Re: NPR Publishes Pro-ID Editorial

rev.goetz <jimgoetz316@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Wilkins wrote:
rev.goetz <jimgoetz316@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Wilkins wrote:
rev.goetz <jimgoetz316@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Wilkins wrote:
rev.goetz <jimgoetz316@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Wilkins wrote:
bullpup <bullpup@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Elf M. Sternberg" <elf@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:87ver5hm5y.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Today's All Things Considered [1] included a commentary
[2] by Whitney R. Harris, the last living prosecutor of
Nuremberg, in their series This I Believe. Harris puts
forth a rather strong pro-ID line in his statement,
although he uses it as an axiomatic premise rather than
as a conclusion, to build up a progressive argument.

We do not know whence came the first manifestation
of that life -- the tiniest amoeba -- capable of
discernible thought and movement. To ignite the
spark of life requires the hand of God. Never mind
the universe. Here on Earth, we find the
quintessential role of God.

To quote PZ, "What is it with creationists and their
amoebae?"

Is my inability to understand how they can't get past the
simple fact, that at it's very basic level, their
objection to the ToE is based upon an argument from
incredulity, itself an argument from incredulity on my
part, and therefore my objection to their argument from
incredulity equally logically invalid?

I suspect that, because they can't imagine getting to the
top of the stairs in a single jump, they need guidance to
take the first step too...

Some of us do not believe that all of the steps per
physicalism are absolutely impossible, but we suspect that it
would have been extraordinarily unlikely apart from a World
Ensemble with an unlimited number of universes similar to the
observed universe.

Unless there was some kind f physical necessity for each step...

I as far as I can tell, studies of chemistry and abiogenesis
indicate that natural abiogenesis is possible, but nothing
indicates that it is was necessary.

If it happened, then it was necessary. Physical laws don't sit
around being contingently possible until someone puts them into play
- a chemical reaction that led to life was necessarily going to
happen in those conditions. What wasn't necessary was that the
conditions would obtain, but since they did, every step was
physically, chemically and thermodynamically necessary.

After the fact we know that a causal process was necessary. That
there were other possible causal pathways allowed by the laws of
physics is besides the point. Once the conditions occurred, the
subsequent outcome was a necessary outcome.

Look at it like this - *some* physical outcome has to have happened
(we live in a physical universe). None of them are mandated just by
the laws of physics, but each one that *has* happened happened out
of physical
necessity.

Okay, but there is no indication that it was necessary within the time
constraints of multigenerational stars in the universe.

Ahead of time? Maybe not (though I wonder how you could make that out),
but after the fact, sure there is.

Well, I should say that there is no indication that natural abiogenesis
would be necessary in any given universe with inititial conditions
identical to the observed universe. But It may be necessary in a World
Ensemble with an unlimited number of universes with initial conditions
indentical to the observed universe.

If the intitial conditions were *exactly* as the present one's then, as
a physical determinist, I think that natural abiogenesis would
inevitably result. This is, of course, what causal processes do - they
inevitably cause whatever the conditions and the operative laws entail.

Of course, there is a chaotic effect where very minor variations will
(deterministically) cause wildly different outcomes downstream. But we
do not need an infinity or universes to attain life, just a very big
universe. And that we have. The rest is gravity, chemistry and time.

And if abiogenesis was strictly natural in our universe, then we do not
know if is was an accident or a necessity within the context of the
time constraints of multigenerational stars in the universe.

I personally think that thermodynamics rules - if there are processes
that *can* lower entropy locally, which is to say, can retard and emply
the flow of energy through a system, then the likelihood that such
systems will develop chemically is very high indeed, given a
sufficiently rich chemical environment and a sufficient flow of energy.

While we might have had to wait for the right elements to be formed and
collected into the rich environment required, there is no (logical)
necessity for them to be the same as ours. Given time, the chemicals and
their properties, and gravity, you have a reasonably high likelihood
they will collect *somewhere* in the visible matter universe and
generate what Prigogine called "dissipative structures", which are
physical systems that support their structure by dissipating energy, and
that some subset of those will be able to copy themselves.

--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

.

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