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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (93823)	1/17/2005 4:44:22 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Respond to of 108807

Interesting site, particularly this page: The question of life’s origin has engaged the minds of humans since they first contemplated our place on Earth and in the Universe. The subject often elicits emotion—first because it involves ourselves, and second because biochemists don’t yet have a comprehensive account of the specific steps that led to life on our planet. A Non-scientific Idea Many people have been raised to accept unquestioningly certain principles, one of which is that life originated by means of a God or gods. The theological or philosophical idea that life resulted from such a supernatural process is a belief. Admittedly, it might be a perfectly good belief, but it remains just that—a belief—for no unambiguous information, acceptable in a laboratory of science or a court of law, confirms the creation of life by a supernatural being or beings. Scientists have no clear data whatsoever supporting the idea that someone or something deposited already-made life on planet Earth long ago. Furthermore, we have no known way to test experimentally the idea that divine intervention created life. Science is agnostic when it comes to God—not atheistic, as some people prefer to read that laden word wrongly—just agnostic. Aside from personal feelings or cultural persuasions, most professional scientists just don’t know what to make of a God or gods. We simply have no bone fide data on which to base a judgment. The belief that life suddenly arose by means of some vitalistic process is outside the realm of modern science. Today’s scientific method, which is a philosophy of approach based on reasoned logic bolstered by experimental and observational tests, cannot be used to study supernatural ideas for the origin of life. Accordingly, such ideas, unprovable even in principle, seem destined to remain beliefs forever, hence beyond the subject of science. tufts.edu The rest of the page, BTW, makes it pretty clear that science has not been able to come up with a very good explanation of the origins of life. The current consensus appears to be "chemical evolution", but AFAICT, there is no observable evidence to support it. This "theory" replaced earlier "theories" of "spontaneous generation" and "panspermia", the latter of which only attempted to answer the question of origins of life on Earth, not answering the basic question at all. In any case, the use of the word "theory" to describe these hypotheses seems to be a much looser usage than one would apply to evolution in the context of what happened AFTER life originated. And by allowing it to be used in that context, scientists seem to be leaving themselves open to the Cobb County usage "only a theory" and to those who would describe attribution of the origins of life to a supreme being or force as a "theory". It seems to me that the "theory" of chemical evolution has no more evidenciary basis than the "belief" in creation by a supreme being as an explanation of the origins of life. Just my 2 cents.