From: me22over7@gmail.com   
      
   On 7/09/2025 11:25 pm, John Harshman wrote:   
   > On 9/7/25 12:51 AM, MarkE wrote:   
   >> 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.   
   >   
   > I believe, unfortunately, that *you* can't. You ignored the point   
   > entirely. What has religion come up with as an explanation for the   
   > origin of life in the last several thousand years? If it is indeed a   
   > "way of knowing" on par with science, there should be something you   
   > could point to. What is it?   
      
   The epistemological categories are intrinsically different, such that   
   demanding the category of religion (say) provide anything resembling a   
   scientific explanation of OOL is to commit a category error.   
      
   Science provides 'how' knowledge within its domain. Religion is not   
   expected to provide the how of life, rather the who and why.   
      
   To be clear, I'm not anti-science. Moreover, the world religions contain   
   mutually exclusive claims, which makes 'religion' as an alternative   
   source of knowledge problematic.   
      
   I'm willing to have a discussion in good faith, including highlighting   
   the challenges and limitations of my own position.   
      
   Are you?   
      
   >   
   >> -------   
   >>   
   >> * 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)