Abiogenesis (Origins)

by dhw, Thursday, August 04, 2011, 20:44 (4858 days ago) @ broken_cynic

KENT: It is already apparent that you do not find your experience of agnosticism to be constrained by the dictionary, so please accept that I as an atheist may also not fit precisely in either the dictionary or your own notion of what an atheist is, believes and thinks.-I do most certainly accept that, and the whole point of these discussions is for us to find out what we all think and why. Just to set the record straight, it would of course be absurd to reject Huxley's definition of his own coinage. I should have indicated that the middle-road definition is an ADDITIONAL meaning, since in an epistemological context most people would agree that it is impossible to KNOW whether God exists, and that would make us all agnostics, as you indicated in your post of August 2 at 16.37 under "What do we need..."-Dhw: "Atheism therefore expressly rejects the existence of a designer and hence the theory of design..."
KENT: Agreed.
Dhw: "...which leaves abiogenesis as the only alternative."
KENT: Pretty much. As Balance correctly pointed out, even if it didn't happen here on Earth, the buck has got to stop somewhere/time.-This is an important step forward.
 
KENT: You talk about "believing in something which has no scientific evidence to support it," but I don't 'believe in' anything in this scenario. I don't hold to any particular theory of abiogenesis [...] I don't dogmatically 'believe in' the idea in general. I merely observe and accept that (as you have illustrated) in the absence of the supernatural, abiogenesis in some form is likely to be the source of life in this universe.
 
This is where language begins to muddy the waters. There are many theories as to how abiogenesis may have occurred, but abiogenesis itself is the hypothesis that living organisms first arose spontaneously from non-living matter. If you categorically reject deliberate design, it is not a matter of accepting that abiogenesis in some form is LIKELY to be the source. You have agreed there is no alternative. Then may I ask why, if you accept it, you don't 'believe' it?-KENT: So the only point where belief comes into this at all is way before these considerations even come up in the broader analysis when I note that all of the deities on the table are 1) utterly ridiculous, 2) irrelevant to our existence or 3) both, and that furthermore, beyond the lack of supporting evidence the concept of the supernatural is fundamentally incoherent.-I prefer to put "supernatural" in inverted commas, because I'm not satisfied that we actually know what constitutes "natural". More in a moment. In your discussions with me, I would ask you to discount the conventional tales and concepts of God and/or the gods ... I'm not going to defend them, though I would not dream of calling all of them "ridiculous". Nor will I argue that any kind of God is "relevant" to my own life. I can live quite happily on my fence. You say of chance that: "Beating huge odds is something we know happens in the real world. Magic isn't." I don't believe in magic either. Nor do I know of anyone on this forum who does, including our theists. IF there is some sort of super-intelligence out there, I could only conceive of it as a form of energy different from what we know, but consciously and scientifically constructing life in the same way as we construct computers. IF this were so, I could then conceive of human consciousness as a similar form of energy, channelled through the material brain, and I could link this energy to the many mystic and/or psychic experiences that remain unexplained. This scenario does not involve the supernatural, but would be an extension of the natural. Just as a dog hears real things I don't, maybe some human minds also perceive real things I don't. This is just a maybe, but since we know so little about the universe, I for one am not prepared to assume that we have exhausted all the possibilities of what constitutes "Nature".
 
KENT: What 'astonishingly complex mechanisms' do you suggest that chance must supply?
 
I have set out the case (for both sides) in my post of August 1 at 13.42.***
 
*** I see David has given us some important information on this subject in his latest post. David also updates us regularly on the latest research into such subjects as the genome, epigenetics etc. (See "Brain complexity", for instance.)
 
KENT: 'A designer is unnecessary' is not an assumption at all. Adding the idea of a designer to the body of knowledge we currently have doesn't add anything to our understanding, therefore it is not necessary. I'm not suggesting that I know the details of how it happened and there wasn't a designer involved, I'm simply saying that that by the law of parsimony a creator is extraneous complexity and is therefore dismissed.
 
You have already said there wasn't a designer involved (see above). You are quite right that "a creator is extraneous complexity", and I have indeed asked who created the creator, quoting Dawkins. That is a potent reason for my non-belief (as opposed to your disbelief). But if by applying Ockham's razor we are left with too many unanswered questions (there are too many for me, but not for you), we are forced to consider the possibility ... no more ... that the razor may have cut out the very heart of the matter.