Wiki the God of Scientism

[Darkstorn]

I do not think that I am being subjective.

If you say that a paragraph that says absolutely nothing about concepts, ideas or theory is entirely fine and "clearly indicating" that it is one of those things, the you are using subjective reasoning. We are not talking about facts here but your and our assessments of a paragraph. This very endeavour is subjective to the maximum. You cannot avoid that.

Then you make the subjective decision to say that out of two paragraphs with identical wording, only one is wrong.

THEN you imply, indirectly I might add, that this is most likely because one of the concepts talked about is close to your heart and the other is something you're trying to discredit. By using a wikipedia article and a bunch of semantics.

I don't go around pretending my assessments of things are objective. For one: I entirely disagree with your point. But you're "being objective." So i'm wrong, eh?

You didn't use objectivity in you assessment. Stop pretending that you did.

(I do not feel happy to be repeating this).

1. Definition of ABIOGENESIS
:specifically : a theory in the evolution of early life on earth : organic molecules and subsequent simple life forms first originated from inorganic substances

2. Abiogenesis | biology
Abiogenesis, the idea that life arose from nonlife more than 3.5 billion years ago on Earth. Abiogenesis proposes that the first life-forms generated were very simple and through a gradual process became increasingly complex.

3. Abiogenesis: Definition, Theory & Evidence - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com
Abiogenesis is a scientific theory which states that life arose on Earth via spontaneous natural means due to conditions present at the time. In other words, life came from non-living matter.


4. the definition of abiogenesis
....the theory that the earliest life forms on earth developed from nonliving matter.


5. Abiogenesis definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
Also called: autogenesis
the hypothetical process by which living organisms first arose on earth from nonliving matter

6. abiogenesis
The supposed development of living organisms from nonliving matter.
...

The article about your god also didn't first say that it's talking about an idea or a concept. So of you're still going on about semantics, at least stop showing a double standard.

If one of the wiki articles is in the wrong as you say, then using your own reasoning, we should instead conclude that there's an equal mistake in the other article.

But using my subjective reasoning neither is really wrong unless you really care about semantics.

I have no problem with them talking about gods as if they were real. And they do.

 

[Altfish]

He is not talking about the article overall. He is talking about the word choice in the introductory sentence. Look through Wikipedia, and ask if there is a difference between how concrete factual concepts are introduced and how metaphysical concepts are introduced (now I suggest that most abstract concepts are introduced with a similar fashion that we see metaphysical concepts). Then look at how Abiogenesis is treated. There is no prepositional phrase which identifies a specific field as we see with metaphysical concepts like EVP. There is no mention of hypothetical in the first sentence like we see with panspermia. Now, looking at non metaphysical terms we see some abstract concepts such as surjective functions which are mathematical terms are treated like EVP where they are identified a prepositional clause identifying the field (in mathematics) and we see some concrete concepts such as Mars simply identified without such clauses ("Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and...)."

Now you try some. See if the pattern holds. I posted the items I checked. there might be exceptions, but so far @atanu seems to be correct: There is a different handling with respect to Abiogenesis.

If you want to say this difference is subtle, I agree. Even if you want to argue that this difference means little given the context of the rest of the article, I agree. But, there is a difference. And we should not avoid the critical thought questions such as why, or what effect, if any, could this have?

I don't understand why you or the OP think it should be changed or others changed to match it. Wikipedia is a crowd sourced database of information; if you don't like it change it.

I wish you would stop using abbreviations. What is EVP? A google search gives me Electronic Voice Phenomenon is that what you mean?

 

[Curious George]

I don't understand why you or the OP think it should be changed or others changed to match it. Wikipedia is a crowd sourced database of information; if you don't like it change it.

I wish you would stop using abbreviations. What is EVP? A google search gives me Electronic Voice Phenomenon is that what you mean?

Well there is a big difference between saying something is different and merits critical thought and something should be changed. In a way, I feel as though you are putting words in my mouth.

EVP is electronic voice phenomena. I posted Wikipedia defining sentence for several items earlier. This was one. You can compare those or go look up some metaphysical stuff and compare. I suggest that you look up some abstract concepts as well. This latter most will indicate that it is not just supernatural stuff that is worded differently.

I think you should also read my earlier post so you better understand my perspective before we continue.

 

[Altfish]

Well there is a big difference between saying something is different and merits critical thought and something should be changed. In a way, I feel as though you are putting words in my mouth.

EVP is electronic voice phenomena. I posted Wikipedia defining sentence for several items earlier. This was one. You can compare those or go look up some metaphysical stuff and compare. I suggest that you look up some abstract concepts as well. This latter most will indicate that it is not just supernatural stuff that is worded differently.

I think you should also read my earlier post so you better understand my perspective before we continue.

But, and I keep coming back to this, the information posted is crowd sourced!
Therefore the likely reason for the differences in pages is the style of the people uploading those pages. It is unlikely that the people who created the Abiogenesis page also did, to use you example, the EVP page too.
There is no conspiracy here.

 

[Polymath257]

That is not the point, I am afraid.

The Wiki page says: Abiogenesis is the natural process by which life arises from non-living matter,

Is that statement accurate? Is it already established that abiogenesis is the natural process by which life arises from non-living matter?

Or, is abiogenesis a scientific hypothesis that life arises from non-living matter?

No, abiogenesis is the process. There is also a hypothesis that abiogeneisis is how life originated on Earth.

 

[Polymath257]

Why the accusation? I know I am illiterate. Please educate me without accusations.

My profession is science and I do not distrust science . I am pointing out the usage in Wikipedia, which is obviously misleading, as shown by definitions from standard dictionaries in post 34.

In gravity, electricity, kinetics, thermodynamics, quantum physics etc. we can compute predictions and test them. We have samples with which we can calibrate. There is no such evidence for abiogenesis. It is a scientific hypothesis and a field of enquiry wherein studies are ongoing.

Wikipedia usage: "biogenesis is the natural process by which life arises from non-living matter", seems to imply that it is already established scientifically that life originates from non living matter.

And clearly it does. If you go back to the initial stages of th Big bang, the conditions were such that life could not exist. All that existed was non-living matter.

Now, life does exist. Since it did not exist at one time and only non-living matter existed then, life arose from non-living matter in some way.

This is similar to saying that at one time stars did not exist. Now they do. So stars originated from non-star matter.

But we can go further. There is no real difference between 'living matter' and 'non-living matter' except for arrangement of the components and ability of the relevant chemicals to get to the sites where they are used. No atom, no molecule in a living thing is alive. So even today life arises from non-living matter.

 

[Polymath257]

I do not understand.

Is the WIKI statement "abiogenesis is the natural process by which life arises from non-living matter...", an established fact?

Yes, that is *a* definition of the word.

 

[Polymath257]

Thank you. Columbus also pointed this out. But can we compare the following two sentences and see how the two are different?

The meaning of the word "Abiogenesis" is the natural process by which life arises from non living matter.

Versus

Abiogenesis is the natural process by which life arises from non living matter.

OK, how are they different?

 

[Polymath257]

Thank you for a nice opening. The scope of this thread was to examine the validity of Wiki definition of abiogenesis. But you have raised fundamental questions that I am interested to pursue. Due to an important assignment I will, however, be unable to attend to this for 5-6 days.

For now, I will say that the number 1 option (red highlight) can be dismissed right away. Option 3 (maroon highlight is hypothetical and has not been proven in laboratory and neither any falsifiable mechanism proposed.

To me the 2nd option is the most viable one. You will find that some quantum physicists will not be averse to this option. We are automatically attuned to the third option because of our materialistic genetic predispositions and beliefs. But there are some questions as to what exactly is that which appears as particle or as wave? But to even consider the second option you need to open up regarding what is life. What is life actually?

The diverse forms that is manifest and that we sensually see moving and recreating is life? Or the underlying conscious information mechanism is?

OK, option 2 (that life has always existed) is clearly false. In the conditions of the early Big Bang, the temperature was in the hundreds of millions of degrees. Atoms could not yet exist because it was too hot. Life was simply not possible in those conditions. In fact, it wasn't for about 300,000 years that things cooled enough for neutral (as opposed to ionized) atoms to exist. Again, those are not conditions that allow life to exist.

But we can go further. Until the first generation of stars went through their cycle, there were not the basic elements (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc) that are required for life to arise. So, even 10 milliion years after the start of the expansion, life was impossible.

Option 2 is clearly wrong.

 

[columbus]

Wikipedia is a crowd sourced database of

But, and I keep coming back to this, the information posted is crowd sourced!

It occurs to me to point out the forest here, as opposed to the trees.
Wikipedia isn't even an authority, much less a god. It's a resource. It's a valuable one, but you need to keep it's limitations in mind. It's accessible and accurate for mountains of stuff. Simple facts, like geography and chemistry and stuff it's great. As issues become more opinions, especially controversial ones, you have to be a lot more careful about what you find on Wikipedia.
Tom

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

That is not the point, I am afraid.

The Wiki page says: Abiogenesis is the natural process by which life arises from non-living matter,

Is that statement accurate? Is it already established that abiogenesis is the natural process by which life arises from non-living matter?

Or, is abiogenesis a scientific hypothesis that life arises from non-living matter?

The only ways to change it to your (apparent) liking would be one of the following:

Abiogenesis is perhaps a natural process by which life arises from non-living matter
Abiogenesis could be a natural process by which life arises from non-living matter
Abiogenesis is a guess as to a natural process by which life arises from non-living matter

But then, what of any Wiki article on ANY God or god concept?

Here's how the Wikipedia article for "Yahweh" starts out:

Yahweh (/ˈjɑːhweɪ/, or often /ˈjɑːweɪ/ in English; Hebrew: יַהְוֶה‬ [jahˈweh]) was the national god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel (Samaria) and Judah.

Better change that one to:

Yahweh was the national god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel (Samaria) and Judah - though it is completely unknown whether or not this god actually existed.

How about the article for Vishnu?

Vishnu (Sanskrit pronunciation: [vɪʂɳu]; Sanskrit: विष्णु, IAST: Viṣṇu) is one of the principal deities of Hinduism, and the Supreme Being in its Vaishnavism tradition.

Edit to:

Vishnu is one of the principal deities (results of acknowledging actual deity status and/or existence of said being may vary) of Hinduism, and the Supreme Being in its Vaishnavism tradition.

Better get to work.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You are naive. No geochemistry or biochemistry indicates that non living material became living. If you have such definite evidence you may please show them. If that was so, you may synthesise life in laboratory.

You have it backwards. We don't need to know that abiogenesis is possible, nor do we need to demonstrate it by synthesizing life de novo.

We need a reason to believe that naturalistic abiogenesis was impossible to stop researching it. If that is so, perhaps you can demonstrate it to the scientific community.

Also, we have very good reason to believe that undirected, spontaneous abiogenesis occurred either on earth, elsewhere or both. See Columbus' argument at post 75 above for the three logical possibilities, and then put them in order by likeliness. Life is unlikely to have been present when the universe began expanding. That leaves naturalistic mechanisms and divine creation as the origin of life. The naturalisitic explanation is more likely both because we have much more evidence for it than creationism, and because invoking a god to do what nature may be well able to do without one is a violation of Occam's principle of parsimony. It makes the solution much more complex.

I'll ask you what I ask those that tell me that biological evolution couldn't have been up to the task of generating the tree of life from a single ancestral population of biological replicators - What would you have the scientists do differently? Do you recommend that they abandon their research?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I am not into debating with atheists.

I love debating theists. I wonder how to account for the difference?

God is not something dead; he is alive.

Neither term applies to an immaterial entity. It is either conscious or not.

Life is all about matter and energy. It's about absorbing external energy sources and using them to create, arrange, and transport materials within a material structure bounded by a material structure. Metabolism, growth, development, repair, excretion, locomotion, and cell division are all fundamental life processes requiring matter and energy. A disembodied mind would be a different kind of thing.

That he would then take materials from this universe and engineer matter that would be given the spark of life, whatever that might be is not at all the same as if you shake chemicals around which come together by chaotic interactions to create a living cell with its DNA.

Agreed.

Are you unaware of how order can arise from apparent chaos?The earth is considerably more ordered than the collection of objects that came together to form it. Whatever their shapes, trajectories, compositions, and number were, now they are a oblate spheroid all moving in the same direction as a unit with an internal structure ranging from lighter and cooler substances at the crust and heavier, hotter ones as we go deeper, surrounded by a structured atmosphere. All it took was gravity working on matter over time. It was inevitable given the circumstances in the early solar system.

Life is very possibly just as inevitable given the right ingredients coming together under the right circumstances for a long enough time.

The two processes cannot be compared. It would be like comparing the engineering of a computer and its cpu, gpu with this same shaking up of chemicals in some large place, planet, (?) and expect a computer of highest quality to emerge from this chaotic interaction.

Computers can't self-assemble or reproduce like biological systems. Nor is there a natural mechanism that selects for one over another.

 

[Curious George]

But, and I keep coming back to this, the information posted is crowd sourced!
Therefore the likely reason for the differences in pages is the style of the people uploading those pages. It is unlikely that the people who created the Abiogenesis page also did, to use you example, the EVP page too.
There is no conspiracy here.

Again, I do not believe that I suggested theretail was a conspiracy.
While I understand that the pages are crowd sourced, that does not answer a question regarding a consistency across multiple pages. Has anyone tried editing and see if it gets changed back? I don't know.

I am only commenting on the word differences.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

This thread is related to another thread 'Science and Scientism'.

On Abiogenesis, Wikipedia begins as below:




Many readers, particularly some who are not of science background, will imagine that it is well proven that life arose from non living things. There is no mention that this is a hypothesis or a theory.

Is this science? Discuss please.

...

It defines scientific theory as

A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can be repeatedly tested, in accordance with the scientific method, using a predefined protocol of observation and experiment.[1][2] Established scientific theories have withstood rigorous scrutiny and embody scientific knowledge.[3]

It used to list multiverses as an example of this! -- repeatedly tested?! though it was removed- but still includes things like evolution. (testable?) climastrology (rigorous scrutiny?? )



I think Mark Twain summed it up pretty well " [science] such wholesale returns of conjecture, out of such a trifling investment of fact"

 

[sandy whitelinger]

That is not the point, I am afraid.

The Wiki page says: Abiogenesis is the natural process by which life arises from non-living matter,

Is that statement accurate?

That's the definition of the word, more or less. Merriam Webster says it the evolutionary process...

 

[Grandliseur]

Neither term applies to an immaterial entity. It is either conscious or not.

True. Here the point of discussion then begins to revolve about what God is, where he is. If this universe of ours, is as claimed in the Bible, a created one, God would by necessity exist outside this universe. We are even told that the reason God knows the thoughts of every human being alive is because we consist of matter that fundamentally is part of God. As a supercomputer has many users, the superuser may check on what the ones below do, work on, etc. while the super user is outside the knowledge of the bottom users.

Computers can't self-assemble or reproduce like biological systems. Nor is there a natural mechanism that selects for one over another.

You are beginning an evolutionary's argument, which I neither accept nor am interested in. It always degrades to 'you say, I say'

If you have questions I can answer about Biblical subjects, or God, (if I know it) I'll be happy to answer.

 

[atanu]

The only ways to change it to your (apparent) liking would be one of the following:

Abiogenesis is perhaps a natural process by which life arises from non-living matter
Abiogenesis could be a natural process by which life arises from non-living matter
Abiogenesis is a guess as to a natural process by which life arises from non-living matter

But then, what of any Wiki article on ANY God or god concept?

Here's how the Wikipedia article for "Yahweh" starts out:



Better change that one to:

Yahweh was the national god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel (Samaria) and Judah - though it is completely unknown whether or not this god actually existed.

How about the article for Vishnu?



Edit to:

Vishnu is one of the principal deities (results of acknowledging actual deity status and/or existence of said being may vary) of Hinduism, and the Supreme Being in its Vaishnavism tradition.

Better get to work.

No. I think you are equating science and religion. That should not be.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Wikipedia is now a so-called Skeptical organization on any subject related to the paranormal or spirituality. Apparently its atheist founder Jimmy Wales is on-board with an organization called Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia.
I used to see balanced articles but no more.

Reader, know what you are getting on Wikipedia. I have seen Wikipedia criticized by many sources recently because of this. 'Buyer beware' when reading this atheist skewed website.

You do realise that Wiki is open to editing, and that many groups (including GSoW) have organised for that purpose, right?
Even Wikipedia openly acknowledges bias on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia:Systemic bias - Wikipedia

Wikipedia Is More Biased Than Britannica, but Don’t Blame the Crowd

Wikipedia Is Shockingly Biased: 5 Lessons From An Admin


I'm not here to argue that Wikipedia isn't biased. Merely that it's biased in LOTS of ways, as is most of what we consume in life, and buyer should ALWAYS beware.

 

[George-ananda]

You do realise that Wiki is open to editing, and that many groups (including GSoW) have organised for that purpose, right?

Yes, I do realize it is open to editing. But no, I don't know that there are many biased groups involved in the subjects I am most interested in (paranormal subjects and spirituality) besides GSoW.

Even Wikipedia openly acknowledges bias on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia:Systemic bias - Wikipedia

Wikipedia Is More Biased Than Britannica, but Don’t Blame the Crowd

Wikipedia Is Shockingly Biased: 5 Lessons From An Admin


I'm not here to argue that Wikipedia isn't biased. Merely that it's biased in LOTS of ways, as is most of what we consume in life, and buyer should ALWAYS beware.

I believe the average reader though assumes Wikipedia is a basically neutral source of information which it actually is on most mundane subjects. It is a very go-to source on many search engines.