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C.S. Lewis on atheist thinking

HomeReligion, Atheism, and Odd TheologyC.S. Lewis on atheist thinking

Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.

C.S. Lewis

[Emphasis mine]
This quote from noted theologian C.S. Lewis highlights a major problem for modern atheists: they borrow heavily from a worldview they reject. When thinking about the process of thinking, atheists assume that their brains can be relied upon to give good answers. In a universe of philosophical materialism (the idea that the physical is all that exists), there’s no good reason to assume that our brains are trustworthy in that way. In fact, Darwinian evolution would suggest otherwise, because our brains are then the result of many random mutations and natural selection. In other words, our brains contribute to the survival and spread of our genetic information…and everything else is “gravy”. Any other function our brains might perform could be eliminated after another mutation.

If our brains are simply biochemical and not the creation of some greater mind; if our brains are not connected to an immaterial mind; if the physical is all that truly exists, we can’t trust in reason to get us anything but grandchildren. The only way to speak meaningfully about reliable ideas is to presuppose that our brains function as something more than a blob of DNA-spreading goo.


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Comments

38 responses to “C.S. Lewis on atheist thinking”

  1. rickson says:

    Thanks for qouting and commenting on it. C.S lewis was a genius

  2. Leichtenberg says:

    That’s really cool!

  3. FeepingCreature says:

    Atheist here, and this is a weak argument.

    We can trust in reason to be useful, for otherwise evolution would have selected against it. Evolution is not capable of sustained caprice; the mere arithmetic of energy consumption would have long ago filtered out reason unless it was useful. Certainly it uses enough of the body’s nutrient budget that it *must* be paying its rent *somehow*! [1]

    Of course, we may say that perhaps it is useful for evolution for us to be deceived in all our reason, but then we might equally say that perhaps God takes amusement in our pointless fumblings. Certainly a great mind like God has far more room for caprice than an impersonal principle like mutation&selection.

    [1] http://www.brainfacts.org/about-neuroscience/ask-an-expert/articles/2012/how-does-the-brain-use-food-as-energy/ The brain uses an entire fifth of our energy budget, despite only making up a fiftieth of the body’s mass.

    • Tony says:

      FeepingCreature:

      Thanks for weighing in! I’m not sure you’ve posted sound conclusions, and I hope you will agree in the end.

      To conclude that reason is beneficial we must first have reason, and then we must have some way of showing that reason itself can both know and express reality, and finally we need accurate reasoning to determine that we’re not fooling ourselves. In other words, the only way we could trust in reason is if we already trust in reason. That’s circular reasoning, which shows that we have reasoning. Cogito ergo sum, right?

      Unfortunately for atheists, there is no Darwinian reason to trust in reason for anything beyond reproduction. The only Darwinian conclusion is that everything about us confers greater survivability. Theism provides a framework that can explain the existence of reason, while materialism does not. If you conclude that reason exists, you show that you share at least part of your worldview with theists like me.

      Your thoughts?

      • FeepingCreature says:

        I don’t *trust* in reason, exactly; I merely use it in the absence of an alternative. I guess I would say I am confident in reason, because as I have learnt about reason I have not found any inconsistency in my view of reality that would be explained by fundamental flaws in reason. But such a finding can only reassure, not convince.

        For the reasons that you said, it is ultimately paradoxical to use reason to contemplate the possibility that reason is untrustworthy, despite the real possibility. If one’s reason is irreparably damaged, then they are lost regardless; in this scenario there is no hope of establishing links between decisions and outcomes. So why consider it unless you expect to do something about it? Similarly, it is never worth considering that you are perfectly deceived about reality – what exactly do you expect to achieve with the thought? The world, and reason, are what we find ourself stuck with for better or worse. We cannot step out of our skin and look at our reason from the outside to establish its trustworthiness – our eyes, like our brain, are lodged firmly on the inside of our skulls.

        On the other hand, if you trust reason unconditionally, then you *can* use reason to establish that you shouldn’t trust reason unconditionally. Even though it’s not possible to determine reason’s reliability using reason, it’s always possible to find mistakes. For instance, the existence of insane people should lead you to believe that reason can sometimes not be trusted. As such, I believe one should always doubt, and keep seeking out evidence in the world of what one merely believes one will find there – to not let reason stray too far on its own from the visible truth of its topics.

        “Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.”

        • Tony says:

          You and I are on the same page, it appears.

          I do have a question for you. What do you do with Michael Shermer’s contention (shared by many atheists) that we have no free will? As a materialist, he acknowledges what seems to be the logical end of materialism: that we are nothing more than biochemical machines, without minds or reason or free will. Clearly, I do not share this perspective. My brother, an atheist, does…or, at least, he says that that seems right. Do you share their view?

          • FeepingCreature says:

            I believe that the entire “free will debate” has been hopelessly confused for the past several centuries. My position on the matter is known as “compatibilism,” the belief that there is no contradiction between hard determinism/materialism and free will; any such contradiction is a misunderstanding of what free will actually is.

            Why would we think that there was a conflict between determinism and free will? When we look back on a choice, we consider what would have happened if we would have made another choice. This seems to stand in conflict with determinism, which says that we could not in fact have made any other choice than the one we actually did make. Our feeling of exploring different possible choices and then selecting – choosing – one would turn out to be a mere delusion, with the choice predetermined from the start and unalterable – a very fatalistic position!

            However, nondeterminism and even dualism merely obscure this issue. Surely if the world is indeterministic then there is also no way to “make another choice,” because there is no way to make choices period? Even granting the existence of an immortal soul, that soul still has to be *causing* the choice in some fashion, and to imagine that this choice could be made differently – “freely” – is to diminish its power, not strengthen it, by making the choice ultimately arbitrary.

            Hence the true problem of free will: with determinism we have no freedom, and without determinism we have no will.

            Compatibilism attacks this problem at the root. It asks, what if this feeling of exploring different alternatives is *real*, but is about *imagination*, not possibilities? That is, we consider possible ways that we could choose as part of the process of coming to a decision, and these imagined worlds actually exist – in our head! – but we ultimately only choose one? In such a framework, the feeling of free will does not indicate that we “could have made another choice,” since materialism says we can’t, but rather that we *considered* other choices to make our decision.

            If we look at the states of mind that are commonly held to reduce freedom of will, that is, overwhelming rage, drunkenness, or being threatened with violence, we find that what these states of mind have in common is that they reduce the options that we may freely consider before we decide, either by making through threats all other options unpalatable, or by damaging the apparatus of consideration itself. (This makes sense, as the deterrence of law appeals to reason, and reason cannot operate when impaired.) Thus, compatibilism asserts that freedom is a state of mind, in which different possible actions are fairly considered, and our Will can only be free inasmuch as it is determined by our minds, that is, through the mechanism of physics applied to the brain.

            Addendum: Note that this still does not exclude souls, but it does require them to participate in physics in some fashion, so that their – your – state of being can cause your actions. A soul whose decisions are “free” in the sense of not being determined by your mind is not something that should reassure you.

            Addendum 2: These are fairly recent concepts. The Problem of Free Will is a thorny one. I do believe that compatibilism is the solution though.

            Addendum 3: Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism and https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

          • Tony says:

            Interesting. I’ll ask questions that might seem frivolous, but are not: did you intend to reply to me, or did you reply to me without intention? Were you forced, by your biochemistry, to add your thoughts? If so, what does that tell us about the nature of the universe? If not, what does that tell us about free will?

          • FeepingCreature says:

            Sorry for the late answer.

            To clarify: I replied because I truly intended to reply to you. I was not “forced” by my biochemistry to respond; rather, I *am* my biochemistry. My mind is not kept in bondage by my brain; rather, my brain is what *does* my mind at all. Intention is a cognitive feature; cognition is computed using the biochemistry of neurons. If you presumed a superphysical mind, a la Chalmers’ P-Zombies, you’d get into trouble when neurology advances to the point where a mind can be reproduced mathematically – you’d either have to say that the simulated mind would not feel, and hence not talk of, consciousness and intent, meaning that the epiphenomenal mind is causally active and open to scientific study itself; or you’d have to say that the simulated mind speaks of intention and consciousness and will for *no reason at all* – which then leaves you on very thin ground, for what reason do you have to think that you yourself perceive your own consciousness accurately? Much more parsimonious, I would think, to say that the biological structures that physically make you state that you are conscious and intentional also are the process that *implements* consciousness and intentions.

            But regarding the universe as a whole, I am not capable enough of poetic language to explain what this means for my view of the world, so let me just recommend you two texts from the Secular Solstice celebration, meant to be read out back-to-back: “Beyond the Reach of God” and “The Gift We Give Tomorrow.” You could read the original posts as well, but I think the Solstice versions are better at carrying the emotional subtext.

            http://lesswrong.com/lw/8py/beyond_the_reach_of_god_abridged_for_spoken_word/

            http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/8o6/the_gift_we_give_tomorrow_spoken_word_finished/

            Looking forward to your response! (This is fun.)

          • Tony says:

            FeepingCreature:

            Good to hear from you…this is indeed fun.

            You believe that humans have some measure of free will. From where did we get it? Is free will a function of physics, or the result of a mind? You seem to think that it’s a biological function, as most materialists do…but that seems nonsensical. At what point in an uncaused universe does mind appear? Every bit of evidence that we’ve ever had tells us that an effect cannot be greater than its cause, so how does the information in our bodies and in our minds come from inanimate matter, regardless of how many billions of years come between?

          • FeepingCreature says:

            Hi, back again! Sorry that I missed your reply for a month.

            This notion that an effect cannot be “greater” than its cause is not a physical law. The only thing physics restrains is that work cannot be done without expending an equivalent or greater amount of energy, where “expend” roughly translates to “averages out.” For instance, all energy that life uses on Earth comes from the sun, whose energy is chemical/nuclear and comes from the Big Bang. But that doesn’t mean that the Big Bang is the source of all *information*, or *structure*, because this is strictly a statement about energy. If you turn on a computer and it renders a fractal, or a 3d environment, that information was not contained in the energy used to power it.

            I find fractals fascinating, by the way. If you look at something like the Mandelbrot set ( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Mandel_zoom_08_satellite_antenna.jpg ), then in a certain sense the “information” contained in this image is no greater than p’ = p^2 + c, p0 = 0, p > 2. On the other hand, there certainly *seems* to be structure there that is vastly greater than contained in that definition. On the third hand, this is not structure that a God could have created, because it arises from pure mathematics, which transcends creation. I could believe that God laid down the laws of quantum physics and relativity, but I find it immensely harder to believe that God laid down the laws of arithmetic, because that does not seem like something that could be, in any sense, “created”; rather, it seems like eternal logical relations, that no power could shift.

            I believe that, similar to the Mandelbrot, the structure of the human body, cells, biology, is not something that needed to be created, but rather a mathematical fact arising from the physical structure of the universe. Physically, it is the case that certain combinations of molecules can create more copies of themselves. Physically, it is the case that, through gradual random changes in the arrangement of those molecules, more complex “replicators” can be created. All those things were already true at the Big Bang, just like the formula for the Mandelbrot already contains every facet found inside that shape. Given that, the creation of life does not, ironically, require any kind of creative work at all; merely an arbitrary set of molecules coincidentally stumbling upon the first steps of that sequence. And once the first replicator shape came about, the process would have accelerated itself; instead of random chance, it would obey its own mathematical laws, just like certain shapes in the Mandelbrot can obey their own laws that arise from specializations in the underlying law of the fractal. But it would still be following a path that had been there from the start.

            I believe this concept extends to free will. I have been shaped through millions of years of evolutionary effects to have certain desires, such as the basics: avoid pain, seek shelter, seek food, up through the more complex, seek mates, behave prosocially, have fun, mourn loss, protect your allies, all the way through the recent breakthroughs: talk, plan, reflect. In that strictly mathematical sense, no free will can be found. But that goes too far in that we accidentally reduce the self out of existence – what am I if not the integrated sum of my impulses, desires and dreams? Just like subshapes in the Mandelbrot fractal can obey more complex laws without coming into conflict with the base law that defines them, there can be room for “I” in such a system without violating physics. “I” is not in conflict with physics – I *is* physics, or rather, the subset of chemistry, subset of biology, subset of psychology, which is described by more complex laws that are still harmonious with the underlying law. The things that I will are not beside physics, they *are* physics.

            I have free will, not despite, but because the binding laws of physics move my mind to action.

          • Tony says:

            FC:

            No hurry. I appreciate your comment.

            You seem to be contradicting yourself. You say that something is not a physical law, but then you outline the physical law. The relevant key phrase is ‘sufficient cause.’ If a butterfly lands on your head, it is not a cause sufficient to break your leg. I suggested that inanimate matter is an insufficient cause for life to arise. Can you posit some theory as to how inanimate matter might be sufficient?

            I like fractals as well. The background I used for this website is a fractal from the Julia set. I’m not sure we’re on the same page with regard to the idea that math is any kind of cause. Math is an abstraction…the creation of mind, not a physical structure. When I say that there are 24 buffalo in a herd, that’s not a physical reality, it’s an abstract description. Physically, there is a buffalo and a different buffalo and another different buffalo. Math simply provides us with a less tedious method of description.

            Like the laws of logic, it seems math isn’t something that needed to be created. Just as A cannot be non-A, 2 + 2 is always 4. Some things appear to be tautological.

            I need more data. While our bodies (and components) adhere to the laws of physics (like everything else), I’m not sure how our bodies would arise naturally from the laws that govern the universe. Were that the case, every physical structure in the universe would cause life to arise. So far, that doesn’t seem to be the case. How would you explain further? Can you name non-living combinations of molecules that replicate themselves? Can you give an example of increased complexity in non-living structures that arise by replication? I find your phrase “once the first replicator shape came about” interesting, as it leapfrogs any explanation of how and goes directly to what. Can you fill in the gap by explaining the path?

            You also seem to be leapfrogging with regard to the effects of evolution. In Darwinian evolution, only success in producing the next generation matters. There are no long-term selectors, and there are no strategic mutations. There is only randomness in mutation, most of which are clearly deleterious. Free will is not a biochemical response to stimuli, but an abstract concept like math and logic. To discuss whether we have free will requires both free will and a conscious mind capable of abstraction. Correct me if you think I’m wrong: Darwinism has no explanation for this.

          • FeepingCreature says:

            I’m going to reply here since we seem to have reached the comment depth limit on the website. 🙂

            > I suggested that inanimate matter is an insufficient cause for life to arise. Can you posit some theory as to how inanimate matter might be sufficient?

            Okay so, first of all we don’t know with confidence how life on this planet originally arose. However, there are several strong theories of abiogenesis, positing a simplistic initial replicator molecule that then bootstrapped itself into modern RNA. The transition of inanimate matter into extremely primitive animate matter does not seem to me a hurdle high enough to strain incredulty, especially given that it would have been enough for it to happen at any time at any place in the cosmos, due to anthropic bias. An event that is merely astronomically unlikely, is still near certain given astronomical scales. What exactly of it strikes you as impossible, or at least implausible?

            > When I say that there are 24 buffalo in a herd, that’s not a physical reality, it’s an abstract description.

            Ah, I would argue that it’s a “physical abstraction”, in that if you reorganize physics from “exhaustive list of ground truths” into “buffalo plus error”, you will arrive at a more compact description of reality, even when describing the exact same physical events. (cf. Kolmogorov complexity.) In fact, I would argue that all knowledge of reality compresses reality; or rather, that is what it means for something to be knowledge. While it is true that the cognitive pattern of the buffalo exists in the mind, it is not *created* by the mind, merely recognized; just such as the Mandelbrot is already inherent in complex mathematics, the Buffalo is already inherent in the physical ground truths of the world.

            > Were that the case, every physical structure in the universe would cause life to arise. So far, that doesn’t seem to be the case. How would you explain further?

            The Anthropic Principle is a near-tautological observation that notes that for life to recognize that it is alive, it must exist in the first place. Hence, assume (as it seems from a cursory observation of the cosmos) that life is astonishingly unlikely in an observable volume of space set by our astronomical technology. However, the universe is composed of an enormous number of such volumes, such that even an astonishingly unlikely event could plausibly occur somewhere and somewhen in it; wherever this event (life, and later intelligent life) occurred, that’s where we would find ourselves wondering about our unlikelihood.

            The question you are posing is related to a close concept called the Great Filter. Observing that there does not seem to be other life “out there”, it certainly seems that at least one of the steps from “inanimate matter” to “intelligence spreading through the cosmos” has to be highly unlikely. It seems to me that your proposal is that the initial rise of life is that step, which is a theory that has widespread support. Because of this, some people observed that we should *hope* not to find Life on Mars, because if there was life there, it would mean that life was more probable than we’d thought, which would mean the Great Filter would have to lie later, and possibly even in our future. Quite an unsettling notion. “Luckily,” Mars appears to be sterile.

            Thanks for keeping this up, I’m enjoying it as well. 🙂

          • Tony says:

            >> Okay so, first of all we don’t know with confidence how life on this planet originally arose.

            Agreed.

            >> However, there are several strong theories of abiogenesis…

            On this, we can’t agree. Abiogenesis scientists themselves tell us that we have really no idea. There are theories, to be sure, but they all fall quite a bit short.

            >> The transition of inanimate matter into extremely primitive animate matter does not seem to me a hurdle high enough to strain incredulty…

            On this, we can’t agree. When evaluating a theory, it’s important to look for evidence to support it. Every theory must comport with what is already established. When you can replicate this in a lab, I’ll jump on board. Until then, I’ll stick with all of the evidence that’s been accumulated throughout the history of mankind and say it plainly: life does not come from non-life. From spontaneous generation to Miller-Uray and beyond, we simply have zero examples of this being reality. Simply saying that it’s likely (something else on which we can’t yet agree) doesn’t actually get it done.

            The Anthropic Principle is a fun thought experiment, but hardly holds any explanatory power. It appears instead to be a “what if” designed to counter the idea that the fine tuning of the universe (about which virtually everyone agrees) is evidence of a creator. I see no real value in saying that a universe must contain sentient life (strong anthropic) or that the only reason we consider the fine tuning is that we’re here (weak anthropic). The first is simply the result of imagination, and the second depends on a multiverse theory that has (to date) absolutely no evidence at all. Theories abound, to be sure…but theories are simply theories.

            My position doesn’t depend on whether life exists anywhere else, but on the available science at hand. Even if life exists “out there,” we would be faced with the same question about how that life arose. A universe teeming with life doesn’t touch the question, it only expands it. While the theory of evolution (which has some merit) attempts to tell us what happened after life arose, it says nothing about how. Based on the apparent age of the universe, the complexity of even the simplest organisms, and the statistical near-impossibility that time and chance alone can account for the world as we know it, it seems to me that the idea of a creator best fits the evidence.

          • FeepingCreature says:

            Oops, replied to my own comment by accident. Reposting here, with slight addition:

            Addendum since I forgot: Free will is evolutionarily useful for the same reason that intelligence in general is useful: because it increases the control that an animal can exert over its environment, improving its odds of survival and reproduction. Though, concepts of personal responsibility only become useful and selected for once you arrive at social animals.

            The evolution of social responsibility closely connects to Theory of Mind and is strongly selected for in any social sexual species once it can arise. A social, cunning animal will not do something bad while it’s being observed; a moral animal will not do bad things even when it’s unobserved. Mating bonds with moral animals are more successful for obvious reasons.

          • Tony says:

            Again, we have yet to establish how free will (or sentience) can arise through random selection. Just as the concept of sentient machines is based entirely on imagination, the idea that mutations and time and environmental conditions can create sentient beings with the freedom to ignore their biochemistry is also based entirely on imagination. That’s not to say that it’s false, but that we have no evidence for it. As Darwinism only posits what happens after life comes to be, so your theory of free will seems to only address its utility after it’s achieved. The salient question is how a mindless, random process can produce free will…and while you’re not alone in your train of thought, a whole bunch of thoughtful atheists tell me that free will is an illusion.

            I’m curious: why do you disagree with Shermer et al on the idea that a universe without God must not include free will? What about their position do you find untenable?

            Still fun. Thanks!

  4. FeepingCreature says:

    I’m not sure if this reply is going to work right. I think we may be reaching the limits of the comments software.

    Re fine tuning, I think that it is a mistake to judge the probability of the evolution of life by the complexity of the simplest organism to currently exist. If that was the case, I would agree that the complexity of even the simplest cell is simply too large to be justified by spontaneous abiogenesis. However, there are theories of precursor stages of life, such as “RNA world”, that would be vastly more simple than even the simplest current organism. This theory has significant support in the fact that the very oldest parts of our cells, the ones most set in stone, seem to run largely on RNA.

    The point of invoking the anthropic principle is not so much to explain away the fine-tuning of our universal constants; I agree that the necessary multiverse is unproven. However, in my opinion the universe as a whole is already quite large enough to shave off many orders of magnitude of the improbability of an initial RNA replicator, and the anthropic principle may gainfully be used to make the point that our sandbox is all of space and all of time, not just this specific planet at a specific geological timespan. We know that the component molecules of RNA would plausibly have existed on primordial Earth. In my opinion, between the size of the playground and the (relative) simplicity of RNA the improbability of life arising is reduced to an astonishing curiosity, rather than a knockout blow.

    > Again, we have yet to establish how free will (or sentience) can arise through random selection. Just as the concept of sentient machines is based entirely on imagination, the idea that mutations and time and environmental conditions can create sentient beings with the freedom to ignore their biochemistry is also based entirely on imagination.

    As a materialist, I am certainly not arguing that evolved beings can “ignore their biochemistry”! That would be like arguing that a pocket calculator can ignore arithmetic.

    > a whole bunch of thoughtful atheists tell me that free will is an illusion.

    Stated in advance: I think that free will is real, but it means something different than what is commonly understood in philosophy. I certainly believe that these are thorny questions and it is entirely possible for a lot of thoughtful atheists to be completely confused. 🙂

    > I’m curious: why do you disagree with Shermer et al on the idea that a universe without God must not include free will? What about their position do you find untenable?

    Combining with this: my main issue with this point is that I have never been shown any theory of free will that is even coherent in itself, any mechanism by which the sort of will that lets you, in a certain situation, decide “freely”. Furthermore, as a compatibilist it is my opinion that what is commonly referred to as free will is not just compatible (hence the name) with physical necessity, but rather it wholly depends on physical necessity to operate.

    It seems certain to me that one of two things must be true: either our will is structured; that is to say, there is a fact of the matter as to what preconditions, emotional desires, memories or sensory perceptions, result in a certain action to be willed. Or our will is random; that is, we will what we will “for no reason” but caprice.

    Under the view that free will is about the question “could I have decided, in the exact same situation, to do something different”, it seems to me that the former of those lacks freedom of will, and the second lacks will entirely. As such, if there is such a thing as free will to be found, it seems to me that it must be found within, not without, the forcible motion of the laws of nature.

    Here is the part where I cheat a bit by redirecting the conversation to a similar but crucially different problem. Consider the question: “when I decided to act, was I in control of my faculties?” This does not mean that there is a nonphysical “I”, such as a soul, that controls my actions in defiance of material necessity – again, if such a thing existed, it would fall into the same paradox of either being determined (not free) or random (no will). Rather, it seems the case that man is usually possessed of reason and an awareness of the consequences of his actions, but there are many conditions which impair this ability, such as mental illness, stupidity, drunkenness or rage. If we consider “free will” to be primarily a question of moral culpability, then under a deterrence theory of punishment it seems intuitively obvious that there is no point to punishing a person if they are, through no fault or foresight of their own, in a state where they are incapable of being deterred.

    If we look at this intuition, it seems to me that it captures most of what we consider “free will” to be useful for, ie. the ability to tell good from evil, and it does so in an entirely materialistic framework. Given the inherent paradox of a metaphysical free will, it seems plausible to me that the conversation has simply gone astray; that free will was supposed to be about materialistic free will all along. In my opinion, this folly may have been prompted by a long-suffered malady of philosophy; that is, an overreliance on imagination. We can certainly imagine going back and deciding differently, which may give the impression that the choice was free in some sense, but we do so with the benefit of hindsight. I believe that if we were actually put, without our knowledge of the outcome, back into that exact same situation, we would either be making the same decision every time, or our decision would be random; that is, meaningless.

    Always a pleasure!

    • Tony says:

      >> we may be reaching the limits of the comments software.

      Yeah, WordPress comments can (natively) only go 10 levels deep. I’m looking into a better organizational system, but it may take a while to gel.

      >> …theories of precursor stages of life, such as “RNA world”

      I’m not an expert in the field…I’m simply at the mercy of those who are. Even a quick scan of sites like TalkOrigins reveals that those very knowledgable in the field are generally unwilling to draw firm conclusions about how life began. There’s just so much we don’t know! Because we’re ignorant, we have to create models that bridge our ignorance with testability. One obvious example is the whole ‘primordial soup’ thing. We’re trying to replicate the conditions on the early earth, but we don’t know what those conditions were like. Miller-Uray comes to mind, obviously…despite being debunked by all sides, people still refer to it as if it concludes the argument somehow. It’s a long, long journey from finding the building blocks of RNA to building a rhinoceros.

      >> …our sandbox is all of space and all of time…

      A good point. Panspermia IS one possible option. Of course, that requires life in another part of our universe…which has exactly as much available evidence as the multiverse: zero. I love how some people jump all over the ‘life on Mars’ idea whenever someone suggests that they’ve found water somewhere else in our solar system. Yes, I get that life as we know it isn’t possible without water…but the existence of water ice on an asteroid or canals on Mars is a long, long way from panspermia. I’m sure you agree.

      >> …if there is such a thing as free will to be found, it seems to me that it must be found within, not without, the forcible motion of the laws of nature.

      You seem willing to redefine free will. I’m not. The established definition goes something like this: the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion.

      I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that we may be talking about two different things. Perhaps you need a unique term to describe your position. Another comment thread on GodWords helps explain. Someone asked whether Christianity and anarchy are compatible. Because the definition of anarchy is ‘without leaders,’ they are not compatible. Some who believe otherwise keep telling me that they are compatible, as anarchists don’t believe in having any earthly authority over them. They persist in this fiction, despite my efforts to point them to the simple facts of etymology. As Inigo Montoya tells us, that word doesn’t mean what they think it means. They aren’t talking about anarchy (an ancient concept) but anarchism, a very new political ideal. Perhaps coining a new phrase will help make your position more clear as well.

      >> If we consider “free will” to be primarily a question of moral culpability, then under a deterrence theory of punishment it seems intuitively obvious that there is no point to punishing a person if they are, through no fault or foresight of their own, in a state where they are incapable of being deterred.

      We agree. If morality exists (and I contend that it does), culpability is key. To punish someone for what they cannot control appears, on its face, entirely unjust. This has many theological implications, most of which are unfortunately all but ignored by religious people.

      >> If we look at this intuition, it seems to me that it captures most of what we consider “free will” to be useful for, ie. the ability to tell good from evil, and it does so in an entirely materialistic framework.

      I would suggest that, in an entirely materialistic framework, good and evil have no meaning. As I see it, you’re borrowing from a theistic worldview to start the conversation.

      >> Given the inherent paradox of a metaphysical free will

      I seem to have missed that part. Could you explain, in simple terms, why metaphysical free will is inherently paradoxical? I’m sorry if I’m being dense, but you seem to be assuming facts not in evidence. I see no paradox, given that I believe in (limited) metaphysical free will. Maybe you can correct me.

      >> …this folly may have been prompted by a long-suffered malady of philosophy; that is, an overreliance on imagination.

      With respect, this philosophy student will suggest that this over-reliance is not a malady of philosophy, but of bad philosophy. Consider this parallel: Jesus taught that His followers should love His other followers, and love their neighbors, and love even their enemies. When someone who calls themself a Christian is hateful, that’s not a problem with Christianity. That person isn’t in concert with what Jesus taught, but in conflict. In the same way, an over-reliance on imagination isn’t part of philosophy. The practice of philosophy is about examining our assumptions to determine what can be known…when we rely on our imagination, we’ve gone outside the bounds of philosophy.

      >> We can certainly imagine going back and deciding differently, which may give the impression that the choice was free in some sense, but we do so with the benefit of hindsight. I believe that if we were actually put, without our knowledge of the outcome, back into that exact same situation, we would either be making the same decision every time, or our decision would be random; that is, meaningless.

      Because we have no way of replicating any single event, we can’t substantiate your theory. Hindsight is indeed subjective. Some (including one of my philosophy professors) would say that because we’re unable to prove something that seems apparent, we simply live as though it’s true anyway. I can’t prove that you exist, but I’m going to reply as if you do. I can’t know that I could have chosen a burger for dinner last night instead of Chinese food, but I’m going to act as if I could have.

      This is the paradox inherent in discussing free will. Those who believe in free will can’t prove that it exists, but they act as if they have it. Those who don’t believe in free will also, ironically, act as if they do as well.

      >> Always a pleasure!

      Ditto, my friend.

  5. FeepingCreature says:

    I seem to have repeated myself without noticing.

    I believe that the core argument remaining is that, absent the necessity or usefulness of a superphysical explanation, sophisticated reason can like the cell arise out of simpler precursors. An animal may be driven by evolution to model its environment; the simplest example is an amoeba that always turns towards the sun. The animal does not have to possess reason for this, it merely has to embody reason; its actions be caused by its senses in a way that leads it to succeed at life. As the animal becomes more complex, it will gain a richer sensorium of its environment; this allows it to infer the existence of unseen parts of the world from visible parts, such as a fish deducing a predator from the movement of the water and the reeds, leading to the evolution of imagination. Then too, social awareness is immediately useful; the ability to recognize predators from herbivores grows to the ability to wonder whether a predator may be hungry, or whether another of the same species is a competitor or an ally. This then leads to the ability to give evidence that you are an ally in order to placate other members of the tribe. And all of this is running on the same piece of meat, meaning that skills at spotting traps can be reused to spot untrustworthy allies, and so on. I believe if we look at the history of life, the jump from apes to Man is a small revolution and a great deal of incremental improvement; most of the groundwork is already laid. And now that we possess general intelligence, our reason can “close the gap” and think about itself and about our own actions, but that was not its purpose in nature until very recently.

    When evolution seems to come up with a very complex answer out of nowhere, it is usually the case that it repurposed something. It seems to me that logical reason and self-consciousness are just such a repurposing of instinctive reason and social awareness combined with the jump to language.

    • Tony says:

      With respect, it seems you assume too much. I see your point but, without the existence of a metaphysical mind, I see pathway to the ability to reason. As CS Lewis said in the article, there’s no reason to trust in reason. Most people would claim that evolutionary pressures are all about reproduction. If that’s the case, the only thing we can really trust our brains to do is find ways to reproduce more effectively. In a materialist universe, there is only biochemistry and environment.

  6. Logos01 says:

    “On this, we can’t agree. Abiogenesis scientists themselves tell us that we have really no idea. There are theories, to be sure, but they all fall quite a bit short.”

    I was brought here by FeepingCreature but he did not sponsor this comment. Just thought I’d throw some extra insight of the current state of the sciences into the conversation, since the above statement isn’t really all that viable at this point.

    Back in 2011, a report by NASA on the chemical compositions of multiple observed asteroids demonstrated the presence of multiple functional nucleobases in those asteroids which could only have formed in abiotic conditions; and moreover we see that there are multiple bases that do not occur anywhere in the terrestrial ecology. These non-terrestrial nucleobases include but are not limited to xanthine, hypoxanthine, purine, and a few variants of diaminopurine. The terrestrial nucleobases were also found.

    Supplementally, RNA precursors — that is, self-replicating compounds that operating solely on known mechanisms of chemistry *could* produce RNA — have been discovered that are simpler compounds than RNA. One of those in specific, PNA, uses as a chemical backbone variants of peptide chains which are fully compatible with the work back in the 1950’s/1960’s of Bernal and Fox — which to save some googling was the demonstration of the development of peptide chains in abiotic conditions.

    We have strong confidence to believe that there is an available abiotic pathway to the development of abiotic heritable replicators. The fact that we have not actually produced one such is at this point a mere artifact of insufficient repetition of trials; there is no *mechanical* reason to assume that this could not have occurred — which puts the assertions of there being a problem of abiogenesis occurring through natural phenomena in a very tough position; such claimants are now in the position of contradicting the available evidence.

    Moreover; this is merely *one* path. Now that one such has been demonstrated, unless there is a fundamental principle that can be *demonstrated* to exist that precludes others from existing, we cannot assume as rational actors that they do not exist.

    That is to say — those who claim that “life cannot come from non-life” must now demonstrate the proof supporting this assertion; it cannot be corroborated by the available evidence at hand.

    • Tony says:

      Welcome, Logos01…I appreciate your comment.

      It’s important to note what has, and has not, been claimed. I do not claim that life cannot come from non-life. That’s a broad statement that I can’t substantiate. I simply claim the facts: we have no solid evidence that life can come from non-life. We (apparently) live in a cause-and-effect universe, which allows us to engage in the scientific method with some confidence. To date, there is simply no scientific reason to believe that life arose on its own. I would suggest that claims that it has are philosophical in nature, and not scientific.

      The fact that nucleobases were formed doesn’t answer the question of whether life can come from non-life. That’s kind of like suggesting that the iron ore in the Morrison Formation proves that Skynet is real. A nucleobase is not life per se, and there’s a whole bunch of steps between the formation of bases and actual living things. You might re-read your comment and note that you’ve done what all responsible reporters do: you fall short of making claims you can’t substantiate. You use words like could, and compatible, and confidence. I appreciate that.

      Of course, you did overstep a bit with that last part, about assuming the conclusions of future trials, and suggesting that the evidence says what it clearly does not. Still, you haven’t gone very far off the trail…and you’re not alone. A lot of people think that the apparent self-organizational properties of things like clay and quartz is evidence that life can arise spontaneously from non-living things. They may be shown right in the end, but we’re really no closer to proving that today than we were when it was first suggested.

      I’m agnostic on the question, myself. I have no dog in the abiogenesis fight. I simply recognize that, despite many experiments and models in the field, nobody has been able to go past complicated supposition. I take no pleasure or displeasure in this…I’m simply reporting on the facts at hand. You might take a look at the Wikipedia article on abiogenesis – not that Wikipedia is always right, of course – and note of how many times the theories fall short of actual conclusions. The field is based primarily in guesswork. Educated, complicated guesswork, to be sure…but guesswork nonetheless. That’s not a criticism, but an observation.

      As a result, I would suggest that any claim that violates Newton’s third law should be carefully substantiated, and not assumed.

  7. Logos01 says:

    So … I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you meant the second law of thermodynamics, as opposed to any of the laws of motion. The second being the one about entropy in isolated systems only ever increasing. That being said, you do not do yourself any favors invoking it in a conversation about abiogenesis. There’s a very simple reason for that: The Earth’s biosphere is not an isolated system. It receives negentropy (energy) from two sources: solar insolation, and heat from the radioactive decay of isotopes in the Earth’s core. Those are losing energy constantly and some of it goes through the Earth’s surface. That energy can be used to *locally* increase negentropy through processes that increase the total entropy of the universe. (Negentropy can be concentrated locally, as the work of concentration itself decreases total negentropy.) Anyone who’s seriously interested in the conversation of abiogenesis would understand this — invoking Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics in the conversation just puts egg on your face.

    Now on to the meat of the matter. The claim that abiogenesis is philosophical rather than scientific ignores the existence of historical sciences. We can through scientific exploration gain a better understanding of how the world could have reached the current state of affairs, and know what facts about how things are count as evidence towards how things were, and which do not. (Things like the limited number of nucleobases on the Earth indicating the limited number of cases of replication kicking off during abiogenesis.)

    And as to people “hedging their bets” … that’s misrepresenting the case. The goal isn’t to get the exact sequence of events; it’s to obtain sufficiently plausible explanations for what could have occurred that we can address the topic as sufficiently solved as to disregard it as a problem of history.

    > “Of course, you did overstep a bit with that last part, about assuming the conclusions of future trials, and suggesting that the evidence says what it clearly does not.”

    Would you care to point to a specific part of that which supports this claim on your part? Because the current understanding is that the large number of repetitions is all that would be required to create one or two PNA molecules in an environment with nucleobases (which, again, have been demonstrated to occur abiogenically). Are you correct in the assertion that nucleobases are not life? Yes, absolutely. However — that’s a distinction without meaning. We *know* it’s not life… that’s the point. Nucleobases are a necessary stepping stone to go from non-life to life. They part of the whole “heritable replicator” thing.

    Once we demonstrate a causal path that can viably produce heritable replicators through abiogenic mechanisms, the game is over; the jig is up. Heritable replicators can mutate, and that puts us in the realm of evolution — even if only of non-living phenomena. (Life is more than just things reproducing themselves, even heritably.) Which would be why nobody bothers going any further than demonstrating the plausibility of the development of a heritable replicator in the prebiotic primordial earth. This is more than clay or quartz self-organizing. It’s self-organization *with mutation*.

    To summarize: all the necessary precursors to a heritable replicator have themselves been demonstrated to occur abiogenically. The precursors’ ability to spontaneously/accidentally assemble is a phenomenon that has some fixed probability of occurring. No matter how minimal the probability of PNA (or some other RNA precursor) forming in the prebiotic environment, that probability is fixed and non-zero. What this in turn means is that all that’s necessary to have it actually occur is a sufficiently large set of repetitions. This isn’t a stretch; it’s a simple statement of mathematics.

    • Tony says:

      >> I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you meant the second law of thermodynamics, as opposed to any of the laws of motion.

      No, I’m talking about Newton’s third law of motion. I’m sorry to so quickly invalidate the first part of your message, but I’m not talking about entropy.

      >> Now on to the meat of the matter. The claim that abiogenesis is philosophical rather than scientific ignores the existence of historical sciences. We can through scientific exploration gain a better understanding of how the world could have reached the current state of affairs, and know what facts about how things are count as evidence towards how things were, and which do not. (Things like the limited number of nucleobases on the Earth indicating the limited number of cases of replication kicking off during abiogenesis.)

      I’m sorry to have written in a way that confused you. I’m not saying that we have no facts that might relate to abiogenesis. I’m saying that the conclusions that laypeople draw are often based not in the facts, but in supposition. They aren’t relaying established information about settled science, but making philosophical statements that they extrapolate from the facts. To draw a parallel, think about the idea of a missing link in an evolutionary chain. A lot of laypeople make sweeping judgments about humanity’s ancestors (for example) based on morphology. If something looks like a human, it must be a human or a proto-human. Their presuppositions may or may not be accurate, but their methodology is flawed and their conclusions can’t be substantiated. In the same way, pretending that the organization of clay molecules (for example) in some way establishes abiogenesis is more than a stretch…it’s a fantasy.

      >> And as to people “hedging their bets” … that’s misrepresenting the case. The goal isn’t to get the exact sequence of events; it’s to obtain sufficiently plausible explanations for what could have occurred that we can address the topic as sufficiently solved as to disregard it as a problem of history.

      And here you make my point for me. The existence of nucleobases on an asteroid do not provide a sufficiently plausible explanation for how life can arise from inanimate matter. They may hint at the possibility, or they may not…but the idea that this “sufficiently solves” anything other than the question of whether we might find nucleobases on asteroids is pretty silly.

      >> Would you care to point to a specific part of that which supports this claim on your part?

      Certainly. You stated that “We have strong confidence to believe that there is an available abiotic pathway to the development of abiotic heritable replicators.” That’s clearly an overstatement. Strong confidence? Not at all. We have some evidence that it’s possible, but we don’t even know if it’s plausible. It hasn’t happened, as far as we know…we simply acknowledge that the building blocks exist on an asteroid. I’m not disagreeing that the theory might at some point be shown accurate. I’m pointing to the fact that we’re a long, long way from any sort of evidence that these nucleobases could, given the right random circumstances, become a living thing at some point in the future.

      >> Because the current understanding is that the large number of repetitions is all that would be required to create one or two PNA molecules in an environment with nucleobases (which, again, have been demonstrated to occur abiogenically).

      This is akin to the idea that, in a multiplicity of universes, surely one would end up like ours. Where’s the evidence? It may be a decent theory, but – again – it’s an extrapolation based on modeling that requires a number of assumptions that we can’t yet substantiate. That’s why I – along with many others – recognize the conclusion as a philosophical statement, rather than an explanation of the facts. It’s a guess.

      >> Are you correct in the assertion that nucleobases are not life? Yes, absolutely. However — that’s a distinction without meaning. We *know* it’s not life… that’s the point. Nucleobases are a necessary stepping stone to go from non-life to life. They part of the whole “heritable replicator” thing.

      Right. Let me know when it happens, so we can celebrate together. What an exciting discovery that would be!

      >> …causal path…mutate…plausibility…self-organization *with mutation*.

      AND (not but, but and) it’s still speculative at this point. See below.

      >> …some fixed probability…

      There’s the rub. Let’s say the probability is fixed, and it’s 1 in 1,000. That’s only step one. THEN – as you point out – you have to have mutations. Not only that, but the mutations in a specific population must not be deleterious, as most mutations are. That 1 in 1,000 goes to one in a gazillion. Then you have to have one beneficial mutation stacked on another and another and another and another…all being selected for over time, being passed on to a continuing genetic line, all without being wiped out by another bad mutation or without being selected against by a predator or disease and without being destroyed by environmental factors.

      Again: I’m not saying it’s not possible. I’m simply pointing to the simple and unassailable fact that bases on a space rock is no more evidence for abiogenesis than is water ice on Mars. We’re a long way from any solid conclusions, no matter how many times you suggest that we’re not.

      I appreciate you being here, and disagreeing with me. I very much enjoy these discussions! =)

  8. Logos01 says:

    > “No, I’m talking about Newton’s third law of motion. I’m sorry to so quickly invalidate the first part of your message, but I’m not talking about entropy.”

    Newton’s Third Law: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

    That you would invoke this law is utterly, profoundly, confusing. It has absolutely nothing to do with this conversation whatsoever. There is no part of the topic of abiogenesis that in any way shape or form relates to it. We’re in bizarro-world territory here. I can only assume that you don’t understand the laws in question, as that’s what the evidence I have at hand (of you invoking the Third Law of Motion at all; it’s as intelligible an act to perform as to declare that the schnozberries taste like Jello in response to being asked if a bridge is strong enough to be driven over. I apologize for the harshness of my language here but I needed a way to convey that this is “Fractally Wrong” territory.

    > “They aren’t relaying established information about settled science, but making philosophical statements that they extrapolate from the facts.”

    Ahh. I see. You’re confusing philosophy with formal science. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_science ) — It’s an easy enough mistake to make. Taking established evidence and making logical conclusions from them is not presupposition nor is it philosophy. Especially for things like constructing histories from available material evidence. It is absolutely *NOT* flawed methodology to assert that a complete skeleton with hominid anatomy and a brainpan correlating to a Dunbar’s Number of 150 or more to be a kind of human. Even if we don’t have flesh or DNA to go along with it. (For what it’s worth, you picked a very, *very*, poor example with skeletal anatomy. The homologousness of skeletal anatomies in animals is literally a proof of evolution. A human-like skeleton would in and of itself qualify scientifically as a kind of human animal. The question of whether or not it’s a new species is something that would need to be handled slightly differently — but then the only question is ‘is this instance of a skeleton representative of the kind of animal?’ and *not* ‘is this not the kind of animal it structurally appears to be?’.)

    > “This is akin to the idea that, in a multiplicity of universes, surely one would end up like ours. Where’s the evidence?”

    There’s two things that need to be broken apart here.

    1) The idea itself that you invoke as an analogue is evidence of itself. It’s also a fairly narrow claim as we have no way of falsifying the Tegmark Mathematical Universe model. However, I suspect you mean something more like the Weak Anthropic Principle. Which isn’t a statement that requires evidence, either: it only asserts that no universe which is observed from within will exist without observers within it. This is meant to note that it should come as no surprise that our universe is well-configured to permit our existence — we as observers could never observe any other kind of universe in the first place. This only means that we cannot make any assumptions about probability of our existence from it (and it alone).

    That being said … the work of Lawrence Krauss et.al. *DOES* raise the Weak Anthropic Principle’s estimate slightly further by demonstrating that our universe is according to its own laws of physics capable of having spontaneously manifested (as the curvature of the observable universe is exactly 0, thus the sum energy of the universe is 0; and as such our laws of physics permit its spontaneous genesis. Where one such universe can spontaneously manifest, and absent evidence precluding other universes… the Weak Anthropic Principle holds primarily to de-privilege our existence. We cannot declare specialness of our nature due to the mere fact of our existence. The available evidence doesn’t support it.)

    2) ” it’s an extrapolation based on modeling that requires a number of assumptions that we can’t yet substantiate. ” This is untrue. The assumptions have been substantiated. PNA has been shown to exist. The backing chain peptides have been shown to exist in nature. The nucleotides have been shown to exist abiogenically. Peptides have been shown to exist abiogenically. Ergo: PNA’s precursors have all been shown to be capable of forming abiogenically, and PNA is a viable construction of those precursors. There are *no* chemicals whose constructions can be shown to occur that cannot occur outside of the laboratory given a sufficient period of compatible environment for them to be constructed. (Hell; carbon nanotubes are a common product of burning wood.)

    Simply put: There are no unsubstantiated assumptions at all here. All that’s left is to actually execute a sufficiently large series of tests. In fact, your position — of viewing this as unsubstantiated and needing to be executed before it can be believed — is the unreasonable stance here; you have no evidence with which to justify your skepticism. Ask any Organic Chemist out there about the plausibility of PNA forming abiogenically in the presence of nucleotides given Bernal/Fox’s work, and they would tell you that it is a certainty that PNA would develop. I’ll repeat that: The people who are best-trained on the subject matter would say that it is absolutely certain that it would occur given those conditions. And what’s more — we know those conditions existed, and that they existed for millions of years in millions of square kilometers of area.

    > There’s the rub. Let’s say the probability is fixed, and it’s 1 in 1,000. That’s only step one. THEN – as you point out – you have to have mutations.

    Right. And you do *HAVE* to have mutations. That’s how heritable replication works. Once you have heritable replication, you have mutations. Period.

    > Not only that, but the mutations in a specific population must not be deleterious, as most mutations are. That 1 in 1,000 goes to one in a gazillion.

    This is a soundbyte that doesn’t do the religious people of the world much credit. In fact, the supermajority of mutations are benign — neither beneficial nor deleterious (seriously; it’s something like 99% of all mutations). They basically do nothing. It is however true that more mutations are deleterious than are beneficial, but that’s utterly irrelevant.

    I say it’s irrelevant because even if we assume that only one in a billion billion mutations do not kill the replicator, that’s still enough for evolution to kick in. Especially given the volumes and timescales we’re talking about here. Replications would be occurring multiple times per *day*, and would be occurring for *millions* of years, over *millions* of square kilometers of territory — with *millions* of PNA/RNA/DNA molecules per *milliliter* of fluid.

    The human mind is literally incapable of grasping the sheer number of replication events involved in this scenario. Your intuitions about it are not capable of taking these numbers into account unless you replace them with “infinitely many”. And once you start talking about infinities, *any non-zero probability is a guaranteed occurrence*.

    And remember — *we only need one*.

    > “all without being wiped out by another bad mutation or without being selected against by a predator or disease and without being destroyed by environmental factors.”

    Nahh, you don’t need to worry about this. The reason being that the sheer number of replications occurring means that even if one optimal/useful chain fails to successfully replicate and is completely wiped out, another similar one will survive. Also, since each individual step in the chain would have tens of thousands of copies produced — you’re then left in the territory of assuming that each of those tens of thousands would share the same not merely “deleterious” but *fatal* mutation, and that every single independent instance of the evolution of those beneficial lines would have the same fatal mutations.

    And we already know that this is not how evolution works. (Consider for example the multiple independent evolutionary chains that led to the development of the eye. Eyes did not evolve once but many times — with each evolutionary line completely independent of the others. While, yes, eyes evolved in organisms, the key point we’re discussing here is that evolutionary mechanisms apply to non-living things so long as those non-living things have heritable replication. Another claim we know for a fact to be true thanks to the existence of genetic algorithms.)

    > I’m simply pointing to the simple and unassailable fact that bases on a space rock is no more evidence for abiogenesis than is water ice on Mars.

    You’re wrong to do so. These aren’t guesses. They’re absolute proof of the things claimed to exist abiogenically, *existing abiogenically*. It’s proof-positive demonstration that they do exist. And since if for no other reason we know that asteroids and microcometary debris leave organic compounds intact after impact with the Earth, we know for a *FACT* that the abiogenic nucleotides present in said asteroids were present during the prebiotic era of Earth… let alone requiring them to have come into existence through similar mechanisms to whatever formed them in those asteroids in the first place.

    I’ll grant that you’re correct to assert that water on mars is not evidence for abiogenesis, though. However, claiming that the presence of nucleobases in asteroids is equally non-evidence is simply wrong as a matter of fact.

    So when I for example say that we have proof of the abiogenic existence of nucleobases … we have that. When I say that we have proof for the abiogenic existence of amino acids and peptide chains … we have that. And when I say that we have proof for the existence of a heritable replicator made up of nucleobases and peptide chains … we have that, too.

    So when I say that we should take the “1” of nucleobases, the “1” of peptide chains, and the “1” of heritable replicators made of those things… and sum those into “3” — yes, that’s not strictly speaking something we have directly observed.

    I’ll put this in syllogistic form:

    Given:
    – Peptide chains can and do form abiogenically.
    – Nucleobases can and do form abiogenically.
    – Heritable replicators can be and are formed of only peptide chains and nucleobases
    We must then accept the conclusion that:
    – Heritable replicators can and are formed abiogenically.

    We don’t need to actually abiogenically form one in simulated conditions for the syllogism to hold. We instead need special evidence to contradict it — and no such evidence exists.

    It is, thusly, currently *irrational* to insist that abiogenic heritable replicators have no evidence supporting their having existed during the prebiotic era of Earth’s history.

    > We’re a long way from any solid conclusions, no matter how many times you suggest that we’re not.

    I do not mean this as an insult, but — given the invocation of Newton’s Third Law and your conflation of water on mars with nucleobases in asteroids, and reinvocation of clay and quartz several times in this conversation, your position here just isn’t even remotely persuasive.

    I invite you to notice that you are confused. 🙂

    • Tony says:

      That’s not how we roll around here, Logos01. If I said something that confuses you, it’s generally considered good form to ask for clarification. It’s generally considered bad form to assume the other person is a moron. Take note: you first assumed that I meant something I didn’t say, and worked to refute it. When I provided you clarification, you proceeded to wave your hands and proclaim that I have no idea what I mean. It may not be what you’re used to, but here we work on a system of mutual respect. That doesn’t mean you should agree with me, of course. It means that your disagreement isn’t also disagreeable.

      If you’d like to try again, I’ll be here.

  9. Logos01 says:

    > When I provided you clarification, you proceeded to wave your hands and proclaim that I have no idea what I mean.

    You invoked the law of motion that declares that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” in a conversation about the arisal of life from prebiotic chemistry.

    You further did so with exactly no explanation, and when I attempted to raise the level of conversation by providing the best-possible form of that claim that I could find, you went out of your way to reject that improvement and again provided absolutely no explanation of your assertion, despite there being no connection whatsoever between it and the conversation at hand.

    The term “fractally wrong” was invented for literally this scenario. Was I perhaps extreme in my invective? Sure. But there are times when being disagreeable is the most agreeable way to approach the dialectic.

    • Tony says:

      Thanks for your measured reply.

      That you couldn’t see the connection doesn’t indicate there is none, of course. Newton’s third law of motion is considered tautological. The equal and opposite reactions that we observe show that an effect is always commensurate with its cause. In other words, the corollary to Newton’s third law: no effect can be greater than its cause. That’s the connection. Darwinian evolution is based in the notion that greater organization comes from lesser, that more information comes from less, and that more complexity comes out of the simpler. Darwinism doesn’t deal directly with abiogenesis, of course…but they’re philosophically related. The reason I invoked Newton’s third law is that, with very few (and very limited) exceptions, we see the opposite in play: entropy, to which you correctly and intuitively leapt, is the soup du jour. The universe is headed for heat death. Death and decay are the norm. While the variety may have increased, the fragility of life has not decreased. With every reaction – from the chemical to the nuclear – there is some loss, or waste…so everything is winding down.

      Your suggestion that I’m confusing philosophy with formal science suggests that you may be unfamiliar with philosophy. There’s a big difference between the two. Formal science is a method for explaining what we know. Philosophy is a method for explaining what we don’t know by determining what we do know. Formal science might say, “We have found artifacts that suggest this population engaged in a form of worship.” Good (formal) philosophy might respond, “Because we don’t know this with certainty, we will hold this conclusion tentatively.” Note that good philosophy and good science (and formal science and formal philosophy) often go hand in hand. When I say that certain claims made by some laypersons are philosophical in nature, I mean that they are not really based in the facts. One might substitute the term ‘philosophical’ with ‘metaphysical’ at times, as such claims tend toward areas of faith rather than evidence. As an example of a philosophical claim, one might follow up with, “Because they worshiped, we know they were human.” Do you see the logical leap there, from the actual evidence to an unwarranted conclusion?

      This was the point of my earlier statement about abiogenesis: that the conclusions drawn by laypersons usually don’t match the evidence found by researchers. When we jump beyond what the evidence can justify, we leave the realm of science and enter the realm of (bad) philosophy. As I understand it – and I’m clearly not an expert in the field – no expert in the field is willing to say that abiogenesis has been established in a way that can link primitive structures like bases on asteroids with the development of modern, complex biological entities. They may presume the conclusion, but the conclusion hasn’t to this point been bridged by the evidence.

      You may say that it’s all but done. I say otherwise. You may know more about it than I. Here’s my question for you, in response: what meaningful information would abiogenesis give us? What can we learn, with certainty, from the establishment of abiogenesis?

  10. FeepingCreature says:

    > With respect, it seems you assume too much. I see your point but, without the existence of a metaphysical mind, I see pathway to the ability to reason. As CS Lewis said in the article, there’s no reason to trust in reason. Most people would claim that evolutionary pressures are all about reproduction. If that’s the case, the only thing we can really trust our brains to do is find ways to reproduce more effectively. In a materialist universe, there is only biochemistry and environment.

    I don’t see how you can trust, even given the existence of a metaphysical mind. With a materialist mind, we may at least inspect our ancestral forms and try to understand how reason came to be – the mechanism being a very simplistic optimization pressure operating over very great spans of time on very many organisms, at least gives us a possible to verify the origins of our reason. Given an extraphysical, directly-created mind, it would seem to me that we are utterly at the mercy of whatever being decided to create that mind, and can trust no evidence about it. It would seem to me that to an omnipotent omniscient being, it would be just as easy to create a mind that is misled in all its reason than one whom its reason steers true. At least when evolution wants to deliberately mislead us, it has to pay an overhead cost – deception costs power, adds complexity and may break.

    To build a mind that I can, inasmuch as such is possible, trust – I much prefer a God that cannot trivially outthink that mind.

    > With respect, this philosophy student will suggest that this over-reliance is not a malady of philosophy, but of bad philosophy.

    And yet, in Christianity as in philosophy, they just keep doing it … 😉

    Re Miller-Urey, there is a long way between that and modern life, but the point is that “a long way” does not pose hindrance if you don’t get exhausted, can’t die, and may retry as many times as you like. A random walk on a plane eventually visits any location. Agreed that Panspermia hits the recursion problem.

    > I would suggest that, in an entirely materialistic framework, good and evil have no meaning. As I see it, you’re borrowing from a theistic worldview to start the conversation.

    “Good and evil” are useful even if they do not capture any “true” facet of reality, because they help society prosper. As such, I might as well argue that religion has borrowed from evolution – even animals know altruism by instinct. (Google ‘evolution of reciprocal altruism’.)

    > You seem willing to redefine free will. I’m not. The established definition goes something like this: the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion.

    I think the inherent contradiction here is visible in the phrase “acting without constraint.”

    Try to imagine a human acting without any constraint or guidance. Will he look like a human being? I pose that he would look more like an epileptic, muscles spasming with no coordination or purpose.

    You may disagree with my addition of “guidance”. I would argue that the difference between guidance and constraint is merely one of degree. Any imposition of order on one’s actions progresses from a kind of necessity. As such, I think will is only possible inasmuch as necessity of some kind guides your actions, and any opposite of that is a kind of randomness.

    I would further argue that our definitions can be easily brought into concert by modifying the phrasing to “without coercive external constraint; the ability to act at one’s own reasoned discretion.” Is this a departure too far?

    • Tony says:

      >> Given an extraphysical, directly-created mind, it would seem to me that we are utterly at the mercy of whatever being decided to create that mind…

      Certainly.

      >> and can trust no evidence about it.

      In the purist sense, we don’t even know whether we’re being forced to have this conversation, either by our biochemistry or by the creator of our minds. We have no way of verifying anything at all, including cogito ergo sum. Even this kind of radical doubt may be the result of programming from our robot overlords.

      What choice do we have? Only one meaningful choice exists: to live as if what seems apparent actually is. We already do that, of course. You and I are having a conversation about free will, reason, and truth…presumably because we both want to, we could both choose otherwise, and in some way our words reflect reality. To doubt any of these is to invalidate the whole exercise. We may play mental games, but we both know we both live under the presumption that we are self-conscious, that reason exists (and can be trusted), and that we enjoy at least some limited freedom.

      >> I much prefer a God that cannot trivially outthink that mind.

      Who wouldn’t? Fortunately or unfortunately, our preferences don’t change reality. If some God exists, and if that being demands something from us, at the very least some kind of self-preservation – seeking pleasure and avoiding pain – seems reasonable. After more than 40 years of thinking about it, I’ve become convinced that we were created by a powerful, sentient being…and that this being actually has our welfare in mind. Maybe I’m fooling myself with wishful thinking. Maybe I’m not.

      >> And yet, in Christianity as in philosophy, they just keep doing it

      Sadly, yes.

      >> “Good and evil” are useful even if they do not capture any “true” facet of reality, because they help society prosper.

      Do they? Is that what you see happening around the world? Sure, we’ve created some comfort and leisure for a portion of humanity. One would think that after tens of thousands of years we’d be farther along than this. The evidence of our progress shows that we may not be prospering very much. Granted, we have the ability to communicate over long distances, but there’s more slavery now than at any time in history. Refrigeration is nice, but we can now kill a hundred thousand people in one strike, rather than one at a time…and we’ve already done so. I could go on in depressing detail about all of the ways in which humanity is no more prosperous than we were in the past, despite our advances in technology…but I’d guess you need no help in that area. I’m less concerned about finally building flying cars and more concerned about helping one more person suffer less at the hands of their neighbors, or their schoolmates, or their parents. If morality is a social construct, it sucks.

      I would suggest that human nature hasn’t changed one bit since the beginning of recorded history. Maybe ‘helping society prosper’ is a social construct intended to distract us from the fact that the corrupt leaders of today do the same as the corrupt leaders of yesterday. Maybe celebrating the opening of another new Starbucks keeps us from wondering about children being sold for sex. Maybe the only way we can truly prosper has nothing to do with passing on our DNA and more to do with changing our character. I may be fooling myself about Jesus, but I’d rather live in a world where everybody lives what Jesus taught than in a world where nobody does.

      </rant>

      >> I think the inherent contradiction here is visible in the phrase “acting without constraint.”

      It’s not ‘without constraint’ as if our free will is unlimited. I can’t fry your brain from across the world, as I’m constrained by the limits of my tinfoil hat. As the definition says, ‘without the constraint of necessity or fate.’ That is, free will means being able to choose rather than being forced.

      >> You may disagree with my addition of “guidance”. I would argue that the difference between guidance and constraint is merely one of degree. Any imposition of order on one’s actions progresses from a kind of necessity. As such, I think will is only possible inasmuch as necessity of some kind guides your actions, and any opposite of that is a kind of randomness.

      I don’t disagree with that at all. A soldier who jumps on a grenade to save another isn’t acting randomly…he’s acting in concert with what he believes to be true: that it’s good to be selfless, or that it’s better for him to die than the man next to him, or something else. This guidance seems to be the accumulation of beliefs about reality. Just so, in virtually everything we do (including this discussion) we’re guided by what we believe.

      Because of this idea, we can (and do) presume things about each other. First, that we each think there’s some benefit to ourselves in sharing what we believe with others. Second, that we each think there’s some benefit to the other in sharing what we believe. Third, that some ideas reflect reality better than others. Fourth, that what we believe – in some way – makes our lives better or worse, depending on how closely those beliefs reflect reality. I’m sure you could add to this list, and that we could find a dozen or more presumptions that we share.

      >> I would further argue that our definitions can be easily brought into concert by modifying the phrasing to “without coercive external constraint; the ability to act at one’s own reasoned discretion.” Is this a departure too far?

      Nope. I like it.

  11. Logos01 says:

    [Edited…see editor’s response]

    This equivocation is the “great error” of your assertions and is why I reacted the way I did.

    …earlier you claimed you *weren’t* talking about Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics. And here it turns out that you actually are. You thereby demonstrate that you just don’t understand what you’re talking about, here. Happily, everything I’ve already said about entropy and negentropy already addresses your concerns. I invite you to re-read that section.

    …Continuing to make this mistake will not flatter you.

    • Tony says:

      Strike two, Logos01. I only have interest in conversations that can progress, and you’re slowly convincing me that this might be a waste of time. Earlier I explained that we work here on the basis of mutual respect, and that if you don’t understand something someone’s written you should ask for clarification rather than dismiss the idea or demean the other person. You’re persistent, which might seem like an admirable trait…but not in this regard.

      First, I was speaking colloquially of Newton’s Third Law of Motion. I didn’t mean it was actually and technically a tautological statement but that it’s generally not disputed. I will give you some latitude here, and recommend that you respond to the idea being expressed rather than look for reasons to nitpick and jump on opportunities to deride the other person.

      Second, you’ve twice told me that I mean something other than what I wrote…and then told me I don’t know what I’m talking about. Clearly, you don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s really annoying when someone incorrectly corrects someone else, isn’t it? You know, like, “It’s Y’OURE, you idiot”? Well…it’s not Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics, and I wasn’t talking about entropy at all. If you’d like to review what I wrote and engage with it directly, I’ll still be here. Consider this before you respond: if I’m really as dumb as you’ve suggested, aren’t you foolish to waste your time here?

      Third, I want to be clear that I enjoy having you here, and appreciate your work to challenge my thought process. I’m not threatened by what you’ve written…on the contrary, I welcome it. I don’t write this because of anything you’ve written, but because I’ve been having these conversations since 1979 or so…and I’m being cynically preemptive here. You wouldn’t believe how many (it’s a lot) like to take a cheap shot on the way out (it’s a lot) and suggest that this kind of message (it’s a lot) proves that my ideas can’t hold up, that I’m afraid to be proven wrong (it’s a lot) and that I’m unfair in treating them so badly because I only want to live happily in my fantasy bubble. It’s a lot. My chastisement has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your behavior. I’m a busy man. I’m a husband, a father, a businessman, a local leader, a teacher, and a friend. That stuff keeps my schedule full. I won’t take the time to discuss nonsense with you. Stop telling me what I mean. If what I’ve written confuses you, I’m happy to clarify. If you persist in foolish behaviors like not reading what I write and then arguing that I mean something else and then pretending I’m an idiot, we’re done.

  12. FeepingCreature says:

    > Do they? Is that what you see happening around the world? Sure, we’ve created some comfort and leisure for a portion of humanity. One would think that after tens of thousands of years we’d be farther along than this. The evidence of our progress shows that we may not be prospering very much. Granted, we have the ability to communicate over long distances, but there’s more slavery now than at any time in history. Refrigeration is nice, but we can now kill a hundred thousand people in one strike, rather than one at a time…and we’ve already done so. I could go on in depressing detail about all of the ways in which humanity is no more prosperous than we were in the past, despite our advances in technology…but I’d guess you need no help in that area. I’m less concerned about finally building flying cars and more concerned about helping one more person suffer less at the hands of their neighbors, or their schoolmates, or their parents. If morality is a social construct, it sucks.

    I think that we see more suffering due to two issues: our population has never been this large, both taxing our ecosystems and increasing the numerical amount of suffering by sheer chance; and second that we have never been this sensitive or capable of *perceiving* suffering that is happening far away from us. Even two centuries ago, if there had been an unimaginable genocide in, say, South America, Europeans or Americans simply would not have been aware of it. Combined with the fact that usually people emphasize the positive parts of their recollection, it’s easy to get a rose-colored picture of the past. The books “Better Angels of our Nature” and “Enlightenment Now”, both by Steven Pinker, make a good argument that society and individuals have never been as well-off as it is now, by any objective metric that we can track.

    Should we be further along? An evolutionary joke with some truth: “We are the stupidest conceivable species that could possibly develop society.” Obviously: you have to pass through being the stupidest conceivable species to get less stupid, and if we’d been the stupidest conceivable species that could develop society *earlier*, we’d have simply developed society *earlier*. It happens as soon as it can happen, whether we’re up to it or not. I think considering that, we’re not doing half bad.

    > Who wouldn’t? Fortunately or unfortunately, our preferences don’t change reality. If some God exists, and if that being demands something from us, at the very least some kind of self-preservation – seeking pleasure and avoiding pain – seems reasonable.

    I’m sorry, I phrased that badly. I agree that a God that I can trivially outthink is preferable from a utilitarian perspective – but the actual argument that I wanted to make, was that it would seem to me that the reliability of reason seems more questionable when faced with an omniscient God, than with a patient, slow, brute-force plodding Idiot God like evolution. I bring this up since you seemed to propose that believing in God was an argument in favor of the trustworthiness of reason.

    > What choice do we have? Only one meaningful choice exists: to live as if what seems apparent actually is.

    Fully agreed.

    > We already do that, of course. You and I are having a conversation about free will, reason, and truth…presumably because we both want to, we could both choose otherwise, and in some way our words reflect reality. To doubt any of these is to invalidate the whole exercise. We may play mental games, but we both know we both live under the presumption that we are self-conscious, that reason exists (and can be trusted), and that we enjoy at least some limited freedom.

    I agree with this; however, I believe that we may have truly divergent views on what kind of freedom is *necessary* in order to be able to gainfully think about what action to engage in next. I am of the opinion that it is worthwhile to consider one’s actions and attempt to choose even in a universe that is fully deterministic and in which only one path exists – because I identify myself, and my reason, with the pattern embedded in that path which causes the next step of the path to follow from the previous one. I think that there can be only one sequence of steps that I actually walk, and I think my reason is what *determines* this sequence of steps, not in the face of physical counterfactual paths but imagined ones, and *using* imagined ones to select the right one. From the beginning, given the person I was and the person I was becoming, there was only one possible path – but that path is necessarily in harmony with my self – it *is* made up of my choices, internal rather than external but no less deterministic because they’re forced by my personality, desires and moral views. A recursive, evolving function of my self and my environment, which to compute we call “life”.

    This may be more obvious to programmers. A large fraction of the people I know to be Compatibilists are programmers; the standing theory seems to be that we are already used to strictly deterministic systems making reasoned choices, because that’s what a program *is*.

    > I don’t disagree with that at all. A soldier who jumps on a grenade to save another isn’t acting randomly…he’s acting in concert with what he believes to be true: that it’s good to be selfless, or that it’s better for him to die than the man next to him, or something else. This guidance seems to be the accumulation of beliefs about reality. Just so, in virtually everything we do (including this discussion) we’re guided by what we believe.

    To use this example, I think it diminishes the agency of this soldier if we imagine that he could have, if placed in the same situation again, done differently. It seems to me to make his decision a kind of fancy of the moment; whereas I would argue that the moral constraints that forced him to make this sacrifice would be no less crushing the second time around.

    You seem to perceive physics as a kind of external force. As a materialist, who believes their brain to operate within physics, I perceive physics as the instrument of the *internal* forces that make up my personality. I have chosen; hence, I could not have done differently than what I’d chose. If I could, it would not have been a choice but a dice throw.

    • Tony says:

      I’m sorry for the delay. My son just graduated from high school, and virtually everything was put on hold for all of the meetings, ceremonies, parties, and paperwork.

      >> we see more suffering due to two issues: our population has never been this large, both taxing our ecosystems and increasing the numerical amount of suffering by sheer chance; and second that we have never been this sensitive or capable of *perceiving* suffering that is happening far away from us.

      We agree, of course. I would suggest that man’s inhumanity to man hasn’t changed on a percentage basis. Regardless of the population growth, man has not evolved into a better being. We’re just as awesome and just as awful as we always were. One reason I believe that the Bible is true is that it explains this reality. Most other belief systems explain it away, if they deal with it at all. Most other belief systems are transactional, where saying and doing the right things are the key to prosperity, or at least avoiding calamity. Christianity is relational. It teaches that our problems come from who we are, and that we’re unable to fix ourselves. God is more than willing to address the parts of us that are broken, loving us like a perfect Father who helps us be who we were meant to be. As I see it, humanity as a group isn’t getting better or worse.

      Every belief system says that there’s a problem with humanity, and proposes solutions for fixing the problem. If Christianity’s explanation of the problem was that we are bad, then the Christian solution would simply be that we should be good. Christianity would then be a behavior modification system. Despite the fact that this is how Christianity is often portrayed, that’s not accurate. The biblical explanation of our problem is that we are spiritually dead. Jesus said that He came to give us life. John, who was probably Jesus’ closest friend (and thus in a good position to know what Jesus taught) wrote that those who have the Son have life, and those who don’t have the Son do not have life. Good and evil are not social constructs, created to benefit society. They describe relationships between people, and cannot be subjective.

      >> I think considering that, we’re not doing half bad.

      Depends on your point of view. If we’re randomly-generated physical constructs that respond to external stimuli according to our biochemistry, there’s no “doing good” or “doing poorly” at all. There’s only existing and not existing, neither of which could be said to be better than the other. I’m an optimist. I believe we’re more than randomly-generated physical constructs, that life has a purpose that can be discerned, that our actions are freely chosen, and that our lives have meaning.

      >> it would seem to me that the reliability of reason seems more questionable when faced with an omniscient God, than with a patient, slow, brute-force plodding Idiot God like evolution. I bring this up since you seemed to propose that believing in God was an argument in favor of the trustworthiness of reason.

      Thanks for clarifying. If there is a God, and if He created us in some ways to be like Himself, it stands to reason that reason has meaning and value. If we are simply the effects of mindless physics, reason can have no meaning. We can’t even suggest that it can, because we have no basis for providing meaning. Some suggest that our biological purpose is to procreate, passing on our genetic material to future generations. I would challenge that notion. Why would our assertions about the replication of cells lead us to conclude that there’s purpose behind any of it? Who says that survival is the goal of living things? To have a goal, you must have an end in mind…something that’s preferred. In a mindless and random universe, from where would any goal spring?

      >> I think that there can be only one sequence of steps that I actually walk, and I think my reason is what *determines* this sequence of steps, not in the face of physical counterfactual paths but imagined ones, and *using* imagined ones to select the right one. From the beginning, given the person I was and the person I was becoming, there was only one possible path – but that path is necessarily in harmony with my self – it *is* made up of my choices, internal rather than external but no less deterministic because they’re forced by my personality, desires and moral views. A recursive, evolving function of my self and my environment, which to compute we call “life”.

      Choice and determination are necessarily mutually exclusive. What you describe is an automatic system where you do what you are, and cannot do otherwise. In this way, your “choices” can only be acknowledgements of what you do, rather than freely making selections between two or more options. Where there is no choice, there is no freedom. Where there is no choice, there is also no culpability. In your view of the universe, I would contend, there is no good or bad or thriving or suffering. There is only stimuli to which we respond. There is no way to assess whether your death as an individual is of net benefit or detriment. There are no values of any kind.

      Right?

      As always, it’s a pleasure.

  13. Logos01 says:

    > First, I was speaking colloquially of Newton’s Third Law of Motion. I didn’t mean it was actually and technically a tautological statement but that it’s generally not disputed. I will give you some latitude here, and recommend that you respond to the idea being expressed rather than look for reasons to nitpick and jump on opportunities to deride the other person.

    I addressed the idea being expressed. It was invalid, and I demonstrated why it was. This wasn’t nitpicking, it was dialectic. To point out exactly where and how a person is in error on matters of fact in a calm and factual matter is not being harsh or mean; it’s how conversation helps us approach truth. If I am in error on matters of fact in this conversation, I expect to be informed of such; as this is the stance of the honest participant in conversation.

    The mere fact that you were invoking Newton’s Third Law of Motion does not mean you were correct to do so, nor that what you said did not in fact relate to Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics. I explained the reasoning for my statements and gave examples to demonstrate the error here.

    > Well…it’s not Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics, and I wasn’t talking about entropy at all.

    If you want to discuss effects being greater than their causes, then you are in fact discussing Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics. That’s the law that governs the relationship of events in spacetime following Hawking’s Arrow (of Entropy). The *instant* you are discussing causal sequences, you are discussing Newton’s Second Law — this is how it works.

    For what it’s worth — *yes*, absolutely, it is annoying to be incorrectly corrected; and the feeling of being incorrectly corrected can often be confused with the feeling of being *correctly* corrected on something we do not want to acknowledge having been wrong on. This is why the evidence and reasoning associated matter. I wasn’t “nitpicking”; I was *demonstrating*.

    I’m not trying to “chastise” you, or “make you feel dumb”. I in fact have been assuming that you are at least my equal intellectually: I have been speaking to you exactly as I would wish someone to speak to me.

    When I say to you that using a certain argument or idea is “not flattering”; what I mean is that I want you to be using the best possible ideas or arguments in support of *your own* position. This is the “Ironmanning” stance of argumentation (as opposed to strawmanning): I take the time to comprehend what you are *trying* to say, express the best possible form of it I can identify and address the flaws or strengths of *that*.

    In *this* case that means correcting your misapprehension as to the nature and applicability of the Third Law of Motion, and pointing you towards the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Of course, in order to be an honest extension of the conversation I must *also* provide the reasoning for *why* I make this correction — and I have done so.

    > I’m a busy man. I’m a husband, a father, a businessman, a local leader, a teacher, and a friend. That stuff keeps my schedule full.

    By all means, we all have a lot on our plates; I have no expectations on your time and you’ve been very generous so far.

    Also; I fully understand how you could pattern-match our discussion to brow-beating “gotcha-ism”‘s. But I assure you; that is not what I am doing.

    Lastly, I will say this: your “[Edited]” version cut out pretty much the entirety of the meat of the dialogue, including the part where I demonstrated why Newton’s Third Law of Motion was completely inappropriate to be mentioned here (acausality and fungibility of action and reaction; conflation between the motion definition of reaction and causal definition of reaction [and their definitions *are* non-fungible], and so on.) It’s hard to have an honest conversation with someone who only reads part of the conversation. (There’s also where I had to provide a much more in-depth explanation of the difference between natural/social science and formal science, as your usage demonstrated your understanding to be in error there [formal science as a tool for discerning *what* we know; whereas it is in fact a tool for fleshing out the relationships of what we know and can never be used for discerning material knowledge in and of itself.])

    > If you persist in foolish behaviors like not reading what I write and then arguing that I mean something else and then pretending I’m an idiot, we’re done.

    I obviously *HAVE* been reading what you write, as evidenced by the fact that I am addressing specific sub-sections of your writings individually. It’s not possible to do so non-selectively / representatively without actually reading and grasping the whole. If you sincerely believe that I’ve been cherry-picking and distorting your positions to degrade them, then by all means if you are willing please point out where and how so I can become a better participant in future conversations: if I am mistaken on points of fact or systemic approach, *correct* me.

    I’m perfectly happy to engage you in continued respectful discourse, but I do agree that unless we can both be open to having our ideas criticized *on the basis of fact*, there can be no possibility of it continuing.

    • Tony says:

      I’m sorry for the delay. My son just graduated, and our schedule has been full.

      >> I’m not trying to “chastise” you, or “make you feel dumb”. I in fact have been assuming that you are at least my equal intellectually: I have been speaking to you exactly as I would wish someone to speak to me.

      I can appreciate that, but… (see the next bit)

      >> Ironmanning

      That sounds like a great idea, but it’s not as awesome in practice as it is in theory. I’m all for the concept, but have found over the 35+ years I’ve been having these conversations that my strong corrections aren’t as welcome as I would hope. A little grease goes a long way. Telling someone what they think tends to create walls of separation, even if you do it to seek common ground. A little humility on both sides – the presumption that we have a lot to learn – makes for effective, respectful dialogue. You and I may both find such social niceties a little tedious, but that’s just how the world works.

      It may be instructive to learn what you hope to achieve here, on my website. If your goal is to have deep but endless conversations about stuff that doesn’t really change the way we live for the better, you’re in the wrong place. If your goal is to try to convince me that your worldview is better than my own, you may want to try a different approach. What do you want? If you don’t have a goal, you might take a moment to consider whether you need one.

      >> I have no expectations on your time and you’ve been very generous so far.

      I appreciate that.

      >> your “[Edited]” version cut out pretty much the entirety of the meat of the dialogue…It’s hard to have an honest conversation with someone who only reads part of the conversation.

      I have a goal. To reach that goal, you and I need to cooperate. I’m much less concerned about the content of any single comment than I am about the nature of our interactions. My editing was not to remove content I didn’t like, but to cut through the argument and get to a discussion. If my goals and your goals aren’t in concert, you’ll probably find your time here fairly unsatisfactory.

  14. FeepingCreature says:

    > I’m sorry for the delay. My son just graduated from high school, and virtually everything was put on hold for all of the meetings, ceremonies, parties, and paperwork.

    Congratulations and don’t worry!

    Instead of answering everything you said individually, I’ll try to cut to the core of the matter. If I understand you correctly, your argument is that will, purpose and meaning cannot arise spontaneously, they can only preexist, and as they already exist (in God), God can confer them to us. Hence a mere physical universe could inherently not contain any meaning or purpose.

    I would argue against that that meaning, purpose and will don’t seem to be fully arbitrary. Even if we admit them as separate categories of properties from material facts, it certainly seems like the fact that we possess them is … not useful, exactly, but, let’s say, “contributing to the fact of our existence”. Meaning provides structure and guidance to our lives, but meaning and purpose also make us contribute to large, prosocial projects, which is certainly evolutionarily welcome.

    It is certainly the case that meaning and purpose seem like separate categories that could never arise from mere material, similar to how DNA and cells seem like a separate category of physical stuff (“life”) that could never arise from inanimate matter. However, as with cells, we find that meaning and purpose have preceding, simpler “transitional forms”; that is, intentionality, and before that, imagination. Lots of animals possess imagination and are able to make plans; the simplest but most impressive that’s known to me is Portia Fimbriata, the Jumping Spider, a creature with such a tiny brain that it has to actually track its eyesight patiently over its field of vision to slowly assemble a complete picture of the world, but which can still make plans, improvise and be aware of objects that it cannot see. Clearly this is a highly valuable trait in nature, but equally clearly it cannot be fundamentally all that complicated, since it appears in such a simple animal. (600 thousand neurons, as compared to a human’s 100 *billion*.) Then to become aware of purpose, all it takes is the necessity to think about other people who make plans, and the means they employ to execute them. From there it’s an obvious step to apply this new lens to yourself.

    The notion of purpose may seem like a separate property from matter, but if you look at brains, it seems clear that “a brain that has a notion of purpose” can and will arise in a merely materialistic evolution, because purpose is a really useful concept.

    There’s a *really* good Tumblr post about this; please allow me to quote it in full:

    > A PLAY ABOUT MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING IN TWO ACTS

    > ACT I

    > Cat, a lifeform specialized in detecting small prey animals and catching them: *sees a mouse, chases it, catches, eats it*
    Human: “Wow evolution has made such a great hunter, look at it! Amazing!”

    > Cat: *sees a laser pointer dot, frantically tries to catch it but cannot, as it is just light*
    Human: “lol too optimised for wanting to catch things am I right”

    > ACT II

    > Human, a lifeform specialized in using and making tools and seeing if tools are good for different tasks: *sees a knife* “Aha! Someone made this sharp tool to cut things. I see, it’s really good for that!”

    > Human: *looks at his own body* “Who made this?? What were they thinking? There’s some bigger hidden meaning behind this right? What am I made for… What is the purpose of my mortal life? Am I good? Am I bad? Is there a God? I keep looking for my destiny but alas, I can’t figure it out….”

    The implication being that since we are “the tool-using animal”, we instinctively see our own existence in terms of being a tool with a purpose for another being, who has some goal in placing us here. But evolutionarily speaking, that’s just us reflecting our specialization onto ourselves. In other words, we made God in our own image.

    Several further notes:

    > In a mindless and random universe, from where would any goal spring?

    Evolution observes: creatures with goals survive. Evolution observes: Creatures with prosocial goals tend to survive more. Hence, genetic patterns that lead to prosocial goals arising in the minds of creatures produced by them are selected for.

    > Some suggest that our biological purpose is to procreate, passing on our genetic material to future generations.

    Procreation is probably *why* we have a *notion* of purpose, but evolution did not create us to maximize procreation, because evolution does not plan ahead. It is simply the case that the course of our mutations led to creatures who were more successful at procreation; we do not thereby inherit evolution’s purpose, inasmuch as it can be said to have one; rather, our human purposes simply happened to aid evolution’s “goal” of procreation, and were thus selected for. Certainly I agree that we cannot *conclude* purpose from evolution; this is not what I’m saying, rather I’m arguing that we possess purpose because possessing purpose was evolutionarily useful and attainable for us. It happens because it can.

    Does this invalidate all purpose? I don’t think so. As you said, it is a separate category; since we now have it, learning the physical reasons for why we have it should not logically affect our ability to follow it. If you changed a person to perceive themselves to have a random purpose, it would still be their purpose. What argument would you make against it? What argument could you make?

    > Good and evil are not social constructs, created to benefit society. They describe relationships between people, and cannot be subjective.

    This seems a nonsequitur. Anyway, if that is so, then why is it that pretty much all instances of what we call evil (theft, false witness, murder, adultery, blasphemy, heresy) happen to be antisocial behavior?

    > Choice and determination are necessarily mutually exclusive. What you describe is an automatic system where you do what you are, and cannot do otherwise. In this way, your “choices” can only be acknowledgements of what you do, rather than freely making selections between two or more options

    I contend this – a free choice, to me, requires determination because determination is the mechanism by which the system-that-is-“me” evaluates the two or more options available to it, and selects the one more consistent with their will. I still don’t see what option you recognize between determination and randomness. If a random choice is not free, then what else is there but a determined choice?

    I would not say that a choice is an acknowledgment of what I do; rather I’d argue that each choice is an acknowledgment of what and who I *am*. As Schopenhauer said, man can do as he wills, but he cannot will as he wills. A choice that would be inconsistent with who I am would not be a free choice; rather, it would not be *my* choice at all, by definition.

    > As always, it’s a pleasure.

    Same!

  15. FeepingCreature says:

    Edit: To clarify, because it’s really important: I’m saying the state of having two options available, and then selecting one, is *how* the single choice that I was ever always going to make *is determined*. Physics is deterministic, and our brains use that determinism to *determine* our choice, in a way that we subjectively experience as “free will”.

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