The Case of Dean Kenyon

Dean Kenyon was a distinguished senior biology professor at San Francisco State University and co-author of a standard work on the origin of life on earth, “Biochemical Predestination.” Kenyon eventually became disillusioned with efforts to explain life as a product of purposeless and unguided chemical reactions. He became a proponent of intelligent design.

When Kenyon taught the prevailing naturalistic theories of biological origins in his introductory course for non-majors he also explained his own scepticism about whether these theories are consistent with the evidence and argued that intelligent design is a legitimate alternative to naturalistic explanations of the origin of life.

A handful of students complained, and the department chairman immediately endorsed their complaints. He announced that he would not allow Kenyon to teach this course in the future, on the ground that Kenyon was improperly introducing his religious opinions into the science curriculum.

Was the department chairman right?

The idea of unintelligent abiogenesis.

Comments on the previous post focused on the terminology usage which is frustrating though I am partly to blame for this. Apologies.

Allow me to concede the semantic point to commenter “Anonymous” regarding the usage of the phrase “the theory of abiogenesis.” at present this “field of research” should not apparently be dignified with this title. Apologies.

May I call it the “scientific idea of unintelligent abiogenesis.”

Now…
What are the criteria for determining whether an idea is a scientific idea or not?

Is it necessary for the idea of unintelligent abiogenesis to be falsifiable for it to be considered a scientific idea or is the idea of unintelligent abiogenesis a simple axiom of scientific thinking with no other options permissible within science.

In other words is the following proposition necessarily true:

Life exists in the universe therefore it must have had an unintelligent origin at some point in time.

Is Abiogenesis Falsifiable?

(With acknowledgements to Commenter William Bradford)


The theory of Abiogenesis is closely related to the Theory of Evolution. In many text book treatments of evolution abiogenesis is included within the category of evolution in its broadest meaning.

Abiogenesis is the natural extension of the principle of common descent allowing a chance/time bridge to be built between inanimate and animate matter.

Abiogenesis is the hypothesis that it is possible to account for the origin of life either on the earth or somewhere else in the universe by chance without the intervention of pre-existing intelligence… in other words without design.

Materialists have two options (it seems to me.)

1. Abiogenesis is probable enough to have occurred in this universe… and in fact it has.
2. Abiogenesis is not probable enough to have occurred in this universe and so there must be multiple universes and we simply happen to be in one of the universes that spawned life.

Option 2 (it seems to me) should be excluded from science because by definition we cannot have any evidence of the existence of another universe. Which leaves only option 1.

What does a materialist do if 1 is actually falsified?

Can science in principle allow 1 to be falsified? If so how? If not is Abiogenesis really science?

Intelligent Design ....or not?

Is this a collection of random boulders or have they been placed intelligently? How do we know?

Holiday Pictures

The view from Slioch.

Eilean Donan Castle

Loch Maree