How did life started - the scientific answer!

by dark angle 46 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Knowsnothing

  Well, there is still the Big Bang. How did that come about? Was there anything before?

  Cofty, how do you test for before the Big Bang, before the singularity?

  Ah, mind you, if some causative agent made the universe, then it isn't in the universe, is it?

  Cofty, do you believe in infinite regression, i.e. it is all ultimately infinite, as you go back, you keep going back? Or, do you believe in a beginning of sorts? It's all theory and conjecture at this point, because we have no way of knowing. We can't go further back than the Big Bang, and that's why we have imaginative theories like string theory and all of it's variants.

  One of them proposes an infinite number of films (universes in different dimensions, parallel to each other) that vibrate and can excite the universe closest to it, causing a Big Bang. Where did these films come from, if they even exist?
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  cofty

  All interesting questions Knowsnothing. Questions are good but the only sensible answer is "we don't know yet". Why do you feel the need to fill the void with random ideas.

  The chances are we won't know for sure in my lifetime and that's a shame but I accept that. I don't have to pretend I'm smarter than everybody else by claiming special knowledge.

  Edited to add - I think I may have wrongly conflated your position with PSon. My apologies.
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  Knowsnothing

  Why do you feel the need to fill the void with random ideas. -cofty

  Because, I am random and anything is possible. I also wish I could be certain of my beliefs, or at least comfortable with them. I suppose I feel comfortable with deism. I also thirst for answers, and even though I recognize I am finite and must come to an end, I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge. I am foolishly ambitious.
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  tec

  I used to wonder if it made more or less sense that all life was created by a living being. Was adding this element of a creator making things more complicated or more surreal than a simple e x planation that would be more plausible?

  But I received a simple answer:

  "Life comes from a LIVING being. Life (the living) can not come from death, or nothing."

  Perhaps something might be able to come from nothing (as the argument goes)... but how can that something be a living thing? How can living things and all the life we have here in our universe(s)... come from something lifeless?

  Makes no sense to me.

  Life comes from life. Very simple.

  Peace to you,

  Tammy
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  dark angle

  The idea of God was rooted in common sense. as we observe our world through our senses we see the natural law of cause & effect, everything in world it seems has some cause. eg. rivers are caused by rain, rain is caused by clouds, clouds are caused by water vapor that came from the sea, vapor was caused by the sun.,ect... Could the ultimate cause of everything be God? Our ancestors thought so. Thus the beginning of the concept of God. Such was the idea that guided our civilization throughout history.

  However, as we enter our technological age, we have discerned that our feeble senses are enadequate to study our world more precisely. Common sense was no longer enough. We began inventing machines & equiptments that are many times more powerful than our human senses allow, and to peer on other areas as well that we can't normally detect. Telescopes, microscopes, satellites,atomic accelerators etc..... These increased our understanding of the natural laws. One of the most dramatic discoveries that i can think of is the enhanced understanding of cause & effect or causality. We have discovered that in the subatomic level, quantum particles no longer obey the familiar law of causality. A particle can exist out of nothing. Heck even the laws of thermodynamics no longer apply! Moreover, (Albert Einstien and others) General theory of Relativity shows that time has a beginning and that the universe started as an infinitessmally small & dense point that burst into a big bang.

  These modern ideas has shown that the causality idea is not always true at all scales. This in turn overturns the need of a Creator to cause it all. JW's beloved word "He causes to become" becomes threatened and shaken. Here's the reason why:

  1. If the universe started so small, smaller than quantum particles we see now, then the rule of causality no longer applies to it. At the quantum scale quantum mechanics takes place requiring no causality. Thus the universe can exist out of nothing.

  2. Time, if run backwards ends at the big bang. If there was no time before the big bang, then there is no time for a God to create the universe. (Stephen Hawkins argument). I might add as well that there is also no time for Gods' existence.

  So here we have it. now it looks probable that God did not exist considering how humans come up with such idea and how modern science shows that our universe could have existed without cause. Ofcouse, any evidence, suggestive or not, for the Gods' existence will be equally interesting.
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  sizemik

  Good thread . . .

  Something you might like to add to the mix . . .

  We're still influenced by our religio-cultural influences to attribute some magical quality to "life" . . . specifically carbon based because of it's amazing complexity. We feel it needs a "spark" as if to cross some mystical threshold.

  I've heard a slightly different take . . . that the ability to replicate and gain in complexity lies with the inanimate also . . . at a molecular level eg; crystallisation etc. The mystical threshold we call "life" may be nothing of the sort . . . rather simply a level of complexity that displays certain characteristics. A clear and distinct boundary between "living' and "non-living" may be a religiously inspired preconception which is uniquely human and without real foundation scientifically.
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  dark angle

  Thank you for the additional insights sizemik. those are valid & resonable observations too. i will look on those subjects as well.