Best origin of life quotes from 2015?

From Ashish Dalela's Is the Apple Really Red?: 10 Essays on Science and Religion, Chapter 5: Impersonalism, Voidism and Science. http://www.ashishdalela.com/books/apple-really-red/ The book was published at the end of 2014, but it's close.

"The central difficulty in the philosophies of impersonalism and voidism is the inability to explain how the manifest world of forms is created from the formless. For instance, if the universe prior to creation is oneness, then how is that oneness divided into many parts? If the universe is emptiness prior to creation, then what converts that emptiness into objects? The scientific counterpart of these questions is: If space-time is the fundamental entity from which the universe springs, then what causes the random fluctuation in that space-time, which, in turn cause the manifest universe? Without such an explanation, the theory of nature is incomplete because it cannot explain the origin of form from the formless." In recent times, there have been attempts to solve this problem by postulating consciousness as a transcendent entity that creates the forms. For instance, some New Age thinkers claim that nature is a quantum probability wavefunction that consciousness collapses into definite states out of its choices. This consciousness, the spiritualist claims, is an impersonal cosmic consciousness, the field of choices in which the world of experience is created. But this idea of a cosmic impersonal consciousness is a misnomer because the idea of choice and the idea of oneness are incompatible; choices imply individuality, and if consciousness can choose, then it must be an individual. Choices without individuality cannot exist. The idea of cosmic conscious choices thus leads to inconsistency. However, without the notion of a transcendent consciousness, there is no explanation for the emergence of form from the formless. In that scenario, the scientific explanation of nature is incomplete. Science is already being stalked by problems of incompleteness and inconsistency which spirituality is supposed to solve. For, if science was already complete and consistent, then there would be no need for a spiritual alternative. By adopting impersonal and voidistic approaches, however, we again inherit problems of inconsistency and incompleteness, this time from the spiritual notions. It has become customary in science to attribute anything that the scientific theory cannot explain to randomness. Thus space-time can randomly produce particles, and these randomly created particles can randomly combine to form complex molecules, which can randomly combine to produce living beings. By injecting the idea of randomness into a logical-empirical explanation of nature, such theories violate the fundamental goal in science which is to provide predictable cause-effect relationships. Those who propose randomness as an explanation of currently unexplained facts believe that they are proposing a unique scientific idea, but a closer look reveals that they are proposing infinitely many unique ideas. Most impersonalist and voidist religious philosophies ride on this dogmatic approach to science. Just as matter can ‘emerge’ from the collapse of the wavefunction or changes to the geometry of the spacetime in physical theories, impersonalism and voidism suggest that forms are created from something formless. While claiming to provide a ‘synthesis’ of science and religion, in so far as the problem about the conversion of formless to form is concerned, we would not have moved an inch in neither religion nor science."

tarmaras

June 17, 2015

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OT: Dr. Giem has new video on ORFan genes: New Genes Are Essential 6-13-2015 by Paul Giem - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qgGPV1AO1E It has been noted that ORFan genes (genes that are not related to genes in other organisms) are common. Research on fruit flies shows that a substantial portion of those genes are essential for development, raising the question of how so many of those genes can evolve so rapidly.bornagain77

June 15, 2015

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The existence of linear and digital sequences in life is a fact, an experimental fact, and all biologists acknowledge it. It is equally a fact that linear and digital sequences that direct the synthesis of molecules do not exist in the inanimate world, so it is beyond dispute that a divide does exist between life and matter. It is the divide between the analogue world of chemistry and the digital world of life, and it is not a fiction. The problem is the origin of that divide, not it's existence. - Marcello Barbieri, Code Biology: A New Science of Life, p 12. http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319145341 c.f. http://www.codebiology.org/Mung

June 14, 2015

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Of interest: The Digital Code of DNA and the Unimagined Complexity of a 'Simple' Bacteria - Rabbi Moshe Averick - video https://vimeo.com/35730736bornagain77

June 14, 2015

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Hi News, Is he asking specifically for quotations regarding the origin of life?Mung

June 14, 2015

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