Metaphysics, intelligence, God

[N.T.M.]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

Evolution is a well established fact. With that said, abiogenesis isn't.

Abiogenesis MUST have existed for evolution to have taken place. Whether on earth, or seeded by ETs, abiogenesis must have initiated life somewhere after the big bang. To quote somebody else here, "it's necessary."

Anyway, thanks for the links. I'll be sure to read those. Much appreciated.

Oh, and just for the record, trust me when I say that all religions are fallible. My only argument was the existence of some "greater power." Also, I know that a lot of creationist evidence is inaccurate. Some is valid, but often debates are made without sufficient information. (just to concede to one of your points)

*edit* Also, evolution as it's technically defined is accurate, but I don't believe that it's accurate to the extent of stemming from a single ancestry.

mhss1992:

-There is a side people lean to when evidence points to it. If there's evidence of a contrary, then obviously people need to consider it. The "want" to believe in something without compelling evidence is what we call "magical thinking" aka what most religions imply.
-I am atheist because of everything I've mentioned, yes. I used to believe in God until I questioned why. Why don't you believe in Santa Claus? Well, there's overwhelming evidence to suggest that there isn't a magical man who delivers presents to everyone in a night. Likewise with God, there's a ton of evidence to suggest that no such being needs to exist, much like we don't need Santa to explain how we got presents under the tree as kids. The difference is that the evidence is a bit harder to understand with respect to God.

The claim of trolling is both a trite and abused method of discrediting your opponent. It'd also constitute an ad hominem which reflects terribly on yourself.

I too have analyzed things objectively to reach my current perspectives. Seeing as it's futile, however, to rebroach that is pointless.

I was sincere when I was asking about a book recommendation. I can respect others' beliefs (evolutionists for example) while maintaining integrity. Completely excluding the argument, you disappoint me.

(rescinding all contentions)

[MrRubix]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

If you're not trolling, then you're just stupid. Maybe that'll help clear things up.

By the way, nothing I've said is ad hominem. You might want to actually understand certain overused Latin phrases before you toss them into the mix. Flaming != ad hominem.

[mhss1992]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

mhs1992, I think we're going to have to just agree to disagree. I've made my points very clear and you are free to take them as you wish. I think we're just going in circles at this point -- everything we're bringing up on this page has already been addressed, so I am going to have to echo Izzy on this point.

Okay.

I don't have many new things to say, either. I still can't conceive certain things like the "in death" continuous swapping. There's also that older thought experiment about slowly changing a person's brain into another: it just doesn't feel like the answer is that easy.

But I'm not going to discuss anything else. I still have my reasons to believe in what I do, and you have yours. I just can't make you feel like I do. Well... Unless one of us changes their mind first, we will have to wait until we die for an agreement (or nothing).

[Reach]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

Abiogenesis MUST have existed for evolution to have taken place. Whether on earth, or seeded by ETs, abiogenesis must have initiated life somewhere after the big bang. To quote somebody else here, "it's necessary."

Anyway, thanks for the links. I'll be sure to read those. Much appreciated.

Oh, and just for the record, trust me when I say that all religions are fallible. My only argument was the existence of some "greater power." Also, I know that a lot of creationist evidence is inaccurate. Some is valid, but often debates are made without sufficient information. (just to concede to one of your points)

*edit* Also, evolution as it's technically defined is accurate, but I don't believe that it's accurate to the extent of stemming from a single ancestry.

Abiogenesis refers to a very specific theory or field for studying and detailing the origins of life on Earth. Don't confuse it with the origin of life, becuase it's not technically the same thing. Yes 'life' is required for Evolution to occur....but, that's obvious and as such the validity of evolution is not in any way dependent on the validity of abiogenesis.


Also, if you believe evolution is technically accurate you have to accept single ancestry. Otherwise you don't quite understand.

There is a very intuitive and obvious way to prove this. Let's start with a hypothetical by saying you and your significant other are the first lifeforms on Earth. You reproduce. Your children reproduce, etc. Your children are related to you, and their children are related to them which in turn makes them related to you.

Etc, which by definition means that every organism that will ever proceed you is fundamentally related to you.

I don't see why this isn't completely and utterly obvious, so maybe you mean something else.

[Izzy]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

And incest leads to mutation/evolution. The bible all makes sense now. Hah.

Edit: Does the bible say anything about incest being bad? If so then it contradicts itself. I guess that is no surprise though.

[MrRubix]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

Abiogenesis refers to a very specific theory or field for studying and detailing the origins of life on Earth. Don't confuse it with the origin of life, becuase it's not technically the same thing. Yes 'life' is required for Evolution to occur....but, that's obvious and as such the validity of evolution is not in any way dependent on the validity of abiogenesis.


Also, if you believe evolution is technically accurate you have to accept single ancestry. Otherwise you don't quite understand.

There is a very intuitive and obvious way to prove this. Let's start with a hypothetical by saying you and your significant other are the first lifeforms on Earth. You reproduce. Your children reproduce, etc. Your children are related to you, and their children are related to them which in turn makes them related to you.

Etc, which by definition means that every organism that will ever proceed you is fundamentally related to you.

I don't see why this isn't completely and utterly obvious, so maybe you mean something else.

Precisely correct -- the concepts are technically separate.


Izzy: A Google reveals:

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/says_about/incest.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest_in_the_Bible

http://www.thirdmill.org/answers/answer.asp/file/99806.qna/category/ot/page/questions/site/iiim

http://listverse.com/2008/05/26/top-6-incestuous-relationships-in-the-bible/

and http://www.clarifyingchristianity.com/faq_bq.shtml for epic lols

[N.T.M.]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

By the way, nothing I've said is ad hominem. You might want to actually understand certain overused Latin phrases before you toss them into the mix. Flaming != ad hominem.

lol Nope. Want me to define it for you?

Abiogenesis refers to a very specific theory or field for studying and detailing the origins of life on Earth. Don't confuse it with the origin of life, becuase it's not technically the same thing. Yes 'life' is required for Evolution to occur....but, that's obvious and as such the validity of evolution is not in any way dependent on the validity of abiogenesis.

Sounds like a paradox.

Precisely correct -- the concepts are technically separate.

They're not mutually exclusive. They must coexist.

And incest leads to mutation/evolution. The bible all makes sense now. Hah.

Edit: Does the bible say anything about incest being bad? If so then it contradicts itself. I guess that is no surprise though.

Nobody here's talking about the bible.

Also, if you believe evolution is technically accurate you have to accept single ancestry. Otherwise you don't quite understand.

There is a very intuitive and obvious way to prove this. Let's start with a hypothetical by saying you and your significant other are the first lifeforms on Earth. You reproduce. Your children reproduce, etc. Your children are related to you, and their children are related to them which in turn makes them related to you.

Etc, which by definition means that every organism that will ever proceed you is fundamentally related to you.

I don't see why this isn't completely and utterly obvious, so maybe you mean something else.

Yeah I meant something else, but no worries.

[Reach]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

Sounds like a paradox.

Why?

There's no paradox.

Is the following what you're trying to say? If not, you should explain, because no paradox exists. The only paradox here could be if you and I mean completely different things.

Assumptions:

1. Life is necessary for evolution to occur.
2. Abiogenesis is a theory of how life began.
3. Therefore...abiogenesis is necessary for evolution to occur.

Clearly 3 is a contradiction. LIFE is necessary for evolution to occur, but not abiogenesis given that is just a model of how life began.

Abiogenesis is probably right anyway, but when I say that it's not a fact, I mean precisely that, but I do not mean in any way that it's just a hypothesis and there's no good evidence or reason to believe it's true. It's just not as well supported as say, Evolution, which is undeniably true in light of overwhelmingly large mountains of multidisciplinary evidence.

[MrRubix]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

NTM, they do not need to coexist. Like Reach said, abiogenesis is just one of many theories. Evolution doesn't require abiogenesis -- it requires life. The honest answer to how life began is "We don't really know, but we can make some reasonable conclusions supported by evidence and experiment," and abiogenesis is one such reasonable approach, unlike the "what spawned the universe" question which nobody really has a good answer for. You can try to tackle it from a quantum perspective, but it's still quite hazy.

Anyways, ad hominem is when you try to discredit someone's argument with something logically disconnected from the topic. "Why should we believe his opinion -- he's a troll, so we shouldn't listen to what he says" would be one such approach because it doesn't directly refute the argument and instead provides some other explanation. In this case, I still refuted your points and just flamed you in the process -- this isn't an ad hominem attack. You are simply incorrect to begin with.

At any rate, we have a firm understanding of forces and interactions to the extent that it's foolish to say "it's so improbable for these types of structures to arise" -- an argument you posted earlier in this thread. It's akin to the fallacious "Tornado in a junkyard" argument -- it totally misses the point. We have forces that are VERY much deterministic. These forces, when present in a given environment containing materials and conditions NECESSARY FOR LIFE (imagine that?), can allow for self-replicating structures to occur. Slowly, these structures change and we eventually start to see the emergence of more complex forms, giving way to what we know as evolution. If you read that abiogenesis site Reach linked to, it gives a fairly good explanation for how all of this is possible.

There have also been a few experiments done (I admit I know little about them) that have shown how various amino acids can form naturally (given the conditions of early Earth are replicated in terms of what interacts with the relevant chemicals) -- and all without the need of a creator.

[mhss1992]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

There have also been a few experiments done (I admit I know little about them) that have shown how various amino acids can form naturally (given the conditions of early Earth are replicated in terms of what interacts with the relevant chemicals) -- and all without the need of a creator.

Pasteur's experiment?

[MrRubix]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

I was referring to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%...rey_experiment

Again, I don't know a whole lot about it.

[Reach]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

There have also been a few experiments done (I admit I know little about them) that have shown how various amino acids can form naturally (given the conditions of early Earth are replicated in terms of what interacts with the relevant chemicals) -- and all without the need of a creator.

All of them can form naturally. Many primitive structures like ribosomes can self-assemble as well (actually, this was proven quite recently).

This seems intuitively impossible to many people, but there are many good, easy to understand examples of self assembly due to very simple physics and chemistry in nature.

For example, lipid bi-layers, which make up cellular membranes, self assemble and can do so spontaneously. They do this because it is thermodynamically favorable to do so, i.e. it maximizes the entropy of the system. This is counterintuitive, because an assembled membrane would appear less chaotic than a disassembled one, but this is not so. Water molecules aggregate around individual lipid molecules to form a low entropy system. The mathematical solution, as it turns out, to minimize the number of aggregated water molecules is for the lipids to create a membrane with the hydrophobic ends on the inside.

Viola, the optimal solution in the construction of a membrane happens naturally and spontaneously.

The exact same thing happens with many of these amino acids and primitive structures. They are optimal physical solutions to thermodynamic problems that would have arose in the presence of more dynamic systems arising on earth (volcanic activity, lightning, asteroid impacts, radiation etc).

Now then, that doesn't necessarily imply the absence of a 'divine force', but it means it isn't necessary.

[MrRubix]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

Great post, Reach -- good example.

Again, we don't say these structures happen as a result of chance. The laws of our universe and the properties of matter interact in such a way to result in equilibria/optimal solutions which eventually lead to more "complex" structures compared to a simpler "less functional" array of simplicity.

A very simple example may be a snowflake or crystal lattice. There are all sorts of interesting structures/mathematical properties we can derive, and yet we understand how these things form naturally. It just so happens that one such naturally-occurring item can be a structure that gives way to sentient life.

Again, echoing Reach's last sentence and reiterating a past point I made, I personally stick to Occam's Razor when it comes to explaining things. If there's no need for a creator, I won't assume there is one unless evidence shows otherwise. In absence of such evidence, any postulation to the unknown is merely a "maybe" and could be anything. We have a process for determining whether or not these "maybes" are true or not true, but some questions cannot be answered satisfactorily depending on their nature.

For instance, we can never properly test a hypothesis such as immortality or eternal aging -- because it cannot be demonstratively falsified (at what point do we claim someone is immortal if it's possible they could still die tomorrow?).

Likewise, we can never disprove a God because, to many, God tends to be defined as something outside of our realm of understanding. No matter what proof is amassed, "God" is always outside of it. Again, we can't disprove such a thing, so science is a bit helpless when it comes to "disproving" a God.

In the end, it comes down to what we personally wish to believe. I personally believe in what I can observe, test, and analyze evidence for. In the face of the unknown, all I can do is seek out answers -- but otherwise I have to simply say "I don't know yet, but I'd love to find out." Others are fine with assuming a "maybe" as true in absence of evidence -- as faith.

The main problem, in my eyes, is that all the arguments against creationism/God/etc tend to call for a fairly firm understanding of math, physics, biology, chemistry, physiology, and statistics/probability. It can get pretty complicated for many people to wrap their heads around, because the whole thing is a hugely loaded problem in terms of dissection. Whenever I try to debate this stuff with my mother, she refuses to listen because she doesn't want to hear about molecules and physics and statistics. It's "easier" to believe in a "soul" and that a "God" created everything. It seems only natural that when comparing an easy, unfalsifiable concept against a huge cluster**** of complex subjects, people will take the path of least resistance, especially when that path is also psychologically appealing. Fuse that into a social system where it's considered taboo to really even question religion, and you've got a firm stranglehold.

I've always found it truly amazing how things like Christianity/creationism/etc have been perpetuated for so long. Personally, I feel pretty isolated as an atheist. Most people I encounter are religious or believers in God for one reason or another -- I've rarely come across people in real life like Reach who shares many of the similar viewpoints that I do. But I do think that atheism will continue to grow as we learn more about our universe, since I suspect that it will evermore continue to show that God is not needed to explain anything.

[N.T.M.]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

NTM, they do not need to coexist. Like Reach said, abiogenesis is just one of many theories. Evolution doesn't require abiogenesis -- it requires life.

Ah, I see. Abiogenesis must be more specific than I thought. I'd presume that it's also somewhat subjective, which is why I thought it was necessary. Whatever then. Lets not argue over semantics.

Anyways, ad hominem is when you try to discredit someone's argument with something logically disconnected from the topic. "Why should we believe his opinion -- he's a troll, so we shouldn't listen to what he says" would be one such approach because it doesn't directly refute the argument and instead provides some other explanation. In this case, I still refuted your points and just flamed you in the process -- this isn't an ad hominem attack. You are simply incorrect to begin with.

Nope. I'm well aware of what an ad hominem is. I was referring to the instances of gratuitous criticism involved while evaded questions. So it would, in those instances, be correct.

Not trying to reignite anything. Just clarifying.

Assumptions:

1. Life is necessary for evolution to occur.
2. Abiogenesis is a theory of how life began.
3. Therefore...abiogenesis is necessary for evolution to occur.

Clearly 3 is a contradiction. LIFE is necessary for evolution to occur, but not abiogenesis given that is just a model of how life began.

Yes yes, I see. Like I was saying, abiogenesis is somewhat subjective as far as its definition. I've seen it defined numerous times as simply life arising from non-living matter. In that case any life following the big bang must constitute abiogenesis because its definition is so vague (but if that's not the case....).

Again, we're talking about semantics here. I see the logic.

There have also been a few experiments done (I admit I know little about them) that have shown how various amino acids can form naturally (given the conditions of early Earth are replicated in terms of what interacts with the relevant chemicals) -- and all without the need of a creator.

Again you're comparing amino acids to a prokaryotic cell.

That's equivalent to comparing a toothpick to an airliner. Completely objectively you must at least realize that that's laughable.

At any rate, we have a firm understanding of forces and interactions to the extent that it's foolish to say "it's so improbable for these types of structures to arise" -- an argument you posted earlier in this thread. It's akin to the fallacious "Tornado in a junkyard" argument -- it totally misses the point. We have forces that are VERY much deterministic. These forces, when present in a given environment containing materials and conditions NECESSARY FOR LIFE (imagine that?), can allow for self-replicating structures to occur. Slowly, these structures change and we eventually start to see the emergence of more complex forms, giving way to what we know as evolution. If you read that abiogenesis site Reach linked to, it gives a fairly good explanation for how all of this is possible.

I think it's odd how out of all I've read that the most compelling aspects were conveniently omitted.

Anyway, again, I'll read those links. Been busy lately. =/

It can get pretty complicated for many people to wrap their heads around, because the whole thing is a hugely loaded problem in terms of dissection.

lol That post just screams conceit.

[MrRubix]

Re: Metaphysics, intelligence, God

You are retarded.