Chance, mistakes and accidents caused life

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If chance, mistakes, haphazard events and accidents caused life, how can the reason of math and science find the answers?
 
Was there a Big Bang?

Did matter without any life move to matter with life?

Was the development of life caused by accidents, mistakes of nature, chance and haphazard events?
 
Jim_Baur said:
Was there a Big Bang?

Did matter without any life move to matter with life?

Was the development of life caused by accidents, mistakes of nature, chance and haphazard events?
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I would vote Yes, Yes, and Yes.
 
Giants:

I want to understand and not to fight.

In an academic, curious and loving way, how can reason comprehend the accidents, mistakes of nature, chance and haphazard events?

Thanks!
 
There is no evidence that chance or accidents produced a working biological mechanism. I could have all the parts for a bicycle sitting in a pool of water for a billion years but they wouldn’t assemble themselves.

Peace,
Ed
 
Jim_Baur said:
If chance, mistakes, haphazard events and accidents caused life, how can the reason of math and science find the answers?
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Because there was more to it than chance. Chemistry was heavily involved, and chemistry is not a chance process. It is not chance that binds exactly two hydrogen atoms to exactly one oxygen atom billions of times over, it is chemistry. Chemistry is not a chance process.

Even for chance processes, I can use mathematics. If I roll a fair die six million times I will get a 1 about a million times (and a very sore wrist). With a little more calculation, I can put various probability limits on how far away from the exact 1,000,000 my actual result is likely to be.

rossum
 
rossum said:
Because there was more to it than chance. Chemistry was heavily involved, and chemistry is not a chance process. It is not chance that binds exactly two hydrogen atoms to exactly one oxygen atom billions of times over, it is chemistry. Chemistry is not a chance process.

Even for chance processes, I can use mathematics. If I roll a fair die six million times I will get a 1 about a million times (and a very sore wrist). With a little more calculation, I can put various probability limits on how far away from the exact 1,000,000 my actual result is likely to be.

rossum
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At present, the probability is nil.

Peace,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
At present, the probability is nil.
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You did not read the “small print”. Rossum did not say that there will be 1 million “ones” in succession which would be very unlikely. However, with one million tosses, there it would very likely happen to see 30 or 40 “ones” in a row. If one would toss a die 10sup[/sup] times, it is mathematically certain to have 1 million “ones” in a row.

Of course this is all inapplicable, just like your “bicylcle part” analogy. The chemical processes are not random, and when a very simple molecular chain just happens to form randomly - and that is not unlikely at all - then the next step will “build upon it”.

Using that pretty bad bicycle analogy, let’s suppose that small quakes randomly shuffle the parts all the time, and somehow a cogwheel would connect to the chain. From that moment onward they would act as one piece! And then some more time later another chance event would connect two other parts… and so on. The point is that one does not always start from “square one”. The small parts which are stable and molecules are very stable, will act as higher level building blocks. Of course the bicycle analogy is still incorrect. Molecules are unlike the pieces of a bicycle.

As for empirical experiments, they are conducted all the time. Scientists try to recreate the alleged environment of the “primordial soup” and in just a few **months **(!) they get very promising “not-quite-life” but very complicated results. And we are talking about **months **here, not billions of years. On top of that, what is “life” is a matter of defintion. I suggest Dr Asimov’s wonderful collection of essays “The Tragedy of the Moon”, where he talks quite extesively about “what is life, and what is inanimate”.
 
Trurl said:
As for empirical experiments, they are conducted all the time. Scientists try to recreate the alleged environment of the “primordial soup” and in just a few **months **(!) they get very promising “not-quite-life” but very complicated results. And we are talking about **months **here, not billions of years.
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Call back when they actually make the real thing. They’ve got plenty of it to reverse engineer. If it is merely a series of chemical reactions, they should have worked out at least a few working recipes by now.
 
Inego_de_Loyola said:
Call back when they actually make the real thing. They’ve got plenty of it to reverse engineer. If it is merely a series of chemical reactions, they should have worked out at least a few working recipes by now.
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Scientists can show the origin of many of the components of life from natural causes: amino acids, purines, pyrimidines, lipid bilayers etc.

Creationists have so far not shown any of those same components being created by any deity, either in the lab or in the field. Where is your evidence of divinely produced amino acids? Science has had naturally produced amino acids since the 1950s.

Creationism has nothing. Science has many of the ingredients already. Science is well in the lead in the study of abiogenesis.

rossum
 
rossum said:
Science has had naturally produced amino acids since the 1950s.

rossum
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I am here to learn. Please do not take this as an attack. I hate fights. I love science, math, learning and thinking. I love problem solving.

rossum: I thank you for all of your insightful ideas.

THANKS!!!

Does it take a “somebody” to produce the building blocks of life?
 
Jim_Baur said:
I am here to learn. Please do not take this as an attack. I hate fights. I love science, math, learning and thinking. I love problem solving.

rossum: I thank you for all of your insightful ideas.

THANKS!!!

Does it take a “somebody” to produce the building blocks of life?
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Is that “somebody” alive? If so then what is that “somebody” made from?

You cannot explain the origin of life by positing a living cause. At best all that you have is the first living thing causing the second living thing. That is not particularly helpful; one of the characteristics of living things is reproduction. And that involves making more living things: “Birds do it, bees do it…”

rossum
 
In the lab, the building blocks to life and put together by humans.

In your judgment, could life have developed on earth without some being(s) directing it?
 
Jim_Baur said:
In the lab, the building blocks to life and put together by humans.

In your judgment, could life have developed on earth without some being(s) directing it?
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In the lab, conditions on the very early earth were reproduced. That is what “prebiotic” means. Under those conditions the chemicals that are found in living organisms: amino acids etc. form naturally.

No living beings are directing the chemicals, all the experimenters do is to set up the initial conditions. Everything beyond that is chemical reactions.

rossum
 
Is the development of life by chance, random selection, mutation, mistakes, accidents, haphazard events and the like?

If so, how can we discern that with reason (the above seems to be outside the scope of reason)?

THANKS!
 
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