h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ok, it's story time kiddies. Douglas [Adams] somehow read my mind and wrote the script for the radio show. Sort of, my theory was not quite as 'clean' as Hitchhiker's. I was in high school [US, grades 10-12] from 1974 to 1977. My biology teacher was a fantastically smart man, Milo Misut [Milo being short for something he never revealed]. He was born in the village made famous by that Vlad dude, from whence the vampire stories came. He was also left-handed and suffered severe beatings by elders whenever he instinctively used his left hand for anything. This forced him to become ambidextrous-I loved watching him write two separate questions on two blackboards, one with each hand, at the same time. He spoke at least 14 languages fluently. He introduced me [and all of his students] to Darwin and other theories on how we got here, religions never entered these discussions. He didn't think Darwin's ideas were incorrect, just that they left large holes and gaps in explaining things. Over the next three years I researched human history and ideas on the origin of life extensively and came to the same conclusion-nobody has the answer [unless it's 42 and I'm not going there now]. There are and have been some pretty good ideas, none are complete. Like Dawkins says, there are huge gaps in the timeline. Some of what he says is true, lots of it is simply opinion [unless he's also a child psychologist intimate with DSM IV, a computer programming expert in many many many different programming languages on many many many different systems and an expert on religious beliefs and trends in other countries-specifically the US]. Huge gaps in a criminal investigation leave you with circumstantial evidence, so that's all we have now regarding the origin of life. What fills those gaps will help answer this question. I don't see evolution by natural selection doing the job solo, I think it had help at least once to make huge leaps [in evolutionary terms]. My original theory was that some un-earthly ship dumped it's waste here-waste being loaded with all kinds of living organisms-howevr this was likely due to repeated incidents of airplanes dumping theirs at altitude and the people on the ground wondering what the "blue ice" was a that time. It's as likely that there was a ship that crashed. Quite simply: WE DON'T KNOW. Anyone who claims they DO should be examined.

Ok, it's story time kiddies. Douglas [Adams] somehow read my mind and wrote the script for the radio show. Sort of, my theory was not quite as 'clean' as Hitchhiker's.

I was in high school [US, grades 10-12] from 1974 to 1977. My biology teacher was a fantastically smart man, Milo Misut [Milo being short for something he never revealed]. He was born in the village made famous by that Vlad dude, from whence the vampire stories came. He was also left-handed and suffered severe beatings by elders whenever he instinctively used his left hand for anything. This forced him to become ambidextrous-I loved watching him write two separate questions on two blackboards, one with each hand, at the same time. He spoke at least 14 languages fluently. He taught at colleges and universities all over the world. He introduced me [and all of his students] to Darwin and other theories on how we got here, religions never entered these discussions. He didn't think Darwin's ideas were correct or incorrect, just that they left large holes and gaps in explaining things and didn't explain other things well. Over the next three years I researched human history and ideas on the origin of life extensively and came to the same conclusion-nobody has the answer [unless it's 42 and I'm not going there now]. There are and have been some pretty good ideas, none are complete, none are factual. Like Dawkins says, there are huge gaps in the timeline. Some of what he says is true, lots of it is simply opinion [unless he's also a child psychologist intimate with DSM IV, a computer programming expert in many many many different programming languages on many many many different systems and an expert on religious beliefs and trends in other countries-specifically the US]. Huge gaps in a criminal investigation leave you with circumstantial evidence, so that's all we have now regarding the origin of life. What fills those gaps will help answer this question. I don't see evolution by natural selection doing the job solo, I think it had help at least once to make the huge leaps [in evolutionary terms] history indicates. My original theory was that some un-earthly ship dumped it's waste here-waste being loaded with all kinds of living organisms-however this was likely due to repeated incidents of airplanes dumping theirs at altitude and the people on the ground wondering what the "blue ice" was a that time. It's as likely that there was a ship that crashed, or that this planet was a vacation spot left to rot or a zoo that ran out of funds. Quite simply: WE DON'T KNOW. Anyone who claims they DO is, IMO, incredibly gullible, stupid or a liar.

sorry about the double post!!

Er, Jez, I do have a name! (Even if you don't like it...) So what's with all the links to my space? That's just weird!

I mentioned Hell in response to someone else's post!

In fact, your whole posting is weird!

The problem with your theory, Dr J, is that it doesn't tell us anything about how life develops - it simply assumes that life was already present. Did that life evolve elsewhere, was it "created", or what? The primary question remains unanswered.

Noggin

Noggin has given you the standard response, Jeff. I would have done the same if he hadn't beaten me to it. Your theory relates only to the origin of life *on Earth*. The origin of life is the much more intriguing question.

You also haven't considered what kind of evidence we'd expect to find if your theory were correct. Maybe it wouldn't be Dawkins' famous 'rabbit fossils in the Pre-Cambrian', but there would be some sign of a range of levels of life-forms appearing at the same time. Moreover, they would presumably be pre-adapted to a different environment from that of Earth at that time.

In the absence of evidence for your idea, I have no alternative but to send you to Occam's for a shave. A trickier idea to refute is that the most basic 'seeds' of life came from space, as proposed by Fred Hoyle. In that case, there would be no evidential difference on Earth between life's arising here spontaneously or from space dust.

What we would expect though is to find complex organic molecules in space. Interestingly, that is what we do find. Nevertheless, there are plenty of potential Earth environments where relevantly similar conditions obtained at the time.

toxx

toxxin

<>

Honest answer: I don't Know.

This assumes that there is only one honest answer, and that the comulsory honesty only applies to a victim and not an agressor.

There are other honest responses, "Why do you ask?" for instance, or "why are you so angry?."

"promise not to hurt me?"

Compulsory honesty might have prevented him picking up the axe in teh first place.

<>

If it says on the cover 'Fiction' then we all know what we're getting so there isn't any dishonesty involved is there?

Or am I missing the point

There are actually many problems with all the theories, and I never attempted to explain how life develops from square one, only how life here may have been planted or 'helped along' via some external additives. There's also the possibility that what we call life was engineered by something we might call a robot. Anything is possible.



Only I know what I have and have not considered, and the evidence we'd expect to find is exactly what's here now-this is because to develop a theory about what took place in the past one must work backwards from the evidence that exists in the present thus leaving no alternate 'ending' as a possibility. This is true for ANY theory as they all end at the present.



IMO the evidence is all around us.

The dinosaurs were here, allegedly, for millions of years-were they intelligent? Intelligent according to whom? Were they unintelligent and or undeveloped because they left behind nothing that we might think indicates intelligence such as writing or other evidence of communication or buildings? Or were they truly intelligent in that they didn't choose to rape and pillage the planet and pollute the ground, water and air and instead lived WITH the planet?


Is this the first planet humans have been on? Who can say? Who can say if those drawings found in a cave in France were really 52,000-65,000 years old? Who's to say that one is a map of the solar system at approximately that point in time? Who's to say that the lines connecting what might be Venus and Earth indicate a travelled path? Who's to say we didn't leave Venus after we polluted the atmosphere and turned it into ammonia? Who's to say we didn't leave Mars after we blew up everything on the surface and wasted the atmosphere? Too many possibilities. Too many gaps in what we call history. Nobody knows.

that apple tree in the garden of eden had a lot to answer for lol.

This is precisely *not* how science works, Jeff! What we do is come up with hypotheses as to what happened in the past and work out what present observations would show us to be *wrong*. If we find that we are wrong, we can eliminate that hypothesis. It seems to me that some of your ideas are soon eliminated by observations that have already been made.

It is no use just looking at the data we have, and trying to work out a theory based on it. Infinitely many hypotheses are consistent with any given data set. I suggest that you read 'The Logic of Scientific Discovery' or 'Conjecture and Refutation' by KR Popper.

toxx

"Only I know what I have and have not considered, and the evidence we'd expect to find is exactly what's here now-this is because to develop a theory about what took place in the past one must work backwards from the evidence that exists in the present thus leaving no alternate 'ending' as a possibility. This is true for ANY theory as they all end at the present."

The point is that a valid theory must predict something new. Something that we have not yet observed and preferably something that it is not evident from present knowledge that we ought to observe. How else can we determine if the theory is likely to be correct except by its ability to predict what isn't yet known. For example, general relativity predicted that if one viewed stars angularly near the sun durring a solar eclipse, they would be shifted because their light would have been bent by the Sun's gravity. No one had observed that until after the theory had been proposed; that is why it was such strong evidence for the theory.


"The dinosaurs were here, allegedly, for millions of years-were they intelligent? Intelligent according to whom? Were they unintelligent and or undeveloped because they left behind nothing that we might think indicates intelligence such as writing or other evidence of communication or buildings? Or were they truly intelligent in that they didn't choose to rape and pillage the planet and pollute the ground, water and air and instead lived WITH the planet? "

How about, could they have been intelligent if we consider their brain:body mass ratios? Or, if they were intelligent, why do we not find evidence of stone tools in fossil sites dating back to the Mesozoic? Or anything else that is evidence they influenced their environment in an intelligent way? If a species is intelligent but does not manifest this intelligence in how it interacts with its environment, that intelligence has no survival value and wouldn't have evolved.


"Who can say if those drawings found in a cave in France were really 52,000-65,000 years old? "

Radiocarbon dating on the dyes?



"Who's to say that one is a map of the solar system at approximately that point in time? Who's to say that the lines connecting what might be Venus and Earth indicate a travelled path? Who's to say we didn't leave Venus after we polluted the atmosphere and turned it into ammonia? Who's to say we didn't leave Mars after we blew up everything on the surface and wasted the atmosphere? "

Off subject, but it's CO2, not NH3 on Venus. And humans could never have made that much CO2; we'd have chased ourselves off the planet long before we had. Furthermore, Mars's surfaces that suggest a wet/warm climate are billions of years old.

Cheers for mentioning some hard facts, RDO. I was too lazy to go beyond the theory. Maybe, between us, we've managed to convince Jeff.

toxx

U179697 wrote
>> Er, Jez, I do have a name! (Even if you don't like it...) So what's with all the links to my space? That's just weird! <<

You keep changing your name. In a conversation which lasts years, as this one does, it is confusing to refer to people by a name they will probably stop using three months hence. This method (using the reference to your user number, U179697 ) causes no permanent confusion. Since you don't want people to read or link to your space, I will use just the number in future.

If you are going to keep using the same name, then I can refer to you by that, but the evidence shows that you are not consistent.

I have no opinion on this name one way or the other. But there have been so many of them...

>>I mentioned Hell in response to someone else's post!<<

I corrected your assumptions because they were wrong. This is a public thread. If you want to restrict replies to one person in future, please state it on the post concerned.

As I have said before, when dealing with you I restrict myself to correcting factual errors which refer to my religion, or responding to personal posts.

>>In fact, your whole posting is weird<<

Thank you.

Jez - weird heathen with only one name and who checks her facts whenever possible.

Hi Dr.J

Some interesting questions there, but what are you trying to say? History is bunk, or that science is bunk?

Based on the evidence presently available to us, and testable by us, we are the latest version of an immensely-long evolutionary trail on this planet alone. No credible evidence of intelligent alien intervention has been proven.

The scientific evidence is sufficiently strong though to condemn the creation proposition of the Bible to the status of myth or allegory at best.

Unless you know otherwise............?

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\

Er Jez, I was Della the Cat Woman from June 2001, to February 2004. Then I was Adelaide, and now I am Apple Adelaide. That's not too confusing is it?
Funnily enough, there is a new Della who has come along, and who has similar views to and the same knowledge and way of expression as Blatherskite (and is on at the same time!)

That's already confused some people who haven't been able to understand that I haven't been 'Della' for 14 months!

very naughty indeed lol , how you doing apple .

Fine, Sirshifty... but I am having server cursed problems...

On the subject of evolution, have a look at 'Organisms that Look Designed' @ http://users.rcn.com/rostmd/winace/designed_organisms/ and 'Dolphin embryonic hind limb buds' @ http://www.freewebs.com/oolon/SMOGGM.htm#dolphinhindlimbbud



alji

The reason I think Christianity has gotten a bad name is that for the most part it seems to be practiced contrary to what the Bible teaches. I am a Christian, and having said that, have a different view of it than most. The first is that the Old Testament is STRICTLY for historical use... those who don't believe that are the ones teaching the "fire and brimstone" sermons. The call to witness to others doesn't mean to stand on the corner and preach hate and all those who oppose are going to Hell... I'm a huge proponent of teaching by example as far a witnessing goes.

The underlying and overall message (for me at least), which is rarely gotten or practiced, is to be good to your fellow (hu)man and respect the Earth... that's it. Follow that one easy step and everything that a Christian can preach is covered. With the way its widely practied today, I understand the stigma that Christianity gets.