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

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 14:56 (5596 days ago) @ David Turell

David Turell, - What the heck! I replied to this post already! Here goes again... - > Hate to break into such a long-winded discourse between you two, but the above makes no sense to me. The universe started with the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Life started here about 3.6 billion years go. The finite time for life to appear here was 10.1 billion years. There was no 'infinity' of time for chance to cause the event. There were 10.1 billion years, not an open-ended stretch of time.
> - The compelling part lies in the estimates for how many earth-like planets there are in our galaxy alone. The most conservative estimate I've heard is 10k. In our early solar system alone there is 3 planets (including our own) that could have harbored life, and the discovery of the broad range of extremophiles on earth means that life might have gotten started in extremely violent conditions in places we wouldn't even think to search. Life could be a helluva lot older than earth! - In this view, in that 10.1Bn years, each earth-like planet is a machine attempting to start life. (But it doesn't have to be limited to planets....) 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. - 
> By the way, expansion of the universe is theoretically not infinite. It is predicted by most theorists with infinite expansion, space-time will rip and the universe be destroyed. We will be gone long before then in 'heat death', if we survive the expansion of our sun in 5 billion years, by moving to another solar system with a friendly planet like ours. - The cosmos tearing apart is new... there was a sciam article last year that talked about the "death of cosmology" and it was saying that we would expect an empty black void. Nothing at all about cosmic tearing, just a black so black that even the microwave background will be destroyed.

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\"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.\"