have they found anything?

[amb]

I have never claimed we are alone. I have always claimed we may be alone. For all we know the galaxy could literally be overrun with intelligent conscious beings. But by observing this one example we have here, it's quite possible that a planet such as the Earth, with all that's in it's favour for the evolution of animal lifeforms is not a common event in the galaxy. Not Forgetting the intelligence that homo sapiens has acquired, purely by chance for a moment, it's either extremely rare, or intelligence is a product of the laws of physics which in that case are built in as Paul Davies claims, an act of a designer. Another physicist whose name escapes me now once stated: The universe seems to have known we were coming.

 

[Lonewulf]

Another physicist whose name escapes me now once stated: The universe seems to have known we were coming.

I'm not impressed, as that sounds rather silly.

Of course Earth has all that we need. We wouldn't have evolved here if it didn't. If Earth lacked a resource or two, it's highly plausible that life would have simply adapted, and looked entirely differently than what it does. They'd also probably think that the "universe seems to have known they were coming", and wouldn't question those changing resources.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I have never claimed we are alone. I have always claimed we may be alone.

Then you DO agree that we may be one of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy? (I've only been asking you to agree to this for weeks if not months now, and prior to this post, you haven't indicated agreement to that.)

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Not Forgetting the intelligence that homo sapiens has acquired, purely by chance for a moment, it's either extremely rare, or intelligence is a product of the laws of physics which in that case are built in as Paul Davies claims, an act of a designer.

Again, your thinking is all backwards and leans toward a perspective that is common among creationists.

All traits arose "purely by chance" AND ALSO as "a product of the laws of physics". There's no either/or about it. Everything in the natural world (that is to say, everything) obeys the laws of physics.

No Designer or Deity is necessary.

Another physicist whose name escapes me now once stated: The universe seems to have known we were coming.

Utter Creationist nonsense!

We know exactly what a universe tailored to humans would be like: it's the one believed by most people to be the case until science proved otherwise. It's a universe whose scale in time and space is proportional to human existence. That is, it's only a few thousand years old (created about the time human history started) and not very big at all. The Earth is at the center of that universe. The amount of stuff in that universe isn't much more than the eye can see. (And those things that look like tiny dots in the night sky are in fact just tiny dots.)

We now know that the Earth is not the center of the universe. Our solar system doesn't even occupy a special place in our galaxy. Our galaxy occupies no special place in the local group, etc. The age of the universe is nearly 14 billion years. The amount of stuff and distances are staggering.

You keep forgetting that life evolves adapted to conditions. Conditions are not created to fit life.

ETA:
This bit:

the intelligence that homo sapiens has acquired

makes no sense whatsoever. Homo sapiens did not acquire intelligence. There is no such thing as pre-intelligence homo sapiens. Rather "intelligence" is a term used to describe a grouping of traits that homo sapiens has. While it seems like a minor point, I think it once again shows that your approach to evolution is very similar to that of the Creationists.

You seem to think there's a magic point where humans were invested with intelligence (or consciousness) and that those things never existed in other organisms before in any form at all. You seem to think there's a sharp demarcation that separates humans from all other organisms on the planet. You seem to deny (or at least ignore) the fact that intelligence --or at least the traits that comprise it-- exists on a continuum among organisms on Earth.

With that Creationist approach, you also continually set up the dichotomy whereby intelligence is either the result of a Designer or it is "an accident". By accident, you seem to mean something that doesn't normally obey the laws of physics. (Again--there's no way around this--you are advocating a supernatural origin of intelligence. If not, then saying intelligence is an "accident" is no more meaningful than saying that ants or anything else evolved as an "accident".)

You use the same approach wrt the universe. You've used a version of the Fine Tuning argument with its backward approach to things. (The Texas Sharpshooter approach.)

 

[amb]

You keep forgetting that life evolves adapted to conditions. Conditions are not created to fit life

Think man will ever adapt to the conditions on Mars, Venus, Europa?
Of course life adapts to the conditions, but the conditions also need to be as they are here on Earth to a certain degree. It was the very first life that appeared on this planet that made more complex life possible billions of years later. If not for algae, there would probably be no oxygen, no complex life.
The origin of life itself is not accounted for by evolution alone. Some pre- biological process such as self-organization must have been involved, and later evolution took over.
There is a current gap in scientific knowledge, [for the present time] but plausible natural mechanism, sufficient to keep god out of any hypothesis.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Think man will ever adapt to the conditions on Mars, Venus, Europa?

Again, that's not how evolution works. Man didn't evolve on Mars, Venus or Europa.

Of course life adapts to the conditions, but the conditions also need to be as they are here on Earth to a certain degree.

Says who?

It was the very first life that appeared on this planet that made more complex life possible billions of years later. If not for algae, there would probably be no oxygen, no complex life.

I thought your thesis was that simple life is commonplace and complex life depends on conditions being identical to the Earth in every imaginable way. Now you're contradicting yourself. (You even admit that "conditions" like the oxygen in our atmosphere is the result of life and not a prerequisite.)

The origin of life itself is not accounted for by evolution alone. Some pre- biological process such as self-organization must have been involved, and later evolution took over.
There is a current gap in scientific knowledge, [for the present time] but plausible natural mechanism, sufficient to keep god out of any hypothesis.

We've gone over this before. Do you remember watching this video?


Hint: you did watch it. Your response was to say: "Great video. But as you know, I'm not argueing [sic] about the origins of life." Here it is 100 posts later, and you're back to claiming that abiogenesis is some big mystery that science can't explain. (As if, even if it were true, our ignorance somehow adds even a shred of evidence to support the Rare Earth thesis.)

Did you ever read the links I posted prior to that about spontaneously forming proteins? It explains it quite well. There is no huge gap in our knowledge wrt abiogenesis. There's no great mystery. Chemistry explains it quite well.

Look, you're offering nothing new but only jumping around. You're only repeating arguments that have been thoroughly refuted. You're contradicting yourself. And you're not responding to my questions. (Like how can human intelligence be an "accident" but not every trait of every organism?)

 

[LarianLeQuella]

but the conditions also need to be as they are here on Earth to a certain degree.

Really? Says who? Our one datapoint? And exactly what sort of conditions? Underwater volcanic vents? Radioactive mines? Arid mountain tops?

 

[arthwollipot]

Think man will ever adapt to the conditions on Mars, Venus, Europa?

Given enough time, yes. Assuming that we had a way to survive there in the first place, then over many thousands of generations, humanity would adapt to whatever conditions it found itself in.

Of course, by then they probably wouln't be called "human".

 

[amb]

Number of alien worlds quantified

Breach of rule 4 removed. If you want to discuss an article, a link and short quote should be sufficient.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Cuddles

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Number of alien worlds quantified

Edited by Cuddles: 

Quoted breach of rule 4 removed.

You really should use quote tags when you're quoting a block of text. You should also provide a reference and link to the source. It looks like you quoted a news story here. However, it looks like you're taking credit for writing it. And I think the man's name is the alt text for a photo that appeared in the newstory.

At any rate, this story is about what I've been saying from the beginning. I think even if there are many intelligent civilizations in the galaxy, it's unlikely we'll ever contact another one just because things are so spread out in time and space. (Really that's exactly what my first several posts on this thread said. You can go back and read them.)

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I think maybe this is the article that amb plagiarized (presented as his own words).

I'm also pretty sure it's the same group that has done modeling of the question of ETs that I referred to (with proper quote tags and a link to the article in question) back in post number 456.

It would really save a lot of time, amb, if you simply read my posts with care.

 

[Radrook]

There are just too many transitional-stage unanswered questions for one to take evolution seriously as the mechanism producing life on this or any other planet.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

There are just too many transitional-stage unanswered questions for one to take evolution seriously as the mechanism producing life on this or any other planet.

More creationist nonsense.

ETA: Even AIG lists this one as one of the "arguments to be avoided".

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

There was a cool story in the news today about subglacial microbes with a novel approach to living without oxygen:

At chilling temperatures, with no oxygen or sunlight, these newly found microbes have survived for the past 1.5 million years using an "iron-breathing" technique, which may show how life could exist on other planets.

I think it was Larian who said earlier that we must not wear blinders as to what conditions might sustain life. We keep getting surprised by terrestrial life in strange conditions. We shouldn't rule out ANY possibilities for ET life.

 

[amb]

I think maybe this is the article that amb plagiarized (presented as his own words).

I'm also pretty sure it's the same group that has done modeling of the question of ETs that I referred to (with proper quote tags and a link to the article in question) back in post number 456.

It would really save a lot of time, amb, if you simply read my posts with care.

I apologize for that. It's always a lack of time on my part. Rush, rush. I should have previewed it before posting, or at least read the post after posting which I didn't do as I switched off immediately after that post.
I thought the source would have been shown as well. It didn't.

 

[amb]

Next time I will post a link.

 

[amb]

There are just too many transitional-stage unanswered questions for one to take evolution seriously as the mechanism producing life on this or any other planet.

You must be joking! Evolution is not in question and is a fact. The very origins of self replicating molecules are the only remaining questions to be answered, and sooner or later it will. The means of how it happened, was it on Earth or somewhere else and brought here by an asteroid, comet or whatever that scientist still dispute.
What is in dispute here is the likely/unlikely ''Rare Earth'' hypothesis.
Life is more than likely teeming in the universe. But perhaps for various reasons, intelligence isn't.
If conditions suit, life will somehow evolve everywhere on an Earth like planet, and perhaps non-Earth Like as well as claimed by some biologists.
But there are a few who claim that we may be unique, an accident that only occured once, or at best, a few dozen times throughout the cosmos.

 

[LarianLeQuella]

There was a cool story in the news today about subglacial microbes with a novel approach to living without oxygen:


I think it was Larian who said earlier that we must not wear blinders as to what conditions might sustain life. We keep getting surprised by terrestrial life in strange conditions. We shouldn't rule out ANY possibilities for ET life.

Don't forget microbes that seem quite content in sulfuric acid.

I would love to see another "great demotion" for our place in the universe once Webb has a chance to look around a bit more and hopefully finds some candidates. Remember, we couldn't even detect our own civilization from the nearest star with the technology we have. We currently have a selection bias to NOT find anything, even if it's teeming out there at our level of development. And to make things more difficult for anyone to find US, is that we are leaking less and less extranious radio noise because of focused transmission technology and fiber optics. Someone may conclude that we wiped ourselves out instead of became more efficient with our communications technology! Woudn't that be funny!

 

[amb]

Please have a look at this. A bit longish, but well worth it if you all have not yet seen it.
It is exactly what I've been trying to put across, but by a giant of one of today's scientists.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un1,ZW29GTw

It's not working. It is a lecture by Richard Dawkins addressing a hall seemingly full of theists.
Sorry guys, Ive spent half an hour trying to get it back to no avail.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Please have a look at this. A bit longish, but well worth it if you all have not yet seen it.
It is exactly what I've been trying to put across, but by a giant of one of today's scientists.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un1,ZW29GTw

It's not working. It is a lecture by Richard Dawkins addressing a hall seemingly full of theists.
Sorry guys, Ive spent half an hour trying to get it back to no avail.

You correctly pointed out to Radrock that the question of ET intelligence is not a question of theism, so I'm not sure if this video would've helped your case anyway. You really have been using the language of creationists in making your case. That's why I think it's you that have been muddying the waters and bringing in that point of view even as you reject it. (The false dichotomy that either intelligence like ours is designed and commonplace in the universe or "accidental" and extremely rare is what I'm talking about. It raises the creationist point of view. It's just bad arguing, but it really does depend on the creationist perspective.)