Chance v. Design Part 4 (Evolution)

by dhw, Sunday, July 12, 2009, 08:44 (5612 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt: The best that chance can give us is either the processes that initiated life were completely random (fair die roll) or they weren't...We cannot know if we were designed, thus meaning for all practical purposes, we have no other choice than to trust the origin of life question to science.
The argument cuts both ways. If we cannot know whether we were designed, we cannot know whether we came into existence by chance. So epistemologically speaking, science can't help us any more than metaphysics can. - Matt: Both explanations are unsatisfactory, but one is less so.
Why is chance less unsatisfactory than design? Do you have any objective criteria for measuring their unsatisfactoriness? Besides, why should one believe in an explanation one finds unsatisfactory? (This is the reason for many of us being agnostic.) - Matt: We do not know how the chemistry happened, we only know that it DID happen. It could have been designed, but we all agree we can't know." So in that broader sense, why try? 
As you will have learned from your study of epistemology, the borders between belief and knowledge are not clear. In the context of the origin of life, we can never get beyond belief. Eventually scientists may crack the code and discover how inanimate matter became animate, and eventually we may find that the universe is teeming with life. I find these possibilities immensely exciting ... and I would say the quest for knowledge is an end in itself. But I would also surmise that if these two discoveries were made, a lot of people would tend to believe in abiogenesis, which would be a hard knock for theism. - Matt [referring to my refusal to believe that my pet chimp could spontaneously type a Shakespeare sonnet]: It's bad to use a chimp in that scenario because you're installing intelligence into the situation which completely messes with the randomness. (The chimp has a will and will not pound out random information.) 
Sorry, I forgot to mention that my pet chimp is illiterate, doesn't speak English, never had any typing lessons and, despite many years of one-to-one tuition, still can't say let alone spell the word 'banana'.