Beastt
Legend
Let me assert that your car couldn't run without the aid of the Magic Squirrel. You can explain about flammability ranges of gasoline, the energy released in the combustion chamber when carbon-carbon bonds are replaced with carbon-oxygen bonds. You can explain to me that a gallon of gasoline contains 31,000 calories and that an internal combustion engine is designed to release that energy and use some fraction of it to turn the wheels of your car. But I can always come back and tell you that all of these mechanisms are what the Magic Squirrel uses to make your car run. But in so doing, have I provided any evidence of the Magic Squirrel? Do you believe that your car can't run without the Magic Squirrel? Why not?NASAg03 said:
This is all you're doing in proclaiming that God used the Big Bang and Evolution to create the world and apply diversity to life. Try applying the principles of Occam's Razor instead. The principles of Occam's Razor exist and are utilized because they make sense and they work. If you already understand the mechanisms behind a process and those mechanisms fully explain the process, anything you arbitrarily stack on top is pure conjecture and more than likely, wrong. If I go outside and till the soil, apply fertilizer, provide a bit of shade, the right amount of water, plant the seeds and observe the plants growing, is it because of all that I did which provide for the plant's needs or is it because I chanted a ritual spell whenever I watered the plants?
Stacking unnecessary causes, entities and desires on top of explained phenomena is a practice designed in the hope of keeping your beliefs alive by protecting them from the linear and logical nature of reality.
I'm beginning to think you actually don't see what you're doing with this question. I'm going to ask that you bear with me for a moment while I move the concepts involved to a safer question -- one for which you are far less likely to hold preconceived notions so common to you that you may not even recognize that you hold them. For a moment, lets change this from "Why do we exist", to "Why does water that has been heated and allowed to cool, then freeze faster when subjected to cold than water of the same temperature which wasn't first heated?" We can proceed as if you asked this question of me and I would explain that heating the water reduces the number of dissolved gasses in the water which serve to act as insulators against thermal conduction. Your response, as we see up above is; "You're telling me how but I'm asking you why!".NASAg03 said:
Are you starting to see the problem? You've already decided for yourself that there is a sentient desire behind our existence. And though you're not expressing that directly, that is what you're implying with your question. You're hoping that if you keep asking that question, that I'll begin to conclude the same thing you've concluded -- that there must be a sentience with a purpose behind our existence. But there is no evidence of such a sentience nor is there any evidence of any specific purpose. So now that we've explored why you think this is a valid and pertinent question, allow me to turn things around for you.
Now let me ask you a question, "Why does soil, poured through several feet of standing water, end up in sedimentary layers on the bottom?" Now you can explain to me about how gravitational attraction between the particles in the soil and the planet cause the particles to push against the friction, (drag), caused by the water and how the greater the surface area of the particle, the more drag is created, but that having more mass, the gravitational attraction is greater. And I'm going to respond to you, "Okay. That's the 'how'. I want to know the 'why'." Do you understand the futility of asking such a question once you remove the preconception that there is a sentient desire behind and guiding the process?
We're here because this is where we are. I can talk about nucleotide material, the likelihood of vesicles of fatty acid forming in a water base and the way a particular type of soil called, "montmorillonite clay", has been shown to act as a catalyst to draw raw nucleotide materials into the vesicles where they self assemble into molecules like segments of genetic material. I can explain to you that these molecules can, theoretically, continue to mutate and change until they become not unlike RNA. I can demonstrate that some kinds of RNA are known to have the ability to self replicate and how if a more simplistic "genetic" molecule can mutate and evolve into something closer to RNA, there is no demonstrable reason why this RNA couldn't conceivably mutate into DNA. I can then take you through the genetic mutations and environmental challenges which fuel the process of evolution. But this doesn't satisfy you because it neglects your preconception. It doesn't address your pure assumption that there is a sentience with a cause behind these processes. But just as sediments are filtered by the combined action of gravity and viscosity, the process is fully satisfied simply by explaining the mechanisms. There is no evidence of any sentience or any purpose implied in any of these processes. The process of abiogenesis is every bit as much a chemical process as ammonia and bleach producing chlorine gas.
The ammonia doesn't have an agenda. The bleach doesn't have a purpose in mind. These two cleaning products haven't conspired into formulating a plan to produce a potentially lethal gas.
There is no indication of a sentience or purpose behind the interaction of the two chemicals. And just as there is no indication of a sentience, no purpose and no "why" in the chemical reaction between bleach and ammonia, there is no indication of any sentience, purpose or "why" behind the chemical processes involved in abiogenesis.
I agree. You don't understand. But part of the reason you don't understand is because you are so indoctrinated into your beliefs that you are no longer capable of thinking from outside of those beliefs. It simply befuddles you to try to understand that the processes themselves are all that is necessary because you have always mentally implied a sentient purpose behind the processes. But the processes alone are enough. This is demonstrable. It's not simply some wild, nutcase babbling. The models show it to be perfectly plausible. That's considered evidence. And evidence is necessary before any objective opinion can ever lead to any conclusion.NASAg03 said:
The problem you have in grasping this is one I've experienced myself. When I began to consider a universe without God, I would find myself falling back into old habits without even realizing it. I would project thoughts about this omnipotent entity watching over me. It was so much habit by the time I was 33 that it didn't simply go away. I considered that maybe I had trouble letting go because there was something wrong with the idea that there wasn't a God. But I had the same problem when I got out of high school. After 12-years of getting up 5-days a week to go to school, it took months to shake the feeling that I had to go back.
It requires a level of objectivity you're likely not willing to apply. I don't think you would have any problem with the idea that bleach and ammonia can mix and produce chlorine gas without a sentient purpose behind it. But that doesn't conflict with ideas you've held as true for what I would guess to be, most of your life. Is it "good enough" that there is simply a chemical reaction between bleach and ammonia? Or does there have to be a sentient purpose? What about soil drifting down through water? Can you conceive that this might happen without a sentient purpose behind it? Can sodium chloride added to water, increase the specific gravity of the water without either the salt or the water having a sentient plan? If you can grasp these concepts, you're utilizing objectivity. Now you just have to take that objectivity and pit it against something you've believed with the total exclusion of doubt for a very long time. The same kind of chemical processes very likely lead to the emergence of life on this planet. And those chemical processes didn't think it out. They didn't have a plan, nor was there any sentient purpose behind them acting in accordance with their properties.NASAg03 said:
Because there is no evidence that there is a question beyond that. If you wish to suggest that there is, then you'll need to provide the evidence.NASAg03 said:
It doesn't need to, nor is there any evidence that it does. If people wish to go off chasing after the existence of purposes or entities when no evidence implies their existence, they're welcome to do so. But where does it stop? Should you go in pursuit of evidence for absolutely everything you can imagine? Should science be searching for evidence of Leprechauns, simply so that they can pursue this evidence, if it's ever found? Or should we stick to the scientific method of pursuing only those things for which evidence is known to exist?NASAg03 said:
(I'm going to break this up a bit to save people their sanity. If it gets too long, the only thing anyone gets out of it is some unplanned sleep.)
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