Atheists Prevaricating

Discussion in 'Politics' started by mike oxbig, Sep 1, 2012.

  1. Lucrum

    Lucrum

    I don't don't see that much difference at all and politics has nothing to do with it. And "do not have any belief in their myth" isn't necessarily 100% accurate. I'm skeptical, but open minded, of both sides.
    In short, I don't know what to believe anymore.
     
    #41     Sep 16, 2012
  2. A little know fact is there's another deity on the Christian team, yes the Holy Quartet.
    The Father, Son, Holy Ghost and Frank Lutz - the Holy Quartet.
     
    #42     Sep 16, 2012
  3. jem

    jem

    what a bunch of sophistry and misdirection....
    how did your beloved amino acids evolve into life by random chance that is the question.... something had to be a precursor substance... you attempt to make a big deal out of the fact scientists took some compounds and made amino acids. your are stuck in 1950s science mode... you need to adjust to current understandings.

    the question is the creation of life... not amino acids.

    you have no proof life evolved from non life here on earth by chance.... because...

    a... science does not know how life began..
    b... science does not know if the drive for life was coded into the substances or the environment.

    many top scientists, including nobel winners speculate we may have had "directed" evolution... because in their opinion it is very unlikely life evolved by random chance given the time and the environment on earth...



    ---

    how many fricken times do we have to go over this...

    http://web.mit.edu/rog/www/papers/does_origins.pdf

    We now know that the probability of life arising by chance is far too low to
    be plausible, hence there must be some deeper explanation that we are yet to
    discover, given which the origin of life is atleastreasonably likely. Perhaps we
    have little idea yet what form this explanation will take—although of course it
    will not appeal to the work of a rational agent; this is would be a desperate
    last resort, if an option at all—but we have every reason to look for such an
    explanation, for we have every reason to think there is one.
    In a detailed survey of the field, Iris Fry (1995, 2000) argues that although
    the disagreements among origin of life theorists run very deep, relating to the
    most basic features of the models they propose, the view sketched above is a
    fundamental unifying assumption (one which Fry strongly endorses). Some
    researchers in the field are even more optimistic of course. They believe that
    they have already found the explanation, or at least have a good head start
    on it. But their commitment to the thesis above is epistemically more basic,
    in the sense that it motivated their research in the first place and even if their
    theories were shown to be false, they would retain this basic assumption.
    3
    There is a very small group of detractors, whom Fry (1995) calls the “Almosta Miracle Camp” including Francis Crick (1981), ErnstMayr (1982),
    and Jaques Monod (1974), who appear to be content with the idea that life
    arose by chance even if the probability of this happening is extremely low.
    4
    According to Crick “the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a
    miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to been satisfied
    to get it going” (1981: 88); the emergence of life was nevertheless a “happy
    accident” (p. 14).
    5
    According to Mayr, “a full realization of the near impossibility of an origin of life brings home the point of how improbable this
    event was.” (1982: 45). Monod famously claimed that although the probability of life arising by chance was “virtually zero. . .our number came up in the
    Monte Carlo game” (1974: 137). Life, as Monod puts it, is “chance caught
    on a wing” (p. 78). That is, although natural selection took over early to produce the diversity of life, its origin was nothing but an incredibly improbable
    fluke.Does Origins of Life Research Rest on a Mistake? 459
    However, the vast majority of experts in the field clearly define their work
    in opposition to this view. The more common attitude is summed up neatly
    by J. D. Bernal.
    [T]he question, could life have originated by a chance occurrence of atoms,
    clearly leads to a negative answer. This answer, combined with the knowledge
    that life is actually here, leads to the conclusion that some sequences other than
    chance occurrences must have led to the appearances of life. (quoted in Fry 2000:
    153)
    Having calculated the staggering improbability of life’s emergence by chance,
    Manfred Eigen (1992) concludes,
    The genes found today cannot have arisen randomly, as it were by the throw of
    a dice. There must exist a process of optimization that works toward functional
    efficiency. Even if there are several routes to optimal efficiency, mere trial and
    error cannotbe one of them. (p. 11)
    It is from this conclusion that Eigen motivates his search for a physical principle that does not leave the emergence of life up to blind chance, hence
    making itreproducible in principle:
    The physical principle that we are looking for should be in a position to explain
    the complexity typical of the phenomena of life at the level of molecular structures and syntheses. It should show how such complex molecular arrangements
    are able to form reproducibly in Nature. (p. 11)
    According to Christian de Duve (1991),
    . . .unless one adopts a creationist view,. . .life arose through the succession of an
    enormous number of small steps, almost each of which, given the condition at
    the time had a very high probability of happening. . .the alternative amounts to
    a miracle. . .were [the emergence of life] not an obligatory manifestation of the
    combinatorial properties of matter, it could not possibly have arisen naturally.
    (p. 217)
    Not all theorists follow De Duve so far as suggesting that life’s emergence
    mustbe inevitable. While nota specialistin the area, Richard Dawkins (1987)
    captures the attitude that appears to dominate scientific research into life’s
    origin. According to Dawkins,
    All who have given thought to the matter agree that an apparatus as complex as
    the human eye could not possibly come into existence through [a single chance
    event]. Unfortunately the same seems to be true of at least parts of the apparatus
    of cellular machinery whereby DNA replicates itself (p. 140)460 NOUS ˆ
    In considering how the first self-replicating machinery arose, Dawkins asks
    “Whatis the largestsingle eventof sheer naked coincidence, sheer unadulterated miraculous luck, that we are allowed to get away with in our theories,
    and still say that we have a satisfactory explanation of life?” (p. 141) And
    he answers that there are strict limits on the “ration of luck” that we are
    allowed to postulate in our theories.
    6
    According to Dawkins, an examination
    of the immense complexity of the most basic mechanisms required for DNA
    replication is sufficient to see that any theory which makes its existence a
    highly improbable fluke is unbelievable, quite apart from what alternative
    explanations are on the table


    http://web.mit.edu/rog/www/papers/does_origins.pdf




     
    #43     Sep 16, 2012
  4. stu

    stu

    No it isn't the question. You're confused. The scientific question is how do compounds synthesize via known chemical and physical processes.

    Using the creationist mindset you're for ever trying to fit magic somewhere/anywhere in between, no life - inorganic matter - chemical reaction - amino acids - protein - life; as the reason for life. It's just very dumb of you.

    Indeed. How many times until the penny drops and you understand non scientific philosophical pontificating like that is no type of argument except a bad one.
     
    #44     Sep 16, 2012
  5. jem

    jem

    when caught bullshiting the troll changes the topic once again.
    Stu you are so predictable.

    and you are so full of shit..

    in the end it is possible is that all life is, is just a synthesis... but if it were so simple you would not have just about every noted scientists in the field doubting it could have happened by random chance.

    you need to read the scientists surveyed by that MIT paper...

    you are stuck in 1950s thought.



     
    #45     Sep 16, 2012
  6. jcl

    jcl

    You have misunderstood this. Of course almost every noted scientist in the field doubts that life could have happened by random chance because it didn't, and no one claimed that.

    There are about 10 different theories of abiogenesis. None of them says that life "happened by random chance". All theories are based on different self organizing processes that in the end under certain environment conditions lead to replicating RNA. Some of such processes, such as the spontaneous building of peptids, have been verified in the lab.
     
    #46     Sep 17, 2012
  7. jem

    jem

    You are now crossing over it to my lane... but I will play...

    Don't some scientists including prize winners state it is possible (some might say likely) the "self organizing processes" were baked in to the DNA or the environment? You only had about 3 billion years for all this to happen...
     
    #47     Sep 17, 2012
  8. jcl

    jcl

    I'm not sure what you mean with baked in to the DNA. An example for a self organizing process is the symmetric pattern of a snowflake. An overview of the theories I mentioned can be found here:

    http://student.science.uva.nl/~jckastel/html/abiogenesis.pdf
     
    #48     Sep 18, 2012
  9. stu

    stu

    ....so what's your problem ?

    ...self organizing processes baked in by the environment...
     
    #49     Sep 18, 2012
  10. jem

    jem

    it is possible but very unlikely the synthesis was accomplished by random chance.

    you realize if it was baked in by the environment... then the question is who baked the environment to be this way? you just consented to the idea that if not random chance... must be something else.
     
    #50     Sep 18, 2012