Abiogenesis (Origins)

by David Turell , Sunday, August 07, 2011, 18:15 (4855 days ago) @ dhw

I expressed surprise at David's alternative explanations of life as chance versus a "miraculous happening".-> I have no difficulty understanding your objection to chance, and I don't mind "life appears to be...", which is nicely ambiguous, but until now this whole discussion was based on chance v. intelligent design. My problem lies in understanding what you mean by "miraculous happening", especially since you talk of an injection of intelligence and information. Here, then, are some questions for you:
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> 1) Intelligence and information about what?-Life requires information to be life and manage its reactions and processes. That information can only come from intelligence. No one has ever seen a code formulated by chance, and no one ever will.
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> 2) Am I wrong in assuming that you believe God invented the scientific laws that govern Nature?-No. The universe appears to run by pre-existing laws, which can be explored by the use of math, as Einstein has pointed out. Einstein's writings are confusing but the best explanation I have is that he is Spinozan in his philosophy: the 'old man' is all of the infomation and intelligence in nature. The UI created those laws.
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> 3) Or are you saying that God did not invent them, but is able to circumvent them?-I don't know how much God can change what was created. I think we just have to accept what we see and impute nothing else.
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> You have not used the word 'magic', but Kent (b_c) does, and I don't think it's inapt, used in conjunction with "miraculous happening". The gist of it is: God the scientist v. God the magician (in the sense of a wizard, not a trickster). To put it another way, do you think God said: "Let there be life" and there was life? Or do you think he worked it out?-God is not a magician. That bemeans the concept of a greater power, one of the phrases I use for the UI. As Adler puts it, "God is a personage like no other person we can imagine or think of. I believe the appearance of life is miraculous, and calls to view the infinite impossiblity of chance.
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> *******
> I like to keep David on his toes. I enjoy sitting on my picket fence and watching him run round and round the divine labyrinth.-dhw is shifting from buttock to buttock. He has never crawled up the hill to ponder God as Adler has done. I don't agree with Adler and his 'personage' usage. I think that is a weazel word. We must exclude all religious definitions and take only what science offers: the evidence for intelligence. To me that evidence is overwhelming. Leslie concludes: Only choices are God and/or multiverses, and this conclusion comes from looking at our Universe and not the biological side of reality. He doesn't define 'God'.-My conclusion: only a UI can create what we see in reality: our cosmos and life as it exists. Only an intelligence can take inorganic molecules and create life. The Big Bang is a creation. From what we don't know. Guth reminds us, we only know what happened after the Bang.-dhw please come down to Earth, and plant your ideas with two firmly placed feet. You continue to teeter back and forth, with your insistence on, 'I can't know anything, so why should I choose between the only two obvious choices'. You, yourself, have said that you cannot accept chance. What else is there?