few physical forces in a way that helps us figure out how those building components of Nature work. That's not at all the same as understanding the full complexity of Nature! But it's a wonderfully interesting and useful process of finding out building blocks, many of which we can use to very great reward. For example, using General Relativity, we are able to make GPS navigation much more accurate than we could with only Newtonian physics alone.

So, abiogenesis -- so far that field is mostly speculative and without much evidence past simple basic organic molecules forming, but has many interesting possible avenues to explore more, and may or may not ever result in well supported science (that can be repeatedly tested or observed) to actually show the formation of a self-reproducing basic life form some day. It may never get there, and we don't know. It's speculative in that way. (but I have one speculation below in post #3)

In very sharp contrast, the Big Bang not only fully agrees with the Bible in a more simple obvious way -- it just outright corresponds to the wording of the Bible no matter which way you read the text -- but is happens is also very strongly indicated by extensive observations in astronomy.

The Big Bang is not proof of God all by itself (which I think God would not allow, as that would preclude faith, which is to believe without seeing conclusive proof ahead of time), but it's certainly fitting Genesis chapter 1. Christians often point out how the Big Bang especially well fits most views of God as creator.
I would like to respond to "physcis more able to get to the heart of things"

It hits at the very heart of the problem.
(and I speak as a mathematical physicist who spent much of a career in math modelling!)

It is also where the philosophical problem is.
If you look out of the window, maybe you see a solid green fence.
Yet nothing about the fence is actually green! - that is the wavelength of light that the fence is least able to use, so it reflects it. And even our present model of it, says it certainly is not solid! It is more space than particle (which is also just a model) and less dense perhaps than our solar system.

Our observation of the universe in a philsophical sense is only a shadow, or a reflection of what is actually there. Our models and laws are based on those abstract observations. . We observe it only in terms of how it interacts with our senses. Then there is projection problem. By analogy your TV which is only 2D so has less dimensions than your observable reality in 3D sees a blue cylinder with red ends as a red circle or blue rectangle. It sees nothing of the interior whether or not it is whole or empty. So it cannot model the reality. There is no reason to believe that we can observe all that is there (a blind cave fish or bat has a very different model) and no reason to believe we observe all the dimensions that are there. Why should we?
According to evolutionists we develop senses only that are needed to improve our survival.

So that comes to the model of the universe. We codify patterns in observations. Sure what we call gravity is repeatable so we call it a "law". But we cannot say what gravity "is" only what it normally does. It is a name for an observation, not an explanation.
And as dark matter shows, a name given to an error in a model, even the patterns that do exist dont fit everywhere. Take the rotation of remote galaxies.

As philosophers such as Kant noted, the "noumena" that is the things that underly our observations are unknowable, we can only know "Phenomena" that is how the noumena impact on our senses. The "laws" live only in our minds on paper and in our computers. They do not live in the world. They are just an abstract of the universe through a hazy porthole through which we observe how it interacts with us.

A blind cave fish or bat would have a completely different science from us.

Even the objectivity of what we observe presumed in the model is severely challenged by quantum physics, indeed one quantum experiment has recently confirmed to observers can see different outcomes of what they presume the universe to be. Quantum physics requires observation to crystallize the assumed reality. It is seemingly different to different observers! Sinceas a mind game any one observation of a single photon state can be used to trigger a bomb that destroys the world, it cannot be written off as only something that affects the small world!.

As science goes deeper it gets further from the reality. The extrapolation of the laws (to wind back time to big bang) , laws which are a further abstraction of observations which were already just an abstract. So it is several steps removed. So Physics laws do not "underpin the universe." in any sense. For sure we have gotten clever in observing and using patterns. But what underlies them, or whether what they usually do, they must always do, is an assumption not a logical conclusion.

As for the "big questions" , science has no idea what consciousness "is". This is brought into focus by such as veridical near death experiences. Veridical means the experiences can be validated to the extent the observer knew something about a place, a conversaation, or a process so detailed it cannot have been random chance, the detail is separately validated, but they cannot have known from the place they were, let alone without consciousness! They are astounding. And more and more neurologists and cardiologists are recognising that the mind is not just a process of the brain. The mind controls the brain.

This is evidence of what we Christians call a soul. Very few survive a cardiac arrest , even with our science, but the "veridical" experience of some that have show that consciousness is indeed separabe and survives clinical death.

So that poses a bigger question for life. The abiogenesis believers have us believe that life is just random chemistry , despite the fact they cannot tell us when where or how it happened. (and they dare challenge us on evidence??) Yet all of that explanation for life in totality can be completely dismissed since it cannot begin to explain a separable consciousness.

So physics does not get to the "heart of things" it finds patterns in observations of the universe and names and interrelates them. Mighty useful it is too. But it cannot see what any of it really "is" which is unknowable.
So Yes we can be surrounded by the "great cloud of witnesses" spoken of in the bible. If consciousness is just an energy that does not interact but can observe, science has no way of knowing or discounting it. The evidence of veridical experience certainly supports it!

Much of what atheists claim as a voice of "science" is not science at all. It is scientism.
A belief in a materialist origin for all.
Sadly they are teaching it to children.
 
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The Barbarian

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The abiogenesis believers have us believe that life is just random chemistry ,
"Abiogeneis believers" would include God, who says that the Earth brought forth living things. Since He was there to see it, I'd say that He has it right.

And scientists will tell you that science has no way of saying anything about God to either confirm or to deny Him. It's a method, not a philosophy.
 
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Mountainmike

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"Abiogeneis believers" would include God, who says that the Earth brought forth living things. Since He was there to see it, I'd say that He has it right.

And scientists will tell you that science has no way of saying anything about God to either confirm or to deny Him. It's a method, not a philosophy.

With respect "earth brought forth living things" in a context of creation, is not an explanation of the precise events.
So random chemistry is not the only hypothesis. I am firmly in the camp of "dont know" which is where science is.

As a catholic you may care to study such as "serafini" on eucharistic miracles- cardiac tissue created. So God really can will life from nothing if he cares to even now. The eucharistic miracles also allow darwin to be defeated with the test he himself set: that his law would be refuted if ANY complex life came from other than random small change, which these clearly did, with white cells showing recent life. Few realise these EM have been validated by many pathologists one of whom said it was "compelling evidence of created heart tissue"

All we have is an allegorical summation in the bible. It is not sufficient to describe the exact process for life, and we probably would not understand it even if it was explained.

The "soul" or "consciousness" is not chemistry. So at best the physical body and therefore abiogenesis/evolution is not a complete explanation of human life anyway
As for what the "soul" is. Does it experience time and location or is it free from both constraints? "non local" to use the words of quantum theory. We cannot know.
 
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The Barbarian

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With respect "earth brought forth living things" in a context of creation, is not an explanation of the precise events.
So random chemistry is not the only hypothesis. I am firmly in the camp of "dont know" which is where science is.
"Random chemistry" isn't an hypothesis at all. Chemistry isn't random; it works in specific ways. Seems to me that God made things so as to produce everything as necessary. No one still knows how life formed from natural processes, but the evidence continues to show that it did.

As a catholic you may care to study such as "serafini" on eucharistic miracles- cardiac tissue created. So God really can will life from nothing if he cares to even now.
God does do miracles. But it's not because He has to do them; it's to teach us something thereby.

The eucharistic miracles also allow darwin to be defeated with the test he himself set: that his law would be refuted if ANY complex life came from other than random small change, which these clearly did, with white cells showing recent life.
Oh, you've confused Darwin with abiogenesis. Darwin just supposed that life began when God created the first living things. It's the last sentence in On the Origin of Species. Darwin's theory is not about how life began.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Darwin, 1859 edition

Thought you knew.

The "soul" or "consciousness" is not chemistry. So at best the physical body and therefore abiogenesis/evolution is not a complete explanation of human life anyway
They aren't supposed to be. You seem to have a lot of misunderstandings about these theories. Might be useful to find out what they are actually about. Did you not know that while our bodies are made naturally, each of us is given a soul directly by God? I believe that's in the Catechism, if you're not sure about it.
 
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Mountainmike

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"Random chemistry" isn't an hypothesis at all. Chemistry isn't random; it works in specific ways. Seems to me that God made things so as to produce everything as necessary. No one still knows how life formed from natural processes, but the evidence continues to show that it did.


God does do miracles. But it's not because He has to do them; it's to teach us something thereby.


Oh, you've confused Darwin with abiogenesis. Darwin just supposed that life began when God created the first living things. It's the last sentence in On the Origin of Species. Darwin's theory is not about how life began.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Darwin, 1859 edition

Thought you knew.


They aren't supposed to be. You seem to have a lot of misunderstandings about these theories. Might be useful to find out what they are actually about. Did you not know that while our bodies are made naturally, each of us is given a soul directly by God? I believe that's in the Catechism, if you're not sure about it.

I suggest you check out the points I have made before contest them.

Chemistry is a quantum process in science so by definition it IS random.

"abiogeneticists" believe that unguided random processes led to a living cell which evolved from there.
The definition of "abiogenesis" is predicated on the definition of "life" and "Life" as defined by such as NASA includes the definition of "Living" as capable of darwinian evolution , you cannot separate them in science.

And regardless of that. Creation of life as heart tissue without precursors shows God can do what he wants!. So what happened in the past is uncertain. And it woud also trigger darwins falsification clause.

The point I make is science is not what people think. The universe is unknowable by science. The laws are patterns of osbervations not a scaffold that holds it up. Scientific materialists have no idea where life comes from because life has a soul. There is no explanation for that in chemistry or indeed for consciousness.
 
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The Barbarian

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Chemistry is a quantum process in science so by definition it IS random.
Chemical engineers would laugh at that belief. Turns out, chemical processes reliably go the same way, time after time. There is a nonzero probability that all the oxygen molecules will go to one corner of the room and suffocate you. I can confidently predict that will never happen. If this puzzles you, maybe you need more research.

"abiogeneticists" believe that unguided random processes led to a living cell which evolved from there.

Nope. A lot of us think God built nature to work that way. He says it did, after all. If not Him, who? Incidentally, an omnipotent God can use contingency just as easily as He can use necessity for His purposes. Don't sell God short, now.

The definition of "abiogenesis" is predicated on the definition of "life" and "Life" as defined by such as NASA includes the definition of "Living" as capable of darwinian evolution , you cannot separate them in science.

Sorry, that assumption is wrong. As you just learned, Darwin himself assumed that God just created the first living things. There is nothing whatever in Darwinian theory about the origin of life. You trusted the wrong people on that. If you doubt this, look up Darwin's four points of evolutionary theory and tell us which of them is about the origin of life.

And regardless of that. Creation of life as heart tissue without precursors shows God can do what he wants!

As I said, God can do miracles, but He doesn't have to do them to make things work. Miracles are done to teach us something, not because God isn't capable of creating a universe that works as He intends. And science doesn't deny miracles. You might as well be upset with plumbing for not considering miracles. I think you're trying to load science beyond it's capacity.

Scientific materialists have no idea where life comes from because life has a soul.
Science can't consider souls. But scientists can. So can plumbers.

Imagine that.
 
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Halbhh

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I would like to respond to "physcis more able to get to the heart of things"

It hits at the very heart of the problem.
(and I speak as a mathematical physicist who spent much of a career in math modelling!)

It is also where the philosophical problem is.
If you look out of the window, maybe you see a solid green fence.
Yet nothing about the fence is actually green! - that is the wavelength of light that the fence is least able to use, so it reflects it. And even our present model of it, says it certainly is not solid! It is more space than particle (which is also just a model) and less dense perhaps than our solar system.

Our observation of the universe in a philsophical sense is only a shadow, or a reflection of what is actually there. Our models and laws are based on those abstract observations. . We observe it only in terms of how it interacts with our senses. Then there is projection problem. By analogy your TV which is only 2D so has less dimensions than your observable reality in 3D sees a blue cylinder with red ends as a red circle or blue rectangle. It sees nothing of the interior whether or not it is whole or empty. So it cannot model the reality. There is no reason to believe that we can observe all that is there (a blind cave fish or bat has a very different model) and no reason to believe we observe all the dimensions that are there. Why should we?
According to evolutionists we develop senses only that are needed to improve our survival.

So that comes to the model of the universe. We codify patterns in observations. Sure what we call gravity is repeatable so we call it a "law". But we cannot say what gravity "is" only what it normally does. It is a name for an observation, not an explanation.
And as dark matter shows, a name given to an error in a model, even the patterns that do exist dont fit everywhere. Take the rotation of remote galaxies.

As philosophers such as Kant noted, the "noumena" that is the things that underly our observations are unknowable, we can only know "Phenomena" that is how the noumena impact on our senses. The "laws" live only in our minds on paper and in our computers. They do not live in the world. They are just an abstract of the universe through a hazy porthole through which we observe how it interacts with us.

A blind cave fish or bat would have a completely different science from us.

Even the objectivity of what we observe presumed in the model is severely challenged by quantum physics, indeed one quantum experiment has recently confirmed to observers can see different outcomes of what they presume the universe to be. Quantum physics requires observation to crystallize the assumed reality. It is seemingly different to different observers! Sinceas a mind game any one observation of a single photon state can be used to trigger a bomb that destroys the world, it cannot be written off as only something that affects the small world!.

As science goes deeper it gets further from the reality. The extrapolation of the laws (to wind back time to big bang) , laws which are a further abstraction of observations which were already just an abstract. So it is several steps removed. So Physics laws do not "underpin the universe." in any sense. For sure we have gotten clever in observing and using patterns. But what underlies them, or whether what they usually do, they must always do, is an assumption not a logical conclusion.

As for the "big questions" , science has no idea what consciousness "is". This is brought into focus by such as veridical near death experiences. Veridical means the experiences can be validated to the extent the observer knew something about a place, a conversaation, or a process so detailed it cannot have been random chance, the detail is separately validated, but they cannot have known from the place they were, let alone without consciousness! They are astounding. And more and more neurologists and cardiologists are recognising that the mind is not just a process of the brain. The mind controls the brain.

This is evidence of what we Christians call a soul. Very few survive a cardiac arrest , even with our science, but the "veridical" experience of some that have show that consciousness is indeed separabe and survives clinical death.

So that poses a bigger question for life. The abiogenesis believers have us believe that life is just random chemistry , despite the fact they cannot tell us when where or how it happened. (and they dare challenge us on evidence??) Yet all of that explanation for life in totality can be completely dismissed since it cannot begin to explain a separable consciousness.

So physics does not get to the "heart of things" it finds patterns in observations of the universe and names and interrelates them. Mighty useful it is too. But it cannot see what any of it really "is" which is unknowable.
So Yes we can be surrounded by the "great cloud of witnesses" spoken of in the bible. If consciousness is just an energy that does not interact but can observe, science has no way of knowing or discounting it. The evidence of veridical experience certainly supports it!

Much of what atheists claim as a voice of "science" is not science at all. It is scientism.
A belief in a materialist origin for all.
Sadly they are teaching it to children.
Nice exposition! I found myself nodding in agreement with familiar stuff all the way through (except you didn't get what I meant on physics getting to the "heart of things" because I don't write well enough, or include key parts I need to....), but it's great to see others here able to put the subtle into everyday language. Sometimes I wonder if anyone knows what I'm talking about when I try to explain that we have only a representation of reality in our minds -- That I'm referring to precisely what Kant referred to as the "noumena" and "Phenomena", trying to put it into everyday language (Kant was a main source for me to begin to understand that back about 35 years ago or so). I worry that after I explain that, then after hearing that, someone reading a post of mine won't feel like going any further, and getting what I say next. Or vise versa, where if I talk about physics getting at actual reality, the real thing, the noumena, it could cause someone to just assume I'm clueless that we have only a vague representation of reality in our minds that isn't even slightly like the realty out there, and so they'd just dismiss what I say, because how could anyone know both topics well, of the mind and physics).

It's hard to explain the limits on our perception and in contrast the reality of physics, both in one post, and get anyone to listen ( I assume). I don't want to write a really lengthy post either. But maybe I should just give up on trying to explain it all in exposition and just use metaphors.... (lol)

There is this amazing real world we cannot perceive, but we can discover aspects of like blind men feeling a part of an elephant. Our representation/phenomena being in contact with the real (in the absolute sense of the word). When we touch an elephant, though blindfolded, we are really touching a real thing even though our perception is profoundly unlike the reality...

Physics is sorta like that. It's like touching the elephant blindfolded and recording the phenonema. The elephant is real, and we are touching it, and that's real, in an absolute sense, regardless of how partial/transformed/altered our perception is -- it's still a transform of the real.

In physics we find the patterns (or approximations thereof in domains), and the patterns, mathematical, are accurately representing the real patterns nature consistently follows within certain conditions/domains. Nature itself. We actually have touched the real.
 
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Mountainmike

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Chemical engineers would laugh at that belief. Turns out, chemical processes reliably go the same way, time after time. There is a nonzero probability that all the oxygen molecules will go to one corner of the room and suffocate you. I can confidently predict that will never happen. If this puzzles you, maybe you need more research.



Nope. A lot of us think God built nature to work that way. He says it did, after all. If not Him, who? Incidentally, an omnipotent God can use contingency just as easily as He can use necessity for His purposes. Don't sell God short, now.



Sorry, that assumption is wrong. As you just learned, Darwin himself assumed that God just created the first living things. There is nothing whatever in Darwinian theory about the origin of life. You trusted the wrong people on that. If you doubt this, look up Darwin's four points of evolutionary theory and tell us which of them is about the origin of life.



As I said, God can do miracles, but He doesn't have to do them to make things work. Miracles are done to teach us something, not because God isn't capable of creating a universe that works as He intends. And science doesn't deny miracles. You might as well be upset with plumbing for not considering miracles. I think you're trying to load science beyond it's capacity.


Science can't consider souls. But scientists can. So can plumbers.

Imagine that.

I am a mathematical physicist, so I suggest you do more research!
What you said does not contest what I said.
 
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The Barbarian

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I am a mathematical physicist, so I suggest you do more research!
What you said does not contest what I said.
It does. You've confused what goes on at the quantum level with what goes on in our lives. As you just realized, Chemical reactions are quite predictable, which is why we can have industrial chemical processing.

I don't remember pchem fondly, but it was informative. Maybe you should take a look at it. Worth a try?
 
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Scientists these days seem to think that they can claim a grand unprovable model explaining origins, cosmology, or even human nature, is science. That the process and probabilities with which their consistent theories explain things are sufficient grounds for estimating a thing to be true.

When did the empirical method and facts give way to speculations?

To what extent is science relevant to life, what is it helpful for, and regarding to what can it be ignored?

Should we mainly ignore it on origins but pay attention when it speaks of viruses and vaccines for example?

Since science can neither prove nor disprove theories of origins like the Big Bang, Abiogenesis, and the grand theory of common ancestry why do we spend so much time discussing these life-irrelevant theories and so little simply marveling at the wonder of life, the universe, and everything?

Original comment from which this thread originated:

Science is the discovery of a set of rules behind a repeatable phenomenon. Most science is 100% accurate because the methodology used behind the scene will guarantee the truth we discovered. It is by means of the predictability and falsifiability of science which guarantee the truth of a science.

To put it another way, to a phenomenon which repeats, we can formulate a theory by infinitive number of times on observing how this phenomenon repeats itself, till to the point that our theory can predict its repeating behavior with 100% (or nearly 100%) accuracy, such that the phenomenon is predictable to use. Say, we are secured to send manned craft to the surface of moon, such that shall the mission failed we won't blame that "the theory is wrong". There are always reasons why such a mission failed but for certain that it's not our scientific theory which failed! If it's really that the theory failed, you deserve a Nobel Price on making it fails, because the theory itself is subject of falsifiability.

While both the predictability (it's theoretically predictable that we can go to the moon) and falsifiability of science are depending on the repeatability of such a phenomenon. That is, if we can't make the phenomenon itself repeat, whatever theory we come up with cannot be predictable (how next time the same phenomenon occur), and cannot be falsifiable (how we can make fail if it's not true next time it repeats itself).

So a truth is detected and confirmed only when we make our theory bearing the characteristic of predictability and falsifiability. What behind the scene is, we humans don't have the ability to predict a future. If a theory allows us to predict a phenomenon without error (i.e., nearly 100% predictable), we know that we have the truth of such a phenomenon at hand. Evidence almost has no bearing on such a process, instead prediction does.

TOE and Big Bang etc. won't repeat themselves in front of us. They can never have the predictability (how next Big Bang would occur) and falsifiability (how we make Big Bang theory fails next time when such a Big Bang occurs) required to secure what we can call a scientific truth. To put it another way, we humans will never have the capability to confirm such a truth (or falsehood) unless we can make the phenomenon itself repeat, from end to end. That is, if you would claim that TOE is a scientific truth, first you need to make a single cell evolves itself to a living being or organism. Then from the infinitive number of evolution from a single cell to a fully grown organism, you develop a formulation about how such a repetition shall occur predictably. And if the theory is not true, how it can be falsified through the next repetition of such a process of evolving from a single cell to an organism.

That's what science is and how its accuracy is attained. A "science" without predictability and falsifiability, at best, can only represent the best effort from our scientists to try to figure out alternatively what it is under the circumstance that true scientific methodology won't work as the phenomenon itself won't repeat! That is, we humans can't possibly know the scientific truth behind the phenomenon, but we can try our best to approach on what it is by means of non-scientific means. It says, science won't work but we can provide a non-scientific explanation worked with the best effort from our scientists. It is an explanation provided by our scientists, yes. It's a scientific truth, hardly! It doesn't attain any scientific accuracy at the end.

The deception is on,
Science is accurate - true
It is a science - true and false (yes in a sense that it's developed by our scientists, but not with a scientific methodology thus it's false)
Thus it is accurate - false (a fallacious conclusion, it's out of human capability to determine its accuracy)
 
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The Barbarian

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TOE and Big Bang etc. won't repeat themselves in front of us. They can never have the predictability (how next Big Bang would occur) and falsifiability (how we make Big Bang theory fails next time when such a Big Bang occurs) required to secure what we can call a scientific truth.
But predictions about the big bang can be tested, and if they are falsified, the theory falls. But many of the predictions of the theory have been subsequently verified (and yes, the results have been repeatedly reproduced) showing that the theory is correct. For example, the predicted microwave background was accidentally found by a couple of Bell Labs engineers who were trying to make the perfect microwave antenna. The residual hiss they were hearing no matter which way they pointed the antenna was the cooling radiation left over from the big bang.
 
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Mountainmike

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It does. You've confused what goes on at the quantum level with what goes on in our lives. As you just realized, Chemical reactions are quite predictable, which is why we can have industrial chemical processing.

I don't remember pchem fondly, but it was informative. Maybe you should take a look at it. Worth a try?
With respect you have confused it.

You are using hopelessly inappropriate analogies to the instance of abiogenesis.
Schoolboy science will not work here.


You cannot treat it like a dissociation equilibrium.
 
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The Barbarian

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With respect you have confused it.

You are using hopelessly inappropriate analogies to the instance of abiogenesis.
You're confused again. We're talking about the fact that chemistry is not random.

Schoolboy science will not work here.
Which is why you're having difficulty. Try to focus here. Chemistry, as you now realize, is not random, even if quantum events are random. I don't see why this should puzzle a physicist.
 
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mindlight

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1 Corinthians 3:19
Much that has been assumed to be true and much that the wise of this world have invested so much into constructing will indeed be exposed as folly in time.
 
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mindlight

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But predictions about the big bang can be tested, and if they are falsified, the theory falls. But many of the predictions of the theory have been subsequently verified (and yes, the results have been repeatedly reproduced) showing that the theory is correct. For example, the predicted microwave background was accidentally found by a couple of Bell Labs engineers who were trying to make the perfect microwave antenna. The residual hiss they were hearing no matter which way they pointed the antenna was the cooling radiation left over from the big bang.

The background hiss could be a leftover impact of the Big Bang or the result of a cosmos-wide or maybe even regional supernatural judgment that came later, how can we possibly know either way? What we know is that we hear a background hiss. That is the fact here. We may assume its scope is universal or not but cannot prove that either way from inside our own little cosmological bubble of consciousness and experimentation. To go beyond the fact of the hiss and to connect this to the prevailing models of cosmology and galactic evolution remains speculative.
 
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mindlight

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You're confused again. We're talking about the fact that chemistry is not random.


Which is why you're having difficulty. Try to focus here. Chemistry, as you now realize, is not random, even if quantum events are random. I don't see why this should puzzle a physicist.
In essence, he is saying there is no chemistry that shows how abiogenesis could work in practice. It simply does not happen, there are no facts or demonstrable experiments that support it. The credibility of the theory is incredibly shaky and without it, the whole edifice of naturalistic macroevolution is also challenged. If emergence from inanimate matter never produces life then why should we assume naturalistic processes also governed a billion-year process of evolutionary changes? If at any point in the development of life on earth we have to assume supernatural intervention to make it work then naturalism is no longer a sufficient modus operandi beyond the scope of what the scientific method can actually prove.
 
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The Barbarian

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In essence, he is saying there is no chemistry that shows how abiogenesis could work in practice.
God says it did. I believe Him.
It simply does not happen, there are no facts or demonstrable experiments that support it.
Well, let's take a look...

In the 1920s, A.I. Oparin suggested that conditions in the early Earth could produce the organic molecules (like amino acids) necessary for life.

The Miller-Urey experiment, in 1953, verified his prediction.

In 1969, the Murchson meteorite was found to contain abiotic amino acids, further confirming Oparin's prediction. More than that, the meteorite contains short protein sequences (peptides) of amino acids polymerized together.

About that time it was discovered that the one organelle necessary for cellular life (cell membrane) is the simplest organelle, and will self-assemble from organic molecules to form vesicles.

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Lipids can form abiotically:
The results indicate that condensation reactions and abiotic synthesis of organic lipid compounds under hydrothermal conditions occur easily, provided precursor concentrations are sufficiently high.

The credibility of the theory is incredibly shaky and without it, the whole edifice of naturalistic macroevolution is also challenged.
You've been badly misled about that. Evolutionary theory assumes life began somehow, but makes no predictions about that. Darwin, for example, just supposed that God created the first living things. Since macroevolution has now been directly observed, that's not an issue. I think you've confused macroevolution with a consequence of macroevolution (common descent).

If at any point in the development of life on earth we have to assume supernatural intervention to make it work then naturalism is no longer a sufficient modus operandi beyond the scope of what the scientific method can actually prove.
As you see, we don't have to make that assumption. Indeed, the evidence and God's word tells us that the universe was already made in such a way as to make the emergence of life inevitable. Perhaps you are unaware that science is only methodologically naturalistic, and does not (in fact cannot) say anything about the supernatural. Can't assert that it exists, and can't deny that it exists. If you want to believe that God created the Earth to bring forth life, I'm with you. If you'd rather just say natural laws happened that way without God, I'd disagree, but science can't help resolve that issue.

And, as you just learned, none of this has anything to do with biological evolution. If you learn nothing else from this discussion, remember that.
 
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