Re: Ool - out at first base?

On Sun, 15 Dec 2024 4:50:40 +0000, MarkE wrote:

On 15/12/2024 1:31 am, Martin Harran wrote:

On Sat, 14 Dec 2024 23:04:28 +1100, MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com> wrote:
>

On 14/12/2024 10:34 pm, Martin Harran wrote:

There's nuance here.

Again you make no attempt to address my actual question.
>

As I've said here many times before, there is the
error of prematurely invoking divine action.

That is exactly what ID does and you seem pretty much on the same
track.
>

When that is done, it is
shown to be error by subsequent scientific advances. That's an appeal to
the god-of-the-gaps.

And God-of-the-gaps is exactly what you are offering here, no matter
how you try to dress it up, until you offer some sort of tahyway from
the protocell to God..
>

However, consider this scenario. Let's say there were 500 years of
active OoL research from this time on. What if (say) little further
progress has been made. In fact, the greatly enlarged body of
understanding and experimental results in this area have revealed that
(say) the barriers to the naturalistic formation of a viable protocell
are far, far deeper than than is regarded today.
>
What then?

Nothing different - how long we don't know something has no impact on
the answer. The fact that it took thousands of years to figure out
that the sun is just another star didn't change the fact that that was
exactly what it was.
>

Well, a person living 500 years from now still has a personal choice to
make:
>
Option 1. They may choose to say, "We just don't know, but keep looking;
I still have no need of that God hypothesis."

Why would they refer to the 'God hypothesis' at all? I use quotes
because it's not even a hypothesis until you outline a pathway that is
at least possible if not plausible.
>

Option 2. Or they may choose a provisional position like this: "On the
basis of the accumulated scientific evidence, I'll take a closer look at
the God hypothesis, though continue looking for a natural explanation."

People who would go for that option would likely already be
considering the 'God hypothesis'
>

Of course, different people will make different choices in this scenario
for many different reasons.

The reason is almost inevitably whether or not the person nis a
religious believer.
>
Can God and science be reconciled? Yes they can, no doubt about it in
my mind but not by turning the God that people generally worship into
some kind of designer fiddling about with protocells. Christians
believe that man is made in God's image; what have protocells to so
with that image?
>
>

My contention is that option 1 is actually a*more* reasonable and valid
application of science.
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Moreover, I contend that we are much closer to this point than 500 years
away.

>
Christian de Duve put it this way: "Science is based on the working
hypothesis that things are naturally explainable. This may or may not be
true. But the only way to find out is to make every possible effort to
explain things naturally. Only if one fails - assuming failure can ever
be definitely established - would be entitled to state that what one is
studying is not naturally explainable."
>
That seems close what to what I'm proposing. Thoughts?

>
First of all, I note that you left out the first sentence in that
quote - "Intelligent design is simply not a scientific theory" !
>
I'm not conversant with de Duve's ideas but I don't see him suggesting
that you can just jump from "not naturally explainable" to "Goddidit"
which is what you are trying to do. There are many possible reasons
why we might not be able explain something in natural ways - limits on
human intellectual competence is just one, lack of tools and equipment
is another. There is, of course, always the possibility that God did
indeed do it but if you are going to make a case for that, you have to
be able to offer some ideas about how or why he did it that way and
the strength of your argument will be directly proportional to how
tentative or how strong your ideas are. You are offering nothing so
that means your argument is worth nothing.
>

>
No, wrong. Demonstrating an existing theory to be false has no
requirement to provide and demonstrate a viable alternative*.
>
Your arbitrary requirement that I "offer some ideas about how or why
[God] did it that way" or else I am "offering nothing so that means your
argument is worth nothing" says something about where you're coming
from.
>
-----
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* Example of a theory disproved without an alternative being offered:
>
The Caloric Theory
The caloric theory posited that heat was a fluid-like substance, called
"caloric", that flowed from hot objects to cold ones. This theory was
widely accepted because it explained certain phenomena, such as the
transfer of heat and the expansion of gases when heated.
>
The Disproof
In 1798, Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) conducted a groundbreaking
experiment during the boring of cannons. He observed that enormous
amounts of heat were generated by friction, seemingly without any
depletion of a material "caloric" substance. His experiments
demonstrated that heat could be produced indefinitely by mechanical
work, challenging the idea that heat was a conserved fluid.
>
However, while Rumford's findings refuted the caloric theory, a
comprehensive alternative explanation—what we now understand as heat as
energy transfer and the kinetic theory of heat—was not yet fully
developed.
>
The Transition Period
It wasn't until the mid-19th century, with the work of James Prescott
Joule, Hermann von Helmholtz, and others, that the modern thermodynamic
understanding of heat as a form of energy was established. Joule's
experiments in particular quantified the relationship between mechanical
work and heat, leading to the formulation of the first law of
thermodynamics (energy conservation).
>
Why This Matters
This case illustrates how science can enter a transitional phase where
an established theory is refuted, but a replacement theory has not yet
emerged. During such periods, scientific progress often relies on
accumulating experimental evidence and conceptual groundwork before a
new paradigm can be articulated. The disproof of caloric theory paved
the way for the modern understanding of energy, despite the temporary
gap in explanatory frameworks.

An interesting example to choose in the TO context.
Thompson (or the Reichsgraf von Rumford, as I call him, of course)
was a fascinating character in every sense of the word.
He had lots of great ideas and sound intuitions, which often panned out.
But also  more than once, his theological preferences got in the way
and his attempts to turn some of his observations in design arguments
meant that it was left to others to then develop the right theories, to
his considerable chagrin.
Case in point his attempt to explain animal fur as designed for their
comfort, which led him to misinterpret his own observations on air
convection to claim that gases were non-conductors to heat.
I'm not sure your account of the history of the transition from caloric
to motion-based accounts was as neat as you described it. I'd agree
that it gets as close to a falsification experiment in the Popperian
sense as you could possibly get. But still, there were several ways
open to repair the old theory, more or less convoluted, and they
were all put on the table. And while he did not formulate the details
of a competing theory, there was at least an outline - he talked about
radiation and motion early on. So I'd say there was quite a bit of
opposition "despite" the outlines of an alternative theory, and
caloric theory really became abandoned in full only when it became clear
that his board ideas opened an avenue for promising research and
better and better alternative theories,