Stanley Miller debunked?

"5. The failure of one historical experiment to create life, for which it was not even intended to do, does not mean that life could not arise naturally nor that we will never figure out how."Does this mean you take it as a matter of faith that we one day will prove life arose naturally?Isn't this very concept a matter of belief and not science?

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What would you consider "proof" that life arose naturally? I can't think of anything that would be considered proof. Like any other science, all that anyone can do is to construct reasonable theories, based on our current understanding of science, and then test the principles as best we can.

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I agree, but isn't the conlcusion life must have arisen via naturalist (random and undirected) means speculation based on inference? Doesn't that put it par with design theory?

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To me faith is something believed without any evidence.

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So what is the evidence life arose spontaneously and without direction?Is it merely that there is no evidence it did not, therefore it must have? I've heard that before, seems a little circular to me.

Thank you for the welcome and the advice, I'll follow it from here out.

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Not at all! It just means that out inability to reproduce the theorized abiogenesis of life does not constitute evidence that it did not occur.

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But it is also not evidence that it DID occur!It seems then to me that one must believe it occurred or disbelieve it, hence a matter of faith.

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That a given cybernetic abstraction is MORE abstract than the subjetive form-making distinctions collected in nature and abstracted in the concept "phenotype". I dont think this is ordered correctly but that is the evidence in lack of information about the small scale directions of changes.

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I'm not sure what you're saying. This is in response to my question that a lack of evidence that life didn't arise spontaneously is someone evidence that it did?This message has been edited by Highlander, 08-13-2005 02:17 AM

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Darwin, a free thinker who dared make far-reaching conclusions based on observations, would have been dismayed to see the petrified doctrine his brainchild has become. Must we admit that all organisms are nothing but watery Turing machines evolved merely by a sequence of accidents favored by nature? Or do we have the intellectual freedom to rethink this fundamental issue? - Eshel Ben Jacob

Brad, I think I understand what you're writing, but I'm not sure I understand why you are writing it in the way that you do.What you seem to be saying is yes, it is a matter of belief, but that you hesitate to call it 'faith' because of the religious implications.I can only say if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...