RE: Atheism is impossible, I don't see how life can be created naturalistically.
September 2, 2011 at 12:54 pm
(September 2, 2011 at 12:09 pm)Diamond-Deist Wrote: Cells were inanimate fact, and yes they did originally not have life unless that guy from NASA was lying on that programme I watched.
Cells were once inanimate, or there are both animate and inanimate cells? I doubt that for a number of reasons, for one all cells can die and death is something that can only happen to a system that was once alive, not only that but cells are considered the fundamental unit of life and the root of the field of biology which is specifically the study of life. Given both those points I don't know how a cell could possibly be considered inanimate.
I doubt that the NASA scientist was lying or that he was mistaken, it is more likely that you misunderstood him.
Quote:If you can explain how it went from inanimate to life you will be doing one better than him, according to him they still cannot work that bit out.
I specifically said that I could not account for it and that while we know how some of the constituents of cells can be produced via naturally occurring chemical processes we do not know the full process. Like I said I'm not well versed in biology beyond the fundamentals, if you want more detail you'll have to ask someone else.
Quote:I would have thought it was obvious, life is by definition is a struggle to survive, you've heard of the arms race phenomena? basically drove the variety of life we have .... Cambrian explosion (if I've spelt it right)?
Life is not defined as "the struggle to survive", it is (simply put) a descriptive term given to systems that display "the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death." The definition you provided is extremely problematic, for starters it's circular reasoning; Seeing as survival is necessarily a goal of certain forms of life the "struggle to survive" as a definition of life can be restated as "The struggle for life to live", defining life as the struggle to live offers no insight into what it means to be 'alive' to begin with - Furthermore, it overlooks the fact that many forms of life lack the capacity to care or comprehend their existence, thus they cannot be said to be "Struggling".
The Cambrian explosion is simply a period of time in the evolution of life where there was an emergence of diversity for whatever reason, again, I'm not the person to ask about any great details regarding biology or evolution, but please do take a look at this knowledgebase; http://www.talkorigins.org/
Quote:Not so much ..... I am certainly not inserting the God element here at all, maybe Nicholas would but I am just playing devils advocate on his behalf.
If you are arguing on his behalf then you are defending the position that "Atheism is impossible" given that we can't explain certain aspects of abiogenesis, this is both an argument from incredulity AND something that necessitates that a deity is the alternative - seeing as not-atheism is by definition theism.
You simply can't escape that conclusion.
.