Life From Dirt?

[Brian2]

Ah, so you think there has to be some extra, supernatural ingredient for a biochemical system to become alive? Is that it?

Yes and no. It is hard to tell just where the machine becomes more than a machine, so maybe not all biochemical systems need a spirit to be called alive.

 

[Brian2]

Maybe so, but my point was that simple creation doesn't establish all the other attributes that people tack on to gods. Incidentally, I don't see why a god with many of the attributes associated with gods couldn't exist without the ability to create the universe. Maybe gods were created in some way as part of the universe? They would need to have some powers over the material world that we don't currently understand, but that has never stopped gods before.

If the creation has life, then the creator has life, if the creation is designed intelligently than the creator has intelligence, if the creation needed strength to be created then the creator has strength etc. If we see a quality in the creation then chances are the creator has it, in abundance. I am told that moral evil is distinct as it is just a corruption of what was created.

There's always a gap for gods to retreat into, certainly. What's the relevance of the deist god to our lives though?

When science finds mechanisms it does not mean that the personal God of the Bible is being pushed into irrelevance, unless you think that the Bible God was actually involved personally in doing those things that a mechanism is found for. It was just a false argument in the first place. But God can still send lightning if He wants to and God created it all and God also holds it all together and keeps it all going.
And that is just part of the physical side of creation without mentioning little things like life and eternal life and dealing with evil etc.

 

[Subduction Zone]

If the creation has life, then the creator has life, if the creation is designed intelligently than the creator has intelligence, if the creation needed strength to be created then the creator has strength etc. If we see a quality in the creation then chances are the creator has it, in abundance. I am told that moral evil is distinct as it is just a corruption of what was created.
But there is no scientific evidence or other reliable evidence that life is intelligently designed. If anything there is evidence to the contrary. Complexity is not a hallmark of design. The greatest efficiency possible is a hallmark of design and life lacks that in spades.



When science finds mechanisms it does not mean that the personal God of the Bible is being pushed into irrelevance, unless you think that the Bible God was actually involved personally in doing those things that a mechanism is found for. It was just a false argument in the first place. But God can still send lightning if He wants to and God created it all and God also holds it all together and keeps it all going.
And that is just part of the physical side of creation without mentioning little things like life and eternal life and dealing with evil etc.

Why believe that? There does not appear to be any good reason to do so. Wen those that have that belief are asked for rational support for their beliefs all that is heard are crickets at best.

 

[Brian2]

Painting the bullseye around the arrow is also called the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy, and refers to overemphasizing the importance of evidence that seems to support a belief while downplaying or ignoring the rest. An example is creationists comparing Genesis to science and picking out the parts that look alike, like life coming from the sea, in order to make it appear that the myth anticipated the science, while ignoring all of the places they contradict one another (not to mention where the two creation myths in Genesis contradict one another).

Science ignores the religious writings about life and reports of spirits etc because that evidence is not something that can be tested and the question about what life is, is not really a scientific question. iow it cannot be shown that spirit does not exist.
There is only one creation account in Genesis imo.

and that at this point in time, there is no evidence that needs an intelligent designer to account for, so adding one to the narrative adds useless complexity, useless meaning adding no predictive or explanatory power.

Nobody knows how the genetic system became a storer and user of data.

A proposition is considered scientific if it is falsifiable, that is, if it is a wrong, there can be physical evidence of that somewhere. These are really the only ideas about reality that can be used to anticipate outcomes, and thus the only ones worth thinking about. This idea has been called Popper's Razor. Claims about entities that are said to be undetectable can be put in the same category as all other unsupported claims (Hitchen's Razor) or insufficiently supported claims (Dawkin's Razor). The can all be disregarded without refutation or counterargument.

I don't really want God proven scientifically, that is something others demand from theists.

It is evidence that somebody has made a specific claim, not that the claim is accurate.

Witness evidence is evidence especially when no other evidence is available, and there are independent witnesses testifying to the same thing.

Elsewhere, you wrote," So the resurrection has more than one witness in independent accounts verifying it and at the same time verifying each other." Eyewitness testimony by itself is weak evidence for the claims made. It becomes stronger as more and more people give the same account independently but requires supporting physical evidence to corroborate. This is why Christians cite that there were many independent reports of miracles as evidence that they occurred. Interobserver subjectivity improves the likelihood that they are all correct when there is consensus. But in the case of the Bible, we only have the claim that there were multiple independent, reliable observers, not their independent eyewitness testimony. It's hearsay.

There is no refutation of the miracles of Jesus in history and in fact His enemies (Talmudic Jews) say He was a miracle worker.
And yes the resurrection has more than one witness.

Causality refers to the observed fact that some events lead to other events. You move a cueball with a cue stick, which in turn moves an object ball. It always occurs in that order. There is always a before and after state, and the after state is determined by what came before. This pattern is repeated continuously - I lift my cup and it always rises, and always in that order. I sip then swallow some of the contents of the cup, always in that order. Causality refers to that pattern. It makes no sense to say that something outside of time causes something inside it, because causality (like existence itself) requires the passage of time between cause and effect. It also makes no sense to call simultaneous occurrences cause and effect. It becomes an arbitrary assignment which was which, and something never observed.

If I open my fist I cause a volume to appear in my hand. They happen at the same time.
There is no problem with a first cause being seen as the cause and not the effect.

Special pleading is a claim that an unjustified double standard is being employed. Calling something special for being first is not justification for exempting it from reason.

It is reasonable to say that time cannot be infinite into the past.
It is reasonable to say that the B theory of time is rubbish because it ignores cause and effect.
It is reasonable to say that time and space started with the BB.
It is reasonable to say that the first cause (God) lived unchanging in timelessness. He just was/is.
It is reasonable to say that the first cause happened simultaneously with the BB.
It is reasonable and justified to say that the first cause is different to the things that have come into existence.

Empiricism and critical analysis are not a trap, but a razor as described above. Claims about reality that aren't amenable to empirical study can safely be ignored, and should be ignored unless and until they become that.

You are talking about a science that is probably significantly different to the time when modern science began and everyone believed in God and even saw a rational and understandable universe because they believed in a rational God who gave us the ability to analyse the world.
Modern science began in that time and atmosphere and because of it it seems, and not the God who was the Father of science so to speak is thrown out by people who demand empirical evidence for God.

But there is no evidence to the contrary, and as I've just delineated, until we find some entity or process in a living organism not explained by chemistry, the idea that there might be more to it is less than unhelpful and not worth further consideration.

But there is evidence.

True, but no refutation is needed for an unsupported claim. Now we're back to Hitchens' Razor.

That's right, it's automatically discarded by you because you believe only in evidence that can be analysed by science.

Isn't all disagreement? But not all opinions are equal. Sound conclusions are not equal to faith-based opinions.

What are sound conclusions and why do you want to contrast them with faith based opinions?

Acting requires the prior existence of time, as does anything that has a before and after state. This is also correct for thinking and existing. All imply the passage from before to after via now. If one wants to say that something exists outside of space and time and makes no detectible impact on nature, then apart from the idea of existence outside of time being self-contradictory, it is also the description of the nonexistent. This is true of leprechauns and vampires, and why we live life as if they don't exist. It's also why I live life as if no gods exist.

The unchanging God creates time space by opening His hand. His act and the effect happen simultaneously and can continue into time.
Not thinking but knowing.
We don't even know what time it and we make grand statements about it.
Not changing, but being.
No actions of love just loving.
We can't really fathom it but we don't know what time is really, we only can conceive of a state where time exists.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

If the creation has life, then the creator has life, if the creation is designed intelligently than the creator has intelligence, if the creation needed strength to be created then the creator has strength etc. If we see a quality in the creation then chances are the creator has it, in abundance. I am told that moral evil is distinct as it is just a corruption of what was created.
...

The problem is who created ability to do a corruption?

 

[Brian2]

Subduction Zone said: But there is no scientific evidence or other reliable evidence that life is intelligently designed. If anything there is evidence to the contrary. Complexity is not a hallmark of design. The greatest efficiency possible is a hallmark of design and life lacks that in spades.

Why believe that? There does not appear to be any good reason to do so. Wen those that have that belief are asked for rational support for their beliefs all that is heard are crickets at best.

I presume you said the first bit above.
I don't know how you can see evidence that the universe was not designed but flat out deny the evidence that it was designed.
It is rational to presume that a creator has at least got the attributes that it can create.
But what do you mean by "rational support"?

 

[Brian2]

The problem is who created ability to do a corruption?

Sounds like a question about free will.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Sounds like a question about free will.

Yeah, that is not from God. That is a corruption from Satan.

 

[exchemist]

Yes and no. It is hard to tell just where the machine becomes more than a machine, so maybe not all biochemical systems need a spirit to be called alive.

Aha now we're getting somewhere. I should have thought that the classical Christian view would be that Man being made "in the image of God" refers him having, possibly uniquely in the animal kingdom or possibly not, an immortal soul. So I presume that is where you are coming from. Fair enough.

As you may be aware, there has been considerable theological debate over the centuries about the point at which "infusion" of the soul is believed to take place, during the development of a human foetus. But what that tacitly implies is that, up to that point, there is no supernatural component. So there is no requirement in any Christian doctrine, so far as I am aware, to believe there is an intrinsic supernatural component to all living organisms.

I can therefore see no religious reason not to accept that life can arise by natural chemical processes, subject to the same physical laws that guide the formation of inorganic features of the natural world.

 

[Heyo]

Aha now we're getting somewhere. I should have thought that the classical Christian view would be that Man being made "in the image of God" refers him having, possibly uniquely in the animal kingdom or possibly not, an immortal soul. So I presume that is where you are coming from. Fair enough.

As you may be aware, there has been considerable theological debate over the centuries about the point at which "infusion" of the soul is believed to take place, during the development of a human foetus

Who's talking about humans? To reject abiogenesis, a "soul" or other supernatural entity like a "life force" or something had to have been infused into the very first proto-procariot. And that force had to have been essential to that proto-cell going from "just a bunch of chemicals" to "alive".

 

[blü 2]

It sounds magical however we want it to have begun.
It is magical to think that the universe came from nothing.
It is magical for order to be the result of chaos.
It is magical for life to come from non life.
It is magical to think that we can be at this point in time yet if there has been an infinite amount of time in the past.

Yes, these are good questions and in science correspondingly works in progress.

I don't see how anything can come from a literal nothing, since a literal nothing is nowhere in space or time and has no dimensions, no energy, no anything else of any kind.

But I've played with the idea that the dimensions of time and space are properties of or from mass-energy, and if that's the case, then time and space exist because mss-energy does, and not vice versa. And while I'm speculating in this manner, I wonder whether time, being ex hypothesi a property of mass-energy, may stop, or run backwards, or exist in more than one temporal dimension just as space exists in more than one spatial dimension and so on. The attractive thing about that idea (and ideas like it) is that they might do away with the question of beginnings and literal eternities.

But as for abiogenesis, yes, it's still a work in progress, and no, nothing capable of biological reproduction has been put together in a lab so far. However, every few years, some or other extra piece of relevant information is found about the chemistry at the borders of life and non-life, and I don't share your confidence that the question is unsolvable by its very nature.

If I'm right and we indeed discovered how to make life from non-life, would that change your views about your religion? I'd be surprised if it did, but it seems fair to ask.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Subduction Zone said: But there is no scientific evidence or other reliable evidence that life is intelligently designed. If anything there is evidence to the contrary. Complexity is not a hallmark of design. The greatest efficiency possible is a hallmark of design and life lacks that in spades.


I presume you said the first bit above.
I don't know how you can see evidence that the universe was not designed but flat out deny the evidence that it was designed.
It is rational to presume that a creator has at least got the attributes that it can create.
But what do you mean by "rational support"?

You keep conflating complexity with design. Undesigned things can be complex. I might have blown the line a bit.


Complexity is not a hallmark of design. Simplicity is. A device that does a job efficiently and simply shows design. Life is not like that. It is overly complex. It has inefficient work-arounds. Life is essentially a kludge. Many structures would be better if they were designed anew from scratch. But evolution cannot work that way. It has to build off of existing structures.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Science ignores the religious writings about life and reports of spirits etc because that evidence is not something that can be tested

Correct. Science ignores everything except observable nature.

it cannot be shown that spirit does not exist.

Nor need it. If the idea isn't needed to account for what we can observe, we don't have any reason to include it in our models ofreality and how it works.

There is only one creation account in Genesis imo.

There are two: The Two Creations in Genesis - Bible Odyssey

Nobody knows how the genetic system became a storer and user of data.

Correct. That is consistent with what you responded to: "at this point in time, there is no evidence that needs an intelligent designer to account for, so adding one to the narrative adds useless complexity, useless meaning adding no predictive or explanatory power."

Witness evidence is evidence especially when no other evidence is available

Yes, as I said: "It is evidence that somebody has made a specific claim, not that the claim is accurate."

there are independent witnesses testifying to the same thing.

So it is claimed.

There is no refutation of the miracles of Jesus in history

Nor need there be. Insufficiently supported claims don't need to be refuted to not be believed.

If I open my fist I cause a volume to appear in my hand. They happen at the same time.

Yes, and if a cue makes contact with a cueball, the cueball moves at that moment. Cause precedes effect. That's how we identify which is which. The cause of you opening your hand preceded the appearance of the volume.

It is reasonable to say that the first cause (God) lived unchanging in timelessness. He just was/is.

No, it is not. I've already explained why that doesn't make sense. Does your god think? Then it changes over time. As soon as you say existing out of time, you are contradicting yourself the way 'married bachelor' does. To exist is to pass through a series of consecutive instants.

the time when modern science began and everyone believed in God and even saw a rational and understandable universe because they believed in a rational God who gave us the ability to analyse the world.

No, the Age of Reason was the result of the rise of humanism. The idea that the world was rational and comprehensible doesn't come from the Bible. That begins with the ancient Greeks, as I explained to you here last September:

"In the West, rational skepticism was first introduced by the ancient Greek philosophers, whose skepticism about the claims that natural events were punishments from capricious gods led to free speculation about reality. Thales (624 BC - 546 BC) suggested that everything was a form of water, which was the only substance he knew of capable of existing as solid, liquid and gas. What is significant was his willingness to try to explain the workings of nature without invoking the supernatural or appealing to the ancients and their dicta. The more profound implication was that man might be capable of understanding nature, which might operate according to comprehensible rules that he might discover."

It became science when observation was added centuries later. Aristotle famously and erroneously proclaimed that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones without testing the claim.

And it's unsurprising that most scientists were Christian, since it was the work of these scientists that made first deism and then atheism tenable. But their science didn't come from their Bibles, which were already centuries old by then. It came from free speculation - the same thing Thales did - but now with experimentation (rationalism became empiricism).

it's automatically discarded by you because you believe only in evidence that can be analysed by science.

Did you mean analyzed empirically (experienced through the senses and understood by the memory and reasoning faculty)? Evidence is also my criteria for belief in daily life. But yes, anything that isn't sufficiently justified by the rules for evaluating evidence is not believed.

What are sound conclusions and why do you want to contrast them with faith based opinions?

Sound conclusions are the result of valid reasoning applied to evidence (or premises). They are correct statements in the same way that correct sums are the result of valid reasoning (the rules of addition) applied to addends. If you follow the method without error, you are guaranteed a correct result, just life if you follow correct driving instructions, you will arrive at your destination every time. In each case, there is a correct path to follow (literally or figuratively) to derive correct (sound) conclusions, all other paths leading elsewhere. That is the power of critical thinking, and why those that understand it and have developed proficiency in it become uninterested in other way of deciding what is true about the world. It's why the skeptic doesn't accept biblical reports of resurrection. They don't pass that test.

 

[exchemist]

Who's talking about humans? To reject abiogenesis, a "soul" or other supernatural entity like a "life force" or something had to have been infused into the very first proto-procariot. And that force had to have been essential to that proto-cell going from "just a bunch of chemicals" to "alive".

OK, OK, but I'm trying to find out what @Brian2 thinks, not ridicule him.

 

[Subduction Zone]

OK, OK, but I'm trying to find out what @Brian2 thinks, not ridicule him.

Good luck. I tried to get him to give a clear model of his version of the flood and that was like pulling teeth. I do not think that he will want to get specific. When a person has a belief that they are afraid is wrong being specific makes it possible to refute that idea and believers tend to want to believe. They do not want to be right. That is rather foreign to scientists since they often tend to want to be right more than they want to believe. The scientific method is based on "Here is my idea, this is a model of it, and these tests (and perhaps others) could refute it if it is wrong". Believes get the burden of proof wrong. They tend to say "Here is what I believe (sort of) now prove me wrong. If you can't prove me wrong my belief is justified". That can be seen in the above post by @It Aint Necessarily So . He repeatedly points out when @Brian2 is not supporting his beliefs properly.

 

[exchemist]

Good luck. I tried to get him to give a clear model of his version of the flood and that was like pulling teeth. I do not think that he will want to get specific. When a person has a belief that they are afraid is wrong being specific makes it possible to refute that idea and believers tend to want to believe. They do not want to be right. That is rather foreign to scientists since they often tend to want to be right more than they want to believe. The scientific method is based on "Here is my idea, this is a model of it, and these tests (and perhaps others) could refute it if it is wrong". Believes get the burden of proof wrong. They tend to say "Here is what I believe (sort of) now prove me wrong. If you can't prove me wrong my belief is justified". That can be seen in the above post by @It Aint Necessarily So . He repeatedly points out when @Brian2 is not supporting his beliefs properly.

Yes. There are indications of a partially thought-through position, I think. It may need to evolve a bit.
As it were.

 

[Alien826]

If the creation has life, then the creator has life, if the creation is designed intelligently than the creator has intelligence, if the creation needed strength to be created then the creator has strength etc. If we see a quality in the creation then chances are the creator has it, in abundance. I am told that moral evil is distinct as it is just a corruption of what was created.

I don't want to take up too much of your time, as you are already answering several others, but I don't see that that follows at all. It may be so in particular circumstances, but you still have establish that your "ifs" exist in this case.

When science finds mechanisms it does not mean that the personal God of the Bible is being pushed into irrelevance, unless you think that the Bible God was actually involved personally in doing those things that a mechanism is found for. It was just a false argument in the first place. But God can still send lightning if He wants to and God created it all and God also holds it all together and keeps it all going.
And that is just part of the physical side of creation without mentioning little things like life and eternal life and dealing with evil etc.

I was talking about the deist god, who created the universe and didn't intervene afterwards. There's not much to build a religion on there.

As far as the "god of the gaps" goes, it's just an observation that over the years less and less has been attributed to gods as natural explanations are found. So we don't need angels to push the planets round in their orbits, they manage that perfectly well on their own. We can extrapolate from that to expect that eventually science will close all the gaps, but I suspect there will always be some gaps for god to exist in, as you have pointed out.

 

[exchemist]

I don't want to take up too much of your time, as you are already answering several others, but I don't see that that follows at all. It may be so in particular circumstances, but you still have establish that your "ifs" exist in this case.



I was talking about the deist god, who created the universe and didn't intervene afterwards. There's not much to build a religion on there.

As far as the "god of the gaps" goes, it's just an observation that over the years less and less has been attributed to gods as natural explanations are found. So we don't need angels to push the planets round in their orbits, they manage that perfectly well on their own. We can extrapolate from that to expect that eventually science will close all the gaps, but I suspect there will always be some gaps for god to exist in, as you have pointed out.

Cardinal Newman realised the appeal to "God of the Gaps" was a dead end, pointing out exactly what you are saying, viz. that the person who bases his faith on that is building it on sand, since as science advances the gaps inevitably grow smaller.

 

[blü 2]

There is no refutation of the miracles of Jesus in history and in fact His enemies (Talmudic Jews) say He was a miracle worker.
And yes the resurrection has more than one witness

No, the miracle stories are no more credible than the miracle stories of other religions and folk tales. None of the authors ever met an historical Jesus. None of their accounts is a first-hand account ─ all are hearsay. And Paul's visions are all mental events personal to Paul, not accounts of events in reality.

No, from the point of view of providing evidence of the resurrection, the bible fails outright. It has no eyewitness account, it had no contemporary account, it has no independent account. The first time we meet it is the very brief references to it in Paul, twenty or more years after the event, which he only heard about. There is no detailed account until Mark, written about 75 CE ie some 40-45 years down the track. We then have Matthew, Luke, John, and references in Acts 1. Each of the six accounts contradicts the other five in major ways.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinarily persuasive demonstration. On the evidence available we can only conclude the resurrection was not an historical event.

This is another reason why religious belief requires faith.

 

[gnostic]

Cardinal Newman realised the appeal to "God of the Gaps" was a dead end, pointing out exactly what you are saying, viz. that the person who bases his faith on that is building it on sand, since as science advances the gaps inevitably grow smaller.

Meaning...God is becoming smaller than the mouse?