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

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 16:20 (5386 days ago) @ xeno6696

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.
 
 
> > 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. - No, a big-rip is not a new thought, but an old one. I read the same sciam article on heat death. By the way, the last issue is a great improvement over the garbage the last editor was allowing. Having read SciAm for over 25 years, I have the background to complain a litle about the junk that has been present in the recent past years.