Girl saying the tsunami in Japan is an answer to her prayers.

Which also means that belief in a Creator doesn't automatically make you irrational. Unfortunately, too many of my brethren happen to be...

Abiogenesis? Well, honestly, we can't really explain how it happened. The existence of a Prime Motivator would tie it up nicely, as well as explain the platypus. If we understand the general concept that life cannot come from unlife, then we have to do one of two things. Either we need a new rule, or we need a new explanation. It's up to science to figure that out. In this circumstance, there is a general bit of wiggle room for a Creator, if not Creation. Let me remind all those who are still dogging on about Creation-do you know how He did it? He didn't see fit to explain it to us. He gave us inquisitive minds and insatiable curiosity instead. If God chose to mold evolution over vast time scales until it was just like He wanted it, then introduced himself to Adam, the man He had sculpted as if he were clay (the Hebrew there allows it) then that does not in any way deny the concept of Creation. It's simply different from the one you learned in Sunday school. It makes it no less miraculous or God any less God.

God gave us minds to make tools, formulate theories and test them. Use your rational mind-I see no reason a person can't have faith and reason both.

I find myself in between camps here. However, as I'm content and not really upset by the debate (if I found myself challenged by another's opinion, I would look for supporting evidence before feeling as though anything had changed for me-use the scientific method. If I can get my meds to hold out, I'm sure I could explicate that in dealing with articles of faith as well.

Surgery's tomorrow. I'm holding on with a few fingernails yet.

 

I disagree, it would fill the gap but not provide us with any answers or knowledge. It's akin, imo, to simply throwing your hands up in the air and declaring we don't know the answer so let's just give up trying to find out.

It was my understanding that science has already moved on from the concept that life cannot come from unlife and most currently accepted models for how life could have begun take the view that organic molecules were created from inorganic precursors.

 

Last I checked, yes, they wanted to rewrite the rule, but still had no reliable mechanism to point to that could recreate the process. If it's not repeatable, it basically didn't happen to the scientific community. Sure, we have lots of one-time events out there, and we know they're fact, but if you want to prove a mechanism you need repeatability, which is what the last I checked scientists were lacking.

 

gl with the surgery kayin..

 

I wish you all the best on your surgery tomorrow, Kayin.

 

Yeah all the best for tomorrow.

 

Word.

I maintain that the choice with regards to the Christian God is between atheism and misotheism. If the Catholic account of God and the universe is correct, God is either totally irrelevant or totally despicable.

Don Cupitt, Anglican priest, has this to say about the metaphysical God:

 

I agree that current accounts and explanations of abiogenesis are inadequate. But with abiogenesis, it need only be a one-time event, once you have life, you can go from there. It need not be probable because it's already happened, and besides, in an area the size of the Universe, even the most improbable things become more likely than not.

I'm not saying we should accept the current ideas or reject them. They need further explanation. But what always puzzles me in such instances is when supporters of creation add in a God. Surely God is even more improbable.

Or is it turtles all the way down?

Edit: Also, good luck with the surgery. Always nice to have someone who can be sensible about religious discussions and so eloquent. Hope to have you back here soon.

 

edit: also good luck for your surgery.

 

The platypus has got to be the biggest joke in the animal kingdom-it's a bouillabaise of the strangest features in the animal kingdom.

I mean seriously, it's a venomous mammal. It's extremely odd. Every time I see one, I think of God sitting and smirking. As if the joke's on us.

Also, with the abiogenesis argument, here's a concept. What if science tries everything it can and can't replicate it? What will we say then? Do we go on to xenogenesis and panspermia, or what? At what juncture does the concept of a Prime Mover go from absurd to plausible? (This isn't an attack, I'd love a real opinion.) If we cannot with our science replicate the events, do we form new theories, or simply persist in believing we just can't get the experiment right?

I like science. I use it a lot. But it doesn't have every answer. And this one is pretty important. I know it's on my mind from time to time, and I'm betting others think about it too-which means the current confusion in the scientific community is not doing anyone any favors.

As an aside, I saw on wikipedia that one of the new theories involves living clay. That made my whole day right there.

 

Well, we know that all life - you and I, and even platypuses - are made of chemical elements. We also know that chemical elements can spontaneously form ordered patterns. There's a chance, certainly, that we'll never recreate the exact chemical composition and environment that formed the pattern of life...but even if we don't it's certainly more likely that life emerged from these observable processes than from an invisible man in the sky.

Oh, and I support your wish not to go to heaven tommorrow

 

I think I can think of weirder and crazier animals than the platypus...
The idea that if something is strange and odd then someone must have designed it confuses me.

 

If science tries everything and is unable to show that current models provide a plausible explanation/mechanism for abiogenesis then yes we move onto other hypotheses. That's how science works, why would it be any different in respect of abiogenesis? Having said that we already can perform a number of experiments that support the idea of abiogenesis, such as being able to show the creation of organic molecules from inorganic precursors or how simple organic molecules can end up forming RNA. I think the bigger issues we have is our current understanding of the exact environment at the time abiogenesis was likely to occur and how we can go from simple organic molecules to protocells. But these are research topics which are fairly new so it's understandable they're still unanswered.

As for your query about a Prime Mover, I don't think there's any juncture in science where the introduction of a supernatural entity as a means to explain something becomes plausible. The entire idea just goes completely against the whole purpose of science. I think the scientific community would rather admit to not knowing than saying an unknowable, untestable supernatural entity was responsible.

I don't see what the issue is with science not having all the answers as long as it openly admits to not having all the answers. I don't understand why people seem to think that we should have all the answers to everything at this point in time. I mean it's only recently (when considering the entire span of time humans have existed) that we have reached the level of technology needed to begin to experiment and understand some of the big questions of the universe and i'm sure there's many questions out there that we still don't have the technological level or prior knowledge to even begin to answer. But that's something that will come with time and it doesn't need us to try and fill in the gaps by invoking some supernatural force or influence for which there is zero evidence. As I said in a previous post, to do so is akin to throwing your hands up, declaring you don't know and so are just going to give up trying to find out.

You mean one of the new hypotheses, it's not even close to a theory.

 

Good luck Kayin.

 

I don't feel that evolution challenges the existence of God, I feel that evolution fails to properly explain the origins of life on this planet and that the scientists behind evolutionary research are largely biased. Intelligent Design has a very bad stigma to it because media seems to always report that their belief is "God did it". The whole idea behind Intelligent Design is not to prove that God exists but that the origins of life and the progress of species had to have a guiding hand.

I've found that #1 you're never going to ever be able to prove the existence of God to anyone but yourself and #2 that just by honestly searching for that proof you'll find what you need for yourself and nothing more. I don't consider looking for God "bad faith" at all. If there is a God that created us, then he certainly gave us inquisitive minds for a reason. Religions ask for blind faith, God does not.

 

You're looking in the wrong place. Evolution doesn't attempt to explain the origins of life. What you should be looking at is Self-Organization

If you actually take some time to sift through the mass of evidence, with an open mind, you'll see that there is actually no need for a guiding hand. Both self-organization and evolution are inherent in the laws of physics with no need for external or internal agency

 

Why would it? That's not the purpose behind the theory of evolution. It doesn't have anything to do with explaining hte origins of life.

Would you like to provide some examples of this?

Intelligent Design has a bad stigma attached to it because it's proponents keep trying to push it into the realm of science and it's really really bad science. It's been shown numerous times that the arguments put forward in support of Intelligent Design are flawed and stem from a misunderstanding or confusion about the natural world. For example, many claims have been made about irreducible complexity and how things like the eye or flagella can't be explained by evolution when they can and have been. The best thing for Intelligent Design would be to admit it's not science and that it's acceptance requires you to have faith without needing evidence.

As for reports by the media that the belief boils down to "God did it" isn't that essentially what is being said? Intelligent Design may not specify exactly who this guiding hand behind the origins of life and progress of species is but if it's not God then who else could it be? How many supernatural entities are you wanting to invoke to explain things that in a lot of cases have already been explained?

 

^That.

If God created life, what exactly did he create it from? Did he click his fingers and a living soup appeared? That would be nonsensical in the extreme- basically 'magic'.

Or did he have a play with his chemistry set to create the living soup/ fully formed humanoids a few hundred thousand years ago? In which case that sounds more like an advanced race or intelligent beings creating life vs a divine creator; God is an alien in that case...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chase_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)



You cant make life out of nothing, you cant snap your fingers or poke some amino acids with a stick and turn it into single cell organisms- 'life' is not the work of a divine creator, unless said creator wasn't actually divine at all. But then, where did the creator come from in order to seed earth with life?... ( clue: not a God-figure).

 

I seriously love all you people; you make my evenings quite exciting and it's always a delight to turn my computer on with the knowledge that I get to read and interact with a large group of such poignant people in one place. Seriously. Love you guys.

Anyway, back to front once more:

Awesome! The first real bit of scientific understanding you've demonstrated thus far! A theory about the gradual progression and selection through natural means and pressures of randomly-mutating replicators has absolutely no place within the context of an argument of origin of said replicators. Unfortunately you then absolutely ruin it with your statement describing the concept of "intelligent design" as anything but Genesis-inspired creationism. Oh well, you win some and you lose some, right?

Monotremes are very cool animals, and are quite well understood now from both a modern biological standpoint and from an evolutionary standpoint, so I'm unsure to how you figure that it is a fish stew? Yes, it has some very unique adaptations to its environment, but so do you and I (why do I have webbed toes again? Why do I have an unnatural fear of being "dirty"? Adaptations/heredity!). Simply because we see no active usage for several features of a well-adapted animal within its environment does not make those adaptations superfluous in any regard.

To your second point, two things: first of all, why do we need all the answers? While I do see the aesthetic value in having a nice and neat little mathematical equation for each and every little phenomena in the known universe, I don't see it being absolutely necessary for our further existence and survival on both a physical and intellectual level. Secondly, if our current ideas about abiogenesis prove to be unrepeatable, or if we can verify the direct causal stimuli for the organisation of the precursors of RNA/DNA replication but cannot replicate it in laboratory settings, then we'll move onto new models and new ideas for how it happened. For example, if we can manage to find evidence for directed (or otherwise) panspermia, then we'll investigate where the origins of that lie. This does not negate the search for causal origin, merely shifts it away from current models. This is kind of the point of science: when an idea doesn't produce predictable results, we don't just jump to fantasy and go home for the day. As I've said before: inserting a doctrinal "god of the gaps" theory into what we don't currently understand only serves to deny avenues of investigation and the potential for furtherance of our understanding of the universe around us (and beyond).

OK, lets accept this idea for a moment, suspend all doubt that the universe and everything in was created by a Prime Motivator, as you put it, and that we're it's little inspired creation running about on a lonely planet. What then? Well, we would then require an explanation for that Prime Motivator, and an explanation on why it decided to plonk us down here on this little blue pebble adrift in a vast sea of nothingness, alone. Then we'd need to look at it's divine inspirations within the minds of people, and try to find a way to filter those with aberrant mental conditions proclaiming to hear the voice of this Prime Motivator and those that actually do, therein finding a natural mechanism for transport of ideas into peoples heads (remember: only what we don't understand is super(outside of)-natural). There would also be the question as to why it decided to do such abhorrent things in the past through it's divine word, and ignore such prevalent abhorrent conditions when just the simplest of advice (like: wash your hands in clean, running water) could have saved billions of lives through the millennia. You insert one little idea and you get a run-away tangent of questions. There is also the little niggle of falsifiability to deal with in this whole thing that is kind of a precursor to the notion of accepting such a view...

The premise of a god-type figure is untesable, but the claims of where such an entity exerts forces outside of our current understanding are testable (to a degree). Case in point: prayer tests; chemical analysis and physical examinations of the "Crying Madonna" statues; life after death experiments (some of which are really rather neat); ect. We can poke and prod at our understanding of such an ideas influence within our culture and physical world within the context of scientific investigation, which should be more than enough reason to doubt in the existence of such a figure until other results come in.

Phase 1. Insight religious debate.

Phase 2. ?

Phase 3. Prophet!

Things happen - no biggie. There is a reason that I typically listen to classical composers when I'm writing on a particularly heated topic, as it does tend to calm me down a bit and take my mind off my emotions by allowing them to flow to a different outlet (it's not uncommon for my posts to take more than an hour and a half due to musical pauses). I would recommend trying it if you don't already.

Hate to break this to you: but by asserting that Genesis-inspired creationism is science is making a scientific claim. Those of us asserting that evolution through natural selection, the slow modification of randomly-reproducing replicators through the non-random selection of beneficial mutations are using a scientifically proven theory about our physical world. You're holding an old book that says we were created from a pinch of sand in a day. There is a bit of a difference here.

Yes, I can, within the context of a debate framed within the context of the scientific methodology in it's application to the subject at hand. You've provided a list of people that have very little if anything to do with biological evolution, therefore their opinion shouldn't be counted on with any veracity. I agree that many of them have compelling arguments, but they're flat out wrong and have been proven as such time and again. A good example of this would be your straw-man: Louis Pasteur. Obviously he would make a blanket statement to such effect of the impossibility of spontaneous organisation - he died over one hundred years ago! We barely understood how microbes worked, never mind how RNA and DNA interact or what their direct role in everything is.

First: evolution through natural selection does not in any way require an origin explanation. What about this do you not understand? It is a theory of descent, and a well proven one at that. We've been able to rather well sus-out what the first single-celled organisms would have been and somewhat how they would have worked, and this is where a process like evolution would come in to gradually modify and adapt these organisms (if you can call them that) to the prevailing conditions so as to best utilize resources for reproduction or continuation of their existence. The "foundation" of evolution is the non-random selection of randomly-mutating replicators. End of.

Second: mathematicians are all well and good in their field of work, but again I feel as though I have to reiterate: they're not evolutionary biologists, and the few you've mentioned are under no circumstances representative of a counter-evolutionist movement within the scientific community. They're working towards an agenda (I'm talking about people involved within such fraudulent organisations as the Discovery Institute), and it isn't one that is taken seriously within the scientific or academic communities.

Third: fraudulent, deceptive, misleading, and not worthwhile for anybody to pay any mind to.



A brief side-note addressed to Kayin: I hope you pull through, otherwise I'll be really rather quite bored - plus I'll send slightly miffed prayers at you.

 

The more I read this thread and the more I try to be thoughtful to those who believe in gods and try and understand their viewpoint, the more questions get thrown up in my head. What I mean by that is that when I think of the scientific angle, it answers more and offers ideas and evidence, but when I think of the other angle (gods) it just throw up questions and confusion. The only answers being given on the gods angle is that a greater being did it ... with no evidence of that. Just a faith, a belief that that is how it started and praying for a great end when it comes. And that seems counterproductive to how we are expanding and learning. Instead of digging down and exploring where we have come from and where we are going to (see below), people just say "god did it".


to


Think about the mud huts we used to live in, the crude spears we used to throw, the raw diet we used to live on. Now think about the brick houses, fully networked with microwave ovens, satellite dishes receiving signals from above our atmosphere. That has all happened in a few thousand years. That is evolution. Now take us back a couple of thousand more years, in fact, many many many thousands of years back.

Look how large the universe is ... and how insignificant we are. All we need is a shockingly big earthquake and it's game over for all of us ... like the dinosaurs ...

Or will a god save us?