The Odds of Life Occurring by Random Chance and The Odds of Sexual Reproduction and Genetics

originally posted by: SprocketUK

originally posted by: Raggedyman

originally posted by: SprocketUK

originally posted by: Raggedyman
Water flows downhill, life supposedly flows up
Sounds like your own argument let's you down
Funny that

a reply to: SprocketUK

Pass that joint along fella. It's obviously doing wonders.

Is that it, your scientific rebuttal, a cheap swipe about me being on drugs
Care to address the issue rather than trying to make me look like I compared the flow of water downhill to life evolving uphill.

We disagree, I get that, you are welcome to your silly beliefs, allow me the same
If you are going to throw your intellect around, you better get some...

No it was a polite way of saying you answered my point with pure piffle.
You'd have known that if you stepped away from the lectern for a breath though.

Mine may have been piffle to you but you avoided the answer completely and started on me.
Pretty tough?

I will step away from my lectern when you man up and step away from your lectern, when you come up with an honest, sincere, well thought out rebuttal as opposed to a slap and run away answer
Cmon, you can do it, like grown ups do, just try

Enough of the piffle, lecterns, what ifs, evaporations, altruistic daydreaming, give an honest answer
Or what, just your faith and your preaching based on your proof, a telescope
Where is the proof, what is the proof exactly, no piffle

a reply to: AlienView

You are misrepresenting how it is thought life began. There are several hypotheses (note the word) on how this happened. But it is thought that when complext molecules, such as RNA (and then DNA) formed, they began to undergo the self assembly process they are known for. This is the important part. Self assembly. Nucleic acids will do that with out any help, their thermodynamic potential is sloped that way

So no life did not occur from a random "it just happened" event. Most likely the Earth was a cruicible for chemical reactions, which somewhere created the proto nucleic acids which have become our DNA and RNA.

Now another theory is that these self assembling molecules were brought in on a comet or meteor, this is known as panspermia.

Again it is not a random "it just happened".

All this said, we do not KNOW how life began. It is nigh impossible to prove or disprove a scientifically sound hypothesis on this. We don't have time machines. Unlike evolution, where we can gather information through bioinformatics and fossils, this one is harder. Thus Proteogenesis/abiogenesis is most likely going to be just a series of hypotheses, where one or two are the statistically most likely. This means those who want to inject deities into the equation can play silly buggers

a reply to: Noinden

All this said, we do not KNOW how life began. It is nigh impossible to prove or disprove a scientifically sound hypothesis on this. We don't have time machines. Unlike evolution, where we can gather information through bioinformatics and fossils, this one is harder. Thus Proteogenesis/abiogenesis is most likely going to be just a series of hypotheses, where one or two are the statistically most likely.

For now, probably true - But if in the laboratory we could combine what we think was the primordial soup and see JUST ONCE life actually occurring we could show that life here [on Earth] is quite probably not unique - It could have happened and could be happening elsewhere in the universe.

Here for example:

Scientist Craig Venter creates life for first time in laboratory sparking debate about 'playing god'
See whole article here:
www.telegraph.co.uk... l

Of courese this is not the same thing as having an ongoing bio-system that continues to thrive and evolve..

The reason to ask a question on the 'odds' of life occurring is to try to establish how common or rare life might be
throughout the Cosmos

And to speculate on the uniqueness of biological lfe as Man sees and perceives it.


For example, it is possible that biological life guided by Genetic codes is unique
- But other forms of life that are not biological in nature may also exist.

I keep envisioning a form of life that may be mechanical instead of biological in nature -
And that advances like an evolving artificial intelligence.

Unless you are one of those fanatical types that insists 'life' must be biological
- There is every reason to believe, in at least the possibility, of other forms of life that are not biological






"ScienceFictionalism - the way of the Future"
universalspacealienpeoplesassociation.blogspot.com...

a reply to: AlienView

You really do not understand how science works do you? To see "life occuring" you are going to be sitting watching it for a long time. Long in a geological sense. Thus you are building a straw man argument here.

The rest of your post is a bunch non sequitur comments. For example your article (its a news paper not an academic one FYI) on Venter is useless. Here (www.jcvi.org... etic-oligonu/) is a better place to go.

For the intelligent only:

A New Equation Reveals Our Exact Odds of Finding Alien Life

It’s been over half a century since Frank Drake developed an equation to estimate the probability of finding intelligent life in our galaxy. We’ve learned a lot since then, prompting an astrophysicist from MIT to come up with her own take on the equation. Here’s how the new formula works — and how it could help in the search for alien life. The new formula was devised by Sara Seager, a professor of planetary science and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I contacted her to learn more about the new equation and why the time was right for a rethink. Assessing the Probability of Intelligent Life Back in 1961, Frank Drake proposed a probabilistic formula to help estimate the number of active, radio-capable extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. It goes like this:..........."

See whole aritcle here:
io9.gizmodo.com...


But this does not change the problem - that being the uniqueness of life - is it common or rare


You can come up with all the hypotheses and theories you want - and all the speculation you want - But I'm still waiting for
the evidence of the existence of ONE other intelligent species [or for that matter just one other form of life not found on Earth]
existing in the Cosmos - PROVE IT


Of course I can quote you many top name scientists of today who believe alien life is 'probably' common throughout the universe - Still we wait for the proof of just ONE







"ScienceFictionalism - the way of the Future"
universalspacealienpeoplesassociation.blogspot.com...

a reply to: AlienView

All of which has nothing to do with your OP Life HAS occurred once, and the evidence points to it not being directed by another being.

originally posted by: AlienView
If life begins by a random chance combination of inert matter - The odds of this occurrence should be calculable, right

No, because we don't know all the variables.

a reply to: AlienView

This question can't be answered. We have created artificial life but is this how it happened on earth we don't know. For that matter will prpbably never know all we can do is look at what's here now and where that evidence leads us.

But this is trying to disprove science in an attempt to prove god. Why do people think this proves anythIng?? Disproving faeries exist doesn't prove that big foot does.

originally posted by: dragonridr
But this is trying to disprove science in an attempt to prove god. Why do people think this proves anythIng?? Disproving faeries exist doesn't prove that big foot does.

There are plenty of other ways for life to have come into existence without relying on "God." The biggest problem with most religious people is their sad lack of imagination.

dragonridr wrote:

"But this is trying to disprove science in an attempt to prove god."

NONSENSE

What is really incredible is the extent to which the new religion of atheism will go to disprove god - ff it even sounds like
you are trying to prove an a priori intelligence, which to them sounds like you are trhying to prove a god - they accuse you
of heresy and sin - Anything that sounds like it may indicate an intelligence in and a part of their very tiny brains is a threat
to their ant like mentality!

And you see how bad it is with crazy religious fundamentalist still killing each other!
Think of how bad it might get if these crazy atheist take over?
Right, it already happened - It was called Communism - and they say Stalin killed over 20 million - out did the
religious fundamentalism didn't he - Score one for the new religion of atheism!

"Furthermore, this impatient, greedy attitude is responsible more than anything else for the excessive stupidity we find in the world. Just as such people have no patience to chew up real food, so they do not take sufficient time to “chew up” mental food."

"As modern times promote hasty eating to a large extent, it is not surprising to learn that a great astronomer said: “Two things are infinite, as far as we know – the universe and human stupidity.” To-day we know that this statement is not quite correct. Einstein has proved that the universe is limited."

- Frederick S. Perls in a book titled “Ego, Hunger, and Aggression....."

Qjuote source:
quoteinvestigator.com...

a reply to: dragonridr

One does not have to disprove anything to have faith in a deity (or many), one just has to have well faith. People wonder why I throw the term gnosis in these threads. It is because gnosis is spiritual knowledge, something one feels. You can not "measure god" as one does not know what parameters to measure. Similarly you can't faith science, as you need to measure things I can feel that a reaction will work in the lab all I like. I still have to do the appropriate manipulations for that to be so. I know these, by taking measurements (amounts of reagents, temperatures, off gassing, stir speed etc)

a reply to: Noinden

I agree that science is measurable and faith is not.

BUT it stlll requires a faith in the measuements, factors, and questions you are asking
- Am I asking the rigtht questions, are the mesurements always the same and under what conditions might they change ?

And under what conditons will I get the same results? - for simple questions within a closed envrronment it is usually easy.

But if you take, say the Planet Earth - can it be shown that you would get the same results ?

Another words is life an enevitable consequence of the conditons that led to it here on Earth ?

Or is it a long shot that may have only happened once [or rarely] ?

I say the question even if unanswerable for now is still worth asking.

Knowledge continues to increase and this question will not go away - What Man asked thousands of years age which
was unanswerable then can now, in many cases, be understood and answered.

A time may come when questions of the existence of life and its probablity may become answerable
- And maybe there will be a very exacting scientfic answer
- But then again maybe such an anawer will never come - The universe and existence may indeed be surrounded by a
supernatural intelligence that Man will never understand - And saying that everything that exist is based upon so called
'natural' phenomena still remains to be proven





"ScienceFictionalism - the way of the Future"
universalspacealienpeoplesassociation.blogspot.com...

a reply to: AlienView

Your argument is circular reasoning. Science relies on empirical evidence. The great thing about science is that the results do not rely on your belief in them or not. They just are. Gravity is there, even if you don't know about it. Thus a scientist who doubted a result, could repeat the work, and get the same result. Thus their view has changed.

What I feel you are trying to imply is that science can sometimes rely on assumptions. This is true, and if the assumptions are proven wrong, or changed, the view of science changes along with the new data. That is not faith.

originally posted by: Noinden
a reply to: AlienView

Your argument is circular reasoning. Science relies on empirical evidence. The great thing about science is that the results do not rely on your belief in them or not. They just are. Gravity is there, even if you don't know about it. Thus a scientist who doubted a result, could repeat the work, and get the same result. Thus their view has changed.

What I feel you are trying to imply is that science can sometimes rely on assumptions. This is true, and if the assumptions are proven wrong, or changed, the view of science changes along with the new data. That is not faith.

Yet, new data can be interpreted in many ways, including faith.

From Scientific American, February 2015:

Can Faith and Science Coexist?

Last week I "debated" the question above at my school, Stevens Institute of Technology, in an event sponsored by the Christian group Veritas. My "opponent" was John Lennox, a mathematician at Oxford and a Christian. I enclose "debated" and "opponent" in quotations marks because Lennox--a ruddy-skinned, white-haired Irishman, who has debated such renowned religion-bashers as Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer and Christopher Hitchens--is so disarmingly genial. The debate's original title was "Can Faith and Reason Coexist?", but Lennox and I substituted "science" for "reason" to sharpen our focus.

I suspect Lennox wins over many people by appealing to their hearts as well as intellects. Lennox loves God, loves the world, loves people—even atheists!--and compared to him infidels such as Dawkins must seem mean-spirited. Lennox presents an eloquent case for intelligent design--How could this marvelous world possibly have arisen through sheer chance?—and the consolations of belief in divine justice and an afterlife.

Speaking after Lennox, I called myself a lapsed Catholic turned psychedelic agnostic. I expressed sympathy with several aspects of Lennox's perspective before outlining where our views diverge. Here's a summary of my major points:

...................................................

*Without God, Lennox said, there can be no ultimate hope. I vehemently disagree. I am more hopeful than most people I know, whether believers or atheists, and my optimism is based not on wishful thinking but on the enormous progress we have achieved overcoming disease, poverty, oppression and war. I don't have faith in God, but I do have faith in humanity."

See whole article here:
blogs.scientificamerican.com...


And many of we who believe Intelligent Design may be an intrinsic property of existence itself or an interpretation of what
science may mean and not something pre-designed by a creator,

God may always be dependent on faith and belief - But a universe that science keeps showing has patterns of design
- Intelligent design as they call it - does not require faith or god - And yet it does require intelligence - If you did not possess
an intelligent mind you could not perceive an existent state - An intelligent mind is a prerequisite for all that exists.
And some will go on ranting how it all existed long before Man was aware of it - But you can't really prove it - you can only make assumptions of what happened in the past.


Unless of course you were capable of time travel - Like my mythical time travelers in:


"ScienceFictionalism - the way of the Future"
universalspacealienpeoplesassociation.blogspot.com...

a reply to: AlienView

We don't know the odds of life emerging because we've never observed it and don't know how frequent it is in our galaxy, let alone the universe. We don't know the odds of sexual reproduction happening, but it offers a distinct advantage over asexual, so it's no surprise.

Even if the odds for life emerging are 1 in 400 billion, that makes it inevitable in our galaxy considering the amount of stars that are present. Now look at the whole universe. Even with low odds, it becomes abundant considering the amount of times the dice are rolled. ID advocates love to throw numbers around in relation to this, but the truth is, we simply don't know. More information is needed to even begin assessing this. One thing I can assure you is that whatever the odds are for abiogenesis succeeding, the odds are exponentially worse in regards to intelligent design or an always existing god that created everything.

a reply to: Barcs:

Yes, I see how you scientific purests despise Intelligent Design - I understand your dilema.

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts"
– Richard Feynman

Einstein Said That All Serious Scientists Believe In Intelligent Design

"Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.

"The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."
– Albert Einstein



“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
― Albert Einstein



You heard of Einsteiin did you not? Even on our home planet which exists in a parallel universe, Einstein is greatly respected
- To some of us his theories and ability to transcend the mediocrity of much of Human stupidity gives us hope that your race
of beings may yet fly with us - The universe we live in thrives on and requires an ever increasing intelligence.
Let go of your petty Evolution and evolve with us

“You are what you think.
All that you are arises from your thoughts.
With your thoughts you make your world.”
– Buddha

"ScienceFictionalism - the way of the Future"
universalspacealienpeoplesassociation.blogspot.com...

a reply to: AlienView

It depends on which scientist one asks.

I am of the opinion that water may turn out to be single most important factor to make life possible.

originally posted by: AlienView
a reply to: Barcs:

Yes, I see how you scientific purests despise Intelligent Design - I understand your dilema.

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts"
– Richard Feynman

Einstein Said That All Serious Scientists Believe In Intelligent Design

"Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.

"The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."
– Albert Einstein



“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
― Albert Einstein



You heard of Einsteiin did you not? Even on our home planet which exists in a parallel universe, Einstein is greatly respected
- To some of us his theories and ability to transcend the mediocrity of much of Human stupidity gives us hope that your race
of beings may yet fly with us - The universe we live in thrives on and requires an ever increasing intelligence.
Let go of your petty Evolution and evolve with us

“You are what you think.
All that you are arises from your thoughts.
With your thoughts you make your world.”
– Buddha

"ScienceFictionalism - the way of the Future"
universalspacealienpeoplesassociation.blogspot.com...

What does Einsteins personal opinion have to do with anything I said? Way to dodge and change the subject with quote mines. Einstein wasnt a supporter of creationism or ID, he was essentially a deist.

a reply to: AlienView

you seem to have missed this selection in your quote mining:

. . . I came—though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents—to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment—an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections. It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the 'merely personal,' from an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in its pursuit. The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of our capabilities presented itself to my mind, half consciously, half unconsciously, as a supreme goal. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights they had achieved, were the friends who could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.

he has also referred to himself as agnostic and pantheist. so as you can see, he alludes to altruism and service to others but rejects theism. you must have overlooked that detail.