Why is a \"designer\" so compelling? (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, July 29, 2009, 00:20 (5378 days ago) @ David Turell

Life could be a helluva lot older than earth!
> 
> > Every planet you add decreases the amount of time for life to start, and you really only need one successful attempt. Your argument doesn't seem to take this into consideration. 10100000000years/10000planets decreases that "time to life" by a magnitude of 4. The total number of years needed to exhaust the possibilities (if the estimates are correct) is more like 1.01million. And that's just for OUR galaxy, and not considering the extremophile possibilities of genesis. I admit this is raw speculation but it is certainly more believable than some creator being. 
> 
> Matt, you have switched from an infinite time to make life to calculations that it ought to be easy. Which is it? Certainly we know that this universe is capable of producing life and consciousness, but guesstimates don't tell us how easy, and what you are citing is guesswork. And one could argue that if it is so easy, a creator might have set it up that way. Our scientists have found it very hard to even find a starting process of any sort.
> - The infinity argument is of specious origin (old memory) in the first place. Kill it. (It was never part of my original argument anyway.) - The time for life to form in the cosmos is essentially from when organic compounds appear in the cosmos, until the present. I think I'm going to have to read Shapiro while in MX next month. My guess is he's already talked about all of this (and probably killed my ideas here.) - You correctly point out (and I admitted) that these numbers are conjecture--but frankly so is any imperceptible creator, only epistemologically one has the benefit of actually being an object of study and generating knowledge. At some point we do have to make a decision about what makes an argument better, and I'll always side with those that relate to what we *can* know. (Even when I know they're provisional explanations, but then, in science--what isn't?)

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"