From: the_thompsons@earthlink.net   
      
   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 think you're being oversensitive here. I said it sounds like   
   gobbledegook- meaning I don't get it. That's why I asked for further   
   explanation.   
      
   Athena got pissed off and turned Arachne into a spider. How is that not   
   "magic poofing"?   
      
   A fable is a category of story that features anthropomorphic animals or   
   plants, and has some kind of moral that's made clear at the end. Are you   
   really saying creation stories don't have fables associated with them?   
      
   Chris   
      
      
   >   
   > -------   
   >   
   > * 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)