Why I am not an atheist.

[ratiocinator]

Although short strings of RNA can replicate themselves without enzyme assistants, longer strings need a retinue of helpers, and specifying them requires a very long sequence—longer than could be replicated with high-enough fidelity until those very enzymes were already present. We seem to face paradox once again, in a vicious circle succinctly described by John Maynard Smith: "One cannot have accurate replication without a length of RNA of, say, 2000 base pairs, and one cannot have that much RNA without accurate replication" (Maynard Smith 1979, p 445.)​

Dennett is agreeing with John Maynard Smith concerning the paradox.

Note my emphasis. Dennett is not agreeing that there is a (real) paradox. Once you have something that replicates with inheritance and variation, then you have natural selection.

The next paragraph from Dennett's book:

One of the leading researchers on this period of evolutionary history is Manfred Eigen. In his elegant little book, Steps Towards Life (1992)—a good place to continue your exploration of these ideas—he shows how the macros gradually built up what he calls the "molecular tool-kit" that living cells use to re-create themselves, while also building around themselves the sorts of structures that became, in due course, the protective membranes of the first prokaryotic cells. This long period of precellular evolution has left no fossil traces, but it has left plenty of clues of its history in the "texts" that have been transmitted to us through its descendants, including, of course, the viruses that swarm around us today. By studying the actual surviving texts, the specific sequences of A, C, G, and T in the DNA of higher organisms and the A, C, G, and U of their RNA counterparts, researchers can deduce a great deal about the actual identity of the earliest self-replicating texts, using refined versions of the same techniques the philologists used to reconstruct the words that Plato actually wrote. Some sequences in our own DNA are truly ancient, even traceable (via translation back into the earlier RNA language) to sequences that were composed in the earliest days of macro evolution!​

 

[John D. Brey]

Note my emphasis. Dennett is not agreeing that there is a (real) paradox. Once you have something that replicates with inheritance and variation, then you have natural selection.

The next paragraph from Dennett's book:

One of the leading researchers on this period of evolutionary history is Manfred Eigen. In his elegant little book, Steps Towards Life (1992)—a good place to continue your exploration of these ideas—he shows how the macros gradually built up what he calls the "molecular tool-kit" that living cells use to re-create themselves, while also building around themselves the sorts of structures that became, in due course, the protective membranes of the first prokaryotic cells. This long period of precellular evolution has left no fossil traces, but it has left plenty of clues of its history in the "texts" that have been transmitted to us through its descendants, including, of course, the viruses that swarm around us today. By studying the actual surviving texts, the specific sequences of A, C, G, and T in the DNA of higher organisms and the A, C, G, and U of their RNA counterparts, researchers can deduce a great deal about the actual identity of the earliest self-replicating texts, using refined versions of the same techniques the philologists used to reconstruct the words that Plato actually wrote. Some sequences in our own DNA are truly ancient, even traceable (via translation back into the earlier RNA language) to sequences that were composed in the earliest days of macro evolution!​

Not only have I read the book many times, but when I quoted the section I did, I read the section you quote above.

When I read the quote you give above, it appeared, at least to me, to merely be an attempt to solve the paradox. It really isn't a solution. For instance we read: "This long period of precellular evolution has left no fossil traces, but it has left plenty of clues . . .." So-called "clues" are subject to interpretation. And interpretation is often based on the desires of the interpreter. For instance we read:

By studying the actual surviving texts, the specific sequences of A, C, G, and T in the DNA of higher organisms and the A, C, G, and U of their RNA counterparts, researchers can deduce a great deal about the actual identity of the earliest self-replicating texts, using refined versions of the same techniques the philologists used to reconstruct the words that Plato actually wrote.​

By studying the texts produced by replicators, we can deduce, speculate, a great deal, about the earliest self-replicators. Statements like this don't solve the paradox, they merely make it seem like they're on the trail of a solution by employing tautologies and oxymorons in a manner that sound like sound logic if not an actual solution to the paradox.

I'm not saying that Dennett's instincts are wrong, or that his belief that replicators had to evolve since there's no other way for them to come to be, is wrong. Dennett's instincts and beliefs may be correct. And in the minds of those who reject thoughtful processes being involved in evolution Dennett's ideas have to be correct even if we can't prove it yet.

I'm merely trying to stay away from the metaphysics of belief, and thereby interpreting in a manner that supports our metaphysical belief, so that we can look at the true science.

Creationists can't prove God exists. So they say we can deduct from what does that God exists. But this is using their metaphysical belief that God exists to "deduct" that he exists, which is using their metaphysical belief in God to deduct, in a tautological manner, that he exists.

In the piece you quoted from Dennett, he's saying: We don't know how replicators came to be when it seems you need to already have replication to get the necessary equipment to replicate, but since we know we have replicators, we know they came to be somehow (which we can speculate about til the cows come home), and since we know there is no Creator who just made it so, we know our deductions and speculations are inherently sound even if they sound, and are, at this point, merely tautologies we use as placeholders until we can figure it out.



John

 

[ratiocinator]

I get the idea that, for instance, coach roaches or some fish at the bottom of the sea are better adapted for survival (since they've been around so long and would purportedly be around when we're long gone) such that making value judgements on evolution could be argued to be more of an anthropocentric prejudice and or a cultural phenomenon.

In Daniel Dennett's, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, he pointed out these kinds of prejudice (as have so many others like say Richard Dawkins). And yet in Daniel Dennett's more recent book, Freedom Evolves, he's forced to come my way, or toward my argument since earlier in this thread I mentioned that God created the world perfect except for one thing: freewill.

Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species, us. The differences between autonomous human agents and the other assemblages of nature are visible not just from an anthropocentric perspective but also from the most objective standpoints (the plural is important) achievable. Human freedom is real---as real as language, music, and money----so it can be studied objectively from a no-nonsense, scientific point of view. But like language, music, money, and other products of society, its persistence is affected by what we believe about it. So it is not surprising that our attempts to study it dispassionately are distorted by anxiety that we will clumsily kill the specimen under the microscope.

Human freedom is younger than the species. Its most important features are only several thousand years old--- an eyeblink in evolutionary history---but in that short time it has transformed the planet in ways that are as salient as such great biological transitions as the creation of an oxygen-rich atmosphere and the creation of multicellular life. Freedom had to evolve like every other feature of the biosphere, and it continues to do so today. Freedom is real now, in some happy parts of he world, and those who love it love wisely, but it is far from inevitable, far from universal. If we understand better how freedom arose, we can do a better job of preserving it for the future, and protecting it from its many natural enemies.

Freedom Evolves, p. 305.​

The stage in the travel from past to future associated with biological evolution is nearing its end. The human "freedom" whereby men can create new life forms in the twinkling of an eye in cosmic time will very rapidly lead to the jettisoning first of the death-cell, or the part of anatomy that causes senescence, and then very soon after that biological bodies will come to an end and the "soul" will receive bodies that are "incorruptible and that fadeth not away" (1 Corinthians 15:54; 1 Peter 1:4).

One widespread tradition has it that we human beings are responsible agents, captains of our fate, because what we really are are souls, immaterial and immortal clumps of Godstuff that inhabits and controls our material bodies rather like spectral puppeteers. It is our souls that are the source of all meaning, and the locus of all our suffering, our joy, our glory and shame. But this idea of immaterial souls, capable of defying the laws of physics, has outlived its credibility thanks to advances of natural science. . . . The self-understanding we can gain from science can help us put our moral lives on a new and better foundation . . ..

Freedom Evolves, p. 1.​

You do like misrepresenting Dennett, don't you? The kind of free will he's arguing for is compatibilism, which completely undermines your argument that "God created the world perfect except for one thing: freewill". This kind of free will makes no sense at all from the point of view of an omnipotent, omniscient creator because it would still make all our choices deterministic (or possibly deterministic with element of true randomness). There is no agency that could undermine or defy such a creator - the creator would have determined all our choices from the outset.

 

[ratiocinator]

Not only have I read the book many times, but when I quoted the section I did, I read the section you quote above.

When I read the quote you give above, it appeared, at least to me, to merely be an attempt to solve the paradox. It really isn't a solution. For instance we read: "This long period of precellular evolution has left no fossil traces, but it has left plenty of clues . . .." So-called "clues" are subject to interpretation. And interpretation is often based on the desires of the interpreter. For instance we read:

By studying the actual surviving texts, the specific sequences of A, C, G, and T in the DNA of higher organisms and the A, C, G, and U of their RNA counterparts, researchers can deduce a great deal about the actual identity of the earliest self-replicating texts, using refined versions of the same techniques the philologists used to reconstruct the words that Plato actually wrote.​

By studying the texts produced by replicators, we can deduce, speculate, a great deal, about the earliest self-replicators. Statements like this don't solve the paradox, they merely make it seem like they're on the trail of a solution by employing tautologies and oxymorons in a manner that sound like sound logic if not an actual solution to the paradox.

I'm not saying that Dennett's instincts are wrong, or that his belief that replicators had to evolve since there's no other way for them to come to be, is wrong. Dennett's instincts and beliefs may be correct. And in the minds of those who reject thoughtful processes being involved in evolution Dennett's ideas have to be correct even if we can't prove it yet.

I'm merely trying to stay away from the metaphysics of belief, and thereby interpreting in a manner that supports our metaphysical belief, so that we can look at the true science.

Creationists can't prove God exists. So they say we can deduct from what does that God exists. But this is using their metaphysical belief that God exists to "deduct" that he exists, which is using their metaphysical belief in God to deduct, in a tautological manner, that he exists.

Apart from the fact that none of this changes the fact that you quoted out of context and implied that Dennett agreed with you. He's also talking about deductions and evidence. You have given no arguments that there are any tautologies and oxymorons involved.

The fact that we don't have a complete, tested theory of how life first arose, goes no way at all towards any argument for god(s). In fact, since we have a lot of evidence of the history of the universe and earth up to and after the first life, any god hypothesis would have to involve a very strange god - first kinking things off and letting the natural laws it created do everything up to the start of life and then... well what? God suddenly thought "oh dear I forgot about how to get life started", then produce a miracle and then let evolution proceed, again entirely through natural laws. Does that really sound credible to you?

 

[John D. Brey]

You do like misrepresenting Dennett, don't you? The kind of free will he's arguing for is compatibilism, which completely undermines your argument that "God created the world perfect except for one thing: freewill". This kind of free will makes no sense at all from the point of view of an omnipotent, omniscient creator because it would still make all our choices deterministic (or possibly deterministic with element of true randomness). There is no agency that could undermine or defy such a creator - the creator would have determined all our choices from the outset.

Right. I'm glad you get that. But before I address your statement above I wanted to say that in the Dennett quote I gave, he speaks about the theory that we are souls trapped in our physical bodies, but implies that having a soul not subject to the laws of physics has outlived its time. And yet, ironically, later in the book he concedes, with other materialists, that the human mind indeed transcends the laws of physics.

Although smart matter still nominally follows the laws of physics, it is so extraordinarily intelligent that it can harness the most subtle aspects of the laws to manipulate matter and and energy to its will. So it would at least appear that intelligence is more powerful than physics. What I should say is that intelligence is more powerful that cosmology. That is, once matter evolves into smart matter (matter fully saturated with intelligent processes), it can manipulate other matter and energy to do its bidding.

Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, p. 364.
​

John

 

[John D. Brey]

The kind of free will he's arguing for is compatibilism, which completely undermines your argument that "God created the world perfect except for one thing: freewill". This kind of free will makes no sense at all from the point of view of an omnipotent, omniscient creator because it would still make all our choices deterministic (or possibly deterministic with element of true randomness). There is no agency that could undermine or defy such a creator - the creator would have determined all our choices from the outset.

If God is perfect, creating a world perfect, would be cloning God, since absolute perfection leaves no distinction between itself and something else. Therefore God creating the world perfect is a logical redundancy with no meaning. It would merely be God looking in the mirror for all eternity.

And yet God creating the world with one iota less perfection that he himself possess, produces the first instance of duality between absolute perfection, versus something else. And since God himself is absolutely perfect, he can't know what the "something else" of the first instance of duality is, has, can become?

The great kabbalists went further by realizing that in the same sense that God can't know what exists in the other side of the duality produced by something less than absolutely perfect, by the same token God can't know himself without that mirror to see what he looks like from the vantage point of something other than himself.

Where this goes in the hands of a true kabbalist is that God is the first to desire the fruit of "knowledge," and most probably the first to eat from that tree (even if in the guise of ha-adam).



John

 

[ratiocinator]

And yet, ironically, later in the book he concedes, with other materialists, that the human mind indeed transcends the laws of physics.

Oh, do give me a quote for that - preferably in context this time. Quite why you quoted a different book from a different author is beyond me - especially when even that doesn't support your assertion; "its bidding" would still have to come about deterministically (or with some truly random element).

 

[ratiocinator]

If God is perfect, creating a world perfect, would be cloning God, since absolute perfection leaves no distinction between itself and something else. Therefore God creating the world perfect is a logical redundancy with no meaning. It would merely be God looking in the mirror for all eternity.

And yet God creatinh the world with one iota less perfection that he himself possess, produces the first instance of duality between absolute perfection, versus something else. And since God himself is absolutely perfect, he can't know what the "something else" of the first instance of duality is, has, can become?

This appears to be just pointing out (yet another) basic contradiction inherent in the idea of a perfect, creator god.

 

[John D. Brey]

Apart from the fact that none of this changes the fact that you quoted out of context and implied that Dennett agreed with you. He's also talking about deductions and evidence. You have given no arguments that there are any tautologies and oxymorons involved.

The fact that we don't have a complete, tested theory of how life first arose, goes no way at all towards any argument for god(s). In fact, since we have a lot of evidence of the history of the universe and earth up to and after the first life, any god hypothesis would have to involve a very strange god - first kinking things off and letting the natural laws it created do everything up to the start of life and then... well what? God suddenly thought "oh dear I forgot about how to get life started", then produce a miracle and then let evolution proceed, again entirely through natural laws. Does that really sound credible to you?

If we concede that life exists, and believe that God doesn't, the latter belief tends to imply that the remarkable qualities we observe in living organisms are both "natural" and that they evolved naturally, without in any way breaking the so-called laws of nature.

Enter a true paradox like how can inert material become or be alive? Or how can you get replication if it appears to require processes that to all scientific examination (so far), are irreducibly complex?

Enter the beloved tautology: The existence of life from natural processes guarantees that natural processes are the source of life.

Since the tautology is always true, not according to a truth-criteria, but merely by stating something in a manner that can't be false, tautologies have become the bed-mates of those who can't distinguish their metaphysical beliefs from their scientific facts.

God might not exist such that if he doesn't there seemingly must be a natural explanation for paradoxes like how inert material becomes living material. But moving from the belief that God doesn't exist, to the necessity of natural processes creating life, and then using that tautology backwards, so that since natural processes can create life you don't need a God, is the circular thinking that circumscribes even very brilliant men like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and say the Pope, or those who make the same mistake when they present tautological proofs for the existence of God.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Oh, do give me a quote for that - preferably in context this time. Quite why you quoted a different book from a different author is beyond me -

Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species, us. The differences between autonomous human agents and the other assemblages of nature are visible not just from an anthropocentric perspective but also from the most objective standpoints (the plural is important) achievable. Human freedom is real---as real as language, music, and money----so it can be studied objectively from a no-nonsense, scientific point of view. . . Human freedom is younger than the species. Its most important features are only several thousand years old--- an eyeblink in evolutionary history---but in that short time it has transformed the planet in ways that are as salient as such great biological transitions as the creation of an oxygen-rich atmosphere and the creation of multicellular life.

Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves, p. 305.​

Dennett is using the word "freedom" as a tautology. He's describing the fact that human intelligence appears to be autonomous in relation to the natural laws of evolution that require millions and billions of years, but since he believes human autonomy must be "natural" and a product of slow moving evolutionary laws and processes, he uses the word "freedom" not to insinuate that human intelligence is free from evolutionary processes, but that the freedom from the slow-moving processes associated with naturalistic evolution must have itself evolved by those processes.

In other words, throughout his book Dennett is confronted with the fact that in just 150 years, human intelligence has moved from horse an buggies that wouldn't impress Julius Caesar much, to space-shuttles that would take naturalistic forms of evolution billions and billions of years to design and manufacture.

Dennett knows that if you took a Civil War general up in a space-shuttle, or even to the moon, showed him heart-transplant surgery, an I-phone 12, wide-screen TV's, the Internet, etc. . . and ask him how far he thinks you've taken him into the future from the time of the Civil War, he'd likely imply thousands or millions of years until you show him his grandchild so that he can do the math.

If you could show mother nature what human intelligence has done in 150 years, she'd hit you with a bolt of lightening and say "It's not nice to fool mother nature!" She'd then margarine-alize you; turn you into a stick of man-made butter.

Dennett's entire hypothesis in the book is that ok, human intelligence isn't natural; it's clearly supernatural, since nature has no explanation for it. So, what he decides to do, to place man's supernatural intelligence back into a materialistic or naturalistic way of thinking, is to say that man's supernatural freedom from nature itself evolved. Freedom from the laws of nature, laws that take billions of years to design complexity and functionality, isn't really unnatural since it itself, it's supernaturalness, evolved. . . That's a tautology: human intelligence isn't like all other assemblages of nature that have evolved over hundreds of millions of years therefore it must have evolved to be unlike anything else that evolved. It evolved, naturally, to be supernatural. It evolved not to have required evolution for it to have evolved.

Creationists use the mirror-image of Dennett's tautology to produce tautological proof that God exists. We, here, on the other hand, are hoping to evolve the discussion beyond the necessity to cover our inadequate and antiquated theories in tautological garb[age].




John

 

[paarsurrey]

In a book I authored twenty-years ago, I pointed out that a successful argument against Darwinism and scientific materialism in general demands that the arguer step outside the circumscription of the principles and ideas that make Darwinism and scientific materialism appear to be viable in the first place. Darwinism and scientific materialism can be seen to be false from root to branch so long as the wrong-headed conceptualism in which they sprouted is doused with a good dose of the weed-killer known as truth.

In that spirit, rather than go point-by-point through Evangelicalhumanist's list (and discussion) for why he's an atheist, it seems more propitious to cut to the chase concerning Evangelicalhumanist's list since every element suffers from the same fundamental conceptual error.

John

How does one know right from wrong, please?
How does one know error from non-error, please?
How does one know perfect from imperfect, please?
How does one know good from evil, please?
How does one know sin from no-sin, please?
Right friend, please?

Regards
__________
#85

 

[John D. Brey]

This appears to be just pointing out (yet another) basic contradiction inherent in the idea of a perfect, creator god.

Imo, that contradiction is part and parcel of the contradiction of high entropy products like star-dust, earth, water, etc, evolving, in an asymmetrical direction (past to future) toward extremely low entropy products like the human brain, or human thought (the latter being products that following the arrow of entropy should devolve not evolve).

The theory of evolution attempts to deal with the same contradiction, in reversed order, as the contradiction of a perfect creator creating imperfection.

Planet earth, millions of years before the first life, could be said to be terribly imperfect in comparison to what it looks like now. It was a hot, steamy, stupid, stinky, rock hurling through space. Now it sends out satellites to explore other dumb stinky rocks hurtling through space.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

How does one know right from wrong, please?
How does one know error from non-error, please?
How does one know perfect from imperfect, please?
How does one know good from evil, please?
How does one know sin from no-sin, please?
Right friend, please?

Regards
__________
#85

Ask Jethro and if he doesn't know ask Jed?



John

 

[paarsurrey]

Ask Jethro and if he doesn't know ask Jed?

John

I just want to inform one that I have asked the same questions from our friend @Evangelicalhumanist , please.
I am an ordinary person in the street with no claim of any piety or scholarship. I don't get one from one's post above ^, please. So kindly elaborate for me, please. Right, please?

Regards

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Imo, that contradiction is part and parcel of the contradiction of high entropy products like star-dust, earth, water, etc, evolving, in an asymmetrical direction (past to future) toward extremely low entropy products like the human brain, or human thought (the latter being products that following the arrow of entropy should devolve not evolve).

The theory of evolution attempts to deal with the same contradiction, in reversed order, as the contradiction of a perfect creator creating imperfection.

I think you would do better if had a clearer understanding of what life -- at its most essential -- actually is. Here's a definition for you to ponder for a bit:

A living cell, or a living organism (multiple cells), is a system that is not in equilibrium with its surroundings; it requires a constant input of energy to maintain its nonequilibrium state. Such living cells and organisms maintain a low-entropy state by increasing the entropy of their surroundings.

Think deeply enough about that, and you might find some surprising notions popping into your head.

 

[Audie]

Not only have I read the book many times, but when I quoted the section I did, I read the section you quote above.

When I read the quote you give above, it appeared, at least to me, to merely be an attempt to solve the paradox. It really isn't a solution. For instance we read: "This long period of precellular evolution has left no fossil traces, but it has left plenty of clues . . .." So-called "clues" are subject to interpretation. And interpretation is often based on the desires of the interpreter. For instance we read:

By studying the actual surviving texts, the specific sequences of A, C, G, and T in the DNA of higher organisms and the A, C, G, and U of their RNA counterparts, researchers can deduce a great deal about the actual identity of the earliest self-replicating texts, using refined versions of the same techniques the philologists used to reconstruct the words that Plato actually wrote.​

By studying the texts produced by replicators, we can deduce, speculate, a great deal, about the earliest self-replicators. Statements like this don't solve the paradox, they merely make it seem like they're on the trail of a solution by employing tautologies and oxymorons in a manner that sound like sound logic if not an actual solution to the paradox.

I'm not saying that Dennett's instincts are wrong, or that his belief that replicators had to evolve since there's no other way for them to come to be, is wrong. Dennett's instincts and beliefs may be correct. And in the minds of those who reject thoughtful processes being involved in evolution Dennett's ideas have to be correct even if we can't prove it yet.

I'm merely trying to stay away from the metaphysics of belief, and thereby interpreting in a manner that supports our metaphysical belief, so that we can look at the true science.

Creationists can't prove God exists. So they say we can deduct from what does that God exists. But this is using their metaphysical belief that God exists to "deduct" that he exists, which is using their metaphysical belief in God to deduct, in a tautological manner, that he exists.

In the piece you quoted from Dennett, he's saying: We don't know how replicators came to be when it seems you need to already have replication to get the necessary equipment to replicate, but since we know we have replicators, we know they came to be somehow (which we can speculate about til the cows come home), and since we know there is no Creator who just made it so, we know our deductions and speculations are inherently sound even if they sound, and are, at this point, merely tautologies we use as placeholders until we can figure it out.



John

All that study and you never learned that its
impossible to prove a theory.
Next time you find a forum, don't let that
slip, it kills your credibility right at the start.

You may want to hold back on the "metaphysics" and claims to know more than
scientists till you show you actually do
know something.

 

[Audie]

I think you would do better if had a clearer understanding of what life -- at its most essential -- actually is. Here's a definition for you to ponder for a bit:

A living cell, or a living organism (multiple cells), is a system that is not in equilibrium with its surroundings; it requires a constant input of energy to maintain its nonequilibrium state. Such living cells and organisms maintain a low-entropy state by increasing the entropy of their surroundings.

Think deeply enough about that, and you might find some surprising notions popping into your head.

The flow of energy through ad system acts to
organize it.
How can that be hard to understand.

 

[paarsurrey]

I just want to inform one that I have asked the same questions from our friend @Evangelicalhumanist , please.
I am an ordinary person in the street with no claim of any piety or scholarship. I don't get one from one's post above ^, please. So kindly elaborate for me, please. Right, please?

Friend @John D. Brey , kindly read the response of our friend @Evangelicalhumanist vide his post #91 on the same questions posted to one, please. Will one like to give the response to his points in the post under reference, please? We will appreciate one's response, please. Right friend, please?
Is one angry, please?

Regards

 

[Audie]

Not only have I read the book many times, but when I quoted the section I did, I read the section you quote above.

When I read the quote you give above, it appeared, at least to me, to merely be an attempt to solve the paradox. It really isn't a solution. For instance we read: "This long period of precellular evolution has left no fossil traces, but it has left plenty of clues . . .." So-called "clues" are subject to interpretation. And interpretation is often based on the desires of the interpreter. For instance we read:

By studying the actual surviving texts, the specific sequences of A, C, G, and T in the DNA of higher organisms and the A, C, G, and U of their RNA counterparts, researchers can deduce a great deal about the actual identity of the earliest self-replicating texts, using refined versions of the same techniques the philologists used to reconstruct the words that Plato actually wrote.​

By studying the texts produced by replicators, we can deduce, speculate, a great deal, about the earliest self-replicators. Statements like this don't solve the paradox, they merely make it seem like they're on the trail of a solution by employing tautologies and oxymorons in a manner that sound like sound logic if not an actual solution to the paradox.

I'm not saying that Dennett's instincts are wrong, or that his belief that replicators had to evolve since there's no other way for them to come to be, is wrong. Dennett's instincts and beliefs may be correct. And in the minds of those who reject thoughtful processes being involved in evolution Dennett's ideas have to be correct even if we can't prove it yet.

I'm merely trying to stay away from the metaphysics of belief, and thereby interpreting in a manner that supports our metaphysical belief, so that we can look at the true science.

Creationists can't prove God exists. So they say we can deduct from what does that God exists. But this is using their metaphysical belief that God exists to "deduct" that he exists, which is using their metaphysical belief in God to deduct, in a tautological manner, that he exists.

In the piece you quoted from Dennett, he's saying: We don't know how replicators came to be when it seems you need to already have replication to get the necessary equipment to replicate, but since we know we have replicators, we know they came to be somehow (which we can speculate about til the cows come home), and since we know there is no Creator who just made it so, we know our deductions and speculations are inherently sound even if they sound, and are, at this point, merely tautologies we use as placeholders until we can figure it out.



John

You are still talking about proving science.
And saying Dennett plus countless other
scientists are intellectually dishonest.

 

[John D. Brey]

All that study and you never learned that its
impossible to prove a theory.
Next time you find a forum, don't let that
slip, it kills your credibility right at the start.

You may want to hold back on the "metaphysics" and claims to know more than
scientists till you show you actually do
know something.

I appreciate that advice. I really do. Coming from you an all. <s>



John