Hawking says there are no gods

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Tommy Jeppesen said:
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We are debating the chances of life and you can't restrict that to here, because here is a part of the Universe, unless you believe here is special.
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I am not debating this (clarification: not because I agree, mind you. Because this is even further off topic.)
 
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kellyb said:
The people who promote and believe in "panspermia" as reasonable do mean that it might have been a one time event here on earth, carried by a meteor.

https://www.nature.com/news/2004/040216/full/news040216-20.html


It might have been a poorly chosen word for the concept, though. Wiki says the word dates to the 5th century BC, and took off 1834 in this paper.
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The article is interesting and I wouldn't argue against such speculation. However, the evidence on Earth is that life started once. That does not support 'pan' .

Just because someone speculates about life floating around the cosmos, the fact life evolved here once doesn't support the speculation.
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
The article is interesting and I wouldn't argue against such speculation. However, the evidence on Earth is that life started once. That does not support 'pan' .

Just because someone speculates about life floating around the cosmos, the fact life evolved here once doesn't support the speculation.
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I have a lot of words where I kind of have my own private definition, but can also use the word to "transmit" the mental concept as other people use the word.

The function of language is merely to transmit mental concepts from the mind of one person into the mind of another or others. The "meanings" (dictionary definition type meanings) of many or most words have changed over time, and most words have multiple definitions.

eta: I was replying to your unedited comment, sorry!
 
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kellyb said:
Do you believe there must be some element of truth to evolutionary psychology, even if the science is still in its infancy and the data probably mostly extremely flawed at this point?
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Why is the data flawed?

Defining any science to be in its infancy or not depends on the range you choose to use. Every science is in its infancy technically.


As for the free will debate, seems to me all the same arguments can be applied whether there is a god in the mix or not. How does god supposedly allow free will when everything else is god determined?

If you think about it, the belief the world sucks because god gave humans free will is no more than a typical Christian Apology.
 
We will never discuss anything if we wait for every term and group in it to be defined to some level mathematical precision.

Like I just said down in another thread the simple fact that we used to able to least occasionally have a discussion about something, anything without every single time somebody demanding we come to a screeching halt to "clarify" all the terms being used should not be as radical and controversial a statement as it is.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Just because someone speculates about life floating around the cosmos, the fact life evolved here once doesn't support the speculation.
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Yeah, I'm not very convinced of panspermia myself, either. I haven't kept up with the debate for about 15 years now, though. 15 years ago it was essentially written off as extremely outlandish. Lomiller (I think that was the member here - someone who is a "good skeptic" in my eyes. Pretty sure it was Lo but could have been dasmiller?) said something in a different thread, about 6 months ago(?) that gave me pause, though. Something about the rapidity with which life evolved on earth that's scientifically "fishy"? Something that made me wonder if perhaps legitimate debate was emerging or re-emerging about...something about abiogenesis on Earth. (really useful info to give you, I know! lol)
 
kellyb said:
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eta: I was replaying to your unedited comment, sorry!
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That's OK, I'm trying to keep from going totally off topic. It makes it hard to address the semantics debate without starting a debate on the whole panspermia argument.
 
Panspermia is just recursion for the sake of recursion, a turtles all the way down solution to a problem of its own creation.

"Life couldn't have developed on Earth, so it was seeded from another planet."
"And how did that planet develop life?"
*Shrugs* "I dunno."
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Why is the data flawed?

Defining any science to be in its infancy or not depends on the range you choose to use. Every science is in its infancy technically.
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I don't necessarily think the data is terribly flawed. I was trying to gauge where dann is "at" on that topic. "Computational theory of mind" (which I think is more likely than not, more or less "true") is taken as a given within the discipline of evolutionary psychology (at least according to the wiki).

I totally agree that all the sciences are still technically in their infancy. Falsification (and thus solid, irrefutable progress) is just easier with stuff like physics, hence functioning satellites and internet, etc.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Panspermia is just recursion for the sake of recursion, a turtles all the way down solution to a problem of its own creation.

"Life couldn't have developed on Earth, so it was seeded from another planet."
"And how did that planet develop life?"
*Shrugs* "I dunno."
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A year ago I would have agreed with you, but someone here said something not long ago that really gave me pause. I might play around with the search function in the science and math subforum, where I read it, to see if I can find it again. I want to say it was in a thread about aliens.
 
Found it! SG, it was you and lomiller talking about panspermia in this post. I found his argument...passionate, and I've always seen him as one of the people who tends to know what they're talking about when they write with the "voice of authority" as he's doing here:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12301377&postcount=28

He said:

Current origin of life theories suggest a middle ground of large, complex yet stable self replicating molecules that are neither living organisms nor simple building blocks.

The problem is that there is no clear pathway that satisfies the three requirements of complexity, stability and early emergence. Higher complexity means lower stability without some sort of self repair mechanism, but that requires higher complexity. Since life emerged so early it doesn’t seem like you can simply wait for an ideal molecule to come about though chance.
The two competing hypothesis are: a) that there is a clear chemical pathway present in the early earth that we simply haven’t discovered yet or b) that the replicating molecules or it’s progenitors were already present in the material the solar system formed from. This pushes the question further back in time, but now you have more potential environments and longer timespans in which these molecules can form.

Again, I actually favor the first answer but to dismiss the second possibility out of hand seems silly.
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:confused:
 
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psionl0 said:
Obviously not but without it, humans will act strictly in accordance with the state and history of the entire universe (of which they are part of). You may say that you have free will but only because you are programmed to do so.
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But how can an outside-the-universe factor result in free-will? Wouldn't that outside-the-universe factor have its own rules by which 'free-will' is defined? And therefore it still isn't 'free-will' because it is based on another set of rules.

So, unless you can clearly enunciate what that factor needs to be, all you have done is pushed the mystery back one level. "Free-will of the Gaps", if you like.

Anyway, we disagree on whether free-will can exist in a naturalistic universe or not. Perhaps best to leave it there. Good discussion! :thumbsup:
 
That just assumes a sight unseen "better environment" for life to develop in.

Right now we have a random sample of... one as to a planet we know life developed on. Assuming it has to be a deviation from the norm and inventing a fix for that deviation when we have absolutely zero data on life developing anywhere else seems premature to me.
 
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Thor 2 said:
What a great way to argue. You just dismiss all my arguments and shout THEOLOGY really, really loud and persistently, with the implication that I can't do theology, because I don't believe in the god I am analysing the behaviour of.
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I wasn't making an argument, I was making an observation.

Thor 2 said:
This is just a cop out as I am sure you know, because instead of doing THEOLOGY, I am just illustrating why belief in the god in question is absurd, because it is completely inconsistent with the concept of an all knowing, all powerful god, believers believe in.
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You are using your own ideas about God (which you don't believe in) to argue with someone else's idea of God. I can think of nothing more pointless.

As I wrote earlier, it is perfectly valid to point to two statements within a belief system and argue that they are contradictory and inconsistent. But my point is that this is NOT what you are doing.

Thor 2 said:
Nothing unique in my approach at all. You will see it being used by Dennits, Dawkins, Harris, and the late Hitchens among others.
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Haha, true enough for Dawkins and Harris. Not so true for Hitchens and Dennett though. The latter two argued the point from the perspective of the religion or philosophy they were critiquing. You are nowhere near arguing like Hitchens. But certainly you argue like Dawkins and Harris, from what I've seen, if that is any comfort to you.

Thor 2 said:
I started this discussion with epeeist, (a Catholic), as I recall until you jumped in boots and all, flailing about with your ineffective rebuttals.
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No, I've offered no rebuttals, just observations. I felt compelled to jump in when epeeist posted to you:

"I enjoy discussion and argument. I do get frustrated that you seem to in many instances have an incorrect understanding of Catholicism, but I can sympathize that given your beliefs it's probably not worth a detailed course of study to you."

I've felt the same frustrations when reading your 'arguments', so I thought I'd let him know that he was not alone in feeling the way he was feeling.

But it was slightly rude of me, and not conducive to any useful argument, which is even worse. I apologise. I'll restrain myself in future.
 
JoeMorgue said:
That just assumes a sight unseen "better environment" for life to develop in.

Right now we have a random sample of... one as to a planet we know life developed on. Assuming it has to be a deviation from the norm and inventing a fix for that deviation when we have absolutely zero data on life developing anywhere else seems premature to me.
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I have no idea. Whatever he's talking about is way over my head. He seems to be arguing that "large, complex yet stable self replicating molecules that are neither living organisms nor simple building blocks" were possibly present in the...whatever it was, whatever molecular matter our solar system was formed from, and maybe only survived and went on to become true "life" here on Earth. Something like that.

Again, it's way over my head, but I don't think he's the type to just be full of ****.
 
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kellyb said:
Found it! SG, it was you and lomiller talking about panspermia in this post. I found his argument...passionate, and I've always seen him as one of the people who tends to know what they're talking about when they write with the "voice of authority" as he's doing here:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12301377&postcount=28

He said:



:confused:
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Thanks, the panspermia debate should be carried on there.

Now if someone would find one of the dozen 'free will' debate threads we could get back to the discussion here as to why one need not prove there are no gods in order to conclude with a fair degree of certainly that there are none.
 
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