Up from the soup we arose...?

Originally posted by Nicksten
What a load of junk - I cant believe I spend time reading stuff like this but at the end it just shows how many fools there are in the world.

The only other life that exists that people will never find on their own is Heaven. Other than that there is nothing and if there was, and if they were better as most people ALWAYS say, wouldn't they have made contact with us?

This is one horror story you don't tell your kids.

Well we may not have been contacted because we are quarantined. Signs outside the Oort cloud, leave this bunch alone, they are bad for your health. They are on a self destructive path and we can come back in a few thousand years.

Originally posted by divegeester
Increasing degrees of higher-order life from entropic chaos, continually developing by random chance...?

In case you didn't know, anyone, the title of this thread "Up From the Soup We Arose" is a spoof on a great Christian hymn:

"Up From the Grave He Arose!
With a mighty triumph over His foes.
He arose in victory over the dark domain.
And He lives forever with His saints to reign.

He Arose.
He Arose.
Halelujah Christ arose. "

when I saw the title "Up from the soup we arose" I had to chuckle.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Well we may not have been contacted because we are quarantined. Signs outside the Oort cloud, leave this bunch alone, they are bad for your health. They are on a self destructive path and we can come back in a few thousand years.

Do you know that "Star Trek" is science fiction?

Originally posted by divegeester
I see your point, but it is highly unlikely that the sand would get in the jar on it's own.

What does that have to do with anything? My question is whether or not your characterization of the workings of the natural world as 'random chance', when we all know perfectly well that the universe operates via a set of well defined laws, is reasonable, or essentially a strawman.
If by 'random chance' you mean 'there are elements of chance', then the answer to your op is undoubtedly 'yes'. If however you are constructing a stawman, and are claiming that life arouse entirely by chance and that no processes or natural laws came into play, then the answer is no.

Originally posted by twhitehead
What does that have to do with anything? My question is whether or not your characterization of the workings of the natural world as 'random chance', when we all know perfectly well that the universe operates via a set of well defined laws, is reasonable, or essentially a strawman.
If by 'random chance' you mean 'there are elements of chance', then the a ...[text shortened]... y by chance and that no processes or natural laws came into play, then the answer is no.

How did we get these natural laws? What are their purpose?

Originally posted by twhitehead
What does that have to do with anything? My question is whether or not your characterization of the workings of the natural world as 'random chance', when we all know perfectly well that the universe operates via a set of well defined laws, is reasonable, or essentially a strawman.
If by 'random chance' you mean 'there are elements of chance', then the a ...[text shortened]... y by chance and that no processes or natural laws came into play, then the answer is no.

Well as it was you who introduced the sand in the jar sinking as a metaphor for a natural law generating life!
I didn't see what that had to do the op premise that natural law doesn't look likely to create life in the first place; considering the 2nd law of thermodynamics and that there has never been shown an increase in genetic code as a result of mutation.

Originally posted by divegeester
Well as it was you who introduced the sand in the jar sinking as a metaphor for a natural law generating life!
I didn't see what that had to do the op premise that natural law doesn't look likely to create life in the first place; considering the 2nd law of thermodynamics and that there has never been shown an increase in genetic code as a result of mutation.

considering what about the 2nd law of thermodynamics?

Originally posted by divegeester
Well as it was you who introduced the sand in the jar sinking as a metaphor for a natural law generating life!
I didn't see what that had to do the op premise that natural law doesn't look likely to create life in the first place; considering the 2nd law of thermodynamics and that there has never been shown an increase in genetic code as a result of mutation.

Shouting the second law of thermodynamics and waving it as it it is proof of your point
will get you nowhere. And do you know what the other laws of thermodynamics are and
what they mean? Or have you just heard someone say 'oh the second law of thermodynamics
says life can't get more complicated and must inevitably decline' and just take them at their word?

The second law of thermodynamics simply states that all CLOSED systems will tend towards entropy.

As we do not live in a closed system the level of entropy on our planet is free to go both up and down.
If all systems always tended towards entropy it would be impossible to build anything as a building
has less entropy than the raw materials that made it.
As it is self evidently possible to build things it must be possible to locally reduce the level of entropy.

Second, There has definitely been demonstrated cases of increases in genetic code due to mutation.
And it is easy to see that it is in fact inevitable that mutation will be able to lead to code increases.

There are three basic copying errors that DNA can undergo. deletion, duplication, and mutation.

Deletion is obviously where code simply fails to get copied.
Duplication is where code gets copied twice.
Mutation is code being copied badly.

If these errors happen randomly then it is not only possible but inevitable that sometimes
the code will increase in length or information content, and sometimes decrease.

Evolution by natural selection will of course guide this process.

Here is an article by Dawkins himself on the issue.

http://www.skeptics.com.au/publications/articles/the-information-challenge/


Third, There are entire fields of science dedicated to the property of emergence of paten from
chaos, complexity from simplicity, using simple deterministic laws to generate immensely complex
and unpredictable paten and behaviour. If you don't think the simple laws of nature can't create
complex structures then you are simply misinformed. Also Chaos doesn't mean the same thing in
science as it does in common usage.

Fourth, asking where do the laws of nature come from is a valid question.
to which the answer is we don't know.
there are some possibilities that we are exploring, but we don't know.
This doesn't justify saying because we don't know it must have been god.
from an explanatory perspective this gets you nowhere as you then say, and where did god come from?
However you don't have to know the answer to the question 'how did the universe with its laws come into
being?' to be able to talk about the consequences of those laws in that universe.
Those laws are perfectly compatible with the 'spontaneous' formation of life, in fact it may well be that
life is an inevitable consequence of those laws, we don't know yet.
However scientific enquiry is the only way of finding out.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Shouting the second law of thermodynamics and waving it as it it is proof of your point
will get you nowhere. And do you know what the other laws of thermodynamics are and
what they mean? Or have you just heard someone say 'oh the second law of thermodynamics
says life can't get more complicated and must inevitably decline' and just take them at thei ...[text shortened]... , we don't know yet.
However scientific enquiry is the only way of finding out.

Didn't realise I was "shouting", sorry you took it that way.

Originally posted by divegeester
Didn't realise I was "shouting", sorry you took it that way.

That was possibly not the right term to use.
I simply meant you are saying
"second law of thermodynamics"
like it self explanatorily makes your point.

It is an oft used argument against evolution and is wrong, and oft debunked.

The second law of thermodynamics doesn't mean what you think it does.

However I didn't mean to imply you were shouting in the sense of ranting, or
trying to shout people down.

For that I apologise.

However please try to read and respond to the points I was actually trying to make.

Originally posted by divegeester
Increasing degrees of higher-order life from entropic chaos, continually developing by random chance...?

If there is meat in the soup, you are dishonest. 😕

Originally posted by RJHinds
It sounds to me like he means it is highly unlikely that someone put
the sand in the jar.

The jar/earth/universe, does not matter that much. A creator who made us to be just like him did that? Strange when things go way over our heads are answered with such a god concept.

Originally posted by RJHinds
How did we get these natural laws? What are their purpose?

We didn't get anything for it is not there for us. That would be a little too arrogant don't you think? And there's no purpose. Things just are. Because you look for reason and purpose you have to create a creator.

Originally posted by divegeester
Well as it was you who introduced the sand in the jar sinking as a metaphor for a natural law generating life!

It wasn't intended to be a metaphor at all. I was trying to clarify what you mean by something coming about by 'random chance'. Too often I see people trying to dispute evolution by creating a strawman and equating natural processes to the roll of a die. I am trying to determine whether you realize the difference between the two and whether you realize that the universe in general does not operate by random motion of particles, but rather follows very specific rules which more often than not create order out of chaos.

I didn't see what that had to do the op premise that natural law doesn't look likely to create life in the first place; considering the 2nd law of thermodynamics and that there has never been shown an increase in genetic code as a result of mutation.
Well, you clearly don't understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and your claim regarding mutations is just nonsensical. All mutations result in an increase in genetic code, by definition.

Originally posted by twhitehead
your claim regarding mutations is just nonsensical. All mutations result in an increase in genetic code, by definition.

'Nonsensical' - you are allowed to disagree without being so intellectually dramatic you know.

A mutation is a change; the "definition" does not demand an addition. However, as it is so nonsensical to you perhaps you can find an example where genetic mutation has added information to the genome?