How Does Life Come From Randomness?

[Wolf28]

Just a thought, maybe you don't need the whole system first. Consider a snowflake, an extremely intricate and beautiful thing. The whole thing was built from only a few simple properties and rules of engagement of a simple 'part' a water molecule. This didn't need a "structure, formatting, an operating system to run on, an architecture to process it, a source," and billions of lines of coding. It built itself from the bottom up. It's complexity from simple.

There are other examples that do this eg fractals and cellular automata, but these do need a computer.

I prefer to believe that life built itself up to great complexity from just the relatively simple rules of engagement of the initial ingredients - just like the snowflake. If you can get something as complex as a snowflake from a simple water molecule, what can you get from all the 92 elements and the already pre-existing organic molecules with all there multitude of rules of engagement? These original organic molecules also formed without code etc, they self-assembled, so why not keep getting more and more complex from the bottom up until life arises?

As for any coding I suggested in post 8 that 'order' is inherent in the environment and has always been there.

I'm working my way down the page, so I won't reply to your latest posts until I get there. Agreed, great discussion

I don't mean to keep contradicting you. I know what you mean about a snowflake. But it's really not a fair comparison. "Ultimately, it is the temperature at which a crystal forms — and to a lesser extent the humidity of the air — that determines the basic shape of the ice crystal" or snowflake. So on the one hand you're right. Something inanimate "knew" just what to do. But it's just a natural process. A result of what happens to an extremely cold water droplet when it freezes onto a pollen or dust particle in the sky. Just as it is a natural result of vinegar and baking soda to foam up when mixed, or crystalline structures that form in caves as a result of cooling liquids in rocks. And the natural result of a multitude of other things that happen when certain conditions are met. That's the physical world in action. Change the conditions and elements or chemicals react to form other elements or chemicals, and obviously they take on different forms and characteristics. Simple reactions.

The difference is that life - in a way - defies the laws of the natural world and becomes something completely different. Try to freeze me and my body, as long as it's alive, tries to remain at a certain temperature because its alive. "All living organisms share several key characteristics or functions: order, sensitivity or response to the environment, reproduction, growth and development, regulation, homeostasis, and energy processing. When viewed together, these eight characteristics serve to define life." And nothing else does all those thing, most everything else besides life do almost none of them. I'll keep this one short and give you a chance to read everything. I know I can sometimes ramble on. My apologies.

 

[David-J-Franks]

But a creator IS an "other being". We create things every day and we're simple humans. Programmers write huge game worlds and they are very realistic in a gaming sort of way. Not bad for decades old programmers. But what about millennia old programmers? Why couldn't we be living in a perfect simulation created by some incredibly intelligent other being? Then The laws of physics we're trying to discover are simply the simulation's creator's parameters he set up for his creation. Maybe those laws break down in extreme environments like black holes and the quantum world because it isn't so perfect. Maybe our creator (which is what that would make him/her/it in my hypothetical) hasn't quite figured out a unifying theory yet either. Why couldn't that be true? Why would you deny that possibility? Why did all this have to come from nothing? It makes no sense, IMO, when other equally logical possibilities can also be true. And my hypothetical is only one possibility. I am positive that there are others we've never even thought of. Abiogenesis, intelligent design, advanced programming, Hogwarts ? Nothing should be discounted when we know so little about it. Science is about enabling thought, not denying it.
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"That there don't appear to be observable examples of how life begins just makes it much harder to figure out than understanding planetary motions, that occur in open sight. How Life Began isn't something we can understand through direct observation so figuring out how to figure it out is challenging; more questions than answers perhaps, more thought experiment than lab demonstration but I think it is still Real Science. " - Ken Fabian

"By both digging into the genetic infrastructure of life as well as trying to recreate it in the laboratory, scientists have pushed back the mystery of life’s origins to an early RNA world and even a pre-RNA world. But the process through which non-living substances took on the attributes of life remains elusive.", https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/about/history-of-astrobiology/ " - Rod.
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Why is life and the creation of it so mystifying? Why don't we even know how to study it? It seems beyond our comprehension. IMO, it's because of our stubbornness to try and pigeon hole it into a physical science, when it may be better approached through other means. Not religion, as it too seems to miss the mark. But we're missing something.

But a creator IS an "other being".

Suggesting the creator is a being is not solving anything IMO, what is the origin of the creator, abiogenesis?

As a human being I need to survive so I need some sort of reality filter in order to move on, as there isn't time to consider every last idea. This filter is built up over a lifetime of experience observation, communication with others and some proper science. For things that have no direct proof I have 2 unscientific extras in my reality filter. First I'm willing to accept good logic and secondly somethings I just simply call absurd.

I think all scientist have a reality filter. The projects they choose may well follow strict scientific methods, but the choice of their projects was done with their unscientific reality filter.

Now using your reality filter can you honestly say you might be a computer simulation? For me, it comes in my absurd catorgory

Why did all this have to come from nothing? It makes no sense, IMO, when other equally logical possibilities can also be true.

Why do you think it came from nothing? Matter/energy can't be created or destroyed. This means there has always been 'something' and that existence is eternal with no beginning or end.

Science is about enabling thought, not denying it.

I think there is also a collective reality filter, 'science' filters out the absurd for us

 

[Wolf28]

Suggesting the creator is a being is not solving anything IMO, what is the origin of the creator, abiogenesis?

I explained this in a prior comment, maybe to someone else. It ties into your assertion that there is no beginning and no end. If the matter/energy can't be destroyed, where did it come from? For that matter, where did time come from? There are many things we do not know the answer to because "physics" says so. But physics isn't a perfect theory. Time, energy, matter - these thing can be forever but a creator can't? The question is always asked - well, "what is the origin"? So, your physics allows some things to always be but no others. What are those rules? It can't be a living thing? Why not?

As a human being I need to survive so I need some sort of reality filter in order to move on, as there isn't time to consider every last idea. This filter is built up over a lifetime of experience observation, communication with others and some proper science. For things that have no direct proof I have 2 unscientific extras in my reality filter. First I'm willing to accept good logic and secondly somethings I just simply call absurd.

And as a human being I need to ask why and not just take someone's word for it when they say because "that's just the way it is. Anything else is too absurd". The Wright brothers were told that it's absurd to think man could fly. Their reality filter should have stopped them from pursuing it just like it probably stopped so many others before them. "If man could fly he'd have wings!" But they ignored their filter.

Again, is it absurd to believe in entanglement? There is no explanation for it, none what-so-ever. Not a clue how it happens. Yet it does, and just because it's mentioned in the scientific world it's not considered absurd. Why not? Because it exists, that's why. No explanation does not exclude it's existence. My absurdity\reality filter screams at me when matter/energy/time is forever but nothing else can be. My reality\absurdity filter sounds the alarm when abiogenesis (something from nothing - a giant leap from inanimate to life) is supposedly more believable than an intelligent designer that, like time, could have been here with no origin and no end. Why would a creator need an origin but not time?

I think all scientist have a reality filter. The projects they choose may well follow strict scientific methods, but the choice of their projects was done with their unscientific reality filter.

I believe your using your filter as a way to avoid uncomfortable questions. Absurdity is relative. It's an opinion. You can't buy it at the store. It's not a standard. To me, abiogenesis is more absurd than a creator. I see examples of creation by intelligent humans (beings) all the time. I see NO examples of spontaneous life emerging from anything non-living. And neither has anyone else.

Now using your reality filter can you honestly say you might be a computer simulation? For me, it comes in my absurd catorgory

It was an example. I'm looking for an alternative to a supernatural creator, because abiogenesis doesn't do it for me and my filter. Here is some good logic for you to read:

Do We Live in a Simulation? Chances Are about 50–50

Gauging whether or not we dwell inside someone else’s computer may come down to advanced AI research—or measurements at the frontiers of cosmology

www.scientificamerican.com

Why do you think it came from nothing? Matter/energy can't be created or destroyed. This means there has always been 'something' and that existence is eternal with no beginning or end.

I do not think it came from nothing. I asked why did life have to come from nothing, when there are so many equally logical alternatives. Now that I think about it, they are even more logical than abiogenesis.

I think there is also a collective reality filter, 'science' filters out the absurd for us

It is one tool, yes. But if scientists just suddenly stopped exploring the "absurd" and closed their minds to anything outside science's proven scope of reality, science would be stuck in it's current state and never progress. Thought experiments into the absurd have advanced our understanding exponentially. Einstein and many other renown scientists were considered absurd before their far out ideas were proven.

 

[David-J-Franks]

What constitutes the "supernatural" to you? Would it be something outside our laws or The laws of physics? One of the strangest aspects of quantum physics is entanglement: If you observe a particle in one place, another particle—even one light-years away—will instantly change its properties (breaking the speed of light law), as if the two are connected by a mysterious and Instant communication channel. Scientists have observed this phenomenon in tiny objects such as atoms and electrons. But two research groups have now scaled up entanglement to engineered objects barely visible to the naked eye. So it's not just happening in the quantum world.

It's real, yet seemingly, entanglement breaks the known and what we think are the unknown laws of physics. Is it supernatural? Probably not. Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. That, my friend, is my entire point, entirely! I don't care what you may call a "creator"; supernatural, supertechnological, hyperphysical, hyperuniversal, I know I made up a bunch of words, but you know what I mean. You can look at it from any angle that makes you comfortable, but IMO, the most obvious answer to the question of where did we and life come from is that it was created. The alternative needs more magic than any notion of a creator.

but IMO, the most obvious answer to the question of where did we and life come from is that it was created. The alternative needs more magic than any notion of a creator.

Before I respond to any more, straight to the bottom line - of your post.

IMO. There 2 choices for life; Abiogenesis or a creator.

Abiogenesis can be investigated with science, there's already evidence for making precursor molecules etc. It seems plausible. None of us can say which way it will go, but at least there's something tangible to work with for now.

A creator is a 100% belief system with zero evidence and nothing to work on, as you have already said we don't have the tools to investigate these things. Why should I just 'believe' when science at least appears to offer possibilities?

All the discussion of how abiogenesis might work and how improbable it is, becomes irrelevant for a non believer of creationism, simply because it's the only possibility left, and so must have happened.

None of us can prove it one way or the other, so it just comes down to personal choice, take your pick!

What constitutes the "supernatural" to you? Would it be something outside our laws or The laws of physics?

Sorry to be boring but because I dismissed it as rubbish at an early age I still only see it as ghosts etc and also recognise it as something which other people see as something beyond a physical mind.

If you observe a particle in one place, another particle—even one light-years away—will instantly change its properties (breaking the speed of light law), as if the two are connected by a mysterious and Instant communication channel.

Mysterious, yes. Instant, NO. Nothing is instant that's impossible, instant would require an infinite speed of action or communication, absurd to me. It must have a mechanism with a finite speed, just that we haven't discovered or figured it out yet.

Personally I don't even see it as too mysterious. There is an underlying side to reality, for example, particles are not the most fundamental things. Every particle has a more fundamental underlying fluctuating quantum field associated with it, which gives rise to its particle like nature. There's a whole sea of quantum fields and foam etc out there, so its not unreasonable to think waves or ripples could propagate through this at faster than light speed, for entanglement.

 

[Wolf28]

Before I respond to any more, straight to the bottom line - of your post.

IMO. There 2 choices for life; Abiogenesis or a creator.

Abiogenesis can be investigated with science, there's already evidence for making precursor molecules etc. It seems plausible. None of us can say which way it will go, but at least there's something tangible to work with for now.

A creator is a 100% belief system with zero evidence and nothing to work on, as you have already said we don't have the tools to investigate these things. Why should I just 'believe' when science at least appears to offer possibilities?

All the discussion of how abiogenesis might work and how improbable it is, becomes irrelevant for a non believer of creationism, simply because it's the only possibility left, and so must have happened.

None of us can prove it one way or the other, so it just comes down to personal choice, take your pick!
Sorry to be boring but because I dismissed it as rubbish at an early age I still only see it as ghosts etc and also recognise it as something which other people see as something beyond a physical mind.
Mysterious, yes. Instant, NO. Nothing is instant that's impossible, instant would require an infinite speed of action or communication, absurd to me. It must have a mechanism with a finite speed, just that we haven't discovered or figured it out yet.

Personally I don't even see it as too mysterious. There is an underlying side to reality, for example, particles are not the most fundamental things. Every particle has a more fundamental underlying fluctuating quantum field associated with it, which gives rise to its particle like nature. There's a whole sea of quantum fields and foam etc out there, so its not unreasonable to think waves or ripples could propagate through this at faster than light speed, for entanglement.

So, entanglement. I suggest you read up on it because your information is just wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement - here's a start.

A creator need not be supernatural and is not 100% belief - there are scientific alternatives to abiogenesis out there - and I'm done with that subject. You seem to be getting annoyed by it so I'll let it go. You say you want to "investigate with science", then I suggest you do so and stop limiting yourself to one alternative simply because you favor it.

I apologize for annoying you but you're doing it to yourself. I have repeatedly shared scientific sources to back up my arguments but you keep referring to a creator as something religious and abiogenesis as the only choice. THAT's NOT science! You cannot pick and choose the science you like and the science you don't like and discard it as absurd or 100% belief. That's what's absurd. Abiogenesis is 100% belief as well if you want to go down that road. Give me one example of abiogenesis, natural or artificial. We have life so we can study it. That's what you're referring to when you say that it can be investigated. But you have a preconceived conclusion - that its origin must be abiogenesis and nothing else. And again, that's an absurd approach to science. Even the most proven theories are still under investigation for their short-comings. But ok - I said I wouldn't bring it up no more and here I am still talking about it. In my defense, I am challenging your scientific method, not the origin of life. Take care.