Posts by kepler

10

The Use of the Word Satan in the Bible

by kepler in

job 38:4,7.. .

job 1:6 before the lord, and satan came also among them.

job 2:1 before the lord, and satan came also among them .

kepler

Clarity,

Thanks for your note. It's the best result I can hope for engaging in this sort of thing.

10

The Use of the Word Satan in the Bible

by kepler in

job 38:4,7.. .

job 1:6 before the lord, and satan came also among them.

job 2:1 before the lord, and satan came also among them .

What often takes me off-guard on this forum is how the tides of contributions shift from close adherence to and extreme difference with JW world view. Maybe a few days ago I might be an outlier in one direction - and then next I am sailing on the other side of the lake from the regatta. A friend once gave me a bit of advice: "Just be yourself, ...clone!"

mP,

We might have had a similar discussion a couple of months ago. Full revisit: a topic called Biblical herpetology. But to tell the truth, most of my knowledge of reptiles and amphibians is present day, watching or raising turtles and frogs. Interesting enough as a hobby, but it's provided virtually no practical application. I've got nothing transferable in this case. Suspect though that areas of scientific inquiry, following a specific trail such as farm implements, coins, bricks, stored seeds, etc. tells a lot more about a society than we might initially view.

Just in passing, I did mention above that camel caravans are supposedly a relatively late innovation in the mideast. That Moses would be writing of a camel caravan king in 1473 BC ( or 1200 BC for that matter) is an illustrative difficulty with such authorship for Job. Other than that it makes doctrinal sense for the WTBTS to have Moses write Job is about the only rationale I can see. But neither cuneiform or hieroglyphic records for Egyptian or Mesopotamian origin are available in support of any argument. So, whether it's snakes or camels, there's indirect testimony about the past. But I don't think it makes sense to dismiss what ancient writings we have by saying that all the authors' motives were base and exposed.

Glenster,

Sounds like you have addressed usage of another set of words in the OT. You are right about the first verse of the first chapter of the first book. It is an interesting insert considering that later in the text ( in English) there appears to be an editorial "we": "Let us make man in our own image and likeness." This mystifies many due to the plural, but it also raises the question of what is the image of an invisible god but that of a spirit - And this poses another stumbling block for JW doctrine. Granted, you could place in two columns arguments for bodily and spiritual resurrection - and JWs drill on the former. But what I referred to above from Mark is an argument for the latter. Same with Christ on the cross speaking to the Good Thief in Luke. The edit of this part of the Gospels in the NWT is as blatant as an episode in Orwell's Animal Farm.

But back to the singular and plural. I am not a Hebrew linguist - and Biblical scholarship has had centuries to mull such matters. But the words El and Elohim appear to be singular and plural of god. The use of YHWH, Elohim, El Shaddai and all the other forms are tracers too of Judaeo-Christian thought. And as I look at these things, trying to juggle in my mind which editorial group was using what term and why, I am inclined to reserve judgment. Things that I read a year or two ago, I would interpret differently now - and maybe it is just a matter of coming up to speed with people at this longer than I have been. But I would be aware of groupthink organizations inside or outside of the forum.

WTWizard,

Talking about "opposition"!

You wouldn't happen to be related to Jonathan Swift? You are not without sharp observation. And I confess that I share some of your anger. Who knows, maybe as much even if I don't manifest it the same way. I guess I don't look as far afield for inspiration or motivation - though perhaps some of my examples sound as demonic to JW trained ears. But actually I am convinced that there is room within Christian belief for further search for truth and room for action as well. Even our sense of fair play is based on the foundation it provided. We find ourselves in a campsite that we should leave in as good or better condition than when we found it. Tough order, but it has to be at least a conscious thought before it can be enacted.

10

The Use of the Word Satan in the Bible

by kepler in

job 38:4,7.. .

job 1:6 before the lord, and satan came also among them.

job 2:1 before the lord, and satan came also among them .

kepler

In the Jehovah Witness pamphlet “What Does the Bible Really Teach?” (WTBRT), on page 28-31 of chapter 3 ( “What is God’s Purpose for the Earth?”) there is a section titled “The Origin of an Enemy”. In the beginning it reads:

“The first book of the Bible tells us of an opposer of God who showed up in the Garden of Eden. He is described as “the serpent”, but he was not a mere animal. The last book of the Bible identifies him as the “one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth” [unattributed]. He is also called “the original serpent” [Genesis 3:1; Revelation 12:9]. This powerful angel, or invisible spirit creature, used a serpent to speak to Eve, even as a skilled person can make it seem that his voice is coming from a nearby doll or dummy. That spirit person had no doubt been present when God prepared the Earth for humans. – Job 38:4,7.”

To me this reads more like the Cliff Notes for Milton’s “Paradise Lost” than Genesis, and at that, it does not match up very well with the events in the middle and the end. We will stop for a moment here to look at the quote from Job, chapter 38. The first verse from the NWT reads:

1 “And Jehovah proceeded to answer Job [my emphasis] out of the windstorm and say…

4 “Where did you happen to be where I founded the earth?

7 “When the morning stars joyfully cried out together and all the sons of God began shouting in applause?”

On page 29 of WTBRT, the epistle of James is cited as explaining how a perfect spirit creation of God could somehow go bad. “Wrong desire may become very strong. Then if the opportunity presents itself, he may act upon the bad desire that he been thinking about.” - James 1:13-15.

I suggest checking out this passage for yourself to see if this sheds any light on the origin of evil in this world; whether or not it is simply inherent in human nature with which we must struggle, or whether evil resided in eternity waiting to manifest itself in interference between God and man; that one more perfect creature managed to corrupt another in full view of a royal court over which presides an eternal, omnipotent and omniscient God.

Clearly, since its founding, the WTBTS has been of the latter view. With the 1934 Yearbook I attempted a word count of the number of times its author (Joseph Rutherford) used certain words. Beyond its statistical report, most of the yearbook then was set up as a daily meditation: a passage selected from the Bible and then a paragraph selected from the previous year’s WatchTower publications. Almost invariably the WatchTower quotations were variations on the impending Armageddon theme. Judging by word counts for the first six months of daily “meditations”, Rutherford referenced Jesus 184 times and Satan 126. He mentioned “organization” 76 times, but I leave it a matter of speculation whether this was used as a pejorative.

As early as 1921, author Rutherford is quick to connect Satan with passages in the Bible Old Testament. From “The Harp of God”, pages 29-30, chapter 2, “The Creation”:

[Of Lucifer], the prophet Ezekiel says of him that “that he was the anointed cherub that covereth”, which seems to indicate that he had authority over some others. Continuing, the prophet records: “Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou has walked up and down in the midst of stones of fire. Thou was perfect in thy ways from the day that thous wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.” (Ezekiel 28:14,15).

When one actually reads chapter 28 of Ezekiel, it is apparent that Ezekiel is addressing these words to the King of Tyre under siege by the Babylonians.

“Thou has been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond (Ezekiel 28:13). “ The same thing. This is about the king of Tyre.

Even in 1921 there was a tendency to cite Biblical verses in reverse order to validate an interpretation adapted for contemporary ends. But if you go to verses 11 and 12, you will read the following:

The word of Yahweh was addressed to me as follows: son of man, raise a lament for the king of Tyre. Say to him, The Lord Yahweh says this :

You used to be a model of perfection, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty; ( 28:12)

You were in Eden, in the garden of God.

All kinds of gem formed your mantle

It is hard for me to believe that such a Bible moth as Rutherford could be unaware of what he was doing.

Now, having ascertained that Joseph Rutherford refers very frequently to Satan in his writings, often citing Satan where he is not, let us check for how many times the Bible actually mentions the chap.

With an on-line concordance, searching for: Hebrew word “SATAN” in King James version

Old Testament

JOB 1:6 before the LORD, and SATAN came also among them.

JOB 1:7 the LORD said unto SATAN, Whence comest thou? Then

JOB 1:7 Whence comest thou? Then SATAN answered the LORD, and

JOB 1:8 the LORD said unto SATAN, Hast thou considered my

JOB 1:9 Then SATAN answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job

JOB 1:12 the LORD said unto SATAN, Behold, all that he

JOB 1:12 forth thine hand. So SATAN went forth from the

JOB 2:1 before the LORD, and SATAN came also among them

JOB 2:2 the LORD said unto SATAN, From whence comest thou?

JOB 2:2 whence comest thou? And SATAN answered the LORD, and

JOB 2:3 the LORD said unto SATAN, Hast thou considered my

JOB 2:4 And SATAN answered the LORD, and said, Skin for

JOB 2:6 the LORD said unto SATAN, Behold, he is in

JOB 2:7 So went SATAN forth from the presence of the (14)

[ According to NWT Appendix written by Moses in 1473 BC in parallel with Numbers and Deuteronomy]

PSALM 109:6 over him: and let SATAN stand at his right [accuser?] (1)

ZECHARIAH 3:1 of the LORD, and SATAN standing at his right [Joshua] to accuse him

ZECHARIAH 3:2 the LORD said unto SATAN, The LORD rebuke thee,

ZECHARIAH 3:2 LORD rebuke thee, O SATAN; even the LORD that (3)

[1 st chapters circa 520-517BC, later chapters 200 years later]

1 CHRONICLES 21:1 And SATAN stood up against Israel, and provoked David (1)

[ According to NWT Appendix, written by Ezra sometime in the mid 5 th century]

New Testament –Gospels & Acts

MATTHEW 4:10 him, Get thee hence, SATAN: for it is written,

MATTHEW 12:26 And if SATAN cast out SATAN, he is divided

MATTHEW 12:26 if SATAN cast out SATAN, he is divided against

MATTHEW 16:23 Get thee behind me, SATAN: thou art an offense

MARK 1:13 forty days, tempted of SATAN; and was with the

MARK 3:23 them in parables, How can SATAN cast out SATAN?

MARK 3:26 And if SATAN rise up against himself, and be

MARK 4:15 when they have heard, SATAN cometh immediately, and taketh

MARK 8:33 Get thee behind me, SATAN: for thou savourest not

LUKE 4:8 Get thee behind me, SATAN: for it is written,

LUKE 10:18 unto them, I beheld SATAN as lightning fall from

LUKE 11:18 If SATAN also be divided against himself, how shall

LUKE 13:16 daughter of Abraham, whom SATAN hath bound, lo, these

LUKE 22:3 Then entered SATAN into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of

LUKE 22:31 said, Simon, Simon, behold, SATAN hath desired to have

JOHN 13:27 And after the sop SATAN entered into him. Then

ACTS 5:3 said, Ananias, why hath SATAN filled thine heart to

ACTS 26:18 from the power of SATAN unto God, that they

New Testament Epistles

ROMANS 16:20 of peace shall bruise SATAN under your feet shortly.

1 CORINTHIANS 5:5 such an one unto SATAN for the destruction of

1 CORINTHIANS 7:5 come together again, that SATAN tempt you not for

2 CORINTHIANS 2:11 Lest SATAN should get an advantage of us: for

2 CORINTHIANS 11:14 And no marvel; for SATAN himself is transformed into

2 CORINTHIANS 12:7 flesh, the messenger of SATAN to buffet me, lest

1 THESSALONIANS 2:18 I Paul, once and again; but SATAN hindered us.

2 THESSALONIANS 2:9 after the working of SATAN with all power and

1 TIMOTHY 1:20 I have delivered unto SATAN, that they may learn

1 TIMOTHY 5:15 For some are already turned aside after SATAN.

Revelations

REVELATION 2:9 and are not, but are the synagogue of SATAN.

REVELATION 2:13 thou dwellest, even where SATAN's seat is: and thou

REVELATION 2:13 martyr, who was slain among you, where SATAN dwelleth.

REVELATION 2:24 known the depths of SATAN, as they speak; I

REVELATION 3:9 of the synagogue of SATAN, which say they are

REVELATION 12:9 called the Devil, and SATAN, which deceiveth the whole

REVELATION 20:2 is the Devil, and SATAN, and bound him a

REVELATION 20:7 thousand years are expired, SATAN shall be loosed out

----

To give credit where credit is due, I would not be writing this post right now if I had not been reading WTBRT under the direction of an Elder and his assistants who visited me each Saturday a couple of winters ago. I would not have reviewed what is actually said at Genesis 3:1, nor would I have connected it with what else is said in the Bible in the manner indicated above. What happened was that I was shocked to my core by what I saw – and it was entirely different than what the Elder and the Brothers were trying to lead me to believe.

When I looked at what was said in the Bible and what I have just excerpted in part from the pamphlet WTBRT, I was amazed by the deceit in behalf of attempting to prove the devil's existence, a rather contrarian enterprise, if I do say so myself.

Genesis never identifies the serpent as Satan or the devil. Satan in the book of Job could be a proper name – or more likely, a title to a prosecutorial presence in a conventional court of an earthly monarch transposed to a celestial realm. There is no evidence for authorship by Moses and the dates ascribed to such authorship are preposterous archeologically even if Moses had written anything himself at all. Anachronisms such as camel caravans abound – and the structure of the book is a poem embedded in a surrounding narrative drawing differing conclusions. This suggests at least two authors.

Satan as a name for the devil is just as semantically slippery as saying “Judge” is Rutherford’s first name. For in the other instances that ha satan appears in the Hebrew text of the OT, save one, it could just as easily be an accuser in a trial ( Zechariah or Psalms) and has sometimes been translated as such. If all letters are capital, then proper nouns and common nouns can only be determined by context. And even then, XEROX could represent a corporate enterprise or a paper copy.

The account in 1 Chronicles is the most problematic. In the 21 st chapter, almost out of nowhere, this 5 th century record proclaims that the “the devil made David do it”. King David did a lot of regrettable things as the earlier books of Samuel and Kings recount. But of all the evil, or treacherous things that are attributed to David, this particular incident was so terrible that it provoked one of three severe punishments from God - David's choice (3 years of famine, 3 months at the hands of thy enemies or 3 days of Yahweh’s sword – an epidemic 21:12-13). Remarkably, o nly a few chapters before is related the contrasting promise the Lord had made to the people of Israel via the prophet Nathan ( I Chronicles 17:9-10). David selects the last of the choices in which 70,000 reportedly succumb to plague.

What was at the base of this issue? King David had ordered a census.

Has anyone really ever sorted out the inherent iniquity of this deed? Each decade the United States engages in a nationwide tally. The Gospels record a census in connection with Christ’s birth. And the Watchtower’s annual collection of data about itself could hardly be described as anything else.

The only thing that is clear here is that the author of the Chronicles, perhaps Ezra the representative of the Persian monarch, assumes that the reader knows what he is talking about when he says that Satan urged King David to compile a census. Nothing earlier in the Old Testament gives us any clues. Genesis tells us nothing about the serpent’s connection to God’s court – or even if God presides over one. God’s behavior and description are inconsistent in chapters one and two. And his ability to foresee the consequences of events on Earth is not consistent (e.g, reporting second thoughts about appointing Saul as King). When he speaks in the Old Testament about relations with his people, the Covenant, it is described without any reference to events in the Garden of Eden at all. While some can derive order in these tales, one could just as well conclude there is chaos from which the notion of Satan could arise.

Yet in the New Testament, we find that Satan has a complete identity as an evil spirit. In the Synoptic Gospels his minions appear to lurk behind every tree. In the quotes from the Gospels above, it is even said of Satan, “It is written…” Where? As well as I can tell within the framework of the Bible itself, initially in the Epistles of Paul.

In the Gospel of John we have one reference to Satan as Satan, but in Revelations we have eight. By definition, we speak of the author of this Gospel as John, but do we know who John of Patmos really is? The John of the Gospel speaks of a divine Christ who was on the Earth and John Patmos speaks of a Christ who appears in symbolic visions. The Gospel of John speaks less of demons than the Synoptic Gospels. In chapter 8, Christ accuses Pharisees of being spawn of the devil for their beliefs; in chapter 10, skeptics claim he is possessed of the devil for beliefs of his own. I am unaware of miracles in John related to casting out of demons. Revelations, despite much mention of Satan, speaks only three times of demons: worshiping demons ( 9:20), demonic spirits ( 16:14) and a dwelling of demons ( 18:2).

In seeking an answer to these questions, I have noted what Jewish commentators say about their Scriptures. The Devil is not inherent within it. One has gone so far as to say that the reason the serpent in the garden is the serpent is because at that writing “the devil had not been invented yet”.

But this is not to dismiss the presence of evil in the world.

We know evil when we see it, but we know nothing for sure when we are simply afraid of the dark. If we are called as jurors to judge a crime, for the most part, we have a choice of considering that an individual is guilty or innocent; but sometimes we are allowed to take into consideration the expert testimony of those who argue for “not guilty by reason of insanity”: crimes which make no sense in terms of gain, jealousy or anger; crimes sometimes where people have driven off an edge of despair or make no sense at all. There is provision for hate crimes and heinous crimes, but none for demonic possession.

Are crimes committed under the influence of drugs or alcohol the result of the individual neglect or the work of the devil? Are crimes done in the name of ideology or zealotry the fault of the devil or should we attribute blame to human agents? Are evil ideas at loose in an era the responsibility of those who are alive on Earth or an invisible agent sprinkling them down on us like salt? If a person spontaneously spouts obscenities and blasphemies, do we attribute it to the devil or a neural disease? How about seizures?

But back to the book WTBRT.

“The first book of the Bible tells us of an opposer of God who showed up in the Garden of Eden. He is described as “the serpent”, but he was not a mere animal. The last book of the Bible identifies him as the “one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth” [unattributed]. He is also called “the original serpent” [Genesis 3:1; Revelation 12:9]. This powerful angel, or invisible spirit creature, used a serpent to speak to Eve, even as a skilled person can make it seem that his voice is coming from a nearby doll or dummy. That spirit person had no doubt been present when God prepared the Earth for humans. – Job 38:4,7.”

This paragraph and subsequent paragraphs are filled with assertions which examination does not support. The first book of the Bible does not tell us that an opposer of God showed up in the garden. T he narrator says that the snake had been around long enough to gather a reputation as clever or subtle – but that’s more like Aesop’s fables than an exposition on an eternal being capable of tripping up the work of the Creator. If it did, then there is more duality in the creation and rule of the world than the first chapter of the book suggests. It is Revelation that says “original serpent”; not Genesis. And Genesis says nothing about marionettes, puppetry or ventriloquism. But we are told on page 29:

“This happened in the case of Satan the Devil. He apparently heard God tell Adam and Eve to have children and to fill the earth with their offspring. ‘Why all these humans could worship me rather than God!’ Satan evidently thought. So a wrong desire built up in his heart.”

This is a lot of supposition since we are only to Genesis chapter three. This is supposition derived from perspectives that are shared with us in the Bible only after Romans – and after the Apostle Paul had given his world view reconsideration during events related in Acts. Since Paul’s writings precede the Gospels chronologically, it is hard for us to tell if and when anyone looked at things this way before Paul wrote of them himself.

But as for Satan “apparently heard God tell Adam and Eve” or “Satan evidently thought” … based on

3:1 Now the snake was the most subtle of all the wild animalsthat Yahweh God had made. It asked the woman…

The text specifically says that the snake was an animal. Who is deceiving whom and how?

If “it is written”, then the written tradition is outside of the Old Testament canon and there are several candidates to consider. Zoroastrian documents provide earlier and more detailed discussion of eternal conflict between good and evil, or “truth and lies”. The book of Enoch, alluded to in the epistle of Jude, resembles Zoroastrian writings more than anything else in the Old Testament. My conclusion, based on what evidence I have in hand, is that notions of Satan and the devil grew up after the return from the Captivity and that they are more reflective of Persian Zoroastrian thought. Consider that the second chapter of the first book of the New Testament is about the visit of the Magi.

Magi are Zoroastrian priests.

The first Persian monarch acknowledged as a Zoroastrian follower, a worshiper of Ahura Mazda, was Darius I.

Another couple of quotes from Zechariah.

Zechariah 1:7

On the 24 th day of the 11 th month ( Shebat) , in the 2 nd year of Darius, the word of Yahweh was addressed to the prophet Zechariah as follows, “I had a vision during the night. There was a man riding a red horse standing among the deep rooted myrtles…

1:12 The angel of Yahweh then spoke and said, “Yahweh Sabaoth, how long will you wait before taking pity on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, on which you have inflicted your anger for the past 70 years?

The NWT appendix indicates that Zechariah wrote in 518 BC of events from 520 to 518 BC.

An inconsistency, is it not? As are many of the other matters that were discussed above: Genesis 1 describes creation differently than Genesis 2; sometimes Israel’s covenant with God is in force and his people are to remain on the lands in peace, at others it is not.

Most of what WTBTS says about events in the garden sounds much like the abbreviated guide to Milton’s Paradise Lost, which seems to have borrowed extensively from the book of Enoch to which, mysteriously, there seems no recourse anywhere in 17 th century England. But Milton and the Watch Tower differ on several important details after the Garden. Lucifer by Milton’s reckoning was thrown out of heaven long before the Witness observance - if one can be a witness to an invisible event.

But I have noticed where the WTBTS remains on message: Satan is important.

In truth I do not know the answers to all the questions I have posed – and certainly will need help in search of answers from people outside of the organization that brought these things to my attention.

But if Satan in 1914 weren’t thrown to the Earth which he already “owned”, and if all alive who do not believe as the WatchTower says to believe, or all who lived and died before the Watchtower came to be did not believe as the Watchtower said to believe yesterday, today or tomorrow… If they are not destroyed along with the evil one after re-enacting a variant of“Paradise Lost”, which Satan inexplicably has never read… If more than simply friends and relatives who were publishers and pioneers will remain here on Paradise Earth forever, or bodily confinement to Paradise Earth is not to be eternal fate, but perhaps transcendence as Christ’s words in Mark 12:24 imply ...where would the WTBTS be?

Diminished.

39

Paradise earth doctrine - did it strike anyone else as a bit odd?

by sseveninches in

i have neglected to read jwfacts.org since discovering jwn a few weeks ago (remnants of the "apostate" defenses in action), but recently i decided to dive head first into it, and it has been eye-opening.

of course, some of the information i already knew through reading jwn, but one of the pages that really got my attention was the paradise earth topic under "questionable doctrine".. paradise earth caught my eye because way before i started having doubts about jw doctrine, i have always been asking questions about the topic - not to raise doubts (since i didn't have any back then), but just for my personal understanding, and to see how plausible it could be.

in the past i have asked things like:.

kepler

As one radio commentator observed, most predators have their eyes set forward (hawks, eagles, tigers, sharks...) and most animal prey have their eyes on the sides of their heads (pigeons, chickens, sheep, cattle, game fish...) to get a wide field of view. So when Paradise Earth commences, you have to wonder which way will eyes re-position themselves. Will hawks and owls look more like pigeons or pigeons look more like owls? Will our own eyes take on a wider spacing?

The Paradise Earth was something I was never raised in - and only deduced after several years of engagement and living with someone who eventually returned to the society like a yo-yo on a string.

Not to get wrapped up in the details of my own religious upbringing, I would say that the idea was entirely foreign - save for the notion that when I was introduced to parochial schools in the 7th grade, the sister/nun who was my first teacher in a Catholic school used to go on about how the world was designed for us. I liked Sister J- otherwise she did everything she could to help me transition into the parochial school system - but the notion that the world was like a custom made suit or car made little sense to me because I was already secular enough to see the counter arguments: that we were part of the world like fish, monkeys, birds, trees and everything else that was born here. If the world and we were not made for each other, then there was little likelihood we would be sitting in a class talking about it. If we would be suddenly introduced into Jupiter or Mars, we would certainly die. But if there were beings placed there by God or an evolutionary process they would stare at us in amazement and wonder why we expired or existed at all with the apparatus evolution or circumstance had given. The next five years, taught by brothers in religious orders or their lay equivalents, only one or two of them were actually naive enough to pull the same argument - and it didn't hold with anyone who heard it. Certainly the biology and physics teachers didn't try to pull an argument like that - even though we started every class hour with a prayer. Whatever the motive, we weren't there because we wanted back in the Garden of Eden as soon as God would announce a shutdown.

No, where I got a suspicion that some doctrine liked that lurked in the background was if my fiancee caught me speaking of, reading or watching anything that suggested that someone might live a normal day on another planet or even strive to do so. That offended her somehow and she started to explain how the earth was designed for us. Only movies that had Denzel Washington, Louis Gossett, Jr. or Eddie Murphy could address espionage, science fiction, historical conflict or much of any drama; otherwise it was an artistic travesty. Books were career counseling and self help and movies were for light comedies - I finally figured out.

We had met in a non-denominational church and I only gathered slowly what were the implications of her background: If you observed it in the sky, if you dug the bones out of the ground, if you observed the geological strata in the Grand Canyon, it didn't matter. We could attend an open night at a science institute or stroll in a museum. No evidence based on centuries of labor in laboratories, at blackboards, computers, measuriing lava flows, parallaxes to stars or anything else really mattered. At one point, we had dinner in Maryland with immigres I had helped to get into the country. Their visas came in a process like they would have been excellent pitchers for the Yankees if they ball players from Cuba instead of physicists from Russia. But it turned out they actually believed that people could live in space or other worlds and that they were striving for a future like that for their descendants. They had sat at campfires in their childhood in Siberia dreaming of the day and dedicating their careers for that possibility for their children or grand children. She was inches from their faces telling them that we were made to live on a Paradise Earth.

It was obvious that she was offended by the idea that human aspiration within the 21st century could exist outside the interpretive scriptural framework of 19th century Anglo-Protestants who just had to come to terms somehow with the west's ancient institutional church. The only way was to declare most of history an apostacy that was only resolved by the sort of efforts in America that produce figures like Joseph Smith, Brigham Young or leaders of "Awakenings". A pity the people she was talking to did not get the same indoctrination she did starting from when she was five. They probably had a philosophical background that skirted Anglo-Protestantism millenarianism entirely. But she never found out what people from that part of the world dealt with in terms of indoctrination. Why should she, now that she was planning to go back into the indoctrination business.

Who exactly will reside in-on Paradise-Earth and why, I am still not clear on. And since this is a rectification due to an egregrious event in the Garden that the society had once clocked at 6000 years ago in 1975, I have to wonder as others do why this confrontation with mortaility affected all animal life as well as human. There is no satisfactory explanation for all the biota that seems to be dead material on this earth, animals that died in tar pits or perhaps even turned into chalk or coal. Then there are bone remains of animals that were slain by other animals than man. And then there are feline carnivores that cannot even digest meat dinners and never could.

Then there is all that geologic evidence that this earth which was made for us was a very hostile place for anyone like us for aeons of time as well. Camping on the earth 500 million years ago would be no treat if there were enough free oxygen by then. I don't know if there would be any firewood. And some of the possible snapshots millions of years later...

But OK. So the select get to stand around on paradise earth because for humans without immortal souls there is no transcendance to a higher plane in death. Whether you believe there is any substance in an afterlife or not is certainly worthy of other threads. But if you believe that human fate is to remain on this earth forever, then are we not asking all of the nature we observe to stop in its tracks as well?

The Earth is not static in its nature. Nor is even the moon - it is receding away with time. The sun is growing brighter and hotter as it burns up its nuclear fuel and it has a finite life as can be determined by observing and modeling stars that are similar to it. If half of its ten billion year life is expired, paradise on earth a billion years from now is not necessarily part of the warranty. And water boils away into space anyway when you are counting that long. Then there are even more immediate and subtler ways that eternity slips through one's fingers.

If the earth and its environs are supposed to work perfectly like a monotonous machine forever, how is it supposed to reset itself to the task? Does this make any more sense than having all of us simply die at our appointed times and meet our Maker on whatever terms that might entail beyond our ability to perceive on this plane of existence? On hand you have the impassable veil of death and the other, the banal.

While perhaps Buddhism and other eastern philosophies have attempted to clear the mind through meditation, it appears to me that the WTS attempts to clear the world of all distractions from a vague PG rated return to a theme park. The faith of my background is sceptical about the perfectability of human kind, but it encourages its adherents to take part in the re-ordering of the world, perfectable or not: works, professions, charity, arts, search for knowledge or even truth, raise, protect and teach children... and in the process to glorify God - whether The End comes with a colliding comet in ten minutes or in a billion years.

In that regard Judaism, Islam and most of Christianity not obsessed with Apocalypse have more in common with each other.

27

"Blunders that led to World War"

by Jeffro in

on the watchtower.org site at the moment, they are featuring a link to an article that first appeared in the august 2009 awake!

that purportedly talks about how world war i began.. in jw make-believe land, world war i began suddenly, and was essentially a big surprise.

so it's interesting to note that the one of the most significant things that led to world war ithe first and second balkan warsare completely omitted from the article.

kepler

test

170

Simple answer, please! Scientifically explain the origin of life coming from nothing!

by Silent_Scream in

scientific method asserts nothing living can come from something non-living.

science is observable, science is reproducible.

a living thing coming from non-living matter has never been observed nor reproduced.. therefore, it takes faith in an unknown process to believe that that's exactly what happened in the beginning, with no evidence!.

kepler

Bobcat,

You raised some good points about what else is said in the New Testament.

And in discussion that follows, I should preface things by saying I have never studied Hebrew formally. So in looking into these matters, somewhat in reaction to Elders coming to my house every Saturday morning for the fall and winter of 2009 and 2010, I am indebted to several sources on these matters. One of them was Marc Zvi Brettler's book, "How to Read the Jewish Bible". Professor Brettler is the co-editor of the Jewish Study Bible and the associate editor of the New Oxford Annotated Bible.

Also, I am not Jewish, but I found Brettler's book very interesting. It made me aware of things I would have never known otherwise.

Brettler's argument for the two forms of description in chapters 1 and 2 is based on the use of Hebrew verbs. On page 32:

"...In chapter 1, on day six, first the land animals are created, (vv.24-25), and then man and woman are created simultaneously (vv. 26-28). In contrast, in chapter first man is created ( v. 7), then animals are created ( vv. 18-20), and only after these are found unsuitable to man's partner ( v. 20) is woman created ( vv. 21-23). A single story written by a single author would not be self-contradictory in such a significant matter.

"This might be the most significant difference between these stories, but once it is noted, other distinctions become apparent. Each individual difference by itself might not be convincing, but cumulatively, they become compelling. Other differences include the fact that in Genesis 1 the deity is called God [Heb], whereas in much of the chapters 2-3 the deity is called YHWH Elohim [ Heb. the Lord God]. The units use different terms for crucial terms like "creation" - thus in 1:27, the first human is "created" [Heb - b-r'], whereas in 2:7 the human is "formed" [Heb. y-tz-r]. In fact the word translated as "create" is used a total of 7 times in 1:1-2:3, but not at all in 2:4 - 3:24."

Brettler also observes that the form of chapter 1 is very formal and unlike anything else in the book; the subsequent chapters are free-flowing, with none of the formulaic phrases. Chapter 1 is a description of a powerful, majestic God while the God of chapters 2-3 moves about the garden, talks to people and "even tenderly clothes them."

So I guess my point is that "create" and "form" are not used interchangeably in Genesis.

Witness My...,

I'm not sure if you are posing that question to me or not. Since the topic was a discussion about origin of life with respect to what science can tell us, incomplete as it is, I think Genesis 1 is illustrative of an earlier understanding. Life is created by God in a sequence of commands. Where chapters one and two disagree, the account in one seems to hold up better in my mind, but as you say, it reflects a flat earth, etc.

But saying that, is the picture that you provided reflect a uniform vision of creation throughout the old testament? Can you get all those details out of the Genesis account, or do you have to poke around in Psalms and other books to get that full picture?

170

Simple answer, please! Scientifically explain the origin of life coming from nothing!

by Silent_Scream in

scientific method asserts nothing living can come from something non-living.

science is observable, science is reproducible.

a living thing coming from non-living matter has never been observed nor reproduced.. therefore, it takes faith in an unknown process to believe that that's exactly what happened in the beginning, with no evidence!.

kepler

"Scientifically explain the origin of life coming from nothing!"

Based on the topic title, have to wonder if all the discussion about things coming from nothing really fits under the tent. Life is one thing, but God is another, save that one can invoke God as the source or creator of life. But I would say that discussing the origin or existence of God is an idea being handled down the street under another topic or two.

I don't have any idea what fraction of people on this website are aware of this idea already, but it might be appropriate to mention it in this context: If you read Genesis 1 to 2:3 or 2:4 and then continue from there through the rest of Genesis 2, you obtain two different accounts of the creation of life. The details differ enough that a lawyer could cross examine a witness (capital W?) with justification. Try it. Moreover, terminology in chapter one is "create" as in out of nothing, and chapter 2 the creation going on "was formed" from existing materials. Two different accounts written at two different times with different terminologies, edited and merged. There is a lot of support for the first chapter being the later version. As one evening lecturer I heard once remarked, "The best explanation that Neo-Babylonian science could provide." The second or earlier (?) version starts with the first mention in the book of Jehovah or Yahweh. He is working in the garden.

Paradise, I had come to discover recently, was a word of Persian origin for the same notion: a garden.

But save for Genesis 1, there is nothing in the last two paragraphs that addresses the problem of creating life out of nothing. In Genesis 2, as the sequence proceeds, God plants a garden, makes man from the soil, breathes life into him and then fashions wild animals and birds to accompany man, after instructing him on which trees from which he could eat. Eve comes later. Compare this with account 1.

It could be argued that the author or authors of the second chapter were less concerned with the issue of creation than establishing a relation between God and man - or human kind. But the first chapter does seem very pre-occupied with identifying a logical sequence starting with light, separation of formless fluids, creating a vault called heaven over another region known as earth separated into land and seas. Performing these things over a period of a couple days, the narration then turns to the creation of life: living creatures in the waters, birds, vegetation, creatures of the land... created out of nothing, but each of its own kind. Human kind comes last on the sixth day, male and female. God was happy with the result.

If nothing else, the sequence of events in Genesis 1 is intriguing and closer in some ways to what present day investigations suggest than what is recounted in the second chapter. Yet the second chapter's attention is to material ingredients, animating process, river beds and park rules.

On the issue of breath being animation or spirit - that does not seem to be simply inherent to Hebrew texts. Many of the same issues arise in interpretation of the Greek of Homer's Iliad. When the word psyche comes up in its verse, does it mean breath or more than that? All the freight that we assume an ancient word like psyche might carry, we have to wonder if the early users saw the same connotations.

Now, trying to be as scientific as I can...

In our notion of biological life, it would seem reasonable to stop somewhere far short of atoms and subatomic particles more clearly associated with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. I mention that here because it was already. It is understood that matter and energy are or could be transformng back and forth at a very low level. In fact, I believe there are some laboratory effects such as the Casimir effect that have been used to give evidence of that effect by creating slight imbalances and pressures... But that addresses matter and energy rather than life itself. Or another way of looking at it: we would still have a universe, but would we have anyone living to observe it?

In the restricted sense of life on Earth, we speak of organic chemistry and the myriads of compounds that can be found in organic matter - but we also know that a sugar, alcohol or carbohydrate is not living. Hydrocarbons like petroleum and natural gas might have originated from organic matter or living things - or maybe not. Methane is certainly "optional". For some time viruses were said to be at the border between living and non-living matter. They attack living cells and multiply, but do they have a complex enough structure to rate as being alive? Evidently DNA and RNA reside in viruses, but are dependent on other living things to multiply. Did they come first or later? Or is it that there were hosts of potential viruses and only the ones with the pertinent chemical machinery survived? Rather than atomic or subatomic physics, I am inclined to think that origin of life boundaries can be better studied in search of a transition between bacteria and viruses - if there is such a thing.

1

Sociological Parallels Exhibited among Primitive Tribesmen: String Theorists?

by kepler in

physicist lee smolins 2006 book the trouble with physics is ostensibly about physics; in particular, the quagmire that string theory has turned into: a leviathan that has the majority of the worlds advanced theoretical physicists engaged in pursuit of a theory or system of theories that is yet to be validated by experiment.

it also encounters difficulties predicting much of anything, including the very basic features of the universe we live in.. .

i had heard of the book and had seen reviews before i picked it up at discount bookstore.

kepler

Physicist Lee Smolin’s 2006 book “The Trouble with Physics” is ostensibly about physics; in particular, the quagmire that string theory has turned into: a leviathan that has the majority of the world’s advanced theoretical physicists engaged in pursuit of a theory or system of theories that is yet to be validated by experiment. It also encounters difficulties predicting much of anything, including the very basic features of the universe we live in.

I had heard of the book and had seen reviews before I picked it up at discount bookstore. And one of the reasons I became interested in the book was not so much its discussion of string theory, but its survey of physics in general, e.g., the quest to unite or reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics, an explanation of the standard model and its fundamental particles or anything else that the author might be able to explain.

But aside from identifying and elaborating on the five basic problems of physics early on, the going got very tough in the middle portion of the book. When arguments were based on terms such as “background dependence”, “emergence” or “the Maldacena conjecture”, it was very difficult even to take sides.

Nonetheless, near the end of the book, in three chapters (“How Do You Fight Sociology?”, “What is Science?” and “Seers and Craftspeople”), I started marking down Smolin’s remarks for what he was saying about belief systems.

We need not relate all of Smolin’s concerns about string theory vs. other physical theories such as quantum gravity with which Dr. Smolin is concerned. But it is interesting to see how he addresses the problem of a pervasive and compelling social environment.

Noting that physical theories should have a tendency to have formulations that avoid generating expressions which are described as “infinities” ( roughly, numerators divided by zero denominators), Smolin discovers that many or most of the practitioners of research in the string theory field assume that earlier pioneers had taken care of this matter in papers - published sometime or somewhere. Smolin says this is not the case and has informed many of his colleagues.

“When I described this situation in my review paper, it was greeted with disbelief (page 280)…. I had a similar experience talking to string theorists; some were shocked that the proof of finiteness had never been completed. But their shock was as nothing to compared to that of those physicists and mathematicians I talked to who were not string theorists, and who believed that string theory was finite because they had been told it was. For all of us, the impression of string theory as finite had had a great deal to do with our acknowledgment of its importance. None of us could recall ever having heard a string theorist point to it as an unsolved problem…

“None of the string theorists I’ve discussed these issues with have decided, on learning that the theory has not been proved finite, to stop working on string theory.

“But when and if the issue of finiteness is settled, we will have to ask how it happened that so many members of a research program were unaware of the status of one of the key research results in their field."

-----------------

This was not the only example of cracks in the façade. In a review article that Smolin quotes, two researchers write:

“In summary, we see convincing reason to place [Maldacena’s duality conjecture] in the category of true but not proven. Indeed, we regard it on much the same footing…”

Smolin notes, that he had never heard of a mathematician referring to a result as true, but unproven. He believes that the above authors reason that string theory is a well-defined mathematical structure – despite wide agreement that even if it is true, we have no idea what that structure is. Then, when it comes to defending these unproved conjectures, string theorists often note that something is “generally believed”.

Suddenly I begin to see things that I have seen in other people’s pamphlets. But they are coming from physicists.

“No sensible person doubts that this is true...”

“Anyone who hasn’t been asleep for the past six years knows that…

“I doubt that there are many hold-outs left who doubt that the above statement holds...”

In response to the last quote, Smolin says:

“It doesn’t feel good to have to admit to being one of the holdouts, but that is what a detailed examination of the evidence forces me to be.

“This cavalier attitude toward precise support for key conjectures is counterproductive for several reasons. First, …it means that no one works on these important open problems – making it more likely that they will remain unsolved. It also leads to a corrosion of the ethics and methods of science, because a large community of smart people are willing to believe key conjectures without demanding to see them proved…

“The discussion has brought out seven unusual aspects of the string theory community.

1. Tremendous self confidence, leading to a sense of entitlement and of belonging to an elite community of experts.

2. An unusually monolithic community, with a strong sense of consensus , whether driven by the evidence or not, and an unusual uniformity of views on open questions. These views seem related to the existence of a hierarchical structure in which the ideas of a few leaders dictate the viewpoint, strategy and direction of the field.

3. In some cases, a sense of identification with the group, akin to identification with a religious faith or political platform.

4. A strong sense of the boundary between the group and other experts.

5. A disregard for and disinterest in the ideas, opinions and work of experts who are not part of the group, and a preference for talking only with other members of the community.

6. A tendency to interpret the evidence optimistically, to believe exaggerated or incorrect statements of results, and to disregard the possibility that the theory might be wrong. This is coupled with a tendency to believe results are true because they are “widely believed”, even if one has not checked or even seen the proof oneself.

7. A lack of appreciation for the extent to which a research program out to involve risk.

…

“How could a community act in a way so at odds with the goodwill and good sense of its individual members?

“It turns out that sociologists have no problem recognizing this phenomenon. It afflicts communities of highly credentialed experts, who by choice or circumstance communicate only among themselves. It has been studied in the context of intelligence agencies and governmental policy-making bodies and major corporations. …There is a literature describing the phenomenon, which is called groupthink.

‘ a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative course of action.’

…It requires that members share a strong “we-feeling” of solidarity and a desire to maintain relationships at all costs. When colleagues operate in a groupthink mode, they automatically apply the ‘preserve group harmony’ test to every decision they face.”

Another characterization of groupthink from an Oregon State University website:

“Groupthink members see themselves as part of an in-group working against an out-group opposed to their goals. You can if a group suffers from groupthink if it:

1. Overestimates its invulnerability or high moral stance,

2. Collectively rationalizes the decisions it makes,

3. Demonizes or stereotypes outgroups and their leaders,

4. Has a culture of uniformit where individuals censor themselves and others so that the façade of group unanimity is maintained, and

5. Contains members who take it upon themselves to protect the group leader by keeping information, theirs or other group members, from the leader.

170

Simple answer, please! Scientifically explain the origin of life coming from nothing!

by Silent_Scream in

scientific method asserts nothing living can come from something non-living.

science is observable, science is reproducible.

a living thing coming from non-living matter has never been observed nor reproduced.. therefore, it takes faith in an unknown process to believe that that's exactly what happened in the beginning, with no evidence!.

kepler

I suppose this thread is flickering out at the"first principle" level, but it sounds like there are still a few involved in discussing some of the details or scenarios derived thus far by scientific inquiry. And I'd like to reflect a little on one of those particulars. For a number of reasons I think it interesting to examine.

Back about 1980 I had opted out of a dissatisfactory job in industry and took some part time work at the nearby state university atmospheric science department. Auditing or taking the courses in the department was another lateral move in my graduate studies - and I was fortunate enough to join a class on planetary atmospheres, taught by a distinguished meteorologist who was studying Mars weather in real time in those days. We were not concerned directly with biology and life, but it was understood that life had an influence on the evolution of atmospheres: certainly here on Earth, based on sampling of sediments and ice cores, minerals and fossils. Life would also play a role theoretically, if we were to get a good observation of a planet revolving around another star where we could discern atmospheric properties. To make the explanation simple: 21% free oxygen (O2) is just not that natural an expectation when you throw rocks and ice together.

Somewhere in the midst of the course, a lecture was devoted to the famous Stanley Miller - Harold Urey experiment conducted at the University of Chicago in 1953. Miller, under his instructor's direction, the Nobel chemistry laureate Harold Urey, generated several amino acids in a heated flask with repeated electrical discharges. The idea was to simulate then understood conditions on the primitive earth, presuming an atmospheric mix of hydrogen, ammonia and methane....

It was a small lecture group of maybe a dozen and a half. So it was not too surprising that I got heard when I raised my hand.

Here we were getting data back from Mars and Venus which both had atmospheres 95% CO2 and ~5% N2. Titan, at 95 degrees Kelvin had some methane, but mostly nitrogen. CO2 would have all been dry ice... How come we were assuming that the Earth was different way back when? Wouldn't our atmosphere be largely CO2 judging from all we were learning in the last decade (1970s)?

I wish I could remember exactly what our instructor's answer was, but he certainly grasped the issue. I think he was willing to concede more CO2 atmosphere early on, but he had reservations. At the very least, white cliffs of Dover and other carbonate formations hadn't been there forever...The textbook, "Evolution of the Atmosphere", scanning now or reading ahead back then, seemed to have said very indirectly (e.g., volcanic emissions) that Earth without life would have an atmosphere much like Mars or Venus save that the atmospheric pressure would have likely been in between the extremes.

In effect, it looked like Miller and Urey had a way to explain glycine and other amino acids, some sugars - if there were big refineries back then similar to their lab experiments, with access to large quantities of methane, ammonia and hydrogen. But as far we knew, the atmosphere was mostly CO2 and N2. If there were ammonia and methane, it was produced in smaller quantities and broke down quickly over geologic time.

So was the experiment a failure?

Not exactly. Because it was an experiment that demonstrated a hypothesis: that building blocks of life could be derived from inorganic compounds mixed, heated or electrically charged (lightning) in a non biological environment. That part related to the so-called coming from nothing. And with many variations, including atmospheres and pressures more consistent with what we can discern from geology, the experiment has been repeated thousands of times over the decades. Some experiments were repeats to verify; others to change the environment. There have been experimenst with chemically riched early seas ( conducive), N2 and CO2 atmospheres (not very good incubators), environments to simulate undersea volcanic vents (good as well).

So the debate didn't end with people noticing the same discrepancy. There is a school of thought derived from Urey and Miller, but its critics are as likely to use similar methods to suggest different types of enclaves for early life: tidal pools, undersea volcanic vents, soil compounds...

But there were other problems that had to be addressed. What about exposure to UV radiation that would break down the compounds? What about all the processessing that has to go on to get to RNA and DNA? And then if you had another planet such as the ones which are being identified orbiting other stars (some young, some old), what are the odds?

Of course, this is a glass half empty or half full proposition. Going from the assumption that rodents spontaneous generated in trash piles to these type of deliberations is certainly headway, but not a demonstration of the solution.

Yet at the same time, looking at this problem from another angle, rather than atmospheric science, but something we might call the formation of planets, we can say that we actually can observe this part of the process: formation of planets.

That part of Genesis is on-going in the sky.

If you look in the right part of the sky such as the gaseous nebula close to Orion in the winter sky, one finds very young stars in which the formation of planets can be observed. Young in the sense that they might be only ten million years old, vs. the age of the sun, more like 4.5 billion years old. Other stars within or surrounding the galaxy might date all the way back to 13 billion years ago - but that is a discussion certainly off topic. Many of these very young stars still have the rings of gas and dust surrounding them that were thought to have formed early in the solar system's history. These were surmised before astronomical observatories had the capability to detect them. In 1980 that part of the story was hypothesis too. But they are there, and in some cases now, the planets embedded in them can be seen in the process of formation.

At that stage, where gas, dust and rocks are falling on a planet, I suspect that discussions about atmospheric gas are largely a moot point. This is a state of perpetual explosion and intense heat. The rubble has got to clear away and things have to cool down. But then when the dust all clears and the internal heat dies down, it will eventually be possible to observe or catalog planets around other stars that might be very young, as old as the earth or older. If a planet were to have absorption lines in the infra red for water vapor, ozone, methane ( since they are easier to observe than say an identifier for free oxygen), we might have some very intriguing questions to entertain after that.

This website would not be named for JWs if it did not deal some with prophecy. So let us engage to a limited extent. Identification of atmospheric conditions in extra-solar planets has already begun with the easy pickings - the planets very close to their suns. I believe it will continue to the planets with placement in thermal conditions similar to earth's and that we will have identifications of their atmospheres within a decade or so. Whether they show H2O, O3 and CH4? Well, that's where I bow out on prophecy. That's what I want to find out the conventional way.

170

Simple answer, please! Scientifically explain the origin of life coming from nothing!

by Silent_Scream in

scientific method asserts nothing living can come from something non-living.

science is observable, science is reproducible.

a living thing coming from non-living matter has never been observed nor reproduced.. therefore, it takes faith in an unknown process to believe that that's exactly what happened in the beginning, with no evidence!.

kepler

GeneM,

Good summary post. A lot of these discussions seem to get bogged down in first principle discussions ( like Cogito, ergo sum. Yeah, but how do you know?) and the problem never gets any better defined. I think you pushed it beyond that point.

Several pages back and a good night's sleep, I had left something hanging as well. SS had said that we could not prove that the sun was 93 million miles away without a yardstick, and I left the solution up in the air. I fiddled with it for a while and then looked it up. Before radar and the space age, estimates of the sun's distance or the Astronomical Unit started to roll in with measurements of parallax.

The basic idea is to observe the sun or a solar related event like the transit of Venus at opposite sides of the earth and see if the observers had a difference in measurement angle. They do, but it is very small. About 8.8 arc seconds, with an arc second equal to 1/3600th of a degree. The sun itself, like the moon, is about a half a degree wide in the celestial sphere. So aiming at a smaller object like Venus or Mercury makes the observations more precise. Venus is about a hundredth the width of the sun, but when viewed a third of the way there, it is about three times wider. Its basically the same process as measuring the distance to (nearby) stars, except with stars, the opposite ends of the Earth's orbit around the sun is used as the triangulation base.

I don't think anyone bounces radar beams off the sun, but we have received radar returns from Venus, Mercury and Mars for decades. Then we have sent spacecraft all over the solar system via navigation... Er, I won't mention what his name's laws...

So the point is, there are geometric methods and proofs for establishing the distance to the sun. And there are methods and proofs for examining other things.

SS, I believe, you started this thread asking about the origin of life. My interpretation of that, perhaps wrong, was that you were asking how it can arrive on the scene when before there was none. If you meant literally nothing, as in no elements or compounds, well, I don't know what can be done on that one. But for the former there is a body of evidence for steps, circumstances and mechanisms. Incomplete but a career path for many now alive and maybe still to come.