About the Charismatic gifts and their exercise.

[jeremyp]

Jeremy,

Try reading that sentence again.

Epistemology concerns the distinction between justified belief and opinion. If someone asserts the non-existence of something to be a fact rather than just an opinion, testing that claim is epistemology. 

And your point is?

You’re floundering now.

No, merely frustrated. LR made a statement: "there is no verifiable evidence of God". It's patently true as evidenced by the fact nobody seems to be able to bring it to the table. If there is evidence under a rock somewhere in the Himalayas that nobody alive knows about, it is not verifiable.

You can do all that bullshit about epistemology as much as you like but you are making fine points that nobody in the real World cares about.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Of course it would be subject to natural selection, that's why it wouldn't get off the ground. It's environment would be teeming with life that was already very well adapted to it. We don't know how life (more specifically replication with inheritance and variation) started but it was in a very different world to today, and one that wasn't filled with competition.

What are you actually proposing anyway? That god magicked life into existence and then waited 4 billion years for evolution to do the rest of the job? This seems like god of the gaps nonsense.

I'm afraid you still have to justify Dawkins assertion that we would never see abiogenesis because the products would be swiftly digested.
You then....if you are supporting that assertion need to justify why the process of its digestion could never be observed.
Next comes your explanation for why the new organisms are invariably unfit when that idea would exclude any new species from developing. This is the point where yours, Steves and Dawkins conjecture fails big time because what you are asserting is:

New species can emerge from the single tree of life.
New species can never emerge from a new tree of life

Suggesting a special reason for the success of the original tree of life.

What is this and how does it work?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

What are you actually proposing anyway? That god magicked life into existence and then waited 4 billion years for evolution to do the rest of the job? This seems like god of the gaps nonsense.

No I'm saying that what Dawkins asserts is wrong and that error is born out of dogmatic commitment to the one tree of life theory and a fear of pivotal events only occurring once.

It actually points to abiogenesis being an extremely improbable event occurring under almost unique conditions......almost miraculously one might say.

[Stranger]

I'm afraid you still have to justify Dawkins assertion that we would never see abiogenesis because the products would be swiftly digested.

No, I don't.

Next comes your explanation for why the new organisms are invariably unfit when that idea would exclude any new species from developing. This is the point where yours, Steves and Dawkins conjecture fails big time because what you are asserting is:

New species can emerge from the single tree of life.
New species can never emerge from a new tree of life

Suggesting a special reason for the success of the original tree of life.

What is this and how does it work?

Seriously?

In order to get a new tree of life going, you first need something or other that reproduces itself with variation. That could (according to one hypothesis) be something like a molecule of RNA (such as R3C). That's not a new species, it's just a molecule and it has had no chance at all to adapt. It would be far, far simpler than any living thing that it might encounter. Undisturbed, in an earth devoid of any complex life, it stands a chance (if its environment is relatively stable) of natural selection building up robustness and complexity, but in a world full of complex life how would it ever get off the ground?

The likelihood is that some variation made one sort of replicator far better at the job than others, which would explain why all life appears to have a single common ancestor. After that, new replicators would immediately be outperformed.

And I'll ask again, what are you actually suggesting? That god magicked life into existence and then waited 4 billion years for evolution to do the rest of the job?

[SteveH]

No I'm saying that what Dawkins asserts is wrong and that error is born out of dogmatic commitment to the one tree of life theory and a fear of pivotal events only occurring once.

It actually points to abiogenesis being an extremely improbable event occurring under almost unique conditions......almost miraculously one might say.

Abiogenesis probably is extremely improbable, which is another reason why it's only occurred once. The conditions on earth were probably suitable for abiogenesis to take place for billions of years before it did.
I repeat: after life has established itself once, abiogenesis can't happen again for the reason I gave earlier: that it'd be crowded out by existing life (and probably eaten by it, as Dawkins says). Also - this is speculation on my part - existing life would modify conditions on earth to suit it, so that the conditions suitable for abiogenesis - the right atmospheric mix, etc - no longer obtained.

[Stranger]

No I'm saying that what Dawkins asserts is wrong and that error is born out of dogmatic commitment to the one tree of life theory and a fear of pivotal events only occurring once.

There is very good evidence for one tree of life. Why would he, or anybody else, be afraid of "pivotal events only occurring once"?

It actually points to abiogenesis being an extremely improbable event occurring under almost unique conditions...

Except that life seems to have started on earth almost as soon as it possibly could, which points to the opposite. Life may be very, very improbably or it may be something that it happens pretty much every time the conditions are right - we don't know.

...almost miraculously one might say.

Even if it's so improbably it's only every happened once, it would have to be in the place living things are talking about it, wouldn't it?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Abiogenesis probably is extremely improbable, which is another reason why it's only occurred once. The conditions on earth were probably suitable for abiogenesis to take place for billions of years before it did.
I repeat: after life has established itself once, abiogenesis can't happen again for the reason I gave earlier: that it'd be crowded out by existing life (and probably eaten by it, as Dawkins says). Also - this is speculation on my part - existing life would modify conditions on earth to suit it, so that the conditions suitable for abiogenesis - the right atmospheric mix, etc - no longer obtained.

You mean abiogenesis can happen but the results are immediately consumed or crowded out.
Surely it has as likely a chance of that happening as any new species or individual. Why then does this not occur with all new individuals.......of any species?

My objections therefore still valid until you provide a process by which natural selection can make a special exception against abiogenetically derived new individuals.

I perfectly accept your suggestion that life changes global conditions so that abiogenesis cannot happen but this is different to abiogenesis happening but then being eaten or crowded out which would be an argument by special pleading.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

There is very good evidence for one tree of life. Why would he, or anybody else, be afraid of "pivotal events only occurring once"?

I'm not saying there isn't evidence.

Dawkins fear of the single event is well known....his aversion to discussion of the origin of the universe, his long running advocacy of phyletic gradualism against Jay Gould and Eldridge's punctuated equilibrium.....it's all there.

[SteveH]

You mean abiogenesis can happen but the results are immediately consumed or crowded out.
Surely it has as likely a chance of that happening as any new species or individual. Why then does this not occur with all new individuals.......of any species?

Because new species are already biologically complex and advanced, and able to fend for themselves at least as well as the species from which they sprang, and better if their modificstion provides an advantage, whereas completely new life has to start from scratch, as simple RNA molecules.[

I perfectly accept your suggestion that life changes global conditions so that abiogenesis cannot happen but this is different to abiogenesis happening but then being eaten or crowded out which would be an argument by special pleading.

Why is it special pleading?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Because new species are already biologically complex and advanced, and able to fend for themselves at least as well as the species from which they sprang, and better if their modificstion provides an advantage, whereas completely new life has to start from scratch, as simple RNA molecules.[Why is it special pleading?

Complexity is a biological word.........advanced isn't......

Complexity is not necessary for survival by natural selection but fitness is.
You have got therefore to outline a process where a new abiogenetically derived species automatically is unfit but many, many evolutionary derived but simple species are fit.

Until you do, you are specially pleading.

In fact complexity features in intelligent design which is a road down which you don't want to go.

[Stranger]

Complexity is not necessary for survival by natural selection but fitness is.
You have got therefore to outline a process where a new abiogenetically derived species automatically is unfit but many, many evolutionary derived but simple species are fit.

FFS Vald, this isn't difficult! A single strand of RNA can reproduce itself but it really isn't all that good at it compared with even the simplest of modern life.

Fitness is relative to the environment and the earth is now full of extremely well adapted and complex (relative to a single molecule) lifeforms that will out perform anything simple enough to be the first replicator in a new tree of life.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

FFS Vald, this isn't difficult! A single strand of RNA can reproduce itself but it really isn't all that good at it compared with even the simplest of modern life.

Fitness is relative to the environment and the earth is now full of extremely well adapted and complex (relative to a single molecule) lifeforms that will out perform anything simple enough to be the first replicator in a new tree of life.

Again you seem to be having an argument separate from the one I'm having.
Firstly I'm talking about life. I don't think strands of RNA count.
Secondly if that is what Dawkins is talking about then his argument that all single strands of RNA are eaten up or out competed are nonsense and my argument is vindicated.

Focus Laddy.

[SteveH]

Vlad - give up. You are hopelessly confused.

[Stranger]

Again you seem to be having an argument separate from the one I'm having.
Firstly I'm talking about life. I don't think strands of RNA count.

We're talking about abiogenesis and my whole point is that you can't get to anything resembling modern life forms all at once. You have to have something much simpler for natural selection to work on. That means something that reproduces itself with variation, which could have been just an RNA molecule.

Secondly if that is what Dawkins is talking...

I neither know nor care what Dawkins was talking about.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

We're talking about abiogenesis and my whole point is that you can't get to anything resembling modern life forms all at once. You have to have something much simpler for natural selection to work on. That means something that reproduces itself with variation, which could have been just an RNA molecule.

I neither know nor care what Dawkins was talking about.

Well then we are having two different arguments.....I hope you continue to enjoy yours.

[Stranger]

Well then we are having two different arguments.....I hope you continue to enjoy yours.

Look up!

[Spud]

And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved (Genesis 32:30).

So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend (Exodus 33:11).

In verse 20 (Exodus 33) Moses is speaking with God face to face in the tent of meeting. He asks to see God's glory. God replies that Moses must not see his face while he is in his glory.

[Gordon]

In verse 20 (Exodus 33) Moses is speaking with God face to face in the tent of meeting. He asks to see God's glory. God replies that Moses must not see his face while he is in his glory.

How convenient.

[Roses]

In verse 20 (Exodus 33) Moses is speaking with God face to face in the tent of meeting. He asks to see God's glory. God replies that Moses must not see his face while he is in his glory.

What nonsense!