Who gets into heaven

Cypress said:
We are almost no closer to recreating cellular biology from inanimate chemistry under natural conditions than we were 70 years ago.

Many scientists are pessimistic we will ever be able to replicate it or explain it.

The problem is amino acids are relatively simple. They are found throughout the universe. The DNA molecule is an information-bearing system, essentially akin to digital information consisting of 3.5 billion bits of precisely ordered data.

There is nothing like that in inanimate chemistry. There is no chemical analogy outside of cellular biology.

Another problem is of a chicken and egg variety. Pointing to amino acids really explains nothing. Proteins are built via DNA. So you'd have to have DNA or RNA somehow previously existing before you could build proteins out of amino acids.

We also have descriptions for the molecular machinery of the cell. But we have no adequate explanation for why and how these machine-like purposeful cellular mechanisms originated.

Not a scientific question. A question of logic and philosophy.
You would be amazed at how many questions are philosophical and how little science actually explains about your life.
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70 years vs 4,000,000,000 or so? Not exactly a shocker we haven't nailed that yet.

And god's existence may be a philosophical question, but not a logical one.
 
Crepitus said:
70 years vs 4,000,000,000 or so? Not exactly a shocker we haven't nailed that yet.
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It is an article of faith for the non-scientist that they must find the "weakness" in science. It helps their faith if they can denigrate epistemologies they fail to understand even at a basic level.

Crepitus said:
And god's existence may be a philosophical question, but not a logical one.
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God's existence strains logic far too much.
 
Crepitus said:
Had to look that up, lol.
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The constant attacks on science's weakness actually belies the vast amount of knowledge we have about the subject. When I read that life is somehow "Special" I have to remind that there is nothing different between the chemistry of life and non-life. Even some of the standards of basic life-chemistry (eg chirality of molecules) may be directly related to some mineral surfaces showing a preference for one enantiomer over another.

Life isn't special in any real way scientifically. It's the exact same chemistry we see in the non-living world in many cases. There's nothing "magical" or "mystical" about biochemistry.

Sure it's a pain in the ass to memorize the Glycolosis Cycle for a biochem test but that doesn't mean life is somehow "Mystical" and can ONLY be explained by reference to the supernatural.

It's absurd on its face to say that since humans haven't yet created life in the testube from scratch that it must be GOD.
 
Crepitus said:
70 years vs 4,000,000,000 or so? Not exactly a shocker we haven't nailed that yet.
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It didn't take four billion years. We find evidence of cellular life at least as far back as 3.8 billion years, shortly after Earth's heavy bombardment phase when no life could have survived.

We basically nailed quantum mechanics in about 30 years, same with the big Bang, and same with the evolutionary synthesis between natural selection and genetics.

If you are insinuating it will take four billion years to really understand the origin of life, you are basically admitting science can't answer it.
Crepitus said:
And god's existence may be a philosophical question, but not a logical one.
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Many philosophers and theologians have used the rules of logic to infer a god or intentional creative force.

The meaning of quantum mechanics is also a philosophical question.

If every important question had to be a scientific question, most people wouldn't get through life. Most people can't do calculus or physics, and most people only have the most rudimentary understanding of chemistry and biology.
 
Cypress said:
It didn't take four billion years. We find evidence of cellular life at least as far back as 3.8 billion years, shortly after Earth's heavy bombardment phase when no life could have survived.

We basically nailed quantum mechanics in about 30 years, same with the big Bang, and same with the evolutionary synthesis between natural selection and genetics.

If you are insinuating it will take four billion years to really understand the origin of life, you are basically admitting science can't answer it.

Many philosophers and theologians have used the rules of logic to infer a god or intentional creative force.

The meaning of quantum mechanics is also a philosophical question.

If every important question had to be a scientific question, most people wouldn't get through life. Most people can't do calculus or physics, and most people only have the most rudimentary understanding of chemistry and biology.
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OK, so 200,000 million vs 70.

Still ridiculous to expect us to manage it in that short a time.

Quantum mechanics is far from "figured out", we've barely scratched the surface and it's not a philosophical pursuit.
 
Crepitus said:
OK, so 200,000 million vs 70.

Still ridiculous to expect us to manage it in that short a time.
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Even if you want to insinuate it will take 200,000 years to understand the origin of life, that is still a statement that we will never know. No organization is going to keep funding A fruitless search even after ten thousand years.

Crepitus said:
Quantum mechanics is far from "figured out", we've barely scratched the surface and it's not a philosophical pursuit.
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The calculations required to use and understand quantum mechanics are very well established. Quantum mechanics is the most thoroughly vetted and corroborated scientific theory in history.

The big questions about it are sort of philosophical in nature. What does quantum mechanics mean, is ultimate reality really probabilistic, and if so, why?

You know who else thought science has very significant limitations in guiding human knowledge? Albert Einstein.

Most people can live a full and flourishing life without knowing anything about the big bang, the human genome, physics or chemistry. Because most of the questions and knowledge we seek in life do not require test tubes or mass spectrometers.
 
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WinterBorn said:
Can one not be spiritual and not believe in a God?
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Yes, as over 300M Buddhists prove daily. The militant atheists want to claim them in their numbers, but a person who believes in the afterlife, that some part of a human being's consciousness survives death, is not really an atheist. You don't believe people have souls or the equivalent like Buddhists.
 
Crepitus said:
70 years vs 4,000,000,000 or so? Not exactly a shocker we haven't nailed that yet.

And god's existence may be a philosophical question, but not a logical one.
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Believing the Universe magically appeared out of nothing isn't logical either yet that's exactly what the militant atheists believe.

 
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