On Monday, December 1, 2014 5:41:19 AM UTC, John Clark wrote: > > Zibbsey wrote: > > >I should think we'll need an origin-of-life answer to scientific >> standards before we can start finalizing on the assumptions underpinning >> all that. >> > > Darwin was in my opinion the greatest scientist who ever lived because he > provided a elegant answer to the question of how we got from simple > bacteria to human beings. >
It was an elegant - intuitive - answer. But at the time of going to press it was in fact unviable. Darwin was aware of this but only vaguely. It wasn't until Mendel the reason it had been unviable arrived...at the same time as the solution that made it viable. In terms of that aspect. I think it was you the other day that said had Darwin kept his nerve he might have been credited with other major scientific advances. But it isn't always the most robust avenue to go down, assuming something is complete in of itself. In the case of natural selection it depends what level of abstraction the matter in question is situated on...... > But even Darwin didn't answer all the mysteries of biology, how we got > from simple chemicals to simple bacteria still remains a mystery because > for Darwin's mechanism to work you need heredity and there is no clear > understanding of how you could have heredity in the era before bacteria > existed. > ......which is what I find so interesting about your position here. you believe in natural selection as you say, then you might have held your nerve a little here and taken the very robust stance that, the problem of heredity must ultimately be resolvable because for an unbroken causality of events starting in chemistry and ending in biology not to be impossible, strong forces of natural selection were necessary. > > > Anything remotely that appeared to question the detail of a natural >> selection worldview was policed as suspicious of being creationist at root. >> > > That's not true, many real scientists are working on the origin of life > question and there are a lot of promising ideas that are worth pursuing, > although nothing has been proven yet. > It isn't legitimate to negate a broad point spanning a very large area 'origins', with a meagre exception like this. I obviously know about abiogenesis and efforts thee. But that is a sick-puppy science. Even if they make life in the lab it will remain so. Because we'll never attain surety it is what happened to create our life. For that to be approached we will need the generalization of natural selection that must be available for life to have been possible. > As for religion, if it had a good explanation to the origin of life I'd > become the most religious person you'd ever care to meet, but it doesn't > have anything of the sort. All that religious people say is "God did it" > but when asked how God did it they just say "I don't know". Well... I > don't need God as the middle man, I'm perfectly capable of saying "I don't > know" all by myself and don't need to invoke the God theory to do i > Well actually religions like Christianity (not only) have a fairly similar structure I that they involve some major assumptions early on, and most of the really impotant stuff after are more or less consequences. They say "God did it". Ok. But then you say "The multiverse did it" > > A logical person is allowed to say "I don't know", but a logical person is > not allowed to pretend he understands something when he does not by > embracing a theory that is, not necessarily wrong but is, obviously stupid. > They'll be calling this period of catch all infinity theories, pretty damn stupid. If Science survives. Which it may not. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
