Originally posted by salainen

Yes I see, suppose its not important when you look at it like that. God isn't necessarily needed, it just seems so unlikely that life begun randomly (unlikely, as in its a very small probability).

It actually seems to be a high probability under the right conditions. It didn't take life very long to start after the earth was formed, and that tells us a lot. Life is a chemical reaction...there are a lot of those in the universe, why does life seem to be a something special? We are a natural occurrence in our universe...about as natural as a sun, or water or any other occurrence. I'm not sure of your point in if life is a normal occurrence in the physics of our universe then why do you suggest it takes intelligent design, or otherwise why would it be a long shot without intelligent design? Earth is proof that life is a natural occurrence in our universe...end of story...

Originally posted by Xtrozero
It actually seems to be a high probability under the right conditions. It didn't take life very long to start after the earth was formed, and that tells us a lot. Life is a chemical reaction...there are a lot of those in the universe, why does life seem to be a something special?

That is an interesting thought, but from my biology studies life is an incredibly complicated process. As far as I know, according to the major current biological theory, life only began once, and then eventually evolved to everything we know now. It only happened once billions of years ago, and has never happened since. There is only one lineage of life, not an infinite number of them, every currently living thing (on earth), descended from the LUCA. If it was a high probability under the right conditions, you would think it would have happened at least a couple of times... We haven't found life anywhere except here (yet).

Originally posted by colin42
How could we know that life only began once? What we can say is all life today is related to one such event due the evidence we have but cannot claim it only started once.

Thats what I was thinking while writing this, but by life beginning I really meant in a way similar to how our life began. Its not just the fact that life randomly happened, but that then life was able to sustain itself through everything, even though random events, such as changes in the environment, could have happened at any moment and destroyed everything. There have been a few great extinctions in the earths history, but all of these occured at a time when they didn't wipe out the entire population. There are so many variables, so much luck involved in life randomly beginning, and then being able to get through, and actually evolve, over billions of years, without being wiped out. We know of only one beginning of life, and that beginning amazingly was able to survive all these years.

Originally posted by colin42
We tried to rationalise the results of simple cause and effect on a grand scale by seeing a creator. We now see a different picture using modern science.

Modern science wasn't required for atheism, and atheism didn't begin from modern science. Chances are that all ahteists would still be atheists without science. As atheists usually say, its common sense that God doesn't exist. In my opinion it is a bit more philosophical than common sense.

Originally posted by colin42
Science is a tool we use to look past the effects to discover the cause and nothing more. Those that deny it or feel threatened by it need to look at themselves to see why it affects them in that way and then discover the cause.

My guess is if that is done honestly based on evidence the conflict between science (a tool) and religion (a belief) will be resolved.

Modern scientific research usually uses a disprovable hypothesis. Therefore science cannot prove the non-existance of God, since you can't disprove the hypothesis of something existing. It just can't be done. And I don't think there is any way that you could prove the existance of God either.

Then again, what conflict is there between science and religion?

Originally posted by colin42
Without people that believe in god there would be no such thing as an atheist. The only thing required for atheism is religion.

Science only requires a questioning mind. Modern science gives it a format in which to work.

Precisely. If nobody believed in God everyone would be an atheist, but such a word wouldn't exist. Since there are people who believe in God (and presumably always have been, since people began to think), there have always been atheists, modern science wasn't required.

Originally posted by colin42
The conflict comes from what we place under the label and how unwilling we are to redefine it.

I maintain that from that point, call it creation or big bang (just labels) this universe evolved due to cause and effects and could not have formed in any other way and that includes life.

Science has built rules to avoid bias but no matter how you define it. At its most basic level science is looking at the effects to find the cause and each time we succeed we find more questions

I still don't see any conflict between science and the belief in God.

Mating creates a pup. Raising it causes evolution.

It happens on microcosmic scales!

As above so below right?

Originally posted by salainen
That is an interesting thought, but from my biology studies life is an incredibly complicated process. As far as I know, according to the major current biological theory, life only began once, and then eventually evolved to everything we know now. It only happened once billions of years ago, and has never happened since. There is only one lineage of life, not an infinite number of them, every currently living thing (on earth), descended from the LUCA. If it was a high probability under the right conditions, you would think it would have happened at least a couple of times... We haven't found life anywhere except here (yet).

I don't agree with this for like evolution has showed us that speices type come and go all the time, so why not life in general too. We had some serious resets on life in the past and that is why much might seem to be closely connected, but life started earily in earth's history and is still here.

Don't confuse LUCA with the start of life. Basic life was already somewhat complex when we talk about LUCA and a RNA world. Also it is kind of hard to find other life since we have been no where yet. I'm sure at some point we will find very basic life evidence on Mars one day.

"Theistic Evolution is the anesthetic given to man while his religion is being removed." William Jennings Bryan

Originally posted by colin42
So you are making a statement from your point of view. I read it as you have not noticed any conflict.

In that case I think from my reply shows we both agree.

What do you mean from my point of view? What conflict is there between science and religion? I don't see how there could be any conflict, you yourself said that science is a tool, and religion is a belief. Why can't someone with beliefs use a tool properly?

Originally posted by Xtrozero
Don't confuse LUCA with the start of life. Basic life was already somewhat complex when we talk about LUCA and a RNA world. Also it is kind of hard to find other life since we have been no where yet. I'm sure at some point we will find very basic life evidence on Mars one day.

I didn't say LUCA was the start of life, I said all currently living things descended from it (which is pretty self explanatory). It would be certainly interesting if life was found on Mars, and would certainly show that life has begun more than once.

Originally posted by wingedmo26
"Theistic Evolution is the anesthetic given to man while his religion is being removed." William Jennings Bryan

Not really though, theistic evolution came with evolution. Religion is a belief, most people who believe in God would also believe in most, if not all, major scientific theories. Religion and evolution actually fit very well together. Still, its understandable that many theists, and atheists, do not believe in evolution. Its not a very easy thing. Nobody has yet provided evidence for it in this thread (still waiting).

Originally posted by colin42
Err are we having a translation issue here. You don’t know anything about the conflicts between religions such as creationists and evolution? If that is so read this thread and all the 100's of threads on this subject

If you are saying there 'SHOULD' be no conflict then again I agree.

Oh I see what you mean. I meant there should be no conflict. As in there isn't any conflict between religion and science, but there is conflict between certain religions and science. Sorry I didn't understand you earlier, thats probably what you were saying the whole time

Originally posted by colin42
I know it’s just words but you don’t 'believe in science', it is not a faith. You read the evidence, perform the experiments if you can and then apply it to your understanding of the world. Then you either reject or accept. It has nothing to do with belief.

I know what you mean, but there are often several theories in science, and you do sometimes need to choose which one to believe. In the 1900s Einstein believed the universe to be static. He was a scientist, and used science to come up with his conclusions, but his discoveries were debunked by people such as Hubble. These days most scientists would believe that the universe is expanding, but really thats only what we believe. It could be that in the future someone will work out that the universe is actually shrinking, who knows? Therefore it must only be a belief. Generally a belief backed up by very good evidence, but none the less able to be disproven-not 100% fact.

Originally posted by colin42
Darwin and his supporters paid a heavy price for publicising the theory, a price set by the religious groups of that day and that has continued for many years

I see what you mean. It is unfortunate, since most of the time these people don't understand any of what they are talking about. But that does not really negate the fact that some people who believed in some religion also believed the theory of evolution. The point I was trying to make was that religion is a belief in God/Gods, and sometimes other things, but most of their knowledge comes from elsewhere. Christians don't use their bible to study maths, they learn it from elsewhere. And they can use their knowledge in maths to study parts of the bible. Similarily, when the theory of evolution came around, religious people would have used that knowledge to study scripture, and see how it fits in with their beliefs.

Originally posted by colin42
Evolution is the most accessible theory of them all and the one most easily applied to observations one can make even in your backyard.

Anyone that does not understand what evolution describes does not want to understand. This is why we see the same people saying the same incorrect statements over and over again. Dishonest misrepresentation and purposeful ignorance. If someone rejects what evolution describes that is a fair judgement. To reject evolution based on purposeful ignorance is not, yet many do.

Ah, yes, I don't really know what to call it, but I was talking about Darwin's theory on the origin of species. As in everything evolving from one common ancestor. Its very clear that evolution is happening all the time, thats not in any way hard to understand. What is a little bit more complicated is the idea of everything evolving from singe celled organisms.

Originally posted by colin42
I don’t agree but advise you to stop waiting and go find the answers for yourself. Then decide whether you reject or accept what evolution describes.

Before you claim to have the option of sitting on the fence. Those days are over. Science see's evolution as a done deal and there is more than enough evidence to make your decision one way or the other.

Ok, I'll go and look it up again, and then post about it here. But I still believe that the said evidence is a little bit more complicated than what you are implying. You didn't wan't to post it here, so it must either be lengthy, or complicated, or you don't really remember/know.

Originally posted by colin42
As I have written before. At its most simplest it is cause and effect. Small changes, selected by the environment over time.

This is where I feel those that support intervention trip up. They misuse the word random. There is nothing random about how advantages are selected so it looks to them like the hand of intelligent design when in fact every action in this universe will play its part in that selection in some way no matter how small.

Everything is random, and is believed to increase entropy. Selection does have non-random variables as well, and overall will usually go towards an advantage over a disadvantage (due to disadvantages obviously not helping the organism to survive). Importantly though any individual changes in the genome etc. are random themselves, and therefore selection is largerly driven by randomness.

Originally posted by colin42
Define random in the context of the universe

In the context of the universe? Well, I think the current consensus is that the movement of atoms, and their parts is random (apart from the interactions with other atoms). The movement of planets probably would be random, but not in the universe that humans have explored, since they are all affected by other planets, stars etc. The life of planets and stars isn't really random either, since its all determined by several factors. I don't really know if anything is truly random, as everything is affected by other things. Perhaps that was the point you were making?

Originally posted by colin42
What part of the selection process is random?

I suppose you are right in that selection is not random, but what I meant was that it all comes down to the random changes in the genomes. A mouse cannot just begin to select for larger body size, without the random possibility of such a choice arising. And I think that the further we go back in time the smaller the selection power was, and it was driven more by randomness, although I'm certainly not sure of that. I don't think selection played a large role in self-replicating organisms, as the only traits that could be selected against were those that killed the organism before replication, or affected the replication negatively. I suppose anything that positively affected replication could have been selected for, though.

Originally posted by salainen
If it was a high probability under the right conditions, you would think it would have happened at least a couple of times...

But the right conditions disappeared as soon as there was life to exploit the available resources..

Originally posted by rhinoceros

Originally posted by salainen
If it was a high probability under the right conditions, you would think it would have happened at least a couple of times...

But the right conditions disappeared as soon as there was life to exploit the available resources..

I don't quite see how. Do you mean that life suddently exploded and was everywhere, or are you saying that the right conditions were only at that specific place where it occured, and by occuring the one chance was gone. Had it failed, and the first or the first 1000 singe celled prokaryotes died, well we wouldn't be here. Or if they had died, the opportunity for some other life would have opened?