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Disproving atheists in 82 seconds
- Thread starter peilthetraveler
- Start date
Quote from piezoe:
My response to Urey and Millers experiment, when I first heard of it, was "duh, why wouldn't you get amino acids under those conditions?". I think their experiment, while not unimportant, has been given too much emphasis, whereas Orgel's work, much of it anyway, was truly ingenious -- from my point of view anyway. There is nothing magical at all about the Urey-Miller experiment. A very easy experiment to do, but the work-up of the reaction mixture required very competent hands, and was not easy --especially in the early 1950's when it was done.
There's nothing new here. Miller's experiment created some simple amino acids -- but not the more complex ones. It created a lot of tars that would poison biological reactions. I am not aware of any evidence that he created long chains of amino acids (proteins). There is a huge gap between a world in which the seas contain a very dilute mixture of some of the needed amiino acids and some of the needed nucleotides (along with lots of poisonous tars) and one in which the various useful components are combined in the right way to make a reproducing organism.
That said, I don't want to disparage the work of contemporary researchers in abiogenesis. They have a number of interesting ideas, some of which will no doubt be incorporated into whatever the final theory turns out to be. But no, we don't have a complete theory now. Nobody is yet ready to do the rocks-in-a-box experiment that demonstrates unequivocally that we know how life was created from non-life. I am not an advocate of "directed evolution" (just another version of "God did it") but I am also not an advocate of pretending to have solved a problem that hasn't been solved yet.
Quote from PHOENIX TRADING:
I'm sorry you failed to understand the point.
Your red herring distraction about matter/energy are immaterial: for all you have done is changed the question to "how did energy come from no energy?"
So I'll spell it out to you.
Both depend as equally as the other on some (quite potentially unfathomable at least in the scientific sense ) miracle.
That's why we call it "BELIEF"
If either were scientifically provable it wouldn't be dependent upon personal opinions.
The question is only a problem if one assumes that at some point there was nothing. It is in fact more logical to assume that there never was nothing. That "everything" just always was, albeit in a different state.
This is difficult for us to fathom as it seems to us that things always have a cause, a precedent, and often seem to appear out of nothing. The idea of something having always been is counter to our naive observational bias that things are temporary. But in fact, we have never actually observed something come from nothing. The "creation" of things always involves a reassembling of previously existing things. There is no reason to assume any different for the universe as a whole.
Quote from PHOENIX TRADING:
I'm sorry you failed to understand the point.
Your red herring distraction about matter/energy are immaterial: for all you have done is changed the question to "how did energy come from no energy?"
So I'll spell it out to you.
Both depend as equally as the other on some (quite potentially unfathomable at least in the scientific sense ) miracle.
That's why we call it "BELIEF"
If either were scientifically provable it wouldn't be dependent upon personal opinions.
"how did energy come from no energy?"
That's not a question that interests me, for reasons I hope I made clear. And frankly, one can hardly add anything to what futurecurrents wrote in the post immediately above. I could not have done better than he in explaining why your question does not interest me.
I suppose there is a third category besides believers who have faith and educated atheists who are prisoners of their education. The third group, some of whom would claim to be agnostics, are neither reliant on faith nor their education, but are lost in a similar muddle of incoherent thought as that of the educated faithful -- I intentionally omit mention of the uneducated faithful, from which almost any imaginable utterance can come. There is no point in having anything to do with their religious "ideas" other then to exploit their simple-mindedness for monetary gain, a practice most reprehensible.
A good example of a person who claimed to be an agnostic most of his life is Bertrand Russell. Russell admitted on his death bed that he was actually an atheist. Russell, clearly a prisoner of his education, was by no means "lost in a muddle of incoherent thought", but he, like most, must have been susceptible to the sensibilities of those around him, for what else could explain why someone as educated and coherent as Russell would claim to be an agnostic?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell
Quote from futurecurrents:
The question is only a problem if one assumes that at some point there was nothing. It is in fact more logical to assume that there never was nothing. That "everything" just always was, albeit in a different state.
This is difficult for us to fathom as it seems to us that things always have a cause, a precedent, and often seem to appear out of nothing. The idea of something having always been is counter to our naive observational bias that things are temporary. But in fact, we have never actually observed something come from nothing. The "creation" of things always involves a reassembling of previously existing things. There is no reason to assume any different for the universe as a whole.
REALLY! ,
are you so stupid(cognitive dissonance) as to not recognize the good ole "the universe has always existed" is the exact equivalence to the other side arguing "God has always existed".
Sheesh and the previous poster thought this was a good argument.
unbelievable hypocrisy , willful blindness
Concerning bertie russell : There's no fool like an overly clever fool.
"esp with an axe to grind"
"esp with an axe to grind"
Quote from PHOENIX TRADING:
Sorry jem . but I'm fully aware that time began with the big bang.
Sorry that this question appears to flummox you so much.
Actually it started after the big bang according to scientists.
Its odd you would feel flummoxed and then say it was I who was flummoxed especially when my comment was not directed towards you.
The point for those flummoxed is that there may be no "before" for those outside of the timeline created by the big bang.