The emergence of life from inanimate mater hasn’t been explained. If you’re saying that in principle it can never be explained, that seems like a very strong claim; so, why not?
Stop posting “peace” after your replies.
So hypocritcal.
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Right. Islam does not mean peace, it means war. War on anyone who doesn’t convert to their sad little medieval cult-religion.
For example the conclusion of Hoyle is not unique but common to thinkers not blinded by dogmatic naturalism. Einstein argued that the “scientist’s religious feelings take the form of rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural laws which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection”.
Einstein 1949.
The emergence of life from non-living matter (not “inanimate”, for all matter is quite “animate”, i.e. moving) is very easy to understand. What we call life is a higher-order, more derivative version of the same stuff going on at the chemical-molecular level below life.
Your cells are “alive”, right? Well a cell is just a system of molecules moving around. Exchanging energies and particles. That’s all it is. Once these complex systems develop more and more until they ‘learn’ (are selected based on natural selection pressures) how to do things like exchange enough energies and particles to reproduce their own structure, we call them “alive”. Ok, sure. But deep down they are just doing the same stuff any molecular configuration is doing.
That is at the chemistry level of molecules, one step up from the elements. But that is a poor level to understand life, or at least the meaning and truer nature of life. What we call life is more philosophical, rooted in meaning and experience, understanding, consciousness, activity as opposed to mere reactivity; these things develop along infinitely higher levels than what is going on chemically inside of your cells. And yet, scientists and philosophers seemingly want to focus on the point at which so-called non-living matter “becomes alive”.
That displays a gross ignorance of the substrata of all living things, because it all descends into chemical-molecular structures; molecules exchanging energies and particles. So-called “organic” only means to identify and single out certain types of molecular systems built on things like carbon atoms, as opposed to other types of atoms we don’t find essentially at the base of our own biological structure. But again, at this level it’s all the same. Living and non-living things are all doing the same stuff at this level.
Which means LIFE must be understood on a different level than this. Indeed, on a very much higher level of analysis and understanding. We, as living beings, are not reducible qua life to the smallest-most isolated molecular components within us.
I have won the debate by default. Peace 
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This troll is really a perfect representative of islam.
Thanks man. We really needed a good laugh around here, now that satyre is gone again.
I always found the idea of a primordial soup bombard with lightning a pretty plausible scenario.
At one point a self sustaining bioelectrical circuitry may well occur.
From that to DNA and procreation is still a great leap, but still.
Evidence of possibly the oldest forms of life on Earth has been found in hydrothermal vent precipitates.[1](Wikipedia)Why would we not suppose that the potential for life was there when the universe exploded into existence?
All living organisms are composed of matter. Matter is composed of elementary particles, which are ubiquitous.
To find components for life does not mean life will naturally proceed from those components, any more than the presence of marine organisms in limestone means that the Parthenon will gradually appear on that site (“you need to understand, it’s a slow process spanning hundreds of millions, even billions, of years” and soon the Parthenon will just pop up and on the horizon a dolphin completes the picture with a knowing wink before disappearing into the wine dark sea).
The evolution of complex entities which seems to violate common sense may be possible in deep time over billions of years. That such processes strain our imaginations doesn’t disprove them. The God hypothesis is so difficult to grasp that many think it requires a leap of faith. The question “Why is there there something and not nothing” confronts us with the self-luminous, inexplicable fact of existence itself about which all calculations of probability must fail.
You made the feint, the suggestion about this underwater vent.
You presumably were assuming that raw materials present —> gradual formation of life.
Whereas that is never observed scientifically.
Moreover, it is scientifically improbable i.e. beyond 1:1x10^50 chance. In fact l have no idea how many zeroes the exponent has to make it possible i.e. 1x10^???
Also, l pointed out, you can’t even go from life (marine exoskeltons in chalk) to something relatively simple like the Pathenon. You tacitly acknowledged that would “strain our imafinations”. So if that’s a stretch, then how much more of a stretch would life be, even after abiogenesis. Plus the Miller-Urey experiment was actually an example of, well, blush … intelligent design. And in any case its products, simple molecules “and amino acids” (as if they aren’t mostly simple molecules too, and l don’t think they even isolated specific amino acids but guaranteed it’d be something simple like glycine) which was pretty much bound to happen given the ingredients but anyway … these molecules wouldn’t get you anywhere. To build proteins you’d need enzymes (which are proteins) plus co factors. To build enzymes, you’d need enzymes.
Also note how many mass extinction events (5 apparently) that have occurred. I’m guessing that includes the epoch when the earth was completely covered in ice.
LOTR is more plausible. Theism even more plausible, there’s actual evidence.
Are you saying that life must be the result of divine intervention not the result of gradual evolution since the beginning of the universe based on natural law?
I don’t know what you mean by “natural law” it seems to be a term used by a political party in the UK, used with spiritual meaning.
Also Divine Intervention implies there was something before the Divine intervened.
In the beginning there was God. He created the cosmos because he decided to be known. Before creation, there was nothing but he, and there is still nothing but he.
EDIT: Just realised, l fell for it: no, l’m not making the thrust, you are. You are making an unscientific statement and l have shown why it is unscientific.
By natural law I meant the laws of physics. I thought that would be obvious. “Thrust”? What is this to you, Mortal Combat? What did I claim that was unscientific?
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Please calm down. Apologies for correcting you with science but l am biased by my scientific background, l cannot help it. I understand Atheism flourishes in the absence of science and it is basically a throng of angry peasants captained by a red jowelled angry Norman warlord.
Here, let me be a total hypocrite and consult your buddy, Google AI: “Natural law is a philosophical and legal theory asserting that inherent human rights and moral principles are derived from nature and can be understood through reason, forming a universal moral code that transcends human-made laws”
Also Wikipedia:
The Natural Law Party (NLP) is a transnational party founded in 1992 on “the principles of Transcendental Meditation”,[1] the laws of nature, and their application to all levels of government.[2] At its peak, it was active in up to 74 countries; it continues in India and at the state level in the United States. The party defines “natural law” as the organizing intelligence which governs the natural universe.
Quite the opposite of what you are now saying.
Your term “Natural law” used in lieu of the Laws of Physics and in the context of this new turn in the debate, implies something that would have quite happily gone its own way without God. Please, don’t drag me into these petty semantics.
Let me know if you have any science to counter what l wrote above, which refutes as unscientific, your claim about abiogenesis around sigh sea vents, always sea vents etc… .
I dub your tactic the Felix Corner-Turn (unscientific atheistic claim about evolution of life / religion —> trenchant refutation of that claim —> ignore the refutation and add further supporting claim —> trenchant refutation of that claim —> ignore the refutation and change subject to something similar, contingent even, but not quite the same topic and ask what my problem really is (thus making it personal) ----> and add something about how religious people need not be so argumentative, you’re here merely to help and in fact religion has a LOT to offer mankind (l call this flattery technique the Back-Rub of Death, it usually comes after the Felix Corner-Turn)
In science, “natural law” often refers to the fundamental physical laws of nature, like Newton’s law of universal gravitation or Ohm’s law, which describe cause-and-effect relationships in the universe. Anyway, I already clarified that is what I meant by it, which would have been enough if you weren’t here to quibble. So, bye bye.
Excuse me … ? You forgot the Back-Rub of Death.
@felix_dakat Here you go, l already answered, as per the teachings of the Islam:
The Standard Model of the Universe was based on 19 dimensionless constants.
It is interesting to note that the Qur’an gives 19 as a dimensioneless constant - this is one of the great mysteries of the Qur’an and a sect recently sprang up from this number 19:
Qur’an 74:30:
Pickthall: Above it are nineteen.
Yusuf Ali: Over it are Nineteen.
Shakir: Over it are nineteen.
This is thought to be in reference to the number of angels governing Hell, which is not an expanding reality, and people will be walking on their faces in Hell:
054.048 On the day when they are dragged into the Fire upon their faces (it is said unto them): Feel the touch of hell.
When Hell is filled, it will be squeezed according to one well known hadith: Narrated Anas bin Malik:
The Prophet (peace be upon him) said, "The Hell Fire will keep on saying: ‘Are there anymore (people to come)?’ Till the Lord of Power and Honor will put His Foot over it and then it will say, 'Qat! Qat! (sufficient! sufficient!) by Your Power and Honor. And its various sides will come close to each other (i.e., it will contract). "
From what l gather, the current cosmological inventory of dimensionless constants is 25, up from 19 (quote Wikipedia: “Some physicists consider it to be ad hoc and inelegant, requiring 19 numerical constants whose values are unrelated and arbitrary”) - l cannot find a reference but it was via Wikipedia or somewhere, that l read that the additional constants accrued to account for gravity (inc. hypothetical dark matter), and cosmological expansion (inc. dark energy) - both of which could be absent from Hell, hence Hell may well only require “19”.
Peace.