Abiogenesis (Origins)

by dhw, Monday, August 08, 2011, 15:09 (4854 days ago) @ David Turell

With regard to the origin of life, David stated that the choice lay between chance and a "miraculous happening". As we've always discussed the alternatives in terms of chance v. intelligent design, I expressed surprise, and asked if God was a magician or a scientist.-DAVID: 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 impossibility of chance.-You've confirmed that you believe God created the laws of Nature, in which case I assume that in creating life, he worked within those laws, since miracles by definition are contrary to the laws of Nature. I've been rightly criticized for using that same word in the brief guide, and will take it out when I eventually get round to another revision. I understand your argument against chance, and it's only the wording of the alternative that I find so confusing. "Miraculous" in the sense of stunning, amazing, even incredible ... that I can accept. However, since you've stated categorically that God is not a magician, perhaps I can take it that you regard him as a scientist who worked it all out.-DAVID: I like to keep dhw on his toes, his rump is so tender from the picket fence.
Dhw: 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.
DAVID: dhw is shifting from buttock to buttock. -Well, not really. I'm firmly balanced. Fortunately, it's not a matter of life and death ... otherwise, of course, I'd be in the position of the logical ass who starved to death between two identical bags of hay.-DAVID: 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?-The alternative is an unidentifiable conscious power which either emerged by chance from nothing (as impossible for me to believe as earthly life springing by chance from nothing), or has existed for ever (equally impossible for me to believe). If I asked you to explain the origin of God, you could only answer: "I don't know." If you ask me to explain the origin of life, my answer is the same. Chance doesn't convince me, but nor does this unknowable power. Your don't know simply goes back one step further than mine. You and your atheist counterparts are able to embrace your respective faiths (I'm talking of full believers and full disbelievers), but I'm not able to embrace either, since both are equally irrational. And so I get pelted by both sides. Truly we agnostics are the martyrs of our time!