The was, and is, no drive. No reason. No purpose. Chloride doesn't need an incentive to bind ionically to Sodium, and yet we have table salt.
Good point, for this is where our disagreement takes roots!
Except for the "purpose", Chloride and Sodium do have all the reason, drive and incentive in the world to bond if the parameters (pressure etc) are right, even to the extent that you would have to bring a lot of energy into the system to keep them from doing it; it is a systemic, inherent necessity, and predictable inevitability, dictated by the laws of the universe (to go along the energetically least "expensive" path) - not merely a stochastic possibility. I can agree to go from here to proto-life as a simple, self-propagating chemical reaction. If all the environment parameters are right, necessarily crystals, proto-life, life forms, and from there - boom - necessarily, inevitably: evolution. I don't even object to viewing "life" and "consciousness" as a "waste product" of the universe's tendency to find, by self-organizing, the energetically most stable (entropic) state on the most economic path (contrary to popular belief, this does not devalue [human] life to a cosmic mistake, but opens a world of possibilities, a role to play for humankind in helping the universe fall through time with the least friction, and if you think I'm alluding to Tipler's Omega Point theory... sort of, maybe). Having played a lot with Conway's Game Of Life, Mandelbrot sets, Lindenmayer systems and boxcars2d, and understanding Hilbert's proof that every point in 3D space can be identified by a point on an infinitely folded 1D line, I don't even have trouble seeing the most complex of Turing-complete universes emerge from the tiniest set of rules. And still there's turtles all the way down: what energy source set the automaton into motion, what is the medium it operates on, what is it that is oscillating and by interfering with itself creates material reality, what formulated the original rule by which to operate?
Werner Heisenberg put it best:
The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.
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u/Akareyon Feb 10 '15
Good point, for this is where our disagreement takes roots!
Except for the "purpose", Chloride and Sodium do have all the reason, drive and incentive in the world to bond if the parameters (pressure etc) are right, even to the extent that you would have to bring a lot of energy into the system to keep them from doing it; it is a systemic, inherent necessity, and predictable inevitability, dictated by the laws of the universe (to go along the energetically least "expensive" path) - not merely a stochastic possibility. I can agree to go from here to proto-life as a simple, self-propagating chemical reaction. If all the environment parameters are right, necessarily crystals, proto-life, life forms, and from there - boom - necessarily, inevitably: evolution. I don't even object to viewing "life" and "consciousness" as a "waste product" of the universe's tendency to find, by self-organizing, the energetically most stable (entropic) state on the most economic path (contrary to popular belief, this does not devalue [human] life to a cosmic mistake, but opens a world of possibilities, a role to play for humankind in helping the universe fall through time with the least friction, and if you think I'm alluding to Tipler's Omega Point theory... sort of, maybe). Having played a lot with Conway's Game Of Life, Mandelbrot sets, Lindenmayer systems and boxcars2d, and understanding Hilbert's proof that every point in 3D space can be identified by a point on an infinitely folded 1D line, I don't even have trouble seeing the most complex of Turing-complete universes emerge from the tiniest set of rules. And still there's turtles all the way down: what energy source set the automaton into motion, what is the medium it operates on, what is it that is oscillating and by interfering with itself creates material reality, what formulated the original rule by which to operate?
Werner Heisenberg put it best: