One of my “E-buddies” posted this on one of my other message boards… I would like it if you guys would read it, and rip it to shreds so that I can E-mail it back to her.
“So. You believe that a couple hundred thousand years ago a random explosion happened, and somehow, molecules collided and whoosh! over the course of a few years, somehow, some way, this big, huge, beautiful Earth was created as it stands today. Of course it’s just a co-incindence that the Earth’s scientific measuerments are made exactly to fit mankind’s need. It’s just a coincidence that, oh look! If you moved the Earth just a teensy bit to the left or right, say, .001%, we’d either, freeze completely over from being too far away from the sun, or burn to a crisp from being to close. It’s also just a coincidence that the Bible seems to know more about early science than we did, that there has never been anything in the Bible that has been proven wrong, aaaaaaaaannnnnndddd… the weird thing is, the chances of molecules bonking together to form life is comparable to the chances that somebody will find the winning lottery ticket on the street, then finding another one every day for the rest of his life. So do it. Challenge me. Tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.”
Oh yes, it can’t have happened by chance, because we’re here and if it happened by chance then we probably shouldn’t be here therefore it can’t have happened by ch… bleh.
If the earth was just that teensy bit closer or further away (actually last I heard the goldilocks zone was thought to be a bit bigger than previously imagined, but no matter), then there wouldn’t be an ‘us’ to be standing here commenting on it, sheesh!
And saying that the Bible knows a lot about science is really sticking your neck out, it’s an open invitation for people to come back with “Oh yeah, and the value of PI is 3, is it?”
AFAIK, the Bible is a wonderful unique book that can tell us a lot about ourselves and why we are where we are (sociologically and spiritually), I also believe it can tell us a lot about the character of God (and a lot about people’s misconceptions of the character of God), but science? don’t think so.
What is the person trying to say, that earth-life was floating around in outer space, hoping that the “perfect planet” would appear so that they could finally have a home?
The planet came first! So the question “Why is the planet Earth so perfectly suited to its lifeforms needs?” is misleading. A better question would be “Since Earth is suited to a certain kind of life, did you really expect a different kind of life to spring up there?”
What’s often omitted from discussions of the probability of the origin of life is that that probability is the probability of one trial succeeding. If the probability is non-zero, then over enough space and enough time, life is more or less guaranteed to appear.
I can’t stomach addressing this point by point, the banality sickens me. Most of this revolves around the idea that the occurrences cited cannot be coincidental because everything needs to happen ‘just so’ for the world we live in to appear as we see it. This can be addressed by pointing out that it has happened, so the probability is exactly one. Just as the probably any given lottery number is a long shot prior to it’s drawing, it is a certain fact after it’s drawing, or is the lottery evidence of miracles to this person as well?
Besides, there are too many unknowns/variables in any equation that you use to calculate the probability of life occurring and anyone will manipulate these in whichever direction suits their purpose, I thought I’d seen something from the SETI people which suggested the universe would be teeming with life.
The best response to any statement like the one in the OP is “Really?, can you show me the calculations for that?”
Ask her about the other “people” on the other planets in our solar system, who never developed because their plants DID “freeze completely over from being too far away from the sun, or burn to a crisp from being to close.” Along with the millions of other dead planets . . . It’s just a bit of luck on our part that OUR planet was in the right place at the right time.
I love the “if we were any closer to the sun, we’d burn up!” line - apparently the words perihelion and aphelion are not in the vocabulary of idiots. The distance the earth moves in relation to the sun is some 5 million kilometers, give or take, as it makes its annual trek round the sun… and gosh, if perihelion is at some 147.5 million kilometers, a change of +5 million is 3.3% change in distance - slightly greater than the number your idio…er, friend… posted.
** Chekmate** Fpr the record, this is ** GD** which means you shouldn’t have the word “Stupid” or “Idiotic” in a thread title. Such things belong in the Pit.
That having been said, I long ago resolved to never, ever, debate the origin of life, for the simple fact that I’ll get shot down very quickly.
(Am I a sheep for believing in Creationism? Yes. bbbaaaahahh)
Mangetout, that is the Drake equation. See it here: http://www.seti-inst.edu/science/drake-calc.html
Here’s an apt quote to go with Drakes’ equation: “Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.” - Arthur C. Clarke
First of all billions of years ago, not “a couple hundred thousand”. This makes it sound like the earth was just thrown together - it took several billion years (IIRC, the age of the universe is reckoned at about 12 billion years and the earth is only about 4.6 billion years old, someone correct me if I’m wrong) to get here. Pretty amazing that God could set a plan in motion that covers that much time and worked flawlessly, huh?
And aside from that, once you get past the first few seconds after the “big bang” we’ve got a decent idea of how things progressed. What kicked the whole thing off is a mystery (possible answers include “God did it”), but once it got started the laws of physics make the rest if it inevitable.
As already noted this just isn’t true. Earth’s orbit varies by around 3% over the course of the year.
To continue this, exactly which scientific measurements are we talking about? You could vary gravity by probably 20% in either direction without much notable effect - a 20% reduction might even be benificial. Less UV radiation would certainly be better for mankind.
What’s the ideal climate for mankind? Humans survive in both the arctic and the tropics - which one was “made exactly to fit mankind’s need”? I’m sure you could play around with the oxygen content of the atmosphere a bit, and probably any number of other things as well.
And this arguement may carry less weight, but: if humans did evolve on this planet, wouldn’t it make perfect sense that we’d be adapted to the earth as it is? I doubt your friend would accept this as proof of evolution, but the given evidence fits evolution just as well as creation in this case.
Could we get an example of the Bible demonstrating expertise about “early science”? And as far as nothing in the Bible ever being proven wrong, that depends on how literally you interpret different sections of it and how willing you are to go outside the Biblical text to explain it. For instance, the two different lineages shown for Jesus in the Gospels - the standard explanation is that one lineage is for Joseph and the other is for Mary but based solely on the Biblical text alone there’s no reason to believe this. And of course the standard stuff like pi=3, the sun orbiting the earch, etc.
Could we see a calculation here, please? By necessity any calculation on the formation of life is going to include a number of assumptions, and I don’t think anybody can honestly say at this point how likely it is. Maybe we are unique in the universe, but maybe there’s some form of life on just about every chunk of rock orbiting a star out there. At this point we don’t know, so I don’t think anybody should be throwing around probability calculations.
Seems like everyone has picked out most of the cherries. Here are some leftovers (sorry if I repeat)…
Big Bang Theory does not say that it was a random event. The Theory says nothing about what “caused” the Big Bang. Plus, it wasn’t even an explosion in the sense we’re familiar with. It was the creation of space and time and the rapid expansion of space carrying energy that eventually cooled & formed matter.
ever hear of gravity or simple mechanics of motion?
The Big Bang happened 12-15 billion years ago. The Earth only formed about 4.5 billion years ago. (“a few years” indeed!) The formation of the Earth is still being researched but it is currently well described. http://www.seds.org/billa/tnp/origin.html
Plus, the Earth was not created anything like how it is today. It was a molten sphere for quite a while (and probably repeatedly after many “Earth-shattering” collisions such as the probable one with a Mars-sized planet that formed the Moon). Even after cooling down, the atmosphere didn’t even have any O2 in it for something like 1-2 billion years (anyone remember a more precise timeframe?) after its formation…not until green algae/plants evolved.
It’s no coincidence that Mankind’s needs fit the environment. If they didn’t, then we wouldn’t be here.
The Earth’s “scientific measurements” also exactly fit the needs of worms. Perhaps the universe was created for worms? Or bacteria? Or mildew?
The “scientific measurements” also fit the needs for rocks to exist…perhaps the universe was created for rocks? (thx C. Sagan)
Since there is no scientific theory of abiogenesis and there is still much that is to be understood about the conditions of the early Earth, there is no way to calculate such odds.
Minor nit: there are scientific theories of abiogenesis, but none are sufficiently complete and there’s not enough evidence available to evaluate tham thoroughly or calculate meaningful odds.
The formation of the Earth has been pretty well established at 4.5 billion years ago. The “oxygen holocaust,” when record numbers of cyanobacteria dumped oodles of O[sub]2[/sub] into Earth’s atmosphere and wiped out most non-aerotolerant species, happened some time between 2.5 to 3.5 billion years ago.
So, your recollection of 1-2 billion years after the formation of the Earth for the creation of an oxygen atmosphere is pretty much dead-on.
However, I must pick one small nit: green algae and plants are multicellular organisms. They didn’t come along until much later than the oxygen-holocaust time frame.