BTW, have you vindicated your peer-reviewed articles and show how they provide evidence for abiogenesis? Also who cares about the Lindhl article being peer reviewed? It is just speculation. For example Walter Gilbert wrote "One can contemplate an RNA World containing only RNA molecules that serve to catalyze the synthesis of themselves." in 1986 in Nature. Has this idea been vindicated since we wrote it? No, the best polymerase could only add 14 nucleotides to a primer template and only with 97% accuracy. Such low accuracy will lead to an error catastrophe. The point of using Gilbert's article was to show that even peer-reviewed articles are just speculation.

As was said by someone else, "If it has reliable methods for detecting design, then, it can be trusted without having to waste time searching for chance and necessity. If the method is in, then so is the evidence."

Ra-men. Ra-men.

You asked if I agree that:
"1. there are no natural indicators of intelligent activity
2. empiricism exludes effect->cause reasoning"

1) generally, I disagree…since in archeology we know humans and how they work and what they leave behind…and in SETI we are looking for specific electromagnetic pulses that would indicate something other than stellar emissions.

specifically, in ID-biology…it all comes down to the quote above–can dembski's design inference provide a method to differentiate RM/NS from ID? philosophically, the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding has yet to be tasted. his assumptions for "perturbation tolerance" (he comments here, and in 5.10 of No Free Lunch) are at best speculative. not only is the problem a philosophical one of "how many ways can we arrive at the same function we see?" but also "how many of the functions we see can be substituted for other functions, novel or rearranged?" This brings in the nitty gritty of why facing RM/NS to CSI vis-a-vis is a joke. Until the "design inference" becomes valid, there are no "natural indicators" of intelligent design in biology.

a more general question for you–do you think that the fingernails evolved, but the flagellum was "poofed"

as for your second point…how is that not a strawman? I said that ID cannot (yet) translate itself into empiricism and remains a philosophical concept. I did not say there is "no way ID can ever become empirical" nor "empiricism excludes cause-effect". My point is that your arguments have not shown an effect which cannot be amply accounted for using solely natural causes…including RM/NS. From Behe recanting on the blood clotting cascade and later moving the goalposts on them, I think it clear that filling in "design" for "unknown natural cause" is specious.

I actually conceded your point that, "scientific discovery is significantly influenced by sociological factors", as I extrapolated "sociological factors" to include political/popular support…but I disagree that political support does not affect research. Unfortunately for those of us who depend on scientific grants to make a living, the budgets of the NSF and NIH etc are directly tied to Congressional committees…who are nothing, if not political.

From stem cell support to FDA approval, it is becoming increasingly clear that political support does indeed affect science (unfortunately).

I agree that OOL research is nascent, but I think that autocatalysis and some other burgeoning fields of chemistry and physics must be positioned to lend more modes of thought to abiogenesis before dismissing it. From a sheerly common sense viewpoint, I sincerely doubt we will ever succeed at narrowing down the OOL past a handful of reasonable pathways. The historical inferences we can make are simply weak. However, if self-assembly or some branch of bioinorganic chemistry (say the copper-assisted formation of AAs) has some great breakthrough in demonstrating a hitherto unthought of possibility…I could be terribly wrong.

So I agree MikeGene that until we see results, OOL will be like a lot of fundamental research with no short-term payoff–backburner priority. As I am sure you know from working in research, inability to demonstrate a short-term return on any investment in science equals difficulty in procuring the funding.

One thing about OOL is for sure–astrobiology is the surest way to discover abiogenesis. The funding provided for researching possibilities life elsewhere will inadvertently supply answers to the reality of origin of life here. Benner, at my school, is one of the world's finest in that category. I have had a few short discussions with him about abiogenesis, and he feels that OOL research is no more plagued with fundamental (philosophical) difficulties than, say, QED or string theory…it is a matter of time and technology.

Since those in charge of funding equate ID with religion, are you saying the government should be funding religion?

Bipod already dealt with your argument "“ "it is not the populace that prescribes the heuristics of research. nor is it the populace that provides research grants of any substance. rather, both are determined by scientific, academic, and corporate communities."

The key here is that both Robinson and Szostak have acknowledged a point I have been making for years "“ scientific discovery is significantly influenced by sociological factors. In this case, they have blamed lack of funding and researchers for the paltry track record of abiogenesis research over the last 50 years. So I'm still waiting for the first ID critic to concede the obvious. Thus, will you join with Robinson and Szostak and acknowledge that scientific discovery is significantly influenced by sociological factors?

That is obvious from the continuation of NDE.

Aacobb:
Of course, as Mike Gene pointed out, people may get tired of funding such research if it never goes anywhere.

As long as there are atheists with deep pockets that is unlikely to happen in abio.

Aacobb:
It will be interesting to see when, if ever, research on ool by design even begins.

Are you implying that there are currently no labs working on synthesizing life? That is far from reality.

But seeing you are fond of what Mike Gene says:

"To say that ID has no proposed mechanism means only that we don't specifically know how ID was implemented. So what? Do we have any good reason to think that if ID was implemented at the origin of life (for example), then we should be able to determine how ID was implemented? Of course not. The truth of ID does not entail the ability to describe the process of design. Thus, the inability to describe the actual process that was implemented is essentially meaningless apart from its rhetorical appeal."

The above from ID & mechanisms

It is truly amazing that someone who has been arguing against ID for so long (as you have) doesn't have a clue about what ID really is about.

The issue would be that once one group sez they cannot figure it out (abiogenesis), that they have exhausted all possible avenues for life arising from non-living matter via unintelligent, blind/ undirected processes, another group will pop up and say that first group just wasn't good enough at doing what needed to be done.

IOW there will never come a day when abiogenesis research is over and all scientists say that life did not arise from non-living matter via unintelligent, blind/ undirected processes.

No, I don't read CF, but I like to see where visitors are coming from, and a while ago, I checked out your profile, which links to us. You actually made me use Google to find out what "pwns joo" meant.