Evolution: Is There Any Good Reason To Reject The Abiogenesis Hypothesis?

[Ghosty1981]

However, in reading this article, I believe the good Father argues ineffectively. For instance, in arguing against the principle of sufficient reason (the less perfect cannot be the cause of the higher perfect ), his example (the lizard to snake) is not evolution but devolution . The snake arguably is a lizard less several important parts. The snake having less locomotion, and a loss of ability to use its eyelids is a lesser being. Remember, the tree of life purportedly explains the lower to the higher forms of life.

While I agree with you that Fr. Austriaco argues ineffectively, I think his error is that he grants too much to Fr. Chaberek. Fr. Chaberek says:

Further, it is supposed that in the macroevolutionary process lower (that is less perfect) organisms generate higher (that is more perfect) organisms.

There is no reason to suppose that one type of animal is “higher” than another just because it descends from a baser animal on the evolutionary tree. We don’t suppose that lower generate higher in the macroevolutionary process because there is no lower and higher in animal life, only different; there is no “evolution” nor “devolution”, only change. A cat is not higher than a bacterium, merely subsequent in a continuous process of change.

Even if we grant that we might identify “devolution” in macroevolutionary change we are still accepting macroevolutionary change, a change from this kind of thing to another kind of thing, something that is supposedly impossible according to the Intelligent Design reading of Aquinas. In order to accept devolution we must still accept substantial change, unless there is no real substantial difference between a lizard and a snake.

I assume you would say that this isn’t a problem because the snake didn’t really devolve from the lizard, and that you are merely trying to highlight an error in evolutionist thought. If so I counter that there is no reason to assert, even for a Thomist, that there is really a substantial difference between two apparently different species of animal. Although substances really exist under accidents, our perception of substances is limited and subject to error; what appears to be a difference in substance may in fact be merely a difference in accidents.

continued…

 

[Ghosty1981]

The argument against Chaberek’s second objection ( a change of nature requires substantial change) is similar. The “evolution” of a living human being to a corpse is backward as the corpse is a lesser being and the substantive change that is always the cause of death is the departure of the soul.

The example may be of something going “backwards”, but the underlying premise is sound. Accidental changes do indeed change the disposition of matter and make it more or less suited to certain forms. The form to be taken up by the newly-changed matter must pre-exist, but it can pre-exist virtually in the powers of its causes. Aquinas, for example, said that new species exist in the powers of the stars and elements (and neither stars nor elements are alive themselves), and today we might say that they pre-exist in the laws of physics. So long as a form can be reduced to matter it can be contained either actually or virtually within matter, so the power of sight is contained virtually in the laws governing photons and chemistry. No truly new power or form can arise that isn’t contained within the pre-existing elements in some way, but it needn’t be explicitly manifest in these earlier forms; sight was a new development with eyes, but sight is expression of primordial material laws.

In short it is an error to say that a Thomist must assert that new forms must be created immediately by God (an error Fr. R also makes on that website), so long as we accept that all emerging forms really existed in some manner in their causes, and ultimately in the Knowledge of God as the author of these causes.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Gorgias]

You are inventing a context for Humani Generis.

I could say the same thing to you.

 

[Aloysium]

So long as a form can be reduced to matter it can be contained either actually or virtually within matter, so the power of sight is contained virtually in the laws governing photons and chemistry. No truly new power or form can arise that isn’t contained within the pre-existing elements in some way, but it needn’t be explicitly manifest in these earlier forms; sight was a new development with eyes, but sight is expression of primordial material laws.

Similarly, a home could be said to be contained in some fashion within bricks and mortar. But, where it is contained is in the person who constructed them in order to build the house that would contain the specific human relationships that make it a home.

My view is that the power of sight is a relational capacity we share with animals. It is not contained virtually in the relationships that are described by laws of physics and chemistry. It requires them to happen in time and space, but is of a totally different order. It is a truly new power, not contained within pre-existing elements, and required a creative act as they did before its temporal appearance. Sight is a manifestation of a new dimension, that of the psychological, which utilizes and is one with the physical, but is not an expression of primordial material laws, having its own laws that apply to the relationships it forms.

 

[Ghosty1981]

The driving forces for change are understood as being random mutation of DNA and epigenetic processes, all of which would be based solely on the inherent properties of matter. These do not include an inevitable development of life.

They do not include an inevitable development of life as an empirically evident necessary effect, but they don’t exclude it either. My point is simply that speaking of natural selection (Darwinism) does not necessitate the philosophical baggage that is often smuggled in with the use of the term. I can speak of formal causality and natural selection without any inherent contradiction.

One could posit a natural force that moulds matter into the more complex shapes and behaviours we find in the world, but then as the laws of physics and chemistry apply everywhere in the universe, we should find, and do not, that everywhere we look in space, is teeming with life.

First, we don’t know that the universe isn’t teeming with life. Both our understanding of the conditions of life and our exploration of the universe are pretty narrow at this point.

Second, life could require conditions that are extremely rare, even to the point of only existing here on Earth, even if the underlying laws are universal. There is no way to assign probability to the emergence of life from universal laws without understanding the necessary conditions and the universal laws, and our understanding of both is not exhaustive. We don’t even know what variables are required for life, let alone the necessary value ranges of those variables. It’s like trying to determine the probability of drawing an unbeatable hand in poker without knowing the number of suits, the numbers, their relative values, or the number of cards in the deck.

All we can say is that life exists, and it exists here. We can’t even say that life will exist on another planet that possesses all of the same variables and values that we have discovered and defined, because we don’t know if there are variables that we haven’t yet discovered.

Peace and God bless!

 

[edwest211]

I was watching a science program on TV. According to the scientists, if we found a planet that was the right distance from its sun, had water and ‘the building blocks of life’ (amino acids), then life would appear there. It took a while, but I concluded: They don’t know that.

 

[Ghosty1981]

I was watching a science program on TV. According to the scientists, if we found a planet that was the right distance from its sun, had water and ‘the building blocks of life’ (amino acids), then life would appear there. It took a while, but I concluded: They don’t know that.

Right. It is one thing to say that if a place contains all the conditions necessary for life, then life will eventually appear there. It is another to say “these are the necessary conditions for life”. The first is a reasonable enough proposition, the second is not yet warranted given the knowledge we have.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Aloysium]

I love these animation of the amazing nanotechnology involved in cells. This one demonstrates the movement of a vesicle down a microtubule, carried by a kinesin molecule, all of which is coded for in the DNA.

To me science boils down to the specific formulae and an understanding of such processes as the one illustrated here.

However, that does not satisfy our need to know, to put the science into some grander understanding of what is the world, and our place in it. At that point, to be able to interpret the science, we leave it and enter into philosophy. Science cannot tells us whether organisms exist as individual beings and how that happens to be. It can’t say any more about the highly intricate and synchronized systems that constitute the anatomy and physiology of life, other than they exist and what they do. And, it is an assumption that they arose as a result of properties inherent to the matter itself. Evolution is a philosophical system masking as science, and as much peudoscience as much disparaged ID. Ultimately, if one wants to get a clear idea of what the universe is about, to put into perspective its wonders and beauty, the best light from which to grasp it is the Word of God, making all things clear.

 

[Hobgoblin]

Shouldn’t you be able to point to a Church teaching that states this explicitly?

If you posted something explicit I must have missed it. Can you point it out? From what I’ve read the Church seems intentionally non-committal in this area. Humani Generis is open to Adam’s body being the result of evolution though. If you’re aware of something explicitly stating otherwise I’d like to see it.

 

[Aloysium]

if a place contains all the conditions necessary for life, then life will eventually appear there.

It’s part of a belief system, then. Pretty much everyone here has enjoyed the movies and television series, since we were kids.

 

[o_mlly]

There is no reason to suppose that one type of animal is “higher” than another just because it descends from a baser animal on the evolutionary tree. We don’t suppose that lower generate higher in the macroevolutionary process because there is no lower and higher in animal life, only different; there is no “evolution” nor “devolution”, only change. A cat is not higher than a bacterium, merely subsequent in a continuous process of change.

This argument is non-Thomistic. And, ironically, it is also argues against macro evolutionary theory. You would change the metaphoric evolutionary tree of life to a field of grass. And Thomas most certainly judges the cat as a more perfect being than the bacterium. The cat and the bacterium possess different and unequal forms. The irrational sentient soul, expressing greater being than the non-rational non-sentient soul, is the more perfect and higher being.

Once again, if one’s first argument is flawed …

 

[IWantGod]

we should find, and do not, that everywhere we look in space, is teeming with life.

So you would agree that a testable hypothesis would be the possibility of finding evidence of life out side of the planet earth, and in so doing this would be scientific evidence of abiogenesis? Something like a planet with a breathable atmosphere, since there would have to be certain precursors involved, one of them being life. Planet hunters are looking for such objects as we speak and have technology that can detect the compositions of atmospheres.

There is no evidence other than what has been revealed of God’s intimate relationship with His creation, to explain the diversity around us.

It has not been revealed to us that God directly created diversity or that abiogenesis is not true.

 

[Aloysium]

So you would agree that a testable hypothesis would be the possibility of finding evidence of life out side of the planet earth, and in so doing this would be scientific evidence of abiogenesis?

No, because God is the Creator of all things and matter does not have primacy in the formation of living beings. You find life and we will talk further about this.

It has not been revealed to us that God directly created diversity or that abiogenesis is not true.

It is revealed by reason, the capacity to understand the structure of existence, and not a logic based on false assumptions.

At each step in the creation of the world, the Word of God organized what was a chaos into a new order. In modern terms, He brought forth “light”, the primary realities of time-space-energy, and from that basis created atoms, from which He established a new order that is the cell, one thing in itself, composed of what is otherwise “dust”, that to which an organism reverts when it dies. That information was then utilized in the bringing forth of plants and animals, and ultimately mankind, who was to have dominion over and bring all creation into communion within the Trinity. In and through Jesus Christ, this is happening.

 

[Aloysium]

I thought I’d post another YouTube clip, demonstrating the wonders of creation. A bit of actual science in all this speculation might help trying to understand the subject at hand.

 

[Aloysium]

I love these animation of the amazing nanotechnology involved in cells. This one demonstrates the movement of a vesicle down a microtubule, carried by a kinesin molecule, all of which is coded for in the DNA. Kinesin protein walking on microtubule - YouTube

Perhaps people didn’t understand what that video was about.
This one explains more of what is going on:

That all this has arisen by itself seems more rational to some than that it was created by God, on whom we here and now depend for our very existence as persons, with the complexity and mystery that is this unity of being. Go figure.

 

[John10]

Yes, there is the law of Biogenesis.

Secondly I see more and more scientist continue to doubt Darwin theory of evolution.

The new discoveries of DNA and genes are making it harder to justify evolution.

 

[o_mlly]

1. God made a natural order that acts according to it’s own nature
2. From the time of the big bang up until the present we see the natural formation of different kinds of physical natures and elements which eventually lead to the formations of planets.
3. Our planet was fortunate enough to form in the Goldilocks zone, allowing for chemistry to ensue and the formation of water which is needed for life.
4. All these processes happened naturally , and most Christians when faced with the question of science versus genesis will say that genesis is not an historical representation of how the universe was formed over time, but rather it is a theological representation of God’s sovereignty over the universe. Hardly anybody argues with this point.

The Picture i get from science is that, apart from the theory of evolution, there has been a kind of cosmic evolution. It appears as if the universe is a system that manifests according to the intrinsic principles put there by the Creator and is not something that is tinkered with. It’s a universe that creates new forms through it’s internal interactions.

Given the four premises above is there any good reason to think that God didn’t allow complex life to form naturally from chemical interactions? More importantly is there any good reason to think that there is any logical contradiction in thinking that single celled organisms were the result of a chemical soup, and in fact this same process might have occurred elsewhere?

A scientific response:
The hypothesis presents no evidence in support of the claim.

Send it over to the Philosophy Department.

A philosophical response:
Premise 3 is inadequate. No demonstration or proof that water and chemical materials are sufficient for life. Living beings are substantially different than non-living. All beings act through their accidents, not their substances.

" It’s a universe that creates new forms through it’s internal interactions." False.
The actions of accidents cannot generate different substances (forms). Less perfect beings cannot generate more perfect beings, that is more actualized beings.

Send it over the Literature Department - Fiction division.

 

[buffalo]

Humani Generis is open to Adam’s body being the result of evolution though.

How so if polygenism is not allowed?

 

[rossum]

How so if polygenism is not allowed?

Polygenism of “true men” is not allowed. That says nothing about those contemporary almost-humans from whom Adam was descended.

Any of Adam’s grandchildren, even is one parent was not a true man, but an almost-human could have been given a soul by God, and such a grandchild would have descent from both Adam and Eve. That satisfies both Catholic teaching and the biological evidence on population sizes.

Say, Adam and eve were Mitochondrial Eve’s parents. Then every living human is descended from Adam and Eve. There were never any true men who were not descended from Adam and Eve because God never gave them souls. Only true men received souls.

 

[edwest211]

Respectfully, the almost-human idea does not appear to be credible. Especially when adding a soul.