Is our solar system weird? The current odds (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, July 13, 2016, 11:57 (2838 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Viewings of these articles run into hundreds, and sometimes even thousands, and so long as you are willing to devote your time to educating us, I hope you will go on doing so. As for the debates, I don't know. I've looked at viewings for discussions that began at the start of the year, and they are all in the hundreds, so perhaps for now we should monitor the figures as we go along.-DAVID: I've enjoyed it. Natures wonders reaches thousands. We shall monitor.-It will probably save us both a lot of time and repetition if I refrain from commenting on these articles, and just say a huge THANK YOU for all of them. But I will make just one final, general comment: you frequently end by pointing out that the different phenomena defy the odds of chance, and represent saltations. There is no disagreement between us on this. My argument is that the huge variety of life forms and wonders (e.g. the weird creatures in the Mariana Trench) suggests to me that there is no overall, controlled plan - as would be implied by God's specially designing every single one of them - but a free-for-all resulting from the autonomous ability (perhaps God-given) of organisms to adapt to and/or exploit (through innovation) all the different environments. I hope your thousands of fans will keep this in mind for all future articles!