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| Re Probablity, NASA and the Origins of Life |
| Re Probablity, NASA and the Origins of Life The whole point of the 'Probablity, NASA and the Origins of Life' was to promote my 'paranormal' view of 'chance' by suggesting that 'randomness' in the universe is innately rigged to produce life. And my ironic point was that NASA was supporting my view, because even given the new understandings of the toughness of life most scientists would not be so perverse as to suggest that life is so likely that it could have independantly arose on our nearest planet. Official consensus scientific opinion isn't saying so and I can't imagine many scientists would stick their necks out and say it officially. A lot of your responses seem to be saying is that life is more likely, or the potential for it, is much more widespread than hitherto believed. And if that's what you're saying to me then well that's great. But does that mean the view that life is a freak, blind accident which science has been promoting with unequivocal certainty for over a 100 years has now gone ? Well if it is, let me dance on it's grave singing hallelujah! However if this is not the view held by all the scientists out there and these google newsgroups display that you hold many differing views on this same subject. Then you still need probablity theory to explain why life is just a pointless, freak accident and that article was aimed at you. From a historical viewpoint the origins of life has always been a bit of an Achilles Heel for Science because it is a place where theist arguments can creep in and people can argue that God created life. So Science has always needed an argument that this event was freak but 'explainable' event. Just saying it was a freak event can open the door to mystical explanations of life's creation. So the probability explanation was Science's attempt to explain an extremely unlikely event. But I always saw it as like putting a plaster on a gaping gash. The consequences of this new liberal view of life's origins has some interesting repercussions. If life will get going given te slightest chance and doesn't seem to need such special conditions in which to occur. Why does it 'wish' so tenaciously to exist ? Why do the chemicals go to all that bother? What do they have to 'gain'? Also it looks like we might have a universe that seems to be giving birth to life and maybe is teeming with the stuff. So what exactly is the universe and maybe it is in some senses 'alive' !? I won't be the only one to make these kind of observations and they sound like evidence to suggest the work of God (or whatever you believe in) in the universe's conception, it will also suggest a theoretical support for UFO believers. But if Science is happy with those unintended implications that's OK with me. But in the past it has been very reticent to be seen as championing anything that might just conceivably be promoting Religious or paranormal beliefs. However what my street sense tells me is this - Most Scientists who are reading this, even the younger ones will have been brought up to believe that life was a one off freak event. But because of these new discoveries about life's resilence, and more importantly this big NASA push, they have become a bit shy about expressing this view, even the new watered down version. Everybody's just biding time, waiting for the results from these Mars missions. And if they don't find life there, or NASA ends it's 'life is likely on Mars' campaign because of a lack of success, there will be an almost collective 'Told you so' from the scientific community. But if the opposite is true, no one will have egg on their faces. The trouble is no one knows for sure what they'll find. So the question remains why is NASA so certain.? Anyway, whether NASA finds life or not, I will still believe that there's something odd about chance and the universe and that it has direct relevance.to life's place within in it. |
| This was my response to replies I got on the Google Newsgroups Jan 2002. I found that most of them didn't find any great problem about the abundance of life in the Universe and they kept saying that a bacterial form of life may indeed be common and them I realised that there as been some makor change in the way they view the origins of life that I will hopefully discuss at a later date |
| The Modern Paranormalist |