This is a reply to
Message 6540 from tvicrospa at Yahoo Clubs.
quote:
Originally posted by tvicrospa:
science requires some subjectivity. The very essence of evolutionary transitions is subjective, as, of course, not every possible transitional model is available.
Therefore, to assert that questions of the universe are religious and not 'science' per se because of the subjectivity, and that therefore these questions are not allowable in the debate, seems to me to be quite a contradictory position.
First, of course these questions are allowable in the debate. I don't think we should put any topic off limits.
Second, if by "questions of the universe" you mean the "why" type questions you posed in Yahoo post #6527, they are science only to the degree they are based upon evidence, which is why I said science is limited to that which is evident to the five senses. This by no means implies science is not a human, and therefore subjective, activity, but it does mean that answers not based upon evidence are not scientific. If you can answer your philosophical questions with evidence then you're doing science. So far you have no evidence, only rhetorical questions like, "How could order possibly descend from a random universe?"
I am assuming, of course, that your question is more of the nature of how the natural laws governing our universe came to be, something science cannot answer without evidence and so is more appropriate for philosophy and metaphysics, as opposed to describing the nuts and bolts behaviors of the laws themselves, something science is pretty good at. But you go on in a different vein:
There are so many probably millions of anecdotal circumstantial evidences that point against random being, and random construction of life. How did a crab, or crab ancestor (surely no ancestor has been yet found, right?) obtain hemocyanin as its oxygen-carrier, but invertebrates (or ancestors) obtain hemoglobin, for the exact same purpose?
There's no need to pose specific questions. The amount we do not know and possibly can never know about specific evolutionary paths is immense. Most of the history of life no longer exists, being either decayed or eroded or subducted or crushed or buried or heated and metamorphised or in some way destroyed. And just because we one day develop plausible scenarios for how hemocyanin and hemoglobin evolved does not mean that any of them are correct. We can never know for sure, and this is more than just the simple precept that science is tentative. We can only hypothesize, not theorize, about much of life's history because in most circumstances the evidence is simply absent.
What science *can* do is develop theory for what evidence we have, and the theory of evolution is consistent with that evidence. Further, it is the responsibility of science to describe the world as we find it, not as we wish it, and whenever evidence is uncovered that falsifies current theory then that theory must change, perhaps even be overthrown.
When considered in this context, your additional questions concerning centipedes and thinking plants are still clearly in the non-evidentiary category. You have as yet presented no evidence
for Creationism or
against evolution. In order to make your case that Creationism deserves consideration alongside evolution you must show that, like evolution, it has evidence apparent to the five senses supporting it.
[This message has been edited by Percipient (edited 01-05-2001).]