Firstly, congratulations on finding a 12 year old lecture on the Internet. Hint: He's describing Abiogenesis. He doesn't even know what it is, and he's describing it. You can hardly blame him, what with him being a Computer Science professor, and it being 12 years ago.
I did. The "Mechanism" he's referring to is Abiogenesis, which makes the chance considerably better than "not very good".
Okay, so I'll take back my 'probability of life is very small' idea... Spoiler I guess I'm not so stubborn after all. ...but it hasn't been completely disproven. At the same time, though, we can't say there is a good probability or bad probability, because we just don't know, yet. Did you read that last part, Rabid?
The probability of life forming on earth is 1. How do we know? Because there's life. How do we know that God didn't put life here? Because there's no proof of god and we can't base other things off the assumption that he exists. You need to prove god before you can prove he created life, not the opposite way around. For the millionth time, my coin-flipping arguments were directed towards evolution.
Heres a experiment done by Urey Miller which he recreated in a form the atmosphere of early Earth and under these conditions he tried adding non living elements to create life. He succeeded in making basic building blocks of life which is very impressive. He created RNA. The Miller/Urey Experiment Source with more explanation and detail on the specifics of the experiment. Also Lynn Margulis and her theory of Endosymbiosis also a good read not even that long. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0_0/history_24 Both of these can show that a god was not needed to create life and that life could have occured through many chemical reactions and or evolution/mutations of basic building blocks of life.
Your logic is flawed because either you completely left out these details or you purposely ignored them and believe them...
It doesn't really matter. Those factors only served to speed up the process, as you can probably tell. Without the same proportion of molecules and continuous lightning storms it would have happened slower, but given the size of the planet relative to his experiment it would have happened just as fast.
im confused, how does the evidence for how life was created argue against the existence of god? if he is all powerfull, couldn't he create life through any means including Abiogenesis?
True, without such things as Abiogenesis we would have scientific proof that God exists. This knowledge would eliminate the necessity for faith. The Bible says we need faith for a reason. And don't say I'm just falling down to ground zero again and claiming we just need faith. I've been going with this idea for a while now.. even look at one of my previous quotes:
No you wouldn't! Without a scientific explanation there isn't an automatic interjection of faith and superstition. It's like saying, "If my car isn't red, its blue." If I have to explain why that's wrong then there really is no hope.
Wow, I woke up at 6:30 and wrote that.. I feel pretty dumb. What I meant: "..without such things as Abiogenesis the chances of God's existence would be higher.." ... ... I've been thinking, though... about this whole debate... I'll try to explain it: Well, here's my view on this whole Evidence of God thing we call a "debate". Where to start? Well... Two Equations: The more scientific "evidence" against god, the less faith needed. (E>F) The less scientific "evidence" against god, the more faith needed. (E<F) Two More Equations: When E>F, there's less room for true believers. (E>F=less T) When E<F, there's more room for true believers. (E<F=more T) What God Wants: more T In The End: E </> F = 1 ..and that's where both sides (atheists/theists) tend to get things wrong. Atheists tend to only see the: "=1" part of the equation No matter what, theists will generally believe in their religion 100% (1) and are too stubborn to disagree. Theists tend to only see the: "E </> F" part of the equation. If you know this, then you know: (E<F)<T and (E>F)>T and thus know how to be more of a "true follower" of God. So: Atheists tend to absorb the 'theists are too stubborn to disagree with their own religion' part. While theists tend to absorb the 'what it means to be a true follower' part. Conclusion: When one tries to explain their side of the "equation" to the other side, the other side usually doesn't agree, generally because they don't know how to view the other side due to their absorption in only one part of their side. This allows more room for name calling because well, both sides are usually rather oblivious to the other side's seemingly (as each side views it) "obvious" knowledge. It's really an unending loop. ... So I may have to work out a few things.. cuz I have to go to bed now.. so if you find any mistakes it's prbly cuz I don't have enough time.
Well Miller was taking a guess with information at the time he and even us would not know the consistancy of the primal Earth atmosphere exactly. Also he would not have knowledge of lightning storms and how often they occured. There very well could have been other power sources to take lightnings place as the energy source. Skeptisism can be a good thing when it comes to continueing to learn about a new thing. We have just added recently found knowledge into his exsperiment which shows that there are more things we still need to know before makeing a definite decision. This is just one "idea" of how life can be formed and for the most part it has been sucessful but it needs to be further reasearched. Theres also the second link which shows anouther way it could of happened naturaly instead of being created by a divine being. It will eventualy come to this, it will take the right ammount of elements or ingredients at the right amount at the perfect conditions to create life. The recipe is relatively close to being solved if you consider how fast Miller created his experiment [with in his short life time as a human] which is only about a hundred years if your lucky. Compared to all of previous generations and future generations of humans to come. Its not a question of if but when the combination will be discovered.
No, you're still wrong because chance is a statement of probability and probabilities require strict conditions and known variables. Since no evidence of god exists and to know the mind of god would not make him god we cannot assign a probability or terms like "chances" to him. The chances of god can never increase or decrease, because they never exist and, if they do, to state such an opinion would imply you have omnipotent knowledge of all things. Interesting to say the least. Its an argument for the unknowable to say the least. It doesn't dignify a response because it has no basis. So I'm not going to respond and tell you what god does or does not want but I will respond to what I know and what I know is this: To assert that a Divine Agency exists but is inaccessible carries two burdens. (1) If it does meet the logical requirements of existence its an argument for the unknowable and (2) if it does not meet those requirements its an argument for the impossible. If I were to place a briefcase on the table in front of you and asked you to identify what was inside, you could not on any evidential basis. If I were to ask you, however, what was not in the briefcase you could give me a near infinite amount of responses: I am not in the briefcase. Things larger than the briefcase are not in the briefcase. A pen made of writing is not in the briefcase. The briefcase is not in the briefcase. iTunes is not in the briefcase (the running software alone, not a cd install or a laptop playing iTunes). 1492 is not in the briefcase. Logic can show impossible beings don't exist but it can't show that possible beings do exist without verifiable evidence. It's important to remember that the more specific and stringent your definition of divine agency becomes the more you have to justify and the more vague and ambiguous your divine agency becomes the less practical relevance is maintains until it ceases. To assert what a Divine agency wants (such as true belief, less evidence) is again an assertion of what is unknowable even if the Divine agency exists. In this case, however, the Divine agency cannot exist because you believe the divine agency to be perfect yet still desires praise, worship, true belief, etc so it is not an assertion of the unknowable but the impossible. I can attempt to help you, though. God walks by sound knowledge, yet in his book written by men and believed by men he demands faith. If we were created in the image of god do you think he would prefer you to walk by sound knowledge or blind faith? Would god prefer you be more like him or less like him? If you would like to retract or rephrase your argument with this in mind it may considerably increase justifiability of it; it will not make it evidential, true, or anything other than an argument for the unknown or impossible but it may help trick the less careful. In order to make your current argument function without my revision you will have to (1) make it logically possible or show that a perfect being that still desires is logical and (2) show that you have omnipotent knowledge of the subject or provide evidence to back up the claim.
If I throw a penny into the air from on top of the Empire State Building blindly and expect it to land on a bulls eye the size of that penny all the way at ground level what are the chances... Chance is not always a two sided quarter. Comparing our being here as a flipping a quarter is not really the right way to say it. Instead ask how many pennies you would need to throw before one lands on the bulls eye, you will not get a 50-50, you will get 0.0001 - 99.9999. This is how rare we are, if not significantly more, and there are even more variables that we can add to it, our location to the sun, the moon that we need, a working environment, evolution, our intelligence. Now we are throwing a penny from the Empire State Building, blind folded, with high winds, into a marker floating in the air and moving side to side, and the penny must land and stay on this floating marker. So saying our chances are 50-50 is not correct, there are billions of planets and suns and Astronomers predict that only 10,000 of all of these will, will be able to, or once had life.
I feel that number is way off. The elements are near the same here, and 14 billion light from here. Life is probably all over the place! Stuff you can't even begin to imagine. We live in an isolated region of the Milky Way. We are not even close to having the technology to find other life so easy. That does not mean that it doesn't exist. I am tired of people being close minded due to what other people tell them. Use your own intuition. As far as the probability debate, you really can't compare the origin of life to a coin toss. It makes for a great analogy, but it is too blinded by it's own ambiguity to be truly relevant. Anyway, you guys should look up a guy named Carl Sagan, the series changed the way I look at everything. I grew up in the eighties. I think they should rebroadcast it so more people can expand their minds. Cosmos was a great series, and changed the way I act as a person and think. I am an atheist, and I am not afraid to admit that. I am not against god, it's just not really a part of my life or the way I view the world.
Yes it does. If he didn't have just the right mixture, then his results would be way off. I'll admit that I've only had one year of high school chemistry, but even that told me that if you don't have the right ratios you'll get it wrong. If lightning struck the spot at an average of once a day(generous in my opinion if you can show me a higher occurrence please do) that would be so extremely slow compared to a constant charge, then essentially nothing would happen. The size of the planet wouldn't speed up the process either. What good would some thymine in Russia do if the adenine was in Australia? You would need all of the chemicals locally and I don't even mean as close as down the street either. All that to make one molecule, one DNA base pair now think of the million, billions, trillions needed to make just one cell. It doesn't. Yes.
As the scale increases, so does the overall amount of molecules. Everything isn't homogenous on the planet; there would be different concentrations of various minerals everywhere you look. All it took was for one area's concentration, out of the billions of cubic meters of water on earth, to be correctly mixed and charged.
Yes and then you would have to have the right combination of the product and other products to form a new product, then that product with other products, etc. until you could even think about an organism. Then evolution kicks in. Think of how many times the entire process might have to restart because the organism couldn't survive well enough. With only one or two organisms evolution isn't that great a process.