Why do you think

Sid · June 5, 2023, 11:22am

Gracious me , I’ve said in more ways than one in more posts than one that the “quantitative” - mass , charge , spin etc are the only things that are the purview of science. The “qualitative” - devout- cannot be measured and are in the eyes of the beholder . Devout to you may not be devout to me .

Calilasseia · June 5, 2023, 11:29am

Still repeating this bullshit, despite it having been shredded repeatedly?

Oh wait, scientists have even found a molecular basis for this.

I’m also waiting for you to ask yourself why fish developed advanced pair bonding and parental care behaviour tens of millions of years ago.

Sid · June 5, 2023, 11:29am

Provide the peer reviewed PROOF to back up that claim .

Calilasseia · June 5, 2023, 11:31am

Given your repeated duplicitous summary dismissals of peer reviewed scientific papers when they’re presented to you, this is weapons grade chutzpah on your part.

EDIT: Oh, by the way, did you forget this post, in which I provided a peer reviewed scientific paper, demonstrating that our ability to think arose in part from a retroviral infection that occurred 400 million years ago in Sarcopterygian fish?

Sid · June 5, 2023, 11:36am

Provide peer reviewed PROOF that lifeless inanimate matter produced consciousness, and while you are at it provide how Consciousness benefits a blind pitiless meaningless purposeless lifeless universe

Calilasseia · June 5, 2023, 11:37am

That paper on the Arc gene is pretty telling in this regard. Though it’s obvious you never read it.

Sid · June 5, 2023, 11:58am

While I’m thinking about my reply to that I’ll throw in another one of those amazing goat herders who I suspect had a far greater knowledge of chemistry than yourself . Maybe there’s more to goat herding than meets the eye , ya think ?
——–

“God is Truth. There is no incompatibility between science and religion. Both are seeking the same truth. Science shows that God exists.”

“The observations and experiments of science are so wonderful that the truth that they establish can surely be accepted as another manifestation of God. God shows himself by allowing man to establish truth.”

–Sir Derek Barton, winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, as quoted in Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the Origins of the Universe, Life, and Homo sapiens.

Sheldon · June 5, 2023, 12:09pm

He doesn’t he can keep his bs beliefs to himself, so can you, you both chose not to.

That’s still a lie, plenty of objective evidence has been posted. You however have failed to offer one single word to evidence your claim that love is evidence for a deity.

Imaginary you mean, they don’t exist, as you yourself admitted early on, the request for objective evidence can’t be answered.

I never mentioned proof, this is a silly theistic straw man lie you keep peddling.

You want a peer reviewed paper to demonstrate that human brains cease to function, and that consciousness disappears the same time? Now that’s fucking hilarious, and coming from someone who can’t offer one shred of objective evidence a deity is even possible or for any of his claims. Not only that but every time objective evidence is posted, you lie that it hasn’t been, so what would be the point anyway, to someone as dishonest and closed minded as you clearly are.

Why, you’ll only lie it hasn’t been presented as you’ve done every time. Besides no one has claimed this, it is you who came here champ, so why don’t you provide peer reviewed PROOF that an unevidenced deity using magic produced consciousness? Oh that’s right you don’t have shit…you are funny fair play.

That’s the game he is playing, constantly demanding evidence he then lies hasn’t been demonstrated, while refusing to offer a single word to evidence his magic sky fairy.

Which god and why? Oh sorry I forgot you make unevidenced claims then run away pretending you’ve said something profound, when your bs is just vapid meaningless unevidenced platitude, like that one.

BS, the creation myth in your bible makes several claims that are incompatible with scientific facts, the Noah flood myth is utterly falsified by the geological evidence that no global flood has ever occurred, the Exodus myth despite decades of archaeological searching has been demonstrated to be a complete myth. How about a grown man living inside the belly of a whale for months, lets have a peer reviewed paper "proving2 that, your unevidenced bs is getting funnier and funnier.

More bs, religions aren’t seeking the truth, they are claiming that it was handed to them millennia ago, and that it is immutable, that is the very definition of closed minded. Science bends it’s findings to the evidence, religion bends all facts to their belief, and your posts have proved this again and again.

I don’t believe you, and if it does how come atheism is massively higher among the scientific community, especially among elite scientists.

" Larson and Witham (1998) found that 92% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject a belief in God or higher power."

So either 92% of the elite scientists in the NAS, don’t understand science, or you’re talking through your arse with yet another appeal to authority fallacy, misrepresenting the subjective unevidenced religious beliefs of a Nobel winner as if that lends the claim scientific gravitas, I think we all know where the safe bet there is.

He’s expressing a subjective unevidenced belief, and you’re using another appeal to authority fallacy. Line them up all you want, they remain irrational by definition.

How does love evidence any deity? You still can’t answer this, quod erat demonstrandum…

Calilasseia · June 5, 2023, 12:10pm

Yawn. Did he find any genuine evidence for his cartoon magic man? No he didn’t.

Your fake resort to “quotes” fails on that ground alone.

Oh by the way, if mythology fanboy assertions about consciousness needing some special magic brand of “god sauce”, were something other than the products of their rectal passages, then vast swathes of neuroscience research would have been impossible to conduct by definition. Including the research described in two interesting scientific papers I cover in detail in this document:

Oh look, more evidence that testable natural processes are responsible, not a cartoon magic man from a goat herder mythology.

Got some actual substance to bring to the table, instead of your usual tiresome bullshit?

CyberLN · June 5, 2023, 1:56pm

Oh, ffs! This is the fourth time. HOW DO YOU DEFINE DEVOUT?

CyberLN · June 5, 2023, 2:01pm

@Calilasseia provided the peer reviewed proof you requested. When reminded of this after you asked again, a more appropriate response would have been, “oh, you’re right, my bad.” Not some random quote.

Sheldon · June 5, 2023, 2:12pm

Oh the quotes are very far from random, he is quite deliberately cherry picking Nobel winners for quotes where they espouse their subjective religious beliefs, as if their scientific achievements lend some gravitas to their unevidenced superstitious beliefs, it is the very definition of an appeal to authority fallacy.

Calilasseia · June 5, 2023, 6:06pm

Ah, the usual mythology fanboy double standard at work … where peer reviewed scientific papers are summarily dismissed because they don’t mention his cartoon magic man, but fatuous “quotes” and ex recto apologetic fabrications purportedly “prove” that his cartoon magic man is real.

I’ve been observing this brand of mendacity for 14 years.

Cognostic · June 5, 2023, 6:39pm

Where is this lifeless, inanimate matter, you speak of. Are you completely unaware that the building blocks for life have been found on asteroids traveling through space?

Building Blocks of Life Found on Samples Collected From an Asteroid

Your building a strawman with your assertion. The fact of the matter is, the right chemicals for life are out there, all around us. Atoms are not living and yet they are the substance you are made of. Your argument is inane.

Assuming the universe is blind and pitiless, consciousness has nothing to do with it. You are implying that consciousness has a motive. Consciousness is as blind and pitiless as the universe itself. It is an event. An outward manifestation of life forms. What makes you think it has a goal? What makes you think consciousness itself is a goal? You are just attributing erroneous assumptions all over the place.

Sheldon · June 5, 2023, 7:37pm

It didn’t, consciousness evolved. Only your religion’s creation myth claims consciousness appeared instantly using magic. Also we have objective evidence for all the things you say can’t exist…without something no one can demonstrate any evidence is even possible, an unevidenced deity using magic. So that’s Occam’s razor violated again, like it’s your first night in prison.

Calilasseia · June 6, 2023, 5:10am

@Cognostic … I’ve been aware for some time of peer reviewed papers, documenting the evidence that key molecules have been found in interstellar gas clouds. One paper even documents an experiment in which the amino acid glycine was synthesised in the laboratory under the requisite conditions. Ammonia and ethanol condensed onto dust particles as cometary ices, will undergo ultraviolet photolysis and the resulting radicals will react to form glycine.

Scientists have now found molecules such as pentose sugars, simple lipids, and even nucleotides in space. If these molecules can be synthesised in that environment, the much milder conditions on Earth pose no problems for the chemistry of formation thereof.

Calilasseia · June 6, 2023, 6:15am

As an example of the sort of work that has ben conducted, with respect to the chemistry of interstellar gas clouds, I turn everyone’s attention to this paper:

Racemic Amino Acids From The Ultraviolet Photolysis Of Interstellar Ice Analogues by Max P. Bernstein, Jason P Dworkin, Scott A. Sandford, George W. Cooper and Louis J. Allamandola, Nature, 416: 401-403 (28th March 2002) [source is here]

Note that this result was obtained nineteen years ago as I write this.

From the paper:

Bernstein et al (2002):

The delivery of extraterrestrial organic molecules to Earth by meteorites may have been important for the origin and early evolution of life1. Indigenous amino acids have been found in meteorites²—over 70 in the Murchison meteorite alone³. Although it has been generally accepted that the meteoritic amino acids formed in liquid water⁴ on a parent body, the water in the Murchison meteorite is depleted in deuterium⁵ relative to the indigenous organic acids^6,7. Moreover, the meteoritical evidence⁸ for an excess of laevo-rotatory amino acids is hard to understand in the context of liquid-water reactions on meteorite parent bodies. Here we report a laboratory demonstration that glycine, alanine and serine naturally form from ultraviolet photolysis of the analogues of icy interstellar grains. Such amino acids would naturally have a deuterium excess similar to that seen in interstellar molecular clouds, and the formation process could also result in enantiomeric excesses if the incident radiation is circularly polarized. These results suggest that at least some meteoritic amino acids are the result of interstellar photochemistry, rather than formation in liquid water on an early Solar System body.

The authors explain their experiments thus:

Bernstein et al (2002):

The laboratory experiments described here were designed to elucidate potential pathways from interstellar chemistry to the organic molecules extracted from meteorites. We have conducted laboratory experiments at temperatures, pressures and radiation conditions that are representative of the interstellar clouds from which planetary systems form. In a series of experiments, gases were vapour deposited onto a substrate at 15 K forming an ice film consisting primarily of amorphous H₂O with other compounds over a range of concentrations (0.5–5% NH₃, 5–10% CH₃OH and 0.5–5% HCN, relative to H₂O). These solid mixtures are representative of the composition of interstellar ice mantles in dense clouds and towards forming stars (protostars). For example, relative to H₂O, NH₃ has been observed at 10–30% in the ice around the massive protostars NGC753817 and GCS318, and CH₃OH has been commonly observed in clouds around forming stars¹⁹. Thus, H₂O, CH₃OH and NH₃ are reasonable starting materials because they are among the most abundant molecules frozen onto grains in the dense ISM. In addition, it is reasonable to include HCN because it is abundant in cometary coma and the dense ISM²⁰, where the majority of HCN should be frozen onto grains. Other simple molecules present in interstellar ices at comparable or greater abundances (CO, CO₂) rapidly form in situ in our experiments as a result of ultraviolet (UV) photolysis^13,21.

The interstellar ice simulations were performed in a cryogenic sample chamber, and great care was taken to exclude contamination and ensure that the starting materials did not react prior to deposition. Amorphous H₂O ices containing CH₃OH, HCN and NH₃ were vapour-deposited at temperatures and pressures representative of dense molecular clouds (15 K and 10^-8 torr, respectively) while simultaneously exposed to UV radiation characteristic of the ISM. On warming under dynamic vacuum, the ice sublimes, leaving behind an organic residue that was analysed by gas chromatography– mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and high-precision liquid chromatography (HPLC). In GC-MS, the identity of molecules are ascertained from both their retention time and mass fragmentation patterns. The HPLC allows us to identify amines bearing a fluorescent label by the retention time with the coinjection of authentic standards.

N-formyl glycine, cycloserine (4-amino-3-isoxazolidinone) and glycerol were detected in the organic residue before hydrolysis, and glycine, alanine, serine, glycerol, ethanolamine and glyceric acid were observed by GC-MS after hydrolysis. Amino malonic acid and hydantoins were also tentatively identified. After hydrolysis, glycine, alanine, serine urea and ethanolamine were detected by HPLC (Fig. 1). The carbon yield of glycine, the most abundant amino acid when starting from methanol, was typically about 0.5%. Most biological amino acids are chiral, meaning that they exist in two mirror image (enantiomeric) forms—dextro-rotatory (D) and laevo-rotatory (L). Living systems employ L-amino acids almost exclusively, while the amino acid products of (abiotic) laboratory syntheses are usually a 50:50 mixture of D and L (a racemic mixture). The chiral amino acids produced in our experiments—serine and alanine—were determined to be racemic, (100.1 ± 1.6)%, within the integration error, providing evidence that they were not contaminants. This is also demonstrated by controls showing that if the UV was omitted the amino acids detected by HPLC (Fig. 1, trace B) are 1,000 times less abundant than in otherwise identical experiments where UV light was included during deposition. In addition, GC-MS of organics produced in experiments consisting of fully ¹³C labelled starting material showed fully labelled products, further confirming that contamination is minimal.

That’s quite some result.

Basically, the authors replicated the conditions within an interstellar gas cloud in their apparatus (15K temperature and high vacuum) into which their reactants were carefully introduced, in the form of solid comet-like ices refrigerated to similar temperature. Those ices were then irradiated with ultraviolet light similar to that emitted by stars (the wavelength being determined of course by the usual spectroscopic analysis). After a suitable period of time, the material was carefully transferred to both gas chromatograph mass spectrometers and high-performance liquid chromatography analysers, to determine if any new molecules had appeared in the irradiated material,

The authors report above that indeed, they found important precursors (namely N-formyl glycine, cycloserine and glycerol) prior to hydrolysis, which yielded glycine, serine and alanine (among other products) after hydrolysis. Note also that the authors took special steps to eliminate contamination, one of these being the use of isotopically labelled starting products labelled using ¹³C (a rare but stable isotope of carbon), and found that the products were also isotopically labelled at the end of the test, ruling out contamination as a source of the molecules in question.

Now, this result dovetails nicely with earlier work, involving spectroscopic analysis of interstellar gas clouds, via which means glycine was detected therein.

In addition, the authors mention that the products could be synthesised in enantiomeric excess (favouring L over D amino acids) if the ultraviolet radiation is circularly polarised. Further experiments in this vein no doubt have taken place, but I’ll require time to find any relevant papers devoted to this.

Finally, the authors conclude with:

Calilasseia · June 6, 2023, 6:34am

Yet to read this one in full, but again, we have laboratory experiments demonstrating the requisite result:

Enantiomeric Excesses Induced In Amino Acids By Ultraviolet Circularly Polarised Light Irradiation Of Extraterrestrial Ice Analogues: A Possible Source Of Asymmetry For Prebiotic Chemistry by Paola Modica, Cornelia Meinhert, Pierre de Marcellus, Laurent Nahon, Uwe J. Meierhenrich and Louis LeSergeant d’Hendecourt, The Astrophysical Journal, 788: 79-89 (10th June 2014) [Full paper downloadable from here]

Modica et al (2014):

The discovery of meteoritic amino acids with enantiomeric excesses of the L-form (ee_L) has suggested that extraterrestrial organic materials may have contributed to prebiotic chemistry and directed the initial occurrence of the ee_L that further led to homochirality of amino acids on Earth. A proposed mechanism for the origin of ee_L in meteorites involves an asymmetric photochemistry of extraterrestrial ices by UV circularly polarized light (CPL). We have performed the asymmetric synthesis of amino acids on achiral extraterrestrial ice analogs by VUV CPL, investigating the chiral asymmetry transfer at two different evolutionary stages at which the analogs were irradiated (regular ices and/or organic residues) and at two different photon energies (6.6 and 10.2 eV). We identify 16 distinct amino acids and precisely measure the L-enantiomeric excesses using the enantioselective GC × GC-TOFMS technique in five of them: α-alanine, 2,3-diaminopropionic acid, 2-aminobutyric acid, valine, and norvaline, with values ranging from ee_L = −0.20% ± 0.14% to ee_L = −2.54% ± 0.28%. The sign of the induced ee_L depends on the helicity and the energy of CPL, but not on the evolutionary stage of the samples, and is the same for all five considered amino acids. Our results support an astrophysical scenario in which the solar system was formed in a high-mass star-forming region where icy grains were irradiated during the protoplanetary phase by an external source of CPL of a given helicity and a dominant energy, inducing a stereo-specific photochemistry.

Sid · June 6, 2023, 11:20am

No . I’m just pointing out the amazing depth of intellect and knowledge that can be found in a goat herder.

Calilasseia · June 6, 2023, 11:26am

No, you’re playing your usual duplicitous game of apologetics. Just because someone with scientific credentials issues sycophantic noises about your cartoon magic man, doesn’t mean it exists, especially if said sycophantic noises are bereft of proper evidential support.

Ex recto assertions don’t point to intellect and knowledge, they point to ignorance.

Genuine intellect and knowledge is exhibited when someone engages in the diligent labour required to convert an assertion into an evidentially supported postulate. Which has never happened with assertions about cartoon magic men from pre-scientific mythologies.