What does it mean for something to be possible, plausible, or probable?

[Loudmouth]

As for abiogenesis, it is just a void with pure speculation.
And again - being precise - it is not a hypothesis nor are there any hypotheses for it.

That's clearly false. I can think of two hypotheses off the top of my head.

Hypothesis #1: Natural processes can produce complex organic molecules through abiotic processes.
Confirmation: The Miller-Urey experiment.

Hypothesis #2: Randomly assembled RNA molecules will have activities needed for RNA replication.
Confirmation: Randomly assembled RNA molecules in experiments have been confirmed to have RNA ligase activity, a needed component for RNA replication:
Structurally complex and highly active RNA ligases derived from random RNA sequences. - PubMed - NCBI

I can find more, if you want. Contrary to your claims, abiogenesis research is full of testable hypotheses that have been supported and are still being tested.

 

[Mountainmike]

Miller Urey is not even close to abiogenesis ,which is spontaneous creation of a first cell.

A cell in chemical pathway terms, even for the simplest cell, is bigger and more sophisticated than most of the chemical factories in an entire country put together, which abiogenesis supposes happened as a blind accident.

So abiogenesis..that is the first cell ( or cells if you suppose that the first cells reproduced meiotically)
Is not even a hypothesis.

You have no proposed pathway, no reducible forms conjectured, nor do you have a testable conjecture. You need that for it to be a hypothesis.

So Abiogenesis is just the name for a gaping hole in an apriori conjecture of life as a biochemical accident.

Study science please, and what hypotheses and theories are.

That's clearly false. I can think of two hypotheses off the top of my head.

Hypothesis #1: Natural processes can produce complex organic molecules through abiotic processes.
Confirmation: The Miller-Urey experiment.

Hypothesis #2: Randomly assembled RNA molecules will have activities needed for RNA replication.
Confirmation: Randomly assembled RNA molecules in experiments have been confirmed to have RNA ligase activity, a needed component for RNA replication:
Structurally complex and highly active RNA ligases derived from random RNA sequences. - PubMed - NCBI

I can find more, if you want. Contrary to your claims, abiogenesis research is full of testable hypotheses that have been supported and are still being tested.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Miller Urey is not even close to abiogenesis ,which is spontaneous creation of a first cell.

Miller-Urey was just the eye-opener, showing that complex organic chemicals were not necessarily the product of biological metabolism. It wasn't realistic for early Earth. But since then we've found even more of the complex 'building blocks' of life in meteorites, in interstellar space, and in more realistic early Earth simulations.

Self-assembly of lipid cell membranes (both single and double-layered) is demonstrable fact, but the assembly of simple cells is only one abiogenesis hypothesis of several being investigated. In the others, non-cellular replicators are the initial products of abiogenesis (i.e. the first life), and encapsulation in a vesicle (cell membrane) is an evolutionary step.

A cell in chemical pathway terms, even for the simplest cell, is bigger and more sophisticated than most of the chemical factories in an entire country put together, which abiogenesis supposes happened as a blind accident.

You're describing a cell after 3.5 billion years of evolution. The earliest cells would have been far simpler.

You have no proposed pathway, no reducible forms conjectured, nor do you have a testable conjecture. You need that for it to be a hypothesis.

So Abiogenesis is just the name for a gaping hole in an apriori conjecture of life as a biochemical accident.

Study science please, and what hypotheses and theories are.

You give the impression of someone who has missed the last 60 years of abiogenesis research - here are some links that might help bring you up to date:

How Life on Earth Began
How Did Evolution Begin?
A New Physics Theory of Life
Artificial Cells that Replicate Themselves
From Self-Assembled Vesicles to Protocells

There's plenty more out there if you care to Google it.

 

[FredVB]

Are you aware that you can't make a list of nouns and expect it to be accepted as evidence without any explanation?
It isn't us who is refusing to take this step. It is you who is refusing to take the step to show how the nose was created by God.

Speaking of necessary existence is not making a noun and expecting its acceptance. The claim there is necessary existence is absolutely valid, if there were not that, nothing would ever exist, period. This being dismissed is without any logic. How this with being understood as the Creator would make all things that the universe consists of is from unique capacity that does not need us to understand it, or have any way to explain it, yet necessarily that ability would be one of the things without limit that characterize that necessary being.

Basically (no offence intended, just a technical term) "God" is a "black box". It is the explanation that you don't need, want or can explain... it just works. Whatever you need from it, it does.
"How did it all begin? God!" That doesn't tell you anything, and you can neither verify or falsify it.
So I wouldn't call it an "adequate" explanation.
But atheists can provide concepts that do exactly the same. My personal favorite is "primal chaos", which is, basically, also just a "black box". I can use it as explanation whenever I do not have any other explanation.
And I am sure that resurrection from the dead would be a huge point in convincing atheists. The problem is: all you do have is claims about resurrection from the dead.
I hope you see why this is kind of a deal-breaker for people who tend to the skeptical spectrum?

I would call that argument for the necessary being absolutely what works, and this is before identifying God that is revealed to humanity as that, this explains what cannot be explained at all ever without this. So your discussion without this always remains unconvincing, except to some extent to some who think rather like you.

There are resurrection accounts, but referring to resurrection as evidence is foremost having the resurrection of Jesus to be considered. It is having strong basis to say that his followers at that time all really saw him after that burial and when he was said to be risen, they all changed to be bold witnesses of that, and no one however antagonistic of this emerging Christianity ever dealt with the evidence of that empty tomb, and no dead body of Jesus was left.

 

[Radrook]

Actually, the whole area of plausibility and possibilty is irrelevant to atheism.
Neither are explanations relevant since they have all been rejected beforehand.

 

[Radrook]

Speaking of necessary existence is not making a noun and expecting its acceptance. The claim there is necessary existence is absolutely valid, if there were not that, nothing would ever exist, period.

So because things exist it is impossible for a condition of nothing to exist? How does things existing make nothing impossible to exist? Obviously things exist. It's the impossibility part I don't understand.

 

[FredVB]

So because things exist it is impossible for a condition of nothing to exist? How does things existing make nothing impossible to exist? Obviously things exist. It's the impossibility part I don't understand.

Regardless that we don't understand it, God necessarily exists, the necessary existence. We may not have the capacity to reason out why the existence is necessary, but we KNOW that absolute nonexistence cannot bring about existence, that is impossible. There are impossible things, such as circles that are squares, existence shows there is necessary existence to explain it. It is impossible for the necessary existence to not exist, and that existence is eternal and unlimited, as being necessary existence would mean that. So nowhere is there absolute nonexistence.

 

[Radrook]

Regardless that we don't understand it, God necessarily exists, the necessary existence. We may not have the capacity to reason out why the existence is necessary, but we KNOW that absolute nonexistence cannot bring about existence, that is impossible. There are impossible things, such as circles that are squares, existence shows there is necessary existence to explain it. It is impossible for the necessary existence to not exist, and that existence is eternal and unlimited, as being necessary existence would mean that. So nowhere is there absolute nonexistence.

Prior to God creating EVERYTHING! What existed outside of God?

 

[Loudmouth]

Miller Urey is not even close to abiogenesis ,which is spontaneous creation of a first cell.

No single hypothesis is the whole theory. You asked for testable hypotheses, and that is what I gave you.

You have no proposed pathway, no reducible forms conjectured, nor do you have a testable conjecture. You need that for it to be a hypothesis.

There are multiple proposed pathways in modern abiogenesis research, and they break down into two camps. The first is the RNA world camp where genetics occurs first. We can even test hypotheses as to the activity of RNA molecules, and they do have both enzymatic and genetic properties. The second camp is the metabolism first camp. They are looking at proteins that metabolize other molecules which then form the basis for reactions in genetic systems.

Anyone who claims that there are no proposed pathways in abiogenesis research simply don't know the science.

So Abiogenesis is just the name for a gaping hole in an apriori conjecture of life as a biochemical accident.

Abiogenesis is just one explanation for the origin of life. It just happens to be the only one conducive to scientific research. How would you propose that scientists test your claims as to the origin of life?

Study science please, and what hypotheses and theories are.

My irony meter just exploded.

 

[Loudmouth]

Actually, the whole area of plausibility and possibilty is irrelevant to atheism.
Neither are explanations relevant since they have all been rejected beforehand.

So says the person who rejects evolution and abiogenesis out of hand, and refuses to even consider it.

 

[FredVB]

Regardless that we don't understand it, God necessarily exists, the necessary existence. We may not have the capacity to reason out why the existence is necessary, but we KNOW that absolute nonexistence cannot bring about existence, that is impossible. As there is impossibility for some things to exist, such as there being the existence of circles that are squares, existence shows there is necessary existence to explain it. It is impossible for the necessary existence to not exist, and that existence is eternal and unlimited, as being necessary existence would mean that. So nowhere is there absolute nonexistence.

Prior to God creating EVERYTHING! What existed outside of God?

What is being asked here? The discussion about necessary existence does not have room for anything else to be conceived of existing before necessary being. Necessary being exists without dependence on anything external to that existence. This existence is eternal and infinite, being unlimited, necessarily, or this wouldn't be necessary existence. And this being has capacity to create more existence further, without limit of that capacity of course, otherwise there is still no explanation for anything in the universe, as this universe does not fill the role of this necessary existence, not being eternal and infinite, and with the infinite capacities to create and organize intelligently.

What is just in this universe might be subject, from some such as there could be among us, to observation or testing, but there isn't this possibility for what is transcendent to this universe, and there would be such transcendence.

 

[FredVB]

Actually, the whole area of plausibility and possibilty is irrelevant to atheism.
Neither are explanations relevant since they have all been rejected beforehand.

Is the rejection relevant, either way?

So says the person who rejects evolution and abiogenesis out of hand, and refuses to even consider it.

Yet if discussion of such is not dismissed, there should not be rejection of bases observed by others for creationist beginnings, for that sake alone. Still when discussion of necessary being is brought up, it is with recklessly not giving it understanding in seriousness, or dismissive disregard of it.

 

[lesliedellow]

I think I will stick with the dictionary definition of those words, rather than conduct a long debate with myself to decide whether I dare use them. Trying to introduce that kind of precision into a natural language would result in nothing ever been written. At least nothing more than three or four sentences long.

It probably(!) couldn't be done anyway, because natural languages are just not designed to carry the weight you are trying to place upon them.

 

[FredVB]

Yet the weighty subject of God, which would have profound meaning for us, would be subject to such language that gives meaning beyond what is meant originally, as in the dictionary, to words such as "nothing", in such argument counter to what I post. With the simple understanding of the words, everything cannot come from nothing, as new meanings to the words are used to have it assumed that everything began without our need to consider cause before it, rather there was something always, which explains everything now. I don't have to give further meaning to those words. And God then isn't to be just dismissed, in what is considered.

 

[FredVB]

Those who are not believers in this forum tell believers they should explain their bases to justify their beliefs, though it is known those won't be accepted, with it being said they themselves have bases that justify their position from scientific things that can't be denied, and those things said by those who try showing any faultiness in those things are criticized then. Yet the greatest question is one they will just act like they don't understand, or they ignore or say it is of no importance to them. Where did everything come from? That is, unless there is what there always was, and always will be, to explain everything otherwise, there is nothing to explain it all, there can't have been nothing, and then everything just started, yet the universe did start (and there was low enough entropy for all the orderly complexity to function so well from that, including in those who claim they can know the truth of such things.) There must then be what is beyond the universe, which always was, and always will be. That is not being dealt with by those who remain unbelievers, while as here they go on like they have the answers and others can't answer with basis for their alternative.

 

[AnotherAtheist]

Miller Urey is not even close to abiogenesis ,which is spontaneous creation of a first cell.

A cell in chemical pathway terms, even for the simplest cell, is bigger and more sophisticated than most of the chemical factories in an entire country put together, which abiogenesis supposes happened as a blind accident.

So abiogenesis..that is the first cell ( or cells if you suppose that the first cells reproduced meiotically)
Is not even a hypothesis.

You have no proposed pathway, no reducible forms conjectured, nor do you have a testable conjecture. You need that for it to be a hypothesis.

So Abiogenesis is just the name for a gaping hole in an apriori conjecture of life as a biochemical accident.

Study science please, and what hypotheses and theories are.

The first cell in abiogenesis would be far simpler than any currently existing life form.

That does not argue against abiogenesis. It just shows that the first cells are now extinct.

As an example of abiogenesis theory, the first cells are not likely to have been able to reproduce by themselves; it is much more likely that they would have incidentally reproduced when cells were physically disrupted by movement (etc.) in the natural world.

Yes, we know what science and what hypotheses and theories are. You need to look into actual theories of abiogenesis are, rather than ridiculous straw men such as a complex cell coming out of nowhere.

 

[AnotherAtheist]

Those who are not believers in this forum tell believers they should explain their bases to justify their beliefs, though it is known those won't be accepted, with it being said they themselves have bases that justify their position from scientific things that can't be denied, and those things said by those who try showing any faultiness in those things are criticized then. Yet the greatest question is one they will just act like they don't understand, or they ignore or say it is of no importance to them. Where did everything come from? That is, unless there is what there always was, and always will be, to explain everything otherwise, there is nothing to explain it all, there can't have been nothing, and then everything just started, yet the universe did start (and there was low enough entropy for all the orderly complexity to function so well from that, including in those who claim they can know the truth of such things.) There must then be what is beyond the universe, which always was, and always will be. That is not being dealt with by those who remain unbelievers, while as here they go on like they have the answers and others can't answer with basis for their alternative.

Science is working on 'where did it all come from'. Big bang theory. Abiogenesis. Etc. Loads of work being done and better and better theories all the time. This is important to me.

My biases is that I prefer theories that are consistent with sufficiently large amounts of evidence and which make testable predictions. I prefer this to claims of 'fact' where the fact is easily shown to be false. If you are annoyed that we unbelievers seem to think that we have the answers and you don't, then how can you show that your answers are better than mine?

 

[Radagast]

But is that what the word “possible” really means?

Well, yes. Something is possible if it is not impossible. That means there's a "possible world" in which it is true.

Arguing beyond that depends on what you think the metaphysical status of possible worlds is.

We know, based on the study of evolution and biology, that Unicorns are not possible beings in our universe

Well, they are possible, in the sense that a different history could have produced them (Craig is using "possible" in the standard philosophical sense here).

 

[AnotherAtheist]

Well, they are possible, in the sense that a different history could have produced them (Craig is using "possible" in the standard philosophical sense here).

It's also possible that they existed but are extinct and we never found a fossil. It is remarkably unlikely though, in my opinion.

 

[Radagast]

It's also possible that they existed but are extinct and we never found a fossil. It is remarkably unlikely though, in my opinion.

You're using "possible" in a different sense. Ha, ha, nice debating trick, but not really meaningful.

Craig is, of course, using "possible" in the philosophical sense. This is different from the probabilistic meaning of "possible."

P: P is true in this world (e.g. cats exist)
~P: P is false in this world (e.g. unicorns exist)
☐P: P is necessarily true, i.e. true in every possible world (e.g. 2 + 2 = 4)
☐~P: P is impossible (necessarily false), i.e. false in every possible world (e.g. 2 + 2 = 5)
~☐~P: P is possible (not impossible), i.e. true in some possible world (e.g. unicorns exist)