Can random molecular interactions create life?

[rahvin]

<< you just meant not to assign false definitions to something? When the statement "Life requires polymers" is made, how is that an inaccurate statement? Do you know of any kind of life that does not require polymers? I think it's a fairly accurate distinction. Of course, life is far more complex than it's polymer composition. >>



NO we CAN'T say that. We can say we THINK it does. We don't know the boundaries of life. That's the point I'm trying to make. Chemically it is possible for a silicon based cellular structure, there would probably be little to no polymers present in that organism. Do silcon based organisms exist? Who knows, see we just don't know enough about this stuff yet to be placing hard line definitions on any of it.



<< What's common sensical about the theory that life has gradually evolved over billions of years from a single-cell oranism >>



The fact that we have evidence in about 8 different disciplines that this very thing HAS happened. The evidence is mountainous and the best of it is in molecular biology.



<< No random process could ever hope to find even one such protein structure, much less the full set of roughly 1,000 needed in the simplest forms of life. >>



The process isn't entirely random, organic molecules and polymers favor certain reactions. And again, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE SIMPLEST FORM OF LIFE IS, no one does. BTW, "numbers never lie, but liars can figure" is a famous statement in statistics. You can contrive numbers to say anything. Silverpig profoundly demonstrated that stars never form and if you half the distance between yourself and a wall every second you will never touch the wall because you never hit 0. How can you touch the wall?

And FINALLY, Science is not interested in God or the concept of a god. The very nature of a god (as defined) precludes study using the scientific method. If there is nothing to say about God with science than God cannot be considered. It's foolish to believe that we don't have the ability to figure things out in time. Our curiosity IS natural and understanding the universe we live in is a natural extension of that. To decry science and what we learn from it because it conflicts with your beliefs is folly. Evolution is a fact, abiogenesis may not have occured, but after life was started evolution is proven.

 

[ImTyping]

<< Let's merely focus on the task of obtaining a suitable sequence of amino acids that yields a 3D protein structure with some minmal degree of essential functionality. Various theoretical and experimental evidence indicates that in some average sense about half of the amino sites must be specified exactly. For a relatively short protein consisting of a chain of 200 amino acids, the number of random trials needed for a reasonable likelihood of hitting a useful sequence is then in the order of 20^100 (100 amino acid sites with 20 possible candidates at each site), or about 10^130 trials. This is a hundred billion times the upper bound we computed for the total number of molecules ever to exist in the history of the cosmos!!. No random process could ever hope to find even one such protein structure, much less the full set of roughly 1,000 needed in the simplest forms of life. It is therefore sheer irrationality for a person to believe random chemical interactions could ever identify a viable set of functional proteins out of the truly staggering number of candidate possibilities. >>



Interesting how a geologist can try to be an authority on biology.

Interesting how you can twist numbers to try to make your point.

Mark Twain said: "There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians." Guess we should add creationists to that list.

Using fuzzy math, and taking a literal interpretation of these numbers, one would tend to say that random occurances could not result in life. Problem is, the interactions are not random, but follow a set of universal rules within chemistry and physics that are anything but random. And the author makes the mistake of thinking in linear fashion. This is not a case of two molecules interacting here, and two others interacting there. It is a case of trillions of molecules interacting with each other...trillions of different times. In trillions of different ways. And that is how you can have a finite number of molecules performing a seeming infinite number of combinations...combinations that result in life itself.

 

[xirtam]

<< I tried being reasonable once. I didn't like it. >>



Ok. Guess it's time for something new... evolutionary progression from single-celled life forms to super-complex, multi-organ, completely integrated Homo sapiens, anyone?

Molecular biology has proven nothing about evolution, but what the heck. Let's give up being reasonable. After all, if all of the evolutionary doctrine was true, reason is nothing more than a by-product of entirely random chance. It means nothing, in and of itself. Our very thoughts are the byproduct of all that is meaningless. Sure... why not?

Oh, and ImTyping, those very universal chemical and physical rules you're talking about prohibit the kind of development about which we are discussing. But who needs those rules, anyway? Am I just "twisting them around?" Does arguing from a scientific perspective make me a liar, or do you just not want to face up to reality?

 

[Moonbeam]

We are 100% sure that life exists in the universe and we have 0, zero, in the way of scientific proof that there is a God. By the 'walks like a duck, looks like a duck' theory of common sense, life arose spontaneously.

To ask what is common sensical about the theory that it gradually arose is contained therein. There is life and there is no proof of a magical cause. Life occurs as a result of a complex arrangment of inannimate matter and returns there when the order collapses. Some of the complexity is passed from living thing to living thing as food. The rest is reestablished by the energy of photosybthesis. Organisms have been consumming organisms for quite some time if we are to believe our eyes and place a small a priori stake in common sense over imaginative wish wislfillment. We see that the universe is more than 6000 light years across, for example. We know then that the force of gravity that is propelling us at some fraction of the speed of light toward the great attractor in Sagitarius wouldn't be seen or felt for eons and eons of time yet had there not been time for gravity and light to act at that distance. So a created universe of short age violates not only the notion of gravity and Einstien's constant, but makes no sense in other ways.

We see that the more ancient the rock, the more primitive the lifeform. The implications are obvious. We see that evolutionary theory was developed against the grain of the hope for imortality. We conclude that only powerfully persuasive evidence propells men to see what is not in their best interest to believe they see.

It probably boils down to what you call honest. Is it honest to appeal to magic that makes you immortal to explain what nobody was here to witness, or is it more honest to go with an explanation for which, from it's inception as an idea, all additional evidence has only sharpened, refined, and added to. The creationists claim over and over that there is no scientific proof of evolution because proof requires repeatable experiment and nobody has seen evidence in the lab. There is only one lab in which the experiment that lead to us could take place in and that is the universe we see. We are left to infer what happened. Where you come down will depend on the nature and quality of your inference. Evolution is one inference that is the best guess of the biggest body of investigators for whom eligance rather than wish is paramount. Then there are the detractors who, while appealing to the notion of no proof for what we didn't see project their own imaginings and unsupported bunk probabilities onto that unwittnessed past.

The great crime that creationists impose on humanity, in my opinion, is that they take the absurd for truth. They adher to a concocted unreality that only they are preconditioned to accept. In accepting one absurdity they open themselves to the charge that all their claims are equally absurd. An absurd notion of our origin leads to an absurd notion of God which leads to a rejection of God by sense loving people. The rejection of an absurd notion of God leads to a rejection of any notion of God. If what God is is something REAL but different than what is rejected, that will be rejected too. The inner drive that feeds this debate is a feeling of something good inside. The notion of God resonates with something good within us and we struggle to prop Him up to preserve the good. I think the good exists without God in the common sense usage and that therefore all that is essential about Him is essentially true. Let's leave behind what is unessential if it damages the essential.

"What the world needs is love, love's the only thing that there's just not enough of" A song.

 

[Riprorin]

<< We see that the universe is more than 6000 light years across, for example. We know then that the force of gravity that is propelling us at some fraction of the speed of light toward the great attractor in Sagitarius wouldn't be seen or felt for eons and eons of time yet had there not been time for gravity and light to act at that distance. So a created universe of short age violates not only the notion of gravity and Einstien's constant, but makes no sense in other ways. >>



But What about Light from Distant Stars?

An entirely legitimate question, then, is how we could possibly see stars millions and billions of light wars away if die earth is so young. Part of the reason scientists like myself can have confidence that good science will vindicate a face-value understanding of the Bible is because we believe we have at least an outline of the correct answer to this important question.
This answer draws upon important clues from the Bible, while applying standard general relativity. The result is a cosmological model that differs from the standard big-bang models in two essential respects. First, it does not assume the so-called cosmological principle and, second, it invokes inflation at a different point in cosmological history.
The cosmological principle is the assumption that the cosmos has no edge or boundary or center and, in a broad?brush sense, is the same in every place and in every direction. This assumption concerning the geometry of the cosmos has allowed cosmologists to obtain relatively simple solutions of Einstein?s equations of gen-eral relativity Such solutions form the basis of all big-bang models. But there is growing observational evidence that this assumption is simply not true. A recent article in the journal Nature, for example, describes a fractal analysis of galaxy distribution to large distances in the cosmos that contradicts this crucial big-bang assumption.
If, instead, the cosmos has a center, then its early history is radically different from that of all big-bang models. Its beginning would be that of a massive black hole containing its entire mass. Such a mass distribution has a whopping gradient in gravitational potential which profoundly affects the local physics, including the speed of clocks. Clocks near the center would run much more slowly, or even be stopped, during the earliest portion of cosmic history. Since the heavens on a large scale are isotropic from the vantage point of the earth, the earth must be near the center of such a cosmos. Light from the outer edge of such a cosmos reaches the center in a very brief time as measured by clocks in the vicinity of the earth.
In regard to the timing of cosmic inflation, this alternative cosmology has inflation after stars and galaxies form. It is noteworthy that recently two astrophysics groups studying high-redshift type Ia supernovae both concluded that cosmic expansion is greater now than when these stars exploded. The article in the June 1998 issue of Physics Today describes these ?astonishing? results which ?have
caused quite a stir? in the astrophysics community. The story amazingly ascribes the cause to ?some ethereal agency.? (Dr. John Baumgardener)

 

[Riprorin]

<< Evolution is one inference that is the best guess of the biggest body of investigators for whom eligance rather than wish is paramount. >>



Really. Then consider this quote from a leading evolutionary propagandist, geneticist Richard Lewontin. It illustrates the implicit philosophical bias against Genesis creation, regardless of whether or not the facts support it.

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-in-tuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

It's interesting that you use the word absurd 6 times in your last paragraph when you describe theories contrary to you own. Unfortunately, wishing it doesn't make it so.

A belief in God does not preclude one from believing in evolutuon but if one is an atheist, he must reject the notion of a First Cause.

So who do you think is more prone to intellectual dishonesty?

 

[Moonbeam]

What is absurd is the extent we are willing to go to convince ourselves of our own self importance. I particularly liked the part about us being somewhere near the center of the universe. Sounds familiar. I also think that when you say 'draws on important clues from the Bible', I hear not scientists, but rationalizers or apologists. I call this shoe-horning life to fit a preconceived notion. The bias against Genesis creation that you claim is nothing but the bias in favor of common sense, the refusal by so many minds not to evoke magical explanations to explain the unknown, but to infer a material cause as has stood us in good steed in so many areas where magic used to rule and we now know better. It's merely the extension of the faith we have that when we pull up a chair, it will be there when we turn to sit in it. The bias is all on your side. Hope of imortality. You may be content that 3 people in a hundred may be able to swallow creation mythology and preserve some fanatic faith in God, but I think faith in God can come in different ways and in different realizations of what God is. I watch the arguments on this board on this subject and it seems that almost always those who dump creationism have dumped God and that the dumping is not unrelated. My opinion is that we would be much better off without this 'absurd' theory for the nail it drives in the spirituality coffin. It's difficult to have faith so why don't we raise the bar and make it absurdly hard. Good idea.

 

[linuxboy]

So who do you think is more prone to intellectual dishonesty?

Anyone who still thinks he/she has anything to prove or gain by staying with the fallacy or rearranging prejudices to uphold a new one.


Cheers !

 

[ImTyping]

<< Oh, and ImTyping, those very universal chemical and physical rules you're talking about prohibit the kind of development about which we are discussing. But who needs those rules, anyway? Am I just "twisting them around?" Does arguing from a scientific perspective make me a liar, or do you just not want to face up to reality? >>



As soon as you start arguing from a scientific perspective, we could have a discussion. I have a degree in science journalism, and another in chemistry. If you want to start arguing organic and inorganic chemistry with me, bring it on. Quote some sources outside of the bible-thumping head in the sand community that backs up what you have to say.

 

[Moonbeam]

<B>"So who do you think is more prone to intellectual dishonesty? </B>

Anyone who still thinks he/she has anything to prove or gain by staying with the fallacy or rearranging prejudices to uphold a new one."

Are you really asking who is more prone or do you want to know who actually is engaged in more of it. I don't see that the two need to be the same, but what relevance who 'is more prone' has is invisible to me.

As to your two choices, may I please have more options.

I can see there's more than one flavor of being shoe-horned.

 

[linuxboy]

As to your two choices, may I please have more options.

The beauty of or statements is that they allow for an infinity or additions since there's no way of telling if one or the other or both or any are true by themselves since I can wedge in all sorts of ors. So I could say that those who like bananas or those who walk or those who talk like crazy mushrooms , &c, &c are prone to intellectual dishonesty.

I'd choose the banana-eating folk, they just cannot be expected to do anything right.

Cheers !

 

[Netopia]

It's a little late in this thread (and a little early in the morning) to be adding anything meaningful, but I have question and a statement:

Many people are talking about infinite universes so that there are infinte chances of life occuring. To the best of my knowledge, science has absolutly NO way to prove even one other universe, much less infinite ones..... but the fact remains that when we speak of the beginning of life, whether it be via God or science, it appears to any reasonable man that the infinite must be involved. It would seem that no matter what you believe, you have to accept some infinite and undefinable person, process, thing.... behind it all or it just doesn't stack up. We all agree that SOMETHING happened and none of us can conclusively show what that something was... so both sides hold onto faith in what they hope for.

The question. Why is it that people who say that science cannot include God because he is immaterial and immeasurable, include things like infinite universes which are equally immaterial and immeasurable?

Joe

 

[Moonbeam]

Hi Netopia, long time no see. Thought we'd lost one of our more thoughtful members. Your question catches me at a bad time because I'm trying to remember is I ever told linuxboy one of my favorite sayings, when among chimpanzees always carry a banana, and if that's where he got the banana folk thing. Anyway I hope I'm not guilty of appeals to the infinite. My whole emphasis is that an unknown ordinary is preferable to an unknown magical.

 

[xirtam]

<< As soon as you start arguing from a scientific perspective, we could have a discussion. I have a degree in science journalism, and another in chemistry. If you want to start arguing organic and inorganic chemistry with me, bring it on. Quote some sources outside of the bible-thumping head in the sand community that backs up what you have to say. >>



Bible-thumping head in the sand community? Which one is that? And which quote of mine is from such a source? Finally, with your degree in chemistry, do you find it probable that everything we observe today in nature came from random chemical development? If you want to stop the ad hominem and give me reasons why you believe what you believe -- I don't care whose head is stuck in the sand... I want to consider reasons based on merit rather than source -- then "bring it on." My point is merely that science has not conclusively proven how the universe, how all this order, how my very existence came into being. Evolution is speculation. So is Creation. Speculation based on data, and it's about the best we can do, but it bothers me when people adamantly hold that "the scientific data" supports one and not the other. I actually don't see either as scientifically excluded... can you correct me on this with rational argumentation?

 

[her209]

Humans came are a creation of a highly evolved monkey.

 

[Netopia]

<< Anyway I hope I'm not guilty of appeals to the infinite. My whole emphasis is that an unknown ordinary is preferable to an unknown magical. >>



If God exists, He is a known* ordinary since His existance would be the norm.

Joe

*To those who follow Him

 

[Moonbeam]

He would be a known ordinary to those who know him. To those who don't he would continue to be an unknown magical. I am speaking of the proper choice for those who don't know, and I am speaking of knowing in the scientific definition of the word, a testably demonstrable entity according to instrumentating that of themselves demonstrate his qualities. The ohter kind of knowing, the only way God can be known, from within, may one bay be demonstrated with instruments when such knowledge exists, but it will not convey the knowing to another person, only that the knower expresses characteristics the same as other knowers and different from the rest of us,

 

[geek167]

.......Where did the molecules come from?

 

[busmaster11]

<< I subscribe to the multiverse theory, therefore the anthropic principal states that we are able to question this fact because we are in one of the few universes that life actually did evolve in.

The other billions of universes where life didn't evolve don't have the chance to speculate therefore our decision is a bit biased. >>



You mean the only one out of an INFINITE number of universes, (or atleast 1/infinite) that contains all properties to the exact values that support intelligent sentient life? I stand by those numbers as proof of existence of God...

 

[Athanasius]

Sometimes a simplification is not mere child's play.

By current scientific paradigms, we don't know. If we did know, we could explain the core truth in a way that a child would understand. Do not mock the child's genius just because its isn't complex. Simplicity has its own incontravertible power.

Without knowing, everyone must introduce an hypothesis or presupposition that best accounts for the existing data.

This universe did not exist forever. We are inside this universe. Based on current knowledge, we believe that this engine of a universe is running down, has a limited amount of fuel, and did not start itself. Furthermore, we have strong suspicions that the real implicate order is non-local and non-physical.

So, the more rational presupposition is that the universe has an "external" cause, and that this "external" cause is non-local and non-physical. Well then, is this cause mindful or mindless?

Based on current knowledge, which seems the more rational presupposition? Then there are those nagging scientific finds that don't quite go away that suggest that even cnsciousness is non-local and non-physical. I am not talking quackery here. I am talking about a significant enough anomaly that mainstream science should be taking a closer look. Why isn't it?

Why is it that presupposing an Original Mind that is non-local and non-physical is met with such angst in much of the scientific community? Claiming the "religious abuse" principle as a reason for resisting something is hardly scientific. That actually defies a standard of logic: abusus non tollit usum: "The abuse does not abolish the use."

Once there was a thread that said, "Religious People are Weak Minded." In that thread, I posted the following three examples:

Example 1: How can someone with a genuine case of Dissociative Identity Disorder have different brain wave patterns for each of his different personalities? Even in cases of extreme stress, a person's basic brain wave patterns do not change. But, if personality is ultimate nonlocal/non physical, then one person with multiple personalities could do what is, from a purely physical perspective, impossible. Hence, personality is greater than matter, even though we cannot scientifically prove personality unless we try to reduce it to a mere by product of the brain. Yet people with DID would tend to challenge such a reduction.

CONCLUSION: personality is seemingly greater than matter.


Example 2: According to our current understanding of physics (at least as best as I understand it), every region of space has different fields composed of different waves. When physicists calculate the minimum energy a wave can possess, they find that every cubic centimeter of space contains more energy than the total energy of matter in the known universe.

CONCLUSION: under current scientific paradigms, energy is seemingly greater than matter.


Example 3: Consider Bohm's experiment with plasma. Plasma is a gas containing a high density of electrons and positive ions. When in a plasma, electrons stop behaving like individuals and start behaving as part of a larger and connected whole. Although their individual movements appeared random, vast numbers of electrons were able to perform tasks that were surprisingly well organized. Like a living creature, the plasma regenerated itself and enclosed impurities in a wall much like a living body encloses a foreign substance in a cyst. Bohm was so amazed by these qualties that he had the impression that the electron sea was alive. His experiments with the beavior of electrons in metals confirmed this "communicative" ability of "mindless" electrons.

CONCLUSION: Interconnected, mindful order is seemingly greater than individual randomness, though both exist.


If personality is greater than matter, and energy is greater than matter, if interconnected, mindful order is greater than individual randomness, and if the implicate order behind everything is apparently non-local and non-physical, then why is belief in a non-local, non-material, universal Mind/Logos so irksome to some people? Would it be better received if I used more obviously scientific terminology and called it "The Implicate Order behind all other implicate and explicit orders"?


Or is there a personal, subconscious axe to grind against even the existence of God? Are we so irked by the concept that we belittle those who believe?

 

[rahvin]

<< Molecular biology has proven nothing about evolution >>



Your statement is ignorant and incorrect.



<< After all, if all of the evolutionary doctrine was true, reason is nothing more than a by-product of entirely random chance. It means nothing, in and of itself. Our very thoughts are the byproduct of all that is meaningless. Sure... why not? >>



Your logic is lame at best. You do a good job of presenting the rather typical creationist arguement that if life it's created it's meaningless. Some of us celebrate the fact that life DOESN'T have a purpose and there are no eternal rewards/punishments.



<< An entirely legitimate question, then, is how we could possibly see stars millions and billions of light wars away if die earth is so young >>



Because quite frankly, light takes time to travel immense distances. The light we see from stars is a look into the past, that light was emitted in the past. In the case of very old light the light would have been emitted before the earth existed, and got here after it did. A very simple analogy is when a quarterback throws long, there isn't anyone where he threw the ball when he threw it, but there might be when the ball gets there. The starscape we see includes stars that may not even exist anymore.



<< The cosmological principle is the assumption that the cosmos has no edge or boundary or center and, in a broad?brush sense, is the same in every place and in every direction. This assumption concerning the geometry of the cosmos has allowed cosmologists to obtain relatively simple solutions of Einstein?s equations of gen-eral relativity Such solutions form the basis of all big-bang models. But there is growing observational evidence that this assumption is simply not true. A recent article in the journal Nature, for example, describes a fractal analysis of galaxy distribution to large distances in the cosmos that contradicts this crucial big-bang assumption. >>



I've read that article and I saw nothing in it that disproves the big bang. It does raise questions about distributions from an explosion but there is simply too many holes in our knowledge of the early events to make a conclusion against the big bang. The evidence for the big bang is rather tremendous, red shift is a great example. Based on your statements you appear to have a fundemental lack of understanding of relativity and the concept of space-time. Outside the boundary of the expanding space-time boundary there is nothing we can describe because it lays outside the boundary of our universe.



<< It is noteworthy that recently two astrophysics groups studying high-redshift type Ia supernovae both concluded that cosmic expansion is greater now than when these stars exploded. The article in the June 1998 issue of Physics Today describes these ?astonishing? results which ?have caused quite a stir? in the astrophysics community. >>



Yes the universe is accelerating. This is one of the nails in the coffin of a recycled universe. In addition there is simply not enough matter for gravity to recollect the universe into another big bang, a second nail. It really points to nothing, but does raise quesitons.



<< A belief in God does not preclude one from believing in evolutuon but if one is an atheist, he must reject the notion of a First Cause.

So who do you think is more prone to intellectual dishonesty? >>



There are liars in every group, to incinuate that all athiests are liars and closed minded is bigoted. The ones most prone to intellectual dishonesty are those individuals that have shown it in the past. In my experience creationists, particularly the young earth variaty are quite prone to deception.



<< My point is merely that science has not conclusively proven how the universe, how all this order, how my very existence came into being. Evolution is speculation. So is Creation. Speculation based on data, and it's about the best we can do, but it bothers me when people adamantly hold that "the scientific data" supports one and not the other. I actually don't see either as scientifically excluded... can you correct me on this with rational argumentation? >>



The universe started with a big bang. Fairly well supported theory. What order? You came into existence when a sperm fertelized an egg. Evolution is a fact. Creation is unsupportable dogma.



<< Where did the molecules come from? >>



The molecules that make up this planet and you? From star dust.



<< So, the more rational presupposition is that the universe has an "external" cause, and that this "external" cause is non-local and non-physical. Well then, is this cause mindful or mindless? >>



I would like to point out that trying to associate causality to something doesn't make it the "rational presupposition". The "rational presupposition" is that we can't even make any assumptions about pre-universe because of the very fact that it would lie outside the boundaries of our universe. Frankly it's as highly likely that the universe simply began to exist as it is that it had causality. I simply do not believe either has more or less rationality than the other explanation.

 

[Netopia]

MoonBeam,

I guess I'm missing something in your statements.

I think you are implying that infinite universes are unknown ordinaries and that God is not. But in my mind, anything that cannot be proven to exist in any way, shape, or form has to be taken as more magical or supernatural or whatever you want to call it.

For instance, we could say that we can believe in infinte universes because we have observed one universe. Why not believe in infinite mind because we have observed at least one mind? Actually, most of us would say that to some extent, we have observed many minds and yet we wrestle against accepting that there could be a supreme single consciousness. Why?

This may sound wierd, but back in my druggy days (daze?) I used to do a LOT of tripping. I prefered mushrooms to acid, but whatever was avialable was fine. The thing is, when in an altered state, I could sit and think about things more "deeply" because my mind wasn't constrained by what was "reasonable" or "logical". One one hand, a person could say that these thoughts were insane or at least deranged, but on the other hand, they were to some extent alternative realities. If we take this further, why could it not be that a being who is supremely more intelligent and powerful than I, consider a reality so intensly and in such detail that said reality actually "lived" in the mind of that being? If that being were of great enough intellect, he could start the thought in motion and let it cascade to it's ultimate end, intervening where it thought necessary for the good of the new "reality". The created beings in this reality would consider themselves "real" and yet they wouldn't be truly self-existant... they would also be quite incapable of understanding the power of the mind who could conceive everything, every time and every one in a single eternal moment.

More and more, this is how I believe that existance is. That what seems to us to be physical is in the real reality only something logical to a being who exists in what we can only call super-physical. That this being isn't in this reality, or out of it, but would be both, just as your mind is reading these words and these words are in your mind, but you mind isn't limited to these words and nor is it exclusively locked out of what you are reading, but it is both grasping these words and doing many other things all at once. I also believe more and more that time doesn't exist but is merely an illusion of motion like the frames of a film being interpreted as motion by our minds who cannot grasp it any other way.

The other thing I acknowledge is that if everything I'm postulating is true, it doesn't matter, because I am in this reality and cannot escape it or rise above it. I am limited to the rules that have been laid out and must operate within them. Since I believe that the being in question is God and that He has interacted with the reality and it supreme over it, logic dictates that wrestling against that which is eternal and infinite would be a folly on my part at best.

I'm probably misquoting Athanasius, but it is easier for me to believe that matter and the universe flowed out of creative mind than to think that random matter and energy somehow generated higher consciousness and mind.

Joe

 

[Riprorin]

<< There are liars in every group, to incinuate that all athiests are liars and closed minded is bigoted. >>



I don't believe this so why would I incinuate it?

My point was that theists aren't limited in their view of the origins of life (ever hear of Theistic Evolution?) but atheists are since by virtue of their unbelief must reject, a priori, any evidence that suggests a First Cause.

 

[Moonbeam]

Athanasius:

"Furthermore, we have strong suspicions that the real implicate order is non-local and non-physical.

So, the more rational presupposition is that the universe has an "external" cause, and that this "external" cause is non-local and non-physical. Well then, is this cause mindful or mindless?"

What do you mean by implicate order? How is it non-local and non-physical? I don't get this and so can't follow the argument. I worry that a set of conclusions that lead one to the other is being created here with a sort of grafting of something about nature on to conclusion 1 setting the whole cascade off, but that the graft is artificial. Anywhy, I don't know cause I don't get it.

Netopia, that's a great theory. There is some recent theoritical work supporting the notion that the universe doesn't flow like a river, but like a movie, that it is made up of discrete frozen frames occurring one after the other.

I prefer to think that conscious arose from matter because it makes sense to put the more difficult farther on in time. Awareness came late to life, and likely to the universe too. Awareness creates some complex questions about the meaning of existence, but since our awareness isn't as old as the universe, it seems to me that the questions about meaning and any conclusions from those questions are all about stuff that happened late and as a result of awareness not anything fundamental about the universe itself.

 

[aka1nas]

The weak anthropic principle explains that even though the chance of life spontaneously arising is extremely low, it is still possible and furthermore, we just happen to be that one-in-a mega-billion chance, or we wouldn't be here to wonder about it and this would all be a moot point.