Originally posted by FZ+
I have shown this already... And you can't talk to someone who doesn't speak your language either - conclusion: foreigners aren't alive?
I think you are still stumbling into the same pit - that any life has to be life like us.
I understand at least enough about the field to know that the definition of life is not that open to debate. This is why we have a discipline known as “biology,” why we can say something is “dead,” why we could state clearly after the Mars visit no life was found, etc.
Are we going to discuss life by the general definitions of science, or do you get to make up your own rules? The life we have here is the only life we know, and it may just be the only life in the entire universe. In fact, from what we actually know it
is the only life (you are probably familiar with Ward and Brownlee’s book “Rare Earth – Why complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe”).
Life does a number of things, not just one, that are all necessary for it to be “alive.” So taking rocks or a single chemical process and showing the similarity to one life process does not make a rock or chemical process alive! Life is a
system, not just a collection of stuff, that metabolizes, reproduces, and evolves . . . all of which allows it to participate in natural selection. The most primitive single cell can do that -- a virus alone or crystal cannot.
The chemogenesis question raised here was whether or not chemistry and physical processes alone can create the living
system we call a cell
AND (and regarding this thread, that is a big “and”) if those scientists who claim chemogenesis is the “most likely” origin of life are exaggerating when they make that claim.
Originally posted by FZ+
On the one hand, you claim to strive for objectivity and unbiased, against dogma subjectivity and faith. You attack strongly my proposal that the life/unlife distinction draws from our personal subjective views of how we are, not as an actual physical materialistic difference. Ok enough, that is not an uncommon position to take.
On the other hand, you reject that argument that chemogenesis must be followed because it is the only empirical method of analyzing it, and say that a subjective method that views life as a spiritual subjective entity is unfairly unused. Again, not an uncommon position.
But when you put them together, the two contradict each other. On the one hand, you constrain the possibilities into life only as an empirical property, and thus limit us to only science as a possibility for examining it. (Since even if we were to invoke a supernatural physics principle, it's evidence will eventually be found by further research into the only road of chemogenesis.) On the other, you say it is unfair that we only use science when the problem can clearly be treated subjectively!
In effect, you have created an impossible position...
It is
your description of my point that has “created an impossible position,” not me.
First, let me further clarify why I reject your proposal that the “life/unlife distinction draws from our personal subjective views.” It’s because I consider your argument sophistry. It looks to me like a debating tactic you are using in order to blur the boundaries of life so you can then claim life is nothing unique. But for the reasons I gave above, and more, most biologists would not agree with you.
Molecular biologist Hahlon Hoagland in his book “The Way Life Works” lists 16 patterns of life:
1. Life builds from the bottom up
2. Life assembles itself in the chains
3. Life needs and inside and an outside
4. Life uses a few themes to generate many variations
5. Life organizes with information
6. Life encourages variety by reshuffling information
7. Life creates with mistakes
8. Life occurs in water
9. Life runs on sugar
10. Life works in cycles
11. Life recycles everything in uses
12. Life maintains itself by turnover
13. Life tends to optimize rather than maximize
14. Life is opportunistic
15. Life competes within a cooperative framework
16. Life is interconnected and interdependent
Apparently also more impressed than you with the uniqueness of life is Stephan Jay Gould who writes, “[Nobody knows] . . . any formula that can account for the amount of change and almost inexhaustible variety that have written life’s adventures all across our planet. That story is a mystery locked into deeps of time that are mostly beyond our reach. . . . Our life dwells at the interplay between supreme cosmic forces and the ever-changing history of chemical and physical events . . .”
Lynn Margulis says, “Islands of order in an ocean of chaos, organisms are far superior to human-built machines. . . . Life is a single expanding organization . . . It is matter gone wild, capable of choosing its own direction in order to indefinitely forestall . . . death.” (By the way, Margulis also agrees viruses are
not alive saying, “In our view, viruses are not [alive]. . . . Biological viruses reproduce within their hosts in the same way that digital viruses reproduce within computers. Without an autopoietic organic being, a biological virus is a mere collection of chemicals . . .”)
Notice how she says “mere collection of chemicals”? And “expanding organization”? Notice how awed they all are by life, that they consider it a mystery. Just about everyone not trying to win a debate or who’s not turned into a cold calculating machine notices there is something unique about life.
So no one knows what makes non-living chemistry become living chemistry. One theory is that chemistry shapes itself into life, or chemogenesis, but it isn’t the only theory. It is just the theory that materialist thinkers believe most because they are not willing to consider any evidence other than material evidence. There are empirical researchers who have non-materialist theories; not every scientist buys the chemogenesis theory.
Separate from the issue of one’s favorite theory is claims made about how likely some theory is true. Yes, I am of the non-chemogenesis persuasion, but I realize I cannot prove my theory is correct. Yes, you and others are of the chemogenesis persuasion, and you cannot prove your theory is correct either.
However, you don’t hear me telling the world in science documentaries, writing in textbooks, or in public interviews that my theory is “most likely” how life came about. I might say that, if asked, “in my opinion . . .” But there are scientists saying chemogenesis is “most likely” all the time, and not just to each other either, but to anybody who will listen. Do they have enough evidence for that “most likely” label? I say they aren’t even close to having it, and what they are doing is using the current popularity of science as a bully pulpit to preach the doctrine of materialism.
As I said to AG, there is a big difference between empiricism and materialism. The former investigates reality by way of a logical and experience-based method that hypothesizes with the expectation of observing what has been hypothesized. Ideally empiricism is a neutral practice and does not assume what cannot be discovered through it does not exist, but rather assumes it is simply unavailable to senses and or logical analysis. But the materialist goes further to assume that what is unavailable to senses and or logical analysis
does not and cannot exist. Because the only thing revealed through the senses and logical analysis are material processes, the materialist concludes existence is purely physical.
Now, everyone is entitled to their beliefs. My objection is when materialist philosophy starts to influence empirical objectivity, so that the so-called “objective” opinions we are expecting really are tainted by the materialist faith in matter as God.
What do I want? I want scientists to acknowledge that chemogenesis is only a working hypothesis for some of them, to be 100% objective about how close they are to proving chemogenesis, to openly say what the difficulties are with the theory, and to
stop saying chemogenesis is “most likely” until they can demonstrate non-living chemistry can transform itself into living chemistry.
As of now, all they’ve managed to achieve is a “mere collection of chemicals.”
.