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From: Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Life: Turn it upside down!
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2024 10:28:48 +0200
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On 10/04/2024 22:50, JTEM wrote:
>   Arkalen wrote:
> 

<snip>

> 
> There are working assumptions. Abiogenesis is a working assumption
> and it's wrong it assume that it's a fact, much less a well
> accepted fact.

I'm not talking about abiogenesis in that (snipped) sentence, I'm 
talking about the conditions on early Earth, which is what you continue 
to seem to claim you were referring to when you talked about "faith". 
Can you clarify for me which if any of these claims you'd be willing to 
grant as plausible enough to draw inferences from in this conversation?

1) Earth existed as a planet 4 billion years ago
2) Earth did not exist as a planet 6 billion years ago
3) Earth formed by accretion around the same time the rest of the Solar 
System did
4) Photosynthetic life did not exist in the earliest stages of Earth's 
existence
5) in the lade Hadean/Archean period Earth had a solid crust and oceans
6) alkaline hydrothermal vents exist today
7) alkaline hydrothermal vents are created by the reaction of 
serpentinization between mantle minerals like olivine and water
8) the conditions for the existence of hydrothermal vents were as or 
more common in the lade Hadean/Archean vs today
9) the atmosphere in the late Hadean/Archean was reducing, with 
low-to-negligible levels of oxygen and higher-than-today levels of 
carbon dioxide and methane

> 
> There are other ideas out there, including other scientific ideas.
> 
> There's a lot of interesting things, published online, on the
> topic of a-priori assumptions. I know you're plenty familiar
> with the concept and the pitfalls but maybe a reminder?
> 
>> I would take it as a confirmation that you think things like "there 
>> wasn't free oxygen in the atmosphere in that Hadean" are faith, but 
>> then you say this:
> 
> If abiotic oxygen is a myth, life has already been discovered
> on Mars. Ganymede. Europa.

Sure, very low free oxygen then. In terms of the reason I originally 
brought it up (the chemistry of alkaline hydrothermal vents) it works 
out the same.

<snip>

>> the alkaline hydrothermal vent hypothesis is far and away superior to 
>> all others in scope, specificity, evidential support and predictive 
>> power.
> 
> Lol!  Nothing is useful unless and until life is spontaneously
> formed under laboratory conditions. AND THEN that's when the
> debate begins!  Because it won't "Prove" that it ever happened
> in nature, only that it is not excluded.

I didn't say "useful", I said "superior to all others in scope, 
specificity, evidential support and predictive power". I'm happy to 
justify each of those claims, is there one you have particular 
objections to or that you want me to start with?

> 
>> It's especially superior to panspermia which isn't even so much a
>> hypothesis as a vague notion that doesn't actually explain the origin 
>> of life.
> 
> Science is about stepping outside of yourself. That is literally
> why it exists. Humans are so biased that we need a specific
> set of rules, a process we must follow to keep up from latching
> onto whatever our knee-jerk tells us.
> 
> Science was created to remove the human element.
> 
> You're insisting that the human element is what validates the
> work.

I wasn't aware I was doing that, could you clarify? The criteria I 
listed are actual rules science uses to evaluate hypotheses, they're 
very much a part of the "stepping outside of yourself" and "removing the 
human element" that you describe.

> 
>>> There's also creationism, yes.
>>
>> Sure. I figured that since you were talking about a spectrum of 
>> complexity in things that actually exist from life to nonlife that the 
>> context of this thread was naturalistic explanations.
> 
> The problem with Creationism is that abiogenesis, in a lab, would
> be an example of same. So you're not escaping Creationism with
> such goals, you're trying to validate it with an actual example!
> 
> Ironic, I know.

Not really; the lab is a controlled environment that allows one to 
narrow down the causes of any given phenomenon. This includes natural or 
nonsentient causes.

Take for example the Todd Willingham case and the debunking of the 
forensic science used to convict him. Forensic scientists had some ideas 
on how human-caused fires differ from accidental ones and based on those 
they argued that various patterns were evidence that Todd Willingham had 
committed arson. Then a guy called Gerald Hurst discredited all this 
evidence based in part on experiments where he re-created those patterns 
in ways that showed that they can occur in non-human-caused fires.

Now I can see there is a fun little conceptual paradox there that I'd be 
happy to work through, but just for a start: do you think what Gerald 
Hurst did was inherently impossible or invalid?

<snip>

>> Sure, and the alkaline hydrothermal vent hypothesis is really good in 
>> comparison to pretty much all of the other ideas on abiogenesis
> 
> Rather circular, that. And anyone proposing a different answer
> would be definition be disagreeing with you.

It's not circular, it's a positive claim that I gave a number of 
justifications for earlier and am happy to give more (but I already 
proposed that higher up so we can keep it there). And of course anybody 
making a contradictory claim is disagreeing with me, that's the nature 
of positive claims. The next step is for me to defend my claim, those 
that disagree to make counter-arguments, etc.

> 
> What do you have in common with all of them? That's a start.
> 
> 
>>>> And I'm telling you most of that spectrum is empty, shows a huge gulf.
>>>
>>> That would be more convincing if either one of us could point to
>>> such a spectrum -- mapped out, scientifically. But we can't. So
>>> you are arguing... what?
> 
>> Here's me pointing->:
>> ...water&lower -> Tornadoes, crystals, abiotic autocatalytic 
>> reactions, alcohol -> polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, long alkanes 
>> -> [huge gap] -> most viruses -> giant viruses, intracellular 
>> parasites? -> prokaryotic cells -> eukaryotic cells & higher...
> 
> This is usenet. The internet. I just read a claim that the exact same
> scientists who worked out the date, time & location of the eclipse
> are the people who have determined that Gwobull Warbling is REEL!
> 
> Matter exists along a spectrum. All matter. Map it out. Speaking
> rhetorically. Not saying you should do it but I am saying that it
> needs to be done. >
>> Shouldn't be too hard for you to fill that gap if what you're saying 
>> is true.
> 
> And yet we both know that it's never been done.
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