Modularity, A distinguishing property of life

When natural selection operates it does not know or care what the overall purpose of the organism is, it simply selects those most fit to reproduce in that environment. That generally tends to be the more efficient, least expensive, more dependable, etc. organism. Complexity is situational; excess complexity is a detriment when resources are limited, so selection tends toward "optimal" complexity.When the goal of a designer is to make an organism better able to reproduce in a given environment then that case would likely be indistinguishable from natural selection, although the pattern of introduced mutations would indicate said designer is completely incompetent. If we assume a different goal of the designer then we should be able to distinguish departures from what evolution would tend to produce; for instance a designer intending us to have monogamous romantic relationships might make sexual desires limited to one partner upon pairing.

I never said that. My point was that you would not see the difference by examining how efficient, or effective the construction of organisms are. Instead I said that you should identify a designed organism by looking for elements that specifically indicated an intent rather than expected interactions between other organisms.Thinking more about your original point though, I have to say that I disagree on other grounds as well. Computer programmers today using "object-oriented" design plan for the modules they construct to be, as the name implies, modular. This means that they can be used in a variety of different ways without knowledge of the other processes in the system. The benefits here are limiting the scope the programmer needs to consider; in most cases fully integrated design would be impossible for a human to grasp. For an omniscient designer this consideration would be superfluous, but for a merely *intelligent* designer it would be a very real concern. I don't think the lack of integrated design provides any evidence for the lack of an intelligent designer.Edited by Phage0070, : Wording (imagine that!)

Those are not the only two options. Our intelligent designer does not necessarily have infinite time or resources to devote to making life, and making organisms might be a time-consuming process. Reusing modules which need to perform a similar function between organisms would save a lot of effort, just like for programmers. Integrated design may be superior for an individual application, but again ideal design is not a requirement of an intelligent designer. In the case of an intelligent but not omniscient designer, with limited resources and no specific compulsion for theoretical perfection, modular design is logical.

Abiogenesis has evidence that supports it, and their faith does not?We can see the pieces, and how they fit together. We just have not managed to put them together ourselves, and we are working on it. Sheesh, slave-driver...

WRONG. You assume that at some point there was nothing, from which came everything. We have not established that there was nothing at any point, so using it as a starting point is a huge assuption. Even *if* we had established such a thing, the question you stated is *not* a "chicken-egg" situation at all. That sort of problem assumes that we have observed both chickens and eggs, and that they are objectively related. In this case it would be more of a rock-unicorn situation: We observe the rock to exist, and have no proof of the existence of the unicorn much less any particular relation of the unicorn to the rock. We know the rock exists, and assuming we knew that it did not exist at a prior time we could conclude it came into existence at some point in the interim. The unicorn is no more or less likely to enter into our conclusion than the concept a god did it.

Security camera footage can be doctored; sufficiently expert tampering would not be detectable. The person who was working there at that hour could be lying because you bribed them, or they might simply be mistaken. You CANNOT prove that you did not order that pizza.

The key is in the inherent differences between possessing information and not possessing it; they are not as interchangeable as you suggest here. If you don't have information you always, or at least should always, leave yourself open to the possibility of new information to the contrary. For instance, suppose we look at the tape and don't see any ordering happening; that is a good indication that nothing occurred. However we don't dismiss the possibility of new accurate information that indicates you *did* order a pizza, even if that information indicates something surprising such as you being able to exist in two places at once. In the alternate situation where we have the information that you ordered we can, and indeed must, dismiss new information indicating that you did not order the pizza even though it may be accurate. Instead we must first attack the accuracy of the initial information that you did order the pizza.

"As we know it," sure. This does not mean that spacetime and matter came from nothing whatsoever. In fact your initial statement shows what a violation of logic you went through: "Expansion of the universe strongly implies a beginning, otherwise where is it expanding from?" All our observations up to this point have indicated that things are caused by other things. While possible, it is by no means logically demanded that the Big Bang be caused by nothing at all. The difference is that those who support abiogenesis do so with EVIDENCE to back them up. Sure, they have not proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt, but they do have very strong indications that is how it happened. It is NOT FAITH that drives them to this conclusion, it is examining very real evidence. Someone who believes God did it does so without any good supporting evidence and is in essence talking out of their sphincter.Note that I am not talking about the old theory of bread and cheese spontaneously forming maggots, but rather the concept that the non-living elements spewed out of stars eventually became organized and formed living structures. Yes, the proof is on the proposer and it should be viewed with varying levels of skepticism (note that this never stops). This does not mean that the evidence in support of this concept is the same thing as wild, baseless speculation.

Sure, but if you got accurate information that you *did* order the pizza you could not dismiss it out of hand. You might try to attack the accuracy of either datum based on your experience that you cannot be in different places at the same time, but assuming that they are both accurate you must conclude that you *did* order the pizza no matter that it destroys your other assumption. This isn't an appropriate question; two plus two equals five by fiat. Mathematics is a conceptual system that operates by rules we define, so the proof you request is in essence saying "It does not because I say it does not." Yes: You cannot dismiss accurate information regardless of its violation of previously established norms, including logical contradictions. This means that even if evidence points strongly toward something not happening, the possibility always remains of new information becoming available.

This is a false dichotomy; there are plenty of other possibilities available. For instance: 1) Everything was always alive, matter just eventually assumed forms that we recognize as life. 2) Sometime in the future we invent time travel and seeded our own creation. 3) Life naturally appeared on the planet out of whole cloth, without any supernatural guiding influence, 4) etc...Note that I also disagree with the Pope, so quoting random people who have contrary opinions to me is unlikely to form a strong argument in and of itself.

Exactly, and it is only possible because you have determined by fiat that it is possible. A purely mental exercise can do anything, and I think it is clear that was not what I was arguing. Note the similarity between the above example and this one. Logic is a mental framework and does not necessarily have any bearing on the world.

And this is supposed to mean what exactly? That I have to agree with everything he says? Do you really consider supernatural creation by an invisible sky wizard a legitimate scientific possibility?

This bears immense relevance! For instance, I assume that you consider a human (Bob) to be alive. However if we take the component elements of Bob, and I do mean elements down to the atom, and put them in a bucket stirred up every which way, you I assume would not consider it to be alive. The distinguishing point here is not the material of the being we call Bob, it is the particular orientation and behavior of those materials.Suppose we put Bob back together one atom at a time. At what point does he become "alive"? BAM, at that point he has "spontaneously" become alive; it is only spontaneous because you arbitrarily decided to make it a sudden moment, the addition of one more or less molecule is hardly going to have any dramatic effect on Bob overall. The point at which you draw this line would be interesting as well since there are many situations in which Bob might be considered alive *briefly* before perishing.

Certainly you can, your concept of mathematics at this point would simply be a less than accurate model of reality. Make no mistake, mathematics is a *tool* to help us understand reality, it is not reality itself. There are fields of mathematics which allow things that are not realistically possible. While helpful, those things are not made possible by the Power of Math. Complete and utter garbage, this is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of reality. Logic is DESCRIPTIVE. Logic does not dictate the reality of things, the reality of things dictates what is logical. Yes, they correlate because we have defined our construct "logic" to correlate with reality, but do not confuse correlation with causation.As with math, certain things which are impossible in reality may be possible within the conceptual framework in order to make the model function correctly, representatively of reality.

No, there is certainly merit in the study. While there may be no hard dividing line between when the components of a car become a car, there is certainly merit in understanding the relation and functioning of all of the parts. The same is true of the study of abiogenesis. The point is there is no reason to the ravings about the impossibility of turning parts into a car in some instantaneous flash.