RE: The code that is DNA
December 17, 2019 at 9:11 am
(This post was last modified: December 17, 2019 at 9:19 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(December 16, 2019 at 6:44 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: I don't know anything about odds, but the strangeness and rarity of life is certainly interesting. We can easily envision a world in which life is constantly and continually emerging naturally out of the environment, much like waves in the sea. Instead, if it ever did arise naturally it only appears to have done so once, however many billions of years ago the standard model suggests, and in only one location in the universe, and then never again.
I emphasize once mostly because evolution always attempts to trace ancestry to a single common ancestor for all life. Rarely do you hear someone suggest multiple lineages emerging from separate origins of life.
It is interesting, isn't it? It's not so much that life only arose once, though, it's that it's only stuck the once. Similarly, no comment on terrestrial biology is a comment on the universe as a whole. If we were going to go that route, though, we have to acknowledge that we actually do find life in every habitable nook and cranny of the known universe so far. So it might be pretty common - even if habitable planets aren't....relatively speaking. There may be little islands of life all over the place..but the planets only form under specific circumstances around specific stars seperatef by immense distances, and then, only exist for a set amount of time before they end up getting gutted by any number of events and processes. This, all but ensuring that every given representative of life is convinced that they are utterly and completely alone.
The reason that you rarely hear the above, from biologists, is that it runs counter to facts of genetics. We hear it all the time from creationists, though, who insist that god specially created people, and also created animals - multiple individual lineages with separate origins.
I'll ask you a similar question to the one I asked Yukon. If it turned out that the universe was teeming with life, that it was as common as water - would this make you believe in gods less, more, or just as much as you do today?
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
