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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
 Posted - 09/12/2008 : 07:51:19 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Bill scott
But what does the experiment that you pointed out contain that allegedly abiousgenesis does not contain?
Manipulation with preconceived intent. Without it no experiment.
Your experiment actually demonstrates the need for manipulation with a preconceived intent for any chance at non-living matter becoming life or living matter.
Now where you and I will disagree is the cause behind the manipulation and preconceived intent in the real world model. |
Does this reasoning strike anyone else as stupid? And no, I have no other word for it.
Similar scenario:
I am going to do a lab experiment which I call "lighting a pile of wood". I use a source of sufficient heat to set a pile of wood on fire. From it I conclude that, given enough heat, wood will also catch fire in nature if enough heat is applied. I could even refine my experiment further to investigate necessary conditions (for example the presence of oxygen, and that live wood will be harder to set to burn than dead wood will).
Now, I have used intent in all those experiments, so Bill will conclude that forest fires will always be the result of pyromaniacs. Natural forest fires will never happen, even if the conditions are right.
Stupid? Yes. But creationist reasoning at its finest as far as I can see. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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Bill scott
SFN Addict
USA
2103 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 08:00:53 [Permalink]
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| Originally posted by tomk80 |
| He who can explain how matter that previously did not exist can begin to exist and begin to exist as life has my attention. |
Which are two different questions. For the first, (nuclear) physics is needed, |
Please go on...
| the second is but chemistry. |
Do tell... |
"Lets get one thing clear, Bill. Science does make some assumptions." -perrodetokio-
"In the end as skeptics we must realize that there is no real knowledge, there is only what is most reasonable to believe." -Coelacanth-
The fact that humans do science is what causes errors in science. -Dave W.-
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 08:03:26 [Permalink]
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Bill; it does sound to me like you are trying to move the goal posts.
-Abiogenesis is about how the elements in the primitive earth combine themselves into a living organism (the origine of life itself) it has little to do with how the elements themselves came into being (that'd be the origin of the universe -that happened many a billion years before that).
Filthy mentioned the LHC and that might bring us answers on that second subject.
-Ultimately, we won't know for certain that it happened that way. Just have a very plausible explanation.
But, it's nothing new, science only deals in theories (that is actually part of its power, the fact that it tries to avoid dogmatisms).
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 08:16:22 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Bill scott
Which means what we think might have happened but we do not know... |
As is the case with a lot of human knowledge. So what? Nobody here is pretending to have knowledge that we don't have.
Which does not negate the knowledge we do have.
| With our finite knowledge how do we even know that chemical reactions behaved in the same way back at the creation of life, whenever that was? |
Have you got any indication that this is not the case? If not, why would you assume that reactions were different?
With our finite knowledge, how do we even know that we weren't created last thursday with all our memories intact. I can give you a rediculous scenario at the rate of one per minute easily for a day, each one I can defend with the proposition that our knowledge is finite, so how do we know that it might not have been different? Perhaps cows actually fly every time humans are not looking, but as soon as anyone looks at them mysterious cosmic ray from our eyes instantaneously turn them in standing moo-cows whenever we look. How do we know this isn't the case with our finite knowledge? We don't. We know its extremely unlikely, as is your proposition. But with our finite knowledge, we don't know more than that.
A few weeks ago, Uranium was detected in a dutch soil, below a landfill. Chemists have proposed a likely reaction that caused this to happen. But perhaps they were wrong, perhaps reality is different inside landfills. How do we know, with our finite knowledge? We don't, but in the absence of any indication that reality is different in landfills, I see no reason to assume that. Do you?
| Experimentation provides that. |
This experimentation proves that we can try and create a model of what we think the original model may have been like and then manipulate the experiment in a way that we think might recreate millions of actually years that would have been seen by the real world model and our preconceived results may or may not tell us something about the real world model but we can never truly know for sure with all the unknown variables that would be at play and out finite knowledge. So at the end of the experiment what we truly know is that we don't know.
[/quote]
Nonsense, what we know at the end of the experiment is what kind of reactions would be possible in what kind of circumstances. In the end, we can provide likely scenarios and test those. We will indeed never know with certainty what happened exactly, as is the case with almost all human knowledge. And you can indeed hide behind that as a line of defense to eternally reject that possibility that life was not created. But why you would want to do that is beyond me. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 09/12/2008 : 08:17:25 [Permalink]
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With our finite knowledge how do we even know that chemical reactions behaved in the same way back at the creation of life, whenever that was?
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We don't. That is why we experiment and gradually increase our knowledge.
Our knowledge will remain finite in any event, but limit gets constantly pushed back as time passes and study proceeds. Dig it: beg, borrow or steal a time machine and show Cotton Mather a simple flashlight, and see how fast you end up on the gallows, or worse.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 08:23:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Bill scott
Please go on... |
Why would I need to go on? How matter came into existence refers to the start of the existence of matter, ie atoms. How those come into existence is a question of physics. I don't know about America, but in the Netherlands the distinction between chemistry and physics is something you learn in your first year in high school.
I already did. The statement is self-evident. Life arising from lifeless matter would entail the reconfiguration of molecules into other molecules. That is chemistry. There are no special 'life atoms' that are only present in living organisms. We used to think that, but now we know better. Hence, it is chemistry. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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Bill scott
SFN Addict
USA
2103 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 08:24:07 [Permalink]
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| Originally posted by tomk80 |
Does this reasoning strike anyone else as stupid? And no, I have no other word for it.
Similar scenario:
I am going to do a lab experiment which I call "lighting a pile of wood". I use a source of sufficient heat to set a pile of wood on fire. From it I conclude that, given enough heat, wood will also catch fire in nature if enough heat is applied. I could even refine my experiment further to investigate necessary conditions (for example the presence of oxygen, and that live wood will be harder to set to burn than dead wood will).
Now, I have used intent in all those experiments, so Bill will conclude that forest fires will always be the result of pyromaniacs. Natural forest fires will never happen, even if the conditions are right. |
Keeping the analogy going first off I never said there were no natural forest fires. That is a strawman. I said that you taking your Colman butane torch to a pile of wood with the intent of lighting a fire does nothing in the explanation of how natural forest fires get started. And then add in that it really says nothing on the origin of natural forest fires when the fire we are discussing took place millions of years in the past (we think) and who knows what different conditions natural forest fires encountered millions of years in the past. So you see, you lighting sticks with the intent of fire hardly explains the origin of natural forest fires millions of years (we think) in our past now does it?
| Stupid? Yes. But creationist reasoning at its finest as far as I can see. |
I hope me playing along with your analogy has helped you understand. |
"Lets get one thing clear, Bill. Science does make some assumptions." -perrodetokio-
"In the end as skeptics we must realize that there is no real knowledge, there is only what is most reasonable to believe." -Coelacanth-
The fact that humans do science is what causes errors in science. -Dave W.-
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 08:35:38 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Bill scott
Keeping the analogy going first off I never said there were no natural forest fires. That is a strawman. I said that you taking your Colman butane torch to a pile of wood with the intent of lighting a fire does nothing in the explanation of how natural forest fires get started. And then add in that it really says nothing on the origin of natural forest fires when the fire we are discussing took place millions of years in the past (we think) and who knows what different conditions natural forest fires encountered millions of years in the past. So you see, you lighting sticks with the intent of fire hardly explains the origin of natural forest fires millions of years (we think) in our past now does it? |
But in this analogy, the intent question is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether the conditions used can be representative for the conditions that could occur in nature.
You frame it as a question of whether intent is needed, but in this case that is not the question that you apparantly mean.
I hope me playing along with your analogy has helped you understand.
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It makes me understand that the presence or absence of intent in your criticism is irrelevant. What you apparantly really want to ask is to what measure the conditions and reactions simulated in the laboratory are representative for the conditions present when abiogenesis happened. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 08:48:33 [Permalink]
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I don't understand the fuss. All that is needed to be done is to discover a set of conditions that are satisfactory, then look for evidence that they occured some 3.5 billion years ago. The former is being worked on and the latter is a book soon to open. Perhaps.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 09:16:49 [Permalink]
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Indeed, if (when) we are able to demonstrate how a life form would have emerged of chemical reactions, we'll just have to determine if these reactions would have occurred in earth's past.
If they did, it will be a logical theory to assume that it is where life come from (until we found another, more likely, set of reactions).
And it will be a rational, scientific explanation.
It is fast coming the day when the God of the gaps will be homeless! |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 09:44:05 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Simon
Indeed, if (when) we are able to demonstrate how a life form would have emerged of chemical reactions, we'll just have to determine if these reactions would have occurred in earth's past.
If they did, it will be a logical theory to assume that it is where life come from (until we found another, more likely, set of reactions).
And it will be a rational, scientific explanation.
It is fast coming the day when the God of the gaps will be homeless!
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Nah, Bill Scot demonstrates sufficiently that new gaps can always be found. And if not found, constructed. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 09:51:11 [Permalink]
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Poor Billy, this artificial life thing has you upset and confused! I blame your parents for brainwashing you.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Bill scott
SFN Addict
USA
2103 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 10:14:06 [Permalink]
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| Originally posted by tomk80 |
| Why would I need to go on? |
Why wouldn't you?
| How matter came into existence refers to the start of the existence of matter, |
You don't say?
| ie atoms. How those come into existence is a question of physics. |
Which you do not know the answer. And physics would be the explanation of how the chemestry began to exist. So I do see them as intertwined.
| I don't know about America, but in the Netherlands the distinction between chemistry and physics is something you learn in your first year in high school. |
But you never learned that they have effects on each other?
I already did. The statement is self-evident. Life arising from lifeless matter would entail the reconfiguration of molecules into other molecules. |
But in the real world there is no wall of separation between abiogenesis and cosmology. That only happens in the .edu world. So I will always want to know the first cause of this lifeless matter. You can insist that in the abiogenesis discussion the origin of lifeless matter that may or may not have lead to life is not important but so would I if I believed a completely materialistic explanation can be found for all that exists.
The biggest difference between you and I is your belief that the lifeless matter will someday be explained through completely materialist explanations. I am extremely skeptical of that conclusion and have not seen much evidence to convince me otherwise
| As is the case with a lot of human knowledge. So what? Nobody here is pretending to have knowledge that we don't have. |
I never said anything about pretending. What I said is that you think you have knowledge of how it might have been.
| Which does not negate the knowledge we do have. |
It negates that fact that you can know that you know.
| With our finite knowledge how do we even know that chemical reactions behaved in the same way back at the creation of life, whenever that was? |
Have you got any indication that this is the case? |
No. And that is my point.
| If not, why would you assume that reactions were different? |
Why would you just assume they are the same?
| With our finite knowledge, how do we even know that we weren't created last thursday with all our memories intact. I can give you a rediculous scenario at the rate of one per minute easily for a day, each one I can defend with the proposition that our knowledge is finite, so how do we know that it might not have been different? Perhaps cows actually fly every time humans are not looking, but as soon as anyone looks at them mysterious cosmic ray from our eyes instantaneously turn them in standing moo-cows whenever we look. How do we know this isn't the case with our finite knowledge? |
We don't
Exactly.
| We know its extremely unlikely, as is your proposition. But with our finite knowledge, we don't know more than that. |
I would say with the whole finite knowledge thing that you can't even be sure that you know whether or not my proposition is unlikely. Because of the the conclusion that you have come to you like to label it as unlikely but you really don't know you just like to think that you do.
| A few weeks ago, Uranium was detected in a dutch soil, below a landfill. Chemists have proposed a likely reaction that caused this to happen. But perhaps they were wrong, perhaps reality is different inside landfills. How do we know, with our finite knowledge? We don't, but in the absence of any indication that reality is different in landfills, I see no reason to assume that. Do you? |
Depends on many factors.
| Nonsense, what we know at the end of the experiment is what kind of reactions would be possible in what kind of circumstances. |
Exactly. And in the case of abiogenesis we have no idea what kind of circumstances there were back then. Heck we don't even know when "back then" was. We have guesses and speculation but that is all.
| In the end, we can provide likely scenarios and test those. |
Likely being the key word here. My weather man said last night that because of a high pressure area we would likely see sunny skies today. As I look out the window it is cloudy and sprinkling. And your discussing likely circumstances from millions of years ago to boot.
| We will indeed never know with certainty what happened exactly, as is the case with almost all human knowledge. |
Agreed.
| And you can indeed hide behind that as a line of defense to eternally reject that possibility that life was not created. |
But life was created. We just debate whether it was created my purely materialistic means or not.
| But why you would want to do that is beyond me. |
I have yet to hear a more rational explanation then an eternal creator. Somewhere somehow whether in this dimension or another, whether in the universe or another the first matter began to exist. I see no other possibility then for it's creator or first cause to have an eternal existence. With out an eternal creator you must then have eternal matter. |
"Lets get one thing clear, Bill. Science does make some assumptions." -perrodetokio-
"In the end as skeptics we must realize that there is no real knowledge, there is only what is most reasonable to believe." -Coelacanth-
The fact that humans do science is what causes errors in science. -Dave W.-
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 10:29:10 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Bill scott
But in the real world there is no wall of separation between abiogenesis and cosmology. That only happens in the .edu world. So I will always want to know the first cause of this lifeless matter. |
So what are you doing to find the answer to that question then, Bill? You have this burning desire for knowledge, it seems. How are you setting out to determine the first cause of lifeless matter?
| The biggest difference between you and I is your belief that the lifeless matter will someday be explained through completely materialist explanations. I am extremely skeptical of that conclusion and have not seen much evidence to convince me otherwise. |
What evidence have you seen to indicate that the origin of matter has a non-material explanation, bill? If you can't accept a material explanation on weak evidence, then it sure would be extremely hypocritical of you to accept a non-material explanation based on no evidence.
All this bullshit "skepticism" of yours bill is just that, complete bullshit. Because you have no intention of following your objections to their rational conclusions. You are just stubbornly refusing to accept any evidence that endangers the supremacy of your magic man theory. And we can all see right through you, bill. You are transparent in your dishonesty. So just go back under whatever rock you crawled out of and leave the intelligent people alone. We get it, bill. You're stupid and proud of it. Good for you! Now go worship the sky and leave the science to people who don't let religious brainwashing utterly obliterate their understanding of reality.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 09/12/2008 : 10:38:55 [Permalink]
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"Likely" is the wrong word to use. We examine those possibilities which lead to pragmatic, useful hypotheses.
An eternal, all-powerful creator leads nowhere, because with such a being, all explanations and all ideas are equally useful (not at all).
We already know that matter did not exist prior to about T=10-32 seconds. Earlier than that, all was energy. Earlier than T=0 (if such a statement is meaningful), we'll probably never know.
That, of course, doesn't mean that there is an "eternal" anything. In fact, everything we do observe has a finite lifetime. Positing an eternal anything is contrary to our entire body of knowledge.
The idea that there "must" be eternal matter if there's no eternal creator is simply unsupportable by any logic or evidence. It's an empty assertion, devoid of reason. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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If this works out…
