Re: Curiosity and dead kitties
--- In SkunkworksAMA_at_yahoogroups.com, Spam Hater <searcher@...> wrote:
>
> OK, there are a lot of misconceptions here. First, nobody can figure
> out how life came to be without outside help. Every theory has been
> proven wrong. (snip)
Unfortunately, that argument itself runs on a lot of assumptions AND ignores a lot of facts. Admittedly our world's history of life still contains conjecture, but so far NO theory has been completely disproven--and yes, that does include "intelligent design". However, even "Intelligent design" begs a question of its own: How did THAT intelligence develop?
We've already seen even on our own world that life can exist and thrive in conditions we humans consider too extreme for life. All you have to do is look at the videos of those volcanic hot spots on the ocean floor for a very graphic example. That also debunks your first argument about how life never should have been born on this planet because we already had one place that was dark and relatively oxygen poor, even though it lay under hundreds and even thousands of feet of di-hydrogen oxide. And we all know that mold absolutely loves cool, damp places.
I'll admit that I'd never heard that our oceans had once been covered in algae--considering the breadth of the ocean as it once must have been, it really seems hard to believe the whole surface was covered so as there should have been enormous wave action all around that one high spot that we've named Pangea. I'm quite sure we already had our moon by then (by whatever means it may have formed) so winds and tides would have kept that pot stirring, pretty much preventing any large-scale formation of algae on the seas. Sure, there may have been patches, much like our own Sargasso Sea, but nothing world-spanning.
As for the three extinction events; simply put, none of them killed ALL life, so at no time did it have to start back from scratch. While admittedly even life in the seas was affected in each case, life forms adjusted to the new conditions and continue to do so even today--when left alone by Man.
If you really bother to look, you might see that Man is not alone on this planet even now, but Man does have this habit of destroying any perceived competition for his place at the top of the food chain. Take a look--take a good look at the animals of our world. There are those who say we anthropomorphize the animals and other things in our lives, but when you really pay attention, you might discover that many of those animals are far more intelligent than we want to believe and have been for as long as mankind himself has taken a dominant role on this world.
No, I'm not just talking about whales and dolphins, either. While it's fairly obvious that they are roughly equal to us in intelligence, their lack of manipulative appendages would suggest they can't be; yet they seem to have the most extensive natural communications network in the world. But even on dry land we have many creatures we tend to call 'pests' that demonstrate remarkable intelligence despite our every attempt to confound them. Foxes and raccoons consistently break into homes and outbuildings to scavenge and disrupt our lives. They also live comfortably in places mankind has built for his own comfort. Rats and mice in the wild are remarkably efficient at surviving despite our efforts to eliminate them. We see every one of these creatures as pests in one way or another, yet they all have their roles still in our world and most of them still survive despite our efforts. Unfortunately, at least here in the US wolves--a very needed species--have been all but eliminated.
My point is that the long monologue about life still has far too many questions open that haven't been answered. Intelligent design cannot answer them because it opens a whole new can of worms not even related to religion. And don't forget that even if the many gods over man's history did or do exist, where did THEY come from?
Received on Fri Aug 02 2013 - 15:04:13 CDT
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