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Moshe Averick on origin of life as bringing out the illogic of naturalist atheists

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stromatolites/C. Eeckhout

Moshe Averick, author of Nonsense of a High Order , writing at Algemeiner, asks us to picture scientists receiving a Morse code message from outer space, purportedly sent by aliens offering a cure for cancer. Will they respond by claiming that there must be some explanation for the message other than an intelligence?:

Imagine further that the following exchange then takes place between two SETI scientists:

– “Hold on, stop the party! How do you know the source is an intelligent alien life form, maybe there is some naturalistic unguided process that is the source of these transmissions?”

– (Incredulously) “What unguided, naturalistic process do you know of that can produce intelligible Morse code messages?!”

– “Aha! The Argument from Ignorance! Just because you don’t know, does that mean there must be an intelligent creative force behind these messages? After all, did you meet these aliens? Do you know who, where, or what they are?

Is the conclusion that these transmissions originated from an intelligent source an Argument from Ignorance or is it simply as obvious as 2+2=4? The simple truth is that we are not ignorant of how specified information – like Morse code messages – arises. The only known source of such information is creative, conscious, and intelligent activity. More.

And life, even at its humblest, is full of specified information.

Note: The difficulty with the origin of life is that it is a historical event in time, as opposed to a law of physics or chemistry.

We could find out how to produce an event that creates life in a test tube. But that would not tell us whether it arose that way. We would know only that it might have arisen that way.

Suppose further research turns up 297 other scenarios that also produce life? Then we know of 298 ways life could have arisen, which is pretty much what we have today with the origin of life community’s Theory of the Month approach— except that our approaches would be complete, detailed and backed by hard evidence of success.

There are two other possibilities: We could try 180,000 events that produce life and discover that only one of them works. Then it is reasonable to conclude that that event or a very similar one took place. We can’t go back in a time machine to check. But we can live with Sherlock Holmes’ principle that if we have ruled out all the other suspects, this is likely the one.

The third possibility is that we will discover certain laws of physics and chemistry which reliably generate life under certain conditions. See Does Nature Just “Naturally” Produce Life? This was the view of biochemist Christian de Duve (1917-2013), a Nobelist (1974). In that case, we could say that life will get started when certain external conditions are right. But no one has discovered the conditions that generate life, only conditions under which it can exist.

We will be at this a long time.

See also: Moshe Averick in USA Today on the confusion around origin of life

Is origin of life really a science problem?

and

What we know and don’t know about the origin of life

Comments
Possible is non-exclusive. Could advanced civilizations be sending messages according to SETI? Maybe, it's possible. If it's possible advanced intelligence exist in the universe, you cannot rule out attempts of communication by Design to this planet. Nor possible design of life on this planet. Darwinist often appeal to possibility. That no matter how remote the probability, it's possible non-life beget life. And unguided, blind evolutionary processes arose on earth despite overwhelming odds against it. While it's possible patterns may be a result of natural phenomenon, it's also possible patterns are a result of advanced life form's communication to earth. One possibility does not exclude the other. Morse code is a simple analogy. Ruling out Morse Code does not rule out any number of other possible communication codes by advanced intelligence to our planet, including binary data, a simple bitmap image. Message in the Matrix Thus, just because a million or a billion different natural patterns may be streaming into SETI, it's possible 1 message might be by Design. Because it's possible. Life in the Matrix ;-) ________00000000000___________000000000000_________ ______00000000_____00000___000000_____0000000______ ____0000000_____________000______________00000_____ ___0000000_______________0_________________0000____ __000000____________________________________0000___ __00000_____________________________________ 0000__ _00000______________________________________00000__ _00000_____________________________________000000__ __000000_________________________________0000000___ ___0000000______________________________0000000____ _____000000____________________________000000______ _______000000________________________000000________ __________00000_____________________0000___________ _____________0000_________________0000_____________ _______________0000_____________000________________ _________________000_________000___________________ _________________ __000_____00_____________________ ______________________00__00_______________________ ________________________00_________________________ Aliens must be Beatles fans, all you need is Love.DATCG
July 21, 2017
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Seversky at 3, they'd probably communicate, as in Contact, by establishing some mathematical propositions and then work on a communications system using them.News
July 20, 2017
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Perhaps M Averick is unaware that Morse code encodes the basic Latin alphabet, Arabic numerals and some punctuation symbols. Even if distant aliens had independently invented Morse code, they would be unlikely to know any Earth languages and we certainly would have no knowledge of theirs. If they sent a message in their language, even if we suspected the dots and dashes were a signal from an alien intelligence, it would still be gibberish to us. In practice, it would still be possible that the dots and dashes were the product of some natural phenomenon. I might be a message bearing a cure for cancer but we would have now way of knowing so the SETI skeptic could be right.Seversky
July 19, 2017
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Putting myself in the scientists' position, if the message was indeed in the form of Morse Code, my initial hypothesis would be that it was created by a human on Earth, so I would check to make sure my antenna was pointed in the right direction. The notion that it was created by an alien life form would seem extremely unlikely, at least until I had eliminated some of the more mundane explanations. Assuming that the message was reasonably long and recognizable to me, I wouldn't seriously entertain any hypotheses which posited that it arose without the action of some intelligent being.daveS
July 19, 2017
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OOL debate is a joke: mucho gossiping and speculation. At least at this point it seems like tremendously puffed ‘bzdura’* or ‘yerunda’**. I another thread I commented that nybody can sweep and mop the floor with the archaic pseudoscientific hogwash that is said in those debates. But here I must make a correction, because the floor will get dirty if that garbage is used for mopping. Yes, this is a pathetic world. (*) Polish language (**) Russian languageDionisio
July 19, 2017
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