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?

[Kenisaw]

Science does not agree with you. The images we see are the data stored in our memory system (the brain). Same thing for when we dream. There was even a study done that used an algorithm that predicted with 60% accuracy what people dreamed after they saw groups of images while awake via mapping of the MRI readouts from both awake and asleep portions of the study.

All of that cool stuff happened/happens AFTER consciousness began to exist. No one can explain the origin of consciousness, can they? Nope.

The origin of each person's consciousness occurs sometime after conception, and it ends at their death. Since a normally developed, functioning brain is always present in a conscious human, and there is no data or empirical evidence that consciousness can or does exist outside of the physical structure of the brain, the origins of consciousness are pretty easy to figure out.

Once you people realize that science, as good of a methodology as it is, has limitations and is not the end all/ be all of knowledge, the better.

Once you realize that claiming science fails because it hasn't done something yet while making baseless believer claims that have no empirical or rational support is not a real argument for your supernatural leanings, the better.

The brain is a data storage device that can recall information and replay it.

Sure, Mother Nature has built her very own VCR system in human beings...with our complex brains, we can fast forward, rewind, press play...and even STOP, if we want. Not bad for a mindless/blind process.

Human beings are not the only animal that has that system. Fortunately the quantum properties of certain groupings of molecules and physical structures allow for it to happen.

We will point out once again that there is zero evidence for a mind that exists separate of the physical brain in a human body

Speak for yourself. I am gladly not included in that "we". I have evidence that mental states could not ever have originated from physical states, thus, a mental state would have had to precede physical states....which happens to jive with Christianity with God being an un-embodied mind who preceded and created a physical world.

No coincidence.

I haven't seen this evidence you write about. I will peruse your other posts in here and see if I can find what you refer to without linking me to it or outright posting it in your reply to me...

[Kenisaw]

Cool. Give me the time, date, and location of the museum that will be showcasing life from nonliving material.

I will be there if that is what is going down.

Look in the mirror. You are life made up entirely of non-living material. I've pointed this out to you ad naseum. I guess it's OK to take a non-point and throw it up in a discussion with someone else, eh? Your technique has been noted...

[Kenisaw]

The "who" in this argument is the image-forming mechanism operating in my brain

But that can't be the case. The "who" (person that can see the image), can't be the same "thing" as the "image-forming mechanism operating in your brain".

This is clearly a case of X and Y, with X being unidentified.

, which is only able to create the image of a football in my conscious mind because I have seen one before with my eyeballs, which resulted in the creation of a memory.

That is fine, but I still need you to identify who is "seeing" the image inside of your brain.

When I close my eyes and think of a football, this memory is recalled and I "see" it, because my brain is able to form a mental image from this stored memory. Without a prior event of seeing a football, I would not be able to recall the image (or movie as the case may be ... I can easily imagine a football flying through the air or tumbling through the goal posts because I have seen those events as well and can recall versions of them in all kinds of forms, or form new scenarios very much as anyone does when dreaming).

Again, that is all fine and dandy...but I still need to know who is this "I" in the scenario.

Whenever I see anything with my eyes in real time (as opposed to recalling a memory to create the image), the production of an image in my brain is a similar process. Light enters through my pupil and is focused onto my retina where it activates rods and cones, and electrical signals are generated along my optic nerve. These signals enter my visual cortex which inverts the upside down image on my retina and I "see" whatever it is my eyes were looking at. This image is produced in my brain via neuronal activity, and whether it is a real time image processed through the eye > retina > optic nerve > visual cortex path, or via memory recall from prior experience, the actual perception of the image is ultimately the same ... it is a physical process by the material parts of the brain (ie. neural networks).

So the answer to "who can see the image if the material parts of your brain can't see it", is that there is no "who" or "invisible person." The material parts of the brain produce various electrical signals and chemical reactions that combine to create the perception of an image in our heads. How could it be otherwise?

You are saying that there is no "who" or invisible person...yet you are using this "first-person" terminology of "I". The "I" IS the "who". But "who" is the "I"?

And by no means and I playing word games here. This is, what I think, a legitimate question...so legitimate in fact; the entire CASE is based upon this "identity", or lack thereof (on naturalism).

His explanation is completely satisfactory. He is explaining to you how a brain/sensory system collects and stores the input received from eyes through the optical nerve to the occipital lobe, and then stored in memory. The image pulled up from memory of a football in your mind's eye is no different than the image you "see" after your brain has processed the visual input from looking at a football. In both instances your brain is giving you the resulting data, the only difference being whether your brain interpreted it from visual data or it pulled it out of memory from data it stored.

The "I" could have been stated as you, or Donald Trump, or Kenisaw. The point is that it is a brain and how it operates, regardless of whose brain it is we are talking about.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 338 by For_The_Kingdom]

All of that cool stuff happened/happens AFTER consciousness began to exist. No one can explain the origin of consciousness, can they? Nope.

Not to mention the intentional mental states of the brain, which I am bringing to Dr.NoGod's attention.

Once you people realize that science, as good of a methodology as it is, has limitations and is not the end all/ be all of knowledge, the better.

I think your conundrum is that you don't appreciate that a conscious mind is nothing more than the operation of neural networks in the brain. With sensory inputs (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste), and memory storage functions of various types (short term, long term, sensory), these neural networks (ie. the brain) function to organize and store information to create a conscious state in an individual that has a brain advanced enough to carry out these tasks.

My dog has a brain that can carry out many of these tasks, and he is certainly aware of his surroundings and acts on things he sees, hears, smells, etc. He just doesn't have the amount of neocortex that a human does and is missing the specific brain sections needed to process symbolic thought like a human can, but he is certainly a conscious being. I also have an acquarium with fish that have brains that are less developed than the dog, and no doubt worms in the back yard with even more primitive brains.

It is easy for me to see how brains started as simple nerve bundles in earlier life forms (eg. arthropods), and then progressively became more centralized and complicated over time to perform more advanced functions. We humans still have a'hind brain" that deals with the basic bodily functions (breathing, operating the blood pump, etc.) so that these functions occur even if we are not conscious. This hind brain is very similar to the brains of simple animals. The huge expansion in the neocortex (which only mammals have) in humans is responsible for our exceptional ability for symbolic thought, language, spatial reasoning, etc. But these abilities do not need any divine explanations ... they are the direct result of additional brain regions (cerebral cortex) that have been tacked onto earlier brain forms, adding more functionality and the ability to become an "I."

[For_The_Kingdom]

The origin of each person's consciousness occurs sometime after conception, and it ends at their death.

The question is; how do you go from a point at which there was no sentient life whatsoever, to sentient life EVERYWHERE? What is the origin of consciousness, period?

Since a normally developed, functioning brain is always present in a conscious human

Right, but again...if you go back far enough in time you will get to a point at which there was no conscious humans to begat MORE conscious humans...so the question immediately becomes where did the consciousness of the first humans come from, which go the action started for all other conscious humans.

, and there is no data or empirical evidence that consciousness can or does exist outside of the physical structure of the brain, the origins of consciousness are pretty easy to figure out.

There is also no empirical evidence that suggests that sentient life can come from nonliving material, but most naturalists seem to have no problem accepting that much.

This is the taxi cab fallacy.

Once you realize that claiming science fails because it hasn't done something yet

When you try to do something, but after trying, you are unable to do it...isn't that..failing?

while making baseless believer claims that have no empirical or rational support is not a real argument for your supernatural leanings, the better.

It is rational to me.

Human beings are not the only animal that has that system.

Fortunately the quantum properties of certain groupings of molecules and physical structures allow for it to happen.

*Fortunately, an extremely intelligent, cosmic creator with astronomical powers and abilities allow for it to happen.

I haven't seen this evidence you write about. I will peruse your other posts in here and see if I can find what you refer to without linking me to it or outright posting it in your reply to me...

I've been discussing this particular stuff off and on with a few people (Bust Nak, in particular) over the course of the past year. A thread needs to be created on the topic.

[For_The_Kingdom]

Look in the mirror. You are life made up entirely of non-living material.

We are talking about the sentient part of me, though. Lets not set up straw mans and red herrings, here.

I've pointed this out to you ad naseum. I guess it's OK to take a non-point and throw it up in a discussion with someone else, eh? Your technique has been noted...

I did what?

[For_The_Kingdom]

His explanation is completely satisfactory. He is explaining to you how a brain/sensory system collects and stores the input received from eyes through the optical nerve to the occipital lobe, and then stored in memory. The image pulled up from memory of a football in your mind's eye is no different than the image you "see" after your brain has processed the visual input from looking at a football. In both instances your brain is giving you the resulting data, the only difference being whether your brain interpreted it from visual data or it pulled it out of memory from data it stored.

Sure, that is a fine explanation as to how memory works. But that isn't the question. The question is; who is the culprit of this first-person view?

So far, I've yet to see an adequate answer to this question.

The "I" could have been stated as you, or Donald Trump, or Kenisaw. The point is that it is a brain and how it operates, regardless of whose brain it is we are talking about.

SMH.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 345 by For_The_Kingdom]

Why is it you just go 'shaking my head' SMH as if that is a rebuttal to a point someone else has made? It literally is nothing more than "I disagree" but without a rebuttal or counter-point or explanation.
I as a reader don't care that you disagree with Kenisaw. I want to know if you can raise a cogent counter-point to him.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 343 by For_The_Kingdom]

There is also no empirical evidence that suggests that sentient life can come from nonliving material, but most naturalists seem to have no problem accepting that much.

To date, all examples of sentient life we have are every single human being who has ever lived.
Every single human being who has ever lived is a life-form whose ultimate elemental/particle composition are well non-living.
Again, I had a thread discussing this very detail and I don't think you ever replied to it.
viewtopic.php?t=31973

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 343 by For_The_Kingdom]

Right, but again...if you go back far enough in time you will get to a point at which there was no conscious humans to begat MORE conscious humans...so the question immediately becomes where did the consciousness of the first humans come from, which go the action started for all other conscious humans.

It sounds like your position is that a "conscious human" describes only a modern homo sapien, and that these creatures could not have evolved (including their brains as part of the process) from slightly less "conscious" versions of similar creatures.

Human intelligence did not just suddenly appear from the birth of one fully formed individual who kick started the process. If you look at the brain size and structure in the sequence of hominins that eventually evolved into homo sapiens it is very clear from the fossil record that things went from smaller and simpler to larger and more complex over a period of several million years. In humans, about 75% of our entire brain is neocortex, which is responsible for higher order brain functions like language, symbolic thought, cognition, etc. This is what provides humans with the huge intelligence advantage that we have over any other animal (so far).

Your implication that a fully modern human being had to exist first in order to produce offspring with the same characteristics does not jive with what we know about how humans did arise on this planet. We evolved from a great ape predecessor over a long period of time and through many intermediates in a very "bushy" evolutionary tree, and as part of that process the brain became more and more complex in structure, and physically larger, and (if this makes sense) more sentient and conscious ... which is the same thing as saying we acquired the capacity for higher levels of intelligence allowing us to ponder such concepts.