is life only evolved and selected chemical reactions?

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Mc Do Well: Aug 2, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

rudatron posted:

Lacking any kind of mechanism of god itself being created, you also cannot simply default to that position. Like if RNA forming is unlikely because probability, what's the probability of random supernatural intelligence? You'd have an easier time justifying aliens.

*shaves head*

Ready to be shot into space.

Space Monkey!

# ? Feb 3, 2016 04:22

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 19:10

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

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McDowell posted:

Like I said- it would be circumstantial - we could pretend the multiverse is a laboratory and we're just one petri dish.

Hmmm so goddidit because you like a god that does the same stuff you do.

Great logic here.

# ? Feb 3, 2016 09:05

Pentecoastal Elites: Feb 27, 2007

waitwhatno posted:

One day we might find out how the very first life/RNA on earth began. If it turns out to be an extremely improbable event with a mean time of trillions of years for the entire universe, then you have a decent case for gods existence. It's not exactly catching god with his hands in the cookie jar, but it's pretty close.

Actually, no. You'd just find good evidence that we're alone or one of a very few forms of life to exist in the entire universe. This is kind of a weird formatting of the anthropic argument with religious connotations, which is your argument here, but better because we already have the numbers. It goes like this:

We know from general relativity and quantum theory that there are a number of universal physical constants (the speed of light, Planck constant, vacuum permittivity, etc). If any of these were even a little bit different, the universe would be an incredibly different place. A few different values and matter couldn't exist, there might be many temporal dimensions and a single spacial dimension instead, the big bang could have only produced an incredibly short lived (billionths of a second) material universe, etc etc. You don't need to find that abiogenesis is extremely rare - the fundamental nature of the universe seems to be perfectly tuned to allow for life.

There are no "reasons" it should be so. There's nothing that forces Planck's constant to be what it is, and it's very easy to imagine it being something only a little different and rendering our universe totally unrecognizable. All of the constants we've found just happen to be what they are, luckily for us.

You can take this as evidence of a Creator - a lot of people do - but I don't buy it. What if the constants were different? Well, life wouldn't start and no one would be around to comment on how perfect all these constants are. Or, life would evolve and there'd be a collection of time-travelling flatlander scientists talking about how the universe might have allowed for a third spacial dimension, if only the constants were a bit different.

So, ultimately, no. Rare abiogenesis wouldn't be evidence of God, but it would explain help explain Fermi's paradox. I don't know what really would be evidence. Maybe we find life is really rare AND sentience is even rarer (although there are animals on Earth that challenge this) AND Earth-likes are extremely rare (probably not) AND water/oxygen environments are the only places life can arise (probably not). Honestly for evidence you'd need to find a second thing as big as the fine-tuning of the universe. Then you're probably getting somewhere.

e: a multiverse would actually be evidence against a creator. It'd explain the fine-tuning -- we're necessarily in the universe that can best support life. It'd be the same as why life developed on Earth instead of on the Moon.

Pentecoastal Elites fucked around with this message at 10:41 on Feb 3, 2016

# ? Feb 3, 2016 10:39

lollontee: Nov 4, 2014; Can't post for 10 years!

blowfish posted:

Hmmm so goddidit because you like a god that does the same stuff you do.

Great logic here.

Gods are a reflection of our desires, so yes.

# ? Feb 3, 2016 11:04

GABA ghoul: Oct 29, 2011

Onion Knight posted:

Actually, no. You'd just find good evidence that we're alone or one of a very few forms of life to exist in the entire universe. This is kind of a weird formatting of the anthropic argument with religious connotations, which is your argument here, but better because we already have the numbers. It goes like this:

We know from general relativity and quantum theory that there are a number of universal physical constants (the speed of light, Planck constant, vacuum permittivity, etc). If any of these were even a little bit different, the universe would be an incredibly different place. A few different values and matter couldn't exist, there might be many temporal dimensions and a single spacial dimension instead, the big bang could have only produced an incredibly short lived (billionths of a second) material universe, etc etc. You don't need to find that abiogenesis is extremely rare - the fundamental nature of the universe seems to be perfectly tuned to allow for life.

There are no "reasons" it should be so. There's nothing that forces Planck's constant to be what it is, and it's very easy to imagine it being something only a little different and rendering our universe totally unrecognizable. All of the constants we've found just happen to be what they are, luckily for us.

You can take this as evidence of a Creator - a lot of people do - but I don't buy it. What if the constants were different? Well, life wouldn't start and no one would be around to comment on how perfect all these constants are. Or, life would evolve and there'd be a collection of time-travelling flatlander scientists talking about how the universe might have allowed for a third spacial dimension, if only the constants were a bit different.

So, ultimately, no. Rare abiogenesis wouldn't be evidence of God, but it would explain help explain Fermi's paradox. I don't know what really would be evidence. Maybe we find life is really rare AND sentience is even rarer (although there are animals on Earth that challenge this) AND Earth-likes are extremely rare (probably not) AND water/oxygen environments are the only places life can arise (probably not). Honestly for evidence you'd need to find a second thing as big as the fine-tuning of the universe. Then you're probably getting somewhere.

e: a multiverse would actually be evidence against a creator. It'd explain the fine-tuning -- we're necessarily in the universe that can best support life. It'd be the same as why life developed on Earth instead of on the Moon.

The exact mechanism/reason for why the physical constants are the way they are is unknown. There might be a very good explanation for this, we just don't know yet.

But you gotta be pants-on-head retarded to see an event with a probability of 1e-50 per billion years and per universe happening shortly after the formation of the earth and not think that there is more to the story than just physics.

Of course this is all hypothetical anyway, since there is a mounting pile of support for the RNA world hypothesis and we might have a plausible explanation of how it all began in the next couple of decades, if we are lucky.

(There is never going to be any direct evidence for god, since he his existence is unprovable by definition. I assume your question wasn't about that.)

# ? Feb 3, 2016 11:54

Blurred: Aug 26, 2004; WELL I WONNER WHAT IT'S LIIIIIKE TO BE A GOOD POSTER

Onion Knight posted:

We know from general relativity and quantum theory that there are a number of universal physical constants (the speed of light, Planck constant, vacuum permittivity, etc). If any of these were even a little bit different, the universe would be an incredibly different place. A few different values and matter couldn't exist, there might be many temporal dimensions and a single spacial dimension instead, the big bang could have only produced an incredibly short lived (billionths of a second) material universe, etc etc. You don't need to find that abiogenesis is extremely rare - the fundamental nature of the universe seems to be perfectly tuned to allow for life.

There are no "reasons" it should be so. There's nothing that forces Planck's constant to be what it is, and it's very easy to imagine it being something only a little different and rendering our universe totally unrecognizable. All of the constants we've found just happen to be what they are, luckily for us.

You can take this as evidence of a Creator - a lot of people do - but I don't buy it. What if the constants were different? Well, life wouldn't start and no one would be around to comment on how perfect all these constants are. Or, life would evolve and there'd be a collection of time-travelling flatlander scientists talking about how the universe might have allowed for a third spacial dimension, if only the constants were a bit different.

I think another problem with the "fine-tuning" argument is that it presumes that the universal physical constants of the universe are 1) independent and 2) capable of variation. Ignoring the multiverse hypothesis, which would immediately ameliorate these concerns and which has at least as much evidential support as the "creator" hypothesis, I'd question if we're justified in assuming either of those claims. Fact is, until we are able to arrive at a grand unified theory of physics, we simply don't know why the values of the universe are what they are, to what degree they are co-dependent, or to what extent they might be capable of variation. The following are my own perhaps ill-informed opinions on the matter, so I'd welcome the feedback of anyone who knows about this stuff better than I do.

Point 1) - that the values of the universe are independent - implies that a hypothetical, omnipotent being might be able to change one value of the universe (let us say, the speed of light) without changing any of the others. I question if that's a valid assumption. To use an analogy from geometry, we cannot change the value of the length of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle without altering either the length values of the remaining two sides, or the value of the angle that connects them. These values are co-dependent. When we have a circle, the values of one the diameter or the circumference of the circle may be arbitrarily set, but the value of the other must be adjusted to retain the ratio of pi, or else to distend the shape into something that is no longer a circle. Again, these values are co-dependent. Now, imagine if I said, ""The value of pi has been calculated beyond the millionth decimal place. If the value of pi were to have been off by just the smallest fraction of a percent, then many features of the universe - including the elliptical orbits of the planets, and their roughly spherical shape - would be completely impossible. For the value of pi to have been so precisely set so as to allow for the orbital paths and shapes of the planets that we see today could not have happened by chance. The odds of pi being exactly the value that it is, down to the millionth decimal place, are unimaginably huge. The only reasonable explanation is a divine creator who chose the value of pi so as to make round shapes in our universe possible". Does that sound like a reasonable explanation? Of course not. The value of pi is fixed by a certain ratio, and would be the same in all possible universes.

Now when someone asks, "what if the weight of the proton were just 10% higher or lower?" I can't help but think they may have fallen victim to the same kind of thinking I've just characterised. We don't know for sure, of course, but it may well be that the weight of the proton is co-dependent (and therefore fixed by some necessary, geometrical ratio) with other variables in the universe, and that we couldn't arbitrarily adjust its value without simultaneously adjusting other values in turn (let us say, the weight of the neutron and electron). This is idle speculation until we have a grand unified theory of everything, and can understand just how it is that everything hinges together, but I think it's a fairly credible way to puncture the confident proclamations of the fine-tuning crowd without taking any grand metaphysical leaps.

Point 2) - that the values of the universe are capable of variation - implies that it is at least hypothetically plausible that the values may have turned out differently, and that it is therefore valid to ask why they arbitrarily possess this or that value as opposed to any of the potentially infinite number of other values that they might have otherwise possessed. In addition to what I said before about the possibility of certain values being co-dependent and therefore fixed in the form of certain ratios (e.g. the length of the hypotenuse of a right-triangle is not arbitrary, but a fixed ratio of the other two sides - and vice versa) there is also the problem that, on the quantum level, phenomena don't exhibit gradual variations, but rather "jump" from one value to another (in fixed gradations) that do not permit intermediate values. Two pick just a couple of examples:

First, the spin of elementary particles. These can only exist in gradations of 1/2, e.g. : 0, �, 1, 1� and so on. It's incoherent to ask what a fermion with a spin of 1.736 would look like, just as it would be incoherent to ask what a universe with a pi value of 4 would look like. Similarly, if we were to arbitrarily change the spin of a given particle (let us say, from 1 -> 1�) we would not just be changing this value independently, we would also be changing fundamentally the kind of particle it is (in this case, if I understand correctly, from a boson to a fermion), and thus all its other properties at the same time. Hence, the spin value of a particle is not variable.
Second, there is the concept of Planck length. Zeno asked what would happen if Achilles were to talk an infinite series of steps, each half as long as the last - what would happen? Well, quantum physics tells us this would be possible until he arrived at Planck length, at which point the exercise would have to cease. It's impossible to take a step equivalent to half of Planck length (roughly 1.6^-35m) because it is impossible to distinguish between two locations that are a shorter distance that that apart. I raise this example because it shows that even something which appears to be capable of infinite variation - in this case length or distance - is actually constrained by this shortest permissible length. Every length, as I understand it, must be some exact multiple of this Planck length, and it is in principle impossible for the length of anything to vary beyond the 36th decimal point of a metre.

These may seem like nitpicking, but I think they're important as they show that the earliest conditions of the universe - i.e. those at the quantum scale - may severely restrict the kind of variations possible in the universe. That is, rather than the weight of the proton being potentially infinitely variable (presuming it's variable at all) it may actually only be possible at certain fixed values (e.g. its current weight, 50% lower, or 50% higher) owing to the fixed gradations of values at the quantum level. This is idle speculation, and perhaps goons more schooled in physics than me may wish to comment, but I think these are issues that any fine-tuning advocate would need to address before speculating with equal idleness about how unlikely it is for all the values of the universe to have turned out as they have without the intervention of a divine creator.

waitwhatno posted:

But you gotta be pants-on-head retarded to see an event with a probability of 1e-50 per billion years and per universe happening shortly after the formation of the earth and not think that there is more to the story than just physics.

Not necessarily. Go onto a random number generator and generate 3 100-digit numbers. The odds against you getting exactly those three numbers are incomprehensibly huge, and you'd have to sit through trillions of iterations of the universe while constantly hitting the refresh button before you ever saw those 3 numbers again. But there's nothing, for all that, that's remotely special about those numbers - the generator had to produce something, after all. The odds of any occurrence can be portrayed as being impossibly remote if you're prepared to approach it with enough imagination, and to factor in enough variables.

Now the difference, of course, is that there's nothing "meaningful" about those numbers we produced where there is something "meaningful" about the emergence of life, but this claim of the meaningfulness of life is just an arbitrary, post hoc designation you've made after the emergence of life has already happened. To use another analogy: imagine you strike a golf ball down the fairway. You find where the ball has landed, lift it up and paint the blade of grass on which it was resting red. You then replace the golf ball and proclaim, "it's a miracle! Of all the millions of blades of grass on this fairway, the ball just happened to land on the only red one! What are the odds!". Now is there anything special about this blade of grass that deserves explanation? To the golfer, yes, there is now a significance to this blade of grass, but the significance was only ordained after the fact. When you give the emergence of life this retrospective significance, regardless of how astronomical the odds against its development may have been at the inception of the universe, you're doing exactly the same.

Blurred fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Feb 3, 2016

# ? Feb 3, 2016 12:41

Pentecoastal Elites: Feb 27, 2007

Blurred posted:

...

I mostly agree with you. My point in bringing it up was that his argument is essentially a reconfiguration of this one, and is (imo, I guess) a weaker version -- even if we do find that life is really rare.

As I understand it though (I am not a physicist) is that our current understanding of physics doesn't suggest that there is anything that constrains the constants, or at least doesn't to any significant degree (from our perspectives). Like, there may be upper and lower bounds for the coupling constant, for example, but nothing that would necessarily lock it to, or even near, the value we see. That's why it's so interesting to some people. But again it might just seem that way because we haven't gone far enough yet in physics.

Ultimately, though, it's neither here nor there for the same reasons it doesn't matter if abiogenesis is super rare.

Blurred posted:

Not necessarily. Go onto a random number generator and generate 3 100-digit numbers. The odds against you getting exactly those three numbers are incomprehensibly huge, and you'd have to sit through trillions of iterations of the universe while constantly hitting the refresh button before you ever saw those 3 numbers again. But there's nothing, for all that, that's remotely special about those numbers - the generator had to produce something, after all. The odds of any occurrence can be portrayed as being impossibly remote if you're prepared to approach it with enough imagination, and to factor in enough variables.

Now the difference, of course, is that there's nothing "meaningful" about those numbers we produced where there is something "meaningful" about the emergence of life, but this claim of the meaningfulness of life is just an arbitrary, post hoc designation you've made after the emergence of life has already happened. To use another analogy: imagine you strike a golf ball down the fairway. You find where the ball has landed, lift it up and paint the blade of grass on which it was resting red. You then replace the golf ball and proclaim, "it's a miracle! Of all the millions of blades of grass on this fairway, the ball just happened to land on the only red one! What are the odds!". Now is there anything special about this blade of grass that deserves explanation? To the golfer, yes, there is now a significance to this blade of grass, but the significance was only ordained after the fact. When you give the emergence of life this retrospective significance, regardless of how astronomical the odds against its development may have been at the inception of the universe, you're doing exactly the same.

A better response than I could have written.

# ? Feb 3, 2016 14:19

GABA ghoul: Oct 29, 2011

Blurred posted:

Not necessarily. Go onto a random number generator and generate 3 100-digit numbers. The odds against you getting exactly those three numbers are incomprehensibly huge, and you'd have to sit through trillions of iterations of the universe while constantly hitting the refresh button before you ever saw those 3 numbers again. But there's nothing, for all that, that's remotely special about those numbers - the generator had to produce something, after all. The odds of any occurrence can be portrayed as being impossibly remote if you're prepared to approach it with enough imagination, and to factor in enough variables.

Now the difference, of course, is that there's nothing "meaningful" about those numbers we produced where there is something "meaningful" about the emergence of life, but this claim of the meaningfulness of life is just an arbitrary, post hoc designation you've made after the emergence of life has already happened. To use another analogy: imagine you strike a golf ball down the fairway. You find where the ball has landed, lift it up and paint the blade of grass on which it was resting red. You then replace the golf ball and proclaim, "it's a miracle! Of all the millions of blades of grass on this fairway, the ball just happened to land on the only red one! What are the odds!". Now is there anything special about this blade of grass that deserves explanation? To the golfer, yes, there is now a significance to this blade of grass, but the significance was only ordained after the fact. When you give the emergence of life this retrospective significance, regardless of how astronomical the odds against its development may have been at the inception of the universe, you're doing exactly the same.

But that's not really the point here. Each number has an equal probability to show up in a random number generator. There is nothing surprising about finding a 7 or a 88 in there.

Imagine that all numbers have an equal probability to show up, except for 7. Let's say that the probability of finding 7 is something ridiculous low like 1e-100. If your random generator now spits out a 7, I'm gonna assume you made a coding mistake or that your loving with me, I would never assume that I'm just a really, really lucky guy.

Obviously I can not conclusively proof that you are loving with me or made a coding error, without access to the source code, it could always be luck. But the jury is probably not gonna be on your side here.

# ? Feb 3, 2016 16:37

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

why is life the special case?

# ? Feb 3, 2016 17:15

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

waitwhatno posted:

But you gotta be pants-on-head retarded to see an event with a probability of 1e-50 per billion years and per universe happening shortly after the formation of the earth and not think that there is more to the story than just physics.

No, you don't. If I roll a centillion-sided die and just so happen to roll a 1 on the first try, does that mean it'd be pants-on-head retarded not to think that some supernatural force intentionally made that result come up? What if that number just so happened to be something you would think was random, like 539,999,135,986? What if it came up 123,456,789? Which of those results requires a god (or at least points to a god having a hand in the results) and which do not?

What your making is a logical fallacy called an argument from incredulity. You don't understand how something so improbable could happen naturally, so you make a leap of logic to say that obviously it couldn't be a natural occurrence. That doesn't follow though because, again, improbable is not impossible. By your own logic no one has actually ever won the lottery because the odds of doing so are just so low.

Edit:

waitwhatno posted:

But that's not really the point here. Each number has an equal probability to show up in a random number generator. There is nothing surprising about finding a 7 or a 88 in there.

Imagine that all numbers have an equal probability to show up, except for 7. Let's say that the probability of finding 7 is something ridiculous low like 1e-100. If your random generator now spits out a 7, I'm gonna assume you made a coding mistake or that your loving with me, I would never assume that I'm just a really, really lucky guy.

Obviously I can not conclusively proof that you are loving with me or made a coding error, without access to the source code, it could always be luck. But the jury is probably not gonna be on your side here.

I really think you don't understand how probability works. Lets go back to my centillion-sided die analogy again. Assuming for the sake of argument that it's perfectly made, every single number has an equal chance of coming up, 1-in-1 centillion. I roll it and end up with a 7, how could I possibly have come up with that number when the odds of doing so are so very, very low?

Who What Now fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Feb 3, 2016

# ? Feb 3, 2016 17:56

khwarezm: Oct 26, 2010; Deal with it.

If we find life outside the earth is that evidence that god(s) exists since he would allow the seeding of such a wondrous process all around the cosmos? Alternatively, if we don't find life outside of earth is that evidence that god exists since such an unlikely process would require deliberate intervention from a higher power?

# ? Feb 3, 2016 18:34

GABA ghoul: Oct 29, 2011

Who What Now posted:

I really think you don't understand how probability works. Lets go back to my centillion-sided die analogy again. Assuming for the sake of argument that it's perfectly made, every single number has an equal chance of coming up, 1-in-1 centillion. I roll it and end up with a 7, how could I possibly have come up with that number when the odds of doing so are so very, very low?

You didn't read my post.

For example, take the range of 1-100 and the probabilities:

p(7)=1e-100
p(1,...,6 and 8,...,100) = (1-p(7))/99

The chances of getting a 7, even after generating a million numbers, is pretty much non-existent. It would be VERY surprising and no sane person would ever assume that it was just luck.

# ? Feb 3, 2016 19:09

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

waitwhatno posted:

You didn't read my post.

For example, take the range of 1-100 and the probabilities:

p(7)=1e-100
p(1,...,6 and 8,...,100) = (1-p(7))/99

The chances of getting a 7, even after generating a million numbers, is pretty much non-existent. It would be VERY surprising and no sane person would ever assume that it was just luck.

You're still conflating improbable and impossible. Those aren't synonyms. But ok, we test it a million times and it doesn't come up, what if we test it a billion times? What if we test is 1e-100 times? Is it now only a product of outside interference if the number 7 crops up? If it's not, what if it comes up twice, is that a product of outside interference?

You're misusing probabilities. Again, why is it more significant to get a 7 in your example versus a 7 in my example? They both had the similarly tiny chances of occurring, but you only think the former is a product of interference, why?

# ? Feb 3, 2016 19:26

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Again, why is 7 or, for that matter, earth life in any way special?

# ? Feb 3, 2016 19:52

Blurred: Aug 26, 2004; WELL I WONNER WHAT IT'S LIIIIIKE TO BE A GOOD POSTER

waitwhatno posted:

Imagine that all numbers have an equal probability to show up, except for 7. Let's say that the probability of finding 7 is something ridiculous low like 1e-100. If your random generator now spits out a 7, I'm gonna assume you made a coding mistake or that your loving with me, I would never assume that I'm just a really, really lucky guy.

Well exactly. It's different here because you're specifying in advance what a meaningful result would be. If I give you a 100 digit number on a piece of paper, you hit the random number generator and then get exactly that number, then you'd be justified in thinking there were shenanigans afoot (e.g. either I was loving with you or else I have supernatural powers). The odds of these two events coinciding are as good as zero. On the other hand, if you hit the random generator first and I then copy the number I see onto a piece of paper while exclaiming "what an extraordinary coincidence it is that this number was spat out over the other 10^100 possibilities!", you'd be justified in thinking there was nothing remarkable about this feat. But the important thing to note is that the odds of each of these cases occurring is exactly the same (i.e. basically zero), yet we're justified in thinking that the first event is extraordinary beyond all reckoning, while the second is the most mundane thing imaginable. The only difference in the two cases lies the order in which the result and its potential significance are posited. Same thing goes for our example with life.

# ? Feb 3, 2016 20:08

Ytlaya: Nov 13, 2005