James Le Fanu: Why Us? (The limitations of science)

by David Turell , Sunday, July 12, 2009, 17:45 (5611 days ago) @ John Clinch

I said "Then I say that you seem to be starting with your conclusion and retro-fitting the evidence that supports it. I'm not saying you are a pseudoscientist, but that's what they do". - 
I think you do not understand my point of view in how I think (for myself, not to have you think that way). I am not a pseudoscientist, and I'm sure I understand the biology of life far better than you do with my medical training. I reached my conclusions after years of study and retrofitted nothing. - 
> David said "You are correct again in a partial way, from my viewpoint. Prior to and like Antony Flew, I reviewed the evidence and changed from agnostic to belief in a universal intelligence imbedded within and without the universe. With my scientific training I feel I have the right to read a study, and its findings, and reach my own conclusions, which may be partially different than the author. Scientific facts do allow different interpretations" - My point is, I think quite clear. You are so enamoured of your belief system, or non-belief system you are not willing to understand mine, or accept that I am allowed to express it. And you use the typical defense mechanism of going on an inappropriate attack, when my position cannot be really attacked. My final position is from natural philosophy and it suits me fine.
 
> Right, let's skip to the chase: this is pseudo-scientific, a priori, and usually implausible, conclusion. However brilliant you are, David, unless you are an expert in paleo-biology, your views on this are as a lay observer. - It is not pseudoscience. I am using scientific evidence to reach a conclusion of my own. I am a lay observer in this area. I am not presenting it in a scientific journal. Then it would be pseudoscience. And since you brought up my possible brilliance, my childhood IQ was something over 150. - 
> David again: "Basically I feel that living organisms are too complex to have invented themselves. My prediction is that when 'junk DNA' is found to be filled with organizing interference RNA, as is happening now in biological research, the overwhelming complexity will present a picture so complex as to enormously reduce the probabilities that natural selection did it. After all natural selection is a passive purposeless process, using whatever forms or biochemicals are presented to it to have a competition decide the issue of what survives. - > You are trashing natural selection, for which there is a vast amount of evidence, but are being rather shy of putting any positive prediction in its place. - 
All the Darwinists claim that evolution has a purposeless direction. Gould explained that since bacteria were the simplest, evolution could only go in the direction of the more complex. Natural selection is passive and purposeless. - > You don't say but presumably that prediction would be "Godunnit". If so, I'm struggling to understand how that article supports that prediction. - I'm surprised you don't understand how the article fits. My point is that iRNA's and miRNA's are constantly being discovered out of so-called junk DNA. Life will be discovered to be so complex in its coding system in DNA/RNA that 'chance' development will be seen as impossible. I've been stating this theory of mine over and over on this website. Your mindset is so rigid you are not 'seeing' my comments. - > Believe me, I do understand where you are coming from: the complexity is indeed staggering and, of course, our present understanding cannot account for the origin of life. 
 
Right on! Here we are full agreement. But: we will never know 'for sure' how life originated. We can find methods in the lab that may mimic it, but that will be by the intelligent design of the scientists, and may not be the actual historical method. We cannot know the original method with certainty. - 
> I am extremely confident in saying that there is absolutely no evidence to support a metaphysical conclusion that a designer is responsible for RNA. Basically it's ID, creationism Mark II, and positively not a scientific theory. - I understand that is your rigid point of view. It is not mine. I didn't say it was a scientific theory and agree it is metaphysical. - 
> By the way, I haven't read Flew. He's on my list of holiday reading. Who knows, perhaps I'll change my mind on the God issue. But if I do, it'll be for metaphysical reasons and not based on any supposed evidence from nature. - You didn't read what I wrote above accurately. I told you Flew used the same evidence I used from science.