John Clinch feels there is 'no barrier' to the study of the origin of life. I think there is a barrier in several ways. First, the OOL scientists have gotten nowhere because they have been studying the biochemistry that is currently on exibit in life. To go from inorganic to living organic is a tremendous leap, and they have tried to say, if RNA is small and relatively 'simple', lets research that as a beginning. But to go from inorganic to RNA is in reality a giant leap. And this approach requires RNAzymes, RNA molecules which can relpicate themselves and grow new ones to join together, and then to create a variety of RNAs so as to develop an organized living organism. This approach must image that one RNA molecule will appear somehow by accident and that the accidental process will produce a population of these molecules. Nothing known in chemistry can accomplish that. The logical step is to work with inorganic molecules at a very simple level where there is some type of energy exchange loop as theorized by Robert Shapiro. - Second: what is required here is a reproduction of past history in a time where present conditions are totally different than were present 3.6 billion years ago, which is the age of the best evidence of fossils of early life. The Urey-Miller lightening in a bottle experiment in 1953 did produce some amino acids, but used an atmosphere in the bottle that current evidence has shown was not the correct atmosphere. We know what we find now in living matter, but it gives no clue as to how the huge gap was jumped. In other words, studying living matter gives no clue as to how to start life. It is impossible to reproduce history if we were not there to observe it and report on it. - My moral: As a scientifically trained person I don't have blind faith that science can solve all research issues. After all, we have the problem of Heisenberg's uncertainly principle and we cannot get past the quantum wall of uncertainty that so upset Einstein. It is an absolute certainty that we cannot reach into some areas of our reality. Quantum mechanical formulas work as averages of what the individual particles are doing, or should I say what the waves are doing, since quanta are both at the same time, and only become one or the other when they are measured. There are scientists who claim the universe exists only because we are here to observe it!! Do not have blind faith in science. There are limits.

'I happen to believe that it is not but it is essentially a factual question: either you and me will enter a life after death or we won't. Science might never be able to conclusively answer this question by disproving it in a formal sense, just as it may never be able to answer the question as to whether there is more than one universe.' - That's what I believe too; though nothingness ... the condition of death ... is an idea which it is difficult to get one's head around, finding it impossible to imagine myself being in a state of nothingness. Indeed, I once entertained the notion that the fundamental impulse to religion is this inconceivability of one's own being dead. But, despite my belief, I too acknowledge that I can never know whether or not I'll survive death (at least, not until after the event of my own demise), which is why I must remain agnostic in relation to the question. I believe that death will result in my annihilation, but I can't know this. - 'Yes, aren't they art, philosophy and religion?' - I don't think so. Philosophy embraces a wide range of projects, each with its own distinctive aims and methods; but for me it's primarily the business of evaluating beliefs through making explicit the assumptions that underlie them and testing the soundness of the arguments on which they depend. Religion is about realising the divine through the ritual enactment of its narratives in worship and prayer, and through their virtual enactment in the conduct of one's daily life. Philosophy and, more so, religion make use of art in the pursuit of their respective aims, but they are not themselves art. Art, like philosophy, is many things; but, again, for me it's primarily the business of giving expression in works to one's sense of things - 'Greater and greater neurological and psychological knowledge informs, or should inform, philosophical speculation about the mind/ body problem.' - Oh, it does! Neurophysiology and psychology have provided much in the way of grist for the philosophical mills in recent decades, keeping philosophers busy examining the claims that practitioners in those fields make and the thinking that underlies them. There has also been a big debate in philosophical circles concerning the claims made in relation to consilience, following the publication of Edward Wilson's book on the unity of human knowledge, and whether of not the culture gap between the sciences and the humanities can be bridged. An interesting contribution to this debate by Jerry Fodor, which highlights some of the problems the ideal of consilience runs into, is to be found here. The American philosopher, Richard Rorty, dismissed the ideal of consilience by remarking that, even if it was possible to translate the language of literature and the arts into the language of neurophysiology, he couldn't think why anyone would want to. - '[R]eality really does exist independently of your ability to perceive it.' - I'd have to plead guilty to agnosticism in respect of this matter as well. How on earth can we know that? It's a useful thing to believe, but we can hardly experience what reality is really like outside of our experience of it.

John Clinch writes: "Let's not cheapen such a magnificent tableau by positing meddling deities or resurrecting the old God-of-the-gaps who is always going to get squeezed out by scientific progress. Dhw is so wrong in his approach on this." - "Let us restrict ourselves to that which we CAN know about ... i.e. to test theories about living brains ... and leave everything else to the wannabe true believers (whoops, sorry, 'agnostics'.)" - You seem to have a remarkable talent for misreading texts, and then criticizing them on the basis of your own inaccurate interpretation (see my reply on 01/03 to your entry on 29/02). Your various entries under Postulation and the first quote above show that you are still missing point after point. Similarly, in your response to whitecraw you say for my benefit: "There is no 'in principle' barrier to scientific study of the origins of life." I never said there was (see 01/03 again.). But your determination to prove that I am a "true believer" and not an agnostic hardly advances the discussion. I suggest you concentrate more on your own beliefs than on mine, since (a) you are infinitely more qualified to do so, and (b) this will certainly generate far more constructive arguments. - I'd like to take the second quote in conjunction with the fact that you are open-minded about panpsychism. If by "panpsychism" you mean that the universe is a single organism endowed with some sort of intelligence, your open-mindedness and mine will have taken a giant step in the same direction. In the section of the "guide" entitled The Nature of a "Creator", one of my many speculations (and you have failed to grasp that all of these sections are speculations, not expressions of belief) reads: 'The designer may even be the universe, which may even be a body, within which the galaxies are limbs and our solar system a mere cell." In the thread entitled Intelligent Design, I was rightly taken to task for using the words design and designer, because these are tainted ... though no-one has yet come up with a suitably neutral alternative (whitecraw suggested demi-urge). But if you ignore the unwanted religious implications of the terminology and my propensity for imagery, perhaps we may find ourselves moving onto common ground. - "Restricting ourselves to that which we CAN know about", however, presupposes that we already know the limits of what we can know about, and you are no doubt referring to the physical world that can be investigated by the natural sciences. But if you are prepared to keep an open mind about panpsychism, then you can at least acknowledge the possibility of an intelligence that may not be subject to scientific research ... a form of mind that is different from ours (and may have been responsible for life on earth). From then on, we can speculate, but my speculations are inevitably more wide-ranging than yours. For instance, even if science works out how all the strands came together, it still won't remove the possibility of a universal mind, and I see no good reason why we should not speculate on the nature of such a mind. Is it conscious like ours? Are there manifestations even within human experience of different forms of consciousness and intelligence from those we are familiar with? Or even different forms of life? Of course it may be that there is no universal mind, and the strands fell into place by chance. We may never know, and you acknowledge this (which interestingly makes me wonder if it's just possible...perish the thought...that in fact deep down you are really an agnostic), but at least we can examine the evidence, and science is not our only means either of access or of examination.