[Mongoose]

Originally posted by Ford Prefect
There are fundamental differences in cognitive ability between humans and all other life on this planet. On the other hand, we still exhibit a considerable degree of submission to our animal instincts. So I think that both arguments are valid.

Now that's a very intelligent statement.  It's certainly better than saying that humans are "just liek teh chimpz!!11" It's absolutely true that humans are primates, mammals, and animals, and that we share the same physical characteristics of all of these classifications.  However, no matter how similar our DNA, anyone who says that human mental capacity is comparable to every other species on the planet is grossly mistaken.    We are capable of experiencing emotions and feelings that no other species could even dream of.  Our intellectual development has enabled us to rise from simple hunter-gatherers to brave explorers, great engineers, and gifted artists.  We've developed a myriad of languages; our literary and artistic achievements are beyond number; our scientific development is truly amazing.  Just think about it:  it took only 66 years from the first powered flight to the first moon landing, only 49 from the discovery of radioactivity to the atomic bomb.  Look at the Internet, a vast global network that makes distances of tens of thousands of miles irrelevant.  I challenge you to sit there and tell me that all of that is the same as sitting in a tree and eating bananas.  Beyond any of these accomplishments, even more important than all of this, there is that undeniable fact that we are the only species on this planet that has achieved true sentience, a total sense of self and the development of one's own unique personality.  I would call it a soul; you may have a different name for it.  You can't say that it doesn't exist, though, for without it, you wouldn't be able to make a post here.

As a slight aside, my belief that humans are the pinnacle of all creation does not automatically lead to a belief that what happens to the rest of the world doesn't matter.  I happen to feel that it is our position as the dominant life on this rock we call Earth that charges us with the duty of being responsible caretakers of our home.  The fact that we have advanced far beyond any other species means that we have the responsibility to ensure that our actions to not lead to these species' extinctions.

[aldo_14]

It's worth noting all these symbols of human achievement are themselves defined by humanity; we judge ourselves by our own yardsticks.  For example... we care about communication across the world - does the chimpanzee?  Does the dolphin?  Our cognition has led us to develop great things, but they're great things within the context of what human thought requires - not the simple matter of survival as a species.

Do we need the concept of a soul to survive?  Probably not; but the concept exists regardless.

The only real test we can offer is that of survival; and whilst humanity is very good at killing off other species, it's somewhat inevitable that will rebound on us.

I'm not one of those people who think "'we're no better than chimps and should live in the woods", but at the same time I think it's worth recognising we're still part of a living world; that we have a tremendous amount of power to shape this planet, but are stilll vulnerable to both its vagarities and the consequences of how we live.

[Ford Prefect]

Complexity is not an entirely subjective concept. Humans do so much more than purely what we need to do in order to survive, so by definition we are considerably more complex than other life. Whether or not this makes us better is an entirely different question, but the fact remains that we have evolved to a qualitatively different state.

[Mefustae]

True, evolution is not always for the better, and Humanity is a prime example of this...

...I mean, in our infancy, we were a species of ape-like nomads in Africa. We lived in harmony with nature, and as we supported the surrounding environment, so did it support us...

...fast forward a few hundred thousand years, and we're the equivalent of a wart on the arse of the Planet, as parasite on the globe, moving from area to area, depleting resources and forever multiplying like bacteria, we're actually going backwards in terms of Intelligence, I mean, just look at the sudden upsergeance in the number of Politicians ...

[Stealth]

Originally posted by Mefustae

...I mean, in our infancy, we were a species of ape-like nomads in Africa. We lived in harmony with nature, and as we supported the surrounding environment, so did it support us...

right, and before that we were just a bunch of atoms that by chance (defined as 10^42 power) collided and formed cells that developed and in time (millions of years) formed every species on this earth today.  also the environment was perfect for life, finely tuned by the same 'coincidence' that brought about life on the planet.

*shakes head*.  i swear i'll live my entire life and still not be able to see that logic.  and it's not a matter of "you don't see it because you don't want to", it's more of a "you don't see it because it's the most absurd thing you've ever heard".

[Mefustae]

To use a slightly mundane phrase; 'What'chu talkin' 'bout Stealth!?'

[Flipside]

Life evolved to cope with the planet, not vice versa.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Stealth
right, and before that we were just a bunch of atoms that by chance (defined as 10^42 power) collided and formed cells that developed and in time (millions of years) formed every species on this earth today.

Seriously. Buy a f**king clue how abiogenesis works before you comment on it.

The probability argument you're quoting is a massive strawman and stating it merely shows that you don't understand the subject at hand.

You may think you're arguing against abiogenesis with what you just said but in fact you're arguing against a fantasy version of it that no reputable scientist believes in. I'll bet you can't find a single scientist who's published a paper in a peer reviewed journal saying that bunch of atoms collided and formed cells.

You're arguing against something that no scientist believes in.

[Stealth]

see first of all... i'm not "arguing" anything.  i'm stating how absurd it seems to me that life created and evolved by 'chance'.  that we were once fish, and then apes, and then evolved into modern day humans.

what i said about "atoms colliding" and "10^42 power", etc. i wasn't stating facts; i was trying to make it sound ridiculous.  because to me the idea that life originated in some primordial sea, and a multi-celled organism formed, etc. *shakes head*.  the whole "life just happened by chance" and "we evolved over millions of years, from a 2 celled organism floating in a soup" just doesn't make sense to me.
Would you care to explain to me how you believe life originated?

[Ford Prefect]

Actually when we talk about the entire course of evolution, we're talking in the billions of years. Now consider, for the sake of comparison, that all of recorded civilization falls within, what, five thousand years? It's easy to just say the numbers, but the true scale of that is really quite hard to imagine. Life has had a really, really long frigging time to evolve.

[Stealth]

billions of years, eh?

so evolution aside, how did life on earth begin?


no seriously.  i'm trying to understand this

[Flipside]

Well, my feelings are that it's not as random as all that.

It doesn't take much, for example, to get Hydrogen and Oxygen to turn into water, and what with the state of the primordial atmosphere, ignition sources were everywhere. A massive amount of early evolution was about chemistry, not biology. Yes, the chances that life would be exactly as it is today are billions upon billions to one, as are the chances of life being any other way, but the odds of life evolving in the first place are, given the right conditions, looking higher and higher, and life had to turn out somehow.

Evolution is all about exploitation, if a resource is available, something will come along and exploit it, and usually produce some kind of emission as a result, which something else will come along and exploit. That's why mankind is as it is, we are the top of the exploitation chain. However, just because mankind exists, it does not mean that there is no more ecological room for Chimps and Apes. Just as Donkeys are still around when Horses are obviously so much 'better' etc

[Stealth]

yeah well let's keep evolution out of it as much as possible for now.  just life developing:  my thoughts are that yes, it's possible for hydrogen and oxygen to combine to form water, but that's with the right equipment and/or conditions, PLUS combining water is hardly life.  but i can see where you're coming from

also, i wouldn't say the chances of life today are billions and billions to one... i'd say the chances of life PERIOD are trillions and trillions and trillions to one. (what exactly are the chances though?  i don't know an exact number, but i'm sure some scientist has theorized what the chances of life forming are.  anyone got a number they can throw out here?)

[aldo_14]

It's worth noting within the random chance theory; we don't know how many trillions of times the universe was 'created'.  It's quite possible there are an infinite number of either parallel universes or even (more unlikely AFAIK) sequential universes.  Within that context, life is not improbable - it's inevitable.

If you decide to equate the formation of life to God (or aliens, etc), you're not answering the question - you're shifting it.  What are the odds of a divine omnipotence manifesting itself?  Certainly, it's no more likely than an infinite number of realities - chances for life to arise on earth.

The origins of life - the scientific theory - is still being investigated.  Life can be said to derive from proteins, formed from amino acids; DNA defines the amino acid building blcks for proteins.  It's a massively complex scenario - particularly when you include the other requisites, like membranes to contain the whole morass.  The arguement used against 'chance' is that these can't just arise by random at once (the analogy is that of a tornado hitting a junkyard and assembling a 747).

The thing is, the theory doesn't say that - they evolved.  One or 2 amino acids bump together, and combine.  And then bumped into another cluster, so on - and eventually we end up with 'modern' proteins thousands of amino acids long.  This type of inherent complexity is seen all the time in nature; the formation of polymers, crystallization, sugars assembling into starches.  Neither is life, of course, but it proves that natural 'assembly' and complexity occurs.

Life - all life, at least on this planet - itself only requires 4 basic elements (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen), combined with a few trace others.

There are things that are unquestionably odd about the arisal of life on Earth - like how (pre atmosphere) UV rays didn't break up the molecular bonds on early life, or how monomers weren't polymerised if life evolved in water.  This doesn't mean the theory is untenable.  It just means we still are exploring it.

They do, incidentally have evidence of life from 3.85 billion years ago, in marine sediment from Akilia Island (in Greenland).  Although it's obviously not fossilized, you can detect the trace telltale residues from once-living organizms - carbon isotopes and phosphates.

It's easy to pick an answer that can justify itself - by invoking the God answer you don't need to even consider the question.  Why does my Pc work?  Is it because God powers it?  Why not?

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Stealth
see first of all... i'm not "arguing" anything.  i'm stating how absurd it seems to me that life created and evolved by 'chance'.  that we were once fish, and then apes, and then evolved into modern day humans.

what i said about "atoms colliding" and "10^42 power", etc. i wasn't stating facts; i was trying to make it sound ridiculous.  because to me the idea that life originated in some primordial sea, and a multi-celled organism formed, etc. *shakes head*.  the whole "life just happened by chance" and "we evolved over millions of years, from a 2 celled organism floating in a soup" just doesn't make sense to me.
Would you care to explain to me how you believe life originated?

Just cause you can't wrap your head round it doesn't make it false. Most people simply can't grasp how big Earth actually is let alone the size of the sun but that doesn't magically make them smaller. Human brains aren't designed to deal with huge numbers or huge sizes. That's why so many people can't grasp how long 4 billion years actually is and how much change can accumulate in that time.

Abiogenesis is a really tough subject to understand for most people as unlike evolution it is based on really complicated chemistry (Where as evolution is easier to understand as it is based on two simple principles, mutation and natural selection).

The other thing that makes it complicated is that abiogenesis has several different competing theories all of which explain all the data we have so far. Without a time machine it's pretty hard to tell which one is correct. Evolution doesn't suffer from that cause we can pretty conclusively prove that since the oppossing theories like Lamarkerism and saultationism don't work in a lab which leaves us with only one theory that can't be disproved, Darwinian evolution.


Saying that something is random when it in fact isn't is not helping you understand the problem. Look at salt crystals under a microscope and you'll see that they are perfectly square. The chances of that happening to even a single crystal is remote. The chance of it happening to all the crystals you look at is even bigger than the number you mentioned. Salt crystals grow that way because that is the way they like to organise themselves. It's the lowest energy configuration for them.

The same thing is happening but on a vastly more complicated scale in abiogenesis.  Amino acids stringing themselves together to form primative proteins may seem fantastic and hard to believe in but each step along the way was a probable outcome same as it was for the salt crystal. It's still perfectly understandable chemisty, just much more complicated than simple crystal lattices.

If you honestly do want to "get a clue" (as I less than tactfully put it earlier ) My suggestion is to visit a library and check out Richard Dawkins excellent book "The Selfish Gene". That contains probably the best explaination I've ever read of how evolution works and also covers how abiogenisis has to work to fit with it (although it only gives one of the theories).

[Stealth]

Originally posted by karajorma


why do you think you're so much more intelligent than I, that you can 'understand' it and i can't?  i can see where all of you come from, i really can, but at the same time i can't look around, and look at how perfectly everything is designed (the atmosphere protects us from UV rays, the complexity of human hands, eyes, etc.) and think "well they just developed and over billions of years evolved into that"... i can't do it.

"Why does my Pc work? Is it because God powers it? Why not?"
You're looking at it the wrong way.  do you ever look at a computer and say "gee i wonder if someone made that?"  no of course not, because it's obvious that it was made BY someone/something.  you don't look at anything man-made and wonder how it came about.  it was made, by someone or something somewhere.  that's how i am.  i can't bring myself to look at everything and how finely tuned it is, and how everything fits together so perfectly, and think "yeah. it evolved to that.  over millions and billions of years".  and don't say it's because i "don't have the capacity to understand", because i'm almost positive that you aren't so superior to me that only you can understand.  and i've researched all the topics, and they still don't make sense to me

[Ford Prefect]

Indeed. (EDIT: In reference to aldo's post.) And when you take that combination of events and consider the untold number of stars, galaxies, and galactic clusters in this universe, it seems to me that life is likely to emerge many, many times, even if the number of planets harboring life is a tiny percentage of the total number in the universe.

I mean, come on:





And that's just a part of ONE galaxy.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Stealth


you know, your attitude's typical:

"You don't understand what you're talking about.  you're too stupid to understand something that's OBVIOUSLY the truth".

...typical.

So you ignore all the supporting evidence and label the person that presents it as arrogant to stop you having to actually consider it?

Kara's simply explained why it's not as unlikely as you believe it is, and why evidence supports that.  If you really want to avoid learning about why scientists (and some of the finest minds of humanity at that)have decided this is the best, most proven theory, feel free - but you won't be doing yourself and favours.

RETROSPECTIVE EDIT; above is probably a bit harsh, if you didn't actually read all of karas post.

EDIT; with ref to Ford - it's been estimated that there are 100bn stars in the Milky Way.  There are a further estimated 200bn galaxies - and that's only in the observable universe.

Even if only a few of those trillions of stars have planets with suibtable conditions for life (as we define it), thats still a hell of a big universe for life to begin within.  And even if it's so incredibly unlikely as to never occur anywhere else, it still doesn't matter - because it began here.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Stealth

you know, your attitude's typical:

"You don't understand what you're talking about. you're too stupid to understand something that's OBVIOUSLY the truth".

...typical.
 

You what?

I never said you were too stupid. I said it's hard to understand and takes effort. Completely different thing you know.

[Stealth]

yeah my mistake kara, i read the first sentence and the last paragraph, and took it the wrong way.  my bad.