xian

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Stephen T-B
[B]What annoys xian (and lies behind his brilliantt OP) is the refusal by atheists to acknowledge the fact that they are bound together by a common dogma, just as Christians are.
[QUOTE]

what annoys you, is that I already know things that you are likely to believe (more likely than unlikely) simply because you are an atheist.

Stephen T-B

Doesn't annoy me in the slightest.

I hold views which are consistent with the opinion that there is no god and that the life we lead now is the only one we get.

To do otherwise would imply an incoherence which you seem to think Atheists claim as being part and parcel of being an atheist .

xian

hey you admit this......

Mageth

lol, and where do you find that?

I didn't "find" it. It's a metaphysical philosophical axiom that's been around for a long time. Not certain where it originated, but you can find it in Hume, for one. You really should read more.

Read this page for an example of where the axiom is cited. If that's not enough, you can do a google search for "infinite number of possible hypotheses." You should get a lot of hits, but not an infinite number.

So, if you insist there are not an infinite number of hypotheses to explain a set of data or observations of a phenomenon, you can set out to disprove this axiom.

how about you just name 10 of them. forget infinite...i'll be nice.
...
C'mon...you can do it...right? (i bet you dont even get 3)

I already gave you three. And I didn't claim to know all of them. And until you disprove the axiom, I feel no need to give more, as there's no need for me to prove anything.

And, BTW, you already gave one yourself - life always existed.

i'm not changing anything.

You changed "origin of life on earth" to "origin of life in the universe" in mid-argument. Those are two different, if related, questions. Don't be disingenuous.

i will simply expect a cop out response like "well science hasn't discovered one yet" blah blah.

There's already been three, maybe four alternate examples of how life originated on earth given - two by me and one by you. Alien seeding (I gave two alternatives for that), spontaneous generation and "life always existed." None of those fit into the category of "abiogenesis" hypotheses considered by modern science. But in any case, like I said, I don't have to cop out - I can merely refer you to the axiom. Disprove it if you can.

NO matter WHAT you come up with, it will fall UNDER one of the categories (of which abiogenesis was one of them)

So what? The categories aren't necessarily hypotheses themselves. There may or may not be a limited number of categories of hypotheses, but there are an infinite number of possible hypotheses.

BTW, in Science, abiogenesis is technically not an hypothesis. From here , abiogenesis is defined as "The scientific study of how life originally arose on the planet, presumably from nonliving things and the presence of nonliving organic matter." A scientist studying abiogenesis has an infinite number of possible hypotheses from which to select candidate hypotheses.

(And I know that, no doubt, you can find several dictionary definitions that make abiogenesis sound like an hypothesis itself. In a broad sense, perhaps it is, but as an explanatory hypothesis, it is insufficient. As is clarified below, and as you yourself admit it is really a category of hypotheses.)

abiogenesis is a broad category. it is a category itself. any alternative theory you try to come up with will fall UNDER this.

OK, to make things easy, I'll concede this point, since by abiogenesis you seem to mean "god didn't do it". For the sake of argument, and to simplify things, let's just limit it to two categories: "goddidit" and "god didn't do it". By "god" I mean any supernatural means. So our broad categories are supernatural hypotheses and natural hypotheses. Within each of those categories, there are an infinite number of possible hypotheses.

But, in line with your above statement, I'd like to see you concede that abiogenesis is a category of hypotheses (including all possible "god didn't do it" or "natural" hypotheses) , not an hypothesis itself. Rather than calling the category abiogenesis, I would call it natural hypotheses. And within this category, there are an infinite number of possible hypotheses to explain life on earth (I don't expect you to concede this (though you should)). Abiogenesis is also the study of the category of natural hypotheses.

NOTE: I feel I've learned something from this line of dialogue. When it started, I was thinking of "abiogenesis" in a narrow scientific sense as in the relatively few hypotheses involving certain biochemical substances interacting in a primoridial environment, self-organizing, beginning self-replication, etc. I think I've broadened my definition of it a bit. Actually, now I think I'll use the scientific definition of abiogenesis as "The scientific study of how life originally arose on the planet" as cited above.

Mageth

if you want to know who has done the changing, it is you guys. this post is about my ability to identify atheists without a profession of atheism. How it turned into this mush i do not know.

One of the infinite number of possible hypotheses for this phenomenon is "Garbage in, garbage out."

AndresDeLaHoz

[QUOTE]Originally posted by xian
[B][QUOTE]Originally posted by Stephen T-B
What annoys xian (and lies behind his brilliantt OP) is the refusal by atheists to acknowledge the fact that they are bound together by a common dogma, just as Christians are.

Quote:

what annoys you, is that I already know things that you are likely to believe (more likely than unlikely) simply because you are an atheist.

Yes. Like in reason, science, and common sense. You know, like most competent human beings.

I'm still waiting for an explanation on how quantum indeterminism in subatomic particles causes bonding at the molecular level to be unpredictable. Go on.

xian

i'm still waiting for you to explain how the theory of abiogenesis as the origins of life in the universe does not depend upon random events. Go on.

AndresDeLaHoz

What a dodge that was.

Atoms and molecules do not depend on random events to bond. Of course, the conditions of the earth and a few random lightning could always do some good.

Of course, if you've got some novel new theory that shows that chemical bonding CANNOT happen in a coherent manner, only at random, then by all means, show it.

The beginning of life does not depend on random, just as current life does not depend on random.

Mageth

xian:

i'm still waiting for you to explain how the theory of abiogenesis as the origins of life in the universe does not depend upon random events. Go on.

Note that AndresDeLaHoz, early on in this discussion, said:

Chance most likely had some part of it, but life didn't just pop out of chance.

So it's obvious that he does not think randomness was not involved in some way.

He just clarified this by correctly pointing out that it is incorrect to say that the origin of life depends on random events. Randomness was no doubt involved, but there is much more to it than randomness.

xian

lol, nice way to minimize the dependence of abiogenesis on random events by saying "Of course, the conditions of the earth and a few random lightning could always do some good. "

CONDITIONS are everything!!!

from the "conditions" come the possibility of the event. it truly is funny how abiogenesis is suddenly a deterministic event, when the conditions themselves are enourmously improbable.