Which is exactly why I say that, at best, your argument offers support to the idea that life on Earth was seeded by life originating from elsewhere.

We don't know of any intelligences that existed in the past. You do NOT get any probabilities for creation of cells in the PAST from being able to create cells NOW. Get it already.

You are 100% in saying that my argument does not necessarily conclude that life on this planet was created by God. The only conclusion it makes is that for any lineage of life whose origin is unknown, it will more likely be the result of an intelligent creator than natural emergence(should it turn out that its easy for intelligences to create life or course).

I don't think Jason1990 found any serious flaws in what I proposed. He did provide an avenue of attack but I don't think anyone's actually taken it. I'll help you guys out.

If someone were to show that the existence of an intelligence capable of creating life at the time and place life originated on this planet was less probable than life naturally emergeing , then it doesn't matter how much easier it is for intelligence to create life. It would still be an underdog in this situation to natural emergence.

All you guys got to do to defeat my argument is to show the existence of an intelligence is highly unlikely.

Stu, are you just ignoring all the arguments that have been presented for why you are wrong here? I get what you're trying to do, and unlike some of the posters here, really do appreciate your efforts to try and apply logic to religion. But when making arguments based on logic, you need to be open to criticism of your hypothesis, you must be prepared to amend it if it looks like the original premise was ill-founded. You start off with an attempt at a logical argument, but then you seem to try and support it through nothing but faith?

And this intelligent creator is a massive underdog not to fit whatever criteria we put in place for "life". That's the only problem I have with your statement - even if it's correct it has virtually no explanatory power, because it just defers the question.

Logic is a special case of probability.

In a logical argument, the writer begins with a set of propositions, A₁, ..., A_n, which he hypothesizes are true. (These are called the premises.) He then applies the rules of logic to arrive at a conclusion C. If the reader agrees with the premises, then he must also agree with the conclusion.

In a probabilistic argument, the writer also begins with a set of propositions, A₁, ..., A_n. But instead of hypothesizing that these are true, he hypothesizes that they have certain probabilities:

P(A₁) = p₁
P(A₂) = p₂
...
P(A_n) = p_n

(These are called the prior probabilities.) The writer then applies the rules of probability to arrive at a posterior probability of the form P(C) = p. If the reader agrees with the priors, then he must also agree with posterior.

If all the priors are either 0 or 1, then the posterior will be also, and the entire argument will reduce to a classical logical argument.

As far as I can tell, I am the only person in this thread who has presented a complete probabilistic argument. If anyone else (OP or otherwise) wishes to present one, I will be more than happy to comment on it.

What question does it defer?

Can life naturally emerge?

How did the first lineage of life come to be if there was no intelligence around to create it?

Answering those questions really wasn't the point of this thread. The point of this thread was show that what many atheist considered to be the simpler explaination can very well be the more complicated one.

We've been over this. The onus is on you to demonstrate non-living intelligences (and no, corporations et al don't count).

Following your (well nigh inevitable) failure to do so, the question that's deferred is indeed the origin of this creator-life.

If the universe always existed why can't intelligences have always existed?

Even ignoring the possible flaws in this line of reasoning, this doesn't form any kind of demonstration that they exist. Like Flynn said, in the absence of any actual demonstration of their existence, there is no reason to believe in their existence.

There is no known demonstation of a process by which life naturally emerges in existence. Are you saying you have no reason to believe such a process exists? If Venter succeeds are you locked into believing the life on this planet was created because that is the only process to have been demonstated?

No, obviously not. A 'demonstration' of such a process a priori cannot exist, because if one demonstrates it, it is no longer natural but created. This is similar to what Venter is doing.

If by 'demonstration' you just mean 'go back in time to 1 billion years ago or whenever and stare at the right bit of seawater until life emerges' then again, I have no reason to suspect time travel is possible so this scenario is likely impossible.

There is no a priori reason why a demonstration of intelligences cannot exist, if they were capable of getting to this planet and creating life 1 billion years ago.

Who said the universe always existed? More to the point, who said the concepts of 'always' and 'not always' were valid in this context?

But why get sidetracked? What we call 'naturalistic' is so called by virtue of the absence of what you are calling 'intelligence'. With no evidence of such an 'intelligence', living or no, we default to 'naturalistic' as the most elegant explanation. Nothing can be ruled out, but if you want to argue for this, you need to demonstrate that non-living intelligences are possible, rather than simply supposing them to be, or else you do nothing but push back the question "How did life arise?"

I wish I understood this language well enough to be able to debate it with someone. Is there no way that you can phrase this in words instead of in these terms for the sake of a simpleton such as myself?

As I don't understand exactly the mechanics proving what you say, it is hard for me to respond coherently, but from what I can see, I'm unsure as how this changes the argument about observations of white swans. No finite observation of white swans makes any difference to a universal theory about all swans being white - simply because any observations are an infinitely small number relative to the universal theory. Hence the importance of falsification from what I was always taught.

Does what you are saying disprove this? (again I really apologise for my ignorance in the terms being used).

Let me first refer to this post:

Now, in principle, anyone could go through and replace every symbol with its English language equivalent. For example, consider the following:

Instead, we could write

What the argument shows is the following. Assume two things. Assume it is indeed possible that all swans are white. And assume that when I see a swan, it is possible for that swan to be non-white. In other words, my hypothesis that all swans are white is logically possible, and it is capable of being falsified (by encountering a non-white swan). Under these assumptions, it follows that every white swan I see increases the likelihood that all swans are white.

Assume Venter is successful while natural emergence remains unproven.

Could you make a probabilistic argument that natural emergence is a favorite over intelligent creation as an explaination for the orgin of life on this planet?

Could you make a probabilistic argument that intelligent creation is a favorite over natural emergence as an explaination for the orgin of life on this planet?

Your argument may(! I havent examined it further than skimming the thread) have merit with tregards to life (or material intelligence), it does not have merit with regards to God. Do you see why?

Furthermore, if his group pulls it off it shows that one can make life can come from lifeless materials only. This disproves needing something 'extra', aside from the lifeless stuff of our universe ( the 'material'), for life.

In other words, it would make a supernatural component inherent in all forms of life less likely and a supernatural creator less likely aswell.

Knowing the underlying thinking is sound is more important to me than the conclusion.

Does science have any understanding whether those first things that bumped into other things to create life in the first place isn't happening all the time, from the time of first of the first life up to the present?

My layman's understanding is that it is not likely to still be occurring.
The Miller-Urey experiment will produce no amino-acids at all if the 'atmosphere' contains more than 'trace' oxygen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%...rly_atmosphere

There are unlikely to be any 'non-oxygenated conditions, that still somehow contain liquid water, Methane, Ammonia, Hydrogen, and all the other things that the experiment used.

+6000(Earth's age according to THE word of God)

just because something becomes more likely doesn't mean >50%. Of course it doesn't mean <50 either

Not without further assumptions.

What sort of assumptions would you need?