Posted on 11/25/2008 10:22:41 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
A team of Princeton University scientists has discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution.
The scientists do not know how the cellular machinery guiding this process may have originated, but they emphatically said it does not buttress the case for intelligent design, a controversial notion that posits the existence of a creator responsible for complexity in nature...
(Excerpt) Read more at princeton.edu ...
Your question has the assumption of philosophical naturalism embedded in it and requires the assumption of philosophical naturalism for interpreting any answers. In summary, you commit the fallacy of equating the existence of natural physical laws with philosophical naturalism in your question. Now perhaps you believe that generating fallacious questions is somehow support for philosophical naturalism, but that is only because you lack the critical-thinking capability needed to recognize your error.
That you continue to insist on maintaining your position even after I have showed you the fallacies supporting it merely proves the point that a belief in philosophical naturalism destroys critical-thinking ability.
Can you cite an example of consciousness that exists without a body?
If you can’t cite an example of a scientific discovery that resulted from abandoning methodological materialism, could you tell us what point you are trying to make?
You cannot even define ID, yet you are certain that it has no place? Furthermore, your statement about Eistein replacing Newton cannot be further from the truth. Thus, if you do not understand physics, don’t make absurdly false statements about physics.
I do realize that I have insulted or may have insulted you on this point. But please, “Newton is the Man” as far as science and technology goes. Yes, much of his work breaks down at the extremes, but so does Einsteins when you look closely at it.
In 1862, August Kekule von Stradonitz had all but given up the pursuit of the structue of benzol when he conceived its hexagonal structure (the "benzine ring") as the result of a dream he had of a snake biting its own tail. Dreams are not part of the rigor of methodological materialism.
Yes. The consciousness of the many people throughout history who have experienced and described discorporate experiences, aka "near-death experiences".
That's why science relies on methodological naturalism -- an assumption about the natural world. If that assumption can be shown to be incomplete or wrong it can be changed.
Creationists, on the other hand, willfully accept a philosophical position that destroys their critical-thinking ability--they are absolutely unwilling to accept any evidence that contradicts their religious beliefs. They misrepresent, pick and choose, and otherwise mangle any data that contradicts their religious beliefs, and that which they can't so treat they ignore. Creation "science" is pure religious apologetics, and everyone knows it.
So don't lecture scientists about critical thinking.
#2: Directed mutation implies a designer. Now the Evos will have to work overtime to convince the public that this too is the product of a process that merely gives the “appearance of design.” LOL
False.
What these scientists are describing is just a feedback mechanism. No big deal -- except to creationists who know little about science and who are blindly grasping at any straws that come by.
What matters in science is how you validate ideas. Methodological materialism concerns itself with evaluating hypotheses.
I had such an experience as a child during surgery. Sorry, but everyone who has reported such an experience has had a body that lived to tell about it. I'm not aware of anyone recovering from cellular necrosis and reporting such an experience.
1. Origin of the Universe-tell us how, from a naturalistic point of view, the universe sprung from nothing. To do this you must contradict Einstein, Wilson, Penzias, Hubble, Jastrow, the findings of COBE, the findings of WMAP, law of cause and effect, David Hume's assertions of first cause, Kalam's Cosmological Arguement. Even Fred Hoyle, avowed atheist to the bitter end said there seemed to be a superintelligence tinkering with the laws of physics. Science can take you back only as far as a few millionths of a microsecond prior to Big Bang. But what of the moment prior to that singularity. Please clear this up for all of us.
The second example in the history of science in which the assumption of supernatural causation has led to useful scientific discoveries is first life. Tell us how the first cell came to be.
If living organisms are nothing more than chemicals and their sofisticated reactions, and nothing else, please explain consiousness...what is its chemical makeup? What does conciousness weigh? What is the molecular structure of love, hate, beauty, justice? You do agree that there is something called conciousness? No?
If at any point you deny the universe beginning, then you deny all of the findings of the theory of general relativity, Hubbles red shift, the predicted background ratiation from the big bang found by Wilson and Penzias, as well as the findings of COBE and WMAP. You have denied what science has shoved into your face. Yours is a volitional application of selective science and is dishonest in refusing to consider all of the above findings and allow those findings to take you whereever they will take you.
So your charge is simple. Just tell us the natural materialistic explaination for origin of the universe, first life, and consiousness.
is assuming a supernatural causation.
Please state when and where non-naturalistic processes have been used in science to produce a tangible result.
An interesting problem, but the net energy (and therefore mass) of the universe is zero, so it is an error to assert that physics says something came from nothing. Physics allows temporary somethings from nothing. And we are, by all accounts, both scientific and religious, temporary.
ID/Creationism: The idea that a non-materialistic "intelligence" (or God) somehow is involved in naturalistic processes.
Furthermore, your statement about Eistein replacing Newton cannot be further from the truth. Thus, if you do not understand physics, don’t make absurdly false statements about physics.
The Einsteinian theory of certain aspects of physics replaced Newtonian. I used it as an example of how one materialistic theory can replace another and that does NOT open the door for ID. It was exemplary and tangential to my argument.
Consciousness exists — obviously — but cannot be defined in material terms, nor can its existence be demonstrated by the scientific method.
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Chuckling. Has the simple statement of your predisposed thinking ever actually worked as scientific evidence?
C’mon, just saying so don’t make it so.
If the brain dies, so does consciousness (if you have evidence to the contrary, I’d love to see it). The brain is a physical entity. Consciousness would then seem to be housed in a physical entity. That physical entity can be poked and prodded using electrical and chemical stimuli to produce mental events.
I think you still have work to do on your thesis.
Simplicity-is a subjective term.
Elegance-is a subjective term.
Laws of Physics-can you tell me from naturalistic science where and how we test and display by scientific method that the law of physics should not be 'expected' to act upon nature consistent with those laws of nature...whether it is a cue-ball or bullet or a distant star?
The idea that any given branch of science (save, of course cosmology) is dependent on the answers to how it All Started is to eschew science and the Scientific Method.
Why assume that the laws will be consistent?
Why assume that we will be able to discover them?
Nothing I said or quoted implied that.
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