From: me22over7@gmail.com   
      
   On 7/09/2025 12:28 pm, Chris Thompson wrote:   
      
   >> This brings me back to my "1000 years" thought exercise. If that   
   >> scenario did play out, it would be an instance of science providing   
   >> evidence of non-causality. That's the other sharp edge - evidence from   
   >> science giving reason to consider explanations beyond the reach of   
   >> science.   
   >   
   > Perhaps you could rephrase that? It sounds like gobbledygook.   
   >   
   > But we really don't need to wait a thousand years. We can start with one   
   > simple question: what has religion produced in the last 2000 years, as   
   > far as tangible results about the OOL? We've got a few books that   
   > describe magic poofing. We've got a bunch of fables, like those   
   > featuring Coyote. We've got the Dreamtime of Australian Aboriginal   
   > people. And at least a few hundred others. None of these seem to be any   
   > more reliable than the rest. Why hasn't religion settled on one, or at   
   > least a few similar hypotheses? Just because science has been doing   
   > other stuff should not have held theologians back from working on this.   
      
   I agree that we don't need to wait 1000 years, that's an overly   
   conservative number for the exercise. OOL research is already   
   progressively revealing inadequacies in naturalistic explanations of   
   even a protocell*.   
      
   But I digress. This discussion is a reasonably careful attempt to define   
   and delineate epidemiological categories and their application.   
   Thoughtful opposing contributions welcome. However, statements like   
   "sounds like gobbledygook", "magic poofing", and "a bunch of fables" are   
   standard TO fare and a lazy category error.   
      
   I believe you can do better.   
      
   -------   
      
   * For example:   
      
   1. The thread here "New" "ideas" on origin of life: "The study finds   
   life’s origin faces severe mathematical challenges".   
      
   2. Deeper OOL paradoxes only partially acknowledged, e.g.   
   https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11084-014-9379-0   
      
   3. Or this   
   (https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/HMw_ZoXIIOc/m/nb1u4MD6AAAJ):   
      
   This talk is from 2015, though David Deamer's book "Assembling Life"   
   that is based on this was published in 2019. Note Bruce Damer's call for   
   a new approach to OoL, and note the uncanny alignment with Tour, Bains,   
   Long Story Short, etc:   
      
   4:29 “[OoL research has] been mainly focused on individual solution   
   chemistry experiments where they want to show polymerization over here,   
   or they want to show metabolism over here, and Dave and I believe that   
   it's time for the field to go from incremental progress to substantial   
   progress. So, these are the four points we've come up with to make   
   substantial progress in the origin of life, and the first one is to   
   employ something called system chemistry, having sufficient complexity   
   so instead of one experiment say about proteins, now you have an   
   experiment about the encapsulation of proteins for example, and   
   informational molecules built from nucleotides in an environment that   
   would say be like an analog of the early Earth, build a complex   
   experiment. Something we're calling sufficient complexity, and all of   
   these experiments have to move the reactions away from equilibrium. And   
   what do we mean by that? Well, in in your high school chemistry   
   experiments, something starts foaming something changes color and then   
   the experiment winds down and stops. Well, life didn't get started that   
   way. Life got started by a continuous run-up of complexity and building   
   upon in a sense nature as a ratchet. So we have to figure out how to   
   build experiments that move will move away from equilibrium…”   
      
   6:31 “You can't sit in a laboratory just using glassware. You have to go   
   to the field. You have to go to hot springs, you have to go to […]   
   Iceland and come check and sit down and see what the natural environment   
   is like, rather than being in the ethereal world of pure reactants and   
   things like that…”   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)