DNA, Where did the code come from?

@anthony1312002,

Quote:

I'm convinced that more than just these 3 notable persons in science are rethinking their views regarding the existence of a Creator.

There are tens of thousands of scientists. Undoubtedly some small percentage of them will come to believe in a creator during their careers. I am sure this number will be significantly higher than 3.

There are also scientists who are going the other way. I am an example of this. When I was younger I was a very faithful evangelical Christian. As I learned more about science while getting my Physics degree, I became an atheist. My increasing knowledge of science wasn't the only part of my process of becoming an atheist, but it certainly was part of the fact that the more I thought and learned the less that my belief in God made sense.

I don't think that science proves that there is no god. But it sure as Hell (irony fully intended) doesn't prove that there is one. It is a fact is that far fewer people with a science education believe in any god than the general population.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

I'm not a scientist, and didn't study physics or any of the sciences. All my siblings are christians, but I couldn't believe in the god the church was preaching because I saw too many contradictions in it. They teach "a loving god," and a "god that turns a woman into a pile of salt." There are many examples like this one that only seems not logical. I just can't overlook all the contradictions in the bible, and look upon it as a book written by many authors with good imagination and with a goal to control people. They've succeeded very well during the past two thousand years.
I can't believe that there are so many miracles in the bible to teach about the existence of god, but the populations of the world after that time no longer have them. Why stop the miracles if he wants to prove his existence and to save humanity?
You're on your own, kiddo.

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@cicerone imposter,

I know people in the sciences who believe in a god, but not in the Christian God. There are many different beliefs other than Christianity.

There are many ways that the Bible contradicts our modern understanding of science and of history. But for people who believe in a god but don't believe the Bible is literally true, these contradictions are irrelevant.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

Rules don't have to be established. They can just be random. The Universe has to operate somehow and there are rules that just are.

Things just happen randomly because they happen, and they start processes that lead to some result. The end result doesn't say anything special about which random things happened to happen.

Thank you Max.

That is the clearest and most honest expression of how most explain the origin of life I've ever seen. You could shorten it to a bumper sticker length phrase though:

**** Happens!

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@rosborne979,

Quote:

Magic is not an answer to anything.

God doesn't need to be magic; smarter than YOU will suffice, and that isn't really asking for much...

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@anthony1312002,

I note you quote Taiwanese scientists in your 'conversion thesis'. Taiwanese evangelism is an interesting demographic phenomenon which probably has more to do with the embracing of 'Westernism' in general than deism per se. Interestingly, renowned Western scientists subscribing to Christianity such as Polkinghorne see no relationship between scientific progress and belief, and cite 'the existence of morality' for their religious basis. Presumably scientists like him see through the naivity of ascribing the mechanics of natural evolution ('red in tooth and claw') to the intentions of a 'caring creator'.

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

I note you quote Taiwanese scientists in your 'conversion thesis'. Taiwanese evangelism is an interesting demographic phenomenon which probably has more to do with the embracing of 'Westernism' in general than deism per se. ...

Same here in S. Korea.

@anthony1312002,

Quote:

I'm convinced that more than just these 3 notable persons in science are rethinking their views regarding the existence of a Creator.

Unless you present evidence for the existence of this creator, then your statement is nothing more than a Bandwagon Appeal, argumentum ad populum. If you want to give your claim some teeth, show us the evidence that they (or you) have for the existence of this being.

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@FBM,

It's interesting that even people with above average intelligence believe in a creator without the evidence.
I think god(s) are a human necessity.

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@cicerone imposter,

Mmm. I'm not sure they're a necessity. Maybe just a deeply ingrained tradition. Half of all Koreans don't identify with any religious beliefs. The other half is split between Buddhists and xtians, with a few fractions going elsewhere.

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@FBM,

I arrived at that conclusion from the fact that almost all cultures had/have their god(s).

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@cicerone imposter,

Koreans have had plenty of deities throughout its history. Sanshin (an immortal mountain deity) was borrowed from Daoism and adopted by Buddhists. Still has a place in most Buddhist temples. But religion(s) in general took a back seat to industrial development a few decades ago, and now the dominant religion is $$$$.

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@FBM,

I think that's a dominant human religion. $$$$$$$$

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@cicerone imposter,

A-yep. And when xtianity and $$$ get together, it's a perfect storm of horse doodoo.

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@FBM,

I enjoyed the way you stated that.
BTW, Wall Street has nothing on religion. All the $$$$$ they get is tax free!

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@cicerone imposter,

True that. Incidentally, Korea just passed a law that religious types have to start paying taxes like everybody else beginning next year. Eh, tomorrow. If the US could manage that, the economic landscape would be changed overnight. That would wipe out the national debt, I'd think.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

How does god come in besides as a statement of belief.

How does "randomness" come in other than as a statement of belief, Farmer?

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As I recall, Francis Crick, a co-discoverer of the DNA code and a militant atheist, thought it was impossible for DNA to have come into being "ex nililo." He therefore espoused the theory that life on earth came from outer space, ya know?

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@layman,

Panspermia . . .
Oh, yeah. . .
Hmm. How did that complex molecule develop randomly on the planet Ork, anyway?

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Quote:

Crick was not content to sit back on his laurels after winning one of the top prizes in science, however. He continued to study the mysteries of life, such as the nature of consciousness, or the possibility that RNA preceded the development of DNA. In 1973, he and the chemist Leslie Orgel published a paper in the journal Icarus suggesting that life may have arrived on Earth through a process called ‘Directed Panspermia.’

Crick and Orgel wrote in their book ‘Life Itself,’ "an honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going."

"It now seems unlikely that extraterrestrial living organisms could have reached the earth either as spores driven by the radiation pressure from another star or as living organisms imbedded in a meteorite. As an alternative to these nineteenth-century mechanisms, we have considered Directed Panspermia, the theory that organisms were deliberately transmitted to the earth by intelligent beings on another planet.

http://www.astrobio.net/topic/origins/origin-and-evolution-of-life/francis-crick-remembered/#sthash.geeWTFHz.dpuf

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@neologist,

Quote:

Hmm. How did that complex molecule develop randomly on the planet Ork, anyway

Well, I spect ya would hafta ask them guys on other planets that, eh, Neo? At least Crick answered the question of how it got on earth. Sheesh, what more do ya want?

1 Reply

DNA, Where did the code come from?

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