Moved Another step towards answering the question of life's origins - religion

[Lion IRC]

If RNA can be created without divine intervention, what need for the divine?

If it's creation that accounts for RNA that's enough for me.

 

[Lion IRC]

humility just drips from his every word...

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Yes, I suppose that does sound a bit arrogant doesnt it?

 

[Elixir]

But these are the same atheists who say the only thing that would convince them God exists, is if...WAIT FOR IT....they experienced...

"something which couldnt be explained by the scientific method."

Sorry pal, your hubris is slipping.

I have had multiple experiences that defy explanation, yet your silly fairy tale remains just that.

I have no beef with creator hypotheses, or with mountains of unexplained phenomena being piled up to evidence creators’ existence.

I only lament that people doing that are so deluded that they find it logical to attribute such things to a particular being, when any old supernatural being among the 10,000 plus that people have created, would equally suffice to explain it all.

 

[TomC]

If RNA can be created without divine intervention, what need for the divine?

If it's creation that accounts for RNA that's enough for me.

What does "creation" mean in that sentence?

Creation isn't necessarily important. Tolkien created a whole world, Middle Earth. I created a pan of yummy food earlier today.

It's the premise that God creates things, therefore we theists know more about God than you do that is so insufferably egotistical.
Tom

 

[Shadowy Man]

If RNA can be created without divine intervention, what need for the divine?

If it's creation that accounts for RNA that's enough for me.

What does "creation" mean in that sentence?

It doesn’t seem to matter.

 

[pood]

If RNA can be created without divine intervention, what need for the divine?

If it's creation that accounts for RNA that's enough for me.

So it’s OK that RNA was created by blind natural processes, which it was?

I think you’re equivocating on the meaning of the word “create” which, like all words, has different shades of meaning in different contexts. You seem to think that “create” means PURPOSEFUL creation; i.e., design. But it need not mean that at all. Evolution “creates” all manner of forms varied and wonderful, without an ounce of thought behind any of it.

 

[Elixir]

If Lion’s ilk are forced to retreat to an assertion that their god “created” the big bang that “caused” the energy cloud that condensed into hydrogen clouds that coalesced into stars that produced heavier elements, with planets where the god-created ingredients for life came together etc., - that all would be better than giving up on Jesus.


What religions get people to believe is less important than what religions get them to do. That includes expressions of generosity, empathy and love, as well as genocide, torture and support of despots.
On balance, it’s probably a neutral effect, just kind of embarrassingly stupid.

 

[Lion IRC]

All that aside, the origin of the first organism remains an unsolved problem

Yes, and the two menu options as far as I can tell are;

- Time plus chance (infinite monkey theorem)
- Not chance

 

[pood]

All that aside, the origin of the first organism remains an unsolved problem

Yes, and the two menu options as far as I can tell are;

- Time plus chance (infinite monkey theorem)
- Not chance

IOW, God of the gaps.

Science doesn’t disprove the existence of God, it just shows that certain types of gods cannot exist — we don’t need Thor to explain thunder and lightning. Can you agree with that?

Some scientists believe in God, like Francis Collins of biology fame. Newton, of course, believed in God. He thought that in studying nature he was uncovering the hidden hand of God.

The point is, though, that science does not NEED God in their equations and investigations and observations. Newton did not NEED God to posit his laws of motions. He never said, things move such and such, therefore God! As an explanation that would have been totally empty. Perhaps you can see this?

“God” is a showstopper for science, but it doesn’t follow from this that God does not exist. It just follows that science can’t USE God for anything. Maybe God underpins it all, and you can believe that if it makes you feel good.

 

[bilby]

If it's creation that accounts for RNA

It's not. It can be, but it's not usually, much less always. This isn't hard to understand, if you think about it for a second; But...

that's enough for me.

...apparently you are absolutely determined not to do so.

 

[bilby]

humility just drips from his every word...

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Yes, I suppose that does sound a bit arrogant doesnt it?

Nah, that just sounds stupid and hidebound.

 

[Elixir]

we don’t need Thor to explain thunder and lightning. Can you agree with that?

Ah yes, but that doesn’t rule out Thor.
Thor has been around longer than science. Cultures forever have known there was a God of thunder and lightning. Science can describe it and model it on a small scale but good luck trying to even come close to Thor’s real deal!
Thor rules, hammer down!

 

[Elixir]

Maybe I'd better read the article to see if it actually does say "creation"..."create"..."created"

How does what the article says alter the fact of what happened?

Personally, Lion, I feel like there’s a gigantic cellular engineering gap between a producer of replicas and a producer of imperfect self replicas that do the same.

 

[rousseau]

We don't know life's origins in the same way that we don't know the whole fossil record. We know, through inference, what happened, it's just hard to define the process in scientific terms. Personally, I'll take Dawkins' explanation in The Selfish Gene and call it a day.

 

[Elixir]

It's a weird objection when atheists whine about God of the gaps.

But hardly as weird as a theist whining about atheists whining about it, when no atheist even mentioned it, despite theist prompting. And then using the topic nobody else mentioned as an "excuse" to introduce a blatant straw-man argument.

But these are the same atheists who say the only thing that would convince them God exists, is if...WAIT FOR IT....they experienced...

"something which couldnt be explained by the scientific method."

The only thing that would convince a rational person of anything is evidence for that thing.

If you want to convince me that God exists, just supply evidence that God exists.

If you believe that this requires "something which couldnt be explained by the scientific method", then you may be right - that would certainly be a requirement if God does not exist. But if God does exist, simply providing evidence of that existence would suffice.

Nobody cares that you are butt-hurt over being asked for actual support for your claims.

And the only person who said the text in quote marks is you - despite your dishonest use of those quote marks, to imply that you were addressing a man not made from straw.

Good post bilby.
That’s one reason why I usually leave rabid theists to their fare; they are so damn smarmy with their argumentations, and they barely realize it - if at all.
Another is - who cares? God or no god, things go on the same. Why bother genuflecting to some dude who pretends to speak for a god?

 

[southernhybrid]

Sometimes posters here are able to create the impression that they are clueless. Sometimes posters create responses to threads about articles that they never bothered to read. There's that word create again. What could it possibly mean?


Here's a clue.

A much-debated theory holds that 4 billion years ago, give or take, long before the appearance of dinosaurs or even bacteria, the primordial soup contained only the possibility of life. Then a molecule called RNA took a dramatic step into the future: It made a copy of itself.

Then the copy made a copy, and over the course of many millions of years, RNA begot DNA and proteins, all of which came together to form a cell, the smallest unit of life able to survive on its own.

Now, in an important advance supporting this RNA World theory, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., have carried out a small but essential part of the story. In test tubes, they developed an RNA molecule that was able to make accurate copies of a different type of RNA.


The work, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, gets them closer to the grand goal of growing an RNA molecule that makes accurate copies of itself.

“Then it would be alive,” said Gerald Joyce, president of Salk and one of the authors of the new paper. “So, this is the road to how life can arise in a laboratory or, in principle, anywhere in the universe.”

The team remains a ways off from showing that this is how life on Earth truly began, but the scenario they tested probably mimics one of the earliest stirrings of evolution, a concept described by the English naturalist Charles Darwin more than 150 years ago.

How many who posted actually read the article? I feel for Tharmas who was trying to start a discussion about the article but it was derailed by a poster who created a lot of nonsensical posts Oh my. There's that word again.

 

[Jarhyn]

If RNA can be created without divine intervention, what need for the divine?

If it's creation that accounts for RNA that's enough for me.

So it’s OK that RNA was created by blind natural processes, which it was?

I think you’re equivocating on the meaning of the word “create” which, like all words, has different shades of meaning in different contexts. You seem to think that “create” means PURPOSEFUL creation; i.e., design. But it need not mean that at all. Evolution “creates” all manner of forms varied and wonderful, without an ounce of thought behind any of it.

I think he fails to understand the difference between "assembled according to a plan" and "assembled by putting chemicals that exist in lifeless environments in a lifeless environment and shaking it in ways that produce 'predictably unpredictable' results".

 

[Elixir]

I think he fails to understand the difference between "assembled according to a plan" and "assembled by putting chemicals that exist in lifeless environments in a lifeless environment and shaking it in ways that produce 'predictably unpredictable' results".

Add it to the list.
Surely Lion can be proud of his effort to derail discussion of proto-life being “created”. That he never read the article (which is probably written by Satan anyway) is no impediment to the interjection of stupid irrelevancies.

 

[bilby]

We don't know life's origins in the same way that we don't know the whole fossil record. We know, through inference, what happened, it's just hard to define the process in scientific terms. Personally, I'll take Dawkins' explanation in The Selfish Gene and call it a day.

Yeah, we don't know which horse will win the next Kentucky Derby, but we do know with fair certainty that the winning jockey won't be riding a duck.

There are a handful of contenders for exactly how life first started; None are the creationist duck.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

God or no god, things go on the same.

Precisely. There are those of us unable to differentiate between an evidenced claim and an unevidenced claim. Enough said.