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Life From Dirt?
- Thread starter Jimmy
- Start date
I spring from dirt regularly.
But many theories of abiogenesis posit starting in water or mud.
Dirt (which is dry) seems less suitable because chemistry would
be more difficult without water & the mobility it provides molecules.
If one finds abiogenesis too implausible, & that a beginning
for such things is necessary, then the God alternative raises
the question of whence came it / them / those. If that has
no reasonable answer, then we're back to abiogenesis.
But many theories of abiogenesis posit starting in water or mud.
Dirt (which is dry) seems less suitable because chemistry would
be more difficult without water & the mobility it provides molecules.
If one finds abiogenesis too implausible, & that a beginning
for such things is necessary, then the God alternative raises
the question of whence came it / them / those. If that has
no reasonable answer, then we're back to abiogenesis.
Last edited:
Heyo
Veteran Member
There is no such thing as a "God theory". There isn't even anything that could be called a god hypothesis. The different hypothesis for abiogenesis at least propose a mechanism - the god story just assumes that life was poofed into existence by magic.
Jimmy
King Phenomenon
Don’t be so nit picky. People find it annoying
I don't.
Yerda
Veteran Member
Just the springing from dirt part or do you mean any possible natural source for life?
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
Life coming from dirt is the Bible, not science.
Uhm.... Sure.
Water is more plausible then dirt.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
Words have meaning. If they didn't they'd just be sounds.
Daemon Sophic
Avatar in flux
Probably more like dirty water, with lightning striking, to get the right chemicals and energy all at the same time.
Like this.....
Interestingly; active volcanoes frequently generate their own lightning storms.
We Never Know
No Slack
Wouldn't creation be a mechanism?
We Never Know
No Slack
Daemon Sophic
Avatar in flux
No. It's more of a method. By "mechanism" there is a suggested set of actions that are taking place, that taken together lead to an action (new life forming, in this case). Whereas a "method" is just a vague summary "stuff happened that made new life".
It's just hand-waving compared to "mechanism". Like in a car. "I started the car" is a method.
But mechanism is more like, I turned the key, which .....
The starter switch is usually worked by the ignition key. Turn the key beyond the 'ignition on' position to feed current to the solenoid.
The ignition switch has a return spring , so that as soon as you release the key it springs back and turns the starter switch off.
When the switch feeds current to the solenoid, the electromagnet attracts an iron rod.
The movement of the rod closes two heavy contacts, completing the circuit from the battery to the starter.
The rod also has a return spring -when the ignition switch stops feeding current to the solenoid, the contacts open and the starter motor stops.
The return springs are needed because the starter motor must not turn more than it has to in order to start the engine. The reason is partly that the starter uses a lot of electricity, which quickly runs down the battery.
Also, if the engine starts and the starter motor stays engaged, the engine will spin the starter so fast that it may be badly damaged.
The starter motor itself has a device, called a Bendix gear, which engages its pinion with the gear ring on the flywheel only while the starter is turning the engine. It disengages as soon as the engine picks up speed, and there are two ways by which it does so - the inertia system and the pre-engaged system.
The inertia starter relies on the inertia of the pinion - that is, its reluctance to begin to turn.
Inertia system
An inertia type starter: this one is an 'inboard' type in which the Bendix gear throws the pinion towards the motor; there are also 'outboard' ones in which it moves the other way.The pinion is not fixed rigidly to the motor shaft - it is threaded on to it, like a freely turning nut on a very coarse-thread bolt.
Imagine that you suddenly spin the bolt: the inertia of the nut keeps it from turning at once, so it shifts along the thread of the bolt.
When an inertia starter spins, the pinion moves along the thread of the motor shaft and engages with the flywheel gear ring.
It then reaches a stop at the end of the thread, begins to turn with the shaft and so turns the engine.
The inertia of the heavy piston assembly prevents it from spinning immediately when the motor shaft turns, so it slides along the thread and into engagement; when the engine starts, the pinion is turned faster than its shaft, so it is thrown back out of engagement.Once the engine starts, it spins the pinion faster than its own starter-motor shaft. The spinning action screws the pinion back down its thread and out of engagement.
The pinion returns so violently that there has to be a strong spring on the shaft to cushion its impact.
The violent engagement and disengagement of an inertia starter can cause heavy wear on the gear teeth. To overcome that problem the pre-engaged starter was introduced, which has a solenoid mounted on the motor.
There's more to a car starter system: As well as switching on the motor, the solenoid also slides the pinion along the shaft to engage it.
The shaft has straight splines rather than a Bendix thread, so that the pinion always turns with it.
The pinion is brought into contact with the toothed ring on the flywheel by a sliding fork. The fork is moved by a solenoid, which has two sets of contacts that close one after the other.
The first contact supplies a low current to the motor so that it turns slowly - just far enough to let the pinion teeth engage. Then the second contacts close, feeding the motor a high current to turn the engine.
So unless you or @Moon are about to take the more mature and thoughtful route of getting "nit-picky" and detail all of the activities this "God" character utilized, step-by-step, in order to bring about new life, then the two words are different.
Brian2
Veteran Member
Why does a God have to have begin?
JDMS
Academic Workhorse
Why make what is essentially a duplicate post...?
Ella S.
Well-Known Member
Interestingly, I disagree, and I would love to hear your thoughts on why. I will say that I rarely see anyone who proposes that God created the universe go into detail about the mechanisms of how this was done, but that doesn't mean that no such mechanisms have ever been supposed.
However, in order to go into detail about the mechanisms through which God created the universe, we first have to reject naturalism in favor of either metaphysical idealism or mitigated dualism. While this is a stretch for the scientifically minded and the skeptical critical thinker, this is also the territory that the concept of God resides in the vast majority of the time. It is only once we settle on one of these metaphysical concepts that we can begin proposing a mechanism for how God could give rise to the physical universe.
If you think about it for a second, this is sort of inevitable. The question of what physics is and how it got here is not a question within the physical sciences themselves but about physics, thus meta-physics. So any potential answer we can give, whether it's from naturalism, idealism, or dualism, it will be within the domain of metaphysics. Now, you can attack the methods of metaphysics as well as how justified its conclusions are, but once we start asking metaphysical questions it becomes a conversation about metaphysics.
Simply arriving at idealism or dualism is not enough, of course. We would have to go a step further and propose specific mechanisms for which the ideal can interact with or induce changes in the apparently material. We also have that! It's called manifestation.
Think about it this way: have you ever daydreamed or had a lucid dream where you could add and subtract objects to your mental image? By visualizing something, it gains form within the mind. Idealists posit that our entire universe is in the mind of God, and so God did the same thing when they created the universe; they visualized it and it manifested.
Theologians like George Berkeley call this "immaterialism." If it weren't for God continuing to dream up what we perceive as a material universe, we would stop existing within their mind and thus stop existing entirely. In this way, God not only created the universe, but continues to sustain it by holding on to the mental images of everything within it. This also explains how God is both omniscient and omnipotent: they know everything because everything is contained within their mind and they're omnipotent because they're essentially lucid dreaming on a cosmic scale.
Immaterialism is one example of how idealism solves this problem of a mechanism. Mitigated dualism tends to apply the same general principle, just with added steps that only really make sense after doing some fairly specific visualization exercises.
I was going to get into how this provides philosophical justification for occult and New Age concepts of magic, which use additional mechanisms that rely on this core idea, and how they're linked to the general concept of receiving synchronous "signs from God," but my post is already getting too long. We can discuss immaterialism more and how it provides a mechanism for creation if you want.
Of course, immaterialism is unfalsifiable, but our current understanding of the world makes it highly likely to be false since we know that matter generates mind, not the other way around. However, it does provide philosophical coherency to the metaphysics of theology, which is pretty much exactly what you're asking about here.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
No abiogenesis hypothesis says anything about "sprang from dirt" though.
What "god theory"?
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
A magical one.
Heyo
Veteran Member
That would be a possible approach for the creation of the universe since we know so much less about it than about the emergence of life. But in the context of this OP naturalism is pretty much established as the only game in town. We have 10 billion years with no need for magic before the emergence of life and 3.8 billion years of no need for magic after the emergence of life. We know about many mechanisms necessary for life from complex structures formed in the Miller-Urey experiment to spontaneous construction of lipid bi-layers near certain clay.
So, in the context of emergence of life, there is no "god hypothesis" that can compete with science.
I like to compare this "immaterialism" to the simulation hypothesis. In fact I made an OP, my first on this site, about it. Are the Programmers Gods?
It makes gods a bit more accessible without taking away any (reasonable) qualities of the un-reality. The "dream" could end when the janitor pulls the plug because he needs the outlet to vacuum the room and we can also ask why the programmers don't seem to mess with the simulation.
Yep. The simulation hypothesis is also unfalsifiable and thus unscientific but it is a valid comparison to immaterialism. Scientists don't like it because it is a creation model and creationists don't like it because it isn't magical and mysterious enough. And when a model pisses off both sides for different reasons, it has some validity to it.