Does Life Exist

[Atrocities]

Originally posted by JurijD:
Oh no, you missunderstood my post entirely

You said that you don´te believe us to be the product of evolution from lower hominids (you called them apes and that you also don´t believe we were created by a "pooof" ....

I explained then (in great detail) that we are actually (with the highest degree of probability science can offer us now) the product of evolution starting from "apes" as you called them or hominids as they are correctly termed.

... the quote you put up has nothing to do with what I said... perhaps I didn´t make that sentance clear enough.

I wanted you to reconsider your disbeliefes in the evolution of man... and I tried to name a few arguments to get you satrted on that way. This god bussiness you developed below has nothing to do with my argument and nothing to do with what I said...

quote:

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Reconsider what? That we were created instantly or we were not created instantly?

To reconsider that we were created instantly or arrived from somewhere else... which is not the case...we most probably are the product of evolution.

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Would you consider that our species evolved from several differant lower primates? That over time cross breeding has created what we are today?

[Atrocities]

Originally posted by Gozra:
I would like to point out a few things.
First God is a God of law He obeys the RULES just like the rest of us.

"Gods thoughts are not our thoughts. Gods ways are not our ways." - Unknown

I think this to be true as well.

[JurijD]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Would you consider that our species evolved from several differant lower primates? That over time cross breeding has created what we are today?

Yes, that is an interesting idea that was proposed a few years back. For now it cannot be definately proven nor can it be disproven. But since cross-species breading is an extremely unlikely event (the offspring of such unions in most cases are infertile) I think this is not very likely, but it could have happend.

I still think the most likely event is that we came about by slow mutation of our genes mostly... perhaps cross breading played a role too. but in any case it was all natural, aliens most likely didn´t play a role here and neither did some magical being that flipped a finger and the wolrd appeared... maybe that´s how time-space got started but later on I think physics governs everything.

[ August 10, 2003, 09:40: Message edited by: JurijD ]

[JurijD]

Back to the original debate:

Simple life:
I still think that life in one form or another will be very common in our galaxy. By this I mean some form of lower single-celled life. Bacteria, protozoa etc. etc. (if cells will even be the building blocks of life on other worlds... who know !) I base this on the discoveries we made in the Last few decades. Life has turned out to exist in the most unusual places... at the bottom of the sees, in vulcanos, 10km unde ground etc. etc. where the temperature, pressure and other conditional extremes challange our usual perception of a life friendly environment. I wouldn´t be at all surprised if we found bacteria living under ground on Mars and perhaps even Venus... the moons of Jupiter, Saturn and perhaps even further out.

Complex life: The evolution of multicelular organisms requires a certain environmental stability that earth provided. But obviously the more complex life gets the more rare it will be because the more complexity an organism has the greater are its envirnomental requirements. So I´m pretty sceptical that we will find complex multicelular organisms in our solar system... perhaps on Mars, Titan or Europa... but I doubt it.

Intelliget life: Lets put the early hominids as a base line. Anything more evolved is intelligent anything less is not. By this cretaria if we found some form of aliend dolphin it would not be an intelligent life form.... Noone can really answer this question, as I pointed out erlier. I wouldn´t be surprised if our galaxy had 1.000.0000 intelligent species in it and neither if we were the only one. This is because I cannot make a realistic approximation of the number for myself... its just not possible, the Drake and the Rare Earth equations are a bunch of §%!%"§ ... they can give whatever results you want, depends how optimistic you are so they are virtually useless.

Conclusion:
I think theis question will only be answered when we have explored our entire galaxy... or have enocountered an alien race that will share its knowledge with us. since both events are very unlikely I think this post could hang around for a very long time...

[oleg]

Originally posted by JurijD:

quote:

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Originally posted by Atrocities:
Would you consider that our species evolved from several differant lower primates? That over time cross breeding has created what we are today?

Yes, that is an interesting idea that was proposed a few years back. For now it cannot be definately proven nor can it be disproven. But since cross-species breading is an extremely unlikely event (the offspring of such unions in most cases are infertile) I think this is not very likely, but it could have happend.

I still think the most likely event is that we came about by slow mutation of our genes mostly... perhaps cross breading played a role too. but in any case it was all natural, aliens most likely didn´t play a role here and neither did some magical being that flipped a finger and the wolrd appeared... maybe that´s how time-space got started but later on I think physics governs everything.

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Earlier this year there was a paper published in Nature that proved (apparently) there was no crossbreeding between neanthertals and modern man. We simply wiped them out.

[JurijD]

Originally posted by oleg:
Earlier this year there was a paper published in Nature that proved (apparently) there was no crossbreeding between neanthertals and modern man. We simply wiped them out.

Interesting. Thanks for the input. I guess crossbreading really was an imposibility and not only very unlikely.

[oleg]

There are several recent and more or less rigourous scientific papers that assert we mayin fact be one of the First Ones - stars evolution indicates stars older then our Sun are too poor in heavy elements. At the same time, younger stars give up to 20% chance of planets observable by modern - and VERY rudimentary technics ! Basically, we still have some time handicape to evolve and go to the stars. If we fail, in a millenium or two, aliens will come and resolve our pitty squables