Why would anyone believe that life can come from none life. I know you have your theories but they don’t make sense or are scientific. Life from non-life implies at the very least, intelligent design. This used to be called common sense. What happened?
Can somebody provide the best evidence for life coming out of non-life?
So where did the intelligence for intelligent design come from? Was it from non-intelligence, or did it design itself? Does that sound more sensible and scientific to you?
Greetings, verysimple,
Atheism is only a position on belief in a deity (Atheism is specifically a lack of belief in a deity,) and as such, Atheists have no single position on the origin of life except to say that it doesn’t include a deity.
That said, and while I have no knowledge of the origin of life, I do know that living things are comprised of basic elements (e.g. Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Calcium, Iron, trace elements of Copper, Zinc, etc.) These elements form molecules in amino acids, Membranes, Protoplasm, Cytoplasm, Riboneucleic Acid (RNA,) Deoxyriboneucleic Acid (DNA,) and other components of living things.
I also know that elements form compounds, and compounds form more complex compounds such as crystals, all without any apparent living or conscious direction and could very easily form components of living things and living things themselves. Thus, abiogenesis is not incompatible with what I and others know is true of Elements and Compoinds. No Achilles’ Heel for me.
It has been proven in theory and experiment in the lab that you can create the building blocks of life by combining a solvent (usually water) with certain chemicals and adding energy.
You’re using a very old argument that anyone who’s been an atheist for any length of time has heard and rejected many times over. If everything must have a creator or it can’t exist, why doesn’t that apply to God? If you want to be better at this you really should watch the video David thoughtfully provided on the last thread.
Beautiful. I’ll use your logic to wreck your argument. So if I continue what you’re saying, it’d be something like this:
Life from non-life implies at the very least, intelligent design.
And, intelligent design or an uncreated god, from non-life or nothing implies, at the very least, an even more intelligent design.
And that ‘even more intelligent design’ implies at the very least, an extremely intelligent design.
You know, the cycle never ends. The same thing can be applied to the universe. An uncreated universe. I’m just trying to show you how flawed this ‘argument from nothing is’. Atheism is only about absence of belief in gods. Nobody said we know with absolute certainty how the universe began. However, if you’re strictly talking about non-LIFE, then as David Killens have given a link to the video, it’s a pretty good stage to start from. After all, the mere elements of chemistry can’t individually be considered life. That’d be too many lives hanging around in the periodic table then. But, nobody knows if even that is the absolute truth.
If you’re talking about how life began, we don’t know that either, with absolute certainty. But scientists do have some theories about how things might have begun.
Either way, it’d become argument from ignorance. That is, just because we don’t know how life began, it must be intelligently created.
Hope that helps.
Firstly I would point out that not all atheists support the idea of evolution much less abiogenesis. I can’t follow their logic but I’m just reminding you that atheists have only one issue, they reject the theist claim that any gods exist. Got that? The don’t accept the claim. Gods might exist, but you have given them nothing to work with and claims that abiogenesis is nonsense is a typically unsupported theist claim that can annoy those Christians that accept Evolutionary Theory as a fact and that abiogenesis might well be the only valid explanation for life which does not necessarily invalidate their faith.
Anyway back to your OP:
Why would any rational person believe life came from non-life through magic?
Yes, there are theories, which are eminently more logical than notions of mythical superstition which makes no rational sense at all and which is considered the very anti-thesis of science.
Your comment that current theories on abiogenesis aren’t scientific only reveals a lack of knowledge on the subject and an unwarranted bias.
The origin of life is considered a majestic and massively complex subject and its not a surprise that in the natural course of mankind’s desire to explain everything, the origin of life has been long relegated to the realm of faith in a creator god, which explains a lot less than modern research.
We know only one thing for sure. Life started. We have several areas for speculation. One involves a creator deity, a divine spontaneous inexplicable act that created life from clay, mud, dust, whatever, in a manner that suspends all the rules of nature.
Another view is that through the natural processes of physics and chemistry, on inert chemicals and compounds in turbulent and sometimes toxic environments we no longer experience on earth, over several billion years, an ever increasing preponderance of bio-chemicals and bio-compounds displaying independent and reactive properties for change, variation and development, at some point developed an amazing but highly evident ability to replicate. And it only had to happen once in the early part of our earth’s history. The replication through variation and circumstance could have provided all the change and mutations required for the emergence of a single celled organism completely interactive with its environment and with self reproductive abilities (the sex came much later).
You can condemn the scientific research as mere speculation but it is speculation built on a solid edifice of evidenced knowledge, understanding and reason. There is a substantial basis for accepting the possibility of abiogenesis as a natural phenomenon, everything required was already naturally available, no special creation required.
It is now a subject that borrows heavily from other scientific fields like astronomy, geology, palaeontology, micro-biology, physiological metabolism and so on…
The findings so far in abiogenesis is not a product of unquestioning faith, which in itself is not a path to truth, but those findings are due to a methodology that has been proven to produce consistent and repeatable evidences that have persistently shown how reality and nature works and how it can be utilised and moderated.
I leave you some references if you care read up on more about abiogenetic research. Its all very scientific.
Science Daily - see the article, half way down the page “Building Blocks of Life Can Form Long Before Stars” - fascinating.
Nature Magazine - scientific reports
I don’t expect you would actually read this. It makes my brain bleed, but its just one paper out of millions presented every year, subjected to strict critical peer review, that just shows how detailed and precise research into the possibility of abiogenesis really is. Its not just a nonsense subject unless you are enmired in superstition.
Then there is Wikipedia, which is an easier read. I recommend it if you genuinely are interested in abiogenesis as something more than just a weapon to needlessly use against atheists.
Luckily; abiogenesis isn’t a tenet of atheism.
Abiogenesis has nothing to do with atheism, and atheism has nothing to do with abiogenesis.
You seem unsurprisingly to be ishonestly dodging this question, while claiming to have answers.
No you don’t, that’s pure assumption on your part.
Another unevidenced assumption, without any pretence of argument or evidence.
When you said you had “answers to the big questions” I didn’t realise you were simply going to make them up.
Take a look around, that might help. You might notice the diversity of life all around you.
Just because you want to delude yourself it required an unevidenced deity from an archaic superstition, using unexplained magic, doesn’t make it so.
Not knowing how life originated is fine, but making unevidenced assumptions is not.
Is this really the best you have, an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy?
Quelled surprise…
Here’s an analogy…
Take a clock 
. Take apart all the pieces- put it in a box 
and shak…
Oh, fuck - wait wrong analogy…
Take straw, and flint, and pyrite (fool’s gold) and air and motion (shake the box)
How long before a chemical reaction of 
is produced?
Cool, huh?
BTW - only 5 “ingredients” required in the box to kick start this thing we call life…
Very good analogy white.
Theists love this assumption of ID based on an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.
I always make the same observation.
Life exists as an objective fact, natural phenomena exist as an objective fact.
Now, before they go adding deities and supernatural causes that we don’t even know are possible.
Atheism does not make any assertions, claims or assumptions, it is simply the lack or absence of belief in any extant deity. Therefore atheism does not have to offer alternative explanations to the unevidenced and superstitious claims of theists or the religious.
It’s the model that fits most of the facts. Very simply, that is why people can believe that life can come from non life. Do you have a better model? Do you understand that the model does not prove life came from non life. (Do you actually understand that?) Abiogenesis is the most accepted of the 10 or so top cosmological theories for the origins of life, It requires no magic and nothing supernatural so already it is hands over heals more probable than the God hypothesis, which has nothing at all backing it up.
Somewhat a “straw man” of a position. First I’d like to know how simpleminded views “non-life”.
Our evidence (thus far) has been demonstrated that something comes from something(s).
You are correct; however, the fact that you can not demonstrate even the possible existence of this creator deity you so adhesively attest to, does mean that it is not a possibility worth considering. It is in the same arena as blue universe creating bunnies, of universe farting unicorns. We do not need to debunk claims that are pure imagination.
Any opinion based on FAITH is as useless a pig fart in a tornado. Every religion on the planet has come to their conclusions based on FAITH. There is no position at all that I can not hold based on FAITH. Faith is not, nor has it ever been, a path to discovering anything that is true. Faith is the most useless and worn out concept in the theist arsenal. It gets you absolutely nowhere.
Faith (as it is commonly used by theists around here) sounds suspiciously similar to bizarre delusions.
Faith is the very definition of bias, and blind faith the very definition of closed minded.
Indeed.
My understanding is that faith is “believing without seeing”. I think that’s a definition of superstition. Hence any belief based on faith may be deemed to be a superstition.
I’m not making this up. No less a person than The Big J himself is reported as saying:
John 20:29: Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. (KJV)
Jesus is insisting his believer believe blindly. So they did that. They even believed his return was imminent, until it wasn’t. From that point, the religion which came to be called Christianity was just a failed millenarian movement.
Matthew 16:28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. (KJV)
Just because we may not have an answer about where life came from does not imply that intelligent design was involved.
Logic’s a bitch, ain’t it.
Nothere,
There is yet another problem with denying abiogenesis and affirming Intelligent Design.
Even if one could prove that life can only come from other life, and even if you could prove that a God exists, what is the proof that God is a living thing that created all other life?
A living thing is comprised of components that act together towards maintaining its structural integrity and continuing this self-sustaining action. Also, so far, all living things atrophy in this process and eventually die. (The Transhumanist school of thought and science is working to change this, but that’s another thread entirely.)
Anywho, if the God that created all life is a living thing, wouldn’t that mean that God also has to engage in actions to maintain structural integrity or die? Wouldn’t that mean a limitation on not only God’s immortality, but also God’s Omnipotence, Omniscience, and God’s perfection? And what is a God without all of these traits?
Also, if a living God created all living things only for them to atrophy and die, usually in painful, horrible ways, both natural and artificial, how can this God be considered Omnibenevolent to his creation? This God is like sadistic Beavis and Butthead with a lab full of bread mold, caged mice, leached Pavlovian dogs, dry tinder, and a match and is nothing worth worshipping!