The Argument "For" and "Against" Creative Intelligence (Human or Divine)

[Gambit]

The dichotomy is false because there are more than two possible answers ... that is the usual reason. The dichotomy is also false because you are misrepresenting a very complex treatise by Blackmore with a quote mined snippet and and oversimplified generalization.

What are the other possibilities? Also, how exactly am I misrepresenting Blackmore? (If you're going to make an accusation, I like you to substantiate it.)

Actually that's rather obviously false, all you need to do to see that is to apply the now discredited IDers arguments about cillia or eyeballs, called irreducible complexity. The argument that falsifies irreducible complexity when it comes to biological systems becomes a bit spacey, but is still useful when applied to memes and falls apart (I feel) when applied to physical objects.

That's interesting. You're employing an ID argument to discredit Dawkins' memetic evolution. Of course, you have failed to explain how exactly it discredits it.

 

[HonestJoe]

The whole universe is out of question, we're limited to the observed universe.

When you're talking about the chance of something happening, you can't dismiss all the ways it could happen that we can't observe. That human-centric attitude is a major block in this kind of discussion. We're not the centre or focus of the universe, we're just another brief speck in the vastness.

If abiogenesis happened on this very planet how is it that we cannot find any example in nature that can recreate the events to cause it? Maybe not observe another arising of life forms or animation from inanimate objects, but situations that would cause it at least.

I'm not clear what you mean. Nobody is saying abiogenesis necessarily happened more than once on this planet but it could have done in a way we wouldn't notice. For example whole species could come to be, live and die out in the depths of the oceans and we could easily miss them. There is also the vast periods of time on this planet when humans didn't exist at all or not at the level of being aware of such things. If abiogenesis happened again while our ancestors were still sitting in trees or making mud huts, how would we know?

We've come across nothing that suggests living organisms were built from a series of nonliving things, or even that they can be.

I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure there is some evidence relating to the amino acids and proteins that make up living things but also exist independently. We've certainly come across nothing that strongly suggests any other alternative. Abiogenesis remains the strongest hypothesis.

I'm glad you're aware of how rare this must be. And it just so happens that one lucky strike of the match caused one planet to be packed full of life surrounded by stillborn planets without a single hint of life (exception of Mars being possible to have contained life).

We don't know all of the other planets are (and always have been) dead. There are only two planets we've been able to study sufficiently to comment on - Earth obviously does have life and as you say, it seems possible Mars did at some point too.

Many planets will have environments outside the reasonable scope for supporting life due to things like extremes of temperature or lack of atmosphere but there must countless planets in that infamous "Goldilocks zone" across the countless billions of other solar systems so it seems unreasonable to presume life only ever existed (or will exist) in ours throughout the entire history of the universe.

But to say it is a coincidence just doesn't feel right in the mouth for me.

Sorry, but

that's your issue (and to be fair, a human issue). It doesn't change the facts one bit.

All of those factors that added up to make you and I sit here, two separate consciousnesses within a very complex universe, conversing on whether or not we are here for a reason, all of those factors are very coincidental.

Literally everything is coincidental. Any event, action or situation you care to imagine could happen (or not) in an infinite number of possible ways. If there were some kind of cosmic intelligence that created to universe to be exactly the way it is that would still be exactly as coincidental. That the human race developed an intelligence that tends to make it very difficult for us to accept and understand extreme odds and coincidental events is, in itself, coincidental . None of that really tells us anything about the source of life in the universe.

And at the very beginning we did come from nothing. Something did had to have come from nothing, because something coming from something would defeat the purpose of the question. There was a time before time where time did not exist, where non-existence ceased to exist until potential energy created the universe. I agree with you. At some point there was a point where 0 became 1, where the meaning to life was meaninglessly created.

I'm actually not convinced there must have been a point where there was literally nothing. The could be an unknown something that always is and it could be argued that anything that existed "before" time must have "always" existed by definition. Frankly I don't think it is possible for us to know what (if anything) exists at this level, that it's outside the scope of our very existence. We can speculate (and boy do we speculate) but I don't think it's a good thing when that speculation goes beyond causal entertainment or mental masturbation.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I
I believe human beings exhibit creative intelligence. But I also believe they exhibit destructive stupidity because a random factor appears to be at play in human nature. (Of course, creativity and destructivity may be a matter of perspective.)

Well so do I think they 'exhibit creative intelligence' ..

I call a spade, 'a spade' .. but if people wish to play mind games, suggesting that it only appears that way and so on, what can I say?

 

[Thief]

The point is that that is not true. Retrospective statistics of that sort are BS because there are actually two possible values, 100% for what actually happened and 0% for all other possibilities.

Naw......
Pick a cube....any cube....and label the six sides with four letters.
You may double label if you care to.

Throw the cube and record the result......as many times as it takes to form a genetic code.

Now remember......the ORDER of the code is vital.
If you get a bad toss, you have to start all over!

 

[Willamena]

Naw......
Pick a cube....any cube....and label the six sides with four letters.
You may double label if you care to.

Throw the cube and record the result......as many times as it takes to form a genetic code.

Now remember......the ORDER of the code is vital.
If you get a bad toss, you have to start all over!

Nature will never accommodate your experiment simply because you've promoted the 'order' in significance.

If you're looking for a needle in a haystack, you've very little chance of finding it. You're looking for the past in the future. That's a needle.

 

[viole]

Naw......
Pick a cube....any cube....and label the six sides with four letters.
You may double label if you care to.

Throw the cube and record the result......as many times as it takes to form a genetic code.

Now remember......the ORDER of the code is vital.
If you get a bad toss, you have to start all over!

How many cubes can i throw?

Ciao

- viole

 

[Sapiens]

Naw......
Pick a cube....any cube....and label the six sides with four letters.
You may double label if you care to.

Throw the cube and record the result......as many times as it takes to form a genetic code.

Now remember......the ORDER of the code is vital.
If you get a bad toss, you have to start all over!

You need to understand that difference between retrospective and prospective. Here's an example: you know those Japanese pachinko machines? They have lots of slots at the bottom and thousands of steel pegs, you drop a ball bearing down, it bounces off the pegs and winds up in a slot? If you were to calculate the odds against a ball taking any particular path down, pin by pin, and then winding up in a predetermined slot, you'd see that the odds would be passing small ... yet with each trail the ball takes a document-able path and winds up in a slot.

 

[Sapiens]

What are the other possibilities? Also, how exactly am I misrepresenting Blackmore? (If you're going to make an accusation, I like you to substantiate it.)



That's interesting. You're employing an ID argument to discredit Dawkins' memetic evolution. Of course, you have failed to explain how exactly it discredits it.

No, that's a complete willful misinterpretation on your part ... but what else is new. Try reading carefully what I wrote.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

Uh? What do you mean here? Why would those chemicals that served to originate life not be suitable to sustain it?

Those conditions were very harsh. Species nowadays (except for maybe a few micro's), if taken back to those conditions, would die immediately.

I don't think life was quite as delicate and transient as you make it to be.

I don't think you have a clue of what I'm talking about if you think I'm making it to be unrealistically delicate.

Earth's air does indeed have CO2, but it would be a very long time between the origin of life and it having much of a particular need for either CO2 or atmospheric oxygen.

I apologize, I must not have been clear enough when I said 'in place of', bud. I'm not in grade school, I'm fully aware it does have CO2, I was referring to the levels of CO2 are not as high as the levels of oxygen in earth's air.

Human-respirable air came a long time after life originated in this planet.

Not instead, besides. Or after, depending on the referencial.

Regardless, it exists now and it had the potential to exist. It is required for life to exist as it does now on earth, and it does.

What do you mean? I'm not saying lava doesn't exist on earth, I'm saying it doesn't exist in quantities that prevent the existence in life, and that water exists in quantities that allows the existence of life. Both of those are obvious, the only thing I'm saying differently is that the fact that things are this way is significantly coincidental. The fact that the conditions were kept right over all of this time for life to continue existing was a very slim chance. Things could have been slightly different and life could have been obliterated. but they weren't!

The mathematical chance made it so. That things turned that way was a consequence, not a cause.

I agree, friend. And I do understand that it is a consequence that could have happened with or without divine intervention. I must emphasize that I don't think you are wrong about any of this; that it could be possible. The only thing I'm saying differently is that the likeliness of this sequence of events leading to this point to have happened was as unlikely as a mouse finding its way through a very complex maze on the first try. (OK, maybe that's over exaggerated a tad bit) It's possible, but very unlikely if unguided.

We got to where we are today through complete accident. Life survived all of this time because the conditions were set enough to where they could. Again, it's possible these conditions could've been the working of chance
but that's one hell of a chance.

I admit my argument isn't justified, it's based only on the emotional factor of surprise at the complexity of nature and not hard evidence. I don't expect to convince you of anything. All I'm trying to do is understand how this complexity doesn't come off to you as miraculous and how you can look at all of this and say it's just coincidence.

You seem quite impressed, I am not sure why. We are naturally biased towards witnessing environments where life did develop, among who know how many trillions of others that do exist.

For now, that can't be said. Nobody knows for sure if there are other reactions that cause life.

Even if life were proven to exist on another planet, we can't claim anything about the environment that gave birth to them.

"Meaning"?

It's an entirely different subject. Discussing the meaning of life would come after discussing whether or not life formed without guidance. All I can say is, if you disagree that life came unguided and thus has no official purpose, we will have to agree to disagree since there isn't an obvious reason behind our existence.

I believe this meaning can be known by observing the way one's existence effects the rest of existence.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

There's that banana again. What I said was about us, not fate.

I understand that it isn't the world that shapes up to the compatibility of life, but life that shapes up according to the world. But there are certain conditions that would make life not even have a chance to adapt to - earth could have been completely lifeles if the conditions were too harsh for evolution to even begin to take place.

 

[AndromedaRXJ]

The only way that makes sense is if these resources were limited in stock to only creatures that are alive now.

Bingo.

I mean an unrelated clade of life could possibly get a foot hold, but it'd be an uphill battle. I'm giving you a reason why it's probably never happened.

There's other reasons why life may not have started twice. For one, the early Earth is nothing like it is today. So maybe today doesn't have the right conditions to start life, only support it.

But nonetheless still an assumption. Actually, the line I highlighted red was exactly what I'm trying to say on this point.

It's a hypothesis, or an early-stage theory, not an assumption.

Assumptions have no basis. Abiogenesis has basis, though not enough to claim certainty, but no one is treating it like it's correct without question.

it'd just be very coincidental.

What exactly is coincidental about abiogenesis and evolution without God?

 

[Thief]

Nature will never accommodate your experiment simply because you've promoted the 'order' in significance.

If you're looking for a needle in a haystack, you've very little chance of finding it. You're looking for the past in the future. That's a needle.

I am instead pointing out.....
The odds of random life are beyond numbers and chance.
Something Greater compels what life is.

 

[Thief]

You need to understand that difference between retrospective and prospective. Here's an example: you know those Japanese pachinko machines? They have lots of slots at the bottom and thousands of steel pegs, you drop a ball bearing down, it bounces off the pegs and winds up in a slot? If you were to calculate the odds against a ball taking any particular path down, pin by pin, and then winding up in a predetermined slot, you'd see that the odds would be passing small ... yet with each trail the ball takes a document-able path and winds up in a slot.

Compare that to the flight of a dandelion seed.
No one can plot the flight path.....too many variables.

But you can be sure there will be more dandelions.

The chemistry that makes the flower is complex.
Far to complex to be random.

 

[Thief]

How many cubes can i throw?

Ciao

- viole

Fair question.
Throw as many as you like into hot water...and wait how ever long til they line up in sequence of a genetic code.

Without Someone guiding the chemistry.....you might have to wait....forever.

 

[McBell]

I am instead pointing out.....
The odds of random life are beyond numbers and chance.
Something Greater compels what life is.

No, you are not pointing out anything.
you are making a bold empty claim.

perhaps you will be the first in history to present your math for both the probability of the universe with god and with out god?

 

[Thief]

No, you are not pointing out anything.
you are making a bold empty claim.

perhaps you will be the first in history to present your math for both the probability of the universe with god and with out god?

You know my routine by heart....should know by now.....
No photo....no equation...no fingerprint....no repeatable experiment.

You have to think about it.

Now be a good boy....and go think.

 

[McBell]

You know my routine by heart....should know by now.....
No photo....no equation...no fingerprint....no repeatable experiment.

You have to think about it.

Now be a good boy....and go think.

Yes, i do.
You make bold empty claims then retreat tail tucked to hide behind your faith.

 

[Thief]

Yes, i do.
You make bold empty claims then retreat tail tucked to hide behind your faith.

You troll too much.

 

[McBell]

You troll too much.

And you spend far to much time hiding behind your faith.

 

[Sapiens]

Compare that to the flight of a dandelion seed.
No one can plot the flight path.....too many variables.

But you can be sure there will be more dandelions.

The chemistry that makes the flower is complex.
Far to complex to be random.

That's the logical fallacy know as an argument from ignorance.