DNA animation

It is much better, but don't expect it to be something you can speedread.

He was biologist first, and is pissed off at people misrepresenting evolution in ways that suits their agenda.

Yes, he is too strident; think of it as not suffering fools gladly.

Reply to
Tom Gardner
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Absurd. I never suggested any such thing, and specifically said that I am not invoking some diety to explain DNA-based life.

All I have suggeted is that the primordial soup immaculate conception thing (remember when spontaneous generation was orthodox? You're too young) is improbable, so something else might be considered. The response from people without ideas is "creationist!"

Of course questioning orthodoxy raises questions!

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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Reply to
John Larkin

The difficulty of reading his work is how boring it is.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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Reply to
John Larkin

I think you're too young to remember spontaneous generation too.

But what are the other alternatives, at least in general terms?

If intelligence was involved, whether it's god or aliens, then the intelligence still needs its origin explained.

If not intelligence, then what?

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

I read a book about Louis Pasteur when I was a kid. It's amazing that people didn't already understand about germs, from mere folklore.

If life popped up spontaneously on Earth, a few billion years ago, from lifeless origins, it probably popped up somewhere else billions of years before. The universe is maybe 1e10 years old and has maybe

1e21 stars. Big numbers.

Consider the possibilities.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

Isn't that the true definition of a Troll?!!!

You must be new here.

JL is the top poster here I'd bet. Make of that whatever you like.

Tim

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Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
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Reply to
Tim Williams

Well they though fish "spontaneously generated" from water, and flies from rotten meat, so if they saw visible mold they'd think the same.

Folklore should have informed people that if you get hit on the head you lose consciousness, yet it took a long time to realize that mind was the function of the brain. The Egyptians preserved a mummy's organs in separate jars but threw the brain away. Aristotle thought it was a cooling system for the heart.

Folklore about contagion led to theories about "bad air" or something.

And AFAIK the Greeks didn't even think to speculate about gravity, which is not hard to observe, but they seem not to have noticed it. They noticed that things fall (heavy bodies fall faster, right) but didn't wonder why.

But life needs heavy elements from at least 2nd generation stars. Maybe our seeds formed before our sun, but it would still be a matter of spontaneous, random processes.

You keep saying that but what are the possibilities?

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

But is mostly on topic so deserves slack.

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

Yep, and if life exists elsewhere in the universe, how would we know over t he vastness of space??? So the idea that for life to evolve spontaneously requires us to be aware of other life in the universe is not a good argumen t... just like all your other arguments about the origins of life.

It's actually almost certain that there is life elsewhere in the universe. In fact, it is nearly certain that intelligent life exists somewhere other than Earth. It's actually much of Earth where we have our doubts.

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  Rick C. 

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Rick C

I'm just reading what he writes. His words speak for themselves. He may be the most frequent poster, but he is also the most frequent troll. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

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  Rick C. 

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Reply to
Rick C

Yup, it seems likely that it life has occurred elsewhere.

A more interesting question is what are the chances we will find out about it and/or converse with them, given the timescales and distances involved.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

If it's feasible to make a super optical telescope with a big array of big space telescopes, then we might see visible evidence long before meeting them. It sure would be safer that way.

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

Not really. It has been demonstrated that we broadcast enough EM signals that any civilization that could reach us would have already heard our signals and would be looking for us by now.

We let that horse out of the barn some time ago.

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Rick C

I read once a story about a medical missionary in the New Guinea highlands, who couldn't get people to take antibiotics to stop them going blind, because the witch-doctor said the blindness was caused by demons.

He put his finger in an infected person's eye and rubbed it in his own and a few days later had a full-on infection they could recognize, then treated it with the antibiotics and got better (which no-one ever did) and they weren't convinced.

So he brought a microscope, put some eye goo on a slide and let them look at the "demons" for themselves. Told them the antibiotic killed the demons and they were all convinced immediately and he was able to save many people's eyesight.

Adapting an incorrect belief is easier than adopting a correct one.

Clifford Heath.

Reply to
Clifford Heath

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He was a biologist long before he got into the public atheist role.

As an atheist, he's a lot less impressive that he is as a biologist. "The G od Delusion" is essentially a polemic, while there is probably quite a to b e said about why humans are susceptible to the delusions that there's a per sonal god talking to them. Religious mania is a well known psychological d isorder, and the difference between the people who have to be committed up in a psychiatric institution and those who voluntarily commit themselves to a religious institution is merely a difference in degree.

Dawkins doesn't have that kind of lab. The people who do have much more pro fitable things to do with their time.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

The timescale that matters is the ephemeral nature of any technological society compared to astronomical timescales.

In a nutshell, the problem is this: civilisation kills planets.

Biological progress is driven to increase dissipation. Technology rapidly multiplies that until resource exhaustion is inevitable and irreversible.

Clifford Heath

Reply to
Clifford Heath

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His style doesn't seem to have improved. His content, in both the Selfish G ene and the Blind Watchmaker, is absolutely orthodox biology, and correspo ndingly difficult to improve. John Larkin doesn't like actual science but t hat's a problem with John Larkin, rather than Richard Dawkins.

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The "mainstream" making the assertions weren't the people doing the work, b ut rather people who thought that they were entitled to have opinions about it. Few of them were as un-entitled to have opinions as John Larkin is, but the less entitled you, the more entitled you seem to feel.

It's not so much that they can't allow themselves the option as that they k now enough to recognise that it isn't an option. John Larkin might try to t risect angle while he's about it.

John Larkin doesn't seem know much about electronic design either.

Some of them can even design special purpose transformers for specific jobs , rather than making excuses about it being too hard to find a local coil-w inder to wind them for you.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

Piles of TTL gates don't have any mechanism to create the wiring that might link them up into an assembly that might run MS DOS.

Self-replicating RNA does have this kind of option, and seems to have had the capacity to exploit DNA as a more stable data storage system.

John Larkin does claim to believe in evolution, but he clearly doesn't understand the implications of that belief.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

I would describe it as a catalog of the arguments (good and bad) against theism. I was careful who saw the cover as I was reading it while back-packing around the Philippines!

It's a difference in kind - the kind of harm that results. Not in the kind of psychological process that allows delusion.

We don't mind young girls believing in Unicorns, or children in Santa, because we know they'll grow up and stop believing in them, not start cult compounds preparing for the imminent return of their chosen mythic creature.

Unicorns and Santa are grounded in the purported existence of entities that combine different actual elements in a non-factual way. E.g. a unicorn is "a horse with a horn" (both ideas are real and meaningful) and Santa "an old man with a beard and red clothes who comes down the chimney to leave gifts" - all possible factual elements, but combined in a counter-factual way.

Gods on the other hand are grounded in combinations of non-actual elements in a way that cannot be construed as either factual nor counter-factual - because the elements themselves are abstract constructions; things like infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, first cause, creator, etc. These are all abstract categories for which there is *no observable* therefore the combination is unobservable.

That's what I mean when I say "the term 'God' *does not refer*".

It's not that there is no answer, rather there is *no question* that can be answered.

When there is no possibility of grounding, there is no restraint on the behaviour (including the evil) that might result.

Clifford Heath

Reply to
Clifford Heath

Some proponents of "intelligent design" have concocted pseudo-mathematical arguments that produce preposterous numbers.

This is all propaganda designed to impress the gullible, and John Larkin is seriously gullible.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

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