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Inevitable problem with abiogenesis

Doveaman

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It's a possibility, but it just sets the same situation back to some other place.
Even so, this would have no effect on the origin of life on earth.

All life on earth is observed to have come from life, and there is nothing to suggests otherwise.

This is why scientists are searching outside of earth to find the origin of life on earth.

They are searching for God.
 
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essentialsaltes

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All life on earth is observed to have come from life, and there is nothing to suggests otherwise.

We know there was a time when there was no biological life on earth. And then there was.

Either earthlife came from non-life, or it came from somewhere else. If it came from somewhere else, then that life came from non-life.

This is why scientists are searching outside of earth to find the origin of life on earth.

That's not what most scientists studying the problem are doing.
 
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Chriliman

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Ow dear.....

Falsifiability of ideas isn't about the ideas being right or wrong.
It is about them being testable / verifiable.
It is about being able to tell if they are right or wrong. It is about having the potential of being shown false IF it is in fact false.

My undetectable pet dragon is an unfalsifiable proposition: you can't detect it, so you can't prove he exists. You also can't prove he does not exist. In other words: the idea of said dragon being real is untestable and thus unfalsifiable.

Now consider a statement like "product X causes cancer".
Now that IS a statement that is falsifiable. If that proposition is wrong, then you should be able to show it wrong... you can TEST it. You can take a bunch of lab rats and feed it product X and then see if they get cancer.

If the statement is wrong, you could SHOW it to be wrong. There is a pathway for doing so.
If the statement is accurate, you could SHOW it to be accurate. There is a pathway for doing so.


Get it now?



No. Falsifiability is what enables us to distinguish that which is true from that which is false.

In fact, you wouldn't even know "the truth about" a thing, if the thing is unfalsifiable.
That's the entire point of falsifiability... to be able to tell if it is truth or not.



"know"? I think you spelled "believe" wrong.

I already understood, but thanks for the rehash.

The claim 'God exists' can only be shown to be true, if indeed God exists.

It cannot be shown to be false. Same with your pet dragon if you never choose to disclose the truth about your pet dragon. (The truth being it does not exist as a material animal, it does exist in your thoughts though ;)
 
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Chriliman

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Ok, life is self-existent - which makes the question "where did life come from?" obsolete, in the first place.

Not necessarily, if life on earth came from an eternal life source(God) then learning more and becoming aware of that eternal life source becomes very important to further our understanding of reality.
 
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Chriliman

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We know there was a time when there was no biological life on earth. And then there was.

Either earthlife came from non-life, or it came from somewhere else. If it came from somewhere else, then that life came from non-life.



That's not what most scientists studying the problem are doing.

You're missing the possibility that the 'somewhere else' is an eternal life source.
 
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Chriliman

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No, no....

Rather: he's never true nore is he ever false.
That's kind of the entire thing with unfalsifiable propositions: they can't be tested in any way. They can't be shown to be correct and they can't be shown to be false.

Just like my undetectable pet dragon.

When a proposition becomes known to be true, it can no longer be falsifiable. This is simple logic.
 
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Speedwell

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Not necessarily, if life on earth came from an eternal life source(God) then learning more and becoming aware of that eternal life source becomes very important to further our understanding of reality.
But that "life force" could work just as well with a collection of organic chemicals as with a handful of dust.
 
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Nihilist Virus

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Right so if we take all the organic component elements and shuffle them repeatedly (without the assistance of intelligence or design as is present in a lab), allowing for covalent and hydrogen bonding to take place, eventually we should come up with a self-replicating organic molecule in nature outside of a living system. Right? Even though we have never found a single case or have evidence that infers it actually ever happened. But even so, we should believe the made up hypothesis driven historical narrative imposed on the actual facts. Is that it? Hmmm?

This is currently a gap in scientific knowledge. You should not hold a positive belief here. The proof of concept has not yet been produced. We are only saying that it's not difficult to envision how it could have happened. That is the first step in replicating the event.
 
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Nihilist Virus

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Are you saying it's not possible to demonstrate that non-life came from life?

Ever heard of a miscarriage?
But it would explain what life came from. Life came from life.

If we can locate the original form of life that gave rise to life on earth, I believe we will find God.

God is a life form? Could you name one characteristic of life that applies to God?
 
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Astrophile

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Didn't say it would prove organic compounds couldn't have originated non-biologically. I said it would prove abiogenesis could happen through intentional conscious means.

I didn't say that it couldn't. What I said was that the experiment wouldn't prove that abiogenesis could happen only through intentional conscious means.
 
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Chriliman

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I didn't say that it couldn't. What I said was that the experiment wouldn't prove that abiogenesis could happen only through intentional conscious means.

I see, yes it would prove it could happen through intentional conscious means, but that doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility that it happened apart from all conscious intention.

However, it'd still be impossible to demonstrate that it happened apart from all conscious intention, since conscious intention is required to demonstrate/comprehend anything.

So again, you're welcome to believe in things that can't possibly be demonstrated, but most of us want to be able to know that our beliefs are true via verification or demonstration.
 
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Astrophile

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If life from exclusive nonlife is true then God is falsified. Therefore God can be falsified and your statement above is false.

You appear to be adopting the hypothesis of vitalism, the idea that 'life' is an independent (and perhaps supernatural) entity that has to be introduced from outside (by God?) into a chemical system to make it operate. So far as I know, biologists rejected this idea during the 19th century, and they now regard life as an emergent property of complex chemical systems. If this view is correct, then the origin of life from non-living matter is different only in degree from any other evolutionary increase in complexity, and it no more disproves the existence of God than any other natural process.
 
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essentialsaltes

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You're missing the possibility that the 'somewhere else' is an eternal life source.

Is this 'life source' biologically alive or not? If it's not alive, then we have life coming from non-life.

If you're talking about some sort of gods, I don't think their followers generally believe them to be biologically alive.
 
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Astrophile

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It is akin to discovering a dead body, multiple stab wounds, a knife sticking out of her chest, blood all over and bloody footprints exiting to room and assuming we cannot deduce a murder because we do not know the identity of the perp. Therefore it must be natural causes. In both cases, you have your mind made up in spite of the evidence. Not because of the evidence.

Again, your analogy fails. We have all read about murders or have seen animals killed, so your analogy of deducing murder from the evidence is reasonable. However, none of us have ever seen a god create a universe, or even something smaller such as a tree, out of nothing, so it is not reasonable to infer that the universe must have been created by a god. If you had eye-witness accounts of God at work, and if the eye-witness had seen God producing something like a universe, then you would have a case.
 
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Astrophile

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I see, yes it would prove it could happen through intentional conscious means, but that doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility that it happened apart from all conscious intention.

However, it'd still be impossible to demonstrate that it happened apart from all conscious intention, since conscious intention is required to demonstrate/comprehend anything.

Yes, I agree. If scientists could demonstrate the occurrence of abiogenesis in a biological or chemical laboratory, that wouldn't disprove the existence of God. However, I think that you are still missing the point. The experiment would show what organic compounds were necessary to start the process of abiogenesis, and what sort of environment was necessary for abiogenesis to occur. The fact that scientists needed conscious intention to produce these necessary organic compounds and the appropriate environment for abiogenesis wouldn't prove that the same compounds could not be synthesised or that the same appropriate environment could not exist on the Hadean or Archean Earth without conscious intention.

So again, you're welcome to believe in things that can't possibly be demonstrated, but most of us want to be able to know that our beliefs are true via verification or demonstration.

It depends how you think God created life. If He created life as scientists would do it, using an assemblage of organic compounds in a laboratory, then the fact that scientists had succeeded in replicating the process would be evidence that God did it in that way. If, on the other hand, you believe that God created life supernaturally, then a scientific demonstration of abiogenesis would be irrelevant to the question and would do nothing to verify the belief or to demonstrate the process of creation. The experiment would only succeed in proving that abiogenesis can be achieved without supernatural powers.
 
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Chriliman

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Yes, I agree. If scientists could demonstrate the occurrence of abiogenesis in a biological or chemical laboratory, that wouldn't disprove the existence of God. However, I think that you are still missing the point. The experiment would show what organic compounds were necessary to start the process of abiogenesis, and what sort of environment was necessary for abiogenesis to occur. The fact that scientists needed conscious intention to produce these necessary organic compounds and the appropriate environment for abiogenesis wouldn't prove that the same compounds could not be synthesised or that the same appropriate environment could not exist on the Hadean or Archean Earth without conscious intention.



It depends how you think God created life. If He created life as scientists would do it, using an assemblage of organic compounds in a laboratory, then the fact that scientists had succeeded in replicating the process would be evidence that God did it in that way. If, on the other hand, you believe that God created life supernaturally, then a scientific demonstration of abiogenesis would be irrelevant to the question and would do nothing to verify the belief or to demonstrate the process of creation. The experiment would only succeed in proving that abiogenesis can be achieved without supernatural powers.

Scripture supports the idea that God uses natural elements to create the necessary forms for life to arise and this happens because of what God does to make it happen. If scientists eventually figure out how He did it, I can only hope they do it to humbly glorify him and not out of selfish pride among themselves.
 
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Chriliman

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Is this 'life source' biologically alive or not? If it's not alive, then we have life coming from non-life.

If you're talking about some sort of gods, I don't think their followers generally believe them to be biologically alive.

Haven't you heard of the body of Christ aka the church? It's biologically alive.
 
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quatona

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Are you saying it's not possible to demonstrate that non-life came from life?
No, I am not saying this.
But it would explain what life came from. Life came from life.
Then it does not explain where life came from.



If we can locate the original form of life that gave rise to life on earth, I believe we will find God.
Then you still wouldn´t have explained where life came from. You have just moved the goalposts from "origin of life" to "origin of a particular form of life".
 
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