Posts by A Ha

405

Origin of Life

by cofty in

in recent years significant progress has been made in solving the question of how life originated on our planet.. how do you think theists will respond when it finally happens?

as a former christian i know my reaction would have been something like "well that just goes to show that it takes intelligent life to make life", but for two reasons that defense doesn't work.. firstly it would prove that life is not an ethereal force that originates with god.

there is no 'ghost in the machine', no elan vital.

A Ha

SBF - Can you explain what you believe is the difference between a God doing something by "natural" means as opposed to "supernatural" means. I am not convinced this is a meaningful distinction.

When we ask for explanations in this context, it seems we're asking for the ultimate explanation--at least as far back as we can go.

To return to the Planet Fairies example, a culture believes that PFs are responsible for the motion of planets, then along comes Newton and gravitation, and the PF explanation is modified to "gravity is generated by PFs to guide the planets." Then Einstein refines our ideas and curved space-time fits the evidence better, so the PF explanation becomes "PFs curve space-time to guide the planets along their orbits." If people keep insisting that some supernatural explanation is the cause of the natural explanation, then they're keeping to a supernatural explanation. If others say "space-time is curved, full stop," that's a natural explanation.

If God is said to interact with the natural world, then eventually, the God explanation has to have some sort of natural component. Positing that some part of the equation involves nature doesn't blur the distinction between natural and supernatural.

405

Origin of Life

by cofty in

in recent years significant progress has been made in solving the question of how life originated on our planet.. how do you think theists will respond when it finally happens?

as a former christian i know my reaction would have been something like "well that just goes to show that it takes intelligent life to make life", but for two reasons that defense doesn't work.. firstly it would prove that life is not an ethereal force that originates with god.

there is no 'ghost in the machine', no elan vital.

A Ha

Only if you think God cannot use natural means. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Yes they are. In your scenario it's a supernatural explanation.

To say some supernatural agent is "using" a natural mechanism is uninteresting. In that case, we can always insert some undetectable supernatural thing behind everything we see. Einstein's GR explains the orbits of planets naturally. We can accept curved space-time, then insert Planet Fairies that push the planets in their orbits, and I guess the naturalist cannot "prove" there aren't Planet Fairies. But again, that's an uninteresting claim. It takes advantage of how malleable the concept of God is.

405

Origin of Life

by cofty in

in recent years significant progress has been made in solving the question of how life originated on our planet.. how do you think theists will respond when it finally happens?

as a former christian i know my reaction would have been something like "well that just goes to show that it takes intelligent life to make life", but for two reasons that defense doesn't work.. firstly it would prove that life is not an ethereal force that originates with god.

there is no 'ghost in the machine', no elan vital.

A Ha

But what is most amazing is that your materialist reductionism apparently blinds you to the fact that the same phenomenon can have different levels of interpretation. A river can be cold, it can be blue, it can be rough, it can be clean, it can be amazing, it can be ugly, it can be ancient, it can be artificial. What makes no sense whatsoever is to pit different kinds of descriptions against one another as if they are in competition.

This isn't what cofty (or anyone else) is doing. The descriptions you use depend on context, and are not mutually exclusive, as you say. However, to say life arose by naturalistic means, and also to say it arose by supernatural means are mutually exclusive. This isn't a "different level of interpretation," (a different focus, or scale), like saying the river is cold and the river is blue. It's like saying the river is blue and the river is red.

405

Origin of Life

by cofty in

in recent years significant progress has been made in solving the question of how life originated on our planet.. how do you think theists will respond when it finally happens?

as a former christian i know my reaction would have been something like "well that just goes to show that it takes intelligent life to make life", but for two reasons that defense doesn't work.. firstly it would prove that life is not an ethereal force that originates with god.

there is no 'ghost in the machine', no elan vital.

A Ha

Vidquin - See, God doesn't come into the picture here.

But God is in the picture, and you put him there.

As a preface to introducing your "Life comes from life law," you said, "God is the source of life..." it's all in the same post. Now maybe you didn't directly state that this law is evidence for God (I'm too lazy to go back and read everything again) but it's the clear implication given that this thread is about the origin of life.

Viviane responded that the problem for your claim is that God, being alive, would then be in need of an explanation. You didn't reply to that, but repeated that this was your observation, and challenged anyone to come up with an exception. Landy said, "God?" and you didn't reply to that. Finally, I said that because this law of yours was setting up a causal chain, the first link in the chain has to be exempt from it to avoid an infinite regression. But that means you can't really make any claims about the first form(s) of life, only life after that--and even then it's going to be an inductive argument.

405

Origin of Life

by cofty in

in recent years significant progress has been made in solving the question of how life originated on our planet.. how do you think theists will respond when it finally happens?

as a former christian i know my reaction would have been something like "well that just goes to show that it takes intelligent life to make life", but for two reasons that defense doesn't work.. firstly it would prove that life is not an ethereal force that originates with god.

there is no 'ghost in the machine', no elan vital.

A Ha

Vidquin - A "law" implies a statement of order and relation in nature that has been found to be invariable under the same conditions

This doesn't really work when this law creates a chain but doesn't apply to the first link in your chain. Whether that life is a universal common ancestor, or if each "kind" of life is its own creation, you still must ignore your "law" to account for the first link.

To ignore the first link, and to exempt God from the law, then to turn around and use this law as evidence in favor of God seems logically inconsistent.

405

Origin of Life

by cofty in

in recent years significant progress has been made in solving the question of how life originated on our planet.. how do you think theists will respond when it finally happens?

as a former christian i know my reaction would have been something like "well that just goes to show that it takes intelligent life to make life", but for two reasons that defense doesn't work.. firstly it would prove that life is not an ethereal force that originates with god.

there is no 'ghost in the machine', no elan vital.

A Ha

prologos - was it not about the transition from dead matter to life? and we have not just mud, but organic, ex-life stuff around. Is life then a question of oxygen management?

Ah, yes you did mention restarting life. I don't know what the obstacles are, but I suspect it's a lot more complicated than just oxygen management. I'm a complete lay person in this area, but I suspect a big part of the answer is entropy--if for no other reason than entropy rules all. If anybody asks a science-ey question that you don't know the answer to, just say "entropy" and there's a good chance you'll be right.

405

Origin of Life

by cofty in

in recent years significant progress has been made in solving the question of how life originated on our planet.. how do you think theists will respond when it finally happens?

as a former christian i know my reaction would have been something like "well that just goes to show that it takes intelligent life to make life", but for two reasons that defense doesn't work.. firstly it would prove that life is not an ethereal force that originates with god.

there is no 'ghost in the machine', no elan vital.

A Ha

but even slightly degraded complex once-alive compounds would be better than ground rock and water to have life start again?

Yeah, the conversation was about organic molecules, not living organisms. And when I said oxygen would make them degrade, I meant it would destroy them. They need to reach certain lengths to start replication or one of the other hallmarks of life, and oxygen is so greedy for electrons that it doesn't let them do that.

It's one of the great poetic developments of biochemistry that so much of life now depends on oxygen, which is so toxic.

405

Origin of Life

by cofty in

in recent years significant progress has been made in solving the question of how life originated on our planet.. how do you think theists will respond when it finally happens?

as a former christian i know my reaction would have been something like "well that just goes to show that it takes intelligent life to make life", but for two reasons that defense doesn't work.. firstly it would prove that life is not an ethereal force that originates with god.

there is no 'ghost in the machine', no elan vital.

A Ha

what gives me pause is, that with all the juicy organic material around, we have not seen spontaneous, or artificial restarting of the original spark that fired up life.

For one thing, our earth is filled--in every niche, every nook and cranny, from deep sea vents at crushing pressures and temperatures, to arctic permafrost, to hot springs, and everywhere in between--by bacteria that see juicy organic material as food. And if some of those juicy organic materials could avoid being consumed by bacteria, earth is an oxygenated planet, and oxygen reacts with organic compounds and they degrade.

405

Origin of Life

by cofty in

in recent years significant progress has been made in solving the question of how life originated on our planet.. how do you think theists will respond when it finally happens?

as a former christian i know my reaction would have been something like "well that just goes to show that it takes intelligent life to make life", but for two reasons that defense doesn't work.. firstly it would prove that life is not an ethereal force that originates with god.

there is no 'ghost in the machine', no elan vital.

A Ha

SBF, you changed your characterization from "their view of reality will be confirmed beyond doubt, once and for all..." to "will tend to support..." That's a huge difference.

405

Origin of Life

by cofty in

in recent years significant progress has been made in solving the question of how life originated on our planet.. how do you think theists will respond when it finally happens?

as a former christian i know my reaction would have been something like "well that just goes to show that it takes intelligent life to make life", but for two reasons that defense doesn't work.. firstly it would prove that life is not an ethereal force that originates with god.

there is no 'ghost in the machine', no elan vital.

A Ha

I think it will make things a little less frustrating for naturalists, but it won't change much to the type of theist who uses this argument to begin with. Their challenge will change from "You can't say how life got here," to "You can't prove that your successful lab experiments are the way life actually got here." (A variation of the 'you weren't there' argument.)

And, yes, you'll see variations on the "that just proves that someone intelligent had to set up the initial conditions" theme.