[jdjtcagle]

You should have respect for people no matter what they believe, God says not to judge people for yourself

[Black Wolf]

No! Biogenesis topic > Religion debate! Go start a new thread. God and the beginning of life are totally unrelated.

[jdjtcagle]

He's right...

(to a point)

[Kazan]

jdjtcagle: i only have to respect your right to have and opinion, i do not, and it is dangerous to, respect every opinion


You are delusional, all three of you -- you have absolutely positively ZERO evidence supporting your poisiton and yet you assert that your position is the absolute truth in the face of invalidating evidence

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=delusional

3. # Psychiatry. A false belief strongly held in spite of invalidating evidence, especially as a symptom of mental illness: delusions of persecution.

[jdjtcagle]

If that is the definition then yes I am and if you don't respect me Kazan, whatever...

Ok Kazan, all this your dangerous to society bull**** gets on my nerves, seriously...

I don't ask anybody to believe, I don't try and persuade people to believe, and I don't go around in the streets yelling and screaming about the return of christ, ect...

I simply live my life the way I want without being persuaded to believe anything that they want me to believe and I don't persuade or interfere with the way they live there life

[Beowulf]

Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009
I was reading an article at Space.com ( http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/meteorite_survival_001025-1.html ) and it led me to thinking. What are your views of the origin of life on Earth? Spontaneous formation of proteins, the theory espoused in the article, or something else entirely?

Trying not to sound to spiritualistic...

Earth is a living planet. Earth breathes life... life exists everywhere, from the microbes in soil, to the African plains, to the most extreme enviroments of Antartica and oceanic trenches.

Earth is simply TEEMING with life.

[BlackDove]

I'd assume everything is "alive" to some degree. How it all started, I have no idea. Wouldn't even want to hazard a guess, although I'm quite sure that with further understanding of science, we're getting closer and closer to the answer.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Guys, learn from experience; Kazan is particularly vocal about the whole 'God issue' and will argue for hours stating many more references than you could believe exist.

Sit happily and believe what is best to you and ignore those who would undermine your beliefs.


Kazan, learn from experience; these guys are particularly vocal about the whole 'God issue' and will argue for hours stating many more references than you could believe exist.

Sit happily and believe what is best to you and ignore those who would undermine your beliefs.
[/color]

[Kazan]

Maeglamor.. you're _half_ right -- they don't have any references i would be suprised to see and couldn't invalidate in a matter of minutes  -- i speak from pure expirience.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]See.
[/color]

[Grey Wolf]

This was really intended to be a discussion on how, not why. Those are completely different discussions. Scientists and engineers debate how. Philosophers debate why. Even if you believe God created life on earth, the question is how, in scientific terms, did the actual event happen.

[Impurial]

Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009
This was really intended to be a discussion on how, not why. Those are completely different discussions.

I disagree.  The concepts are not so distant as you think.  The meaning of the purpose of life come from the same source as the answer to the origin of life.

Consider the invention/creation/birth of anything "new".  A baby, a new product, a new theory - for lack of appropriate comparisons.  The only explanation for why lies in the heart of the how.  Why is a baby born?  Ask the parents.  Why is a new product invented and sold?  Ask the inventors.  Why is a new theory proposed?  Ask the scholar.

Thus, if life does have a purpose; to know that purpose one must question the source of life.  If life does not have a purpose, then why even search for how?  For what comfort could the how bring, lest it answers the why?

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Impurial
Thus, if life does have a purpose; to know that purpose one must question the source of life.  If life does not have a purpose, then why even search for how?  For what comfort could the how bring, lest it answers the why?

There is no why. I'm quite comfortable in that fact. In fact I sleep better at night knowing there is no ultimate reason why I'm here. The problem with spiritual people is that they can't comprehend this fact and think that deep down I'm missing something cause I crave the same answers they do.

Sadly they are wrong. I've long ago dealt with the fact that there is no why.  How on the other hand is important because every little bit of knowledge is one step further down the road to explaining how the universe works.

Originally posted by aldo_14
There's also a theory, IIRC, that proteins didn't spontaneously form, but rather 'evolved' into the form that allowed life (and DNA, blahblahblah)... which sounds pretty damn plausible, especially as it means there's no need to rely on the gigantic odds of a protein like collagen forming spontaneously.
(NB: IIRC, the odds of a 200-amino-acid protein forming spontaneously are 1*10^260, which is a stupidly large number.  And that's excluding the interrelationship with DNA and whatnot which allows life to form)

I think a/the book which describes this in proper detail is called The Blind Watchmaker.  I've not read it, only seen a summary and reference.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393315703/104-4918594-4199961?v=glance is it, I believe.  The presence of negative reviews from creationists lends it a nice bit of credibility

The blind watchmaker is sheer brilliance. The inorganic clays theory I mentioned earlier is explained quite well in that book. I would however suggest reading the Selfish Gene first (same author) as that is a much easier book to understand.

[Knight Templar]

Gee-ohh-dee


*spites Kazan purposefully*

[aldo_14]

We don't need a why.  Because life is.

Why does it exist?  Because in this xxxth iteration of the universe, or reality, or whatever, life began and evolved.  The numbers came out right.

[Kazan]

aldo: that's assuming serial trials of the probability - in reality PARELLEL (billions upon billions at once) of trials happen simultaenously


Just to keep the watchmaker fallacy from hopping in: http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/arguments.html#design

[InfernoGod]

Life began when two godly companies invented a game called Freespace.

[Kazan]

only one of those companies was godly -- the other was satanic

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Kazan
aldo: that's assuming serial trials of the probability - in reality PARELLEL (billions upon billions at once) of trials happen simultaenously


Just to keep the watchmaker fallacy from hopping in: http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/arguments.html#design

What about the Big bang - collapse cycle?

Analogy still works if you think side to side in time, not forward and back, anyways....

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Kazan
Just to keep the watchmaker fallacy from hopping in: http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/arguments.html#design

One more reason for reading The Blind Watchmaker. It has an even more in-depth explaination of the fallacies of the Watchmaker arguement.