Attempts (like the thread OP), to assert a belief is validated by insisting alternative evidence or explanation is demonstrated, is using a known common logical fallacy called argumentum ad ignorantiam.
Epistemologically, no responses is even necessary, it’s logical to dismiss any such fallacy.
Hitchens’s razor applies.
However, when theists assert that a supernatural cause from an unevidenced deity is more probable, than some as yet unknown natural phenomona. Then we should note some contrary facts to their claim.
They cannot demonstrate that a deity or anything supernatural is even possible, let alone show how probable it is.
Natural causes have been demonstrated to exist, so we know they’re possible, and we know there are natural phenomena we don’t yet understand.
Since extant natural causes are a known fact, and supernatural causes unevidenced wishful thinking, to rule out the former as less probable than the latter is risible bias.
Never forget religions have done this for many natural causes when we didn’t understand them, and have had to be dragged screaming to accept those facts as science uncovered them, some theists still deny known facts like evolution in favour of unevidenced superstition.
As @Calilasseia has pointed out above, the dishonest attempt by the thread author to conflate abiogenesis with atheism should have alarms bells ringing, as it amply shows the logical fallacy behind the duplicitous assertion.
Atheism does not need to explain anything, anymore than not believing in garden fairies requires evidence.
Some theists like to load the dice in their favour, because at some level they know they’re holding an empty bag, and don’t want to focus on that fact.
Other theists are simply ignorant of the most basic logical tenets, and use simple common logical fallacies because they are ignorant of them, and what their use means. Often ironically, while simultaneously claiming such arguments are rational.
I have no idea how to measure the difference between a hydrogen atom in something alive, and a hydrogen atom from space (that was presumably never part of a living creature). According to modern physics; you can’t measure it, because there is no difference.
As far as I’m concerned; this makes the whole question of “how to get life from non-life” kind of silly.
Also, I see things I might describe as non-life, becoming part of something I would describe as alive, all the time. It’s called photosynthesis.
Even the small fraction of the available literature I have in my collection, contains documentation of enough robust experiments to make life difficult for any honest objections to the postulates of prebiotic chemistry.
And, indeed, the subsurface oceans of both Europa and Enceladus are considered to be viable candidates for indigenous life of some sort, even if it’s only single celled life forms, because the extant conditions in those oceans are not that far removed from prebiotic Earth conditions.
There is one big exception to this, of course, and that centres upon the fact that those subsurface oceans are shut off from light, by tens of kilometres of overlaid ice. Which immediately rules out photosynthesising organisms. But there are alternative energy sources to call upon, if the deep geophysics of those bodies produce their own version of hydrothermal vents.
Discovery of actual indigenous life in those subsurface oceans would, of course, give us other models to investigate. But for me, discovery of something akin to an RNA world would be even better, for reasons I’ve already provided.
Indeed, those of us who paid attention in class, learned that Wöhler killed off vitalism in 1828, when launching organic chemistry… There’s no difference between a hydrogen atom in a water molecule inside a human body, and a hydrogen atom in a water molecule in interstellar space.
For that matter, every molecule in our bodies is, when isolated, non-living. Extract glucose from a sample of your blood, and pop the resulting solid crystals in a petri dish, and there’s no obvious way of telling them apart from a sample of synthetic glucose. A sophisticated scientist might decide to check the ratio of 13C to 12 C and gain clues from that, but even that test would require very sensitive instruments to pick up any difference, and assumes that the materials used to make the synthetic glucose sample had a different isotopic ratio to begin with. If the starting materials had the same isotopic ratio, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
For that matter, it would be possible to synthesise a molecule such as human insulin from scratch, and again, differentiating that synthetic insulin from insulin extracted from a blood sample would be difficult even for a fairly sophisticated chemist. Admittedly, such an exercise in total organic synthesis would be a formidable undertaking, but it’s certainly possible in principle.
EDIT: oh look, a total organic synthesis of human insulin has been reported in the organic chemistry literature … courtesy of this article in Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Of course, the boundary between “life” and “non-life” starts to look pretty blurred, when you observe, as Gerald F. Joyce has done, RNA strands not only self-replicating when in a solution of bare nucleotides, but undergoing Darwinian evolution whenever a chemical gradient exists.
Oh, and with respect to the matter of peptide synthesis, this became possible as far back as 1963, when Robert Bruce Merrifield invented the solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) technique. His 1963 paper in JACS describing the technique, is the fifth most cited paper in the journal’s history. He was awarded for Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1984 for this work.
The technique has of course been refined over the years, as new reagents and new reaction mechanisms were discovered, that proved to be of utility value in either speeding up the reaction process, or eliminating side reactions that produced unwanted impurities. Merrifield peptide synthesis is now sufficiently advanced a technique, that there exist automated units for performing said syntheses. You can, if you spend enough money on one of these units and the reagent supplies, dial in a desired peptide sequence, hook up the reagent supplies, and let the machine do the donkey work for you.
In short, you can think of a Merrifield peptide synthesis machine as a Turing machine for producing proteins. It will even, in sophisticated variants thereof, protect the sulphur atoms of cysteine molecules during the synthesis, then selectively deprotect them to allow disulphide bonds to be formed to order.
The fun part being, of course, that most of the mythology fanboys peddling their tiresome apologetics here, won’t even know that this technology exists, or anything about the scientist who made it possible. Basically, if a machine can produce insulin, who needs a cartoon magic man?
Why would anyone believe that life can come from magic? That’s what intelligent design amounts to. It’s not more believable than evolution and abiogenesis, it’s less believable. It’s a fairytale.
Abiogenesis makes sense to me because the building blocks of life do or can arise naturally. Can life? Probably, given the right circumstances. I can’t prove that and I’ll admit it, but I would ask you the same thing you asked us: can you prove that god created life?
Neither know nor care about the ‘why’ or the ‘what’ of the personal superstitions of others. Unless they get in my face .More so when politicians use their beliefs to make policy.
When you rule out aliens, sperm, evolution, self generation, turtles all the way down and common sense, magic is all you have left. So, it must be magic!
I can think of two reasons, I’m sure there are more:
“I am too ignorant, lacking in imagination or stupid to think of anything else, therefore god/aliens did it”
Arguably the most common logical fallacy used by believers in virtually all religions: “Post hoc ergo propter hoc” (After this therefore because of this) EG Bloke prays for his cancer to be cured, he goes into remission. It’s obvious his prayer worked (rather than the chemo therapy). -------Meso America; there is a drought. A human sacrifice is made in desperation. It starts to rain the next day. Obviously human sacrifice works. Next time, no rain, so more human sacrifices, increasing the number until there is rain.
It is my position that all human activity has (or once had) a purpose, and follows its own logic The logic may be sound , but the inference false.
Thought for today : “None of us is as stupid as all of us” (Anon)
Corollary: One could indeed gain the impression that magic works from watching the excellent series of Harry Potter documentaries . Of course it doesn’t work for muggles.
