(April 9, 2016 at 2:05 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote:(April 8, 2016 at 2:16 pm)AAA Wrote: All we have are incredibly complex ways to convert light energy to chemical energy and more complex ways to convert light energy to chemical energy. I'm not saying that there aren't more than one ways to do it, I'm saying that it is speculative to say that one led to the other.
Transitioning from one to the other would require invoking many enzymes that we have no idea if they ever existed. It IS speculative. It is speculation based on observation, but it is speculation none the less. Why not speculate and say that the more complex ones have degraded and lost components to become the less complex ones?
Based on semantics like that, I could call anything "speculation" with the intention of dismissing it.
Geology? That's just speculation based on what we observe about rocks.
Chemistry? That's just speculation about what we observe when we mix stuff.
Theology? That's just speculation based on what we observe in religious texts and testimonies.
That's just an intellectually dishonest word game, bro. Shame shame.
When both genetics and metabolic processes connect older forms of life with newer ones, and the older forms of these processes appear to be more simple than what we currently observe, then yes, it is reasonable to "speculate" that these processes continued to grow and refine over time as some of these organisms evolved into newer, more complex things.
Please tell me you're not trying to throw down the "you weren't there, therefore you're just speculating" argument. You're not, are you? If that argument were sound, forensic science would be totally useless, and so would many other forms of science. We do not have to observe an event directly to know that it occurred. We can reason that an event occurred by the evidence it leaves behind. This is why field evidence trumps eyewitness testimony in both the lab and the courtroom.
There is a fine line between observations and speculation. Chemistry is not speculative, you can measure amounts of reactants and products and intermediates to develop mechanisms for reactions. Speculative chemistry would be saying that chemicals could get together to form life on their own.
I'm not saying you can't speculate. I'm saying that speculation is not the same as empiricism. You can compare multiple speculations against the evidence to see which one is more likely to have happened. But if you have only have one hypothesis that works after centuries of the brightest people in the world trying to come up with an alternative, then you can reasonably say that it is likely to be true.
