The limitations of science (The limitations of science)

by David Turell , Saturday, February 20, 2010, 14:29 (5388 days ago) @ dhw


> Here's the deal I'm offered: 
> 
> a) choose design and have faith in a universal intelligence, the form of which is unknown and unknowable, the origin of which is inconceivable, and the presence of which is impossible to detect; b) choose chance, chuck your chemistry set in the Jacuzzi, and wait for a cry of "Eureka".
>
> Try arguing the opposite of what you believe. -I don't need to quote Dembski, that tricky monster, to offer what I believe. Everyone, even Dawkins, agrees that most of biology looks designed.
You have offered two options as a sourse of design: chance or design. If there is a third way I haven't seen or heard about it as a theory. It would have to be 'spontaneous generation' and that died an ingloroius death many eons ago.-We have an either/or choice. Chance requires probabilities. Matt doesn't want to touch that with a ten-foot pole and insists we must know everything, every last detail, about living biochemistry, and add all knowledge ab out 10^80 particles in the universe before we can calculate the propabilities of chance. there is no way I'll accept that. -There are all sorts of steps that have to be taken to even get to the necessary amino acids (20), all left-handed, nucleotides, all right-handed, while made from those 20 lefties. Only eight amino acids have arrived on Earth from the meteorites we have studied. How did the other 12 pop up? Or are we doing a Darwin: there are gaps in the record and we have'nt found those pesky missing rocks yet? How did RNA and DNA polymerize without enzymes, which are absolutely nesessary or the polymer reactions really will take forever, millions years for each tiny addition of a molecule? -And finally, if one has a supply of all the amino acids needed for one manufactured part on the shelf the probability of them coming together into something functional (i.e. the flagellum), has been calculated, and the only complaint I've seen is that an error was made (that is not admitted) but, surprisingly, when the error is accounted for, the odds remaining still negate chance.-If chance doesn't work what is left? George's argument of endless time is not available. Life appeared in 200-400,000 years after the Earth cooled enough, and with what we know about extremeophiles, the time coujld be somewhat shorter. That time limit is part of the probabilidties.-I'll stick with design from an amorphous universal intelligence. I cannot know more than that. Except, I've got intelligence! Where did that come from? Yes, out of my brain. So how do we account for consciousness? I don't know. But I'm happy to have it. It is an amazing emergent quality that I enjoy. And I see that convergence is everywhere in evolution. Convergence is built into the process. Many attempts at the same result. Intelligence started evolution and convergence produced mine. Now you have a brief summary of my religion.