Did Abiogenesis Actually Happen?

ZeusAres42

@Factfinder, 

I think the issue here is that @just_sayin is attempting to employ scientific methods, inherently designed to explore the material world, to conclude that an immaterial entity created life. He simultaneously uses science to argue that it can resolve questions inherently based on scientific inquiry, while also arguing that it cannot answer questions arising from this same inquiry. Essentially, 'just_sayin' appears to be using science to support the idea that something beyond the scope of science (immaterial) initiated life and to assert that science itself is capable of answering questions derived from its own domain. At the same time, he also argues that science is not capable of doing so from its own domain. I don't think he gets the irony.

And, no this is not AI generated (I would admit so if it was). 

Feel free to check any of the following AI content detectors: 

• https://copyleaks.com/ai-content-detector
• https://gptzero.me/
• https://writer.com/ai-content-detector
• https://www.scribbr.com/ai-detector/
• https://quillbot.com/ai-content-detector
• https://undetectable.ai/
• https://www.zerogpt.com/
• https://contentatscale.ai/ai-content-detector/
• https://detecting-ai.com/
• https://crossplag.com/ai-content-detector/

MayCaesar

@ZeusAres42

We need an AI model specifically tasked with writing texts that successfully pass the AI content detector tests. Let the first AI Civil War begin!

Factfinder

@ZeusAres42

No he doesn't see the irony at all though he has tried to make a point of irony accusing atheists of not wanting to use science to debunk his code = coder arguments. All the while refusing the reality that seeing the design in an automobile is possible  because it has all the trade marks of the designer who is not actively hiding for some dumb reason.  

ZeusAres42

@MayCaesar

MayCaesar said:

@ZeusAres42

We need an AI model specifically tasked with writing texts that successfully pass the AI content detector tests. Let the first AI Civil War begin!

This is an issue that universities need to address. In all fairness, given enough time and effort, all AI content detectors can be manipulated by humans to pass their checks. I wouldn't go to such lengths for a casual debate site discussion, lol. AI content detectors, like AIs in general, are not infallible. As Peter Boghossian recently discussed in one of his videos, the most reliable method of detecting plagiarism in universities involves human effort.

ZeusAres42

Factfinder said:

@ZeusAres42

No he doesn't see the irony at all though he has tried to make a point of irony accusing atheists of not wanting to use science to debunk his code = coder arguments. All the while refusing the reality that seeing the design in an automobile is possible  because it has all the trade marks of the designer who is not actively hiding for some dumb reason.  

@Factfinder ;

Another observation I've made, not just with him but with several other theists as well, is this attempt to blend creationist arguments such as the Kalam Cosmological, Ontological, and Fine-Tuning arguments with theism.

These arguments are, at the very least, fair. I don't agree with them, and they have all been proven unsuccessful, but still, they are at least fair, perhaps even plausible. I admit I might have also been a bit harsh on William Lane Craig before, only for singling him out when it's not just him; he's primarily known for showcasing these arguments on YouTube and other platforms over the years, albeit from a perspective formed over several decades of indoctrination.

Moreover, these arguments seem more akin to a deistic position. That is fine, but a significant issue arises when they begin to merge these arguments with their specific theistic religions. And I am pretty sure this can virtually be done by anyone from any theistic/polytheistic position to convincingly argue that their version is the true one.

MayCaesar

@ZeusAres42

I have a pretty strong and contrarian opinion on this: rather than discouraging the use of AIs, I believe that it should become an integral component of one's study process. This is the future, and limiting the use of such powerful tools during studies - when at work virtually everyone uses them - seems counter-productive to me. Heck, even as I am typing this, I have a chat with ChatGPT open in the next tab where we are working together towards optimizing an algorithm

Of course, there is a difference between using AIs to enhance one's productivity - and using it to literally do everything for you. I believe that the proper way of addressing the latter is designing assignments in such a way that they cannot be done by an AI. Instead of giving students small coding assignments that ChatGPT solves upon one simple prompt, it is better to give them complex projects that require them to design a model, collect data, etc. All the while encouraging them to also practice doing all of this without the help of the AI: whatever tools you have at your disposal, having a wide mental bandwidth always helps.

Plagiarism and other explicit offenses are a different matter entirely, and Peter is absolutely right: AI content detectors are seriously flawed. A couple of my thesis paragraphs failed a couple of such checks, even though I wrote it before NLP models were a thing... I doubt it will stay this way for long though: the rate at which these tools are improving is ridiculous.

Factfinder

ZeusAres42 said:

Factfinder said:

@ZeusAres42

No he doesn't see the irony at all though he has tried to make a point of irony accusing atheists of not wanting to use science to debunk his code = coder arguments. All the while refusing the reality that seeing the design in an automobile is possible  because it has all the trade marks of the designer who is not actively hiding for some dumb reason.  

@Factfinder ;

Another observation I've made, not just with him but with several other theists as well, is this attempt to blend creationist arguments such as the Kalam Cosmological, Ontological, and Fine-Tuning arguments with theism.

These arguments are, at the very least, fair. I don't agree with them, and they have all been proven unsuccessful, but still, they are at least fair, perhaps even plausible. I admit I might have also been a bit harsh on William Lane Craig before, only for singling him out when it's not just him; he's primarily known for showcasing these arguments on YouTube and other platforms over the years, albeit from a perspective formed over several decades of indoctrination.

Moreover, these arguments seem more akin to a deistic position. That is fine, but a significant issue arises when they begin to merge these arguments with their specific theistic religions. And I am pretty sure this can virtually be done by anyone from any theistic/polytheistic position to convincingly argue that their version is the true one.

Now you are on to something there. Though I wouldn't say you were too hard on Craig or anyone. Back when I was heavily involved with the freewill baptist denomination I was encouraged and was offered to be sent to one of their seminary/theological colleges to become an accredited preacher. The reasoning was to have a title of academic stature, to be taken as an intellectual with both authority and faith. In other words if I had a DR. before my name people would then have to take my apologetic preaching more serious. That was the thinking and the movement back then. So developing a tactic of first convincing someone there is a small probably that a designer may have substance would be simpler to do initially, then guide them to their specific god from there. 

ZeusAres42

Factfinder said:

ZeusAres42 said:

Factfinder said:

@ZeusAres42

No he doesn't see the irony at all though he has tried to make a point of irony accusing atheists of not wanting to use science to debunk his code = coder arguments. All the while refusing the reality that seeing the design in an automobile is possible  because it has all the trade marks of the designer who is not actively hiding for some dumb reason.  

@Factfinder ;

Another observation I've made, not just with him but with several other theists as well, is this attempt to blend creationist arguments such as the Kalam Cosmological, Ontological, and Fine-Tuning arguments with theism.

These arguments are, at the very least, fair. I don't agree with them, and they have all been proven unsuccessful, but still, they are at least fair, perhaps even plausible. I admit I might have also been a bit harsh on William Lane Craig before, only for singling him out when it's not just him; he's primarily known for showcasing these arguments on YouTube and other platforms over the years, albeit from a perspective formed over several decades of indoctrination.

Moreover, these arguments seem more akin to a deistic position. That is fine, but a significant issue arises when they begin to merge these arguments with their specific theistic religions. And I am pretty sure this can virtually be done by anyone from any theistic/polytheistic position to convincingly argue that their version is the true one.

Now you are on to something there. Though I wouldn't say you were too hard on Craig or anyone. Back when I was heavily involved with the freewill baptist denomination I was encouraged and was offered to be sent to one of their seminary/theological colleges to become an accredited preacher. The reasoning was to have a title of academic stature, to be taken as an intellectual with both authority and faith. In other words if I had a DR. before my name people would then have to take my apologetic preaching more serious. That was the thinking and the movement back then. So developing a tactic of first convincing someone there is a small probably that a designer may have substance would be simpler to do initially, then guide them to their specific god from there. 

Exactly. If Theism was removed entirely from the equation and we were dealing only with the idea of diety/creator then I would at least take that more seriously. 

ZeusAres42

@MayCaesar

I don’t really disagree with anything you’ve said. My point was mainly about the infallibility and potential over-reliance on automation (AKA automation bias). Incidentally, I also have ChatGPT-4 open in another tab, lol. I mostly use it for refining grammar, spelling, and fact-checking, as well as utilizing other sources for these tasks.

Regarding plagiarism, I was referring to recent incidents, such as the President of Harvard University resigning after being caught cheating. Not that there was any mention of ChatGPT, though. Whatever happened, she was caught out for copying almost everything, including acknowledgments. Again, my main point was that human effort is the most reliable method here, at least in this day and age.

The same still applies to analyzing whether you have malware on your PC. There are some really smart people out there who can create malicious code to bypass any antivirus/anti-malware program. Hence, sole reliance on automation is not enough.

MayCaesar

@ZeusAres42

I would just like to add one problem with detecting plagiarism in general: the "searcher's bias", for the lack of the better term (and not to be confused with confirmation bias). Basically, as the amount of objects analyzed increases, the probability of finding similarities between objects also increases - as does the probability of confusing accidental correlation with direct causation.

Take just the previous paragraph of my comment. I just wrote it without using any tools other than my brain and my keyboard. However, given how many posts on this topic have been made on the Internet, it is very likely that someone has posted a paragraph incredibly similar to it. Furthermore, as our writing is learned partially by reading others' texts, we naturally gravitate towards writing in a style that we have seen somewhere else.

In science, this is even more of an issue, as people reference the same known phenomena, theorems, et cetera. If you take two large books on knot theory and do a pairwise search across all sentences, you likely will encounter, at least, 10-20 pairs of sentences that are almost identical between the books. And if you are intentionally looking for signs of plagiarism, you will find these to be such signs.
This is pretty much what AI content or plagiarism detectors do, except the database of texts they get to use is much wider, hence such pairs are much more likely to be found in large numbers.

I think that, just like in the system of justice, presumption of innocence should be the guiding principle in establishing whether an act of plagiarism or unsolicited AI use took place. I do not know the details of the President of Harvard case - it seems much more serious than just a few similar sentences to those from other authors' papers - but in general I think that the threshold should be set quite high. And I agree with you that humans can be much better judges of that than AIs, with the caveat that humans are more prone to personal biases than AIs.

just_sayin

ZeusAres42 said:

@Factfinder, 

I think the issue here is that @just_sayin is attempting to employ scientific methods, inherently designed to explore the material world, to conclude that an immaterial entity created life. He simultaneously uses science to argue that it can resolve questions inherently based on scientific inquiry, while also arguing that it cannot answer questions arising from this same inquiry. Essentially, 'just_sayin' appears to be using science to support the idea that something beyond the scope of science (immaterial) initiated life and to assert that science itself is capable of answering questions derived from its own domain. At the same time, he also argues that science is not capable of doing so from its own domain. I don't think he gets the irony.

And, no this is not AI generated (I would admit so if it was). 

Feel free to check any of the following AI content detectors: 

• https://copyleaks.com/ai-content-detector
• https://gptzero.me/
• https://writer.com/ai-content-detector
• https://www.scribbr.com/ai-detector/
• https://quillbot.com/ai-content-detector
• https://undetectable.ai/
• https://www.zerogpt.com/
• https://contentatscale.ai/ai-content-detector/
• https://detecting-ai.com/
• https://crossplag.com/ai-content-detector/

Zeus, I love that you are thinking about me.  I think it upsets you that I am comfortable with science.  I don't really understand that.  I've explained already that my faith is not contingent on science proving or disproving abiogenesis or the creation of the universe.  Your faith is far more dependent upon miracles than mine. The only miracle that is crucial to my faith is the resurrection of Jesus.  You need need hundreds of miracles to be true.  Things like 1) everything came from nothing, 2) life came from non-life (and the many, many sub-miracles for each stage of chemistry for creating a cell) 3) order came from chaos, 4) Consciousness came from nonexistence, 5) Morals came from matter.

When we were talking about miracles in the prayer debate, I pointed out that if a miracle was proven false it would not destroy my believe that some miracles are true, but for the atheist, a single miracle destroys your faith completely.  If science could prove that the universe could create itself from nothing, or that non-life could result in life, it would not destroy my faith.  I would simply state that God used these means.  But for you atheists - if your miracles of everything came from nothing, and life came from non-life don't work, which is the case, then your faith is destroyed. 

I'm mentioned just a few of the problems with abiogenesis.  You can't explain the chemistry of how a pre-biotic chemical environment can create, not just life, but any of the numerous pre-states needed before a cell can be created (lipids, polymers, chirality, RNA, DNA, etc).  Yet, you believe this on faith.  The atheist appeals to magic (time).  Just give it time and it will happen.  But if you follow the literature, then you know that all of these processes must happen in minutes, not millennia or they fall apart.  Science is not my enemy, its yours.   

Factfinder

@just_sayin

 I think it upsets you that I am comfortable with science.

Why do you need to lie to yourself like this if your faith is as strong as you say?

Morals came from matter.

I have morals because I have no desire to murder, rape, lie, steal, all this with no god. You admit you have morals cause they came from god, if god was disproven which sin have you been itching to commit that you will do first?

 I would simply state that God used these means...

Yes we're quite aware of your unscientific god of the gaps approach. And your use of remarks said off the cuff in scientific circles as if they are official findings to be printed in journals as 'new discoveries' or 'conclusions' when they're obviously not.

You can't explain the chemistry of how a pre-biotic chemical environment can create, not just life, but any of the numerous pre-states needed before a cell can be created (lipids, polymers, chirality, RNA, DNA, etc).

Neither can you explain it. Except to invoke blind faith and say god did it. 

MayCaesar

Oh, he attributed the exact same 5 beliefs to Zeus as me, just copy-pasting them? Nice.

just_sayin

MayCaesar said:

Oh, he attributed the exact same 5 beliefs to Zeus as me, just copy-pasting them? Nice.

Now - to be fair I have called you, Fact, and Zeus the 3 stooges of atheism.  I think of you as one.

MayCaesar

@just_sayin

I think that this is one of the real differences between us. I deal with concrete arguments, theories and statements, while you deal with their projections onto a very limited space in which all people who disagree with you are similarly flawed and all of their arguments are similarly indefensible.

That is a very comfortable space to inhabit. But a boring one. It is like sitting in your warm apartment all day versus sailing across the Arctic Ocean: one is much nicer at the beginning, but the other is what life is really about.

Factfinder

@MayCaesar

Oh, he attributed the exact same 5 beliefs to Zeus as me, just copy-pasting them? Nice. 

I think he's done that to everyone who rejects his childhood mythology of faith based beings as scientific fact. He somehow feels reassured if he can equate rational, critical thinking, logical skepticism of thor's existence on par with his blind faith in thor. 

Factfinder

just_sayin said:

MayCaesar said:

Oh, he attributed the exact same 5 beliefs to Zeus as me, just copy-pasting them? Nice.

Now - to be fair I have called you, Fact, and Zeus the 3 stooges of atheism.  I think of you as one.

And you think that helps your pseudo scientific arguments how?

just_sayin

Factfinder said:

just_sayin said:

MayCaesar said:

Oh, he attributed the exact same 5 beliefs to Zeus as me, just copy-pasting them? Nice.

Now - to be fair I have called you, Fact, and Zeus the 3 stooges of atheism.  I think of you as one.

And you think that helps your pseudo scientific arguments how?

Are you denying the miracles you believe in?  Well, then let's hear the scientific explanation for how life came from non-life?  That's a good miracle for you to explain.

Please include the following: how ALL needed amino acids were created, why didn't water inhibit the formation of proteins, how did lipids form, how did life know chirality was essential and how did all the created parts for it happen to be left handed, how did RNA form,  how do you make ADP without ATP, and how did you make ATP without ADP, How did DNA form, how could all of this have happened in a short period of time since the parts break down rather than build up within a short period of time?

Let's hear your pseudo scientific argument now for your faith claim.

Factfinder

@just_sayin

Thor did it. I don't know how.

Bogan

@just_sayin ;   Now - to be fair I have called you, Fact, and Zeus the 3 stooges of atheism.  I think of you as one.

WHAT ABOUT ME-E-E-E!?   I am shocked and deeply hurt.   

just_sayin

Bogan said:

@just_sayin ;   Now - to be fair I have called you, Fact, and Zeus the 3 stooges of atheism.  I think of you as one.

WHAT ABOUT ME-E-E-E!?   I am shocked and deeply hurt.   

Bogie!  You know you are my favorite and far more useful than they could ever be.  I know you want me to say you are a Curly Joe or Shemp, but I think more of you than that.  I think of you as a friend.  You are more of a Patrick to my SpongeBob. Or a Ralph to my Bart Simpson.  Or a Joey Tribbiani to my Chandler.  

MayCaesar

Factfinder said:

@MayCaesar

Oh, he attributed the exact same 5 beliefs to Zeus as me, just copy-pasting them? Nice. 

I think he's done that to everyone who rejects his childhood mythology of faith based beings as scientific fact. He somehow feels reassured if he can equate rational, critical thinking, logical skepticism of thor's existence on par with his blind faith in thor. 

As simple as it may sound, I have found that some people simply cannot think - "think" meaning the process of processing information by means of one's own analysis. They adopt other people's views, read in other people's statements what they want to read in them, et cetera. They never really think independently.

I have a very hard time conversing with such people. It is like talking to a pre-programmed NPC in a video game: after a while they run out of lines and either resort to repeating the same few lines over and over again, or just become silent. You cannot get anything out of them that was not explicitly put in there by the programmer.

One of my favorite mental exercises to do during long runs and walks is to have a mental debate between two positions - and I steelman both as best I can. Japanese princess arguing in favor of monarchy, versus an American enterpreneur arguing for laizzes-faire democracy - let's go! I might be on the latter's side, but I will make the former's arguments as convincing as possible, and triple-steelman them if I feel that the opponent is winning.
I wonder how often these people play devil's advocate and try to criticize their own positions - if ever? It seems to me that even one instance of doing that should send their whole mental construct crumble. Heck, I can make a FAR stronger argument for god's existence if I really want to, than any of the theists around here have made.

Factfinder

@MayCaesar

I wonder how often these people play devil's advocate and try to criticize their own positions - if ever? 

Bingo! They can't afford to do that. That may constitute 'doubt' the arch enemy of blind faith. They never will willingly see things objectively. 

just_sayin

Argument Topic: Science of the Gaps

There are 4 'big bangs' of atheism:

1. the Cosmological (the universe “just popped” into existence out of nothingness);
2. the Biological (life “just popped” into existence out of a dead thing);
3. the Psychological (mind “just popped” into existence out of a brain);
4. and the Moral (morality “just popped” into existence out of amorality).

When confronted with evidence that suggests these notions are false, the atheist will often make a science of the gaps appeal - that science will answer these questions someday.  That is a false notion.  There is no reason why God may not be the answer for these questions.  The classic science of the gaps argument is “I don’t know, but we’ll find out one day!”.  This assumes science is all knowing and powerful and can provide the answer.  This underlies much of atheistic thought which is unwilling to admit that there are serious problems with cosmogonic models and with abiogenesis.  The atheist simply dismisses the scientific evidence, while simultaneously looking to it as a god for the answer.  

Factfinder

@just_sayin

When confronted with evidence that suggests these notions are false, ...

A desperate fallacy you cling to. To shore up your insecurities in believing in the jewish zombie.

just_sayin

I asked basic questions of origin of life research.  See here: https://debateisland.com/discussion/comment/176078/#Comment_176078

Atheists believe in abiogenesis.  But is this based on the science or on their faith in science?

Has anyone ever seen life start from non-life without intelligence guiding it? 

Nope.  

Has anyone solved the problem of there being no viable mechanism to generate a primordial soup?

No.  Atheists use to claim that the reducing atmosphere of the early universe was ideal for life.  We now know that was inaccurate.  The early atmosphere was probably volcanic in origin and composition, composed largely of carbon dioxide and nitrogen rather than the mixture of reducing gases assumed by the Miller-Urey model. Carbon dioxide does not support the rich array of synthetic pathways leading to possible monomers.  As University College London biochemist Nick Lane stated that the primordial soup theory “doesn’t hold water” and is “past its expiration date.”

The desperate atheist sometimes appeals to panspermia to try and avoid this issue, but there is no evidence of incoming bacteria, and moon rocks are sterile.   Moon rocks should be teeming with bacteria and viruses if panspermia produced life.  The science suggests that is not the case.

Has anyone formed the 20 to 22 amino acids that comprise proteins naturally and all in the same environment as would be needed for life?

Nope.  The Miller experiment initially claimed 3 amino acids present, and a later review found traces of 3 other ones but in very low amounts.  The reason Miller found in was because he created a trap to prevent the naturalistic reactions that would have destroyed the amino acids created.  That's the catch, the same reactions that create some amino acids are just as likely to destroy them also.  So Miller created a trap to prevent nature from doing its thing.  When asked where in nature this kind of trap would exist, Miller said he had nothing.  Even granting the formation of 6 amino acids by Miller, only 10 have ever been created by naturalistic means from scratch without the use of cells.  

Since it appears forming polymers requires a dehydration synthesis, have they been created in a puddle naturally without human assistance like Darwin said they could be?

No.  The National Academy of Sciences states, “Two amino acids do not spontaneously join in water. Rather, the opposite reaction is thermodynamically favored.”  Water breaks down protein chains into amino acids, it doesn't go the opposite direction.  

Has the problem with the lack of a viable mechanism for producing high levels of complex and specified information been solved?

No.  A bacteria has about 100+ genes and is consider way to complex to be LUCA. In fact scientists claim that LUCA would have had to have about 355 genes to be the ancestor of all known life - even more complex than bacteria or viruses.  If you have code (say DNA) you need a means to translate it (say RNA).  No one has solved how these could chemically happen especially without one another.  While a virus can copy itself - it can't do it without being inside another cell.  

Does the RNA World Hypothesis have definitive evidence that it works?

No.  A serious problem is that even if you can figure out how to make proteins you need a system to self-replicate.  In fact Stanley Miller said "The first step, making the monomers, that’s easy. We understand it pretty well. But then you have to make the first self-replicating polymers. That’s very easy, he says, the sarcasm fairly dripping. Just like it’s easy to make money in the stock market — all you have to do is buy low and sell high. He laughs. Nobody knows how it’s done."

Often scientists have postulated that RNA arose first - yet there are some massive problems with this issue.  1) RNA has never assemble by itself without human guided help.  And 2) RNA has not been shown to perform all the necessary cellular functions currently that are carried out by proteins, so it is inadequate by itself to perform these functions.  

Further, to explain the ordering of nucleotides in the first self-replicating RNA molecule, materialists must rely on sheer chance. But the odds of specifying, say, 250 nucleotides in an RNA molecule by chance is about 1 in 10150 — below the “universal probability bound,” a term characterizing events whose occurrence is at least remotely possible within the history of the universe.  (See See William A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge University Press, 1998).)

 Biochemists have spent decades struggling to get RNA to self-assemble or copy itself in the lab, and now concede that it needs a lot of help to do either.

As New York University chemist Robert Shapiro puts it "The sudden appearance of a large self-copying molecule such as RNA was exceedingly improbable. … [The probability] is so vanishingly small that its happening even once anywhere in the visible universe would count as a piece of exceptional good luck."

Unless the atheist is willing to admit miracles exist, it seems their faith is in vain.

Can the origin of the genetic code be adequately explained by unguided natural processes?

Nope.  DNA provides code for how to made a structure, while the RNA reads that and creates what the code calls for.  This system cannot exist unless both the genetic information and transcription/translation machinery are present at the same time, and unless both speak the same language.  

"[T]he link between DNA and the enzyme is a highly complex one, involving RNA and an enzyme for its synthesis on a DNA template; ribosomes; enzymes to activate the amino acids; and transfer-RNA molecules. … How, in the absence of the final enzyme, could selection act upon DNA and all the mechanisms for replicating it? It’s as though everything must happen at once: the entire system must come into being as one unit, or it is worthless. There may well be ways out of this dilemma, but I don’t see them at the moment."- Frank B. Salisbury, “Doubts about the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution,” 

"Life’s three core processes are intertwined. Genes carry instructions for making proteins, which means proteins only exist because of genes. But proteins are also essential for maintaining and copying genes, so genes only exist because of proteins. And proteins—made by genes—are crucial for constructing the lipids for membranes. Any hypothesis explaining life’s origin must take account of this. Yet, if we suppose that genes, metabolism and membranes were unlikely to have arisen simultaneously, that means one of them must have come first and ‘invented’ the others.” - Jeff Miller

Instead of providing the scientific answer for these first few questions (cause there are lots more problems) the atheists on this site, pretended like they weren't serious issues and engaged in a LOT of ad hominem attacks.  But I did not end my argument with just showing why the atheists argument was bad, I gave several good reasons to believe why there was an intelligence behind the origin of life - specifically the complexity of the DNA needs a coder (intelligence).  I showed several examples of the statistical improbability of different chemical stages/reactions occurring organically and how it was much more likely for an intelligence to be behind it.  And like a church choir they began to say sing the science of the gaps song in unison.  

Factfinder

@just_sayin

All that and still no evidence god did it. Must play heavy on your spiritual insecurities.

MayCaesar

just_sayin said:

Atheists believe in abiogenesis.

Eh, buddy... You just make a lie after a lie, stacking them together into a giant sandwich, then pointing at it and saying, "No one can eat it in one sitting, right? I win!"

*sigh* Atheists do not "believe" in abiogenesis. Atheists lack belief in the supernatural, and that is all there is. And those who assume that abiogenesis took place generally do not "believe" it same way you believe in your god, but find it to be the most reasonable explanation in the lack of more concrete knowledge. The explanation may be wrong, and I have never met anyone who would not acknowledge this fact.

Where do you find all those "atheists" who believe in all these things you attribute to them? And why do you generalize it to all people who do not take your favorite fantasy book to be an accurate description of reality?

Bogan

    Just sayin quote  1.   the Cosmological the universe “just popped” into existence out of nothingness;

Which is more believable than the idea that a god with the power to create an entire, apparently infinite universe composed of matter out of nothing, just popped into existence, 



just sayin quote   2. the Biological (life “just popped” into existence out of a dead thing);     

Which is entirely feasible given the right conditions, the right nutrients, and a very long period of time. 


just-sayin quote  3.   the Psychological (mind “just popped” into existence out of a brain);

An intelligent and self aware brain can evolve from a simpler brain over a long period of time.   Human brains have gotten bigger over time with the Homo Sapien brain much larger than Cro Magnum brains which preceded it.    


Just-sayin quote  4.    and the Moral (morality “just popped” into existence out of amorality).

"Morality" is simply the generally agreed upon principles which define acceptable behavior within any community.   Such a concept is inevitable within any self protecting society which seeks to sublimate the entirely selfish behaviour of individuals, for behaviour which benefits the entire group as a whole.     What constitutes morally acceptable behaviour changes with time and circumstance, as changing times alter the basic needs of a community.   Morality can never be carved in stone, whatever religious people may think. 

just_sayin

@Bogan ;
Hey Bogie!!!
Bogie quote: Which is more believable than the idea that a god with the power to create an entire, apparently infinite universe composed of matter out of nothing, just popped into existence, 

Since no natural source can create a universe from nothing, it is more likely a supernatural force created the universe.

Bogie Quote: Which is entirely feasible given the right conditions, the right nutrients, and a very long period of time. 

Bogie, haven't you been paying attention.  Time is not friendly to abiogenesis.  Several of the chemical reactions needed produce deadly gases that are detrimental to the amino acids, lipid, or proteins created.  The reactions have short half lives in some cases.  Further things like water can be destructive to protein formation.  So time is not your friend, its the enemy of abiogenesis.

There are a least 10 areas of the process that can not be replicated naturally.  In fact, even in laboratory conditions scientists have only been able to create half of the amino acids needed.  In fact an entire class of amino acids essential for life has never been observed to be created without the aid of enzymes which first need to be created by amino acids.  See the problem?   

Bogie quote:  An intelligent and self aware brain can evolve from a simpler brain over a long period of time.   Human brains have gotten bigger over time with the Homo Sapien brain much larger than Cro Magnum brains which preceded it.  

Can matter think?  Is matter self-aware?  How does the material become immaterial?  Science can't explain consciousness.  

"Morality" is simply the generally agreed upon principles which define acceptable behavior within any community.   Such a concept is inevitable within any self protecting society which seeks to sublimate the entirely selfish behaviour of individuals, for behaviour which benefits the entire group as a whole.     What constitutes morally acceptable behaviour changes with time and circumstance, as changing times alter the basic needs of a community.   Morality can never be carved in stone, whatever religious people may think. 

If the universe is just the reaction of natural processes, the there is no such thing as objective good or evil.  A natural process or reaction is neither good nor evil, it is just the inevitable reaction to one's environment.  Without an absolute lawgiver, you can't have objective morals.  Atheists can borrow the moral values of Christians, but their world view can't derive a set of morals from naturalism.  

Factfinder

@just_sayin

Science can't explain consciousness.  

You said you were talking science. Well science doesn't have all the answers as you point out so, are you saying you simply don't know either? Or do you have a baseless assertion of ignorance to make? 

just_sayin

Factfinder said:

@just_sayin

Science can't explain consciousness.  

You said you were talking science. Well science doesn't have all the answers as you point out so, are you saying you simply don't know either? Or do you have a baseless assertion of ignorance to make? 

It's more than that, Factfinder.  How does matter have consciousness?  How does matter become self-aware?  There is no scientific, nor logical explanation.  

Factfinder

@just_sayin

It's more than that, Factfinder.  How does matter have consciousness?  How does matter become self-aware?  There is no scientific, nor logical explanation.  

That we know of. There are working theories, or to be more precise, hypothesis. Of course it is was impossible, inconceivable that man could fly. Totally not logical to ever say he will, till he did. So who knows? You believe you have the answers and you feel good about it. Cool. I know I don't have the answers and I'm cool with that.  

elijah44

@Barnardot, yeah but, with religion it’s kind of different

MayCaesar

There is a cool hypothesis on what consciousness really is. In short quantum mechanics treats all physical entities as probabilistic waves, with the outcome randomly sampled from the probability space - and consciousness could be what is responsible for that outcome. So there is an abstract agent "choosing" one of the infinity of possible outcomes every moment in time, and each choice is a "bit" of consciousness. Highly ordered systems such as human brains make choices systematically, and that is why we have such continuous consciousness. Interestingly, it suggests that intelligent beings have "free will" in a limited sense: they have no control over their choices on the grand scale, but their brains do make choices. It would also suggest that, while intelligent beings are prone to experiencing continuous consciousness, specs of consciousness are experienced by all matter in the Universe. This keyboard I am typing on does not have the same continuity and coherence of consciousness as I do, but it does have something: it is not self-aware, but it exists as a conscious agent.

One interesting consequence of this would be that the AIs we have today actually have a fairly developed consciousness, although they obviously cannot explain it to us or even fully comprehend it. Another is that life is not a prerequisite to consciousness. Another still is that there could be multiple levels of consciousness: each of us humans has their own consciousness, but all humans put together might have meta-consciousness - not the "hive mind" of any kind, but there is a self-aware being that sees itself as a collection of all humans. In this respect, consciousness is extremely unremarkable, and our human consciousness is fairly basic compared to what it is out there.

This hypothesis, unlike most other hypotheses on consciousness, is partially testable: we can try altering our own consciousness by fairly mundane means and see whether it works. However, it is based on so little evidence and reasoning, that for now it presents more of a philosophical interest than a scientific one.

just_sayin

MayCaesar said:

There is a cool hypothesis on what consciousness really is. In short quantum mechanics treats all physical entities as probabilistic waves, with the outcome randomly sampled from the probability space - and consciousness could be what is responsible for that outcome. So there is an abstract agent "choosing" one of the infinity of possible outcomes every moment in time, and each choice is a "bit" of consciousness. Highly ordered systems such as human brains make choices systematically, and that is why we have such continuous consciousness. Interestingly, it suggests that intelligent beings have "free will" in a limited sense: they have no control over their choices on the grand scale, but their brains do make choices. It would also suggest that, while intelligent beings are prone to experiencing continuous consciousness, specs of consciousness are experienced by all matter in the Universe. This keyboard I am typing on does not have the same continuity and coherence of consciousness as I do, but it does have something: it is not self-aware, but it exists as a conscious agent.

One interesting consequence of this would be that the AIs we have today actually have a fairly developed consciousness, although they obviously cannot explain it to us or even fully comprehend it. Another is that life is not a prerequisite to consciousness. Another still is that there could be multiple levels of consciousness: each of us humans has their own consciousness, but all humans put together might have meta-consciousness - not the "hive mind" of any kind, but there is a self-aware being that sees itself as a collection of all humans. In this respect, consciousness is extremely unremarkable, and our human consciousness is fairly basic compared to what it is out there.

This hypothesis, unlike most other hypotheses on consciousness, is partially testable: we can try altering our own consciousness by fairly mundane means and see whether it works. However, it is based on so little evidence and reasoning, that for now it presents more of a philosophical interest than a scientific one.

May, it seems like you are talking about Penrose's Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory of consciousness.  You forget to mention the time-traveling aspect of it.

 For Penrose, wave function collapse is a real, physical, objective phenomenon: a gravitational field can’t tolerate being in a quantum superposition, eventually collapsing the particle’s wave function. According to Penrose, gravity-induced wave function collapse involves a process that jumps the particle back in time, retroactively killing off possible quantum realities in under a second. This reality-annihilating backward-jumping makes it as though only one, fixed classical reality ever existed.

LOL.  If you aren't laughing at atheists, then you aren't paying attention to what they are saying.

You may want to read

https://phys.org/news/2022-06-collapsing-theory-quantum-consciousness.html

https://futurism.com/the-byte/biologist-says-sun-conscious

MayCaesar

@just_sayin

This has nothing to do with time travel.

just_sayin

MayCaesar said:

@just_sayin

This has nothing to do with time travel.

Yes, May,  it does.  In Penrose's theory the wave function collapses as a result of quantum gravity effects which 'destroys' the multiverses and the particle jumps back in time.  From the Forbes article:

Penrose thinks these backward time jumps are the only way a superposition can collapse into a single, fixed state and still remain consistent with results from experiments in both quantum physics and classical physics.... Penrose’s ideas about retro-activity as an explanation for quantum anomalies are only recently gaining traction. Retrocausality is the proposal that a measurement in the present can change a particle’s properties even before the measurement was made. 

MayCaesar

@just_sayin

I apologize for stating it, but you clearly do not understand the meaning of the terms you use. Gravity and wave function collapse are completely different phenomena. Penrose's explanation involves the effect similar to quantum entanglement collapse of which at the superficial glance appears to break finiteness of the speed of light and, hence, effectively violate directedness of time; to explain why this is not the case is not very difficult, so I will leave it to you as a home exercise.

just_sayin

MayCaesar said:

@just_sayin

I apologize for stating it, but you clearly do not understand the meaning of the terms you use. Gravity and wave function collapse are completely different phenomena. Penrose's explanation involves the effect similar to quantum entanglement collapse of which at the superficial glance appears to break finiteness of the speed of light and, hence, effectively violate directedness of time; to explain why this is not the case is not very difficult, so I will leave it to you as a home exercise.

The 'time-travel' component of Penrose's theory is critical for his view of consciousness.  As Forbes said:

For Penrose, wave function collapse is a real, physical, objective phenomenon: a gravitational field can’t tolerate being in a quantum superposition, eventually collapsing the particle’s wave function. According to Penrose, gravity-induced wave function collapse involves a process that jumps the particle back in time, retroactively killing off possible quantum realities in under a second. This reality-annihilating backward-jumping makes it as though only one, fixed classical reality ever existed.

As Science Direct, Consciousness in the universe A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory, says

The effective quantum backward-time referral inherent in the temporal non-locality resulting from the quanglement aspects of Orch OR, as suggested above, enables conscious experience actually to be temporally-nonlocal, with backward time effects seen as temporal variability in axonal firing threshold (Fig. 2b), consciously regulating behavior and providing a possible means to rescue consciousness from its unfortunate characterization as epiphenomenal illusion. Accordingly, Orch OR could well enable consciousness to have a causal efficacy, despite its apparently anomalous relation to a timing assigned to it in relation to an external clock, thereby allowing conscious action to provide a semblance of free will...

Hope that helps.  Feel free to share with me the 'the effect similar to quantum entanglement collapse of which at the superficial glance appears to break finiteness of the speed of light" thingamajig . 

MayCaesar

@just_sayin

I believe you are getting an F for this exercise.

just_sayin

MayCaesar said:

@just_sayin

I believe you are getting an F for this exercise.

May, I would counter that you are as dumb as dirt, but according to the theories you have referenced, dirt is conscious.  I don't want to insult dirt.  LOL.  

If you want to discuss Wigner, or Penrose's theories on how quantum mechanics is either effected by or effects consciousness, let me know.  I'm happy to discuss the science with you.  

MayCaesar

I commend you for working so hard on your abstinence! You are so happy to discuss science with me, yet you have never addressed any of the arguments I have made directly. I am not sure if I would be able to deny myself pleasure with such consistency. You will go far in life, my friend.