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Thanks. Those Qualiasoups are good and point up flawed thinking that is almost universally used. 'Oh I don't do that, so nobody else does' 'Oh I disagree with what you say so you are wrong until you convince me' and 'I heard a mysterious knocking sound. It was my deceased uncle unless you can prove to me 100% that it wasn't.'
Probably the people who use such arguments think they are legitimate, but would probably use them in any case simply in order to support what they believed was true anyway. Or at least as something they hoped would undermine the rational/scientific thought that questioned their beliefs.
Do we have any proof or evidence to support this idea?
No. Not really. It is purely based on three things:
(1) extrapolation of the development of life back to the earliest fossils, of a couple of cells back to suggest how they might have developed
(2) some experimental work to suggests that under the right conditions, life could arise from biochemicals
(3) some hypothetical mechanisms that seem plausible
That's really it, and the mare relevant factors to the religion -debate are that it is simply blinkered to claim that abiogenesis is impossible and therefore a God must have done it, and that it makes no difference to the argument for evolution v. genesis. Even if a god had to start life off and even if one argues that speciation cannot occur without some divine help, the evidence seems to roundly refute the story as told in Genesis.
There was a (YE) poster who directed me to a site which argued that, interpreted correctly Genesis can be made to agree with the science. I pointed out that this means the evolution is true and Genesis in fact endorses it.
How is believing something that is impossible, and has NEVER been observed to have happened any MORE plausible to consider than that if we have a universe, something caused it?
No. Not really. It is purely based on three things:
(1) extrapolation of the development of life back to the earliest fossils, of a couple of cells back to suggest how they might have developed
(2) some experimental work to suggests that under the right conditions, life could arise from biochemicals
(3) some hypothetical mechanisms that seem plausible
Sorry to intrude . . . but in another thread I was reminded of how consistently my Synthesis is roundly dissed because it is based on extrapolation and plausibility . . . as if it is just "made up" or pulled from my nether regions. It seemed apropos to comment on this similar defense of Abiogenesis. Just saying.
Sorry to intrude . . . but in another thread I was reminded of how consistently my Synthesis is roundly dissed because it is based on extrapolation and plausibility . . . as if it is just "made up" or pulled from my nether regions. It seemed apropos to comment on this similar defense of Abiogenesis. Just saying.
Yes. I take your point. Yet it is (rather like the materialist default) founded on what know (the fact of natural selection and the fossil record indicating development from the simplest cells, and the facts of the workings of physics without any need for divine intervention) and the view that a beginning of life and indeed a beginning of the universe, is (at least feasibly) through some natural (unplanned) cause rather than a god being involved. Especially as the hypothetical mechanisms make it dismissive of creationists to claim that it is just impossible.
Your synthesis, ingenious though it is, doesn't seem to have real reason to suppose it is true, the hard Question, the emergence of consciousness, the a priori of the god -concept, the nature of the Mystical Experience, none of these really need a 'God' explanation, and we can hypothesize that there is a natural and indeed evolutionary reason for the way we are and these religious ideas we get. There is no compelling need to posit a Goddunnit to the beginnings of life or our consciousness. And I know your views on Occam's razor.
Yea I do not think the concept of abiogenesis is really comparable to simply making things up at all. Especially when the things made up seem to have no bearing on reality whatsoever.
Abiogenesis is a hypothesis at this time not a Theory in the scientific sense - but it is a hypothesis that is based solely on what we know to be true of reality. It does not require we make anything up - imagine evidence we do not have now but hopefully will find in the future - or anything else.
Rather we know many ways in which Abiogenesis can happen. Our issue is in finding out which one - if any - of them it actually was. That proteins form and can become self replicating is well known and that is pretty much all we need to know for abiogenesis to be a sound hypothesis.
This is in no way comparable to some of the things we see entirely made up around here.
So what would inspire such an attack on a random scientific hypothesis? Simply put , fear. Fear that all the Sunday mornings grovelling are wasted. Fear that the great God is not going to come back from the sky, and that Humans are alone, without a creator, without a guide or a savior, in fact, and must find answers for themselves.
Abiogenesis simply cannot be proven or dis-proven with current technology. One day, with more information, it probably will be validated or rejected. Until then, science offers many exciting frontiers.
I did not read what Vizio wrote, lest he join Mr5150 and Eusebius on the iggy page. I am assuming that like most theists, when backed into a corner with no intelligent response, he resorted to name calling and such out of desperation and defeat. Miss June is correct, if you want to have an intellectual discussion, read something other than Wiki and bring some useful information to the table, like Arequipa does, And like I try to do.
Yea I do not think the concept of abiogenesis is really comparable to simply making things up at all. Especially when the things made up seem to have no bearing on reality whatsoever.
Abiogenesis is a hypothesis at this time not a Theory in the scientific sense - but it is a hypothesis that is based solely on what we know to be true of reality. It does not require we make anything up - imagine evidence we do not have now but hopefully will find in the future - or anything else.
Rather we know many ways in which Abiogenesis can happen. Our issue is in finding out which one - if any - of them it actually was. That proteins form and can become self replicating is well known and that is pretty much all we need to know for abiogenesis to be a sound hypothesis.
This is in no way comparable to some of the things we see entirely made up around here.
I have been watching this discussion with interest, and I think I would go one further. I think Abiogenesis is not even a hypothesis, it is merely a label for the observation that the evidence we have points to life emerging from non-life in some way. Even if one chosen some sort of panspermia type explanation (that life is seeded here from outer space) at some point it had to come from somewhere, so at some point we still have non-life producing life.
Hypotheses about how this observed behavior could have come about are the scientific part. These hypotheses can and have been tested, refined, and make testable predictions, thus we have a body of experimental results spanning almost a century. What is happening is that critics are conflating the scientific hypotheses about how life emerged from non-life, with the observation that it must have happened.
Not only that, but most critics of abiogenesis are not criticizing abiogenesis, per say. A literalist interpretation of Genesis requires abiogenesis! The real criticism is that we limit the scientific mechanism for abiogenesis to things that science can actually investigate, natural phenomena. After all Genesis proposes that man came from dirt, clearly abiogenesis, but the mechanism was the supernatural power of God, also known as "Magic!"
So this really isn't about naturalists irrationally choosing to believe something without evidence, it is once again about the rejection of assertions that have no evidence! When believers can empirically demonstrate God, or mathematically model the divine creative force, we might be able to form a scientific hypothesis about how life emerged from non-life, using the power of God as a mechanism. Until then, we can only explain the world in terms of what is actually observable...
I have been watching this discussion with interest, and I think I would go one further. I think Abiogenesis is not even a hypothesis, it is merely a label for the observation that the evidence we have points to life emerging from non-life in some way. Even if one chosen some sort of panspermia type explanation (that life is seeded here from outer space) at some point it had to come from somewhere, so at some point we still have non-life producing life.
Thank you. You said it much better than I did.
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Genesis can be made to agree with the science. I pointed out that this means the evolution is true and Genesis in fact endorses it.
