It was written 17 years ago by a non specialist. Of course it’s going to use more tentative language than what is written by OOL scientists today.
You have yet to show any reason to reject much more modern OOL assessments written by OOL researchers except you don’t like the implications for your religion. That isn’t a valid criticism.
What I noticed is that the Indiana article is almost 5,000 words (and some obnoxious font coloring, but that’s beside the point) and the Berkeley one is just under 700 words. For an “Evolution 101” presentation, the Berkeley one isn’t bad, the Indiana one is too detailed for most students. Of course, I’m not saying that they should ignore your point, I’m just saying that practically when you’re trying to distill things down for students it’s often the philosophical parts and the nuance that are first to go.
That’s possible. But I will tell you that constant “but you’re not doing science right!” from non-scientists is not going to be particularly effective at inducing them to change.
(To be clear, the following is a general statement, and not directed at @Ashwin_s).
Even for me, someone who believes God created the universe and affirms that God could have intervened in natural history, it gets really old to hear people tell scientists that they don’t know how to do science. It’s fine for people to ask questions about science and how science is done, but it’s just not this philosophically-laden quest to rid the world of religious people. It’s honestly mostly about curious people wondering about the world around them … and then getting in a lab (in vitro or in silico) to figure out how to understand it better.
Of course it’s a human endeavor, so it’s not perfect and can have its biases, its infighting, its ignoring what’s staring you in the face, but it’s a lot less that way than other methodologies of investigation. It’s hard to have a vast philosophical conspiracy in science, however it does tend to represent the underlying worldview of the scientists themselves, to some extent. It normally doesn’t affect the science at all, but it can affect how it’s communicated.
That’s why I say if Christians want better science communication, they need to stop pulling their kids out of science classrooms and bashing scientists, and encourage them to learn everything they can and think for themselves.
however, they ended up keeping philosophical baggage which is quite prominent to (atleast to me) in the article.
You should be able to see why this is a problem for people (especially theists). People access Science through “Science communication”. Science education at the high school level is essentially science communication too. If scientists cannot keep their world view our of presentations of Science and the state promotes Science education. Isn’t it the same as the state promoting a particular philosophy/world view?
I think a lot of the political problems with respect to the ID debate is due to this. All these pieces of communication add up in the mass consciousness and leads to two phenomenon-
Frankly, I am beginning to think that kids should not be taught evolutionary biology and origins related Science without a strong grounding in the philosophy of Science so that they are atleast mentally equipped to distinguish between Scientific fact and unintentional propoganda by the author of whatever text they are reading.
I suggest you educate yourself on scientific methodology first so you won’t keep mistaking accurate scientific descriptions as materialism/atheism driven “unintentional propaganda”.
So you should be all for a good grounding on the philosophy of Science.
That’s a good start.
But apparently you don’t think a good grounding on the philosophy of Science will involve avoiding untestable hypotheses on the presence or activity of God?
This is the core of my solid agreement with @swamidass that ID activists will never satisfy the scientific imperative of Intelligent Design … in the same way that Behe cannot tell us when God helped Evolution and when God ignored Evolution… equally so in the laboratory!
There’s more information in the other chapters of the Berkeley article, including more hypothetical-type language, such as
However, since new evidence is constantly being discovered, hypotheses about how life originated may change or be modified. It’s important to keep in mind that changes to these hypotheses are a normal part of the process of science and that they do not represent a change in the basis of evolutionary theory.
The origin of life might seem like the ultimate cold case: no one was there to observe it and much of the relevant evidence has been lost in the intervening 3.5 billion years or so. Nonetheless, many separate lines of evidence do shed light on this event, and as biologists continue to investigate these data, they are slowly piecing together a picture of how life originated.
I’m finding the whole thing an interesting primer.
I’m curious how accurate people think the picture in How did life originate? is (given the above caveats of course)?
It will involve avoiding all untestable hypothesis whether it involves God or naturalism.
As to whether it’s impossible to come to an inference that an intelligence was involved in creation. I don’t rule out the possibility.
As always, you will do what you will.
But you have been cautioned that it is a philosophical impossibility … rendering it scientifically impossible as well.
It’s called selection.
Any empirical basis in this particular case?
It seems that me that no one knows enough about the actual conditions to say this with any certainty.
You sound like this.
In the experiments, obviously. Have you considered learning more before pontificating?
Do you have a way of explaining to @colewd that “complexity” is a false god?
Have you considered being more specific with your claims?
Have you considered being more specific with your claims?
I don’t have any way of explaining anything to him. No one here does. People have tried explaining things to him for months, but you can’t explain things to someone who doesn’t want to understand. Facts threaten his faith; you can’t expect him to listen.
Yes, I’d be happy to do so if you bothered to do some deeper reading and research.
I am quite disappointed in your inability to understand that complexity comes from God but cannot be measured in Evolutionary processes!
What makes you think it can be?
If you were in Behe’s tree fort and you kept this up for a day, he would toss you out, plain and simple.
Point the way. Only request is that you stick to selection working on “,self reproducing compounds” as that’s the subject.