Abiogenesis

[liamconnor]

Again, I rarely wander over to the sciences and more rarely set up an argument. Not my forte.

But I recall reading that a famous atheist became a theist (not a Christian) because of the problem of abiogenesis.

Now, as I understand the term, it refers to the theory that life can come from non-life.

In simplistic terms, a rock can, over time, produce (on its own, nothing added to it; the development happens "within") cells.


Question:

Do I understand the term "abiogenesis"?


Based on my (or your corrected version's) definition, has it been reproduced by scientists?

[For_The_Kingdom]

Okay, let me clarify my statement. Your contention is that naturalism cannot in principle explain the origin of consciousness.

A contention that I defended well and that you have very little to contest about.

Meh, doesn't change a thing I said. Both are still naturalistic.

Can you give a natural law which states that abiogenesis can/will occur given X and/or Y conditions?

Nope. I guess it must not be too naturalistic, then.

How so?

If you don't know by now, you will never, never, never know.

So tell me explicitly what you meant.

Everything is in the post.

Well there are also the links that you could look at, but you were expecting more.

Because anyone can post links to support their points. I expect more than that. Observational evidence would be a good start, but we both know that aint happening.

No good. You don't need to know here I live, I know better than to give away anything online that could lead to my identify.

LOL smh. Aight bruh.

I will instead give you the number of a natural history museum I found on Google: Field Museum of Natural History: +1 312-922-9410

Ok, and I will call them and ask them "is there any "life from nonliving material stuff going on there", and tell you what they tell me. Cool?

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 398 by For_The_Kingdom]

And I am saying "Sorry charlie, but even given 4 trillion years, those faces wouldn't get there. Mother Nature isn't a sculptor."

I would not argue with that at all. Dating the rocks making up Mt. Rushmore would only tell you that the magma that solidified to make them was a certain age (and carbon dating would be no good for that ... it is only useful for organic things living within the last 50,000 years or so because the half life of carbon-14 is only about 5,730 years ... you'd have to use other isotopes like U-238 which decays to Pb-206, or U-235 which decays to Pb-207 ... the half life of U-238 is about 4.5 billion years so covers the bases on time).

Then to figure out when the faces were sculpted you'd have to look at the surface modifications and weathering, study the tool marks and what might have been responsible for those and what creature might have the technology to do it, figure out it must be humans, then hit (these days) Wikipedia to find out that it was sculpted by Gutzon Borglum and his son and the work was done between 1927 and 1939 ... with plenty of photos and videos available to confirm it. There is no claim that "anything" can happen given enough time., but that specific events can happen which require very long periods of time, and which are deduced from supporting physical evidence.

Wrong based on whose standards? Yours? How is your standard the correct standard over anyone else's?

This response was in reference to ISIS and their activities being right or wrong ... and I'll stand by my answer of "wrong" on that point not as a standard I am defining, but as a standard most of humanity abides by based as far as I can tell from the world's response to them.

Do we have the answer as to how you will get consciousness squirted in there if you eventually start with a prokaryote?

I think the answer to this is yes. The prokaryote eventually becomes a eukaryote, then a multicellular eukaryote, then a bilateral eukaryote, then a vertebrate, then a mammal, then a primate with a brain that is about 350 cm3 and 50% neocortex, then a homo sapien with a brain that is about 1300 cm3 and 75-80% neocortex (leaving out a great number of other steps along this path of course). Depending on where you define consciousness squirting in (homo erectus? homo heidelbergensis? homo sapien?) you get it somewhere in the last measly 2 million years. If it is defined as when religious beliefs first appeared then maybe 500,000 years ago, and if complex language is the defining stage them maybe only 100,000 years ago or less. But there is abundant evidence that intelligence in humans was a progressive process ... it didn't suddenly appear as if humans were poofed into existence one day fully formed as we are now.

That is the complete opposite of what you are saying. You are saying that things were chaotic from the beginning and began to get very, very, VERY organized and orderly over time...which would be like an explosion at a paint factory (in very slow motion) giving you the "School of Athens" painting (my favorite painting of all time, btw) as an end result. That is the complete opposite of what you are saying. You are saying that things were chaotic from the beginning and began to get very, very, VERY organized and orderly over time...which would be like an explosion at a paint factory (in very slow motion) giving you the "School of Athens" painting (my favorite painting of all time, btw) as an end result.

Ah ... this sounds exactly like the "tornado in a junkyard creating a 747" argument. I didn't argue chaos to order from that standpoint ... I am arguing relative simplicity (prokaryote or earlier) to relative complexity (primates) which is what the fossil record shows and which modern genetics also supports. A human is far more complex and "less organized" than a prokaryote.

[Bust Nak]

A contention that I defended well and that you have very little to contest about.

Opinion differs on that, more to the point, you were wrong when you stated your contention is the cause, the means, the method of consciousness/blowing air/visual images.

Can you give a natural law which states that abiogenesis can/will occur given X and/or Y conditions?

No. There is no such law.

I guess it must not be too naturalistic, then.

Why make that jump in logic?

If you don't know by now, you will never, never, never know.

Okay. I will take that as another win.

Everything is in the post.

Not explicit enough.

Because anyone can post links to support their points. I expect more than that. Observational evidence would be a good start...

Which is why I suggested going to a museum.

Ok, and I will call them and ask them "is there any "life from nonliving material stuff going on there", and tell you what they tell me. Cool?

May I suggest you try being less flippant? Try asking if they "have anything on Earth history related to abiogenesis on display."

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 395 by For_The_Kingdom]

Non-sentient life = my couch.

Can you give me a definition please, instead of just an example? I really would like to know just what you consider non-life to be, and why. Why do you consider your couch to be non-life? I don't know what your couch is made of. It could be leather, meaning it was alive at one point, but is no longer.

I am talking about the sentient part of me, which is my consciousness.

Not all that is alive, is conscious, or sentient. Think of it like a Venn diagram.

You missed the point, sir. The point is, unbelievers condemn God and judge him based on what they consider to be acts of savage brutality

Which is the only standard we all have.

my point is simple; it can't be any more savage/brutal than animals being slaughtered at the slaughterhouse and when you are stuffing hamburgers or fried chicken down your throat.

For your information, I don't eat burgers or fried chicken. Also, this is a non-sequitur. It is possible for humanity to do something on a large scale, and have it still be wrong. The Nazis during World War II committed murder on a very large scale.

On naturalism, we are nothing but animals...and in the animal kingdom, animals kill each other all of the time.

Not all the time, but generally speaking, yes. The carnivores kill other animals because that is how they survive. They literally have no other options, assuming they don't want to starve to death.

So on atheism, God is killing animals (humans)...and in "real life", humans are killing animals (slaughterhouse).

Incorrect. On atheism, we don't believe there is a god. There is a belief held by other people, such as yourself, that there is a god.
Besides, are you really trying to argue that it's okay for God to do something because humans do it too?
Not all humans are meat-eaters. I know of some vegan atheists on Youtube who put out content on a regular basis. What does the meat-eating practices of the majority of humanity have to do with them?

So there is no difference, unless the atheist would like to believe that human life has more value than other "animal" life, which he can't logically justify.

Neither can yourself, good sir, in your theism. In your theism, God selected the Hebrews as his favoured, special race, above other races of humans and above other animals.

Now, on Christian theism, human beings are NOT animals and our lives ARE more valued than animal life

Which is why the Old Testament describes the Hebrews as waging war at God's command against other tribes...

but I don't see any Christian law and/or principle that forbids bigamy.

Which is where you fall down. You apparently need to have it as a law before you'll consider it as being 'wrong' in some sense. Do you need a line from Jesus saying "Thou shalt not have two brides" or something like that, or are you able to reason it out for yourself that maybe, just maybe, someone having two wives is not a good idea?

Take a look at myself. I do not steal, I do not murder and yet...I'm not a Christian or Jew. I don't follow the Ten Commandments.

Excellent.So based on that, life appears to be objectively meaningless

You appear to not know what the word 'objective' means. Please look it up in a dictionary.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 398 by For_The_Kingdom]

That is what we are dealing with whenever the "time" element is thrown in there. The implication is that "anything can happen, given enough time".....but no, uh uh, still aint happening.

Wrong. You and I have been debating for a long, and I've seen responses you've had with other atheists/skeptics on the topic, and to my knowledge, NOT ONCE has any of us said that anything can happen, given enough time.
Certain things can happen, like the evolution of single celled organisms to multi celled organisms like us, over a long period of time, but NOT Mount Rushmore (which we know for a fact was designed).

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 398 by For_The_Kingdom]

An objective standard is needed for something to be considered objectively wrong. Theists argue that the objective standard is God.

Here's the thing.
1) This immediately shows you don't know what the word 'objective' means
2) How do you know that the entity you are arguing for (God in this case) IS that objective standard?

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 398 by For_The_Kingdom]

An objective standard is needed for something to be considered objectively wrong. Theists argue that the objective standard is God.

Here's the thing.
1) This immediately shows you don't know what the word 'objective' means
2) How do you know that the entity you are arguing for (God in this case) IS that objective standard?

Is Kingdom talking about the same objective god creature that used to say slavery was a go, but now it's all about the Golden Rule? Sounds like that god's moral compass is discretionary if you ask me...

[Clownboat]

No, you see, there is no evidence for a global flood nor this great genocide of life on the planet.

No, you see, there is no evidence regarding the notion that life came from nonlife,

I submit that it must take the quality of 'being lazy' in order to maintain such beliefs. Oh the work us non-believers must do on behalf of the believer (not all of course).
How can life emerge from nonliving matter? UNC scientists find new evidence.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0 ... w-evidence

order came from chaos,

You seem so self assured, but when I examine your claims, they are just falsehoods. Any idea why?
ORDER FROM CHAOS: "Imagine you have twenty-six small pieces of paper with one letter from the English alphabet on each side of each piece. Now throw these imaginary pieces into the air and wait for them to land. See how many English words you can find in the jumble. If you find none, gather them up and throw them again. Eventually you will find a word and if this process is repeated enough times you will find, inevitably, every word in the English language."

intelligence came from nonintelligence,

I'm not sure what work you want me to do for you here. Can you be more specific, or better yet, do the work on your own? Nevermind, it's easier to just claim a god did it.

language came from muteness,

Straw man. Who argues language came from muteness?
Even bacteria communicate so I'm at a loss as to what empty claim you are now making.

the universe came from nothing, etc.

If energy cannot be created nor destroyed, why do you claim that the universe came from nothing.

So before you go talking about what there is no evidence for regarding the Bible, focus yourself on the lack of evidence for your own religion (naturalism).

And a great example of pride coming before the fall.
When you believe the gods did it all, like yourself, your work is done. Knowing this, it is hard to blame you for not being more educated on these matters. Why would you after all?

If you want me to believe in your genocidial god, you will need to provide evidence for it.

Provide me evidence that sentient life can come from nonliving material.

Done above (and there is more, but I warn you, it will require effort on your part). Will you now provide evidence for your genocidal god?

Personally, I can only hope that it is false just like all the other gods.

Personally, I can only hope that mankind didn't originate from slime crawling out of primordial soup.

I don't think this statement is true. For example, if you were raised to believe in a god that provided you with eternal bliss after you die that used evolution to get to man. I don't see what problem you would have with it.

as even you probably agree that all the gods are false. Well, all but your own of course.

I also agree that all the women out there aren't my mother. Well, all women but my own mother of course.

Notice the dodge readers? Rather than acknowledge the logical argument being made, he would prefer to divert attention. Pretty much what he has been doing all post so far. His failure is that he would argue that the gods are false, except for his, while no one we know of argues that all women are their mothers.

You don't know why the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation is wrong?

No, not on atheism/naturalism..no.

Then you probably don't understand atheism or naturalism. Either way, please read just above to see what I actually asked you. Why all the ducking and diving? Why can't your arguments stand on their own?
Also, do "I" know what a rhetorical question is?

You would seriously not see anything wrong if for example some dictator decided to kill off all Eskimos?

No, not on atheism/naturalism.

Not the question I asked you. More evidence that your arguments cannot stand on their own I would suggest.

Do you see anything wrong with the alpha male of a lion pride deciding to kill off all hyenas? If you do, tell that to the lion.

Um.... I know this will go against what your holy book says, but animals actually cannot talk. Sorry.
But yes, if I created a planet, I would consider leaving out the need to eat others animal or the needless killing you mention. But I'm not an all powerful god, so how could I possibly understand the need for such needless killing?

What about all of the insects you've killed in your life...or how about all of the animal meat that you've consumed in your life? Are you a vegan? Vegetarian? Are you a member and/or supporter of PETA?

What about them? No I'm not a vegetarian.

Or do you just care about human life, and disregarding all other forms of life?

I care about all life. Human life has more 'value' than a parasite that swims up your urinary tract though IMO. Don't you agree?

If you are not a vegetarian, vegan, or a member of PETA, you are not practicing what you preach...because on naturalism, a human life has no more intrinsic value than the life of a fly...yet, we kill insects all the time, and we eat the meat of animals all the time.

When I argue such things, feel free to let me have it. Currently though, your are still on a dodge attempt from having to discuss your genocidal god concept.

Naturalists just simply don't have a dog in the fight it comes to the subject of morality.

You're getting way off topic here? Would you prefer to talk about naturalism instead of your genocidal god?

Only when mothers and fathers stop telling their children that there is a god out there that loves them so much as to send them to heaven, yet hates another so much as to send them to a hell will we ever stop the violence and bloodshed.
I beg you to keep such teachings away from my children.

I will stop telling them once it stops being true.

Once you can show that you speak the truth, I'll be out there on the roof tops with you. Until then, shouldn't we do our due diligence and find out if the claims are even true or not?

I honestly don't know.

My point exactly.

You wished to make the point that I don't know how many flies I have killed in all my years on this earth? Odd point don't you think? Nothing you want to expound on with this great point of yours?

No atheist I have ever met has made this claim.

It was a statement..

More arguing with the English language than actual points I see. Is a statement not a claim now? What theists will go through to not address points.

Science, not atheism is what determined that humans are animals.

Not necessarily. Not every scientist has to agree that humans are animals...but every atheist does.

Humans are animals.
"Modern humans (Homo sapiens, primarily ssp. Homo sapiens sapiens) are the only extant members of Hominina tribe (or human tribe), a branch of the tribe Hominini belonging to the family of great apes."
The only reason to not accept this that I know of is because a human animal is using the reasoning of a human animals from thousands of years ago over the knowledge human animals now have.

That was a whole lotta wrong in one post don't you think?

I would tell you to correct me if I'm wrong...but you can't correct me.

Correct, but that is only because you cannot reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into in the first place. I debate to sharpen my own thinking and I trust readers learn here as well. Forthekingdom, unless or until your beliefs directly harm those around me, I don't debate for your benefit.

I am sorry to hear you say this. Please stay away from my children as I don't want them to believe in any gods that the believers can justify genocide because of a nonsensical idea that a god needs human sacrifice for atonement.

LOL. "Daddy, you said that killing is wrong, but you just ate a greasy hamburger which came from a cow that was slaughtered at the slaugtherhouse. How is killing wrong when you are eating the meat of an animal that was killed".

Now we have a believer down playing such evil as genocide by comparing it to eating a hamburger. Forthekingdom, you make what I do here far to easy.

Clownboat: "Honey, killing is only wrong when it comes to humans killing other humans. The cow that was slaughtered in order for me to enjoy this burger, its life is insignificant. It is ok to butcher animals for the purpose of food consumption. Now, go to your room for having the nerve to question my blatant act of hypocrisy."

Do you have something on your chest? Do you need to start a topic on eating the meat of other animals? I recognize that this is how the world works and that if I were an all powerful god, I would not have created it in such a way. The irony is strong with this one.

[rikuoamero]

Personally, I can only hope that mankind didn't originate from slime crawling out of primordial soup.

I'm personally okay with this. I have no problem believing that my ancestors were single celled organisms (and their precursors).
It'd be great if my every single one of my human ancestors was a renowned king or hero, but if the evidence indicates otherwise...why should I let my hopes and desires cloud my judgement?

FtK...when you debate evolution, is it your thought that those of us who are of the evolution camp are saying, implying or thinking that we WANT to be descendants of simpler life-forms? That this is what we hope is true?

[For_The_Kingdom]

Opinion differs on that, more to the point, you were wrong when you stated your contention is the cause, the means, the method of consciousness/blowing air/visual images.

No, I wasn't wrong. The question is "what is the cause?" (means, method, etc).

No. There is no such law.

Then abiogenesis is scientifically unverifiable and any acceptance of it as a natural theory is speculation at best.

Why make that jump in logic?

Why not?

Okay. I will take that as another win.

SMH.

Not explicit enough.

Actually, it was.

Which is why I suggested going to a museum.

I want observational evidence of abiogenesis.

May I suggest you try being less flippant? Try asking if they "have anything on Earth history related to abiogenesis on display."

But that's not what I want. I want to see abiogenesis in action. I'm sorry for wanting observational evidence for natural occurrences.