Out of Africa?

[Skybird]

"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." - Christopher Hitchens

[Rockstar]

Thats true it should also include the Darwinian theory of evolution which teaches everything was just random chance.


It was supposed to be a clear and relatively low humidity night. I had every intention to take the opportunity to photograph Mars tonight as its that time of year again when its in opposition and closest to Earth. Even without a focal extender I can pick up some really nice surfaces detail. But once again the science of meteorology lied too me AGAIN Instead of a breezy clear sky's, I was met with low clouds, stagnant air, bugs and high humidity. With Mars being so close to the horizon there was too much atmospheric interference for me to bother. So here I am.


I want to clarify a few words when I use the word religion I do not in anyway shape or form mean the historically and embarrassing moral influences of religion. I use the word strictly in matters concerning the possible cause of our existence. Also, when I speak of evolution it is not always in regards to Darwinian or neo-Darwinian ideas of evolution which is too say we are just a random selection on the dart board of life. The universe proves we have evolved. From the energy of the big bang into a physical sentient being shows that but I believe by design not by random chance.


In my opinion the greatest self revelation of a Creator is the creation It brought into being.


Big Bang creation of energy ---> matter ---> life ---> brain ---> mind and sentience.


There are two aspects in nature's march toward life that call out for commentary: the creation of the universe perfect for life, and the formation of sentient life able to experience the wonders of love, joy, and compassion, but built of combinations of protons, neutrons, and electrons that have not the vaguest hint of sentience within their structures. Life and consciousness emerged from non living matter. But how?


The Bible of course gives God the credit for that event. “God created the heavens and earth” That is the very first sentence of my Bible, Genesis 1:1. But the Bible being God oriented, has a vested interest in listing God as the Creator. Secular science even as it embraces the concept of creation, does not necessarily turn to God for the beginning. But there are aspects of quantum physics that allow the creation of something from nothing. Science posits that the big bang was the beginning of time and space. But what about matter? That is considerably more enlightening (literally). The big bang did not produce matter as we know it, not any of the ninety two elements. The primary material product of big bang was exquisitely intense energy or light. The wonder or argument is not whether this genesis took six days or as NASA has computed 13.75 billion years looking back from our position in space and time. The wonder is that it happened. And today's science agrees with those desert sheep herders who wrote in a book 4,000 years ago that it did “In the beginning...”



It also speaks of man being created. Admittedly neither Darwinism nor Intelligent Design have proved how that happened or by whom. Darwinism and neo-Darwinism espouse that we evolved by random selection. But is it really possible we are here by chance? The late Dr. Robley D. Evans urged, always repeat in summary what you have just espoused. Consider the string of assumptions for which supporting data, if any, are vanishingly scant in an unguided random chance world.

1. A prebiotic atmosphere and hydrosphere existed that could support the reactions among methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, a few amino acids, and water leading to the complex substrates of RNA. Current understanding of prebiotic atmosphere make it hostile to such reactions.
2. The assumed substrates, though diverse in properties and chemically unstable, assembled locally so that they could interact.
3. These substrates combined to form chains of polynucleotides.
4. These polynucleotides became self replicating molecules able to cull from an adjacent medium the necessary components to rebuild themselves, though with slight variations – mutations – that allowed evolution to progress from prebiotic to life.
5. FINALLY a cell appeared complete with gated membrane to regulate entrance and egress, housing DNA that codes via its four nucleotides for RNA found much earlier in this process.

Each of those stages presents chemical and physical hurdles for which there are no logical solutions. And yet we have life.


But lets take a look closer look accepting that somehow life started and now we need that early life form to mutate and climb step by step the fabled mountain of improbability. Mutations that are to be passed on to the next generation must occur in the genetic material, that is, in the DNA of the reproductive line. Such a mutation might result in a variant (mutated) protein that might produce a new effective organ, say, a system leading to a kidney or the precursor of a pump that might develop into a heart. The neo-Darwinian concept of evolution claims the development of life resulted from random mutation in the DNA that yielded these varied organic structures. Some of variations were beneficial, some not. The rigors of the environment selected for the beneficial changes and eliminated those that were detrimental.


Its a persuasively devised theory, but lets look at that process a bit closer with the insights of molecular biology. The building blocks of all life are proteins. And proteins are precisely organized strings of amino acids. Information held in DNA determines which and in what order the amino acids are formed and yield the end product, the protein. If the DNA mutates, we get a different amino acid and hence a different protein. And now comes the problem of random mutations in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution. The genetic system of all life is totally coded.


Assume the the entire hydrosphere, all of the approximately 1.4 x 1033 liters of water in all the oceans and icebergs and lakes on earth, was imbibed in biological cells each weighing a billionth of a gram. We would have had 1033 cells reproducing, mutating, actively moving this grand process of evolution. If each cell divided each and every second since the appearance of liquid water on earth some four billion years ago, the total number of mutations, or stated in another way, the number of evolutionary trials, would be 1050. Although vast, this number pales when compared to the 10260 potential failing options for a single protein. Hitting upon the useful combinations did not, and could not, and will not happen by chance.


All biologists enamored with neo-Darwinian evolution know this truth. Their hopeful reply goes something along the line that, although we now have a DNA world, other worlds may have been possible, and DNA, being the first to form and survive, merely took over. Other systems might have used other types of proteins that we see as lethal or useless in today's DNA world. There is no evidence that this is true; however, let us assume its truth. Now we have the DNA dominated world we know. And so we are back to the above calculations as the first form of life, a microbe, mutates, and either advances or perishes as it starts to climb the mountain of improbability by random mutations on the DNA that will in time lead to kidneys, bones, liver, heart, eyes, brains, mind, sentience. It has to choose randomly from the vast hyperspace of possible biological combinations the tiny fraction that are beneficial or at least neutral. Clearly there must be other factors that limit the types of mutations that can occur. There are, but not as random as some biologists would have it.
One of the most widely used biology textbooks, Biochemistry, by Voet states, though in subtle wording 'Keep in mind that only a small fraction of the myriads of possible peptide sequences are likely to have stable conformation. Evolution has, of course, selected such sequences for use in biological systems'. Just how did “evolution' become so clever that it could “of course select” from the “myriads” of failures the few that function?


Darwinism simply ignores the statistical unrealistic possibility that the fabrication of viable proteins could have occurred by unguided random mutation. That life developed from the simple to the complex is, in opinion, a certainty. What drove that development is the central debate.


There is a proverb that is actually true and worthy of repeating which states: the song a sparrow learns in its youth is its song for life. And we humans, at our deepest emotional level, are not so different. What we learn in our youth is with us for life. And we all learned in school that Darwin got it right didn't we? Not withstanding the article “Did Darwin Get It Right?” in the peer reviewed science journal, Science, maintains he didn't. Some here may or may not agree but I think we can thank lawyers and judges not science to continue the argument that only Darwin's version of evolution can be taught in our schools. As witnessed here at Subsim they attack ones personal beliefs and character rather than look at the data. The game is rigged in such a way that you are fed from your earliest days the saga that unguided random mutations produced life, then arguing from the major to the minor, certainly, you believe Hawking's untruth that monkeys banging away on typewriters could with time produce sonnets!


It is the DNA research and the data it produces not ones religion or a religion which appears to have persuaded Anthony Flew to change his mind or for people like Dawkins to squirm in their seats and admit to the possibility of design but assure us that it must be aliens from another world. Look at the scientific data, consider the probabilities and possibilities. Instead of the straw man argument that because a scientist is religious or has personal beliefs his research, mathematics, micro biology and DNA research isn't science.


Whats the verdict? Neither Darwin nor Intelligent design knows I can dismiss either one as neither can prove their theory. As for me I just have my personal beliefs which isn't even enough to get a free cup of coffee around here.

[Obltn Strand]

Real life example of natural selection and evolution: Mosquitoes...those pesky little blood suckers.

Every where you go they produce this recognizable buzzing sound. This doesn't really matter in wilderness because they have ample nesting grounds. However in urban areas with fewer locations to for their young ones to develop their numbers drop.

Late in evening they penetrate defence grid and start looking for "donors". Now because urban mosquitoes have small numbers they have to rely on stealth. Buzzing sound is a sure way to alert target of it's presence and thus more likely to get itself killed before laying it's eggs.

So one mutation allows mosquitoes to operate more successful in urban environment and thus are better able to continue their family line...

Natural selection and evolution...I don't think any(one)/(thing) which produces better mosquitoes is worth worshiping as god...

[Catfish]

@Oltn Strand

[...] I don't think any(one)/(thing) which produces better mosquitoes is worth worshiping as god...

I agree, though it is not the scientific approach

@Rockstar this is at least something to work with and discuss.

Darwin travelled the world, and came to certain conclusions; he was the first internationally, to write it all down. There were others from The Netherlands to Germany who had come to similar results, but Darwin was the first to dare writing it down, and publishing it. He caught a lot of fire for this, since people did not want to stem from apes, nor were they content to see "their" (religion's) view of god changed.
Darwin had not said that man is the successor of 'apes', which is impossible since the apes of today have also changed a lot. But both branches of species go indeed back to one progenitor.
Still at Darwin's time the western religion's dogma was that the earth is 7500 years old, and Darwin's and other's discoveries publicly doubted that. As had Kepler and others before, who were killed for religious reasons.

But what Darwin wrote is stilll the best working theory today, which can be trusted as long as there are no better arguments and evidence for a newer, other, or improved theory.
What is true is that there has been a lot of research and developing theories since then, and indeed it looks as if there should be small adjustments made, to Darwin, so they have been included. This still does not render his general theory obsolete.

When I read about the probability of 'erroneous' or better random changes in the text above (wherever it is from?) there are a lot of misconceptions here. We have not yet discovered all secrets of the DNA, RNA and mRNA and so forth, especially not how it came into being. But we can assume that it was indeed the kind of material that was suited best to survive the impact of the environment, from heat/cold, to changes in salinity, UV light, radiation, and whatnot. The other randomly evolved techniques of transferring information of how the phenotype should look like, did not make it over the millions of years.
Though this is not quite true, we may still find other biological techniques (on earth or other planets, and then there is the problem with virusses, which do not 'live' at all).

But to speak of an impossible probability due to sheer numbers here is wrong. It is not an on/off mechanism, changed phenotypes due to changed DNA information are not completely unable to survive, but the changes are indeed very tiny. Some get blue eyes, another one green, or brown. Each colour may have an advantage or disadvantage, then there is man-own preferences apart from direct physical advantages or disadvantages, which may favour one or another in the long run.

This is too much stuff to write here and now, but one thing is sure and proven: When the DNA splits due to coyping itself, there are alot of things that can go 'wrong'. The presumed 'exact copies' are sometimes not so exact, so small aberrations may occur. Over the time, some will offer an advantage to the phenotype, so they will have a better chance in getting on.
The dinosaurs. They died out because they grew too big, were slow, had small brains, or whatever prejudice we insert to prove how advanced we humans are. Only that this is nonsense. First, not all dinosaurs died out. We humans still have to make our way of some 400 million years in time.

The dinosaurs adapted, changed, and they did it pretty well, they are still all around us.
Their special appearance and properties of their time back then gave them the advantage they needed. When the environment changed, those who had advantages in that new situation due to changes in the DNA, survived. Smaller, other teeth, insulation, whatever.
But it was not the entire gene that changed, only parts here and there, and sometimes some parts were not changed, but just switched on or off by environmantal influnce, or by some decay or improvement within the gene.
So the probability of survival and change is not small at all, it will not make a whole species die out just so.

During the time of life on earth, there have been some "die-outs" and some being better adapted "survived" (Wich is b.t.w. what Darwin says in "Survival of the fittest"). Fittest does not mean stronger, or bigger, it means better adapted to the environment.
Those who "survived" often did not do that in their unchanged form though, over the time. ALso that change does not mean they died out. Their phenotype changed, along with inner adaptions.

The question is always posed wrong: We see there is O2 in the atmosphere, the temperature is at 20 degrees (well in the habitable zones, and average value ok), and men think female bodies are perfect, hopefully the other way round too but i digress .
So there must be someone/thing who arranged it all for us in the way it now is, so that all fits together so perfectly? No.
We are how we are, because we continously adapted to this situation we now have, we will still adapt to coming changes, and if we do not we die, as a species.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Catfish

Fittest does not mean stronger, or bigger, it means better adapted to the environment.

This cannot be reiterated too often!!!

So there must be someone/thing who arranged it all for us in the way it now is, so that all fits together so perfectly? No.
We are how we are, because we continously adapted to this situation we now have, we will still adapt to coming changes, and if we do not we die, as a species.

Perfect!


Every species is "perfect". Perfect means that the species adapted to the state of things in the way it was possible in the amount of time it had for that.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Thats true it should also include the Darwinian theory of evolution which teaches everything was just random chance.

That's part of the problem. The Theory of Evolution does not teach anything. It is an attempt to explain what we see in nature. As for random chance, this should help a little.
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evoli...ptions_faq.php

In my opinion the greatest self revelation of a Creator is the creation It brought into being.

Opinions are great, and you may be right, but I have yet to see any evidence for the existence of any kind of creator. Calling the universe "creation" doesn't make it so. This is what caused my loss of faith.

the creation of the universe perfect for life,

But the universe is not perfect for life. We can't survive on 90% of our own planet, let alone any others we are only vaguely aware of. And none of this proves the universe was created. There is nothing in nature to indicate this other than our wanting it to be so.

and the formation of sentient life able to experience the wonders of love, joy, and compassion, but built of combinations of protons, neutrons, and electrons that have not the vaguest hint of sentience within their structures. Life and consciousness emerged from non living matter. But how?

So far no one knows for sure. That's why we keep exploring and investigating.

Science posits that the big bang was the beginning of time and space.

Not really. Scientists posit a great variety of things, but so far those really are just speculations. The only thing the Big Bang tells us is that the universe started expanding 13.8 billion years ago. What started it? What came before it? How did it happen? Why? The "whats" are educated guesses, based on what we do currently know about how things work. The "hows" and "why"s are open to debate. God? Chance? Who knows?

And today's science agrees with those desert sheep herders who wrote in a book 4,000 years ago that it did “In the beginning...”

You keep saying that. I want to know exactly what "today's science" has to say about that. Or "NASA" as you quoted earlier.

It also speaks of man being created.

Where? Nothing in today's scientific research indicates anything of the kind, one way or the other. If it did it would be front-page news.

Admittedly neither Darwinism nor Intelligent Design have proved how that happened or by whom.

The first is because the Theory of Evolution has nothing at all to do with how anything came to be. It is solely about how life changes over the millennia. Intelligent Design starts from the belief that everything was created, but can provide no proof of that or even real evidence.

Darwinism and neo-Darwinism espouse that we evolved by random selection. But is it really possible we are here by chance? The late Dr. Robley D. Evans urged, always repeat in summary what you have just espoused. Consider the string of assumptions for which supporting data, if any, are vanishingly scant in an unguided random chance world.

You keep quoting people's opinions as if they constitute fact, and attempting to use that as an argument. This is called the "Appeal to Authority" fallacy.

As for it being possible that we are here by chance, the odds are also very much against us having this discussion today, considering all the decisions that take place in a lifetime. Yet here we are. The same is true of the universe. People can talk about probabilities all they like, but once something happens the odds are suddenly 1-to-0. We don't know if it's possible or not, and attempting to use probability to argue for or against something may sway some, but more often it's the other way around - the arguer already believes it so any argument is justified.

Darwinism simply ignores the statistical unrealistic possibility that the fabrication of viable proteins could have occurred by unguided random mutation. That life developed from the simple to the complex is, in opinion, a certainty. What drove that development is the central debate.

You keep saying "Darwinism" as if it's a group collective thing. Thousands of scientists working in the field of Evolution have thousands of differing opinions. It's easy to lump them all together, but they are not a collective mind. As for statistical probabilities, as I've tried to point out while on the whole they can be useful in determining trends they don't prove anything at all.

Not withstanding the article “Did Darwin Get It Right?” in the peer reviewed science journal, Science, maintains he didn't.

First, you need to be more precise in your labels. Did Darwin Get It Right? is the title of a book subtitled Catholics and the Theory of Evolution. The title of the article you reference is Did Darwin get it ALL Right? (Caps are mine) Here is the article itself, and it doesn't maintain that Darwin didn't get it right, as you state, but that he was wrong in one very specific area. Yes, it's peer-reviewed, but using that label to support your argument isn't helpful when you misrepresent the article itself, and its meaning.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/267/5203/1421

Some here may or may not agree but I think we can thank lawyers and judges not science to continue the argument that only Darwin's version of evolution can be taught in our schools.

As as been said repeatedly, Evolution may or may not be right but it is science. Intelligent Design starts from a belief and attempts to use science to support itself. It's not even a theory. Whether you believe as they do is irrelevant. ID at its core is nothing more than an attempt to have someone's religion taught in schools as "science".

As witnessed here at Subsim they attack ones personal beliefs and character rather than look at the data.

No need to be coy, you're talking about me. I would argue that I haven't attacked your beliefs, but rather those of the people who push ID as "science". I also don't believe I've attacked your character, but rather your manner of "discussion". As I said, you started this with derision rather than discussion. I even answered you query (as mocking as your tone was) on the dates for the African migrations, and you never even addressed that. Instead you launched directly into a tirade against "Evolutionists", complete with ROTF smileys and Dick Tracy Decoder Ring insults. Is pointing that out "attacking your character"? If so, then I guess I'm guilty as charged.

As for "the data", what you've presented so far has been negligible. As I've also pointed out, it's pretty standard Creationist fare to assume that if you can show just one flaw in "Darwinism" then of course what you espouse must be the answer. This works because Evolution, like any science, is not perfect. Nor is it complete, and likely never will be. The alternative you offer, however, relies on the conviction that something we can't see, taste, touch, feel, hear or sense yet is somehow intelligent made it all happen. That "Theory" not only can't be proven, it can't be disproven for the simple reason that it can't be tested.

The game is rigged in such a way that you are fed from your earliest days the saga that unguided random mutations produced life, then arguing from the major to the minor, certainly, you believe Hawking's untruth that monkeys banging away on typewriters could with time produce sonnets!

Again, look before you leap. First, you didn't mean Stephen Hawking but Richard Dawkins. Second, he only quoted the old saying. It originated at least one hundred and fifty years ago, old enough to be misatributed to Thomas Huxley. And no, I don't believe it. But then I don't believe anything.

Instead of the straw man argument that because a scientist is religious or has personal beliefs his research, mathematics, micro biology and DNA research isn't science.

Not a straw man at all. Scientists personal beliefs do not usually affect their work, Dr. Mary Schweitzer, who discovered the so-called soft tissue samples in dinosaur bones, describes herself as a devout Christian, who also believes in a very old Earth. The problem I have is when that personal belief drives an agenda, as with Michael Behe. You talked about lawyers and judges, but it was a lawyer who got Behe to admit that the sole evidence he could actually provide for ID was "It looks designed to me."

Whats the verdict? Neither Darwin nor Intelligent design knows I can dismiss either one as neither can prove their theory.

Again you try to be dismissive by using "Darwin" rather than Evolution. I don't here you using "Johnsonitsts" or "Thaxonists" when describing ID proponents. Hence, you show a definite bias. There's nothing wrong with that, except when that bias drives your whole argument.

As for me I just have my personal beliefs which isn't even enough to get a free cup of coffee around here.

Personal beliefs are fine when you discuss them. When you start of blatantly attacking an entire field of endeavor and openly mocking people who work in that field? That's when you get an argument. If your argument was openly hostile from the start you can't complain when people reply in kind.

[Skybird]

Need dictates form/design.

The laws of physics rule what goes in building planes, and what not. Want to float on the water? You need to make it such that you are lighter than water.

An ocean of O2-saturated water rules the ways in which carbon-based multi-cellular life forms adapt to breathing in it - by forming out gills. The ocean was not made to support fish - fish became fish in order to be able to live in the ocean.

The process of such adaptation to the environment takes time, and the current status any species has reached is what time so far allowed. Thus, no species' design is miraculous or a random event, but an expression of the needs dictated by its environment, and that time it had for that adapatation process. Its neither ahead in time, nor behind. Its always "perfect" as it is. More was and is not yet possible after this amount of time passed by.

Rockstar, you time and again get caught in admiration for that shadowplay on the wall. But the shadows and the events they depict are your own hands and fingers and what you hold up with them. Keep your hands down, and you see the shadows will be gone. Then you can start wondering about the wall itself, its structure and material, the light reflected by it, its colour and origin. But when you always focus only on the shadowplays, you admire a miracle that you yourself have called into being. Its quite circular what you are doing.

Sorry, cant find better English words to express what I mean. I am certain Steve understands what I am after, but in your case I am not so certain.

"Keep your hands down!"

[Von Due]

About statistics and probability in this context:


Current theories about the age of the Universe say that it's between 13 and 14 billion years old. Steve mentioned 13.8 billion years so let's use that figure.


Let's build a scale where 1000 years is represented by 1mm on aline going left to right and the rightmost end is the presence.


2mm left of now is roughly where they say Jesus walked around. Roughly 2mm.


On the same scale, according to the theories, Earth and the rest of this solar system formed 4.5 kilometer to the left of now.


Compare 2mm to 4.5km.


Lifeforms formed, according to the most popular theories now, some 300 million years after Earth was formed. That's 300 meters on our scale. 4.2km left of now where 5mm represent 5000 years. The Cambrian explosion happended somewhere in the vicinity of 500 million years ago, or 500 meters left of now, 3.7km to the right of the beginning of what one can call life in its simplest, most unevolved form.


3.7km on a scale where 1mm represents 1000 years.



Chemical reactions, including mutations, in a living organism happen real fast. Like really really fast. A single reaction can happen in a matter of femtoseconds or even attoseconds. Let's go with femtoseconds.



Let's make 1 femtosecond 1mm on our scale
0.000000000000001 second is 1mm. 0.000000000001 second is 1 meter.
0.000000001 second is 1km
1 second is 1,000,000,000 km.
1 year is approx. 31,556,000,000,000,000 km or about 3335 light years.
500,000,000 years (the time since the Cambrian explosion) is about 1.7 trillion light years away from now where a single chemical/biological reaction can happen over a "distance" of a dozen or so mm.


The probability of an evolution ruled solely by physics (and in extension of that, chemistry then biology) is far from zero.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Von Due

About statistics and probability in this context:


Current theories about the age of the Universe say that it's between 13 and 14 billion years old. Steve mentioned 13.8 billion years so let's use that figure.


Let's build a scale where 1000 years is represented by 1mm on aline going left to right and the rightmost end is the presence.


2mm left of now is roughly where they say Jesus walked around. Roughly 2mm.


On the same scale, according to the theories, Earth and the rest of this solar system formed 4.5 kilometer to the left of now.


Compare 2mm to 4.5km.


Lifeforms formed, according to the most popular theories now, some 300 million years after Earth was formed. That's 300 meters on our scale. 4.2km left of now where 5mm represent 5000 years. The Cambrian explosion happended somewhere in the vicinity of 500 million years ago, or 500 meters left of now, 3.7km to the right of the beginning of what one can call life in its simplest, most unevolved form.


3.7km on a scale where 1mm represents 1000 years.



Chemical reactions, including mutations, in a living organism happen real fast. Like really really fast. A single reaction can happen in a matter of femtoseconds or even attoseconds. Let's go with femtoseconds.



Let's make 1 femtosecond 1mm on our scale
0.000000000000001 second is 1mm. 0.000000000001 second is 1 meter.
0.000000001 second is 1km
1 second is 1,000,000,000 km.
1 year is approx. 31,556,000,000,000,000 km or about 3335 light years.
500,000,000 years (the time since the Cambrian explosion) is about 1.7 trillion light years away from now where a single chemical/biological reaction can happen over a "distance" of a dozen or so mm.


The probability of an evolution ruled solely by physics (and in extension of that, chemistry then biology) is far from zero.

Eh - in how far leads the panorama of long times and eons and their visualization via your distance model to your last sentence'S conclusion...?


I listened with interest to your model description - until the last sentence.

[Von Due]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Eh - in how far leads the panorama of long times and eons and their visualization via your distance model to your last sentence'S conclusion...?


I listened with interest to your model description - until the last sentence.

Assuming that evolution is only ruled by what is physically possible in any given instance, stack up the number of possible instances and this is as close to the Shakespeare-typing chimps we get. The chance of no biological evolution happening out of the chemical soup in the very beginning is what is really remote. In this universe anyway :p


EDIT: Just a few speculations that entered my mind now: The Crab Nebula is probably the remnant of a super nova that was observed less than 1000 years ago. 1000 years is next to nothing compared to the time it would have taken to form the solar system. Its current diameter as we see it now, is about 11 light years. The closest star to our is only 4-5 light years away. A super nova not only produces heavy elements, but is really good at spreading them. A super nova happening relatively near the cloud that would eventually form our solar system, or happening within a few thousands or few million light years away from a fully formed system, would have given future life the elements it would need in abundance.


Forming building blocks for amino acids, proteins and so on is well within reach for nature. Building blocks, complex molecules, have been detected floating around in deep space. It is not unlikely that several such building blocks were formed shortly after a super nova went off, and kept forming, and keep forming, as long as the right elements were there.


After Earth's surface was filled with water to have everything from puddles to oceans, I see no reason why these complex molecules wouldn't be present here, kickstarting the chemical evolution that preceded the biological one. So in a way, life did start "out of nothing", if by nothing one mean the inevitable exploding of massive stars, the inevitable spreading of heavy elements and complex molecules and the laws of physics binding elements and molecules together.

[Skybird]

And now you have completely u-turned? Sorry, I am in total confusion about what you originally wanted to say. I took it that your time model was your aegument, in a way I do not follow, that life is so unlikelys to form up that itz is unlikely that there is no intention behind its showing up, and so it was "dsigned". Thats how I understood your first post. In the second you seem to explain why that now is not so?


I'm lost on what you want to say...!?

[Von Due]

Ah. I see and I'm sorry for any confusion but there was no u-turn. Both posts were just me loosely thinking out loud that given the huge amount of time evolution is talking about, the beginning of life and the following evolution here on earth is close to inevitable and not, as some others claim, impossible.


EDIT: What impresses me a great deal more than the beginning of life, is how resilient life is. Snowball Earth (1, 2 and 3??), the Permian Extinction, and life still clings on. That to me is really impressive!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Von Due

Ah. I see and I'm sorry for any confusion but there was no u-turn. Both posts were just me loosely thinking out loud that given the huge amount of time evolution is talking about, the beginning of life and the following evolution here on earth is close to inevitable and not, as some others claim, impossible.

Ah, that clears it. I got the completely opposite impression of what you meant.


Modern cosmological theory seems to postulate that "nothing" cannot avoid to result in "something". "Nothing" is not the absence of anything, but is somethign which has traits, qualities, namely the one to let thing sspring into existence. My question there just is if this pragmatical understanding of "nothing" as just the astronomical void (which is not really all that empty) indeed is the nothing that philosophy means. Obviously it is not. "Nothing" in the meaning of absence of anything existing cannot carry traits, obviously. Traits are not nothing.



This stuff makes me dizzy at times.

[Von Due]

No worries at all


Someone in the physics world once said something to the effect of
- Our best theory is the best of bad ideas.
I tend to favour that view. We know so little and yet our limited knowledge has produced results that you would burn for a few hundred years earlier.



According to quantum physics, nothing is indeed full of stuff. How this nothing-stuff interacts with well behaved stuff is still being heavily researched. Furthermore, on one hand, quantum physics appears to many to be nothing more than ideas in the minds of madmen and yet, these ideas produced the CD player which I know works.


The idea that a clock hand has more mass* when it's moving than when it's not moving seems ridiculous but that fact is key to nuclear power.


Physics can be torture for the human mind.


*mass-energy but that's not something one learn until way down the line.