You will not get it done. And one of the biggest reasons why is that the permission to do so would have to come from God himself. And God is reserving his permission until the end times when the 2nd beast of Revelation is granted power to give life to an inanimate image for the first time in order to deceive people.
Revelation 13
" 14 And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. 15 He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed."
Poorly worded. God’s relevance is not in question under any circumstances. If you or anyone obtained life from non-living matter it would be due to an appeal to the supernatural. Now, there is a dark side and there is a righteous side, but that is a different discussion.
Answer to your question: No. God is never irrelevant. Your luck in obtaining life would be occultic.
@r_speir will no doubt provide his own answer but I will simply say that I have no problems with abiogenesis because that is what the Bible describes. Even man is described as being made “from the dust of the ground.” Abiogenesis refers to life coming from non-living material. That is exactly what the Bible describes. And unless one thinks that biological life ALWAYS existed, then there MUST have been a point in time when non-living matter first became biological life. That’s abiogenesis: biological-life from that which is not biological-life.
The Bible describes such biological-life from non-biological-life in multiple passages but this is one of my favorites:
Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. – Ecclesiastes 3:19-20
Science doesn’t care whether or not the abiogenesis (which must have happened at some point in the past) was willed by a deity. That’s a separate question for theologians and philosophers to address. Until a scientist demonstrates that a deity’s role can somehow be detected and investigated in that abiogenesis event, I will consider the question outside the realm of science.
Seeing how both scientists and theologians agree that there was a time in the past when the first non-living ingredients became a living organism, we should all be able to affirm abiogenesis as a given.
POST-SCRIPT: As a pre-emptive clarification against a likely reply which may come from some of my Christian brethren, I should point out that we should all agree that God is NOT a biological organism. Therefore, don’t try to pretend that Genesis defies abiogenesis because “life came from life”. As I have explained on these forums many times over the years, the English language happens to apply the word “life” to both biological bodies and spirit-beings but that is NOT necessarily the case for Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek. See my post of November 2018:
And how do you know what “permissions” God will and will not grant?
Your proof-texting with Revelation 13 is a good example of abusing a Biblical text by applying it wildly outside of its context. Nothing in the passage says that that is the ONLY instance where God permits an abiogenesis event through the agency of someone other than himself.
I’m old enough to remember when there were still Christians in America who claimed that God would never permit humans to leave the bonds of earth behind and travel from the earth to the moon—because allegedly only God would “someday transport us through the heavens to be with him for eternity.” My own grandfather was one of those scoffers. He died just months before the Apollo astronauts reached the moon.
It would be impossible to escape that conclusion since it would require some kind of mystical incantations, invocations, etc. I have no idea since I do not deal in those dark areas.
How does that help resolve the question? After all, I believe the entire universe comes from God alone. (Do you agree that Genesis 1:1 states that clearly?)
So even though we both agree that the entire universe comes from God alone, that in no way determines whether or not humans will ever synthesize a living organism.
As an atheist, I can completely understand that position. Dennis Venema over at BioLogos wrote a really good essay on the topic:
Venema’s position seems to the most consistent to me. I see no value in arbitrarily deciding what has to be natural and what has to be supernatural when it comes to topics like abiogenesis. If God uses natural processes to produce weather, why not use natural processes to create life?
You also make a good point. One could interpret the Bible as supporting abiogenesis.
For those who are keeping score at home, this is known as the Begging the Question logic fallacy—a sub-category under what is commonly known as circular reasoning.
Venema’s positions will be a lot of yarn about nothing except to a natural mind who only deals with and believes in the natural. That is why you like it. In reality, his explanation is hay.
If you do not touch the supernatural, you will in no wise bring life to your inert chemicals.
I gave you an Old Testament account where it occurred but you did not believe me. There is a dark magic that Satan is chomping at the bits to exploit and strike the match to light up your “deaf and dumb” chemicals. If God would just give his ok, Satan would do it today, in an instant.
He gave the ancient Egyptians permission via the occult to throw down their staffs to become living snakes, but that was so Aaron’s staff (itself a living snake) could immediately swallow them down in sight of all there that day.
What evidence? Are you suggesting you actually possess “evidence” whereby you could get the job done in the natural? I have not seen any evidence yet. Where is this evidence?
You will not get it done. And one of the biggest reasons why is that the permission to do so would have to come from God himself. And God is reserving his permission until the end times when the 2nd beast of Revelation is granted power to give life to an inanimate image for the first time in order to deceive people.
That’s a new one. I thought the Pope and Obama were the candidates vying for the position of the beast. I guess the room has gotten more spacious to include OoL research teams.
Quoting bible verses doesn’t help your case. Its irrelevant to the discussion. A Muslim could as well cite some koranic verses, but it won’t matter to you or me.
God’s relevance is not in question under any circumstances. If you or anyone obtained life from non-living matter it would be due to an appeal to the supernatural.
We were able to explain lightning, genetic inheritance, disease epidemics without appealing to the supernatural, and current OoL is towing the same line. Your projection is extremely unlikely.
