Is "life" bound to happen?

Discussion in 'Agnosticism and Atheism' started by OlderWaterBrother, Oct 31, 2009.

  1. jumbuli55

    jumbuli55 Member

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    BTW, if you speak of Tao, i hope you have understanding of basic concepts of Tao.
    Ever read Tao Te Ching?

    These people have vested and almost religious interest in insisting that "it's all happened by random chance and natural selection", regardless of relevant evidence or plausible argument to support the notion.

    Just as with any RELIGIOUS group, critically thinking mind at this point must inquire: what is it that these dogma worshippers have to gain if the darwinism is accepted as valid theory?
    What is there for these relentless advocates to gain or maintain?

    Once you ask that question and ponder on it the answers will pour like a river down the mountain.

    I won't give any further comments on it. Those who have brains will comprehend.
     
  2. Indy Hippy

    Indy Hippy Zen & Bearded

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    Yes I have read the Tao Te Ching, it is my personal philosophical preference. I also know that the Tao isn't really so much a god or even an entity as it is a way of being
     
  3. OlderWaterBrother

    OlderWaterBrother May you drink deeply Lifetime Supporter

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    Yes, I know that chemistry is chemistry, I also know that that hygienic practice and mummification/preservation techniques are two different things. Why, don't you? :D
     
  4. thedope

    thedope glad attention Lifetime Supporter

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    Mummification and food preservation are not the same thing. Hygienic practice, mummification, and food preservation are all applied sciences with chemistry at their root. You're silly.
     
  5. Stabby

    Stabby Member

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    The rest of the world could be putting on a highly elaborate charade, deceiving me into the false belief that Mexico exists. Mexicans might be made in a laboratory in Sweden and given acting lessons. Until I go to Mexico I have to admit that it might not exist, although conclude that there’s an excellent chance of it existing and it would be silly and unreasonable not to accept it. The same goes for evolution. Until I observe evolution occurring myself, I cannot in good faith claim complete certainty. I have never claimed such, although in the future I will be sure to be less ambiguous when using “fact”, instead I will use “scientific fact”.


    If you don’t believe evolution to be true then you don’t believe humans to have evolved from other species over millions of years and are the products of natural selection, mutation and have genetic instincts and adaptations suited for the Paleolithic lifestyle. It’s impossible to treat any knowledge gained from the evolutionary perspective as valid, as it relies on evolution being true. Unless someone has crazy double-think skills perhaps. That would be mighty impressive.



    Knowledge in the hands of those who would use it for evil is a bad thing, yes. What I said is that it is the basis for a lot of good for the world and people wishing to benefit from knowledge should seek it. That it is also the basis for evil isn’t any reason to snub knowledge itself and doesn’t diminish the value of knowledge or the good that knowledge begets. This would be anthropomorphizing the concept “knowledge” itself.


    Scientists needed a word for when evidence is so completely and utterly conclusive that it would seem as if its deniers were either ignorant to the evidence or blatantly denying reality. There’s no point in anthropomorphizing “science”. The scientific community isn’t a single entity with an agenda or common unifying purpose like a club or cult, it’s a collection of people with academic credentials and a common epistemology, many of whom disagree with the others vehemently on many things. Evolution doesn’t happen to be one of them though. When something is a legitimate scientific fact, that says much about its validity.

    I can see how this may appear as elitism. I think that this is a misconception, but an understandable one considering the attitudes of some scientifically oriented folks, declaring things to be "fact", "irrational", etc.





    It doesn’t say sphere, it says circle. A CD is a circle, but is flat. And something doesn’t have to be spherical to hang in suspension. I’m not very impressed by that one.

    It’s not as if I came in here with the intention. Things happened like that. My apologies if this conversation was detrimental to your intended purpose for this thread.
     
  6. jumbuli55

    jumbuli55 Member

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    I am flattered to see that all the Religious Dogma Worshipping Darwinists have run out of two parrallel threads where I was challenging them on merits, and instead resorted to attacking a Straw Man so conveniently set up for them by fellow OWB.

    Let Darwinists and their Straw Men argue among themselves, illustrous Victory is that of the Scientific Method which they can't touch (as evident from mass deserting of two other serious threads dedicated to arguing merits of Darwinism).

    Hurray !!! Darwinists are decisevly defeated !!! Hoax perpetrating Munchausens exposed !!!



    :cheers2:
     
  7. OlderWaterBrother

    OlderWaterBrother May you drink deeply Lifetime Supporter

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    You did not say food preservation and in conjunction with mummification, one might think that you were talking about the preservation of the dead instead of food.

    Also hygienic practice and food preservation have almost nothing to do with chemistry. :rolleyes:
     
  8. OlderWaterBrother

    OlderWaterBrother May you drink deeply Lifetime Supporter

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    Although there is a remote possibility that Mexico, as you say may not exist, it's existence is not a theory and can be easily proved by just going there. Neither of which is true of Evolution.

    One does not need to know how a useful bit of information was arrived at, to use it. One only needs to know that it is useful.

    I never said that you should snub knowledge and I never said that knowledge isn't the basis for great good either, I just said there is some knowledge that mankind would be better off without.

    Actually it says nothing about it's validity, all it says is it's the prevailing theory and as we know prevailing theories don't always hold up.

    I didn't ask you to be impressed.

    Also, the original-language word translated “circle” at Isaiah 40:22 may also be rendered “sphere”, in fact certain Bible translations read; “the globe of the earth” (Douay Version) and “the round earth.”—Moffatt.

    Your conversation is not in the least detrimental to the intended purpose for this thread. It's just off topic and I was wondering why you have made no attempt to address the OP. ;)
     
  9. OlderWaterBrother

    OlderWaterBrother May you drink deeply Lifetime Supporter

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    Just wondering in what way the OP is a Straw Man. :D
     
  10. jumbuli55

    jumbuli55 Member

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    Darwinists don't claim that life was bound to happen. They don't even claim to know how it came to be.
    What they say is that given the vast size of Universe and billions of years of timeframe Life could have emerged spontaneously and then evolved by random chance and natural selection.
    They see Shakespeare on the table and say monkeys must have typed it by random chance. They don't say monkeys were bound to type Shakespeare. Notice the difference?
    Why argue the point that they don't dispute to begin with?

    Next, you take a position of "Bible is the word of God" and "I believe in Creation".
    What scientific grounds, what evidence do you have to sustain your claim?
    In fact you advance the argument that is symmetrical to one advanced by Darwinists , only it's much easier to refute your position and thus you make them appear more reasonable and rational than they actually are.

    If you are a believer of course it's your right to believe what you chose.

    But how do you argue and show your opponent wrong on Scientific grounds if the argument you base your position on is itself derived from Faith rather than Empirical Evidence and Scientific Method of arriving to conclusion?

    Yet that's what you are doing.

    Ergo, I must conclude that you are either foolish (which i find hard to believe since i have read some of your other posts and you give an impression of relatively inteligent poster) OR you have deliberately set up this thread as a Straw Man so that there wouldn't be any serious argument about Darwinism.
    You tell me what else it could be.
     
  11. OlderWaterBrother

    OlderWaterBrother May you drink deeply Lifetime Supporter

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    Thank you for your explanation. :D

    Perhaps that is what the books say, the trouble is that in discussions with evolutionists, this subject keeps coming up. The quote in the OP is a direct quote, cut and pasted from such a discussion. To me the statement seems fallacious and this thread was started not so much to prove or disprove Evolution but to see if evolutionists had any proof to back up such a claim. The answer seems to be no.

    As for Evolution vs Creation, yes I do believe in God and creation but this thread has nothing to with either and that is not my arguing point in this thread and I have at no time said it was. Some have asked and yes that is what I believe but as has been pointed out Creation does not negate the possibility of a Universe where life was bound to happen, so arguing creation in this thread is a moot point. All that is need is to say that there is the possibility that life could have occurred some other way than by spontaneous generation, thus making the statement life was bound to questionable. :D
     
  12. thedope

    thedope glad attention Lifetime Supporter

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    I can understand your confusion. I speak of the nature of things outside of the prism of belief. You interpret with a pointed mindset that looks for ammunition to defend your assumed belief, that unsubstantiated statement that other nations had no knowledge of hygienic practice.

    Wrong.
     
  13. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    well nothing is bound to happen, but if anything with the means of doing anything about it, say some postulated negative power, wished us to not exist, would we even be here at all? that we do exists, suggest to me, that negative, harm wishing powers, are a figment of imaginations that find claims of their existence convenient to their own agendas.
     
  14. Stabby

    Stabby Member

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    And I could also study biology and genetics formally and have the complete and utter certainty of virtually every biologist. Alas, I will never study genetics, or go to Mexico. But will I remain agnostic about their existence? I think that that would be unreasonable. The evidence for evolution that doesn’t require vast amounts of knowledge in biology and genetics is highly plausible, but I will agree that it doesn’t provide that certainty of more learned scientists. This is where reasoning can provide a rational positive belief.

    Without evolution as an axiom, one would never arrive at such knowledge. If one is finding such bits of information gained by the evolutionary perspective to be true, one is confirming the validity of evolution. Or intelligent design, I suppose. That God fellow COULD have created humans with the natural instincts, and psychological/physiological adaptations suited for pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers. The god-centric perspective would make for few testable and useful hypotheses, though. At risk of creating a false dilemma I’ll remain open to another explanation for our adaptations and instinctual mechanisms than natural selection, but as you say, evolution is the prevailing theory (or religion I suppose. That one’s extremely prevalent too).

    This is true. Alfred Nobel found that out the hard way.

    That prevailing theories haven’t always held up says nothing about the validity of prevailing theories. Especially modern ones, which are much less fallible than those of the past. Science is accelerating faster than ever before, and yet evolution remains a legitimate and ubiquitous scientific fact, verified by correct hypotheses. How many things as securely factual as evolution in modern times do you think are actually wrong?


    The vast majority of them translate it to circle. I can’t see this as having much significance. The Greeks were speculating that the earth wasn’t flat hundreds of years before Christ so we can say that the translator of the douay version was at least well-educated.

    Abiogenesis? I can’t really speculate on whether or not it was bound to happen. However likely or unlikely it was, it happened and so I would say it was at least likely to happen. In the scenario that it didn’t happen, we wouldn’t be existing and wouldn’t be talking about it and so if we are (we are, I think), we can conclude that this reality is one in which abiogenesis had at least good probability of occurring. This really says nothing though.
     
  15. OlderWaterBrother

    OlderWaterBrother May you drink deeply Lifetime Supporter

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    This is really what this thread is about.

    See you say; "However likely or unlikely it was", you say; "it happened", you say; if "it didn’t happen, we wouldn’t be existing", you say; "we can conclude that this reality is one in which abiogenesis had at least good probability of occurring", none of these are necessarily so. We don't know any of this.

    When you say; "However likely or unlikely it was", you are forgetting one thing and that is not how likely it is but that it could be impossible under any circumstances for life to occur by it's self.

    When you say; "it happened", you are just taking for granted that it happened, because there is no proof that it did. It hasn't even been proved that it could happen let alone that it did happen.

    Then you say; if "it didn’t happen, we wouldn’t be existing". Why not?

    Last you say; "we can conclude that this reality is one in which abiogenesis had at least good probability of occurring". So from all these unproven statements you draw the conclusion that life springing from non-life had a good probability of occurring.

    And I'm just to take your word for it?
     
  16. Stabby

    Stabby Member

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    I really have no idea about the origins of life. Notice the "This really says nothing" at the end, signifying the uncontemplated ramble. :p

    But I see what you mean. Treating abiogenesis as the only option rules out that whole god thing. I tend to take him for granted and even forget about him from time to time. Yes, that is one option. You'll have to excuse me. The "God did it" option automatically rings the god of the gaps fallacy bell in my brain.

    I'm not exactly enticed by the question of the thread. It poses an unanswerable question, one which I don't feel the need to search for the answer for. Life happened. Prove to me how it happened and I'll adopt that belief, but I'm not concerned with the how.
     
  17. famewalk

    famewalk Banned

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    Jacques Monod makes out that the perception of life was nevertheless necessary when It happened; in essence we observe pro-creation, over against thermodynamics, and the Laws of replication in the molecular biology (literally all molecules in matter itself are duplicate for compounds to OBSERVE) along with the laws of thermodynamics, which are against time, a state to state comparison. (sticking tongue out].
     
  18. sathead

    sathead Banned

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    The perception of Life? I think you are meaning that life as such has no realizable worth for the objective reality. Instead: "Life was bound to be..." is the subject which now realizes itself with the adjective's beyond perception of normal happiness, freedom of choice, and mental judgment, i.e. subjective meanings of WHY we are here?

    Camus writes: "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." Normal life had no meaning as much as we think.
     
  19. sathead

    sathead Banned

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    The perception of Life? I think you are meaning that life as such has no realizable worth for the objective reality. Instead: "Life was bound to be..." is the subject which now realizes itself with the adjective's beyond perception of normal happiness, freedom of choice, and mental judgment, i.e. subjective meanings of WHY we are here?

    Camus writes: "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." Normal life had no meaning as much as we think.
     
  20. OlderWaterBrother

    OlderWaterBrother May you drink deeply Lifetime Supporter

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    Thank you for your honesty. :D It may not seem like it but I've enjoyed discussing this with you. :D
     

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