lpetrich

This makes me wonder why creationists do not champion vitalism, the old hypothesis that living things have some sort of "vital force" or life-stuff or whatever that distinguishes them from nonliving things.

One vitalism-related hypothesis held that certain substances could only be made by living things -- "organic compounds". However, over the 19th cy., many organic compounds were successfully produced from inorganic compounds or simpler organic compounds, and that hypothesis was dead by the end of the 19th cy.

The development of organic chemistry paved the way for the development of biochemistry and molecular biology, which have had great success with mechanist, non-vitalist paradigms, like the coded-molecule paradigm of heredity.

Yet we don't see anyone bleating about how mechanistic and materialistic biochemistry and molecular biology are. And we don't see anyone bleating about how this or that biological mystery requires the presence of some life-stuff.

Quetzal

Actually lp, I think you'll find that the creationists DO adhere to vitalism, or something akin to it. This is the fundamental premise of all of the essentialist positions (i.e., the impossibility of common descent; the teleological finalism of the "perfection" of man, the taxic discontinuity or barrier between "kinds", etc). Most of 'em merely posit a distinct "vital force" that distinguishes humans (the soul), but a lot of their ideas can be traced to (or have been influenced by) vitalism.

As to why they beat up evolution rather than biochemistry and moleculary biology, my opinion is that biochemistry isn't a direct threat. Evolution, because it challenges man's place at the pinnacle of creation, certainly does. Wait 'till Orgel et al actually produce life in the test tube and see if the creationists don't start attacking biochemistry as well.

Oh, I guess they already do: abiogenesis can't happen, remember? They just tend to lump it in with evolutionary biology by insisting that evolutionary theory MUST explain the origins of life, the universe, and everything. They don't have to single out molecular biology, 'cause they already include it in evilution.

Camaban

[quote]Wait 'till Orgel et al actually produce life in the test tube and see if the creationists don't start attacking biochemistry as well.
[/quote

No, they'll simply point out that life needs an intelligent creator (IE, the scientists)

And if we want to REALLY prove it can happen by accident, we'll have to show it happening in the wild

monkenstick

methodological naturalism was alright until it produced a natural explanation for something that God was meant to explain. Thats when methodological naturalism was shown to be obviously quite flawed - if the bible says god did it, then natural explanations obviously aren't correct.

Thats why science should abandon methodological naturalism - it produces results that religious folk don't like or agree with.

wade-w

My experience has been that few understand that there is a difference between cosmology, abiogenesis and evolution. Its all one unified subject to them, and its evilution!

I had a contract once where there was a very vocal fundie on the same project. I once tried to tell him that the theory of evolution said nothing at all about how life got started in the first place, but only how it has changed since. This seemed to confuse him greatly.

There was a lot of press here recently on teaching evolution in the schools (Cobb County is here in Atlanta). Many of the newspaper articles on the subject referred to evolution as a theory about the "origins" of life.

I sometimes think that the theory of evolution is the most misunderstood theory in all of modern science.

"Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has..."
--Martin Luther

Dr.GH

Actually, it would be posible to identify specific processes. These would leave specific geological residues which if found to exist, would generally confirm a particular abiogensis scenario.

Cretos would just ignor it, like they already ignor most data.

Undercurrent

The hypothesis that there is a soul that confers humanity on an object is a form of vitalism, or something akin to it. It says that humans differ from other animals in an obvious either-or way, as opposed to just a change in degree.

The problem is that this hypothesis has no observational basis whatsoever (other than the vague "humans behave differently than rocks" observation.) So in regimes where the precice moment when a non-human object becomes human is important to the debate (evolution, abortion debate, whether or not to take a comatose patient off life support) they're forced to just make up stuff on the fly.

m.

Valentine Pontifex

Re: vitalism

Well the Discovery Institute position on the genetic basis developmental biology as formulated by Wells and others is not all that far from vitalism....

Albion

Well, the Bible says God very directly did all sorts of things, and fundamentalists seem to be able to accept naturalistic explanations for at least some of them. But the theory of evolution cuts into that need to feel special which the "God created humans in his image" adherents seem to feel. I remember reading somewhere the opinion that if evolution didnt' include humans, it might well have been accepted by now. I mean, the YECs are quite happy to stick every type of bat - fruit-eating, blood-eating, you name it - into one Biblical "kind," but humans and the apes all get their own completely separate kinds. When it comes down to it, it's all about us.

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Math already did it. It's 42.