Origin of Life

by cofty 405 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Viviane
    Viviane

    Your point is is wrong. If theology says that life comes only from his and it turns out otherwise, that's an impact.

    In fact, in many area of science,scientific breakthroughs have confirmed a model of reality.

    Perhaps history, evidence, logic and reality showing your posts to be nothing but, as you put it, fantasy, is why you feel than languag accurately describing them is abusive?

  • Esse quam videri
    Esse quam videri

    Small blue dot.

    Image result for small blue dot picture

    Oh yes, and on this small blue dot there is a fella who has the origin of life all figured out.

    Cofty.

  • slimboyfat
    slimboyfat
    Viv I have not read many of your posts before, and you were apparently most prolific during a period when I didn't read the forum much. So I was not previously familiar with your style of going through others' posts and declaring right and wrong with apparent confidence and authority, but not much argument. I'm not sure how to respond to that. For example, you are welcome to your opinion that I mischaracterised materialism as involving circular reasoning, but I don't agree. I don't know there is much more to say about it unless you elaborate. From my point of view, David Bentley Hart explains well the circularity involved here:

    Naturalism is a picture of the whole of reality that cannot, according to its own intrinsic premises, address the being of the whole; it is a metaphysics of the rejection of metaphysics, a transcendental certainty of the impossibility of transcendental truth, and so requires an act of pure credence logically immune to any verification. . . . Naturalism’s claim that, by confining itself to purely material explanations for all things, it adheres to the only sure path of verifiable knowledge is nothing but a feat of sublimely circular thinking: physics explains everything, which we know because anything physics cannot explain does not exist, which we know because whatever exists must be explicable by physics, which we know because physics explains everything. There is something here of the mystical.



    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/359260/god-against-materialism-edward-t-oakes-sj

  • Viviane
    Viviane
    Here you are talking of God, don't you know?

    Which God? What's this God made up? Where can I see this God? Can I test to see if it's alive? Tell me some basic properties of this God. Is it visible? Invisible? What does it look like? Is this God alive? If so, what created it?

    Sorry, I've no idea what you are talking about unless you can describe it to me in some objectively verifiable manner.



  • slimboyfat
    slimboyfat
    Your point is is wrong. If theology says that life comes only from his and it turns out otherwise, that's an impact

    How can science ever "show" that life doesn't come from God? I guess what you mean is that if scientists manage to generate life from non-life you believe this some how will prove that life can arise without God. But what is the basis for the assertion?

    If there is a God, and he himself made life from non-life in this way, or indeed some other way, then the experiment tells us nothing one way or another. Scientific discoveries cannot establish metaphysical questions because they are dealing with different things.

    The attempt to collapse all understanding of reality into a reductive materialist framework is based on circular reasoning.

  • cofty
    cofty
    You asked what impact scientific discoveries on the origin of life would have on believers and how they would respond. The question assumes that scientific discoveries impact philosophical or theological questions. - SBF

    Science has impacted on theological questions again and again and will continue to do so.

    It is just incredible that anybody would doubt it. How many examples can you think of? Stop being so obtuse.

    on this small blue dot there is a fella who has the origin of life all figured out - EQV

    Once again theists resort to lying about the position of those who don't share their superstitions rather than address the actual question.

    I have said repeatedly that origin-of-life science is about hypotheses. Evolution is a fact. No explanation of abiogenesis has yet reached that status.

    My question is about what effect - if any - it will have on theism when science proves that life emerges from geochemistry without any intelligent agency.

    It is an interesting question. It's fascinating to see how many ways there are to avoid it.



  • cofty
    cofty
    if scientists manage to generate life from non-life you believe this some how will prove that life can arise without God. But what is the basis for the assertion? - SBF

    It turns out there is such a thing as a dumb question.

    It depends on what you mean by "what", it depends on what you mean by "is", it depends on what you mean by "the", it depends on what you mean by "basis", it depends on what you mean by "for", it depends on what you mean by "the", it depends on what you mean by "assertion".

  • cofty
    cofty

    Getting back to the topic.... (before SBF shits on it again)

    As a JW and then a christian my belief was that life was something ethereal that belonged only to god. That was also the basis of objections to abortion and even forms of oral contraception that prevented the implantation of a fertilised ovum. It was the primary objection to euthanasia.

    The bible says somewhere, "with you is the source of life, with light from you we see light". The creation account portrays a lifeless corpse being imbued with the breath of life and Adam is animated.

    Ecclesiastes talks about the spirit going out and returning to god.

    On this understanding the efforts of scientists to see if life will emerge from geochemistry is an impossible task. It is not doomed to failure because it is too technically difficult, it is doomed because life comes only from the lifegiver. The barrier is theological not scientific.

    I have heard believers on this forum raise similar objections to origin-of-life science many times.

    It's interesting that a biblical literalist like Vidqun began with that position but has shifted to the position that science could succeed but that god would not permit them to do so.

    I am trying to get to the central question of what is life, what does christianity say about it and how progress in origin-of-life research might challenge long-held assumptions.

  • slimboyfat
    slimboyfat
    As a JW and then a christian my belief was that life was something ethereal that belonged only to god... On this understanding the efforts of scientists to see if life will emerge from geochemistry is an impossible task. It is not doomed to failure because it is too technically difficult, it is doomed because life comes only from the lifegiver. The barrier is theological not scientific.

    Actually that's not what JWs teach. JWs argue that life arising from non-life is technically difficult and that the chances of it happening spontaneously are vanishingly remote. However they allow for the possibility that scientists may be able to create living cells at some stage. They have no theological objection to this. I'm not sure about other creationists, but as far as JWs are concerned your question is based on a false premise.

  • cofty
    cofty
    You are wrong.

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