Can you prove to me that abiogenesis is the only cause of life?

Question

I am writing this new question after realizing that I did not use correct terminology the last time I tried to ask this question.

Again, Aristotle says in his Posterior Analytics, a treatise on logic and knowing, that "we say we know something truly, and not in the manner of the sophist, when we know the cause, that it is the cause, and that it can not be any other way." My hesitation in accepting abiogenesis stems from the fact that I don't see how life can come from things that aren't alive themselves. What was said in the answers to the previous question I asked was that the right mixture of proteins and a lightning bolt could produce amino acids. This still leaves the problem of the amino acids forming into strands of DNA and becoming an organized, living body.

Meeting the three conditions laid down by Aristotle for knowing, explain to me how life can come from things that aren't alive.

I hope the terminology meets with general approval.

lithiumdeuteride: I'm not doubting that man is composed of these parts, I'm doubting the chance organization of the parts themselves billions of years ago into life forms. You're talking about decomposition, I'm talking about construction and coming-to-be.

I thought the whole point of science was to prove things. To test the validity of a theory, don't scientists try to come up with a scenario where their hypothesis would not hold up? Isn't that the whole purpose of the scientific method, to show that something is the cause of something else, and that it can not be otherwise? It is true that we move from effect to cause in our knowing, but the purpose of doing so is to find the causes of certain effects. You can't claim that something is true because this effect fits this cause. Science demands that you rule out all other potential causes for the effect in question before you say that you know its cause. That's my point, that's Aristotle's point, and I still don't see why you dismiss Aristotle's criteria simply because they're difficult to meet or because he died 2500 years ago.

Answer 1

>"I thought the whole point of science was to prove things."

No. On that point you are quite mistaken.

Science does not "prove" things.

Science *explains* things.

The goal of science is to produce the best explanation based on the current evidence. The reason supernatural agents are excluded from scientific explanations is just because they make *lousy* explanations. The supernatural agent is more mysterious and complex than the thing it purports to "explain."

>"Science demands that you rule out all other potential causes for the effect in question before you say that you know its cause."

Not quite true. If science is faced with two possible causes for an effect, it tries to find some experiment or observation that rules one out but not the other. If this is not possible, then Occam's Razor comes into play ... the explanation with the fewest assumptions is considered the best explanation. Supernatural agents *BY DEFINITION* are impossible to rule out ... but that strength is also the weakness of supernatural causal explanations in science because *BY DEFINITION* they always lose out in an Occam's Razor comparison with any explanation that involves only natural phenomena.

For example, what causes the sun to rise and set? The scientific reason is that we live on a rotating globe. An alternative cause might be that God moves the sun through the sky ... and there is no way to "rule out" that alternative. Nor the alternative that Apollo carries the sun across the sky in a horse-drawn chariot. Nor the alternative that Tsohanoai the Navajo Sun God carries the sun on his back. (This is the precise point of the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, may the pasta bless them.) As none of these, or dozens of other alternative causes can be ruled out, the *only* thing that makes us choose the "rotating globe" explanation is just that it is the simplest ... it requires no additional assumptions. We cannot prove that it "cannot be any other way" ... but we go with the simplest explanation we can find.

So in science, Occam's Razor trumps Aristotle.

Now to your main question:

>"explain to me how life can come from things that aren't alive."

This question, as worded, assumes there is some fundamental boundary between between things that "alive" and those that are not "alive". Yet, the closer we look at the molecular level, the more elusive that boundary becomes. "Life" seems to be simply a degree of self-replicating complexity. So it is a valid question to wonder how that self-replicating complexity can arise ... but not if you assume that life and non-life are two fundamentally different forms of matter.

As correctly noted by people in your other post, and as correctly addressed in your revised question here ... the question of abiogenesis is limited to the emergence of the essential ingredients of natural selection. Once natural selection is operating, we leave the less well-understood question of abiogenesis and move into the *far* better understood arena of evolution ... natural selection explains everything from first replicating molecule to the modern world of sponges, orchids, and humans.

So with all that said, I fully admit that I cannot "prove" that abiogenesis is the "only" cause of life (as opposed to a supernatural agent), other than to say that biochemists are hot on the question of how this *might* have happened ... and when a leading theory emerges (there are currently several ... mostly very good ones), then the next step will be to search for evidence that it not only *might* have happened that way, but actually *did* happen.

But even then, no scientist will ever say it is "proved" ... any more than a scientist says that atoms and molecules are "proved." It's all about explanations of evidence. No more.

Answer 2

By your language you are either poorly educated (we'll get back to this) and/ or ignorant - I can't decide if these should be exclusive of each other in your case. If you make a claim, you have the onus to provide the evidence backing the validity of your claim. Unfortunately for you, you can't because no such science has been done to show abogenesis is impossible. In fact, the universe is so large and has been around so long that anything that has a probability of occurring that is greater than zero, will occur at some point in space-time. We are a happy circumstance of these circumstances. As for leap in logic, really are your thoughts that immature? There is evidence - microwave background, measured recession of galaxies, to support the mathematical model of the universe formation called the big bang. Your model is a fairly tale about a magic man in the sky making everything appear in less than 144 hours. Do you really think the observational evidence supports that tale? Grow up, your probably a 14 year old with a lot of arrogance and a matching amount of ignorance.

Answer 3

I still say you need to educate yourself and stop the " appeal to authority " argument from Aristotle. Look at what you have written. Amino acids do not form DNA, but form proteins. DNA is formed from deoxyribonucleic acid. I do not have to meet conditions laid down by a philosopher that died 2500 years ago.Scientists do not prove things, but are convinced by the evidence, Abiogenisis is a hypothesis for just this reason, but the probability of some like process engendering life is by many orders of magnitude greater than the alternatives. We are not creationists, here, so do not claim access to all truth, but by the effects seen and processes done, we know we are the result of physio-chemical processes. Any other agency, being a remarkable claim to truth, would need remarkable evidence. I have given you a web site; use it.

Chance organization? You are truly ignorant of the " blind watchmaker ", natural selection. You are thinking top down design, not a simple algorithm construction complexity from simplicity. We know this happens, however you define your terms. Google polyploidy and the fossil evidence, radiometric evidence and comparative morphology. Somehow, I think you will not, as you have some preconceptions to overcome first.

That is why you construct competing hypothesis to ever approximate the truth. Again; science does not prove things, because things may need some adjustment in the future, Newton to Einstein is one example of this. Newtonian mechanics are still used at the speeds we travel, while Einstienian mechanics for light speed. The latter was a better approxamation than the former, but we did not through out the former. No Kuhnian paradigm shift, usually. Only Darwin paradigm shifted when he completed the Coperican revolution in science. My bed time is near, so I suggest you get to googling.

Further more Aristotle's concepts and criteria set back scientific progress for a thousand years. And again you " argue from authority ".

Answer 4

Author Arthur Clarke once observed that a technology that is far enough advanced will appear to be magic to those who have never seen it before ... I’m sure you can easily think of examples.
A corollary to this which might apply to this question could be that just because something seems magic or impossible to you doesn’t mean that it is magic or impossible.

I mean, a car is almost magic to me: I put in my key and in a few minutes I am roaring down the freeway at speeds no human could ever achieve with their muscles. And so, for me, Aristotle’s 3 conditions don’t apply to cars:
1. I don’t know how cars are engineered, manufactured, or run. (‘cause’)
2. If you showed me detailed plans for a car, I wouldn’t be capable of telling whether the plans were a clever forgery or the real things. (‘is it a cause?’)
3. If you told me that the plan was the one and only way to ever build a GTO, again I would have no way of knowing whether what you said was the truth. (‘it is the only cause’)

And yet, there are cars all around me; just because *I* don’t understand a car does not mean that cars don’t exist or that I can’t know that cars exist. Not only that, but there are people around who do know enough to adequately judge the three Aristotelian conditions for cars and who will know that cars are not some form of magic. John De Lorean, for example, certainly would have been able to judge these points for GTOs.

And so it goes for you with abiogenesis:
1. You clearly don’t even have a high school understanding of biology: DNA *is not* made from amino acids, and amino acids *are not* made from proteins. These are things I certainly learned at age 14 in my regular HS Bio class. (‘cause’)
2. Given that you seem to know almost no chemistry or biology, you cannot adequately judge whether the descriptions being offered to you are realistic. (‘is it a cause?’)
3. Again, since you clearly lack the educational background to judge the theories about abiogenesis, how can you possibly judge which is best? (‘it is the only cause’)
Also, since science has not specified a single reasonable and strongly supported hypothesis about abiogenesis yet, it is not humanly possible to make this distinction.

Still, as with me and cars, you should realize that just because *you* don’t understand abiogenesis, that doesn’t mean that it is impossible. And you should acknowledge that there are people who think very hard about this and work their whole lives to understand it, and *they* don’t think it is magic or impossible. In fact, some of these people seem to be answering your questions.

Also, perhaps you think I am being snide in suggesting that you lack the biological training to form educated opinions about these issues. Perhaps you think that your errors are semantic and of little consequence to your argument in toto? But imagine that you and I were talking about the Bible, and to your shock I said “Mohammed wrote one of the Gospels.” And then I insisted, “Yes he did, Mohammed, Mahatma, Lazarus, and Josephus were the authors!” I am sure that from your point of view, my mistaken understanding of the New Testament would be so egregious that it would invalidate any further opinion I might have on the subject, no?
And that’s how it is for scientists when you mistakenly contend that ‘amino acids [form] into strands of DNA’. And still, two of the answers above are exceptionally patient with you in the face of this.

Incidentally, from the way you phrase your question, it seems obvious that you already have decided what it is that you will believe about abiogenesis. I suspect that Aristotle would be disappointed by this. And I think Aristotle would be even more disappointed in you if he had the chance to read and understand the three excellent answers you have gotten above.

Lastly, I would note that abiogenesis is not in dispute: either God did it, or molecules on the early earth did it. Since life exists, you don’t actually have an option to disbelieve in the animation of the inanimate, you simply have the option of choosing the mechanism that appeals to you.

You had hopes that someone would convince you of abiogenesis based on Aristotle’s philosophical approach, and instead I am arguing that you are not in a position to accept the knowledge were it truthfully offered. Oh well, sorry about that!

Good luck.

Answer 5

It is an absolute fact that if you slice a human into small and smaller pieces, eventually you will end up with a single organic molecule, say an amino acid. If you slice this in half a few more times, you might be left with a single oxygen atom.

Is the oxygen atom alive? Most people would say no.

But consider that the atom is not special. Every single piece of matter that makes up the human body is one of those atoms. None of them are alive by themselves. All life is made up of non-living parts.

What, then, makes it alive? Essentially, the only thing is its complexity. Life is not special. It's just matter with a complex structure.