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True, but we know that nature acting alone didn't do it.
For the moment, let's assume that life on earth was designed. The best you could infer is that life on Earth came about through design, but you can not infer that life everywhere in the universe had to arise through design. The inference doesn't stretch that far. There are no observations of other life besides that on Earth to base your conclusions on.
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And it does not rule out a supernatural entity becoming part of the natural world and then designing life.
The ID inference can not move into this realm. It no more rules it out than rule it in. However, since the supernatural is untestable it is not a choice for ID theory (since you claim it is a science). We would first have to observe a supernatural deity descending to earth to take the form of a designer, and this observation would have to be testable. Without this, there is no way that you can even bring forth the idea of a supernatural deity as a reliable agent, although it can be considered.
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It depends on what you call "naturally".
Through repeatable, testable phenomena found in nature. These mechanisms should not rely on previous religious indoctrination or cultural indoctrination. They should be demonstratable through methodological naturalism and lend themselves to testing through the scientific method.
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Also you have yet to provide any evidence that life could arise from non-life by natyre acting alone.
That life COULD arise through chemistry is very possible. Whether or not life DID arise through chemistry is another question, a question that ID creationists want to be answered by appealing to the supernatural. The answer is that we may never know. Two thousand years ago I could have asked you where lightning came from. If you were unable to answer could I then claim that it had to come from Zeus? This is the argument you are using towards many here.
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In fact the more we know the less likely it becomes.
Actually, it's the other way around. Abiogenesis research over the last 50 years has made huge strides. They have still not reached to goal, but our understanding of biochemistry and early earth environments has steadily increased and the possibility of life arising in these conditions becomes more likely everyday. For instance, the discover of catalytic RNA has been a boon to abiogenesis research. Catalytic RNA is capable of building nucleotides and replicating small segments of RNA. It can act both as the source of nucleotide sequence and as an enzyme to replicate it. This makes it a very strong candidate for the first replicator.
{Fixed one quote box. Also, this is getting remote to the theme of the topic. There are better places for this discussion - Adminnemooseus}
This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 09-14-2004 11:49 AM