God, truth, and shtuff like that
This post has been taken away and shot due to it's incorrect and hasty content. My bad. I'll try to study up more before I again tread the waters of such a massive debate.
Thanks
Thanks
posted by ben at 9:47 PM
11 Comments:
Which nobody, NOBODY, should ever take to mean that religion is in any way, shape, or form, correct.
I should have my brother see this. He's big on this sort of stuff.
That microbe was my father. He was a great little speck, then he evolved. Fucking sell-out...
I guess I'll start off by saying that you really should try to figure out what science actually says about these kind of things before forming an opinion. I speak only from experience, because the argument you just used is close to one I used to justify believing in God when I was in high school. The problem is, virtually nothing in your description of how life came to be in its current form is correct.
In the beginning, there was nothing, but random chance prevailed at incalculable odds to create... A microbe.
No. A microbe is a living organism, like bacteria. You're getting WAY ahead of yourself. In the beginning there were simple chemicals, polymers, self-replicating polymers, hypercycles, protobionts, THEN bacteria. That's a simplified ordering of the progression, which took hundreds of millions of years. The odds aren't really incalculable, either (here's a discussion of some of those probability calculations you see, along with some explanation of that progression I gave you).
I think the confusion that some people have here stems for confusion about the boundaries of evolutionary theory. The theory of evolution that Darwin came up with begins with the capability for reproduction and heredity in every organism. It does NOT say anything about the origin of life (called abiogenesis), which is typically the domain of biochemistry. In high school we learn about the theory of evolution and that it explains how we got here, but we don't learn about abiogenesis. Therefore, we get the idea that the beginning of evolutionary theory is what science thinks is the beginning of life, when it isn't.
And not just any microbe, but one that could feed on anything, survive any sort of environment, and reproduce itself perfectly en masse.
No, no, and no. There's no living thing that fits those first two conditions (nor one that needs to to survive), and replication had to evolve as well.
Then, that microbe evolved. Oh yes, it changed into a new kind of microbe, one that not only held all the characteristics of the first one, but also conveniently didn't compete with the first kind enough to drive them both to extinction.
What would happen is simple polymers would begin replicating after they appeared. They would increase in number over non-replicating polymers, obviously, because those ones can't replicate themselves. The resources needed for this are miniscule, so there's no reason that would drive any to extinction for quite a long time. Lab experiments have shown that accurate replication at this stage is quite possible, as well.
The second kind of microbe then conformed to the idea of changing, and evolved into an even better something.
Conformed? Why would you pick that word? Replication is a chemical reaction.
This miracle continued to happen, defying all laws of physics and the nature of competition as they struggled to stay alive.
What laws would those be? What exactly is the nature of competition? As I said, competition for resources is not a big deal at the early stages of the origin of life. Competition increases as complexity increases.
Food appeared out of the nether, stayed up to date on the changing dietary ways of the microbe empire, and didn't die off like it should have either.
None of that makes the least bit of sense. The Sun hardly appeared out of the nether, and that was the primary source of nutrition for early bacteria. We're still talking about fairly small resource needs here, so there's not really a reason for all of them to go extinct.
This went on for much, much longer than anyone would like to admit, and these microbes eventually grew into big, smart monkeys that were so advanced that they were able to tell everyone where they came from.
Well, there's nothing really wrong there, at least.
Genetics, mutations, natural selection, and really anything short of divine intervention can not possibly explain the origins of life. Nothing can not have created something. Unliving things can not have created living organisms, especially ones capable of surviving in pre-Earth (ish) environments.
The dividing line between life and non-life is not as clear as you think. In fact, I don't think you can actually give me something specific that divides them. Lab experiments have demonstrated that organic molecules can be spontaneously generated from non-organic molecules, an early step in the origin of life. Replication is a chemical reaction. There's no reason life can't have arisen slowly and gradually. Also, what does the environment of the early Earth have to do with anything? Chemicals are pretty much everywhere and chemical reactions occur in a very wide range of environments. We also see living organisms that can survive in extremely harsh environments and they happen to be among the simplest of all organisms.
If alternate universes exist, then there aren't different rules that apply there.
I haven't a clue what that's supposed to mean. There's no reason alternative universes couldn't have different laws of nature. I don't see the relevance of this anyway.
It seems that the faith in there at least "having been" an intelligent designer at the beginning of everything is much better founded than a belief in unproven, incalculable, never-been-witnessed, scientific theory.
Really? Notice that the adjectives you use to describe the scientific theory apply to your intelligent designer. In fact, as I hope I've demonstrated to you, they really don't apply to the scientific theory at all. We have been able to do experiments that simulate situations on the early Earth, as best as we can figure. Besides, look what you're doing. You're taking a mystery (the origin of life) and explaining it with an even bigger mystery (a designer). You exchanged a few questions about the origin of life for more questions about this designer. Where did it come from? What is it? Why did it create us? What did it do to create life on Earth? Did it create the Universe? How? Why can it violate the laws of nature? Why doesn't it show itself? The questions are endless. Your argument here is also fallacious, using argumentum ad ignorantiam. Essentially, you're saying that since science hasn't proven the exact way that life arose, it is wrong. You then build your intelligent designer on this fallacious foundation. Not a very good argument, I'd say. Furthermore, the form of argument used here has a terrible track record. We don't know why the Sun rises? God(s). Disease? Demons. Rain? God(s). The gap for the supernatural is getting smaller and smaller. The fact that the type of argument you're using has been proven wrong every time the issue has been resolved and the fact that it's fallacious should serve as quite a warning.
To begin with, I didn't mean to insult anybody with my post, except for the few rather stupid people who prompted the post in the first place. That being said, I'll try to defend some litlle bit of my dignity from your (Jeff's) comment.
Yup, nothing started with a microbe. Half this crap was quickly tossed out satire and such, but yeah, I should work on being more accurate among such things. The actual calculations of the odds I was referring to are actually really incalculable, since any observations on the origins of such chemicals, polymers, etc., are either in nature, where there are already chemicals, minerals, etc., or in labs, where the environment is chemically sterilized in an artificially created (plastic/ metal/glass) micro-environment.
Good call on abiogenesis, I'm not very familiar with it at all, so, uh, my bad, I'll read up on it.
The evolution of replication cannot be considered in the timeline of life, since replication happens at different speeds for different things, and the original chemicals, polymers, etc, proposed in the theory aren't around, nor proven.
No, there's not anything around that can feed on anything or survive in any environment, that was definitely sarcasm.
Again, lab experiments cannot "prove" the replication of polymers in the incorrect environment, and there are no labd in existence that can correctly replicate the environments in question.
"The Sun hardly appeared out of the nether, and that was the primary source of nutrition for early bacteria. We're still talking about fairly small resource needs here, so there's not really a reason for all of them to go extinct."
This is based on the assumption that the sun was around the origins of life. The sun would also have to grant light and not burn up/suck in these early microbes, which is what it should have done in it's early stages.
Hmm... a distinct division between life and non-life? I'd like to say that "non" part, but I don't think it would fly. I thounght it was the ability to reproduce.
"We also see living organisms that can survive in extremely harsh environments and they happen to be among the simplest of all organisms." True, but they are also among the least adaptive to external environments.
Ah, the alternate universe thing. I was referring to another universe where the third law of thermo-dynamics didn't exist, which would allow a whole lot of nothing to create all this "something". Quite a bit of my problem with these theories and such is that there is no real beginning. This also gives rise to the question of if there is a beginning at all, in the sense that we use it, but that reaches way into the realm of speculation.
Yeah... it seems that my last paragraph sucked. This is rather prone to happen in my writing, as Chris can probably attest. I respect your knowledge, don't get me wrong, but some of it (like mine) is based on unproveable data. I hope to hear back (really), and I'll be reading up more on abiogenesis and such in the mean time.
Toodles
Oh yeah, and ignore any redundancies or spelling errors of mine please. Thank you.
"Yup, nothing started with a microbe. Half this crap was quickly tossed out satire and such, but yeah, I should work on being more accurate among such things. The actual calculations of the odds I was referring to are actually really incalculable, since any observations on the origins of such chemicals, polymers, etc., are either in nature, where there are already chemicals, minerals, etc., or in labs, where the environment is chemically sterilized in an artificially created (plastic/ metal/glass) micro-environment."
I was thinking you meant incalculable in the sense of incalculably high. I'm not really sure if you're saying that's not what you meant or not. Anyway, you're right that the odds are difficult to calculate, but I don't think it has much to do with how we replicate past environments, but what environments we replicate, as it's very difficult to know what environment is correct. I don't understand your problem with replicated environments, actually. Chemically sterilized is good if we're trying to isolate certain phenomena. Plus, as far as I know, the container isn't a big deal, as it's unlikely the properties of any of those materials would affect a reaction. Plus, replicating experiments for those kinds of confounding effects is pretty effective. But, we'll never be perfect. That shouldn't keep us from learning what we can from such simulations.
"The evolution of replication cannot be considered in the timeline of life, since replication happens at different speeds for different things, and the original chemicals, polymers, etc, proposed in the theory aren't around, nor proven."
I don't understand your problem here. Those things had to have happened for life to evolved, so they're included. Also, what does speed have to do with anything? We're talking about the ability of chemicals or proteins to replicate and then moving up through more complex polymers, cell division, sex, etc. What abiogenesis research does is make educated guesses about what chemicals were around looking for reactions and situations that can get to the the next level and progressing. Actually, it goes backwards much of the time, but the idea is the same. It's always going to be a flaw of abiogenesis that confirmation of any one theory will be difficult, but that shouldn't stop us for looking for avenues that get us to the point we're at now. If you're looking for proof, you're looking in the wrong place. Science is not in the business of proving anything.
"Again, lab experiments cannot "prove" the replication of polymers in the incorrect environment, and there are no labd in existence that can correctly replicate the environments in question."
Again, I don't really understand your problem with replicating environments. The difficulty is in figuring out which one to replicate. It'll be idealized, but it'll be close.
"This is based on the assumption that the sun was around the origins of life. The sun would also have to grant light and not burn up/suck in these early microbes, which is what it should have done in it's early stages."
It's not an assumption, it's based on our current scientific models of the origin of our solar system. Our planet couldn't have formed without the sun.
What basis do you have for saying the sun should have burnt up early life?
"Hmm... a distinct division between life and non-life? I'd like to say that "non" part, but I don't think it would fly. I thounght it was the ability to reproduce."
I think reproduction would by considered necessary but not sufficient. For example, we've created self replicating robots. I don't think they're alive. Viruses can replicate, but it's not clear that they're alive. In any case, "something out of nothing" is not a good argument about life emerging from non life, because the material is all there and "life" is essentially an organization of that material.
"True, but they are also among the least adaptive to external environments."
You mean adapted, I assume. It doesn't matter, as they can adapt to new enviroments given enough time (and a postive benefit for doing so, of course).
"Ah, the alternate universe thing. I was referring to another universe where the third law of thermo-dynamics didn't exist, which would allow a whole lot of nothing to create all this "something"."
I don't think you mean the third law here. Maybe the 2nd? It still doesn't matter, as there's no "something out of nothing." We're talking about the material changing states.
"Quite a bit of my problem with these theories and such is that there is no real beginning. This also gives rise to the question of if there is a beginning at all, in the sense that we use it, but that reaches way into the realm of speculation."
The Big Bang theory implies a beginning, as does thermodynamics, but we're far being very certain.
I don't know a lot about abiogenesis myself. It's actually a very difficult subject to get good information on, as it changes very quickly. The Talk Origins site I linked in my last post has some information, but not much. Creationist web sites love to talk about it, but they rarely have anything interesting to say.
Also, you didn't say anything about the problems with positing an intelligent designer. Abiogenesis is fairly speculative at this point and will never be as certain as other areas, but this isn't a reason to dismiss it. We have to weight the evidence for both ideas. I think a small amount of evidence for abiogenesis and Occam's Razor is sufficient to make a tenative, open to revision conclusion.
Hello again. I would like to repeat that I am not in any way trying to be rude, but rather to argue in style... or something like that.
"I was thinking you meant incalculable in the sense of incalculably high"
Well, I actually meant both. This sort of stretches into the chaos theory, but basically, nothing that happens can be calulated to anywhere near accuracy. For example, if you threw a penny over your shoulder, and there was a 6x8 table behind you, in a hundred square foot room, and you wanted to know the odds if that penny landing on the table you would have to know:
The weight, size, aero-dynamics, trajectory, odds of bouncing, rotations of, etc. that penny. Then you need to know how hard, at what angle, etc. that penny was thrown. And then the material, height off the ground, and distance of from you the table is.
Factor in stuff like wind resistance, if there is a cross breeze (etc.), the temperature of the room, and you run into the problems of how these effect the other conditions, which in turn create more problems to take into account. It's not possible, even in a controlled environment, and it can definitely not be done on the scale required for figuring out how life began. It's crazy.
"For example, we've created self replicating robots. I don't think they're alive"
Good point, I hadn't thought about mechanicalisms.
"It doesn't matter, as they can adapt to new enviroments given enough time (and a postive benefit for doing so, of course)."
I can't say that I agree with this, since the lack of foreign intrusion makes it impossible for natural selection to take place. They have no variation, and their replication isn't different at any given time.
"Also, you didn't say anything about the problems with positing an intelligent designer"
This is true. I can't in any way prove that there is a God or higher being. I'm mostly confused as to why "faith" is such a bad thing. I guess it all comes back to what you believe in, rather than what you can prove. This doesn't mean I think you should hold on to anything that's been disproven- oh heww no- but more that no one has it figured out.
That's all for now.
I don't think you're being rude at all, so don't worry about it.
I agree that odds calculating can be difficult. I do think we can get close, but it'll be a ballpark figure.
"I can't say that I agree with this, since the lack of foreign intrusion makes it impossible for natural selection to take place. They have no variation, and their replication isn't different at any given time."
Foreign intrusion? I'm not sure what you mean, but I'm assuming you mean some sort of change in environment (climate, predators, food, etc). They can vary genetically, as they have DNA. You also might want to look up endosymbiotic theory, which explains how eukaryotic cells developed and doesn't rely on variation. It says cells were formed through a symbiotic relationship with other types of bacteria. No variation within species is required.
"This is true. I can't in any way prove that there is a God or higher being. I'm mostly confused as to why "faith" is such a bad thing. I guess it all comes back to what you believe in, rather than what you can prove. This doesn't mean I think you should hold on to anything that's been disproven- oh heww no- but more that no one has it figured out."
My opinion is this: faith, defined as believing something on insufficient evidence (and often no evidence), is improper in everyday life. You don't get points for writing 2+2=5 no matter how much you believe that's correct. We don't take people seriously if they believe an invisible pink elephant follows them around based on no evidence (we tell them to seek psychiatric help, actually). Basically, just believing something doesn't get you very far, nor is it honest, when dealing with just about everything. So, why is religion an exception? That's my thinking, at least.
I don't think anyone has the answers. I just think that based on the evidence we have, there's no reason to believe in God or any religion. In many cases, religious dogma directly contradicts what we know about the world. In others, it asks us to believe very strange things based on no evidence. Some people see the same thing and say they're agnostic. I don't because I see the default position as disbelief - until someone shows me evidence of an invisible pink elephant, I don't believe it, whether I have evidence against it or not.
Ok, here goes some more...
"You also might want to look up endosymbiotic theory."
This was pretty cool, though I'm not sure I got all of the technical jargon used to describe it. Is it related to chemical replication, by any chance?
By foreign intrusion I meant an outside inflow of the same species, but with enough genetic variance to spread the species beyond its natural habitat. I was thinking -more specifically- of the thermophiles that you see in the hot pools at Yellowstone Park, etc. The different species can be easily identified by their different colors, and none of the colors overlap, since the organisms can not survive in any temperature of water (up to about a hundredth of a degree, in some cases) other than their own. This makes variance within these species impossible beyond their own ecosystem... or so say the guides at the Park.
"faith, defined as believing something on insufficient evidence (and often no evidence), is improper in everyday life"
I'm inclined to agree, odd as that sounds. I'm probably way beyond the strict confines of "the church" by saying it, but I only know that religion is wrong (placebo!), and science is too specualtive (for me). I have faith that there is a God, and get some comfort out of the things that science cannot explain... yet. I believe morals are a good thing to have, and knowledge can often be much more useful, though not as beneficial to the well-being of humanity.
"until someone shows me evidence of an invisible pink elephant, I don't believe it, whether I have evidence against it or not."
Aye, and it's always your choice, though I hope that the church is confused on the idea of God's eternal judgment/etc.. If life and existence is a gift, should it be ignored on the basis that you don't know who sent it? And if it is, how do you conclude what is true, outside of biased faith? These aren't trick questions, I sure don't have the answer myself. But anyways, thanks for the theories and such, I'll try to read up more on them, and not come across as a dunce in the future. Oh yeah, and the invisible elephant isn't pink, she's a light shade of purple.. with yellow dots.
"This was pretty cool, though I'm not sure I got all of the technical jargon used to describe it. Is it related to chemical replication, by any chance?"
Not really, it's farther down the line. I was just pointing out an example of evolution without genetic variation.
"By foreign intrusion I meant an outside inflow of the same species, but with enough genetic variance to spread the species beyond its natural habitat. I was thinking -more specifically- of the thermophiles that you see in the hot pools at Yellowstone Park, etc. The different species can be easily identified by their different colors, and none of the colors overlap, since the organisms can not survive in any temperature of water (up to about a hundredth of a degree, in some cases) other than their own. This makes variance within these species impossible beyond their own ecosystem... or so say the guides at the Park."
Hmmm. Do you have a source for your claim? As far as I know, there's no need for there to be an inflow of outside organisms of the same species to create genetic variance. That doesn't make any sense, as genetic variation comes from processes like mutation and because we're talking about asexual organisms. It's possible that the organisms' traits related to where they can survive are so fine-tuned that variation is very difficult in that respect, but this is something that would occur over a long period of time and wouldn't necessarily be applicable to organisms on the early Earth. I'd have to see exactly what the guides at the Park say, though.
"I'm inclined to agree, odd as that sounds. I'm probably way beyond the strict confines of "the church" by saying it, but I only know that religion is wrong (placebo!), and science is too specualtive (for me). I have faith that there is a God, and get some comfort out of the things that science cannot explain... yet. I believe morals are a good thing to have, and knowledge can often be much more useful, though not as beneficial to the well-being of humanity."
I don't think science is particularly speculative. It seems to me that at a couple points in our discussion you were asking for ironclad proof when we only had good evidence. Science is always uncertain, but I wouldn't call it speculative. I do see why people dislike the uncertainity, but it seems like the method is the only sound one we have.
Personally, I understand why people base religious beliefs on gaps in our understanding of certain things. We've seen such gaps shrink and shrink over time. It seems that logically, you have a pretty good inductive argument that those gaps aren't really things that can't be explained naturally.
I also don't see how morality has anything to do with any gaps in our understanding. I don't think you have to believe in god to have morals, if that's what you're saying.
"Aye, and it's always your choice, though I hope that the church is confused on the idea of God's eternal judgment/etc.. If life and existence is a gift, should it be ignored on the basis that you don't know who sent it?"
Who does that, though? If I knew there was a god, my life wouldn't change at all, except maybe in the sense that I would attempt to find out more about that god.
"And if it is, how do you conclude what is true, outside of biased faith?"
If it is, I don't see that our current truth finding methods would be falsified. It probably wouldn't be possible to know anything about god or the purpose of that gift, as if your only method is faith, how is that a method at all? It's essentially random chance as to whether you'd pick the correct thing to have faith in.
"These aren't trick questions, I sure don't have the answer myself. But anyways, thanks for the theories and such, I'll try to read up more on them, and not come across as a dunce in the future. Oh yeah, and the invisible elephant isn't pink, she's a light shade of purple.. with yellow dots."
Well, technically, it wouldn't be any color, as it's invisible. :)
"It seems that logically, you have a pretty good inductive argument that those gaps aren't really things that can't be explained naturally."
Excellently said.
"It probably wouldn't be possible to know anything about god or the purpose of that gift, as if your only method is faith, how is that a method at all?"
I don't know. The only other ways I can think of off hand are strict adherance to "holy books" and astral projection... Though that is supposed to work better after you've had large amounts of heroin.
Any form of faith is sustained on placebo. Thanks again.
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