Material World

@kellyjay said
Regardless of how it began, we can always say we don't know and can never know.

And what is wrong with saying we "don't know" if that is an honest answer?

@kellyjay said
Regardless of how it began, we can always say we don't know and can never know; because there are several choices to be made that could be true no matter how much evidence is pointing one way or another. Without drilling into anything or anyone specific, would simply looking at material and immaterial, which came first, be a question we can look around and see what the most ...[text shortened]... if we believe because we believe, that is blind faith, there should be a reason, not a lack of one.

Because we don't yet understand all of the processes of nature, and have been in the (mere) last few hundred years been unable to replicate them, we some of us say 'nature can't have done it' , when all of the evidence from ancient life forms in older rocks, leading through to far more complex life forms in newer rocks indicates very strongly that nature has been at it for a very long time, whether we like it or not. The odds against 'life' forming from proteins and amino acids using mathematical equations are it is said vanishingly small, but it could just as well be argued that with so many billions upon billions of interactions going on at the molecular level at any one time, sooner or later something was going to hit the jackpot; one is simply foolish to try to second - guess nature in this or any other regard. Don't forget that we are dealing here in unimaginably long periods of time; for billions of years there was nothing but single - celled life before anything else happened, and the atmosphere had to oxygenate before higher life was possible, so best not write off nature quite so readily, don't you think?

If you think that a more reasoned and reasonable explanation is that there was this god who made everything, then made everything else a bit later, then that is your prerogative. Had you been an ancient Egyptian then you would have said that Amun - Ra created the earth and everything in it; you are a product of your time, and happen to have been born into a mostly Christian society, so you believe as you do, but to say that divine intervention is the only explanation is leading you down a blind alley, with nothing but your imagined god at the end of it.

@indonesia-phil said
Because we don't yet understand all of the processes of nature, and have been in the (mere) last few hundred years been unable to replicate them, we some of us say 'nature can't have done it' , when all of the evidence from ancient life forms in older rocks, leading through to far more complex life forms in newer rocks indicates very strongly that nature has been at it ...[text shortened]... explanation is leading you down a blind alley, with nothing but your imagined god at the end of it.

I do not like arguing how long periods of time there were; I admit I don't know. What we don't know doesn't even concern me as much as what we do know as far as coming to some conclusion about what we see. In life, mainly because what we call older lifeforms and new ones share many things in common, can we say simple to complex shows us anything?

In the here and now, we have a simpler life and more complex, all sharing the same time period we live in. Therefore a straightforward statement from simple to complex doesn't, on its face, mean simpler life automatically means older observing life today shows both exist now at the same time.

All that aside, our study of biology has shown us the unexplainable if life were to come from material to immaterial first, due to the linguistic nature of DNA, we can read it. When we read a book, we don't think the letters are meaningless; they have symbolic features, string some together they form words, string those together they can become sentences, all of that carries meaning.

The typical conclusion we come to when we see a book written in a language we can understand is someone wrote it; there was a mind behind it. Someone like a child could write a book due to how it was written with their spelling and punctuation; we can tell they don't have a strong command of the written word; while others with a strong command we can glean that by how they structure their writing, we may not know who wrote something, but we can tell someone did, the type of meaning we see in the written word don't just by happenstance happen, typically a mind is always behind them. (Sorry for the book)

@kellyjay said
I do not like arguing how long periods of time there were; I admit I don't know. What we don't know doesn't even concern me as much as what we do know as far as coming to some conclusion about what we see. In life, mainly because what we call older lifeforms and new ones share many things in common, can we say simple to complex shows us anything?

In the here and now, we h ...[text shortened]... word don't just by happenstance happen, typically a mind is always behind them. (Sorry for the book)

There's nothing wrong with not knowing, but other people do know, by carbon dating rocks, looking at sedimentary deposits, understanding how rock metamorphoses and so on. It's all out there and well known in the scientific world. And your lack of knowledge is important, of course, to your understanding of 'what we see.'

Of course simple and complex life forms exist simultaneously, and your lack of understanding of how this can happen indicates how little you actually understand about evolution.

Indeed we can 'read' DNA', and this has given us an understanding of how species relate to one another, and thus can we better understand our origins. For example you and I are very similar genetically to Chimpanzees, and quite similar although less so to Orang Utans, and this is because all three species have a common ancestor, not very long ago in geological timescales. Orang Utans 'split off' from the lineage of Homo Sapiens earlier than did Chimpanzees.

I don't think your comparing DNA to a book is very helpful, it sounds like more of your 'talking snakes are the same as airplanes' kind of logic. People write books for other people to read, DNA occurs naturally, and just because we can understand it does not make its' origin supernatural or 'conscious'.

@Indonesia-Phil

Indeed we can 'read' DNA', and this has given us an understanding of how species relate to one another, and thus can we better understand our origins. For example you and I are very similar genetically to Chimpanzees, and quite similar although less so to Orang Utans, and this is because all three species have a common ancestor, not very long ago in geological timescales. Orang Utans 'split off' from the lineage of Homo Sapiens earlier than did Chimpanzees.

Similarity is obvious.
Relationships of descent is a theory for why there are similarities.

Another valid interpretation is that there is similarity reflecting knowledge of a common designer.

Relationships because of descent is a possible interpretation of the similarities in functionality.

I am not a biologist but it should be common sense that that is not the only possible interpretation.

A pair of rollar skates, a unicycle, a tricycle, a bicycle, a motorcycle, a four wheel car, an eighteen wheel truck all have in common wheels. The common desgn of having wheels works.

It could be the same with living things.

@sonship said
@Indonesia-Phil

[quote] Indeed we can 'read' DNA', and this has given us an understanding of how species relate to one another, and thus can we better understand our origins. For example you and I are very similar genetically to Chimpanzees, and quite similar although less so to Orang Utans, and this is because all three species have a common ancestor, not very long ago i ...[text shortened]... n wheels. The common desgn of having wheels works.

It could be the same with living things.

When we assume something is true and use it to uncover other mysteries if we are wrong in our assumptions it creates a false image of reality. So why things have both similar and dissimilar features really matters.

@sonship said
@Indonesia-Phil

[quote] Indeed we can 'read' DNA', and this has given us an understanding of how species relate to one another, and thus can we better understand our origins. For example you and I are very similar genetically to Chimpanzees, and quite similar although less so to Orang Utans, and this is because all three species have a common ancestor, not very long ago i ...[text shortened]... n wheels. The common desgn of having wheels works.

It could be the same with living things.

It's estimated that 99.9999 percent of species which have existed here on our dear old earth are now extinct. Even if this is off by a couple of percentage points it's clear that most species didn't make it. If your 'valid interpretation' that your god or someone else's god was busy up there designing everything, they must be a lousy designer, don't you think?

@indonesia-phil said
It's estimated that 99.9999 percent of species which have existed here on our dear old earth are now extinct. Even if this is off by a couple of percentage points it's clear that most species didn't make it. If your 'valid interpretation' that your god or someone else's god was busy up there designing everything, they must be a lousy designer, don't you think?

The numbers you bring up come from where?

@kellyjay said
The numbers you bring up come from where?

From a bloke I met down the pub last Thursday. Where do you think they came from? From study of the fossil record, and from our now deep scientific understanding of how evolution works. In any case the numbers aren't important, I was careful to say that the quoted number was an estimate, but the fundamental point remains, which is that most species that have existed on our dear old earth ain't here any more. About 65 million years ago an asteroid struck earth somewhere near Mexico, (which by the way wasn't there at the time) and the cataclysmic effect of this destroyed most species on earth, and saw to the end of the age of dinosaurs. That kind of thing, you know?

Thence by the by do we see a rise in the number and diversity of warm - blooded mammals, which better survived the catastrophe, which in the end (so far) led to us having this conversation. No asteroid, no me and you, lucky old us, eh?

@fmf said
And what is wrong with saying we "don't know" if that is an honest answer?

Nothing is wrong with saying I don't know. I use that answer a lot, but we can look at all of the evidence and see what makes the most sense wherever the evidence leads. Doing that is quite different from ignoring some inconvenient truths that can only be dismissed by personal definition, not because the evidence doesn't point.

@indonesia-phil said
From a bloke I met down the pub last Thursday. Where do you think they came from? From study of the fossil record, and from our now deep scientific understanding of how evolution works. In any case the numbers aren't important, I was careful to say that the quoted number was an estimate, but the fundamental point remains, which is that most species that have existed on ...[text shortened]... n the end (so far) led to us having this conversation. No asteroid, no me and you, lucky old us, eh?

How evolution works is simply how life works, biological evolution can only function after life starts; it has nothing to do with life's beginning; chemicals don't evolve; they react predictably. If the numbers are not important, don't bother using them; quoting them makes me think you pulled them out of a body part for effect, nothing more.

The trouble you have, even if everyone wholly accepted evolution as to how it may have happened, is there isn't a mechanism we can point to that can explain how the information properties in life got there; as I pointed out to you earlier, we can read it and know what much of it says. Being able to read it means it has properties similar to words and codes. It is a highly complex code that does an incredible amount of work more sophisticated than we can produce. The information alone is just part of the question because, within life, many of the necessary things have come together in ways we have no stinking clue how it happens.

@indonesia-phil said
From a bloke I met down the pub last Thursday. Where do you think they came from? From study of the fossil record, and from our now deep scientific understanding of how evolution works. In any case the numbers aren't important, I was careful to say that the quoted number was an estimate, but the fundamental point remains, which is that most species that have existed on ...[text shortened]... n the end (so far) led to us having this conversation. No asteroid, no me and you, lucky old us, eh?

YouTube

I posted a long time ago, and I could be wrong, but I believe this guy has passed. He worked on a comet for the origin of life questions, and one of the people they consulted with was Uri Miller, who put together the famous experiment on the building blocks of life. The vast majority of this talk is about science. Faith is mentioned simply as pointing out the difference between science and faith according to him.