>(DAVE 12/4) Michael: Really. Perhaps you'll state what chemical or
>physical "rule" my ability to love follows.
MWF
Wrong level of the system to be analysing. Although the operation of
the central nervous system is powerfully affected by a large number of
complex chemicals, serotanin (?) being one, as well a simpler ones, Calcium
ions being important, at the present time at least there is no one chemical
or enzyme which is linked to bonding behavior.
However, a quick review of the higher primates, including pygmy
chimpanzees [our closest living reletives] reveals that social groups are
the norm. Even the formidable lowland Gorilla's are no match for their
native predators, let alone other primates, and man is particularly
helpless. Thus safety comes from numbers. The ability to forage for and find
adequate food comes from safety. The ability to successfully reproduce comes
from safety and adequate nutrition.
Thus your ability to love "follows" your (the species) need to be
able to ensure your own safety and that of your near kin (kin selection).
Dave 12/4
> Or what "rule" accounts for me
>sleeping.
MWF
Similar to the above. Successfully exploiting diurnal or nocturnal
niches in the eco system depends upon being suitably well adopted to those
conditions. But a diurnal animal is blind at night, and a nocturnal animal
is blinded by day. Thus periods of reletive inactivity are forced upon all
animals. In addition to other benifits, being able to sleep allows the
stimulous seeking brain to shut down during periods of no or little stimulation.
There are other benifits as well, sufficient that natural selection
pressures deselected non-sleepers out of the gene pools.
DAVE
> Or what "rule" accounts for how I came into existence in the
>first place.
MWF
Like I said once. Limits.
The stuff of the universe is rigidly constrained in the number of
states any one part can either independently assume or assume in relation to
other parts under any given set of circumstances.
These states are varied enough to allow very complex aggregations to
form, yet simple enough to also limit just how many different ways the
aggregates can form. This works at levels from the formation of baryons from
leptons, to the formation of atoms from baryons and electrons, to molecules
from the atoms, to complex molecules from simple molecules.
DAVE
> Or what "rule" explains how I formed from hydrogen and helium
>amongst other elements.
MWF
See paragraph immediatly above.
DAVE
> Start with those.
MWF
Done.
DAVE
>Life is here, I agree.
MWF
All around us.
DAVE
> Aubrey was asking you to explain how it came to be.
>Which you have not answered.
MWF
You want a reciepe, I can't give you one. You want to know where to
get a LOT of info on what's currently thought and what work is going on, I
can oblige. Here's enough to get you going on a web surf:
http://golgi.harvard.edu/biopages/all.html
http://www.biology.yale.edu/BioFrames.html
http://www.mat.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints/Elechem_abstract.html
http://outcast.gene.com/local-bin/pphtml/ae/WN/SU/primordial_soup.html
http://www.imb-jena.de/RNA.html
>
>
>Aubrey>
>>> Create that which you say, "Just Happened by chance."
>>
>> Nobody, except creationist dimwits, says life happened "by chance".
>>And what does what I can do or not do have to do with the origin of life?
>>
>(DAVE 12/4) Michael: "Creationists" believe that the world was created, or
>designed. They do not believe anything happened by chance. I suggest you
>look up the meaning of "creationist" and "dimwit" one more time.
MWF
I mispoke myself. I'll rephrase the statement:
"It is only creationist dimwits who claim that scientists say that
life arouse by "chance". It is a creationist mistatement at best, and most
probably a deliberate lie told to confuse and mislead. But then perhaps they
are merely as stupid as they seem."
DAVE
>I believe Aubrey is asking you how the universe, if not created, could have
>come about by chance. Which you have not answered.
MWF
Nobody knows how the universe came about. Nobody has the data to
answer that question. No data, no answers--at least from honest sorts.
>
>
>Aubrey
>>> If you can't, then why?!
>>
>> Why couldn't Archemedies fly? Surely he was as smart as anyone now
>>living. Why couldn't Newton fly? Newton had far better technology than
>>Archemedies, so what was his excuse? Why didn't Maxwell build a radar, or
>>even a simple radio? Maxwell discoverd the equations which govern
>>electromagnetic waves, so what was HIS problem?
>>
>> This is simply another form of the the argument Ad Ignoratio, in the
>>form of the "God of the Gaps".
>>
>(DAVE 12/4) Michael: Perhaps if you actually answered something it would
>be more beneficial. Aubrey's questions are legitimate.
MWF
Sorry, but no they are not. If there is no data upon which a
principled answer could be based by ANYONE, then to try and demand one is at
best stupid, and at worst dishonest.
Archimedes, despite being arguably the most brilliant man who has
ever lived, did not have enough information to build a flying machine--but
this is obviously not because flying machines can't be built. Thus the lack
of Archimedes ability to build one would have been irrelevant had he been
asked.
Newton, although brilliant, likewise still lacked adequate
information to build a flying machine.
And Maxwell lacked that which is necesarry to build a radio.
Aubrey, however, seems to think that if we, or in particular I,
cannot anwer his question _right now_, that he has somehow proved something
important and even conclusive.
All he has _proved_ is that I cannot anwer his question. With only a
little extropolation, he has proved that right now, today, we cannot do that
which he asks.
Thus it is but another argument Ad Ignoratio.
And 20 years ago a desk top computer with more more capcity than an
IBM system 360 mainframe would have been not even a pipe dream.
And right now I'm using one.
Since living systems violate no physical laws, there is nothing
except lack of data which stands between molecular biologists and "creating
life in a test tube".
Daily we accumulate more data.
DAVE
> If you deny a
>creator, you deny design, you deny a God, then what are your beliefs
>concerning how we came into existence? It seems a clear enough question.
MWF
There is no data with which to answer the question, so far as it
extends to the origin of the universe itself. Since no data could have
existed at the moment of origin--since the universe was at that moment and
for some brief time afterward completely uniform, i.e., undifferentiated
ergo no data could have been encoded anywhere---the universe started as a
blank sheet. No information about where it came from was inscribed.
I'm very sorry about that, but that's the way it was. And in the
absence of data, no answer is the only principled answer.
As to "us" as the biologicical us, life violates no chemical or
physical laws, precurser chemicals have been formed. Evolution has been
demonstrated in both bioloical and non-biological systems. Solving the
question of exactly what may have happened on the earth so long ago is
simply a matter of time. Too many people are too interested in the problem
for it to remain unanswered.
I suspect the first "artificial" self replicating molecule will be
produced in my lifetime at least.
>
>Michael
>> >Yawn<
>
>Aubrey>
>>>And if that, which you can't create happened from
>>>nothing (Chance) then give me the exact details on how everything came to
>>>be, which in my book would be impossible since you can't create that, which
>>>you claim happened by chance. If you create the conditions for your logic
>>>and nothing happens, then another force is at work.
>>
>Michael>
>> As above.
>>
>(DAVE 12/4) Michael: What kind of an answer is that? Aubrey is asking you
>to explain something - please read above.
MWF
Aubrey is making fallacious psuedoarguments disguised as
questions.And repeating himself no less. And displaying a truly appalling
lack of understanding of even basic science.
DAVE
>You are, without a doubt, the most illogical errantist on this list -
MWF
Please, if I make any logical errors, feel free to point them out to me.
DAVE
>radically unsubstantiated statements, you're a wanna-be scientist who refers
>to fancy scientific principles without, it seems, an inkling of what they
>mean
MWF
Really? Feel free to check out every statement I allege as fact, or
as an accepted scientific theory.
For evolution go to Ernst Mayr's _The Rise of Biological Thought_,
probably the finest reference you can get. It's still avaiable in paperback,
or at any universtiy library.
DAVE
> - you deny something yet you have no apparent reason for denying it (at
>least that you want to share with us).
MWF
Which of Aubreys arguments that I "deny" bothers you the most?
DAVE
>You seem like a pretty intelligent guy, Michael, I wish you would share it
>with us instead of these stupid Latin responses you have to everything.
MWF
Those "stupid Latin resoponses" are only stuck onto the arguments
that they describe. I stick them there so that perhaps eventually someone,
if they do not choose to believe me, will know what to look up in a logic
textbook to see if I know what I'm talking about. In any event, the only
proper response to a fallacious argument is to identify it as such, and were
possible, show where the fallacy is. I've explained the argument Ad
Ignoratio enough times, list regulars ought to understand it by now, and why
it is a fallacy and be able to spot the fallacy when I point it out.
Try, I bet you can.
>
>Michael
>> The argument Ad Ignoratio is fallacious, no matter how dressed up.
Still true.
Ciao.
Michael Fisher, ET1/SS USN ret., lawstudent
http://www.sonoma.edu/cthink/Library/intraits.html
* * *
He that would make his own liberty secure,
must guard even his enemy from oppression;
for if he violates this duty,
he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Thomas Paine