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WBraun
climber
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Feb 28, 2012 - 12:08pm PT
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beliefs "are also science..."
You can't say that.
I could make up sh!t and say a giraffe lives in my stomach because I believe it to be so.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Feb 28, 2012 - 12:08pm PT
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Base104 stated:
I can't stand people using the word "science" like it is a dirty word.
Recently, it seems to have become the in thing to do, to "bash" science, to somehow seek to ridicule "learning", people with advanced degrees
This is done by calling them "elitists"
WHY?
Presumably because it makes the bad mouther feel better about themselves
As if to say I am just as good as you people with your college degrees, your "learning",
I may not be as smarty as you are but I can sit back and throw criticisms and personal insults anyway. So there. See, I feel better now.
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monolith
climber
albany,ca
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Feb 28, 2012 - 12:09pm PT
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Look at http://www.icr.org/ for an example where creation research is considered science, making it eligible to be taught alongside evolution (or even replace with the right school board).
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cowpoke
climber
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Feb 28, 2012 - 12:32pm PT
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Ah, thanks, monolith. I think I misunderstood SLR to be speaking of people claiming their beliefs are science. But, if I now understand correctly, I agree that people often claim their beliefs are supported by science...and often using flawed work that does not stand up to empirical scrutiny.
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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Feb 28, 2012 - 12:52pm PT
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One thing that is important about the origin of life is that there is no evidence about it in any form at all other than existing life forms. We may be too far removed from it to be able to come up with testable theories. Even with a theory, experimentation is difficult because we don't have billions of years to run the experiments.
But that is the point of having a physical theory, that it is testable. It does not have to demonstrate, step by step, how life was formed any more than evolution has to show, step by step, how life evolved. The theory is still testable, it makes hypotheses which can be falsified by observation, or shown to be consistent with observation.
While the inability to detail the specific history of life on Earth may be a disappointment to many, it is not a necessary requirement for a physical theory of life.
I don't see how you can avoid a discussion of the origin of life as any smart student will do the extrapolation "back in time" and come up with that question. It can be turned into a teaching opportunity regarding the nature of scientific research.
I have read about experiments in creating life from non-life. I recall that the experiments did yield interesting results scientifically but that the experiments and results were not enough to show life from non-life. They just showed that certain processes that would be expected to happen in that situation can happen.
You are absolutely right and I didn't give the idea enough thought. The discussion would get back to the origin of life. It would not make sense to skip it. It does seem like a difficult thing to teach in any sort of beginning class though. I'll have to ask my daughter in HS if they got into that when they were learning about evolution in bio last year.
I'm glad to hear opinions in these forums from people who are much clearer thinkers than I.
Dave
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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Feb 28, 2012 - 12:59pm PT
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SLR, you should provide some evidence or, at the very least, one example of Evangelical Christians claiming that their beliefs "are also science..."
How about http://christianscience.com/what-is-christian-science?
I'm not sure if it's strong evidence but the words "christian" and "science" are right there together. That's got to count towards something.
Dave
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Feb 28, 2012 - 01:16pm PT
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I for one certainly don't believe there was any molecular Adam and Eve conjured in whole fabric out of some metaphysical consciousness.
--
While I have never suggested that the above is what I believe, some put this forth as though I secretly believe it. This tells me that many people can only imagine either a mechanistic or biblical explanation for "creation."
Also, I get broad sided for questioning the absolutely hegemony of materialism and reductionism because for me, it all starts to break down early on.
Now here, with Abiogenisis, we're presented with two options: one, matter orgainzed itself, producing by strictly random and undirected means, some of the most astonishing constructs in the universe: RNA/DNA. And the other, where a folksey God bequeaths Adam and Eve from some "metaphysical consciousness," whatever that is. While I am not partial to either narrative, the latter has the advantage of something remarkably complex emerging from an intelligent source, while the former suggests this all "just happend," and they seek to call that pronouncement "science." Many smart people are exhausting themselves trying to discover how life simply emerged, basically from the composite parts. Of course they will never get there - and it is easy to see why.
Lastly, if life was so easy and simple to kick start, as one person mentioned, we will surly be able to accomplish this facile task ourselves any day now, wouldn't you think?
As I said earlier, I think the whole idea of "creation" is the false note in all of these arguments.
JL
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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Feb 28, 2012 - 01:40pm PT
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be honest, you've never taken physics and chemistry courses - even better a slew of them over several years - in which you've felt a connection to them.
am I right?
a folksey God bequeaths Adam and Eve from some "metaphysical consciousness," whatever that is
On the last page or two, you said it was tedious to bring up the Abrahamic narrative yet again - calling it something of a deadend - and yet here YOU just did it. I guess it's with us all for life, eh? lol
Many smart people are exhausting themselves trying to discover how life simply emerged, basically from the composite parts.
Hey, welcome to the Enlightenment 3.0 - marked by a passion for science and science education - which it likes to discuss. A lot. Like climbing. ;)
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cowpoke
climber
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Feb 28, 2012 - 01:48pm PT
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I'm not sure if it's strong evidence but the words "christian" and "science" are right there together. Dave, I misunderstood SLR's post so my question of evidence is unnecessary, but the SLR post was referring to Evangelical Christians and not Christian Scientists, two distinct faith/belief systems/traditions.
Eric
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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Feb 28, 2012 - 02:12pm PT
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re: adaptive fiction
Of course the real juicy question is... if abiogenesis were in fact true and we were mechanistic material beings - top to bottom through and through - like the "lowliest" primate with but one life to live - would this be something (a) you could adapt to and embrace (and perhaps work into a narrative of its own with which to live) or (b) would this be something you'd like to cover up and disguise over with (what's becoming known in evolutionary religious studies as) an "adaptive fiction."
I see humanity splitting on this issue. Perhaps under the right circumstances even, speciating over this issue.
Also, just because a few individuals in the pack could adapt to abiogenesis, evolution, materialism, monegesis (one life to live), etc. doesn't mean the majority could. Now if this is true, then the better life strategy might be: if you can't beat em, join em (in the adaptive fiction) or when in Rome (with its adaptive fiction) do as the romans. (Now this might explain the romney's of the world.)
Would you lie about not being an evolutionist if you could be governor or president? Would you lie and say you were a Muslim (assuming of course you could pull this charade off) if you blinked and suddenly found yourself in a Taliban camp? or would you proudly declare your atheism when asked? Just what are the life strategies to employ in the service of survival and reproducibility? Is the pursuit of truth always the best life strategy? Just how inviolate is our "duty" to truth in a ultimately pointless universe? (Light questions to contemplate during the lunch hour.)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Feb 28, 2012 - 02:41pm PT
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be honest, you've never taken physics and chemistry courses - even better a slew of them over several years - in which you've felt a connection to them.
am I right?
Questioning one's education is an old trick to say, Oh, well, the duffer lacks the requsite edjamacation to fully grasp the nuances of the subject.
In the context of abiogensis, you're saying that if I only had the physics and chemistry background, I would better appreciate and could fully grasp - according to established science - how RNA/DNA and replicating cells accidentally or spontaneously appeared in the material world. Ed has been asking for a theory about how this was all possible - no takers so far.
We have been told that the emergence of life was a certain thing given the fabulous nature of the primordial soup, so rich and volatile were the ingredients. This is like saying Greek is such a rich language that Homer's Odyssey could easily have written itself - providing I had the required courses in Greek to fully appreciate said epic
Another angle provided is that life evolved so slowly that it is impossible to say - in the wide spread of things - when the bucolic protein became little Jimmy. Or conversely, life emerged as a mutation, basically all at once, in a flash. Or it was such a simple process that we might never discover how in a million years. Or as Ed pointed out, the true origins were air mailed from outer space in the long ago past, which simply predates said origins to some earlier time and place.
It's one thing to trot out these daffy explanations and say, if only you had the book learning, you'd grasp what was involved. It's another thing to actually expect educated folks to say, "By golly, it must be so because that dude can quantify the living sh#t out of stuff so he must be right."
Not so much. . . .
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 28, 2012 - 02:47pm PT
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Largo: While I have never suggested that the above is what I believe, some put this forth as though I secretly believe it. This tells me that many people can only imagine either a mechanistic or biblical explanation for "creation."
Hmmmm, not sure I'm buying that second sentence. But my take on it is that once you get all the way down to the 'soup' and the first self-replicating biochemical manifestation it almost doesn't matter whether you work backwards from the physical or forward from the [conscious] metaphysical. That is, except for the fact that once you really start looking at the 'guts' and details of the biomolecular mechanisms around the operation / expression of RNA and DNA you are presented with a wondrous bounty of mechanisms that in turn are elegant, bizarre, obvious hacks, workarounds, shakey, outlandish, fragile, and prone to error. In short, they are in no way what I'd personally come up with if I were the 'consciousness' doing the 'designing' - no way, Jose! - what a crock of shite hacks.
Our bodies (the 10% human and 90% symbiant cells) are such a hack and kludge job on so many levels it's a wonder we survive in spite of it all. I simply have a very hard time believing that this is the best a 'designer' could come up with. I mean if the mechanisms of life as it is expressed on Earth are someone's idea of good or elegant 'design' then they should immediately be demoted back to inorganic forms.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 28, 2012 - 04:01pm PT
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I have to defend Largo here... and while I firmly believe there is a physical explanation for life, we just don't have a theory of life that comes anywhere close to being consistent with observation.
After trying to find ways of assembling organic molecules, first into DNA, then into RNA, then into preRNA, and into protein polymers... we find the problem of building this stuff up from the bottom to be daunting.
Of course we've only been doing it for a few decades, not a few 100 million years... and the sort of combinational chemistry that was available during the early period of Earth's history certainly exceeds our current capabilities in the lab, but even that might be something that can be done, either experimentally or calculationally.
Further, it cannot be ruled out that the bits of molecular stuff that kick starts life didn't come from some extraterrestrial stuff, like meteorites... in which case, since we don't know the origin of the meteorites we have no way to constrain the chemistries... this doesn't suggest that abiogenesis didn't occur, but that we will never know the conditions under which it occurred.
In any case, the physical phenomena of life most likely involves aspects of physics, chemistry and biology that are yet to be understood, in particular, the nature of chemical processes that change the local entropy in such a way as to be self sustaining. That generalization, even beyond chemistry, would be interesting to study and is more likely to provide a scientific explanation and understanding of life that could be difficult or impossible to "produce" in the lab.
Largo's position is entirely defendable, our current "theory of life" isn't much of a theory, and what has been stated so far on this thread is just the restatement of the observation of life, and the expression of belief in a physical theory yet to be proposed.
Once again, if you think you have done more than that, your theory should be able to state, in a concise way with "mathematical precision" what life is....
...no one's done that yet, either on this blog or in the larger scientific literature.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 28, 2012 - 04:06pm PT
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I wasn't in any way 'attacking' Largo's comment, but rather merely commenting on overall implausibility of the 'design' argument based on what a lousy job the 'designer' did over and over.
My only criticism of his overall blog commentary is with his perceptions around science and the unknown. That something is unknown is the best part and the whole point of science and no different than unclimbed rock from my perspective - it's entirely ok that we don't know a lot of stuff in the same way it's ok there is a lot of rock that hasn't been climbed. I get the sense, though, philosophers tend to get up some serious angst when presented with the unknown and unknowable.
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cliffhanger
Trad climber
California
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Feb 28, 2012 - 04:14pm PT
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God is fond of the seed form. The biggest trees and animals all start from a microscopic single cell. The same for the universe. Everything was enfolded by God into the incredibly precise initial conditions of the Big Bang. At the moment of the Bang the creating was done and everything unfolded from there. Evolution is just the unfolding of the extremely precise initial conditions. Evolution is just how God did it.
The Biblical story of creation was never meant to be scientific. Take Genesis 3:19 - for dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return. This is way off scientifically. Dust is just the most tangible part, but only comprises 4% of the body. 60% is water that came from the air as condensed vapor. And 36% is carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen that was taken from the air in the form of CO2 and N2 by plants, along with some water that was split into H and O. That means 96% of the body comes from the air. A much more scientific statement would have read: for air thou art and to air thou shalt return. But 4000 years ago few, if any, would understand what that meant.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Feb 28, 2012 - 04:19pm PT
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Largo says: "Now here, with Abiogenisis, we're presented with two options: one, matter orgainzed itself, producing by strictly random and undirected means, some of the most astonishing constructs in the universe: RNA/DNA. And the other, where a folksey God bequeaths Adam and Eve from some "metaphysical consciousness," whatever that is. While I am not partial to either narrative, the latter has the advantage of something remarkably complex emerging from an intelligent source, while the former suggests this all "just happend," and they seek to call that pronouncement "science."
Comment:
From what we have seen till now through the history of science we have every reason to believe that there will in the end be a physical/bio-organic explanation if there will ever be a well grounded explanation. The idea of an intelligent designer behind RNA, DNA, the atom and so on are new instances of the belief in the God of gaps. The God myth as explanation doesn't add anything to our understanding.
Of course Largo is free to find an advantage where he wants to find it.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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Feb 28, 2012 - 04:30pm PT
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Questioning one's education is an old trick
One's education translates to experience and training. Experience and training in the sciences matters every bit as much as experience and training in other fields.
On these threads one needs to think about experience (or education) at some point.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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Feb 28, 2012 - 04:30pm PT
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I have to defend Largo here...
Your choice. But from what?
we just don't have a theory of life that comes anywhere close to being consistent with observation.
Untrue.
After trying to find ways of assembling organic molecules, first into DNA, then into RNA, then into preRNA, and into protein polymers... we find the problem of building this stuff up from the bottom to be daunting.
Sure it would be daunting. But what's your point?
your theory should be able to state, in a concise way with "mathematical precision" what life is....
Untrue. This is biology. Biological theories don't have to have a basis or a rendering in mathematics to be valid. Or to be proposed or followed as a basis of belief or action. Or to be conceived as being "obedient to" to underlying chemistry and physics.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
-A race of corn eaters
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Feb 28, 2012 - 04:47pm PT
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Largo's position is entirely defendable, this is so not true
our current "theory of life" isn't much of a theory sorry, just don't get this at all
and what has been stated so far on this thread is just the restatement of the observation of life just don't get this either
and the expression of belief in a physical theory yet to be proposed. dang, nor this.
Sorry.
.....
Now, if by "physical theory" you mean all the events of the biology (model) reduced to physics and rendered into math and equations that just ain't going to happen. And who would need that to happen anyway? Certainly not me before I would support it. (Esp before and in relation to any Abrahamic model for how life works.)
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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Feb 28, 2012 - 05:05pm PT
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Lastly, if life was so easy and simple to kick start, as one person mentioned, we will surly be able to accomplish this facile task ourselves any day now, wouldn't you think?
Just one small point. It may be that the odds of inorganic matter accidentally forming life are so small that it took a nearly infinite number of universes over an nearly infinite amount of time to have it happen just this once. And if it were that rare and unlikely then we will never reproduce it in a test tube.
And even if the odds of rolling a seven are 5 to 1, you might still roll it on the first roll. Life might be so improbable that our existence is a freak of nature, so to speak.
I'm sure that we all know that the early life was not at all a strand of DNA being converted to RNA then converted to proteins as happens now.
Dave
P.S. And now a huge deja-vu. I remember writing this post in the past and have a feeling about what will happen next. It's cool when that happens.
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