Christopher, you stated that "atheist means... not being any
kind of theist." This definition is faulty, because according
to it, deists and pantheists are atheists.
What is the basis for your belief that life came from non-life
apart from the input of intelligence?
Can you name any atheists that think the first lifeform was
designed by an intelligent entity or entities? I would like to
get my hands on any atheists' writings to that effect.
You are not, by any chance, right now thinking of Crick, are you?
In this passage, he says "the origin of life appears at the moment
to be almost a miracle," not that it _was_ a miracle:
Crick, Francis. 1981. _Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature_ (NY:
Simon and Schuster), 192pp. Crick was a winner of the 1962 Nobel
Prize for Physiology or Medicine. On 88:
Only if life was very easy to start, because there is in
fact some rather direct pathway through the maze of
possibilities, are we likely to be able to reproduce it in
laboratories, at least in the immediate future. An honest
man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could
only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at
the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the
conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to
get it going. ....at the present time we can only say that
we cannot decide whether the origin of life on earth was an
extremely unlikely event or almost a certainty or any
possibility in between these two extremes. If it was highly
likely, there is no problem. But if it turns out that it was
rather unlikely, then we are compelled to consider whether
it might have arisen in other places in the universe where
possibly, for one reason or another, conditions were more
favorable.
Perhaps Hoyle crossed your mind as you pondered my question and
considered Crick's suggestion that perhaps life arose somewhere
other than on earth. However, I read Hoyle to say that he
believes in an entity similar to one of the Nordic or Greek gods,
or modern Hinduism's Brahma. See his 1983 _The Intelligent
Universe_, 236-7.
Hoyle was an intelligent design person
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.4.21L.01.0008260947160.377959-100000%40irix1.gl.umbc.edu
Hoyle's Boeing 747 illustration
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.4.10A.B3.9911112150170.459922-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu
I will grant that some theists have, in the words of this
passage, accepted that "life arose from inanimate matter through
a series of physico-chemical processes no different from those we
can observe today":
Hearn, Walter R. and Richard A. Hendry. 1960. "The Origin of
Life" in _Evolution and Christian Thought Today_, Russell L.
Mixter ed. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company), 222pp, 53-70. On 67-70:
While there is still much uncertainty about these things,
there is no reason to believe that logically necessary
"gaps" will remain as our understanding develops. The
possibility of doing experiments to settle some of these
questions is now fairly good, and many scientists are
interested in doing them. This does not mean that
scientists will necessarily ever be able to "create life,"
although this certainly seems within the range of scientific
possibility; it does mean, however, that reputable
scientists _do_ have faith that life arose from inanimate
matter through a series of physico-chemical processes no
different from those we can observe today. If Christians
cannot accept this, at least as a legitimate hypothesis,
there will inevitably be conflict at this point.
HOW DID LIFE ORIGINATE? BIBLICAL PASSAGES
The emphasis of the entire Bible is on an omnipotent God who
is the Author of the whole universe and all that it
contains. The explicit passages in Genesis describe his
creative activity in the form of a brief but beautifully
poetic narrative, emphasizing his divine purpose and the
orderliness of his plan as it unfolds. It seems to the
authors of this chapter, who are biochemists and perhaps
prejudiced by their scientific training, that the Bible
gives little specific information about the _ways_ in which
God has worked in nature, possibly because such details are
irrelevant to the major theme of his revelation of himself.
The type of physico-chemical mechanisms he may have used in
the creation of life seems to be left as an open question.
The Bible does unequivocally state that God _is_ the Creator
and that therefore we are indebted to him and responsible to
him; this statement is intended to have the same impact on
all men whether or not they understand the mechanism of
enzyme synthesis or the thermodynamics of open systems. Men
may believe in him as Creator or reject him, but they cannot
legitimately claim to do so on the grounds of their
understanding or lack of understanding of nature. It does
seem clear that the biblical description of God's creative
activity may include an instantaneous, explosive, _ex
nihilo_ type as well as a sustaining or developing type;
admittedly our word symbols become inadequate as we try to
grasp the significance of either of these concepts. Some
writers use the term "special creation" for the first type,
and many "creationists" seem to place their major emphasis
on special creation.
A CHRISTIAN VIEW OF THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
Many devout Christians have found little difficulty in
accepting the evidence for the age of the earth presented in
an earlier chapter and the gradual development of living
forms to be discussed in subsequent chapters, regarding this
as an illustration of God's use of natural forces in a
process of continuous creative activity. Where large gaps
in the record of geological or biological development exist,
some Christians have felt these to be evidence for God's
special intervention in a sudden creative act, while others
have not felt the necessity for such a belief. The gap
between non-living matter and life has always seemed so
large, however, that most Christians have probably felt a
need to assume at this point an extraordinary and sudden act
of special creation.
.... The authors of this chapter consider the expressions
in Scripture regarding the creation of life to be
sufficiently figurative to imply little or no limitation on
possible mechanisms. Others may disagree with this
conclusion.
.... How did life originate? The Christian may answer
unhesitatingly, "God created it," but he should realize that
this is not a complete answer. The scientist may say, "We
are not yet certain, but probably it happened something like
this ---," and outline the sort of reasoning presented in
this chapter and the evidence behind it. But even if he
could describe precisely the mechanisms by which life came
into being, his answer could still never be a complete one
by itself.
How did life originate? The concerted attempt to find an
answer to this fascinating question by the experimental
method is just beginning. There are now many attractive
theories to be tested and modified by new information from
many areas of investigation. No one can accurately predict
the extent of new discoveries or the effects they may have
on our concepts of nature and of life itself. Christians
need not regard this great adventure of discovery with
suspicion or fear, but may take part in it enthusiastically
and even joyfully, confident that they are in a sense
thinking the Creator's thoughts after him as they learn to
understand his ways. After all, we believe that God has
created life-- why should we not be interested in how he
created it?
To those theists who think that [Hearn & Hendry]"life arose from
inanimate matter through a series of physico-chemical processes
no different from those we can observe today," I ask them, where
is the experimental and observational evidence in support of this
proposition?
Writing at least 2 and possibly as many as 13 years before Hearn
& Hendry, the blindwatchmakingist Eiseley recognized that the
observational and experimental evidence for the spontaneous
generation hypothesis is glaringly missing, despite many attempts
to obtain such evidence:
Eiseley, Loren. 1946, 1957. _The Immense Journey_ (NY: Vintage
Books), 210pp. On 198-9:
Darwin, in one of his less guarded moments, had spoken
hopefully of the possibility that life had emerged from
inorganic matter in some "warm little pond." From that day
to this biologists have poured, analyzed, minced, and
shredded recalcitrant protoplasm in a fruitless attempt to
create life from nonliving matter. It seemed inevitable, if
we could trace life down through simpler stages, that we
must finally arrive at the point where under the proper
chemical conditions, the mysterious borderline that bounds
the inanimate must be crossed. It seemed clear that life
was a material manifestation. Somewhere, somehow, sometime,
in the mysterious chemistry of carbon, the long march toward
the talking animal had begun.
A hundred years ago men spoke optimistically about solving
the secret, or at the very least they thought the next
generation would be in a position to do so. Periodically
there were claims that the emergence of life from matter had
been observed, but in every case the observer proved to be
self-deluded. It became obvious that the secret of life was
not to be had by a little casual experimentation, and that
life in today's terms appeared to arise only through the
medium of preexisting life. Yet, if science was not to be
embarrassed by some kind of mind-matter dualism and a
complete and irrational break between life and the world of
inorganic matter, the emergence of life had, in some way, to
be accounted for.
Nevertheless, as the years passed, the secret remained
locked in its living jelly, in spite of larger microscopes
and more formidable means of dissection. As a matter of
fact the mystery was heightened because all this intensified
effort revealed that even the supposedly simple amoeba was a
complex, self-operating chemical factory. The notion that
he was a simple blob, the discovery of whose chemical
composition would enable us instantly to set the life
process in operation, turned out to be, at best, a monstrous
caricature of the truth.
With the failure of these many efforts science was left in
the somewhat embarrassing position of having to postulate
theories of living origins which it could not demonstrate.
After having chided the theologian for his reliance on myth
and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position
of having to create a mythology of its own. Namely, the
assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved
to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the
primeval past.
My use of the term _mythology_ is perhaps a little harsh.
One does occasionally observe, however, a tendency for the
beginning zoological textbook to take the unwary reader by a
hop, skip and jump from the little steaming pond or the
beneficent chemical crucible of the sea, into the lower
world of life with such sureness and rapidity that it is
easy to assume that there is no mystery about this matter at
all, or, if there is, that it is a very little one.
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 11:15:58 +0000 (UTC)
From: Christopher A. Lee <calee@optonline.net>
Newsgroups: talk.origins, alt.atheism, sci.skeptic, talk.atheism
Subject: Re: Quote Mine Project - Part II
Partial piggyback....
On Wed, 1 Oct 2003 10:55:57 +0000 (UTC), "Hiero5ant"
<vze4knfn@verizon.com> wrote:
"david ford" <dford3@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0310010102250.26912-100000@linux3.gl.umbc.edu...
Correct me if I am wrong, Charles & Mambo, but you believe that
life came from non-life in the distant past, correct?
What is the basis for your belief that life came from non-life?
Perhaps partly your atheism?
This is absolutely, incredibly stupid, especially as Ford has been in
this set of newsgroups since 1995. That's 8 years in which one might
have expected him to have learned something.
People have been explaining to him all this time that atheism has
nothing to with that.
That all atheist means is not being any kind of theist.
That not believing something is not the same as believing its
opposite.
That even in the educationally backward USA about 4 times as many
theists as atheists accept scientific understanding of origins.
It demonstrates just how impossible it is to have any kind of
meaningful discussion with this kind of idiot.
He sits there nodding his head while it all washes past him and then
asks such incredibly stupid, loaded questions that don't do anything
except demonstrate he has switched his brain off all that time.
<snip>
This criticism alternates between being the most exasperating and the
most amusing in the entire "debate": the only people who believe life
*didn't* come from non-life are people who believe that life has always
existed, and I've never met any of those people.
The structure of DF's criticism can be succicntly stated as follows:
1) It is impossible for life to come from nonlife.
2) Therefore, life came from nonlife.
This structure is incorporated into numerous other creationist
arguments, to wit, "It is impossible to violate the 2nd law of
thermodynamics, therefore the 2nd law of thermodynamics has been violated";
"It is impossible for new information to be created, therefore new
information has been created"; and "It is impossible for investigation of
origins to be undertaken scientifically, therefore creationism is a
science".
One might ask him what is his basis for pretending Charls & Mambo
believe life came from non-life due to their atheism.
The answer would be sheer stupidity on his part.
.
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