Posted on 06/23/2008 3:05:46 PM PDT by betty boop
What is Life/Non-life in Nature?
by Jean F. Drew
Everywhere we see the “behavior” of life/non-life (death) in nature; but that doesn’t tell us what life/non-life IS.
Darwin’s theory of evolution doesn’t help with this question. It presupposes the existence of life axiomatically, and then proceeds to speak of the origin and evolution of species. Its fundamental assumption is that biological evolution is a wholly naturalistic, material process governed by the laws of physics and chemistry, with random variation and natural selection as the principal drivers of the system. Central to the Darwinist view is that life forms — species — evolve into completely other, more complex species; and this is so because all living beings are members of a Tree of Life that is rooted in a single common ancestor (the theory is silent on where the common ancestor came from).
But Darwinist theory doesn’t tell us what life is, or where it came from, just how it evolves (or speciates) under purely materialistic and naturalistic constraints. It is not a theory of life, and I think Darwin would agree with that.
This does not prevent theorists from speculating that, given the preferred scientific cosmology of a material universe of infinite size and unlimited duration — no beginning, no end — anything that can happen, will happen in time. Therefore, it is plausible to suppose that life itself may have originated from random chemical reactions that somehow “lucked out” and “stuck,” giving us the origin of life and its ubiquity and persistence henceforth.
The important point is that Darwinism rests on a certain cosmology, or world view. That worldview is increasingly being falsified by modern physics. (See below.)
It seems doubtful that an investigation carried out at the level of physical chemistry can demonstrate the emergence of life from non-living matter. This is called abiogenesis, which describes the situation where non-life (inorganic matter) spontaneously bootstraps itself into a living organism.
Miller and Urey attempted to demonstrate abiogenesis under laboratory conditions, using simulated lightning strikes on a suitable “pre-biotic soup.” They got a bunch of amino acids. But amino acids are the building blocks of living systems, not living systems themselves.
Wimmer got a better result in his attempt to create a polio virus, a living organism. He actually succeeded! But his “recipe” involved far more than the material “cell-free juice” he used as his culture: He introduced information into the mix: Wimmer began with the information sequence of RNA which he synthesized to DNA (because RNA cannot be synthesized) and then synthesized the message from DNA to RNA. When he added the message to a cell free juice, it began transmitting and duplicating. And he got himself a polio virus — a living being….
But the important thing to bear in mind is that, although Wimmer was successful in creating a living being, he was not the author of the information that led to this result. It was already “there” — and no scientist claims to know its source. Indeed, physics so far has been unable to locate any source for this type of life-generating information within the physical world. In other words, scientists recognize the indispensable requirement of information to living systems, they see that it is indeed “there”; but they cannot say how it got there, or from whence it came.
Consider also that the universe itself seems to be “informed,” in the sense of displaying evidence of some remarkable “fine-tuning” that guides its evolution. Physical chemistry itself rests on, is informed by, deeper principles: the physical laws, which in turn depend on certain ubiquitous universal constants — the speed of light; the value of pi; Plank’s constant; Plank time; the resonance precision required for the existence of carbon (a necessary element for life); the explosive power of the Big Bang precisely matched to the power of gravity (its density precisely matched with the critical density of the universe); the delicate balance in the strong nuclear force; the precise balancing of gravitational force and electromagnetic force; the meticulous balance between the number of electrons and protons; the precision in electromagnetic force and the ratio of proton mass to electron mass and neutron mass to proton mass; the Big Bang’s defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and gravity’s cumulative effect; etc., for examples.
If the universe were at bottom “random” in its evolution, these instances of evident fine-tuning would be inexplicable. The fact is we cannot say whether a system is random or not without knowing its symmetrical properties.
The “fans of random” speak and act as if they think the problem of symmetry is irrelevant to their concerns. Yet to the extent that they recognize the universe conforms to physical laws (and usually they do), the symmetry problem cannot be obviated. For laws demonstrate the property of what mathematicians call symmetry. A symmetry of some mathematical object — and the physical laws are inherently mathematical structures — is any transformation that preserves the object’s structure.
A practical application of the principle of symmetry can be found in Einstein’s observation (in his 1905 paper on Special Relativity, the same that gave us his magnificent unification of mass and energy, e = mc2) that the laws of nature are the same for all observers, regardless of their particular space-time positions.
It is evident that there are symmetries in nature, and also that mathematics has been amazingly successful in teasing them out. A favorite story is Reimann’s geometry of curved spaces. He “created” this geometry at a time when no one believed that geometry could be other than flat (Euclidean). So Reimann put his geometry on the shelf where it sat for about 50 years, gathering dust. Then a friend of Einstein pointed him to Reimann’s geometry (and Ricci’s tensor) as possible keys to the elucidation of the problems of special relativity. And they exactly did the trick.
Indeed, mathematicians have been so good at doing this sort of thing — creating mathematical systems with an eye to symmetry, and finally beauty — that Eugene Wigner marveled about “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in its ability to model and describe nature.
At this point, it seems useful to widen our purview and revisit cosmology, for now we are speaking of the universe as a whole, and cosmology is the branch of knowledge that deals with the universe as an integrated and (some would say) even living system (in some fashion).
Cosmology is conventionally defined as: (1) a branch of philosophy dealing with the origin, processes, and structure of the universe; and (2), the astrophysical study of the structure and constituent dynamics of the universe, with a particular eye on the construction and modeling of a comprehensive theory that describes such structure and dynamics. The latter is the scientific approach. Note that (2) does not explicitly address the question of origin.
Indeed, questions of origin, both of the universe and of life, seem to be troubling to many scientists. Historically, their preferred cosmology has been the eternal universe model, wherein the universe, thought to be infinite in size, just always was, having no beginning or end; it just goes along in periods of expansions and contractions in a sort of self-conserving “boom and bust” cycle forever (no second law of thermodynamics to bother it).
Now in an infinite, eternal universe, anything can happen. And so this “classical perspective” of biology anticipates that the origin of life involves “random chemicals reacting for eons and finally lucking out, resulting in a living cell coming together,” as Harold Morowitz explains it.
But then satellite observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation starting in the 1960s provided striking evidence that the universe actually had a beginning. That is, it is not eternal, and it is not infinite. The CMBR — which is universal in extent — is thought to be the “echo” of the original “big bang,” which constituted the creation event of the universe in which we live, and which powers the cosmic space-time expansion. Thus the universe truly can be thought to have “initial conditions.”
The troubling thing about the big bang/inflationary universe theory is the suggestion that the universe was either created out of nothing, or if it was created out of something, then there’s no way we can detect or prove that cause. Using a “time-reversal symmetry transformation” here — running evolutionary time “backwards” like a videotape played in reverse — the laws of physics break down at the Planck Era — 10–43 of the first second following the big bang. “Prior” to that, there is no space, no time, no physical laws of nature, no matter; it’s pure nihil: Nothing.
The nothingness “before” the creation of the universe is the most complete void that we can imagine — no space, time or matter existed. It is a world without place, without duration or eternity, without number — it is what the mathematicians call “the empty set.” Yet this unthinkable void converts itself into the plenum of existence — a necessary consequence of physical laws. Where are these laws written into that void? What “tells” the void that it is pregnant with a possible universe? It would seem that even the void is subject to a law, a logic that exists prior to space and time. — Heinz Pagels
Which of course is precisely what Genesis says: The Creation is “ex nihilo,” initiated by and proceeding according to the Word, the Logos of God, Who Is the Law of the Void as well as of the Creation, the “logic that exists prior to space and time.”
Evidently this is not a scientific statement, though I believe it is a truthful one. Still it is true that some physicists (and biologists) find the idea of a beginning of space and time out of nothing deeply disturbing for whatever reason. Taking into effect the evidence that leads to this conclusion, some have sought a “non-theistic” explanation for the phenomenon of the Big Bang. This cosmology grudgingly acknowledges that the universe did have a beginning, postulating its origin as a random fluctuation in a universal quantum vacuum field. But of course, this line of reasoning is silent about where the universal vacuum field itself came from in which a random fluctuation can occur, or how time and space got started so that events can occur in it.
This view (non-theistic cosmogenesis) is fallacious, however, because sudden quantum appearances don’t really take place out of “nothing.” A larger quantum field is first required before this can happen, but a quantum field can hardly be described as being “nothing.” Rather, it is a thing of unsearchable order and complexity, whose origin we can’t even begin to explain. Thus, trying to account for the appearance of the universe in a sudden quantum fluctuation doesn’t do away with the need for a Creator at all; it simply moves the whole problem backward one step to the unknown origin of the quantum field itself. — M. A. Corey
Whether your cosmology is philosophical or scientific, ultimately it rests on an unknown that is directly unknowable, a mystery. Scientists just as much as anybody else ponder the origin question, despite the fact that their formal methods cannot help them much there.
Cosmologically speaking, scientists get much better traction with the problem of constructing and modeling a comprehensive theory that describes, not the origin, but the structure and dynamics of the universe. But even here, they run into “mysteries.” Such as evidence for the almost eerie fine-tuning of the universe necessary for the inception, evolution, and support of Life. As Freeman Dyson put it, “The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.”
Take just one example from among many, the just mentioned universal vacuum. Because the vacuum is not “nothing,” it has energy, specifically “vacuum energy” — the energy content of empty space. Ian Stewart notes:
As it happens, the observed value [of vacuum energy] is very, very small, around 10–120, but it is not zero.
According to the conventional “fine-tuning” story, this particular value is exactly right for life to exist. Anything larger than 10–118 makes local space-time explode; anything smaller than 10–120 and space-time contracts in a cosmic crunch and disappears. So the “window of opportunity” for life is very small. By a miracle, our universe sits neatly within it.
But Stewart is a tough-minded mathematical scientist, and so evidently feels constrained to add:
The “weak anthropic principle” points out that if our universe were not constituted the way it is, we wouldn’t be here to notice, but that leaves open the question why there is a “here” for us to occupy. The “strong anthropic principle” says that we’re here because the universe was designed specially for life to exist — which is mystical nonsense. No one actually knows what the possibilities would be if the vacuum energy were markedly different from what it is. We know a few things that would go wrong — but we have no idea what might go right instead. Most of the fine-tuning arguments are bogus.”
What a relief that Professor Stewart thinks that only “most” of the fine-tuning arguments are bogus, and not all of them! One of the things likely to “go wrong” under his scenario would be the end of life as we know it on this planet, and with it intelligence. But other than that, his is a respectable argument, even though it would probably be entirely moot under different values for the vacuum energy, since intelligent beings probably would not then be around to entertain it.
There is an abundance of evidence from the precision of the fundamental values of the universe that contradicts the theory that a universe compossible with life can arise (or indeed actually rose) from an “accident.” Just as “nothing comes from nothing,” the laws of nature cannot have been established via a random process. There is nothing implicit in the meaning of “random” that contains any motive spring for it to generate order, organization, higher complexity. It is simply “random”; i.e., it reflects no law in its behavior. The people who say that the universal evolution is nothing more than the effect of a process of matter in its motions and “pure, blind chance” — as Nobel laureate Jacques Monod claims — rely on the same reasoning that says, if life can be spontaneously generated from non-life, then similarly order can come from disorder.
Which is the same sort of problem, it seems to me, involved in all the multiverse and parallel universe and “panspermia” cosmologies one finds littering the landscape these days. The latter — panspermia theory — seems to be a particular favorite of atheists such as Francis Crick and Sir Fred Hoyle.
Panspermia theory holds that life on Earth was seeded here by space aliens. I gather anything that avoids the conclusion that the universe, and Life, is a divine creation, and thus has a spiritual dimension (which would include such things as intelligence, law, information, etc., all the “non-phenomenal” aspects that “tell” phenomena “what to do”) is what is being sought in such fanciful imaginings. Such theories seem ultimately designed to forbid anything that is immaterial from having causal impact in the universe. But if you say that, then where does physical law fit in, where mathematics, or logic, or intelligence, or information? Not to mention the evident universal constants? None of these are material entities.
But the fact regarding these exotic cosmologies is, not a one of them can be falsified, or subjected to replicable experiments. All these cosmologies are works of pure philosophical imagination dressed up in the language of scientific jargon.
However, that doesn’t mean the adherents of such imaginative speculations are bad scientists. Here’s Sir Fred Hoyle, a “non-Darwinian evolutionist,” contented atheist, and honest thinker:
No matter how large the environment one considers, life cannot have had a random beginning… there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (1020)2000 = 1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.… the enormous information content of even the simplest living systems… cannot in our view be generated by what are often called “natural” processes,… For life to have originated on the Earth it would be necessary that quite explicit instruction should have been provided for its assembly… There is no way in which we can expect to avoid the need for information, no way in which we can simply get by with a bigger and better organic soup, as we ourselves hoped might be possible a year or two ago.
Information is the key to life, just as it is the key to the fundamental structure and evolution of the universe, from the beginning. One conjectures the universe has the structure and dynamics it has because these were “programmed” in at the beginning. And this structure evidently was primed for life.
Again, this is what Genesis tells us: The Universe has an intelligent cause that is outside of space-time. Physics and biology acknowledge the necessity of information for the rise and maintenance of life, but assign no cause for this information within spatiotemporal reality. But if it cannot be found “there,” then where can it be found?
See Genesis. And consider this observation, from Albert Einstein:
“The natural law reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
Scientists recognize so well that the universe has fundamental structure that they are encouraged to propound “grand unified theories,” GUTs, or “Theories of Everything.” The standard model of physics today recognizes four fundamental forces in nature: the nuclear strong, the nuclear weak, electromagnetism, and gravity. So far, all have been conveniently “reconciled together,” or unified — except for gravity, which continues to resist being fitted into any kind of “grand unified” model thus far.
Regarding the four fundamental forces, here are some more interesting thoughts from Ian Stewart:
Other types of forces could in principle give rise to other types of universe, and our ignorance of such possibilities is almost total. It is often claimed that without the particular forces we have, life would be impossible, proving that our universe is amazingly fine-tuned to make life possible. This argument is bogus, a wild exaggeration based on too limited a view of what constitutes life. Life like ours would be impossible — but it is the height of arrogance to assume that our kind of life is the only kind of organized complexity that could exist. The fallacy here is to confuse sufficient conditions for life (those aspects of our universe on which our kind of life depends) with necessary ones.
It is interesting that here Stewart reduces life to the definition, “organized complexity.” The description appears to be general enough to encompass everything (everything material at least), yet at the same time, is useless to provide insight into the living nature of actual, particular living beings.
Be that as it may, it seems Stewart is working to a doctrine, to a particular world view, in giving his analysis. And he seems to recognize this in what follows:
The view that a Theory of Everything must exist brings to mind monotheist religion — in which, over the millennia, disparate collections of gods and goddesses with their own special domains have been replaced by one god whose domain is everything. This process is widely viewed as an advance, but it resembles a standard philosophical error known as “the equation of unknowns” in which the same cause is assigned to all mysterious phenomena…. “Explanations” like this give a false sense of progress — we used to have three mysteries to explain; now we have just one. But the one new mystery conflates three separate ones, which might well have entirely different explanations. By conflating them, we blind ourselves to this possibility.
When you explain the Sun by a sun-god and rain by a rain-god, you can endow each god with its own special features. But if you insist that both Sun and rain are controlled by the same god, then you may end up trying to force two different things into the same straightjacket. So in some ways fundamental physics is more like fundamentalist physics. Equations [brief enough to fit] on a T-shirt replace an immanent deity, and the unfolding of the consequences of those equations replaces divine intervention in daily life.
Despite these reservations, my heart is with the physical fundamentalists. I would like to see a Theory of Everything, and I would be delighted if it were mathematical, beautiful, and true. I think religious people might also approve, because they could interpret it as proof of the exquisite taste and intelligence of their deity.
Exactly so — that would be my takeaway!
To sum up, it appears that a model of the universe that stipulates that all that exists — life and non-life — is simply the product of random transformations of “matter in its motions” has been falsified by modern physics. To the extent that information — which presupposes intelligence — plays a role, we have to acknowledge that other, immaterial factors are at work. Which of course we do, to the extent we realize and acknowledge the universal existence of physical laws, of finely-tuned cosmic values, and of the symmetries in nature. To do so, we have to put a check on randomness as a possible explanation for the nature or structure of things.
But we cannot eliminate randomness altogether. In the final analysis, it seems to me the universe lives in the dynamic tension that obtains between that which is changeless (the symmetry), and that which is changeable (a symmetry-breaking event). Or as Leibniz put it, at the level of fundamental universal principles the universe must consist of something that does not ever change, and something that is capable of changing.
For example, consider the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The first is a conservation law — matter cannot be either created or destroyed — that is, matter is unchangeable; i.e., it is “symmetrical” under all known conditions. The second law “breaks the symmetry” of the first; and if it couldn’t do that, then probably nothing would ever happen in our universe.
The most amazing thing to me is that evidently, as a consequence of such a fundamental tension, we live in a “guided” universe, but not a wholly deterministic one.
And the Guide does not seem to reside in the system — at least, as far as science can tell.
Thus it seems to me if the Guide could construct a universe finely-tuned and primed for life on the most global scale — i.e., that of the whole universe — then it should be child’s play for this Source to prime and guide any living (or non-living) sub-unit of the universe — preeminently biological creatures; and of these, Man above all.
Given that the universe evidently has been left deliberately incompletely determined, or underdetermined (Planck’s constant reminds us of this), then not only the “free development” of nature has been left intact (subject only to the natural symmetries), but so also has human free will been left wholly intact.
Given the splendors of natural reality, and the uncanny facility that man has for exploring and understanding them, really all I can say is: I am on my knees in gratitude, thanks, and praise, and all glory be to God — in Whom we live and move and have our Being.
—other individuals
—other groups
—the man in my mirror.
No other source or collection of inputs comes close to such accuracy in my 61 years.
Global flood 4,350 years ago.
Evolution is already dead on a number of fronts.
Within the near horizon, even the powers that be will be propagandizing the new explanation.
Customs . . . hmmmm . . .
are usually more archaic than our . . . ‘perceptions.’
. . . and color and distort the perceptions wholesale.
Christ sliced cattywumpus across all such.
Truth has a tendency to do that with customs, individuals, reality as many individuals and groups construe it.
I don’t know when the flood occurred.
There are many schemes for dating it.
Time will tell.
Nevertheless, Scripture is also true about the man in your mirror.
Denial of that has consequences important to each man in each mirror.
IMHO FWIW, Muslims are irrational in a way that Christians and Jews are not. Thus they are not on a par, intellectually or spiritually, with Jews and Christians, who honor reason. And this speaks to the nature of their God, Allah. Allah is not the least bit interested in human reason (which is practically worthless anyway in a master–slave relation), and certainly not in human freedom; he's in the slavery business. With Allah, it's either "my way, or the highway." On his view, men are born as slaves to his will, not as "free agents" with a will of their own. So if Allah tells men its okay to kill their women — wives, daughters, nieces, etc. — for putative offenses to Allah's sense of aesthetical predilections and priorities, then men have no choice but to kill their women....
Allah is a freaking nutcase because he's doing Satan's business here on earth. And he won't be satisfied until every man agrees with him, or is dead for refusing agreement. The death sentence, of course, to be executed by his mindless, barbarian slaves....
People say this is not what Islam is all about; this is a total misunderstanding; that there are actually "moderate" Muslims out there who believe Islam is a religion of peace and universal harmony among peoples.... Balderdash!
If the latter is a fact, then all I'd have to say is this: Such "moderate" people have not even begun to understand the "message," the "theology" of Allah.
Jihad is not broadly understood in the Islamic world today as the "self-conquering of lawless ego," which is the screed that CAIR gives us. Rather, it signifies conversion by the sword to Allah — either that, or death to the infidels who are such because they refuse to accept a slavemaster as their deity.
Like I said, JMHO FWIW.
You really need a better sense of discrimination on such "spiritual" matters, dear Soliton. Otherwise, sooner or later you'll be taken "for a fool," and have to pay the consequences. Or so it seems to me.
There are many schemes for dating it.
The date I quoted, about 4,350 years ago, is the consensus of Biblical scholars.
That gives archaeologists and other scientists a specific age range to examine for evidence of a global flood.
The evidence isn't there. The idea of a global flood about 4,350 years ago is a myth.
And if the Bible is wrong on such a major issue, what else is it wrong about?
I’m not real impressed with Biblical scholars.
Certainly not any more than I’m impressed with the priests of the Religion of Scientism.
I’ve read solid scientists assert the accuracy of a global flood etc. etc.
I don’t think God will ask you why didn’t you believe in a global flood.
I suspect He will ask you why didn’t you believe His Word when it was clearly so accurate about the man in your mirror . . . and why didn’t you follow His Loving Son who died for you.
There's 2 Heavenly visitation cases reported on this thread:
In case one:
Jesse Duplantis . . . he comes back in his body 30 min before he's to speak at a church. He's spent 5.25 hours in Heaven in his earthly body--at least in the same clothes and evidently in his earthly body because . . .
as he's walking down the aisle from the back of the church to the front after the service has already started . . . . and everyone is turning and pointing at him with surprise, if not shock. He begins to feel that he's royally goofed in his clothing somehow.
He gets to the platform and the pastor and others on the platform kind of give him wide berth with awed expressions on their faces.
He learns later that his face, countenance, hair are all glowing with a bright light. He didn't see the light when he was showering and getting dressed.
Where did the light shining forth from his body come from Coyoteman?
###############################################
In the Sid Roth interviews with the grandmother of the 4 year old girl and her later as she's 7 . . . When she came back from her first visit to Heaven at age 4 . . .
she reported meeting an uncle she had NEVER heard a thing about nor had anyone who could have spoken to her. The grandmother had had an abortion as a teenager 35 years before that NO ONE living who could have talked to the granddaughter had known about. NO ONE living--alive since the girl was living--NO ONE KNEW about the aborted son.
And, there was a little boy that had been shot in the face by his father--dead--shortly before Victoria was born. The family had not told the little girl deliberately but she met the shot boy in Heaven and told the family about it--including what his favorite toy was--a plastic water pistol. Her family was shocked that she could have known anything about it.
Soooooooo, Clever Coyoteman--HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN TO YOURSELF how this little girl had all this accurate information about children who'd died earlier without any of her knowledge on earth????
In short, your humanistic scientism explanation of "reality" has NO reliable answer or explanation for any of the above. You can't explain such TO YOURSELF.
You can play mental games about the information and rationalize it 6 ways to Sunday to make sleeping easier. However, such rationalizations do NOT alter THE TRUTH at all. And, sooner or later, every living thing has to face THE TRUTH.
The 4 year old's interviews begin at:
HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Z_llT9Lso
Jesse Duplantis is talking here about the driver driving him to church looking at him warily . . . etc. here:
HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw-wM-u8-aA
The thread about such visitations is here:
HERE: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2043893/posts?page=133#133
It doesn't matter that much how you answer on this thread. How you answer to yourself in your mirror or as you lie down at night or go about your day in your idle thought moments . . . how honest you are with yourself then, could have very eternal consequences.
Certainly not any more than I’m impressed with the priests of the Religion of Scientism.
I’ve read solid scientists assert the accuracy of a global flood etc. etc.
Creation "scientists?"
Face it, the idea of a global flood about 4,350 years ago is a tribal myth. The only folks who support that idea are the ones who already buy into the rest of the associated mythology. Independent scientists, say in India or China, do not come up with anything close to a global flood at that time period. They have no a priori reason to do so.
Here is some evidence you might consider: There is a cave in southern Alaska, called On Your Knees Cave. It is dated to 10,300 years of age. A partial human skeleton yielded mitochondrial DNA which was matched to living descendants on the west coasts of North and South America. There was no flood, depopulation, and replacement with people from the middle east (as documented by the continuity of mtDNA).
This matches a mountain of other evidence from archaeology in the western US. If there was a flood 4,350 years ago it would be readily visible in the soils, and archaeologists would find that evidence easily. Its not there. Rather, what we see is overall continuity of human cultures, fauna and flora, and stratigraphy.
Christianity is a MINORITY religion? Would you care to explain that, please?
Allah doesn’t even exist, he’s a made-up moon god. satan is their god and he proves it every day with murders, beheadings, torture, bombings... and there’s NO 72 virgins for any of them.
I believe The Bible is true—every word.
I don’t believe it’s a geology text, per se.
I believe I’ll understand all the seeming mysteries in due course.
I’m still waiting for your answers to my questions.
I don’t believe it’s a geology text, per se.
The Bible is misleading you on the purported global flood. That is not geology, that is an integral part of the Bible. And it is easily disproved.
As for answering your questions, sorry no time. I need to dust my dental floss collection.
As for answering your questions, sorry no time. I need to dust my dental floss collection.
= = =
The evidence suggests that you will remember that reply in less than ideal circumstances.
you: “Then we are screwed and the Muslims are just as likely to be right as the Jews and Chrisians. [sic] Everybody becomes reduced to guessing.”
We have near 1,400 year’s “experiments” that we can use to test your hypothesis (that Moslems are just as likely to be right as Jews and Christians). I’ll kick it off with some observations. Maybe others might like to add a few more.
At the beginning of that 1,400 year’s time there is no doubt that the Moslems had it all over the Christian Western Civilization in general knowledge, literature, science, etc. Where are they now in comparison to the Western World (even after a century and one half of determined attacks on Western Culture by its own denizens)? Of course, some might say that this comparison is not fair because Moslems actually started behind the Christians since they (the Moslems) owed their cultural ‘superiority’ to some of the civilizations they conquered (the Moors, the Persians, the Babylonians), but I’ll leave that argument to the experts in European and Near East history after the collapse of the Roman Empire (west). Rather, I’ll just note that since 1901, the first year Nobel prizes were awarded, there have been 9 Moslem recipients, while Moslems represent nearly 20% of the world population, and that there have been over 130 Jewish recipients, while they represent 0.2% of the world population. I’ve not tried to pick off the number of Christian Nobel recipients (that would be rather hard to do – since it’s not always an easy task to discern Christian from Atheist), but I’m willing to wager that the number comes to more than sixteen (not counting Blacks and Orientals from other parts of the world who happen also to be Christian).
For centuries Western Culture and Moslem Culture were partners in “that detestable trade” slavery. Who now eschews slavery and who lead in the drive to abolish the institution, and who still follows the practice and even defends it?
In the Seventh Century it was common practice to slaughter every member, man, woman, and child, of a besieged city, if they offered more than token resistance to their invaders (see the Crusades). Who now still offers enthusiastic endorsement of such a practice, and follows through on the threat when given the opportunity? Who does not?
Who cheered and rejoiced at the practice of flying very large jet planes at very high speeds into very tall buildings, and who were horrified at the spectacle?
All of these issues involve opinion, of course, and are a matter of value judgment. In the process, they render an obscenity the idea of a moral neutrality based on scientific ‘objectivity.’ But, I’ve gone on long enough. Maybe someone else would like to play.
You are fishing for an answer supporting your religious belief that these rights are bestowed by some deity.My "religious belief that these rights are bestowed by some deity" (the same belief that was recorded in the Declaration of Independence, by the way) notwithstanding, any answer will do as long as it satisfactorily addresses the question: I have yet to receive one. Feynman explained why science is incapable of providing such an answer: Morals are not scientific questions, at least not the part that demands a value judgement. This does not mean that science is bad; quite the contrary, science is good (a value judgement that I can make only from outside the realm of science) but it cannot provide the answers to all questions, not even all the important ones, like questions involving moral value judgements. Feynman's definition of science is a good one, because unlike the naturalist he does not falsely assume that science is all-encompassing.
Don't you have to show some evidence for such a deity before you can start assigning attributes and attributing munificence?Let's not get ahead of ourselves. First of all, I cannot prove that, and in fact (you may be surprised to hear this) I do not believe that it is possible to be proved. However, that usually doesn't matter because whether they like to admit it or not, most scientists already tacitly assume a "god." The philosophy of science itself assumes that the universe is "rational," or is governed by "laws." Also, there is a very strong belief (especially among physicists) that there is a single "unifying principle" behind the universe. This seems to be supported by the discoveries of the past 150 years or so, where relations have been found between phenomena that had previously seemed to be independent, and mathematical models have been developed to explain it; however, we must admit that we still really don't know whether or not it is "turtles all the way down." Feynman was one of the few people who was completely honest about this (so at least his atheism was consistent in that respect!) which is one of the reasons why I admire him... in addition to his brilliant Nobel Prize-winning work in physics, of course. This is from that same interview with Omni magazine:
Omni: To someone looking at high-energy physics from the outside, its goal seems to be to find the ultimate constituents of matter. It seems a quest we can trace back to the Greeks' atom, the "indivisible" particle. But with the big accelerators, you get fragments that are more massive than the particles you started with, and maybe quarks that can never be separated. What does that do to the quest?This is all endlessly interesting in its own right, but we still have not settled the question of morals. You wrote:
Feynman: I don't think that ever was the quest. Physicists are trying to find out how nature behaves; they may talk carelessly about some "ultimate particle" because that's the way nature looks at a given moment, but ... Suppose people are exploring a new continent, OK? They see water coming along the ground, they've seen that before, and they call it "rivers." So they say they're exploring to find the headwaters, they go upriver, and sure enough, there they are, it's all going very well. But lo and behold, when they get up far enough they find the whole system's different: There's a great big lake, or springs, or the rivers run in a circle. You might say, "Aha! They've failed!" but not at all! The real reason they were doing it was to explore the land. If it turned out not to be headwaters, they might be slightly embarrassed at their carelessness in explaining themselves, but no more than that. As long as it looks like the way things are built is wheels within wheels, then you're looking for the innermost wheel--but it might not be that way, in which case you're looking for whatever the hell it is that you find!
Omni: But surely you must have some guess about what you'll find; there are bound to be ridges and valleys and so on...?
Feynman: Yeah, but what if when you get there it's all clouds? You can expect certain things, you can work out theorems about the topology of watersheds, but what if you find a kind of mist, maybe, with things coagulating out of it, with no way to distinguish that land from the air? The whole idea you started with is gone! That's the kind of exciting thing that happens from time to time. One is presumptuous if one says, "We're going to find the ultimate particle, or the unified field laws," or "the" anything. If it turns out surprising, the scientist is even more delighted. You think he's going to say, "Oh, it's not like I expected, there's no ultimate particle, I don't want to explore it"? No, he's going to say, "What the hell is it, then?"
Omni: You'd rather see that happen?
Feynman: Rather doesn't make any difference: I get what I get. You can't say it's always going to be surprising, either; a few years ago I was very skeptical about the gauge theories, partly because I expected the strong nuclear interaction to be more different from electrodynamics than it now looks. I was expecting mist, and now it looks like ridges and valleys after all.
As to your other question, most human groups still operate largely at the tribal level. This is the result of millions of years of evolution. It is only in the past few hundred, or thousands, or years that large-scale travel was possible whereby members of one tribe encountered members of other tribes in large numbers. I would suggest that many of our customs are still adapting to catch up with our technology.This is all very interesting as well, but what does it have to do with a basis for morality? Or more concretely: On what basis could a naturalist (i.e. one who believes that there is nothing to this world beyond what the scientific method can tell us) claim that people ought to behave in a certain way, as opposed to another?
Are you really suggesting that Christians have never invaded other people’s countries and converted the inhabitants by force?
Are you really admitting that you cannot respond to my points sans misrepresentation, and a changing of the subject in order to promote an argument? That the best you can do?
I responded directly to the point you were making. The slave trade by Christians in this country continued until the year after Darwin published Origin of Species. Darwin was born on the same day as Lincoln. Coincidence? I think not.
Prior to the Civil War, the people who did the most to relieve the suffering of slaves were Quakers. And perhaps Unitarians. I know Quakers pretty well, having graduated from a Quaker college. They have little in common with fundamentalism and have no problem with empiricism.
Following the war, Christians did everything in their power to continue the subjugation of former slaves, a political force known as Jim Crow. That continued for a century after the war. I grew up under Jim Crow laws. I’m not aware of any effort in my home community by mainstream Christians to bring an end to racism. If there was such a movement, I certainly didn’t see or hear about it in church. And I did go.
Oh my! Surely you're not going to leave us hanging? ... Upon what empirical evidence do you reject coincidence in Lincoln and Darwin sharing the same birthday?
I just applied Dembski's Explanatory Filter and calculated the odds.
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