Since people keep being up elements of divine creation of live vs life arising from natural means.
My take on this is simple neither have concrete evidence, but we know nature exists for it to arise from. We don't know that any supernatural agent exists to even potentially create it.
I simply say I don't know, but if I had to guess I am going to go with things I know exist.
What do you mean by natural means? Yes, we are aware that life arises from reproduction. But this is simply producing material from material that already exists. Recombining genetic data. We have yet to be able to create life from inorganic matter. So I don't think we "know" either.
"Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him."
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
I am talking about the origin of life.Quote by: Ender
Maybe I wasn't clear. I am saying abiogenesis is the idea life arose from normal matter and part of creationism is that life arose from a divine creator.
With abiogenesis the thing life comes from is known to exist.
With creationism we need a divine power. We have no evidence of this divine power.
What evidence do creationists have to offer that shows "life" is more than chemical interactions that become more complex over time? What is the creationist's explanation for the difference between non-living and living things; in other words at what point does a complex chemical interaction become life? Do creationists realize that we are not even one person, that our bodies are host to organisms that have their own lives, without whom we couldn't "live"?
People Are Human-Bacteria HybridMost of the cells in your body are not your own, nor are they even human. They are bacterial. From the invisible strands of fungi waiting to sprout between our toes, to the kilogram of bacterial matter in our guts, we are best viewed as walking "superorganisms," highly complex conglomerations of human cells, bacteria, fungi and viruses.
More than 500 different species of bacteria exist in our bodies, making up more than 100 trillion cells. Because our bodies are made of only some several trillion human cells, we are somewhat outnumbered by the aliens. It follows that most of the genes in our bodies are from bacteria, too.
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[John F. Kennedy]
The principal value of debate lies in the development of logical thought processes, and the ability to articulate your positions publicly.
[Senator Dick Clark of Iowa]
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Just a nit but technically creationism(poof theory) is a (extremely poor) theory of abiogenesis. Maybe we can just use Natural Abiogenesis and Supernatural(magical) Abiogenesis. Meh, maybe not.
Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith. - Christopher Hitchens
That s fine. I went with wikipedia: In natural science, abiogenesis (pronounced /ˌeɪbaɪ.ɵˈdʒɛnɨsɪs/ ay-by-oh-jen-ə-siss) or biopoesis is the study of how biological life arises from inorganic matter through natural processesJust a nit but technically creationism(poof theory) is a (extremely poor) theory of abiogenesis. Maybe we can just use Natural Abiogenesis and Supernatural(magical) Abiogenesis. Meh, maybe not.
Yeah, let's keep it simple. Sorry I opened my mouth.
Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith. - Christopher Hitchens
No one knows for sure how the first life originated.
There's evidence for a naturalistic mechanism of the early formation of life. Wikipedia actually does a decent job (although it's not very up-to-date) summing the hypotheses (Abiogenesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Which model ultimately proves correct - or perhaps none of them will, or all will in part - can only come with time.
A few things are clear. Molecules which are used in living organisms are not different than molecules that we can make in a lab. That much has been clear since Wohler synthesized urea. Molecules used in modern life - from amino acids to nucleotides to fatty acids - can be made in environments that may have been found on the early earth. These molecules can then undergo polymerization, again under conditions like those on the early earth. Although not under the same conditions, an entire field of chemistry utilizes equilibrating mixtures of molecules - some of them biologically-inspired macromolecules, including peptides - which are capable of self-amplification and even self-replication. Accordingly, I don't think it's unreasonable to accept a naturalistic origin for life.
To be honest, even if at some point in the future scientists create an entirely functioning cell from inorganic molecules, there will still be doubt if that's how life first originated. After all, how can the experimenter be positive they got early-earth conditions completely right? What if life originated on another planet, and was then somehow transported to earth (although this, I think, just leads to a regression of how life may have originated)?
A miraculous origin of life, on the other hand, lacks even the beginning of a chain of evidence. There's no empirical evidence that suggests an entity capable of creating life exists. Even if it were shown that such an entity did exist, one would have to somehow prove either that such an origin of life is the only possible origin of life, or that such an entity definitely created life on earth. In other words, one would have to show that life either cannot or certainly did not originate naturally.
We have to be realistic - thus far, nothing that we're aware of has been proven to be of supernatural origin. Yet, even in the past century, we have come to an intimate and intricate grasp of how natural processes govern life. Then which is the most realistic explanation for the origin of life - a natural one, or a supernatural one?
Pro scientia et humanitate.
Well, I was going to say something much the same as Carbon did, but Carbon wrote it much more detailed and more eloquently than I could anyway. The one point I differ on though is the idea that nothing supernatural has been proven scientifically. I believe in Christianity, but I see no reason to believe supernatural is not simply a term used for things not yet explained. Plenty of things we would have considered supernatural a thousand years ago turned out to be real, but also with logical explanations behind them. There's no reason to think there can't be a logical set of reasons we may someday unravel that shows how God or an "entity" produced life. Natural processes are simply an explanation of the mechanism.
"Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him."
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
I have no problem in agreeing with this when it concerns scientific "revelations" yet to come. For instance, we may someday find that a being does exist who was the cause of the Big Bang. We may find a natural explanation for angels, possibly even ghosts and ESP. It's not the going forward I am concerned with. It's the events that have supposedly already occurred and which, if we're to be honest, form the basis of the Christian religion, that defy natural explanation and thus fall into the category of supernatural events. Wise men following a star; has anyone tried this lately? A child born to a virgin; of course the modern explanation is that virgin is a mis-translation of young girl. A dead man coming back to life after three days; unless as I posted elsewhere he was actually in a coma. Demons being cast into swine, a man walking on water, so many events described in the Old and New Testament that defy known physics and for which there is no reason to think we'll find an exemption in the physical laws at any point further down the road. If you eliminate the supernatural from the Bible you remove the foundation of the Christian religion, not to mention cripple Judaism and deal a fatal blow to Islam.I believe in Christianity, but I see no reason to believe supernatural is not simply a term used for things not yet explained. Plenty of things we would have considered supernatural a thousand years ago turned out to be real, but also with logical explanations behind them.
The Forum Rules
Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
[John F. Kennedy]
The principal value of debate lies in the development of logical thought processes, and the ability to articulate your positions publicly.
[Senator Dick Clark of Iowa]
The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.
[Terry Pratchett]
You're right. It is very unlikely that it's possible to go back and examine those cases. That doesn't mean an explanation isn't possible. It just means we'll almost certainly never find those explanations, regardless of whether they exist. That's why it takes a higher degree of faith to be Christian or Muslim versus believe in a general creator or ghosts or esp.
"Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him."
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
Can't say I disagree. The more specific the god, the more attributes ascribed to that god, the greater the faith it requires to believe.That's why it takes a higher degree of faith to be Christian or Muslim...
The Forum Rules
Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
[John F. Kennedy]
The principal value of debate lies in the development of logical thought processes, and the ability to articulate your positions publicly.
[Senator Dick Clark of Iowa]
The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.
[Terry Pratchett]
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