How did it start?

Here's another atheist's opinion: I don't know.See, I don't even know what consciousness is, so how can I say what happens to it when my body dies? I have some suspicions, though. Consciousness seems to be somewhat of a social phenomenon, as though some part of your consciousness depends on the sort of "network" you form with other people through language.Obviously, when you die, the bulk of your consciousness stops functioning with your brain, but what about the stuff going on with other people? Are the bits of yourself you've left with other living people, connected by language interaction, enough to support a sort of low consciousness?It wouldn't surprise me if it did. But I can't imagine what it would be like.Honestly though, who cares? We'll all get to find out what happens, right? There's considerably more fruitful things to worry about than death. However you choose to make your peace with it is fine with me.

I attempted your experiment, but was unable to duplicate your results. Can you explain?

What do you mean by "living"?Seriously. What qualities must be present for something to be considered living?

So what you're saying is, you don't know what "living" means at all in this context. Why didn't you just say so instead of quoting irrelevant definitions?

Can you possibly answer my question?After all, the topic is precursors to living cells, right? Well, I can hardly tell you what the precursor is without knowing where the line between living and non-living is.I can only presume, though, that your refusal to even attempt to answer a pertinent question is evidence that you're not even remotely interested in learning about the precursors to life - you're just interested in taking potshots at a theory you don't begin to understand.

I tried for 6 years. Was that long enough? I was absolutely sincere.

Which is made out of non-living things. How do we know this? Because that's where all living things come from - non-living material. Why would the first one be different? It's entirely the same; "eating" isn't magic. It's just a kind of chemistry. Non-living matter reacts chemically to exactly the same degree that living matter does. Out of non-living things. Through chemistry. Which is exactly where the first life came from; non-living things, through chemistry. But again, your rebuttal is just a kind of crypto-vitalism - the idea that the chemistry of living things is somehow fundamentally, unbridgably different than the chemistry of non-living things, because it's endowed with some kind of living force.There's no such force, and nothing happens when you or I eat that couldn't be replicated by entirely non-living chemistry.

That's what I've been trying to get him to see all along. The reason that my argument appears "weak" is because I'm phrasing it in such a way as to lead Robin into rebutting it exactly the way I want him/her to do.The idea that living things are different has no merit. Living things are just matter involved in certain kinds of chemistry, and there's no reason to believe that chemical arrangement wouldn't have a chemical origin, and every reason to believe that it would.

No, it's not. It's not the the least bit different, which has been the point of a number of posts from me to you, but you have ignored those points. Hell, you did it just now. You don't, of course, say the word "vitalism", but you hold the vitalist position: "Make life"? "Eat"? What relevance do those have to the question, which is one of chemistry, unless you're still viewing life through the lens of vitalism, where life and non-life are fundamentally different?For god's sake, get my argument straight already. The process by which non-living matter is incorporated into living things is chemical. Therefore there's no reason to believe that the process by which non-living matter was incorporated into the first living thing was anything but chemical.It's very, very simple. But you seem determined to misunderstand at every possible juncture.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 12-15-2004 01:53 PM

Robin's not asking for the specific pathway. Robin's asking for the evidence that the pathway exists. That's not in the least what Robin has been asking for.

I don't think it was there when I started my message. Well, you've certainly succeeded. Add a bit more brandy to the nog, I'd say. That always infuses me with Christmas spirit - some kind of spirit, anyway.

Well, if you can't understand my argument, then maybe you can struggle with this one for a bit - if life doesn't come from non-living matter, what does it come from? Right. Nobody knows of any other things besides the living and the non-living. Before there was the living, then, it's most reasonable to conclude that there was nothing but the non-living. Ergo, what did the living have to come from? Since there was nothing else, the answer has to be "the non-living."How did this happen? I don't have a fucking clue. Presumably chemistry; maybe aliens or God.But I don't see how the proposition that "life came from the non-living" can be in any doubt, whatsoever. It's the inescapabe conclusion, at this point. No. 4 billion years of living things acting on the Planet Earth have created conditions globally inhospitible to abiogenesis.

Not in the least. Where's the contradiction? I know what had to happen - life came from non-life. What I don't know is how it did happen. Did aliens turn lifelessness into life? Dunno. Did God do that? Dunno. Did it do it itself? Dunno, but the research in that direction so far has produced more results than research into God or aliens.I don't see the contradiction. "Out of nothing"? Where is nothing to be found? And if life came from nothing, then why is it made out of the same stuff that was already here? If life comes out of nothing, spontaneously, why doesn't it happen anymore? "Mind" doesn't exist, except as an idea. How could anything physical come from it? How could something in this universe be eternal? And how could something not in this universe affect something in this one?This message has been edited by crashfrog, 12-15-2004 03:29 PM

Dubious? Show me a mind atom, then.

There's a lack of evidence for specifically what non-living activity (a better word for this would be "chemistry") gave rise to life, and without that it's impossible to say for absolutely certain that physical chemistry is the source of life, but there's plenty of evidence that life is the result of chemistry, and no evidence for any alternative, so the real picture is a lot less ambiguous than you suggest.There's very real evidence that physical chemistry is sufficient to account for the existence of life. That evidence is our vast success at creating possibly every known type of organic molecule through entirely inorganic chemistry. The question now is simply what order those molecules have to be in, and what arrangement of chemistry will sufficie to put them there.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 12-15-2004 04:08 PM