Life From Dirt?

[Brian2]

Then faith has no use in helping is determine fact from fiction.
Faith is just believing whatever you want to believe.

It is reasonable to believe in a creator for a start.
Not believing has no use in helping us determine fact from fiction.
Faith is believing what you find reasonable and true, whether this is in a creator and Jesus or in human ability to determine through science what is best to believe.

 

[Brian2]

It's not good for anybody who cares about being rational and believing in as many true things and as few false things as possible.

That sounds like as sensible as wanting to be the richest man in the grave.
You could be the most knowledgeable person in the grave, but learning and learning does not mean that we will ever come to a knowledge of the truth unless you count the truth as just being a collection of facts.

That's the claim.

You don't know it then. You believe it because you want to.

And your claim (what you believe) is that you believe more true things and less false things than I do.

 

[Brian2]

Speculations based in evidence (supported empirically) are not the same as unfalsifiable religious speculations, just as speculations about what the weather will be like are not equally meaningful if they are based in weather forecasting science rather than being based in tossing chicken bones.

But you claim that Bible prophecy is the same as scientific prophecy like weather forecasting.

There you go again. I haven't read those words from anybody but you.

And?

And again. Will you continue ignoring this matter of you changing what you read into something else? It seems so. And I will continue pointing it out whenever I see it. Is that good for you? Is that how you'd like the future to proceed - you making the same error repeatedly, having it called out, ignoring that, and making it again? .

I'll just have to risk it. If somebody says things that point to a belief that God does not exist, then maybe I'll keep pointing it out so that you have something to do.

What you're saying here is that the science ("humans find[ing] out facts") is the arbiter of the truth, not scripture, which must be reinterpreted to align with the science. Why go to a Bible for information when the believers themselves go to the science to find out how those scriptures should be understood?

I don't say that science is completely accurate or inaccurate and neither should you. Sometimes science shows the best interpretation of the Bible about physical things, but not about spiritual things. Spiritual is the realm of God and the Bible.

Yet people more skilled at reasoning and interpreting evidence than you disagree.

If you are talking about scientists then many of them might say that it shows design. However it is true that science cannot and does not show that there is no designer or creator, so I suppose you must be talking about skeptics like yourself who are more skilled at reasoning and interpreting evidence that I am.
How do you think that a scientist is going to determine if something shows design or not?

Sure it does. Science ("humans find[ing] out facts"), or more properly, empiricism, accounts for spiritual experience the same way it accounts for other experience, such as experiencing something as valuable or beautiful. They're psychological states conjured up by the brain.

That is no more than the presumption that there is no actual 'spiritual' and that it can all be interpreted as physical phenomena.
Sure, that is the only evidence that science has to work with, however there is more evidence that science cannot work with, but that evidence is not even acknowledged in science or by those who just stick to what science claims in all of what they believe.

No, it's not. It's evidence, because it can be experienced using the senses, and it's evidence of something, but not of the god it describes. It's evidence that somebody wrote the words in it, and that they have been printed and assembled in book form. That's it. It's not evidence that any of its claims are true, nor even evidence that writers believed what they wrote - just that they wrote those words.

Yet I believe it.

That's true for leprechauns and vampires as well, but not for anything known to actually exist.

Things that are part of the physical universe can probably eventually be detected by science but not things that are not part of the physical universe.

Everything you believe about gods is pure speculation.

That is presumption based on the belief that the Bible is not true. (or if you like, the lack of belief in the Bible and drawing conclusions from that lack of belief)

Existing implies the passage of time, just like thinking and acting. The qualities of the existent are that they can be found at some (or all) times in some (or all) places interacting with other things that exist. These three things are all true of every real thing, but none are true of imagined things with no external referent. Contrast wolves with werewolves to see why this is so. Wolves can affect their surrounding (which is evidence of their existence) wherever they are whenever they are there. Werewolves never affect anything anywhere ever, becuase they cant if they don't exist.

God can be found at all times and places and in timelessness also and when and where no other things exist.

No, there can't. If say that you have evidence of something, you are saying that you detected it. Think of the wolf and werewolf again. One is detectable, that is, is evident to the senses

God is not evident to the senses but is detectable if God reveals Himself to you. But how can God reveal Himself to you if you do not believe God is doing that? This seems to be a good place for faith to be handy.

 

[Kenny]

But if you want to say that a naturalistic answer is the only possible true one that is your decision.

There you go again. I haven't read those words from anybody but you.

If you want to say that a naturalistic answer is the only possible true one, that is your decision.

I may not have used those exact words, but I have as much said it also. I say it this way, “I support your right to believe what you believe as a free-will spirit agent”.

 

[Brian2]

If you want to say that a naturalistic answer is the only possible true one, that is your decision.

I may not have used those exact words, but I have as much said it also. I say it this way, “I support your right to believe what you believe as a free-will spirit agent”.

@It Ain't Necessarily So doesn't like me saying that skeptics believe in anything, and says he will correct me when I do that. (Skeptics/atheists don't have faith in anything, they just lack faith in things it seems) But if what they are saying indicates otherwise, that also should be pointed out to them.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

For those who think that life could not originate spontaneously... I think that a lot can happen when you have millions of years and a whole planet to work with. Sometimes people ask why it isn't happening again. I think that it would be unlikely to, given how short is human history and how much of the biomass is occupied in living organisms.

Another argument is that abiogenesis might only be possible in a prebiotic milieu. Life assembling itself from nonlife may only be possible in the absence of creatures that feed on organic molecules.

If you want to say that a naturalistic answer is the only possible true one, that is your decision.

That's not my position. I'm an agnostic atheist.

Why is this phenomenon so common on these threads? I write repeatedly that I do not rule out supernaturalism, just that I have no reason to invoke it, and this invariably is transformed into comments like yours above. I've coined a phrase for this - disbelief/unbelief conflation, where disbelief means saying that something is false and unbelief is the same as agnosticism - neither belief nor disbelief.

Brian's comment above this one reflects that same tendency. What he is referring to is when he tells me I have ruled out gods and the supernatural and I tell him what I just told you - no, I have not.

Do you have an opinion as to why so many believers do this? Why did you?

In my humble ? opinion, science relies upon magic.

That's exactly wrong. Science seeks order in the universe. If it were satisfied with magic, there would be no need to posit dark matter. Just say that some god or angels is keeping spiral galaxies moving like pinwheels. That was good enough for the Greeks (Apollo pulled the sun through the sky) and the Vikings (Thor makes lightning and thunder), but science removes the magic that the faithful accept from the process.

these self replicating molecules turned up..no evidence of this, is there?

They exist when once they didn't, which is also your reason for saying that a god did it. We expect no more evidence for the naturalistic hypothesis than that it is possible that abiogenesis occurred naturalistically, nor do we need more. We need evidence that it didn't to posit that it didn't.

Spiritual is the realm of God and the Bible.

Disagree. I don't find the Christian approach to life spiritual at all. Believing in and praying to imagined spirits isn't being spiritual. Nor is an ideology that teaches that the earth and beasts are there for us to have dominion over, nor one that teaches that living in nature is inferior to an immaterial existence following death, or that the world is expendable and will be destroyed in a fiery apocalypse.

How do you think that a scientist is going to determine if something shows design or not?

He'd need to identify something that only intelligence could have created. Do you recall the argument from design based in a hypothetical story of a man walking through a heath and stumbling upon a watch? What tipped him off that it was intelligently designed? Assembled, inorganic materials - glass and polished metal. We don't see such things grow from ingredients naturally like the thousands of plants that didn't catch his eye before finding the watch.

That is no more than the presumption that there is no actual 'spiritual' and that it can all be interpreted as physical phenomena.

I don't presume that. I simply have no reason to believe in spirits or supernaturalism, so I live as if they don't exist without saying they don't. That the default position with agnosticism. We must live like those who say yea or those that say no while making neither assertion, and for skeptics, atheism is the default position regarding agnosticism for gods - agnostic atheism.

they are not certain of the absolute truth of their results as they have not tested all other possible scenarios.

Nor need they be. It's sufficient that it is possible.

their tests do not show that all life forms evolved from the one life form without any tweaking of genes by God, as opposed to natural processes.

Nor need they for the same reason.

You have this strange requirement for certain knowledge, but only from science. That's quite rare, seldom available, and not necessary. Most things we do in daily life are decisions based in incomplete knowledge. It's not only rarely possible to do better, it's not necessary. We live life as if our beliefs are correct, some knowing that they might not be.

I detect the undetectable God by faith that He exists and allowing Him to show Himself to me.

You're describing confirmation bias. Once you decided that this god exists, nothing you see will change that.

At least they are conclusions and not just "We don't know" statements as atheists/skeptics give.

This is a problem with faith, not a virtue. Guessing and calling the guesses truth, knowledge, or answers is not a virtue.

It is a faith after all, so objective verifiability is not applicable.

Yes, it's a guess, and evidentiary support for unfalsifiable claims is neither available nor necessary for one to believe them by faith.

There is no purpose for my existence or for the existence of anything without a creator

Even if the universe were created, you might have no purpose to the creator, who might not know you exist or care if it did.

I determined the purpose from faith in the creator and listening to Him.

I determined my own purpose listening to my conscience and reasoning faculty.

The purpose of life for us is to find the creator and to serve the creator and enjoy the creator and thank the creator.

That's not the one I came up with for myself.

It is reasonable to believe in a creator for a start.

Not in the literal sense of the word. There is no sound argument that ends, "Therefore, God." If you hold that opinion, you didn't get there through reason.

Not believing has no use in helping us determine fact from fiction.

I'd say that believing absent sound criteria is the easiest way to believe fictions. The purpose of critical thought is to identify and reject false and unfalsifiable claims so as not to accumulate wrong ideas.

 

[LuisDantas]

It is reasonable to believe in a creator for a start.
Not believing has no use in helping us determine fact from fiction.

I have.to strongly disagree on both counts.

More to the point, the idea of a creator has no explanatory value and brings many serious drawbacks with it.

 

[shunyadragon]

For those who think that life could not originate spontaneously... I think that a lot can happen when you have millions of years and a whole planet to work with.

Sometimes people ask why it isn't happening again. I think that it would be unlikely to, given how short is human history and how much of the biomass is occupied in living organisms.

The present observations of the environments such as the hydrothermal vents is that much of the amino acids and basic chemicals for abiogenesis exist today, but they are the food in the food chain of the life at the vents. It would be obvious that the first simple life forms of abiogenesis would disappear and could not compete with later more complex forms like viruses and bacteria. in the food chain.

The extinction of species as life evolved due to the inability to compete with more well adapted species in evolving life is common throughout the history of life.

 

[Kenny]

That's not my position. I'm an agnostic atheist.

But wouldn’t it be by default as an agnostic atheist?

Why is this phenomenon so common on these threads? I write repeatedly that I do not rule out supernaturalism, just that I have no reason to invoke it, and this invariably is transformed into comments like yours above. I've coined a phrase for this - disbelief/unbelief conflation, where disbelief means saying that something is false and unbelief is the same as agnosticism - neither belief nor disbelief.

Then perhaps this is why their is point of misunderstanding… at least in my view.

It doesn’t seem congruent to say “I don’t rule out supernaturalism” and then say “I am an agnostic atheist”.

Maybe the question really is… “If you don’t rule out supernaturalism, why don’t you investigate it and pursue the possibility? What is the “why?"

Brian's comment above this one reflects that same tendency. What he is referring to is when he tells me I have ruled out gods and the supernatural and I tell him what I just told you - no, I have not.

Do you have an opinion as to why so many believers do this? Why did you?

Because of the incongruency of your statements? Trying to nail down an illusive position?

 

[LuisDantas]

Industries built around evolution? Please explain what type of industries that would be.

Agricultural research is one. Both the crops and their biological adversaries are subject to selection, which is taken into account to develop specific varieties and counter-measures against parasites and other hazards.

Imunization. Biological pathogens - bacteria, fungi and virii, among others - are continuously selected by evolutionary pressure, which must be monitores so that vaccines and other measures are tailores to current levels of each antigen of concern.

Antibiotics, too, are routinely observed and measured for their eficacy against specific bacteria, which are themselves subject to rapid adaptation which must be taken into account.

I'm not up to speed, but there are apparently other, more sophisticated and innovative applications as well, including bioremediation, medical drug research and even industrial design.

 

[LuisDantas]

Just the way you express it, that these self replicating molecules turned up..no evidence of this, is there?

It is unsurprisingly difficult to find hard evidence for an event that may have happened millions of years with inherently unstable molecules at a place that can only be speculated upon.

They turned up,? From...??? Yes, I know ,, outer space or water...or maybe volcanoes.

Are you truly uninformed about the primordial soup?

Primordial soup - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And then what happened after they supposedly turned up. Would the transition from non life to life be considered abiogenesis?

Pretty much. We have considerably hints towards that having happenned just like that.

Virii are essentially parasitic self-replicating molecules.

Coarcervates have been known to form for about a century now.

Just because we have no hard evidence (and it would be absurd to expect any) it does not follow that it did not happen, or even that it is not by far the most likely explanation for the origin of life.

I've heard statements that maybe way out there evolution has occurred in other areas of the universe. No evidence. Just maybe.

Anything is possible, but I personally doubt that panspermy played a role. We are just too far away from most everything else.

 

[YoursTrue]

I have.to strongly disagree on both counts.

More to the point, the idea of a creator has no explanatory value and brings many serious drawbacks with it.

It depends on what a person believes. You may say it has no explanatory value, but I disagree with that, since I believe nature itself shows there is a creator, or higher power. Like I say, you are going to disagree. I say that because my assessment of your opinions is based on what you've expressed, your mindset, or as they say, worldview.
What I also find interesting is that even in the Bible many did not believe.

 

[ratiocinator]

It is reasonable to believe in a creator for a start.

Why?

 

[ratiocinator]

You may say it has no explanatory value, but I disagree with that...

It's obvious why it has no explanatory power. Since it could, quite literally, 'explain' anything at all, it actually explains nothing. It doesn't tell us why things are the way they are (explanation) because it could be applied to any way thing might be.

...since I believe nature itself shows there is a creator, or higher power.

How does it show that (blind faith aside)?

 

[LuisDantas]

It depends on what a person believes. You may say it has no explanatory value, but I disagree with that, since I believe nature itself shows there is a creator, or higher power.

That is not a matter of disagreement, but rather of having or refusing a functional idea of what an explanation is.

Saying that something is created by divine will, or that it is or was a miracle, is not an explanation; it is a refusal to seek for an explanation.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

If you don’t rule out supernaturalism, why don’t you investigate it and pursue the possibility?

How does one investigate supernaturalism? There's nothing to look at - nothing to investigate except nature, which does not support claims of supernaturalism.

How about you? What are you doing to investigate the claims and pursue the possibility that vampires exist? Probably as little as I'm doing investigating supernaturalism and for the same reason.

Because of the incongruency of your statements?

That's why you change the meaning of my words from what I wrote to something different?

My comments are coherent and correct. If you think otherwise - and at this point, I don't think you understand what my words mean, in which case you cannot paraphrase them accurately or identify any incongruency in them - make your case by explaining what you think my words mean and why they seem incongruent to you.

 

[YoursTrue]

That is not a matter of disagreement, but rather of having or refusing a functional idea of what an explanation is.

Saying that something is created by divine will, or that it is or was a miracle, is not an explanation; it is a refusal to seek for an explanation.

I believe the earth is inhabited by humans, trees and animals by divine will because it now makes sense to me, moreso than the theoried possibilities of abiogenesis leading to evolution.

 

[LuisDantas]

I believe the earth is inhabited by humans, trees and animals by divine will because it now makes sense to me, moreso than the theoried possibilities of abiogenesis leading to evolution.

Your privilege, but all the same still arbitrary choices.

 

[shunyadragon]

But wouldn’t it be by default as an agnostic atheist?

. . . because if not defining one's beliefs as to not 'knowing' has no absolute default position

Then perhaps this is why their is point of misunderstanding… at least in my view.

It doesn’t seem congruent to say “I don’t rule out supernaturalism” and then say “I am an agnostic atheist”.

Maybe the question really is… “If you don’t rule out supernaturalism, why don’t you investigate it and pursue the possibility? What is the “why?"

The problem is regardless of belief 'supernaturalism' cannot be falsified by any method that relies on objective verifiable evidence.

Answer this: "How can supernaturalism be objectively investigated?"

Because of the incongruency of your statements? Trying to nail down an illusive position?

I do not believe @Aint Necessarily has a position is nether illusive nor incongruent. He chooses to rely on Methodological Naturalism and objective methods to understand the world which is consistent. He also does not take the extreme position of atheism and does not claim to 'know.'

The lack of objectivity and inconsistency among Theists concerning subjective beliefs which they do not agree is a problem you have to deal with including the failure to accept academic history and science based on an a subjective ancient tribal scripture. My Theism acknowledges the lack of objectivity and consistency of Theism and the inconsistency when dealing with academic science and history. I live in today's world that requires the acceptance of objectivity of academic history and science,

 

[Kenny]

How does one investigate supernaturalism? There's nothing to look at - nothing to investigate except nature, which does not support claims of supernaturalism.

Certainly doing nothing can’t be called an “investigation”.

How about you? What are you doing to investigate the claims and pursue the possibility that vampires exist? Probably as little as I'm doing investigating supernaturalism and for the same reason.

the comment about “vampires” is one of those phrases that causes the problems that you were wondering about and that being "Do you have an opinion as to why so many believers do this? “ - Probably a tit-for-tat situation. For your perusal, Vampire bat - Wikipedia

The way I tackled it is along this way, “The Bible (you can use supernatural) is either false or true, it can’t be both. I will start with it is true and test the sucker (yes, I called the Bible a ’sucker’), I will find out soon enough iif it is false. After accepting Jesus, I began to see the supernatural.

Practical application… investigate on your own if you really want to.

Otherwise, people will see your answer as “politically correct” - not much substance and at heart an atheist (a faith position). Giving excuses “why I can’t” really means “I don’t want to” in my book. Can you imagine where we would be if people said “It can’t be done?"

That's why you change the meaning of my words from what I wrote to something different?

Not trying to. Trying to understand and clarify? As a possibility?

My comments are coherent and correct. If you think otherwise - and at this point, I don't think you understand what my words mean, in which case you cannot paraphrase them accurately or identify any incongruency in them - make your case by explaining what you think my words mean and why they seem incongruent to you.

At this point, I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion. Can we stay on subject and not try to make a side issue?