Re: Horses beaten, not stirred.

"Deaddog" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> I really have no wish to revisit my refreshing whackathon with the howlers
> over the "mystifying omission of abiogenesis from the general theory of
> evolution."  Like a cicada, I sound off on this every several years, with
> much the same lack of results.
>
> However, as a fun holiday quiz, I wondered if you could tell the quotes
from
> t.o denizens (apologies to those who didn't get quoted) from Dembski
quotes.

I'm not sure that I understand how the preceeding leads to the following. I
can't imagine IDers like Dembski saying any of the things quoted below. I
would have absolutely no trouble at all identifying these as quotes from
evolutionary biologists arguing ID and creationism.


> Oh, this isn't fair, it's all out of context, and it certainly couldn't
mean
> anything, could it?  But it's pretty easy.  Really.  No peeking!
>
> Since its inception in the early 1990s, the intelligent design movement
has
> attracted so much attention that it has succeeded in dominating the
origins
> debate.
>
>
>
> I do think that "life" has a meaningful definition to it, but it is clear
> that there is not and never has been a bright line between "living" and
> "non-living".  Discussions about life are useful. Discussions about the
> evolution of life are useful, whether we know how life began or not. Even
> discussions about how life came about are useful.

Can you imagine Dembski saying this? I can't.

Frank


>
>
>
> Even though we know that life began somehow on earth, there is a huge lack
> of useful evidence to work with.
>
>
>
> There is a whole set of biochemical reactions that have a lot in common.
We
> can study them as a group. We happen to call that set life. At the same
> time, we know that some other biochemical reactions or biochemicals are
> only partially consistent with this.
>
>
>
> The origin of life is a separate issue from its subsequent evolution.
>
>
>
> There is now such a thing as life, because the intermediate forms are not
> longer around. The only ambiguity we see is in viruses.
>
>
>
> It's no exaggeration to say that the origin of life and its subsequent
> complexification constitutes an "information revolution" in the history of
> matter. Indeed, matter needs to be formed in very special ways to
constitute
> life.
>
>
>
> I have no idea how to construct a definition of life that encompasses all
> time and space. I just know we can recognize it (on earth) when we see it,
> and distinguish it from non-life.
>
>
>
> The origin of life is ultimately irrelevant to the mechanism of the origin
> of species.  It doesn't matter whether nature, God, or some alien
initially
> seeded the earth with life; evolution is what has been happening since
then.
>
>
>
> Evolutionary biology has been hugely unsuccessful as a scientific theory
in
> accounting for the origin of life and the emergence of biological
> complexity.
>
>
>
> So life is chemical interactions of a sort we are so interested in we call
> the aggregate process life, and the possession of the process the event
> "Life".  I think it's just a shorthand means of pointing at a set of
> categories.  And it is useful--with knowledge of the attributes we assign
to
> matter we call living, we can then distinguish it from
> non-living matter, or even, previously-living matter.
>
>
>
> Nonbiogenic emergence had to happen at least once, namely, at the origin
of
> life.
>
>
>
> There is a substantial difference of opinion on whether or not the origins
> of life is covered by evolution or not.
>
>
>
> Life is a bitch, but that's no reason to define it out of
> existence.  [OK, this is my favorite]
>
>
>
> Organisms emerge without the direct causal agency of other organisms. In
> place of life begetting life, here we have nonlife begetting life.
>
>
>
> There's a difference between chemistry and biology even though it may be
> difficult to identify the dividing line. I'm happy to think of biology
> (life) as just a complicated form of chemistry.
>
>
>
> Special juxtaposition for John:
>
>
>
> We do things that are common to all humanity, not merely the scientific
> element of it, in order to do science. It may be that one day in the
> indefinite future all this will be convertable to some global theory, but
in
> the meantime, science is done anyway. So we can have untheoretical
> operational notions and do good science.
>
>
>
> There is a discrepancy between science as an empirical enterprise that
goes
> where the evidence leads (which is a legitimate conception of science) and
> science as applied materialist philosophy that maintains its materialism
> regardless of evidence (this is a bogus, though widely held, misconception
> of science).
>
>
>
> Non-woof
>
>