That includes the god called Science.
Richard
I donāt believe in other gods. There is only one, the creator of the universe who sent His Son to rescue us from our sins.
You may be one who turns everything in the world into gods, but I am not.
Science is a method of looking at the evidence apart from what people want or believe. It goes for honesty by testing its hypotheses rather than trying to prove them like preachers, lawyers, politicians, and used car salesmen. It goes for objectivity by providing written procedures anyone can follow to get the same results.
To be sure science has limits when it comes to living our lives. It is founded on objective observation and life requires subjective participation. Thus religion is an important and unavoidable part of human life however subjective and diverse it may be.
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Human vanity.
It is faith in humaninty , human understanding, and knowledge.
Richard
On the contrary. Science is humility and faith. It is religion which is rife with far more human vanity and thus people fight over their religious beliefs trying to push their religion over those of others.
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Thanks for the clarification. Faith in God or Man.
Iām not sure what that has to do with abiogenesis but it does inform about your thoughts.
There is no presumption that in a Godless, purely ānaturalā world, humans could understand everything or could discover how everything happened. Heck, entropy itself and other processes erase historical information.
Similarly, there is no presumption that God could not or did not use the mechanisms in-built in the created universe as a means of creating early life.
Recall the relationship you asserted about abiogenesis and faith:
Abiogenesis is an ongoing investigation. Those of us with a strong faith tend to think it is a foolās errand but scientists will tell you that ubderstanding it does not preclude God from it.
How does āstrong faithā relate to whether investigating abiogenesis and lifeās history is a foolās errand?
The explanation for unexplained mysteries is āI donāt know.ā Thatās humility. Iām not sure it comes down to whether one has āfaithā in God or man, as thatās kinda not a form of humility.
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Weāre all humans here. Our understanding and faith about how God brought about life can neither be perfect nor complete. One shouldnāt conflate scientism with science. There are many with a strong faith in God who also happen to be scientists and who donāt presuppose that the study of abiogenesis is a foolās errand.
You may think it is but thatās an opinion. A human one.
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beings trying to understand the world around them.
Why quote just one or two words from some-oneās post and ignore everything else they said?
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I am not going to quote something I do not agree with.
wow, i never knew that.
And that is significant because?
Faith means you do not have to know. it is the antithesis of science.
If you need to know, you do not have faith.
If you have faith, you do not need to know.
And, as I said earlier, I am convinced that humanity is not ready for the key to life, even if it is possible to find it.
Richard
One shouldnāt conflate the cultish distortion of the word āscientismā with the philosophy of naturalism. The actually definition of the word āscientismā has nothing to do with this distortion which is basically what naturalism consists of, equating the understanding of science with reality itself.
scientism: Thought or expression regarded as characteristic of scientists.
Implying that this is something bad and to be avoided is outright bigotry and insulting (typical of radical cults who donāt want any scientists or other intelligent people in their midst because they constantly tell so many lies). It is like implying that garbage workers are low class filthy people. When frankly it is YOU who would be sickly filthy people without the work they do to hold up civilization and make things work.
Frankly the thought or expression characteristic of scientists includes a well informed understanding of the limitations of science.
Of course, there is evidence for Model A Fords, in garages, museums, and historical accounts. There is no evidence for primitive cells. But as has been argued, primitive cells, regardless of how improbable, can be imagined, as if that tells us anything about whether they ever existed or not. So you take umbrage for using the word āunimaginableā as if your response is any where near a meaningful argumentāor as if imagination is any kind of evidence.
I must have missed these ārapid developments.ā Please quote peer reviewed articles that validate this claim.
Randy,
Well, you were āa lonely family doc in West Michiganā, doing Iām sure wonderful things, I was a lonely, substitute teacher in Roseville, CA for 20 years. After 15 years of research, I quit the lab to follow Jesus. I did, by Grace, however, before I left, make some discoveries, including, with my late colleague, Rob Haworth, the Mitochondrial Permeability Transition Pore.
Thanks for the kind words,
Dr. Douglas R. Hunter (Doug)
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Dr Hunter, nice to meet you. Sorry, I meant ālowlyāāin that Iām not a scientist!
Maybe you can talk more about the mitochondrial testing you did; also, what you did for Christian service after stopping that work.
.
Thank you
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And there you areā¦
Wikipedia - Mitochondrial permeability transition pore
The MPTP was originally discovered by Haworth and Hunter in 1979 and has been found to be involved in[neurodegeneration, hepatotoxicity from Reye-related agents, cardiac necrosis and nervous and muscular dystrophies among other deleterious events inducing cell damage and death.
The Ca2Ā±induced membrane transition in mitochondria: II. Nature of the Ca2+ trigger site
Welcome aboard.
As regards you opening post, I would agree that material abiogenesis is a tough one. As oneās personal opinion, it is rational to think āas far as I am concerned, nope, it didnāt happen.ā But many others, such as Nick Lane, find abiogenesis quite rational and work on finding pathways which they think at least make an edge frame around the puzzle. I do not follow the topic much, because I do not think the current state of evidence is really decisive.
What I do accept is that while the fossil record for detailed impressions goes back to the Cambrian era, the mineral signatures for life extend another two or three billion years prior, so the period for which we have almost no record is far greater than the entire fossiliferous era. That is an expanse of time also beyond imagination for microbial evolution, so the question becomes, how simple can a cell even be, and still give rise to more cells? Whatever that may look like, it would not be the end product we see today.
The basic physical laws of the universe are necessary for life, the question is are they sufficient for life? Can God create a universe which would ultimately yield our world, or did some inadequacy demand interventions along the way?
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That is like asking us to quote peer reviewed articles for evolution. All it proves is your unwillingness to see anything of the kind. I am not a biologist but I keep hearing of new developments even when I am not looking for them.
Here is an article on one of these developments with references to 7 such articles you demand.
Here is another article linking up to more articles on another development.
Here is a NASA site with 500 pages of links to articles on astrobiology work studying the origins of life which I got to through this NASA article.
This article is filled with links to articles regarding developments over the last 30 years.
Another astrobiology article with 2 links.
New developments in chemical evolution.
Gradual evolution of autocatalysis into template based replication.
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And this is just spending a few minutes looking. I am sure I could continue this list all year long. It is an active area of research ā and that is case in point.
But of course this assumes your eyes, ears, and mind open and willing to hear such developments. I have little doubt that an unwilling mind is quite capable of shutting out all such things to see and hear absolutely nothing.
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Ron,
Thanks for tracking down article II of the MPTP trilogy of 1979.
We were doing research at the Institute for Enzyme Research at U of Wis, Madison. on mitochondria isolated from fresh beef hearts from Oscar Mayer Slaughter House.
Where the cell came from is indeed now the overarching question.
It seems impossible to have a primitive cell (and we donāt) because all the key parts are so inter-related. You canāt make enzymes without the DNA code, amino acids, RNA, and other enzymes; and you canāt make DNA or RNA or amino acids without enzymes, and without enzymes chemical reactions needed for life donāt occur. The cell had to be designed, and then put together all at once or over a long period. Hard to imagine if not unimaginable, even in a 3 billion year time span.
And this, of course, brings us to the unimaginable God.
Doug a biochemist and follower of Jesus
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Those of us with strong faith have no trouble with it.
Yes ā as Neil deGrasse Tyson likes to say, the universe is under no obligation to make sense to human minds, including imagination.
So? Why should that limit my faith?
Given that humans were made as the images of God in His cosmic temple, I see no reason to believe that anything about the universe is beyond human reason.
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False.
No, I pointed out the lack of specificity in your assertion.
That you cannot follow the logic does not make the argument non-meaningful.
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Ouch.
That is human vanity at its height.
Because you are misunderstanding the reasoning.
Richard
It is not vanity to do as God commands.
Philippians 4:8 Whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable ā if anything is excellent or praiseworthy ā think about such things.
Is not the universe God created noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy? Should we not devote ourselves to study that which is from God Himself. Surely we should not use the things written by men about God as an excuse to ignore everything God is telling us in what He created.
Job 12:7 āBut ask the beasts, and they will teach you;
the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
8 or the plants of the earth, and they will teach you;
and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
Frankly it is vanity to put the Bible and ones understanding of it above all God is telling us in the earth and sky.
John 5:39 39 You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me;
And where does scripture point us to learn about God?
Romans 1:20 Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.
Thus it is science which submits in humility and faith to learn all God tells us in what He has made. And it is often the religious who indulge in human vanity to use the things men have written about God to shut God and His kingdom from men.
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