(December 5, 2015 at 1:21 pm)AAA Wrote:

(December 5, 2015 at 1:19 pm)Irrational Wrote: You can attain it, but it's a matter of what ideals and principles you adhere to as well. It's not always about smart or education. It's also about intellectual integrity.

Ok, so what do I have to do to attain it?

I don't really know much of anything by my own research, I'm just an average Joe who reads a lot and never got it together. But when I read what the brightest (or so-called brightest) minds have to say, I keep my eyes and ears open and run their ideas through the ultimate, and very easy-to-use bullshit filter - it's called the Scientific Method! I'm sure you've heard of it, the problem with those of you with Design on the brain is that you don't seem to understand that the five steps are supposed to be done in order. You go and scramble it up, beginning with your conclusion (Step 5 - there MUST be a designer). When I see a so-called expert doing that, then I know I can look elsewhere for sound ideas.

I just want to point out that the beliefs of scientists are completely irrelevant to the work that they do. Sir Isaac Newton was a practicing alchemist as well as a mathematician and physicist, but it's his work in the latter fields in which he made the greatest contribution. Scientists like everyone else have to show their work, or it doesn't mean a damn.

(December 5, 2015 at 2:34 pm)AAA Wrote: Just because I'm a Christian doesn't mean I won't be a good researcher. Look at virtually every researcher before the 1800s.

Not because you are a Christian. Because you don't accept the most basic biological facts due to your religious beliefs.

Thanks, TRS. Clearly I am too lazy to write all of that out, but instead choose to sit here and snark in short sentences. I am helpful.

Half my field biology team (at least) were Christians. All were evolutionary biologists. My fiancee is a Christian (see immediately above) and she is an evolutionary biologist. Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, is an evangelical Christian and wrote a book on the subject of why evolution must be true, and how it works-- he goes on to make some pretty wild claims about physics, which is not his field, and for which he was roundly criticized by the physics community, but overall you should check it out: The Language of God.

(December 5, 2015 at 2:58 pm)God of Mr. Hanky Wrote:

(December 5, 2015 at 1:21 pm)AAA Wrote: Ok, so what do I have to do to attain it?

I don't really know much of anything by my own research, I'm just an average Joe who reads a lot and never got it together. But when I read what the brightest (or so-called brightest) minds have to say, I keep my eyes and ears open and run their ideas through the ultimate, and very easy-to-use bullshit filter - it's called the Scientific Method! I'm sure you've heard of it, the problem with those of you with Design on the brain is that you don't seem to understand that the five steps are supposed to be done in order. You go and scramble it up, beginning with your conclusion (Step 5 - there MUST be a designer). When I see a so-called expert doing that, then I know I can look elsewhere for sound ideas.

I don't start with the idea of design, I conclude design. Based on the same scientific method that Darwin used and Newton before him. When we have something that we want to study, but can't make observations, we should appeal to our experience to answer the question at hand. Our experience tells us that information comes from intelligence, and complex specific machines come from intelligence. Based on this you should conclude design. You can (and should) still look for a different explanation. But until a good one arises you are relying on faith that one will come.

(December 5, 2015 at 3:05 pm)AAA Wrote:

(December 5, 2015 at 2:58 pm)God of Mr. Hanky Wrote: I don't really know much of anything by my own research, I'm just an average Joe who reads a lot and never got it together. But when I read what the brightest (or so-called brightest) minds have to say, I keep my eyes and ears open and run their ideas through the ultimate, and very easy-to-use bullshit filter - it's called the Scientific Method! I'm sure you've heard of it, the problem with those of you with Design on the brain is that you don't seem to understand that the five steps are supposed to be done in order. You go and scramble it up, beginning with your conclusion (Step 5 - there MUST be a designer). When I see a so-called expert doing that, then I know I can look elsewhere for sound ideas.

I don't start with the idea of design, I conclude design. Based on the same scientific method that Darwin used and Newton before him. When we have something that we want to study, but can't make observations, we should appeal to our experience to answer the question at hand. Our experience tells us that information comes from intelligence, and complex specific machines come from intelligence. Based on this you should conclude design. You can (and should) still look for a different explanation. But until a good one arises you are relying on faith that one will come.

So many of your statements about how life works have overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You are not thinking like a good scientist. You can be one and a Christian at the same time.

(December 5, 2015 at 3:05 pm)AAA Wrote: Our experience tells us that information comes from intelligence, and complex specific machines come from intelligence.

Um, no it doesn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole...on_paradox

(December 5, 2015 at 2:34 pm)AAA Wrote:

(December 5, 2015 at 2:32 pm)God of Mr. Hanky Wrote: People have done what calculations? You would cite if you knew.

Chances are that somebody may have done calculations and found that life as we know it, origin redux is unlikely, but that does not make our own existence particularly remarkable. Even if so, and this is doubtful because such an endeavor to prognosticate would be taken up by a narrow-minded Christian who's goal is not to discover anything but to disprove the work of others, this would not eliminate the possibility of life evolving elsewhere in a different form. Our universe is actually finite, but just how finite it is has been debated, and those like you with an agenda to prove would surely low-ball that figure.

As for life itself, the definition of this has broadened greatly over the past four decades, what with oceanographic research revealing life forms thriving, under conditions where it was previously believed that no life possibly could.
http://www.indiana.edu/~g105lab/images/g...nities.htm
No, Virginia, life does not depend on conditions to fall into place for it. Life digs its cleats into any toehold which it can hang onto, and then it makes its own ecosystem of any resources which it can draw energy from. It works this way because it's life which is alive, not its physical conditions and not its chemical elements. There's no evidence for your god in any of this.

Yes life exists in places you would not expect to find it. But extremophiles are more complex than normal bacteria, so even if you believed in evolution these would certainly not have been able to be the first that evolved. I think the most broad definition of life that could be given is something capable of taking molecules from the environment and use them to produce accurate copies of itself. I don't think I'm being narrow minded, and I want to discover new things. Just because I'm a Christian doesn't mean I won't be a good researcher. Look at virtually every researcher before the 1800s.

Whether or not that uncited claim is true or not is not above debate, but the possibilities they imply for life under a broader range of conditions remain strong.

That you call them "extremophiles" is rather interesting, considering how life, when it first began 4 billion years ago, did so under similar conditions - the atmosphere and ocean was choked with volcanic activity and no oxygen. It was hardly extreme to these life forms, which made do with what it had available. That's what life does.