Hi CTD
If by 'science' you refer to empirical science, you are mixing apples and oranges. The issues are historical in nature. If you mean 'science' in a broad and proper sense, this includes historical investigative methods. Proper historical methods will not give the results you support.
Yes I am referring to empirical science. You’ll have to show me the apples and oranges here; it’s all apples as far as I can see.
I thought about responding to this in the thread devoted to history, but it's not worth making the transfer.
A couple moments' reflection is all that's required to understand that empirical science isn't the right tool for investigating history. Whether you want to know what happened 10 minutes ago or 10 centuries, the most effective way to find out is to ask someone. It's the fastest and the most accurate way to investigate the past. Empirical methods, on the relatively few occasions they are employed, serve a secondary, supplemental role.
Intuitively everyone learns this as a small child. I don't think most folks bother to analyze the hows & whys of learning processes - they just use them. Anyone who cares can analyze the methods and figure it out. Not hard at all.
The age of the earth is determined by empirical observations from many different fields of research all of which give consistent answers. The only field which disagrees is human historical records.
Too erroneous to bother with just now. Conclusions based upon numerous empty assumptions and flawed methods cannot be verified. Verification is an important part of investigating history.
An attempt to misplace the burden of proof.
Jeanie, if you're watching, I hope you'll note the large number of logical fallacies.
If you read back you’ll see that it was Russ who made the positive claim when he said that “Rocks and water simply do not conspire together to become highly-complex, self-aware, self-reproducing, symmetrical machines.” Now I have to say that that passage was vaguely worded and misleading but I assumed that he meant abiogenesis did not happen and I asked him to support that statement because we have some evidence that suggests he’s wrong. I never said that abiogenesis was true, I don’t know whether it is or not. In short Russ made the positive claim I simply asked him to show us his evidence. That is not shifting the burden of proof that is asking him to put up or …
In Reason
Russell
We have had an abiogenesis thread around for a while, and it still lacks evidence that any such thing ever happened. Russ' conclusion appears very safe.
Your actual question:
Can you prove that abiogenesis is impossible especially in light of the many recent successes in demonstrating very simple self replication in chemical systems?
is in keeping with Darwinist tradition. "Whatever is possible must've happened, no matter how improbable..." etc. But even if you convince a person something is possible, that doesn't even imply it actually happened. There are two burdens of proof involved, and no hope in sight for evolutionism on either issue.
