What do atheists think that "to know God" means?

[lightgigantic]

@LG --

I wouldn't call them complete failures.

aaqucnaona

Seconded.

I would.

If one sets out to create life and no life appears, its a failure

Many such experiments produced a lot of the components for our kind of life, that they didn't spontaneously start to replicate is to be expected given that we've done so few experiments and it's a rather rare phenomenon(or, at least, I should hope so).

Then its obvious the components that are hoped to be essential for life to replicate aren't the essential components - so fail.

Kind of like waiting for a baby boy to manifest in a blue painted room with a cot and new packet of nappies.

The fact that you can continue to anticipate life in such a manner is simply testimony to the "sun will shine out my ass" faith required to keep the show on the road.

 

[Arioch]

@LG --

You simply have no concept of how science works. Yes, those experiments did fail to produce replicators(most of which probably wouldn't fit our current definitions of life anyways), however they taught us many things which we wouldn't know otherwise, including new approaches to take in the future. We learned from them and thus they are not complete failures.

And no, not faith in the religious sense because we know that life happened once. We don't know jack shit about any god/force/higher power, and therein lies the difference. We also know that since some of these experiments came close there's a chance that we may succeed in the future.

Also, your analogy to the baby boy is invalid. We're not waiting for anything to manifest, we're attempting to force it to happen as we think it happened before, completely different.

 

[Grumpy]

Yazata

There's clearly more than one meaning of 'chaos' in play here. One has 'chaos' meaning the opposite of order. The other has 'chaos' referring to non-linear dynamics.

Yes, there is the Chaos scientists study and apply, that has been demonstrated to be a part of this Universe and then there is whatever wynn thinks it means. Since this is a science forum isn't it logical to stick to the first? It is scientists she is trying to denigrate for the concept, after all and if she is trying to say we've got it wrong it is up to her to understand the scientific concept, unless she is arguing a strawman(a dishonest tactic, if that is what she is doing).

Somebody might want to argue for the stronger metaphysical thesis that all instances of chaos in the first sense are reducible to and explainable in terms of chaos in the second sense. But that's going to require a lot of argument.

And the effort would be wasted, given the history of refusal to understand in this instance.

It seems to me that it's more likely that the two uses of 'chaos' are kind of analogical. Applied mathematicians were reminded of the conventional meaning of 'chaos' when they realized that simple functions could generate unpredictable and potentially infinitely complex graphs.

That doesn't necessarily imply that all examples of seeming disorder in the physical world are really examples of these nonlinear dynamical functions at work. Some might be and doubtless many others aren't. In some cases A and B will simply have no causal connection at all and their behavior will be independent.

As I pointed out several pages ago, the Universe is not inherently chaotic, it follows the laws of the Universe every time. The appearance of chaos comes from OUR inability to specify initial conditions with sufficient accuracy, even in a relatively simple system such as a three body problem. Very slight differences between what we measure and those initial conditions leads to very different outcomes than those predicted without consideration of these effects.

But the thing is, all this talk kind of misses Wynn's earlier point (if I understood it correctly). Wynn isn't questioning whether there's some physical dynamical principles underlying all physical events. Wynn seems to be suggesting instead that the abstract principles of mathematical physics don't have any meaning or emotional resonance for human beings.

So? Science isn't concerned with how you feel about the facts, it is only concerned with finding out what the facts are. Believe anything you like if it makes you feel better, but don't try to claim such beliefs as being reality. Personally, I find that knowing the Universe as it really is is quite emotionally satisfying. Far preferable to believing things that are demonstrably false just because it feels better to do so.

Imagine putting a huge bomb inside some human artifact, somebody's house let's say. Then we blow that house into a million tiny bits, scattered around more or less at random. We can say, with a great deal of justification, that we've reduced the house to chaos. (We've certainly boosted its entropy to such a point that continued use of the word 'house' to describe it is probably unjustified.)

Arguing that the motion of every single explosion fragment was totally governed by the laws of physics might be entirely true, but that fact isn't going to give the pile of rubble very much meaning to the family that used to live there. It's not their home any longer, it's not their familiar place where they could all go and be together after a hard day.

I think that's what Wynn was getting at. Wynn was wondering if atheists can really live their lives as if the events taking place all around them are just mechanical clockwork, mathematical functions working themselves out, meaningless in human terms, devoid of purposes and intentions and values.

My own answer might be rather different than Wynn's would be, but it's obviously a serious question.

Does it change anything? The house is now a chaotic mess either way. And yes, from experience I know that you can live your life knowing that everything is caused by phisical laws, you just have to operate in a different mode when the effect on people is the consideration because you are no longer talking about the reality of the Universe, but about social interactions. Wynn's problem is she seems to think the two unrelated things are one and the same. They are not.

The Universe has no evident purpose, it has no intent, it has no value judgements. These things come from intelligence and apply to things those intelligences do or think, she is trying to apply the characteristics intelligences have to a Universe they do not apply to.

Grumpy

 

[aaqucnaona]

I would.

If one sets out to create life and no life appears, its a failure


Then its obvious the components that are hoped to be essential for life to replicate aren't the essential components - so fail.

Kind of like waiting for a baby boy to manifest in a blue painted room with a cot and new packet of nappies.

The fact that you can continue to anticipate life in such a manner is simply testimony to the "sun will shine out my ass" faith required to keep the show on the road.

The aim of those experiments wasnt to create new life but to explain how early chemicals may have formed the basis for life as we know it.

 

[Grumpy]

lightgigantic

If one sets out to create life and no life appears, its a failure

So, if you set out to walk a mile, take one step and you are not a mile away you have failed? Creating life is not a simple process, it took most of a billion years for Nature to do it and we've only known enough to take the first few steps for a hundred years or so. That is not failure, that is an incomplete goal that we can show good progress toward.

There have been several self replicating molecules we have created, so we know it can be done. There has been amino acids found in interstellar gas and dust, as well as in meteorites that made it to Earth with millions of organic molecules, so we know the raw material was available. We've created artificial DNA, inserted it in denucleated bacteria and had them reproduce viable offspring. We've reprogramed DNA to do things not found in nature(goats that produce spider silk is just one instance. When you get your spidersilk pajamas(or bullet proof vest)you can thank a scientist).

Then its obvious the components that are hoped to be essential for life to replicate aren't the essential components - so fail.

Kind of like waiting for a baby boy to manifest in a blue painted room with a cot and new packet of nappies.

That stupid one-step-mile meme again. Comes from magical thinking. It should only take saying "Shazzam" in a sufficiently convincing manner in the thinking of a mysticist, evidently.

The fact that you can continue to anticipate life in such a manner is simply testimony to the "sun will shine out my ass" faith required to keep the show on the road.

The only ass shining around here is yours. And an ass is something you should have(and not show), not something you should be.

Grumpy

 

[lightgigantic]

lightgigantic



So, if you set out to walk a mile, take one step and you are not a mile away you have failed?

What to speak of one step one could take a thousand and it wouldn't matter. It depends on which direction one was trying to go a mile in.

If one took a thousand steps to the side they would still be a mile from their destination ... and if they took a thousand steps backward they would now be a mile and thousand steps away. and if they took 1 step forward and 1 step back a billion times they would have still made zero progress.

Hence : fail

:shrug:

Creating life is not a simple process, it took most of a billion years for Nature to do it and we've only known enough to take the first few steps for a hundred years or so. That is not failure, that is an incomplete goal that we can show good progress toward.

This is simply circular reasoning.

You are taking the assumption that it took a billion years to occur spontaneously as a premise that the first few successful steps have even been taken in that direction.

You might as well say that since a person has painted a room blue and purchased a packet of nappies they have taken the first few steps in conceiving a baby boy.

There have been several self replicating molecules we have created, so we know it can be done. There has been amino acids found in interstellar gas and dust, as well as in meteorites that made it to Earth with millions of organic molecules, so we know the raw material was available. We've created artificial DNA, inserted it in denucleated bacteria and had them reproduce viable offspring. We've reprogramed DNA to do things not found in nature(goats that produce spider silk is just one instance. When you get your spidersilk pajamas(or bullet proof vest)you can thank a scientist).

You might as well be talking about urea synthesis of the 1800's.

The fact remains that none of these things are life because there is an immense difference between life and the chemicals that life utilizes.

That stupid one-step-mile meme again. Comes from magical thinking. It should only take saying "Shazzam" in a sufficiently convincing manner in the thinking of a mysticist, evidently.

Say shazzam a billion times for all I care.

Fact still remains you are dealing with non-essential components, like room colour and diapers rendering someone, somehow "half-pregnant" in a totally (magical) faith driven manner

The only ass shining around here is yours. And an ass is something you should have(and not show), not something you should be.

Grumpy

keep the faith brother

 

[lightgigantic]

@LG --

You simply have no concept of how science works. Yes, those experiments did fail to produce replicators(most of which probably wouldn't fit our current definitions of life anyways), however they taught us many things which we wouldn't know otherwise, including new approaches to take in the future. We learned from them and thus they are not complete failures.

based on the faith that the premise of the exercises is valid in the first place.

I'm sure that if one set out to build a cot and paint a room blue they would also learn a few things too, but none of those things have essentially anything to do with conceiving a male child

And no, not faith in the religious sense because we know that life happened once.

When was this?
What was it?
Where did it come from?

We don't know jack shit about any god/force/higher power, and therein lies the difference. We also know that since some of these experiments came close there's a chance that we may succeed in the future.

If you want a good introduction to Jack Shit (and his extended family - "StuffedIfIKnow" from his father's side and "CompletePoppycock" from his mother's) just try finding a scientific consensus on the above

Also, your analogy to the baby boy is invalid. We're not waiting for anything to manifest, we're attempting to force it to happen as we think it happened before, completely different.

If you think people get pregnant simply waiting around for it to happen it appears you are not up to speed on a few essential issues of conception.

 

[lightgigantic]

The aim of those experiments wasnt to create new life but to explain how early chemicals may have formed the basis for life as we know it.

and since they have no experience of it working they have no knowledge what those essential chemicals are or in what environment they combined ... in fact its all guess work about what the environment of the earth was like (all those billions of years ago) ... or even that it happened on earth at all for that matter

In short, it is totally different from the faith that the sun will shine tomorrow since, from beginning to end, its all guess work about an issue no one has experience of.

 

[Arioch]

@LG --

based on the faith that the premise of the exercises is valid in the first place.

Well we have every reason to think that it will be. After all, every single other time someone said that something was "beyond the power of science" they've been proven wrong. That's a pretty good track record, and the results of the experiments bear this out. Again, you just don't know what you're talking about.

I'm sure that if one set out to build a cot and paint a room blue they would also learn a few things too, but none of those things have essentially anything to do with conceiving a male child

But again, your analogy is invalid as there aren't any points of commonality. We did learn a great many things about how life may have come about on this planet, so we learned something directly related to what we were attempting to learn. Again, you don't know what you're talking about, you should probably stop.

If you want a good introduction to Jack Shit (and his extended family) just try finding a scientific consensus on the above

Where do you think I got it from? From many of the scientists that I know. Where have you gotten your ideas on the subject from?

If you think people get pregnant simply waiting around for it to happen it appears you are not up to speed on a few essential issues of conception.

Okay, play deliberately obtuse all you want. You know that my argument is valid and you can't do a thing to it.

 

[lightgigantic]

@LG --



Well we have every reason to think that it will be. After all, every single other time someone said that something was "beyond the power of science" they've been proven wrong. That's a pretty good track record, and the results of the experiments bear this out. Again, you just don't know what you're talking about.

You misunderstand.

That is not reason.

That is faith (faith divorced from analyzing the scope of empiricism I might add)

But again, your analogy is invalid as there aren't any points of commonality. We did learn a great many things about how life may have come about on this planet, so we learned something directly related to what we were attempting to learn. Again, you don't know what you're talking about, you should probably stop.

"perhaps" and "maybe" are not strong resting points for an empirical claim

Where do you think I got it from? From many of the scientists that I know. Where have you gotten your ideas on the subject from?

I can find links to back my claim



All you can do is talk about your friends in high places
:shrug:

Okay, play deliberately obtuse all you want. You know that my argument is valid and you can't do a thing to it.

If you have a valid form of your argument, the only thing I know is that you have failed to explain it, much like the experiments to show how life can spontaneously arrived from matter have also failed

:shrug:

 

[Grumpy]

lightgigantic

I can find links to back my claim

This interview was conducted in October, 1996

From the cite you gave.

Only old, out of date ones, it seems. Since Miller was interviewed in this article we've learned that Black Smokers create their own unique environment, one Miller knew nothing about. He was wrong. Also, in the years since then many more meteorites have been found, many in the Antartic Ice Sheets showing such meteorites could supply enough raw material. And 8 years in biology is often a long time as far as research goes, especially in DNA research.

Here's a few newer cites that gives a much more...truthful picture of current research...

http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/exobio...s-from-sugars-as-the-primary-carbon-substrate

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/life-components.html

http://www.astronomy.com/en/News-Ob...ic molecules found in interstellar space.aspx

The oldest of these cites is 2010. I know it's hard, but try to catch up to the 21st Century, hmmm?

Grumpy

 

[lightgigantic]

lightgigantic





From the cite you gave.

Only old, out of date ones, it seems. Since Miller was interviewed in this article we've learned that Black Smokers create their own unique environment, one Miller knew nothing about. He was wrong. Also, in the years since then many more meteorites have been found, many in the Antartic Ice Sheets showing such meteorites could supply enough raw material. And 8 years in biology is often a long time as far as research goes, especially in DNA research.

Here's a few newer cites that gives a much more...truthful picture of current research...

http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/exobio...s-from-sugars-as-the-primary-carbon-substrate

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/life-components.html

http://www.astronomy.com/en/News-Ob...ic molecules found in interstellar space.aspx

The oldest of these cites is 2010. I know it's hard, but try to catch up to the 21st Century, hmmm?

Grumpy

1996 : no evidence of how, when, or what the spontaneous formation of life occurred. Abiogeneis is strictly a theory governed by several models that are not only not evidenced but not even drawing a consensus.

2012 : no evidence of how, when, or what the spontaneous formation of life occurred. Abiogeneis is strictly a theory governed by at least a dozen or more models that are not only not evidenced but not even drawing a consensus.


It seems the progress that has been made is the number of models that don't draw a consensus ... which, strangely enough, is precisely what one would expect to see if they were investigating an impossible claim.

But regardless, it's still a fail or a hope maintained by the faithful (depending on how you want to look at it)

Actually what we can see is that many scientists have a deep commitment to the notion that life derives from matter ..... yet they admit that they can’t produce the evidence to corroborate their convictions due to being besieged with unregenerate problems. They’re convinced that life arose from matter /is reducible to matter, yet at the same time they must confess to having limited scientific grounds for their conviction.

Their messianic hope is that someday, someone, somehow may be able to validate it..... in the meantime their faith is unshakable.

:shrug:

PS - congrats on reading the link (even if it was only one line ... even after I posted it several times)

 

[Arioch]

@LG --

You really like deliberate obtuseness and straw man arguments don't you?

 

[lightgigantic]

@LG --

You really like deliberate obtuseness and straw man arguments don't you?

You really like lodging claims devoid of evidence, don't you?

 

[Balerion]

@LG --

You really like deliberate obtuseness and straw man arguments don't you?

Why do you still bother, Arioch? :shrug:

 

[lightgigantic]

Why do you still bother, Arioch? :shrug:

Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don't know and I don't care.

 

[Arioch]

@LG --

...I don't know...

This might be the first truly honest thing I've ever seen you post, it's just too bad that you had to muck it up with the other crap in there.

 

[lightgigantic]

@LG --



This might be the first truly honest thing I've ever seen you post, it's just too bad that you had to muck it up with the other crap in there.

and the irony is that the context it appeared in that renders it meaningful is totally lost on you

:shrug:

 

[Grumpy]

lightgigantic

You just don't know anything about science or how it is done, do you? I hope(with some reason)that they succeed within your lifetime in producing life from jars of chemicals. It's quite likely to happen, you know. In the mean time I hope you remain as ignorant of the facts as you have shown yourself to be, a good bout with major cognitive dissonance might help pry your head from where it is so firmly esconched.

This thread is a dead horse, I think I'll leave it to the fly.

Grumpy:yawn::sleep:

 

[lightgigantic]

lightgigantic

You just don't know anything about science or how it is done, do you?
I hope(with some reason)that they succeed within your lifetime in producing life from jars of chemicals. It's quite likely to happen, you know. In the mean time I hope you remain as ignorant of the facts as you have shown yourself to be, a good bout with major cognitive dissonance might help pry your head from where it is so firmly esconched.

This thread is a dead horse, I think I'll leave it to the fly.

Grumpy:yawn::sleep:

Actually what we can see is that many scientists have a deep commitment to the notion that life derives from matter ..... yet they admit that they can’t produce the evidence to corroborate their convictions due to being besieged with unregenerate problems. They’re convinced that life arose from matter /is reducible to matter, yet at the same time they must confess to having limited scientific grounds for their conviction.

Their messianic hope is that someday, someone, somehow may be able to validate it..... in the meantime their faith is unshakable.



PS: ".. jars of chemicals ..." - lawl