Evolution or God

Angilion said:
I don't know what you mean by "evolution of the creation of the planet". Evolution is change over time, so are you referring to changes in stories about the creation of the planet?

We know that other planets exist. Almost certainly lots of them. Probably a thousand billion billion just in the observable universe. So it's not the case that as far as we know the creation of a planet has never happened anywhere else. I don't understand what you're saying.
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I can understand that evolution happens over a long period of time. But why hasn't any other planet evolved to the point of having any life form that can move on top of the surface?

Earth seems to be the exception to any other planet.

The science says all the planets came in to existance around the same time. Yet only earth has a human life form that is self aware.
 
BowdonUK said:
I can understand that evolution happens over a long period of time. But why hasn't any other planet evolved to the point of having any life form that can move on top of the surface?

Earth seems to be the exception to any other planet.

The science says all the planets came in to existance around the same time. Yet only earth has a human life form that is self aware.
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Your post shows that you have not done any research into any meaningful cosmology - Not saying this in some kind of diss way of course just stating an observation. It's all cool as we learn new things all the time. I might be wrong in some of my views too, but I read, watch and adapt so we are all in this together.

"But why hasn't any other planet evolved to the point of having any life form that can move on top of the surface?"
Because Evolution isn't a set scale time frame. Civilisations come and go, we have evidence of this over the last few thousands of years on Earth. Some of the earliest civilisations we know of were very intelligent for their time, had sound knowledge of the stars based on archaeological discoveries etc but we still know very little about them. We still discover new deep sea lifeforms to this day because only a fraction of the deep sea is actually explored/mapped.

From observed scientific evidence, single sell organisms take millions of years to evolve into multi-cell if the conditions are right, the evolution part comes into play are a by-product of survival. Life adapts to the conditions of its environment. Carbon based life needs certain ingredients to survive, so it evolves over millions of years to adept to the changing climates the environment goes through until those ingredients are no longer available.

Life could have easily formed on various planets and moons in our own solar system in its early years billions or millions of years ago when conditions were different, they might exist today in a simpler form under their surfaces (see below). Any surface life on these worlds will have long been destroyed from any signs due to cosmic impacts and violent geography turning everything to dust and rubble, something Earth is capable of doing on a regular basis as we have seen...


"Earth seems to be the exception to any other planet."
There is no science that says this or has found this to be the case. on the contrary, a large number of observations and tests have shown that other planets in our own solar systems are either have bio signatures, or have the ingredients to support life underneath their surface layers. Moons of Jupiter and Saturn for example are confirmed candidates for future NASA missions that will launch in the late decade and 2030s with equipment dedicated to life hunting.

Currently the latest from Mars even is showing good promise: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02968-2

Mars was once like Earth before its atmosphere was lost to space and all surface life ended. It is strongly thought that subsurface life could still exist as we now know that Mars is still active under the surface: https://www.space.com/mars-liquid-water-south-pole-subglacial


"The science says all the planets came in to existance around the same time. Yet only earth has a human life form that is self aware."
Earth is smack in the habitable zone, and so far has evaded extinction level events during the period of humanity. There have been a number of extinction level events before us, else we would likely be dinosaur food these days. In the 1800s a Carrington event happened that caused major havoc to telegram services and electrical systems of the time. If the same solar flare hit us today, we'd be knocked back a generation technologically.

Our solar system is quite unique in that Earth is protected by two gas giants diverting away MOST of the extinction level class rocks that would otherwise head our way. Other planets elsewhere in the habitable zones may not have been so lucky, only forming life for a few million years with a fraction of that evolving complex intelligence but not enough to actually conquer space travel to escape from their doomed fate one day - Perhaps.

I would like to point to you a Cool Worlds Lab video by Dr Kipping where a fictional civilisation's story is told using known science principles and basing intelligence from a sample set of 1 (humanity) since it is what we know of currently. This gives you the best possible example of the how and why, it is the Fermi Paradox described in a way you would never have thought of otherwise, and super easy to visualise and understand.

 
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BowdonUK said:
I can understand that evolution happens over a long period of time. But why hasn't any other planet evolved to the point of having any life form that can move on top of the surface?
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We have no idea whether or not that is the case. We don't even really know how big the universe is. It might be infinite. But in the part of the universe that's (at least theoretically) observable from Earth, it's estimated that there are about 10^21 star systems. The limited evidence and understand that we have indicates that it's extremely common for stars to have planets orbiting them(*). So the number of planets in the observable universe is probably at least a few times higher than that. Maybe 5 times as high, i.e. an average of 5 planets per star systems.

So the probably roughly accurate ballpark figure for the number of planets in the observable universe alone is ~5.000,000,000,000,000,000,000
The number of planets we've had even a superficial look at is 8. That's including Earth. 8 from ~5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. We're nowhere near being able to confidently state that no other planet has life on it.

It does seem likely that at least the vast majority of planets aren't suitable for life. We don't know how life starts on a planet but we do know that there are some conditions that must be met for life to exist and that those conditions must remain stable for a very long time. Most of the universe is extremely hostile to life. Many planets will be close enough to their star for the planet to be baked and irradiated to extreme levels, all the time. Or baked on one side and deep frozen on the other side due to being tidally locked to the star. Many other planets will be far enough away from their star to not receive enough energy for life to be possible. Many planets in between, receiving something in the right range of energy from their star to potentially support life won't be able to for any of numerous other reasons. There's a couple of those next door. Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect that has made it far hotter with a ridiculously dense atmosphere that's probably toxic to everything. Also, it frequently rains concentrated acid and frequently has storms that make hurricanes on Earth look tranquil. Mars has no magnetosophere, so its atmosphere has been almost entirely stripped away and it's irradiated and frozen. On top of all that, we don't know how life starts on a planet. Maybe it's fantastically rare. Maybe Earth is the only planet with life on it. But maybe it's just extremely rare. Maybe the combination of whatever is required for life to start happening on a planet on which conditions are suitable enough for long enough is a wild long shot, a one in a billion billion chance. If that was true, there would be life on ~5000 planets in the observable universe. Or maybe it's much more common. We don't really have a clue. Not yet.

BowdonUK said:
Earth seems to be the exception to any other planet.

The science says all the planets came in to existance around the same time. Yet only earth has a human life form that is self aware.
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I'm pretty sure not all planets came into existence around the same time. Some stars are billions of years older than Sol. Some stars are billions of years younger than Sol. I'm pretty sure that some planets are billions of years older than others and some planets that existed in the past don't exist in the present. Stars heading towards the later parts of their cycle will destroy some of the planets around them.

It's entirely possible that there are people on other planets right now wondering if their world is the only one with life on it. There's enough space in the observable universe for millions of human-level civilisations to exist entirely unaware of each other's existence.

Or maybe it's just us.






* Not strictly true - bodies in space each orbit their joint barycentre rather than one orbiting the other, but that's irrelevant to this subject.
 
Religions are just manmade nonsense to make us feel better, there's far more interesting questions out there.

We only ask "why" because our brains evolved that way, maybe the evolution of life is just there for no reason?

Are we intelligent enough to understand the big picture, due to physical restrictions our brains may never understand life? (Anthropic principle)
 
Quartz said:
One of the big problems is that you cannot disprove the position that an omnipotent creator simply faked it all. "Yes, it was created to appear to be 100 million years old."

I vaguely remember something like this being a point in Terry Pratchett's Strata where they create planets with a layered geological history. Or something. It's been over 2 decades since I read it.

However, the onus is on those who propose something to prove it, not on others to disprove it. And the evidence in favour of the universe being 14+ billion years old, evolution, and so on is impressive.
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This can be applied to any and everything- for example I can say:

* We live in a matrix controlled by machines and any evidence or thoughts you to suggest otherwise is because the machines designed the matrix to appear that way to humans so we'd think it's real

It's schrodinger's cat; we are the cat and no matter how hard we try we can never see the box, whether it exists or not.

It is impossible to prove any theory about your own existence if you do not make assumptions about what is real and what is not - if you accept that anything can be real or fake then nothing can be proven and your entire existence can be a lie
 
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BowdonUK said:
I can understand that evolution happens over a long period of time. But why hasn't any other planet evolved to the point of having any life form that can move on top of the surface?

Earth seems to be the exception to any other planet.

The science says all the planets came in to existance around the same time. Yet only earth has a human life form that is self aware.
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WOW, that is a huge statement.
I for one don't believe for a second that Aliens have visited Earth other than on asteroids (maybe) but to claim no other planet has got life moving on it is a daft statement.
Chances are the building blocks for life are all over the Universe and life will find a way, the chance of it turning intelligent is very rare.
Life on Earth went through many phases and extinction events before humans arrived.

I in no way believe in Gods or Alien visitation but I always remember a well known evolutionist saying that in the Timeline humans don't make sense.
Darwin (often misquoted) said we came from the same ancestor as apes but that missing link has never been found.
 
Obviously the "gods" that humans have created in their imaginations over the years are not real. Evolution quite obviously is real.

Having said that, without anything to prove otherwise, you cannot completely discount that there maybe some higher sort of celestial being or "creator" of things, beyond even our comprehension.
 
So if you had two choices and you can only choose one of them

Someone close to you has cancer, you can either pray to "God" or use science to heal them....

You would choose praying??
 
evolution gets my vote .. but then I am a geneticist so slightly biased.

if you wanted to you could still have god in the mix but not 6000 years ago. ... but I know scientists who are still religious, because then you get onto the topic of what was before the big bang, what is the other side of the expanding universe, what caused all the elements to be in place to create. the primordial soup which lead to life .

I am no scientologist..... far far from it (so much so I could have got the wrong end of the stick) but I don't think it is implausible that at some point many years ago that a higher being seeded our planet... possibly right at the start or possibly somewhere along the way. (but I am talking alien rather than godly - but at some point the 2 things do merge )
 
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I have a different proposition for you that may make you very uncomfortable.


Before religion, we had astrology, the planets is where the bible story comes from, they are the myths of the ages.

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something daft already!! said:
I don't know but reality seems more likely to exist without agency. Religion is a man made construct to enforce control over the population and try to explain something which those providing it, cannot explain.
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Exactly, the human ego knows no bounds, they would even delude people if it means they shine.
The Sun in astrology relates to the human Ego, to be a Star. We are a star but we are lost in this age, we have left many spiritual lessons and practices behind, we live in a very deluded state, you are either religious or not but neither are near the truth.

If you begin to understand science, the Sun and Moon have effect on Earth, we only exist due to these bodies inflicting change upon our planet. We live on this planet, why would we not be effected? Only the ego would defend such non possibility as it then takes away some of that self centered "Freedom".

The ego finds it too scary that we are not in full control.

God as a human is just our projection of our ego.
 
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Here is evidence of how full of arrogance and ego humans are today in this age.


Take a peice of ancient history and model it with our ignorance of today.
"If the ancient Romans knew of what they had made, they could have gotten to the Moon"

Today we simply don't understand what direction Romans went in or anything in the past, we guess, we make it easy.. the real work is not done.
We must have answers, even if the answers are untrue, it brings in adoration, money and all the things the material world can benefit us, but we are derempt of any of the spirituality.

There is no answer, no human alive today knows.

The material world is the illusion, the ego is also.
None of it is real, we simply apply subjective terms to it and hold it as truth.. humans are not intelligent, they are manipulative.

We can now move into more philosophical talk.



We live in a time where being seen as happy or successful is treated better than who we are for real on the inside.
Suicide is up, relational problems.. ego centricity on both sides of the sexes and mutations of that form to appeal to being special.

It is hard for me as a person to see where we are, but I do know that the old age of Pisces is waning and the new age of Aquarius is incoming.

Pisces stands for faith, belief, sacrifice, and religion. Aquarius represents thought, contemplation, innovation, and science. In the movement from the former era to the latter, religion battles science.
This is very evident in our present world. We might have thought that science triumphed already by the discoveries of Newton, Darwin, Einstein, et al. But these last few decades we see religion making an aggressive fundamentalist comeback, as if we have to choose between the two cosmologies, although they really speak about completely different things, with completely different languages.


We have moved into science but have not stripped it away fully, the delusions of the past still have no answers, we have no spirit, no grounding as humans.

We have a huge split and divide in beliefs and we are to simply accept that people wish grave ill things of us without concequence, but we are the ones hurting, feeling pushed back from the inside, we must wear a smile!

Everything is fake.
 
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BowdonUK said:
I can understand that evolution happens over a long period of time. But why hasn't any other planet evolved to the point of having any life form that can move on top of the surface?

Earth seems to be the exception to any other planet.

The science says all the planets came in to existance around the same time. Yet only earth has a human life form that is self aware.
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Science only knows a small proportion of what is out there. I find it hard to believe we are the only advanced civilization when the universe goes on for infinity. Our evolution in its current state and brains just simply cannot comprehend. It is not hard to believe that there is a civilisation out there that looks at us as if we have the brain power of an ant.
 
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This thread can only go one way.

100% atheist here. I was religious up until I was 16 and went to church and all. Then I realised that the people who went to church had the same amount of flaws as the ones who didn't so I started questioning the bible.

Add a smidge of logic to the situation and the bible/religion falls right on its face.
 
BowdonUK said:
I think the real question of the thread is how life started?

Because evolution and God aren't the same thing. They can co-exist.
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"God sent the asteroid hat contained water and organic matter that seeded Earth, just like it once seeded Mars and maybe Venus/Mercury" - Will be the changing answer.

That's fine, one part of humanity need a god to survive, it always has from the days before major religion was a thing, people worshipped the moon, the sun, the waves, the thunder.... Greek Mythology has entered the chat etc. Most religious texts speak of "many worlds" and "many creations" when referring to god's work, in Islam for example it says that we were created amongst many other creations and given privilege over many creations, not all creations, "many" - So at some point in the past it was known by mankind that other beings existed and mankind wrote that down in a book. The privilege part over other creations refers to the animal world, where we have evolved intelligence, the animal world has merely evolved to adapt to changing conditions only.

I think to look at all this from an outside of the box perspective we have to also consider the distant past because it is very clear that past civilisations on earth knew of concepts and things that we simply do not understand today - Maybe one day we will through greater archaeology who knows.

For all we know, long in the past another type of civilisation thrived on Earth before a cataclysmic event wiped them out leaving no trace, or at least if there is trace then it's deep buried under millions of years of crust that has moved on top of it as tectonic plates have shifted the continents over time completely changing surface geology.

These are all theories that scholars, theologists, philosophical heads etc etc have been talking about, and as sound as each may be in its own right, we won't know until the entire planet is fully explored and mapped - We have a greater understanding of our solar system than the depths of our seas for example, that's kind of mind boggling. We can safely and extremely accurately aim a rocket to smash smack into the middle of a tiny asteroid millions of miles away in space yet can't send an exploration vessel for any length of time to spend mapping the entire sea floor of the planet without complications.
 
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