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Origin of life: What has materialism done for you lately?

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Someone wrote to mention the recent announcement that RNA world is “impossible” after all, and that we should now put our hopes in a hybrid RNA-peptide world. = Now we are really onto something at last!

As it happens, that story had whistled through the system already. Perhaps it was propelled by the momentum from the Next Big Thing in origin of life, for which we haven’t yet got the PR.

It all sounds so … unscience-like. We only hear why RNA OOL won’t work when some new flimflam is on offer.

Phil Johnson was right. This sort of behaviour could land a stock promoter in jail.

It says something for what materialism (naturalism) has done to science that evidence claims are routinely accepted in science that would be dismissed (or sometimes, prosecuted) in financial markets. And we are all supposed to just shuddup and believe. And, in some places, submit our kids to schools, to be taught them, with grading.

Some try to explain the problem away by saying, “Science is self-correcting.” No, sorry. There is a difference between “self-correcting” and “having no coherent narrative, changing your story every few weeks.”

At this point, it is fair to say that there is no particular reason for a person of good sense to accept that there even is a purely naturalistic origin of life. It doesn’t matter what else you believe or don’t believe. They simply have not got the evidence, they are going on faith in their particular system, a faith that has not, in this case, been rewarded by anything but continued persistent faith.

Oh and, by the way, here’s the Central Dogma singalong:

Noticed it along the way.

Comments
Liz:
We do not know how life began.
Well, the materialists, about whom the post was written, certainly know, on faith, how it didn't begin.Phinehas
September 18, 2013
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Who, precisely, is “going on faith”?
Why, the faithful, of course! Seems rather obvious. Protocells: Bridging Nonliving and Living Matter Kind of funny title if you ask me. How do we tell the difference between "living matter" and "nonliving matter"?Mung
September 17, 2013
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News: I have news for you. We do not know how life began. We do not pretend to know how life began, we simply do not know. There is no current scientific hypothesis, or series of hypotheses, that takes us all the way from non-life to life. So I don't know who you mean by "they" in the following:
They simply have not got the evidence, they are going on faith in their particular system, a faith that has not, in this case, been rewarded by anything but continued persistent faith.
Who, precisely, is "going on faith"?Elizabeth B Liddle
September 17, 2013
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LOL. But still, there's a lot to be said for formal, old-school educational canons, isn't there? More pluses than minuses, I think. Of course, I'd say the exact opposite to your good lady wife, whose support in this matter I cherish, Rex. The fair sex is not a misnomer, if the weaker sex certainly is!Axel
September 17, 2013
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Axel, thanks for the update. My wife's always telling me I'm so 13th century. ;)RexTugwell
September 17, 2013
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Your definition, the original one, is from Catholic theology, true enough, RexTugwell. However, logicians adapted it to refer to the mindset of persons who deliberately refuse to attend to evidence.Axel
September 16, 2013
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That's what we are up against, sage, isn't it. Makes a great epigram, too.Axel
September 16, 2013
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"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary [not to mention his worldview] depends upon his not understanding it." Upton Sinclairsagebrush gardener
September 16, 2013
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I hate to be pedantic but let's not confuse invincible ignorance with willful ignorance. I dare say materialists are guilty of the latter while the primitive tribes of South America can be considered invincibly ignorant of, say, the Triune God through no fault of their own.RexTugwell
September 16, 2013
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"invincibly ignorant", what an apt phrase! Anyone who can view the advances in biology over the past 20 years without being convinced of design is like an astronomer still clinging to deferents and epicycles. There is none so blind as he who will not see.sagebrush gardener
September 16, 2013
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The thread concerning the courtesy and a distinct and unapologetic lack of it, variously shown by us, towards our meat-head, metaphysical-naturalist friends evidently has a bearing on this topic. How metaphysical naturalism, as a putatively scientific world-view, is still extant, indeed, seemingly hegemonic in the 'philatelic' sciences, some eighty years and more after the initial discoveries of quantum mechanics, is beyond my comprehension. I understand that the Fall of mankind had desperate consequences for all of us, and I understand that God 'scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts', and am very familiar with its occurrences in my life-time. However, that one aspect of the Fall should produce a ruling, putative, professional elite, so perverse and intellectually-challenged as to favour their own preferred, materialist world-view, and the classical, mechanistic paradigm which alone could underpin it in broadest principle, in the teeth of its falsification by the very leading-edge scientific discoveries, of which they claim to be the ultimate, sovereign, unique investigative paragons, the very masters, completely beggars my imagination. Yes, I know the mechanistic paradigm fits the human-scale perfectly. Joseph Heller would have been at a loss to satirise it. It makes Catch 22 read like a dry text book on the normal banalities of service life. However, since it is indeed the case that they choose to exclusively live, paradigmatically-speaking, in the late nineteenth century, how is it possible to treat with them courteously, as though in normal academic discussions? bornagain77 is routinely mocked as a 'spammer', for repeatedly drawing to their attention a multiplicity of successive findings of quantum mechanics cementing QM as an absolutely unambiguous, unequivocal game-changer; most notably, concerning the supernaturally entangled photons - their evident origin from outside of space-time. Consequently, while, as I say, I would still find their obstinate refusal to concede on the issue, beyond comprehension, nevertheless, in a manner of speaking, it perhaps might be claimed by some that, when this blog was first created, polite discussion among peers would have been feasible. Now, that hope is dashed, it seems you are obliged to address a wider public in the guise of seeking rational answers from your interlocutors - assuming you are not masochistic enough to keep trying to convince the plainly invincibly ignorant, anyway. I do not see how this could make any sense at all, given their dogged refusal to concede in the teeth of the long line of discoveries which have elicited the endless Forrest Gump exepressions of astonishment, at each new refutation of evolution by Nature, itself, as ongoing research continues to manifest. Consequently, what is surely mandated by their obstinate, anti-scientific stance is an adversarial approach (a strange congruence that Barry should be a lawyer by profession). Such an approach is not gentle and does not prioritize 'making nice'. And, it seems to me, neither should we.Axel
September 16, 2013
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