An argument foe Grand Design, maybe?

[Greylorn Ell]

(to Immanuel Can:)

I see that you ignored the fact that some requirements for life have been "created" in a laboratory, and would have resulted on planet earth all those billions of years ago, all by themselves due to the environment at that time. If I ever use the word create know that it means that constituents join together, to form another thing. That the constituents create the new thing in their joining. Surely "form" would be more correct, but some things I just haven't changed yet.

Which doesn't necessarily indicate intelligent design.

S.O.B.

Creating some elements essential to life is no more relevant to the abiogenesis problem than the ability of Hittites to make iron weapons is to the creation of automobiles. Sure, cars need steel shells and frames, and once they used cast iron engine blocks. Iron is necessary, but there is much more involved. It is the structuring that is important. The ability to cast an iron cannonball does not imply the ability to build an internal combustion engine. The latter requires an understanding of physics.

We all know about the Miller experiment-- various chemicals cooking away in test tubes and vats, complete with lightening strokes.

Let's suppose that you and I knew enough to assemble a serious abiogenesis experiment, with a roomful of test tubes, vats, and reagents akin to the materials thought to be available when life began. Plenty of energy, etc. An environment that exactly simulates the early earth. We run the experiment for a year, unattended and untweaked, with a technician hanging around and checking temperatures to insure that nothing blows up.

Finally, after a year we open the door to the main vat and what comes out but a dozen little green homunculi jabbering away in some strange language, and carrying a pair of stone tablets with what appear to be 10 lines of information engraved thereon, which they present to us as they bow down in worship. What exactly have we proven?

Have we proven the validity of abiogenesis, the notion that raw materials spontaneously came together to form life?

No. We will have only proven that intelligent engineers can create biological life from the raw materials of our planet.

Greylorn

[Greylorn Ell]

Deleted post.

[Greylorn Ell]

(To I. Can:)

Has no one ever explained to you the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions? Consider fertilization of an egg. The egg must be ripe (necessary), but without sperm you don't get little blue-eyed Jimmy. We know that life began spontaneously, because we know that there is no other possibility. "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

Melchior,

Your assertion is the absurd claim of an ordinary dogmatist.

"Holmes'" elimination declaration posits that the detective has considered all available alternatives. Lacking that often difficult operation, his declaration is irrelevant.

You have not examined all possibilities. You have made, at best, fifth-hand evaluations of Christian and scientific dogma, two functionally identical ideas invented by others, and made the arrogant and childish assumption that you've examined all possibilities. That's what dogmatists do. You've based your beliefs upon an agreement system that is absurd, unscientific, and illogical-- yet ordinary and conventional, thus safe enough for the unimaginative mind.

I can safely make that statement because it applies to each of the alternatives you've cursorily examined.

You do not know squat about how life began. You are merely a parrot, echoing the opinions of ignorant others, no more interesting than any of a hundred-thousand Muslims ritually bowing towards Mecca. I shall ignore you in the future.

Greylorn

[Arising_uk]

...
We all know about the Miller experiment-- various chemicals cooking away in test tubes and vats, complete with lightening strokes.

Let's suppose that you and I knew enough to assemble a serious abiogenesis experiment, with a roomful of test tubes, vats, and reagents akin to the materials thought to be available when life began. Plenty of energy, etc. An environment that exactly simulates the early earth. We run the experiment for a year, unattended and untweaked, with a technician hanging around and checking temperatures to insure that nothing blows up.

Finally, after a year we open the door to the main vat and what comes out but a dozen little green homunculi jabbering away in some strange language, and carrying a pair of stone tablets with what appear to be 10 lines of information engraved thereon, which they present to us as they bow down in worship. What exactly have we proven?

Have we proven the validity of abiogenesis, the notion that raw materials spontaneously came together to form life?

No. We will have only proven that intelligent engineers can create biological life from the raw materials of our planet.

Er!? No, what we have proven is that if those conditions had existed on the early Earth then the world would probably have been full of little green homunculi. Just like the Miller–Urey experiment showed that it is possible to produce some of the building blocks of life from what are considered to be inert chemicals, as such, if those conditions existed on the early Earth then the building blocks of life could have been created by that process. Subsequent experiments have produced more amino-acids than the original and even DNA and RNA nucleotide bases.

[Immanuel Can]

Melchior wrote:

Has no one ever explained to you the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions?

Of course. But that is the point!

The "necessary" conditions for life are not the "sufficient" conditions. Having a habitable planet would be necessary for life, but it is not sufficient merely to have a habitable planet in order to guarantee the appearance of life on it. Life is not an automatic given just because you have some place it could potentially survive, any more than having a dog house gives you a dog.

Isn't that kind of obvious?

[Melchior]

Melchior wrote:

Has no one ever explained to you the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions?

Of course. But that is the point!

The "necessary" conditions for life are not the "sufficient" conditions. Having a habitable planet would be necessary for life, but it is not sufficient merely to have a habitable planet in order to guarantee the appearance of life on it. Life is not an automatic given just because you have some place it could potentially survive, any more than having a dog house gives you a dog.

Isn't that kind of obvious?

You didn't understand what I wrote. The necessary conditions for life could have existed for quite some time, until the right conditions sufficient for life occurred. Then it had to happen. Consider gasoline, spark, air. All of them are necessary for fire, but only when all the pieces are brought together (the right percentage of gasoline in the air, spark, and temperature) will you get ignition. Same with an atomic bomb. A big lump of uranium won't explode. But if it's the right kind of uranium, the right amount, and compressed at exactly the right speed, it explodes.

[Immanuel Can]

Melchior wrote:

You didn't understand what I wrote.

You're right: it was so off base it confused me. I was trying to make out how it could possibly be relevant. But I just couldn't do it.

"Life" isn't "necessary" in any sense, nor are the conditions for life "necessary." And even if we ignored the lack of any explanation for "sufficient" conditions, we'd still have only "sufficient," not "necessary" conditions.

The necessary conditions for life could have existed for quite some time, until the right conditions sufficient for life occurred. Then it had to happen.

This is the ultimate non-description of the process, and non-answer to the important questions. It first entirely begs the question of the origins of the elements, and then secondly, it blows right past the emergence of life as if it were going to happen as automatically as spark, gas, air!

Moreover, you don't answer anything about why it "had to happen," as you say. Well, what made it "have" to? For even an explosion never happens without a catalyzing event. Gas, air and fire do not explode at the gas station, though all three are ever present. But for you, it "just happens"?

Even more extremely, you overlook the fact that explosions are invariably non-creative...and yet you analogically attribute some sort of creative complexity to it.

That explosions do not create but destroy is readily empirically verifiable. If you think otherwise, my recommendation is that you go and stick a rag in your gas tank, and light it, and blow up your car -- and see if it turns itself into a Ferrari.

I will bet anything it will not.

[Melchior]

Melchior wrote:

You didn't understand what I wrote.

You're right: it was so off base it confused me. I was trying to make out how it could possibly be relevant. But I just couldn't do it.

"Life" isn't "necessary" in any sense, nor are the conditions for life "necessary." And even if we ignored the lack of any explanation for "sufficient" conditions, we'd still have only "sufficient," not "necessary" conditions.

The necessary conditions for life could have existed for quite some time, until the right conditions sufficient for life occurred. Then it had to happen.

This is the ultimate non-description of the process, and non-answer to the important questions. It first entirely begs the question of the origins of the elements, and then secondly, it blows right past the emergence of life as if it were going to happen as automatically as spark, gas, air!

Moreover, you don't answer anything about why it "had to happen," as you say. Well, what made it "have" to? For even an explosion never happens without a catalyzing event. Gas, air and fire do not explode at the gas station, though all three are ever present. But for you, it "just happens"?

Even more extremely, you overlook the fact that explosions are invariably non-creative...and yet you analogically attribute some sort of creative complexity to it.

That explosions do not create but destroy is readily empirically verifiable. If you think otherwise, my recommendation is that you go and stick a rag in your gas tank, and light it, and blow up your car -- and see if it turns itself into a Ferrari.

I will bet anything it will not.

A 'necessary' condition is a condition whose absence prevents something from occurring (consider an automobile engine, whose hundreds of parts all must function properly for the engine to run). What are the necessary conditions for an atomic bomb?

A 'sufficient' condition is what completes the conditions and causes the event. You cannot have all the sufficient conditions present and then not have the event, by definition. If you have all the necessary conditions present for an atomic explosion, you get an atomic explosion. Having all the necessary conditions gives you sufficient conditions.

Gasoline and air explodes all the time in your engine. That's what it does! Do you think those pistons move by an act of willpower?

The fact that we don't know all the conditions necessary for the origin of life does not mean that we can't know that there was an origin of life from non-living matter. There was. Every aspect of your body is based on known chemistry (and all the chemicals in our bodies are terrestrial ones), and every aspect of our bodies can be explained as the result of natural selection. We are made of exactly the same chemical as Nile crocodiles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile_crocodile

[Immanuel Can]

Melchior:

Yeah, I already explained that I fully understand "sufficient" and "necessary." I wonder if any explanation is sufficient to make you aware that further repetition is not necessary.

Gasoline and air explodes all the time in your engine. That's what it does! Do you think those pistons move by an act of willpower?

Yes. The will of the engineer who designed the car, the will of the person pushing the gas pedal...gasoline doesn't "just" explode. Even when all the conditions are present for an explosion to happen, it does not...unless someone lights a match. You've forgotten all this in your explanation, and are speaking as if stuff "just happens." It doesn't.

The fact that we don't know all the conditions necessary for the origin of life does not mean that we can't know that there was an origin of life from non-living matter. There was.

The world's scientists will be delighted to know you've personally solved a problem they cannot so far. So show us exactly how it happened. Go ahead...

Every aspect of your body is based on known chemistry (and all the chemicals in our bodies are terrestrial ones), and every aspect of our bodies can be explained as the result of natural selection.

Demonstrably untrue. Thomas Nagel, for example, astutely points out what Locke first noticed -- that mind, unlike chemicals, is indivisible and non-physical, and yet is an essential part of personhood. So how many chemicals are in "mind"? (Note: "brain" is physical and divisible, and hence is not "mind.")

Moreover, natural selection is an extremely poor explanation that fails even its parent-belief, gradualism, at every turn. It does not, for example, explain irreducible complexity, but only serves as a contingent, potential and unconfirmed explanation of a limited set of reducible complexities at most; and it completely fails to produce any rational descriptions of things like multi-species symbiosis or the existence of specific genetic coding and other informational structures with the natural order. It can't even being to describe credible gradualist phases for such things. It's another non-answer, the sort of explanation that satisfies only if you don't ask further questions or think very deeply about it.

[Melchior]

Gasoline does explode when all of the necessary conditions exist (density, pressure, oxygen, spark). It happens every time, quite reliably, thousands of time per minute.

That's how these things can propel cars:



I am unaware of anything called 'irreducible complexity'. Is that some fuckwit's idea of an objection to Natural Selection?

That engine (from an Audi R8) is very complex, but it was developed, gradually, from this, making changes here and there, including changes in the number of cylinders, water cooling, etc.:



The same thing happens in nature. When the VW air-cooled engine cars became no longer competitive, VW dropped that engine in favor of water-cooled engines that could be bigger, with more cylinders, and allow the manufacture of better cars. Interestingly, the VW Rabbit uses many parts that were carried over from the VW Beetle. Just like nature. That's why most vertebrates have the same overall body plan.

[Immanuel Can]

Umm...not sure what your picture is supposed to prove... Somebody built that. It's called an "engine," and it's a product of intelligent design -- every time. No engines have ever "evolved" into existence. So by analogy, are you actually conceding that someone "built" life too? Then we agree.

But I have gas, air and igniters of various kinds in my garage. To my knowledge, my house hasn't exploded...nor will it without a cause. And that cause could very well be a person...but it won't be just the compounds in question, which do not explode by themselves.

And if they did, they'd damage, not "evolve" my house.

It's not smart to dismiss something you know nothing about, by your own admission. Find out about "irreducible complexity." It will rock your world.

[Melchior]

Umm...not sure what your picture is supposed to prove... Somebody built that. It's called an "engine," and it's a product of intelligent design -- every time. No engines have ever "evolved" into existence. So by analogy, are you actually conceding that someone "built" life too? Then we agree.

But I have gas, air and igniters of various kinds in my garage. To my knowledge, my house hasn't exploded...nor will it without a cause. And that cause could very well be a person...but it won't be just the compounds in question, which do not explode by themselves.

And if they did, they'd damage, not "evolve" my house.

It's not smart to dismiss something you know nothing about, by your own admission. Find out about "irreducible complexity." It will rock your world.

I have made no such concession. I am merely showing how things evolve by simple processes of addition and subtraction. In nature, DNA can make 'mistakes', and chains of DNA can become duplicated (or lost). In that way you may end up with more limbs or segments (or fewer):



The Audi V6 and V8 engines are basically the same; the V8 simply has a couple more cylinders. It can also be done in reverse. A V6 engine can be derived from a V8 engine simply by deleting two cylinders. The point is that the same processes (natural ones) are at work here: deletion and duplication.

Here is the V8:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3240/261 ... 00fd_b.jpg

Note the placement of the various engine components.

Here is the V6:

https://brianmschoedel.files.wordpress. ... mg4416.jpg

Why are they so similar? Why reinvent the wheel? The 'conservation' of structures that work is inherent in design, whether that is the result of natural selection or deliberate planning.

If a god were to 'design' creatures, he would have no need to adapt and modify (improve) old designs by trial and error; his 'designs' would be perfect from the beginning. And why 'design' so many varieties of crocodilians?

https://www.google.com/search?q=crocodi ... CAYQ_AUoAQ

The only way to explain it is 'descent with modification'.

[Immanuel Can]

If a god were to 'design' creatures, he would have no need to adapt and modify (improve) old designs by trial and error; his 'designs' would be perfect from the beginning. And why 'design' so many varieties of crocodilians?

Ask Him. See if He has a mind to tell you.

Either way, His decision to do so is not contingent on your (or my) ability to understand and explain His reasons. He might well have reasons nonetheless, and they might well be very good ones. I suspect they are.

The only way to explain it is 'descent with modification'.

You need to reword this: "The only potential explanation I'm even prepared to consider is..." That's the truth.

[Melchior]

If a god were to 'design' creatures, he would have no need to adapt and modify (improve) old designs by trial and error; his 'designs' would be perfect from the beginning. And why 'design' so many varieties of crocodilians?

Ask Him. See if He has a mind to tell you.

Either way, His decision to do so is not contingent on your (or my) ability to understand and explain His reasons. He might well have reasons nonetheless, and they might well be very good ones. I suspect they are.

The only way to explain it is 'descent with modification'.

You need to reword this: "The only potential explanation I'm even prepared to consider is..." That's the truth.

You're hilarious. Are you familiar with Ockham's razor?

[Immanuel Can]

Melchior:

Ockham's razor...yes.

I presume you're also familiar with his very fine shaving cream?

I'll cut to the chase: theory with fewest assumptions to be preferred. Or "simplest," if you like.

However, some caveats.

Firstly, Ockham's razor is a ceteris paribus principle...meaning that it is intended to apply only when all else is equal. So first you need at least two "equal" theories, whatever that may mean.

Secondly, it's only procedural: he argues that we should choose simplicity procedurally, not because it's guaranteed to be right, but because a simpler theory is more likely to be "elegant" in the scientific sense, meaning parsimonious and easy to work with.

Thirdly, it's only probabilistic...(and even this is an extrapolation, and not quite what W of O said) it suggests the simpler theory is more likely to be preferable, but without any guarantees that it is right. After all, "the world is made out of solids" is an extremely simple theory, with few assumptions: unfortunately, it's also untrue.

So the Razor isn't some sort of scientific "Law", far less a guide to truth; it's a procedural axiom, and one that depends on many external conditions...most especially, the discernment of which of a set of theories is actually the simplest, or which actually contains fewest assumptions. And that is always up for debate.

But we cannot even get started: for we have no competing theory here from you regarding Grand Design, so no way of using the Razor. The Multiverse Hypothesis is mathematically irrational and probabilistically absurd. Fine. The God Hypothesis is plausible, even if you don't like it; and the remaining hypothesis is...?

I never did catch that...what is your hypothesis for how the universe came into existence?

It was created by VW, I believe you said?