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

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.

38

What novels have you been reading recently? Recommend any?

by LoveUniHateExams in

i've always been a bit of a reader - but only reading about topics i find interesting, e.g.

natural history, dinosaurs, etc.. recently i've started to select, buy and read novels.. this year i've bought and read frankenstein (mary shelly), dracula (bram stoker), the hound of the baskervilles (a. conan doyle), 'salem's lot (stephen king), jurassic park (michael crichton) and the firm (john grisham).. i have an inclination towards horrors and thrillers.. what fiction have you been reading?.

could you recommend anything?.

A Ha

I just remembered that Daniel Silva's new Gabriel Alon book is out. I haven't read any fiction in quite a while, but with this and Robing Hobb's new book just out, I'll get back into the fiction saddle.

Silva's books might be a little closer to what LUHE has been reading. I guess they're technically thrillers, but the main character is a 60-something year old art restorer who always gets dragged back into Mossad intrigue. Not a lot of action, maybe one shot fired per novel, but again, it's all about the characters.

38

What novels have you been reading recently? Recommend any?

by LoveUniHateExams in

i've always been a bit of a reader - but only reading about topics i find interesting, e.g.

natural history, dinosaurs, etc.. recently i've started to select, buy and read novels.. this year i've bought and read frankenstein (mary shelly), dracula (bram stoker), the hound of the baskervilles (a. conan doyle), 'salem's lot (stephen king), jurassic park (michael crichton) and the firm (john grisham).. i have an inclination towards horrors and thrillers.. what fiction have you been reading?.

could you recommend anything?.

A Ha

Anything by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

This. As a team or their solo novels, I gobble them all up. Aloysius Pendergast is the man.

Not in the genre mentioned by LUHE mentioned, but I read any- and everything written by Robin Hobb. She writes high fantasy, not Dungeons and Dragons type stuff. Her characters are pretty amazing, all the more so because they're pretty simple.

I recommend starting with Assassin's Apprentice. You'll either love it or hate it because of the way she tortures her main character. If you love it, you'll want to explore the other 12 or so books in her universe.

If I could cure cancer or guarantee a happy ending for Fitz and the Fool, I might have to flip a coin.

52

how can navigate if our desire is for absolute truth...

by Ruby456 in

jw
friends

or do we give in to social constructivism?

to relativity?

or is there a way to be real and then to say whats real that everyone agrees to?.

A Ha

Ruby, my thinking of cells, in regards to the modularity topic, was of them being the basic units of the larger whole. However, it is certainly feasible to look at cells as a larger whole, made up of cellular components, nucleus, organelles, membranes, etc. So in this sense I agree that the "modularity" can go both ways. So I stand corrected.

However, I don't think this has anything to do with your larger point--that of absolute truth. Scientists don't claim anything to be absolutely true. All truth (with only one or two exceptions) is provisional. Where scientists land in the metabolism vs replication vs it's-a-bad-question debate has nothing to do with absolutes.

30

Why is it so hurtful to be shunned? Why object to it?

by stuckinarut2 in

it seems like many feel hurt or saddened by the practice of shunning by witnesses.. yes, when ones who we were close to, perhaps family or ones we thought were close friends choose to follow the warped directions of the society, it may seem hurtful.. but really, our reaction is up to us.

the fact is, these ones have shown that in reality, their love for us was never real or genuine.

no, those relationships were superficial and lacking in substance.

A Ha

Everyone is saying that it's because we're social animals. This is not just a saying, and we can't overstate the importance of that. When talking about a topic like this, or morality, I usually say 'humans are intensely social animals.' Our identity in the group is immensely important to who we are and our overall well-being.

This is not something we can fix by saying "Get over it," or "Snap out of it."

Social isolation can be deadly

So many in the JW community suffer through this, and it's why we say it's far worse than just the WTS being meanies. It's abuse.

14

Caption Competition

by Tallon in

.

"my dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking dom perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees fahrenheit.".

over to you ....

A Ha

"The water's cold! It's shrinkage!"

52

how can navigate if our desire is for absolute truth...

by Ruby456 in

jw
friends

or do we give in to social constructivism?

to relativity?

or is there a way to be real and then to say whats real that everyone agrees to?.

A Ha

Ruby-- not just religious groups - any boundary making exercise has the potential towards absolutism imo

Yes, I agree.

Dawkins is a biologist committed to studying how life originates from simple cells while in chemistry cells are an emergent property of modularity. so I guess in a sense chemistry questions some of the assumptions that biologists make because saying that cells are an emergent property questions the absoluteness of the boundaries that biologists adopt

But here I don't. For one thing, cells are things, they not properties. I have never read any biologist--or anybody--say cells (things) are emergent properties of modularity (a property of a larger system).

And biologists are scientists who acknowledge there are no absolutes. Even if cells are emergent (if they are, they're emergent of something more basic, like atoms), this is not even a tiny problem for biologists, who have absolutely no problem with the concept of emergence.