From: dnash@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Dave Nash)
Subject: Re: Probability of Evolution
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 22:29:05 GMT

In article <N43HuB3w165w@kalki33> kalki33!system@lakes.trenton.sc.us writes:
>In the old days people saw maggots in meat and they thought that the
>meat was the source of the maggots, or that the maggots were
>spontaneously generating from the meat. Finally some far-seeing person
>noticed that flies were visiting the meat before the maggots appeared,
                         ^^^^^^^^
>so after some experiments, it was finally realized that the meat was
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>incapable of producing maggots. The maggot-eggs were deposited in the
>meat by flies.

"Cap'n, I'm picking up a strange thought process on the sensors. . .
. . .or lack thereof.  it's hard to tell."

>Nowadays, there are certain persons (symbol=abiogeneticists) who still
>believe that the meat (symbol=primordial soup) is producing the maggots
>(symbol=living organisms). But there are also, as in the past, some
>far-seeing persons (symbol=creationists) who notice that maggots never
>appear without a prior visitation by flies (symbol=soul/other life).

**AHWOOGA!**  Bad analogy alert!

Herr K, please note the underlined portions above. It wasn't enough that people
OBSERVED biogenesis, they had to do several other things as well:
(apologies in advance if some of this is a bit off.  I don't think it
changes the essential point)

1) They had to document the "visitation".  Not just assert it.  Assertions
are a dime a dozen in this field.  "Well we stuck these rods in the heavy water
and it got really hot. . ."  ;-)   
Analogy mismatch 1):  biologists in the bio/abiogenesis debate documented,
K merely asserts.

2)  This only tells us about how current life forms are formed ("from other
life.")  There's nothing here that necessarily holds for the first instances
of life on Earth.  The processes involved may be entirely different.
Analogy mismatch 2):  Pasteur et. al. were working with current lifeforms,
K appears to be talking about the first appearance of life.

3)  Biologists had to experiment a bit to convince others --
specifically, by making sure that if NO flies got to the meat (or whatever),
there would never be maggots.  Other biologists who failed to do this *did* get
evidence (invalid, of course) for abiogenesis.
Analogy mismatch 3):  The biologists constructed scientifically testable test
cases (i.e., if we screen out existing organisms, and our idea is correct, 
no life should appear in the sample);  for K's case to be remotely analogous,
K'd have to give us some way of screening out his/her/its/their god so that
it cannot influence this planet.  Needless to say, this is so far out of the
range of science that the analogy (intelligent biologists <--> creation-
ists) loses on this ground alone.

Will the K continuum come up with a scientifically testable proposition --
one that doesn't invoke "[a] god did it", one which is falsifiable, and one
which can be tested and either supported or invalidated by both believers
and skeptics?

Didn't think so.

Oh, BTW, when was the first post by the K?  I've been an intermittent lurker
here for a couple months now, but I don't recall seeing anything from the K
more recently than a couple of weeks ago -- if that.  If this is true,
'twould seem to be an *amazingly* fast....uhh, descent of a man (sorry) into
childish ranting.   Sad, in a way.

---> Dave


-- 
David Nash                  | Gradual Student, Chemistry
                            | University of Illinois (Urbana)
(dnash@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu)    | This .sig is made of 100% recycled electrons.
(nash@aries.scs.uiuc.edu)   | No binary trees were killed to make it.