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from the It's-the-end^W-beginning-of-the-world-as-we-know-it? dept.
Researchers have demonstrated that an enzyme-free metabolic pathway using sulfate radicals can mirror the Krebs cycle:
A set of biochemical processes crucial to cellular life on Earth could have originated in chemical reactions taking place on the early Earth four billion years ago, believes a group of scientists from the Francis Crick Institute and the University of Cambridge. The researchers have demonstrated a network of chemical reactions in the lab which mimic the important Krebs cycle present in living organisms today. In a study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, they say it could explain an important step in how life developed on Earth.
[...] One central metabolic pathway learned by every A-level biology student is the Krebs cycle. But how did this essential set of chemical reactions, each step catalyzed by an enzyme, first arise? Each step in the cycle is not enough by itself. Life needs a sequence of these reactions, and it would have needed it before biological enzymes were around: Amino acids, the molecular components of enzymes, are made from products of the Krebs cycle.
The research group from the Francis Crick Institute and the University of Cambridge say their demonstration offers an answer. They have shown an enzyme-free metabolic pathway that mirrors the Krebs cycle. It is sparked by particles called sulphate radicals under conditions similar to those on Earth four billion years ago. Senior author Dr Markus Ralser of the Francis Crick Institute and University of Cambridge explains: "This non-enzymatic precursor of the Krebs cycle that we have demonstrated forms spontaneously, is biologically sensible and efficient. It could have helped ignite life four billion years ago."
Found at ScienceDaily.
Sulfate radicals enable a non-enzymatic Krebs cycle precursor (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0083) (DX)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 16 2017, @01:38AM (19 children)
And, hang on, number 3: "double fulfillment" is the same kind of delusion as Jesus Tortillas. You people never take the context of these verses into consideration, jeez. Hasn't it ever occurred to you that any being worthy of the title God wouldn't, indeed by definition *couldn't,* possibly be offended by anything any of its creations do? Sometimes I think nonbelievers take the Abrahamic God far more seriously than its supposedly devout followers.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:35PM (18 children)
> context of verses
My reply stemmed from the meaning of eating from the sacrifice, what context would I be missing?
> telling what a god can or cannot do/feel/be
we don`t know the meaning of "being offended" for a god, so I recommend you stick with what is revealed or discard it without building assertions on nothingness.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:58PM (17 children)
Which one of us has put in almost 12 years studying the Abrahamic religions, Church history, comparative religion, logic, philosophy, apologia, counter-apologetics, and a bit of Hebrew and Koine? I'll wager it's not you.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Thursday March 16 2017, @07:36PM (16 children)
So, counter my assertions logically instead of using an appeal to authority.
You still can't morally judge a god even if you study 120 years.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 17 2017, @01:38AM (15 children)
Oh, now this should be interesting...why can't you morally judge a God? :) You have a lot of defining of terms to do here, starting with what "moral" is.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @05:38PM (14 children)
I don't need to define good, pick whatever def suits you.
Moral from latin morae, social customs, which are then aimed at what is good for society. Extended to the society of mankind moral judgment means judgment on what a god can or cannot do for the greater good of mankind.
As for the reasons I already told you, the limited POV inside the universe, subject to time, cannot match the one of a god outside of it. If you cannot know that killing a butterfly today will stop a thermonuclear interplanetary war 10000 years from now, you cannot judge a god who kills it. This is the technical reason. The theological reason, as told:
Let's put the problem in a tractable context. I run a simulation, I wipe out half of the simulated universe. Can I do it? Maybe not, I am external to the simulation engine. Let's say I am also the simulation engine, that is I am lucid-dreaming the simulation. Can somebody tell me what I can or cannot dream? Can the dream tell me what I can or I cannot dream? Am I not directly feeling what everybody in the dream is feeling so every act is done on me too (Mt 25:40)?
Translate dreamer => god, dream => creation, the dreamer cannot be judged for what he imagines.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 17 2017, @11:35PM (13 children)
That is a complete non-sequitur. If the dreamer is actually dreaming, s/he is bringing only what s/he knows into the dream, and if this includes a moral code it's one s/he also is aware of. Not to mention no Abrahamic theist will tell you Yahweh is dreaming all of this; it is very much purposeful in the Abrahamic delusion.
You also beg the question at least once, by essentially saying that "God works in mysterrrrrrious ways, whooOOoooOOoo~!" and then asserting that, despite this, it's not SO mysterious that you can't be sure it's not just some largely or even maximally-evil being (i.e., maltheism).
Besides which, you're making the same category error as the passage in Romans asking "who is the pot to say to the potter, 'why has thou made me thus?'" In fact, it is this very category error, that of treating subjects as objects, that underlies nearly all human evil throughout all history. A pot is not animate or sentient. A person is. There can be no comparison; the difference is one of kind, not degree.
Obviously this place isn't an apologetics seminar, but I can't help but be continually disappointed by every encounter along these lines I've had so far. If I were Yahweh I might very well drop you into Hell just for making me look bad.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Monday March 20 2017, @09:47AM (12 children)
> If the dreamer is actually dreaming, s/he is bringing only what s/he knows into the dream
This is false, for example I dreamed music, in the dream coming from a normal pop band, that was way bizarre, so that I could not even begin to reproduce it (and I have the technical skill and the equipment to do covers). Anyway you concentrate on the act of dreaming. Dream is closer to the idea of something being both the admin and the engine of a simulator, imagining is the same.
> no Abrahamic theist will tell you Yahweh is dreaming all of this
You misunderstood because you see dream as dual concept wrt reality.
Def. Perceive, whatever I am doing right now (also: whatever you are doing right now in the case of a non solipsistic universe).
Def. Real, what can (in)directly be perceived.
Note this definition of reality is different from the cultural bullshit about ultimate truth, piercing the appearance , really real...
For example, in a game of chess, what is real for a piece is his position on the board, and the moves. Because that determines if the piece stays or gets eaten. The weather outside is real for us, let's call it "meta" for the piece.
So, a theist saying Yahweh is dreaming is the same as telling he has created. We are inside the creation we cannot know for sure what it is made of.
A better metaphor, given the context, is an author having written a book. And you, the judger, are able to see only a few pages of the book, and not understand all words. Yet you proclaim "ha, this situation here should have not happened". You cannot do that. You can say "I don't like it", "it does not make sense (to me, obviously)". OK, a matter of opinion. Also, if you, the judger, are a character in the same book, which would not exist if it weren't for the author? You have even less room to tell the author what to write, even if what is written is REALITY for you. (reality for a character in a book is the story of the book, the only thing that can affect it).
> God works in mysterrrrrrious ways
My videogame avatar cannot punch me in the face. Call this a mystery, I call it "real does not affect meta".
I see you did not answer the questions.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday March 20 2017, @04:21PM (11 children)
You're committing a category error here. None of the examples you give (dreaming sleepers, authors, game designers/players, etc) are omniscient, omnipotent, absolutely-sovereign, etc etc etc. They do not exist sui generis; they arose or emerged from something else prior to them, and their actions, their creations if you will, are still patterned on that external reality. These are not God-analogues, and the difference is one of kind, not degree.
Frankly, between your shaky grasp of English and your rambling, Gish-galloping irrelevancies, I'm not sure you're cognitively equipped for this sort of discussion. Certainly you aren't honest enough.
The short version of why your arguments are not only irrelevant but outright nonsensical is this: if a being truly has the qualities that make it God (ignoring for the moment the mutual incompatibility of same...), it would never create. It would, quite literally, have no reason to and no impetus to. This kind of personal creator God does not exist, and it does not exist because we do.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Monday March 20 2017, @07:11PM (10 children)
If you cannot judge the programmer of a simulation, the author of a book, the dreamer of the dream, you cannot judge a god either. Not because it's forbidden, because it's not possible. God is in the same position ("meta") wrt reality as the author is for the book, the dreamer for the dream... God attributes except Its being transcendent which belong to the definition are irrelevant.
To put it simply. You cannot judge anything in meta, god is in meta, you cannot judge god.
Seems simple enough to me.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday March 20 2017, @09:01PM (9 children)
You're not paying attention, are you? Read my last post closer, please; the very fact that we exist means no God of the omni-$ATTRIBUTE type with a personality or ego does.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Tuesday March 21 2017, @11:16AM (8 children)
Your other assertion was OT wrt my argument.
> if a being truly has the qualities that make it God (ignoring for the moment the mutual incompatibility of same...)
then let's pick transcendence, as all the other qualities are revealed.
> it would never create.
This is either correct, taken literally, because creation of time cannot obviously happen in time, so, it happens literally "never". Or, it means it would never create at all which is an assertion made in the transcendent domain, worthless like all others. Rephrase it as "I believe it would not create at all".
> It would, quite literally, have no reason to
Error, "reason" is a concept tied to time, cannot exist outside of it, for obvious reasons. Thesis discarded.
> to and no impetus [undefined] to. This kind of personal [undefined] creator [as yet inconceivable in detail] God does not exist [of course it does not exist, it metaexist possibly], and it does not exist because we do [error, again cause and effect is undefined outside time, a causal link between different abstractions is also problematic when the effect is in meta and the cause in reality]
Sorry if I don't find your assertions on undefined concepts necessarily defined in any well formed system. If it is not necessarily defined its truth value is irrelevant. Why don't you translate these theorems to tractable contexts instead and see if they make any sense?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday March 21 2017, @05:08PM (7 children)
You really don't seem to understand how this stuff works :/ You don't get to make new words into "get out of epistemological jail free" cards by putting meta- on top of them.
And then you're asking me to use the very same logic you tell me can't be put into use here ("Why don't you translate these theorems to tractable contexts instead and see if they make any sense?") into some more visually-appealing form to you, so that you can...do what, exactly? You sound like a presuppositionalist, like one of Sye ten Bruggencate's acolytes who somehow grew a few more neurons.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Tuesday March 21 2017, @05:48PM (6 children)
You asked for definitions, you got them. According to the definition of reality I stated, a transcendent god cannot be experienced, and its supposed influence not provable as coming from it, therefore not existing. Proof, try to determine the specs of the computer hosting a perfectly isolated VM, you cannot. Try to see where the programmer, or the PC, is in a Conway's game of life sim. Answer, nowhere. You can only [dis]believe that a manifestation comes from "above".
Meta was briefly defined, too. The difference between my definitions and others' is not of any concern if you want to prove their consistence. All it matter is if such definition are useful in your world for your reasonings. In the context of the original discussion they were.
I asked you to reason in terms of simulation and the simulating environment because if a theorem does not work there, it is silly to formulate it where the simulating environment is intractable. It was a mere suggestion.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:44PM (5 children)
And morality, dear Marcello, is interpersonal. Divine Command Theory, and all of its offshoots and imitators, are logical contradictions; any moral imperative a God puts out is nothing more than an aesthetic judgment on its part.
Your analogy of a hypervisor or simulation program breaks down when the God-figure is given a personality or ego. That is intensely interpersonal, meaning any contact or "inspiration" is essentially a VM escape exploit. Now, it works well enough for the Taoist or Deist God-concept, the one I hold, which basically says God *is* the hypervisor, and the VM environment, and the hardware, and therefore in may ways is us.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Tuesday March 21 2017, @09:29PM (4 children)
Divine command theory or whatever it is, needs first to prove a god is behind that, which is impossible. Either believe or not the men who relay such commands, considering that the hypothetical god left people free to act (and to be taken responsible for it). Deriving contradictions from assertions in the domain of god is always playing with undefined variables.
The VM analogy is not disproved by a different analogy, that is of a non insulated VM.
To recap, perfect VM can't be told from genuine hardware, non insulated VM can't be proven as such without prior knowledge of the hardware, which we don't have, outside the analogy.
The immanence of god has scriptural bases too, MT 25, John 1, the creed... You being a free agent direct emanation of god for every instant of your existence is still distant from the "you can become gods" first spoken by the serpent and echoed quite a lot in current society. The difference between the programmer and the hardware and the output data and THE MEANING of the output data (John 1, word is logos in Greek) is still there. A state in a game of which all rules get somehow forgotten ceases to be a state in a game, no matter the obvious consistence of its real world representation.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:50PM (3 children)
You know, people like you fascinate me. I'm asking this genuinely, not to be mean: are you on the spectrum? Because we don't quite seem to be connecting here, and I want to know what angle I need to put this stuff at to get it through to you.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Wednesday March 22 2017, @11:16AM (2 children)
It is easier if you point out what you did not understand or think it is wrong, instead of focusing on a different aspect at each post.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:32PM (1 child)
For one thing, you aren't arguing anything congruent with reality. You gave yourself away with the "your team" comment; it's not as if I couldn't tell what you were beforehand, since you have that corrosive, arrogant triumphalism only a Christian apologist has ever had, but that one sealed it.
You're doing the same bait and switch tactic most apologists do: argue for an essentially generic--if still egoic/personal--God, and then try and smuggle Yahweh with all his baggage in when you think I'm not looking. Yahweh, my friend, fails the God test in a myriad of ways a generic-but-personal God does not, which itself fails more of those tests than the sort of Deist position I espouse.
Not to mention, only a sociopath or an idiot or both thinks kissing up to the biggest bully on the playground is good insurance. I find it amusingly if darkly entertaining how none of you people ever actually stop to think, given Yahweh's character and past actions, that he might get bored with you sycophantic bootlickers in heaven and toss you into hell for any reason or no reason at all. Eternity is a long time to say "that would never happen" in, and the law of large numbers says that anything not logically impossible not only can happen but inevitably WILL happen at least once as time t approaches infinity.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @03:34PM
what you write: "argue for an essentially generic--if still egoic/personal--God"
what I write: "needs first to prove a god is behind that, which is impossible"
Try logically to reconcile these two because I sure cannot.