WHO CREATED LIFE (PART 2)

My discussion continues with Jacob, the self-styled expert in biological sciences and critic of the scientific exploration of the feasibility and mechanism of abiogenesis.

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Author: jacob

thanks for taking the time to go throught wat i've written, and for taking the trouble to 'correct' me as well... i shall go thru ur points one by one..

firstly, i fail to understand how u can 'assume' that my university hasnt issued me with with my degree... or how u feel that i've not studied in a reputable university... i wonder how reputable ur university must be, if they could teach you to make such assumptions.... doesnt say much abt the standard of ur learning, does it?

now to look at the 'evidence' u have so painstakingly collected... the tPNA were synthesized under controlled conditions in a lab, whereas Darwin's 'organic pool' wasnt so amenable to the stable formation of such structures; especially under the prevalent environmental conditions of the time. I quote 'the molecules haven’t yet achieved self-replication..', if they had, u wud have had a valid case here... but of course, in your zeal to prove me wrong, u have missed out on these points....

next... religious believers DO NOT dwell upon how God came into existence... (only atheists like urself try to find out how God came into existence....) He was already there before it all began... its difficult for us all to grasp, but the human mind has its limitations.... its like trying to make yourself understand when time began, or what happened before the Big Bang... its simply beyond our capacity... a believer in God understands this, and is content to praise and thank God for the wonderful things He has created for us all...

coming to the part where u have written abt what psychologists and social biologists have said... u havent mentioned anything abt their explanations for the existence, nature and origins of supernatural beings in the brains of humans, only that they have been successful in explaining it... and i've never, ever, in any form, mentioned above that I alone am in possession of the 'truth'.... thats something only a person who feels that he has no reason to believe in God thinks... I'd rather say for myself that all that I've learnt all these years is nothing compared to the knowledge of God.... of course, u would never say something as such.. its utterly shameful for u to admit that ur knowledge can be inferior to anyone else's....

now look at ur last sentence... 'The answer may not be 42 but there is no valid reason to believe that your religiously generated answers make any better sense.'... i've no idea what u've meant by '42'... anyways...u say that 'the scientific explanation isnt complete, but so is the religious explanation'... well, let me say this... the religious explanation is complete in itself... a believer in God BELIEVES all things around us were created by Him. Full stop. whereas people who refuse to acknowledge Him will keep trying to find alternate reasons, in vain...

I am myself keenly interested in knowing how things happen, what's the purpose of their happening, and so on... but then i also appreciate the skill of the Creator in designing all of these, for instance in fashioning the shape of an orchid so that a male bee thinks it to be a female and unwittingly pollinates it... now i wonder what ur answer to this will be... evolution, perhaps?? if it is so, then answer this- natural selection says that the losers in the evolutionary race are slowly but surely replaced... if it is so, the bees who are attracted to mate with a flower should have been slowly replaced by those who know the scent of a female bee frm that of a flower, why hasnt this happened? maybe u wud like to say that IT IS happening, albeit slowly, well these orchids and bees have been sharing this unusual relationship over millions of years... (you would be surprised to know that the bee doesnt get ANY benefit for this, not even honey/pollen that flowers normally have to
offer...)

i hope that one day, u will wake up frm ur self-induced inability to be amazed at the versatility and ingenuity of God, expressed through His creations...

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Here is my reply.

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@Jacob

Thank you for your reply to my reply. Let me answer your counter charges.

”…firstly, i fail to understand how u can 'assume' that my university hasnt issued me with with my degree…”

I misunderstood your introductory comment to mean that you were a post-graduate STUDENT of biological sciences. If you have only an American College level Bachelor degree in the sciences then this explains why you do not demonstrate the level of expertise and scientific competence that I would expect of a person doing professional level studies and publishable level research in the area. My apologies for elevating you unduly.

”……or how u feel that i've not studied in a reputable university……”

I think I have explained that one sufficiently. In summary, you did not walk the walk of a person doing professional level training in the biological sciences which is the level I erroneously imagined that you had attained.

”……the tPNA were synthesized under controlled conditions in a lab, whereas Darwin's 'organic pool' wasnt so amenable to the stable formation of such structures……”

This argument is irrelevant. Go to http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/ and read up on abiogenesis and the scientific underpinning of the subject you studied at U.S. College level.

”……I quote 'the molecules haven’t yet achieved self-replication..', if they had, u wud have had a valid case here... but of course, in your zeal to prove me wrong, u have missed out on these points………”

It seems that your own zeal failed to note that the second study which I referenced did, indeed, develop self-replicating molecules. Go back to my original response to you, check out the summary article and then use your research skills to track down the original paper. Read it all.

One of the first rules of good research is that you get your facts from primary sources. Getting your “facts” from secondary sources is not objective science, especially if the people providing the information have a clear bias against the view being expressed or the interpretation given to the evidence. The very first thing a good researcher will do is to summarize the argument from the opposition – from the opposition’s point of view. If you are not thoroughally familiar with your opponent’s arguments then you have formed your current position from a basis of ignorance. In the scientific realm such ignorance will lead to your research paper being rejected for publication in a reputable journal. In an impartial court of law, a verdict which has been reached without due and equal consideration of evidence and arguments presented directly by opposing counsel is dismissed as a mistrial.

It is sad fact, but true, that religious believers who have impartially investigated the case both for and against their indoctrinated belief set are extremely rare. Almost all those who believe in the tenants of a religion do so on the basis of extensive ignorance of opposing arguments. It is ironical that the average informed atheist has a better understanding of the arguments used to support a religion than the believers themselves. It is a common theme among atheists born in Christian countries that the reason they became an atheist is that they read the Christian Bible from start to finish, discovering along the way that the god which is worshipped by modern believers has little in common with the general overview presented in this highly promoted, but sparsely read text.

”……..next... religious believers DO NOT dwell upon how God came into existence……”.

That is not something to be proud of. You stifle all curiosity about how something as amazing as a god could come into existence but you obsess over how something as amazing as the beginnings of life on earth could come into being without being created by the entity you do not believe needs to have been created. That, sir, is intellectual suicide.

If you can believe in a god without having to explain how he came to exist then you should have no difficulty accepting that life on earth evolved without having to explain how it came to exist either. There is no valid reason for using special pleading in the case of the god concept.

”…….He was already there before it all began.... …”.

How do you know this? What proof do you have?

Is this statement anything more than dogma based on the uneducated speculation of ancient goat herders?

Back when I was studying for the Christian ministry the standard answers to those questions were quite unsatisfactory. They went like this.

We know that god is eternal because the Bible says he says he is.
But in the real world it is not wise to accept what someone tells you about themselves without any proof that they are telling the truth or, more importantly, that what they think is the truth is actually factual.

We know that the Bible is the true word of god because it contains so many prophecies which have come true.
None of these prophecies are clear and unambiguous. They have to be “interpreted” by those with an emotionally vested interest in them being fulfilled before they can be viewed by other readers as either prophetic or fulfilled. Besides, there are many prophecies in the Bible which quite clearly did not come true at all. See here for a few examples collected by a former priest.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_lippard/fabulous-prophecies.html

In the end the “proof” for the external existence of something called “god” is that the leaders of your particular religious viewpoint tell you that it is true and you believe that they believe that they think that they are telling the truth. This is not at all convincing if you have not been brought up in the religion and need to believe it at any cost.

As you said:
”… ..its difficult for us all to grasp, but the human mind has its limitations.... its like trying to make yourself understand when time began, or what happened before the Big Bang... its simply beyond our capacity... …”

For someone who is prepared to believe what he cannot grasp in order to believe in a supernatural being for which he has no tangible evidence it should be relatively easy to believe that the beginning of life on earth resulted from the gradual evolution of chemicals to the point where they became self-replicating when the environmental conditions were right.

It is much easier because, unlike your belief in an entity with no beginning or end, science is getting closer and closer to explaining how it could have happened. OTOH, no religious believer has ever been able to provide any reasonable explanation of how an entity could always exist. You must simply believe what you are told by the religious leaders and not question it. It sounds like the authoritarian who tells his child: “This is true because I say so and I am right. Don’t answer back or I will punish you for being so rude. “

You asked for an expansion of the explanations given by psychologists and social biologists.

The model for how a thought virus (meme) replicates itself over the centuries was first proposed by Richard Dawkins. See a brief non-technical explanation at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

Darrel Rey takes up the theme in his book, The God Virus. http://www.articlesbase.com/religion-articles/dr-darrel-ray-and-the-god-virus-853684.html

Ray is a psychologist who explains some of the elements I referred to briefly in my first response to you. Other factors come from my research paper in the area.

To summarize, religion is amost always a taught, not a discovered, belief system. It is maintained by social structures which the organism needs to fulfil essential human needs, such as a feeling of belonging and being accepted by others. It breaks down most easily among those who have higher needs for achievement than social rewards, among those who tend to be curious about life and among those with the ability to think independently and to think outside the conventional box. This is a good description of the scientific-investigative personality trait (http://www.careerkey.org/asp/your_personality/hollands_theory_of_career_choice.html) so it should be no surprise that the higher the educational level reached by a person, especially in the investigative sciences, the lower the level of belief in the supernatural.

Strength of religious belief is most virulent in those with strong conformist tendencies, rigid, authoritarian and dogmatic personalities, and among those who have difficulty dealing with shades of gray, shifting paradigms and non-absolutes.

The exceptions are those who develop abnormalities of brain chemistry that result in psychotic conditions with concomitant religious delusions, those who have seizure disorders with foci in a particular area of the right parietal lobe (known as the “god spot”) and those how have sustained damage to this area by other means (stroke, head trauma, etc.). That is, when certain parts of the brain fail to function normally people have experiences which they usually describe in terms of whatever religion or supernatural belief set is most familiar to them. Those who have no belief in a god (including Buddhist monks) experience a feeling of transcendence or oneness with the universe. In other words, people seek to explain unusual feelings in terms of what they know or in line with the context in which they experience these odd sensations.

The brain has evolved to try to make sense of its experiences and to see patterns in everything. It will fill in gaps in visual information as well as gaps in knowledge and experience in order to make sense of the world. This includes the phenomena of confabulation, a condition where the brain makes things up to fill in uncomfortable gaps in memory or experience. Although it may be very obvious to an observer that the person is making stuff up, the victim is not aware that they are lying. A similar process goes on in the minds of those who are emotionally attached to belief sets which cannot be rationally supported. People on the outside can see through the ploys, but those in the grip of the delusions cannot understand why the observer is not convinced by what appears to be clear to them.

”…….I am myself keenly interested in knowing how things happen, what's the purpose of their happening, and so on... but then i also appreciate the skill of the Creator in designing all of these,… …”

Your interest in knowing how things happen is limited to explanations which do not challenge your belief in a creating god. Any thinking outside this box is apparently so uncomfortable and anxiety provoking that you cannot step over the line. It is you, not me, who comes to a Full Stop. You are living in an intellectual cage with walls that are visible to others, but not to you.

The basis of effective research is the ability to suspend judgment, explore explanations and ideas which do not appeal to you and the ability to go where the evidence leads regardless of whether you like the implications or not.

”……natural selection says that the losers in the evolutionary race are slowly but surely replaced…(omitted material)… the bee doesnt get ANY benefit for this.. …”

For someone who pretends to be an expert in biological sciences your understanding of how evolution works is appallingly deficient. That alone undermines all your “humble” insistence on superior scientific knowledge in biological science vis a vis others on this forum. Once again, may I suggest that you spend some considerable time familiarizing yourself with the contents of http://talkorigins.com

”…….i hope that one day, u will wake up frm ur self-induced inability to be amazed at the versatility and ingenuity of God, expressed through His creations….…”

This assumes, quite wrongly, that atheists have never been committed and knowledgeable Christians and have never believed as you do now. I know the field from both sides. I do not believe that you have that privilege.

You also make the mistake of assuming people who do not believe in a supernatural being have “rejected” god and have deliberately chosen not to believe. First, it is impossible to “reject” something you do not believe exists. Second, most of the so-called “new” atheists say that the position was not one of choice; they are simply incapable of continuing to believe in something which no longer makes any sense. Most have a history of several years during which they tried desparately to find reasons to continue to believe what was familiar and comfortable.

Go to http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Atheism to find out what an atheist actually is and what they really think. In your ignorance, you are trying to argue against positions which atheists generally do not take and for positions which atheists have already investigated and found wanting.

You make me feel like I did when a concerned elementary school student tried to convince me to re-believe in Santa so that I would get lots of nice presents and not be punished with a stocking full of coal. The arguments she used were naïve but there was no way of explaining this to the student. Her case seemed compelling to her because she lacked the experience, skill, knowledge and intellectual development necessary to effectively evaluate it. Now she would laugh at her ignorance and lack of critical ability.

I once held beliefs similar to yours. In my mid twenties I became a candidate for the Christian ministry. It took one year of theological training, including an extensive study of the whole Bible, before I was forced to admit that whole sections of what used to be appear to be water-tight beliefs were actually logically untenable or at least extremely shaky. I was unable to continue to believe them without forgetting what I had learned.

It was several more years and a couple of psychology degrees before I could admit that I had not only lost all my belief in supernatural elements but I could no longer even pretend to believe. Like the Santa-believing Elementary school student, I don’t expect you to understand that. Perhaps things will be different in ten years time, should you decide to investigate the basis of your current mindset. Othewise, I imagine you will go on shielding your beliefs from challenge. Sadly, you will have a lot of company.

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