WrongPlanet.net an anti-christian site?

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I once had an A.A. "sponsor" who used to like to quote somebody somewhere as having once said this:

"As man is, God once was ... and as God is, man can become."

I tend to doubt that, of course, but at least he seemed to believe that.

Usually, semantics isn't useful. But I think life can rationally be defined "beyond concensus". At the moment, the seven (terracentric) traits of life are concensus. That does not imply that this is the "best definition" of life, however.


I don't think amino acids "reproduce themselves" (maybe some exotic amino acid, but I'm not an Organic Chemist). There are many origin theories, and a lot of them are RNA centred. Whatever the original "evolver" was , it had hereditary (its copies were a little like it), variation (some were a little different) and selection (some worked better than others). Thats what we need to evolve.

However, Joan Oró did experiments which created nucleic acids, which are the basis for life. If nucleic acids were created, the creation of life seems much less difficult. I'm not sure of the validity of either experiments method, but I they were quite well recieved. They've stood up to the opposition they've faced.

Yeah, you're probably right!! ! I think of "every single molecule," etc., not as players but as inanimate objects. If there is no "intelligent designer," then all you have are a bunch of mindless particles bouncing around and off each other, some sticking and forming new elements and molecules, and EVENTUALLY, by pure luck, they HAPPEN to create life. All our disagreement amounts to is whether particles/waves can actually "play" and "win." If the players are active in the game, winners and losers are inevitable. My position is merely that there can be no "game" if there's no setup. You may see no need for a "dungeon master," but I don't see as how the game makes any sense without one.

"Proofs" for God/god/gods will not lie within the realm of science. Science is an observational skill based purely on empirical, "hard," "cold" naturalistic evidence. Beyond the existence of the world/universe itself, you're not going to find it. You might catch a glimpse of it if you don't rule it out (i.e. phenomenon that you personally experience/witness but unable to repeat/reproduce in a controlled setting, yet you KNOW it to be or to have been real). If you witness something that, say, defies the very laws of nature, you might conclude God/god/gods had a part in bringing it about because science CAN venture a reliable opinion as to what is physically possible and what is not. So as to detecting any deity/deities, that's as far as science can take you. "Knowing" that God exists has to happen on something other than surface-level science or beyond science. And that's where I leave this part of the discussion...


Right, UNLESS you accept certain presuppositions. This is the area that I don't need science to make my mind up for me, but, again, that has to do with where we disagree on things. You have one set of assumptions, I have another.


Well, you have to look beyond science in order to draw those conclusions. Take what I believe for instance. In terms of what I KNOW (Christianity), I believe that what I believe is true and everything else is false (I'm purposefully oversimplifying, btw). I can point to scriptural evidence as the reason why, and I can answer challenges as to why I feel that evidence is true or reliable.

Someone else, however, might argue that all religions are equally true. Well, that cannot possibly be. If all religions are true, then Christianity is also true. But according to Christianity, since it is true, everything else is false. So Christianity cannot possibly be true AND everything else also true. Either everything else has to be true and Christianity false, or Christianity is true and everything else is false. So how do you decide what's what? You can't look to empirical evidence because it's not an empirical matter. Your reasoning has to rely on something else to discern whether one is true and others false, all true and one false, or none true at all.


This is true. We've GOT to hurry up and invent the Improbability Drive!

See, I don't really DISagree here. But one must also accept that not all the world is an empirical world, which is really what we're talking about here. Knowledge takes different forms, and I don't really feel it is safe to ONLY rely STRICTLY on empirical kinds of knowledge or evidentiary assessment. If science didn't presuppose SOME non-empirical elements, it would be unable to function at all.

Disagreements aside, I have to complement you on how you've responded. By FAR what you've said in the way of the proper views of and role of science make more sense than what anyone else has said.

Who knows? *shrug* If anyone really WANTS to annoy me, try to start a war over semantics. Semantic wars don't really help you advance your point in any lasting meaningful way. Perhaps the "stuff" of life defies definition.

This is off-topic, but I was thinking about it two posts ago. If you start quibbling over when life starts and the bridge from a collection of assorted amino acids to an actual "living" organism, you eventually have to come to a point wherein you may rightly declare, "Aha! Life!" If life happens with such spontaneity as that and is so defined by the "scientific community," whatever that means, then you necessarily have to rule that (by definition) human life begins at conception. Saying that an embryo is NOT a life seems to contradict ideas of when/how life actually starts.



Yes, but you're jumping from one science to another. Your jumping from abiogenesis straight to evolution. When I suggested self-replicating amino acids, I was just going for simplicity. There are reasons some people have Ph.D.'s in this stuff and I don't!


I have no idea, but I have no doubts the experiments were well-run. I don't doubt that a situation can be set up in such a way that certain results can be achieved. My only issue with this is how one interprets the data. It indicates the POSSIBILITY that abiogenesis occurs/did occur. And you're right, there are a lot of different theories on this. My focus is on the "test tube" (environment in which the findings are measured and recorded). Is the world/universe a chaotic structure in which the right combination of elements necessary for "sparking" life randomly into being just happened to come together at just the right time? Or is the world/universe a test tube into which the right elements for the creation of life and the "spark/lightning bolt" to initiate it just happened to be placed? If so, you have an initiating process that occurred by design. If you say that an intelligent being present to bring about these results is speculation, the problem then becomes that everything else is also speculation. What you actually do is create a scenario in which your "best guess" is colored by your presuppositions: God exists and could have/did bring about the universe through natural means, doing so by design; God doesn't exist, it's all just coincidence.

Ohhh God......... Do we have to go there? LOL With this line of thought, the picketers might move from abortion clinics to Clorox factories, reasoning that bacteria is "alive". Many more bacteria are killed each day than fetuses. I think the real abortion debate is more related to when the fetus is a cognizant being or has a soul, as opposed to really having "life".

If it has a "soul", wouldn't it get a free pass into heaven?



Precisely my point is that life doesn't defy definition. There is no "stuff" of life, that theory died with Organic Chemistry's birth. There are just some properties that every "living" organism, either here or on mars would have to have, which I've mentioned before.



An embyro is alive. As BurntOutMom rightly points out, Bacteria is also life. We don't consider Bacteria to have inaliable rights, so clearly a thing being alive is not a criterion for it's rights. Sentience is a better one.



Yes, I'm deducing the properties of the "original" living thing from evolution, to comment of abiogenisis I didn't want to bog you down in the Science, but yes, the gist is that there was a self-replicating chemical of some sort. You asked where chemistry ends, and where life begins.

By my definition, life begins when a reproducing thing transforms energy from the environment to maintain its complexity. So the proverbial "amino acids wouldn't be alive, but as soon as they evolved into something which used sunlight/food to keep themselves more complex than their surroundings, they are (think a little less complicated than a bacteria, little more than a virus). Hope that makes sense.



While the latter case may (big may) be true, Divine intervention wouldn't have been necessary. The conditions were right then the original self-replicator could have "randomly" sparked into existence. The point of the experiments is to show that abiogenesis was possible by itself under natural conditions. Maybe a God interfered, but he didn't necessarily have to.

Many Christian-based religions believe in an "Age of Accountability" and before this age.. (which varies slightly from religion to religion) yes, it would go to heaven as the it's not held accountable for it's "sins".

lol

Yeah, I thought about that too, about 30 seconds after I posted. But on the other hand, you also have to consider that not all life is concerned with your personal well-being.

In the last 3 years, I've become terribly prone to staph infections (well, I'm assuming. I got the most horrible boils when I was living in the motel with my two kids and wife after we lost our house. If you want the full story, PM me some time). They still crop up from time to time, but NOTHING as bad as that flesh-eating plague I had back then. I JUST got one on my neck two weeks ago now, just to the left of my larynx. I've gotten very good at draining them by taking scalding-hot baths and rubbing them really good with hot bath cloths. After nearly two weeks, I FINALLY got it to drain yesterday. This one was unique in that the skin right there doesn't have much underlying muscle or bone to support it, just my jugular vein. I just happened to be doing something else and unconsciously casually picking at some dead skin surrounding it when I noticed a tiny amount of fluid on my fingers. I went immediately to the nearest restroom and finished the job. But nevertheless these things make my life miserable.

So I'm not above killing life that threatens me, especially with a boil on my neck that looks like a small goiter, really grossing out my piano students and other people I work with. I'm unpopular as it is, and this doesn't help. I am much relieved.

I also don't believe it's right concerning abortion to hold a woman responsible for killing a baby when her own life is in danger. "Ruining your social life" or "cramping your style" when you go to college is NOT an excuse to terminate a pregnancy. I'm talking stone cold, in the ground DEAD. If you aren't yourself facing death, just have the baby!

Human life aside, I'm a mass murderer and proud of it.

Not trying to be offensive, but wouldn't it be far more moral to abort every fetus then? Rather than suffer the imperfections of Earth it would have an eternity of happiness. If Christians believe that fetus's have souls, and souls go to heaven, then why do they (often) hate abortion?

LOL Happy to see your humor.

That aside, eww... have you been tested for MRSA?

What about E.coli? You kill tonnes of them anytime you take any antibiotic, despite the fact they are mostly benign. In fact, only 1/10,000 of the cells in your body are human. If all life is sacred, then why not just take one for the team and let the majority thrive at your expense?

As I'm sure you've noticed, Christians have been instructed to "go forth and populate the earth"... aborting all fetuses would surely put a hitch in that... Have you heard of the Shakers? Their views of intercourse being bad because of it's direct correlation to the Original Sin and therefore adopting a platform of celibacy has caused a near dying out of the faith since it's inception.

Okay, fair enough. But about having two children, then aborting the rest? That would be morally correct from both standpoints. If I could get people into paradise by having sex, I would.

How about 2 children and mandatory sterilization? Tho as I've stated in other threads, I think there are some people that should have never been allowed to breed in the first place...
At some point in time, someone proposed to me that heaven was individual to each person, and was whatever you loved or brought you joy in life.. I spent a week contemplating an eternity of chocolate and sex.... Then decided it sounded too good to be true!

You make a good point. However, the best response I can give to that one is E. coli and human organism form a symbiotic relationship. When a human dies, an entire host is taken out that can never again support the bacteria. Taking antibiotics is not so much destruction of the innocent as it is (from the bacteria's perspective) a natural disaster. It is unfortunate, but at least the remaining E.Coli will have a chance to rebuild and recover.

@BurntOutMom: I thought about that, but it's pretty unlikely I have MRSA. I RARELY take antibiotics for skin infections. The first time this happened to me, I had several small boils in and around my armpits. I've had shingles before, so I thought I was getting that again because of the swelling. The doctor prescribed antibiotics, which I took and the boils went away after a day or two. I think it might have been six weeks later when I got the boils again. It wasn't that there were so many as it was they were HUGE, one being the size of an orange. I didn't know how to drain them when this happened the first time, but I figured out it wasn't like popping a zit. My little girl, who was only a few months old when we moved to the motel room, got one on her butt. Common sense, we just washed it and hoped for the best until one day my wife noticed there was a lot of blood in her diaper. Sure enough, we found that since we were taking care of her, the boil had erupted on its own. That's how I knew when it was time to drain my grapefruit-sized boil. I stepped in the shower, turned the water as hot as I could tolerate, rubbed off the top few layers of skin with a bath cloth, and nearly passed out watching all the blood and sh!t shoot out every time I pressed down in it. This went on maybe half an hour. I think I lost 2 or 3 pints of blood doing that. I certainly FELT better, though! This place on my neck is pretty big, but it's not basketball sized like the other one. It's just big enough to be ugly and annoying.

I've gotten women into paradise by having sex with them.