Abiogenesis (Origins)

by dhw, Thursday, August 04, 2011, 21:02 (4858 days ago) @ broken_cynic

Dhw: But science has never claimed that life was the product of chance. Science has never claimed that there is or isn't a God. That is not the province of science, whose task is to examine the material world.-KENT: Again, you are talking as if either I or "science"* are dealing in absolute declarations. As you say, science examines the material world and thus, with a few religiously motivated exceptions, all of the (limited) investigations into the origins of life are concerned with that material world, not supernatural intervention. They default to the chance explanation, though I agree that they (rightly) have not declared this to be an absolute certainty.
*What do you mean when you refer to science this way? Science is a method for learning, used to winnow knowledge from data, practiced by individuals and by way of very messy and very human consensus making, eventually forming a (malleable) body of knowledge. Is it fair to assume you are referring to the currently accepted body of knowledge?-No. By science I mean the study of the natural (material) world, and I am trying to separate science from the individuals who practise it, and from whatever non-scientific conclusions they may draw from it. In searching for the origin of life, theist scientists and atheist scientists will study the same materials. No-one is claiming that physical life is not physical! There is no default position. If scientists ever do crack the codes and explain to us how the various chemicals combined to create the mechanisms for life and evolution, no doubt the atheist will say chance did it, and the theist will say God did it. At that moment, they will both have left the realm of science and entered into the realm of subjective belief.-KENT: Show me the first piece of evidence that there is anything but the material world to be accounted for and I will re-consider whether perhaps there is some realm which science cannot touch.-It has proved all too obvious during the short life of this forum that different people have different ideas of what constitutes "evidence". Some would consider the mechanisms of life and evolution as too complex to have been created by chance. Their existence is therefore regarded as evidence of a designer. The same applies to consciousness. The unexplained (as opposed to fraudulent) mystic and psychic experiences recorded over the centuries are seen as evidence. A realm which science cannot touch? What do you mean by touch? Of course scientists can investigate, and they can assume/hope that they will eventually find a material explanation. But they haven't done so. Maybe they will never do so. Your argument will still stand, of course...the material explanation will always be round the corner. But our theists' argument will also stand. Science hasn't explained it because there is something beyond the material world (as we know it). You and they will have a different interpretation of what constitutes evidence.-KENT: I initially rejected the Christian faith I had grown up in, and once strongly claimed for myself, for a purely agnostic position. For several years I was an apologist for believers of all stripes and non-believers alike, determined to correct each side's misapprehension of the other. It was only as I became more of a skeptic and rationalist that I moved from that middle ground.
 
I'm most grateful to you for identifying the agnostic position with the "middle ground". It appears that your concept of agnosticism is the same as mine after all. -Thank you also for the background. My own went in a slightly different direction: I was brought up in a Liberal Jewish household, turned atheist in my teens, then read The Origin of Species and became an agnostic. I am still trying to correct each side's "misapprehension" of the other, and am therefore frequently manhandled by both sides! 
 
Dhw: However, it really doesn't matter if you insist that abiogenesis is not a "key element" in your atheist thinking. If you prefer to think of your faith in such an unproven theory as an "intellectual consequence", let us simply discuss the intellectual consequences."-KENT: There is no 'faith' at work any more than there is 'belief' (at least not in the sense you are using it the word.)-Nothing provokes an atheist more than the word "faith"! (I put on my horns and swing my cloven hoof when I use it.) Let me repeat your own words: "Show me the first piece of evidence that there is anything but the material world to be accounted for and I will re-consider whether perhaps there is some realm which science cannot touch." Why "re-consider"? Does this not mean that your considered opinion is that there is nothing but the material world to be accounted for? That your considered opinion is that there is no realm which science cannot touch? And that your considered opinion is that life is the product of chance and not of design? Why say such a thing if you don't believe it?