The probability of life

Originally posted by john_bmth

 

Incorrect. You propose to fill the gaps of scientific understanding with "God dunnit!". It gets very tedious

I propose we stop pretending abiogenesis is anything more than hypothetical imaginings, because it require biogenesis to be falsified. Abiogenesis is unfalsifiable because any negation would just be reasoned the wrong conditions were tested. Give me one thing that would falsify abiogenesis.

Originally posted by xxsomexpersonxx

 

"Science of the gaps" ? Using science to explain gaps in human knowledge?

edit on 30-7-2011 by john_bmth because: (no reason given)

Science of the Gaps is at play here. Saying science will explain that life began from non-life is a very big claim. The only science that's been observed regarding life's origin's is life coming from life. So for abiogensis to be true it has to falsify this phenomenon that's been observed millions of times. It is therefore science of the gaps to claim science will somehow be able to break a scientific fact.

Originally posted by addygrace

Originally posted by xxsomexpersonxx
Repeatable in the same way it's observable, only in part with modern science, very little doubts it'll be repeatable in whole in the not so distant future.

Science of the gaps. This is what makes abiogenesis unfalsifiable.

Hilarious that you deliberately leave out the part of the quote that explains how abiogenesis could be falsified.

You can redefine science to say that something can't be proven or even supported if it's unfalsifiable. Now you can rewrite what I said to leave out my explaining how that could be falsifiable. You apparently think you control reality.

It's hard to believe something when every single person trying to convert me has to either lie or use fallacious reasoning. This is why I only listen to actual (non-straw) science. You're only hurting your cause.

Trying to turn the "God of the gaps" fallacy around by calling it "science of the gaps" is petty and absurd. It does not even make any sense. Like I said, using scientific method to fill in gaps of human understanding is "science of the gaps". That's a far cry from saying "God dunnit!"

Plus, I see the poster above has shed more light on your intellectual dishonesty. When you have to lie and deceive in order to make your case, your case is beyond hope. Stick to the scripture study, trying to play the science game is not doing you any favours.

reply to post by addygrace


Allow me to give this a try.

No, we have not observed life coming from non-life. There are two reasons for this.

One, we live on a world that happens to have life. Life forms tend to consume the proteins, chemicals, and other assorted tiny flotsams that would conceivably give rise to life. Think of how we metabolize iron before it can turn into an iron crystal or something. Short version, living organisms just eat everything that could possibly give rise to life. Sterile experimentation is hobbled first by the tremendously limited scope of a laboratory vs. what was going on on an entire planet four billion years ago, second by the fact that sterility is imperfect; all it would take is one single bacteria getting in the experiments to completely screw them up beyond all use.

Now, if we were to run massive experiments on abiogenesis on, say, the moon, we might get somewhere. Running htem on earth is a lot like trying to wash clothes in a mud puddle.

The second is, well, a little more esoteric. Where does non-life end, and life begin? What's the narrow line between the two states? There's actually a grey area there, with crystals at the "more like non-life" end of the grey and viruses at the "more like life" end - it's really a rather arbitrary distinction. There's room for "maybe" between yes and no.

Originally posted by novastrike81
reply to post by Griffo

 

I find the study interesting, but when Creationists throw out the probability of life to be 10^390; I like to throw out that "we're here, so it must be probable."

Highly improbable situations happen all the time, like people winning the lottery. Why should the formation of life on Earth or elsewhere in the Universe be treated any differently?

edit on 27-7-2011 by novastrike81 because: (no reason given)

But this kind of just hand waves the problem away. Imagine for a moment you are sentenced to death by a firing squad of 40. You stand their, blindfolded, and hear 40 shots go off, yet you are still standing, thinking "My god, what are the chances every shot would miss?" You wouldn't just say "Well I am standing here, so of course they must have all missed" and leave it at that, would you?

To me that isn't a very satisfactory answer, though perhaps it's the best we'll get. In the end you will either have to accept that the universe is just perfect because it was designed that way, or it's just perfect because if it wasn't we wouldn't be here. I doubt that will stop us from looking for a better answer though.

On a similar note, what many of these 'calculations' fail to take into account is that we are not looking for the probability that life similar to ours would develop. We are looking for the probability that life at all would develop. Similar to how the odds of 2 people in a room sharing a birthday are much greater than the odds of someone else in the room sharing your birthday.

Put another way, if we were a form of life who had evolved in high gravity, able to withstand high temperatures, and arsenic in the atmosphere, I imagine we'd all be thinking "Wow, what are the odds that on a planet with just this amount of gravity, the temperature would be exactly right, and the atmosphere would have just enough arsenic to support us?"

reply to post by addygrace


Addygrace, the problem here is that God creating life wouldn't actually solve anything. Instead of answering the question of the origin of life, it just shifts the question to the origin of God, and creates a thousand new questions.

So while abiogenesis is not a fact, I feel it is a valid explanation because it fits within our current understanding, and would actually answer the question we are asking.

God creating life is certainly a possibility, but that conclusion requires hundreds of other unknown variables to also be true.

Abiogenesis is falsifiable with this simple hypothesis: "if life is eternal, abiogenesis cannot be true"
Corollary to that: "If there was ever a period in the universe without life, abiogenesis must be true"

Prove that life has always existed, and you will prove that life has always come from life. However, if there was ever a point the universe was void of life, then life must have come from non-life, it's as simple as that. Abiogenesis doesn't necessarily detail the process of how that happened, nor does it have to.

But don't take it so personally, abiogenesis doesn't disprove God, they can coexist. God, omnipotent and all knowing, couldn't have planted the seeds for the conditions to be just right to form life? Actually it seems to me that the bible advocates abiogenesis, as Adam came from the earth, and God is not life in this universe as we would define it. It seems to me like you are arguing against abiogenesis as if it's an attack on your faith, and it's certainly not.

reply to post by addygrace

Saying science will explain that life began from non-life is a very big claim.

It’s not a claim at all. As Maslo pointed out earlier, it’s an observation from fact. At some point life began on Earth, which was sterile before. And life still comes from non-life; we are still made of the same common, nonliving elements as the rest of the Earth.

If you don’t want to believe the science, well, don’t. Just go and look in your Bible: Genesis 1:2

It may have taken the intervention of a third party, as you insist, to make it happen, but it happened just the same. Life came from non-life. It can hardly have done otherwise.

So for abiogensis to be true it has to falsify this phenomenon that's been observed millions of times.

That’s not what ‘falsify’ means. A phenomenon is an object or an event; you cannot falsify one. It is scientific theories that are, and must be, falsifiable.

There is no theory of abiogenesis. There is a conjecture or hypothesis of abiogenesis, which, as you correctly point out, is unfalsifiable. It is unfalsifiable because we do not have, and cannot obtain, observational or experimental data to falsify it with. Scientists are aware of this, which is why they do not present abiogenesis as a true explanation of the origins of life, only as a likely one. To one who does not have a vested interest in denying it, the current hypothesis with respect to abiogenesis does, indeed, seem quite likely.

really sorry to go off subject but dnt know how to private message someone..


novastrike81 thats a kick ass profile pic, wered u get it from????

reply to post by DaveNorris


Go to Tools at the top and you'll see messages to the far left of the options that come up. Click that and you'll have the option to send and view u2u's.

To answer your OT question, you can find anything on the internet; and I mean ANYTHING!