Can we handle not being alone?

[Timber Loftis]

The topic is "Can We handle not being alone".

You bet it is, and since your first post, I haven't seen you discuss that topic. Rather, you are discussing the topic of whether a creative mind must be present to bring about the elements necessary for life to develop in the primordial goo. But, enough, I've said my peace.

Butt out Timber and stop derailing the topic.

You betcha. Done and done.

[frudi_x]

@Yorick:
so you're saying somebody put the methane, water, carbon dioxide, sulfur, amonia, nytrogen and all the other componets on the primordial Earth?
i would instead put forth that most of these gasses were injected into the atmosphere by the early volcanic activity, which was a lot stronger than in the present. additionaly most of the carbon and water was brought to Earth by comet impacts during the period of the great bombardment (between 4.5 and 3.9 billion years ago).
noone needed to put these components onto the Earth, their presence is an inevitable consequence of the formation of our solar system, governed by physical laws.

of course you will just claim that somebody put just the right abundances of the right gasses into the interstellar nebula out of which our Sun and it's system of planets was formed, to ensure the Earth would eventually form. however, by our current knowledge the formation of planets is a process too chaotic to be predictable in the long term. even if this turns out to be wrong and what seems like chaos to us is actually predictable, the composition of the solar nebula can be explained by activity in it's galactic surroundings in the past (such as supernova explosions, collisions with other gas or dust clouds, passing stars...), which in turn can be explained by events leading back to the formation of the galaxy itself. and if you still want to introduce your beloved creator, we can take the story back all the way to the creation of the universe, or rather the 10^-43 seconds (the so called Planck time) after it's creation. if someone wanted to meddle with the formation process, all they could influence was the initial conditions, the state of that original blob of energy, before it blew up and created the universe. after that, natural laws took over.

and you still don't seem to understand the point of the experiment i was describing. the goal of the experiment was not to prove that life or at least complex organic molecules will form in an environment similar to that of the ancient Earth. the goal was to find out WHAT will happen in those circumstances! as it turns out, the building blocks for life are quite happy to form in those conditions.
of course the experimenters deliberatly mixed up the gasses in the test chamber and deliberatly added an occasional electric charge. how else are you going to create an experiment if not deliberatly? go out and search the entire planet, to see if in some underground cavern chance has created a mix of gasses of the exact same composition with a faulty power line running nearby? we can't exactly go into space looking for another planet that resembles the early Earth either (if we could, we'd be better of just finding another planet with life already on it and that would settle this debate). what we can do is replicate the conditions in a lab as close as our knowledge permits and see what the results will be. that's the whole point of scientific tests!

Which doesn't change my statements that "probably" holds no water. 60% likelihood is still 40% unlikelyhood. There is no guarantee.

as i already said - everything in science is about probability and likelyhood. there are NO guarantees in science. not even 1+1=2 is 100% guaranteed to be true. this is even more evident in physics, where no theory or even 'law' can be said to be 100% true and no piece of data can be said to be 100% accurate. if you can't deal with the remaining unreliability, that is your problem, science will continue to work regardless.

The variables in the earths development are unthinkably large. The rotational axis, the closeness to the sun, the moons effect, the levels of oxygen balanced with carbon dioxide, the heat of the core, the radiation shields in the atmosphere... it goes on and on. All the variables need to be accounted for and tested with and without. Would life have developed if the planet was closer to the sun? But then the closeness creates a whole other set of variables.

you'd be surprised just how many variables are taken into account when planetologists and astrobiologists talk about the requirements for the emergence of life.
for instance, on the question of what would happen if the earth was closer/further from the Sun than it is. well, you just need to look at Venus and Mars to get some idea. if it were much closer the higher temperatures would eventually lead to a runaway greenhouse effect, similar to what happened on Venus. and if it were even closer it would have eventually become tidaly locked in it's rotation, frying one side of the planet to 500°C and freezing the other at -200°C. if it were only slightly closer than it is now, life would almost certainly still develop, however if it were close enough the temperature would become too high before any intelligent life would emerge (that's because the solar luminosity is steadily increasing with time).
if it was further away, there would be an incrised chance of extended polar glaciacion leading to a runaway global glaciation, effectivly freezing the entire surface under kilometers of ice. there is actually evidence that this has indeed happened several times in the past, as recently as some 550 million years ago, yet life was able to survive. the microorganisms of the day were however a lot more resistant to such extreem conditions than the higher life forms of today, so more frequent global glaciation events would regularly eradicate all but the most primitive of organisms. if the earth was far enough even the greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide and methane couldn't raise the temperature above freezing point of water and it's doubtful life would develope without running water.

I am happy not knowing, and exploring what we DO know, and CAN know, while reveling in the mystery. We were not there. We did not see. At most we can speculate on the evidence we have, but what if a key component is missing? Gone?

apperantly for you 'i don't know' equals 'nobody can know'. you should give the scientists some credit, they know a lot more about their fields than you and i ever will. they CAN know a lot more than you, it's just a matter of how well they convey their findings to the general public (something that most scientists unfortunately aren't very good at).

and i will not comment on the science of theology bit, since that would probably lead to this thread being locked.

[John D Harris]

Originally posted by Nightwing: It's hard for people to grasp something that has no beginning. If the Universe is infinite then there will always be something before and after. As human we want to astablish clear boundries. If all these random events happened here to produce life and the universe is infinate deductive logic would suggest life elseware. We can't prove it but we sure can make an educated guess. The only reason I would want immortality is to see the vastness of the universe. It excites me so much to think how much more there is for us to see.

I can understand that, let me put it in another way what I maintain about infinite vs. finite: Time is the unifing field (IIRC is the correct term.) that we as finite humans pursue, time is the glue that holds the phsyical universe together, without time there is no velocity, velocity is distance over a certain time. Without velocity we have no orbits of particles around the nucleus of an atom, no atoms no matter, no matter No effects of matter ie:gravity/magnetism/ the other forces. Infinite: without time/beyond time. If time doesn't effect you, distance become null and void because you can be two places at once (from the time controled point of view), or multibles of you be at the same place at the same time. You can violate all laws of phsysics at will. Times is the 1st diamention (sp?) that alows the other 3 to exsist.

Now does that support or refute life on other planets? NO! Life on other planets has no effect on the "why" of the Phsysical universe, Life is a by product of the phsysical universe.

[Yorick]

I don't have time to reply to you in detail yet, but I will say:

I see time and again, speculation presented as fact from scientists hard pressed for funding trying to justify their time and money. A wobble over a star viewed from a telescope does not prove life is on a planet near that star.

At best these are educated guess. The operative word being GUESSES. But they justify funding don't they?

Regarding a directing creator, yes. All you present I will come back with an intent being behind it all.

I have a GRAND UNIFIED THEORY that covers the who, why, how and where. As long as you are focussed on purely the how - ignoring or even trying to disprove the who - you will never get to true understanding in my opinion. The simple fact of the impossibility proving anything does not exist seems to have eluded you. Until you have been to every corner of the universe, at every time, and been able to see all there is to see, you can't prove anything - not even the wildest human imagined being - does not exist. You can only work towards proving (within pragmatic certainty) what DOES exist, based on your experience.

I long for the day, when secular western scientists put aside the necessity of atheism and work WITH those of faith, rather than trying to work against us.

I can use everything you discover in my search for knowledge. I can absorb read and learn from every scientific theory and it goes into the cauldron of opinion.

It doesn't seem to be a two way street.

I revert back to the fact that in any experiment you are engaging in, you are adding intent, planning, a desired result and orchestration. These are all elements I regard as vital in the formation of the universe. It's right in front of you, yet you can't, or won't see it. I see you replicating creation. Your work proves my theory - that with a designer, a creator intending life - IT HAPPENS!

As for "know", I believe all I can truly know is that I exist as a self awareness. All else is pragmatic certainty.

[frudi_x]

than answer this for me - who, where, how and why created the creator?

i have already shown you that as far as science is concerned, there is no place left for the creator to hide, except in setting the initial conditions at the moment of the creation (of the universe). any other creator, that would meddle in the affairs of particular objects inside the universe, would itself also have come into being as a consequence of the actions of natural laws. and we are again at the problem of how that intelligence came to be...

you go on and on about the necessity for proof and hard evidence, yet i fail to see any evidence from you that would point to the existence of a creator. if you believe some abstract elements to be vital for the formation of the universe or life, that is only your belief; it proves nothing and carries no scientific weight.
for science, there is no need for a divine component, no necessity for some hidden driving force behind natural phenomena.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by frudi_x: than answer this for me - who, where, how and why created the creator? i have already shown you that as far as science is concerned, there is no place left for the creator to hide, except in setting the initial conditions at the moment of the creation (of the universe). any other creator, that would meddle in the affairs of particular objects inside the universe, would itself also have come into being as a consequence of the actions of natural laws. and we are again at the problem of how that intelligence came to be... you go on and on about the necessity for proof and hard evidence, yet i fail to see any evidence from you that would point to the existence of a creator. if you believe some abstract elements to be vital for the formation of the universe or life, that is only your belief; it proves nothing and carries no scientific weight. for science, there is no need for a divine component, no necessity for some hidden driving force behind natural phenomena.

The creator, by nature is the one infinite eternal uncreated thing in the universe. The question "who created the creator" is irrelevent, because it is not believed that the creator I am speaking about HAS a beginning at all. Infinite as in: no beginning, no end, no limit physically, no restriction, beyond time, beyond limitation, beyond human comprehension.

You ask a question about something I do not believe.

As far as where something would hide, firstly, there is a vast area where anything can hide - outside human knowledge or understanding.

Are you assuming we humans have grasped all there is to grasp? Seen all there is to see? All you know is a tiny fraction of what there is to know. We inhabit one tiny corner of what we know is the universe, for a relative microsecond, and you say "there's nowhere for him to hide". C'mon. Get real. There could be multiple dimensions, parts of the universe or alternate universes where laws of physics are completely altered, there are infinite possibilites! Black holes aren't fully understood. You're talking about a being outside measurable and absolute time, yet we've only relatively recently discovered the relativity of measurable time.

As for "proof", I hand you the testimonies of the majority of humans who have ever lived who have experienced a belief in some sort of creator. In asserting there is none, you override the "truth" of the majortiy of humans and declare their experience both INVALID and IRRELEVENT. Yet, a person of faith will not override your experience in declaring to have had an experience of knowing the creator.

That said however, I present the nature of faith itself, as needing an absence of proof to exist. Where there is indisputable proof, there is no need for faith.

As with your question about "who created the creator" you need to understand the NATURE of the subject, before applying rules of one modus operandi onto another.

You cannot see sound, you have to hear it. You cannot hear cold, you have to feel it. You cannot taste love, you have to give it. Being unable to see sound, hear cold or taste love, doesn't mean they don't exist.

Take faith and the creator on the terms in which they exist, not in the way you approach discovering other elements.

Cheers.

Hugh

[ 09-03-2004, 02:38 PM: Message edited by: Yorick ]

[Timber Loftis]

Well, I just can't let this go on. As I predicted, this thread went straight to the heart of religion. Since the fray has begun, I'm going to give you my two cents.

The creator, by nature is the one infinite eternal uncreated thing in the universe. The question "who created the creator" is irrelevent, because it is not believed that the creator I am speaking about HAS a beginning at all. Infinite as in: no beginning, no end, no limit physically, no restriction, beyond time, beyond limitation, beyond human comprehension.

Well, here's how I see it Yorick. I see no need to abstract and anthropomorphize the infinite that I cannot comprehend. Thus, to represent my view, I would edit your statement thusly:

The UNIVERSE, by nature is the one infinite eternal uncreated thing. The question "who created the UNIVERSE" is irrelevent, because it is not believed that the UNIVERSE HAS a beginning at all. Infinite as in: no beginning, no end, no limit physically, no restriction, beyond time, beyond limitation, beyond human comprehension.

Imposing some "creator" behind the veil only answers a question with a question. Why you can't look at the world around and see the infinite end-all-be-all is beyond me. Why you need some sentient creature watching over all moving the stings behind things I will never understand.

My 2 cents.

And this thread is totally about a banned topic.

[John D Harris]

Originally posted by frudi_x: than answer this for me - who, where, how and why created the creator? i have already shown you that as far as science is concerned, there is no place left for the creator to hide, except in setting the initial conditions at the moment of the creation (of the universe). any other creator, that would meddle in the affairs of particular objects inside the universe, would itself also have come into being as a consequence of the actions of natural laws. and we are again at the problem of how that intelligence came to be... you go on and on about the necessity for proof and hard evidence, yet i fail to see any evidence from you that would point to the existence of a creator. if you believe some abstract elements to be vital for the formation of the universe or life, that is only your belief; it proves nothing and carries no scientific weight. for science, there is no need for a divine component, no necessity for some hidden driving force behind natural phenomena.

Answered 3 posts above yours there is an attempt to assign finite properties to the infinite. As stated 10^-43 sec. is about as far back after the event as our best and brightest brains and super computers can get. yet even then 10^-43 sec. is still a pasage of time, no matter how small it is still requires time to exsist. The Infinite is not bound by those laws and can freely travel through and break those laws(from the point of view of the finite, us), without any consequences to the infinite since those are laws of the finite.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: . quote: The creator, by nature is the one infinite eternal uncreated thing in the universe. The question "who created the creator" is irrelevent, because it is not believed that the creator I am speaking about HAS a beginning at all. Infinite as in: no beginning, no end, no limit physically, no restriction, beyond time, beyond limitation, beyond human comprehension.

Well, here's how I see it Yorick. I see no need to abstract and anthropomorphize the infinite that I cannot comprehend. Thus, to represent my view, I would edit your statement thusly:

The UNIVERSE, by nature is the one infinite eternal uncreated thing. The question "who created the UNIVERSE" is irrelevent, because it is not believed that the UNIVERSE HAS a beginning at all. Infinite as in: no beginning, no end, no limit physically, no restriction, beyond time, beyond limitation, beyond human comprehension.

Imposing some "creator" behind the veil only answers a question with a question. Why you can't look at the world around and see the infinite end-all-be-all is beyond me. Why you need some sentient creature watching over all moving the stings behind things I will never understand.

[/QB][/QUOTE]Ah, but science has discovered a beginning to the known universe - hence it has a finite point of origin. Secondly it is expanding - so it has a finite limit as there is somewhere the universe is not. Expansion implies limit. The universe, though it may be expanding infinitely, is not infinite. It is finite.

As to "why I can't", who says I can't. I can and could. I have experienced an awareness identifying itself as the creator awareness though, and that has influenced what I believe. It's not a matter of being unable to do anything, but acting and making choices based on the experiences I have been given.

I do not believe we are alone.

[Yorick]

In any case Timber, there are many worldviews that view the creator and the universe as being conjoined. Either one and the same - as in pantheism; or the universe being an aspect of, but not the totality of the creator - as in panenthiesm.

Believing in a creator doesn't contradict science. It just gives reason and intent to what is discovered. The "why" and "who" are searched, not just the "how".