The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

Soul Winner wrote: »

I agree, the above doesn't support that but I still maintain that life either popped into existence by chance or it was purposely designed. A step by step gradual process from chemicals to self replicating molecules to cells being the result of the laws of chemistry and physics is a pipe dream. Life is either a complete fluke (chance) or designed by an intelligence, an intelligence which exceeds that of mankind's by billions of light years.

So although you maintain that life must have popped into existence by pure chance if it was not designed, you have not presented any evidence to support the claim. You are expressing an opinion about natural chemical processes, while conceding that the opinion is not supported by people who study natural chemical processes at a professional level.

You've shown me research which goes some way to explaining it in terms of gradualism but that by no means demonstrates it adequately. You think it does enough and I disagree.

I'm not doubting the efforts of these people nor their sincerity, but when other equally qualified scientists are coming up with conflicting theories that they think better explains the origin of life, who are we to side with? There is no general consensus. I agree, a lot of them explain a lot of things until they try to demonstrate it in a controlled environment. And in every case they fail to see the elephant in the room, i.e. themselves, the intelligent designers.

Nobody is claiming to have demonstrated abiogenesis. Remember that conservative estimates for the chance of abiogenesis occuring are one in 10^40. The chances of winning the lotto are roughly one in 10^7. That means you are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more likely to win the lotto than for a given interaction between chemicals to produce life. To create life, we would need thousands of tonnes of a variety of chemical solutions, under primordial conditions, interacting for millions of years. In other words, we would need to recreate the early earth.

Instead, we are saying the natural occurrence of abiogenesis is plausible, and that is evident in the research scientists carry out.

himnextdoor wrote: »

We're 4-0 (at least) up and you want to call a draw? :eek::(:D

:cool:

He was being magnanimous about the 'dead beat' cause that is Evolution.:)

Wicknight wrote: »

If the Intelligent Designer can only be God, and we create life, doesn't that make us God? Oh my word!

We are made in the image and likeness of God ... so if we were to invent some kind of simple 'proto-life' (using vast inputs of intelligently directed actions) that would be expected ... but it wouldn't make any of us the God who created the Universe and all life therein!!!:)

Wicknight wrote: »

If the Intelligent Designer can only be God, and we create life, doesn't that make us God? Oh my word!

We don't create life though, we copy it. Big difference. And God doesn't just create life, He creates the potential for life. Can we do that? Heck, we can't even define life. Prove me wrong please.

So I see the thread has once again entered the phase where the previous points raised about abiogenesis are ignored, and the anti-evolution side start throwing around rhetoric.

Our posts don't go away just because you don't respond to them.

The reason there is a lack of response is because the argument is going around in circles. OK here we go again so...

Morbert wrote: »

So although you maintain that life must have popped into existence by pure chance if it was not designed, you have not presented any evidence to support the claim. You are expressing an opinion about natural chemical processes, while conceding that the opinion is not supported by people who study natural chemical processes at a professional level.

Not at all. The default position is that life is obviously intelligently designed just looking at it from a physical molecular level. Why? Because even the most basic of living systems that we know have a complexity beyond anything that modern intelligent designers can manage to produce. Not only does it look to all intense and purposes to have been designed for a purpose there is also no naturalistic theory that explains it. You have faith that someday this will happen and I have faith that it won't. Both of our positions are faith based but I seem to be the only one willing to admit that.

Morbert wrote: »

Nobody is claiming to have demonstrated abiogenesis.

But in order to expel ID completely you will to have to demonstrate it. Like I said, ID is the default position, if it wasn't then nobody would get the Nobel prize for demonstrating that its not. That's why we have scientists trying to explain without recourse to an intelligent designer. They can't do it.

Dr Robert Shaprio said the following in 2006:

"We shall understand the origin of life within the next 5 years"

"Two very different groups will find this development dangerous, and for different reasons, but this outcome is best explained at the end of my discussion.

Just over a half century ago, in the spring of 1953, a famous experiment brought enthusiasm and renewed interest to this field. Stanley Miller, mentored by Harold Urey, demonstrated that a mixture of small organic molecules (monomers) could readily be prepared by exposing a mixture of simple gases to an electrical spark. Similar mixtures were found in meteorites, which suggested that organic monomers may be widely distributed in the universe. If the ingredients of life could be made so readily, then why could they not just as easily assort themselves to form cells?

In that same spring, however, another famous paper was published by James Watson and Francis Crick. They demonstrated that the heredity of living organisms was stored in a very large large molecule called DNA. DNA is a polymer, a substance made by stringing many smaller units together, as links are joined to form a long chain.

The clear connection between the structure of DNA and its biological function, and the geometrical beauty of the DNA double helix led many scientists to consider it to be the essence of life itself. One flaw remained, however, to spoil this picture. DNA could store information, but it could not reproduce itself without the assistance of proteins, a different type of polymer. Proteins are also adept at increasing the rate of (catalyzing) many other chemical reactions that are considered necessary for life. The origin of life field became mired in the "chicken-or-the egg" question. Which came first: DNA or proteins? An apparent answer emerged when it was found that another polymer, RNA (a cousin of DNA) could manage both heredity and catalysis. In 1986, Walter Gilbert proposed that life began with an "RNA World." Life started when an RNA molecule that could copy itself was formed, by chance, in a pool of its own building blocks.

Unfortunately, a half century of chemical experiments have demonstrated that nature has no inclination to prepare RNA, or even the building blocks (nucleotides) that must be linked together to form RNA. Nucleotides are not formed in Miller-type spark discharges, nor are they found in meteorites. Skilled chemists have prepared nucleotides in well-equipped laboratories, and linked them to form RNA, but neither chemists nor laboratories were present when life began on the early Earth. The Watson-Crick theory sparked a revolution in molecular biology, but it left the origin-of-life question at an impasse.

Fortunately, an alternative solution to this dilemma has gradually emerged: neither DNA nor RNA nor protein were necessary for the origin of life. Large molecules dominate the processes of life today, but they were not needed to get it started. Monomers themselves have the ability to support heredity and catalysis. The key requirement is that a suitable energy source be available to assist them in the processes of self-organization. A demonstration of the principle involved in the origin of life would require only that a suitable monomer mixture be exposed to an appropriate energy source in a simple apparatus. We could then observe the very first steps in evolution.

Some mixtures will work, but many others will fail, for technical reasons. Some dedicated effort will be needed in the laboratory to prove this point. Why have I specified five years for this discovery? The unproductive polymer-based paradigm is far from dead, and continues to consume the efforts of the majority of workers in the field. A few years will be needed to entice some of them to explore the other solution. I estimate that several years more (the time for a PhD thesis) might be required to identify a suitable monomer-energy combination, and perform a convincing demonstration.

Who would be disturbed if such efforts should succeed? Many scientists have been attracted by the RNA World theory because of its elegance and simplicity. Some of them have devoted decades of their career in efforts to prove it. They would not be pleased if Freeman Dyson's description proved to be correct: "life began with little bags, the precursors of cells, enclosing small volumes of dirty water containing miscellaneous garbage."

A very different group would find this development as dangerous as the theory of evolution. Those who advocate creationism and intelligent design would feel that another pillar of their belief system was under attack. They have understood the flaws in the RNA World theory, and used them to support their supernatural explanation for life's origin. A successful scientific theory in this area would leave one less task less for God to accomplish: the origin of life would be a natural (and perhaps frequent) result of the physical laws that govern this universe. This latter thought falls directly in line with the idea of Cosmic Evolution, which asserts that events since the Big Bang have moved almost inevitably in the direction of life. No miracle or immense stroke of luck was needed to get it started. If this should be the case, then we should expect to be successful when we search for life beyond this planet. We are not the only life that inhabits this universe."

And here we are, half way through 2011 with not even a hope in sight of ever figuring out this so called simple little problem. If life was so simple at its emergence on this planet then it should be simple to demonstrate now how it came about. Surely we can make many different computer models of what the earth might have been like way back there and test these theories within those confines? We have, they don't work. Having faith that someday it will be figured out is exactly that, faith. So why are ID proponents the only ones singled out for bringing faith into science?

Morbert wrote: »

Remember that conservative estimates for the chance of abiogenesis occuring are one in 10^40. The chances of winning the lotto are roughly one in 10^7. That means you are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more likely to win the lotto than for a given interaction between chemicals to produce life. To create life, we would need thousands of tonnes of a variety of chemical solutions, under primordial conditions, interacting for millions of years. In other words, we would need to recreate the early earth.

And we have done this, using computer models, but even there these theories have not been verified. We will never be able to create an early earth so we must work with what we have, and what we have is just speculation as to what the early earth might have been like, but like I said, even when these theories are tested in those specific confines they fall apart.

Morbert wrote: »

Instead, we are saying the natural occurrence of abiogenesis is plausible, and that is evident in the research scientists carry out.

Its only plausible given certain conditions but we cannot verify if those conditions were the actual conditions or not. Plus as Dr Shapiro states above: "Unfortunately, a half century of chemical experiments have demonstrated that nature has no inclination to prepare RNA, or even the building blocks (nucleotides) that must be linked together to form RNA."

Wicknight wrote: »

LOL. We can't even define life but we can say God created the potential for it and that we can't create it. Ok then

OK smarty pants, give us your definition of life please. Good luck with this one...

Wicknight wrote: »

Scientists have no interest in expelling ID. You continue to view biology in relation to atheist scientists trying to prove your religion is wrong.

Do I?

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. "Billions and Billions of Demons" - 'Richard Lewontin PhD Zoology Alexander Agassiz Research Professor at Harvard University'

Wicknight wrote: »

The world is full of creation myths. Scientists neither have the time nor the desire to spend all their days trying to prove they are wrong. Why would they, in science it is the responsibility of someone making a case for the accuracy of an explanation to support this, not for everyone else to show it is wrong.

Well Darwin tried to explain how special creation was wrong in his book Origin of species. And he even used theology to make his point.

Taken from Evolutionnews.com

"When the Discovery fellows get together -- at their secret volcano lair, of course -- they sometimes joke that a clever constitutional lawyer could probably succeed in having Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) banned by a federal judge. The book should be kept out of public school science classrooms because of its considerable theological content. No one should be talking about God in a science classroom.

Of course, this is a joke, or is meant to be. Whatever one thinks of its arguments and evidence, the Origin of Species stands near the top of the list of the classics of science and should be understood by any student.

Which is why this new article in the British Journal for the History of Science (BJHS) is so significant. The author, Steve Dilley, is an Arizona State University-trained philosopher of science who studies the relationship between science, theology, and philosophy. His analysis, "Charles Darwin's use of theology in the Origin of Species," BJHS 2011, argues that Darwin used theology throughout his 1859 masterwork to argue for the truth of his theory of descent with modification by natural causes. Darwin's theology was not merely negative, entertaining the assumptions of his creationist opponents as hypotheses simply to contradict those assumptions with evidence.

Rather, Dilley argues, Darwin employed theology in a positive fashion, as support for his own position. "In the Origin," Dilley writes, "Darwin used a specific theological view of God's relationship to natural laws in order to argue for evolution and against special creation." The Origin supplies abundant evidence of theology in action; as Dilley observes:

I have argued that, in the first edition of the Origin, Darwin drew upon at least the following positiva theological claims in his case for descent with modification (and against special creation):

1. Human begins are not justfied in believing that God creates in ways analogous to the intellectual powers of the human mind.

2. A God who is free to create as He wishes would create new biological limbs de novo rather than from a common pattern.

3. A respectable deity would create biological structures in accord with a human conception of the 'simplest mode' to accomplish the functions of these structures.

4. God would only create the minimum structure required for a given part's function.

5. God does not provide false empirical information about the origins of organisms.

6. God impressed the laws of nature on matter.

7. God directly created the first 'primordial' life.

8. God did not perform miracles within organic history subsequent to the creation of the first life.

9. A 'distant' God is not morally culpable for natural pain and suffering.

10. The God of special creation, who allegedly performed miracles in organic history, is not plausible given the presence of natural pain and suffering.

Nothing in Dilley's article can be construed as challenging evolutionary theory, or supporting ID; his scholarly concerns lie elsewhere. As a student of the science-theology-philosophy triad, Dilley wants to understand how these areas of human understanding mutually inform each other. In that, his new article succeeds wonderfully, and will become a locus classicus for future analysis of the history and nature of evolutionary theory.

The article will also be a category-buster to illuminate current discussions, where evolutionary biologists (such as Jerry Coyne or Richard Dawkins) continue to use theology to make their case for Darwinian evolution."

Wicknight wrote: »

Scientists work on testable scientific theories. If a theory is shown to be accurate it is expanded upon and retested, over and over again. If there are knock on consequences for the theology of a particular religion that is rather here nor there.

How ID is testable:

'A Positive, Testable Case for Intelligent Design' - by Casey Luskin

In 2009, I discussed a paper in BioEssays titled "MicroRNAs and metazoan macroevolution: insights into canalization, complexity, and the Cambrian explosion" which stated that "elucidating the materialistic basis of the Cambrian explosion has become more elusive, not less, the more we know about the event itself, and cannot be explained away by coupling extinction of intermediates with long stretches of geologic time, despite the contrary claims of some modern neo-Darwinists." At that time, I noted that "[t]he authors give no indication that they themselves support intelligent design (ID), and it seems they are still hopeful for a 'materialistic' explanation for the Cambrian explosion." Recently I was directed to an article by one of the paper's authors, Mark McPeek, a professor of biology at Dartmouth College, where Dr. McPeek makes it clear that he is in fact not an ID-proponent. Dr. McPeek notes that he is a theist, and he's entitled to his theistic evolutionary views. But I felt it was worth responding to some of his criticisms of ID since they reflect common misunderstandings of the theory of intelligent design.

The passage in question is where he states:

What makes something science is not merely having hypotheses. Science is having hypotheses and then testing them. The Intelligent Design hypothesis is untestable by science, exactly because we can never empirically know or understand the actions of God or any other Intelligent Designer. This in no way negates the validity of the hypothesis. It simply means that this hypothesis is outside the purview of science, because science can only support or refute hypotheses that are empirically testable, and this is not one of them.

Dr. McPeek's article goes wrong where he says: "The Intelligent Design hypothesis is untestable by science, exactly because we can never empirically know or understand the actions of God or any other Intelligent Designer." Let's take God out of the equation here so Dr. McPeek's statement now says: "The Intelligent Design hypothesis is untestable by science, exactly because we can never empirically know or understand the actions of ... any ... Intelligent Designer." That statement is incorrect.

It's quite a simple exercise to know and understand the actions of humans, who happen to be intelligent designers. For example, by studying the actions of humans in the world around us we can construct a variety of testable predictions about intelligent design.

The theory of intelligent design begins with observations of how intelligent agents act when designing things. By observing human intelligent agents, there is actually quite a bit we can learn know and understand about the actions of intelligent designers. Here are some observations:

Table 1. Ways Designers Act When Designing (Observations):
(1) Intelligent agents think with an "end goal" in mind, allowing them to solve complex problems by taking many parts and arranging them in intricate patterns that perform a specific function (e.g. complex and specified information):

"Agents can arrange matter with distant goals in mind. In their use of language, they routinely 'find' highly isolated and improbable functional sequences amid vast spaces of combinatorial possibilities." (Meyer, 2004 a)
"[W]e have repeated experience of rational and conscious agents-in particular ourselves-generating or causing increases in complex specified information, both in the form of sequence-specific lines of code and in the form of hierarchically arranged systems of parts. ... Our experience-based knowledge of information-flow confirms that systems with large amounts of specified complexity (especially codes and languages) invariably originate from an intelligent source from a mind or personal agent." (Meyer, 2004 b))

(2) Intelligent agents can rapidly infuse large amounts of information into systems:

"Intelligent design provides a sufficient causal explanation for the origin of large amounts of information, since we have considerable experience of intelligent agents generating informational configurations of matter." (Meyer, 2003.)

"We know from experience that intelligent agents often conceive of plans prior to the material instantiation of the systems that conform to the plans--that is, the intelligent design of a blueprint often precedes the assembly of parts in accord with a blueprint or preconceived design plan." (Meyer, 2003.)

(3) Intelligent agents re-use functional components that work over and over in different systems (e.g., wheels for cars and airplanes):
"An intelligent cause may reuse or redeploy the same module in different systems, without there necessarily being any material or physical connection between those systems. Even more simply, intelligent causes can generate identical patterns independently." (Nelson and Wells, 2003.)

(4) Intelligent agents typically create functional things (although we may sometimes think something is functionless, not realizing its true function):
"Since non-coding regions do not produce proteins, Darwinian biologists have been dismissing them for decades as random evolutionary noise or 'junk DNA.' From an ID perspective, however, it is extremely unlikely that an organism would expend its resources on preserving and transmitting so much 'junk.'" (Wells, 2004.)

So by observing human intelligent agents, there is a lot we can know and understand about intelligent designers. These observations can then be converted into hypotheses and predictions about what we should find if an object was designed. This makes intelligent design a scientific theory capable of generating testable predictions, as seen in Table 2 below:

Table 2. Predictions of Design (Hypothesis):
(1) Natural structures will be found that contain many parts arranged in intricate patterns that perform a specific function (e.g. complex and specified information).

(2) Forms containing large amounts of novel information will appear in the fossil record suddenly and without similar precursors.

(3) Convergence will occur routinely. That is, genes and other functional parts will be re-used in different and unrelated organisms.

(4) Much so-called "junk DNA" will turn out to perform valuable functions.
Dr. McPeek says, "Science is having hypotheses and then testing them." There's nothing wrong with that statement. He goes on to say that "science can only support or refute hypotheses that are empirically testable." There's nothing wrong with that statement either. The problem is when he says that ID "is not" such a testable hypothesis. But as seen in the quote above, this accusation is made right after Dr. McPeek made his inaccurate statement that we can "never empirically know or understand the actions of ... any ... Intelligent Designer." On the contrary, if we can empirically know and understand the actions of intelligent agents, then we can make testable predictions about what we should find if intelligent causation was at work.

That's exactly what ID proponents do. And the predictions of ID can be put to the test, as discussed in Table 3:

Table 3. Examining the Evidence (Experiment and Conclusion):
(1) Language-based codes can be revealed by seeking to understand the workings of genetics and inheritance. High levels of specified complexity and irreducibly complexity are detected in biological systems through theoretical analysis, computer simulations and calculations (Behe & Snoke, 2004; Dembski 1998b; Axe et al. 2008; Axe, 2010a; Axe, 2010b; Dembski and Marks 2009a; Dembski and Marks 2009b; Ewert et al. 2009; Ewert et al. 2010; Chiu et al. 2002; Durston et al. 2007; Abel and Trevors, 2006; Voie 2006), "reverse engineering" (e.g. knockout experiments) (Minnich and Meyer, 2004; McIntosh 2009a; McIntosh 2009b) or mutational sensitivity tests (Axe, 2000; Axe, 2004; Gauger et al. 2010).
(2) The fossil record shows that species often appear abruptly without similar precursors. (Meyer, 2004; Lonnig, 2004; McIntosh 2009b)
(3) Similar parts are commonly found in widely different organisms. Many genes and functional parts not distributed in a manner predicted by ancestry, and are often found in clearly unrelated organisms. (Davison, 2005; Nelson & Wells, 2003; Lönnig, 2004; Sherman 2007)
(4) There have been numerous discoveries of functionality for "junk-DNA." Examples include recently discovered surprised functionality in some pseudogenes, microRNAs, introns, LINE and ALU elements. (Sternberg, 2002, Sternberg and Shapiro, 2005; McIntosh, 2009a)

Finally, in a later section of his article, Dr. McPeek writes: "if God's hand were accepted as the scientific explanation for some complexity of nature, scientific inquiry into that complexity -- by definition -- stops." Again, nothing could be further from the truth. Below are about a dozen or so examples of areas where ID is helping science to generate new scientific knowledge and open up new avenues of research. Each example includes citations to mainstream scientific articles and publications by ID proponents that discuss this research:

ID directs research which has detected high levels of complex and specified information in biology in the form of fine-tuning of protein sequences. This has practical implications not just for explaining biological origins but also for engineering enzymes and anticipating / fighting the future evolution of diseases. (See Axe, 2004; Axe, 2000; Axe, 2010 ba)

ID predicts that scientists will find instances of fine-tuning of the laws and constants of physics to allow for life, leading to a variety of fine-tuning arguments, including the Galactic Habitable Zone. This has huge implications for proper cosmological models of the universe, hints at proper avenues for successful "theories of everything" which must accommodate fine-tuning, and other implications for theoretical physics. (See Gonzalez 2001; Halsmer, 2009.)

ID has helped scientists to understand intelligence as a scientifically studyable cause of biological complexity, and to understand the types of information it generates. (See Meyer, 2004b; Dembski, 1998b; McIntosh, 2009a.)
ID has led to both experimental and theoretical research into how limitations on the ability of Darwinian evolution to evolve traits that require multiple mutations to function. This of course has practical implications for fighting problems like antibiotic resistance or engineering bacteria. (See Behe & Snoke, 2004; Gauger et al. 2010).

ID implies that there are limits to the information-generative powers of Darwinian searches, leading to the finding that the search abilities of Darwinian processes are limited, which has practical implications for the viability of using genetic algorithms to solve problems. This particular example is relevant because Dr. McPeek cites the evolution of anti-biotic resistance, antiviral drug resistance, and insecticide resistance as his prime examples of the utility of Darwinian evolution. Ironically, one of the primary the ways that scientists combat such forms of resistance is based upon the premise that there are LIMITS to the amount that organisms can evolve. If biological realities like limits to evolution did not exist, it would be pointless for medical doctors to try to combat antibiotic resistance or antiviral drug resistance, because evolution could always produce an adaptation such that the target organism would become resistant without incurring a fitness cost. So ID's predictions about the existence of limits to evolution is what helps combat antibiotic, antiviral and pesticide resistance--not knowledge of Darwinian evolution. (See: Dembski and Marks 2009a; Dembski and Marks, 2009b; Ewert et al. 2009; Ewert et al. 2010; Axe et al. 2008.; Axe 2010a; Axe 2010b; Meyer 2004b; McIntosh 2009a; and many others.)

ID thinking has helped scientists properly measure functional biological information, leading to concepts like complex and specified information or functional sequence complexity. This allows us to better quantify complexity and understand what features are, or are not, within the reach of Darwinian evolution. (See, for example, Meyer, 2004b; Durston et al. 2007; Chiu and Thomas 2002.)

ID has caused scientists to investigate computer-like properties of DNA and the genome in the hopes of better understanding genetics and the origin of biological systems. (See Sternberg, 2008; Voie, 2006; Abel & Trevors, 2006.)
ID serves as a paradigm for biology which helps scientists reverse engineer molecular machines like the bacterial flagellum to understand their function like machines, and to understand how the machine-like properties of life allow biological systems to function. (See for example Minnich and Meyer, 2004); McIntosh, 2009a.)

ID causes scientists to view cellular components as "designed structures rather than accidental by-products of neo-Darwinian evolution," allowing scientists to propose testable hypotheses about causes of cancer. (See Wells, 2005.)

ID leads to the view of life as being front-loaded with information such that it is designed to evolve, expecting (and now finding!) previously unanticipated "out of place" genes in various taxa. (See, for example, Sherman, 2007; de Roos, 2005; de Roos, 2007; de Roos, 2006.)

ID explains the cause of the widespread feature of extreme degrees of "convergent evolution," including convergent genetic evolution. (See Lönnig, 2004; Nelson, & Wells, 2003; Davison, 2005.)

ID explains causes of explosions of biodiversity (as well as mass extinction) in the history of life. (See Lönnig, 2004; Meyer, 2004b; Meyer et al., 2003.)
ID has quite naturally directed scientists to predict function for junk-DNA, leading to various types of research seeking function for non-coding "junk"-DNA, allowing us to understand development and cellular biology. (See Wells, 2004; McIntosh, 2009a); Seaman and Sanford, 2009.)

While it seems clear that Dr. McPeek's criticisms of ID are based upon severe misunderstandings of the theory, don't expect him to admit he's wrong. Dr. McPeek holds a prestigious position at an Ivy League school where he pursues research related to evolutionary biology. If Thomas Kuhn's ideas hold any merit, he's not likely to admit the veracity of a new, competing paradigm of biology. Also, his article makes it clear he's capitulated to the NOMA construct which pretends that, as he puts it, "science can only be mute on these issues, since we cannot empirically test the existence, actions or methods of God." While we might not be able to scientifically identify the designer as God, we can certainly find signs of intelligent action in nature.

Dr. McPeek might feel that it is impossible to scientifically test for the prior action of an intelligent agent, but a lot of other scientists disagree with him. Many of their peer-reviewed scientific publications are cited among the references below.

Morbert wrote: »

This isn't related to what I wrote, and might explain why you are going around in circles. You originally said that, if life was not intelligently designed, it must have popped into existence, and you posted a bunch of quotes from experts. I explained to you that experts don't believe life popped into existence, and are in fact investigating the different chemical and physical processes that would have been responsible for abiogenesis. You ingored this, and asserted that the "default opinion" people must have is that life is intelligently designed. Not only is that wrong, it is irrelevant.

The reason why they don't believe that it just popped into existence is because they know that such an explanation is absurd in the extreme. So they try to explain it in such a way that makes it an inevitable outcome in the evolution of the cosmos. I pointed to Dr Shapiro's article above and said that we are still waiting for his prediction to come to pass...

Morbert wrote: »

Do you accept that scientists studying abiogenesis do not claim life "popped" into existence.

Yes.

I will reply to the rest of your post later, have to dash out now...