Abiogenesis (Origins)

by broken_cynic , Thursday, August 04, 2011, 23:29 (4858 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: "If you categorically reject deliberate design..."-I do not. However, I won't spend any time giving serious consideration to the hypothesis until someone produces some evidence in favor of it simply because it is many orders of magnitude more (unnecessarily) complex than the only serious alternative and thus parsimony/Okham bid me ignore it as I would tales of giant sparkly purple unicorns pissing out the great rivers of the world and consuming virgins by the score.-> Then may I ask why, if you accept it, you don't 'believe' it?-I do not 'accept it' full stop. I accept that it is the only alternative on the table which A) fits the available evidence and B) doesn't hinge on a giant cruft of an unsupported idea with its roots in mythology. (Or in other words, doesn't involve orders of magnitude more unnecessary complexity.) Yes, there is a theme here. -> I don't believe in magic either. Nor do I know of anyone on this forum who does, including our theists.-Interesting statement. How do you distinguish the things theists believe from magic? -> 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.-So a sufficiently powerful or advanced alien would satisfy your notion of deity?-> 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-And therefore an extension of science. And a loss for every religious belief system on earth, though I'm sure the liberal strains of each would adapt just fine and the conservative strains would just dig themselves in deeper. What is this scenario supposed to suggest? It seems to me as if you are conflating 'natural' and 'scientific' with 'what we know/understand today.' -> I have set out the case (for both sides) in my post of August 1 at 13.42.-The original Abiogenesis post? I certainly don't see a balanced treatment of two sides in that post, nor do I see specifics regarding what you think 'chance has to provide' which you find equal in (un)likelihood with gods?-> 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.-Applying the razor (well put by the way) doesn't leave us with any additional questions compared to what we had before using it. In fact it eliminates the bulk of them and leaves the core few, big, but relatively simple questions. Those questions are still there when you add the idea of a designer back on, only now you have all kinds of new questions about the designer to answer too. Yet somehow those questions get a free pass?