Journey Towards Creation

[GUNWOUNDS]

what i am curious about is if every human died tommorrow... and the earth was without humans....would another species (given enough time) rise to take our place with the same cognitive abilities?

or if we went to mars and terraformed it and left it with only plants and bacteria (obviously more than what original earth had to start with)... and came back millions of years later would we find animals or people....equal or similiar to us and our abilities?... or would we find it as we left it ?

or if

[GUNWOUNDS]

An obvious question arises: Did God create life on any other planets except Earth? And if not, then isn't the vastness of the Universe God's way of telling us to leave the confines of our homeworld and begin spreading life rather than destroying it?

what kind of life?? sentient??

[Dante]

If... what... too many ifs and whats. There is nothing special about humans, we just happened to get lucky. We evolved from bacteria anyway so it is feasable that bacteria on another planet have the same potential.

[TMA_1]

that is a plausable opinion, though it is extremely unlikely.

Hugh ross explains why, there are hundreds of prerequisits that are required in order for life to exist. There are only about 6 % of galaxies that have arms that enable planets to exist with life, which is been proven by secularist scientists. the type of galaxies that have arms and have certain places that dont have too much radiation, or too little.

and only about 2 % of stars have planets orbiting, an even smaller number for stars that have rock planets.

you only have even a smaller number of those planets which have moons.

an even smaller percent that have a large space body like jupiter to help suck in deadly impacts.

even smaller amounts that have a cloud of dust and comets that constantly refuel water to a planet.

the list goes on and it is practically impossible.

read "rare earth", written by a guy who was nominated for a nobel prize. He is a highly respected physicist and is looked upon as a leader in the study of those sorts of things. he is an athiest, and wrote this book which is looked upon very credably by scientists. he explains how rare this earth is.

You cant just say "there are so many stars out there, therefore there is life", it isnt that simple.

[Dante]

Just because the chances of life like ours are so tiny, does not mean that life in general is so unlikely. Species that adapt to radiation, life in the atmosphere of gas planets, evolved to survive without water at all... We do not need to base our prerequisites for life on what we currently have to hand.

In any case, the whole point is that rare or not, it happened once and can therefore happen again.

[TMA_1]

by saying it DID happen once and that you dont say it could have happened shows that you are biased on the issue, and leave it to faith to say that it did happen, when you cant say it did without knowing the past, that is intellecual suicide.

you are being faithful to theories, that arent proven, but have a chance of happening.

I give it to you, there is a chance of evolution happening, but when it is so small, cant you see that it is okay to look for other avenues that seem more plausable? that is what science is about. Looking for the more logical and more possible something is that happened, and choosing that over the more improbable and impractical. I see evolution as that, so I choose other avenues. This is valid wouldnt you say?

you are just saying it happened, when any good sceptic or scientist would say that they arent sure it happened, but they think that it was the most probable thing that happened. just saying it happened is based on faith and that makes it just as faulty as any religious or philisophical belief.

[Dante]

In the absence of any realistically believable theories to replace evolution I will accept it as fact until such a time as I am proven wrong.

[Caid Ivik]

Is evolution realistically believable?

[Dante]

Yes.

[TMA_1]

you dont accept anything as 100 percent fact in science, this is why the scientific method was made. sheesh

[Dante]

No, but you can accept it as 'so bloody near certain we might as well accept it until something better comes along.'

[Acriku]

what i am curious about is if every human died tommorrow... and the earth was without humans....would another species (given enough time) rise to take our place with the same cognitive abilities?

or if we went to mars and terraformed it and left it with only plants and bacteria (obviously more than what original earth had to start with)... and came back millions of years later would we find animals or people....equal or similiar to us and our abilities?... or would we find it as we left it ?

or if  the world just continues as it has... for another million years or so... would anything rise up  to challenge us (ala planet of the apes)

if the answer is no... then you have to ask yourself what makes us special.

You're placing evolution as a planned-out process - which it isn't. Human beings are only a branch of thousands of other branches, and given the amount of change and time, it's near impossible to reach the same result through millions of years of evolution. It would be interesting to see how things turn out, however.

And Dust Scout is correct, the Evolution Theory is the best there is, and until something better comes along most scientists would not deny the high plausibility of evolution happening (just like the high plausibility of us revolving around the sun).

[TMA_1]

lol it is the best there is to you, and many others. It isnt the bset though. Dont you see that there are many other opinions, and that many scientists hold other opinions they think are best? if you keep up that kind of one dimensional thinking you will become a dogmatic pharasee. You will become what you fight against. You are fighting for an opinion without listening to opposition. Science teaches never to go towards that direction. To prove my point, you said that dust was right because iti s the best there is and that you need proof.

I wasent even arguing about what was better silly! I was saying that you never accept anything as 100 % fact, and say it is fact and treat it as such, which was what dust was doing, and apparently what you do many times. you deny it of course.

[Acriku]

lol it is the best there is to you, and many others. It isnt the bset though. Dont you see that there are many other opinions, and that many scientists hold other opinions they think are best? if you keep up that kind of one dimensional thinking you will become a dogmatic pharasee. You will become what you fight against. You are fighting for an opinion without listening to opposition. Science teaches never to go towards that direction. To prove my point, you said that dust was right because iti s the best there is and that you need proof.

Sure there are many other opinions, but they haven't held up to the scrutiny of the scientific community. Evolutionary theory has, and that's why I think that it is the best there is now (added now to make it more clear).

[Caid Ivik]

Yes.

What makes you so sure?

[GUNWOUNDS]

Well let me throw this out here... i would like other people's opinion on this...

Through the years of my studies ... more so during the begining.... i learned that humans have genes called Maternal Effector Genes.. these genes .. without going into too much detail...

[Caid Ivik]

Well, this is pure induction, we can say, unreliable way to find some facts. Also, it seems that whole evolution is pointed to improvement. Beasts as well as humans teach new ways to defend themselves. Why do these genes change? Are you trying to show us some kind of neospinozistic theory? Or do you try to show these changes are random? Fortune doesn't exist in material world, everything depends on physical laws. Then we can say the purpose of the world was to create human. And again, Spinoza...

[Dante]

What makes you so sure?

As I said before, there is no alternative. Not one that isn't immediately laughable anyway.

Can anyone here provide a scientific alternative to evolution? Don't bother with religious ones, I treat them as ludicrous by default. You may think this is dogmatic but I've thought long and hard about it and I've come up with nothing to persuade me of anything of any truth in any of the major religions.

[filecore]

on the clusters... there are 13 genes... so A1 A2 , B1 , B2 , etc etc

Okay slightly off what you asked but I remember reading somewhere a while back some statistics - remember how we are always being told how apes are our "closest genetic relatives" and that we are 99% genetically similar, etc?

[Caid Ivik]

As I said before, there is no alternative. Not one that isn't immediately laughable anyway.

Can anyone here provide a scientific alternative to evolution? Don't bother with religious ones, I treat them as ludicrous by default. You may think this is dogmatic but I've thought long and hard about it and I've come up with nothing to persuade me of anything of any truth in any of the major religions.

Why do you think everything but science is laughable? Science says that ie acupuncturical medicine is a nonsense - but it works. Science is the most dogmatic thing ever. It outcompetes even christianity...

[TMA_1]

indeed caid, many scientists are dogmatic, and it is pretty sick.

Instead of laughing at alternative thoughts besides evolution, why dont you look at them? by your answer you havent honestly opened your mind dust, and looked at them.

[Dante]

I already asked you to provide them. How can I examine something I can't see?

Science works by logic and logic requires proof. Since proof denies faith and all that, religion is not proven and therefore not scientific. Thus scientists dismiss it. Acupuncture is different because it works. You can see that it has worked. Though some would dispute this, it can be debated upon with empirical evidence. Religion cannot.

Evolution has garnered more than enough empirical and logical proof to convince me that it is the truth. No other theory has done that, let alone put up a convincing argument.

Why do you think everything but science is laughable? Science says that ie acupuncturical medicine is a nonsense - but it works. Science is the most dogmatic thing ever. It outcompetes even christianity...

Unlike Christianity, science (and therefore logic) can afford to be, to some extent at least. You can afford to lay down the laws dogmatically if you are correct. Needless to say, Christianity (and indeed any other religion) cannot afford to be dogmatic.

[Acriku]

Well let me throw this out here... i would like other people's opinion on this...

Keep in mind that DNA and genetics didn't enter the picture until a while after Darwin and Wallace made their theories on the mechanisms of evolution. And note that evolution has its influence in almost every scientific field - e.g. medicine, archaeology, paleontology, geology, etc.

TMA, what is laughable is the Intelligent Design theory and its advocates.

[Caid Ivik]

I already asked you to provide them. How can I examine something I can't see?

Science works by logic and logic requires proof. Since proof denies faith and all that, religion is not proven and therefore not scientific. Thus scientists dismiss it. Acupuncture is different because it works. You can see that it has worked. Though some would dispute this, it can be debated upon with empirical evidence. Religion cannot.

Evolution has garnered more than enough empirical and logical proof to convince me that it is the truth. No other theory has done that, let alone put up a convincing argument.

Unlike Christianity, science (and therefore logic) can afford to be, to some extent at least. You can afford to lay down the laws dogmatically if you are correct. Needless to say, Christianity (and indeed any other religion) cannot afford to be dogmatic.

Empirical experience is no evidence. Some people say they see ghosts at night. There are many such people. It is an empirical fact, you can accept it. Is that a true evidence that haunting is a real phenomenon? Scientists for more than one and half millenium could accept nothing else than universe model of Klaudios Ptolemaios, where Earth was a center of space. When Kepler came with a new idea of solar system, they laughed at him as it is unprovable. Then they changed ways of observation and it fitted.

Or another science, history. We have thousands of books from the past. Some fictional, some unfictional. There were people laughing, when Schliemann declared, that Troja was real. And here we go. Jews have religious traditions lasting for more than two and half millenia. Monks reach various specifical states of superior mind trough prayer. Eastern meditational and mantric ways are even more powerful. Religion has empirically provable effect on both physical and spiritual characteristics, mostly willpower: in thinking in western, in physical effect in eastern religions.

And yet, we are limited to empirical facts. When it cames to metaphysic, empirism falls. And you can't truly explain world's functions without it.

[Dante]

It is not religion that has done what you claim, it is psychological effects brought on either by belief (which does not imply that what is believed is true) or some conjoining factor.

Yes, science is constantly developing. If we are wrong now then sooner or later we will be proven so by another scientific breakthrough. This is unlikely as the logical and empirical evidence is building up where before they was very little.

And even if science does eventually replace it's theories, religion will never do the same thing. The only thing that can outpace science is science. Religion is an archaic concept that offers nothing new and nothing true.

And empirical evidence is evidence if you have it yourself. It may or may not be correct, but this is where we use logic. If enough people see ghosts then there must be something to the phenomenon. If very few do then it may just be delusion. There is no certainty, there never is, but very very high probability.

It is true that the world is inexplicable via empiricism, hense the reason why I am a rationalist. Logic overrules everything.