Yeah thats the one!!

I am surprised how less people know about this experiment, I only found out a few months ago!

It really is a breakthrough of sorts.

I ain't going to get into heavy evolutionary theory or recite passages from a religious text written by man inspired by God, Allah, Buddha and on.

I think there is an intelligent creator behind this life of ours. I don't necessarily believe it is God as any major religion proclaims it is. It could be God as in the Bible, Allah, as in the Quran, or it could be a galaxy crossing alien race. Whoever it is, there is too much order in nature for it to be completely random. For example, if it was all random, then why do the sexual organs of  sexualy reproducing living organisms all have the same function and relatively the same appearance?

Things like this make me believe it is not all random spawned from a spawning pool during Earth's earliest days.

As for the evolution deniers, I think it is silly to proclaim "Well if they can't evolve bacteria into humans, then the theory of evolution is false!" Bullshit. If you look at the breeding of pets, you cannot sit there and tell me with a straight face that which individual animals the breeder picked for certain personality traits and physical characteristics is not evolved and entirely deemed so only by God.

The cross mix of dog, cat and rabbit breeds is pure evidence of evolution by an intelligent creator. In this case, the breeder.

There are even more variable studies that Miller did using similar principles, such as a volcanic simulation, which yielded far more aminoacids, amines and even hydroxil radicals, which is the prime molecule used to explain why the greenhouse effect gases of the early earth dissipated and gave way to the N2/O2 mixture of the current earth's atmosphere.

Also, this suggests that volcanic formations in early earth were populated by a large mass of organic molecules, which in conjunction with the residuary carbonyl sulfide that emanated from those volcanoes, could have lead to the formation of peptides as well.

First choice all the way!

For anyone who's genuinely curious about this possibility, check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JePLJbqlbEU

(Video is in parts, search related videos for the next section. Apologies for foreign subtitles - it's not my upload.)

The science of fine-tuning is mentioned, as well as some of the detailed workings of the universe, scientific explanations of different dimensions - and how all this connect to spirituality.

A favourite talk of mine. Watch with an open, thinking mind!

Also, this debate of God vs. Random Evolution is about as mature as the Pro-Choice vs. Pro-Life abortion debate.

I think it is time we "evolved" the debate a little bit. For instance, on abortion I am pro-choice, but I believe in partial-birth bans and parental notification unless there is incest or rape involved.

Likewise, I believe in the theory of evolution with an intelligent creator or design behind it. This doesn't necessarily I believe in God as in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, all it means is that I believe there was order to evolution. If that order is as simple as organisms with fangs and claws eat organisms without thus giving us the animal life we have today, then I would believe it eventhough it is not an explanation with a "God" behind it.

As for Creationism, all I have to cite is the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution, which Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell did not know until very recently:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

-US Constitution, 1st Amendment

I believe that everything exists right now. Future Past Present all possible realities are existing right now and are sorrounding us.

And the existance of all is actually this god. I mean he is omnipotent god cant be less then everything.

God probably cant be characterized as something. It is just every possible combination of every possible state following every possible rule.

The question is does god know he exists in every universe or just in some universes ?

I always thought we might live in a Multiversum where every Universe has its own set of rules. But recently they made a discovery that says Alpha the fine structure constant (it determins how strongly electromagnetism interacts with atoms) is variable the more far away it changes. That on the otherhand means einstein was wrong and the natural laws change in our universe and are not constant. Ofcourse it varies just a tiny bit in 12 Billion Lightyears. That indicates our universe is unimaginably larger then we thought so the 10000000000000000000000 Stars in the observable universe are just a tiny fraction of what really is around us and the reason we cant see the whole magnitude of the universe is because light had no time to reach us from farther away.


So eventually there is no Multiverse everything possible surrounds us.

This also tells us what exactly sorrounds us. There would be distant galaxies with creatures we would call angels and gods.

We looked thoroughly in the past century on our universe. And the laws of nature are completly insane. Everyone who tries to understand how our universe works will come to the point thinking its complete insanity and the physists have messed up since this cant be. But actually they are observing those things.

For example its entirely possible according to our natural laws that if you stare long enough on an empty table an apple or an elephant will pop up from nowhere.

Even though you would have to stare a couple of trillion years. According to quantum physics if you wait long enough the nothing beginns to bubble and eventually something completly unexpected can happen like an atom come out of nowhere. And since our Universe will most probably expand for all eternity. There is enough time for the space to make silly things. Like producing an entire person in a bubble of air and a martini after 100 quadrillion years. Because in that timeframe the probabilty that something like that happens is very high.

Such beeings are called von neumann brains. Actually that means that if our universe expands for all eternity (And there is absolutly no reason to doubt that this is going to happen)


Something will pop out from nowhere which exactly has all neutrons protons electrons quarks in the exact same position your neutrons protons electrons and quarks have right now. In other words you. You will pop out from nowhere into a dead universe if our universe expands forever. With the last memory beeing this weird posting.
 
But eventually there will be a new big bang occouring first and filling the space again.


My conclusion the universe is so extremly big even the part we can detect and the laws of this universe are so insane that I came recently to the conclusion we will never be able to understand the universe because we try to understand it. Same goes for god. If we accept that god/universe is the alpha and omega in other words everything we probably might get closer to the truth.


Around us are planets which have diamond icebergs are suns which are million times bigger then our star are oceans so deep that the ground of them is covered with Ice which is so hot that it burns through steel, Are stars which are so dense that you can see the star from the back if you look on it from the front.


Are huge clouds of alcohol hundred times bigger then our solar system. Planets were it rains iron. galaxies so populated with stars that a planet dont need to orbit a sun because there are so many stars that every point on the sky ends with a star.

And this is just the stuff around us what happens in distant galaxies where alpha is a little bit stronger or weaker how does this affect the planets ?



The existance itself is so weird. There must be a god. Its just too insane

 

My only concern is how important are we. And in what relation are we to the universe/god.

I really would like to be around here in 10 Million years just to see what changed.

BTW our whole evolutionary history is a huge row of very happy and unprobable developments. Its like the chance winning in every lottery every day for the rest of your life. I like to think there is a higher purpose.

Sometimes I think what could be the higher purpose. Maybe its like this:


God is everything--> We are tiny parts of gods conciousness. And maybe our purpose is to live every possible life through so we would experience the whole creation one day.

One time you are Hitler then Ghandi and then Paris Hilton or an E.T or something entirely different. Also it would be perfectly fair because you will experience everything good and everything bad.

Its also the only way for a limited person to experience the whole creation.

It seems rather pointless to me to live 70 years work eat have sex die and everything is over forever. Especially when you look at the endless possibilities and the complexity which is necessary to create this live. All this effort from the universe just to make some people living a short life which they forget about when they are dead. One can say you have influence on the future with every action you make but where is the point. Our earth is habitable just a mere  Billion years because our sun gets hotter and hotter. After that we either spread life into the universe or we die and everything was totally senseless.

Also ofcourse there is other life but when we look at the tiny chance we had to live I guess its rather rare. One thing I know definetly. When we die something will happen and with that I mean everyone will sense again something. Because when we die we cant feel the time and according to quantum physics after a long time always something happens. And we will happen again some way or the other.

we= the humans

I thought is was  very well known yet it only produces some of the building blocks and only works in labs where man can guide the process. A dead cell has everything you need to build a cell so the real problem is to put Humpy Dumpy back together again. That's the real problem as even if earth is full of these building blocks (just like today with all the dead cells on the planet) the  laws of nature destroys them very fast before anything can be created by them.  In fact on a good day your DNA in each of your cells has to be repaired  millions of time by these protein machines. If these machines can't repair them fast enough (which will eventually happen) that cell will die or worst become cancer.

I did say that I didn't want this to turn into an atheist vs theist debate of any description. So I shall just say this  on the matter and then move on. there's lots of juicy science for me to respond to when I'm less tired :)

The complaint that evolutionists have with creationists is not that they believe in creationism (generalisations ahoy :P)

If creationism is taught as science in a government funded school, then that violates separation of church and state, which most Athiests/Agnostics see as a vital part of a democracy.

As a basic summary of the majoirty belief amongst agnostics

Believe in Creationism = Go nuts

Share said beliefs with adults and politely try to convince them that your way is right = your right as long as you don't mind if they do the same to you

Teach said beliefs as science to your own children = probably not really your right but we know when to pick our battles and we know we wont win this one.

Teach said beliefs to other peoples children when their parents would wish them to have a secular or other upbringing = definitely not on and is infringing upon the rights of said children, and described by the bit of the constitution that you just quoted up there ^

Obviously, anyone who does actually try to prevent you from believing what you want to believe is a dickhead, but the majority of us agnostics aren't actually all that bad :) And I hope I didn't offend you with the OP, I can end up insulting people without realising it at times, my point was just that generally discussion about the anthropic principle is pretty meaningless if you believe in a creator - it is tantamount to asking why God happened to be smart enough to make a livable universe, which (I spose I don't need to tell you) is not going to lead to a very long conversation.

Teaching creationism is not church nor is school government. (there probably some in the government needs to go back to school) That's like saying teaching Greek mythology (which they did when I went) violates separation of church and state. In fact you can teach Bible as parts of history and not violate the Constitution.

 You can twist the Contitution around to support or be against anything including support child porn which they did.

  What we really need now  is a separation of Federal government and school.

If the bold is what you believe "natural evolution" to be, then it's no surprise you wouldn't believe it.

But much as the breeder can dictate the way in which he wants to change his breed, so can natural conditions. There's still a guiding force even if there's no intelligence or porpuse behind it.

Also, it should be surprising if you couldn't find these commom traits between species. They evolved much in the same conditions and have commom ancestors. Even then, it's not like it works the same way for every animal.

Actually people who don't believe on a natural origin of life use this very experiment as an evidence that life can't just emerge naturally, as it failed to emerge in these experiments. They fail to notice the differences in time scale, complexity and sheer colume between the experiment and reality.

@OP:

I think it's hard to ellect a single explanation, they all have validity.

I believe there are many other configurations the universe could have that would also support life, even if completely different from what we think of life, but there are also some configurations which would make it really hard or even impossible. We also now very little about those constants themselves in the sense of why are them set to those values, so there might be even further explanation, who knows. Anyway, we can't really calculate the odds of a life-supporting universe, even if we can say they are not necessarily so low. This also strengthens the antropic principle in a sense.

But when it comes to multiverse hypostesis, I think some people see it too much as cience fiction. But think about it, if our universe had a begining, if a universe can and will emerge naturally, than many universes can and will emerge naturally, don't you think?