Theism is literally childish

[John V]

Well thank you for demonstrating my point about how raising a child to believe that one fairy tale is true while all the others is false means that they have no concept of plausibility.

I wasn't raised that way. My father's middle name was Darwin. Seriously. We went to church on and off but those of my family who considered such things were evolutionists.

Incidentally, asking for proof is binary religious thinking. It is thinking that something is either true or false. The only thing that ever gets proved is a logic theorem because it uses a heavily constrained set of rules that are unrealistic. Nothing ever gets proved 100% in real life. There is no such thing as absolute truth.

More word games. Substitute "supported beyond a reasonable doubt" or whatever you like for proven. You still don't have it.

Which means that we need to look at plausibility. How likely is it that an explanation is correct? How many questions does it satisfactorily answer compared to competing explanations? Does it rely on assumptions that we have no basis in making? Do we see the same process or phenomenon happen elsewhere for the same reasons? Can we test the hypothesis and reproduce the results?

Fine. When you can show me a single hypothesis on abiogenesis that meets these standards you'll have something. Unitl then, you're just saying that you personally find material explanations plausible, even if there's scant evidence to support them.

Right, so you're deliberately limited the debate here by referring to matter that is lifeless rather than matter that is not animated.

Yes, and?

Which means that you now need to define what life is. Because from what I can see you are making an assumption that life is some kind of force that inhabits matter like a soul in a body. Since we're using your definitions here, how can you tell whether a lump of matter is alive or not? What does it actually mean for matter to not be lifeless? The very word inanimate means that it is not animated, yet you are arbitrarily limiting it to mean lifeless.

Here's the definition Google gives:

the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death

It only sounds stupid to you because you have this vague (and wrong) idea of what life is and aren't open to the idea of not knowing. And then when you start to think about it, you start to make yet more assumptions that are not warranted. Why should we require a car to arise spontaneously?

Because you're using it as an analogy to life, which you believe arose without a designer. A car has a designer, so you shot yourself in the foot with that one.

As I said, the very word inanimate means that it is not animated.

And as I clarified, I'm using it in the sense of "lifeless." And, the first dictionary definition of "animated" is:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/animated

endowed with life or the qualities of life :alive

So, my use is the standard usage of the word.

The opposite therefore is animated matter. How does matter become animated? Through the flow of free energy. You're thinking of an engine as something that drives your car, but the word actually refers to anything that convert one form of energy into mechanical energy. Which is why we talk about rocket engines, steam engines, internal combustion engines, stirling engines, molecular engines etc.

The only characteristic of all forms of life is that it has a metabolism. Any other definition will have an exception that can be applied to something that we still consider alive.

A cell therefore is a molecular engine which uses a metabolism to convert chemical energy into mechanical energy. Thereby making inanimate matter into animated matter.

OK, show us how the first metabolism came to be and you might be on to something.

You were claiming that inanimate matter coming to life is implausible and I was giving an example of inanimate matter becoming animated. I was not defining snowflakes as being alive.

Yes, I agree that you threw in an obvious red herring.

But both life, snowflakes, intelligence and evolution are examples of self organisation. The same underlying thermodynamic process underlies it all. That is, self organisation happens when a system can settle into a stable state by minimising free energy in accordance with the laws of Thermodynamics.

You previously noted that life requires continual fuel to be maintained. So, you know yourself that life isn't a stable state that is "settled into." Just the opposite - absent continual maintenance, living things settle into death, which is a more stable state.

The same laws that underlie modern engines that we create ourselves.

Key words being "we" and "create."

Abiogenesis is plausible using my definition above because we see the same underlying thermodynamic processes occur throughout our daily life. And these aren't just observations, We make use of this understanding when we create engines, or build a fire under a chimney, or try to eat well.

You're noting that intelligent beings can direct energy to achieve useful results. I agree, and that's a good argument for ID, but it in no way supports abiogenesis.

It only looks that way because you have not defined what life is and are ignorant about physics.

I defined life above. I'm no expert in physics, but I had three semesters of it in college. I know a little.