Eilohom: Is creationism real yet misunderstood or interpreted?

reply to post by Uncle Gravity

Salutations, Uncle. Thank you for deigning to reply to me directly. Or should that be ‘daring’ rather than ‘deigning’?

If you will abide being corrected by a young sprout like myself (barely over fifty years old – yes, I know, I know), ‘demise’ means death (or, literally in French, ‘removal’). Since I am manifestly both alive and still here, my demise could not possibly have been wonderful and magnificent; indeed, it cannot have occurred at all. it is probable you had some other word in mind, possibly another one also beginning with D. 'Discomfiture'? ‘Dismissal’? ‘Dismounting’ (as off a high horse)? 'Discombobulation?’ ‘Dismissal’, even?

May I suggest the adoption of a friendly thesaurus? They are quite harmless and, I am told, very cheap to feed.

I have created novel species by inserting a gene into bacteria. The bacteria still functions in a recognisable 'Earthly' manner. That does not mean that there has been no intelligent intervention in the development of its germ line. We can grow ears on the back of a mouse but it only happens if there is intervention from an 'alien' intelligence.

Do you see how it is possible that a species other that Homo sapiens might do the same?

I'm not ruling out some form of alteration on our road, but still it may have never happened.
There are arguments against and arguments for it, I like debating about this but one thing is for sure, we may never know. I tend to think on inteligent design too in fact not for only us but for all other living creatures, life is just amazing, even if evolution happen in was planed out that way, for us to evolve here.

reply to post by Astyanax


Salutation's, Astyanax. Yes your demise was indeed wonderful, your intellectual demise . I guess anyone that think's a Thesaurus is some kind of creature that require's food is probably due my sympathy, so i do appologise for my hearty laughter . I guess you never stop learning, keep up the good work!

A little joke for your delight...........

Two trucks loaded with thousands of copies of Roget's Thesaurus collided as they left a New York publishing house last Thursday. According to the Associated Press, witnesses were stunned, startled, aghast, taken aback, stupefied, amazed ...

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to posts by Pimander and Uncle Gravity

 

 

Originally posted by Pimander
With respect, I don't call myself a scientist - I am one.

And – by my own account – I’m the murdered son of the Trojan hero Hector.

But never mind. At least one person here takes you at your word, and is delighted to do so:

Murdered Son of Hector,

Surely you know that was poor form? I'm not going to surrender my anonymity today, so you the readers of this will have to judge me by the content of my posts.

No. Panspermia is an unfalsifiable hypothesis that multiplies entities unncessarily. It therefore fails the test of Occam’s Razor.

The principle of simplicity works as a heuristic rule-of-thumb but some people quote it as if it is an axiom of physics. It is not. It can work well in philosophy or particle physics, but less often so in cosmology or psychology, where things usually turn out to be more complicated than you ever expected. Perhaps a quote from Shakespeare would be more appropriate than Occam's razor: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Simplicity is subjective and the universe does not always have the same ideas about simplicity as we do....

...The law of parsimony is no substitute for insight, logic and the scientific method. It should never be relied upon to make or defend a conclusion. As arbiters of correctness only logical consistency and empirical evidence are absolute.
Relativity FAQ: What is Occams Razor?

An example of how Occam's Razor can be misleading is the theory that the Earth is the centre of the Universe. It seemed to be the simplest explanation for the fact that the heavenly bodies appear to circle the Earth. Then Heliocentric hypothesis appeared a simpler explanation for the complex motions of the heavenly spheres and replaced it. However, it is only by testing other - on the surface - more apparently complex theories that we learn more about Earth's relationship with the rest of the Universe. On inspection it turns out that, if there is a centre of the Universe at all, it is not likely to even be in our galaxy.

Originally posted by Astyanax
Panspermia is a stupid hypothesis....

Originally posted by Astyanax
As for panspermia, it is stupid not because it is implausible (it is not) but because it is trivial. It matters not a whit whether the planet was ‘seeded’ with life from outer space or developed it indigenously.

Correction: Panspermia is NOT stupid. I could easily be a lot ruder here but I prefer not to stoop to your level.

A team of researchers at MIT is proposing to apply forensic science testing on the Martian surface. Specifically, the task would be to do DNA and RNA sequencing on Martian microbes (if they exist) to seen if they share a common genetic origin with us.

This addresses the novel question of panspermia -- that we are descended from Mars life that migrated to Earth. Such testing could also offer key insights into how serious a risk Martian microbes would present to human colonists.

The MIT team led by Christopher Carr and Maria Zuber (head of MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences) and Gary Ruvkun, a molecular biologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, are proposing to build an instrument to send to Mars and test for extraterrestrial genomes.
news.discovery.com...

Stupid and trivial eh? I think not.

reply to post by Pimander

Surely you know that was poor form?

Trying to boost your credibility on ATS by making unfalsifiable assertions about yourself is very poor form.

You the readers of this will have to judge me by the content of my posts.

I already have, Pimander, and doubtless others have too. I may be wrong about you, but that is neither here nor there. The fault is yours for making a claim in the first place that you are unwilling or unable to substantiate. You are in the court of public opinion here, my friend; you submitted yourself to its judgement when first you chose to put ‘scientist’ under your screen name – just as I did when I chose to put ‘mind firmly closed’ under mine. It’s a little late now for coming over all hurt and offended.

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I see you don’t like Occam’s Razor. Cranks with pet theories of their own tend not to. I’m not saying you are a crank, merely noting the company you’re in here.

Scientists, on the other hand, are rather fond of the Venerable Blade. Here is Newton’s formulation of it, which is repeated on that very strange web page you quoted from:

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

For your information, this is the very first of the set of ‘rules for reasoning in philosophy’ Newton put down in his masterwork, the Principia Mathematica. Yes, Occam’s Razor is that important. Newton’s rival Liebniz said something similar; I’m too lazy to walk downstairs and fetch his Discourse on Metaphysics to procure the exact quote for you, but he asserted that God produces the richest effects from the simplest actions in the same way that an apparently simple function can trace out a very complex curve when it is graphed. People who choose to take exception to Occam’s Razor are on very shaky intellectual ground, I’m afraid.

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reply to post by Pimander

Panspermia is NOT stupid. I could easily be a lot ruder here but I prefer not to stoop to your level.

Fred Hoyle is dead. Are you Chandra Wickramasinghe? If you are not, then it is not your hypothesis I’m calling stupid. Don’t be so quick to take offence.

As for that news item you quoted – well, if we find Martian microbes, and if they turn out to use something like DNA to preserve and transcribe genetic information about themselves, then perhaps we can start considering panspermia again. Until then, it remains both speculative and scientifically irrelevant.