Yes, that's exactly what you're advocating. You can no more subject Jesus to scientific testing than you can the Easter Bunny. You are abandoning all pretense of science.


Irrelevant. That belief can not be tested.


Nonsense. You can't produce one verifiable iota of evidence that He even existed.


There is no empirical Christ. You need to learn what "empirical" means.

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What we really need to do is fix the public.
-- Jon

I doubt it.


http://scholar.google.se/scholar?q=self ... &hl=en&lr=
Really, don't be so childish. You think we haven't figured out self-replication?


Yep, called it. You don't know what a scientific experiment is. You are asking us to disprove a designer (God, you would call it). Until you can actually test the presence of a designer, you can't prove or disprove it. How would test for the presence of a designer? I'm talking a scientific experiment, with all the thoroughness and discipline, not the "rob test of belief".

Further, what does a designer add to the picture? Did you know that we've never seen a solar system formed? That is, from start-to-finish. Same for stars. All we ever get are snapshots in time. Be that as it may, we've a pretty good idea on how they are formed (more so for stars than solar systems). Why do we not invoke a designer? If a designer is doing all this, then its doing it by what you would call "materialistic" methods that are indistinguishable. Why, then, should you add to the picture an unecessary element? An element that is not testable or understandable outside of rob-ology (and barely understandable then)?


Everything ever figured out by science has shown that there is no magic. No miracle. Every single iota. Science is perhaps the most successful framework to figure out and understand the world around us. Your complaint is that since you see it chasing out your god (likely a god of the gaps), that science shouldn't be chasing him out but embrace him. Get over it. If you're god is pathetic enough to be one of gaps then he is neither omnipresent or omnipotent.


Well, then someone better be able to prove where or who or how or what about this designer. You've heard of plate tectonic theory, right? The guy who proposed it in the late 1800s ((Wegner, I believe) got laughed out. Why? His interpretation of the evidence was extremely compelling. He had figured out that the continents had moved over time. It was his mechanism--he thought continents were like icebreakers, plowing through the oceanic crust. It wasn't until the 60s that a mechanism was found and some refinements made that the theory became accepted. If, and it's a big if given the progress being made in abiogenesis research, life can only come about through manipulation you will have to show us the designer, scientifically of course. Until you can prove that your designer god was on earth ~3.8 billion years ago, then there is no reason to suspect that it was there 3.8 billion years ago. How would you prove the existence of a designer from 3.8 bya?


That's almost the way methodological naturalism works. Under the pretense that supernatural explanations are worthless in trying to understand the universe because they do not add anything to our knowledge. Wether they are real, science has no way to test some of them, no way to discern their effects. God did it is a cop-out, advancing nothing. Science, if you will, figures out how god could have done it (or does it). Again, I think you have a problem with this because you see science chasing your god away, which suggests to me that your god is one of gaps, a pathetic imposter and poseur.


Well, aside from the history of science showing us that such an approach works wonderfully, I don't really know what you're talking about. I agree with ringo, I don't think you know what empiricism is. But then, you couldn't even straighten out Rational from rational when you first came to EvC, so no surprise, honestly.


Or you're simply misunderstanding Dawkins. Which is it? All right, I'll let you in on a secret--there is someone not thinking things through here, but it's not Dawkins, and there's someone misunderstanding, and it's not me. Probably you.


I was going to ask you this. I honestly don't care if god is proven or disproven, or if science is wrong on something (science will correct itself, unlike most theology). I only have a care for truth (not Truth). You peddle in false "Truths" (false simply because you claim it to be the Truth, and it is against other Truths), unable to expand your idea of god, unable to shake your misplaced fear in science (or anything liberal, for that matter).

Really, don't call the pot black, kettle.

Feel free to actually pick out a scientific study, rather than give a search listing of people theorizing about self replication. The first study on your list was was published in AD 2000, and talking about 'directed evolution', and they were confident the reasearch would lead to greater understanding. What is the current status of the avenue? Has it since been abandoned (as s common with scientific avenues).



I am only holding the philosophical assumptions of naturalists to the same level of scrutiny, thoroughness, and discipline.

The fact is, you are beginning with a premise that is not emperical, about the absolute value of the single tool of empirical inquiry. Empitical inquiry is not our only tool for testing reality and truth claims.

In a way I agree with you... natural science should look at every material avenue that it can disclose. But we cannot presuppose that it is going to reveal everything. But there are other discliplines that must be combined and made to cohere with what it can illuminate.

[/quote="kuresu"]Further, what does a designer add to the picture? Did you know that we've never seen a solar system formed? That is, from start-to-finish. Same for stars. All we ever get are snapshots in time. Be that as it may, we've a pretty good idea on how they are formed (more so for stars than solar systems). Why do we not invoke a designer? If a designer is doing all this, then its doing it by what you would call "materialistic" methods that are indistinguishable. Why, then, should you add to the picture an unecessary element? An element that is not testable or understandable outside of rob-ology (and barely understandable then)[/quote]

Your first question is a philosophical one... as is the last.

And if a designer is doing 'some' of this, then he/she is allowing for materialistic method in total or in part?

Is materialism an absolute Kuresu?

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Bambi grew up to have horns

The topic is about "what Dawkins said", remember? The only relevant tools would be the ones that Dawkins thinks are relevant. He's only holding you to the same standards that science uses: empirical/observable/material evidence for a creator and for the creation process.

You can't just postulate your own woo-woo "tools" and use them to claim that Dawkins changed his position.

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What we really need to do is fix the public.
-- Jon

Any successful experiment would be relevant.



Once again it is pretty obvious that you were either unable to read what I wrote or intentionally misrepresenting what I wrote. And it does not require clairvoyance to see that the history is of questions in science getting solved.



Bullshit. Again, please learn to read what people write and say.

It is very unlikely that we will ever know how life was formed on earth originally. No one is even considering it or much worried about that.

What is being explored are ways life can be formed and as I pointed out up thread, once one method is discovered it is likely many other pathways will be quickly discovered after that.

Once we have successful experiments that produce life, we will know that wholly natural means are not simply possible but rather that under a given set of conditions, life WILL result.



Again, that is both false and totally irrelevant.

It does not matter whether we can show a given set of environmental conditions actually existed. What scientific experiments show is "If these conditions exist then this will be the result."

It seems maybe you don't know what a scientific experiment is after all.



Nonsense. There is no "leap of faith", rather there is a long history. So far every challenge has resolved to a natural answer. Until and unless there is some reason to expect something other than a natural answer, it would require that "leap of faith" to imagine otherwise.

But wait, there is more.

The non-natural answer, even if correct, is worthless and tells us nothing. When you insert the designer or intelligence or god, we learn nothing. It still does not tell us anything about how a process works.

Insert miracle here is simply worthless as an answer.



I think the readers can see that throughout this discussion who has provided reasoned responses explain WHY they support a position.

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How pierceful grows the hazy yon! How myrtle petaled thou! For spring hath sprung the cyclotron - How high browse thou, brown cow? -- Churchy LaFemme, 1950

You are unfamiliar with google scholar, perhaps? It's a collection of open-access publications. It may not have the most up-to-date published articles, but it has quite a few. Other members of EvC had a better search engine, though I can't recall it. However, you wanted us to point you to studies about self-repliction and abiogenesis. A list of studies on how self-replication occurs fits your demand. Searching for abiogenesis "self repliction" turns up more recent studies, also meeting your demand.

Oh, and I wouldn't bandy about the term "theorize" as you do, since you use it improperly (you know, the whole "it's only a theory" bs).

Your own words, please. The video is creationist propaganda, nothing but bs. Dumbski has been debunked. Behe has been debunked. Everything that any creationist has put forward has been debunked, thoroughly and repeatedly. That people buy into this is evidence of simple will-full or possibly malicious ignorance. So please, your own words on how we can test for the presence of a designer, and preferably an idea that hasn't been debunked.

I'm sorry, what is not empirical about relying on "materialist" explanations? History shows that they work exceedingly well. Why is it that mankind has come furthest in the last 300 hundred years in terms of knowledge compared to the last 6,000 years? A little thing called Enlightenment. And one of the ideas to come out of the Enlightenment was that the world could be understood by empirical means. And guess what happened? We get Gallileo, Copernicus (truthfully those two from the Italian renaissance), Newton, Hooke, Linne, Darwin, Wegener, Maxwell, Curie, Einstein. What advancement in knowledge has come from "god did it" theology? None. Every single advance in knowledge has been borne of empiricism.

Testing reality and truths with empiricism has worked wonderfully, so why do you wish to subvert it and destroy it?

You want nothing more than special treatment for your god because your god is one of gaps. That you insist on religion being mixed with science when there is no need to, when science has proved wonderfully capable of answering how, and in several cases, why the world works. You are scared rob. Scared that science might take your play-god away from you and tell you to grow up.

Would you at least answer the question? You've evading me, and you're not going to slip by. Let's try this again. What does a designer add to the picture if there is no way to discern one?

I predict that you won't actually answer any challenge but go galloping off on a new course, trying to find your way out the illogical box you've trapped yourself in.

The key word being "buy". "Intelligent design" and "creation science" are little more than a front for selling DVDs. The ignorant buy them and the greedy sell them.

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What we really need to do is fix the public.
-- Jon

You won't answer any of my questions? Because you can't point to a single, solitary, lone, mono, uno experiment that shows anything remotely resembling a replicating cycle apart from those taking existing polymers, and subjecting them to intelligent manipultion? And neither could molbiogirl. Neither could she account for adenine despite all the meteor hoopla and 'scientific ' mumbo jumbo.

I therefore will not answer any of yours. But... I will remind you that the way your question is framed, it is not a scientific question.

What exactly are you seeking to add?

What is the picture? Tell me what logical box you wish to confine yourself, and I will e delighted to answer your question, since at that time, you will be exposed for presupposing a material explanation for everything which no competent cosmologist can do without invoking philsophy apart from any emperical ability to verify or test.

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Bambi grew up to have horns

Once again, bullshit. It most certainly is a scientific question. The problem is that it is impossible for you to give a scientific answer because the scientific answer is "the designer adds nothing, is worthless, totally irrelevant and adds nothing."

That is why ID is a failed and worthless concept.

Even if it were true it has no informational content, we learn nothing at all about the process.

The reason ID is simply silly and a waste of time is that even if it were determined that there was some fantasy designer, we still would need to figure out what natural processes that fantasy designer used before we would know anything more about how things happen.

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How pierceful grows the hazy yon! How myrtle petaled thou! For spring hath sprung the cyclotron - How high browse thou, brown cow? -- Churchy LaFemme, 1950

What picture are you and he trying to add to?

Just answer the question.

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Bambi grew up to have horns

Since you're demanding answers to off-topic questions, can we conclude that you've abandoned the idea that Dawkins is "retreating"?

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What we really need to do is fix the public.
-- Jon

The picture is "Does having some Designer in the picture of how life can be created add any value, any worth or information?"

What we find is the picture is the same whether there is some designer in it or not.

The designer, even if true, adds no value, no information, no worth.

But we have several other pictures in this thread.

We have the picture of Rob being unable to support the assertions made in the Opening Post.

We have the picture of Rob constantly trying to draw the thread off topic.

We have the picture of Rob constantly bringing in irrelevant nonsense.

We have the picture of Rob trying to Palm the Pea and Moving Goal Posts instead of addressing the responses to his posts.

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How pierceful grows the hazy yon! How myrtle petaled thou! For spring hath sprung the cyclotron - How high browse thou, brown cow? -- Churchy LaFemme, 1950

Process?

Please do tell us what process was used (it's sounds as if you know).

What is this process or picture you wish to add to?

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Bambi grew up to have horns

That's the question to you. As Dawkins said, empirical/material evidence is needed for the creator and the process - or "intelligent design" is a non-starter.

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What we really need to do is fix the public.
-- Jon

Whatever process finally creates life.

And we are not the ones trying to add to it. You are trying to paint in an unnecessary, useless, worthless designer that would add no knowledge or information.

Had you actually read the message you took that quote from you would have found that it addressed that question as well.

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How pierceful grows the hazy yon! How myrtle petaled thou! For spring hath sprung the cyclotron - How high browse thou, brown cow? -- Churchy LaFemme, 1950