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Plagiarized in part at least from:
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/oncampus/index.php/forums/viewthread/19972/
This may be a god by some definition, but I think a fairly key assertion is that god is the creator of the universe. This exposition doesn't try to argue for the existence of something like that.
In any case, we know that life is possible, but we have absolutely no idea how probable it is for life to start, the probability of evolution from single celled to multicelled life, nor do we know how likely it is that intelligence as we know it develops.
Since we only have one example of life in the universe, we only have one data point. We have no idea whether we as a civilisation have developed quickly or slowly.
We're also yet to find out whether species like ours are actually any good at surviving - it's not unlikely that any intelligent civilisation such as our own inevitably ends up wiping itself out.
All these people trying to come up with estimates for how many planets in the universe harbour life are just engaging in unsupported extrapolations.
All we know is that life is possible, we know nothing about its probability.
The evolution of multicellular life from an ancestral unicellular form has been observed in laboratory conditions.
Excellent post, kudos for expressing the facts so precisely.
Matt Davies,
There is one clue that statistically suggests that life's origin may not be a long shot. On Earth it arose quite soon after the great meteoric bombardment ended. If the odds were truly staggering, we would expect a significant gap between the end of that bombardment and the first appearance of life. The odds for getting a technical civilization are not at all clear. Evolution does not necessarily make species more and more intelligent. Big brains have a heavy cost.
I wonder if the OP is capable of original thinking or even free will?
@David Killens: I wonder if the OP is capable of original thinking
Capable only of plagiarism--the unoriginal sin.
I like that... "Capable only of plagiarism--the unoriginal sin"
Did you make that up or plagiarize it from somewhere?
Regardless I am going to plagiarize it myself someday ;)
@LogicForTW: Did you make that up or plagiarize it from somewhere?
It popped into my head as an original thought, but I just Googled the phrase and found that it was the title of a "Sex and the City" episode in 2002. I loathed that show and never watched it, but maybe I saw the title somewhere and had it lurking in my memory. Who knows? I think I'm the first to apply it to a dishonest, plagiarizing Christianitwit.
Or maybe god put it into my mind to punish me for mocking one of his sheep....Nah.
@ Matt Davies "We don't know - probability of evolution from single celled to multi celled life"
Um.... I hate to burst your bubble but all life begins as a single cell. Researchers have begun to (informally) describe biofilms as multicellular organisms. The Elba worm is an amazing creature that has no mouth or anus yet feeds on carbon dioxide and methane. It does not need sunlight or oxygen for its survival. It is a multi-cellular creature surviving in symbiotic relationship with bacteria. An excellent example of how cells can come together to form a more complex life structure.
NEXT: The probability of life? Ever heard of the Drake Equation? The probability of life in the universe can be given a probability quotient. That's just a fact.
"The Drake Equation is used to estimate the number of communicating civilizations in the cosmos, or more simply put, the odds of finding intelligent life in the universe.
First proposed by radio astronomer Frank Drake in 1961, the equation calculates the number of communicating civilizations by multiplying several variables. It's usually written, according to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), as: N = R* • fp • ne • fl • fi • fc • L
Yes it is not correct and it gets more correct every time we find new planets. That's not the point. The point is this: The Drake Equation predicts the probability of life on other planets from the data we have available. We actually can establish a probability.
Furthermore; with the discovery of extremophiles, on our own planet, life forms that live without oxygen or water, that consume methane, that live in acid or nuclear power waste, the possibility of life on other planets has greatly expanded.
True we all started out as single cells - but we started out as single cells ready made with instructions for multiplication into a multicellular organism. What I mean when I say that we don't know how probable it is for multicellular life to originate from single-cell life is that we don't know how probable, or how quickly, that process occurs in evolutionary history, not in the history of individuals like you or I.
If you imagine the Earth 4 billion years ago, presumably a little time after the origin of life we just had a few different kinds of single-celled organisms floating around. It's a non-trivial issue then to ask how long it took in evolutionary history for these different cells to join up and work together and eventually become specialised.
It's so fast now for a single-celled organism to grow into a multicellular one because the DNA coding for this process is in the cell from the start. It's a much bigger question as to how long it takes for the DNA of primordial cells to have mutated so that they eventually participated in multi-cellular behaviour.
The fact then is that we currently have very little idea how quickly, and how probable the different key stages of evolution are. We don't know whether we've evolved quickly or slowly.
Once again, the Elba worm has been around for ages - how quickly an elba worm would evolve on average is something we have no answer for yet.
Now the Drake Equation - it really mystifies me that anyone takes it seriously at all. We don't have exact values for any of those parameters, so you have to make a guess. But the fact that we have 7 different parameters most of which we could select a range of sensible values for means you can basically get any number you like for N.
The Drake Equation is a first attempt at estimation - but it is the crudest and severely outdated. If you look at what those parameters actually mean, none of them contain any information about how long it takes for life to evolve or originate! Surely any reasonable estimate of how many civilisations there are out there would depend on the average rate at which life evolves and/or originates.
I don't doubt that there are very hardy organisms around - but this says nothing about how quickly they came into existence. Until we have some idea of the average time it takes for life to originate in suitable conditions we cannot make a good guess as to how many civilisations are out there.
I'll have to dig for it, but there was an article that stated that it is believed that the first multi-cellular organisms, as we understand multi-cellular today, started about 600 million years ago.
That would give us over 2 billion years of single cell dominance, with single-celled organisms still being the vast majority of life today.
LostLocke,
It was a big jump in time from the first primitive cell (or strings and sheets of such primitive cells) to the first truly multicellular life. Apparently, that's a difficult step for evolution.
Okay. All you are asserting is that we don't know how long. Fine. We know it took billions of years. We have a fantastic history of evolution for the human eye now, thanks to Creationists trying to use it for their argument of Irreducible Complexity. From a single cell to a completed eye.
Yes, the Drake Equation is an estimate based on the best knowledge that we have at the moment. It gives us the probability of life. It will change as we make new discoveries and new scientific inquiries.
I don't really get why it matters at all how quickly a species changed. Most major changes seemed to be linked to massive cataclysmic events that isolate one species from another. I read for example that white skin is the result of living underground for a long period of time. I can not cite the source but do recall the read. How long.... I have no idea.... but we have millions of years to play with.
I'm not sure what you think I'm arguing against. The OP's point was that life inevitably evolves to an advanced enough stage such that they are essentially gods. I'm just saying that even if that's true, we have no idea how probable it is that an advanced civilisation of this kind already exists - because we have no idea how long evolution to this stage takes.
I did not know that about white skin, but that makes sense!
But yeah, my point is just that we have no reliable estimates of how many advanced "godlike" civilisations are out there.
It seems that the darkness of human skin correlates well with how long a group has lived in the sunny regions. Moreover, evolution arrived at black skin from different routes. The black skin pigment of the darkest Indians evolved in a different pathway than the black skin pigment of Africans. Northern Europeans, living where the sun is rather tame, have evolved white skins, allowing vitamin D production under low light conditions. It is entirely possible that skin color may have changed in some groups due to ancient migrations over time! I can imagine a black-skinned group leaving central Africa, eventually to live in Siberia where white skins would be expected to evolve, and then moving down to Mexico and acquiring a much darker skin!
We can understand the past, but we cannot see the future.
Matt Davis: "The OP's point was that life inevitably evolves to an advanced enough stage such that they are essentially gods. I'm just saying that even if that's true, we have no idea how probable it is that an advanced civilization of this kind already exists"
Yes. This we have no probability of. At least none that I am aware of. Perhaps someone else can enlighten us. Aren't we nearly Godlike?
You may have seen the original post prior to the mods altering it. I did not get that from the OP or from what you wrote. My bad! if that is the case.
Well that's settled then! Yeah the mods took it down pretty quickly, and the point the OP made was very much not what I expected. Always full of surprises!
Cognostic,
I'd have to agree.
I don't see it as inevitable that life must evolve to more and more advanced levels of intelligence. On an ocean world, for example, it is not clear that life could ever evolve technological civilizations. Moreover, big brains cost a lot from evolution's standpoint, and it may be a freak combination of events that allowed our civilization to evolve. Dinosaurs might still be ruling if a meteorite didn't take them out (except for the birds). It may be that once intelligence reaches a certain level that no more evolutionary benefits exist for extending it. It may take some unusual events, such as a forest changing into scattered trees and grasslands, to kick in that added intelligence ultimately useful for technology. Good deposits of metals, of course, would be essential for technology. Who knows what other variables are floating around that we are not even aware of! Yeah, I don't presently see any way to come up with a reliable probability.
Agreed: The ole theist assumption that evolution has a direction, simple to complex, is something no biologist would agree to.
Saw the title to this thread and had this thought pop into my head:
Life proves God, Death proves He Ain't.
;-P
rmfr