Gap between life and non-life (split from What if god...)

[Luc Turpin]

4 hours ago, Gees said:

I went back and looked. I did not see where Luc Turpin misrepresented abiogenesis. I did see where he questioned it, but that is not misrepresenting. The only thing that I could find him guilty of is intelligence as he would not accept as fact something that has not been proven as factual. You, on the other hand, may have misrepresented the worth of the abiogenesis methodology? process? hypothesis? Please provide evidence of Luc Turpin's misrepresentation.

Luc Turpin was not the only one that brought up alternate hypothesis, so your complaint seems excessive. I will tell you that I bought the book, The Holographic Universe, read it, and still can't explain "WTF that means", so I don't know why you would complain that Luc can not explain it fully in a post in this thread. I can tell you that in the back of that book are hundreds of references from page 303 to page 327 -- way too much information for me to absorb.

I revisited my earlier comments on abiogenesis to assess where I may have misrepresented the concept, and I reached the same conclusion as you. I would ask exchemist to clarify where the misrepresentation occurred, but unfortunately, as others, he has withdrawn from the discussion.

Additionally, my statement that 'although there is strong evidence suggesting life could have originated from simple molecules under specific conditions, it remains a plausible concept rather than an established fact' more accurately reflects the current state of scientific understanding, as opposed to claiming that 'abiogenesis is an objective fact.'"

4 hours ago, Gees said:

 Science can not use that methodology on the spiritual or even on the mental. 

Science can study the mental indirectly, but not directly.

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

This adds nothing indicating any level of understanding on your part, so I have no further comment to make to you, either.

That's an overly categorical statement to be accurate. I'd likely get downvoted for backing out of a discussion in that way. In French, we might call this a classic example of 'deux poids, deux mesures,' which loosely translates to judging two similar things with partiality, using different standards for each. In fact, this entire conversation seems to be marked by inconsistent standards, applied differently depending on the speaker and on what is being said.

23 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

I didn't downvote you, I assumed that you'd eat that red shit right up and lick your lips, like a ravenous wolf.

And how does such a statement contribute to the discussion?

25 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Snap, I did the same and guess what? I did not see anywhere where either of you represented anything remotely close to actual understanding of the subject.

I'll reiterate: that's an overly categorical statement to be accurate. Many of my posts are based on the perspectives of those more knowledgeable about the subject than I am.

[dimreepr]

2 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

I'll reiterate: that's an overly categorical statement to be accurate. Many of my posts are based on the perspectives of those more knowledgeable about the subject than I am.

Seriously??? Are you blind to irony???

[Luc Turpin]

13 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Are you blind to irony???

Apparently I am!

[dimreepr]

5 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

Apparently I am!

Do you want me to explain?

[Luc Turpin]

9 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Do you want me to explain?

Would this contribute anything to the conversation?

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, Luc Turpin said:

Would this contribute anything to the conversation?

Yes, but only when you're ready to listen, and there in lies the irony that you don't understand...

 

[Luc Turpin]

23 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Yes, but only when you're ready to listen, and there in lies the irony that you don't understand...

 

Disagreeing with a statement doesn’t mean I’m not listening. In fact, I have the distinct impression that I’m not being listened to, which feels a bit ironic, doesn’t it?

 

[dimreepr]

7 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

Disagreeing with a statement doesn’t mean I’m not listening. In fact, I have the distinct impression that I’m not being listened to, which feels a bit ironic, doesn’t it?

 

Not in the classic sense... 

[swansont]

On 1/27/2025 at 10:04 PM, iNow said:

English is not his mother tongue. He’s obstinate, ignores totally valid criticisms, and only digs in his heels and repeats himself in response to every counterpoint, but being long winded shouldn’t IMO be a reason to assert he’s a bot. He’d likely do better en francais. 

Put another way - we’ve seen this behavior long before ChatGPT came along. 

Blaming stuff on bots is kinda lazy. 

7 hours ago, Gees said:

The only thing that I could find him guilty of is intelligence as he would not accept as fact something that has not been proven as factual.

The only other options here are: life always existed, or life was the result of magic/mysticism. Otherwise, life had to originate at some point, and that’s abiogenesis. Since science’s domain does not cover magic/mysticism, and that avenue was expressly rejected by the author, and also that we can pretty safely rule out life existing on the proto-earth, it’s what we’re left with.

IOW, abiogenesis must be accepted. What’s not yet been shown are the mechanisms and steps of that process.

[Luc Turpin]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

The only other options here are: life always existed, or life was the result of magic/mysticism. Otherwise, life had to originate at some point, and that’s abiogenesis. Since science’s domain does not cover magic/mysticism, and that avenue was expressly rejected by the author, and also that we can pretty safely rule out life existing on the proto-earth, it’s what we’re left with.

IOW, abiogenesis must be accepted. What’s not yet been shown are the mechanisms and steps of that process.

Abiogenesis—the origin of life—remains unproven, including when it comes to understanding its mechanisms and the steps involved. We should allow evidence to guide our exploration, rather than making assumptions or working backward from predetermined conclusions. Restricting ourselves to "acceptable" outcomes that fit a predefined narrative distorts the scientific process and invites confirmation bias. One possibility is that life may have originated elsewhere in the universe, a theory that remains plausible given the current lack of conclusive evidence. Furthermore, if life emerged from the information embedded in molecules rather than solely from physical matter, we may need to reconsider whether it originated from matter or a non-physical state. This suggests the answer could lie in a nuanced grey area, rather than a clear-cut binary choice. Science must remain open to exploring all possibilities.

[zapatos]

25 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

One possibility is that life may have originated elsewhere in the universe

That is not a different possibility. That is abiogenesis.

25 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

Science must remain open to exploring all possibilities.

I guess you missed the @swansont comment that...

2 hours ago, swansont said:

science’s domain does not cover magic/mysticism

 

[Phi for All]

27 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

Science must remain open to exploring all possibilities.

NO! It can safely discard the unfalsifiable and the inane.

[exchemist]

 

Incidentally, a nice paper was published in Nature Astronomy today, showing the presence of a large array of building blocks for life in samples brought back from the Asteroid Bennu. I've started a separate thread on it:

So the progress in abiogenesis research takes another step forward. 😊

Edited Wednesday at 06:56 PM by exchemist

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Luc Turpin said:

Abiogenesis—the origin of life—remains unproven, including when it comes to understanding its mechanisms and the steps involved. We should allow evidence to guide our exploration, rather than making assumptions or working backward from predetermined conclusions. Restricting ourselves to "acceptable" outcomes that fit a predefined narrative distorts the scientific process and invites confirmation bias. One possibility is that life may have originated elsewhere in the universe, a theory that remains plausible given the current lack of conclusive evidence. Furthermore, if life emerged from the information embedded in molecules rather than solely from physical matter, we may need to reconsider whether it originated from matter or a non-physical state. This suggests the answer could lie in a nuanced grey area, rather than a clear-cut binary choice. Science must remain open to exploring all possibilities.

You say evidence (which is what science relies on, and not proof) but if there’s no abiogenesis, then life must have always existed. So tell me, what kind of evidence supports that notion - that life existed before the universe was cool enough to even form neutral atoms, and only hydrogen, helium and lithium were around?

Because that’s a binary situation. Either life always existed, or it started at some point. (the latter is the occurrence of abiogenesis)

You seem to be saying there’s a third option. What is it?

[Luc Turpin]

46 minutes ago, zapatos said:

That is not a different possibility. That is abiogenesis.

I guess you missed the @swansont comment that...

 

1. I agree that it pushes the issue further in time, and still falls under the umbrella of abiogenesis.

2. I should have clarified that I meant all scientific possibilities.

43 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

NO! It can safely discard the unfalsifiable and the inane.

While unfalsifiable claims can be dismissed by science, they don't necessarily eliminate other avenues of investigation. As for 'inane,' it doesn’t add anything meaningful to the discussion.

24 minutes ago, exchemist said:

 

Incidentally, a nice paper was published in Nature Astronomy today, showing the presence of a large array of building blocks for life in samples brought back from the Asteroid Bennu. I've started a separate thread on it:

So the progress in abiogenesis research takes another step forward. 😊

Pre-biotic or post-biotic?

Some even contend of fossilized magnetotactic bacteria in Orgueil meteorite.

https://www.panspermia.org/magneto.htm

 

 

 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

That is not a different possibility. That is abiogenesis.

And this supports the notion that Luc is not understanding/misrepresenting the situation; evidence as @Gees requested

[Luc Turpin]

7 minutes ago, swansont said:

You say evidence (which is what science relies on, and not proof) but if there’s no abiogenesis, then life must have always existed. So tell me, what kind of evidence supports that notion - that life existed before the universe was cool enough to even form neutral atoms, and only hydrogen, helium and lithium were around?

Because that’s a binary situation. Either life always existed, or it started at some point. (the latter is the occurrence of abiogenesis)

You seem to be saying there’s a third option. What is it?

Your statement overlooks the possibility that life could have originated without matter, with a non-physical state—such as information—playing a key role instead.

[zapatos]

14 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

life could have originated without matter

You've lost me. Can you describe what life without matter would 'look' like? Or information without matter?

[Phi for All]

38 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

1. As for 'inane,' it doesn’t add anything meaningful to the discussion.

It seems like the perfect word for what you're doing here. You're denying that abiogenesis is a fact, with some of the worst arguments I've ever seen. Get off the fence and try to learn some science rather than trying to find bits of it that seem to support this inanity.

[TheVat]

19 minutes ago, zapatos said:

You've lost me. Can you describe what life without matter would 'look' like? Or information without matter?

18 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

It seems like the perfect word for what you're doing here. You're denying that abiogenesis is a fact, with some of the worst arguments I've ever seen. Get off the fence and try to learn some science rather than trying to find bits of it that seem to support this inanity.

 

Funny how this thread OP is asking if God is a jerk, which strikes me as an entirely theological topic, and it's stuck looping endlessly on abiogenesis and the creationist totally not creationist totally metaphysically neutral conjecture that it couldn't arise from natural chemical processes and spontaneous local decreases in entropy via self-organizing structures. 

 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Luc Turpin said:

Your statement overlooks the possibility that life could have originated without matter, with a non-physical state—such as information—playing a key role instead.

So I have to provide evidence, but you don’t?

I don’t even know what a “non-physical state” is supposed to mean

And this doesn’t actually address the issue that you require that life existed at the moment of the big bang (of which, again, no evidence has been provided)

[m_m]

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

such as information

What is information? Is there any definition? 

It is just a word, "information", mans concept. 

[iNow]

7 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

life could have originated without matter, with a non-physical state

[Luc Turpin]

The basic information needed to form atoms, galaxies, and life was already encoded at the time of the Big Bang. This "information" refers to the fundamental patterns and laws that govern matter and energy, shaping the universe’s development. These non-physical patterns guided everything, including the evolution of life. As an implication, the precursor to life may have been non-physical, with information being carried by energy without matter.

When specifically applied to the origins of life, this idea offers a new perspective: rather than life emerging solely from chemical reactions, it might have arisen from an informational structure that controlled how atoms and molecules interacted. In this view, life’s key components are the informational patterns that organize molecules, rather than the molecules themselves.

While speculative, this challenges the traditional materialistic view, suggesting that life and the universe are shaped by non-physical informational patterns that direct the evolution of matter and life. 

Edited Thursday at 12:57 PM by Luc Turpin

[dimreepr]

20 hours ago, swansont said:

Put another way - we’ve seen this behavior long before ChatGPT came along. 

Blaming stuff on bots is kinda lazy. 

To be fair, the last time I explicitly called someone a troll I nearly got arrested, it's hard work to figure out a more subtle implication...