Laetoli footprints (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 17:45 (5329 days ago) @ George Jelliss


> dhw thinks: "It would be interesting to know if George, as our resident materialist-atheist, believes in other universes." 
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> So perhaps I should respond. The answer is that I don't know, but it is not a theory I like because it violates Ockham's Razor in a comprehensive manner, and we do not have any actual direct evidence of any other single universe let alone an infinity of them, and moreover it is difficult to see how we could have evidence of other universes if they don't interact in some way, so we could never know if they exist or not.-I think exactly like George for the above paragraph.-> 
> This is indeed something that David Turell tries to argue, repeatedly, but I don't accept his figures. The odds against the first appearance of life may be high, or they may be near to zero. We don't know. I go by what we do know, which is that the universe has been around for 14 billion years, life wasn't there at the start and is here now, therefore it appeared. However it only appeared around 4 billion years ago, and 10 billion years is a lot of time for a lot of things to happen in the zillions of places available in a very large universe. -This is not well thought out. Unless George is promoting panspermia, his argument is filled with irrelevant numbers. On Earth, extreme heat prevented life until about 4 billion years ago, as planetismals bombarded the Earth. As the Earth cooled chemical evidence of life, in organic waste products of life, appear at a site in Greenland about 3.8 byo. This is disputed, and not settled; but in Australia there is definite evidence of life at 3.6 byo. Therefore, complex single-celled organisms took a maximum of 400 million years to appear from a start of inorganic material. Not much time for the evolution of the complexity we find now in the cellular mechanisms of reproduction and the manufacture of energy for life.
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> It could be that Earth is the only place in the universe where life exists, a result of the exceptional conditions here and Earth's exceptional history, or it could be that life is everywhere, but I will only start to believe that when some other life is found.-Absolute agreement-
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> There are other forces at work in the universe besides chance. I'm referring to chemical and physical forces of course.-I recognize George's skill in mathematics, but I feel he needs to take another look at the problems his theorizing faces in biochemistry. Enzymes are enormous molecules with 'key' areas for molecules to fit into to make organic reactions proceed quickly. If they don't evolve, no life appears. Isn't it convenient that they appear just when needed. How were they manufactured? A huge number of amino acids just don't fall together with the proper folding to make an enzyme. I think this is a problem that Matt doesn't comprehend either.
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> Talk about what happened "before the big bang" is just meaningless, as the article by Paul Davies points out. There was no "before". The origin of space was also the origin of time. -Absolutely on point.George and I agree on more than we disagree. His conclusions are just not mine, due to a different mind set.