Creating Information Naturally, Part 1: Snowflakes, Chess, and DNA

Actually, we have court judgements that say, any theory that posits a creator is not science by definition.
This happened in a case with respect to ID. As you said, even though they don’t mention a creator directly, and stick tot he idea of a designer, it was concluded that it was not science as the idea was too close to creationism.
So yes, Science suppresses all hypothesis connected to a creator/the possibility of the supernatural within its field of influence by its very nature.

A post was merged into an existing topic: The Appendix is (NOT) vestigial

150 years ago when Darwin postulated his theory, he made the following claims:

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  1. Individuals within species are variable; 2) Some of these variations are passed on to offspring; 3) In every generation, more offspring are produced than can survive; and 4) The survival and reproduction of individuals are not random; the individuals who survive and go on to reproduce the most are those with the most favorable variation, and they are naturally selected. It follows logically from these that the characteristics of the population will change with each subsequent generation until the population becomes distinctly different from the original; this process is known as evolution.
    Source
    What are the four postulates presented in Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species? - The Handy Biology Answer Book

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The modern “theory” of evolution is often explained as below-.

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Biological evolution, simply put, is descent with modification. This definition encompasses small-scale evolution (changes in gene — or more precisely and technically, allele — frequency in a population from one generation to the next
Source:An introduction to evolution - Understanding Evolution
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The above modern understanding is unfalsifiable because no methods/mechanisms/models etc are involved.
Even in my discussion in this forum, a couple of people have reverted to this definition. This doesn’t look like an advance over 150 years… it’s a retreat to a very basic statement which cannot be falsified because it doesn’t make any solid claims on methods/mechanism/models(family trees etc) which would lead to falsification of the overall theory.

That’s the definition of evolution not evolutionary theory. You can understand evolution as:

  1. These thesis of common ancestry
  2. Evolutionary theory. The mechanisms and processes that explain 1.
    Both can be disproven.

I tend to like these definitions

  1. Evolution - the process by which new species emerge as the modified descendants of pre-existing ones.
  2. Evolutionary theory- the scientific theory that explains how evolution has and is taking place on earth, with reference to particular, old and current, aspects of life on earth and to particular episodes of its history.
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116 posts were split to a new topic: Common Descent Cladograms are all Fake, Convergent Evolution Explains Everything

It’s a good definition… However, this broad definition would include theories suggested by some creationists/ID proponents under evolutionary theory.
Is that an unintended consequence?

I’d have no problem accepting intelligent causation as an additional mechanism within evolutionary theory.

Only mad men walk through a nudist camp convinced that EVERYONE is wearing clothes.

You cannot insult BioLogos with “godless evolution” when we do not support Godless Evolution.

I am not sure this is particularly true. Another way to look at it is if you flip a coin enough no: of times, you get n results in a row… and that particular sequence would be equal to getting a mammal.
If the starting point is same… And you start flipping again… once again getting the required sequence will have similar probability to the first sequence and thus it should happen given time.
unless something has happened which changed the rules of the game.

Intuition should lead to a testable hypothesis. You can’t do science without a hypothesis.

I’ll take you comment as humour (but seriously, intuition can cover almost all areas of scientific research, including developing a hypothesis - most R&D is done within the context of a theory, so hypothesising at every turn may be unnecessary).

Hi Chris,

Intuition in science covers a wide range of activities; some people use the term “serendipity”, but I am convinced that it is a combination of intuition (ie it feels right. or it feels wrong) combined with a deepening understanding of laws and theory, that underpin scientific R&D.

These comments are not theological; as Christians we believe that God reveals Himself, with the ultimate revelation Christ. The response to this revelation is personal and subjective - it should not be confused with material/scientific speculation and hypothesis - however our “test” is by living according to the Law and teachings of the Gospel.

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@GJDS,

I would expect all your views would fit in the @Swamidass Model being discussed at www.PeacefulScience.org !

That’s because calling Pluto a planet or a dwarf planet is a classification issue. The basic tenets of astronomy has to do with things like mass, gravity etc which predicts things like Pluto’s trajectory.
That’s why no one says there is difficulty to falsify…That’s why einstein was able to show that gravity does not follow Newton’s laws in some special cases… and thus pointing to the possibility of a better fundamental understanding.

A post was merged into an existing topic: The Appendix is (NOT) vestigial

A post was merged into an existing topic: The Appendix is (NOT) vestigial

A post was merged into an existing topic: The Appendix is (NOT) vestigial

A post was merged into an existing topic: The Appendix is (NOT) vestigial

This thread was going too many places- I split it up for now, PM me or another Moderator if anything was missed for the other discussions.

Let’s keep this related to the actual blog post: Creating Information Naturally, Part 1: Snowflakes, Chess, and DNA.

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