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simplicio comments on Something's Wrong - Less Wrong
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And that claim by you is based on ... what exactly? Experiments you have performed? Books you have read explaining the theory to your satisfaction with no obvious hand waving? Books like the ones we all have read describing Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection? Or maybe you have encountered a section in a library filled with technical material beyond your comprehension, but which you are pretty sure you could comprehend with enough effort? For me, something in this category would be stereo amplifiers - I've seen the books so I know there is nothing supernatural involved, though I can't explain it myself.
From what you write below, I'm guessing your background puts you at roughly this level regarding abiogenesis. Except, the difference is that there is no library section filled with technical material explaining how life originated from non-life. So, I think you are going on faith.
No there aren't. There is not a single plausible theory in existence right now claiming that life originates from amino acids arising from a Miller-Urey type of process. There are no chemically sound models for creating life from Miller-Urey building blocks.
There are some models which have life starting with RNA, and some which have life starting with lipids, or iron-sulfide minerals or even (pace Tim) starting with clay. But you didn't mention those more recent and plausible theories. Instead you went on faith.
No. Not at all. I don't have a clue as to what it would even mean to look for, let alone investigate a non-naturalistic hypothesis.
What I am saying is this: Suppose I have before me a theist who claims that a Deity must have been the cause of the Big Bang. "Something from nothing" and all that. Suppose further that my own version of atheism is so completely non-evangelical and my knowledge of cosmology so weak that I say to him, "Could be! I don't believe that a Deity was involved, but I don't have any evidence to rule it out."
So that is the supposition. Next, suppose he says "Furthermore, I think the Deity must have been involved in the origin of life, back 3+ billion years ago. From what I know of chemistry and biochemistry, that could not have been spontaneous." I would tell him that I too know quite a bit about chemistry and biochemistry, and that there are many, many clues indicating that life based on RNA probably existed before modern life based on DNA and amino acids and proteins. There is strong evidence that life in its current form came from something more primitive.
Now, suppose he says "Yes, I understand all that evidence. But you still have no theory to explain how life based on RNA might have started. All you have is handwaving. My belief, since I already believe in a Creator-Deity for the Big Bang, is that a Creator-Deity was also involved in the origin of the RNA World." If he said that, then I would answer, "Ok, you can believe that, but since I don't already believe in a Creator Deity, I would prefer to believe that the first living organism on earth arose by some unknown natural process. In fact, I have some ideas as to how it might have happened."
Yes, I said "prefer to believe" this time. I don't have a good explanation for life's origin, though I have spent a good deal of my spare time over the past 30 years looking for one.
I think what's happening here is that the theist's preexisting belief about a creator god is causing them to privilege the hypothesis of divine RNA-creation.
The trouble is, you seem to be privileging it too. The way you've set up the scenario makes it seem like there are two hypotheses: (1) goddidit, (2) some unknown natural process.
But (2) is actually a set of zillions of potential processes, many of which have a far better prior than Yahweh and the Thousand Claims of Scripture, even if we can't actually choose one for sure right now. Taken together, all their probability mass dwarfs that of the goddidit hypothesis.
You don't have to know all the answers to say "you're (almost certainly) wrong."
I don't see any reasons why (2) - unknown natural process - gets to benefit from being a "set of zillions of potential processes, many of which have a far better prior" and (1) - goddidit - does not.
If you want to sum the probability of a hypothesis by performing some weighted sum over the set of zillions of it's neighbors in hypothesis space, that's fine. But if that is your criteria, you need to apply it equally to the other set of hypothesises you are considering - instead of considering only one specific example.
Bostrom's simulation argument gives us one potential generator of 'goddidits', and a likely high prior for superintelligent aliens gives us another potential generator of 'goddidits'. Either of those generators could spawn zillions of potential processes which have far better priors than Yaweh, but could look similar.
None of this leads to any specific conclusion - I'm just pointing out an unfairness in your methodology.
You're quite right. When I said this, I was thinking of "goddidit" as a set of very specific claims from a single religious tradition, which I should've stated.
Mmm actually you did state it as a fairly specific claim. I'm just saying one can't fairly compare highly specific complex hypothesizes vs wide general sweeps through hypothesis-space. This is itself a good argument against the specific "yawheh did it", but not against the more general "goddidit" which you originally were referring to:
You're right - but there is another side to this coin. An atheist has a top-level belief (or it's negation) which sends down cascading priors and privileges naturalistic hypothesizes. So far this has worked splendidly well across the landscape.
But there is no guarantee this will work everywhere forever, and it's at least possible that eventually we may flip or find an exception for the top-level prior - for example we may eventually find that pretty much everything has a naturalistic explanation except the origin of life - which turns out to have been seeded by alien super-intelligence (ala Francis Crick) - for example.
I entirely agree. While I don't know of any good reasons to think the origin of life was not a happy accident, it is not inconceivable a priori (simulations, seeding etc.).
When I describe myself as an atheist (which I try not to do), I really mean that
(1) all the anthropomorphic creation myths are really laughable,
(2) there's not much positive evidence for less laughable creators, and
(3) even if you showed me evidence for a creator, I would be inclined toward what I will call meta-naturalism - i.e., still wanting to know how the hell the creator came to be.
Basically, I doubt the existence of gods that are totally ontologically distinct from creatures.
Bostrom's simulation argument does NOT give us a generator of "goddidits" regarding the origin of life and the universe, because implicit in the question "How did life originate?" is a desire to know the ultimate root (if there is one), and us being in a simulation just gives us some more living beings (the simulators "above") to ask our questions about. Where did life in the universe "one level above us" come from? Where did our simulator/parent universe originate?
There is nothing unfair in dismissing "A MIRACLE!" in comparison to the set of plausible naturalistic processes that could explain a given phenomenon. And to second SarahC, it's somewhat incoherent to talk about non-naturalistic processes in the first place. You need to be very clear as to what you're suggesting when you suggest "god did it". But, no one here is suggesting that, so I'll stop tangenting into arguing against theists that don't seem to be present.
Well, I certainly don't have to know all the answers in order to think that. But my brand of atheism tells me that I ought to have at least some of the answers before saying that.
Different strokes for different folks.