How can a good God allow suffering

@brianjakub,

If by "atheistic societies"you mean totalitarian ones involving leader worship, these are no different to religious ones. We seem to have inherited tribalism from our primate ancestors and religion is a convenient cognitive vehicle for attempts to rationalise it.

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@fresco,

You have a pretty low standard of complexity.
A hurricane is merely an eddy in a stream.
Are you equally impressed with complexity when you flush your toilet?

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@Leadfoot,

Read the literature. A hurricane is given as an example of a dissipative structure. Look up Prigogine (Nobel Laueate) for more complex structures including extrapolation to biological systems.

I realise this rejoinder may be a waste of time for a biased creationist, but in my opinion, its empirical foundations beat creationist ad hocary any day in terms of intellectual satisfaction.

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@fresco,

Your banging your head against a brick wall. Creationists cannot let go of creation because it would destroy their whole belief system. It's interesting to see scientists who can reconcile creation and evolution to keep believing in their savior.

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@fresco,

Quote:

A hurricane is given as an example of a dissipative structure. Look up Prigogine (Nobel Laueate) for more complex structures including extrapolation to biological systems.

Whoa! A hurricane is a dissapative structure! Mind blowing! You mean it doesn’t defy the law of entropy? Does that make you feel like you’ve said something meaningful?

You look up Prigogine. I asked YOU for examples of your DKS generated complexity of any significant complexity other than biological life. If you don’t have any, have the honesty to say so.

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@Leadfoot,

Dissipative self-assembly of a molecular gelator by using a chemical fuel.
Boekhoven J, Brizard AM, Kowlgi KN, Koper GJ, Eelkema R, van Esch JH
Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2010 Jun 28; 49(28):4825-

This article was cited by Pross as significant in the extrapolation of DKS to evolutionary processes. In general DKS is a principle applicable to any dynamic system 'far from equilibrium' which persists by virtual of energy exchanges with its surroundings. The use of DKS as 'a driving force' is based on the concept that 'maximizes entropy' overall..

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@fresco,

Quote:

This article was cited by Pross as significant in the extrapolation of DKS to evolutionary processes. In general DKS is a principle applicable to any dynamic system 'far from equilibrium' which persists by virtual of energy exchanges with its surroundings. The use of DKS as 'a driving force' is based on the concept that 'maximizes entropy' overall..

Yeah, I get that, so if it applies to any system far from equilibrium we should be swimming in examples of these self assembling complex systems because there are plenty of energy concentrations for these 'DKS systems' exploit. And the only example you can come up with is an eddy current?

Somehow that does not compare to the complexity of biological life.

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@Leadfoot,

We are swimming in them. We just happen to call the more complex ones 'life'.
This particular non-creationist pov is that biology looks like it can reduce 'systems chemistry' which leads to spontaneous emergence of complex structures whose reproductive processes further facilitate DKS. But its not in your interests to go with that.
DKS 'exploits' nothing. Thats an anthropomorphism. All we can say is that it is an adjoint of the second law of thermodynamics. And further to that, Rovelli suggests (in The Order Of Time') that 'entropy' is defined relative to the stability of the system we call 'the observer'.

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@fresco,

Quote:

We are swimming in them.

Swimming in them, and yet after asking several times, the only thing you can come up with is an eddy in the flow.

I think you’ve answered my question.

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@Leadfoot,

...of course, to a Creationist's satisfaction who needs to put 'life' on a pedestal rather than countenance a continuum ! Smile

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@fresco,

Simply put, it's all the result of nature.

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@fresco,

Quote:

Bear in mind that the OP has zero significance to my atheism which is based on the social perniciousness of religion, and not the futile search for evidence of the nature of a mythical entity.

Man by nature is pernicious do to his tendency to choose evil over good. That is irrelevant to the logic of the proposed ideas by this mainstream scientist in this video.
https://able2know.org/topic/384507-16#post-6718326

The video seems logical and recognizes an obvious pattern between real life and game theory. Could you comment on his logical recognition fo this pattern and how they both would seem to require a designer. (the "both" being a game and the universe)

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@fresco,

I'm with T. rex lover Leadfoot here. Life is not on some sort of complexity continuum right next to hurricanes. It's far far more complex.

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@Olivier5,

Nobody said it was 'next to' hurricanes. Without getting into a quagmire about defining 'complexity', the substantive issue is whether DKS is a 'driving force' which accounts for the occurence of simpler dissipative structures (e.g. hurricanes) and more complex ones (e.g. cells) with autocatalytic properties which enhance stability.
Irrespective of whether such an abiogenetic principle as DKS proves to be a key component of evolution, its potential viability adds weight to the view that Creationism is a fairy tale, which renders questions about 'the nature of the creator' ridiculous.

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@fresco,

If you're trying to say that the earth climate is conducive to the random emergence of moderately complex phenomena such as hurricanes, and therefore that the random emergence of complexity is not impossible, then I agree.

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@fresco,

Reference material:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3843823/

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@rosborne979,

Thanks for that.

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@rosborne979,

From your link:

Quote:

If we consider now that a sequence made up of 100 monomers was needed for a ribozyme to have the wide range of activity allowing the polymerization of the four ribonucleotides, the probability of one single sequence would be reduced to 0.6×10–60 and synthesizing all of them in one molecular unit over 1 billion years would lead to the synthesis of a mass of nucleic acid representing several tens that of the Earth per day.

Well, at least the DKS people are not afraid to look at the statistical facts surrounding abiogenesis. If you understand the quote above you will get a hint of how improbable life is. Also consider that the consensus among biologists is that a minimum of 1800 nucleotides would be necessary for any self reproducing mechanism.
Their solution to this virtual impossibility is modeled on Darwin's - They propose that It happened in tiny steps. Trouble is, we don't know what any of those steps were, therefore we must take it on faith that they exist.

Even DKS recognizes there has to be some kind of driving force behind this self organizing behavior, because even they can't bring themselves to believe blind chance was enough. They put it this way:

Quote:

either Monod was right, life emerged as a consequence of an event that had almost no chance to occur during the lifetime of the universe, or the emergence of life is not a mere question of the probability of a single event, but a driving force exists—and can thus be discovered—to drive this process through its various stages. So the second possibility—the existence of some driving force governing the evolutionary process—needs to be investigated.

So you see, DKS does recognize the need for some organizing principle beyond the laws of physics and probability. The only difference between DKS and ID is that ID has concrete examples of what the driving force (intelligence) can accomplish.
DKS does not even have a candidate for what that force is, nor can it point to any other example of what it can do. We know the 'driving force' behind hurricanes so they do not qualify as an example of DKS.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

DKS does not even have a candidate for what that force is, nor can it point to any other example of what it can do.

Yes they do, the entire article describes it and documents it with supporting evidence and then summarizes it in the Conclusion Section. Here's a snip:

Quote:

Irreversibility and the kinetic power of reproduction seem to be, at least in principle, sufficient to allow the emergence of life and there is no need to seek out some hitherto unknown physical law to explain the origin of the specific behaviour associated with living organisms.

Yes, I know, a magical and mysterious Intelligent Designer seems like a simpler answer and avoids all those nasty scientific words and ideas that you have to work to understand. But magic and ID are really, deeply, utterly, unsatisfying and unproductive as answers. You can have them if you like, I'm not interested.

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@Leadfoot,

Quote:

We know the 'driving force' behind hurricanes so they do not qualify as an example of DKS.

Hurricanes aren't normally thought as 'reproductive'. That is why they don't qualify as a 'candidate' for DKS as a 'driving force'. However they are temporary dissipate structures like 'organic cells' exhibiting 'stability', and are cited as a pedagogical tool in understanding the concept of emergent kinetic structures. DKS is an extrapolation of the idea of kinetic stability in an attempt to account for what we see as the complexification of emergence involving reproductive autocatalysis.

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How can a good God allow suffering

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