Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer. However,from the free Kindle sample of AL:
“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative conjecture:“Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”
One of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphate
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures that
Bains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life, and one that can
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline hydrothermal vents,
Regardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that many of the
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a complex
That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Perfect.
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer. However,from the free Kindle sample of AL:
“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative conjecture:“Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”
One of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphate
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures that
Bains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life, and one that can
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline hydrothermal vents,
Regardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that many of the
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a complex
That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.Hey, if you aren't interested, don't read it.
Perfect.
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer. However,from the free Kindle sample of AL:
“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative conjecture:“Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”
One of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphate
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures that
Bains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life, and one that can
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline hydrothermal vents,
Regardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that many of the
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a complex
That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Perfect.
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 9:00:40 AM UTC+1, MarkE wrote:from the free Kindle sample of AL:
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer. However,
With other words, you want a theory of OoL without a theory. Baring time travel, every reconstruction of a singular past event will inevitably involve speculation and model building, though specific speculations/hypothesis/models can then be tested andsometimes falsified, which allows us to say that certain things did not happen. But the positive claim cannot be anything but "speculation", which a minute's thought should tell you.
conjecture: “Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative
break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphateOne of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures that
vents, freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life, and oneBains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline hydrothermal
mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that many of theRegardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a complex
That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Perfect.
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 4:00:40 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:from the free Kindle sample of AL:
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer. However,
conjecture: “Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative
break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphateOne of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures that
vents, freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life, and oneBains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline hydrothermal
mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that many of theRegardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a complex
That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Perfect.Hey, if you aren't interested, don't read it.
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer. However,from the free Kindle sample of AL:
“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative conjecture:“Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”
One of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphate
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures that
Bains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life, and one that can
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline hydrothermal vents,
Regardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that many of the
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a complex
That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Perfect.
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 9:10:40 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:from the free Kindle sample of AL:
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 4:00:40 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer. However,
conjecture: “Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative
break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphateOne of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures that
vents, freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life, and oneBains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline hydrothermal
complex mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that manyRegardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a
substance are welcome.That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Bains has given me sufficient reason not to.Perfect.Hey, if you aren't interested, don't read it.
But I do want to thank you for leading me to this goldmine. In reading _about_ Deamer I've discovered within the OoL camp a truth-teller - speaking the same truth as James Tour. The irony is exquisite. And the case is substantial. Counter-arguments of
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 6:00:40 PM UTC+10, MarkE wrote:from the free Kindle sample of AL:
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer. However,
“Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”
“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative conjecture:
break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphate
One of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures that
freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life, and one that can
Bains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline hydrothermal vents,
mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that many of the
Regardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a complex
That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Perfect.
More choice cuts from Bains' article:
[...]
"Because, I suggest, OOL is at least 50 years too early. OOL in 2020 is like AI in 1950. It was missing several critical pieces. We are playing with Toy Domains."
- Maybe OoL does need another 50+ years to develop. Why pretend the current state of the field is anything but?
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer. However,from the free Kindle sample of AL:
“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative conjecture:“Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”
One of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 6:00:40 PM UTC+10, MarkE wrote:from the free Kindle sample of AL:
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer. However,
conjecture: “Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative
break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphateOne of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures that
vents, freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life, and oneBains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline hydrothermal
mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that many of theRegardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a complex
made. To draw “Protocells → Progenote” in a diagram [11] skips over everything about how that transition happens, i.e., how life originates!"That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Perfect.More choice cuts from Bains' article:
"Again, the term ‘Protocell’ is used to mean any liposome-like membrane encapsulating other molecules. In my opinion, a vesicle encapsulating random organic molecules is almost as far from life as the bulk “prebiotic soup” from which it was
- This confirms a recent thread where I challenge Deamer's endorsement of Dyson's "garbage bag model".lab reactions of specific reagents, even to give “messy” products, be part of a larger solution. The research does tell us something about chemistry. But it is not something that has much relevance to OOL, because if you carry out lab organic
"Because, I suggest, OOL is at least 50 years too early. OOL in 2020 is like AI in 1950. It was missing several critical pieces. We are playing with Toy Domains."
- Maybe OoL does need another 50+ years to develop. Why pretend the current state of the field is anything but?
"Most researchers, even some working on such chemical schemes, understand that lab chemistry is only a tiny part of the whole problem. But that is not the primary issue. It is a tiny part solved in an unrealistic way. Only by a tiny, outside chance can
- James Tour couldn't have said it better.what many such advances are is a new scenario—new location, new suggested set of pure reagents to react, a new chain of specific reactions that have be demonstrated, one at a time, in the lab. They are all new Toy Domains."
"And indeed there has been a major advance in the use of the term “major advance” in the OOL literature; 75% of all papers using the phrase “major advance” in the context of origin of life listed in Google Scholar were published after 2011. But
- The term “major advance” called out for the misleading hype that it is. Again, pure Tour.organization rather than individual chemical reactions. We need fundamentally new ways of looking at life and its origin, and we do not have them, not even close."
"I think we need to go beyond this, and here Deamer is oddly muted. We need new ideas, and not just yet another contrived scenario how this or that reaction could happen on this or that mineral, not even a refocusing on the chemistry of life on self-
- We're shooting fish in a barrel now.transition and become self-propagating, autocatalytic, i.e., life-like. But what does “diverse” mean? Atmospheric photochemical networks have nearly as many components and more reactions than central metabolism. Does this mean the atmosphere is alive?
"What new ideas? I do not know!"
- Thank you!
"There is also a lot of excitement about “systems chemistry” and “autocatalytic” systems, catalysed mainly by Stuart Kauffman. Kaufmann postulates that a sufficiently diverse collection of reactive and catalytic molecules would undergo a phase
- Autocatalytic systems? Tar.10/2/18/s1
"And we hear every now and again about “New Physics”, a term growing like bindweed from the intellectual rootstock to Schroedinger’s execrable book."
- A refence to Jeremy England?
"This is a simplistic model, and as such is justifiably relegated to an appendix. However it illustrates that the issue in OOL research is not just ‘can we make it’ but also ‘can we stop making everything else’." https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/
- the tar problem again
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 1:00:40 AM UTC-7, MarkE wrote:from the free Kindle sample of AL:
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer. However,
conjecture: “Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative
One of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
My reading recommendations on the origin of life for people without college chemistry, are;
Hazen, RM 2005 "Gen-e-sis" Washington DC: Joseph Henry Press
Deamer, David W. 2011 “First Life: Discovering the Connections between Stars, Cells, and How Life Began” University of California Press.
They are a bit dated, but are readable for people without much background study.
If you have had a good background, First year college; Introduction to Chemistry, Second year; Organic Chemistry and at least one biochem or genetics course see;
Deamer, David W. 2019 "Assembling Life: How can life begin on Earth and other habitable planets?" Oxford University Press.
Hazen, RM 2019 "Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything" Norton and Co.
Note: Bob Hazen thinks his 2019 book can be read by non-scientists. I doubt it.
Nick Lane 2015 "The Vital Question" W. W. Norton & Company
Nick Lane spent some pages on the differences between Archaea and Bacteria cell boundary chemistry, and mitochondria chemistry. That could hint at a single RNA/DNA life that diverged very early, and then hybridized. Very interesting idea!
Nick Lane
2022 "Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death" W. W. Norton & Company
In this book Professor Lane is focused on the chemistry of the Krebs Cycle (and its’ reverse) for the existence of life, and its’ origin. I did need to read a few sections more than once.
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 7:10:40 AM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:However, from the free Kindle sample of AL:
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 9:15:39 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 6:00:40 PM UTC+10, MarkE wrote:
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer.
conjecture: “Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative
that break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphateOne of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures
vents, freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life, and oneBains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline hydrothermal
complex mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that manyRegardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a
made. To draw “Protocells → Progenote” in a diagram [11] skips over everything about how that transition happens, i.e., how life originates!"That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Perfect.More choice cuts from Bains' article:
"Again, the term ‘Protocell’ is used to mean any liposome-like membrane encapsulating other molecules. In my opinion, a vesicle encapsulating random organic molecules is almost as far from life as the bulk “prebiotic soup” from which it was
can lab reactions of specific reagents, even to give “messy” products, be part of a larger solution. The research does tell us something about chemistry. But it is not something that has much relevance to OOL, because if you carry out lab organic- This confirms a recent thread where I challenge Deamer's endorsement of Dyson's "garbage bag model".
"Because, I suggest, OOL is at least 50 years too early. OOL in 2020 is like AI in 1950. It was missing several critical pieces. We are playing with Toy Domains."
- Maybe OoL does need another 50+ years to develop. Why pretend the current state of the field is anything but?
"Most researchers, even some working on such chemical schemes, understand that lab chemistry is only a tiny part of the whole problem. But that is not the primary issue. It is a tiny part solved in an unrealistic way. Only by a tiny, outside chance
But what many such advances are is a new scenario—new location, new suggested set of pure reagents to react, a new chain of specific reactions that have be demonstrated, one at a time, in the lab. They are all new Toy Domains."- James Tour couldn't have said it better.
"And indeed there has been a major advance in the use of the term “major advance” in the OOL literature; 75% of all papers using the phrase “major advance” in the context of origin of life listed in Google Scholar were published after 2011.
self-organization rather than individual chemical reactions. We need fundamentally new ways of looking at life and its origin, and we do not have them, not even close."- The term “major advance” called out for the misleading hype that it is. Again, pure Tour.
"I think we need to go beyond this, and here Deamer is oddly muted. We need new ideas, and not just yet another contrived scenario how this or that reaction could happen on this or that mineral, not even a refocusing on the chemistry of life on
phase transition and become self-propagating, autocatalytic, i.e., life-like. But what does “diverse” mean? Atmospheric photochemical networks have nearly as many components and more reactions than central metabolism. Does this mean the atmosphere is- We're shooting fish in a barrel now.
"What new ideas? I do not know!"
- Thank you!
"There is also a lot of excitement about “systems chemistry” and “autocatalytic” systems, catalysed mainly by Stuart Kauffman. Kaufmann postulates that a sufficiently diverse collection of reactive and catalytic molecules would undergo a
1729/10/2/18/s1- Autocatalytic systems? Tar.
"And we hear every now and again about “New Physics”, a term growing like bindweed from the intellectual rootstock to Schroedinger’s execrable book."
- A refence to Jeremy England?
"This is a simplistic model, and as such is justifiably relegated to an appendix. However it illustrates that the issue in OOL research is not just ‘can we make it’ but also ‘can we stop making everything else’." https://www.mdpi.com/2075-
actual research papers. Indeed one can quotemine papers from the same set of OoL scientists to suggest that either they think the problem is essentially insoluble or that they think it has essentially been solved. But when I read the actual research- the tar problem againThere seem to be two major complaints.
The first complaint is that OoL scientists keep claiming that much more progress has been made than actually has been. I don't really know what to make of that claim. That sort of triumphalism is more common in popular science summaries than in
significantly change the results. Well, that seems to me a very reasonable way to start. You have an extremely complex problem - a long set of steps that took place over millions of years in unknown environment and that involved complex mixtures ofThe second complaint is that the research is too focused on "toy domains," very simplified sets of reagents and conditions that ignore all sorts of other compounds that would presumably be present in the natural environment and which might
energetically unfavorable and is not expected to happen spontaneously. In living things an energetically favorable reaction has to be coupled to the condensation reaction for it to occur. But you can't have all the mechanisms required for that couplingStill, this is progress. Look at a couple of "catch-22's". (1) The "water problem." Life works in an aqueous environment. But in an aqueous environment, condensation of amino acid monomers into peptides or nucleotides into oligonucleotides is
fatal, too. Until, in "toy domains" people started finding that RNA alone can have enzymatic activity, indeed a variety of enzymatic activities that can be selected for in vitro. That certainly is not remotely proof of the RNA world in all its detail,(2) Another catch-22 - the DNA-RNA-protein catch-22. You need enzymes to replicate or transcribe DNA and you need enzymes to translate RNA into protein, you can't make RNA without the enzymes, but you can't make the enzymes without RNA. Sounds pretty
understand the simple steps well before you add in complications seems to work pretty well. Still, if Bains has some experimental suggestions for a "fundamentally new approach to studying life and its origins," lots of people would be interested.Of course nature, in the form of a volcanic pool or a tide pool or a hydrothermal vent is more complicated than a test tube, but the approach of understanding complicated phenomena by breaking them down into simple steps and making sure you
That's a well-expressed and insightful summing up.of simplified reaction conditions and processes and build from there.
The first complaint of overstated progress, I would agree, would likely be partly attributable to individual horn-tooters and popular science reporters. The second complaint of "toy domains" could be partly justified by the need to start with the study
And as you say, various problems that have been declared catch-22s have since been tackled enough to argue for a downgrade from condition "fatal".and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide answers,
- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 9:15:39 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:from the free Kindle sample of AL:
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 6:00:40 PM UTC+10, MarkE wrote:
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer. However,
conjecture: “Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative
break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphateOne of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures that
vents, freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life, and oneBains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline hydrothermal
complex mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that manyRegardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a
made. To draw “Protocells → Progenote” in a diagram [11] skips over everything about how that transition happens, i.e., how life originates!"That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Perfect.More choice cuts from Bains' article:
"Again, the term ‘Protocell’ is used to mean any liposome-like membrane encapsulating other molecules. In my opinion, a vesicle encapsulating random organic molecules is almost as far from life as the bulk “prebiotic soup” from which it was
can lab reactions of specific reagents, even to give “messy” products, be part of a larger solution. The research does tell us something about chemistry. But it is not something that has much relevance to OOL, because if you carry out lab organic- This confirms a recent thread where I challenge Deamer's endorsement of Dyson's "garbage bag model".
"Because, I suggest, OOL is at least 50 years too early. OOL in 2020 is like AI in 1950. It was missing several critical pieces. We are playing with Toy Domains."
- Maybe OoL does need another 50+ years to develop. Why pretend the current state of the field is anything but?
"Most researchers, even some working on such chemical schemes, understand that lab chemistry is only a tiny part of the whole problem. But that is not the primary issue. It is a tiny part solved in an unrealistic way. Only by a tiny, outside chance
But what many such advances are is a new scenario—new location, new suggested set of pure reagents to react, a new chain of specific reactions that have be demonstrated, one at a time, in the lab. They are all new Toy Domains."- James Tour couldn't have said it better.
"And indeed there has been a major advance in the use of the term “major advance” in the OOL literature; 75% of all papers using the phrase “major advance” in the context of origin of life listed in Google Scholar were published after 2011.
organization rather than individual chemical reactions. We need fundamentally new ways of looking at life and its origin, and we do not have them, not even close."- The term “major advance” called out for the misleading hype that it is. Again, pure Tour.
"I think we need to go beyond this, and here Deamer is oddly muted. We need new ideas, and not just yet another contrived scenario how this or that reaction could happen on this or that mineral, not even a refocusing on the chemistry of life on self-
phase transition and become self-propagating, autocatalytic, i.e., life-like. But what does “diverse” mean? Atmospheric photochemical networks have nearly as many components and more reactions than central metabolism. Does this mean the atmosphere is- We're shooting fish in a barrel now.
"What new ideas? I do not know!"
- Thank you!
"There is also a lot of excitement about “systems chemistry” and “autocatalytic” systems, catalysed mainly by Stuart Kauffman. Kaufmann postulates that a sufficiently diverse collection of reactive and catalytic molecules would undergo a
1729/10/2/18/s1- Autocatalytic systems? Tar.
"And we hear every now and again about “New Physics”, a term growing like bindweed from the intellectual rootstock to Schroedinger’s execrable book."
- A refence to Jeremy England?
"This is a simplistic model, and as such is justifiably relegated to an appendix. However it illustrates that the issue in OOL research is not just ‘can we make it’ but also ‘can we stop making everything else’." https://www.mdpi.com/2075-
research papers. Indeed one can quotemine papers from the same set of OoL scientists to suggest that either they think the problem is essentially insoluble or that they think it has essentially been solved. But when I read the actual research papers,- the tar problem againThere seem to be two major complaints.
The first complaint is that OoL scientists keep claiming that much more progress has been made than actually has been. I don't really know what to make of that claim. That sort of triumphalism is more common in popular science summaries than in actual
The second complaint is that the research is too focused on "toy domains," very simplified sets of reagents and conditions that ignore all sorts of other compounds that would presumably be present in the natural environment and which mightsignificantly change the results. Well, that seems to me a very reasonable way to start. You have an extremely complex problem - a long set of steps that took place over millions of years in unknown environment and that involved complex mixtures of
Still, this is progress. Look at a couple of "catch-22's". (1) The "water problem." Life works in an aqueous environment. But in an aqueous environment, condensation of amino acid monomers into peptides or nucleotides into oligonucleotides isenergetically unfavorable and is not expected to happen spontaneously. In living things an energetically favorable reaction has to be coupled to the condensation reaction for it to occur. But you can't have all the mechanisms required for that coupling
(2) Another catch-22 - the DNA-RNA-protein catch-22. You need enzymes to replicate or transcribe DNA and you need enzymes to translate RNA into protein, you can't make RNA without the enzymes, but you can't make the enzymes without RNA. Sounds prettyfatal, too. Until, in "toy domains" people started finding that RNA alone can have enzymatic activity, indeed a variety of enzymatic activities that can be selected for in vitro. That certainly is not remotely proof of the RNA world in all its detail,
Of course nature, in the form of a volcanic pool or a tide pool or a hydrothermal vent is more complicated than a test tube, but the approach of understanding complicated phenomena by breaking them down into simple steps and making sure you understandthe simple steps well before you add in complications seems to work pretty well. Still, if Bains has some experimental suggestions for a "fundamentally new approach to studying life and its origins," lots of people would be interested.
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 7:10:40 AM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:However, from the free Kindle sample of AL:
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 9:15:39 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 6:00:40 PM UTC+10, MarkE wrote:
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer.
conjecture: “Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative
that break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphateOne of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures
vents, freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life, and oneBains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline hydrothermal
complex mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that manyRegardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a
made. To draw “Protocells → Progenote” in a diagram [11] skips over everything about how that transition happens, i.e., how life originates!"That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Perfect.More choice cuts from Bains' article:
"Again, the term ‘Protocell’ is used to mean any liposome-like membrane encapsulating other molecules. In my opinion, a vesicle encapsulating random organic molecules is almost as far from life as the bulk “prebiotic soup” from which it was
can lab reactions of specific reagents, even to give “messy” products, be part of a larger solution. The research does tell us something about chemistry. But it is not something that has much relevance to OOL, because if you carry out lab organic- This confirms a recent thread where I challenge Deamer's endorsement of Dyson's "garbage bag model".
"Because, I suggest, OOL is at least 50 years too early. OOL in 2020 is like AI in 1950. It was missing several critical pieces. We are playing with Toy Domains."
- Maybe OoL does need another 50+ years to develop. Why pretend the current state of the field is anything but?
"Most researchers, even some working on such chemical schemes, understand that lab chemistry is only a tiny part of the whole problem. But that is not the primary issue. It is a tiny part solved in an unrealistic way. Only by a tiny, outside chance
But what many such advances are is a new scenario—new location, new suggested set of pure reagents to react, a new chain of specific reactions that have be demonstrated, one at a time, in the lab. They are all new Toy Domains."- James Tour couldn't have said it better.
"And indeed there has been a major advance in the use of the term “major advance” in the OOL literature; 75% of all papers using the phrase “major advance” in the context of origin of life listed in Google Scholar were published after 2011.
self-organization rather than individual chemical reactions. We need fundamentally new ways of looking at life and its origin, and we do not have them, not even close."- The term “major advance” called out for the misleading hype that it is. Again, pure Tour.
"I think we need to go beyond this, and here Deamer is oddly muted. We need new ideas, and not just yet another contrived scenario how this or that reaction could happen on this or that mineral, not even a refocusing on the chemistry of life on
phase transition and become self-propagating, autocatalytic, i.e., life-like. But what does “diverse” mean? Atmospheric photochemical networks have nearly as many components and more reactions than central metabolism. Does this mean the atmosphere is- We're shooting fish in a barrel now.
"What new ideas? I do not know!"
- Thank you!
"There is also a lot of excitement about “systems chemistry” and “autocatalytic” systems, catalysed mainly by Stuart Kauffman. Kaufmann postulates that a sufficiently diverse collection of reactive and catalytic molecules would undergo a
1729/10/2/18/s1- Autocatalytic systems? Tar.
"And we hear every now and again about “New Physics”, a term growing like bindweed from the intellectual rootstock to Schroedinger’s execrable book."
- A refence to Jeremy England?
"This is a simplistic model, and as such is justifiably relegated to an appendix. However it illustrates that the issue in OOL research is not just ‘can we make it’ but also ‘can we stop making everything else’." https://www.mdpi.com/2075-
actual research papers. Indeed one can quotemine papers from the same set of OoL scientists to suggest that either they think the problem is essentially insoluble or that they think it has essentially been solved. But when I read the actual research- the tar problem againThere seem to be two major complaints.
The first complaint is that OoL scientists keep claiming that much more progress has been made than actually has been. I don't really know what to make of that claim. That sort of triumphalism is more common in popular science summaries than in
significantly change the results. Well, that seems to me a very reasonable way to start. You have an extremely complex problem - a long set of steps that took place over millions of years in unknown environment and that involved complex mixtures ofThe second complaint is that the research is too focused on "toy domains," very simplified sets of reagents and conditions that ignore all sorts of other compounds that would presumably be present in the natural environment and which might
energetically unfavorable and is not expected to happen spontaneously. In living things an energetically favorable reaction has to be coupled to the condensation reaction for it to occur. But you can't have all the mechanisms required for that couplingStill, this is progress. Look at a couple of "catch-22's". (1) The "water problem." Life works in an aqueous environment. But in an aqueous environment, condensation of amino acid monomers into peptides or nucleotides into oligonucleotides is
fatal, too. Until, in "toy domains" people started finding that RNA alone can have enzymatic activity, indeed a variety of enzymatic activities that can be selected for in vitro. That certainly is not remotely proof of the RNA world in all its detail,(2) Another catch-22 - the DNA-RNA-protein catch-22. You need enzymes to replicate or transcribe DNA and you need enzymes to translate RNA into protein, you can't make RNA without the enzymes, but you can't make the enzymes without RNA. Sounds pretty
understand the simple steps well before you add in complications seems to work pretty well. Still, if Bains has some experimental suggestions for a "fundamentally new approach to studying life and its origins," lots of people would be interested.Of course nature, in the form of a volcanic pool or a tide pool or a hydrothermal vent is more complicated than a test tube, but the approach of understanding complicated phenomena by breaking them down into simple steps and making sure you
That's a well-expressed and insightful summing up.of simplified reaction conditions and processes and build from there.
The first complaint of overstated progress, I would agree, would likely be partly attributable to individual horn-tooters and popular science reporters. The second complaint of "toy domains" could be partly justified by the need to start with the study
And as you say, various problems that have been declared catch-22s have since been tackled enough to argue for a downgrade from condition "fatal".and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide answers,
- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 3:25:40 AM UTC+10, Gary Hurd wrote:from the free Kindle sample of AL:
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 1:00:40 AM UTC-7, MarkE wrote:
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer. However,
conjecture: “Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative
One of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
My reading recommendations on the origin of life for people without college chemistry, are;
Hazen, RM 2005 "Gen-e-sis" Washington DC: Joseph Henry Press
Deamer, David W. 2011 “First Life: Discovering the Connections between Stars, Cells, and How Life Began” University of California Press.
They are a bit dated, but are readable for people without much background study.
If you have had a good background, First year college; Introduction to Chemistry, Second year; Organic Chemistry and at least one biochem or genetics course see;
Deamer, David W. 2019 "Assembling Life: How can life begin on Earth and other habitable planets?" Oxford University Press.
Hazen, RM 2019 "Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything" Norton and Co.
Note: Bob Hazen thinks his 2019 book can be read by non-scientists. I doubt it.
Nick Lane 2015 "The Vital Question" W. W. Norton & Company
Nick Lane spent some pages on the differences between Archaea and Bacteria cell boundary chemistry, and mitochondria chemistry. That could hint at a single RNA/DNA life that diverged very early, and then hybridized. Very interesting idea!
Nick Lane
2022 "Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death" W. W. Norton & Company
In this book Professor Lane is focused on the chemistry of the Krebs Cycle (and its’ reverse) for the existence of life, and its’ origin. I did need to read a few sections more than once.
I've appreciated listening to OoL presentations by Nick Lane and also Jack Szostak. I've particularly enjoyed reading "The Origin of Life Circus: A How To Make Life Extravaganza" by Suzan Mazur.
[...]and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide answers,
- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
On 9/18/23 4:13 AM, MarkE wrote:answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
[...]
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide
- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.I know little specifically about current research going on in
abiogenesis, but I think we can rule out 3 and 4.
I can think of three things which might cause a field to stall.
A: Loss of interest. Rarely if ever applicable to any but narrow,
esoteric fields, and clearly not applicable here.
B. Reassignment of personnel or funding resources. Personnel
reassignments on a large scale happen due to world war, and I have not noticed one of those lately. Abiogenesis research is not so expensive to rely on one, or even very few, sources of funding, so that would not be
a reason.
C. Dominance of the field by a single misguided paradigm. This may have
been common in the past (I'm thinking of reluctance of doctors to start washing their hands, for example), but the last such instance I can
think of was Freudian psychoanalaysis. Abiogenesis most certainly does
not suffer this problem.
As for your possibility #4, note that it has never before happened in
all of history, and in fact the pattern goes strongly the other way.
Natural explanations are found for things that used to be considered supernatural. This trend is not merely in science, but also in theology,
as religious leaders come to see natural explanations as compatible with their religion.
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 7:10:40 AM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:However, from the free Kindle sample of AL:
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 9:15:39 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 6:00:40 PM UTC+10, MarkE wrote:
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer.
conjecture: “Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative
that break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphateOne of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures
vents, freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life, and oneBains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline hydrothermal
complex mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that manyRegardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a
made. To draw “Protocells → Progenote” in a diagram [11] skips over everything about how that transition happens, i.e., how life originates!"That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Perfect.More choice cuts from Bains' article:
"Again, the term ‘Protocell’ is used to mean any liposome-like membrane encapsulating other molecules. In my opinion, a vesicle encapsulating random organic molecules is almost as far from life as the bulk “prebiotic soup” from which it was
can lab reactions of specific reagents, even to give “messy” products, be part of a larger solution. The research does tell us something about chemistry. But it is not something that has much relevance to OOL, because if you carry out lab organic- This confirms a recent thread where I challenge Deamer's endorsement of Dyson's "garbage bag model".
"Because, I suggest, OOL is at least 50 years too early. OOL in 2020 is like AI in 1950. It was missing several critical pieces. We are playing with Toy Domains."
- Maybe OoL does need another 50+ years to develop. Why pretend the current state of the field is anything but?
"Most researchers, even some working on such chemical schemes, understand that lab chemistry is only a tiny part of the whole problem. But that is not the primary issue. It is a tiny part solved in an unrealistic way. Only by a tiny, outside chance
But what many such advances are is a new scenario—new location, new suggested set of pure reagents to react, a new chain of specific reactions that have be demonstrated, one at a time, in the lab. They are all new Toy Domains."- James Tour couldn't have said it better.
"And indeed there has been a major advance in the use of the term “major advance” in the OOL literature; 75% of all papers using the phrase “major advance” in the context of origin of life listed in Google Scholar were published after 2011.
self-organization rather than individual chemical reactions. We need fundamentally new ways of looking at life and its origin, and we do not have them, not even close."- The term “major advance” called out for the misleading hype that it is. Again, pure Tour.
"I think we need to go beyond this, and here Deamer is oddly muted. We need new ideas, and not just yet another contrived scenario how this or that reaction could happen on this or that mineral, not even a refocusing on the chemistry of life on
phase transition and become self-propagating, autocatalytic, i.e., life-like. But what does “diverse” mean? Atmospheric photochemical networks have nearly as many components and more reactions than central metabolism. Does this mean the atmosphere is- We're shooting fish in a barrel now.
"What new ideas? I do not know!"
- Thank you!
"There is also a lot of excitement about “systems chemistry” and “autocatalytic” systems, catalysed mainly by Stuart Kauffman. Kaufmann postulates that a sufficiently diverse collection of reactive and catalytic molecules would undergo a
1729/10/2/18/s1- Autocatalytic systems? Tar.
"And we hear every now and again about “New Physics”, a term growing like bindweed from the intellectual rootstock to Schroedinger’s execrable book."
- A refence to Jeremy England?
"This is a simplistic model, and as such is justifiably relegated to an appendix. However it illustrates that the issue in OOL research is not just ‘can we make it’ but also ‘can we stop making everything else’." https://www.mdpi.com/2075-
actual research papers. Indeed one can quotemine papers from the same set of OoL scientists to suggest that either they think the problem is essentially insoluble or that they think it has essentially been solved. But when I read the actual research- the tar problem againThere seem to be two major complaints.
The first complaint is that OoL scientists keep claiming that much more progress has been made than actually has been. I don't really know what to make of that claim. That sort of triumphalism is more common in popular science summaries than in
significantly change the results. Well, that seems to me a very reasonable way to start. You have an extremely complex problem - a long set of steps that took place over millions of years in unknown environment and that involved complex mixtures ofThe second complaint is that the research is too focused on "toy domains," very simplified sets of reagents and conditions that ignore all sorts of other compounds that would presumably be present in the natural environment and which might
energetically unfavorable and is not expected to happen spontaneously. In living things an energetically favorable reaction has to be coupled to the condensation reaction for it to occur. But you can't have all the mechanisms required for that couplingStill, this is progress. Look at a couple of "catch-22's". (1) The "water problem." Life works in an aqueous environment. But in an aqueous environment, condensation of amino acid monomers into peptides or nucleotides into oligonucleotides is
fatal, too. Until, in "toy domains" people started finding that RNA alone can have enzymatic activity, indeed a variety of enzymatic activities that can be selected for in vitro. That certainly is not remotely proof of the RNA world in all its detail,(2) Another catch-22 - the DNA-RNA-protein catch-22. You need enzymes to replicate or transcribe DNA and you need enzymes to translate RNA into protein, you can't make RNA without the enzymes, but you can't make the enzymes without RNA. Sounds pretty
understand the simple steps well before you add in complications seems to work pretty well. Still, if Bains has some experimental suggestions for a "fundamentally new approach to studying life and its origins," lots of people would be interested.Of course nature, in the form of a volcanic pool or a tide pool or a hydrothermal vent is more complicated than a test tube, but the approach of understanding complicated phenomena by breaking them down into simple steps and making sure you
That's a well-expressed and insightful summing up.of simplified reaction conditions and processes and build from there.
The first complaint of overstated progress, I would agree, would likely be partly attributable to individual horn-tooters and popular science reporters. The second complaint of "toy domains" could be partly justified by the need to start with the study
And as you say, various problems that have been declared catch-22s have since been tackled enough to argue for a downgrade from condition "fatal".
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide answers,
- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 7:15:41 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:However, from the free Kindle sample of AL:
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 7:10:40 AM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 9:15:39 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 6:00:40 PM UTC+10, MarkE wrote:
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer.
conjecture: “Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative
that break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphateOne of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures
hydrothermal vents, freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life,Bains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline
complex mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that manyRegardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a
was made. To draw “Protocells → Progenote” in a diagram [11] skips over everything about how that transition happens, i.e., how life originates!"That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Perfect.More choice cuts from Bains' article:
"Again, the term ‘Protocell’ is used to mean any liposome-like membrane encapsulating other molecules. In my opinion, a vesicle encapsulating random organic molecules is almost as far from life as the bulk “prebiotic soup” from which it
chance can lab reactions of specific reagents, even to give “messy” products, be part of a larger solution. The research does tell us something about chemistry. But it is not something that has much relevance to OOL, because if you carry out lab- This confirms a recent thread where I challenge Deamer's endorsement of Dyson's "garbage bag model".
"Because, I suggest, OOL is at least 50 years too early. OOL in 2020 is like AI in 1950. It was missing several critical pieces. We are playing with Toy Domains."
- Maybe OoL does need another 50+ years to develop. Why pretend the current state of the field is anything but?
"Most researchers, even some working on such chemical schemes, understand that lab chemistry is only a tiny part of the whole problem. But that is not the primary issue. It is a tiny part solved in an unrealistic way. Only by a tiny, outside
2011. But what many such advances are is a new scenario—new location, new suggested set of pure reagents to react, a new chain of specific reactions that have be demonstrated, one at a time, in the lab. They are all new Toy Domains."- James Tour couldn't have said it better.
"And indeed there has been a major advance in the use of the term “major advance” in the OOL literature; 75% of all papers using the phrase “major advance” in the context of origin of life listed in Google Scholar were published after
self-organization rather than individual chemical reactions. We need fundamentally new ways of looking at life and its origin, and we do not have them, not even close."- The term “major advance” called out for the misleading hype that it is. Again, pure Tour.
"I think we need to go beyond this, and here Deamer is oddly muted. We need new ideas, and not just yet another contrived scenario how this or that reaction could happen on this or that mineral, not even a refocusing on the chemistry of life on
phase transition and become self-propagating, autocatalytic, i.e., life-like. But what does “diverse” mean? Atmospheric photochemical networks have nearly as many components and more reactions than central metabolism. Does this mean the atmosphere is- We're shooting fish in a barrel now.
"What new ideas? I do not know!"
- Thank you!
"There is also a lot of excitement about “systems chemistry” and “autocatalytic” systems, catalysed mainly by Stuart Kauffman. Kaufmann postulates that a sufficiently diverse collection of reactive and catalytic molecules would undergo a
1729/10/2/18/s1- Autocatalytic systems? Tar.
"And we hear every now and again about “New Physics”, a term growing like bindweed from the intellectual rootstock to Schroedinger’s execrable book."
- A refence to Jeremy England?
"This is a simplistic model, and as such is justifiably relegated to an appendix. However it illustrates that the issue in OOL research is not just ‘can we make it’ but also ‘can we stop making everything else’." https://www.mdpi.com/2075-
actual research papers. Indeed one can quotemine papers from the same set of OoL scientists to suggest that either they think the problem is essentially insoluble or that they think it has essentially been solved. But when I read the actual research- the tar problem againThere seem to be two major complaints.
The first complaint is that OoL scientists keep claiming that much more progress has been made than actually has been. I don't really know what to make of that claim. That sort of triumphalism is more common in popular science summaries than in
significantly change the results. Well, that seems to me a very reasonable way to start. You have an extremely complex problem - a long set of steps that took place over millions of years in unknown environment and that involved complex mixtures ofThe second complaint is that the research is too focused on "toy domains," very simplified sets of reagents and conditions that ignore all sorts of other compounds that would presumably be present in the natural environment and which might
energetically unfavorable and is not expected to happen spontaneously. In living things an energetically favorable reaction has to be coupled to the condensation reaction for it to occur. But you can't have all the mechanisms required for that couplingStill, this is progress. Look at a couple of "catch-22's". (1) The "water problem." Life works in an aqueous environment. But in an aqueous environment, condensation of amino acid monomers into peptides or nucleotides into oligonucleotides is
pretty fatal, too. Until, in "toy domains" people started finding that RNA alone can have enzymatic activity, indeed a variety of enzymatic activities that can be selected for in vitro. That certainly is not remotely proof of the RNA world in all its(2) Another catch-22 - the DNA-RNA-protein catch-22. You need enzymes to replicate or transcribe DNA and you need enzymes to translate RNA into protein, you can't make RNA without the enzymes, but you can't make the enzymes without RNA. Sounds
understand the simple steps well before you add in complications seems to work pretty well. Still, if Bains has some experimental suggestions for a "fundamentally new approach to studying life and its origins," lots of people would be interested.Of course nature, in the form of a volcanic pool or a tide pool or a hydrothermal vent is more complicated than a test tube, but the approach of understanding complicated phenomena by breaking them down into simple steps and making sure you
study of simplified reaction conditions and processes and build from there.That's a well-expressed and insightful summing up.
The first complaint of overstated progress, I would agree, would likely be partly attributable to individual horn-tooters and popular science reporters. The second complaint of "toy domains" could be partly justified by the need to start with the
I read the actual papers, it just seems like ordinary workaday science, people making modest progress on a difficult problem, not different in tone from papers in any other field of science. It may be that if I were to spend a lot of time reading blogsAnd as you say, various problems that have been declared catch-22s have since been tackled enough to argue for a downgrade from condition "fatal".
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:I had a couple of other thoughts
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.I think you are hearing a very different "narrative" than I am. I certainly am not hearing the narrative - "hey, we've got this all figured out, there's just a few details to wrap up," which seems to me to be what you perceive to be the narrative. When
- "No cover-up here"
answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide
for OoL. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. If you could show, for example, that conditions at hydrothermal vents were incompatible with polymerization of RNA, in principle you'd have reduced the number of possible scenarios that need to be worked- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"You here seem to talk as though experimentally disproven hypotheses were a bad thing and represent a failure in the field. That's not the way I would look at it. Every time a hypothesis is falsified, that result puts additional constraints on models
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 12:25:40 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
On 9/18/23 4:13 AM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide
- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.I know little specifically about current research going on in
abiogenesis, but I think we can rule out 3 and 4.
I can think of three things which might cause a field to stall.
A: Loss of interest. Rarely if ever applicable to any but narrow,
esoteric fields, and clearly not applicable here.
B. Reassignment of personnel or funding resources. Personnel
reassignments on a large scale happen due to world war, and I have not noticed one of those lately. Abiogenesis research is not so expensive to rely on one, or even very few, sources of funding, so that would not be
a reason.
C. Dominance of the field by a single misguided paradigm. This may have been common in the past (I'm thinking of reluctance of doctors to start washing their hands, for example), but the last such instance I can
think of was Freudian psychoanalaysis. Abiogenesis most certainly does
not suffer this problem.
As for your possibility #4, note that it has never before happened inI'm struggling with the enumerated list. It mixes and matches from disjoint concepts without a logical flow.
all of history, and in fact the pattern goes strongly the other way. Natural explanations are found for things that used to be considered supernatural. This trend is not merely in science, but also in theology, as religious leaders come to see natural explanations as compatible with their religion.
A. There is a question involving the state of scientific knowledge associated
with Origins of Life on Earth by natural means. This of course has myriad aspects to it. They range from the state of knowledge of organic chemistry, thermodynamics, information theory, and chemical catalysis. And these separate disciplines become entwined in applied science. Then there's
an overlayer of modeling which mixes adopting the best of various
current understandings and the practicality of experimental testing.
B. Dependent upon an appreciation of aspects of A. above, there are
two more aspects invoked in the proposed scale of 1 through 4. One
is a judgement of the rate of "progress" in the various disciplines, modeling, and experimentation. Two is an assessment of expectations
for what progress should be being made.
C. The 1-4 "scale also introduces some ill-defined perceptions about
how the whole field is perceived. Perceived by what metric? By whom?
Some branch of popular press or science journalism? By peer reviewed publications? By organizations with agendas? It's the sort of thing that just begs for confirmation bias in how one selects and weighs sources.
D. And then there's a conspiracy over-layer folded in about "cover-ups".
Part A has the greatest prospect of objectivity. Part B has a fairly objective
historical aspect, except there's a great deal of confusion over the significance of underlying models for OoL and how to interpret them.
That makes it hard to be clear about progress.
Parts C and D are huge cans of worms. Folding them in, in this unfettered way makes me think "run away, run away!"
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 6:30:41 AM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:However, from the free Kindle sample of AL:
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 7:15:41 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 7:10:40 AM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 9:15:39 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Sunday, September 17, 2023 at 6:00:40 PM UTC+10, MarkE wrote:
Bill Rogers has been pestering me to read this for some time. I’ve resisted mainly because I don’t believe that the OoL issues we’ve been disputing will be helped by another speculated location/model, in this case supplied by Deamer.
conjecture: “Life originated in freshwater hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses then later adapted to the salty seawater of the early ocean.”“Conjecture: Life originated in hydrothermal vents and later adapted to freshwater on volcanic and continental land masses. In the absence of alternatives this idea has been accepted as a reasonable proposal.” And Deamer’s alternative
that break up again into vesicles on wetting. Why fresh water hydrothermal systems? Because in seawater divalent cations, especially calcium, prevent fatty acids from forming bilayers, as well as efficiently precipitating phosphate and organophosphateOne of the more interesting reviews [1] of Deamer’s book opens with, “It is worth reading, it is an advance in the field.”
[1] Bains, William. Getting Beyond the Toy Domain. Meditations on David Deamer’s “Assembling Life”. Life 2020, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/10/2/18
Bains again:
“Deamer’s view might be summarised as “container-enabled chemistry first”. Long chain fatty acids can be made abiotically, and spontaneously assemble into multilayer structures on drying from freshwater hydrothermal fields, structures
hydrothermal vents, freshwater volcanic or sedimentary hydrothermal systems, land ponds, coastal ponds, the Moon and Mars…Choose your key properties for life, your preferred path, find a location that matches those, and you have a new scenario for life,Bains is sympathetic to Deamer’s approach, however in support of my claim that we don’t need another conjecture, says this:
“But. Here is the fundamental problem. There is only one actual fact known about the origin of life (OOL). It happened. We do not know where, when, or how. Suggestions on location range over clouds, in ice, black smokers, alkaline
complex mixture of thousands of other chemicals at OOL, under conditions that might have existed and might have persisted long enough, and then stopping the reaction at exactly the right time to maximize the yield of what you want. It neglects that manyRegardless, Bains trumps a generally positive rap with this summary:
“In my view, almost all the OOL chemistry that I see is Toy Domain chemistry. It is making single types of biochemicals in a controlled laboratory setting using pure chemicals that might, just might, have been present in trace amounts in a
was made. To draw “Protocells → Progenote” in a diagram [11] skips over everything about how that transition happens, i.e., how life originates!"That's from an informed and supportive commentator who believes there must be a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Where have we heard precisely the same criticism of the state of OoL recently? Yes, from James Tour.
Perfect.More choice cuts from Bains' article:
"Again, the term ‘Protocell’ is used to mean any liposome-like membrane encapsulating other molecules. In my opinion, a vesicle encapsulating random organic molecules is almost as far from life as the bulk “prebiotic soup” from which it
chance can lab reactions of specific reagents, even to give “messy” products, be part of a larger solution. The research does tell us something about chemistry. But it is not something that has much relevance to OOL, because if you carry out lab- This confirms a recent thread where I challenge Deamer's endorsement of Dyson's "garbage bag model".
"Because, I suggest, OOL is at least 50 years too early. OOL in 2020 is like AI in 1950. It was missing several critical pieces. We are playing with Toy Domains."
- Maybe OoL does need another 50+ years to develop. Why pretend the current state of the field is anything but?
"Most researchers, even some working on such chemical schemes, understand that lab chemistry is only a tiny part of the whole problem. But that is not the primary issue. It is a tiny part solved in an unrealistic way. Only by a tiny, outside
2011. But what many such advances are is a new scenario—new location, new suggested set of pure reagents to react, a new chain of specific reactions that have be demonstrated, one at a time, in the lab. They are all new Toy Domains."- James Tour couldn't have said it better.
"And indeed there has been a major advance in the use of the term “major advance” in the OOL literature; 75% of all papers using the phrase “major advance” in the context of origin of life listed in Google Scholar were published after
self-organization rather than individual chemical reactions. We need fundamentally new ways of looking at life and its origin, and we do not have them, not even close."- The term “major advance” called out for the misleading hype that it is. Again, pure Tour.
"I think we need to go beyond this, and here Deamer is oddly muted. We need new ideas, and not just yet another contrived scenario how this or that reaction could happen on this or that mineral, not even a refocusing on the chemistry of life on
a phase transition and become self-propagating, autocatalytic, i.e., life-like. But what does “diverse” mean? Atmospheric photochemical networks have nearly as many components and more reactions than central metabolism. Does this mean the atmosphere- We're shooting fish in a barrel now.
"What new ideas? I do not know!"
- Thank you!
"There is also a lot of excitement about “systems chemistry” and “autocatalytic” systems, catalysed mainly by Stuart Kauffman. Kaufmann postulates that a sufficiently diverse collection of reactive and catalytic molecules would undergo
2075-1729/10/2/18/s1- Autocatalytic systems? Tar.
"And we hear every now and again about “New Physics”, a term growing like bindweed from the intellectual rootstock to Schroedinger’s execrable book."
- A refence to Jeremy England?
"This is a simplistic model, and as such is justifiably relegated to an appendix. However it illustrates that the issue in OOL research is not just ‘can we make it’ but also ‘can we stop making everything else’." https://www.mdpi.com/
actual research papers. Indeed one can quotemine papers from the same set of OoL scientists to suggest that either they think the problem is essentially insoluble or that they think it has essentially been solved. But when I read the actual research- the tar problem againThere seem to be two major complaints.
The first complaint is that OoL scientists keep claiming that much more progress has been made than actually has been. I don't really know what to make of that claim. That sort of triumphalism is more common in popular science summaries than in
significantly change the results. Well, that seems to me a very reasonable way to start. You have an extremely complex problem - a long set of steps that took place over millions of years in unknown environment and that involved complex mixtures ofThe second complaint is that the research is too focused on "toy domains," very simplified sets of reagents and conditions that ignore all sorts of other compounds that would presumably be present in the natural environment and which might
energetically unfavorable and is not expected to happen spontaneously. In living things an energetically favorable reaction has to be coupled to the condensation reaction for it to occur. But you can't have all the mechanisms required for that couplingStill, this is progress. Look at a couple of "catch-22's". (1) The "water problem." Life works in an aqueous environment. But in an aqueous environment, condensation of amino acid monomers into peptides or nucleotides into oligonucleotides is
pretty fatal, too. Until, in "toy domains" people started finding that RNA alone can have enzymatic activity, indeed a variety of enzymatic activities that can be selected for in vitro. That certainly is not remotely proof of the RNA world in all its(2) Another catch-22 - the DNA-RNA-protein catch-22. You need enzymes to replicate or transcribe DNA and you need enzymes to translate RNA into protein, you can't make RNA without the enzymes, but you can't make the enzymes without RNA. Sounds
understand the simple steps well before you add in complications seems to work pretty well. Still, if Bains has some experimental suggestions for a "fundamentally new approach to studying life and its origins," lots of people would be interested.Of course nature, in the form of a volcanic pool or a tide pool or a hydrothermal vent is more complicated than a test tube, but the approach of understanding complicated phenomena by breaking them down into simple steps and making sure you
study of simplified reaction conditions and processes and build from there.That's a well-expressed and insightful summing up.
The first complaint of overstated progress, I would agree, would likely be partly attributable to individual horn-tooters and popular science reporters. The second complaint of "toy domains" could be partly justified by the need to start with the
When I read the actual papers, it just seems like ordinary workaday science, people making modest progress on a difficult problem, not different in tone from papers in any other field of science. It may be that if I were to spend a lot of time readingAnd as you say, various problems that have been declared catch-22s have since been tackled enough to argue for a downgrade from condition "fatal".
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:I had a couple of other thoughts
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.I think you are hearing a very different "narrative" than I am. I certainly am not hearing the narrative - "hey, we've got this all figured out, there's just a few details to wrap up," which seems to me to be what you perceive to be the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide
for OoL. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. If you could show, for example, that conditions at hydrothermal vents were incompatible with polymerization of RNA, in principle you'd have reduced the number of possible scenarios that need to be worked- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"You here seem to talk as though experimentally disproven hypotheses were a bad thing and represent a failure in the field. That's not the way I would look at it. Every time a hypothesis is falsified, that result puts additional constraints on models
Options 1 and 2, which I've categorised as unremarkable, naturally include experimentally disproven hypotheses; that's how science works. Therefore, I'm confused as to why you would suggest that I "seem to talk as though experimentally disprovenhypotheses were a bad thing and represent a failure in the field."
You omitted my essential qualification of experimentally disproven hypotheses, i.e. "has reached a level such that". That "level" is of course subjective and open to debate.
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 4:05:41?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 12:25:40?PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 9/18/23 4:13 AM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide
proceed?I'm struggling with the enumerated list. It mixes and matches from disjoint >> concepts without a logical flow.- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"I know little specifically about current research going on in
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
abiogenesis, but I think we can rule out 3 and 4.
I can think of three things which might cause a field to stall.
A: Loss of interest. Rarely if ever applicable to any but narrow,
esoteric fields, and clearly not applicable here.
B. Reassignment of personnel or funding resources. Personnel
reassignments on a large scale happen due to world war, and I have not
noticed one of those lately. Abiogenesis research is not so expensive to >> > rely on one, or even very few, sources of funding, so that would not be >> > a reason.
C. Dominance of the field by a single misguided paradigm. This may have >> > been common in the past (I'm thinking of reluctance of doctors to start >> > washing their hands, for example), but the last such instance I can
think of was Freudian psychoanalaysis. Abiogenesis most certainly does
not suffer this problem.
As for your possibility #4, note that it has never before happened in
all of history, and in fact the pattern goes strongly the other way.
Natural explanations are found for things that used to be considered
supernatural. This trend is not merely in science, but also in theology, >> > as religious leaders come to see natural explanations as compatible with >> > their religion.
A. There is a question involving the state of scientific knowledge associated
with Origins of Life on Earth by natural means. This of course has myriad >> aspects to it. They range from the state of knowledge of organic chemistry, >> thermodynamics, information theory, and chemical catalysis. And these
separate disciplines become entwined in applied science. Then there's
an overlayer of modeling which mixes adopting the best of various
current understandings and the practicality of experimental testing.
B. Dependent upon an appreciation of aspects of A. above, there are
two more aspects invoked in the proposed scale of 1 through 4. One
is a judgement of the rate of "progress" in the various disciplines,
modeling, and experimentation. Two is an assessment of expectations
for what progress should be being made.
C. The 1-4 "scale also introduces some ill-defined perceptions about
how the whole field is perceived. Perceived by what metric? By whom?
Some branch of popular press or science journalism? By peer reviewed
publications? By organizations with agendas? It's the sort of thing that
just begs for confirmation bias in how one selects and weighs sources.
D. And then there's a conspiracy over-layer folded in about "cover-ups".
Part A has the greatest prospect of objectivity. Part B has a fairly objective
historical aspect, except there's a great deal of confusion over the
significance of underlying models for OoL and how to interpret them.
That makes it hard to be clear about progress.
Parts C and D are huge cans of worms. Folding them in, in this unfettered >> way makes me think "run away, run away!"
Don't run away.
Life originated either by known or unknown natural means, or by supernatural agency. The name of this forum sets an agenda of discussing this and related questions. What then might be the terms of engagement?
Is there a place for meaningful dialogue between those who take various and opposing views on this based on different interpretations of scientific evidence, and possibly other evidence or reasoning? If so, in broad terms how might this discussion
On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:16:16 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
wrote:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 4:05:41?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote: >> On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 12:25:40?PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 9/18/23 4:13 AM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide
proceed?I'm struggling with the enumerated list. It mixes and matches from disjoint- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"I know little specifically about current research going on in
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
abiogenesis, but I think we can rule out 3 and 4.
I can think of three things which might cause a field to stall.
A: Loss of interest. Rarely if ever applicable to any but narrow,
esoteric fields, and clearly not applicable here.
B. Reassignment of personnel or funding resources. Personnel
reassignments on a large scale happen due to world war, and I have not >> > noticed one of those lately. Abiogenesis research is not so expensive to
rely on one, or even very few, sources of funding, so that would not be >> > a reason.
C. Dominance of the field by a single misguided paradigm. This may have >> > been common in the past (I'm thinking of reluctance of doctors to start >> > washing their hands, for example), but the last such instance I can
think of was Freudian psychoanalaysis. Abiogenesis most certainly does >> > not suffer this problem.
As for your possibility #4, note that it has never before happened in >> > all of history, and in fact the pattern goes strongly the other way.
Natural explanations are found for things that used to be considered
supernatural. This trend is not merely in science, but also in theology,
as religious leaders come to see natural explanations as compatible with
their religion.
concepts without a logical flow.
A. There is a question involving the state of scientific knowledge associated
with Origins of Life on Earth by natural means. This of course has myriad >> aspects to it. They range from the state of knowledge of organic chemistry,
thermodynamics, information theory, and chemical catalysis. And these
separate disciplines become entwined in applied science. Then there's
an overlayer of modeling which mixes adopting the best of various
current understandings and the practicality of experimental testing.
B. Dependent upon an appreciation of aspects of A. above, there are
two more aspects invoked in the proposed scale of 1 through 4. One
is a judgement of the rate of "progress" in the various disciplines,
modeling, and experimentation. Two is an assessment of expectations
for what progress should be being made.
C. The 1-4 "scale also introduces some ill-defined perceptions about
how the whole field is perceived. Perceived by what metric? By whom?
Some branch of popular press or science journalism? By peer reviewed
publications? By organizations with agendas? It's the sort of thing that >> just begs for confirmation bias in how one selects and weighs sources.
D. And then there's a conspiracy over-layer folded in about "cover-ups". >>
Part A has the greatest prospect of objectivity. Part B has a fairly objective
historical aspect, except there's a great deal of confusion over the
significance of underlying models for OoL and how to interpret them.
That makes it hard to be clear about progress.
Parts C and D are huge cans of worms. Folding them in, in this unfettered >> way makes me think "run away, run away!"
Don't run away.
Life originated either by known or unknown natural means, or by supernatural agency. The name of this forum sets an agenda of discussing this and related questions. What then might be the terms of engagement?
Is there a place for meaningful dialogue between those who take various and opposing views on this based on different interpretations of scientific evidence, and possibly other evidence or reasoning? If so, in broad terms how might this discussion
Do you understand that material evidence, on which material science is based, can provide evidence only for material causes?
--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 4:05:41 AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 12:25:40 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 9/18/23 4:13 AM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide
proceed?I'm struggling with the enumerated list. It mixes and matches from disjoint >> concepts without a logical flow.- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"I know little specifically about current research going on in
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
abiogenesis, but I think we can rule out 3 and 4.
I can think of three things which might cause a field to stall.
A: Loss of interest. Rarely if ever applicable to any but narrow,
esoteric fields, and clearly not applicable here.
B. Reassignment of personnel or funding resources. Personnel
reassignments on a large scale happen due to world war, and I have not
noticed one of those lately. Abiogenesis research is not so expensive to >>> rely on one, or even very few, sources of funding, so that would not be
a reason.
C. Dominance of the field by a single misguided paradigm. This may have
been common in the past (I'm thinking of reluctance of doctors to start
washing their hands, for example), but the last such instance I can
think of was Freudian psychoanalaysis. Abiogenesis most certainly does
not suffer this problem.
As for your possibility #4, note that it has never before happened in
all of history, and in fact the pattern goes strongly the other way.
Natural explanations are found for things that used to be considered
supernatural. This trend is not merely in science, but also in theology, >>> as religious leaders come to see natural explanations as compatible with >>> their religion.
A. There is a question involving the state of scientific knowledge associated
with Origins of Life on Earth by natural means. This of course has myriad
aspects to it. They range from the state of knowledge of organic chemistry, >> thermodynamics, information theory, and chemical catalysis. And these
separate disciplines become entwined in applied science. Then there's
an overlayer of modeling which mixes adopting the best of various
current understandings and the practicality of experimental testing.
B. Dependent upon an appreciation of aspects of A. above, there are
two more aspects invoked in the proposed scale of 1 through 4. One
is a judgement of the rate of "progress" in the various disciplines,
modeling, and experimentation. Two is an assessment of expectations
for what progress should be being made.
C. The 1-4 "scale also introduces some ill-defined perceptions about
how the whole field is perceived. Perceived by what metric? By whom?
Some branch of popular press or science journalism? By peer reviewed
publications? By organizations with agendas? It's the sort of thing that
just begs for confirmation bias in how one selects and weighs sources.
D. And then there's a conspiracy over-layer folded in about "cover-ups".
Part A has the greatest prospect of objectivity. Part B has a fairly objective
historical aspect, except there's a great deal of confusion over the
significance of underlying models for OoL and how to interpret them.
That makes it hard to be clear about progress.
Parts C and D are huge cans of worms. Folding them in, in this unfettered
way makes me think "run away, run away!"
Don't run away.
Life originated either by known or unknown natural means, or by supernatural agency. The name of this forum sets an agenda of discussing this and related questions. What then might be the terms of engagement?
Is there a place for meaningful dialogue between those who take various and opposing views on this based on different interpretations of scientific evidence, and possibly other evidence or reasoning? If so, in broad terms how might this discussion
On 9/18/23 4:16 PM, MarkE wrote:answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 4:05:41 AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 12:25:40 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >>> On 9/18/23 4:13 AM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide
proceed?I'm struggling with the enumerated list. It mixes and matches from disjoint- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"I know little specifically about current research going on in
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
abiogenesis, but I think we can rule out 3 and 4.
I can think of three things which might cause a field to stall.
A: Loss of interest. Rarely if ever applicable to any but narrow,
esoteric fields, and clearly not applicable here.
B. Reassignment of personnel or funding resources. Personnel
reassignments on a large scale happen due to world war, and I have not >>> noticed one of those lately. Abiogenesis research is not so expensive to >>> rely on one, or even very few, sources of funding, so that would not be >>> a reason.
C. Dominance of the field by a single misguided paradigm. This may have >>> been common in the past (I'm thinking of reluctance of doctors to start >>> washing their hands, for example), but the last such instance I can
think of was Freudian psychoanalaysis. Abiogenesis most certainly does >>> not suffer this problem.
As for your possibility #4, note that it has never before happened in >>> all of history, and in fact the pattern goes strongly the other way.
Natural explanations are found for things that used to be considered
supernatural. This trend is not merely in science, but also in theology, >>> as religious leaders come to see natural explanations as compatible with >>> their religion.
concepts without a logical flow.
A. There is a question involving the state of scientific knowledge associated
with Origins of Life on Earth by natural means. This of course has myriad >> aspects to it. They range from the state of knowledge of organic chemistry,
thermodynamics, information theory, and chemical catalysis. And these
separate disciplines become entwined in applied science. Then there's
an overlayer of modeling which mixes adopting the best of various
current understandings and the practicality of experimental testing.
B. Dependent upon an appreciation of aspects of A. above, there are
two more aspects invoked in the proposed scale of 1 through 4. One
is a judgement of the rate of "progress" in the various disciplines,
modeling, and experimentation. Two is an assessment of expectations
for what progress should be being made.
C. The 1-4 "scale also introduces some ill-defined perceptions about
how the whole field is perceived. Perceived by what metric? By whom?
Some branch of popular press or science journalism? By peer reviewed
publications? By organizations with agendas? It's the sort of thing that >> just begs for confirmation bias in how one selects and weighs sources.
D. And then there's a conspiracy over-layer folded in about "cover-ups". >>
Part A has the greatest prospect of objectivity. Part B has a fairly objective
historical aspect, except there's a great deal of confusion over the
significance of underlying models for OoL and how to interpret them.
That makes it hard to be clear about progress.
Parts C and D are huge cans of worms. Folding them in, in this unfettered >> way makes me think "run away, run away!"
Don't run away.
Life originated either by known or unknown natural means, or by supernatural agency. The name of this forum sets an agenda of discussing this and related questions. What then might be the terms of engagement?
Is there a place for meaningful dialogue between those who take various and opposing views on this based on different interpretations of scientific evidence, and possibly other evidence or reasoning? If so, in broad terms how might this discussion
To start with, we need a definition of "supernatural." In particular,
how is "supernatural" recognizably different from "unknown"? How can a hundred different people take your answer to that question, apply it to questions regarding abiogenesis (or anything else) and get the same answer? --
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 2:55:41 PM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
On 9/18/23 4:16 PM, MarkE wrote:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 4:05:41 AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 12:25:40 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >>> On 9/18/23 4:13 AM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide
proceed?I'm struggling with the enumerated list. It mixes and matches from disjoint- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"I know little specifically about current research going on in
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
abiogenesis, but I think we can rule out 3 and 4.
I can think of three things which might cause a field to stall.
A: Loss of interest. Rarely if ever applicable to any but narrow,
esoteric fields, and clearly not applicable here.
B. Reassignment of personnel or funding resources. Personnel
reassignments on a large scale happen due to world war, and I have not >>> noticed one of those lately. Abiogenesis research is not so expensive to
rely on one, or even very few, sources of funding, so that would not be
a reason.
C. Dominance of the field by a single misguided paradigm. This may have
been common in the past (I'm thinking of reluctance of doctors to start
washing their hands, for example), but the last such instance I can >>> think of was Freudian psychoanalaysis. Abiogenesis most certainly does >>> not suffer this problem.
As for your possibility #4, note that it has never before happened in >>> all of history, and in fact the pattern goes strongly the other way. >>> Natural explanations are found for things that used to be considered >>> supernatural. This trend is not merely in science, but also in theology,
as religious leaders come to see natural explanations as compatible with
their religion.
concepts without a logical flow.
A. There is a question involving the state of scientific knowledge associated
with Origins of Life on Earth by natural means. This of course has myriad
aspects to it. They range from the state of knowledge of organic chemistry,
thermodynamics, information theory, and chemical catalysis. And these >> separate disciplines become entwined in applied science. Then there's >> an overlayer of modeling which mixes adopting the best of various
current understandings and the practicality of experimental testing.
B. Dependent upon an appreciation of aspects of A. above, there are
two more aspects invoked in the proposed scale of 1 through 4. One
is a judgement of the rate of "progress" in the various disciplines,
modeling, and experimentation. Two is an assessment of expectations
for what progress should be being made.
C. The 1-4 "scale also introduces some ill-defined perceptions about
how the whole field is perceived. Perceived by what metric? By whom?
Some branch of popular press or science journalism? By peer reviewed
publications? By organizations with agendas? It's the sort of thing that
just begs for confirmation bias in how one selects and weighs sources. >>
D. And then there's a conspiracy over-layer folded in about "cover-ups".
Part A has the greatest prospect of objectivity. Part B has a fairly objective
historical aspect, except there's a great deal of confusion over the
significance of underlying models for OoL and how to interpret them.
That makes it hard to be clear about progress.
Parts C and D are huge cans of worms. Folding them in, in this unfettered
way makes me think "run away, run away!"
Don't run away.
Life originated either by known or unknown natural means, or by supernatural agency. The name of this forum sets an agenda of discussing this and related questions. What then might be the terms of engagement?
Is there a place for meaningful dialogue between those who take various and opposing views on this based on different interpretations of scientific evidence, and possibly other evidence or reasoning? If so, in broad terms how might this discussion
To start with, we need a definition of "supernatural." In particular,
how is "supernatural" recognizably different from "unknown"? How can a hundred different people take your answer to that question, apply it to questions regarding abiogenesis (or anything else) and get the same answer?
So then, do you believe that talk.origins is only for discussion of naturalistic explanations of origins? Or how would you express suitable terms of engagement here?
So then, do you believe that talk.origins is only for discussion of naturalistic explanations of origins? Or how would you express suitable terms of engagement here?
On Tuesday, 19 September 2023 at 08:15:41 UTC+3, MarkE wrote:
So then, do you believe that talk.origins is only for discussion of naturalistic explanations of origins? Or how would you express suitable terms of engagement here?
Opposite ... talk.origins is for discussion of whatever explanations of origins.
But how to? Read yourself. Even question how to differentiate between "unknown"
and "supernatural" will be responded by something like that. Asking anything in
that direction is perceived as aggression, attack or insult. What is the reason?
Can it be non-existence of supernatural explanations?
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:20:41?PM UTC+10, jillery wrote:answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:16:16 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 4:05:41?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote: >> >> On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 12:25:40?PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 9/18/23 4:13 AM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide
proceed?I'm struggling with the enumerated list. It mixes and matches from disjoint- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"I know little specifically about current research going on in
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
abiogenesis, but I think we can rule out 3 and 4.
I can think of three things which might cause a field to stall.
A: Loss of interest. Rarely if ever applicable to any but narrow,
esoteric fields, and clearly not applicable here.
B. Reassignment of personnel or funding resources. Personnel
reassignments on a large scale happen due to world war, and I have not >> >> > noticed one of those lately. Abiogenesis research is not so expensive to
rely on one, or even very few, sources of funding, so that would not be
a reason.
C. Dominance of the field by a single misguided paradigm. This may have
been common in the past (I'm thinking of reluctance of doctors to start
washing their hands, for example), but the last such instance I can
think of was Freudian psychoanalaysis. Abiogenesis most certainly does >> >> > not suffer this problem.
As for your possibility #4, note that it has never before happened in >> >> > all of history, and in fact the pattern goes strongly the other way. >> >> > Natural explanations are found for things that used to be considered >> >> > supernatural. This trend is not merely in science, but also in theology,
as religious leaders come to see natural explanations as compatible with
their religion.
concepts without a logical flow.
A. There is a question involving the state of scientific knowledge associated
with Origins of Life on Earth by natural means. This of course has myriad
aspects to it. They range from the state of knowledge of organic chemistry,
thermodynamics, information theory, and chemical catalysis. And these
separate disciplines become entwined in applied science. Then there's
an overlayer of modeling which mixes adopting the best of various
current understandings and the practicality of experimental testing.
B. Dependent upon an appreciation of aspects of A. above, there are
two more aspects invoked in the proposed scale of 1 through 4. One
is a judgement of the rate of "progress" in the various disciplines,
modeling, and experimentation. Two is an assessment of expectations
for what progress should be being made.
C. The 1-4 "scale also introduces some ill-defined perceptions about
how the whole field is perceived. Perceived by what metric? By whom?
Some branch of popular press or science journalism? By peer reviewed
publications? By organizations with agendas? It's the sort of thing that >> >> just begs for confirmation bias in how one selects and weighs sources. >> >>
D. And then there's a conspiracy over-layer folded in about "cover-ups". >> >>
Part A has the greatest prospect of objectivity. Part B has a fairly objective
historical aspect, except there's a great deal of confusion over the
significance of underlying models for OoL and how to interpret them.
That makes it hard to be clear about progress.
Parts C and D are huge cans of worms. Folding them in, in this unfettered
way makes me think "run away, run away!"
Don't run away.
Life originated either by known or unknown natural means, or by supernatural agency. The name of this forum sets an agenda of discussing this and related questions. What then might be the terms of engagement?
Is there a place for meaningful dialogue between those who take various and opposing views on this based on different interpretations of scientific evidence, and possibly other evidence or reasoning? If so, in broad terms how might this discussion
Do you understand that material evidence, on which material science is
based, can provide evidence only for material causes?
Do you believe then that talk.origins is only for discussion of naturalistic explanations of origins? Or how would you express suitable terms of engagement here?
On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 19:36:39 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>provide answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
wrote:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:20:41?PM UTC+10, jillery wrote:
On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:16:16 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 4:05:41?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 12:25:40?PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >> >> > On 9/18/23 4:13 AM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to
proceed?I'm struggling with the enumerated list. It mixes and matches from disjoint- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"I know little specifically about current research going on in
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
abiogenesis, but I think we can rule out 3 and 4.
I can think of three things which might cause a field to stall.
A: Loss of interest. Rarely if ever applicable to any but narrow,
esoteric fields, and clearly not applicable here.
B. Reassignment of personnel or funding resources. Personnel
reassignments on a large scale happen due to world war, and I have not
noticed one of those lately. Abiogenesis research is not so expensive to
rely on one, or even very few, sources of funding, so that would not be
a reason.
C. Dominance of the field by a single misguided paradigm. This may have
been common in the past (I'm thinking of reluctance of doctors to start
washing their hands, for example), but the last such instance I can >> >> > think of was Freudian psychoanalaysis. Abiogenesis most certainly does
not suffer this problem.
As for your possibility #4, note that it has never before happened in
all of history, and in fact the pattern goes strongly the other way. >> >> > Natural explanations are found for things that used to be considered >> >> > supernatural. This trend is not merely in science, but also in theology,
as religious leaders come to see natural explanations as compatible with
their religion.
concepts without a logical flow.
A. There is a question involving the state of scientific knowledge associated
with Origins of Life on Earth by natural means. This of course has myriad
aspects to it. They range from the state of knowledge of organic chemistry,
thermodynamics, information theory, and chemical catalysis. And these >> >> separate disciplines become entwined in applied science. Then there's >> >> an overlayer of modeling which mixes adopting the best of various
current understandings and the practicality of experimental testing. >> >>
B. Dependent upon an appreciation of aspects of A. above, there are
two more aspects invoked in the proposed scale of 1 through 4. One
is a judgement of the rate of "progress" in the various disciplines, >> >> modeling, and experimentation. Two is an assessment of expectations
for what progress should be being made.
C. The 1-4 "scale also introduces some ill-defined perceptions about >> >> how the whole field is perceived. Perceived by what metric? By whom? >> >> Some branch of popular press or science journalism? By peer reviewed >> >> publications? By organizations with agendas? It's the sort of thing that
just begs for confirmation bias in how one selects and weighs sources. >> >>
D. And then there's a conspiracy over-layer folded in about "cover-ups".
Part A has the greatest prospect of objectivity. Part B has a fairly objective
historical aspect, except there's a great deal of confusion over the >> >> significance of underlying models for OoL and how to interpret them. >> >> That makes it hard to be clear about progress.
Parts C and D are huge cans of worms. Folding them in, in this unfettered
way makes me think "run away, run away!"
Don't run away.
Life originated either by known or unknown natural means, or by supernatural agency. The name of this forum sets an agenda of discussing this and related questions. What then might be the terms of engagement?
Is there a place for meaningful dialogue between those who take various and opposing views on this based on different interpretations of scientific evidence, and possibly other evidence or reasoning? If so, in broad terms how might this discussion
Do you understand that material evidence, on which material science is
based, can provide evidence only for material causes?
Do you believe then that talk.origins is only for discussion of naturalistic explanations of origins? Or how would you express suitable terms of engagement here?My question above is a sincere effort to get you to be clear what you
mean by "scientific evidence" and explanations for them. Scientific discussions are limited to naturalistic aka measurable aka material
causes and effects. This doesn't say there are no supernatural aka non-material causes and effects. This does say things which have no
material aspects provide no scientific basis to discuss, by
definition.
So one can claim to discuss supernatural aka immaterial aka
unmeasurable causes and effects, or claim to discuss naturalistic aka material aka measurable causes and effects, or claim to discuss both
and by so doing fail to "engage" discussing either. Pick your poison.
--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 7:40:41 PM UTC+10, jillery wrote:provide answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 19:36:39 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:20:41?PM UTC+10, jillery wrote:
On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:16:16 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 4:05:41?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 12:25:40?PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 9/18/23 4:13 AM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to
discussion proceed?I'm struggling with the enumerated list. It mixes and matches from disjoint- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"I know little specifically about current research going on in
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
abiogenesis, but I think we can rule out 3 and 4.
I can think of three things which might cause a field to stall.
A: Loss of interest. Rarely if ever applicable to any but narrow, >> >> > esoteric fields, and clearly not applicable here.
B. Reassignment of personnel or funding resources. Personnel
reassignments on a large scale happen due to world war, and I have not
noticed one of those lately. Abiogenesis research is not so expensive to
rely on one, or even very few, sources of funding, so that would not be
a reason.
C. Dominance of the field by a single misguided paradigm. This may have
been common in the past (I'm thinking of reluctance of doctors to start
washing their hands, for example), but the last such instance I can
think of was Freudian psychoanalaysis. Abiogenesis most certainly does
not suffer this problem.
As for your possibility #4, note that it has never before happened in
all of history, and in fact the pattern goes strongly the other way.
Natural explanations are found for things that used to be considered
supernatural. This trend is not merely in science, but also in theology,
as religious leaders come to see natural explanations as compatible with
their religion.
concepts without a logical flow.
A. There is a question involving the state of scientific knowledge associated
with Origins of Life on Earth by natural means. This of course has myriad
aspects to it. They range from the state of knowledge of organic chemistry,
thermodynamics, information theory, and chemical catalysis. And these
separate disciplines become entwined in applied science. Then there's
an overlayer of modeling which mixes adopting the best of various
current understandings and the practicality of experimental testing. >> >>
B. Dependent upon an appreciation of aspects of A. above, there are >> >> two more aspects invoked in the proposed scale of 1 through 4. One >> >> is a judgement of the rate of "progress" in the various disciplines, >> >> modeling, and experimentation. Two is an assessment of expectations >> >> for what progress should be being made.
C. The 1-4 "scale also introduces some ill-defined perceptions about >> >> how the whole field is perceived. Perceived by what metric? By whom? >> >> Some branch of popular press or science journalism? By peer reviewed >> >> publications? By organizations with agendas? It's the sort of thing that
just begs for confirmation bias in how one selects and weighs sources.
D. And then there's a conspiracy over-layer folded in about "cover-ups".
Part A has the greatest prospect of objectivity. Part B has a fairly objective
historical aspect, except there's a great deal of confusion over the >> >> significance of underlying models for OoL and how to interpret them. >> >> That makes it hard to be clear about progress.
Parts C and D are huge cans of worms. Folding them in, in this unfettered
way makes me think "run away, run away!"
Don't run away.
Life originated either by known or unknown natural means, or by supernatural agency. The name of this forum sets an agenda of discussing this and related questions. What then might be the terms of engagement?
Is there a place for meaningful dialogue between those who take various and opposing views on this based on different interpretations of scientific evidence, and possibly other evidence or reasoning? If so, in broad terms how might this
Do you understand that material evidence, on which material science is >> based, can provide evidence only for material causes?
Do you believe then that talk.origins is only for discussion of naturalistic explanations of origins? Or how would you express suitable terms of engagement here?My question above is a sincere effort to get you to be clear what you
mean by "scientific evidence" and explanations for them. Scientific discussions are limited to naturalistic aka measurable aka material
causes and effects. This doesn't say there are no supernatural aka non-material causes and effects. This does say things which have no material aspects provide no scientific basis to discuss, by
definition.
So one can claim to discuss supernatural aka immaterial akaAfter 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
unmeasurable causes and effects, or claim to discuss naturalistic aka material aka measurable causes and effects, or claim to discuss both
and by so doing fail to "engage" discussing either. Pick your poison.
--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 2:55:41 PM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
On 9/18/23 4:16 PM, MarkE wrote:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 4:05:41 AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 12:25:40 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote: >>>>> On 9/18/23 4:13 AM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to provide
proceed?I'm struggling with the enumerated list. It mixes and matches from disjoint- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"I know little specifically about current research going on in
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
abiogenesis, but I think we can rule out 3 and 4.
I can think of three things which might cause a field to stall.
A: Loss of interest. Rarely if ever applicable to any but narrow,
esoteric fields, and clearly not applicable here.
B. Reassignment of personnel or funding resources. Personnel
reassignments on a large scale happen due to world war, and I have not >>>>> noticed one of those lately. Abiogenesis research is not so expensive to >>>>> rely on one, or even very few, sources of funding, so that would not be >>>>> a reason.
C. Dominance of the field by a single misguided paradigm. This may have >>>>> been common in the past (I'm thinking of reluctance of doctors to start >>>>> washing their hands, for example), but the last such instance I can
think of was Freudian psychoanalaysis. Abiogenesis most certainly does >>>>> not suffer this problem.
As for your possibility #4, note that it has never before happened in >>>>> all of history, and in fact the pattern goes strongly the other way. >>>>> Natural explanations are found for things that used to be considered >>>>> supernatural. This trend is not merely in science, but also in theology, >>>>> as religious leaders come to see natural explanations as compatible with >>>>> their religion.
concepts without a logical flow.
A. There is a question involving the state of scientific knowledge associated
with Origins of Life on Earth by natural means. This of course has myriad >>>> aspects to it. They range from the state of knowledge of organic chemistry,
thermodynamics, information theory, and chemical catalysis. And these
separate disciplines become entwined in applied science. Then there's
an overlayer of modeling which mixes adopting the best of various
current understandings and the practicality of experimental testing.
B. Dependent upon an appreciation of aspects of A. above, there are
two more aspects invoked in the proposed scale of 1 through 4. One
is a judgement of the rate of "progress" in the various disciplines,
modeling, and experimentation. Two is an assessment of expectations
for what progress should be being made.
C. The 1-4 "scale also introduces some ill-defined perceptions about
how the whole field is perceived. Perceived by what metric? By whom?
Some branch of popular press or science journalism? By peer reviewed
publications? By organizations with agendas? It's the sort of thing that >>>> just begs for confirmation bias in how one selects and weighs sources. >>>>
D. And then there's a conspiracy over-layer folded in about "cover-ups". >>>>
Part A has the greatest prospect of objectivity. Part B has a fairly objective
historical aspect, except there's a great deal of confusion over the
significance of underlying models for OoL and how to interpret them.
That makes it hard to be clear about progress.
Parts C and D are huge cans of worms. Folding them in, in this unfettered >>>> way makes me think "run away, run away!"
Don't run away.
Life originated either by known or unknown natural means, or by supernatural agency. The name of this forum sets an agenda of discussing this and related questions. What then might be the terms of engagement?
Is there a place for meaningful dialogue between those who take various and opposing views on this based on different interpretations of scientific evidence, and possibly other evidence or reasoning? If so, in broad terms how might this discussion
To start with, we need a definition of "supernatural." In particular,
how is "supernatural" recognizably different from "unknown"? How can a
hundred different people take your answer to that question, apply it to
questions regarding abiogenesis (or anything else) and get the same answer?
So then, do you believe that talk.origins is only for discussion of naturalistic explanations of origins? Or how would you express suitable terms of engagement here?
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
it matters.After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years, so I'm not sure
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the followingsure it matters.
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years, so I'm not
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
Two points:
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject the
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large
majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a
claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that
with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my
breath waiting.
Bob C.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"
- Isaac Asimov
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 7:40:41 PM UTC+10, jillery wrote:provide answers, and are appealing unknown laws, non-supernatural teleological explanations, a multiverse to overcome all odds, etc.
On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 19:36:39 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:20:41?PM UTC+10, jillery wrote:
On Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:16:16 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 4:05:41?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 12:25:40?PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 9/18/23 4:13 AM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
I wonder if there are broadly speaking these possibilities:
1. Claimed progress and actual progress in OoL research is about where you'd expect it to be, given the nature and difficulty of the problem, the age of the field, and the resourcing invested.
- "Nothing to see here"
2. Progress is lagging, claimed and actual, but as would be expected with a maturing discipline coming to grips with the scope of the challenge and not yet ready to concede the need to dial down the narrative.
- "No cover-up here"
3. The field is stalling, but the response is significant downplaying and denial of this, due to lack of awareness, unwillingness to admit, or other motivation.
- "There's a false narrative or cover-up here"
4. The accumulation of evidence, in the form of experimentally disproven hypotheses, has reached a level such that a significant proportion of those seeking naturalistic explanations are calling into doubt the capacity of known laws to
discussion proceed?I'm struggling with the enumerated list. It mixes and matches from disjoint- "Science has no satisfactory explanation for the origin of life (with the qualifier 'thus far' indefinitely applied, technically at least)"I know little specifically about current research going on in
If I could hazard a guess, you would be somewhere between 1 and 2, and closer to 1?
I'd place myself at 3 (with an acknowledged bias to expect 4 in time), along with James Tour and William Bains.
abiogenesis, but I think we can rule out 3 and 4.
I can think of three things which might cause a field to stall.
A: Loss of interest. Rarely if ever applicable to any but narrow, >> >> > esoteric fields, and clearly not applicable here.
B. Reassignment of personnel or funding resources. Personnel
reassignments on a large scale happen due to world war, and I have not
noticed one of those lately. Abiogenesis research is not so expensive to
rely on one, or even very few, sources of funding, so that would not be
a reason.
C. Dominance of the field by a single misguided paradigm. This may have
been common in the past (I'm thinking of reluctance of doctors to start
washing their hands, for example), but the last such instance I can
think of was Freudian psychoanalaysis. Abiogenesis most certainly does
not suffer this problem.
As for your possibility #4, note that it has never before happened in
all of history, and in fact the pattern goes strongly the other way.
Natural explanations are found for things that used to be considered
supernatural. This trend is not merely in science, but also in theology,
as religious leaders come to see natural explanations as compatible with
their religion.
concepts without a logical flow.
A. There is a question involving the state of scientific knowledge associated
with Origins of Life on Earth by natural means. This of course has myriad
aspects to it. They range from the state of knowledge of organic chemistry,
thermodynamics, information theory, and chemical catalysis. And these
separate disciplines become entwined in applied science. Then there's
an overlayer of modeling which mixes adopting the best of various
current understandings and the practicality of experimental testing. >> >>
B. Dependent upon an appreciation of aspects of A. above, there are >> >> two more aspects invoked in the proposed scale of 1 through 4. One >> >> is a judgement of the rate of "progress" in the various disciplines, >> >> modeling, and experimentation. Two is an assessment of expectations >> >> for what progress should be being made.
C. The 1-4 "scale also introduces some ill-defined perceptions about >> >> how the whole field is perceived. Perceived by what metric? By whom? >> >> Some branch of popular press or science journalism? By peer reviewed >> >> publications? By organizations with agendas? It's the sort of thing that
just begs for confirmation bias in how one selects and weighs sources.
D. And then there's a conspiracy over-layer folded in about "cover-ups".
Part A has the greatest prospect of objectivity. Part B has a fairly objective
historical aspect, except there's a great deal of confusion over the >> >> significance of underlying models for OoL and how to interpret them. >> >> That makes it hard to be clear about progress.
Parts C and D are huge cans of worms. Folding them in, in this unfettered
way makes me think "run away, run away!"
Don't run away.
Life originated either by known or unknown natural means, or by supernatural agency. The name of this forum sets an agenda of discussing this and related questions. What then might be the terms of engagement?
Is there a place for meaningful dialogue between those who take various and opposing views on this based on different interpretations of scientific evidence, and possibly other evidence or reasoning? If so, in broad terms how might this
Do you understand that material evidence, on which material science is >> based, can provide evidence only for material causes?
Do you believe then that talk.origins is only for discussion of naturalistic explanations of origins? Or how would you express suitable terms of engagement here?My question above is a sincere effort to get you to be clear what you
mean by "scientific evidence" and explanations for them. Scientific discussions are limited to naturalistic aka measurable aka material
causes and effects. This doesn't say there are no supernatural aka non-material causes and effects. This does say things which have no material aspects provide no scientific basis to discuss, by
definition.
So one can claim to discuss supernatural aka immaterial akaAfter 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
unmeasurable causes and effects, or claim to discuss naturalistic aka material aka measurable causes and effects, or claim to discuss both
and by so doing fail to "engage" discussing either. Pick your poison.
--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:sure it matters.
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years, so I'm not
Two points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large
majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a
claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that
with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my
breath waiting.
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the followingsure it matters.
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years, so I'm not
Two points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large
majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a
claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that
with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my
breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with
claims and quotes, something which seems to be
characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
--
Bob C.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"
- Isaac Asimov
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:not sure it matters.
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote: >> On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years, so I'm
.Two points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" can only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large
majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a
claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that
with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my
breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with
claims and quotes, something which seems to be
characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42?AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:not sure it matters.
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years, so I'm
I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based onTwo points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" can only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
--If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large
majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a
claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that
with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my
breath waiting.
claims and quotes, something which seems to be
characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:not sure it matters.
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years, so I'm
Two points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" can only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates eitherNo.
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining
that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion
about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely
clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a
quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an
extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes,
this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that
ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was
so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are
they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?
How to respond to the myriad answers?
.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large
majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a
claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that
with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my
breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with
claims and quotes, something which seems to be
characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:m not sure it matters.
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote: >> ><snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years, so I'
Two points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining
that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely
clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a
quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an
extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes, this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that
ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was
so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are
they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large
majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a
claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that
with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my
breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with
claims and quotes, something which seems to be
characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
On Wed, 20 Sep 2023 23:09:47 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:
[...]
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this outBack in July 2022, I posted a detailed review of Stephen Meyer's book "'Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe'".
If you want to read the whole review, you can find it here:
1a3tdhte2stpr46o3...@4ax.com
Or
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/z8Yq7lvkAfU/m/um8mt8MDAgAJ
It is a bit long so I'll quote one part of it that I think is relevant
here:
=============================
As mentioned earlier, Meyer at least gets away from the undefined,
'choose what you want' type of designer and comes out in favour of
God. This, however, creates an even bigger problem for me. On page
269, he defines theism, saying that it "affirms a personal,
intelligent, transcendent God." [3]
I have no issue with that definition as it is exactly the sort of God
that I believe in. Where I have a problem with Meyer's ideas is with
the word 'personal' which to me, in terms of theism, implies a God
with whom I can have an interactive relationship. Nowhere in his book
does Meyer explain the jump from a God fiddling about with the factors
in the anthropic principle or tweaking DNA to a God with whom we can individually and collectively interact or a God that we can join with
in the afterlife."
===========================
Would you care to comment on that issue?
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
[...]
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:I'm not sure it matters.
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote: >> ><snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years, so
look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields that's notTwo points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a
quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes, this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was
so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are
they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:As I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years for people to
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."work on something else, or keep trying.
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether they'd give up and go
As for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't say to propose it,because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out, experimentally supported
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large
majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a
claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that
with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my
breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with
claims and quotes, something which seems to be
characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:m not sure it matters.
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote: >> ><snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years, so I'
Two points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining
that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely
clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a
quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an
extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes, this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that
ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was
so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are
they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?
How to respond to the myriad answers?
Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life,
all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have
been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus
a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:so I'm not sure it matters.
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years,
look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields that's notTwo points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a
quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes, this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are
they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:As I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years for people to
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether they'd give up and
it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out, experimentallyAs for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't say to propose
In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?
* In broad terms, and not restricting choices to a dichotomy
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large
majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a
claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that
with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my
breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with
claims and quotes, something which seems to be
characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:05:44 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
century long failure to figure out OoL (or any other scientific problem) would not be not evidence for God.In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?
I don't see how Pascal's wager applies here. To me, the existence (or not) of God is a completely separate issue from whether we figure out how life got started. A fully supported detailed model of the OoL would not be evidence against God, and 5
And, separately, I think Pascal's wager is really poor theology and psychology. If I do not believe in God, I cannot force myself to do so, even if Pascal convinces me that, game theoretically, it would be in my best interests to do so. Look at it inreverse - if I believed in God, but it were against my self interest to do so, would I be able to make my belief go away? Would it seem like a good thing to do if I could? And I mean really cease to believe, not merely cease to express my belief. Pascal'
On Wed, 20 Sep 2023 23:09:47 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com>
wrote:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
1. This possibility exist for all questions. OoL isn't distinguished
by it.
2. Why not keep looking? That's a necessary requirement for learning.
3. Why consider the God-hypothesis at all? How does Goddidit explain anything?
--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:05:44 PM UTC+2, MarkE wrote:so I'm not sure it matters.
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years,
look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields that's notTwo points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research >> into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained >> research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion
about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among
informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes,
this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the
conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:As I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years for people to
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
and go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether they'd give up
propose it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out,As for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't say to
In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?No, I don't think so. For several reasons - one being that of course theologians/priests/adherents
of the various religions have failed for much longer than just your 500 years to reach a consensus,
each considering the other's hypothesis as inadequate. Now, you might be able to make a special
pleading that the God hypothesis should not be evaluated using the same criteria that led you/the
scientists in 2523 to abandon naturalistic explanations, but you can't do this if you want to make a
Pascal type argument - backing the wrong deity could be much worse than not backing any deity
at all, some of them are very much attuned to Exodus 20:5
* In broad terms, and not restricting choices to a dichotomy
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large >> majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a >> claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that >> with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my >> breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with claims and quotes, something which seems to be
characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:so I'm not sure it matters.
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years,
look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields that's notTwo points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a
quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes, this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are
they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:As I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years for people to
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether they'd give up and
it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out, experimentallyAs for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't say to propose
In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?
* In broad terms, and not restricting choices to a dichotomy
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large
majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a
claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that
with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my
breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with
claims and quotes, something which seems to be
characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
On 9/20/23 11:09 PM, MarkE wrote:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this outI asked once before, and I ask again: What is the difference between a supernatural explanation ("God-hypothesis" included) and "explanation unknown"?
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
I won't say you own me an answer, but you very much owe yourself one.
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:05:44 PM UTC+2, MarkE wrote:so I'm not sure it matters.
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years,
look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields that's notTwo points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research >> into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained >> research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion
about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among
informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes,
this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the
conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:As I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years for people to
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
and go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether they'd give up
propose it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out,As for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't say to
In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?No, I don't think so. For several reasons - one being that of course theologians/priests/adherents
of the various religions have failed for much longer than just your 500 years to reach a consensus,
each considering the other's hypothesis as inadequate. Now, you might be able to make a special
pleading that the God hypothesis should not be evaluated using the same criteria that led you/the
scientists in 2523 to abandon naturalistic explanations, but you can't do this if you want to make a
Pascal type argument - backing the wrong deity could be much worse than not backing any deity
at all, some of them are very much attuned to Exodus 20:5
* In broad terms, and not restricting choices to a dichotomy
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large >> majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a >> claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that >> with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my >> breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with claims and quotes, something which seems to be
characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:05:44 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:so I'm not sure it matters.
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500 years,
look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields that's notTwo points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research >> into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained >> research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion
about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among
informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes,
this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the
conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:As I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years for people to
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
and go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether they'd give up
propose it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out,As for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't say to
century long failure to figure out OoL (or any other scientific problem) would not be not evidence for God.In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?I don't see how Pascal's wager applies here. To me, the existence (or not) of God is a completely separate issue from whether we figure out how life got started. A fully supported detailed model of the OoL would not be evidence against God, and 5
And, separately, I think Pascal's wager is really poor theology and psychology. If I do not believe in God, I cannot force myself to do so, even if Pascal convinces me that, game theoretically, it would be in my best interests to do so. Look at it inreverse - if I believed in God, but it were against my self interest to do so, would I be able to make my belief go away? Would it seem like a good thing to do if I could? And I mean really cease to believe, not merely cease to express my belief. Pascal'
* In broad terms, and not restricting choices to a dichotomy
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large >> majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a >> claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that >> with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my >> breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with claims and quotes, something which seems to be
characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 2:45:43 AM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 9/20/23 11:09 PM, MarkE wrote:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this outI asked once before, and I ask again: What is the difference between a supernatural explanation ("God-hypothesis" included) and "explanation unknown"?
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
I won't say you own me an answer, but you very much owe yourself one.A supernatural explanation potentially has major personal ramifications.
--
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 5:45:44 AM UTC+10, Burkhard wrote:years, so I'm not sure it matters.
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:05:44 PM UTC+2, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500
to look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields that's notTwo points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research >> into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining
that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion
about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among
informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes,
this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole
supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that
ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was
so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the
conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:As I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years for people
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
and go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether they'd give up
propose it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out,As for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't say to
My hypothetical presents you with evidence of the possibility that life, including your life, was created by a transcendent intelligent agent. The weighting you give to this evidence is personal and subjective, and it is only evidence of a possibility.In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?No, I don't think so. For several reasons - one being that of course theologians/priests/adherents
of the various religions have failed for much longer than just your 500 years to reach a consensus,
each considering the other's hypothesis as inadequate. Now, you might be able to make a special
pleading that the God hypothesis should not be evaluated using the same criteria that led you/the
scientists in 2523 to abandon naturalistic explanations, but you can't do this if you want to make a
Pascal type argument - backing the wrong deity could be much worse than not backing any deity
at all, some of them are very much attuned to Exodus 20:5
Nevertheless, isn't it reasonable to seek to investigate this further?
Notwithstanding the possibility that there is no such agent, or that the agent is unknowable, or that the various religions claiming knowledge of the >agent are difficult to assess or all wrong, etc.
As per the wager, potentially your eternal future is on the line -- not worth a bit of a look around?
Note too that I am not suggesting that such an investigation in and of itself could or should lead to insincere belief as afterlife insurance.
* In broad terms, and not restricting choices to a dichotomy
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large >> majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a >> claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an >> assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that >> with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my >> breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with claims and quotes, something which seems to be
characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 10:15:44 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:years, so I'm not sure it matters.
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:05:44 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500
to look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields that's notTwo points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research >> into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining
that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion
about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among
informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes,
this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole
supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that
ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was
so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the
conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:As I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years for people
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
and go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether they'd give up
propose it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out,As for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't say to
century long failure to figure out OoL (or any other scientific problem) would not be not evidence for God.In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?I don't see how Pascal's wager applies here. To me, the existence (or not) of God is a completely separate issue from whether we figure out how life got started. A fully supported detailed model of the OoL would not be evidence against God, and 5
reverse - if I believed in God, but it were against my self interest to do so, would I be able to make my belief go away? Would it seem like a good thing to do if I could? And I mean really cease to believe, not merely cease to express my belief. Pascal'And, separately, I think Pascal's wager is really poor theology and psychology. If I do not believe in God, I cannot force myself to do so, even if Pascal convinces me that, game theoretically, it would be in my best interests to do so. Look at it in
My reply to Burkhard attempts to address this.
* In broad terms, and not restricting choices to a dichotomy
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large >> majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a >> claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an >> assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that >> with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my >> breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with claims and quotes, something which seems to be
characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 6:45:44 AM UTC+2, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 2:45:43 AM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 9/20/23 11:09 PM, MarkE wrote:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this outI asked once before, and I ask again: What is the difference between a supernatural explanation ("God-hypothesis" included) and "explanation unknown"?
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
can't see why. Here two models with supernatural explanation:I won't say you own me an answer, but you very much owe yourself one.A supernatural explanation potentially has major personal ramifications. --
- a supernatural designer created life, then died
- a supernatural designer created life, then moved on to other things/universes
- a supernatural designer created life, but only as a cruel joke
- a supernatural designer created life as a form of biological weapon to be used
against other deities
- a supernatural designer created life, but hoped it would stay on a very primitive level
and would have hated the idea of that life developing the ability to
reason about its origin
lots of other possibilities as well. The mere existence of a supernatural designer
is consistent with lots and lots of theories that have no personal remifications
whatsoever
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 12:20:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:say:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 10:15:44 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:05:44 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following >> appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you
years, so I'm not sure it matters.
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500
people to look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields that'Two points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining
that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion
about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely
clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among
informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes,
this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole
supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that
ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was
so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are
they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the
conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games? How to respond to the myriad answers?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:As I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years for
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
up and go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether they'd give
propose it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out,As for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't say to
century long failure to figure out OoL (or any other scientific problem) would not be not evidence for God.In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?I don't see how Pascal's wager applies here. To me, the existence (or not) of God is a completely separate issue from whether we figure out how life got started. A fully supported detailed model of the OoL would not be evidence against God, and 5
in reverse - if I believed in God, but it were against my self interest to do so, would I be able to make my belief go away? Would it seem like a good thing to do if I could? And I mean really cease to believe, not merely cease to express my belief.And, separately, I think Pascal's wager is really poor theology and psychology. If I do not believe in God, I cannot force myself to do so, even if Pascal convinces me that, game theoretically, it would be in my best interests to do so. Look at it
set of beliefs or pretend to have them if doing so was in my self interest, but I could not actually change them. Since the sorts of God you are interested in in Pascal's Wager would not be fooled by feigned belief, I don't really see the point. And asMy reply to Burkhard attempts to address this.I'm not sure what Pascal's wager has to do with OoL. If Pascal's Wager is a reasonable way to think, then its reasonableness does not depend on whether or not there is a solid scientific explanation for the OoL.
Burkhard has already responded to you about Pascal's Wager itself. I agree with him, for the reasons I already gave. I cannot change what I believe simply because it might be in my self interest to do so. In a human situation I might be able to hide a
* In broad terms, and not restricting choices to a dichotomy
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject theLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a large
majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a
claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that
with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my
breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with claims and quotes, something which seems to be characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:15:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:say:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 12:20:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 10:15:44 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:05:44 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following >> appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would you
years, so I'm not sure it matters.
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after 500
people to look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields that'Two points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining
that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion
about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely
clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a
quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an
extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among
informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes,
this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole
supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that
ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was
so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are
they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the
conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly
meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games? How to respond to the myriad answers?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:As I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years for
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
up and go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether they'd give
propose it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out,As for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't say to
century long failure to figure out OoL (or any other scientific problem) would not be not evidence for God.In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?I don't see how Pascal's wager applies here. To me, the existence (or not) of God is a completely separate issue from whether we figure out how life got started. A fully supported detailed model of the OoL would not be evidence against God, and 5
it in reverse - if I believed in God, but it were against my self interest to do so, would I be able to make my belief go away? Would it seem like a good thing to do if I could? And I mean really cease to believe, not merely cease to express my belief.And, separately, I think Pascal's wager is really poor theology and psychology. If I do not believe in God, I cannot force myself to do so, even if Pascal convinces me that, game theoretically, it would be in my best interests to do so. Look at
a set of beliefs or pretend to have them if doing so was in my self interest, but I could not actually change them. Since the sorts of God you are interested in in Pascal's Wager would not be fooled by feigned belief, I don't really see the point. And asMy reply to Burkhard attempts to address this.I'm not sure what Pascal's wager has to do with OoL. If Pascal's Wager is a reasonable way to think, then its reasonableness does not depend on whether or not there is a solid scientific explanation for the OoL.
Burkhard has already responded to you about Pascal's Wager itself. I agree with him, for the reasons I already gave. I cannot change what I believe simply because it might be in my self interest to do so. In a human situation I might be able to hide
"Note too that I am not suggesting that such an investigation in and of itself could or should lead to insincere belief as afterlife insurance."
* In broad terms, and not restricting choices to a dichotomy
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
.
2) In the absence of comprehensive data, I reject the >> assertion that anything even close to consensus of "a largeLikewise, part of the hypothetical, I think.
majority [of] scientists in the field"exists. It's simply a
claim like "4 out of 5 doctors recommend Lucky Strike"; an
assertion without evidence. Of course, Mark can refute that
with a reference to the objective data, but I won't hold my
breath waiting.
If so, it indicates a tendency to play fast and loose with claims and quotes, something which seems to be characteristic of a certain type of zealot.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 7:45:45 AM UTC-4, broger...@gmail.com wrote:you say:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 7:25:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:15:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 12:20:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 10:15:44 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:05:44 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" >> <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would
500 years, so I'm not sure it matters.
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after
Two points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining
that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion
about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely
clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a
quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an
extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among
informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes,
this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole
supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that
ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was
so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are
they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the
conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly
meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
people to look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields that'1. We may never work this outAs I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years for
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
give up and go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether they'd
to propose it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out,As for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't say
and 5 century long failure to figure out OoL (or any other scientific problem) would not be not evidence for God.In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?I don't see how Pascal's wager applies here. To me, the existence (or not) of God is a completely separate issue from whether we figure out how life got started. A fully supported detailed model of the OoL would not be evidence against God,
at it in reverse - if I believed in God, but it were against my self interest to do so, would I be able to make my belief go away? Would it seem like a good thing to do if I could? And I mean really cease to believe, not merely cease to express my belief.And, separately, I think Pascal's wager is really poor theology and psychology. If I do not believe in God, I cannot force myself to do so, even if Pascal convinces me that, game theoretically, it would be in my best interests to do so. Look
hide a set of beliefs or pretend to have them if doing so was in my self interest, but I could not actually change them. Since the sorts of God you are interested in in Pascal's Wager would not be fooled by feigned belief, I don't really see the point.My reply to Burkhard attempts to address this.I'm not sure what Pascal's wager has to do with OoL. If Pascal's Wager is a reasonable way to think, then its reasonableness does not depend on whether or not there is a solid scientific explanation for the OoL.
Burkhard has already responded to you about Pascal's Wager itself. I agree with him, for the reasons I already gave. I cannot change what I believe simply because it might be in my self interest to do so. In a human situation I might be able to
Pascal's Wager. None of that is going to inspire anyone. Seriously. People get inspired by Jesus' message or his personality or direct experiences of community with believers, and that inspiration does not depend on betting that OoL research will stall"Note too that I am not suggesting that such an investigation in and of itself could or should lead to insincere belief as afterlife insurance."Of course it cannot lead to belief - I cannot change what I believe because it's in my self interest according to Pascal or because you give me a nudge and wink and tell me that "my eternal future is on the line."
But that's the point of Pascal's Wager, right, afterlife insurance? Sometimes I don't get what you actually find attractive about Christianity. You want to argue for it based on the incompleteness of OoL research or in something as mercenary as
How does Pascal's Wager even work? Specifically, how does one choose
to __believe__? I don't think I could. I know that I tried when I was young and it didn't work. Pretending to believe when I didn't felt dirty. It would be
like pretending to love someone that I felt nothing for. And pretending so for some potential reward? that would make me a whore.
I have no problem with people who believe. More power to them. But once anyone says why they believe, or don't believe in X, and try to sell me one those reasons, it seems fair to address those reasons. If they say they believe in some particular god because they want to get into heaven,
I smile and make a note to be careful around them. I don't have big problems with (theistic) believers in general, I have friends and family who are such believers. But I don't think any of them have whored out their belief, to the
extent that is even possible to do, in hopes of some possible reward.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:15:45 AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
How does Pascal's Wager even work? Specifically, how does one choose
to __believe__? I don't think I could. I know that I tried when I was young
and it didn't work. Pretending to believe when I didn't felt dirty. It would be
like pretending to love someone that I felt nothing for. And pretending so for some potential reward? that would make me a whore.
I have no problem with people who believe. More power to them. But once anyone says why they believe, or don't believe in X, and try to sell me oneTo put the most
those reasons, it seems fair to address those reasons. If they say they believe in some particular god because they want to get into heaven,
I smile and make a note to be careful around them. I don't have big problems
with (theistic) believers in general, I have friends and family who are such
believers. But I don't think any of them have whored out their belief, to the
extent that is even possible to do, in hopes of some possible reward.
positive spin on
Mark's point, I
think he is not
arguing that you
can make yourself
believe in response
to Pascal's Wager,
only that it might
prompt you to
investigate whe-
ther you might
be open to belief.
It's still a poor
approach - sort of
a threat - think
about this because
if you don't you
might have a bad
afterlife. Not very
inspiring if you ask
me.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:30:45 AM UTC-4, broger...@gmail.com wrote:M
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:15:45 AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
How does Pascal's Wager even work? Specifically, how does one choose
to __believe__? I don't think I could. I know that I tried when I was young
and it didn't work. Pretending to believe when I didn't felt dirty. It would be
like pretending to love someone that I felt nothing for. And pretending so
for some potential reward? that would make me a whore.
Do I detect a bit of mockery?I have no problem with people who believe. More power to them. But once anyone says why they believe, or don't believe in X, and try to sell me oneTo put the most
those reasons, it seems fair to address those reasons. If they say they believe in some particular god because they want to get into heaven,
I smile and make a note to be careful around them. I don't have big problems
with (theistic) believers in general, I have friends and family who are such
believers. But I don't think any of them have whored out their belief, to the
extent that is even possible to do, in hopes of some possible reward.
positive spin on
Mark's point, I
think he is not
arguing that you
can make yourself
believe in response
to Pascal's Wager,
only that it might
prompt you to
investigate whe-
ther you might
be open to belief.
It's still a poor
approach - sort of
a threat - think
about this because
if you don't you
might have a bad
afterlife. Not very
inspiring if you ask
me.
Nice!
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:50:45 AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:30:45 AM UTC-4, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:15:45 AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
How does Pascal's Wager even work? Specifically, how does one choose to __believe__? I don't think I could. I know that I tried when I was young
and it didn't work. Pretending to believe when I didn't felt dirty. It would be
like pretending to love someone that I felt nothing for. And pretending so
for some potential reward? that would make me a whore.
MDo I detect a bit of mockery?I have no problem with people who believe. More power to them. But onceTo put the most
anyone says why they believe, or don't believe in X, and try to sell me one
those reasons, it seems fair to address those reasons. If they say they
believe in some particular god because they want to get into heaven,
I smile and make a note to be careful around them. I don't have big problems
with (theistic) believers in general, I have friends and family who are such
believers. But I don't think any of them have whored out their belief, to the
extent that is even possible to do, in hopes of some possible reward.
positive spin on
Mark's point, I
think he is not
arguing that you
can make yourself
believe in response
to Pascal's Wager,
only that it might
prompt you to
investigate whe-
ther you might
be open to belief.
It's still a poor
approach - sort of
a threat - think
about this because
if you don't you
might have a bad
afterlife. Not very
inspiring if you ask
me.
Nice!
o
c
k
e
r
y
?
?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 7:25:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:you say:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:15:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 12:20:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 10:15:44 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:05:44 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field. Would
500 years, so I'm not sure it matters.
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here after
people to look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields that'Two points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining
that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion
about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely
clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a
quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an
extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among
informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes,
this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole
supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that
ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was
so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are
they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the
conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly
meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:As I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years for
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
give up and go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether they'd
to propose it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out,As for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't say
5 century long failure to figure out OoL (or any other scientific problem) would not be not evidence for God.In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?I don't see how Pascal's wager applies here. To me, the existence (or not) of God is a completely separate issue from whether we figure out how life got started. A fully supported detailed model of the OoL would not be evidence against God, and
it in reverse - if I believed in God, but it were against my self interest to do so, would I be able to make my belief go away? Would it seem like a good thing to do if I could? And I mean really cease to believe, not merely cease to express my belief.And, separately, I think Pascal's wager is really poor theology and psychology. If I do not believe in God, I cannot force myself to do so, even if Pascal convinces me that, game theoretically, it would be in my best interests to do so. Look at
hide a set of beliefs or pretend to have them if doing so was in my self interest, but I could not actually change them. Since the sorts of God you are interested in in Pascal's Wager would not be fooled by feigned belief, I don't really see the point.My reply to Burkhard attempts to address this.I'm not sure what Pascal's wager has to do with OoL. If Pascal's Wager is a reasonable way to think, then its reasonableness does not depend on whether or not there is a solid scientific explanation for the OoL.
Burkhard has already responded to you about Pascal's Wager itself. I agree with him, for the reasons I already gave. I cannot change what I believe simply because it might be in my self interest to do so. In a human situation I might be able to
s Wager. None of that is going to inspire anyone. Seriously. People get inspired by Jesus' message or his personality or direct experiences of community with believers, and that inspiration does not depend on betting that OoL research will stall out or"Note too that I am not suggesting that such an investigation in and of itself could or should lead to insincere belief as afterlife insurance."Of course it cannot lead to belief - I cannot change what I believe because it's in my self interest according to Pascal or because you give me a nudge and wink and tell me that "my eternal future is on the line."
But that's the point of Pascal's Wager, right, afterlife insurance? Sometimes I don't get what you actually find attractive about Christianity. You want to argue for it based on the incompleteness of OoL research or in something as mercenary as Pascal'
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:30:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:<big snip>
What makes you think people have not already looked around? And why do you think that "That's a nice potential afterlife you got there, wouldn't want anything to happen to it," is a particularly good way to get people who haven't thought about it to doTo put the mostThanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
positive spin on
Mark's point, I
think he is not
arguing that you
can make yourself
believe in response
to Pascal's Wager,
only that it might
prompt you to
investigate whe-
ther you might
be open to belief.
It's still a poor
approach - sort of
a threat - think
about this because
if you don't you
might have a bad
afterlife. Not very
inspiring if you ask
me.
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:15:45 AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:Would you say:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 7:45:45 AM UTC-4, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 7:25:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:15:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 12:20:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 10:15:44 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:05:44 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field.
after 500 years, so I'm not sure it matters.
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here
say:Two points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining
that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion
about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely
clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a
quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an
extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among
informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes,
this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole
supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that
ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was
so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are
they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the
conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly
meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you
for people to look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields1. We may never work this outAs I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
d give up and go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether they'
say to propose it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out,As for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't
and 5 century long failure to figure out OoL (or any other scientific problem) would not be not evidence for God.In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?I don't see how Pascal's wager applies here. To me, the existence (or not) of God is a completely separate issue from whether we figure out how life got started. A fully supported detailed model of the OoL would not be evidence against God,
Look at it in reverse - if I believed in God, but it were against my self interest to do so, would I be able to make my belief go away? Would it seem like a good thing to do if I could? And I mean really cease to believe, not merely cease to express myAnd, separately, I think Pascal's wager is really poor theology and psychology. If I do not believe in God, I cannot force myself to do so, even if Pascal convinces me that, game theoretically, it would be in my best interests to do so.
hide a set of beliefs or pretend to have them if doing so was in my self interest, but I could not actually change them. Since the sorts of God you are interested in in Pascal's Wager would not be fooled by feigned belief, I don't really see the point.My reply to Burkhard attempts to address this.I'm not sure what Pascal's wager has to do with OoL. If Pascal's Wager is a reasonable way to think, then its reasonableness does not depend on whether or not there is a solid scientific explanation for the OoL.
Burkhard has already responded to you about Pascal's Wager itself. I agree with him, for the reasons I already gave. I cannot change what I believe simply because it might be in my self interest to do so. In a human situation I might be able to
Pascal's Wager. None of that is going to inspire anyone. Seriously. People get inspired by Jesus' message or his personality or direct experiences of community with believers, and that inspiration does not depend on betting that OoL research will stall"Note too that I am not suggesting that such an investigation in and of itself could or should lead to insincere belief as afterlife insurance."Of course it cannot lead to belief - I cannot change what I believe because it's in my self interest according to Pascal or because you give me a nudge and wink and tell me that "my eternal future is on the line."
But that's the point of Pascal's Wager, right, afterlife insurance? Sometimes I don't get what you actually find attractive about Christianity. You want to argue for it based on the incompleteness of OoL research or in something as mercenary as
How does Pascal's Wager even work? Specifically, how does one choose
to __believe__? I don't think I could. I know that I tried when I was young
and it didn't work. Pretending to believe when I didn't felt dirty. It would be
like pretending to love someone that I felt nothing for. And pretending so for some potential reward? that would make me a whore.
I have no problem with people who believe. More power to them. But once anyone says why they believe, or don't believe in X, and try to sell me oneTo put the most
those reasons, it seems fair to address those reasons. If they say they believe in some particular god because they want to get into heaven,
I smile and make a note to be careful around them. I don't have big problems
with (theistic) believers in general, I have friends and family who are such
believers. But I don't think any of them have whored out their belief, to the
extent that is even possible to do, in hopes of some possible reward.
positive spin on
Mark's point, I
think he is not
arguing that you
can make yourself
believe in response
to Pascal's Wager,
only that it might
prompt you to
investigate whe-
ther you might
be open to belief.
It's still a poor
approach - sort of
a threat - think
about this because
if you don't you
might have a bad
afterlife. Not very
inspiring if you ask
me.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:so?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:30:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:<big snip>
To put the mostThanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
positive spin on
Mark's point, I
think he is not
arguing that you
can make yourself
believe in response
to Pascal's Wager,
only that it might
prompt you to
investigate whe-
ther you might
be open to belief.
It's still a poor
approach - sort of
a threat - think
about this because
if you don't you
might have a bad
afterlife. Not very
inspiring if you ask
me.
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?What makes you think people have not already looked around? And why do you think that "That's a nice potential afterlife you got there, wouldn't want anything to happen to it," is a particularly good way to get people who haven't thought about it to do
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:30:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:Would you say:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:15:45 AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 7:45:45 AM UTC-4, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 7:25:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:15:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 12:20:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 10:15:44 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:05:44 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins" <broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field.
after 500 years, so I'm not sure it matters.
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here
say:Two points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining
that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion
about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely
clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a
quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an
extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among
informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes,
this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole
supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that
ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was
so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are
they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the
conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly
meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you
for people to look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related fields1. We may never work this outAs I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500 years
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
they'd give up and go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether
say to propose it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out,As for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don't
God, and 5 century long failure to figure out OoL (or any other scientific problem) would not be not evidence for God.In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?I don't see how Pascal's wager applies here. To me, the existence (or not) of God is a completely separate issue from whether we figure out how life got started. A fully supported detailed model of the OoL would not be evidence against
Look at it in reverse - if I believed in God, but it were against my self interest to do so, would I be able to make my belief go away? Would it seem like a good thing to do if I could? And I mean really cease to believe, not merely cease to express myAnd, separately, I think Pascal's wager is really poor theology and psychology. If I do not believe in God, I cannot force myself to do so, even if Pascal convinces me that, game theoretically, it would be in my best interests to do so.
to hide a set of beliefs or pretend to have them if doing so was in my self interest, but I could not actually change them. Since the sorts of God you are interested in in Pascal's Wager would not be fooled by feigned belief, I don't really see the point.My reply to Burkhard attempts to address this.I'm not sure what Pascal's wager has to do with OoL. If Pascal's Wager is a reasonable way to think, then its reasonableness does not depend on whether or not there is a solid scientific explanation for the OoL.
Burkhard has already responded to you about Pascal's Wager itself. I agree with him, for the reasons I already gave. I cannot change what I believe simply because it might be in my self interest to do so. In a human situation I might be able
Pascal's Wager. None of that is going to inspire anyone. Seriously. People get inspired by Jesus' message or his personality or direct experiences of community with believers, and that inspiration does not depend on betting that OoL research will stall"Note too that I am not suggesting that such an investigation in and of itself could or should lead to insincere belief as afterlife insurance."Of course it cannot lead to belief - I cannot change what I believe because it's in my self interest according to Pascal or because you give me a nudge and wink and tell me that "my eternal future is on the line."
But that's the point of Pascal's Wager, right, afterlife insurance? Sometimes I don't get what you actually find attractive about Christianity. You want to argue for it based on the incompleteness of OoL research or in something as mercenary as
How does Pascal's Wager even work? Specifically, how does one choose
to __believe__? I don't think I could. I know that I tried when I was young
and it didn't work. Pretending to believe when I didn't felt dirty. It would be
like pretending to love someone that I felt nothing for. And pretending so
for some potential reward? that would make me a whore.
Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:I have no problem with people who believe. More power to them. But once anyone says why they believe, or don't believe in X, and try to sell me oneTo put the most
those reasons, it seems fair to address those reasons. If they say they believe in some particular god because they want to get into heaven,
I smile and make a note to be careful around them. I don't have big problems
with (theistic) believers in general, I have friends and family who are such
believers. But I don't think any of them have whored out their belief, to the
extent that is even possible to do, in hopes of some possible reward.
positive spin on
Mark's point, I
think he is not
arguing that you
can make yourself
believe in response
to Pascal's Wager,
only that it might
prompt you to
investigate whe-
ther you might
be open to belief.
It's still a poor
approach - sort of
a threat - think
about this because
if you don't you
might have a bad
afterlife. Not very
inspiring if you ask
me.
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:50:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:do so?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:30:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:<big snip>
To put the mostThanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
positive spin on
Mark's point, I
think he is not
arguing that you
can make yourself
believe in response
to Pascal's Wager,
only that it might
prompt you to
investigate whe-
ther you might
be open to belief.
It's still a poor
approach - sort of
a threat - think
about this because
if you don't you
might have a bad
afterlife. Not very
inspiring if you ask
me.
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?What makes you think people have not already looked around? And why do you think that "That's a nice potential afterlife you got there, wouldn't want anything to happen to it," is a particularly good way to get people who haven't thought about it to
I'm not suggesting people have not already looked around. Rather, I'm suggesting doing so seems like a reasonable response. Obviously if you have already looked, this suggestion is no longer applicable.
So...not worth a bit of a look around (if you haven't already)? Anyone?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:50:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:do so?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:30:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:<big snip>
To put the mostThanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
positive spin on
Mark's point, I
think he is not
arguing that you
can make yourself
believe in response
to Pascal's Wager,
only that it might
prompt you to
investigate whe-
ther you might
be open to belief.
It's still a poor
approach - sort of
a threat - think
about this because
if you don't you
might have a bad
afterlife. Not very
inspiring if you ask
me.
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?What makes you think people have not already looked around? And why do you think that "That's a nice potential afterlife you got there, wouldn't want anything to happen to it," is a particularly good way to get people who haven't thought about it to
I'm not suggesting people have not already looked around. Rather, I'm suggesting doing so seems like a reasonable response. Obviously if you have already looked, this suggestion is no longer applicable.
So...not worth a bit of a look around (if you haven't already)? Anyone?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:55:45 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
.Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F
The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
Similar to my reply to Bill, I'm only suggesting that consideration of the claims and
promises of various religions would be a reasonable response. If one has already
made such a consideration, good.
What is fascinating here is the absolute unwillingness to concede this, even allowing
any amount of clarification, qualification or correction.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:15:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:55:45 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others - possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
.Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F
The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
Similar to my reply to Bill, I'm only suggesting that consideration of the claims and
promises of various religions would be a reasonable response. If one has already
made such a consideration, good.
What is fascinating here is the absolute unwillingness to concede this, even allowingThe arrogance you display by presuming that others are unfamiliar with the "claims
any amount of clarification, qualification or correction.
and promises" of various religions works against you. Protip: saying things that
presume the target of your prose is ignorant tends to piss them off, especially
when it becomes clear that they are better educated than you.
Is this your mission? To offend and alienate others? I'm trying to help you out here
and explain to you that, from the perspective of what you seem to be trying to
accomplish, you are utterly failing. Take and pause and think.
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:25:45 AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:15:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:55:45 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
We have been keeping up. When several of us answered 1 or 2, you brought up Pascal's Wager yourself. Your main interest in OoL seems to be about whether it can provide a gap for God to fit into, a gap which, if there is a God, that God certainly doesThanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
.Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F
The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
Similar to my reply to Bill, I'm only suggesting that consideration of the claims and
promises of various religions would be a reasonable response. If one has already
made such a consideration, good.
What is fascinating here is the absolute unwillingness to concede this, even allowingThe arrogance you display by presuming that others are unfamiliar with the "claims
any amount of clarification, qualification or correction.
and promises" of various religions works against you. Protip: saying things that
presume the target of your prose is ignorant tends to piss them off, especially
when it becomes clear that they are better educated than you.
Is this your mission? To offend and alienate others? I'm trying to help you out hereTry to keep up. My aim here is not evangelism. It's asking for responses to the hypothetical I previously set out:
and explain to you that, from the perspective of what you seem to be trying to
accomplish, you are utterly failing. Take and pause and think.
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:Would you say:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:30:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:15:45 AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 7:45:45 AM UTC-4, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 7:25:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 8:15:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 12:20:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 10:15:44 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:05:44 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 8:40:43 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 2:10:43 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 1:30:43 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:20:43 PM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 11:45:42 AM UTC+10, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:27:58 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 12:10:42?PM UTC-4, Bob Casanova wrote:
On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 05:43:56 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "talk.origins"
<broger...@gmail.com>:
On Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 8:30:42?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:<snip>
After 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field.
after 500 years, so I'm not sure it matters.
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
"All available hypotheses" just means "all the ones anyone has thought of yet," right?
I'm sure you can guess that my choices would be 1 and 2, with maybe a little more inclination to 1, still leaving open the possibility that someone may come up with an idea that nobody thought of yet. But I won't be here
you say:Two points:
Before you can get to 3, you'd have to make "the God hypothesis" an actual, testable hypothesis. Otherwise it's just a label you put on our ignorance.
1) There has been no more than 150 years of actual research
into OoL; less than 100 years of even semi-serious sustained
research.
I think it was meant as a hypothetical even though he left out the IF at the beginning.
.I don't. But either is possible; I simply think, based on
his prior history of hyperbole and unsupported assertions
stated as fact, plus quote mining, that it was intentional.
Bob, my use of "500 years" and "consensus a large majority scientists" canNo.
only be hypothetical. Therefore, your interpretation as literal indicates either
careless reading, limited comprehension or willful misconstruing?
I testify that I read your original and did a double, then triple, the quadruple
take. What the heck is he saying?
Ultimately, I generously decided that you meant to insert an "If" before
what you wrote. But it wasn't easy to assert that owing to other aspects
of posts you have made.
Firstly, it's so extremely clumsy to have written what you did, intending
the preliminary conditional, but not including it. Do I presume that you
are that inept? It's not unknown but it's seriously bad.
I might add it's as bad or even worse than your earlier quote mining
that distorted a published paper to support your "catch-22" assertion
about the origins of protein translation, which you were extremely
clumsy in defending. Asserting that a paper supports you, with a
quote mine, when the paper clearly refutes that assertion is an
extremely disreputable basis upon which to pontificate.
Furthermore, your writing respective to the 500 years bit was absolutely
bad.
I puzzled over it. Literally, it was suggesting that there had been 500 years
of OoL research that had failed, and that there was a consensus among
informed scientists that such efforts had failed.
Are readers supposed to ignore the fairly direct implication of your literal
wording? Of course, your literal wording is absurd but what allowances are
we supposed to make presuming that your writing skills are inept? Yes,
this is harsh but you were the original author and you own the impact.
Being somewhat generous, I did presume that you intended your whole
supposition about 500 years of OoL research to be a conditional that
ought to have begun with an "If". But of course that supposition was
so clumsy that it was hard to take seriously.
Why 500 years? A consensus among which scientists? What progress
is presumed? What projections of progress exist and upon what are
they predicated? Ultimately, it's a profoundly, obviously, stupid question.
Yet it's understood that the dialog involved in pointing out that the
conditional predicate that you might have intended (if you had
basic expository skills) is so poorly formulated as to be mostly
meaningless.
Were you unaware of these inadequacies or just playing games?Okay, I'll concede that an 'if' would have significantly helped make the hypothetical explicit and clear. Bob, you're off the hook, my bad.
How to respond to the myriad answers?
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would
years for people to look for more tractable questions to spend their time on - they'd have already decided that they were never going to work this out, or that in order to work it out there'd have to be some accumulation of knowledge in other, related1. We may never work this outAs I said, I'd go for "we may never work this out." BUT, your hypothetical, hypothetical as it now clearly is, is a bit ill-defined. What happened during those 500 years? If there was absolutely no progress, it wouldn't take 500
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
they'd give up and go work on something else, or keep trying.On the other hand, if there'd been continuous progress, but no definitive solution, then I suspect lots of people would say "Let's keep at it."
Ot maybe it's somewhere in between, lots of results that seem like a little bit of progress, but still no clear direction for where the answer might lie - then it would depend on individual's interest and personality as to whether
t say to propose it, because that would imply that it was a proposition you could test, like the scientific hypotheses). Indeed, there are certainly forms of the "God hypothesis" that are entirely compatible with the existence of a fully worked out,As for the "God hypothesis," it's not a defined or testable hypothesis. As you say, it's in a different category from scientific hypotheses, and that means that if you like it, there's no reason to wait 500 years to accept it (I don'
God, and 5 century long failure to figure out OoL (or any other scientific problem) would not be not evidence for God.In the context of this hypothetical, doesn't the of logic Pascal's Wager* make consideration of option 3 rational (prudent, even)?I don't see how Pascal's wager applies here. To me, the existence (or not) of God is a completely separate issue from whether we figure out how life got started. A fully supported detailed model of the OoL would not be evidence against
Look at it in reverse - if I believed in God, but it were against my self interest to do so, would I be able to make my belief go away? Would it seem like a good thing to do if I could? And I mean really cease to believe, not merely cease to express myAnd, separately, I think Pascal's wager is really poor theology and psychology. If I do not believe in God, I cannot force myself to do so, even if Pascal convinces me that, game theoretically, it would be in my best interests to do so.
able to hide a set of beliefs or pretend to have them if doing so was in my self interest, but I could not actually change them. Since the sorts of God you are interested in in Pascal's Wager would not be fooled by feigned belief, I don't really see theMy reply to Burkhard attempts to address this.I'm not sure what Pascal's wager has to do with OoL. If Pascal's Wager is a reasonable way to think, then its reasonableness does not depend on whether or not there is a solid scientific explanation for the OoL.
Burkhard has already responded to you about Pascal's Wager itself. I agree with him, for the reasons I already gave. I cannot change what I believe simply because it might be in my self interest to do so. In a human situation I might be
Pascal's Wager. None of that is going to inspire anyone. Seriously. People get inspired by Jesus' message or his personality or direct experiences of community with believers, and that inspiration does not depend on betting that OoL research will stall"Note too that I am not suggesting that such an investigation in and of itself could or should lead to insincere belief as afterlife insurance."Of course it cannot lead to belief - I cannot change what I believe because it's in my self interest according to Pascal or because you give me a nudge and wink and tell me that "my eternal future is on the line."
But that's the point of Pascal's Wager, right, afterlife insurance? Sometimes I don't get what you actually find attractive about Christianity. You want to argue for it based on the incompleteness of OoL research or in something as mercenary as
How does Pascal's Wager even work? Specifically, how does one choose to __believe__? I don't think I could. I know that I tried when I was young
and it didn't work. Pretending to believe when I didn't felt dirty. It would be
like pretending to love someone that I felt nothing for. And pretending so
for some potential reward? that would make me a whore.
Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:I have no problem with people who believe. More power to them. But onceTo put the most
anyone says why they believe, or don't believe in X, and try to sell me one
those reasons, it seems fair to address those reasons. If they say they
believe in some particular god because they want to get into heaven,
I smile and make a note to be careful around them. I don't have big problems
with (theistic) believers in general, I have friends and family who are such
believers. But I don't think any of them have whored out their belief, to the
extent that is even possible to do, in hopes of some possible reward.
positive spin on
Mark's point, I
think he is not
arguing that you
can make yourself
believe in response
to Pascal's Wager,
only that it might
prompt you to
investigate whe-
ther you might
be open to belief.
It's still a poor
approach - sort of
a threat - think
about this because
if you don't you
might have a bad
afterlife. Not very
inspiring if you ask
me.
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F
The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:25:45 AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:15:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:55:45 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
.Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F
The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
Similar to my reply to Bill, I'm only suggesting that consideration of the claims and
promises of various religions would be a reasonable response. If one has already
made such a consideration, good.
What is fascinating here is the absolute unwillingness to concede this, even allowingThe arrogance you display by presuming that others are unfamiliar with the "claims
any amount of clarification, qualification or correction.
and promises" of various religions works against you. Protip: saying things that
presume the target of your prose is ignorant tends to piss them off, especially
when it becomes clear that they are better educated than you.
Is this your mission? To offend and alienate others? I'm trying to help you out hereTry to keep up. My aim here is not evangelism. It's asking for responses to the hypothetical I previously set out:
and explain to you that, from the perspective of what you seem to be trying to
accomplish, you are utterly failing. Take and pause and think.
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 7:20:44 PM UTC+10, Burkhard wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 6:45:44 AM UTC+2, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 2:45:43 AM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote: >>>> On 9/20/23 11:09 PM, MarkE wrote:can't see why. Here two models with supernatural explanation:
A supernatural explanation potentially has major personal ramifications. >>> --I asked once before, and I ask again: What is the difference between a >>>> supernatural explanation ("God-hypothesis" included) and "explanation
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
unknown"?
I won't say you own me an answer, but you very much owe yourself one.
- a supernatural designer created life, then died
- a supernatural designer created life, then moved on to other things/universes
- a supernatural designer created life, but only as a cruel joke
- a supernatural designer created life as a form of biological weapon to be used
against other deities
- a supernatural designer created life, but hoped it would stay on a very primitive level
and would have hated the idea of that life developing the ability to
reason about its origin
lots of other possibilities as well. The mere existence of a supernatural designer
is consistent with lots and lots of theories that have no personal remifications
whatsoever
Yep, which is why I used the qualifier "potentially".
Nevertheless, as per the wager, potentially your eternal future is on the line -- not worth a bit of a look around?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 7:20:44 PM UTC+10, Burkhard wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 6:45:44 AM UTC+2, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 2:45:43 AM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote: >>>> On 9/20/23 11:09 PM, MarkE wrote:can't see why. Here two models with supernatural explanation:
A supernatural explanation potentially has major personal ramifications. >>> --I asked once before, and I ask again: What is the difference between a >>>> supernatural explanation ("God-hypothesis" included) and "explanation
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
unknown"?
I won't say you own me an answer, but you very much owe yourself one.
- a supernatural designer created life, then died
- a supernatural designer created life, then moved on to other things/universes
- a supernatural designer created life, but only as a cruel joke
- a supernatural designer created life as a form of biological weapon to be used
against other deities
- a supernatural designer created life, but hoped it would stay on a very primitive level
and would have hated the idea of that life developing the ability to
reason about its origin
lots of other possibilities as well. The mere existence of a supernatural designer
is consistent with lots and lots of theories that have no personal remifications
whatsoever
Yep, which is why I used the qualifier "potentially".
Nevertheless, as per the wager, potentially your eternal future is on the line -- not worth a bit of a look around?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 7:20:44 PM UTC+10, Burkhard wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 6:45:44 AM UTC+2, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 2:45:43 AM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 9/20/23 11:09 PM, MarkE wrote:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this outI asked once before, and I ask again: What is the difference between a supernatural explanation ("God-hypothesis" included) and "explanation unknown"?
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
can't see why. Here two models with supernatural explanation:I won't say you own me an answer, but you very much owe yourself one.A supernatural explanation potentially has major personal ramifications. --
- a supernatural designer created life, then died
- a supernatural designer created life, then moved on to other things/universes
- a supernatural designer created life, but only as a cruel joke
- a supernatural designer created life as a form of biological weapon to be used
against other deities
- a supernatural designer created life, but hoped it would stay on a very primitive level
and would have hated the idea of that life developing the ability to reason about its origin
lots of other possibilities as well. The mere existence of a supernatural designerYep, which is why I used the qualifier "potentially".
is consistent with lots and lots of theories that have no personal remifications
whatsoever
Nevertheless, as per the wager, potentially your eternal future is on the line -- not worth a bit of a look around?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:00:56 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:do so?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:50:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:30:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:<big snip>
What makes you think people have not already looked around? And why do you think that "That's a nice potential afterlife you got there, wouldn't want anything to happen to it," is a particularly good way to get people who haven't thought about it toTo put the mostThanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
positive spin on
Mark's point, I
think he is not
arguing that you
can make yourself
believe in response
to Pascal's Wager,
only that it might
prompt you to
investigate whe-
ther you might
be open to belief.
It's still a poor
approach - sort of
a threat - think
about this because
if you don't you
might have a bad
afterlife. Not very
inspiring if you ask
me.
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?
I'm not suggesting people have not already looked around. Rather, I'm suggesting doing so seems like a reasonable response. Obviously if you have already looked, this suggestion is no longer applicable.
So...not worth a bit of a look around (if you haven't already)? Anyone?
Do you seriously think anyone posting to TO has not already "looked around"?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:35:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:25:45 AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:15:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:55:45 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
.Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F
The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
Similar to my reply to Bill, I'm only suggesting that consideration of the claims and
promises of various religions would be a reasonable response. If one has already
made such a consideration, good.
What is fascinating here is the absolute unwillingness to concede this, even allowingThe arrogance you display by presuming that others are unfamiliar with the "claims
any amount of clarification, qualification or correction.
and promises" of various religions works against you. Protip: saying things that
presume the target of your prose is ignorant tends to piss them off, especially
when it becomes clear that they are better educated than you.
Is this your mission? To offend and alienate others? I'm trying to help you out hereTry to keep up. My aim here is not evangelism. It's asking for responses to the hypothetical I previously set out:
and explain to you that, from the perspective of what you seem to be trying to
accomplish, you are utterly failing. Take and pause and think.
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this outAnd you've been answered. Your question has myriad problems.
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
It is ill posed for reasons already provided by me and others.
Your list of answers is poorly constructed, among other reasons, 3 is not
in opposition to 1 or 2. And in respect to recent posts, there's a presumption
behind your inclusion of option 3 that people have not considered a God-hypothesis.
Your arguments are approaching word salad. These things must seem profound in your head but out in the wild they have deep flaws that you are refusing to
recognize. It appears that underneath it all, you have some misconceptions about what people think and why they think them. These are mostly unstated but here's what's coming through:
1 You seem to think people are unfamiliar with the claims and promises of religions.
2 You seem to think that people want to not believe in gods to evade moral constraints.
3 You seem to think that people believe in naturalism on dogmatic grounds.
There's more but that's enough for now. I suggest you are wrong regards 1, 2 and 3
but are unwilling to reorganize your views accordingly.
On 22/09/2023 15:13, broger...@gmail.com wrote:to do so?
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:00:56 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:50:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:30:45 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:<big snip>
What makes you think people have not already looked around? And why do you think that "That's a nice potential afterlife you got there, wouldn't want anything to happen to it," is a particularly good way to get people who haven't thought about itTo put the mostThanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
positive spin on
Mark's point, I
think he is not
arguing that you
can make yourself
believe in response
to Pascal's Wager,
only that it might
prompt you to
investigate whe-
ther you might
be open to belief.
It's still a poor
approach - sort of
a threat - think
about this because
if you don't you
might have a bad
afterlife. Not very
inspiring if you ask
me.
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others >>>> - possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?
I'm not suggesting people have not already looked around. Rather, I'm suggesting doing so seems like a reasonable response. Obviously if you have already looked, this suggestion is no longer applicable.
So...not worth a bit of a look around (if you haven't already)? Anyone?
Do you seriously think anyone posting to TO has not already "looked around"?
On the side of the coin, has he had a look around Islam? Buddhism?
Hinduism? Shinto? Tengrism? the Bahai faith? Sikhism? Zoreasterism?
Jainism? Yezidism? Wicca? Asatru? Mormonism?
--
alias Ernest Major
Let me propose a truce of sorts. If I need to adjust my position or way of expressing it, okay.and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological naturalism),
One starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself).https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria
Another approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's notto suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural processes
A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim belegitimate?
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
Genuine question - suggestions welcome from anyone reading this.
Let me propose a truce of sorts. If I need to adjust my position or way of expressing it, okay.and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological naturalism),
One starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself).https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria
Another approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's notto suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural processes
A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim belegitimate?
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
Genuine question - suggestions welcome from anyone reading this.
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:55:45 AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:35:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:25:45 AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:15:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:55:45 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
.Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F
The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
Similar to my reply to Bill, I'm only suggesting that consideration of the claims and
promises of various religions would be a reasonable response. If one has already
made such a consideration, good.
What is fascinating here is the absolute unwillingness to concede this, even allowingThe arrogance you display by presuming that others are unfamiliar with the "claims
any amount of clarification, qualification or correction.
and promises" of various religions works against you. Protip: saying things that
presume the target of your prose is ignorant tends to piss them off, especially
when it becomes clear that they are better educated than you.
Is this your mission? To offend and alienate others? I'm trying to help you out hereTry to keep up. My aim here is not evangelism. It's asking for responses to the hypothetical I previously set out:
and explain to you that, from the perspective of what you seem to be trying to
accomplish, you are utterly failing. Take and pause and think.
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this outAnd you've been answered. Your question has myriad problems.
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
It is ill posed for reasons already provided by me and others.
Your list of answers is poorly constructed, among other reasons, 3 is not in opposition to 1 or 2. And in respect to recent posts, there's a presumption
behind your inclusion of option 3 that people have not considered a God-hypothesis.
Your arguments are approaching word salad. These things must seem profound in your head but out in the wild they have deep flaws that you are refusing to
recognize. It appears that underneath it all, you have some misconceptions about what people think and why they think them. These are mostly unstated but here's what's coming through:
1 You seem to think people are unfamiliar with the claims and promises of religions.
2 You seem to think that people want to not believe in gods to evade moral constraints.
3 You seem to think that people believe in naturalism on dogmatic grounds.
There's more but that's enough for now. I suggest you are wrong regards 1, 2 and 3Let me propose a truce of sorts. If I need to adjust my position or way of expressing it, okay.
but are unwilling to reorganize your views accordingly.
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological naturalism),
One starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria
Another approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's notto suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural processes
A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim belegitimate?
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?I do not think there is a relationship between science and the supernatural. Supernatural explanations are not explanations, they are just a name you put on your ignorance of what's going on. It is certainly not the default explanation which gets to be
Genuine question - suggestions welcome from anyone reading this.
On 23/09/2023 07:51, MarkE wrote:, and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
Let me propose a truce of sorts. If I need to adjust my position or way of expressing it, okay.
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological naturalism)
wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteriaOne starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself).https://en.
to suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural processesAnother approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's not
legitimate?A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim be
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
Genuine question - suggestions welcome from anyone reading this.To address one point, non-overlapping magisteria is incompatible with
God of the gaps arguments. Additionally non-overlapping magisteria is incompatible with creationism.
--
alias Ernest Major
On Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 9:05:44?PM UTC+10, Martin Harran wrote:
On Wed, 20 Sep 2023 23:09:47 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:
[...]
Back in July 2022, I posted a detailed review of Stephen Meyer's book
So then, Bob, LD, and others:
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
"'Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That
Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe'".
If you want to read the whole review, you can find it here:
1a3tdhte2stpr46o3...@4ax.com
Or
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/z8Yq7lvkAfU/m/um8mt8MDAgAJ
It is a bit long so I'll quote one part of it that I think is relevant
here:
=============================
As mentioned earlier, Meyer at least gets away from the undefined,
'choose what you want' type of designer and comes out in favour of
God. This, however, creates an even bigger problem for me. On page
269, he defines theism, saying that it "affirms a personal,
intelligent, transcendent God." [3]
I have no issue with that definition as it is exactly the sort of God
that I believe in. Where I have a problem with Meyer's ideas is with
the word 'personal' which to me, in terms of theism, implies a God
with whom I can have an interactive relationship. Nowhere in his book
does Meyer explain the jump from a God fiddling about with the factors
in the anthropic principle or tweaking DNA to a God with whom we can
individually and collectively interact or a God that we can join with
in the afterlife."
===========================
Would you care to comment on that issue?
I read this after responding to your post in another thread, so have look there also: https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/JKnUO3rwKo4/m/NlPP2oIPCAAJ
I will have a read of your review of Meyer's book too (I have read the book).the afterlife." I don't think Meyer is being evasive or missing an opportunity, but rather it sits outside of science, in the province of special revelation.
You comment that "Nowhere in his book does Meyer explain the jump from a God fiddling about with the factors in the anthropic principle or tweaking DNA to a God with whom we can individually and collectively interact or a God that we can join with in
"Special Revelation is a contrast to General Revelation, which refers to the knowledge of God and spiritual matters which reputedly can be discovered through natural means, such as observation of nature, philosophy and reasoning, conscience orprovidence." >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_revelation#:~:text=Special%20Revelation%20is%20a%20contrast,and%20reasoning%2C%20conscience%20or%20providence.
4. Other (please elaborate)[...]
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:55:45?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote: >> On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:35:45?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:25:45?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:And you've been answered. Your question has myriad problems.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:15:45?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:Try to keep up. My aim here is not evangelism. It's asking for responses to the hypothetical I previously set out:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:55:45?PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
.Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?
The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
Similar to my reply to Bill, I'm only suggesting that consideration of the claims andThe arrogance you display by presuming that others are unfamiliar with the "claims
promises of various religions would be a reasonable response. If one has already
made such a consideration, good.
What is fascinating here is the absolute unwillingness to concede this, even allowing
any amount of clarification, qualification or correction.
and promises" of various religions works against you. Protip: saying things that
presume the target of your prose is ignorant tends to piss them off, especially
when it becomes clear that they are better educated than you.
Is this your mission? To offend and alienate others? I'm trying to help you out here
and explain to you that, from the perspective of what you seem to be trying to
accomplish, you are utterly failing. Take and pause and think.
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
It is ill posed for reasons already provided by me and others.
Your list of answers is poorly constructed, among other reasons, 3 is not >> in opposition to 1 or 2. And in respect to recent posts, there's a presumption
behind your inclusion of option 3 that people have not considered a
God-hypothesis.
Your arguments are approaching word salad. These things must seem profound >> in your head but out in the wild they have deep flaws that you are refusing to
recognize. It appears that underneath it all, you have some misconceptions >> about what people think and why they think them. These are mostly unstated >> but here's what's coming through:
1 You seem to think people are unfamiliar with the claims and promises of religions.
2 You seem to think that people want to not believe in gods to evade moral constraints.
3 You seem to think that people believe in naturalism on dogmatic grounds. >>
There's more but that's enough for now. I suggest you are wrong regards 1, 2 and 3
but are unwilling to reorganize your views accordingly.
Let me propose a truce of sorts. If I need to adjust my position or way of expressing it, okay.
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological naturalism),
One starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria
Another approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's not tosuggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural processes
A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim belegitimate?
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
Genuine question - suggestions welcome from anyone reading this.
As I pointed out earlier, I was forced into early retirement because of a >heart attack, & kidney failure, but I was offered my job back as a >contractor
w/no benefits, but w/a bit more income. So, I'm employed now. You've
been a good supporter through these trying times. It meant a lot to me!
Thank you;
Ron Dean
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 2:55:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:55:45 AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:35:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:25:45 AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:15:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:55:45 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
, and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
.Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F
The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
Similar to my reply to Bill, I'm only suggesting that consideration of the claims and
promises of various religions would be a reasonable response. If one has already
made such a consideration, good.
What is fascinating here is the absolute unwillingness to concede this, even allowingThe arrogance you display by presuming that others are unfamiliar with the "claims
any amount of clarification, qualification or correction.
and promises" of various religions works against you. Protip: saying things that
presume the target of your prose is ignorant tends to piss them off, especially
when it becomes clear that they are better educated than you.
Is this your mission? To offend and alienate others? I'm trying to help you out hereTry to keep up. My aim here is not evangelism. It's asking for responses to the hypothetical I previously set out:
and explain to you that, from the perspective of what you seem to be trying to
accomplish, you are utterly failing. Take and pause and think.
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this outAnd you've been answered. Your question has myriad problems.
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
It is ill posed for reasons already provided by me and others.
Your list of answers is poorly constructed, among other reasons, 3 is not
in opposition to 1 or 2. And in respect to recent posts, there's a presumption
behind your inclusion of option 3 that people have not considered a God-hypothesis.
Your arguments are approaching word salad. These things must seem profound
in your head but out in the wild they have deep flaws that you are refusing to
recognize. It appears that underneath it all, you have some misconceptions
about what people think and why they think them. These are mostly unstated
but here's what's coming through:
1 You seem to think people are unfamiliar with the claims and promises of religions.
2 You seem to think that people want to not believe in gods to evade moral constraints.
3 You seem to think that people believe in naturalism on dogmatic grounds.
There's more but that's enough for now. I suggest you are wrong regards 1, 2 and 3Let me propose a truce of sorts. If I need to adjust my position or way of expressing it, okay.
but are unwilling to reorganize your views accordingly.
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological naturalism)
wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteriaOne starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.
to suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural processesAnother approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's not
legitimate?A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim be
enthroned without passing any empirical tests simply because some given number of non-supernatural explanations have not panned out.But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
Genuine question - suggestions welcome from anyone reading this.I do not think there is a relationship between science and the supernatural. Supernatural explanations are not explanations, they are just a name you put on your ignorance of what's going on. It is certainly not the default explanation which gets to be
On Fri, 22 Sep 2023 23:51:29 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:55:45?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:35:45?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:25:45?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:And you've been answered. Your question has myriad problems.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:15:45?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:Try to keep up. My aim here is not evangelism. It's asking for responses to the hypothetical I previously set out:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:55:45?PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote: >> > >
Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?
The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
Similar to my reply to Bill, I'm only suggesting that consideration of the claims andThe arrogance you display by presuming that others are unfamiliar with the "claims
promises of various religions would be a reasonable response. If one has already
made such a consideration, good.
What is fascinating here is the absolute unwillingness to concede this, even allowing
any amount of clarification, qualification or correction.
and promises" of various religions works against you. Protip: saying things that
presume the target of your prose is ignorant tends to piss them off, especially
when it becomes clear that they are better educated than you.
Is this your mission? To offend and alienate others? I'm trying to help you out here
and explain to you that, from the perspective of what you seem to be trying to
accomplish, you are utterly failing. Take and pause and think.
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
It is ill posed for reasons already provided by me and others.
Your list of answers is poorly constructed, among other reasons, 3 is not >> in opposition to 1 or 2. And in respect to recent posts, there's a presumption
behind your inclusion of option 3 that people have not considered a
God-hypothesis.
Your arguments are approaching word salad. These things must seem profound
in your head but out in the wild they have deep flaws that you are refusing to
recognize. It appears that underneath it all, you have some misconceptions
about what people think and why they think them. These are mostly unstated
but here's what's coming through:
1 You seem to think people are unfamiliar with the claims and promises of religions.
2 You seem to think that people want to not believe in gods to evade moral constraints.
3 You seem to think that people believe in naturalism on dogmatic grounds.
There's more but that's enough for now. I suggest you are wrong regards 1, 2 and 3
but are unwilling to reorganize your views accordingly.
Let me propose a truce of sorts. If I need to adjust my position or way of expressing it, okay.
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological naturalism),
wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteriaOne starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.
to suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural processesAnother approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's not
legitimate?A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim be
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
Genuine question - suggestions welcome from anyone reading this.This thread took a wrong turn when it failed to distinguish between objective facts and subjective values/priorities. Debates about
science can involve both, but often become bogged down in
question-begging and taking past each other. Raising NOMA is a good
first step toward mitigating those problems.
--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 9:40:46 PM UTC+10, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 2:55:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:55:45 AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:35:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:25:45 AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:15:45 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:55:45 PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46 AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
naturalism), and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
.Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
Similar to my reply to Bill, I'm only suggesting that consideration of the claims and
promises of various religions would be a reasonable response. If one has already
made such a consideration, good.
What is fascinating here is the absolute unwillingness to concede this, even allowingThe arrogance you display by presuming that others are unfamiliar with the "claims
any amount of clarification, qualification or correction.
and promises" of various religions works against you. Protip: saying things that
presume the target of your prose is ignorant tends to piss them off, especially
when it becomes clear that they are better educated than you.
Is this your mission? To offend and alienate others? I'm trying to help you out hereTry to keep up. My aim here is not evangelism. It's asking for responses to the hypothetical I previously set out:
and explain to you that, from the perspective of what you seem to be trying to
accomplish, you are utterly failing. Take and pause and think.
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this outAnd you've been answered. Your question has myriad problems.
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
It is ill posed for reasons already provided by me and others.
Your list of answers is poorly constructed, among other reasons, 3 is not
in opposition to 1 or 2. And in respect to recent posts, there's a presumption
behind your inclusion of option 3 that people have not considered a God-hypothesis.
Your arguments are approaching word salad. These things must seem profound
in your head but out in the wild they have deep flaws that you are refusing to
recognize. It appears that underneath it all, you have some misconceptions
about what people think and why they think them. These are mostly unstated
but here's what's coming through:
1 You seem to think people are unfamiliar with the claims and promises of religions.
2 You seem to think that people want to not believe in gods to evade moral constraints.
3 You seem to think that people believe in naturalism on dogmatic grounds.
There's more but that's enough for now. I suggest you are wrong regards 1, 2 and 3Let me propose a truce of sorts. If I need to adjust my position or way of expressing it, okay.
but are unwilling to reorganize your views accordingly.
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological
wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteriaOne starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.
not to suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or naturalAnother approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's
be legitimate?A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim
be enthroned without passing any empirical tests simply because some given number of non-supernatural explanations have not panned out.But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
Genuine question - suggestions welcome from anyone reading this.I do not think there is a relationship between science and the supernatural. Supernatural explanations are not explanations, they are just a name you put on your ignorance of what's going on. It is certainly not the default explanation which gets to
Actually, supernatural origin of life is not just a fallback "default" option if natural explanations fail. It's a legitimate hypothesis in its own right. Moreover, a large number of scientists believe in some form of higher power [1]. A fraction ofthese may have a belief in a higher power that would still be compatible with naturalistic explanation, but many would not.
Yes, natural vs supernatural explanations are investigated differently, but science is not the sole source and arbiter of all truth. Better still though if science itself points to the *possible* need for supernatural explanation of life - which thestate of OoL research is beginning to do I think.
[1] "According to the poll, just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power. By contrast, 95% ofAmericans believe in some form of deity or higher power..."
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/
[...]and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological naturalism),
One starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria
Another approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's notto suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural processes
A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim belegitimate?
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
On 9/22/23 11:51 PM, MarkE wrote:, and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
[...]
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological naturalism)
wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteriaOne starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.
to suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural processesAnother approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's not
legitimate?A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim be
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?You refer to the supernatural a lot, but the term is very poorly
defined. I suggest you replace each and every occurrence of it in your writings with one of "unknown", "personal unsubstantiated belief", or "mythic tradition." All mentions of the supernatural (not just by you),
I think you will find, fit in one or more of those categories.
--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell
On Monday, September 25, 2023 at 10:55:47 AM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:, and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
On 9/22/23 11:51 PM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological naturalism)
wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria
One starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.
to suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural processes
Another approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's not
legitimate?
A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim be
province of theology etc.You refer to the supernatural a lot, but the term is very poorly
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
defined. I suggest you replace each and every occurrence of it in your
writings with one of "unknown", "personal unsubstantiated belief", or
"mythic tradition." All mentions of the supernatural (not just by you),
I think you will find, fit in one or more of those categories.
Yes, it could be as unspecified as "not natural", but I'd suggest a definition along the lines of "transcendent supernatural agency" or an "intelligent designer", which I think is commonly accepted, at least in broad terms. Investigating this is the
To reiterate: The supernatural origin of life is not just a fallback "default" option if natural explanations fail. It's a legitimate hypothesis in its own right. Moreover, a large number of scientists believe in some form of higher power. A fractionof these may have a belief in a higher power that would still be compatible with naturalistic explanation, but many would not.
--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell
Science is a process to describe (if you're a realist) or model (if
you're an anti-realist) the world. Supernatural explanations are only
useful to scientific explanations if they're more than a placeholder for ignorance. To convert Intelligent Design from the propaganda arm of a religiously motivated political movement to a scientific research
program you have to investigate how the Intelligent Design filled
whatever gap you're appealing to. For example you have to attempt to
answer the question as to why your Intelligent Designer intervened to generate life rather than create a universe in which it spontaneously occurred (is life an afterthough, or are there two different Intelligent Designers. or ...?)
On Monday, September 25, 2023 at 10:55:47 AM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:naturalism), and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
On 9/22/23 11:51 PM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological
wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteriaOne starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.
not to suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or naturalAnother approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's
be legitimate?A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim
province of theology etc.Yes, it could be as unspecified as "not natural", but I'd suggest a definition along the lines of "transcendent supernatural agency" or an "intelligent designer", which I think is commonly accepted, at least in broad terms. Investigating this is theBut back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?You refer to the supernatural a lot, but the term is very poorly
defined. I suggest you replace each and every occurrence of it in your writings with one of "unknown", "personal unsubstantiated belief", or "mythic tradition." All mentions of the supernatural (not just by you),
I think you will find, fit in one or more of those categories.
To reiterate: The supernatural origin of life is not just a fallback "default" option if natural explanations fail. It's a legitimate hypothesis in its own right.
Moreover, a large number of scientists believe in some form of higher power. A fraction of these may have a belief in a higher power that would still be compatible with naturalistic explanation, but many would not.
--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell
On Sunday, September 24, 2023 at 4:00:46?AM UTC+10, jillery wrote:, and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
On Fri, 22 Sep 2023 23:51:29 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:55:45?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:35:45?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:25:45?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:And you've been answered. Your question has myriad problems.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:15:45?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:Try to keep up. My aim here is not evangelism. It's asking for responses to the hypothetical I previously set out:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:55:45?PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote: >> >> > >
Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?
The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
Similar to my reply to Bill, I'm only suggesting that consideration of the claims andThe arrogance you display by presuming that others are unfamiliar with the "claims
promises of various religions would be a reasonable response. If one has already
made such a consideration, good.
What is fascinating here is the absolute unwillingness to concede this, even allowing
any amount of clarification, qualification or correction.
and promises" of various religions works against you. Protip: saying things that
presume the target of your prose is ignorant tends to piss them off, especially
when it becomes clear that they are better educated than you.
Is this your mission? To offend and alienate others? I'm trying to help you out here
and explain to you that, from the perspective of what you seem to be trying to
accomplish, you are utterly failing. Take and pause and think.
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
It is ill posed for reasons already provided by me and others.
Your list of answers is poorly constructed, among other reasons, 3 is not
in opposition to 1 or 2. And in respect to recent posts, there's a presumption
behind your inclusion of option 3 that people have not considered a
God-hypothesis.
Your arguments are approaching word salad. These things must seem profound
in your head but out in the wild they have deep flaws that you are refusing to
recognize. It appears that underneath it all, you have some misconceptions
about what people think and why they think them. These are mostly unstated
but here's what's coming through:
1 You seem to think people are unfamiliar with the claims and promises of religions.
2 You seem to think that people want to not believe in gods to evade moral constraints.
3 You seem to think that people believe in naturalism on dogmatic grounds.
There's more but that's enough for now. I suggest you are wrong regards 1, 2 and 3
but are unwilling to reorganize your views accordingly.
Let me propose a truce of sorts. If I need to adjust my position or way of expressing it, okay.
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological naturalism)
wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria
One starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.
to suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural processes
Another approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's not
legitimate?
A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim be
This thread took a wrong turn when it failed to distinguish between
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
Genuine question - suggestions welcome from anyone reading this.
objective facts and subjective values/priorities. Debates about
science can involve both, but often become bogged down in
question-begging and taking past each other. Raising NOMA is a good
first step toward mitigating those problems.
Agreed. It seems difficult to establish provisional, generally accepted guidelines. Anyone aware of previous threads or articles that attempt this?
On Sun, 24 Sep 2023 15:58:42 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>naturalism), and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
wrote:
On Sunday, September 24, 2023 at 4:00:46?AM UTC+10, jillery wrote:
On Fri, 22 Sep 2023 23:51:29 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:55:45?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:35:45?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:25:45?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:And you've been answered. Your question has myriad problems.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:15:45?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote: >> >> > > > On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:55:45?PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:Try to keep up. My aim here is not evangelism. It's asking for responses to the hypothetical I previously set out:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
.Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F >> >> > > > > The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
Similar to my reply to Bill, I'm only suggesting that consideration of the claims andThe arrogance you display by presuming that others are unfamiliar with the "claims
promises of various religions would be a reasonable response. If one has already
made such a consideration, good.
What is fascinating here is the absolute unwillingness to concede this, even allowing
any amount of clarification, qualification or correction.
and promises" of various religions works against you. Protip: saying things that
presume the target of your prose is ignorant tends to piss them off, especially
when it becomes clear that they are better educated than you.
Is this your mission? To offend and alienate others? I'm trying to help you out here
and explain to you that, from the perspective of what you seem to be trying to
accomplish, you are utterly failing. Take and pause and think.
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
It is ill posed for reasons already provided by me and others.
Your list of answers is poorly constructed, among other reasons, 3 is not
in opposition to 1 or 2. And in respect to recent posts, there's a presumption
behind your inclusion of option 3 that people have not considered a
God-hypothesis.
Your arguments are approaching word salad. These things must seem profound
in your head but out in the wild they have deep flaws that you are refusing to
recognize. It appears that underneath it all, you have some misconceptions
about what people think and why they think them. These are mostly unstated
but here's what's coming through:
1 You seem to think people are unfamiliar with the claims and promises of religions.
2 You seem to think that people want to not believe in gods to evade moral constraints.
3 You seem to think that people believe in naturalism on dogmatic grounds.
There's more but that's enough for now. I suggest you are wrong regards 1, 2 and 3
but are unwilling to reorganize your views accordingly.
Let me propose a truce of sorts. If I need to adjust my position or way of expressing it, okay.
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological
wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria
One starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.
not to suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural
Another approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's
be legitimate?
A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim
This thread took a wrong turn when it failed to distinguish between
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
Genuine question - suggestions welcome from anyone reading this.
objective facts and subjective values/priorities. Debates about
science can involve both, but often become bogged down in
question-begging and taking past each other. Raising NOMA is a good
first step toward mitigating those problems.
Agreed. It seems difficult to establish provisional, generally accepted guidelines. Anyone aware of previous threads or articles that attempt this?
To be clear, you need to adjust your position wrt NOMA. OoL is not a
matter of value/priority, the supernatural is not a matter of
objective facts, and NOMA isn't an excuse to conflate the two. People
can discuss for example the meaning of life, and opinions about the supernatural could be relevant to that. OTOH the supernatural has no relevance to an objective, material explanation of how life
originated, any more than covalent bonds have any relevance to
personal happiness.
--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge
On 25/09/2023 03:56, MarkE wrote:naturalism), and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
On Monday, September 25, 2023 at 10:55:47 AM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 9/22/23 11:51 PM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological
wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria
One starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.
not to suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural
Another approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's
be legitimate?
A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim
province of theology etc.You refer to the supernatural a lot, but the term is very poorly
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
defined. I suggest you replace each and every occurrence of it in your
writings with one of "unknown", "personal unsubstantiated belief", or
"mythic tradition." All mentions of the supernatural (not just by you), >> I think you will find, fit in one or more of those categories.
Yes, it could be as unspecified as "not natural", but I'd suggest a definition along the lines of "transcendent supernatural agency" or an "intelligent designer", which I think is commonly accepted, at least in broad terms. Investigating this is the
You've committed recursion in defining "supernatural" as "transcendent supernatural agency". You've also either narrowed the scope of supernaturality greatly, or narrowed the scope of potential interaction between science and the supernatural greatly.
I wouldn't expect many people to exclude ghosts, leprechauns and souls
from the supernatural, or to include angels, djinn and genii loci among
the transcendent.
For supernatural abiogenesis you can restrict the sets of supernatural agencies processes somewhat, but not for the more general question of
the relationship between science and the supernatural.
Science is a process to describe (if you're a realist) or model (if
you're an anti-realist) the world. Supernatural explanations are only
useful to scientific explanations if they're more than a placeholder for ignorance. To convert Intelligent Design from the propaganda arm of a religiously motivated political movement to a scientific research
program you have to investigate how the Intelligent Design filled
whatever gap you're appealing to. For example you have to attempt to
answer the question as to why your Intelligent Designer intervened to generate life rather than create a universe in which it spontaneously occurred (is life an afterthough, or are there two different Intelligent Designers. or ...?)
of these may have a belief in a higher power that would still be compatible with naturalistic explanation, but many would not.To reiterate: The supernatural origin of life is not just a fallback "default" option if natural explanations fail. It's a legitimate hypothesis in its own right. Moreover, a large number of scientists believe in some form of higher power. A fraction
--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell
--
alias Ernest Major
On Monday, September 25, 2023 at 10:55:47 AM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:[...]
province of theology etc.You refer to the supernatural a lot, but the term is very poorly
defined. I suggest you replace each and every occurrence of it in your
writings with one of "unknown", "personal unsubstantiated belief", or
"mythic tradition." All mentions of the supernatural (not just by you),
I think you will find, fit in one or more of those categories.
Yes, it could be as unspecified as "not natural", but I'd suggest a definition along the lines of "transcendent supernatural agency" or an "intelligent designer", which I think is commonly accepted, at least in broad terms. Investigating this is the
To reiterate: The supernatural origin of life is not just a fallback "default" option if natural explanations fail. It's a legitimate hypothesis in its own right. Moreover, a large number of scientists believe in some form of higher power. A fractionof these may have a belief in a higher power that would still be compatible with naturalistic explanation, but many would not.
On Monday, September 25, 2023 at 9:35:48?PM UTC+10, jillery wrote:naturalism), and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
On Sun, 24 Sep 2023 15:58:42 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Sunday, September 24, 2023 at 4:00:46?AM UTC+10, jillery wrote:
On Fri, 22 Sep 2023 23:51:29 -0700 (PDT), MarkE <me22...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:55:45?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:35:45?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
On Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 12:25:45?AM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:And you've been answered. Your question has myriad problems.
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 10:15:45?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote: >> >> >> > > > On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 11:55:45?PM UTC+10, Lawyer Daggett wrote:Try to keep up. My aim here is not evangelism. It's asking for responses to the hypothetical I previously set out:
On Friday, September 22, 2023 at 9:40:46?AM UTC-4, MarkE wrote:
.Thanks, that's all I'm suggesting. And it's just one reason to prompt you to investigate whether you might be open to belief; collect the set:123456789A123456789B123456789C123456789D123456789E123456789F >> >> >> > > > > The curious thing is that you presume that people are unfamiliar with the varied
- possible eternal consequences, good or bad, for yourself and others
- possible positive benefits or pitfalls avoided here and now for yourself and others
- a search for truth and meaning
- curiosity
Not worth a bit of a look around? Anyone?
claims and promises of various religions. Why? Why do you presume that?
Similar to my reply to Bill, I'm only suggesting that consideration of the claims andThe arrogance you display by presuming that others are unfamiliar with the "claims
promises of various religions would be a reasonable response. If one has already
made such a consideration, good.
What is fascinating here is the absolute unwillingness to concede this, even allowing
any amount of clarification, qualification or correction.
and promises" of various religions works against you. Protip: saying things that
presume the target of your prose is ignorant tends to piss them off, especially
when it becomes clear that they are better educated than you.
Is this your mission? To offend and alienate others? I'm trying to help you out here
and explain to you that, from the perspective of what you seem to be trying to
accomplish, you are utterly failing. Take and pause and think.
If, after 500 years on sustained research into origin of life, all available* naturalistic avenues and hypotheses have been demonstrated to be inadequate, and this is the consensus a large majority scientists in the field, would you say:
1. We may never work this out
2. Keep looking
3. Let's consider the God-hypothesis**
4. Other (please elaborate)
You may choose more than one option.
* all the ones anyone has thought of yet
** terms, definitions, options etc are a separate matter
It is ill posed for reasons already provided by me and others.
Your list of answers is poorly constructed, among other reasons, 3 is not
in opposition to 1 or 2. And in respect to recent posts, there's a presumption
behind your inclusion of option 3 that people have not considered a >> >> >> God-hypothesis.
Your arguments are approaching word salad. These things must seem profound
in your head but out in the wild they have deep flaws that you are refusing to
recognize. It appears that underneath it all, you have some misconceptions
about what people think and why they think them. These are mostly unstated
but here's what's coming through:
1 You seem to think people are unfamiliar with the claims and promises of religions.
2 You seem to think that people want to not believe in gods to evade moral constraints.
3 You seem to think that people believe in naturalism on dogmatic grounds.
There's more but that's enough for now. I suggest you are wrong regards 1, 2 and 3
but are unwilling to reorganize your views accordingly.
Let me propose a truce of sorts. If I need to adjust my position or way of expressing it, okay.
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological
wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria
One starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.
not to suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural
Another approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's
be legitimate?
A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim
religion to butt out. In any case, as I've argued (unconvincingly for many), the God hypothesis is competing or at least overlapping with naturalistic causation; moreover, the more science struggles to support the latter, the stronger the case for theThis thread took a wrong turn when it failed to distinguish between
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
Genuine question - suggestions welcome from anyone reading this.
objective facts and subjective values/priorities. Debates about
science can involve both, but often become bogged down in
question-begging and taking past each other. Raising NOMA is a good
first step toward mitigating those problems.
Agreed. It seems difficult to establish provisional, generally accepted guidelines. Anyone aware of previous threads or articles that attempt this?
To be clear, you need to adjust your position wrt NOMA. OoL is not a
matter of value/priority, the supernatural is not a matter of
objective facts, and NOMA isn't an excuse to conflate the two. People
can discuss for example the meaning of life, and opinions about the
supernatural could be relevant to that. OTOH the supernatural has no
relevance to an objective, material explanation of how life
originated, any more than covalent bonds have any relevance to
personal happiness.
Worth clarifying. NOMA proposes a hard separation (if I understand correctly), and accordingly doesn't offer scope for conflation?
I recognise these are different domains of knowledge and enquiry, with an inherent risk of category error. I wonder if Gould's purpose in formulating NOMA was a genuine attempt to respect both and guard against category errors, or disingenuously telling
In broadest terms, is it a dichotomy of materialism ("the theory or belief that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications") or supernaturalism ("phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature")? I'm not sure of theanswer btw.
On Monday, September 25, 2023 at 5:30:48 PM UTC+10, Ernest Major wrote:naturalism), and supernaturalism (perhaps defined as intervention by transcendent agency). Happy to refine those definitions, or consider a different question.
On 25/09/2023 03:56, MarkE wrote:
On Monday, September 25, 2023 at 10:55:47 AM UTC+10, Mark Isaak wrote:
On 9/22/23 11:51 PM, MarkE wrote:
[...]
It might be helpful to first return to an earlier and more basic question I raised, i.e. what are the terms of engagement in/for this debate? Specifically, with respect to the relationship between science (perhaps defined as methodological
wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria
One starting point might be Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) - its Wikipedia article outlines some of the factors and perspectives on the relationship between science and religion (whatever you may think of NOMA itself). https://en.
not to suggest that if science did not explain things, they would or should change their view. Rather, my point is that at a popular, "commonsense" level, there is a (reasonably common?) assumption that either some higher power created, or natural
Another approach is to consider how people think about this issue generally. For example, those who identify as atheists commonly say (in many conversations I've had), I don't believe in God and I don't need to, as science explains things. That's
be legitimate?
A focal point of this issue is the god-of-the-gaps. At times I think this is a legitimate protest by materialists, i.e. creationists are premature in claiming gaps in today's scientific knowledge. On the hand, when/how might the creationist claim
the province of theology etc.You refer to the supernatural a lot, but the term is very poorly
But back to the original question, how would you frame the terms of engagement for debate involving the relationship between science and the supernatural?
defined. I suggest you replace each and every occurrence of it in your >> writings with one of "unknown", "personal unsubstantiated belief", or >> "mythic tradition." All mentions of the supernatural (not just by you), >> I think you will find, fit in one or more of those categories.
Yes, it could be as unspecified as "not natural", but I'd suggest a definition along the lines of "transcendent supernatural agency" or an "intelligent designer", which I think is commonly accepted, at least in broad terms. Investigating this is
You've committed recursion in defining "supernatural" as "transcendent supernatural agency". You've also either narrowed the scope of supernaturality greatly, or narrowed the scope of potential interaction between science and the supernatural greatly.
Fair point, that was sloppy of me to double up on "supernatural".
Narrowing the scope was intentional, on the basis that creation of the universe and life is presumably above the pay grade of ghosts, leprechauns and souls.
assembled say the first cell. However, these calls for a theory of ID may have some legitimacy I think, e.g. if life was created by a designer with super intelligence and foward-looking ability (in sharp contrast with evolution), then make predictions onI wouldn't expect many people to exclude ghosts, leprechauns and souls from the supernatural, or to include angels, djinn and genii loci among the transcendent.
For supernatural abiogenesis you can restrict the sets of supernatural agencies processes somewhat, but not for the more general question of
the relationship between science and the supernatural.
Science is a process to describe (if you're a realist) or model (ifThere are many complaints here that ID doesn't offer an alternative empirically testable hypothesis. I don't think anyone is suggesting that we perform experiments to discover the identity and nature of the designer, or specifically how a designer
you're an anti-realist) the world. Supernatural explanations are only useful to scientific explanations if they're more than a placeholder for ignorance. To convert Intelligent Design from the propaganda arm of a religiously motivated political movement to a scientific research
program you have to investigate how the Intelligent Design filled
whatever gap you're appealing to. For example you have to attempt to answer the question as to why your Intelligent Designer intervened to generate life rather than create a universe in which it spontaneously occurred (is life an afterthough, or are there two different Intelligent Designers. or ...?)
fraction of these may have a belief in a higher power that would still be compatible with naturalistic explanation, but many would not.To reiterate: The supernatural origin of life is not just a fallback "default" option if natural explanations fail. It's a legitimate hypothesis in its own right. Moreover, a large number of scientists believe in some form of higher power. A
--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell
--
alias Ernest Major
There are many complaints here that ID doesn't offer an alternative empirically testable hypothesis. I don't think anyone is suggesting that we perform experiments to discover the identity and nature of the designer, or specifically how a designerassembled say the first cell. However, these calls for a theory of ID may have some legitimacy I think, e.g. if life was created by a designer with super intelligence and foward-looking ability (in sharp contrast with evolution), then make predictions on
This may be the wrong place to jump in, but since <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_theory>
was recently described on a BBC radio programme,
I would like to know whether (1) it is what your book
is about, and (2) it is the "Intelligent Design" argument
heavily disguised to pass for legitimate work.
Which doesn't mean that the book is that.
"Assembly theory" sounded like saying "Complexity
can't happen naturally, it happens for a purpose",
and there's a formula to calculate how complex
a thing is. In other words, it sounds like
intelligent design?
This may be the wrong place to jump in, but since <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_theory>No, the book is just a straightforward review of OoL research as of 2019 - the author is a fan of freshwater volcanic pools as a starting place, but he covers lots of the major ideas. Nothing to do with the "Assembly Theory" you mentioned.
was recently described on a BBC radio programme,
I would like to know whether (1) it is what your book
is about, and (2) it is the "Intelligent Design" argument
heavily disguised to pass for legitimate work.
Which doesn't mean that the book is that.
"Assembly theory" sounded like saying "Complexity
can't happen naturally, it happens for a purpose",
and there's a formula to calculate how complex
a thing is. In other words, it sounds like
intelligent design?
On Thu, 21 Sep 2023 14:07:31 -0400, Ron Dean
<rondean-noreply@gmail.com> wrote:
As I pointed out earlier, I was forced into early retirement because of a >>heart attack, & kidney failure, but I was offered my job back as a >>contractor
w/no benefits, but w/a bit more income. So, I'm employed now. You've
been a good supporter through these trying times. It meant a lot to me! >>Thank you;
Ron Dean
Thank you for your kind words. I am glad to see you separate your self
from your arguments.
What's the point with discussing anything with you: if I said it's warm
and sunny here in
Raleigh- Durham, you'd say no it cold and windy. So, there is no point!
G-bye
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 546 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 50:00:12 |
| Calls: | 10,397 |
| Calls today: | 5 |
| Files: | 14,067 |
| Messages: | 6,417,314 |
| Posted today: | 1 |