Life just has elements that matter doesn’t have—consciousness, for example.

Bacteria?

Just a quick note for now to say Congratulations on your winning entry, as well as to express appreciation for your continued contributions.

Best to you,
ericB

—camanintx: “How do you determine if something has consciousness?”

It is manifested in rationcination, decision making, free choice, and most of all, self reflection.

I would agree with you that anything exhibiting these features would be considered alive, but I doubt you would convince anyone that all living things share these features. Doesn’t that make it a poor tool to differentiate life from non-life.
Maybe we can try to narrow down the line were life and non-life meet. Do you consider bacteria to be alive?

Further, when I ask Darwinists where those laws came from, they either change the subject, refuse to answer, or deny that any such laws exist, indicating that only our reaction to them is real. That is not rational either.

How is this different from ID proponents refusal to define the designer? Last time I checked, the origin of natural laws was a topic for physicists and cosmologists, not biologists.

It is manifested in rationcination, decision making, free choice, and most of all, self reflection.

—-”Do you believe physical laws are descriptive or prescriptive?”

Laws regulate the matter in nature and we also describe those laws; thus, the laws themselves are objective realities and our descriptions of them are subjective reactions. Put another way, [A] We live in a rational universe [nature organized by orderly laws], [B] We have rational minds [a faculty that can apprehend those laws], and [C] there is a correspondence between the two [the logic of one miraculously matches the logic of the other].

Darwinsts deny the correspondence between the rational universe and the rational minds that apprehend it. Even so, there really is an object of the the investigation [the laws themselves, the way they operate, and regulate], and there really is an investigator [who apprehends, describes and puts names on the laws,

The existence of the laws themselves must be explained; they have not been around forever because the universe has not been around forever. Darwinists not only take these facts for granted, they even deny the fact of causation, suggesting that neither the universe or its laws had to be caused. That is not rational.

Further, when I ask Darwinists where those laws came from, they either change the subject, refuse to answer, or deny that any such laws exist, indicating that only our reaction to them is real. That is not rational either.

Thank you for your long and thoughtful reply; sorry it took me a while to see it. I think people are motivated to explore for lots of different reasons and I can see your way of thinking about would be very important to some people, Isaac Newton perhaps? I also know there are pure materialists who are passionate about discovering the principles behind observed phenomena.

Different strokes eh?

Life just has elements that matter doesn’t have—consciousness, for example.

How do you determine if something has consciousness?

Question: Great, where did the law come from?

Do you believe physical laws are descriptive or prescriptive?

Well put. I wish I had said it.

You’re right, of course. It should have been written as follows: matter cannot come from nothing, and life cannot come from matter.

—”As for the life from non-life argument, maybe you can explain exactly what differentiates the two and how it prevents one from becomming the other.”

Life just has elements that matter doesn’t have—consciousness, for example.

—-”You stated that this holds back science yet you cannot produce a single scientific theory that proposes such a concept. Sorry, but irrelavent quotes taken out of context and obscure references to blog posts do not constitute science. And since no theory of biological origins suggest that something came from nothing, your thesis has no legs to stand on.”

All processes suggested by and involving Darwinian evolution propose something from nothing. We already know that matter is not eternal, so to suggest that matter came from nothing is to propose something from nothing. Materailist Darwinists hold that view. To propose that life came from non-life is to propose that life came from that which had no life. That is something from nothing.. Life can only come from life.

In any case, spontaneous generation IS a theory. It fell out of favor for a while, but it appears that Richard Dawkins and the new militant atheists are bringing it back.

Dawkins writes; “Before the coming of life on earth, some rudimentary evolution of molecules could have occurred by ordinary processes of physics and chemistry. There is no need to think of design or purpose or directedness. If a group of atoms in the presence of energy falls into a stable pattern it will tend to stay that way. The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms and a rejection of unstable ones. There is no mystery about this. It had to happen by definition”

That’s spontaneous generation theory and it seems consistent with what biochemist George Wald wrote in the Scientific American in 1954 when he held that, though it seemed impossible, the spontaneous generation of living organisms was, given enough time, probable.

Even if that is a rare opinion among biologists today, the Darwinistic idea that life can come from non-life, or that mind can come from matter, or that matter can come from nothing, violates the principle of causality. So, the dialogue continues with the Darwinist:

Question. Where did life come from?

Darwinist: We once believed that is was spontaneously generated, but that sounded too ridiculous for a while, so most of us now believe that some physical law allowed it to happen

Question: Great, where did the law come from?

Darwinist: It was spontaneously generated.

Anyonr who proposes that life came from non-life, that non-life came from matter or that matter came from nothing, violates the principle of causality.

Non-life cannot come from matter? Really? Maybe you want to think about this a little more.
As for the life from non-life argument, maybe you can explain exactly what differentiates the two and how it prevents one from becomming the other.

The hang up about finding a scientific theory is all yours, not mine. My thesis is that Darwinists think that something can come from nothing, and they do it here all the time.

You stated that this holds back science yet you cannot produce a single scientific theory that proposes such a concept. Sorry, but irrelavent quotes taken out of context and obscure references to blog posts do not constitute science. And since no theory of biological origins suggest that something came from nothing, your thesis has no legs to stand on.

Anyonr who proposes that life came from non-life, that non-life came from matter or that matter came from nothing, violates the principle of causality. Darwinists generally posit all three. That, by the way, is why so many of them appeal to quantum mechanics as an example of something coming from nothing, or didn’t you know that?

The hang up about finding a scientific theory is all yours, not mine. My thesis is that Darwinists think that something can come from nothing, and they do it here all the time. That is why they appeal to quantum mechanics as an example of quantum particles coming out of nothing. They resist the principle of causality which holds that nothing can begin to exist without a cause.

What position do you hold on that matter?