Modularity, A distinguishing property of life

Huh? Then what is it 'proof' for? We don't have life, then we have We'll have to clarify this: Does abiogenesis (life from non-life) include the possibility that God did it ?If it does, then the fact that life appeared at some point in time is proof of abiogenesis, either naturally or supernaturally.If it does not, then life appearing at some point in time is not proof of abiogenesis.Maybe you want to make a distinction between abiogenesis and the scientific field of abiogenesis ? I had to narrow it down, since your question had a different significance depending on what we identified as the 'intelligent designer'. I gave an example where your question was relevant (aliens) and one example where it was not relevant (God of the Bible).

In any case, it would be false to say no evolutionists interchanges abiogenesis and spontaneous generation:

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Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing. I think a scientist has no choice but to approach the origin of life through a hypothesis of spontaneous generation.

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One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation

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George Wald, The origin of lifeI posted those quotes 3 pages ago ...

I doubt anyone would identify mathematics as 'a purely mental exercise'. It is as much part of reality as anything else. If I have two objects, and add two more, I will have four objects. I will never be able to 'decide' that I will have five. Logic is not a mental framework, and have as much bearing in the real world as anything else. How then could we identify laws of logic ? (Classical logic - Wikipedia)Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.

So then abiogenesis is a none-issue ? Since life is a mind game, and so why try to search how life could come from inanimate matter ?

Ok, so I have two apples, and then you give me two apples. I then say: I do not have five apples. You are telling me I could not prove that statement ?Also, there is some irony to all this. You say: You can't prove a negative (which is itself a negative)I ask you to prove it: and you do.By doing this, you are proving a negative, how then can it be true ?

So I could never prove that my car is not blue either ?Or that God did not create the world in six days ?Anyone else agree with that guy ? because personnally i think it is complete nonesense and against the concept of falsifiability. Maybe an outside opinion would be nice.PS ''i'' is not a number, it is a letter. Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.Edited by slevesque, : PS

Ok, so now OUGHT negatives can be proven, but not IS negatives ? (whatever that means, sounds like 'No true scotsman' if you ask me)

Abiogenesis is self-evident, but the fact that life came from innanimate matter [b]on its own[/n] is not self-evident.Only by rejecting a Designer A priori, within a materialistic philosophy, can you be left with only this option.

Ok, yeah, I didn't make the link at all when I saw 'i' haha, but I new what it was, it just far in my memoryI still find 'you can't prove a negative' very unscientific. And a quick research on google will show that there are about ten sites who show that you can prove a negative. The person who first thought of this catch phrase didn't think a whole lot ...

How can you escalate this to Designer vs science in an either/or situation ?Newton studied more about the Bible, and in fact believed in a six day creation freakin' miracle (How dare he! ) and yet it never stopped him from doing great science.Putting all this in either science or A designer is misrepresenting it greatly.As I've said, A designer hypothesis is only against science if you are materialistic. If you are, then I totally understand that you oppose them. But you gotta be aware that no non-materialistic scientists create this false dilemna.

Of course, I agree with you that his opinion on the subject is irrelevant today. But the point I was making is this: believing in a non-materialistic explanation to the origin of life never stopped him from doing science, and neither should it stop anyone ... I do not have a greatly amazing understanding of the science of abiogenesis as of 2009. But if it is still that amino-acids or nucleotides or both, that are in a primordial soup that connect together pretty randomnly and that, given enough time, the right combinations will come up. If it is still that, then it is a special case, even in science.Personnally, I would think that there would have to be something inside the 'priomrdial soup' that would make all this a non-ramdomn process. Does such a mechanism exist ? And if it does, and was discovered, can it create life (Ok, I'll give a precision here. I consider life in a primordial soup as the first 'thing' that could pass down its characteristics, and would be the very first 'thing' that natural selection could act upon. That, in my opinion, would be the line where I would consider it 'life') in a replicate of a primordial soup ?Finally, I have to say that my knowledge in abiogenesis is not at all very deep, as I only got my CEGEP biology class.Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.

Given Newton's writings on the Bible, I would doubt that if he was asked the question ''How did life appear on earth?'' he would have given a naturalistic explanation. He would have probably started with ''in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth ...''. But as you've said, his idea of 'how it all started' never influenced his capacity of doing operational science, which was my point. I agree, and I already knew that hehe (I'm not that non-knowledgeable on the subject). But is the sequence of nucleotides, for example, directed or random ? Since the fact that the molecules only bond in certain ways doesn't affect the sequence. (or I'm missing something)And for proteins, the folding is almost random (since there are thousands of possible foldings for one chain of amino-acids, if i'm not mistaken), unless there is a chaperon to help it fold right. So we know there is a way to have a directed folding, but it can't be a chaperon since iti is itself a protein. Is there a mechanism that could have made the folding non-random besides a chaperon ?PS I'll read that post on self-replicating molecules. Hope its not overly complicatedEdited by slevesque, : No reason given.