Intelligent Design vs. Casino Universe

Herald says:

Quote:

Simple logical inference. If there has been any recognisable life there, NASA would have announced it.
If there has been any ILF it would have some activities in the EM spectrum - TV shows distributed around the planet, some artificial satellites if not whole colonies and structures around the planet, some garbage collection system in the open space, incl. radioactive waste ... empirial destroyers circuiting around the planet, etc.

This is total rot.
A> We simply do not have the technological means at this point to detect any such signs, certainly not at 500 light years away.
B. Consider that 500 years. Even if they developed with the exact same timeline we did, and left the same markers we have been leaving on Earth, when the light from them was emitted 500 years ago, WE had none of those things you're postulating as signes of intelligent life, so they wouldn't have had either.Even if they did exist and they had them 500 years ago, we certainly have no means here and now to detect the traces they would have left THERE. Your hypothesizing is totally unprovable one waqy or the other with any means we currently have at out disposal. The signal they're receiving NOW from us (if they're there), left here around 1500AD. No Tv signals, no radio, no satellites, no nuke residue, no visible cities. Hell, you could barely see Tenochtitlan or London from near earth orbit here then, if Galileo had been able to construct a near earth orbiter.

1 Reply

@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

All the ones I've seen say "artist's conception". Which basically means they're products of imagination, rather than fact.

They may not be entirely imagination. There may be some additional data about elements, quantities, composition, structures - on the grounds of spectral analysis of s.th. ... that are not exactly 'imagination'.

MontereyJack wrote:

Basically all we know is that there's a planet there and roughly it's size, and that it lies within the range where water IF THERE IS ANY THERE, could conceivably be liquid.

Hydrogen and oxygen are not so rare elements in the universe ... and carbon in a star system at the age of 10 Bys ... and the composition of the stars is not so much different throughout the universe.

MontereyJack wrote:

... which based on our current sample of ONE, the earth, is a prerequisite for life AS WE KNOW IT.

One cannot make generalisations on the grounds of ONE example. It is difficult to say who is more irresponsible.

MontereyJack wrote:

We knoe NOTHING about its atmosphere, if any. We know NOTHING about the presence of water there. We certainly know nothing about any trees there (which are hypothesized in one picture, which talks about its being "forested". That's sheer unsupported guess.

Where had this water come from (in the messages on the web) in that case?

MontereyJack wrote:

They're calling it a "cousin".

Cousin at least presupposes common origin. In this case it should have similar physics and chemistry (if not biology). At least the laws of physics and chemistry are supposed to be one and the same throughout the whole universe (that nobody has made the effort to prove yet).

MontereyJack wrote:

The SETI folks think the next generation of telescopes may be able to tell us something about an atmosphere. But they're not here yet.

What about the radio telescope - dislocated on two continents. It has more data than the present day computer systems will ever be able to process.
... and what about the database of the Kepler telescope. There must be some computer algorithms able to search for specific patterns which could find something more. Or the DB will remain top secret facility and will be destroyed when the data become useless some day.

MontereyJack wrote:

You will notice that Farmerman provided evidence that life doesn't have to be based on carbon, and there do exist self-replicating molecules.

Of course there are self-replicating molecules, but FM cannot explain how they work ... and whether they really are only physics and chemistry and nothing else ... or there is something else that we are missing.

MontereyJack wrote:

There exist amino acids in interstellar space, some of the potential building blocks of life.

Where is that ... and how have you detected them? By spectral analysis? Why can't you make spectral analysis of Kepler 186f?

MontereyJack wrote:

Kepler 186f, no matter how it turns out, won't prove a slam dunk for anything.

If there is liquid water ... and C and N and O there ... and never has been any life this will prove everything ... it will prove that biology is something more than simple chemistry & simple physics & simple common denominator of physics and chemistry, and that there should be some other components of life (like information science, quantum encryption, quantum communication or whatever) that are highly underestimated by now.

0 Replies

@MontereyJack,

Harald's not too swift. There have been intelligent life forms (that's what Harald's made-up abbreviation ILF means) on this planet for thousands of years--we've only had television for less than a century.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Im sooo happy many of you guys have joined in the fun. This guy is like a water drop on a hot stove. He tries one thing, abandons it, tries something else, abandons that.

I like the way hes handling the Keppler 186 stuff. First its a white dwarf (with all sorts of "enhanced" temperature predictions), then we tell him that NASA says its a red dwarf, and then Herald decides that 'OK its a red dwarf now but it was once a white dwarf and we should be able to see life remnants" (Or not).

0 Replies

@Herald,

Quote:

O.K. red dwarf, but it doesn't matter what the star is at present. What matters is that the star has been in the past successively Starbirth Nebula, Planetary Nebula, Main Sequence Star, Red Giant and now Red Dawrf going to become White Dwarf eventually.

You should really do a little more research. Red dwarfs are not the result of red giants or "Main Sequence Stars." Red dwarfs are the most abundant and long lifed stars in our universe.

Quote:

We really don't know, but if it does not have life your theory of chemistry and physics making biology falls apart like a tower of cards.

No, it doesn't fall apart since you have missed so much about what can happen to planets around a red dwarf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_dwarf
Read the habitable zone portion of the wiki article.

Quote:

An ILF at the age of 10 Bys should have some footprint in the space around it ... even if it has been extinct by now.

Statements like this always amaze me because it shows ignorance of how technology works and progresses. 50 years ago our technology would not be able to recognize our current radio signals as intelligently produced. Why do you think we would be capable of recognizing any technology other than where we currently are? Can you interpret the digital scrambled signal from satellite TV without a decoder? Now make that signal weaker than background radiation and tell us how you will be able to tell it is intelligently produced.

0 Replies

An interesting "Field article " in todays NYT op ed. It is about a low head dam that has been in place on a series of rivers and creeks near Lyme Connecticut. These low head dams had been in place for about300years(The original low head dams were emplaced to serve as a water impoundment and later as water wheel power to serve the earliest grain and textile mills in the earliest days of the US Industrial Revolution.
Seems that the dams split the population of alewives(like a big menhaden similar to a shad) that used to migrate up the river to spawn (Alewives are an anadromous fish that returns to its place of hatching like a salmon).
So the dams TRAPPED a population of alewives and kept them from migrating . In the intervening 300 years, DArwin's theory has been in action. It appears that the anadromous population , still looking like normal alewives, has continued migrating up and out of the River to the Atlantic and now spawns near the dam breast.

The other population OF ALEWIVES, those trapped by the dam in the early 1700;s HAVE EVOLVED SIGNIFICANTLY.
The original, anadromous , populations, would return each spring, to the salt free upper waters of the rivers and source lakes, and there they would "Slash and burn" the resources. The alwewives would gorge n the copepods and insect larvae , lay their eggs, and be gone.
NOW, when the dams "Captured" a population of these fish, the fish adapted to a full-time lifestyle in a fresh water river. Also, because , in the forst few generations, the captured alewives had decimated the river resources so that the population first began to die off and then, several of them, sort of "pre adapted, with smaller sizes, smaller toothed, and displaying larger gill rakers could , in essence become adapted to "Plankton net feeding" , sort of like a baleen whale except in reverse.
The landlocked alewives, instead of becoming huge filter feeding "grey whales", became like Chihuahua-fish with gill rakers and greatly minimized teeth.

This all happened in about 1000 fish generations, In a time of normal New England History. Its Evolution in action.

Now, they are busting many of the dams to restore the fish habitat and several researchers in evolution have been crying "hold it--Weve got a huge evolution experiment going on here"
(PS, this is my shortened version of the story in the paper, without the cartoon)

AS I said in past threads, IMHO 99.9% of evolution is adaptive.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

PS, your "game over" crap is infantile .
When C and O2 form a compound and when water is created by combination , the reactions are LWAYS exothermic. I don't care where you bury them. As long as they are in contact there will be a predictable amount of energy released.

When C and O2 form a compound almost nothing economically sensible (except for plants and solar energy) can decompose it back when it hits the fan ... for the purposes of deacidifying the environment ... and your pH.

2 Replies

@farmerman,

Quote:

It appears that the anadromous population , still looking like normal alewives, has continued migrating up and out of the River to the Atlantic and now spawns near the dam breast.

Copulation, like streaming, does not evolve because it's a park bench job when there are no more convenient places. Evolution would have the fish grow wings to fly over the dam or legs to walk around it.

I thought evolution was 100% adaptive. "Probably" was an error Dawkins made a public spectacle of himself with.

0 Replies

@Herald,

the "game over" crap that Im fielding is
'Why the heck am I spending good time with someone who apparently didn't pay any attention to High School chemistry?".
Ever hear of dissociation or electrolysis or catalysis?. Theres a bunch more but that may be AP chem.

1 Reply

@Herald,

want to comment on the story about the Menhaden fishies who seem to be evolving just because some dams are in the way. Do you consider the building of a dam as "Intelligent design"?

0 Replies

@Herald,

Herald wrote:

O.K., this is evident. I haven't said that this is truth of the last resort. It is just some assumptions ... on the grounds of the visual picture published on internet, which I hope is not fake.

We don't have the technology to make detailed images of planets at that distance yet. What you are looking at are simply artist conceptions of what the planet "might" look like (heavily weighted toward sensationalism so that people will read the article with the pretty picture... but I digress...). If you want to draw conclusions from something then draw them from the data, not from artists imaginations (whether they be painted or in literary form).

1 Reply

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

'Why the heck am I spending good time with someone who apparently didn't pay any attention to High School chemistry?".

This is very interesting question. Some are not paying attention to chemistry, others are not paying attention to the impossibility of the contradictions - that is life.

farmerman wrote:

Ever hear of dissociation or electrolysis or catalysis?. Theres a bunch more but that may be AP chem.

... and have you ever heard of energy balance.
Our industrial energy in its greater part is based on CO2. Actually it is so based on CO2 that even the economic activities could be measured in CO2.
The decomposition of CO2 cannot afford making more of it (CO2) for it makes no sence - neither economic, nor any other.
On the other side your pH is integral part of the biosphere. The bond is so strong that one could not survive more than 2 min without breathing. There is no such thing like pouring to infinity of CO2, NO2, SO2, CH4 and other chemistry into the air without acidification ... of the air we are breathing ... and of the body.
BTW the one who made or created or introduced through evolution or by whatever the cyanobacteria & the green algae has been perhaps a little bit better in chemistry and some other sciences than some other. Anyway.

1 Reply

@Herald,

the fact that plants MAKE O2 during photosynthesis makes anything else irrelevant for your "atmosfear".
Now, how about commenting on the alewife evolution??

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

Quote:

We don't have the technology to make detailed images of planets at that distance yet.

There's nothing like A2K for learning important facts like that.

Quote:

What you are looking at are simply artist conceptions of what the planet "might" look like (heavily weighted toward sensationalism so that people will read the article with the pretty picture... but I digress...).

And while ros is so busy digressing he seems to be ignoring an important scientific consideration which is the fact of the sensationalism ( so called) causing people to read the article with the pretty picture and why.

I presume that can be explained by ros's refusal to allow that science covers human activity, as well as inert matter and non-human life forms, for the simple reason that if he did allow human behaviour in social groups to be of scientific interest he might have some difficulties with the theological science of the Catholic Church which he has on Ignore as he does me and presumably everything else which he needs to have in order to keep his ridiculous notions in one piece.

He even ignores the obvious fact that modern science, on behalf of which he has appointed himself to speak, is a consequence of Catholic theology and of nothing else.

And A2Kers who think ros has anything worthwhile to say about science are just going to have to make the best of it for the rest of their lives.

0 Replies

@farmerman,

Quote:

Now, how about commenting on the alewife evolution??

As I explained, fm. it is not evolution. Evolutionary processes are much slower that you have suggested. It is well known that head shape in humans is conditioned by geography as are other features of anatomy. Obesity for example.

Darwin became interested in such matters eventually. Unlike you he did have some scientific attitudes.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

As I explained, fm. it is not evolution.

You "explained" nothing. You belched an assertion without much of a knowledge base. The facts are there whether you understand em or .
not.
These fish have jumped the next higher taxon and now scientists want to maintain the status quo to see the experiment perhaps achieve a new genera.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

The status quo being their careers of course.

Nothing to do with the fish which have been forced to make the best of it as one might do on a park bench.

What is happening to that fish in rivers that have not been dammed?

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

What is happening to that fish in rivers that have not been dammed?

they adapt to the entire rivers ecosystem. Im sure someone is keeping data.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

That's true. Because of the drought in California, the fishes in the Sacramento River are suffering. The problem we have in California is that the southern part of the state relies on water from the north. In addition, those who must manage the water resources also must consider the fish, wildlife, and recreation. I'd hate to be the one making the decisions on who gets the water.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Neil Shubin's PBS mini series on "Your Inner Fish" was really good. It blended evidence from the field, lab, the genomes of organisms nd fossil structures to make a really good argument for how evolution works. Denial of Shubin's thesis will probably be cobbled together by guys like Ken Ham who will try to conflate irrelevancies and half truths from all sorts of disconnected issues.

Sorta like gungas
"Since Uranus" orbit is askew from the ecliptic of the Solar System, THIS IS PROOF that evolution couldn't happen"

1 Reply

Intelligent Design vs. Casino Universe

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know