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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Feb 11, 2019 - 06:58pm PT
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Bashing religious text because Jesus didn't actually walk on water is like trying to reduce consciousness to data. If that's the only way you know to view your own life, that's what you're left to do. One could read the bible like a historical text and go away laughing. Try the Song of Songs on for size and give us a take on that. Or the Beatitudes. That's where the money is, not ancient Hebrew law.
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Norton
climber
The Wastelands
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Feb 11, 2019 - 07:47pm PT
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to theists abiogenesis is not a problem, the spirit in the sky created life from nothing
some of those who pursue a more detailed explanation can come up with a couple of
other premises, one being that life from nothing faces seemingly impossible odds requiring not only a planet like ours just happening to orbit a star the perfect distance from its sun along with a moon of size to keep its orbit stable
another group contends that life from nothing may be quite common in the universe
they would say that just in the observable universe there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, those galaxies contain hundreds of billions of stars and planets, just the overwhelming number of planets perhaps trillions virtually insures life starting from nothing just as it did here on earth
the Fermi Paradox, the Drake Equation make for interesting speculation
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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Feb 11, 2019 - 07:50pm PT
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I don't mean to be a dick here, and I usually stay away from posting in this "heavy" discussion, but it's snowing and I'm cozy by the fire with time to ponder. I do have many questions about the historical accounts of the Bible which you seem to find so plausible, would you mind clearing some of these up for me?
For instance... No worries Hardly Visible, asking questions isn't dickish. Without going way off down the rabbit hole, there's a big difference between the Old Testament when people had to make sacrifices to make up for our sinful nature and follow rules to stand out as a chosen people, and the New Testament where that sacrifice has been made for us and all we have to do is accept the gift.
That's a simplistic answer to keep the thread more on topic, but if you'd like to have more of a discussion I tried to answer many similar questions here: http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/2788568/Ask-a-Christian-way-OT
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Good examples of the magnitude of the question, Largo. Those numbers are also assuming all of the ingredients are hanging out together in a relatively protected space.
When people use the Miller-Urey experiment as evidence that the question is close to being answered, it's sort of like saying someone knows how the City of New York was constructed and how it functions because they were able to make a brick.
There's a reason more and more respected scientists are ascribing to the theory of panspermia. It's all but proven impossible for the building blocks of early life to have formed here.
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Edit: Ed, gonna check that video out after the kids go to bed, I'm interested in your take on people's passive acceptance of abiogenesis.
Edit #2
another group contends that life from nothing may be quite common in the universe These people are more philosophers than anything else. This is the passive acceptance without evidence that I am curious about.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 11, 2019 - 07:55pm PT
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another group contends that life from nothing may be quite common in the universe
they would say that just in the observable universe there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, those galaxies contain hundreds of billions of stars and planets, just the overwhelming number of planets perhaps trillions virtually insures life starting from nothing just as it did here on earth
What if anything does it say about the universe if life and therefore consciousness is/are inevitable?
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 11, 2019 - 08:05pm PT
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another group contends that life from nothing may be quite common in the universe
Never happened ever.
Life always comes from life ......
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Norton
climber
The Wastelands
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Feb 11, 2019 - 08:22pm PT
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What if anything does it say about the universe if life and therefore consciousness is/are inevitable?
Why don't you take a shot at answering your own question, Paul?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 11, 2019 - 08:28pm PT
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I'm interested in your take on people's passive acceptance of abiogenesis.
I don't think it's "passive acceptance," more like not having to answer a number of rather important, but hard questions about life.
Accepting that abiogenesis happens because: 1) we (life) exists on this planet and 2) at one time life did not exist on this planet, leaves out a lot of steps.
Scientists have a commitment to explain these phenomena in terms of science
we have to be explicit, and not resort to "miracles." That is our choice.
But having made that choice doesn't mean clear sailing, and "life" is a difficult nut to crack.
"Life is what biological systems do" is one normal way out, but that obviously doesn't help explain abiogenesis.
And obviously, we have to have a physical description of life, which turns out to have a number of difficulties in its own. But without that definition, how do we get to an explanation of abiogenesis?
Largo implies two solutions above: once you get RNA or DNA you're done. But that is tricky because of the specialness of those molecules, and the estimated time required to somehow get to them from component parts.
Kauffman and others argue that self-reproducing catalytic reactions are a more natural starting point, and one that happens with a higher probability. Kauffman (and others) also address the issue of how complexity arises, how the order of life evolves.
These are the ideas of networks operating at a "critical point" in a "fitness landscape" and it has a certain amount of appeal in explaining one of the most obvious features of life, that it is operating in disequilibrium with the local physical environment. (That environment is not in thermodynamic equilibrium anyway, given that the Sun is a major source of energy, and is external to and unaffected by what goes on on Earth).
Anyway it happens, and we aren't at all sure yet how, it is a hugely complicated issue and when pushed a scientist can only say "we don't know yet how it happens." They believe that eventually we'll have the description, there is no reason why there isn't one.
The whole discussion is freighted with the politics of evolution, which includes humans, where by a physical explanation is all that is required to explain the diversity of life on the planet across time and location. But even at the very earliest times the question was, how did the first life happen? Darwin famously avoids discussing it, saying, essentially, that he did not know.
While evolution claims only to explain the evolution of life, it begs the question about that first life.
So if you are on team science, then you are going to say you accept abiogenesis, though you cannot give a reasonable scientific reason why you do.
The Devil is in the details, as they say, and we don't know just what those details are yet.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Feb 11, 2019 - 08:37pm PT
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Panspermia: the theory that life on the earth originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life present in outer space and able to initiate life on reaching a suitable environment.(Wiki)
Learned something today.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 11, 2019 - 08:38pm PT
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Panspermia pushes the origin to some other place, all the same issues still exist in explaining abiogenesis.
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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Feb 11, 2019 - 11:23pm PT
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Appreciate the video, Ed. When I saw Kauffman in the title I thought that it might be about autocatalytic sets but it was much more pleasant to watch a 20 minute explaination that it was to read his papers.
Thanks for your well reasoned answer to my question, and I assume your line of thought is shared by many.
There are two reasons that I struggle with your line of thought:
1) An example of this issue lies in the video, when he skips from protocells, to protocell replication, thereby taking for granted that this step is possible. In most research into abiogenesis a theme arises; the conditions for one small component to happen are almost always contradictory to the conditions needed for another step in the same process, yet people claim that these steps being independently demonstrated has relevance to the overall process. As my professor said way back in my first evolution class after finishing GE classes, "the study of the origin of life is fascinating because each hypothesis disproves the previous hypotheses, so everyone has proven everyone else is wrong in a big circle so we still have virtually everything to learn and discover." This was supposed to be motivation but it planted the seeds of my skepticism.
2) The idea of starting research with the premise that we will not accept the outcome if we don't like it. One possibility in the study of how life came from non-life should be that it can't. To throw out any possibilities off hand is arrogant at best. I'm not a proponent of the "God of the gaps" arguments, only that there may, in fact, be provable gaps.
Just because someone finds a tree does not prove that it grew from a seed in that location, there is the possibility that someone planted a sapling there.
Dang it, I had a video I was gonna post as a reply but I can't find it. An interview with a notable physicist talking about how no plausible theory of the origin or replication has even been proposed. He goes on to say that anyone who claims that a plausible mechanism has been proposed does not understand chemistry. He was not a creationist or anything so that bias was not present.
Dang it!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 11, 2019 - 11:58pm PT
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The idea of starting research with the premise that we will not accept the outcome if we don't like it. One possibility in the study of how life came from non-life should be that it can't.
I think it is the position of the scientist that life coming from non-life is possible, it is certainly the subject of intense scientific interest. The starting idea of science, if you will, is that everything has a physical explanation.
That explanation may be something quite different from what you had in mind, but it is still an explanation, and it will be physical.
An interview with a notable physicist talking about how no plausible theory of the origin or replication has even been proposed. He goes on to say that anyone who claims that a plausible mechanism has been proposed does not understand chemistry.
I think this gets to the issue of a physical definition of life. I don't know when this "notable physicist" made this claim, what it was based on and what it means to "understand chemistry."
For instance, "finite temperature" chemistry, or maybe non-equilibrium chemistry is not something we fully understand, it's not what we learn in school, it is not where the majority of chemistry is done.
Remote detection of life on exo-planets was proposed to use the signatures of the non-equilibrium state of that planet's atmosphere. On Earth, the biological system drives the atmosphere into non-equilibrium by something like a terrawatt-year energy production.
How chemistry or physics works in systems far from equilibrium is a work in progress. Physicists will have their opinions. But understanding this is essential for a physical definition of life.
IMHO
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 12, 2019 - 06:53am PT
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That one possibility is that god does not exist?
It's never happened, nor will it ever happen, as God is not dependent on gross material st00pid mental speculators guessing about everything they are so clueless about ....
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Feb 12, 2019 - 07:51am PT
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limping crab: it seems like so many people just take abiogensis for granted without really discussing the plausibility.
You're thinking for yourself.
Shouldn't the first step [of science] be trying to figure out *if* something can happen without assuming it can?
To make this move, one would first need to know what the realms of possibilities are. Although this seems relatively straightforward, I’d say it presents a circular conundrum, a kind of Escher roundabout of “I start here, but I end at the same place?”
Some of us argue that data are theory-laden: we can’t know what constitutes data without a theory to help us define data we are looking for. If the theory is wrong, then the duly constructed data aren’t likely to be very telling either. At some point, one must either make far-reaching assumptions (like, “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line”), or one must look at the very nature of experience (which is a very slippery beast that turns on the perceiver—illusions). As you point out, many things in reality seem unfathomable.
Moosedrool: No comment.
Ridiculous and leading. Providing ANY information is a choice made. It IS a comment.
Norton: . . . the spirit in the sky created life from nothing
If you use the word created, then there must be a cause. Your spirit, my spirit, the spirit of abiogenesis, the spirit of science, and on and on. Let’s not forget that you appear to be living on a rock spinning at 1000 miles an hour, orbiting around an almost incomprehensibly large heat source at about 16,000 miles an hour, literally in the middle of no where. There is no solid and permanent reference point for any of it. You and your peers seem to say that the universe (reality?) just popped into existence a few billion years ago, from nothing whatsoever, now expanding into infinity.
Just how realistic and plausible is that?
Jogill: Learned something today [panspermia].
Here’s another one beginning with “P” for you—pareidolia.
Gathering data and interpreting it *always* relies upon a theory. It could be arguable that since everything is unique, or that no two things are exactly the same, there are no real patterns to anything. (The so-called "patterns found" are in fact selective choices.) That would seem to be a fair description of the data on any two events. Again, another circular argument.
Without theory, what would one see?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 12, 2019 - 08:11am PT
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Lol.
limpingcrab, I thought I'd respond with one or two items to your posts starting with your comment about RNA vis a vis a crude replicator... but then as I kept reading down through more posts it occurred to me Hartouni was covering the whole shebang with his usual physicalist theoretical description and thus all that was really left was for MikeL to pipe in to top it off. I see now he's done so...
...so that's probably enough posting at this point, this morning.
I will say I did get a sense of some pretty strong biases if not errors or misperceptions running through your posts, your language. No biggie though, imo, today's world has bigger concerns.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 12, 2019 - 08:53am PT
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I will say I did get a sense of some pretty strong biases if not errors or misperceptions running through your posts, your language. No biggie though, imo, today's world has bigger concerns.
And this is said without an ounce of bias, very good.
It is kind of funny though, a little spooky entanglement produces a little abiogenesis which produces a little consciousness and pretty soon you have the Kardashians. What a strange fix we find ourselves in.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 12, 2019 - 09:03am PT
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It is kind of funny though, a little spooky entanglement produces a little abiogenesis which produces a little consciousness and pretty soon you have the Kardashians. What a strange fix we find ourselves in.
Yeah, in a nutshell, that's pretty much it.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 12, 2019 - 09:09am PT
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btw, Paul, limpingcrab is treating the story, or at least elements of the story, as real... as in for-real... and not mere metaphor or allegory like you're constantly banging on about.
Did you notice? Do you notice?
Did you notice? Do you notice?
Did you notice? Do you notice?
Did you notice? Do you notice?
Did you notice? Do you notice?
Not unlike tens of millions of other Americans, including, yes, members of my own extended family. And not mere fringe whacko groups like you and Largo like to minimize and at least in his case caricature.
Care to address this one specific issue... specifically... instead of deflecting the conversation to something more suited to your usual agenda.
Huge swaths of this country still take the bible stories literally and seriously. That means non-allegorically, non-metaphorically. They concern God Jehovah / God Jesus and not God Zeus either.
Lastly, one's gotta be fooling himself, or something, if (just as others have pointed out) he believes you can get as much out of religion - motivation-wise - by taking it allegorically as literally. Because given human nature and the way humans work it just ain't so.
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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Feb 12, 2019 - 09:13am PT
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The starting idea of science, if you will, is that everything has a physical explanation. Fair enough, being open to the idea that abiogensis is impossible wouldn't really add anything to the scientific investigation of it. A better point would be to suggest that those of us not in the field doing the work should be open to the idea. The level of confidence in the idea of abiogenesis still surprises me considering the lack of any remotely possible theory.
It's probably like many things in science where the average person just assumes that if "smart scientists" believe something then it must be true and we don't have to do any hard thinking ourselves. I'm too arrogant for that, I suppose.
pareidolia Interesting, I never really thought of that behavior in the context of statistics.
Does one start with that premise within the study of god? That one possibility is that god does not exist? Can't speak for everyone, but I did. I tried to convince myself that there was no God, hence my chosen area of study, but I came away from it more convinced that there was.
I will say I did get a sense of some pretty strong biases if not errors or misperceptions running through your posts, your language. No biggie though, imo, today's world has bigger concerns. Ya, try as I might, I'm still a human (who's bad at writing). If you get some free time I'd like to know what you're referring to.
Thanks for indulging me on my visit to this thread. It's unfortunate that the title is Religion Vs Science, instead of And Science :)
One final thought: What would it take for you, personally, to come to the conclusion that unguided abiogenesis is impossible?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 12, 2019 - 09:23am PT
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Not unlike tens of millions of other Americans, including, yes, members of my own extended family. And not mere fringe whacko groups like you and Largo like to minimize and at least in his case caricature.
Care to address this one specific issue... specifically... instead of deflecting the conversation to something more suited to your usual agenda.
Oh, I see. So you think he's sold his daughters into slavery, stoned an adulterer and a sodomite? Go to your local Catholic priest and ask him if he takes the creation story seriously like he would a scientific paper. Do it as an "experiment."
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