Hi dcarraher, yes, I
am still waiting for your definition of life.
I've cut you some slack to provide this definition as you are a newcomer to this forum.
The question is whether you can distinguish yourself from the usual IDologist\creationist ... by actually providing substantiation for claims made.
No - because you started with something that is unarguably "Life", and ended with more. In the RNA experiment, you started with RNA, which is unarguably "Not Life", and ended up with more "Not Life". QED - Experiments that start with non-life and end up with more non-life = irrelevant to abiogenesis.
And yet, amusingly, you
still have not defined what life is. In order for you to claim that one thing is "
unarguably "Life"" and that something else is "
unarguably "Not Life"" you must have a definition that makes this "unarguable" distinction.
Yet it appears that you cannot define what life is, because you have not posted it, in spite of several requests to do so.
Note that this is a science forum and you are required to substantiate your claims.
Forum Guidelines
What is your definition of life that allows your to make an "unarguable" distinction between life and non-life?
Message 30 Because the experiment starts with something that is clearly non-life, and ends with more of something that is not significantly different. You started with the ability to replicate, and ended with the ability to replicate - you did not add the ability to replicate, nor did you add any other "life-like" characteristics. Ergo, irrelevant to the question of abiogenesis.
How do you know this without knowing what the definition of life is?
Still no definition of life ...
Message 34 Yes. Even those evolutionists who propose an RNA scenario for the origin of life are merely presenting it as a hypothesis. And within the Evolutionary community, it has many detractors who dismiss it as implausible. So, I'm not really stating anything that other evolutionists haven't, re whether self-replicating RNA is relevant to abiogenesis. If you'd care to argue the point further - take it up with them.
Still no definition of life ...
Ah ... finally addressing the issue?
I really have no response to those of who insist that biology and chemistry are so closely related that there is no difference. I'll have more to offer in the next post, but for this post, I'd like to quote physicist Paul Davies, in his book The Eerie Silence:
...
If I find the distinction between chemistry and biology to be pretty clear, at the very least I am not alone. Let's file this one under the heading of "agree to disagree", where you must admit that you are disagreeing with a significant portion of the evolutionary community, not just creationists and "IDiots".
Curiously, even thought the post is titled "Definition of Life" there is
STILL no definition of life given.
Epic failure.
Message 39 Definitions and Measurements
A common thread running through the above posts is regarding the definition and measurement of such terms as "Life", "Information", "Chemistry vs. Biology", etc. One of the most common debating tactics of evolutionists is the demand that, not only must their opponent define and be able to measure these concepts, but that they have to do it on the evolutionist's terms - in a purely materialistic fashion. If they cannot (so the evolutionist argument goes), then they cannot use those terms to criticise evolutionist views.
Curiously, that is how
science is done, with measurements and clearly defined terms.
Let me provide an example:
The sky is blue in my world.
Based on this statement, you can theorize that either I'm a happy guy, or the weather outside is nice, or both. This is "Information". It is not definable, or measurable, in materialistic terms. It is not constrained by or limited to or even contained in the material elements (LCD pixels?) that transmits the information. But it is definitely "Real" - the material universe has changed because of it. But according to the evolutionist, I would not be allowed to assert that the sky is blue, because I am not able to measure the information content of the message.
And IF you cannot measure and quantify the amount of "information" in a statement (or DNA or anything else), THEN you cannot say whether there is
more,
less, an
increase or a
decrease, ...
... and yet you have made these kinds of statements. Therefore you are either making stuff up, and telling falsehoods OR you have measured the things you have claimed to have quantified.
But according to the evolutionist, I would not be allowed to assert that the sky is blue, because I am not able to measure the information content of the message.
Nope.
You can assert that the sky is blue to your hearts content, what you
cannot do is assert that the amount of information in your statement is
more or
less than the information in a claim that the sky is grey or black or a rainbow of colors or shades of red and orange.
All these statements are observations, and they do convey
meaning.
Only if you want to claim that one has
more or
less information than another do you need to have a definition of information that you can quantify and measure.
It is the claim of
more or
less that requires quantification to substantiate.
Evolutionists don't have a large (or even a small) concern with the actual
amount of "information" and whether it is
more or
less in one situation than another, because we are happily willing to consider that the amount of information can (and does) fluctuate, and we do not bind ourselves to simplistic thinking that it can ONLY decrease in one situation, or that condition {A} must have MORE than condition {B} - only IDologists and creationists seem to make this kind of silly claim (silly because they don't
know the quantity that they base the claim on).
Just like you, apparently, don't know what life is that is
quantitatively different from non-life.
Similarly, "Life" is qualitatively different than "Non-Life" even if not in a form that is measurable materialistically. To use an example that has been beat to death (sorry, bad pun), what is the difference between a live cat and dead cat? A quantum of time. Materially they could be exactly identical.
And --
hysterically -- you
STILL have failed to define life.
So you've asked me to provide a "definition" and "measurement" of information, and life, or you will not accept my criticism of this experiment as not showing an increase in (non-material) information, or being irrelevant to the question of (non-materially-constrained) abiogenesis?
Yes, the definition of life specifically, because you made a claim:
Message 16 ... I'm really astonished that evolutionists would care to argue that life is indistinguishable from non-life. ...
This clearly implies that
YOU are able to make such a distinction, and so you should be able to provide a simple definition.
IF you are incapable of providing such a definition, THEN we can all be
highly amused that you would make such a foolish, careless, and silly statement, accusing others of not being able to do something that
YOU cannot do.
Sorry, you've merely confirmed my assertion that EvC is mostly pointless because we cannot accept each other's base premises.
And yet, fascinatingly, you have
FAILED to defined your "base premises" (life, information) so that we can even evaluate them in order to decide whether or not to accept them.
You cannot complain about any failure by anyone to accept information you have not provided.
As a P.S. - One of the posters above states that the RNA has information. My own opinion on the subject (speaking only for myself) is that "material information" is qualitatively different than "non-material" information. RNA has what I call material information - information that is a direct result of its physical/chemical properties. This is the kind of information that even a water molecule has. A Living Cell, on the other hand, has nonmaterial information contained in its DNA - e.g. how to build a protein. The ability to build a copy of itself is not a characteristic of its physical binding chemistry, it is a process that requires messengers and translators. Replicating RNA replicates because of its chemical characteristics, not because of the information it contains that can be interpreted.
And you have still
FAILED to define how you distinguish these kinds of information ...
... you're just making stuff up.
Now, you can
- honestly concede that you do not have a definition of life that allows us to clearly distinguish life from non-life in ALL instances, or
- honestly provide a definition (that can be tested to see if it "unarguably" distinguish life from non-life in ALL instances), OR
- dishonestly continue to dodge the issue, in typical IDologist\creatiionist fashion (and then we will know that you are another typical IDologist\creatiionist that pretends to know things they don't know).
You're call.
Enjoy.
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