Abiogenesis

[Subduction Zone]

There will be a vote of the peers and one line of hypothesis will get a tick in the end maybe. "Science" might know better, but what gets told to the world is that science says life began such and such a way, and that is what the world believes from the men in the white coats and more people fall away from belief in a God because of misinformation and because people just don't realise that science can only study matter and can say nothing about God or the supernatural.
Naturalistic methodology is an assumption used in science to make life easier and not a philosophy of life in general.

Hmm, we need to ask our research scientists about there official voting record.

 

[Brian2]

Science only deals with the physical properties of our existence. The questions concerning religious beliefs concerning 'spirit' are religious/theological questions.

That is not the way scientific discoveries hit the news.
"SCIENTISTS DISCOVER HOW LIFE BEGAN" would be the headline.

Chemistry does not involve 'speculation' by definition. Science doe not conclude it is only chemistry. Odd statement on your part.

The speculation is not in the chemistry but in saying that things must have happened that way when life began.

 

[Brian2]

Then you appear to be giving life some magical quality. There is no evidence that I know of that life is not just complex chemistry.

Really? Chemicals are just dead inert material and now science would have us believe it is not magic to say that these things can now think about themselves.
You believe it but you already accepted the magic when you became an atheist.
Either way could be said to be magic but seriously I think that a life giver is less magical than dead chemicals thinking about themselves.

And you are incorrect. What we know is that life needs existing life now. You are making an unjustified assumption when you extend that to all time. There were significant differences in environment way back then.

If I am making an unjustified assumption then it is also unjustified to say that initially life did not need previously existing life to begin.

 

[Brian2]

You should not make unjustified assumptions. Those are not allowed in the sciences. And it is very important that you remember that when you make the claim that someone made an assumption you take on a burden of proof that they made an assumption.

In the sciences tentative conclusions are drawn based upon the evidence. Right now the tentative conclusion is that life arose naturally since there is evidence for it and no evidence for any other model.

The accepted conclusion is that life arose naturally. (if it can be called natural that dead matter comes to life)
It is tentative in science until God comes along and shows us He exists. iows it is an accepted conclusion.
What science is doing is trying to show how it happened.
I have to give scientific evidence that people have made an assumption about God when science cannot find God? I think I have lost that argument from the get go. It is science that has made the rules on that argument.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Really? Chemicals are just dead inert material and now science would have us believe it is not magic to say that these things can now think about themselves.
You believe it but you already accepted the magic when you became an atheist.
Either way could be said to be magic but seriously I think that a life giver is less magical than dead chemicals thinking about themselves.



If I am making an unjustified assumption then it is also unjustified to say that initially life did not need previously existing life to begin.

There is no evidence that I know of that shows that life is anything but complex chemical reactions. You may not know this, but you body is still made up of inert "dead" chemicals. The reason I am saying that you use "magic" is because you cannot seem to justify your need for a God.

Once again, tear down life and all you see is chemicals all the way down.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The accepted conclusion is that life arose naturally. (if it can be called natural that dead matter comes to life)
It is tentative in science until God comes along and shows us He exists. iows it is an accepted conclusion.
What science is doing is trying to show how it happened.
I have to give scientific evidence that people have made an assumption about God when science cannot find God? I think I have lost that argument from the get go. It is science that has made the rules on that argument.

"Dead matter" comes to life every day. There is nothing that amazing about it.

And no, you like so many other believers, have made apparently false claims about scientists making assumptions. If you claim that they have you have the burden of proof. I do not know of any scientist that makes an assumption about God when it comes to their work. Some belive in a God and some don't. They all seem to know that one cannot find evidence for God either way.

 

[Brian2]

Hmm, we need to ask our research scientists about there official voting record.

That is what a consensus means. The majority get to decide the truth (tentative) of hypotheses and have to leave God out of the equation because that would not be science.
In these areas where science is encroaching on what the Bible tells us God did the conclusions reached can indeed be the rubbish out after the rubbish of "no God allowed" is put in.
But of course they are tentatively held as true and taught as true until a God shows up to prove them wrong. So the world gets taught in science that there is no need for a God because we have found out how it happened without a God.
People do not realise that it is no more than speculation and changing definitions that has turned what used to be called magic into science and given it a respectable appearance.

 

[Subduction Zone]

That is what a consensus means. The majority get to decide the truth (tentative) of hypotheses and have to leave God out of the equation because that would not be science.
In these areas where science is encroaching on what the Bible tells us God did the conclusions reached can indeed be the rubbish out after the rubbish of "no God allowed" is put in.
But of course they are tentatively held as true and taught as true until a God shows up to prove them wrong. So the world gets taught in science that there is no need for a God because we have found out how it happened without a God.
People do not realise that it is no more than speculation and changing definitions that has turned what used to be called magic into science and given it a respectable appearance.

No, it does not mean that. There is no voting. One idea cannot beat another by one vote.

 

[shunyadragon]

That is not the way scientific discoveries hit the news.
"SCIENTISTS DISCOVER HOW LIFE BEGAN" would be the headline.

This is absurd foolishness. 'hit the news' is not how science documents it's results.

You need to read recognized scientific textbooks and journals so you can get results of scientific research and discoveries.

The speculation is not in the chemistry but in saying that things must have happened that way when life began.

More meaningless foolishness and lack of knowledge pf how science works based on a religious agenda.

 

[shunyadragon]

That is what a consensus means. The majority get to decide the truth (tentative) of hypotheses and have to leave God out of the equation because that would not be science.

In these areas where science is encroaching on what the Bible tells us God did the conclusions reached can indeed be the rubbish out after the rubbish of "no God allowed" is put in.
But of course they are tentatively held as true and taught as true until a God shows up to prove them wrong. So the world gets taught in science that there is no need for a God because we have found out how it happened without a God.
People do not realise that it is no more than speculation and changing definitions that has turned what used to be called magic into science and given it a respectable appearance.

No it is not consensus that makes the grade as far as the falsification of theories and hypothesis it is the conclusions of Methodological Naturalism based on the 'Objective Verifiable Evidence. What happens over time is the the weight of the 'objective Verifiable Evidence' and the repeared research that results in the consensus of scientists supporting the conclusions of falsifiable theories and hypothesis. ALL theories and hypothesis are subject to change and possible replaced or disgarded when new discoveries and research justifies it.

Example: Einsteins 'Theory of Relativity' and other conclusions based on his research was not universally accepted, but over time his work was more widely accepted and was the consensus held by most scientists. Nonetheless his theories and hypothesis have been modified and improved over time, and some of his work has been rejected and replaced by other theories and hypothesis, which had better evidence that supported them.

Again, again, and again . . .

Science CANNOT leave God out of the equation, because there is no equation possible that could include nor exclude the existence nor non-existence of God. Science is neutral to ALL theological/philosophical questions of ALL religions.

The only place the Bible has in science is the academic historical, archaeological, document research, and nothing to do with the 'truth' od the theological content of the text. This true of ALL the religious claims of 'belief' of ALL the anceint scripture of ALL the ancient religions. Philosophical apologetics is the field of stufy and arguments for the beliefs of religions not science.

Are you deaf or lack the basic English to understand the many posts that have clearly and specifically addressed this issue.'

 

[Yazata]

For me it is magic to say that dead matter came to life.

I perceive less of a problem there, perhaps because I conceive of life functionally. 'Life' is what living things do. Hence I conceive of a living thing as a system (or more accurately a whole collection of nested systems). The components of the systems needn't themselves be alive and do appear to be complex biochemicals. The important thing is how these non-living chemicals come together to perform physiological functions, rendering the whole interacting collection of chemicals "alive".

I'm also happy to acknowledge the idea of multi-realizability, and am willing to call a robot whose mechanism performs similar functions "alive" as well.

There is more to life than chemistry even if science wants to define it these days as an emergent property of matter

Philosophically, I don't really know what to make of metaphysical emergence. It's another of those fascinating unresolved issues.

But no, I'm not any sort of vitalist and don't believe in some spiritual "life force" that animates living things. If you do, I won't attack or insult you for disagreeing with me.

and claim in the end to know where life came from because of a redefinition of "life".

I think that the origin of life is one of the most interesting remaining open questions. Despite a lot of bluster from some directions, we really don't know the answer. (And as I argued above, we likely never will in any detail.) But I do tend to conceive of the question in naturalistic ways and would look for the explanations in chemistry I guess.

What we do know now is that life can only come from other life.
That is the state of scientific knowledge.
Anything else is speculation.

Yes, all the life we see around us today is descended from prior life. So every living thing has a long family tree extending all the way back to the origin of life. We still know very little about that origin. Though we do have countless speculations about it.

 

[Yazata]

There will be a vote of the peers and one line of hypothesis will get a tick in the end maybe.

Yes, probably some hypotheses will be more popular than others. But I don't think that we will ever have enough information to annoit one particular hypothesis as the explanation of how life originated.

"Science" might know better, but what gets told to the world is that science says life began such and such a way, and that is what the world believes from the men in the white coats

Yes. By the time scientific ideas trickle down from the academic controversies among researchers to the stories that journalists present to laypeople, ideas that started out as hypotheses somehow become fixed in stone. Any idea prefaced by "Scientists Say..." turns into a mandatory belief that laypeople must unquestioningly accept on pain of being denounced as "deniers" or "anti-science".

It's a little appalling how science is turning into an instrument of intellectual authoritarianism in our contemporary world. The analogies with medieval religious orthodoxy couldn't be more obvious.

and more people fall away from belief in a God because of misinformation

I'm not a theist so that doesn't concern me (except in how it impacts the ultimate metaphysical questions).

But my personal advice to the theist is to study philosophy, in particular metaphysics, the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of science. That will make it a lot easier to perceive when proponents of scientism are talking out of their butts and make it easier to craft counter-arguments.

and because people just don't realise that science can only study matter and can say nothing about God or the supernatural.
Naturalistic methodology is an assumption used in science to make life easier and not a philosophy of life in general.

I think that methodological naturalism is epistemologically motivated. It's motivated by a desire to only admit things that human beings can know about into our theorizing and proposed explanations. That methodological premise has served the history of science very well up until now.

But trouble results when methodological naturalism kind of slippy-slides into metaphysical naturalism, into the assertion that what human beings can know about through sense experience (mathematics is a problem case) is all that can possibly exist.

I don't know how anyone could possibly know that. Hence my agnostic argument with some of the atheists.

 

[Brian2]

But trouble results when methodological naturalism kind of slippy-slides into metaphysical naturalism, into the assertion that what human beings can know about through sense experience (mathematics is a problem case) is all that can possibly exist.

I don't know how anyone could possibly know that. Hence my agnostic argument with some of the atheists.

That is where I have trouble also. It seems that it is common in modern atheism to think like that.
I get two stories "Science cannot say yay or nay to God and spirit" and then from some, "science has shown that we do not need God and that life is chemicals".
The morphing seems to be setting into concrete with some people who stand up for science as if it is their religion and the source of all possible truths.

 

[shunyadragon]

That is where I have trouble also. It seems that it is common in modern atheism to think like that.
I get two stories "Science cannot say yay or nay to God and spirit" and then from some, "science has shown that we do not need God and that life is chemicals".
The morphing seems to be setting into concrete with some people who stand up for science as if it is their religion and the source of all possible truths.

As previous cited concerning the reality of science and Methodological Naturalism, which you have failed to respond to.

The above is absolutely false and a distortion of science based on a religious agenda. Again . . . NO your view of consensus is NOT how it involves science. Please respond.

Still waiting . . . for you to respond coherently to my previous posts, which you are avoiding.

Science is based on the 'Objective Verifiable Evidence ONLY, and CANNOT propose hypothesis nor theories based on Theological/Philosophical 'beliefs.' Science is Neutral concerning Theological and Philosophical questions without 'Objective Verifiable Evidence.''

Again . . .

Still waiting . . .

 

[Yazata]

That is not the way scientific discoveries hit the news.
"SCIENTISTS DISCOVER HOW LIFE BEGAN" would be the headline.

I see that people are trying to slap you around for saying that.

You are right of course. The 99% of humanity who aren't scientists do typically find out about "scientific discoveries" through the mass media.

Which means that in most cases they aren't getting the information from scientists at all. They are getting it from "science writers" or "science journalists" who have inserted themselves between science and the people. A few of these intermediaries are very good at explaining complex things. But in most cases they aren't. Sometimes they barely understand what they are writing about.

And the "scientific discoveries" that the public is being fed oftentimes aren't discoveries at all. They are better described as speculative hypotheses. They are some scientist's hypothetical speculation about how something might have happened or about how something might work. Or maybe the journalist is reporting the discovery of a piece of evidence that's consistent with a particular hypothesis and announcing that the hypothesis is "confirmed", while ignoring that there is evidence consistent with alternative hypotheses as well, and remaining serious problems with this one.

But journalists love catchy headlines, they love announcing exciting "discoveries". So all the qualifiers that the scientist put into his/her original paper are left out by the time their idea hits the streets. The "maybe's" and "it's possible that's" have disappeared. A speculation has somehow magically been transformed into an established "fact".

 

[shunyadragon]

I see that people are trying to slap you around for saying that.

You are right of course. The 99% of humanity who aren't scientists do typically find out about "scientific discoveries" through the mass media.

Which means that in most cases they aren't getting the information from scientists at all. They are getting it from "science writers" or "science journalists" who have inserted themselves between science and the people. A few of these intermediaries are very good at explaining complex things. But in most cases they aren't. Sometimes they barely understand what they are writing about.

And the "scientific discoveries" that the public is being fed oftentimes aren't discoveries at all. They are better described as speculative hypotheses. They are some scientist's hypothetical speculation about how something might have happened or about how something might work. Or maybe the journalist is reporting the discovery of a piece of evidence that's consistent with a particular hypothesis and announcing that the hypothesis is "confirmed", while ignoring that there is evidence consistent with alternative hypotheses as well, and remaining serious problems with this one.

But journalists love catchy headlines, they love announcing exciting "discoveries". So all the qualifiers that the scientist put into his/her original paper are left out by the time their idea hits the streets. The "maybe's" and "it's possible that's" have disappeared. A speculation has somehow magically been transformed into an established "fact".

This is good, nut you missed the point of the reason Brian2 posted this. I the context of Brian2 a slap down is justified.

 

[Yazata]

This is good, nut you missed the point of the reason Brian2 posted this. I the context of Brian2 a slap down is justified.

So why are you acknowledging what I wrote as "good" after you wrote this to Brian2:

This is absurd foolishness. 'hit the news' is not how science documents it's results.

You need to read recognized scientific textbooks and journals so you can get results of scientific research and discoveries.

More meaningless foolishness and lack of knowledge pf how science works based on a religious agenda.

Those two quotes don't look consistent to me.

In my opinion, one of the most interesting and little studied aspects of the philosophy of science isn't trying to understand the logic, epistemology and implicit metaphysics in what scientists are doing, as important and fascinating as that is.

It's describing and perhaps criticizing how science is put to rhetorical use among the general public. What are normal people supposed to think about science's assumed intellectual authority? What conclusions should people draw based on what is said (often by non-scientists) in the name of science?

Atheists have a long history of making rhetorical use of science to suit their own anti-religious agenda. More recently we have seen science being put to more overtly political use. (Though that has been implicit in the whole idea of "social sciences" since their creation in the 19th century.)

I personally think that Brian2 is making an interesting and valid point. You probably should address it.

 

[shunyadragon]

So why are you acknowledging what I wrote as "good" after you wrote this to Brian2:

. . . because it did not acknowledge the intent of Brian2.

In my opinion, one of the most interesting and little studied aspects of the philosophy of science isn't trying to understand the logic, epistemology and implicit metaphysics in what scientists are doing, as important and fascinating as that is.

It's describing and perhaps criticizing how science is put to rhetorical use among the general public. What are normal people supposed to think about science's assumed intellectual authority? What conclusions should people draw based on what is said (often by non-scientists) in the name of science?

Atheists have a long history of making rhetorical use of science to suit their own anti-religious agenda. More recently we have seen science being put to more overtly political use. (Though that has been implicit in the whole idea of "social sciences" since their creation in the 19th century.)

I personally think that Brian2 is making an interesting and valid point. You probably should address it.

The bottomline is that layman untrained and uneducated writers in layman references should not be considered remotely authorative in terms of science. Brian2 indicated that the layman references are relevant based on his religious agenda.

 

[Brian2]

There is no evidence that I know of that shows that life is anything but complex chemical reactions. You may not know this, but you body is still made up of inert "dead" chemicals. The reason I am saying that you use "magic" is because you cannot seem to justify your need for a God.

Once again, tear down life and all you see is chemicals all the way down.

Tear down chemicals and all you have is chemicals.
You are almost saying that science has shown that life is no more than complex chemicals. Scientific speculation has turned into what you believe, or maybe what you believe is justified only by speculation.
Chemical all the way up until life suddenly appears. The chemicals become conscious. That is what the speculation is. The naturalistic methodology has turned into something that has been shown by science to be true for many people because they cannot accept anything as true that science has not discovered,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,except the speculations that agree with the naturalistic methodology.

 

[Brian2]

I see that people are trying to slap you around for saying that.

You are right of course. The 99% of humanity who aren't scientists do typically find out about "scientific discoveries" through the mass media.

Which means that in most cases they aren't getting the information from scientists at all. They are getting it from "science writers" or "science journalists" who have inserted themselves between science and the people. A few of these intermediaries are very good at explaining complex things. But in most cases they aren't. Sometimes they barely understand what they are writing about.

And the "scientific discoveries" that the public is being fed oftentimes aren't discoveries at all. They are better described as speculative hypotheses. They are some scientist's hypothetical speculation about how something might have happened or about how something might work. Or maybe the journalist is reporting the discovery of a piece of evidence that's consistent with a particular hypothesis and announcing that the hypothesis is "confirmed", while ignoring that there is evidence consistent with alternative hypotheses as well, and remaining serious problems with this one.

But journalists love catchy headlines, they love announcing exciting "discoveries". So all the qualifiers that the scientist put into his/her original paper are left out by the time their idea hits the streets. The "maybe's" and "it's possible that's" have disappeared. A speculation has somehow magically been transformed into an established "fact".

That's true.
Some people just like upholding the integrity of science against what they see as religious fundamentalism and miss the point that science has been used for all sorts of evils even if science is not responsible.