Abiogenesis and Probabilities

[DrNoGods]

I'm creating a new thread here to continue debate on a post made by EarthScience guy on another thread (Science and Religion > Artificial life: can it be created?, post 17). This post challenged probability calculations in an old Talkorigins article that I had linked in that thread:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

Are the arguments (on creationist views) and probabilities presented reasonable in the Talkorigins article? If not, why not?

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Swami in post #94]

1. The assumption that Nature is mechanical, or machine-like. Animals are machines, plants are machines and we are machines, our brains being the equivalent of genetically programmed computers.

2. Matter is unconscious. The Universe, Nature, our bodies, are all made of unconscious matter. For some strange reason our brains became conscious, and that is a major problem for materialist science. Consciousness should not exist.

3. The laws of Nature are fixed, from the Big Bang (the first explosion!) until the end of time when all dissolves back into nothing.





5. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same. Again, ever since the Big Bang until the end of time.

6. Biological inheritance is only material, it is all genetic or epigenetic.

7. Memories are stored as material traces inside the brain. All your memories are inside your head, stored in nerve endings or phosphor-related proteins. No one knows how, but the assumption is that they are all in the brain.

8. Your mind is inside your head, it is only an aspect of the electrical activity of the brain.

9. All psychic phenomena is illusory. It appears to exist, but it doesn’t. The mind is inside the head and cannot have any effect on the outside world.

10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that truly works. Alternative and complementary therapies may appear to work, but that’s only because people have got well anyway, or it’s due to the placebo effect.

I would argue that these dogmas or laws are what make the universe in which we live rational. If the universe did not have these dogmas or laws we would be living in an irrational environment. If what you are proposing in true then the universe would not be rational.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #99]

Why do you say that? Sand particles are close together, very close together so why don't static electicity and gravity hold together sand particles on the Earth then?

But they are not orbiting a star or large planet in a near vacuum for millions of years constantly bumping into other particles of all types and sizes. Sand in a desert is a very different environment than particles in an accretion disk orbiting a star.

But I can understand why you would want to try to pivot the conversation. Your theory of planet formation is not faring too well right now.

I don't have any theories of planet formation. I linked to some current ideas and discussion, but I'm a spectroscopist by trade and not a planetary formation scientist (who I'm confident are searching for answers ... probably not including a god creation from nothing).

But maybe I can turn the conversation a little bit more. And let's say that deep time and evolution are correct and millions of years from after all men have long since died off and now an intelligent breed of chickens develops. And they see a desk or a car and they wonder if this is a natural occurrence or if this was made by intelligent beings who lived long before them. How would they prove that it was not a chance occurrence but that intelligent beings made the object that we call a car? They might call it Chacar. The only way they could prove that it was not made by random chance was to prove that it could have been made no other way.

This is basically Paley's watchmaker argument. If the intelligent chickens also found sleds, Roman charriots, horse drawn carriages, a few Model Ts, along with a Tesla, they might conclude that the Tesla was the result of centuries of prior "evolution" of devices to move stuff and not just created as a fully formed Tesla with no prior "ancestors." Planets exist in large quantities and they had to develop somehow. The job of science is to continue to come up with hypotheses, make observations, analyze the data, refine the hypotheses, etc. until the correct answer is found. Just because that process isn't complete for some specific subject does not mean the default answer is a god creation. But that is the leap of faith required to accept that planets were simply created form nothing on "day 4."

Again I am using peer-review papers to prove Walt Brown's theory. Walt Brown predicted large amounts of CO2 in the underground chambers.

Walt Brown's Hydroplate theory is anything but proven. Here is just one debunk:

http://paleo.cc/ce/wbrown.htm

And what (and where) are the "underground chambers"?

[Swami]

"Western" science (whatever that means ... modern science is practiced worldwide and not just in western countries)

I make these distinctions because there are differences between how science is practiced in Western cultures and Eastern cultures. In Western cultures, scientists are hostile towards religion and tradition. In the Eastern cultures, it is not so much. Scientists respect tradition and religion and are willing to integrate it into their worldview. Have you read the The Tao of Physics? Written by Physicist Fritjof Capra. He was not raised in the Eastern culture but has learned Eastern philosophy and has no problem integrating it with science. Many less known scientists in the Eastern cultures have no problem doing the same.

has spent centuries trying to uncover the mechanism of consciousness, and slow progress has been made along the way. Just because science cannot yet provide a full explanation for the mechanism of consciousness does not mean it is ignoring the question or not trying to answer it.

You are missing the big picture. Studying thoughts and brain waves is not the study of consciousness. I have explained many times how consciousness can exist without a brain, thoughts, feelings, the senses, and even the entire body. Scientists have not discovered consciousness in its pure form. Pure consciousness is much more than this. There is a reason that everyone has an innate sense of being more than their body, the feeling of being part of something much greater.


What if matter is made of consciousness, just like a dream is made of consciousness?

Consciousness is not mine or yours; it is the nature of reality, just as consciousness is the nature of dream, in which individual characters can appear. Therefore the brain is not needed for consciousness in general, although it certainly appears in strong association with a local identity like you and I.
- Anoop Kumar, MD

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to Swami in post #104]

There is a reason that everyone has an innate sense of being more than their body, the feeling of being part of something much greater.

Since I've personally never had such a sense I don't understand why or how this kind of thing comes about. It just seems so obvious that consciousness must be an emergent property of a functioning brain that I cannot see how another description makes any sense until there is some evidence for it.

Can you give an example of something that possesses consciousness (aware of its existence) that does not have a working brain? Or, alternatively, an example of something that does not possess a working brain that does possess consciousness?

[Diagoras]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #102]

Thanks for that link. I only managed to properly read down to the section on polystrate fossils before starting to skim later sections. The author's done a very comprehensive job of pointing out the myriad of problems that Brown's theory has.

A highly informative (and entertaining) read.

[Noose001]

1.It's not just 'amino acids' but L- configured amino acids or left handed amino acids that supports life/supported by life

2.The environment has to be 'physiological'. X-rays, H2O e.t.c are not the kind of environment where biomolecules and Biochemical process would proceed. Molecules would be generated and then destroyed. Even within cells, generation of biomolecules is greatly timed and controlled, otherwise they become harmful.

3.Time is never a justification for abiogenesis or evolution. I believe in 'Presentism', which means the past and future are not real, only the present is. So abiogenesis never happened

Forgive my grammar.

[Bradskii]

[Replying to Bradskii in post #84]

Exactly right.

So what is happening to over 3 million deleterious mutations that Kimura says there should be? If there is a 0.1% difference between you and your wife that means that either you or your wife has over 3 million deleterious mutations. According to Kimura.

You're not even following your own arguments. You said this:

'Kimura... say that deleterious mutations are ten times more likely to be definitely harmful than neutral. I am not sure what Bradskii says. So that means that either every generation 164 deleterious mutations were added to the genetic load...'

So there's 164. Not 3 million. You are throwing figures around like confetti without any idea of what they mean.

Let me ask you a simple question: Why are you trying to use science to deny something that you believe is not scientific?

[Tcg]

3.Time is never a justification for abiogenesis or evolution. I believe in 'Presentism', which means the past and future are not real, only the present is. So abiogenesis never happened

Could this reasoning also be applied to your birth? If so, what bearing would it have on your existence?


Tcg

[Noose001]

[Replying to Tcg in post #108]

Yes it does apply to everything.

That particular time i was born was 'present', in that very moment. It has since grown to be past because it is the present that grows into the future and leaves behind the past. But:

i. Past and future are only references made possible by the present. Just like up and down, in the absence of up, there's no down. If you do away with the present, then the past and the future also disappear.

ii. You can only invoke the past or predict the future in the present. So the past and future are not independent of the present therefore only the present is real.

iii. The present is an experience by a mind. Means that there was never a time period that was never experienced by a mind. If things happened without the experience of a mind, then those moments could never be refered to as 'present', but what else could they be refered to?! Past? Future?

Reality is a creation of the mind, in the present only (That's like a 100th of a millisecond). It is life that creates the universe and not the otherway.

[Tcg]

[Replying to Tcg in post #108]

Yes it does apply to everything.

That particular time i was born was 'present', in that very moment. It has since grown to be past because it is the present that grows into the future and leaves behind the past. But:

i. Past and future are only references made possible by the present. Just like up and down, in the absence of up, there's no down. If you do away with the present, then the past and the future also disappear.

ii. You can only invoke the past or predict the future in the present. So the past and future are not independent of the present therefore only the present is real.

iii. The present is an experience by a mind. Means that there was never a time period that was never experienced by a mind. If things happened without the experience of a mind, then those moments could never be refered to as 'present', but what else could they be referd to?! Past? Future?

Reality is a creation of the mind, in the present only (That like a 100th of a millisecond). It os lofe that creates the universe and not the otherway.

So, were you at some point born or were you not?

If you admit you were you acknowledge past events. If you deny that you were, how are you present now?



Tcg