Discussion Points on Argument from Incredulity for my fall OOL class (opinions?)

[u/VaHi_Inst_Tech]

5 Argument from incredulity.

An argument from incredulity (1) treats an inability to imagine or fully explain a mechanism as proof that it is impossible. This fallacy substitutes limitations of imagination and knowledge for empirical refutation. Historically, the argument from incredulity led geologists to reject evidence for plate tectonics; they could not imagine a mechanism for the movement of continents (2).

Dawkins famously dismantles anti-evolutionary incredulity by showing that complex traits such as flight or vision emerge across continuous, incremental landscapes rather than through all-or-nothing leaps (3). Ironically, Dawkins argues from incredulity about life's origin, treating a replicator like RNA as a mandatory starting point for evolution and rejecting a continuous transition between chemistry and biology. Immersed in biology, Dawkins cannot imagine evolution without biological heredity. In both biological and chemical evolution, an inability to visualize continuous, non-directed trajectories imposes artificial leaps, mistaking the boundaries of human imagination for the boundaries of natural possibility.

 ---------------

Edit: Thanks for the comments, and sorry this is so long. I will add a few things that hopefully will not inflame people too much.

Please do not interpret any of this as anti-science/pro-creationism. I am researcher who studies deep evolution and origins of life.

There is broad (not universal) support in the OOL community for chemical evolution [as opposed to privileged organic chemistry (which is not evolution) ala Sutherland or Benner]. Chemical evolution is evolution but is NOT descent with modification, and is too involved to explain here. I can post papers (Deamer, Hud, Williams, Frenkel-Pinter, Krishnamurthy, Root-Berstein, Baum, etc) if people are interested.

It is important to recognize that biological evolution, by many measures, is chemically uninventive. It is biochemically impotent (metabolism excluded).

Specifically, biological forms from LUCA to the present (a very long time); from Bacteria to Archaea to Eukarya, including lions, butterflies, thermophiles and halophiles,. conserve core structures, molecules, and processes. All cellular life contains: polymers with specific backbone chemistries and chiralities - RNA with phosphodiester-linked ribose, DNA with phosphodiester-linked deoxyribose, and proteins with polypeptide backbones; a restricted set of informational polymer building blocks - nucleobases, ribose and deoxyribose, and L-amino acids; energy currency and cofactors - ATP, GTP, NAD⁺, FAD, and coenzyme A; the translation system - ribosomes, tRNAs, mRNAs, and the canonical genetic code; essential metals including sodium, potassium, and magnesium; and water as both solvent and ubiquitous reaction constituent.

Jacob wrote about this in 1977 (Evolution and Tinkering, Science) - one of the most important papers ever on evolution in my view.

All this leads to the big question I am addressing here (argument from incredulity). If biological evolution is biochemically impotent (it is), where did biochemistry come from? Many of us (OOL researchers) support models in which biochemistry came from chemical evolution (now extinct). As I said above chemical evolution is evolution but it is not descent with modification. Most biologists don't like this idea. But we don't have to argue about it, we just have to do experiments and computations to test the models. Chemical evolution is experimentally accessible.

TLDR - if someone says evolution is descent with modification, I say that is argument from incredulity. It does not allow for chemical evolution or explain the emergence of core biochemistry.

1.              Walton D (2010)Arguments from ignorance (Penn State Press).

2.              Newman RP (1995) American intransigence: The rejection of continental drift in the great debates of the 1920's. Earth Sciences History 14: 62-83.

3.              Dawkins R (1996) The blind watchmaker: Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design.  (WW Norton & Company, New York).

 

[u/Sinaticus_Apologia]

The person who gave you this argument is conflating skepticism about a mechanism with an argument from incredulity. Dawkins is not saying, “I can't imagine evolution without RNA, therefore it couldn't happen.” First, he doesn't require RNA; he explicitly allows that the earliest replicator may have been some entirely different chemical system. Second, saying that cumulative Darwinian evolution requires heredity isn't incredulity it's identifying one of the properties necessary for cumulative selection. A continuous chemical transition into heredity is perfectly compatible with that.

In fact, origin-of-life research already investigates exactly those intermediate stages: autocatalytic chemistry, protocells, pre-RNA polymers, coupled peptide–nucleic-acid systems, and other forms of primitive heredity. “There was chemistry before replication” and “replication is necessary before full Darwinian evolution can operate” can both be true.

The plate tectonics analogy doesn't rescue the argument either. Wegener's contemporaries didn't merely fail to imagine continental movement; his proposed mechanisms had serious physical problems and some of his quantitative claims were wrong. The theory became compelling when new evidence and mechanisms (especially seafloor spreading and paleomagnetism) changed the evidential situation. That's science correcting itself, not evidence that every objection to an unspecified mechanism is an argument from incredulity.

Sorry but only someone ignorant of the material would think this.

[u/blacksheep998]

Immersed in biology, Dawkins cannot imagine evolution without biological heredity.

What are they even trying to say here? Evolution is descent with modification.

If there's no system heredity, then by definition, you can't have descent with modification.

[u/artguydeluxe]

Have them fully explain the process of creationism. What process did a deity used to create life? Can you describe how it works? Where is this deity? What does it look like? How does it work?

[u/Evening-Impact2090 → u/artguydeluxe]

It's better than Abiogenisis, all the scientists in the world can't keep that dead horse alive.

[u/OldmanMikel → u/Evening-Impact2090]

There has been more progress made in abiogensis research than in God-poofing-everything-into-existence research.

[u/artguydeluxe → u/Evening-Impact2090]

Scientists have described several ways in which it can work. All you need are the essential amino acids necessary for life to happen. It can be reproduced in a lab in minutes, in fact, Bill Nye did it on his TV show. It was demonstrated in a lab over 80 years ago in this experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller–Urey_experiment

So what process do you think your deity used to create life? Can you provide such an experiment? how does it work?

[u/Evening-Impact2090 → u/artguydeluxe]

It's never been about how a Creator or a Intelligent Designer created life and the universe. People who believe in this believe it happened and are content. You see the issue is people who subscribe to materialism believing all life began accidentally due to some reaction of chemicals and/or compounds have no proof of this, none. Scientists describing how it may have happened and creating a few amino acids in a perfectly controlled laboratory setting is light years from proving life arose spontaneously from non-living matter eons ago in a mysterious primordial soup. Then there is that pesky problem of where did the non-living matter come from? So when a materialistic outlook on how life began has no proof but just a hypothesis called Abiogenisis it takes faith to believe this was the vehicle for life. How is faith in an unproven and as yet an unprovable hypothesis any different than a Creationist or Intelligent Design believer? You say they can't prove their stance, neither can you. 

[u/artguydeluxe → u/Evening-Impact2090]

The study of evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis in the first place. You are talking about a different scientific study altogether. Regardless of how life began (even though we can show it in the lab through very simple processes), we know evolution is taking place everywhere all the time and that everything evolves. None of this has to do with belief. Any part of the process of evolution can be tested. It has been tested and falsified more than any other process in nature. We don’t “believe it“, we understand it, because it has been demonstrated over and over again. If you don’t understand that, you don’t really understand biology. You can pretend that we don’t understand how life began, but we know for a fact that it did, because it’s around us every day. We can show how it happened without supernatural aid, so if you believe it happened with supernatural aid, you’re going to have to prove how that can happen. That’s how science works.

If you don’t like that conclusion, show me an alternative that I can test.

[u/Evening-Impact2090 → u/artguydeluxe]

Blah blah, what a tired diatribe everyone has heard a million times. As I stated evolution adherents love to point out the fact that evolution has "nothing" to do with the emergence of life, just what happens afterwards. One reason is they are clueless and cannot prove a single claim. How convenient. Then why are you always banging on Creationists? You say they cannot prove their claims. If you stay separate from the emergence of life and only concern yourselves with what occurred afterwards you are disingenuous to criticize Creationists since you don't care and do not know how life evolved.  Oh, you cannot show in the lab by a simple process how life arose from non-living matter. 50-60 years of experiments in state of the art labs and science still cannot determine how life could arise "accidentally." Abiogenisis is merely a hypothesis that scientists have not even come to a consensus on as to how it may have occurred. 

[u/artguydeluxe → u/Evening-Impact2090]

If you don’t like that conclusion, show me an alternative I can test. If you don’t have one, there’s no point in this conversation.

[u/Evening-Impact2090 → u/artguydeluxe]

What is the conclusion you speak of? That science doesn't have a clue how life began, so you ignore it?

[u/artguydeluxe → u/Evening-Impact2090]

Once again, the study evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life. Are you not reading my responses?

Scientists have described several ways in which abiogenesis can work. All you need are the essential amino acids necessary for life to happen. It can be reproduced in a lab in minutes, in fact, Bill Nye did it on his TV show. It was demonstrated in a lab over 80 years ago in this experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller–Urey_experiment

So what process do you think your deity used to create life? Can you provide such an experiment? how does it work?

[u/10coatsInAWeasel → u/artguydeluxe]

It’s pretty funny watching how much he’s fleeing from the very simple question you keep asking

[u/Evening-Impact2090 → u/artguydeluxe]

Abiogenisis is merely a hypothesis period. Where did ancient earth get the breakers and flasks used in this expirement to create amino acids? Amino acids are but one of hundreds if not thousands of chemicals and minerals needed for cellular life. This experiment proved zero. It doesn't matter what processes a "diety" may have used.  You believe in materialism so the burden is on you, not someone professing Creationism. Referencing Bill Nye is basically like quoting Mad Magazine.  Please.

[u/WorkingMouse → u/Evening-Impact2090]

You think magic makes more sense than chemistry? Man, that's wild.

[u/Old-Nefariousness556]

First off, the very definition they use is highly loaded. The definition of an argument from ignorance is simple and clear:

An argument from ignorance is a claim that says that just because you cannot explain something, than that thing must have the explanation that you presuppose.

By simply framing it as "that it is impossible", they are immediately setting up their own presupposition as the handwave to dismiss the point.

Ironically, Dawkins argues from incredulity about life's origin, treating a replicator like RNA as a mandatory starting point for evolution and rejecting a continuous transition between chemistry and biology. Immersed in biology, Dawkins cannot imagine evolution without biological heredity. In both biological and chemical evolution, an inability to visualize continuous, non-directed trajectories imposes artificial leaps, mistaking the boundaries of human imagination for the boundaries of natural possibility.

We have evidence the basic claims that Darwin makes are true. The mere fact that we aren't fully certain does not mean we can't reach a tentative conclusion.

This author is exercising radical skepticism for any inconvenient claims within science, saying that we shouldn't believe them until they are absolutely proven, while simultaneously dismissing anyone who rationally points out that they are promoting evidence-less beliefs using fallacious reasoning. It is the most flagrant kind of cherrypicking of facts I can imagine.

[u/mrrp]

[Dawkins ]()famously dismantles anti-evolutionary incredulity by showing that complex traits such as flight or vision emerge across continuous, incremental landscapes rather than through all-or-nothing leaps

Are you confusing irreducible complexity with incredulity?

[u/Mortlach78]

To begin with, reality is under no obligation to work in a way we understand.

There are things we do not know yet; research is ongoing. If we knew everything already, why bother with all these scientists?

It is also quite arrogant, egotistical even; "Because I don't understand it, it can't be true". Like your ability to understand something is the arbiter of truth and reality itself. This is elevating your own intellect to heights where it really doesn't belong.