I was simply pointing out that since the universe is not eternal, a cause for it has to exist which is. That's the only way to escape an infinite regress - otherwise you're just stuck with asking "Well, who made that?", forever.
Abiogenesis and life on Earth - thoughts and pet theories?
- Thread starter Asbo Zaprudder
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Or, we continue to learn and eventually figure out how things work.
We don’t know that it isn’t.
Cosmic inflation model, what is commonly refered to as the Big Bang, doesn’t describe the moments before the known universe rapidly inflated.
How much before there is, we haven’t got the slightest clue yet and we may never.
A „who“ presupposition is a very blatant human bias.
What caused this? Oh, it must be something just like me! No thanks.
This is where I struggle with religion.
Endosymbiosis is not abiogenesis by any means, but it is possibly of interest to those posting here -
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk1075
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk1075
Turtles all the way down, as one story goes.
I have been enjoying a series by an astrophysicist about their process on observing the universe. Quite fascinating.
What's your point?
The better formulation is "Why is that?" anyway. "Who" is an unnecessary assumption.
Yeah, all eukaryotes (including us) appear to be a product of symbiogenesis, which allowed our archaea ancestors to survive and to exploit the increasing levels of oxygen produced by cyanobacteria. Chloroplasts in plants are another example. Of course, in the fictional Star Wars galaxy, there are the midi-chlorians, which George Lucas acknowledged are based on mitochondria.
Which one?
I think Toba’s choke point may have inspired some early myths
Some recent finds about evolution:
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-unraveling-life-key-breakthroughs-years.html
Some recent finds about evolution:
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-unraveling-life-key-breakthroughs-years.html
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Dr. Hugh Ross.
He is an open Christian, but he discusses the origins of the universe, looking at how the universe functions in relationship to life on Earth.
Ross is an old-Earth creationist who rejects evolution by natural selection and tries to shoehorn science into compliance with the Old Testament by interpreting the days (yamim) of Genesis as being akin to geologic ages. His views seem redolent of confirmation bias, but, then, the science around life's origin is non-falsifiable in any case - even if we could cook up membranes, inheritance, metabolism and protein synthesis experimentally and combine them into a living cell. He does agree with most scientific authorities that intelligent design should not be taught in schools as science. For that, we should be truly thankful.
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I don't agree with all of his presentations, but he is an interesting and I have garner much knowledge form him and then go and read the documents he cites.
So, I will take that as a positive and an opportunity to learn.
I was actually asking about what series you were enjoying. Apologies. Sometimes in my desire for brevity I'm not as clear as I intended.
I wasn't brought up in a "religious" family, and it never took root in my brain. And now that I have read a bit on the archeology of the ancient Middle East, religion just doesn't factor into my thinking at all.
A gene (possibly more than one) that regulates a tendency towards religiosity has been proposed. It might be selected for if it enhanced social cohesion and increased the likelihood of it being propagated. Some people do seem to experience religious euphoria which is quite intoxicating. I've felt it myself, but recognised it as likely wholely originating in the limbic system of my brain rather being induced by some external divine agency.
There are three flavors of creationists—young earth, old-earth, and “fully gifted creationists” who take whatever science says as a divine playbook—just short of deists. (Providentialists).
I think a way to talk about abiogenesis is to ask if supernatural beings cause the lime encrustations inside the faucets of creationists. No? Then talk about smokers and Unilever nozzles—and double helix vortices—one creationist didn’t think nature could do those.
Did the supernatural do tornado outbreaks? or was it just blind nature that allows rain and funnels to fall on the just and unjust.
The biggest opening may be due to COVID.
I can just hear an individual talk about Fauci or someone with gain of function research: “One of these days, a white-coat’s lab is going to churn up some superbug *by accident*
A proponent of abiogenesis then says “bingo—that’s all we are talking about here.”
An early Earth hostile to existing life is close to what you see in labs…violent, churning—not a “warm pond” where something just happens.
I don’t blame folks for not buying into that.
Bob Ballard’s discovery of smokers and tubeworms is the best thing to happen since Darwin’s finches.
Something else to consider:
In the popular American imagination, an atheist is not someone who doesn’t believe in the divine—that’s Uncle Bob who drinks and doesn’t go to church.
No, an atheist is Lestat…a powdered wig wearing slave-owner who wears puffy shirts and is a member of a Hellfire club—a social darwinist who looks down upon the populace even as did Gorgeous George (a wrestler who was also a shrink).
Bill Maher said it best when he said “we’re atheists, not vampires.”
Williams Jennings Bryan—though wrong—had his heart in the right place. He feared social darwinists as being corrosive. It wasn’t just religious intolerance.
The evolution OF evolution is interesting that way. A lot of skeptics are libertarians who also have few ties to their fellow man.
There was a movie about Darwin a decade or two back where Toby Jones played Huxley almost as a villain.
That baggage has tainted things ever since.
For years, the only free thought movement had nothing but scowling men behind it.
Then came folks like Sagan, and Neil deGrasse Tyson and Adam Savage.
They knew how to share wonder—but more importantly…
They knew how to smile.
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We always see the past coloured by the lens of contemporary and local or global concerns. Most Darwinists are not the social kind, but I couldn't guess the proportion. I suspect many of the latter just latch onto it to promote their own authoritarian agenda.
There are times I do wonder if there is a designer with a crazed sense of humor—thus, three-pak shakur:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Funnymemes...ll_struggle_not_to_laugh_when_he_looks_at_me/
Please tell me this is photoshop…this cat better have more than nine lives…or it’s creator is going to have its eyes gouged out come the afterlife…
https://www.reddit.com/r/Funnymemes...ll_struggle_not_to_laugh_when_he_looks_at_me/
Please tell me this is photoshop…this cat better have more than nine lives…or it’s creator is going to have its eyes gouged out come the afterlife…
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Interesting, I didn't know that gastropods couldn't hear sound.