Transition from chemistry to biology

The Theory of Evolution doesn't say where life came from. It only concerns itself with where it went once it was here. You could prove, conclusively, that God created the first lifeform, and Evolution would shrug and say "ok, and then..."

It is if he doesn't have any numbers to back it up. Considering the amount of organic material found in space, the odds of a chemical reaction taking place that leads to a self-replicating molecule, given a long enough time and large enough area, makes the probability more and more likely. It may even be inevitable.

That's the wrong way to look at it. You've got 14 billion years, billions of planets, blillions of points on each planet, and billions of molecules interacting at each point. That's billions upon billions upon billions of chances for a self-replicating reaction to take place.

We don't know how many spots produced life. It's substantially possible (perhaps even probable) that life emerged many times on Earth alone, and the type of life we see around us was just the type that happened to out-compete the rest. As far as the rest of the Universe, we've barely begun to explore Mars, let alone Europa, Enceladus, Titan, etc. We can make absolutely zero substantiated comments about life outside of Earth.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Trees have found the EM spectrum, they use light.

If you mean radio, then all we know is that no planets that we have pointed a radio telescope at were sending radio, in such a tightly beamed way as to be found on our planet without spreading too much, at that exact moment. Since we, as a species, are moving away from RF bands, it's entirely possible that intelligent life uses radio for only a brief moment in the vast history of the universe such that us finding one at a similar level of technological progress as ours is very slim at best. But again, this is all conjecture, and with a sample of 1, we have nothing statistically valid to say about life on any other planet.

Edited by Perdition, : clarity

At the bottom of your message is the Edit button, you can click that and edit your message as well as post a quick note as to why you edited your message.

Then why are you getting it wrong?

I see nothing here in conflict with Bluejay's previous posts.

This is the very biggest plus for science. It changes as new evidence is found. Miller and Urey started from they thought the early earth's atmosphere was like and ran experiemnts. Saying they were the first real study into abiogensis doesn't mean we think their results are 100% accurate. They started with a premise (there's that word again) and we have since found that their premise was not entirely accurate. Science, when it comes across instances like that will change the premise to match the current understanding (which probably still contain errors but are more accurate than before) and run new experiments.

Since Miller and Urey, there have been many studies and each of them are getting closer and closer to showing that simple life forms can emerge from non-life. Keep your eyes on the science news and in a few years, maybe a decade or so, you'll see the headline"Scientists create life." The headline will most likely be a little misleading, but it will appear, have no doubt.

Edited by Perdition, : I made a mistake on the coding and fixed it...this is what a note for an edit looks like.

Why? Scientists have recently begun searching red dwarfs for habitable planets because it has been shown that red dwarfs do have habitable zones (and this is just for life as we know it, not even some exotic kind of life).

Linky

This is because our planet finding techniques are skewed toward being able to find these easier. It's like using a computer that counts red flashes on the highway as a car, and then concluding that all cars are red. With Kepler now in orbit, we'll begin to find more terrestrial sized planets in the habitable zone. Keep your eyes and ears open for news on this in the next few years.

For our solar system, Jupiter was very beneficial to us. For one, in the early solar system, Jupiter shot a lot of comets and things at us and helped give us water, and perhaps even caused the crahs that formed our moon. Since that time, Jupiter acts as a "flyswatter" as you say, but in a solar system with less debris, this would be unnecessary.

Evidence? There are some massive moons in our solar system: Titan and the Gallilean moons around Jupiter for 5. And speaking of moons, who says life couldn't form on a massive moon around a gas giant?

True, but if it wobbled as slowly as Mars, that would still leave more than enough time for life to evolve a migratory pattern, or if it evolved at the bottom of an ocean near a hot vent, the tilting wouldn't matter as much. Again, a massive moon around a gas giant wouldn't woble as much. A planet close around a red dwarf wouldn't wobble as much.

And these statistics are very preliminary considering the skewed data set we're working with. But even "very few" means billions of possible planet sout there considering the shear number of planetary systems and moons available to us in the entire universe.

But we can also say that as yet, there is no evidence for a god working at all, so bringing one into the equation is at best a violation of parsimony and at worst a hindrance to actually figuring out how it worked.

Edited by Perdition, : clicked Submit instead of Preview

Science has nothing to say whatsoever on atheism or theism. It is usually fundamental Christians who try to argue that science removes God or tries to prove his nonexistance. Scientists merely look for natural processes because those are all we can look for with any consistency.

However, the fact that everything we once attributed to a god or gods is being replaced by a naturalistic process implies that gods are not only irrelevant to science but unecessary to life the universe and everything. Now, they could still exist, there's just no reason to think they do.

The moon wasn't captured in a "normal" capture method. Perhaps being hit by a massive proto-planet while gravity is fluxuating during the formation of a solar system such that it coalesces into a moon is rather common. We just don't have enough data to make any sort of conclusion. And as I said, it is not absolute that a moon like ours is necessary, especially if the life is growing on a moon itself. Just because we live on the major planet in our earth-moon system does not mean all life has to.

Not even remotely true. A moon in an orbit around a gas giant such that tidal forces heat up the moon (such as Io) could have the heat necessary to have liquid water and the energy necessary for life to begin.

The fact that red dwarfs are old is a point in favor of life evolving on it. If the necessary chemicals are there, then time is the deciding factor, and as you've just said, any planets around a red dwarf have had ample time. As for newer red dwarfs, you're right, life might not have evolved yet, but that would give us a chance to possibly see the formation of life and it's growth patterns.

But everything you've listed as a constraint can be mitigated or ignored if other factors are present. Not to mention, that all presupposes life like ours, but we only have a sample size of one, so knowing what life in general requires is impossible to figure out except for vague generalities.

And I think it will be more prevalent than you think. Neither of us knows, though, and what we think has absolutely no relevance. The assumptions we make skew things from very common to very rare. The truth is probably osmewhere in the middle because both extremes are left in the equation out of ignorance. As we learn more, the probability will probably be constrained more toward the middle. The biggest factor is time, and we've had loads and loads of it over vast amounts of viable real estate.

You're right, as was indicated by me saying "implies that gods are not only irrelevant to science but unecessary to life the universe and everything." This means that gods are irrelevant to science, which is what science says. I then stepped beyond that and based on evidence, I have made the logical inference that if we can explain almost everything naturally, what does that leave a god to do? Not very much and less every day. Thus, a god is becoming less and less necessary. As I said, this has no bearing on an actual god's existence, but it does call into question the motives for believing in one for which there is no evidence and less and less need.