John Branyan #crackpot #fundie #pratt

John Branyan #crackpot #fundie #pratt johnbranyan.com

EVIDENCE FOR GOD 2: MY JELLO IS ALIVE

This is the 2nd part of my fantastic new series where I present evidence for the existence of God.

In part one, I explained what I mean when I say “God”.

In order to understand the first evidence, you need to understand Jello.

Specifically, you must understand that Jello is not alive.

Though it comes in many shapes and flavors…

…none of them are living.

Suppose a spoonful of Jello that you scooped onto a plate suddenly came to life.

It slithered across the table onto the floor and headed out the front door.

Be honest…that would surprise you, wouldn’t it?

Suppose a microscopic piece of Jello suddenly came to life and slithered around.

Is that less surprising?

What if a microscopic piece of Jello came alive a million years ago?

It’s pretty miraculous no matter when it happened.

That’s essentially what happened on Earth at some point in the unrecorded past.

It wasn’t exactly Jello that came to life but it was something just as dead.

And that’s not something that ever happens.

Non-living stuff doesn’t come to life.

Living things only come from other living things.

Always.

Earth started out as dead as a teaspoon of Jello.

And then there were living cells.

Poof!

That’s evidence

19 comments

Much ado about nothing.

Jello isn't alive? I dunno, I've fought quite a few flans and puddings in my day. So why not jello?

Johnny Brana: “I don’t get science. Therefore, God exists!”

Ah, apparently this is some new definition of the word “evidence” that I have never encountered before….

Seriously, the “evidence” is “something came to life, so God”?? I think I’m gonna need something a little stronger than that.

It would be surprising, yes, but that doesn’t imply that it happened with a purpose. “Something weird happened, therefore God” is not a sufficient answer, given that we’ve figured out quite a lot of “something weirds” so far and other being(s) were never a reasonable or necessary explanation for it. Unless you count “human hoaxers”, or “squirrels in the attic”, or “baboons doing whacky shit when no one’s looking”, etc. as “other beings”.

Besides, much more realistic than jello coming to life would be the materials in the jello coming together to form new life which is not itself “jello” in any meaningful sense. We wouldn’t even recognize that if it ever happened, only that the jello went bad.

"Poof!
That’s evidence"

Nope. No one ever said it happened, Poof! That's a creationist mis-summarizing of the complicated reasons scientists came to the conclusions thry hold.
So, you're objecting yo a straw man, not science.

At the same time, when you say, "Living things only come from other living things. Always." what kind of evidence can you show for this? You've never seen it happen, sure. How do you know it NEVER happens? How can you demonstrate this?

Wheat is alive. Berries are alive. Cows are alive.

Suck on that, OP.

As viruses show us, the distinction between life and “mere” organic chemistry is far muddier than one might think. When it comes to the first life, and probably even LUCA, even prokaryotes, let alone slime molds are far too advanced. Most likely, we are talking about circles of amino acid reactions in the pores of long-lived alkaline hydrothermal vents (White Smokers).

But even if we just ignore that abiogenesis can and is in fact investigated: The first life simply spontaneously arose in a freak incident of organic chemistry would still be infinitely more plausible and parsimonious than “literally everything we know about natural history, from the entirity of biology to our extensive catalogue of the different layers of the rocks and the ever-different faunas and floras therein, to astrophysics, to even linguistics and history, is wrong, what actually happened is that a supernatural being that is both the platonic abstract deity of Ultimate Perfection and the more traditional abusive God-Father archetype created everything six thousand and twenty-five years ago (taking six days and then taking a break despite being omnipotent), and back then there was no death so obviously, originally everyone was a herbivore no matter how clearly one is adapted to a predatory niche, and all the diverse geological strata and landforms of Earth originated with one single flood that covered the entire Earth (plus any other disaster movie science that I can shoehorn in) over the course of a single year at the times of the Pyramids, and the enormous diversity of life worldwide derives from the survivors of this flood, which consists of one pair of every “kind”, except for “clean” ones that get seven pairs, gathered by an old man, his three sons and their respective wives, all of which contained in a giant wooden box, and also languages all originated in a single catastrophic supernatural event a few generations later, and all of this is detailed in perfect literal accuracy in this one minor ancient orient nation’s mythical epic that on closer examination shows clear signs of being grafted from more than one source and actually starts with two different, mutually exclusive, creation myths, one of them clearly literary, back to back, and which for the rest of its course focuses exclusively on one single family, clearly written to deal with two conflicting founding myths by making them grandfather and grandson (with the linking son/father conspiciously lacking in stories of his own…) while also setting up the founding epic that makes up the rest of the pentalogy.”
(And note that I have limited myself to the basic conceit of Abrahamism, leaving aside all the stuff whatever splinter of that schismatic sect of Hellenic Judaism has been adding to it.)

Sorry for the rambling.

@Bastethotep #98126

When is your full-length treatise on atheology coming out? :D

This is evidence you don't understand science

Now give that jello a proper timetable and environment and while when it finally does, it will not look like anything resembling a jello anymore, it will be most definitely alive… Or rather there will be all sorts of life feeding upon it.

The guy is supposed to be a comedian. Maybe this is him being funny in a reducto absurdum style?

Specifically, you must understand that Jello is not alive

Wait a minute, though...Jello is made mainly from gelatin, which is basically made from animal parts. So, essentially, Jello WAS alive.

You moron, abiogenesis was a progressive process, taking millions and millions of years simply to get the most basic lifeforms.

Jello Biafra is still alive yes, but getting on a bit, however the Dead Kennedys are now well and truly dead and gone. As for jello, leave it open on the bench too long, soon it will be alive with critters you don’t like.

Hardly the primordial soup you were trying to talk about.

@Bastethotep #98126

As viruses show us, the distinction between life and “mere” organic chemistry is far muddier than one might think.

Makes sense. From what I learned about Viruses they don’t properly fit the common definition of “life” anyway, yet they aren’t inanimate either. Then again, isn’t it true that scientists still haven’t reached a consensus on how to properly define “life”?

It’s an interesting philosophical question, IMO, and makes one wonder, could fully-sapient Von Neumann machines (self-replicating machines) be considered “alive” without being organic even?

I explained what I mean when I say “God”.

So you get to redefine it too, so that you can later affirm that it exists, also using your own arguments. That only affirms your own idea, without presenting any evidence for the actual existence of a deity.

Non-living stuff doesn’t come to life

It clearly did, because we're here. And we know for a fact, from very strong evidence, that life was not the primary material of the universe.

Living things only come from other living things

Reproduction, after abiogenesis. It is also likely that reproducing molecules simpler than the life we are used to preceeded it, just like protocells preceeded more complex cells. We also find evidence in our own cells that it didn't appear as-is, it evolved from previous forms. Before multicellular life, there also was simpler unicellular life. Then we have very strong evidence that evolution happened on larger scales too, even if you deny it with stupid arguments to justify your interpretation of an ancient myth of ancient human traditions who knew little of the natural world.

“That’s essentially what happened on Earth at some point in the unrecorded past.”
Gelatin is made from proteins found in animal tissues.
Bit of a conflict, there. It’s like saying the first car was made out of parts scavanged from a later car.

No One says that a long time ago, life started based on life products.