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Falsifiable and Falsifiability

UNFALSIFIABLE FALSIFIABLE

are terms that surface frequently in theistic/atheistic debates and are used , mainly by atheists to ridicule believers in a Creator.

The argument is that the belief in the existence of a deity is unfalsifiable , it cannot be proved right or wrong. It is mostly use in a mocking way, referring to anything the user of the term regards as superstition.

Unfalsifiable objects are therefore not regarded as of any scientific importance, science only deals with measurable concrete objects.

What about the following statement : Non living matter can not become living matter without presence of an intelligence. ( from now on referred to as THE STATEMENT ) .

Some sceptics will immediately classify it as an unscientific unfalsifiable statement.

Other sceptics will argue that is was already falsified by Darwin.

However , lets examine THE STATEMENT further. THE STATEMENT is based on Louis Pasteur's proven dictum: only life begets life

The sceptics will argue that Pasteur's dictum only apply to the present and not to the ancient primitive earth,.

This sceptic belief is elegantly described by Dorit in the American Scientist Journal:

I Pasteur, of course, was right, but with one major exception. If we think of contemporary organisms in the present, life begets life and like begets like. But if we look into the past, we quickly realize that there must have been at least one time when Pasteur's dictum did not hold.

Some 3.8 to 4 billion years ago, life on Earth emerged from nonlife. Astonishingly early in the history of this planet, its abiotic chemistry assembled into the rudiments of living systems. Those early systems, capable of organizing their chemical reactions, defining an inside and an outside, storing information, encoding their own history and, crucially, evolving, would irreversibly alter Earth's surface and history.

Winter 1859: A single 30-day span begat much of modern biology Robert L. Dorit

American Scientist July-August 2010 Volume 98, Number 4 Page: 286 DOI: 10.1511/2010.85.

Many atheists and so called sceptics will absolute agree with Lorit and argue that THE STATEMENT is falsified and proven to be incorrect ! Appearence of life was a spontaneous event.

Really?

Come again!

Did Lorit observed this emergence of life from non life? Did he observe the absence or non involvement of an intelligence in this process?

Off course not. It is just an unfalsifiable deduction . Nobody can proof the absence or presence of intelligence during the transition of non life to life. Most modern biologists just assume it happened spontaneously in the absence of intelligence.

Let us now examine the validity of other arguments sceptics and atheists will use to falsify the THE STATEMENT.

The creation of life in a laboratory will falsify THE STATEMENT

Jack Szostak's laboratory, the J Craig Venter laboratory and other laboratories are busy with active research to try and solve the puzzle of life's origin.

If any or all of these laboratories manage to create artificial life, will it falsify the THE STATEMENT?

Certainly not. Life emerging in a laboratory would have been created by very intelligent smart human beings.

The Miller-Urey experiment proved THE STATEMENT as being false.

The experiment originated in Miller's intelligent mind. It used unproven speculations about the primitive earth'ss atmosphere. The necessity of building blocks would in any case be necessary, whether intelligence was involved or not.(1) Did intelligence played a role in the production of these building blocks , with a bias towards l-amino acids and d-sugars?

The spontaneous , not intelligence guided , appearance of replicating organic molecules , have never been observed.

All the speculation about the origin of live and the reasons for the bias towars l-amino acids and d-sugasr is unfalsifiable speculations.

The Evolution Theory proved THE STATEMENT wrong and falsified it.

The observation that biochemical systems , morphological characteristics, genes etc point to a common ancestor is regarded as more than enough proof by atheists. (Common descent from a common ancestor).

The complexity of life (even the complexity the most primitive organism) just appear to be designed. ( appearance of design argument)

Does the appearance of design , the common decent arguments and the natural selection really exclude intelligence and falsify THE STATEMENT.

What about other evolutionary processes. ?

To answer the question the meaning of the word evolution should first be define.

A general definition of evolution : " The gradual development of something, especially from a simple to a more complex form. "

A modern tendency is to associate the word evolution only with the evolution of lfe. The word evolution seems to have changed into Evolution . Evolution with a capital E referring to the transformation of simple living cells into more complex organisms.

A very important characteristic of any evolutionary process is the presence of footprints . Footprints revealing the history of the process and leading back to its origin.

As the original simple form changes into more complex forms, it usually branches off in different directions. A careful study of the footprints will also unveil the different branches. Most evolutionary processes will form an evolutionary tree.

The Evolution of life met all the mentioned criteria and in my view should be without doubt, regarded as an evolutionary process.

All evolutionary processes known to mankind except two, are man made.

An excellent example is the evolution of aviation. Retracing aviation's history will take us back to the Wright brothers, or even further back to Leonardo Da Vinci and beyond. Another cutting edge example is happening now . The evolution of artificial intelligence. (AI) AI is comparable to the evolution of human intelligence Is human intelligence the crown jewel of evolution? It can only be regarded as such, if it was intended to be a crown jewel.

Is AI the crown jewel of the evolution of programming abilities?

AI is programmed to evoloved on its own. This evolvement is however preprogrammed by intelligent humans.

During life's evolvement , it not only evolved but its evolvement gave it the ability to evolve further,

As Lorit put it "existing organismes evolved to evolve". "Evolving to evolve". In other words the ability to evolve into very complex forms was also an " evolutionary gift".

Refer to the last pargraphs of " American Scientist " July-August 2010 Volume 98, Number 4 Page: 286 DOI: 10.1511/2010.85.

AI programmers are also trying install the ability of " evolving to evolve " in their programs. Put in plain English , the ability to evolve is the result of preprogramming (in the case of AI: or the spontaneous evolvement of a type of "natural" preprogramming preprogrammng (in the case of Evolution).

Is it really possible that Evolution's ability to evolve was spontaneous preprogramming of the genetic code?

To quote Dorit again:

"Existing organisms have in effect evolved to evolve, balancing their mutation rates to the vagaries of the environment and the costs and benefits of the accurate copying of genetic information. Synthetic organisms, if they reproduce and vary, will indeed necessarily evolve. But we may well find that their patchwork genomes will not yet have developed the subtle diplomacy that allows them to keep up with a changing world. Their lives on this Earth will thus be decidedly short by evolutionary standards. Yet much like copernicium or ununquadium, newcomer elements in the periodic table whose halflives are measured in seconds (or even in milliseconds), the scientific value of synthetic organisms will not depend on their longevity. It will depend on their having lived at all."