The concept of faith

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Time isn't an "ingredient" in the experiment, it's just a condition of space-time.

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That is my point. Time is most certainly a primary ingredient in the naturalist narrative, right? This is why researchers use critters with short life cycles when looking at genetic mutations, isn't it?It seems to me the 'millions of years' is a handy gap filler for those pre-disposed to accept the naturalist narrative where the origin of life is concerned.

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Did we design amino acids? Did we design carbon? I don't see the relevance of the question.

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The difference is that your real time, real life experiments are dealing with pre-existing LIFE and experiments meant to demonstrate (with a high level of certainty) that life arose out of non-life are not. The two are vastly different in scope.

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Would we have to design carbon in order to perform that experiment? Would we have to design the laws of physics? I don't see the great difference you refer to.

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Again, a matter of scope. You are avoiding the point with this line of rebuttal. You are experiment with life as it is, an experiment meant to demonstrate life as it came to be is a more difficult (and assumption laden) task.

It is my understanding, that CS Lewis was a theistic evolutionist. See No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.apologetics.org/acworthletters1.html

Not really. It's simply a condition of spacetime.Waiting around doesn't really do anything. Time isn't an "ingredient" in any sense that I can see. Huh? No, they use them because it's more convenient and less expensive to track changes across generations when the generations are short. It's a convinience thing. It doesn't have anything to do with "time as an ingredient", whatever that would be. A gap-filler? Time itself does nothing. Populations have generations, and each organism has a different generational time.That's the only way that time enters into it - as a reality of space-time, not as a magic force that can do stuff. Life is life. All living things, including these hypothetical living things that we might create in the lab, are based on the same atoms, same elements, same chemistry, same natural processes.The presence of an experimenter's brain somewhere doesn't change the laws of physics, or make an experiment that occurs in the lab not have applicable results to something that occurs or occured in nature. You're just avoiding the issue with these terms. Scope is irrelevant. Scope doesn't change the laws of physics. It's all the laws of physics. It's all the same processes. Those don't change just because an experimenter is in the room. If they did science would be pretty useless, don't you think?

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No, of course not. Like all your apologists they had vast, elaborate networks of logical fallacies (false dillema, circular reasoning, argument from incredulity) with which to inflate their groundless beliefs.

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If you haven't read any of them, how do you know this to be true?This message has been edited by Highlander, 08-13-2005 01:38 PM

Faith hits on a key part of faith, which is that it is to a degree based on experiences of oneself and others, and then put of reasoning on how to interpret those experiences.Anti-faith reasoning is illogical in a lot of respects because it more or less dismisses human religious experience a priori or assumes it is nothing more than a psychological imagination.The problem with such reasoning is that science and demanding scientific evidence limits one to the degree of technological advances, and is thus more or less wholly unsuitable for deciding major "eternal" decisions.For illustration, just consider that we today will be viewed in all likelihood as extremely primitive 300 years from now. So in the greater context of human history, the most advanced people from thier perspective are practically mere savages technologically.So relying on science to be a final or even a reliable arbiter before the technology is advanced is stilly.It is more reasonable to think of human religious experiences as real, and see what the correct interpretation of those experiences is, and that involves the totality of human thinking, including reason to a high degree, and out of that, comes faith in my opinion.

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Huh? No, they use them because it's more convenient and less expensive to track changes across generations when the generations are short. It's a convinience thing. It doesn't have anything to do with "time as an ingredient", whatever that would be.

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Do you read what you type?It is convenient and less expensive to track changes because the generations are SHORT. And time is simply not a factor?You do realize how contradictory that is, don't you?

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That's the only way that time enters into it - as a reality of space-time, not as a magic force that can do stuff.

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Where have I stated or implied time is a magic force that can do stuff? Isn't that what the 'infinite monkey on infinite typewriters over infinite years analogy implies?What I am saying is humans have a short lifespan and our power to observe a series of events which occurred soley due to random, undirected material forces over a vast time period is limited. We have to simulate and in doing so bring certain unproven premises to the table.

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Life is life. All living things, including these hypothetical living things that we might create in the lab, are based on the same atoms, same elements, same chemistry, same natural processes.

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The presence of an experimenter's brain somewhere doesn't change the laws of physics, or make an experiment that occurs in the lab not have applicable results to something that occurs or occured in nature.

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I agree life is bound by the properties of physical matter. Organisms are alive. Matter, in and of itself, is not. Atoms aren't 'alive' until arranged in such a way to be an organism - and even then, the atoms aren't 'alive' by themselves, they are only alive when joined together in a certain way.

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It's all the laws of physics. It's all the same processes. Those don't change just because an experimenter is in the room. If they did science would be pretty useless, don't you think?

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Where have I indicated the laws of physics change because an experimenter is in the room? Could you not put words into my mouth to make your point?I'm saying humans draw conclusions based upon what they observe of the material world. Your experiment deals with what already exists organically. An experiment meant to demonstrate abiogenesis is a tough one, considering that an experimenter must simulate conditions that existed in the far past, and in doing so must bring assumptions to the table.This doesn't mean the experiment cannot produce valid results, it just means that the environment which produced those results was manipulated by an intelligent agent, and caution should be accorded when drawing naturalist conclusions.In short: it is much more difficult to design such an experiment and reach the concrete conclusions, especially where hypothetic first cause is concerned.This message has been edited by Highlander, 08-13-2005 05:49 PMThis message has been edited by Highlander, 08-13-2005 05:52 PM

When did I say I hadn't read them?

I said:

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Have you read any of the great christian apologists, like CS Lewis or Augustine? I doubt it, because you'd realize neither of those men believed what they put forward 'on a whim'.

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You quoted and typed:

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No, of course not. Like all your apologists they had vast, elaborate networks of logical fallacies (false dillema, circular reasoning, argument from incredulity) with which to inflate their groundless beliefs.

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In the experiment? No. To the experimenter? Of course it is. Expermenters only live so long, HL.Time is not a factor in the experiment. There's no need to duplicate "milions of years" if you can duplicate millions of iterations. You've consistently implied that time is the magic fudge factor for evolutionists. If you don't read your own posts, or understand them when you type them, that's really not my issue.I'm not going to wetnurse you through your own discussion so let's drop the "when did I say that?" act, ok? I'm not familiar with any abiogenesis models that require millions of years from start to finish. Certainly the events in question happened a long time ago but why is that a necessary condition to be included in the experiment? Surely the laws of physics don't change over time? Indeed; life is an epiphenomenon of a certain arrangement of chemical reactions. In that sense, life doesn't actually exist; so where again is the barrier that makes it "fundamentally different" to perform this experiment? It's the only logical conclusion from your argument. If you assert that the influence of the experimenter in designing an experiment to test the operation of the laws of physics in a certain situation means that the experiment doesn't apply to the same situation when it occurs naturally, then you must be saying that the laws of physics are different in the lab than in the field.It's the logical conclusion of your line of reasoning, HL. You need to think your arguments through better. Right, such as "the laws of physics are the same then as now, and the same in the lab as in the field." That's pretty much it, actually. Are you asserting that that assumption is incorrect? If so that pretty much shoots science right down the tubes, doesn't it? For instance, we might hold our conclusions tenatively?Allow me to surprise you - we already do that in every field of science. All conclusions are already tentative.Moreover, if the environment of the experiment was manipulated to be like the natural environment, how does the presence of the experimenter taint those results? Are you saying that we can't replicate natural conditions in the lab?

Ah, you did misunderstand. My apologies for not being clear. What I meant was:

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No, of course not (, neither of those men believed what they put forward 'on a whim'.)

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In other words I was agreeing with you, sort of. Not stating that I had not read the words of those men, because I have. There's a copy of "Mere Christianity" on my shelf right now.

Faith isn't arbitrary, though. Gullible people, in their attempt to minimize type I errors, simply accept a lot of nonsense.

I don't see what technology has got to do with religious belief, unless you think God is part of the natural world, and we might find Him with a space probe or something.

We may use rationalism and empiricism to reach conclusions, but it is by faith that we accept these conclusions as truth. I would say that faith is not a method of acquiring information, but rather the decision or action of accepting information as truth. I agree that this is how it is in religious belief. People do not just "believe on a whim" they have their reasons.Does it require faith to believe in such circumstances? Believing IS faith, so yes. As you said, reason alone cannot provide anything that is perfectly certain, but we know that there is a true/false answer to this question so faith is the decision to move that item in question from "uncertain" to "certainly true" or "certainly false". We use faith all the time even if we claim to not "believe" in faith, because we could not function unless we allow ourselves to be certain about some things. We know from experience, that in this particular example of a loving relationship, the relationship can be greatly hindered by a lack of "trust" or "faith" in the love of the other person.

Great. First we have someone defining it out of existence, and now someone's defining it as all belief.Sorry, but there's a categorical difference between my belief in Santa and my belief that I own an '03 Suzuki Bandit 1200.And yes, I can break through the boundary of solipsism.

Sweet! I just bought a 2000 kawasaki Ninja 500R... I LOVE it! Soo much fun... anyway...The difference is empirical evidence... I don't agree with solipsism either, but how do you "break through the boundary" to make something absolutely 100% certain without faith?