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Science does not and will not be able to explain the origin of life. The statement still holds. It's very arrogant of us to assume otherwise.

behringer 6y ago
Why wouldn't it. If it has an answer science can find it.
- gher-shyu3i 6y ago
  Because it's beyond the realm of space and time. We can't go back before t=0 when the universe was created.
  - behringer 6y ago
    Until we know the nature of the universe, that may not be correct.
    - __s 6y ago
      It may not be correct, but it may be correct Your statement "If it has an answer" only holds if you say that any truth science can't prove doesn't exist But this isn't true. See Halting problem etc. There are things for which the answer can exist & yet be undeterminable This is fine. I prefer to look at it this way: science is searching out a subset of knowable truths. The origin of the universe is interesting only insofar as we can dredge up relevant information, but coming up with an origin story or not isn't what proves the validity of science Science isn't about getting all the answers, it's about getting the answers right & at it's best admitting when we got the answers wrong When someone asks "If God doesn't exist what created the universe?" I say "I don't know, I don't care"
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    Life is believed to have emerged at ~t=9 billion why couldn't we formulate a theory of how it emerged?
    - mensetmanusman 6y ago
      Life connects back to time zero because everything prior was an important boundary condition, e.g. heavy metals made through exploding stars supporting elemental composition of life, etc.
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        You don't have to understand everything to understand anything. Scientific theories are always abstractions that reduce the complex interconnected universe to a workable surface area we are trying to explore in order to produce a model that can be used to make predictions about the larger world that in turn can be tested, refined, or shit canned as appropriate. You can say we can't possibly understand how the heart works because we do not understand the entire evolutionary tree leading up to the human race and how the circulatory system evolved over billions of years and ergo heart transplants are impossible. This is trivially false and its false for the same reason parent posters assertion is false. Everything is how it is because of initial conditions ergo everything connects back to time zero but we can still use the abstract understanding we do have to make models and predictions.
      - benlivengood 6y ago
        > Life connects back to time zero because everything prior was an important boundary condition, e.g. heavy metals made through exploding stars supporting elemental composition of life, etc. The initial conditions were so uniform that it doesn't take the same level of detail to understand what happened, and we can look all the way back to the CMBR. A particle-by-particle reconstruction of interactions since the big bang won't make much of a difference in our understanding of what happened on Earth. Virtually all of the interactions arrived in our solar system in a very noisy fashion during star formation and it was up to the resulting sun to pump negentropy into the rocks and other matter.
- nanis 6y ago
  > science can find it. There is no thing called "science" that finds answers. There are scientists who can form hypotheses about the universe they can see and perceive and check whether they are consistent with what they can see and perceive. We are mostly ants on a balloon: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-fact-that-the-un/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-fact-tha... We do not know where the balloon came from.
  - behringer 6y ago
    science is our method of finding answers. When we say science can find it, we mean scientists using the scientific method.
    - gher-shyu3i 6y ago
      Science is a method of finding answers, it's not the only one.
  - Retric 6y ago
    > There is no thing called "science" that finds answers. That’s equivalent to suggesting people can’t do chess. Semantically it may be accurate, but it’s intentionally obtuse. Language doesn’t actually work that way. Anyway, science isn’t experiments and building hypothesis etc. That’s part of the process, but really quite small pieces of a greater whole. It’s the long processes of generations refining and testing earlier ideas that finds truth.
    - nanis 6y ago
      I am not sure I understand the statement about chess. It is important to understand that scientists are individuals with individual incentives. While some have an inherent drive towards getting closer to truths via the application of the scientific method, others may find other things more important. Abstracting "the science" from scientists is a convenient way of training other people in the acceptance of the proposition that there are inherently qualified arbiters of truth.
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  He means to say that science does not have the tools to reproduce the beginning of the Universe. If it's not reproducible it's not Science. Confident assertions non-withstanding, the Human mind is a slave to nature, in that can never hope to uncover it's deepest secrets and thus, it's true.....nature?
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    By that definition science is entirely unreal because we can't reproduce an apple pie from scratch without first creating the universe. We explore geology including theories about the formation of the earth without making new planets. What is supposed to be reproducible is the act of collecting and processing data to ensure that your conclusion isn't based on error, falsehood, or happenstance. What he is promoting is a basic misunderstanding of both science and logic. People with preconceived anti science attitudes do this all the time. They face you down at high noon in their fancy duds, six guns ready at their hips sure of themselves and ready to kill and draw pearl handled.... water pistols. They went looking for the correct answer to satisfy their religion not a commitment to truth and found cheaply manufactured baubles they are sure are deadly weapons because the very skills that would enable them to see it clearly would prevent them from looking for such easy answers in the first place.
    - mensetmanusman 6y ago
      This article by an MIT prof might be interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/03/miracles-and-multiverses/618349/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/03/miracles... tl;dr At some depth, you ask questions beyond the scientific method itself.
    - marshmallow_12 6y ago
      let me rephrase; science has limited itself to understanding the laws of Nature. It can never tell us how the world -and thus life- came to be. I admit your argument was a good one. But not the anti religious points. Essentially atheists has declared Nature as the true god. In the rules he has imposed, he has left us with no choice. Science has hardly managed to do away with god, it has merely managed to exchange him as it were. I will also argue that atheism is a religion. There is nothing more exciting than being able to throw off the rules of one god by replacing him with another who asks for nothing.
tremon 6y ago
That depends on whether your question to the origin of life begins with "How" or "Why".
techrat 6y ago
Is the theory of gravity still something to be considered only a theory?
- hanche 6y ago
  A theory, yes. Those who say “only a theory” tend to confuse theory with hypothesis, which is much looser. A theory is a coherent set of principles serving to explain a range of phenomena. Emphasis on coherent, meaning not only internally consistent, but also consistent with related knowledge. The road from hypothesis to theory can be long and tortuous.
  - techrat 6y ago
    My question was meant to be rhetorical in response to the OP. We have many things labelled to be a theory that are complete enough to be acceptable answers while still being considered relatively incoherent or insufficient to science.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Presumably so especially since both Newton's and Enstein's understanding of gravity is obviously incomplete.
michaelmrose 6y ago
I suggest you defend that position instead of stating it so boldly and asking us to accept your reasoning.
- gher-shyu3i 6y ago
  I mentioned in another comment just one counter example: we cannot go back to before t=0 when the universe was created. There is knowledge beyond the realm of space and time which we have no access to.
  - zuminator 6y ago
    If the universe "began" at t=0, and life began at, let's call it t=100, then all we need is access to t=99, not all the way back to the beginning. I'm not saying that's actually achievable, I'm just saying your argument is not persuasive.
    - gher-shyu3i 6y ago
      I gave it as an example to close the debate fully, because I'm aware of this line of arguing. The point remains, (1) life will not be possible without the universe, (2) the universe exists, and (3) we do not have access to the knowledge about how the universe was created, nor before it was created.
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        Lets go to Wile E. Coyote for this one. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e2/f0/16/e2f0165777598a13c2467a3606ea6ebf.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e2/f0/16/e2f0165777598a13c246... Anvils would not be possible without the universe ergo we cannot possible predict solely on our knowledge of Warner Brothers physics and prior plot lines that the anvil trap he is laying will fall on his own head comically flattening him yet somehow leaving him alive and ready to chase the road runner again in the next sketch. Our models don't capture every aspect of the world but good models capture enough to make increasingly good predictions about the past and future and the more we test them and winnow out the bad we approach but can never achieve perfection. The origin of life isn't inherently any different than the evolution of the continents, the planets, or the tree of life over the eons. No fundamental barrier stands in the way of our understanding. You didn't "close the debate fully". Nobody who didn't start out agreeing with you now does and its because they understand things you do not.
Shorel 6y ago
Neither will religion. It is very arrogant of any ideology to pretend it can explain things it can't.
- gher-shyu3i 6y ago
  Depends on which religion. It's a fallacy to group all religions under a single umbrella called "religion", no such thing exists.
  - Shorel 6y ago
    You can create a list of religions that don't try to explain things with superstitions, and then we can discuss them one by one.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - gher-shyu3i 6y ago
      Superstition: "A belief, practice, or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature or by faith in magic or chance." Islam passes with flying colors because it isn't superstitious.
elif 6y ago
Of course science informs us about the origin of life. Science is a matter of theorization and subsequent development of confidence through testing theorization. It is arrogant and manipulative to view science as black and white and then call everything white due to a lack of 100.000% confidence.
- gher-shyu3i 6y ago
  It's simply a matter of science being limited to observations in the natural world. We will not be able to go back to before t=0 when the universe was created. Such knowledge is beyond the real of space and time, and we do not have access to it.

behringer 6y ago

Why wouldn't it. If it has an answer science can find it.

gher-shyu3i 6y ago
Because it's beyond the realm of space and time. We can't go back before t=0 when the universe was created.
- behringer 6y ago
  Until we know the nature of the universe, that may not be correct.
  - __s 6y ago
    It may not be correct, but it may be correct Your statement "If it has an answer" only holds if you say that any truth science can't prove doesn't exist But this isn't true. See Halting problem etc. There are things for which the answer can exist & yet be undeterminable This is fine. I prefer to look at it this way: science is searching out a subset of knowable truths. The origin of the universe is interesting only insofar as we can dredge up relevant information, but coming up with an origin story or not isn't what proves the validity of science Science isn't about getting all the answers, it's about getting the answers right & at it's best admitting when we got the answers wrong When someone asks "If God doesn't exist what created the universe?" I say "I don't know, I don't care"
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Life is believed to have emerged at ~t=9 billion why couldn't we formulate a theory of how it emerged?
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    Life connects back to time zero because everything prior was an important boundary condition, e.g. heavy metals made through exploding stars supporting elemental composition of life, etc.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      You don't have to understand everything to understand anything. Scientific theories are always abstractions that reduce the complex interconnected universe to a workable surface area we are trying to explore in order to produce a model that can be used to make predictions about the larger world that in turn can be tested, refined, or shit canned as appropriate. You can say we can't possibly understand how the heart works because we do not understand the entire evolutionary tree leading up to the human race and how the circulatory system evolved over billions of years and ergo heart transplants are impossible. This is trivially false and its false for the same reason parent posters assertion is false. Everything is how it is because of initial conditions ergo everything connects back to time zero but we can still use the abstract understanding we do have to make models and predictions.
    - benlivengood 6y ago
      > Life connects back to time zero because everything prior was an important boundary condition, e.g. heavy metals made through exploding stars supporting elemental composition of life, etc. The initial conditions were so uniform that it doesn't take the same level of detail to understand what happened, and we can look all the way back to the CMBR. A particle-by-particle reconstruction of interactions since the big bang won't make much of a difference in our understanding of what happened on Earth. Virtually all of the interactions arrived in our solar system in a very noisy fashion during star formation and it was up to the resulting sun to pump negentropy into the rocks and other matter.
nanis 6y ago
> science can find it. There is no thing called "science" that finds answers. There are scientists who can form hypotheses about the universe they can see and perceive and check whether they are consistent with what they can see and perceive. We are mostly ants on a balloon: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-fact-that-the-un/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-fact-tha... We do not know where the balloon came from.
- behringer 6y ago
  science is our method of finding answers. When we say science can find it, we mean scientists using the scientific method.
  - gher-shyu3i 6y ago
    Science is a method of finding answers, it's not the only one.
- Retric 6y ago
  > There is no thing called "science" that finds answers. That’s equivalent to suggesting people can’t do chess. Semantically it may be accurate, but it’s intentionally obtuse. Language doesn’t actually work that way. Anyway, science isn’t experiments and building hypothesis etc. That’s part of the process, but really quite small pieces of a greater whole. It’s the long processes of generations refining and testing earlier ideas that finds truth.
  - nanis 6y ago
    I am not sure I understand the statement about chess. It is important to understand that scientists are individuals with individual incentives. While some have an inherent drive towards getting closer to truths via the application of the scientific method, others may find other things more important. Abstracting "the science" from scientists is a convenient way of training other people in the acceptance of the proposition that there are inherently qualified arbiters of truth.
marshmallow_12 6y ago
He means to say that science does not have the tools to reproduce the beginning of the Universe. If it's not reproducible it's not Science. Confident assertions non-withstanding, the Human mind is a slave to nature, in that can never hope to uncover it's deepest secrets and thus, it's true.....nature?
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  By that definition science is entirely unreal because we can't reproduce an apple pie from scratch without first creating the universe. We explore geology including theories about the formation of the earth without making new planets. What is supposed to be reproducible is the act of collecting and processing data to ensure that your conclusion isn't based on error, falsehood, or happenstance. What he is promoting is a basic misunderstanding of both science and logic. People with preconceived anti science attitudes do this all the time. They face you down at high noon in their fancy duds, six guns ready at their hips sure of themselves and ready to kill and draw pearl handled.... water pistols. They went looking for the correct answer to satisfy their religion not a commitment to truth and found cheaply manufactured baubles they are sure are deadly weapons because the very skills that would enable them to see it clearly would prevent them from looking for such easy answers in the first place.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    This article by an MIT prof might be interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/03/miracles-and-multiverses/618349/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/03/miracles... tl;dr At some depth, you ask questions beyond the scientific method itself.
  - marshmallow_12 6y ago
    let me rephrase; science has limited itself to understanding the laws of Nature. It can never tell us how the world -and thus life- came to be. I admit your argument was a good one. But not the anti religious points. Essentially atheists has declared Nature as the true god. In the rules he has imposed, he has left us with no choice. Science has hardly managed to do away with god, it has merely managed to exchange him as it were. I will also argue that atheism is a religion. There is nothing more exciting than being able to throw off the rules of one god by replacing him with another who asks for nothing.

tremon 6y ago

That depends on whether your question to the origin of life begins with "How" or "Why".

techrat 6y ago

Is the theory of gravity still something to be considered only a theory?

hanche 6y ago
A theory, yes. Those who say “only a theory” tend to confuse theory with hypothesis, which is much looser. A theory is a coherent set of principles serving to explain a range of phenomena. Emphasis on coherent, meaning not only internally consistent, but also consistent with related knowledge. The road from hypothesis to theory can be long and tortuous.
- techrat 6y ago
  My question was meant to be rhetorical in response to the OP. We have many things labelled to be a theory that are complete enough to be acceptable answers while still being considered relatively incoherent or insufficient to science.
michaelmrose 6y ago
Presumably so especially since both Newton's and Enstein's understanding of gravity is obviously incomplete.

michaelmrose 6y ago

I suggest you defend that position instead of stating it so boldly and asking us to accept your reasoning.

gher-shyu3i 6y ago
I mentioned in another comment just one counter example: we cannot go back to before t=0 when the universe was created. There is knowledge beyond the realm of space and time which we have no access to.
- zuminator 6y ago
  If the universe "began" at t=0, and life began at, let's call it t=100, then all we need is access to t=99, not all the way back to the beginning. I'm not saying that's actually achievable, I'm just saying your argument is not persuasive.
  - gher-shyu3i 6y ago
    I gave it as an example to close the debate fully, because I'm aware of this line of arguing. The point remains, (1) life will not be possible without the universe, (2) the universe exists, and (3) we do not have access to the knowledge about how the universe was created, nor before it was created.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      Lets go to Wile E. Coyote for this one. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e2/f0/16/e2f0165777598a13c2467a3606ea6ebf.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e2/f0/16/e2f0165777598a13c246... Anvils would not be possible without the universe ergo we cannot possible predict solely on our knowledge of Warner Brothers physics and prior plot lines that the anvil trap he is laying will fall on his own head comically flattening him yet somehow leaving him alive and ready to chase the road runner again in the next sketch. Our models don't capture every aspect of the world but good models capture enough to make increasingly good predictions about the past and future and the more we test them and winnow out the bad we approach but can never achieve perfection. The origin of life isn't inherently any different than the evolution of the continents, the planets, or the tree of life over the eons. No fundamental barrier stands in the way of our understanding. You didn't "close the debate fully". Nobody who didn't start out agreeing with you now does and its because they understand things you do not.

Shorel 6y ago

Neither will religion. It is very arrogant of any ideology to pretend it can explain things it can't.

gher-shyu3i 6y ago
Depends on which religion. It's a fallacy to group all religions under a single umbrella called "religion", no such thing exists.
- Shorel 6y ago
  You can create a list of religions that don't try to explain things with superstitions, and then we can discuss them one by one.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - gher-shyu3i 6y ago
    Superstition: "A belief, practice, or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature or by faith in magic or chance." Islam passes with flying colors because it isn't superstitious.

elif 6y ago

Of course science informs us about the origin of life. Science is a matter of theorization and subsequent development of confidence through testing theorization. It is arrogant and manipulative to view science as black and white and then call everything white due to a lack of 100.000% confidence.

gher-shyu3i 6y ago
It's simply a matter of science being limited to observations in the natural world. We will not be able to go back to before t=0 when the universe was created. Such knowledge is beyond the real of space and time, and we do not have access to it.