Definitions (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, June 29, 2009, 12:54 (5624 days ago) @ George Jelliss

George has revisited the terms "materialism" and "abiogenesis". - This is a brilliant post, George, and highlights just how difficult it is for us all to communicate. Language is an inadequate instrument, but it's the best we've got. - I'll take "abiogenesis" first. You say you would prefer a term for "origin of life" that was scientifically neutral. I don't think that's a problem ... "origin of life" will surely do perfectly well. The difficulty in our discussions is to find a term that means the spontaneous origin of life without the intervention of a designer. "Abiogenesis" fits the bill so long as we all know what we're talking about, but it has caused confusion in the past. The forerunner of "abiogenesis" was "spontaneous generation", but I remember you objecting to that when I used it many moons ago. One alternative is to keep repeating: "The Theory that Life Sprang Spontaneously from Non-Life without the Intervention of a Designer", but it's a bit of a mouthful! Any other suggestions? - When I use "materialism", it is not of course meant pejoratively, but only in the philosophical sense that physical matter is the only reality. However, you say "modern physics makes the distinction between material and immaterial more difficult to maintain in this nineteenth century sense". And modern physics and cosmology use "immaterial terms such as energy and information". You go on to ask "how does modern "materialism" differ from other more metaphysical ideas? I think it is less clear." Although you're careful to stress that this doesn't equate the immaterial with the spiritual, it seems to me that these ideas bring the physical and the spiritual much closer together. What does "spiritual" mean? It's just a word to indicate those elements of our nature that we can't pin down to the purely physical. I know how sceptical you are about so-called psychic phenomena, but even if we just stick with phenomena that we all acknowledge ... like consciousness, will, emotion, imagination ... perhaps we can find common ground in terms of unknown forms of energy. As regards terminology in general, though, unless we create our own neologisms, I'm not sure that we can do better than define what we mean by the old words and continue the discussion from there. - Theobiogenesis for Creationism? This could be fun, but if biogenesis = life from life, shouldn't Creationism be theoabiogenesis? And in that case, maybe the atheist theory could be atheoabiogenesis!