How would pre-Darwinian atheists...

[The Flying Dutchman]

How would pre-Darwinian atheists explain the origin of species or life?

[Hoodoo Ulove]

I'll come at this not from a historical but from a philosophical point of view. Assume a wold in which there is no evolution of life-forms, and which the climate is unchanging. There is no reason that this had to have been created - it could have always been this way.

[Hoodoo Ulove]

"World", not "wold".

[Squink]

Spontaneous Generation (http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio114/spontgen.htm)

[Darwin's Finch]

Spontaneous generation, indeed (http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/fgregory/Lamarck.htm):

The natural tendency toward increased complexity was to be understood as a given force of nature. But it only began its work after the simplest of organisms appeared. Where, then, did these simple organisms come from? Lamarck's answer was that they were produced by spontaneous generation.

Nature, by means of heat, light electricity and moisture, forms direct or spontaneous generations at that extremity of each kingdom of living bodies, where the simplest of these bodies are found.

Two comments regarding Lamarok's [sic] doctrine of spontaneous generation are in order. The reader should notice, firstly, that Lamarck refers the creative action of spontaneous generation to the "extremity of each kingdom"; i.e., nature spawns the simplest plant organisms and the simplest animal organisms separately. Lamarck did not believe that there were transitional fores connecting the plant and animal kingdoms. Ironically, many who adhered to the fixity of species felt that there may well be organisms within the great chain of being that linked nature's two kingdoms.

Secondly, Lamarck's understanding of spontaneous generation contained no reference to a Divine Artificer. The means employed by nature were the forces of physics and chemistry. When he did go into the details of spontaneous generation, his explanations were wholly mechanistic. Although earlier in his life Lamarck had not thought that the appearance of organic nature could have been produced from inorganic nature, he later changed his mind. Consequently Lamarck was not a vitalist; he did not feel that life was a special kind of being that was wholly different from nonliving being. To him life was "a very natural phenomenon, a physical fact."

[Napier]

This is conjecture, as I have only been a post-Darwinian athiest, but I think I'd explain it the way I currently explain the origin of the universe: it is to some degree a mystery.

Note that you don't have to hypothesize a god to explain a thing. I imagine that most of existence is complex beyond my ability to comprehend, and that even the things I could comprehend are mostly unknown because there is so much to figure out and learn.

It would be reasonable to speculate about, say, the origin of life. You know people older than yourself, so you assume life existed before you experienced it. You know about archaeological finds, so you assume it goes back many lifetimes. Maybe you know about fossils and guess about how old they must be. There are always ideas you can try and test and discuss and remember - Darwinism is just one of the most exciting and useful ones in the area of life's history.

One more note: part of my athiesm is my sense that people often make up fanciful explanations for things they want to understand, and gods fall into this category in my view of our history. Whether God is what the Church claims, or a made up explanation, or something else, is in a narrow logical sense untestable; but I still have a working picture in my mind that guides me, for example, in deciding whether to spend hours praising him (a choice everybody has to make).

[David Simmons]

In spite of mankinds' propensity to be wiseasses and always have an answer, an intelligent, pre-evolution individual who doubted the Genesis account, and the garbage that religious nuts propounded as a consequence, could just say, "Life exists but I don't have enough information to propose an explanation for how it started." There's absolutely nothing wrong with saying that you don't know.

And in fact we still don't know although there are several reasonable speculations around.

[Evil Captor]

Historically, pre-Darwinists of a rational turn of mind were either atheists who said, "We don't yet know how life originated, but the simple fact that we don't yet know everything there is to know, is not proof of the existence of God. Or they were Deists who said, "We acknowledge that the world we live in must have had a creator of some sort, but we are simply not in a position to say for sure what sort of creature the creator was."

Many of the Founding Fathers were Deists of this sort. America was not created a Christian nation.

[Walton Firm]

An obvious problem with the "God did it" hypothesis is that God, if She exists, must be a very complex being -- at least as complex as any other creature on Earth. So if you postulate the existence of God as an explanation for the existence of life, the obvious next question becomes: how did God come into existence?

If the religous person is allowed to assume the existence of God without explaining it, then the atheist should be allowed to take the existence of life as a given, without attempting to explain it.

[Liberal]

I believe that goodness compels the existence of God. That is, Her existence is necessary.

[Liberal]

Many of the Founding Fathers were Deists of this sort. America was not created a Christian nation.It is not necessary that Christianity and Deism be at odds. It is true that the most powerful churches have been theistic, but it can be argued that that is because it is easier to grab political power with arms and claims of revelation than with persuasive argument and reason. But Freemasonry, Essenism, the Quaker Society of Friends, and many other Christian based belief systems are compatible with Deistic principles.

[jayjay]

"World", not "wold".

Well, it could be a wold, too, but the range of species and populations thereof would be considerably limited...

[jimpatro]

Liberal


I believe that goodness compels the existence of God. That is, Her existence is necessary.

Why is Her existence necessary?

[Hoodoo Ulove]

Because the essence of goodness is edification. Surely everyone knows that! Sheesh!

[jayjay]

Liberal




Why is Her existence necessary?

Lib, can you just link to whatever the last thread you did this in was for him? Because this is kind of an interesting thread and I don't know if I can stand three pages of formal logic proofs of God again...

[David Simmons]

Lib, can you just link to whatever the last thread you did this in was for him? Because this is kind of an interesting thread and I don't know if I can stand three pages of formal logic proofs of God again...Loud cheers.

[Liberal]

Lib, can you just link to whatever the last thread you did this in was for him? Because this is kind of an interesting thread and I don't know if I can stand three pages of formal logic proofs of God again...Will you be kind enough to ask people like Martin Wolf not to do the same thing for the opposite sentiment with statements like: "So if you postulate the existence of God as an explanation for the existence of life, the obvious next question becomes: how did God come into existence?" Or is it your intention to silence believers only and allow nonbelievers to engage in whatever hijacks they wish?

[Liberal]

Liberal

Why is Her existence necessary?Because it is possible that She exists.

[Walton Firm]

Will you be kind enough to ask people like Martin Wolf not to do the same thing for the opposite sentiment with statements like: "So if you postulate the existence of God as an explanation for the existence of life, the obvious next question becomes: how did God come into existence?" Or is it your intention to silence believers only and allow nonbelievers to engage in whatever hijacks they wish?What hijack? My post was directly relevant to the OP's question.

Just to spell it out: if a pre-Darwinian atheist were challenged by a religious person to explain the existence of life, the proper answer would be "I can't, and neither can you". If the religious person then came back with "Yes I can: all life was created by God", the atheist should answer with something along the lines of "Unless you can give the mechanism by which this God being came into existence, you have not explained anything with that answer -- you have merely given a name to your ignorance".

Of course, in our world, we do have a scientifically sound explanation for the origin of species, which does not require us to postulate the existence of God. Therefore, to debate His/Her existence in this thread would be a hijack, and I will refrain from doing so.

[jayjay]

Will you be kind enough to ask people like Martin Wolf not to do the same thing for the opposite sentiment with statements like: "So if you postulate the existence of God as an explanation for the existence of life, the obvious next question becomes: how did God come into existence?" Or is it your intention to silence believers only and allow nonbelievers to engage in whatever hijacks they wish?

I don't want to silence anyone. I'm not asking you to shut up. All I'm asking you to do is if you feel the urge to get ontological again, please link to the last time you did so rather than consuming several pages and an unknown number of hamsters in p so not q blahblahblah, as I seriously doubt that a Proof Of God would have changed all that much in several months time that you would need to repost such.

[Mtgman]

How would pre-Darwinian atheists explain the origin of species or life?
Exactly the same way post-Darwinin athiests do. That's because Darwin's work addressed absolutely nothing about the origin of life. Simply the origin of the DIVERSITY of life.

Enjoy,
Steven

[rfgdxm]

Exactly the same way post-Darwinin athiests do. That's because Darwin's work addressed absolutely nothing about the origin of life. Simply the origin of the DIVERSITY of life.

Enjoy,
Steven
THIS is the correct answer, and the mods might as well close this thread. Darwin himself believed in god; he wasn't an atheist. For Darwin, he merely was theorizing on how he thought god's creation actually worked.

[Hoodoo Ulove]

How would pre-Darwinian atheists explain the origin of species or life?It has properly been pointed out that the question raised is the explanation of biogenesis, and that Darwin may not be relevant. The question still stands. Two answers have thus far been suggested:

1) There need have been no beginning. (This answer also works for the origin of existence).

2) A natural process not yet understood.

Have we missed any?

. . .the mods might as well close this thread. Darwin himself believed in god . . . Darwin's religious views are irrelevant to the question.

[Walton Firm]

By the way, note that while Darwin was the first(1) to propose a scientifically sound explanation for the mechanism behind evolution, he was not the first to come up with the concept of evolution itself.

To quote a passage from the foreword to my copy of The Origin of Species:

The idea of the evolution of organisms, so far from originating
with Darwin, is a very old one. Glimpses of it appear in the
ancient Greek philosophers, especially Empedocles and Aristotle;
modern philosophy from Bacon onward shows an increasing
definiteness in its grasp of the conception; and in the age
preceding Darwin’s, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck had
given it a fairly concrete expression. As we approach the date
of the publication of “The Origin of Species” adherence to the
doctrine not only by naturalists but by poets, such as Goethe,
becomes comparatively frequent; and in the six years before the
joint announcement of Darwin and Wallace, Herbert Spencer had
been supporting and applying it vigorously in the field of
psychology.

To these partial anticipations, however, Darwin owed little.
When he became interested in the problem, the doctrine of the
fixity of species was still generally held; and his solution
occurred to him mainly as the result of his own observation
and thinking.So, even pre-Darwin, an atheist would have been justified to say something like "Well, we haven't quite figured out all the details yet, but there are some strong indications that there's a natural, gradual process at the root of it, and I'm confident that we'll have an explanation in good time."

(1) Along with a couple of contemporaries who more-or-less independently came up with the same idea at almost the same time, as usually happens with these things..

[glee]

How would pre-Bible fundamentalists explain the origin of species or life? :eek:

[Napier]

>How would pre-Darwinian atheists explain the origin of species or life?


>Exactly the same way post-Darwinin athiests do. That's because Darwin's work addressed absolutely nothing about the origin of life.

Now, wait a minute. The OP clearly includes explaining the origin of species, and Darwin's work addressed the origin of species directly.

[rfgdxm]

Now, wait a minute. The OP clearly includes explaining the origin of species, and Darwin's work addressed the origin of species directly.
The most likely answer is in post #17 of this thread.

[rfgdxm]

The most likely answer is in post #17 of this thread.
Aaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhh. Make that post #19. Forgive me, I'm tired.

[jayjay]

>Now, wait a minute. The OP clearly includes explaining the origin of species, and Darwin's work addressed the origin of species directly.

"Origin of species" =/= "Origin of life"

Whence did Homo sapiens originate? From Homo erectus. Whence did Homo erectus originate? From Homo habilis. Homo habilis? Australopithecus africanus. And so on until at some point we go back to some small insectivorous mammal that co-existed with the dinosaurs. Then back to the synapsids. Then back to early amphibians. Etc. Etc. Until we get to a point where we're not really sure what happened, but we have some ideas. Since soft tissue doesn't really fossilize well (and even less soft tissue that's of microscopic stature), "evolution" doesn't cover this area. Biology doesn't even cover this area with any authority, and most biologists will acknowledge this without a lot of foot shuffling and mumbled explanations.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Because it is possible that She exists.
Cite?

[Mtgman]

>How would pre-Darwinian atheists explain the origin of species or life?


>Exactly the same way post-Darwinin athiests do. That's because Darwin's work addressed absolutely nothing about the origin of life.

Now, wait a minute. The OP clearly includes explaining the origin of species, and Darwin's work addressed the origin of species directly.
True, and I probably should have asked for clarification to see if the OP was actually asking two questions(origin of species, origin of life in general) versus just one. The way the OP was phrased seemed to indicate a question about biogenesis, not diversification. Bundling the question about the origin of species with the origin of life in general seems to indicate interest in the origin of the first species, versus the diverse multitude of species we now see. Indeed until Darwin there was no(widely known) reason to believe the species tree had ever been less complex than it was at the time, so if this question were asked of a pre-Darwin atheist they would almost certainly have interpreted it as strictly a question of biogenesis. Common descent was not a widely published/understood model at the time.

Still, in both cases the options would be pretty much as Hoodoo Ulove outlined.

Enjoy,
Steven

[bonzer]

Indeed until Darwin there was no(widely known) reason to believe the species tree had ever been less complex than it was at the time, so if this question were asked of a pre-Darwin atheist they would almost certainly have interpreted it as strictly a question of biogenesis. Common descent was not a widely published/understood model at the time.

Not necessarily. Lamarck is the relevant earlier example of someone who believed that the simplest lifeforms could arise via spontaneous generation and that these had then evolved to produce the observed diversity of species. This is not because Lamarck was himself an atheist - he wasn't - but rather because Adrian Desmond has argued at length in his studies of early 19th century working-class atheism in Britain (notably in The Politics of Evolution, Chicago, 1989) that this movement tended to be heavily Lamarckian. Such atheists also tended to be republicans and socialists and part of the appeal of Lamarck's ideas to them was that they could be interpreted as the progressive result of self-help. Seeing nature as filled with species striving to better themselves had a natural appeal to working class men seeking to improve society.
The "pauper press" of the time thus frequently reprinted the likes of d'Holbach's System of Nature and extracts from French Lamarckians for this audience.

However, it's not obvious to me that Desmond's model will also apply outside of Britain. French and German atheists, in particular, probably had their own, different attitudes to Lamarck.

Darwin himself believed in god; he wasn't an atheist. For Darwin, he merely was theorizing on how he thought god's creation actually worked.

A grotesque oversimplification.
Darwin's religious views were not static. There were times in his life when he was a rather conventional Anglican who expected to enter the Church. There were times in his life when he questioned the whole notion of an interventionist God. And there was the time towards the end of his life when he consistently described himself as an agnostic.
The area where there's probably the greatest disagreement amongst his biographers on the matter is his beliefs in 1859 at the time of writing the Origin, not least because this influences how one reads the few religious references in it. Are these essentially the expression of a Deist or a few concessions to the expectations of his intended readership by someone who no longer has a belief in God and would rather avoid the issue? At roughly the same time, there's the long exchange of letters with Asa Gray on the religious implications of the theory. In these, as he was to repeatedly state when asked thereafter, Darwin states that he sees no necessary conflict between the theory and Christianity and he entirely respects Gray's hope to reconcile his own beliefs. But he also makes it clear that he personally sees nature as undesigned.
As already noted, once Huxley had invented the term, he consistently described himself as an agnostic. All the major recent biographers - Desmond, Moore and Browne, including in their major joint entry on him in the new Oxford DNB - take this as the best description of him in the last few decades of his life.

[An aside: given that Darwin's religious views have often been analysied as in tension with his wife's piety, it's one of the more striking suggestions in the second volume of Browne's biography that she argues that Emma may herself have had major doubts, though these faded after his death. ]

[Liberal]

What hijack? My post was directly relevant to the OP's question.

Just to spell it out: if a pre-Darwinian atheist were challenged by a religious person to explain the existence of life, the proper answer would be "I can't, and neither can you". If the religious person then came back with "Yes I can: all life was created by God", the atheist should answer with something along the lines of "Unless you can give the mechanism by which this God being came into existence, you have not explained anything with that answer -- you have merely given a name to your ignorance".

Of course, in our world, we do have a scientifically sound explanation for the origin of species, which does not require us to postulate the existence of God. Therefore, to debate His/Her existence in this thread would be a hijack, and I will refrain from doing so.And my post was directly relevant to yours. Your demand for a mechanism by which God came into existence is a red herring. And I pointed that out. No explanation for the origin of species has ever required anyone to postulate the existence of God, and the soundness of any scientific theory has zippo to do witht the existence of God. You therefore introduced the irrelevancy in your post, and now that it has been addressed, you claim it was necessary to introduce it. It wasn't.

[Liberal]

Cite?
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PeanosAxioms.html

[Hoodoo Ulove]

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PeanosAxioms.htmlI'll bite, Lib. How does the possibility of God's existence follow from Peano's axioms? Or are you saying that they demonstrate that His existence follows from His possibility?

[Bippy the Beardless]

I'll bite, Lib. How does the possibility of God's existence follow from Peano's axioms? Or are you saying that they demonstrate that His existence follows from His possibility?
<Anakin/Vader> Nooooooooooooooooooo! </Anakin/Vader>

[Diogenes the Cynic]

You're going to have to explain that one to me as well.

I would contend that in order to prove possibility, you first have to prove necessity, i.e. you have to prove the universe can't exist without God. If the universe can exist without God (and no reason has ever been shown why it can't) then God is superfluous, and a superfluous (i.e. unnecessary) God cannot possibly exist.

Of course, even this still leaves out all the usual problems the OA has with trying to define "God" in the first place.

[Walton Firm]

No explanation for the origin of species has ever required anyone to postulate the existence of GodDoes the word "watchmaker" ring any bells?

[DrDeth]

Or they were Deists who said, "We acknowledge that the world we live in must have had a creator of some sort, but we are simply not in a position to say for sure what sort of creature the creator was."

Many of the Founding Fathers were Deists of this sort. America was not created a Christian nation.

Right. "Pure" atheists were rare and controversial back then. Most would have been Deists, or "doubters", since "agnostic' was a term coined around Darwins time.

[Liberal]

I'll bite, Lib. How does the possibility of God's existence follow from Peano's axioms? Or are you saying that they demonstrate that His existence follows from His possibility?I'm saying that it is absurd to ask for a cite for a premise. Peano used five of them. Dio now has an opportunity to ask for a cite for each.

[Liberal]

Does the word "watchmaker" ring any bells?Yes it does. And if I'd said anything about a cosmological argument, it might even be broadly applicable.

[Walton Firm]

Yes it does. And if I'd said anything about a cosmological argument, it might even be broadly applicable.You didn't, the OP did. At least, I assume that's why he specified a "pre-Darwinian atheist", rather than a pre-Darwinian fishmonger or a pre-Darwinian hoofsmith. In fact, you had not posted anything in this thread at all before the post of mine that drew your ire, so how could it have been directed at you?

I haven't been here as long as you have, but I believe that it is customary around here to let the OP determine the subject of the thread, isn't it?

[Liberal]

Ire? What ire? I merely challenged your premise with a premise of my own. It did mean that I was angry with you.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I'm saying that it is absurd to ask for a cite for a premise. Peano used five of them. Dio now has an opportunity to ask for a cite for each.
I accept Peano's axioms as being self-evident and necessary. The possibilty that "God" exists is not remotely-self evident and more importantly it is demonstrably impossible for God to exist unnecessarily. Possibility is contingent upon necessity. If you can't prove God is necessary, you can't prove God is possible. In fact, the discussion of "possibility" is really just an end around the lack of demonstrable necessity. If you can prove God is necessary you prove not only that God is possible but that God, in fact, exists. "Possibility" in this discussion is a space filler for existence itself. Because there is no possibility of God without the existence of God, to assume possibility is to assume your own conclusion, i.e to assume existence itself.

The first thing that needs to be demonstrated is necessity. Possibility is not a given but is precisely what needs to be proven.

[Walton Firm]

Ire? What ire? I merely challenged your premise with a premise of my own. It did [not?] mean that I was angry with you.Fair enough, except that I still don't quite see how your response-premise is relevant to the discussion. Or, for that matter, how your post #10 was an answer to my post #9 in the first place.

Obviously, if our protagonist (the OP's pre-Darwinian atheist) can be convinced of the existence of God, then she is no longer an atheist and the OP's question no longer applies to her. So let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that our atheist has in fact been exposed to all of the various God-proofs that are available to her, and that she remains unconvinced.

I am aware that, to you, it is incomprehensible that anybody could be confronted with the self-evident truth of the Ontological Proof, and not be convinced. However, the truth is that the vast majority of atheists, now and in the past, have managed this feat. So can we just assume that this particular atheist is one of those people?

If you have something to add to this specific discussion, as opposed to a generic can-God's-existence-be-proven debate, could you please spell it out in a bit more detail? As opposed to us having to either read your mind, or draw it out of you over the course of a few dozen posts..

[Hoodoo Ulove]

Possibility is contingent upon necessity.I don't follow this. Given A and B as undefined variables, it is possible but not necessary that A>B. No?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

In the MOA, necessity is typically built into the definition of "God," so it's not an undefined variable.

[DocCathode]

Nitpick #1 How were the Essenes Christian? They were a Jewish sect.

Nitpick #2 My memory could be faulty, or the family tree may have been rearranged, but I seem to recall Anthropology 101 teaching that hominids and austalopithicenes evolved from a common ancestor rather than hominids evolving from australopithicenes.

Re OP

How much preDarwin? If it's after the discovery that pi does not equal three, that the world isn't flat, and that the earth orbits the sun, use those facts to poke holes in the Bible. Science has already shown the Bible to be in error (or at least to contain parables which are not factually true), why accept the Biblical account of the origins of life and the human race?


[b]Jayjay said "homo"[/brainless chuckling]

[Hoodoo Ulove]

Science has already shown the Bible to be in error (or at least to contain parables which are not factually true), why accept the Biblical account of the origins of life and the human race?Nothin' in the OP about the Bible, Doc.

[DocCathode]

Nothin' in the OP about the Bible, Doc.

Oops. Is it too late to change my answer?

Just point out several things that were previously considered great mysteries but had been explained by science. Then say that logic leads you to conclude that God didn't do it, and that science shall one day find the answer.

[Hoodoo Ulove]

I. If you can't prove God is necessary, you can't prove God is possible. . . Because there is no possibility of God without the existence of God, to assume possibility is to assume your own conclusion, i.e to assume existence itself.

The first thing that needs to be demonstrated is necessity. Possibility is not a given but is precisely what needs to be proven.Liberal, this is, to my eye, a pretty cogent attack on the MOA. I think this thread is moribund enough that no one could call a response a hijack. If you think you've responded adequately elsewhere, a cite would shut me up for a while.