Post by rizdek on Jan 29, 2019 0:45:38 GMT
So you would agree that the things that happen in living cells (their strategies) are purely natural...including metabolism, cell division, breaking down protein to release nitrogen, subsequent protein formation, the kreb's cycle and genetic replication...all that is purely natural...something that goes on due to regular laws of chemistry. IOW, once life "got started" it proceeds naturally with all the myriad of complex reactions and interactions being just what chemicals do and what chemistry allows? So the chemistry of life does not require any divine intervention to keep it going and as long as the conditions are just so, the chemistry of life will proceed and support its continuance and proliferation. Furthermore, I think we could agree that the chemistry of life proceeds in a nonrandom manner, it doesn't require some illusive "random chance generator"...an almost magical combination of chemicals that is counter to natural chemical interaction...it's all going on along regular and essentially predictable (or at least theoretically predictable) courses of interaction.
If we agree on that, then I'm safe in believing that if those conditions occurred by some natural means in a natural setting...or some essentially similar natural conditions...at some point in the billion years between when the earth is believed to have formed, during which surface water began collecting and when life is believed to have appeared, that the normal chemistry we agree goes on in living cells would have been sufficient to have triggered primitive life. Then I see no reason to conclude that this life, due to the process of "essentially" random mutations and natural selection, could not have evolved into the life forms we see around us.
I say "essentially" random because I'm not convinced anything purely random occurs in nature. And even if there is, I see no reason to invoke such randomness into the process of life and life reproduction. At the level at which life chemistry occurs...and especially the replication of genetic material...there are a host of factors that could come into play making the process (mutations that provide variation in the replicating process) for all intents and purposes random. For example, it is believed that radiation from the sun might have an effect on the reproduction of genetic material. So while those emanations from that distant object didn't really happen because of purely random processes, ie the chemical reaction in the sun which produces this radiation, is proceeding along regular and understood...or at least theoretically understandABLE, their hitting the earth and the interacting with the specific molecules that are undergoing replication at the time they did becomes an essentially random influence. IOW, for all intents and purposes we can say mutations are caused by random factors even though each of those individual factors might not occur due to purely random processes.
I have seen no research or evidence that the process of life is not normal chemistry nor anything that suggests that under the proper conditions, that same chemistry that now sustains life, cannot have triggered life from noon-living chemicals, either on earth, or perhaps on some distant planet such that the essential components somehow found their way to earth so life got a foothold here. As long as NO divine intervention is required for the chemistry of life, it seems safe to say the origin of life is due to a natural process.
Do you think God would have been unable to create matter/energy those billions of years ago in just the right way SUCH THAT it could eventually self organize into life naturally?
What you believe you have or haven't seen doesn't matter. I have enough knowledge of RNA to know that short chains do not build up continuously. I realize many people hoped they would. I realize they have been watching and helping them along in laboratories for decades now and the chains do not build up continuously. That is proof they won't. That you fail to accept that truth is your problem. Many people believe that it is important to pretend there is no god in order to maintain the social order. If you can't feed thousands of people with five loaves and two fishes, you like to believe no one else can either so that your power is more readily accepted. I do not have that problem. I know I can't. If other people can then I say have at it. I believe God does not typically do their bidding though, nor have they shown me their abilities at all yet.
I regularly participate in maintaining the social order by real science and rational argument. I find no need to lie about anything. I also think lying is worse at maintaining power than accepting some things are unknown. I suspect a god was wise enough to hide things from you in order to keep you sensible.
I don't think believing that life arose naturally and that evolution is a purely natural process means people don't have souls. I mean, if I was a theist who believed humans need souls to be complete and that God wanted people to have souls I'd assume God could work out that details of how to make that happen all the while depending on his natural creation to have produced the human bodies into which he placed those souls.
So setting the whole soul thing aside, I am not convinced that we know enough to state unequivocally that RNA could not have evolved from long chained precursor molecules that arose naturally. Just because they've been doing research for decades isn't proof that it won't ever happen. But even if it is never done in the lab, it is still not proof that it could not have happened in the hundreds of millions years after the earth formed and water began collecting on the earth's surface. But more importantly even if they managed to duplicate precisely how life formed...right down to the exact chemicals that formed and in what order, it would still not be proof that God does not exist or that God didn't create the matter and energy from which life self-organized.