So you're baselessly asserting that order comes from chaos. When it is actually always order replicating itself despite the constant affects of entropy (chaos). For instance, a child does not randomly spawn from the centre of a cabbage, that was randomly manifested out of shit from a horse.
Try not to get bogged down in explaining the full details and mechanics of proteins or prions, because that still doesn't address the main point that I have an issue with. You can't seem to focus on the gap between nonexistence and existence, even if you assert it was a gradual process, there still must be a point where something 'manifested' to act in a certain way that then led to the next increment, which eventually, apparently, led to the manifestation of the most complex code we know. Do you understand what my issue is? So take the spastic prion, what caused it to manifest and what gave it the instruction to start "bending" itself?
In fact, the last two questions, you don't seem to understand but I'm not even sure how I could communicate them adequately. Magic doesn't come into it, something is 'magical' when you don't understand the mechanism behind it, our technology would seem magical to our earlier ancestors.
If the laws of physics or all the laws that determine our physical reality, were random, they wouldn't have any definition or order to them, by saying they came about randomly from nothing, you are asserting an impossibility. When your entire worldview is underlined by this, that opens the door to accepting a lot of crazy shit, just as much as being superstitious does.
You're making two points:
- Life as order coming from chaos
- Life as something coming from nothing
For the first one, it's fine for order to come from chaos if we're just moving order from one place to another. Think of it like having two boxes, one with order, and another with chaos. If we swap the contents of the two boxes, if we look at the box that had chaos it will look like order came from chaos. With more rigor: It's true that the second law of thermodynamics says that entropy can't decrease. But this is true only for a closed system. If the system is not closed, such as Earth receiving sunlight from the sun, there is no problem with entropy decreasing.
For the second one, you're making an artificial distinction between alive and not alive, as if there is some hard barrier between the two. All matter obeys the same laws of physics whether it's part of a living organism or not. Under the right conditions, such as the primordial soup of early Earth, these laws of physics lead to molecules forming that can make copies of themselves, and which though (imperfect) replication eventually evolve into humans. The early self-replicating life forms are not around today and can't come about in our environment because every niche on the planet is teeming with life, from the smallest bacteria to the largest mammal. The primordial soup can't exist as it would be gobbled up by life forms that are already here.
As for laws of physics being random, I don't know where you're getting that from. I certainly made no claims about where the laws of physics come from. Saying they are random doesn't make sense. How do you pick a random number between 1 and infinity? It's nonsensical. And even if you could somehow make the concept rigorous, there is a degree of self-selection happening. If the universe had physical laws such that life was not possible, we wouldn't be here to ask the question.
"You're making two points: Life as order coming from chaos Life as something coming from nothing"
I'm guessing you have no answer to this- "So take the spastic prion, what caused it to manifest and what gave it the instruction to start "bending" itself?"
"For the first one, it's fine for order to come from chaos if we're just moving order from one place to another. Think of it like having two boxes, one with order, and another with chaos. If we swap the contents of the two boxes, if we look at the box that had chaos it will look like order came from chaos. With more rigor: It's true that the second law of thermodynamics says that entropy can't decrease. But this is true only for a closed system. If the system is not closed, such as Earth receiving sunlight from the sun, there is no problem with entropy decreasing."
Sorry, but this isn't convincing at all. If you think order and chaos are amorphous and interchangeable then I don't know what to tell you, honestly. One is literally the absence of the other, just like darkness is absence of light.
"For the second one, you're making an artificial distinction between alive and not alive, as if there is some hard barrier between the two. All matter obeys the same laws of physics whether it's part of a living organism or not. Under the right conditions, such as the primordial soup of early Earth, these laws of physics lead to molecules forming that can make copies of themselves, and which though (imperfect) replication eventually evolve into humans. The early self-replicating life forms are not around today and can't come about in our environment because every niche on the planet is teeming with life, from the smallest bacteria to the largest mammal. The primordial soup can't exist as it would be gobbled up by life forms that are already here."
That is a massive cop out. There is nothing to say to anyone that asserts there is no distinction between alive and not alive.
"As for laws of physics being random, I don't know where you're getting that from."
If everything else originated randomly from nothing, it can only be random. There is nothing it can come from in Atheism, that is the point of being an Atheist.
"How do you pick a random number between 1 and infinity?"
I have no idea what you're trying to say here, this is nonsensical. Are you saying that it's nonsensical to pick a number? Or are you saying that because numbers are ultimately indefinite they are inherently chaotic?
"If the universe had physical laws such that life was not possible"
Why wouldn't it be possible? There are rules that dictate what makes life is possible, and they are apart of the whole picture that I'm talking about, although I am open to suggestions on what to call such things. You are saying "Well, that can't be anything other than it is because that would mean 'X'" But why would it mean X? Because of the rules within the physical world, the ones I am saying you are saying must be random.
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