Is There Any Reason to Believe the Biblical Story of Creation?

Yeah, no **** . . . and after years and years, i'm sick of you insisting on your erroneous claims.

This said, other similar experiments have synthetised sugars that RNA is made of (among other things). But no experiment (to my knowledge) has ever produced RNA abiotically, nor shown how RNA could replicate itself without the assistance of fairly complex proteins, which have a snowball chance in hell of ever appearing by chance. If you know of one, pray tell.

neologist wrote:

Did you find anything in my post that is scientifically invalid?

Brandon9000 wrote:

No, but you're summarizing Genesis, not providing evidence that it's true, which is what the thread title asks.

Do you define truth as epistemological certainty? Certainly, I believe what I posted was not false and provides a basis for the rest of the account. I claimed the first 2 chapters explained how we came to be and why we are here. I see no inaccuracy in the essential order of creation as provided in chapter 1. And I see no hardship in the commands to fill and subdue the earth while avoiding a certain fruit. As for filling the earth to overpopulation, consider what occurs when you ask the waiter to fill your water glass.

Ch 1: 1,2: The creation of the heavens and the earth takes place in an unspecified period of time. Could have been a kazillion years. Who cares? Humans can figure that out later. This time, however, is not included as one of the creative days.

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I find it plausible that something like this would have occurred with sufficient time.

How it happened remains a mystery. You may have your own little theory, and others have another little theory which they call God... Nobody can tell for sure. There's also the idea of extra-terrestrial life landing on earth billions of years ago, which of course only pushes the mystery further back in time, but it's quite telling that scientists are considering this scenario: it tells how baffled they are by how life could possibly have appeared ex nihilo on our planet...

It is IMO important to recognize how little we actually know about some questions, and the emergence of life is one of them. Accepting that our knowledge has limits is a prerequisite to expand our knowledge. Hubris only leads to more ignorance.

In any case, you asked a question and I responded to the best of my ability: big questions remain about our origins, and the origin of the universe; these have not yet been satisfactorily answered by science; some people want easy answers and they go for the deity.

Other people who want easy answers find that a soup can plausibly create something as complex as life, given a few hundreds of millions of years... To each his own.

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The theory is that it was "some molecule."

That's "some theory" you got there... very precise and evidence-based.

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I doubt that computers such as we make them have this capability.

If you are right, and since computers as we build them have computation power, it follows that computation power is not sufficient to create consciousness... So you contradicted yourself....

But that's only because your English is piss-poor.

That "among other things" includes amino acids.

I suggest to you that you do a little research on RNA viruses, which among many other wonderful things, cause ebola and influenza. These viruses use RNA, and only RNA, to replicate their genomes. 

You first stated that consciousness emerged from large enough computing power. Now you're saying something different, ie that one needs the right brain structure to create consciousness. I tend to agree with your latter statement.

Why did you say up-thread that "I imagine that someone will eventually prove it by demonstration, which is something I do not look forward to."? I am asking this because I suspect the answer has a lot in common with religious inclinations. We don't like to think of ourselves as random machines...

I never said anything about a witness. I spoke of evidence, which is very different. We have plenty fossil and biochemical evidence for evolution, which is why it is considered a well-established scientific theory. Idle musing about SOME random molecule replicating itself is not science, not until it can be tested in a lab or against fossil, biochemical or other evidence.

In short, huge mysteries remain about our origin. Eg the random emergence of life seems utterly improbable, which I believe is one reason for folks - including many scientists - to consider the possibility of some supernatural explanations... That's all I wanted to say. And I honestly don't care too much if you happen to agree with my opinion or not about the status of our scientific knowledge. As I said many times, those mysteries will only be convincingly solved once we can create life or consciousness in a lab, as any scientist would agree. And unlike you, I look forward to that.

So let's leave it at that, unless you can address that psychological reason for mystical thinking, rather than invent or quote untested, idle speculations for life or consciousness... Without evidence, there are little more than your own magical thinking. You are, just like believers, in search for a cheap explanation for these mysteries.

My point is that one can think of plausible explanations that are not magical. Your apparent need to think of the thing as very mysterious strikes me as religion.

I meant large enough computing power structured properly.

That is not my reason, since I absolutely do think of us that way. I do not looking forward to it because once we can make conscious thinking machines, there will subsequently be a danger of the "Terminator" scenario - the inversion of the master/slave relationship between humanity and machines.