WrongPlanet.net an anti-christian site?

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I do hope they replicate the experiment as well. I was quite excited when I first read about it.

It would certainly be very difficult getting down through Europa's ice sheet, but I have read that there may be plans to 'practice' in Lake Vostok, Antarctica: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lake_vostok. It doesn't get around the millions of miles away part, but there is at least one analogue situation on Earth that can serve as a test bed for technology necessary for a Europa exploration mission

Unfalsifiable.

Ok, I can buy that.

Ah, but "Biology properly reduced IS chemistry." At which point are amino acids non-life? And at which point do they become life?

I don't know about that... I mean, either you believe in evolution and/or promote it as a hypothesis/theory or you don't. I would define evolutionist as someone who accepts it, in which case I'd be an evolutionist, for instance. However, I reject "macro-evolution" on logical grounds--based on what little I know about the available evidence, and given that I do not work in a scientific area, strictly speaking, I simply cannot. I'm not "making up my own story" in that I'm admitting that my own feelings on the subject lie somewhere between that not being my area and generally not especially interested. Even in the scientific world, "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer!

I get that, which is how I understand that topic.

Who is saying anything about a "magical being"? Further, even if we assume "magical beings" to exist, why be so hasty to rule that out?

Your answer is not that you admit that you don't know.

This says so much.

and this...

and this.

Depends how you define life. There's no quintessential "spark", in any case. I would argue that any molecule/group of molecules which employ energy transformation to maintain a high level of molecular complexity, and to reproduce, is alive.

Problem with AngelRho is he's looking at life as something magical. It's not. It's just a label for something that needs to be labeled.

Strange. Sure, the things we describe as living are strange, but they certainly are definable, and certainly not magical.

There is no valid evidence to support any positive claims for acupuncture, afrocentrism, alchemy, alien abductions, ancient astronauts, angels, animal magnetism, anthropometry, astrology, astrotherapy, back-masking, Bermuda triangle, bio-harmonics, biorhythms, blood type diet, brain typing, cellular memory, chakras, channeling, chem-trails, codependency, consegrity, cosmobiology, craniometry, creationism, demons, DHEA, Dianetics, ear candling, earthquake-HAARP connection, electro-sensitives, e-meter, enneagram, extra-sensory perception, extra-terrestrial life, facilitated communication, faith healing, genetic memory, Gerson therapy, global consciousness, God, graphology, hollow Earth, Hieronymus Device Radiometry, homeopathy, hypnosis, intelligent design, ley lines, lie detector, "Lunar Effect" Lysenkoism, magic, malicious animal magnetism, manifesting, "Mars Effect", maternal impressions, mesmerism, metoposcopy, microacupuncture, missing link, morphic resonance, Mozart Effect, multiple personality disorder, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, naturopathy, neuro-linguistic programming, psychotherapy, New Thought, orgone energy, parapsychology, phrenology, plant perception, polygraph, precognition, pyramid power, Q-Ray bracelet, Quadro Tracker, reincarnation, repressed memory therapy, Rorschach ink blot test, Schumann Effect, Scientology, seeding trials, spellcasting, spontaneous human combustion, subliminal advertising, synchronicity, tachyon and takionics, tarot, telepathy, Transcendental Meditation, universal mind, Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, voodoo, or Zermatism.

Thanks for the alphabetical list of silly concepts to research for fun.

what?

No need to research.

www.skepdic.com

Read all the entries, done.

None of this is really satisfying for the sake of what we're discussing here, is it?

I don't like reducing discussions to a matter of definition. If we're talking science, then we have to use the language of science. Even there you're going to have SOME disagreement. I suppose what we need to know is what the general consensus is about what life is as opposed to what life is not.

Your definition (reproducing, etc.) makes sense. But to what degree is it that amino acids reproduce themselves? I read somewhere, maybe it was a year ago or something, that self-replicating RNA had been created in a lab setting. If anyone here knows what I'm talking about, feel free to provide the reference. But EVEN THEN, you still have the problem of whether life as we know it being improbable. Just because certain things are POSSIBLE doesn't always mean that they happen, especially not on their own. Lab simulations are still created constructs, not necessarily what would happen in nature. I mean, you can't claim to know with any absolute certainty that this IS what happened. You're merely setting up a speculative model of how it COULD have happened. But by virtue of setting it up that way, you create an environment that was DESIGNED to yield the expected results. And because you reason that certain factors in combination in optimal conditions yield self-replicating molecules leading to life, the model is Intelligently Designed.

I'm not promoting Intelligent Design models, just merely showing the difficulties in interpreting experimental lab results as evidence of one or the other. It IS evidence, but we want to know "of what?" Does this "prove" (using that term loosely--solid, undeniable proof is not the goal of science) abiogenesis or creationism, one or the other? I'm also not assuming there to be a dichotomy necessarily, but if we're talking about the interpretation of scientific evidence or data, we have to at least consider the possibility that a dichotomy exists. IF it exists, then which is it? Abiogenesis or the Book of Genesis? Or something else? If it isn't necessary to assume a dichotomy, is it really possible to be both? You said there's no "quintessential spark." I think it might be more appropriate to say "there's no need to assume a quintessential spark." But is it necessary that there wan't one, whether that spark was the word of God, magic, or a serendipitous lightning strike?

you are forgetting probability and the size of the universe here,
the probability of someone winning the national lottery are ridicoulous, it would take several hundres of thousands of tries to be sure you won a first prize, yet it happens everyday to at least a hundred people around the globe(conservative i know, probably higher) simply because of the sheer amount of human beings playing these lotteries.

it is true that there is little way of being 100% certain, then again nothing i know of is.

they found the building blocks of life in comets even, what they are a remnant of or if they are indigenous, i have no clue, but it does provide some interesting food for thought.

as for the definition of life, no one today has any ultimate answer so the real challenge here is finding the definition that fits, one thing is certain it wont be terracentric, even though the versions today still suffer from this to varying degrees.

The lottery is not "pure chance," though. If you don't play, you don't win, and that is actually something that can be guaranteed and proven true with every single drawing! If we're assuming abiogenesis from the anti-theist perspective, there's no one to "play the game," so to speak, whereas with a lottery you have intelligent (more or less ) beings willing to buy into it. You also have certainty that someone IS going to win eventually. It's just a matter of who and when. If we assume that the universe is a spontaneous entity, you can't assume that it even HAS a way to ante up. Life is still improbable, maybe even less so, and the vague possibility that does exist isn't to be confused with inevitability.

You also have to be careful here. The assumption is that the age/size of the universe in collusion with a vast number of unknowns that makes such a vague possibility of life not just vaguely possible but inevitable. Using that same assumption, given that there are so many things we do not know, we cannot, for example, rule out the possibility of God, however minuscule we believe that possibility to be. So if it's possible, it's inevitable. Therefore God exists? I'm sure there's a logical fallacy in there somewhere, but I just can't put my finger on it.

Otherwise, you have a system, given the "age" of the universe and its size, that is not probabilistically favorable to the ascension of life. Probability does not equal a guarantee; life is not inevitable. Either the universe and the earth are much, MUCH older than present indications suggest, or the process needed a jump start.

It's a minor disagreement. I think that everything else you've said is by far the most sensible "pro-science" thing anyone has mentioned.

true we realy dont know much about our universe,
we know that the building blocks of life are somewhat abundant in the universe, at least not rare enough for us not to have found them yet,

amino acids on comet
amino acids beyond our solar system

with the number of exoplanets allready found, compared to what we still need to check, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that life could exist elsewhere.

as for the lottery, you are assuming that there needs to be an external source, as i see it every single molecule, quark and the whole of excistence in this universe(possibly the multiverse) is a player.
intelligence is simply the winnings the lucky few collected, they did so by ticket pooling i believe

now i agree that the possibility of a god cannot be disproven yet.
but just because i cant disprove the holy pasta platter i dont make the assumption its real either.

on another note, there might have been some sort of consciousness that started this particular rendition of our universe( i dont think so, but how would we know), but just because it can create a universe doesnt make it a god(as in all powerfull and automatically on another level, it might be the smartest most powerfull being, yet later something stronger might evolve, weird description hope its understandable)

point being that if you say we know so little about this universe, then almost anything stands as equal a chance of being true as religion.

god could have been a hyper intelligent alien collecting taxes from unsuspecting humans, he could be a human travelling back in time to rid humanity of our faults.
the possibilities are endless when one travels too far down the path of uncertainty, therefore we use acnhor point of quantifiable evidence to base the understanding of the world around us on.

My dad (who drinks a lot) seems to think that God is an alien... Like when a certain level of maturity is reached, they go off and become a God.