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[SteveC]

author=SteveC link=topic=2611.msg85559#msg85559 date=1263241247]

Earth just happened to fall into the Sun's habitable zone, creating the probability of 1, that life can exist in the universe.

Do your research and come back. First off, the norm for planets seem to be they are gas giants - not earth-like (or Mars like) - at least according to what we have seen thus far. For life to appear as we know it, we need water, temperature, and atmosphere - then we need the all important unknown to occur...something has to generate a bio-electrical impulse in the "thing" for "life" to poof into existence.
Something so far, we have been unable to duplicate in a lab - where we can create the precise conditions. The question is still on the table...how does life spring from non-life?

There is currently no good explanation for that.

We are getting there, Deacon. Here's an article I read yesterday concerning a planet that was discovered recently that only 3x the size of earth and another planet that's a little less than 2x the size of Earth. A few weeks ago I believe I posted an article that a planet about 4x the size of earth may have been discovered with water covering the surface. Unfortunately they are not in a habitable zone.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100113122349.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090203110324.htm

There's a good reason why only gas giants have been found, and that's because our technology for finding smaller planets has been very limited, until recently. Take a look at related stories to the right of the main article. It's only a matter of time before we find an Earth size planet in a habitable zone.

I can understand people's need to assign meaning to such a coincidence, but there is no evidence for such meaning, just odds that it could happen. On the other hand, if you need such meaning to get through life, it is perfectly logical. imho, to assume such meaning.

If you want to hang your hat on a series of improbable coincidences - all having to occur in the precise order and under precise conditions - be my guest. You're right, we have no evidence no way or the other to explain all these "coincidences" - just odds that it could happen, which are so minute so that it boggles the mind. As far as "getting through life", that is the question isn't it? I'm not looking at merely "getting through life" - I'm looking at making something out of life, which I believe, one cannot do all by themselves.

 

We have an opportunity to discover life right in our own solar system. Jupiter is the only planet that generates more energy than it receives from the Sun. Ganymede, which orbits Jupiter, is the largest moon in the solar system. Under Ganymede's frozen surface is an ocean of water. We will eventually explored what's under that frozen surface.

It's not a series of improbable coincidences, You need a rocky surface planet, in a habitable zone. Everything needed to bring life to a planet orbits new stars, gravity takes care of the rest. The water on this planet came from the icy depts of our solar system. Early Earth was pummeled by comets and comet debris, that's when Earth, Mars, and the Moon received virtually all the water they would ever receive. Eventually the planets swept up everything in there paths and the bombardment stopped and life began. It's not improbable when you think how logical the system works. It is a thing of beauty, it's logical, and god could have let everything happen without lifting a finger. This science is not a threat to the god concept. Even if we create life or we find life on another planet or moon, this is still not a threat to the god concept. Fundamentalist principles may be threatened though, and it has to prepare itself for change.

[Metis]

Then explain "chaos theory" at the sub-atomic level? These so-called "guidelines" seem to break down at the quantum level.

I'm gonna have to be very brief.

There is chaos at the sub-atomic level, but that chaos "disappears" (actually it doesn't, but I don't have time to get into it) when we get to the mega-matter level.  It's sort of like a picture that's very grainy up close but looks good the further back you get.
  

This has been my point all along. It is no greater an assumption that a rule-maker operated behind the curtain as 'twere - as these rules just somehow just poofed into existence or asserted themselves by chance.

Who said the rules "just poofed into existence"?  Might not they have always been there?

With all due respect, that is a pointless question for beings trapped in space and time. I could ask you the same thing - where did this primordial "stuff", be it energy/mass or whatever - where did that come from? If time is a created 'thing", and it is, then eternity/infinity is real not imagined.

How do you know your god is not "trapped in space and time"?  What evidence can you offer?  None.  So, the reality is that you don't know.

Secondly, the above makes the mistake of assuming that energy/matter wasn't always there to begin with, which is at least a hypothetical possibility. 

If one states He/it was always there - they are saying He/it is eternal. Since we know eternity is real - something has to be eternal. Rules like time and space are created things, unless you want say Rules always were.

 
 
Well, we know energy/matter exists, but we don't know that a deity exists with any certainty, so where would be the logical place to put the odds?

Most cosmologist do not take a stand one way or the other because the whole question is beyond their purview. They are only concerned with observable and measurable facts - i.e. science. 

92% of all cosmologists in the U.S. are atheists or agnostic, so that should tell us something.  Certainly, we don't know much of anything for certain in this area, and certainly there is still room for a theistic cause, but it would seem that in order for that theistic cause to be taken seriously, we should be able to substantiate beyond a reasonable doubt that there is a God.  Or is it Gods, Deacon?    

[fenn]

Wasn't it Hawking who said time is spherical, and asking what was before the beginning of time is like asking what's north of the north pole? You can't prove God from any of this. You can't disprove God either, since you can't prove a negative - prove to me there is no Santa Claus. All very trippy and funny cactus buttons are probably as close as we humans will get to cracking it.

[Metis]

Wasn't it Hawking who said time is spherical, and asking what was before the beginning of time is like asking what's north of the north pole?

I'm not familiar with Hawking's take on this, but it sounds like something he would say.

We have to remember that time is merely sequencing.  So if anything moves from A to B, there's time.  Sometimes cosmologists say that time started with the big bang, but that's just an exaggerated statement that they don't mean if one reads their works.  All the cosmologists I have read do believe something was here prior to the BB that must have caused the two rapid inflations a micro-second apart, but they're not certain what it was.

You can't prove God from any of this. You can't disprove God either, since you can't prove a negative - prove to me there is no Santa Claus. All very trippy and funny cactus buttons are probably as close as we humans will get to cracking it.

LOL!  You do have a way with words, fenn.

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