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Author Topic:   Building life in a lab - Synthetic Biologists
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 98 of 152 (239400)
09-01-2005 6:22 AM
Reply to: Message 97 by iano
09-01-2005 6:08 AM


Re: Ring-fencing the start of life
You cannot probe a part of the brain to get a person to say " I am not"
What is your evidence for this? People can be made to believe some pretty bizarre things due to monkeying around with their brain, I'm not so convinced that they might not beleieve that they don't exist. The fact that we haven't done it yet is not solid evidence that it can't be done, that is gapism at its most blatant. similarly with abiogenesis there is a considerable body of work which gives us several reasonable scenarios for abiogenesis, we may never be able to know if one particular scenario is how it actually happened but it is a million miles away from a metaphysically unapproachable concept such as 'first cause'.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 97 by iano, posted 09-01-2005 6:08 AM iano has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 99 by iano, posted 09-01-2005 7:27 AM Wounded King has replied

  
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 100 of 152 (239424)
09-01-2005 7:57 AM
Reply to: Message 99 by iano
09-01-2005 7:27 AM


Re: Ring-fencing the start of life
The fact that we haven't done it yet but presume we can is Scientism at it's most blatant.
Just as well that isn't what I did then.
You might get a person to say the words "I am not". It's probably relatively straightforward - but for them to actually realise they are not, they have to be.
I love that sound the goalposts make when you move them.
No one can know - any experiment will be speculative. It can only say "it could have happened this way".
Which is exactly what I was saying, but the level of the unknown between abiognesis and 'First cause' is considerable.
But not undirectedly - only by using intelligent analysis of what makes up life then setting up and intelligent experiment which intelligently presumes (but cannot know for sure) things about the conditions back then.
You seem to be driving this toward some metaphysical twaddlefest on the impossibility of really 'knowing' anything.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 99 by iano, posted 09-01-2005 7:27 AM iano has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 101 by iano, posted 09-01-2005 8:24 AM Wounded King has replied

  
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 102 of 152 (239441)
09-01-2005 8:38 AM
Reply to: Message 101 by iano
09-01-2005 8:24 AM


Re: Ring-fencing the start of life
They pose causless singularity, Bang for no reason, something from nothing, unknown dimensions etc. All speculation. Precisely the same as abiogenesis.
Wow, you know, I can't think of a single experiment in the field of abiogenesis which resembles any of those aspects associated with theories of the start of the universe in any way. The whole point is that the empirical experiments performed with respect to abiogenesis mean that it isn't all speculation. We may never know for sure exactly how it happened but the more avenues we explore and the more detailed our knowledge becomes the less tentative the likelihhod for certain hypothesis is bound to become. So while we may neve know we may one day be able to make a bloody well informed guess.
I just don't see where knowledge of God is any less tentative than any other sort.
TTFN,
WK

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 Message 101 by iano, posted 09-01-2005 8:24 AM iano has not replied

  
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 149 of 152 (242399)
09-12-2005 7:37 AM
Reply to: Message 148 by iano
09-12-2005 5:57 AM


Re: How do you eant an elephant?
It will not be naturalistic when/if it is found. It will involve the application of intelligence, carefully assembled conditions and countless failed experiments which are modified to push nearer a result. Naturalistic this is not.
Oh of course, I forgot about all those little fairies and goblins that run about casting magic spells to help out in the lab. I wonder if my pet leprechaun can produce some nanogold for me.
Where is the supernatural element in this? The distinction is not between naturalistic and artificial but between the natural and the supernatural.
No matter how tortuous or finagled the neccessary mix of elements and pathways needed for abiogenesis to occur are they will still be more parsimonious than positing a supernatural being interceding in the event. To my mind the leap in credibility is many orders of magnitude.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 148 by iano, posted 09-12-2005 5:57 AM iano has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 150 by iano, posted 09-12-2005 9:06 AM Wounded King has replied

  
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 152 of 152 (242524)
09-12-2005 11:52 AM
Reply to: Message 150 by iano
09-12-2005 9:06 AM


Re: How do you eant an elephant?
Not many believe in fairies.
Evidence? Not as many I am quite prepared to believe but I doubt you have any idea of actual numbers. There are a number of communities in scotland, such as the findhorn community, where fairy belief is widespread. The volume of belief is entirely irrelevant to the supernatural status, or indeed existence, of any particular entity.
To compare the two as you frequently do (if memory serves me correctly), to be or the same order is do YOU no justice.
Your memory doesn't serve you correctly at all.
You may chose to see it as opening up to probabilites something which currently appears improbable.
That isn't how I see it at all. It probably is relatively improbable, improbable things happen all the time. The question is how improbable and which mechanisms are least improbable.
For you it would be a step forward in copperfastening your existing belief (No God). It is illustrative that you might be looking forward to the day when life-in-the-lab occurs will give you further assurance.
I'm not sure why you consider yourself to be familiar with what my beliefs are, especially since you appear to be under the apprehension that you are talking to someone else. One would have to be a very strange sort of atheist to need 'life-in-the-lab' to give them assurance. I doubt that most atheists consider the probability of abiogenesis from one year to the next.
It doesn't make it more probable to presume by even one iota. Not one shred of a hand-up is offered towards the conclusion of life-by-accident by man -designing - life.
No it doesn't make it any more probable, it just allows us to more accurately guage what the probabilities are. It is the creationists who love to make up probabilities off the top of their heads based on bog all evidence and naive assumptions, the better approach is to gather a mounting body of data to allow you to make some reasonable estimates about probabilities involved.
The probability of any particular chemical reaction happening in a particular environment is not affected by whether that environment came about by chance or was created artificially, provided that the environment itself is the same, do you have any concievable reason to assume that it would be?
Nothing designed can be taken to indicate something by accident. That would be, I'm sure, a form of non-sequitur.
I would have thought then that a suitable corrolary would be that since nothing designed could be used to 'indicate', however you are using that term, something by 'accident' all intelligent design arguments must be based on the a priori assumption that what they are looking at is designed, the very thing which they are supposed to be showing.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 150 by iano, posted 09-12-2005 9:06 AM iano has not replied

  
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