Thread: Is it possible for us as men to have a discussion on God

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

Is that what you used to tell them?

By the way I am with smokelaw, this thread is interesting!

but of course, it's evangelism 101:

hit 'em hard up front with hellfire and damnation, then once they're terrified out of their minds, seal the deal by offering free (at first) membership to the ultimate insider's club.

Jack Chick would have been proud.

When you can, please provide a citation, or some support, that the proposition that life cannot come from non-life was abaondoned by most serious "scientific" minds.

I'm not buying the golden gate bridge until I see a valid deed in my hand.

Matt

Edit: and not wikipedia please. i understand using it for quick reference, but it is not authoritative, and I don't rely upon it. Given your prior post I assume you would agree.

Originally Posted by jockeys

fixed that for you.

OK.

Does the fact that the space shuttle is more complicated than say, a stone make it less real?

Originally Posted by mhailey

When you can, please provide a citation, or some support, that the proposition that life cannot come from non-life was abaondoned by most serious "scientific" minds.

I'm not buying the golden gate bridge until I see a valid deed in my hand.

Matt

Edit: and not wikipedia please. i understand using it for quick reference, but it is not authoritative, and I don't rely upon it. Given your prior post I assume you would agree.

but of course:
here is a good article discussing the inherent vagueness of any definition of life that we care to make up:
Psychozoan: The Definition of Life
here is another good article about the life-like properties of non-living systems, and how it blurs the line:
The blurry line between life, nonlife - The Boston Globe
here is a fine article from astrobiology magazine about the blurriness of the line:
Life's Working Definition :: Astrobiology Magazine - earth science - evolution distribution Origin of life universe - life beyond :: Astrobiology is study of earth science evolution distribution Origin of life in universe terrestrial
another view:
PLEKTIX: On the Definition of Life
an academic paper discussing whether cellular automata should be considered alive:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaitin/mit.pdf

I'll go so far as to agree that my earlier statement was perhaps a tad bold, but your statement that "Science has only one unrefuted position on this, and it is that life does not, has not, and will not come from non-life." is patently invalid because there are no hard and fast definitions that are "unrefuted" that clearly define the boundaries of life and non-life.

in a like fashion, I should be greatly interested to see some recent sources from academia that support the view that the definitions of life and non-life are as uncontested as you propose they are.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Well, what if one of the new things to be learned is the possibility that an invisible friend in the sky did create the world?

Apply Ockham's razor to this:

In an inexplicable series of events, and contrary to all ideas about entropy, life came about on its' own, able to reproduce, and evolve into the varied life we now know today

or

There actually is a Supreme Being, and He did create everything.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

OK.

Does the fact that the space shuttle is more complicated than say, a stone make it less real?

Ockham's Razor, which you invoke so glibly, is sometimes stated as "When multiple competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities."

a good principle, and certainly germane to this conversation. the theory that makes the least assumptions wins, all other things being equal. well, a rock and a space shuttle certainly can both be proven entirely without assumption. both can be observed, both can be repeatably created, etc, etc. I'm really not sure why you bring that up.

the goal of science is to continue to learn; experimenting and refining, until each theory does not require ANY assumptions, only proven and repeatable facts. admittedly, this may never happen. but the religious (all religions, as far as I have studied them) answers to the question of "how did it all get here" make one assumption, but are in no way "equal in other respects" to theories that have grown from experimentation and logic, because they are, by their very definition, infinite, unknowable and unprovable. for further examples, google "russell's teapot" or "the invisible pink unicorn"

Originally Posted by jockeys

but of course:
here is a good article discussing the inherent vagueness of any definition of life that we care to make up:
Psychozoan: The Definition of Life
here is another good article about the life-like properties of non-living systems, and how it blurs the line:
The blurry line between life, nonlife - The Boston Globe
here is a fine article from astrobiology magazine about the blurriness of the line:
Life's Working Definition :: Astrobiology Magazine - earth science - evolution distribution Origin of life universe - life beyond :: Astrobiology is study of earth science evolution distribution Origin of life in universe terrestrial
another view:
PLEKTIX: On the Definition of Life
an academic paper discussing whether cellular automata should be considered alive:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaitin/mit.pdf

I'll go so far as to agree that my earlier statement was perhaps a tad bold, but your statement that "Science has only one unrefuted position on this, and it is that life does not, has not, and will not come from non-life." is patently invalid because there are no hard and fast definitions that are "unrefuted" that clearly define the boundaries of life and non-life.

in a like fashion, I should be greatly interested to see some recent sources from academia that support the view that the definitions of life and non-life are as uncontested as you propose they are.

I will have to read your sources when i get home, but by cursory review, one seems to be a blog, and potentially taking the position that crystals are a form of life, but like I said I will have to read them when I get home, and after I put my girls to bed.

As far as support that only life begets life, please see the birth of my daughters, your birth, the birth of the robin in my back yard, the birth of the maggot on some rotten food in Kentucky. There has never been a documented observation of life coming from non-life. If you have one, please show it. You have some very abstract theories, which at their core rely upon creating a new definition of "life."

Matt

Originally Posted by mhailey

As far as support that only life begets life, please see the birth of my daughters, your birth, the birth of the robin in my back yard, the birth of the maggot on some rotten food in Kentucky. There has never been a documented observation of life coming from non-life. If you have one, please show it. You have some very abstract theories, which at their core rely upon creating a new definition of "life."

Matt

your examples indeed prove that life begets life. they do not prove that ONLY life begets life. and as my sources showed, I am not the only one who thinks we need a better definition of life.

it's easy to tell if some things are alive... a cow is alive, a beaker of acid is not. a dog is alive, a rock is not, etc. but what about things like virii? they exhibit many classical signs of life, but are technically not alive, by the old definition of life.

what about prions? freeform RNA? there are many things that are not technically "alive" by the classical definition, but display many lifelike behaviors. it is cases such as these that bring the scientific definition of "alive" into question. many scientists think that self replication is the ONLY proper definition of life, and if that is so, many things (virii, prions, etc) are very much alive.

perhaps, life is not so cut and dry. maybe it's an analog definition and not a digital one. maybe the transition was gradual, and things gradually became more alive. maybe not. I don't claim to know, I just think it's a logical theory, and I am curious to learn more as experimentation is done to prove or disprove the repeatability. it's the joy of science!

on the other hand, maybe it didn't happen that way. maybe your imaginary pal DID create life. I can't disprove it. you can't prove it. it's completely unprovable one way or another. so, I have made a philosophicial choice to follow the path that lets me use my imagination, my intellect and my logic, and see where it takes me. I wish you the same happiness and fulfillment on your path that I have found on mine, and I thank you for your gentlemanly conduct thus far.

This is a response to the debate about can life be created, I dont think it can, because if god is real then all living beings have a soul. And it is this soul that gives life to all things.

I dont think they will ever succeed in creating life because of this, without the soul/consciousness/spirit/self none of the things that are alive would be. People can build machines as they are made of material energy, but I dont think they have the capability to create life as the source of life is a soul and that is best described as anti-material. All the material stuff is temporary as you will note from observing everything in this world that can be worn away with the sands of time, wheras the anti material stuff which is consciousness/soul/self/spirit is the opposite of temporary and is eternal. And without the ability to create the source which is the power station you cannot create the product which is life.

The people who go against the idea of god say that we are the mind/body but these things are temporary, and through all our lives our minds and bodies have changed but we have remained the same.
So I would say that we are the eternal consciousness(read soul) that is anti-material opposed to our bodies which are temporary material things.
Not sure about the mind maybe that is halfway between the two or just material more complex than we can sense/understand.



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