The origin of life

Scientists tend to fluff over the incredible difficulty of conceiving of the origin of life by natural processes. Here is a rather excitable (but very well thought of) chemist explaining just how ridiculously hard this is without a designer.

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/04/c...me-the-chemistry-of-abiogensis-its-not-there/

Notice how he himself is involved in the design of molecular nano-machines - these obviously bdear some reseblance to some of the components of cells, but they are created by design.

The impoertance of this, is that materialists need to persuade us that life can plausibly start on a planet by chance - with no intelligent intervention. I think it is clear that this isn't really possible.

David
 
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A bunch of random colliding particles (origin unknown) started colliding and began creating lumps of organic matter which spawned limbs and began thinking, on accident. Not once. Over and over and over and over again.

When you stop and drop the a-priori assumptions and really think about it, it’s intuitively absurd. It’s completely outrageous.
 
A bunch of random colliding particles (origin unknown) started colliding and began creating lumps of organic matter which spawned limbs and began thinking, on accident. Not once. Over and over and over and over again.

When you stop and drop the a-priori assumptions and really think about it, it’s intuitively absurd. It’s completely outrageous.
Yes, and of course it is linked to the whole question of evolution by NS, which Behe has shown to be totally impractical.

I think this issue is a huge part of the jigsaw puzzle.

David
 
Yes, and of course it is linked to the whole question of evolution by NS, which Behe has shown to be totally impractical.

I think this issue is a huge part of the jigsaw puzzle.

David
Sheldrake said that this idea of evolution through mutation is losing steam in the mainstream ranks. I don’t know if that’s true or of hes overly optimistic. He states that the discovery of epigenetics (along with other issues) is causing this idea to lose momentum.
 
When you stop and drop the a-priori assumptions and really think about it, it’s intuitively absurd. It’s completely outrageous.
I struggle with the "life from nothing, from purposelessness" myself, but is it really any more absurd than the big bang? Probably not any longer as we've been conditioned to the concept, but just think of how many things we take as fact/good-science now that we would have viewed as "intuitively absurd" 100 or 200 years ago.
 
I struggle with the "life from nothing, from purposelessness" myself, but is it really any more absurd than the big bang? Probably not any longer as we've been conditioned to the concept, but just think of how many things we take as fact/good-science now that we would have viewed as "intuitively absurd" 100 or 200 years ago.

I have to disagree. I see this as absurd in the same way that I see the story of Jonah in the Bible as absurd. But at least the story of Jonah living in the whale has some moral and culture value, as do all good myths and legends. I don’t think there’s good evidence for it. Not that there has not been a progression of forms. I believe there has been a progression of form. Most likely anyways. But I think the changes where more rapid than they say, due to the severe lack of transitional fossils in the record. My issue is with the standard materialistic explanation which states that it’s all the result of random mutation. I think it’s readily obvious that there’s some sort of underlying conscious foundation to it all.

I like Sheldrakes idea of morphic resonance because there’s decent evidence behind the idea itself, and because it fits what I think when I think of evolution of life forms on this planet. Then when I consider the evidence from NDEs, OBEs, Astral Travel, Medium contact, quantum physics, UFOs etc, which suggest a conscious foundation to reality, I see that as matching perfectly with Sheldrakes idea that nature has a memory and an intelligence, and that this also morphs the form of living matter and directs herd animals and flock behavior etc etc. I believe that consciousness in some form has directed this progression, just as it directed the creation of the Universe and reality. I do not feel it’s reasonable to state that mindless matter can form living beings on accident with the most astounding complexity and then cause those forms to become self aware and talk and speak and think and worship. I don’t feel that the random mutation theory is a strong one. But sometimes what happens is that people marry this idea of the progression of form to the idea of random mutation. That is to say that if somebody hears that you believe in evolution, that this also means that you believe that it happened on accident. I believe there’s good evidence for evolution, and almost no good evidence that it happened on accident. But it’s what a materialist must believe. There are no other safe options for a materialist. To them, they must believe it was accidental. And since they must believe that it’s accidental, it could only therefore be due to random mutation. It’s a belief. And I don’t feel that we need to give it the benefit of the doubt.
 
Scientists tend to fluff over the incredible difficulty of conceiving of the origin of life by natural processes. Here is a rather excitable (but very well thought of) chemist explaining just how ridiculously hard this is without a designer.

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/04/c...me-the-chemistry-of-abiogensis-its-not-there/

Notice how he himself is involved in the design of molecular nano-machines - these obviously bdear some reseblance to some of the components of cells, but they are created by design.

The impoertance of this, is that materialists need to persuade us that life can plausibly start on a planet by chance - with no intelligent intervention. I think it is clear that this isn't really possible.

David

I suppose, anyone has noted, time and again, the intensely - and irrationally - passionate character of the materialistic worldview, and the proneness of the social groups and movements that worship and preach it (such as "organised skeptics") to the wrathful, hateful onslaughts on anyone who question something they espouse? Such attitudes and behaviors are easily explainable, given the crypto-religious character of such movements - in fact, they may be called pandeistic, since their presumably "atheistic" position is effectively a mixture of excited, ecstatic panthesim and fearful, anxious deism, welded together by anti-theistic fury and animosity.

The pantheist nature of materialism is described quite neatly here:

https://evolutionnews.org/2019/05/darwinism-as-pantheism-or-vitalism/

One can feel the powerful - even overwhelming - emotional component of the crypto-panthesistic of materialism in this two Dawkins-inspired music pieces by the group Nightwish:



As for the crypto-deistic part of it, it is explained eloquently in this issue of the Edge Science magazine (read the article
"Semantic Pathologies and the "Laws" of Nature" by Michael Reddy):

https://scientificexploration.s3.am...182273&Signature=leepEHL2+uxMvSCtNDXR60FRT2o=
 
I don’t think there’s good evidence for it.
Different argument than what you'd originally posted. I'd interpreted your initial post as an appeal to the absurdity of the "life from nothing" proposition. From that perspective, it doesn't seem any more absurd than the aforementioned big bang. Neither seems intuitive if you will.
 
Different argument than what you'd originally posted. I'd interpreted your initial post as an appeal to the absurdity of the "life from nothing" proposition. From that perspective, it doesn't seem any more absurd than the aforementioned big bang. Neither seems intuitive if you will.
We aren't struggling with the problem of life from nothing at the "Gee whiz how could that happen!" level, James Tour was discussing the scientific implausibility of creating life by random chemistry. Why not watch his video and then we can discuss it.

David
 
We aren't struggling with the problem of life from nothing at the "Gee whiz how could that happen!" level,
Fair enough David. I was just taking Wormwood at his written word. I try to be mindful of the echo chamber risk knowing the rather obvious bias this community (me included) has towards such questions.
 
Fair enough David. I was just taking Wormwood at his written word. I try to be mindful of the echo chamber risk knowing the rather obvious bias this community (me included) has towards such questions.
I guess you still haven't listened to the video. Remember that James Tour is a very successful chemist, and in the video he repeatedly refers to other origin of life scientists lying. That is strong language, but I can see what he means - the headlines tell the lie, and the details in the paper correct that if you bother to read it through. Thus he talks at one point about some experiments that purported to show 'quorum sensing' between artificial cells made of clay and plastic! Quorum sensing normally means the ability of bacteria to change their behaviour as their numbers increase - they can sense their neighbours. What they meant in this paper was that substances would passively diffuse from one of these pretend cells to the next!

Here is a top scientist repeatedly calling the authors of a number of papers liars in a publicly accessible video. Surely someone would decide to sue if they thought they had a leg to stand on!

I wish everyone would listen to that video. There is almost no religion in it.

David
 
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Different argument than what you'd originally posted. I'd interpreted your initial post as an appeal to the absurdity of the "life from nothing" proposition. From that perspective, it doesn't seem any more absurd than the aforementioned big bang. Neither seems intuitive if you will.

If they proposed a model/mechanism which they believed was responsible for producing the Big Bang which sounded just as silly as their proposed model for the progression of life, I would be equally critical of that idea as well. This proposed model of accidental evolution, to me, is the product of a materialistic belief.

I’m no expert on biology but I’ve read a couple of books from both sides and listened to several scholarly debates on YouTube. It’s become apparent to me that their evidence rests upon the apparent progression of forms as SORT of shown through the fossil record. But there’s a serious lack of transitional fossils, which we should be finding. There’s almost no real good examples of inbetween species as they “changed form.” But, I don’t even care to challenge the idea that form has progressed in some way. It’s the idea that it’s happened by random chance that gets me. I don’t see any evidence for it. It seems to me that there are a number of great arguments against it. But they need to persist with their belief to maintain credibility amongst their peers.

There are enormous stumbling blocks to this theory. But when it comes to them, we are given the good old promissary note of materialism. “Well we don’t know how that works now but we will in 200 years.” I refuse to accept that it’s inevitable that THEIR version of the truth will be the one proven true in 200 years. I refuse to accept materialism as the a-priori basis of reality that is given a free pass. Rather it is assumed true and assumed that it will be vindicated
 
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Have been meaning to post this video for a few days. I thought it was really good. I think i disagree or am not sure about some points and the physicist in the interview didn't seem to have any remorse in his voice for allowing the evil BBC to scan his brain, so maybe he's not so aware of what is going on closer to home.
That aside i think it's awesome and the guy makes astronomy/physics fun and interesting
 
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