What is this "random" of which you speak?

What is this "random" of which you speak? Jan 29, 2019 1:52:06 GMT

Quote

Post by Arlon10 on Jan 29, 2019 1:52:06 GMT

Jan 29, 2019 0:45:38 GMT rizdek said:

Jan 29, 2019 0:35:29 GMT Arlon10 said:

   You are correct that what I said implies that living things might not require a soul, if that's what you're getting at. That is, it does seem to me the machine is capable of sustenance activities at least, if only by program. Whether it would necessarily work without a soul (or a ghost in the machine) is not certain. You jumped to soon. People have been known to die from lacking a will to live. I have said many times that the people who think they have no soul might in fact not have one, but that doesn't mean other people have no soul. I hope you realize that people have been arguing the special existence of consciousness for millennia. The argument is not likely to be settled by you. I believe I have a soul because I can perceive it directly myself. I'm sorry you can't do the same. Maybe you do and maybe you don't have a soul.

   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.

I have little interest in proving a god exists. Enough people believe sufficiently in and "fear" (are careful about) a god that there isn't much need for proof, and the people who do need it are not receptive anyway.

I simply state the obvious. The "growth" of short, lifeless RNA chains into something living without assistance from an intelligent designer is not logical. Seeing the same thing over and over and expecting something different to happen has been suggested as a definition of insanity. It is only your vain hope that you can explain the origin of life yourself that keeps you so obstinate.