The origin of Life

[Tiggy]

******************************************************

The problem with your request is that it is as firm as a jellyfish.
Anything that is posted as "impossible" can and would surely be
dismissed by a simple, common tactic: invoking an auxiliary
hypothesis. That is what every Materialist / Atheist does when
the scientific evidence weighs heavily against abiogenesis.

My (our) book, Without Excuse (2011), contains an irrefutable
argument for the impossibility of abiogenesis -- "irrefutable",
that is, until rescuing hypotheses are invoked. My own
dissertation contains another argument (on Mass Energy
Management Systems - MEMS) that shows the impossibility
of abiogenesis. Same thing - invoke auxiliary hypotheses
and the "irrefutable" argument vanishes. So try again, Doug.
This time, try thinking beyond the level of a typical Atheist.

Why don't you present this remarkable evidence that abiogenesis is impossible instead of just running your mouth about it?

And quit pimping your idiot book.

- T

[Ansgar Seraph]

Cue Jorge's standard equivocation between information and meaning.

- T

He might have used "rabbit" and "gavagai" and at least gotten some esoteric cred.

[Doug Shaver]

Never mind whether you might convince anyone who disagrees with you. Do you have an argument for the impossibility of abiogenesis or don't you? If you do, let's see it.

******************************************************

The problem with your request is that it is as firm as a jellyfish.
Anything that is posted as "impossible" can and would surely be
dismissed by a simple, common tactic: invoking an auxiliary
hypothesis. That is what every Materialist / Atheist does when
the scientific evidence weighs heavily against abiogenesis.

You say so. Try me. Present your argument and let's see how many "auxiliary hypotheses" I need to rebut it.

My (our) book, Without Excuse (2011), contains an irrefutable
argument for the impossibility of abiogenesis -- "irrefutable",
that is, until rescuing hypotheses are invoked.

Oh, I get it. If I want to see your argument, I have to buy your book.

[phank]

The evidence and logic are clear: atheism involves beliefs. In order for atheism to be atheism, there must be beliefs that cannot be proven.

Lack of belief is a belief. Right.

Thinking critically has nothing to do with agreeing with me personally. It means following the evidence and reason to the correct conclusion.

Set your faith aside and try it. You will discover many different conclusions.

Notice that nothing here actually disputes the existence of the statement of faith within atheism. It's all ad hominem.

OK, can you reword this. Where is "here"? What does "within" mean in this context? I see no ad hominem here, can you be more specific?

Let me clarify. I wasn't speaking of "all atheists" (and I thought that was obvious), but those who made that particular claim. Now, if a theist or an agnostic would claim that atheism is not faith, they would be equally wrong.

You just don't get it, do you? Lack of belief in any gods is not the same thing as belief in the lack of any gods. Think critically!

In general, atheism makes the claim that it (and people that adhere to it) engage in critical thinking.

Not really. Atheists in general find no evidence that would compel any belief inthe supernatural. Now, if requiring that statements get positive support rather than "you can't prove me wrong" is critical thinking, then I suppose you're right.

Individual atheists often give as the reason that they are atheists. www.worldofdawkins.org and www.skeptic.org state this explicitly.

Yes, lack of evidence supporting a belief. Pretty simple.

However, when you make a claim that is so easily refutable by evidence and reason, any claim to "critical thinking" is severaly damaged.

You just can't get off that hobbyhorse, can you? Lack of belief is NOT belief in lack. THINK CRITICALLY. You may have to set your faith aside to do so.

After all, if the atheist engaged in critically thinking about atheism, they would already have reached the conclusion that atheism is a faith. Many atheists have, as I've quoted from several.

They would not because this is not the case. You have either misrepresented or misunderstood your own materials. Shermer doesn't claim he has a "faith in atheism". He says positive statements require positive evidence.

I don't ever recall using the phrase "devout belief". It seems, phank, that you are making up things.

You have insisted, here and elsewhere, everytime your reflex is triggered, that atheism is a faith. Now you are starting to accuse those who have NO faith of not being able to think critically. This is not devout? If your incessant repetition of the same error isn't devout, nothing is.

I have always held that atheism does not forfeit morals, that atheists can indeed be moral. So let me be clear: the failure of honesty here is solely the failure of Phank, not of atheism or atheists in general.

What does atheism have to do with morals? You are changing the subject. Try thinking critically for a change. I do not need to believe in your god or anyone else's to be moral. But now I don't think you are being dishonest. You have NO CLUE what you're talking about, you think you do, and your repeated uncorrectable errors only dig you in deeper.

[Ansgar Seraph]

Oh, I get it. If I want to see your argument, I have to buy your book.

I bought the book when it came out and we had a bit of discussion about it; I'll see if I can track it down since Jorge seems to have forgotten how badly he defended the topic.

—Sam

[lucaspa]

Materialism is so heavily imbedded into the psyche of people that they
aren't even aware of it. The telegraph key, the tripeptide, the word
combinations (written in ink or displayed on the screen) are ALL material
carriers. Statistics are obtained on those carriers and those statistics
are what you plug into the Dembski/Shannon equations.

And that is all I did. So why are you insisting I am mistaking information for something material?

Yes it DOES measure the material carrier. It results from statistics derived
from the distributions of whatever the carrier is (be they letters from an
alphabet, smoke signal, dots and dashes, flags, chalk on a board ... whatever).

By your insistence, the equation doesn't meaure the material carrrier. Instead, it uses the material carrier to measure the immaterial thing "information".

So, if information can result from statistics on "whatever", that "whatever" would include tripeptides (or longer proteins), right? So far, I've seen nothing that negates that information can arise by chemistry.

I did not say that you thought information
was something material. I said that the carrier of information must be
distinguished from the actual information. In today's material-based
thinking, the two are invariably conflated leading to all manner of errors.

And I did. I said 2.17 bits of information was generated. I never said the tripeptides were information.

NO - you are doing it again. What we measure is NOT the information.
What we measure is proportional to the statistical distribution of the carrier
of the information.

According to Dembski, it is the information. 1 bit of information is generated when a dit or dah is chosen.

[quoteLook, begin with the following alphabet of 26 characters:

{a, b, c, d, .......... x, y, z}

Now construct two strings ('words'):

(1) washington
(2) xlrngsuqbm

Without introducing anything else, which string ('word'), (1) or (2),
has more 'information' as per Shannon? As per Dembski?
That is not an easy question so think about it.[/quote]
So why didn't you think about it?

Actually, choosing a dit vs a dah is more like walking than this. A much simpler case because you have only 2 possibilities. Here we need to figure out how many possible 10 letter combinations out of 26 letters there are.

[lucaspa]

Lack of belief is a belief. Right.

The phrase "lack of belief" is deception. Let's try some examples.
" I lack belief that most atheists are competent critical thinkers" Do you seriously think I am stating just a "lack of belief"?
"I lack belief that the earth is 4.55 billion years old." Again, am I really stating just a lack of belief?
"I lack belief that marriage is only between one man and one woman."

I can continue with examples falsifying your statement.

Yes, it is possible to have choose a neutral position without belief. In regard to deity, agnosticism is this position. However, that statement is in the form "I do not know whether deity exists or not."

OK, can you reword this. Where is "here"? What does "within" mean in this context? I see no ad hominem here, can you be more specific?

No statement within your post addressed the evidence and reasoning that atheism requires that natural processes operate on their own or that "natural processes operate on their own" is a statement of faith. All the statements in the post were ad hominem -- insulting me personally.

Lack of belief in any gods is not the same thing as belief in the lack of any gods.

Go back to my statements above. Yes, to say "i lack belief that deity exists" is exactly the same thing as saying "I believe deity does not exist." The phrases are interchangeable and we use them that way all the time. The argument you make is Special Pleading.

Atheists in general find no evidence that would compel any belief inthe supernatural.

That's a really weak argument. I can make a stronger argument for atheism than that. However, you are still disguising that what you are saying is "we therefore believe the supernatural does not exist".

However, you need to think beyond that statement. What does that statement require? What has to happen in the physical universe for that statement to be valid? Natural processes have to work on their own without requiring the supernatural to make them work. Now, what is your "positive evidence" for that? NOTHING. You have no evidence. So you are believing that as a matter of faith.

Now, if requiring that statements get positive support rahter than "you can't prove me wrong" is critical thinking, then I suppose you're right.

Here we have a difference between how you choose a belief and how science operates. In science, the requirement is to prove something wrong. If you can't do that, then you make no statement about the validity of the statement. You personally can choose your beliefs based on the availability of positive support. If such support is, in your opinion, lacking, you can say "I believe that X does not exist." Alternatively, you phrase that as "I do not believe X exists." Same thing.

Lack of belief is NOT belief in lack.

As we use language, yes it is. You are just applying Special Pleading here because your desire is that atheism not be a belief. BTW, what do you think atheism IS? Knowledge? A neutral position?

They would not because this is not the case. You have either misrepresented or misunderstood your own materials. Shermer doesn't claim he has a "faith in atheism". He says positive statements require positive evidence.

Shermer says, very clearly, that atheism is a belief.
"Therefore, from a scientific or philosophical position, theism and atheism are both indefensible positions as statements about the universe." [emphasis in original]
"But "denial of a God" is an untenable position. It is no more possible to prove God's nonexistence than it is to prove His existence. "There is no God" is no more defensible than "there is a God." Michael Shermer <I>How We Believe </I>pp 8-9.

What do you have when it is not "possible to prove"? Belief. Faith. If a position is "indefensible" from both science and philosophy, and you hold it anyway, what do you think it is?.

You have insisted, here and elsewhere, everytime your reflex is triggered, that atheism is a faith.

I have a firm conclusion that evolution is true. Somehow you never call that a "reflex" or belief. It would appear that I only have "reflex" or "devout belief" when I draw a conclusion different from you about atheism. Your decision to label my conclusions as "reflex" and "devout belief" are both Argument to Ridicule and Special Pleading

Now you are starting to accuse those who have NO faith of not being able to think critically. This is not devout? If your incessant repetition of the same error isn't devout, nothing is.

When you first used "devout faith" you put it in quotes as tho you were quoting me. Now you are trying making an argument to back up your Argument from Ridicule.

When creationists make a claim that is easily refuted by evidence and reason -- such as "abiogenesis can't happen" or "god-of-the-gaps" -- and I say that they are lacking crtitical thinking, you never say I am exhibiting "devout faith". I am going to be arguing stubbornly with Jorge that chemistry produces information. Are you going to say I have "devout faith" there? So what we have here is Special Pleading". I only have devout faith when I state conclusions about atheists -- conclusions you don't agree with.

What does atheism have to do with morals? You are changing the subject.

Not changing the subject. I am only trying to make it clear that the immorality of making up things I said refers to you as the person doing it and not to atheism. Apparently you didn't think critically enough to catch that.

I do not need to believe in your god or anyone else's to be moral.

That's what I said.

[lucaspa]

Ok, but they will hate the idea that they too take it on faith.

LOL! You think! Have you been reading Phank's posts?

However, not all atheists hate it. Many realize it, and are more than intellectually honest enough to say so. Eugenie Scott even said it to the Humanist Society in her acceptance speech of the Isaac Asimov award in 1998.

Because I want them to be saved? OK, maybe not phank - but the rest of them... ; )

Then I suggest you remember that "judgement is mine, says the Lord". Jesus made it clear that belief in God or himself was either necessary or sufficient to be saved.

However, if you insist on trying to convert them, then please stop trying to misuse science to do it. It's hurting your intentions and Christianity.

Ok, but it still seems like a gap argument. No known cause - insert God.

I said we could hypothesize, I didn't say we could conclude. Gap arguments conclude that it must by God. In the case of science, we are allowed to hypothesizes it might be God.

You can't quote Allen to me - quote scripture.

Allen studies scripture; those are his conclusions from scripture But you should be able to think of passages where God is outside the universe: Genesis 1:1 comes immediately to mind.

And there God seems quite hands on.

That is because scripture is about God's actions with humans. So it is a biased sample. But communicating with humans and directing them on what to do with their lives is very different from having to construct the first cell or push the planets around in their orbits. You don't think God is "hands on" in that, do you? Do you seriously think God personally pushes each planet in their orbit, all the time? Or does God sustain gravity?

A man buys a stallion - he could just leave it out to pasture, but perhaps he takes pleasure in actually riding it.

Does the man spend time manufacturing new horses? Or does he let the secondary causes of procreation make a new horse? The ID/creationism argument has God manufacture individual things in the universe. That means there is no process within God's Creation that would make, say, a cell. So God has to become a creature of the universe to make a cell.

So God does intervene in the universe outside of the normal cause and effect model. But isn't that what you are arguing against?

No. I'm not arguing against God intervening in human history. Interacting with humans, either thru personal communication with individuals or occasionally thru a miracle like the loaves and fishes. God is still outside the universe when He does that. He is not a member of the universe, but communicating with us.

You have something different: God having to individually and continually make members of the universe. An analogy is if new people didn't come as babies, but that God had to make each of us from starting material. Why do you think God doesn't do that but had to make the first human directly?

[Roy]

Actually, choosing a dit vs a dah is more like walking than this. A much simpler case because you have only 2 possibilities. Here we need to figure out how many possible 10 letter combinations out of 26 letters there are.

26¹⁰

1 of those combinations provides just over 47 bits of information.

Roy

[lucaspa]

Anything that is posted as "impossible" can and would surely be
dismissed by a simple, common tactic: invoking an auxiliary
hypothesis.

Well, that would mean your "irrefutable" isn't. make up your mind.

You mean "ad hoc hypothesis". Hypotheses are tested in huge bundles of hypotheses, not singly. When the favored hypothesis doesn't work out, you can try to save it by saying that one of the underlying hypotheses -- the auxiliary hypothesis -- didn't work. We run positive and negative controls so that such a claim cannot be invoked.

An ad hoc hypothesis is invoked when data appears to falsify a hypothesis. An example would be the statement "information is not material" when I posted the data that information is generated by chemistry in forming tripeptides.

That is what every Materialist / Atheist does when
the scientific evidence weighs heavily against abiogenesis.

1. I am not an atheist.
2. I pointed to observations of abiogenesis.

My (our) book, Without Excuse (2011), contains an irrefutable
argument for the impossibility of abiogenesis -- "irrefutable",
that is, until rescuing hypotheses are invoked.

I suspect the argument is similar to the "irrefutable" argument that bumblebees can't fly. Since we have observations of living cells arising by chemistry, it doesn't matter what the "argument" is. Observations trumps argument every time.

My own
dissertation contains another argument (on Mass Energy
Management Systems - MEMS) that shows the impossibility
of abiogenesis.

What university is that? I did a Google search on "mass energy management systems" and got no hits. Since that term doesn't seem to exist, how did anyone invoke "auxiliary hypotheses" against it?

[lucaspa]

26¹⁰

1 of those combinations provides just over 47 bits of information.

Roy

:) Thank you. So, since the letters are chosen, whether they spell "washington" or some other letter configuration, then both words have 47 bits of information.

Now we would have to know the number of 10 letter combinations that actually form words in the English language, assuming the chooser wanted the English language. Or would there be another level of information if the chooser wanted only the word for the last name of the 1st President of the US?

I am still waiting for Jorge to argue that the equation -log2(M/N) does not tell us how much (immaterial) information is generated. If he doesn't do that, then his argument against abiogenesis falls apart, since it's obvious that chemistry is a process that makes information.

And just wait until he finds out that natural selection also generates information!

[Ansgar Seraph]

What university is that? I did a Google search on "mass energy management systems" and got no hits. Since that term doesn't seem to exist, how did anyone invoke "auxiliary hypotheses" against it?

Newburgh Theological Seminary. Jorge has since denounced the Ph.D. in Christian Apologetics he received from Newburgh but continues to call his work on MEMS a dissertation. A rather lengthy discussion of the subject can be found on the "KB ... Whitcomb ... 2nd Law" thread.

—Sam

[Tiggy]

I bought the book when it came out and we had a bit of discussion about it; I'll see if I can track it down since Jorge seems to have forgotten how badly he defended the topic.

—Sam

It was near the middle of this thread

KB ... Whitcomb ... 2nd Law

Jorge was spouting off about his nonsense about how all MEMS require intelligence to create, until you showed him under his loosey-goosey definitions a river qualifies as a MEMS.

Then it was flap flap flap for the door for

Good times!

- T

[Ansgar Seraph]

It was near the middle of this thread

KB ... Whitcomb ... 2nd Law

Jorge was spouting off about his nonsense about how all MEMS require intelligence to create, until you showed him under his loosey-goosey definitions a river qualifies as a MEMS.

Then it was flap flap flap for the door for

Good times!

- T

Thanks, Tiggy. That thread was a mess so I'm hunting down some Gitt pages in between jobs, since it seems that Gitt was just compiling a lot of old work into book form.

—Sam

[Wally]

Go back to my statements above. Yes, to say "i lack belief that deity exists" is exactly the same thing as saying "I believe deity does not exist." The phrases are interchangeable and we use them that way all the time.

This is unequivocally wrong.

That you are a believer and intrinsically unable to understand the difference, does not remove the fact that they are significantly different statements.