scholarly journals Dialogue Concerning Life: Abiogenesis, Biogenesis Or Creationism: Religious Response

PREDESTINASI ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Peter O. O. Ottuh

Life itself is a mystery, the how and when of life’s origin constitute a serious challenge to both religion and science. To the reasoning mind, the origination of life is an intellectual problem that needs intellectual resolution especially in the domains of science and religion.  To this extent, some scientific assumptions and postulations concerning the origin of life and the universe are found in a number of theories such as evolution, biogenesis, and abiogenesis among others. Obviously, all these theories pose serious challenges to most religious beliefs including the notion of creationism. In this paper, the historical and critical analytic methods were used to document and evaluate the various religious responses on the subject. The paper posits that religious adherents should acquit themselves with authentic religious beliefs and integrate them with authentic scientific knowledge.

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-174
Author(s):  
Bertram Donn

The illness which prevented Dr. N. Richter from presiding over Commission 15 sessions in Montreal proved fatal on November 26, 1980.Books published since 1978 dealing with the subject matter of Commission 15 are: (1) Comets and The Origin of Life, ed. C. Ponnomperuma, 1981, D. Reidel pub. Co., Dordrecht, Holland (designated C. P. Colloq. in Report); (2) Comets, ed. L. Wilkening, Univ. Arizona Press, 1982 (designated Comets, 1982 in Report) contains invited reviews of Tucson, IAU Colloquium No 61, “Comets” Gases, Ices, Grains, Plasma”. Contributed papers will appear in a volume of Icarus. Papers dealing with cometary and asteroidal orbits appear in IAU Symp. 81, 1979 and with cometary grains and meteorites in IAU Symp. 90, 1981. Proceedings of Workshops are: (1) “Experimental Approaches to Comets”, ed. J. Oro, 1978, Lunar and planetary Institute, Pub. 361; (2) “Modern Observational Techniques for Comets”, eds. J. Brandt et al., 1981, JPL Pub. 81-68, NASA.


2006 ◽  
pp. 147-198
Author(s):  
Jordi Llorca ◽  
Malcolm E. Schrader ◽  
Pasquale Stano ◽  
Francesca Ferri ◽  
Pier Luigi Luisi

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl H. Gibson ◽  
Rudolph E. Schild ◽  
N. Chandra Wickramasinghe

AbstractThe origin of life and the origin of the Universe are among the most important problems of science and they might be inextricably linked. Hydro-gravitational-dynamics cosmology predicts hydrogen–helium gas planets in clumps as the dark matter of galaxies, with millions of planets per star. This unexpected prediction is supported by quasar microlensing of a galaxy and a flood of new data from space telescopes. Supernovae from stellar over-accretion of planets produce the chemicals (C, N, O, P, etc.) and abundant liquid-water domains required for first life and the means for wide scattering of life prototypes. Life originated following the plasma-to-gas transition between 2 and 20 Myr after the big bang, while planetary core oceans were between critical and freezing temperatures, and interchanges of material between planets constituted essentially a cosmological primordial soup. Images from optical, radio and infrared space telescopes suggest life on Earth was neither first nor inevitable.


Geosciences ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Kompanichenko

The advanced version of the author’s inversion concept of the origin of terrestrial life and its application for life in the Universe has been substantiated. A key step in the transition to life consists in the thermodynamic inversion of non-living prebiotic microsystems when the contributions of free energy (F) and information (I) become prevalent over the contribution of entropy (S). It is based the thermodynamic corridor that is mandatory for all chemical scenarios for the origin of life: F + I < S (prebiotic microsystem) → F + I ≈ S (intermediate stage, inversion moment) → F + I > S (primary living unit). A prebiotic organic microsystem can reach the intermediate state between non-life and life only under high-frequency and multilevel oscillations of physic-chemical parameters in hydrothermal environments. The oscillations are considered the fourth required condition for the origin of life, in addition to the three well-known ones: the availability of organic matter, an aqueous medium, and a source of energy. The emergence of initial life sparks in nonequilibrium prebiotic microsystems (being at the intermediate state) proceeds through the continuous response (counteraction) of prebiotic microsystems to incessant physic-chemical oscillations (stress). The next step of laboratory simulations on the origin of life directed to the exploration of the microsystems’ response to high-frequency oscillations (>10−10 s–<30 min) is proposed. Finally, some fragments of the general scenario of the origin of life in the Universe based on the whole four required conditions have been outlined.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (A29B) ◽  
pp. 436-440
Author(s):  
Edwin A. Bergin

AbstractWater and organics need to be supplied to terrestrial worlds like our own to provide the essential compounds required for the origin of life. These molecules form initially during the earliest stages of stellar birth, are supplied by collapse to the planet-forming disk predominantly as ice, and may undergo significant processing during this collapse and within large planetesimals that are heated via radioactive decay. Water and organic carriers can be quite volatile, thus their survival as ices within rocks is not preordained. In this focus meeting our goal is to bring together astronomers, cosmochemists, planetary scientists, chemical physicists, and spectroscopists who each explore individual aspects of this problem. In this summary we discuss some of the main themes that appeared in the meeting. Ultimately, cross-field collaboration is needed to provide greater understanding of the likelihood that terrestrial worlds form with these key compounds readily available on their surfaces – and are hence habitable if present at the right distance from the star.


2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Szostak ◽  
Szymon Wasik ◽  
Jacek Blazewicz

According to some hypotheses, from a statistical perspective the origin of life seems to be a highly improbable event. Although there is no rigid definition of life itself, life as it is, is a fact. One of the most recognized hypotheses for the origins of life is the RNA world hypothesis. Laboratory experiments have been conducted to prove some assumptions of the RNA world hypothesis. However, despite some success in the ‘wet-lab’, we are still far from a complete explanation. Bioinformatics, supported by biomathematics, appears to provide the perfect tools to model and test various scenarios of the origins of life where wet-lab experiments cannot reflect the true complexity of the problem. Bioinformatics simulations of early pre-living systems may give us clues to the mechanisms of evolution. Whether or not this approach succeeds is still an open question. However, it seems likely that linking efforts and knowledge from the various fields of science into a holistic bioinformatics perspective offers the opportunity to come one step closer to a solution to the question of the origin of life, which is one of the greatest mysteries of humankind. This paper illustrates some recent advancements in this area and points out possible directions for further research.


Life ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Bartlett ◽  
Michael L. Wong

Motivated by the need to paint a more general picture of what life is—and could be—with respect to the rest of the phenomena of the universe, we propose a new vocabulary for astrobiological research. Lyfe is defined as any system that fulfills all four processes of the living state, namely: dissipation, autocatalysis, homeostasis, and learning. Life is defined as the instance of lyfe that we are familiar with on Earth, one that uses a specific organometallic molecular toolbox to record information about its environment and achieve dynamical order by dissipating certain planetary disequilibria. This new classification system allows the astrobiological community to more clearly define the questions that propel their research—e.g., whether they are developing a historical narrative to explain the origin of life (on Earth), or a universal narrative for the emergence of lyfe, or whether they are seeking signs of life specifically, or lyfe at large across the universe. While the concept of “life as we don’t know it” is not new, the four pillars of lyfe offer a novel perspective on the living state that is indifferent to the particular components that might produce it.


Aqlania ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 147
Author(s):  
Zenno Noeralamsyah

P This article aim to explore perspective of Fethulleh Gülen about knowledge. The idea that science and religion coalesce in the structure of the universe has been expressed by Western philosophers, that contributed to the almost complete separation of intellectual and scientific activities from religion. In this view of dualism, science and religion both find their apotheosis and its keeping religion and science separating by an unbridgeable chasm. The ontological argument of the idea of giving birth to materialism, which supposes that the nature of existence based on matter. Associated with this, Fethullah Gülen offers a new typical scientific approach that will fuse scientific knowledge and religious beliefs closely associated with spirituality, reconfigures modern understandings of science and faith to relieve the dichotomous presumption of the reason-revelation divide. He is deeply interested in the problematic of the relationship between religion and science, while he does not reject the modern scientific approach, neither does it deify it. The essence of the philosophical thought of Fethullah Gülen (who was otherwise known simply as Hoca Effendi) is that understanding the religious texts and the creeds of Islam should be performed using sufi interpretation and commentary by transmission, without denying current context. In Gülen’s view, religious belief and scientifical reason should be combined, for they are a single truth with two expressions. Therefore, the unification of physics and metaphysics in the nature of knowledge, fundamental concept of bridging science and spirituality, both traditional and modern influences in Gülen's treatment of science will be analyzed in this article, to examine what nature of knowledge is in accordance with Gülen's worldview.


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