Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

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_Nomomo
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Re: Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

Post by _Nomomo »

Kevin Graham wrote:If you want to go back, then why stop at 3.8 billion years? Let's go back all the way to the beginning of nature itself. From the atheistic perspective, the universe came into existence because a chunk of matter became so hot and dense that it exploded. Unguided of course. And all the subsequent laws that were written, came about by accident. As did our galaxy, or distance from the sun, the pecise strengths of the nuclear forces, gravity, etc. None of that was by design, even though it is all mathematically tied together. No. It was all a cosmic accident that just turned out to work in our favor.

You have the unpleasant burden of trying to prove how life came from a chunk fo hot matter. Proponents of abiogenesis haven't even begun to explain this. ...........

...........The idea that we exist because some dense matter exploded, and after blind natural forces had churned over the course of 11.2 billion years, and after a primordal soup encountered some electricity, lfe sprung forth in a Frankenstein kinda way. I don't think you fully appreciate just how complex the simplest cell really is. To show that amino acids could be produced by the natural forces of the universe, is far from substantiating abogenesis. This is like saying the winds of Egypt have produced perfectly round balls of sand, therefore given enough time, we should expect it to produce a pin-ball machine.

Edward Current agrees with you, and he makes every bit as much sense as yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaAdXdkiifM
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_JohnStuartMill
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Re: Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

Post by _JohnStuartMill »

Kevin Graham wrote:
You pointed to Stalin and Pol Pot as exemplars of atheism, which they are not.

No, I never did that. Here, I did a search of all the times I used the word "Stalin" in a post. It all began a year ago in March when people were trying to imply religion is dangerous simply because some religious leaders killed. Here is what I said.

Wed Mar 19, 2008:

Dartagnan: So what kind of atheism is it that is dangerous? What kind of atheism breeds guys like Stalin? The kind of atheism that expresses intolerance towards theists.

Dude: Who cares about Stalin and his deranged personal psychology?! He wasn't just a skeptic (like most of us here). He was much, much more than that to become a murderous dictator.

Dartagnan: You're right. And bad religious people are much, much more than just religious. People in power will have the tendency to abuse that power no matter their views on the origin of life or the universe. I think the benefit of religion is that it provides a personal ideology to temper such temptation, whereas with atheism, well, there's nothing there. So I think the argument isn't what atheism causes so much as what it fails to preclude. Atheism does nothing to make bad people better but it doesn't make good people worse either. And that doesn't mean all atheists are bad. It just means atheism doesn't do anything. Religion effectively makes bad people better people, or at the least, makes a great effort at it.

Clearly I referred to a type of atheism, and did not lump all forms of atheism into Stalinism. But understanding this would require reading.
Fair point. You've got me here -- you did not hold up Stalinism as emblematic of atheism. You did, however, say that it was a logical consequence of atheism, which is virtually indistinguishable from saying it's an exemplar of it. I'm not going to let you wriggle out of castigation for that.

Example #1:
There are clear indications that the symmetries of the universe point to a purpose and that is to promote the existence of human life. This is consistent with virtually all theistic belief systems. This in and of itself screams intelligent design. And when I say intelligent design, I mean to say there are indications that the universe was not an accident and the laws therein were tweaked by something intelligent.

How in the hell can that be watered down to a simple, "it must be God since nature hasn't explained it"? My point isn't that naturalism hasn't explained it. My point is that naturalism can't explain it in any way that excludes an intelligent source. The only explanation that stands a chance is the multiverse theory, which really isn't much of one since we will never be able to detect their existence, let alone count them out to confirm they amount to a trillion trillion.
Are you completely foreclosing on the possibility that a new cosmological theory will emerge, ever? That's basically what you have to do for your residual logic to work: "nothing can explain X except God; therefore God exists" breaks down if another theory is added to the mix. Think about it this way: before electricity was discovered, the 13th century Kevin Graham would say, the only thing that could explain lightning was God. That argument was as bad in the 13th century as it is today. It's also the exact same form of argument you're using in this thread.

Example #2:
we cannot see God, but his/her/its existence conveniently explains a lot about the beauty in the world we live in; things science has not been able to explain. It is truly difficult for some people to sit and wonder at the amazing world we live in and not conclude it was by intelligent design.

Yes, there is much about the world that screams intelligence. This isn't the same thing as saying, "it must be God since nature hasn't explained it"? There is plenty that naturalism hasn't explained, that I think will eventually be explained via science. In the meantime I don't count any of these things as evidence for God. We haven't found a cure for Cancer yet. I don't consider that evidence for God. We have yet to figure out how make batteries last ten years. I don't think that is evidence for God. I've never seen a bear crap in the woods, but I doubt the piles that have been discovered are based on divine intervention.
I can't even take your exegesis seriously. The point of your above quote is obvious. You were not arguing that the unexplained beauty in the world constitutes weak circumstantial evidence for the existence of God; you were putting it forth as a reason we should conclude that God exists.

Example #3:
It defies logic to say it was an accident or that we won the cosmological jackpot. To that extent, I know a God exists.

Exactly.

Why is this one so hard to comprehend? Naturalism cannot explain this without some intelligent source. The problem isn't that it hasn't, but that it can't. Go ahead an just try to throw out some kind of "plausible" naturalistic explanation for the fact that all of the universal constants share one common value, which just happens to be one that theists have taken for granted for thousands of years.
You're making a fatal reasoning error here. You say that you're relying on "naturalism cannot", not merely "naturalism has not", and then you fail, grotesquely, to show that a naturalistic explanation is necessarily impossible, and instead demand that provide one. That's not how it works, buddy. It's your argument that relies on the impossibility of naturalistic explanation for the cosmological constants, so it's your burden to prove it. Good luck, Kevin "Godel" Graham.

All the other stuff about biology and evolution, you can throw up some kind of plausible scenario that might offer satisfying explanations. For example you can simply say one day scientists will watch various elements come together in a controlled experiment, to form a living cell. Fine. I guess that's plausible. There is no reason to think it willhappen, but at least that is a way naturalism could explain life forming naturally.
I think this is the most sensible thing we'll be able to squeeze out of you. Too bad.

But with the fine-tuned universe, just try to come up with a plausible explanation. All you have to fall back on is the appeal to chance. Enter the multiverse argument, which I find to be less than convincing, as well as humorous.
Why would I bother? You won't be satisfied that residual arguments are crappy until science is capable of explaining every jot and tittle of the universe. If magic-free reasoning ever convincingly explained the origin of the universe, you'd find the next-furthest thing out that science couldn't explain at the time, and hitch your belief in God to that instead. I don't want to play that game.

These conversations all come down to the question of what explanatory work God does. If you really want to make a case for your residual arguments, you should give us reason to believe that invoking "God" works better as an explanation than does invoking a magic walnut. You have yet to do so.
"You clearly haven't read [Dawkins'] book." -Kevin Graham, 11/04/09
_mikwut
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Re: Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

Post by _mikwut »

EA and Mr. Stuart,

I am remiss to not ask a couple more questions. First, it appears to me you both are arguing (at least in part) in a basic form that a magic walnut, aliens, etc.. in some way leaves an open question whether or not God or the magic walnut, aliens or some other assertion (demon, dreams etc.) is actual. You both have seemed to insinuate that your hypothesis (walnuts and aliens) cannot be ruled out and that they remain possible and that we don't know that they are not true. Of course neither of you profess (I safely assume) to the verity of any of these hypothesis, nor are either of your professes to an audience to believe. And somehow, a theist doesn't know God exists because we can't rule out these other possibilities?

Am I correct in this part of your argumentation?

regards, mikwut
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_EAllusion
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Re: Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

Post by _EAllusion »

I am remiss to not ask a couple more questions. First, it appears to me you both are arguing (at least in part) in a basic form that a magic walnut, aliens, etc.. in some way leaves an open question whether or not God or the magic walnut, aliens or some other assertion (demon, dreams etc.) is actual. You both have seemed to insinuate that your hypothesis (walnuts and aliens) cannot be ruled out and that they remain possible and that we don't know that they are not true. Of course neither of you profess (I safely assume) to the verity of any of these hypothesis, nor are either of your professes to an audience to believe. And somehow, a theist doesn't know God exists because we can't rule out these other possibilities?

Well, not exactly. The point of the "magic walnut" is to see why such an explanation is fails to meaningfully explain things in precisely the same way God is acting as a bad explanation in the telelogical arguments under discussion. Saying "magic walnut" instead of "nonpersonal object" isn't just flippant. It gets at the point that even if you tailor-defined an object to cause that which you are seeking to explain, it also is egregiously unparsimonious to start attaching extraneous existential claims to it, be it "walnutness" or "intelligence." My object obviously doesn't need to be a walnut to retain its core explanatory solution, so it's inane to conclude the magic object in question specifically must be a walnut (or God). On one level, it explains why these sort of tailor explanations do not work. If you defined a special type of lightning as having a property that causes abiogenesis, the existence of life is not good evidence of that lightning existing. On another level, it gets into why God is an unnecessarily complex explanatory solution of that type.
_mikwut
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Re: Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

Post by _mikwut »

EA,

Does it then only work against a deistic type of teleological argument that isn't a part of other arguments designed to show evidence that God exists?

I could be wrong but I am just not aware of many theists that camp their entire faith and belief solely on the teleological argument, whether that be ID or some other close variant. I picture the theistic argument already having (which are attached to other arguments, even basic perceptual beliefs) a conceptual framework and then discover the scientific anthropic "coincidences" - most theists don't even understand the science behind it, but it corresponds to their already held beliefs.

So it seems to me you a theist could just concede your position and yet were no further in the discussion.

mikwut
All communication relies, to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell, all our knowledge of mental processes, like feelings or conscious intellectual activities, is based on a knowledge which we cannot tell.
-Michael Polanyi

"Why are you afraid, have you still no faith?" Mark 4:40
_EAllusion
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Re: Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

Post by _EAllusion »

Does it then only work against a deistic type of teleological argument that isn't a part of other arguments designed to show evidence that God exists?


It'd work just the same against a theistic teleological argument. It'd work a little better, since theism entails more about the nature of God than deism does and as a result has even more extraneous claims attached to it. I'm not saying anything innovative here. It's a pretty standard explanation of why these kind of "evidences" really aren't evidence. There might be other evidence/arguments for God a person might want to propose. All I'm going after is why this particular kind of argument does not work.
I picture the theistic argument already having (which are attached to other arguments, even basic perceptual beliefs) a conceptual framework and then discover the scientific anthropic "coincidences" - most theists don't even understand the science behind it, but it corresponds to their already held beliefs.

Anthropic coincidences can be consistent with the existence of God, which may be believed for entirely different reasons. Of course, virtually any state of affairs is consistent with the existence of God defined generically enough, but I guess that's beside the point here. The problem is when this is used as confirmation, not simple correspondence.

But sure, a theist could concede my position here and that would not in any way imply theism is wrong. Plenty of theist philosophers do. Look at the aforementioned Robert Pennock. Or Wesley Morriston. Accepting one particular kind of argument for theism is wrong is not the same as saying theism is wrong.
_mikwut
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Re: Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

Post by _mikwut »

Hello EA,

Agreed and thank you. Not trying to patronize but understand.

Maybe pinning down Kevin's exact argument and granting that it possibly matured over time so not holding past statements (or misunderstandings) against him would be enlightening for us trying to understand his argument in the first place. The whole discussion sounds like, "no I didn't, yes you did! No I didn't, yes you Did!"

Kevin, what is your anthropic argument, sorry if it requires your repeating?

regards, mikwut
All communication relies, to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell, all our knowledge of mental processes, like feelings or conscious intellectual activities, is based on a knowledge which we cannot tell.
-Michael Polanyi

"Why are you afraid, have you still no faith?" Mark 4:40
_Tarski
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Re: Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

Post by _Tarski »

Kevin Graham wrote:
Thus far, Tarski is the only person here who has admitted this is his assumption.


?

I wonder what sentence did I write that leads you to say this.

I do not assume naturalism as some sort of axiom.
I assume it in a practical and (initially) tentative sense. It is roughly the same sense as the sense in which I assume that the noises I hear at night are not ghosts but sounds made by physical objects.
This assumption has a perfect track record but it is not an axiom or prejudice that would blind me from the reality of ghosts in case they were (counterfactually) real. I have a good idea what would change my mind and I am not logically blocked from doing so because I have suppoedly adopted a no ghost axiom.

My assumptions about supernatural things like angels and gods are of the same sort as my assumptions about unicorns and leprechauns. It is not an assumption of the sort that would block me from seeing evidence should it be there--it is a practical assumption based on success, experience and in the end common sense.

In what sense is it an assumption? Well, it just means that experience has led me to look for natural explanations first and when I can't find them, I at least try to imagine some possible ones. This is also how I deal with noises in the dark.

To paint it as inviolate philosophical assumption that could have the power to prevent me from seeing good evidence is inaccurate.
Gods and demons are just in a mental box marked "no solid good evidence and no need anyway".
Evidence could change anything but I am also not gullible.

Consider that I came to my skeptical position regarding the supernatural by steps. 99% of those steps were taken while I still had the tacit assumption that the supernatural was real (gods, demons, angels etc). Why didn't that tacit assumption prevent me from coming to the skeptical position?
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie

yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
_Calculus Crusader
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Re: Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

Post by _Calculus Crusader »

I think EA and junior are pommeling a strawman. The argument is not impossible ergo God it is improbable ergo God. Mere plausibility certainly does not cut it for the latter.
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_JohnStuartMill
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Re: Bad News for Creationists: Plausible Abiogenesis Path Found

Post by _JohnStuartMill »

The problem with "improbable ergo God" is that "improbable" isn't strong enough to support a full "ergo". The improbability of abiogenesis can constitute weak evidence for the conclusion "God", or stronger evidence for the conclusion "probably God"*, but it cannot conclusively prove "definitely God".

*This is only if you've already dealt with the flibberflabber/magic walnut counterarguments, which Kevin and CC have failed to do.
"You clearly haven't read [Dawkins'] book." -Kevin Graham, 11/04/09
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