Producing life from non living matter

[Jedster]

Whose technique did you try?

It was in a book by Gershom (Gerhard) Scholem. I don't think it was his 'technique', but he wrote it there. I also recall him writing about certain names of God which were supposedly very powerful.
It was about 55 years ago, so I can't remember much other than what I have written.
Perhaps if our teachers wouldn't have forbidden us to read Kabbalistic books, we wouldn't have done it.
My father had the book.( I would regularly raid his book collection.)

 

[Tumah]

It was in a book by Gershom (Gerhard) Scholem. I don't think it was his 'technique', but he wrote it there. I also recall him writing about certain names of God which were supposedly very powerful.

I've heard of him. I wouldn't read his stuff, but I've heard his thing.

It was about 55 years ago, so I can't remember much other than what I have written.
Perhaps if our teachers wouldn't have forbidden us to read Kabbalistic books, we wouldn't have done it.

I'm sure its fine. I don't think they had Scholem's works in mind when they made the ban.

My father had the book.( I would regularly raid his book collection.)

I hope my kids do the same.

 

[Kirran]

I hope my kids do the same.

What if they make a golem, and it just sits in front of the TV all day and eats your food?

 

[Tumah]

What if they make a golem, and it just sits in front of the TV all day and eats your food?

Where are my kids getting money to buy a TV from?!?!

 

[RESOLUTION]

If life wasn't a product done by a creator, then what prevents us from creating it
the same way as it has been done by the unconscious nature.

This challenge was offered by God thousands years ago, as to create living creatures, can we?

Mans life was breathed into his nostrils by God according to the book of Genesis.
Science and so Man does not have the answer to the first form of life. They never will and with good reason.
God formed the body of man from the soil he created before it became cursed.
Man will never be able to form a man from soil as God, it is cursed.

 

[Jedster]

I've heard of him. I wouldn't read his stuff, but I've heard his thing.

I'm sure its fine. I don't think they had Scholem's works in mind when they made the ban.

I hope my kids do the same.

. Didn't you ever rebel, even a little bit?

 

[Kirran]

Where are my kids getting money to buy a TV from?!?!

Hey the kids aren't doing it, it's the golem. But I guess it'll make do with using your computer. It will find a way past the safeguards. You'll have to take an extra job to pay for all the food it eats as well.

 

[FearGod]

You still don't get it, and you keep asserting that you can make a cheeseburger from the "raw materials" presented in the form of wheat/flour, milk/cheese, meat/beef, vegetables, etc. But that's not what I am proposing. I am saying that asking someone to make "life" from the raw materials that are not "alive" is akin to asking someone to create a cheeseburger given only atoms of carbon, nitrogen, iron, sodium, etc. There are steps in the process we still don't understand (much as you would not understand how to convert raw elements into "cheese" without the help of bacteria), parts that need assembled into such intricate patterns that we can't replicate it without using reactions of the chemicals involved - letting them do it for us. Just like you have to let the cow grow "beef", or produce milk for you, or let the bacteria turn that milk into what we call cheese for you. You can't do those things yourself. No one can! Not even scientists - who you seem to think should have the "magic" necessary to do things like those.

I got it but your analogy doesn't make sense, let me put it to you in one other way.

Imagine that we replace Earth by the moon, then we put water and the elements necessarily for life
in the moon, now can you explain how life will come to existence while the elements of it are available.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

I got it but your analogy doesn't make sense, let me put it to you in one other way.

Imagine that we replace Earth by the moon, then we put water and the elements necessarily for life
in the moon, now can you explain how life will come to existence while the elements of it are available.

Haha... you claim to "get it." What a farce. That is exactly what I am telling you... the answer is an emphatic NO. NO, I can't tell you how life arose from the only the elements present on the surface of Earth. NO, I have no idea what sequence of processes may have occurred billions of years ago on the Earth's surface, or whether or not those processes actually did produce life at some point.

However... what I can tell you is that scientists (far more knowledgeable than myself in the subject) have done some extraordinary things toward the end of discovering just what elements and compounds ALONE are capable of. Strings of RNA proteins that grab a hold of the raw materials/elements/compounds that "fit" with them like a zipper, and then once the chain is complete and stable, they break apart and that new RNA "copy" goes off and does the same thing. This is NON-LIFE REPLICATING ITSELF! This is probably a very scary notion for you... but this has been accomplished in a lab. Not alive, granted... but acting of its own volition, the atoms and molecules seeking out stable relationships, grasping for those they are attracted to by the atomic forces that support all chemical reactions. Recombining strings of molecules that "reproduce" after a fashion. They have even witnessed them doing so IMPERFECTLY... that is, the new molecule strand is MUTATED from the original. These things have already been witnessed.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Mans life was breathed into his nostrils by God according to the book of Genesis.
Science and so Man does not have the answer to the first form of life. They never will and with good reason.
God formed the body of man from the soil he created before it became cursed.
Man will never be able to form a man from soil as God, it is cursed.

So do you recommend that scientists investigating abiogenesis all resign and find other work?

 

[Jose Fly]

So do you recommend that scientists investigating abiogenesis all resign and find other work?

That's the thing about this debate.....a lot of people try and act like the fact that the origin of the first life on earth is a mystery is some sort of black eye for science. But the obvious reality is that it's an unanswered question, which means it's an open area of research.

Answering questions and solving mysteries is why we have science in the first place! So pointing to unanswered questions as bad for science is rather ignorant of the main purpose of the entire enterprise.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I got it but your analogy doesn't make sense, let me put it to you in one other way.

Imagine that we replace Earth by the moon, then we put water and the elements necessarily for life
in the moon, now can you explain how life will come to existence while the elements of it are available.

The elements might evolve into life (chemical, not biological evolution) if permitted to do so. Why wouldn't they? There is no argument against that possibility stronger than it seems unlikely (argument from incredulity, a fallacy). It may well be the case that life forms wherever possible with no element of chance required apart from the presence a hospitable environment.

They won't evolve into a cheeseburger, however. That would require an intelligent designer.

And probably a cow, which could not evolve on the moon. Cows need an atmosphere, which means a protective magnetic field to keep the solar wind from blowing it away, which means a moving, liquid metal core.

So no cheeseburgers on the moon. But a California roll with kelp and tuna is not ruled out.

 

[Ricktheheretic]

Carl Sagan died over 10 years ago, cosmology and quantum mechanics has progressed considerably since then.

He was right in when he said we don't know where the universe came from but since his death there have been many theories proposed, several of them have the advantage of being mathematically feasible and leaving observability evidence today.

Albert Einstein died a long time ago but people still believe his views. Besides, I don't think Sagan is saying anything too complicated. Just that we don't know exactly how the universe came to be and that maybe there is no origin, if people can think god always existed why can't we think the universe always existed.

 

[FearGod]

Albert Einstein died a long time ago but people still believe his views. Besides, I don't think Sagan is saying anything too complicated. Just that we don't know exactly how the universe came to be and that maybe there is no origin, if people can think god always existed why can't we think the universe always existed.

If the stones were always existing, then from where did consciousness come from?

 

[12jtartar]

If life wasn't a product done by a creator, then what prevents us from creating it
the same way as it has been done by the unconscious nature.

This challenge was offered by God thousands years ago, as to create living creatures, can we?

FearGod,
There is nothing wrong with holding to opines, if they are based on facts. The best way to learn is to go to the Bible, and try to learn what it says, instead of what someone said it says, without having already made up your mind.
The reason that mankind will never create life, is because of what the Bible says about the origin of life, Psalms 36:9 which says that God is the originator of life.
Back in the early years of the 19 hundreds scientists spent many years trying to create life. They gave up, because they realized that, even if you put together all the parts that are found in a living organism, there is still no way to bring life to it. They realized that abiogenesis is impossible, life only comes from life!!!
A very important thing to remember is; there is a greater chasm between the simplest living thing and the most complex non living things, than there is between the simplest living thing and man.
This would mean that it would be more likely that a crystal, sitting on a Petrie dish, would, overnight, transform into a fully developed human, than an amoeba ever transforming into a human, because the chasm less.

 

[12jtartar]

Albert Einstein died a long time ago but people still believe his views. Besides, I don't think Sagan is saying anything too complicated. Just that we don't know exactly how the universe came to be and that maybe there is no origin, if people can think god always existed why can't we think the universe always existed.

Ricktheheretic,
We really don't have to accept anyone's word about the origin of the universe, especially when the Bible tells us!!!
The Bible tells us that God, whose name, in English, is Jehovah, created the heavens and the earth, and all the things in it, Genesis 1:1, Acts 17:24, Revelation 4:11.
There is another point to understand here, Jesus was God's very first Creation, Colossians 1:15, Revelation 3:14. After God Created His Onlybegotten Son, He Created the other things in existence, through Jesus, and for Jesus, Colossians 1:15-18, 1Corinthians 8:4-6, Hebrews 1:1,2. Also consider Proverbs 8:22-31, which Scriptures are accepted by most Theologians, as speaking about Jesus, wisdom personified, the Master worker of creation.
Since Jesus was the first creation of God, the universe was created sometime after Jesus was created, so the Heavens had a beginning, just as Jesus did, John 6:57.
The true facts are; most of the theory's about the origin are silly, and most go against the basic scientific Laws that govern the Cosmos, knowledge that man has learned by study of the Creation.

 

[omega2xx]

I wouldn't disbelieve in God if some scientist found a way to create life.
Jesus is said to have replaced a severed ear, yet a good doctor could do the same, just not by miracle.

Jesus did much more than that: He healed the blind, the leper, the lame, the deaf and He even raised the dead just by speaking.

 

[omega2xx]

The same thing that kept airplanes and radios away from physical existence for so long: we did not know how to build them yet.

Not the same thing. God did it ex nihilo

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

If the stones were always existing, then from where did consciousness come from?

Not from a conscious agent.

The problem of consciousness lets us know that even if gods exist, they cannot be the most fundamental aspect of reality, nor its source. For gods to exist and act, there already needed to be consciousness, time, and the natural laws that maintain their structural integrity.

And if we wish to view these gods as separate and distinct from our physical reality, there would need to be laws in place to connect them causally to our world.

We can also deduce that the substance of our universe could not have been created by any agent. It could only be rearranged and presented in a new form. Why? Because creation ex nihilo - creation out of nothing - would require the ability to act on something nonexistent, an obvious logical contradiction.

If there are elements of reality that could not have come from a god upon which a god would depend, what is the value of proposing the existence of one? The more man considers the problems of nature, the more he realizes that gods solve none of them, and are therefore not a helpful idea.

If gods exist, they're just another problem to explain - just another dependent and derivative element of reality, and not a foundation or source for its existence, the original reason that gods were proposed to exist.

They also don't help us with the problem of the origin of life, which would be proposing the existence of the least likely thing to exist uncaused and undesigned to account for the existence of much simpler things like the first living cell.

 

[Kirran]

Not from a conscious agent.

The problem of consciousness lets us know that even if gods exist, they cannot be the most fundamental aspect of reality, nor its source. For gods to exist and act, there already needed to be consciousness, time, and the natural laws that maintain their structural integrity.

And if we wish to view these gods as separate and distinct from our physical reality, there would need to be laws in place to connect them causally to our world.

We can also deduce that the substance of our universe could not have been created by any agent. It could only be rearranged and presented in a new form. Why? Because creation ex nihilo - creation out of nothing - would require the ability to act on something nonexistent, an obvious logical contradiction.

If there are elements of reality that could not have come from a god upon which a god would depend, what is the value of proposing the existence of one? The more man considers the problems of nature, the more he realizes that gods solve none of them, and are therefore not a helpful idea.

If gods exist, they're just another problem to explain - just another dependent and derivative element of reality, and not a foundation or source for its existence, the original reason that gods were proposed to exist.

They also don't help us with the problem of the origin of life, which would be proposing the existence of the least likely thing to exist uncaused and undesigned to account for the existence of much simpler things like the first living cell.

If one takes God to be consciousness, many of these issues are resolved.