Group of scientists suggest that octopuses might actually be aliens | Hacker News Reader

Group of scientists suggest that octopuses might actually be aliens

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84 pointslxm121 comments

As much as I love the concept, I can only imagine what a professional with expertise in cephalopods and their DNA would think while reading this article.

If you've ever read a popular press story in your area of expertise, you immediately see how many things writers oversimplify to the point of absurdity, or just get plain wrong.

I'm guessing the authors of that journal article, were they to read this news story, would simultaneously hyperventilate and strain their necks from the excessive sighing and head shaking.

This article gives direct quotes from the authors, and the quotes are exciting, (33 authors FWIW)

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/958247/alien-octopuse...

Not entirely sure I can take that site seriously. Their ads seem pretty strongly in the fake news territory.

The original paper is here. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S007961071...

Not sure I can take this paper seriously, either, but it's clear they're taking themselves seriously (in a good way.)

OK, but "gene complexes", not necessarily octopuses, per se.

Not necessarily, true. But these aren't bacteria and this is a whole lotta genes - so life here absorbing so much DNA coherently doesn't sound more plausible than eggs hatching to me. (Meteorites are freezing cold if you touch them right after they land, despite ablating most of their mass on the way down. Or rather, iron ones are - carbonaceous, I have no idea.)

We humans use genes that were delivered by viruses.

We get DNA not just from viruses, but also vesicles. All cells, from humble bacteria all the way to our relatively huge and dynamic human cells, package snippets of DNA to send to other cells.

It's like a message in a bottle, thrown out into the "sea" of our atmosphere. Or an email, and viruses are spam.

Previously on HN:

Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses. [0]

800 million viruses fall onto every square meter of Earth every day. They kill 20% of bacterial life every day. [1]

Video simulation of HIV infecting a cell and reproducing. [2]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17005810

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16839636

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982396

Yes - a bit at a time, I take it whereas some bacteria can swallow whole chromosomes entire (so-called "competence"); so I was skeptical about so much DNA transferring to just one kind of creature, at once.

But now I think about it, the frozen octopi or eggs would bring a lot of alien octopi viruses along with them that might be able to do the job for all I know.

Sure. But this isn't science. It's fiction. Or religion.

If it's not testable, it's not science.

We don't have spacecraft? We never will? It's recently been found that Europa sprays out detectable water to great distances, and that traces of amino acid would be preserved at such temperatures. So we may have one answer re life soon.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/may/14/europa-moon-...

If you're assuming that life from, say, Europa, even if we found it, and it was the point of origin for octopi, would have altered so much as to have no genetic or chemical similarity to octopi now, I have no idea what your evidence is for that. To the contrary, there are plenty of very highly evolutionarily conserved proteins, hormones, etc - melatonin is one (it was originally an antioxidant for one-celled creatures.)

Refusing to entertain hypotheses by reason of expense isn't science.

Well, by all means look for fossils of such alien octopai. But just how would you know that they were alien? Preserved artifacts, maybe?

Basically, I'm arguing that going from problematic features of octopus evolution and genetics to alien octopai is quite the stretch.

You've misunderstood Popper's falsification doctrine - if any experiment (of the hypothesis OR null hypothesis) that risks falsification can be devised, you're on the side of the angels.

You're welcome to say "Yuk! Yukky idea I just hate it!" but don't please don't peddle a false version of philosophy of science instead of just saying that.

You should also be civil enough to mark your change in position in the last missive.

> If you've ever read a popular press story in your area of expertise, you immediately see how many things writers oversimplify to the point of absurdity, or just get plain wrong.

I could have sworn there was a named Effect/Rule given to an extension of this but my googling is coming up short. It was about how you'll read a mainstream article about something you know a great deal about and see how much the journalists got wrong but don't keep that in mind when reading about things outside your expertise. I believe I read about it in the comments here on HN. Does anyone know what it was?

The Gell-Mann amnesia effect defines the idea that "I believe everything the media tells me except for anything for which I have direct personal knowledge, which they always get wrong."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

Slightly off-topic, but boy you weren't kidding. That topic is ungoogleable if you don't know the specific term for it. I spent 20 minutes or so trying various combinations of words trying to get it.

And that kind of irresponsible press also has managed to hinder the progress of science. Take for example Podkletnov's research, which was hastly taken into popular press and caused a halt in the studies (whereas the actual paper was conservative and measured).

Let's blame the scientists who cared so much about avoiding any possible embarrassment that were unwilling to do their job - which was to take the original paper for its own merits. Science funding gets bent away from promising areas for all kinds of crummy, narcissistic reasons. Blame the narcissism, not just sloppy journalism which is eternal and perhaps unavoidable.

"[The authors] present a fantastic overview of the various hypotheses about the evolution of life on our planet and the contribution of extraterrestrial elements. The review includes many references, several different opinions and ranges all the way to the up-todate literature...The authors take, however, one more step. Their view differs from common scientific concepts and available evidence, claiming that the origin of viruses, microbes and even animals all the way to tardigradus - originate from space."

"There are several explanations why the Cambrian explosion occurred...but the notion that viruses from extraterrestrial space are the main drivers - is uniquely presented here in this article. The authors believe this and use strong expressions, describing it as evidence-based, yet without any of the necessary evidence. As an excuse they point out to other previous unconventional ideas during history of science which turned out to be true later - this is the argument the authors use. They even find their idea “plausible” - but it is hard to follow their thinking in this respect. So this article is useful, calling for attention, and it is worth thinking about - yet the main statement about viruses, microbes and even animals which came to us from space, cannot be taken seriously."

Commentary to: Cause of Cambrian explosion - Terrestrial or cosmic? Steele, E.J. et al.

Karin Molling, Max Planck Institute Molecular Genetics, Berlin, Germany

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S007961071...

They don't cite "any evidence?" C'mon man, they cite quite a bit of evidence. No-one can read the article and truthfully say this. Size of DNA, sophistication of adaptation, differential body symettry, off the top of my head. Is that weak evidence? Well then by the same token, it's evidence.

This seems to be one of the many, many times when contemporary scientists say "there is no evidence of X" when what they mean is that there is no incontrovertible evidence (the other name for which, of course, is "proof.")

But proof and evidence are manifestly not the same thing and conflating them to confuse one's opponents does nobody any favors.

Evidence that is not defeasible remains evidence. Luckily so - because post-Popper, we know that all scientific evidence is defeasible and proof never actually arrives.

This strangely reminds me of a Wired article[0] from 2013 where it quotes a scientist in this way: "If you want to study an alien intelligence, Godfrey-Smith says, 'octopuses are the closest thing we have.'"

Though it doesn't make the claim that it's of alien origin, nor do I subscribe to the theory necessarily. There's just too much question-begging in the theories that life is somehow of extraterrestrial origin (where did that life come from?).

I think of just how genetically plastic dogs are within their own species, that it's not hard for me to imagine life developing into all sorts of directions without having to resort to the seed hypothesis.

Then again, me trying to speak with any kind of authority on evolution or DNA is akin to a dog discussing quantum physics, so my opinion only goes so far ;)

[0] https://www.wired.com/2013/10/how-the-freaky-octopus-can-hel...

> question-begging in the theories that life is somehow of extraterrestrial origin (where did that life come from?).

I really dislike this paper, but they do address that. The fact that life had to start somewhere doesn't make the question of extraterrestrial origin any less interesting.

Sorry for the late reply, but I agree the idea is interesting, but for me it comes off the same way intelligent design or creationism comes off, almost as a God of the gaps type mentality. Because if life is seeded from elsewhere, it's essentially placing it's origin into infinity, and kind of hand waving away the need to dig further. Not that I'm saying we should philosophically determine where we want the evidence to go, but usually the idea is based on so much conjecture and leads to the same result practically that it just seems like a secular way of dismissing the search based on the evidence we do have.

Granted, we have no idea what discoveries and scientific advancements are going to come in the near to distant future, but while I think the question is worth considering, it seems pretty weird for some scientists to accept this conjecture, but randomly eliminate others.

To each his own I guess, but this probably is more about my own distaste for the line of thinking (that, and the whole "we're in a simulation" hypothesis), where it kicks the question off into a place where we'll probably never be able to answer it. Though as far as fun discussion and speculating as entertainment, that is where I find the ideas most enjoyable, personally :)

Here is what I would like to understand: If there is any truth to the theory that Octopuses indeed evolved in outer space and were delivered to our planet via a cosmic payload, how is it that they happened to have the same kind of protein-based, DNA-based genetics like we have? Isn't it too much of a stretch to imagine that an alien evolved under similar conditions with similar genetic foundation like life evolved in our planet?

Earth’s abiogenesis could have started via a cosmic payload as well, which potentially answers your question regarding the shared biochemistry.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia

It does say our genes are very different from theirs. Also maybe the eggs were somehow flexible on that.

Maybe they are the only alien species to survive because their dna and biolgy found earths enviroment habitable due to the similarities. Others that landed simply couldn't surive.

Our DNA may be as inevitable and common in the universe as the elements from which they are made. Quarks snap together in common forms we call protons, neutrons and electrons. They in turn combine to form a set of regular elements with consistent characteristics. Is it really such a stretch to imagine that the elements form amino acids quite readily all over the universe?

Think in computers. It may be possible that there are alien computers that use the binary numbering system? Think on it as the DNA (oversimplifying, of course). Now, there is any possibility that they use python as their programming language or the intel processors instruction set? That chains of DNA are interpreted in the exact same way, specially the very basic ones (i.e. how to turn sugar into energy) is what makes very improbable, or at least easy to verify, that something from here have in fact alien origin.

Maybe we had 2 waves of incoming DNA from another specific planet, one that bring here the basic building blocks and another the octopus branch (that had the same way to read DNA as it have the same origin), but if that evolution could happen somewhere else, why it couldn't had happened here?

The idea that their evolution could had been triggered by an alien virus still have the same origin requirement. You still have DNA that must be interpreted in the exact same way as ours to work. Occam's Razor would be useful here, just push the moment of the split from our branch closer to the point when we went from unicellular to multicellular

> Its large brain and sophisticated nervous system, camera-like eyes, flexible bodies, instantaneous camouflage via the ability to switch color and shape are just a few of the striking features that appear suddenly on the evolutionary scene

Argument from incredulity.

> The genome of the Octopus shows a staggering level of complexity with 33,000 protein-coding genes more than is present in Homo sapiens.

Red herring.

> this “great leap forward” in complexity was due to “cryopreserved squid and/or octopus eggs” crashing into the ocean on comets millions of years ago

No evidence provided to support this claim. In addition, Cephalopoda is a very well documented clade. Meaning we have fossilized evidence the octopuses originated and developed on this planet.

> crashing into the ocean on comets millions of years ago.

Probabilistic fallacy. Interstellar objects in our solar system are rare (only one ever documented). Comets seeded with eggs have never been documented and should be considered exceedingly rare. The number of comets that ever make contact with Earth is very, very low.

I'm not saying this idea is wrong, but it comes with a large grain of salt. Like everything else in the world, 90% of science is crap. If there is no proposed falsifiability criterion, there is no science here.

I share your discouragement with the present state of "science" (see the Replication Crisis) but the trouble with your comment that it applies to everything ever written, not this article in particular, not to mention that Theodore Sturgeon said it first, as a still more general rule.

I assumed the HN crowd was familiar with the fact that "90% of everything is crap" is someone else's idea. This was probably not a good assumption to make.

Even if they are, framing matters. Your framing sounded like "this is my (ugly) opinion" not like "Everyone knows this common saying."

So familiar, so why state it without any special relevance, much less without attribution? Why waste our time then if everybody knows it?

I don't know why people are giving you a hard time here. The quote is widely-known, and I appreciated your remark about the troubling lack of falsifiability criterion.

See elsewhere here, there's no shortage of experiments to be done that could be determinative in this case. Also, Karl Popper's rule is a great rule of thumb, it really is; but there's an immense bibliography in philosophy of science about whether it's a shoe that fits all circumstances.

Which was it - virus-guided evolution or cryofrozen eggs? That piece is all over the map.

And it begs the question: why is alien life DNA-based at all? Without addressing that, its just a comedy piece.

Without trying to support the piece, the DNA question has a rich history of being explainable via the panspermia theory.

Ok, then the point of the piece, that the Octopus is special in being 'alien', becomes moot? Everything is 'alien'.

But in this case, the leap in complexity is so obvious we can tell it's alien (they say.)

That argument sounds awfully similar to that of Intelligent Design.

I imagine that Punctuated Equilibrium is a far simpler explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium

If you find a watch on a beach... was the old argument. The argument in the paper is that the Octopi change is so fast and so immense it leaves every known instance of PE, including human evolution, far behind along with every other known leap forward. I'm not endorsing that view, just retailing it.

I'm wondering if the fossil record supports the conclusion that octopuses actually got all the claimed features at once? How does a fossil (of a soft creature, notoriously rare to fossilize at all) indicate the presence of color change, large eye and so on.

Or is it a DNA argument. Then I'm back to why DNA at all unless everything is alien. In which case, why the article. Its like "there's this one alien guy in Idaho..." instead of "There's other intelligent life in the universe!!!"

Good point, re soft bodies fossilizing more rarely - because what may have happened is the squids just didn't show up in the fossil record for a very long time, nor the proto-squids. Ocean acidification at various periods (say due to CO2 variations at different periods, which were large) would be a factor.

I'm not saying the 33 scientists weren't well aware of these considerations, though.

I think JoeAltmaier (your parent commenter) still has a point.

If the leap in complexity of octopuses is so obvious that we can tell it's an alien, do you mean other earlier life in our planet was not alien? That would not make sense because it would be hard to imagine that two independent evolutions of life led to the same protein-based, DNA-based life. So the only reasonable theory is that both the earlier life in our planet as well as octopuses are aliens which is JoeAltmaier's point.

The 33 scientists do not mean that. I think, in fact, to make their argument go forward, you pretty much have to assume that squid arrived earlier from a different branch of the same alien lineage, but were quickly - so quickly - followed by vasty more complex octopi, that we know that octopi didn't evolve here. The authors aren't anti-panspermists.

JoeAltmaier's wasn't the one introducing the idea of panspermia. His point was, instead: "why even write this paper focusing on octopi if all life is alien" and my answer was, 'cause this is the one time you can really prove that (according to the authors.)

But it also then supports the much larger issue of Panspermia. That should have been the title/main point then? Yes this is quite a strange article.

In the paper they mention both (paper was linked in the article):

> In our considered view the totality of the multifactorial data and critical analyses assembled by Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe and their many colleagues leads to the bare minimum yet plausible scientific conclusion – that life was seeded here on Earth by life-bearing comets as soon as conditions on Earth allowed it to flourish (at or just before 4.1 Billion years ago); and living organisms such as space-resistant and space-hardy bacteria, viruses, more complex eukaryotic cells and organisms (e.g. Tardigrades), perhaps even fertilised ova and plant seeds, may have been continuously delivered ever since to Earth helping to drive further the progress of terrestrial biological evolution.

EDIT: Further in the paper they talk specifically about the octopus in more detail:

> Thus the possibility that cryopreserved Squid and/or Octopus eggs, arrived in icy bolides several hundred million years ago should not be discounted (below) as that would be a parsimonious cosmic explanation for the Octopus' sudden emergence on Earth ca. 270 million years ago.

Full disclosure: I'm a software engineer not a biologist, so the next bit is my interpretation that could be wrong:

As I get it from the paper they seem to suggest that octopi came into being either due to genes inserted into a terrestrial ancestor whereby the genes came from space. OR by the landing of extraterrestrial eggs on our planet.

For constructive criticism on the content of this article, there's a quartz piece -

https://qz.com/1281064/a-controversial-study-has-a-new-spin-...

Not even criticism - it doesn't mention what the scientists take to be their evidence, much less discuss any of that. It then misunderstands the mention of "future" - the point actually being made was that the alien octopi were so much more complex because they'd had far longer to evolve, not that someone owned a time-machine. I don't have a position on the question, but this article was mostly a waste of time.

"The Hawaiʻian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe."

( https://archive.org/details/oceanicmytholog02dixogoog )

The Simpsons weren't too far off

I find this notion to be completely ridiculous. There's some things that are common to all life. The genetic code for instance. There are of course different dialects [1], but they're all fairly similar, and all code for the same set of amino acids. Cephalopods use the same means of storing genetic information, DNA with the bases G, C, A, and T. They have the same machinery to translate the genetic code into proteins, ribosomes. Ribosomal structure is highly conserved among all life. The idea that all of these molecular machinery developed in parallel on a different planet with the exact same genetic code, means of storing genetic information, and means of converting genetic information in protein is beyond absurd.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Utils/wprintgc.cgi

Which is why it wasn't asserted. See Panspermia.

Orbital decay means planets were more distant from the sun in the past. As well, solar luminosity was lower. It's also likely that water and has accumulated on, say, Venus. So although not a likely harbor for life now, perhaps Venus was the first batter up for the evolution of life.

Against this, there are definitely other heat sources, especially for large planets, and more water (from impacts carrying water, especially) is available at a greater distance from the sun.

Complete sidebar: octopuses/squid are on my short list of "things in American diet I don't eat because they are too smart" (pigs being the other).

Due to the acidification of the ocean, there's an overpopulation of squid in the seas. It would actually be beneficial if people started eating more of them, because they're predators of other fish species that we ourselves are already overfishing. Note: I'm not an environmentalist, it is just something I noticed.

In fact, I have a modest proposal to share with you on that front.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

I'm Korean so dried squid is my favorite snack but it costs $50 for 10 of them in NYC. Would not recommend this snack though, I hear it's pretty harsh on your teeth.

I haven't seen as much evidence for squid intelligence as for octopuses.

The eventual babelfish trained using unsupervised alignment may make things like bird->human or octopus->human possible(or mycellial mass, if it turns out to be intelligent).

I have a suspicion that in the future human-centric mono-species intelligence and consciousness assumptions will be tested, and the outcome may be similar to discovering other galaxies in terms of the impact on humanity's collective psyche.

At first I was confused by "babelfish trained using unsupervised alignment", but realized after re-reading your comment several times, that it's about translation/communication (with other species!) based on machine-learning. Dolphins and maybe whales..

I like the thought of humanity discovering other forms of consciousness, whole dimensions we never expected or imagined.

I too am awaiting the return of the old ones.

I would like to avoid meeting any shoggoths.

Tekeli-li Tekeli-li

I wouldn't trust anything from that website. That scientific journal sounds sketchy, too

It is at least, according to Elsevier, peer reviewed.

* https://www.elsevier.com/journals/progress-in-biophysics-and...

Elsevier getting desperate lol

The well-known Elsevier linguistics journal Lingua had an editor revolt (reconstituted as Glossa, not published by Elsevier), but Elsevier continues to publish a 'zombie' Lingua.

Every pseudo-scientific journal claims to be peer reviewed.

However, so too do the properly scientific ones, so that does not demonstrate anything at all. The thing to look at is the editors, who they are and whether they indeed edit the journal as claimed.

* https://www.bioc.cam.ac.uk/research/uto/blundell

* https://www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/team/denis-noble

* http://www.herzzentrum.de/englisch/departments-sections/inst...

> so that does not demonstrate anything at all.

That's exactly my point!

Peer review doesn't help if your peers are also cranks.

Or at least pier-reviewed.

I, for one, welcome our new cephalopod overlords.

Before you jump to mock this, remember we should encourage well thought out discussion that acknowledges it's shortcomings.

Octopuses?

Octopi, surely?

Both are fine. (Octopi is arguably wrong, since octopus comes from Greek, not Latin (where you'd find that style of pluralization), but is used so commonly that it has become part of the language)

It's interesting, though. When I was a child "octopi" was the classic pluralization exception.

There's even the joke, "if the plural of octopus is octopi, what's the plural of whatatwitamus?"

I have never seen "octopuses" until today.

A few questions that pop into my head:

Why did land insects never rise to match the intelligence of the octopus?

If octopuses are so smart, why aren't they more social?

Why is it that the most social of animals, ants (which are considered eusocial actually), are not pressed with becoming smarter?

Why does sex cause octopuses to self-destruct?

Also, when it comes to weird theories, I have always thought that if we are in a simulation, it is most likely a simulation created by an insect intelligence. Or if we are being visited by aliens, that those aliens would in all likelihood be of an insect like nature, not some lame anal-probing grey dudes.

I claim this as vague support for my theory of alien insects[0].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13620387

> If octopuses are so smart, why aren't they more social?

Because they are so smart.

https://www.sciencealert.com/marine-biologists-discover-an-u...

”For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”

you're asking human questions of a possibly alien intelligence. The assumption that alien life would behave and have the same motivation as earth life is a fallacy. This paradigm may not even apply.

> Why does sex cause octopuses to self-destruct?

Yeah, this has got to be one of the saddest parts. As smart as these creatures are, they really must start over again from ground zero for every generation. Imagine what they could do if they had parents to teach them behaviourly as they grew up.

I assume we have no better luck keeping moms alive in captivity when breeding as well?

Just my own perspective: as one who believes God is responsible for the origin, complexity, and diversity of life, this article makes me chuckle. The theory of evolution as an explanation of the origin of the major taxa of life really paints us into a corner from which it is difficult to wiggle out.

In my opinion, the panspermia/alien origin hypothesis (and its persistence as an explanation in some respected circles) illustrates how strictly limiting ourselves to natural explanations leaves not just a "gap" in our ability to explain origins, but a massive gaping hole. (Also, the insistence on a distinction between "alien" and "divine" has no rational basis.)

A few billion years is like, a pretty long time.

For you.

You’re a big guy

"The theory of evolution as an explanation of the origin of the major taxa of life really paints us into a corner from which it is difficult to wiggle out."

Sure, it's easy to avoid corners when you can place them arbitrarily, or even move them when they're inconvenient.

> place them arbitrarily, or even move them when they're inconvenient.

I know others have been accused of that; I endeavor to maintain integrity.

This is ridiculous, and I'd also point out, despite my being atheist, that it's blasphemous.

Monotheistic religions (almost all) believe in an omnipotent God. Omnipotent means that nothing binds the hand of God, at all. An omnipotent being can literally contrive any situation; they can change anything, from moment to moment, without leaving any traces whatsoever. They can change the very nature of logic itself without consequence.

You are saying that you try to understand and talk about and reason about God inside of some kind of logical framework, where you can't just _deus ex machina_ your way out of any situation, but this explicitly binds the power of God. God and logic can't be combined, God and debate can't be combined, because both deny the omnipotent nature of God.

Speaking for Christianity, God's omnipotence does not mean he can violate his own nature. In fact, he is very limited in the sense that there are an infinite number of things that he cannot do because they are inconsistent with his nature -- his holiness, truth, love, and wisdom.

This literally means that God is not "all powerful". And if there are things he is simply incapable of experiencing, this also means he is not "all knowing".

Yes it does mean that. However, he is "all powerful" where it matters - to accomplish his own will, which is consistent with his character.

If he is controlled by "his nature", then it isn't HIS will.

But it is his will to remain self-consistent, i.e. he cannot change and has no desire to do so. God is entirely different from us in that there is no contradiction anywhere in his person, nature, or work.

You're saying that he chose to have no choice. This implies there was a point at which he had a choice, then chose to have no choice. Can you see how nonsensical this is?

> He chose to have no choice

I never said that. God’s existence and nature are eternal and outside of spacetime. Neither changes with time.

> In fact, he is very limited in the sense

That's blasphemy, and you take it upon yourself to interpret and understand His divine will, and second guess Him, despite being warned over and over that His will is beyond your understanding. Your comments are a textbook example of the type of human arrogance that gets Biblical characters unstuck, over and over and over again.

> he is very limited in the sense that there are an infinite number of things that he cannot do

I would be interested to see canonical scriptural references for this statement.

Not blasphemy, since these statements are proceeding directly from what God has said about himself in scripture.

I’ll break out the Bible references and reply this evening. Cheers :-)

> you take it upon yourself to interpret and understand His divine will, and second guess Him

God's complete will is absolutely beyond human understanding (as he is infinite), but deducing facts about him and his will based on what he has said about himself is not human arrogance or second-guessing him. It's just straightforward thinking.

> I would be interested to see canonical scriptural references for this statement.

Ok, got some direct scriptural examples of a few categories of things God cannot do, because they are inconsistent with his character.

1) God cannot lie.

- Titus 1:2: "... in the hope of eternal life that God, who cannot lie, promised before time began"

- Hebrews 6:18: "... so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to seize the hope set before us."

2) God cannot deny himself

- 2 Timothy 2:13: "if we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself."

This implies that he can't go against his own word or his own express will.

3) God cannot be tempted with evil and does not tempt anyone.

- James 1:13: "No one undergoing a trial should say, 'I am being tempted by God.' For God is not tempted by evil, and He Himself doesn’t tempt anyone."

---

This isn't to say he is restricted to doing only what he wants to do or actually does. Other passages refer to his ability to do things that he doesn't end up doing. One example is Matthew 3:9: "... God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones!" -- something he didn't do and never said he would.

Please understand, AFAIK when the Scriptures speak of what God can't do, it's always meant as a comfort and encouragement to his people. E.g. from the above examples -- if he can't lie, deny himself, or be tempted with evil (much less do it), and if he is all-powerful to accomplish his holy will, then his words can be taken as rock-solid and trustworthy.

[Quotations from the HCSB translation.]

> God cannot be tempted with evil and does not tempt anyone.

Is creating evil in the first place not being tempted by it?

God didn’t create evil. Is there something specific you’re thinking of?

God created everything directly and indirectly, everything includes evil. Even if it was indirect, being omniscient makes him ultimately responsible for it.

Either that or you start to get into pantheistic territory.

He created several classes of beings with the capacity for free will, since love freely chosen is the only kind of real love. Knowing that some would choose to hate him (or do anything else, for that matter) doesn’t shift responsibility away from them for that choice.

Actually, the existence of evil is one of the biggest arguments for God’s existence via showing that there are universal, objective moral values and duties. Summary is —- one cannot call some actions evil except by contrast with what is morally good. We all know certain things are absolutely evil (although some atheists deny that). And moral accountability is impossible without a moral law and a moral law-giver.

> He created several classes of beings with the capacity for free will, since love freely chosen is the only kind of real love. Knowing that some would choose to hate him (or do anything else, for that matter) doesn’t shift responsibility away from them for that choice.

If you knew your child was going to be the next Hitler would you conceive a child? If I told you I was buying a gun so I could go on a shooting rampage would you sell me a gun? Knowing the outcome of your actions makes you at least partially responsible.

> one cannot call some actions evil except by contrast with what is morally good

But if evil didn't exist we wouldn't need to contrast it with anything, it's not like it makes being good any better than it would have been in an evil free world.

> The theory of evolution as an explanation of the origin of the major taxa of life really paints us into a corner from which it is difficult to wiggle out.

I'm really not sure what you mean by this.

> Also, the insistence on a distinction between "alien" and "divine" has no rational basis

What?? You don't see a distinction between life on another planet and supernatural phenomena...?

To be fair, Bruno declared a distinction and was burned at the stake.

> I'm really not sure what you mean by this.

If you assume the major groups of life evolved from common ancestors, the fossil record doesn't offer a lot of help to fill in the early details (i.e. transitional types). Also, you have the problem of the origin of the first single-cell organism.

> You don't see a distinction between life on another planet and supernatural phenomena...?

My point is that insisting on it being an alien life form that seeded life on earth (as opposed to the God hypothesis) is kind of begging the question. Philosophically, what is the difference between an unknown alien life form and God as the origin of life, other than different starting assumptions?

>> what is the difference between an unknown alien life form and God as the origin of life, other than different starting assumptions?

for one, we do know that there _are_ life forms.

Science tries its best to discover the correct explanation for phenomena, and accepts gaps in knowledge as a natural consequence of the ongoing nature of its pursuit of the truth.

You are welcome to believe what you want, but you must understand that accepting faith-based explanations with zero supporting evidence is a fundamentally different sort of thing. Of course you think you have the answers, and that people still grubbing around looking for their own are short-sighted dummies, if you're willing to accept answers that somebody simply made up out of thin air.

> Also, the insistence on a distinction between "alien" and "divine" has no rational basis.

How do you figure that? They seem quite different to me, given the properties that are usually ascribed to hypothetical divine beings.

I'm not arguing with the scientific method, or the power of looking for natural explanations through experimentation.

It's just that examining evidence related to past events can only go so far in explaining their cause. If you assume natural causes all the way back, you will inevitably reach the limit of a natural chain of events. If the origin of life isn't a big enough question, perhaps the origin of the big bang is -- how does anyone go there without stepping into the metaphysical?

> How do you figure that? They seem quite different to me, given the properties that are usually ascribed to hypothetical divine beings.

My point is that on the surface, philosophically speaking, there's no difference between the two explanations beyond their starting assumptions.

> zero evidence

Not at all. Everything that exists constitutes evidence for him in one way or another. (It’s late. Can provide more details tomorrow if you’re interested.)

> It's just that examining evidence related to past events can only go so far in explaining their cause. If you assume natural causes all the way back, you will inevitably reach the limit of a natural chain of events. If the origin of life isn't a big enough question, perhaps the origin of the big bang is -- how does anyone go there without stepping into the metaphysical?

Why speculate in the absence of real knowledge? Maybe some questions simply cannot be answered? Maybe some answers are simply beyond our reach for now? Faced with these gaps, If I'm going to get metaphysical, I'd sooner reach inwards than outwards.

> My point is that on the surface, philosophically speaking, there's no difference between the two explanations beyond their starting assumptions.

Pretty vague, and I disagree in any case, I think—there seems to be a great difference between the two. One is based on phenomena we have directly observed (comets, life on Earth, etc.), and the other is not.

> Not at all. Everything that exists constitutes evidence for him in one way or another. (It’s late. Can provide more details tomorrow if you’re interested.)

If you presuppose that "He" exists and work backwards from there, sure. Otherwise no, I don't think so. Willing to read more, if you write it.

> limiting ourselves to natural explanations

So you mean looking into supernatural explanations? How does that fill any of the holes? It's by definition out of the realm of explanation... Also, saying that "God did it" has about as much content as panspermia ("somewhere else made it").

Evolution doesn't make any claims about the origin of life, only how it evolves over time, and how speciation occurs.

You want to rail against abiogenesis i suppose, because a magic being with fairy dust outside of time and space is more likely.

You're right. It's not nearly as clean a solution as "God did everything, QED"

I’m not saying “God is the origin” removes all the unknowns or difficulties, or is sufficient to explain every detail. Quite the opposite: it adds another dimension of unknowns and mystery, because it allows “why?” to be a meaningful question (speaking of ultimate meaning/purpose, beyond natural preconditions and mechanisms) in scientific inquiry, in addition to “what”, “how”, etc.

It doesn't really add many unknowns or mystery. It's quite simple: "God created everything". Now you're left with only one unknown, "who/what/how created God?"

But the answer to that can't be a "who" or you have the problem of a Super-God, which (by convention) is disallowed. So instead, people say "God is eternal both into the past and into the future" and neatly tie up any possible question. God always was and always will be and he created everything -- a clean solution where if you accept the premise of God, then any and all follow-on questions just point back to the premise.

> Now you're left with only one unknown

That doesn't make any sense to me. "God created everything" is nearly content-less even if you assume it. If you stop there, you're left with nearly zero understanding of how the world/nature/universe works. Inquiry of all sorts (scientific included) is still indispensable for discovering content about the world.

> "who/what/how created God?"

The only way to know anything about the Christian God, at least, is to look at what he’s done and what he says about himself - again a line of inquiry involving discovery, questions, deductions.

> a clean solution where if you accept the premise of God, then any and all follow-on questions just point back to the premise.

Agreed, it does tie it up neatly. But again, assuming the Christian God, we have no ability to know anything about him unless he chooses to reveal it (him being an infinite being). And assuming everything that begins to exist has a cause, there must be something that did not begin to exist -- which must then be defined as having no beginning. You might be familiar with logical systems if you're a developer. At the most basic levels, where everything is bootstrapped, a lot of self-references are often involved.

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