Epistemology of Design (The limitations of science)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 10, 2009, 06:04 (5244 days ago) @ xeno6696


> > We are discussing the limited resources of the Earth. 
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> And all of Earth's components are derived from stellar material that was created in the interstellar cloud that formed our sun and solar system. It's imperative we look outside our planet for these details. If you're only looking here, you're casting your net in shallow waters.-The Standard model and our knowledge of star and solar system formation are pretty complete. We know the available elements. We can study how life is formed right here and we are outside looking also with our satellite probes, etc. 
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> > By your reasoning the Earth is finite. The chances for de novo life on this planet is limited to the Earth and are finite. 
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> There's a minor snafu in your logic: If you're stating that I assert that life can only exist here, I don't agree with that. If however you're stating that the chances for life on earth are finite, this I can accept, but it does nothing to our conversation outside of a general statement that there is a finite number of chemical combinations to create life; nothing new here for either of us. In mathematical terms: A solution exists. -I agree; but we are not dealing with a system that has infinite or almost infinite opportunities for chance to do this. Life can appear anywhere in the universe where the right conditions, such as here, exist. But the requirements of a living cell are very specific, to repeat myself, which greatly reduces the result to be from contingent chance events.
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> > > Design isn't tenable due to the things we cannot know; we cannot call something designed when we've never designed something like it. 
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> > We use life's designs all the time to to develop micro-engines and adaptations. 
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> That's not the same thing. Studying chemistry/nanophysics and applying it isn't the same thing as being able to say "This was designed." Far from it. You can make the argument that "you're studying a design" but there's no way to know it was actually designed. Life follows a pattern that breaks every design rule we would ever apply--and the only reason we know that a bridge was designed is because we know its component parts; rheebar, concrete, struts, girders--were all made by men, and something had to fashion them together. 
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> Does this make it more clear what I'm driving at? We only know that man-made objects are designed. We can't know whether or not a non-man-made object was designed. 
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> Human chemists can create chemicals in much more simple and efficient pathways than what happens in nature. So, if life was designed, why didn't the "supreme intelligence" use paths of lesser resistance? -You cannot negate a designer by defining the designer. Intelligent designing usually requires choices, so simplest may not be best for a particular system. Human chemists can choose what they need off a shelf. Life has to take what comes along and use it. Life has to be more adaptable than the chemist. 
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> In the end I'm still doing little more than pointing out that accepting design is still an act of faith. This whole exercise seems circular, even to me, at this juncture, heh.-We are back at the same point. I've admitted in the past that the only proof of a designer is a negative one, showing that life is so complex, only intelligenced could have designed it..