The idea that everything is set up just right for life on earth

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You then tell the atheist: where in nature do you see something as a result of an accident?
Some thing or some one had to establish life on earth, for everything is ordered. Life on earth was ordered by God.
To which the atheist points out two things:
  1. Our solar system (which is as far as we’ve gotten) hardly counts as a sample size for even our galaxy much less the whole universe!
  2. Life exists on earth (albeit in simple forms) in the most inhospitable of environments, such as glaciers, geysers, deep sea vents, and I believe the dead sea.
 
Oh, but you will. Life is nothing but a consequence of chemistry. What you’re missing is that laws of nature allow for self-organizing processes (as long as there is energy (name removed by moderator)ut). That’s all it takes to create life, really, and evolution takes from there.

But the fine-tuning argument presupposes that there is (and ever was!) only one universe. While we cannot observe another universes, we must note that nothing in the universe is really unique (as in, being only one of its kind), so it naturally follows that the universe is not unique.
Carbon based may not be the only way to go.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry
 
To which the atheist points out two things:
  1. Our solar system (which is as far as we’ve gotten) hardly counts as a sample size for even our galaxy much less the whole universe!
  2. Life exists on earth (albeit in simple forms) in the most inhospitable of environments, such as glaciers, geysers, deep sea vents, and I believe the dead sea.
To which the answer is that a fact does not entail necessity.

In plain English, the existence of something does not mean it must exist.

There is no evidence that anything in the universe is necessary.

Everything in the universe (and the universe itself) is contingent.

The onus is on the sceptic to explain why life cannot not exist! 🙂
 
To which the answer is that a fact does not entail necessity.

In plain English, the existence of something does not mean it must exist.

There is no evidence that anything in the universe is necessary.

Everything in the universe (and the universe itself) is contingent.

The onus is on the sceptic to explain why life cannot not exist! 🙂
Of course it doesn’t HAVE to exist. But the argument that earth is some sort of special snowflake is a bit like being in a bathroom, venturing out into the adjoining apartment, finding no one, and concluding you are the only human on earth. Life doesn’t HAVE to exist elsewhere in the universe, but even barring other universes, its pretty darn likely.
 
You mean you don’t need someone to put the correct chemicals together, in the right ratio, in the right sequence, in the correct environment i.e. pressure/temperature and what not?
No. The temperatures, pressures etc. were those present on the early earth billions of years ago. Scientists have reproduced those conditions and chemicals intimately involved in life have resulted.
They just assembled together on their own with all the right specifications without the direction of anyone? And viola! life is created!? That is amazing!
Do you have a problem with chemistry? Hydrogen and oxygen just assemble together on their own with all the right specifications without the direction of anyone? And viola! water is created!? That is amazing! Chemistry is not a random process. I does not need divine intervention to happen.
Anyway, back to the question again, how did your chemistry create life?
Science is still working on the problem. We have part of the answer but not all of the answer. How did your “who” create life? You have even less of an answer, and no pyrimidines either.
Please do stay on this question rather than asking me to read tons of books.
Tough. This is science. Either I can refer you to books or to many more tons of scientific papers. If you do not know enough to discuss this then you will continue to have problems. Do you know the technical meanings, in chemistry, of the words “racemic” and “chiral”? One of the scientific papers looking at abiogenesis is called, “Emergence of a Single Solid Chiral State from a Nearly Racemic Amino Acid Derivative” (Noorduin et al (2008). Without the correct background knowledge you will find it difficult to understand the significance of that paper. A theologian needs to understand the specialist terminology of Thomist philosophy. If you want to study abiogenesis, then you will need to understand some of the specialist chemical terminology relevant to the subject.
I know it is complex without me doing a lot of reading, but if you already know the answer is chemistry, just show what you have.
We have the amino acids which form proteins, and we have them in a chiral mixture, as in life. We have the purines and pyrimidines which form DNA and RNA. We have lipid bilayers, which form cell membranes. We have studies of the chemical activity of random RNA molecules, including ligases. We have the Spiegelman monster.

Does this add up to life? No, but it is all progress on the road from non-living chemicals to life, and also on the reverse road from simple life to non-living chemicals. Eventually the two will meet in the middle.
But back to the original statements: where did you get the materials to make these fanciful new products?
From the big bang and cosmology. Google “stellar nucleosysthesis” if you are interested.
After you have managed to explain how these elements come into existence, you still haven’t shown how these elements became alive.
I do hope that you are not falling into the error of vitalism. There is nothing special about material life beyond the chemicals involved.
If you can answer how the chemistry works without the aid of anyone directing the process as mentioned above, I will withdraw the “who”.
Another technical term: “valency”. If your knowledge of chemistry does not include such an elementary concept then you are well out of your depth here, and you will need to get stuck into that “ton of books” you have been avoiding.

You are asking questions about very advanced areas of science. That means that you need to have a basic understanding of those areas of science in order to be able to appreciate the work being done in those areas. Yes, this means that you have to do some work yourself in order to understand what is going on.

rossum
 
Of course it doesn’t HAVE to exist. But the argument that earth is some sort of special snowflake is a bit like being in a bathroom, venturing out into the adjoining apartment, finding no one, and concluding you are the only human on earth. Life doesn’t HAVE to exist elsewhere in the universe, but even barring other universes, its pretty darn likely.
I’m glad you admit life need not exist. Now you have to justify your belief that in a clearly hostile universe it is highly probable that life exists elsewhere as well as on earth. One instance is insufficient evidence that there are other instances…
 
I didn’t move anything. The designer I have in mind didn’t create himself.
Then your designer did not originate life, unless the designer is non-living. The origin of life is simultaneous with the origin of the (living) designer.
Now you are claiming I am moving the goalposts?
You are. You started out talking about the origin of life. You switched to the origin of a species. Those are different things.
No I didn’t and irrelevant.
It is irrelevant to your original question about the origin of life. It is not irrelevant to your shifted question about the origin of a species.
If I remember correctly from online sources, the book starting point was that life already existed and it then tries to demonstrate how differentiation of species may have happened. The book doesn’t show how life originates.
Correct. which is why I said you were moving the goalposts when you switched from the origin of life to the origin of a species. They are different questions, with different answers. That is why scientists call one “abiogenesis” and the other “evolution”.
Furthermore, it can not explain the Cambrian Explosion which more or less destroyed this hypothesis.
Some creationist websites lie about the significance of the Cambrian Explosion. Life existed before the Cambrian Explosion, which took about ten milllion years, and life existed in more variations after the explosion. That is not a problam for evolution.
The Many Worlds Hypothesis(MWH) is just another desperate attempt to increase the probability pool when the Single World odds for fine tuning for intelligent life became so terribly remote.
The MWH has some supporting evidence. Fine tuning is a silly argument since we have so little data to go on, 99.99999% of the universe is unsuitable for life and we know that life adapts to its environment or goes extinct. Hence any surviving life will be adapted to its environment.
I don’t need to. You were trying to explain how lifeless elements became life and how things came into existence. Not me. It is futile to get me off track!
Vitalism was shown to be spurious in the 19th century. Salt is “lifeless elements”, yet salt is incorporated into living organisms. There is no difference between the salt in our bodies and the salt in mines or in the sea.
1)No laws of nature can produce life out of inanimate matter.
You are assuming that science will never be able to fill that particular gap in its knowledge. Be very careful about doing that. There used to be a gap called “What causes thunder?” Gods like Thor and Zeus lived in that gap. Science closed the gap and those gods have nowhere to live any more. Forcing your designer to be a god-of-the-gaps is a recipe for a homeless designer.
Your response: chemistry (no details provided)
I provided many details in the form of references to scientific papers. Your inability to understand the significance of those papers is down to your admitted lack of relevant knowledge. The details are there for those who wish to look. Google scholar gives me 3,800 hits for scientific papers about abiogenesis and 2,900,000 hits for “RNA”.
2)No laws of nature can explain where these “matter” i.e. dust, gases, energy came from. How did it come into existence?
Your response: no further update on the ultimate source of ingredients for stellar nucleosynthesis. The preliminary answer was hydrogen which bought a bit of time for you but unfortunately, when we get to the finer details, nothing concrete results.
Are we discussing cosmology or abiogenesis? How much cosmology do you know? How good is your understanding of M-theory? Here is just one paper (of 54,000 on Google scholar) Blau et al, (2002) A new maximally supersymmetric background of IIB superstring theory

The abstract reads:

We present a maximally supersymmetric IIB string background. The geometry is that of a conformally flat lorentzian symmetric space G/K with solvable G, with a homogeneous five-form flux. We give the explicit supergravity solution, compute the isometries, the 32 Killing spinors, and the symmetry superalgebra, and then discuss T-duality and the relation to M-theory.

Mathematical physics, including cosmology, is far far worse than chemistry for very highly specialised terminology. If you don’t like learning chemistry, then mathematical physics is definitely not for you. For instance, how good is your tensor algebra? Spinors are a specialised form of tensors. Killing spinors are a particular form of spinor, just as Killing vectors are a particular form of vector.

Cosmology is a lot more difficult than rocket science. If you don’t want to read “a ton of books” then don’t go there.

rossum
 
I’m glad you admit life need not exist. Now you have to justify your belief that in a clearly hostile universe it is highly probable that life exists elsewhere as well as on earth. One instance is insufficient evidence that there are other instances…
There is also insufficient evidence that there is not.
But the fact that life exists on earth where we previously thought it was impossible indicates places we thought could NEVER hold life might actually have it.
 
There is also insufficient evidence that there is not.
But the fact that life exists on earth where we previously thought it was impossible indicates places we thought could NEVER hold life might actually have it.
You need to justify your belief that in a clearly hostile universe it is highly probable that life exists **elsewhere **as well as on earth…
 
Fine tuning is a silly argument since we have so little data to go on, 99.99999% of the universe is unsuitable for life and we know that life adapts to its environment or goes extinct. Hence any surviving life will be adapted to its environment.
Life **must **exist is the silliest argument…
 
You need to justify your belief that in a clearly hostile universe it is highly probable that life exists elsewhere as well as on earth…
The OBSERVABLE universe is 8.6×10^26 meters in diameter. The solar system is 9.09 billion km in diameter. Water is found on several planets and moons in our solar system. The odds aren’t bad. Race horses have probably won against more.
 
Life **must **exist is the silliest argument…
It doesn’t HAVE to. But the odds are pretty high. You don’t HAVE to flip heads on a quarter but if a ten people do it odds are it will happen more than once.
 
Of course it doesn’t HAVE to exist. But the argument that earth is some sort of special snowflake is a bit like being in a bathroom, venturing out into the adjoining apartment, finding no one, and concluding you are the only human on earth. Life doesn’t HAVE to exist elsewhere in the universe, but even barring other universes, its pretty darn likely.
When you find out FOR SURE, let me know, OK, God Bless, Memaw
 
I’m glad you admit life need not exist. Now you have to justify your belief that in a clearly hostile universe it is highly probable that life exists elsewhere as well as on earth. One instance is insufficient evidence that there are other instances…
There’s nothing really special about Earth.
 
There’s nothing really special about Earth.
Apart from the fact, as Pascal pointed out, that we are aware the universe exists whereas there is no evidence that the universe or anything else, is aware we exist…
 
It doesn’t HAVE to. But the odds are pretty high. You don’t HAVE to flip heads on a quarter but if a ten people do it odds are it will happen more than once.
There are innumerable coins but - as far as we know - only one planet with life. Numbers mean nothing when there is a unique phenomenon.
 
The OBSERVABLE universe is 8.6×10^26 meters in diameter. The solar system is 9.09 billion km in diameter. Water is found on several planets and moons in our solar system. The odds aren’t bad. Race horses have probably won against more.
The belief that wherever there is water there is life is based on the unverified assumption that life depends **solely **on a combination of chemical compounds.
 
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