DBT

Jokes aside about star wars and the force,does the idea have any merit? Not in any way God,patheism or cosmic mind,just as another form of energy.
The reasoning being-
How quickly life appeared on earth.
the tenacity of life,extremophiles,lava vent worms etc
the bounce back after extinction events
the tendancy of organic compounds to form.
any comments apreciated.

Wounded King

Given that we only have one instance of life arising so far it seems a bit premature to call it universal. And if it were universal in what way would it be exotic, these two things seem almost contradictory.

Elvithriel

I believe what you are thinking of is something called vitalism, the belief that there is some special "magic" that makes life work and not just physics and chemistry alone.

It was used by the people of the time to explain what they saw in life and didn't really have scientific explaination for. We eventually discovered the answers as we continue to do, and such, the idea of vitalism fell out of favor.

Darth Dane

But they havn't been able to explain what makes a life a life, and conciousness has not been explained either....




DD - Love Spliff

Jet Grind

True, but we have discovered mechanistic processess and electro-chemical stimulation that happens in the brain. So if it really is something "magical" that makes a life a life then those things are simply extraneous.

TheUnbeliever

Besides, attributing things we don't understand to "magic" or "God" never got anyone anywhere.

Except maybe burned at the stake, or something like that.

GunnerJ

If we assume that this is true,* is the lack of a naturalistic explaination a suficient excuse to give up and submit to magical thinking?

Should humans have stopped studying meteorology 3000 years ago when they had Zues as an "explanation" for lighting and rain?

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*Although I'm not even sure what your first complaint is. I mean, "what makes a life a life?" What are you talking about?

DBT

I did not mean to imply vitalism or magic or god ,
the universe is a strange beast, dark energy,virtual particles etc
perhaps it appeared with its own self organizing principle-energy to atoms ,atoms to molocules,the tendancy towards complexity I know there are no gods sitting on thrones
but I think the mystery still remains why anything at all formed out of the explosion of the big bang.
While earth is the only known life, nasa's mars rock is another possability that life apeared on another planet

Ovazor

Evidence suggesting this is as abundant as evidence suggesting the existence of the stork bearing babies...

If life was a form of energy it could be measured, and it could be converted into another form of energy. Let's suppose for argument's sake that life was a form of energy. What happenes to it when something dies? Shouldn't this energy be converted into some other form of energy when, for example, a bug is squashed? For example, we should observe an otherwise unexplicable relase of heat or radiation when the bug was squashed or shortly after that. If this was not observed we'd have to assume that the new form of energy is exotic as well.

So, I don't think that your idea has merit.

I don't see how this would suggest that life was a form of energy.

As energy is easily converted from one form into another, tenacity doesn't suggest that life was energy.

Nothing to do with energy.

"Organic" doesn't mean "life
"

DBT

Thank you all for the feedback
I can see clearly where the idea fails.What Iam trying to get at is that on one hand we have Goddidit- no evidence
on the other the universe went from big bang to complex forms/life on pure chance and natural processes-plenty of hard evidence.
But is that it- book closed,basicaly all worked out.
So my question is are there any other viable idea's around?
perhaps scientific pantheism?
all comments apreciated.