If participants of this site cannot avoid arguing over something that we already know can’t be satisfactorily resolved through the evidences…
are we forced to allow the steady erosion of trust created by debating these issues?
Is this really in the interest of PeacefulScience.Org, or any of its philosophical underpinnings?
How about we discuss the latest scientific results on the OOL as they come out?
What does that mean exactly? I was sort of hoping we either CONTAIN the argumentative and unsolvable threads… or that we suppress them.
But right now, it seems they are a drain on Peace and on productive discussions.
by the end of the week, (or month) there will be a new result published that restarts the debate anew. That is the awe of science - once you think you have if figured out a new results makes you re-evaluate everything.
Here is my prediction - the definition of life will blur into that what natural selection selects for. If a certain chemical reactions goes through natural selection it is life.
What I notice is that the conversations seem to often go something like:
I think perhaps what @swamidass is pointing out is that maybe if we start with questions rather than answer to defend, and focus more on the science and less on justifying positions, we may get better conversations.
Oh, I agree completely.
However, it seems to be well beyond the average participant to actually execute that plan.
That’s what “intervention skills” are all about. Intervention is a good thing… if it can guide impulse towards more fruitful kinds of discussions.
The solution would be for people who understand and accept the science to have their say. And the religious zealots who don’t understand and keep trying to make fallacious God of the Gaps arguments could just keep quiet or ask honest questions for clarification.
On a voluntary basis, of course.
It’s hard to take your suggestion very seriously when you throw in phrases like “falacious God of the Gaps” arguments.
The idea is not to come up with the BEST arguments for or against God… the idea (I would like to think) is for us NOT to argue over the issue of God at all.
I don’t see any hostile disputations. I see vehement disagrement, but I wouldn’t call it hostile. I also see the same people make the same bad arguments over and over gain. And attempts to get those people to understand why their arguments are bad always meet with failure.
It seems to me the solution isn’t to prevent the topic from being discussed. That’s ridiculous when the problem is the same people who just refuse to refrain from taking every imaginable opportunity to make obviously fallacious, ill-conceived, and counterfactual claims.
In this way they basically get to dictate what can or can’t be discussed around here by their mere pig-headed stubborn refusal to think clearly? Or are we just supposed to sort of ignore these people and hope they go away, and not respond to anything they say?
We’re here to discuss what the science says, right? That’s the point of this discussion board it seems to me, to discuss matters in science, faith, and philosophy? Well, one of those topics is the origin of life. What do we know about it? What do the things we know about it mean or imply, if anything? If we can’t discuss an debate that, then what is even the point of this forum?
Oh, my goodness… let me correct my poor choice of words: Vehement Disagreement is all too common when we debate whether there is a God or no God.
And it’s really not the purpose of these boards. We shouldn’t be enabling this kind of B.S.
Marriage counselors point out that couples that interact quite a bit, and have 3 negative interactions for every 5 interactions are doomed to a failed marriage.
It is better to have 1 negative to 5 interactions (1 / 6 = 17% negative) , at a lower rate of communication, than to have 3 for every 5 (3 / 8 = 38% negative) - - for not only is the rate of negativity higher, but there is less recovery time for each negative event.
Similarly, if this group is not going to consciously (even more important than conscientiously) cultivate amicability by avoiding dead end disputes, and saving the disagreements for the core discussions, then I don’t know how we are going to live up to the name Peaceful Science!
I understand your confusion on this matter… it comes straight from the top. He creates a group where everything is supposed to be distinctly harmonious, and the first thing that happens is all chaos breaks out discussing every classic Atheist vs. Theist dispute known to man and woman.
This was an error in the beginning and it is an error now.
You cannot build harmony between the Jets and the Sharks by having a baseball game-turned knife fight every Sunday. Psychologically it has been proven. To build harmony, you have to mix up the sides, into two blended teams… which means, we need discussions where a significant portion of Atheists and Theists AGREE… to discuss with those of the other stripe who DO NOT agree.
And sometimes we do a good job of that. But it will never amount to much if right next door are 2 threads with knife fights going on.
But then what is the board for? So that people who really do disagree on all sorts of stuff can come here and… not discuss it, but hold hands instead?
Are you going to force people to agree, or only have them discuss stuff where they don’t disagree, in which case why would they discuss it?
Disputes based on challenging the very point of Christianity should not be in the center room with a spotlight on them.
They should be in a separate space, where only people who want to see a knife fight can enter the space and watch the knife fight.
We don’t have to get people to agree on things like theism or atheism. But it should be well within our rights to say: hey, if you are going to show your butt … go show your butt in THE CORNER OVER THERE, where there are no spotlights. And no doubt there will be spectators for the sport no matter where it is.
But do you think it makes much sense to call this place Peaceful Science if we INTENDED to argue over whether or not god exists?
This is a pro-Evolution site, that understands and accepts miracles.
If you aren’t PRO-Evolution, and you can’t tolerate miracles… then I would say you are lost [**see note below], and got directed here by mistake. But that doesn’t mean we can’t entertain you. There’s the room over there… in the corner. Get over there as soon as you can.
Unfortunately, the powers that be here still haven’t figured out the value of that room … and so they haven’t built it yet.
Funny, aye, @swamidass ?
**[ [Note for above] - I want to adjust this sentence. The default position of these boards is pro-Evolution and toleration or acceptance of miracles. Naturally, we would like to be able to produce discussions that encourages Creationists to tolerate evolution and encourages Evolutionists to tolerate the miraculous. ]
[ But what do we do with Creationists who only want to argue with Atheists about Evolution, and Atheists who only want to argue about the absence of proof of God with Theists? This is the “null set” audience I was thinking about when I first posted the paragraphs above! The “null set” audience wants blood and spectacle. We can give it to them… without damaging everything else… if we had a room for them. ]
But… how do you know if a certain chemical reaction is not being driven by an invisible software/design, then, of course, the result will be stablished, no natural selection needed here. I will show an example: if an observer does not know about DNA and is watching an ovule fecundation and development he will see lots of chemical reactions, all them will be selected…
I am telling that because in the origins of life is possible it have happened, if my theory is right. There was an astronomic system driven those chemical reactions in abiogenesis ( which was astronomic embryogenesis that takes million years…)
But, let’s go rational: you know that in the origin of any living body today there are chemical reactions driven by something; why not the same happened in the origin of the first living body? Since there is no other rational plausible alternative, we can not invent phantasies that we never saw anytime, anywhere. Please, Occam’s razor on it.
You are reducing biological history too much. What accounts is the final result/product of a process. There are many examples of traits/species that were dominant and evolving, and were finally discarded. And sometimes the most selected were replaced by humble stagnated species.
I am loosing the definition of life. If a chemical process is selected by natural selection it is alive.
My definition:
“Life is the name that humans gives to the biological shape of the universal natural system.”
Like our human body, this universal system is evolving since the Big Bang inside this agglomerate of galaxies by the process of life’s cycle. This process is who makes our body changing shapes, like embryo from fetus, adult from teenager, etc. At universal level, biological shape comes from astronomic shapes ( the building block of DNA is self-projection of the building block of galaxies) which are the mechanistic shape, which came from atoms systems as the electromagnetic shape, which came from the soup of particles as the quantum shape…
All biological properties ( like metabolism, reproduction, etc.) already were existing at the ancestors shapes, some being expressed, another not, like our shape as adult express the reproductive property that was in potential state as a kid. So,… what is life? There is no exactly time that you can say your body changed from teenager into adult, its a slow and transitional process, so, there is no exactly time when biological shape began.
“Life” is a wrong and dangerous word that has prejudiced humanity because it does not know these hidden properties at our ancestors non-biological systems, then our bias for our separation from the Cosmos. Not knowing that biological system is merely product of an evolutionary universal continuum we created another dangerous concept: “origins”. As result we are searching the “origins of life” as an event that must have a mystical cause, like supernatural beings or magical causality by chance. There is no origins of anything, everything is product of transformation, evolution, in this long chain of events that began at the Big Bang, and is behaving like an exactly reproductive genetic process. Now we are watching the birth of a new systemic shape, which we call “consciousness”. Is it the last shape? Who knows?
Ok, each world view will have its definition, for sure we don’t know the ultimate definition yet. I think it is important that more people try to connect the real known data in different ways, each final result will be a different general picture, which will contribute for evolution of our knowledge. My world view is result of calculating evolution in the reverse way: while the authors of abiogenesis and Darwinian evolution begins at the “origins of life” and calculates from the past to the present, I began with the biosphere of Amazon jungle calculating from the present towards the past. And I can’t stopped at “life’s origins” because the calculation obligated me looking to this galaxy, then, to atoms, till arriving at an event similar to the Big Bang. From here there is no way to go ahead. Only seeing that the properties of life goes ahead, beyond the Big Bang. How I could define a kind of living ghost?
