Intelligent Design?
Offline When it comes to the Evolution v Creationism debate, I have wondered for a while now... what sort of intelligent designer would make us in such a manner that we have to do so many bodily functions... Such as eating... excrementing waste.
For example there are animals out there that can produce vitamin C... we cannot, and must get our daily vitamin C from food. If we were designed intelligently, what sort of sense does it make to give some (un?)intelligently designed creatures this ability, and then keep it from the Pièce de résistance so to speak. Or going further to plants... they get most of what they need from the Sun, and then other random nutrients in water that can even be given via a mist. (Aeroponics) Why can't we, as intelligently designed creatures utilize the same process as plants when it comes to aeroponics? .-. It doesn't make sense.
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
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Probably. Since we haven't actually tried it, it's hard to say for certain.
It's also hard to say whether an artificial magnetosphere would be cheaper/faster/more effective than reigniting Mars' core, or whether either would even be remotely possible any time soon. We're probably a LOT closer to the required level of genetic technology than whatever the science of altering planets will be called when we get to the point we can intentionally modify a planet for the better (subjectively speaking) on that kind of scale.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Actually when I said that, I failed to clarify that I only meant on a small scale, perhaps small enough for a green house? (Then again if we have a greenhouse, I suppose that would hold the gasses, built by some special rovers... actually... I wonder if Curiousity could build a green house. .-.
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
Well the problem with that is that there's too much radiation. None of the things that protect us from the sun are present on Mars. Letting in the good radiation for photosynthesis would simultaneously let in all the radiation that would kill pretty much any living creature on Earth, and certainly anything as complex as plants/animals/etc.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Can you think of any plants that reproduce extremely quickly?As in quickly enough for us to have evolved the given organism into the desired form.
See I was thinking that while we were building the robots and gathering the materials to withstand Mars, we could recreate the composiiton of Martian soil here on Earth, then take the hardiest of, oh, the tenth generation or so, then plant the "cream" of that crop whereupon we would slowly start to introduce increasing amounts of the same sort of radiation to the plants, etc... Granted mutation may ruin that due to damaged DNA, but, well, it couldn't hurt to try, Hel, who knows, we may even stumble upon genes that prevent mutation via radiation.
Then every oh... five generations or so slightly increase the amount of radiation that they're exposed to, etc... until we've reached the conditions that would be created on Mars.
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
I'm not a expert biologist or expert on radiation, just a highly educated layman, who has little knowledge of biology compared to other sciences. So I could be way off here.
But I'm pretty sure the only life forms that could survive the radiation on Mars are some types of extremeophile bacterium. It would take thousands or millions of years to condition any multicellular species to survive the radiation levels seen on Mars, if it is even possible. The radiation there would pretty much instantly kill any plant or animal. Burned to a crisp.
And then there's the reduced gravity, which we cannot currently simulate.
Overall, we'd be better off building a giant space station than trying to terraform Mars. It would be much cheaper. We could probably even start construction today if there were sufficient interest in doing so.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Well, a massive benefit that colonizing and terraforming Mars has as opposed to building a giant spacestation, wouldn't be the fact that we have more room, it's the natural resources that are abound on an untapped planet, perhaps science isn't that far. I don't claim to be a biologist either, actually that's one of my least favourite sciences ( maybe it's because of my first bio class, I don't know) BUT I do know that the evolution of bacteria and virii, happens on a scale that can be seen within a human lifetime... that's why there are new flu strains each year, and now, only a century (or two?) some bacteria are becoming immune to our anti-biotics.
In my personal opinion that's not that bad of a time scale, especially considering the task at hand would be monumental. Granted bacteria aren't going to do much for a planet's terraformation (word?) but it's a start.
And just out of curiousity here, I'm not too well informed on the conditions of Mars (Which actually sounds bad considering what I'm proposing) but what kind of radiation are we talking about here? Are we talking about the electromagnetic radiation spectrum, or are we talking about free neutrons, I'm assuming the former though?
then again on the extraction of resources, I suppose that a Mass Driver project and some way to catch asteroids would yield much higher returns... especially on that aforementioned space station that can process the raw materials... after all most, if not all, of the metals in the Earth's crust came from Asteroids. Well... I know that the heavier metals came from asteroids... as they're at our core from the formation of Earth...
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
Resources are poor on planets. Most of the precious metals sink into the core while the planet cools off. The asteroid belt is going to be the most lucrative location to aquire the resources we need most.
As to the radiation, with no magnetosphere or ozone layer and an atmosphere only 1% as dense as Earth's, Mars is exposed to pretty well everything the universe, and particularly the sun, has to throw at it. All the suns radiation contacts the surface of Mars, while we are protected.
Cosmic rays from outside the solar system are even more hazardous.
X-rays, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, radio waves, gamma rays, and more all strike Mars constantly.
And the surface is completely different than Earths.
Evolution just doesn't work fast enough to overcome all the extreme differences. Earth bacteria maybe, but only a very few, could survive and adapt. Virii would be generally fine, but with no life they'd be dormant. Everything else would be dead or dying in minutes.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Well, in that case, I can't really think of any reason to colonize a planet. However! I would like to point out that asteroids aren't a good source of things like He-3, which would be used in power generation via fusion, with no risk of radiation, and an even higher fuel density AND conversion rate than current fission reactors. Because it doesn't need to be turned into steam power, it can be turned directly into electricity. I digress. The moon, for example, has ~ 500 million years worth of Helium-3 on it. I may be incorrect, but asteroids are pretty much just metal, and some non-metals.
Actually, quite frankly, I'm not at all sure where those lighter elements come from. (Not in a physical sense, yes, stars are fusion reactors, blah blah blah, but rather the gathering and collection of them.) Does it have something to do with gravity fields of large bodies in space resulting in the gases getting stuck in an atmosphere? Or are there other forces at work?
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
We don't actually know how much gas asteroids collect, but I suspect you are right and they won't be a great source of gas. I think the gas giants will be the place to go for that. We just have to overcome the gravity and pressure and they'll be a treasure trove that lasts well beyond the strip mining of every planet and asteroid in the solar system.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Hmm... here's another far-fetched idea. What if we altered the orbit of a gas giant so that it were set on a course to collide with another planet... like Mars (Not necessarily Mars, but a planet) Would that give that planet a super-atmosphere, granted I'm asking for speculation, but does that even sound plausible?
Then we have a rich atmosphere, and can set up shop, so to speak, on that planet and harvest gases.
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
Gas giants already have solid cores from what we can tell. The pressures are so high it turns hydrogen into a metal. Any or even all of the terrestrial planets would just be swallowed up and crushed into powder.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Interesting... so... unless I misunderstand... we could ram enough planets into it to give it a true core.. enough powder would eventually create " dirt" granted.. gravity would be extremely intense by the time there was a "walkable" surface.
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
You'd just end up with a bigger gas giant. Or a star if you threw enough mass in.
The cores of Jupiter and Saturn are likely to be rock and iron just like the terrestrial planets. Just more dense, and covered in hydrogen under so much pressure and so hot that it acts like metal.
Gas giants are the intermediaries between terrestrial planets and brown dwarfs, which are in turn the intermediaries between planets and stars. I don't think people could ever live on one, or have reason to try.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Hmm... I didn't consider that. (It's been a long time since I've talked about astro... anything) I suppose making a star in our backyard isn't a good idea either...
Well, in that case I can't really think of any way to try and harvest a Gas Giant of its... gas.
On a side note I guess Angelo gave up on us. xP
However in light of all of this, I can't think of any reason, beyond those that are political, to try and colonize another planet. Space stations would provide orbital refineries and processing plants for asteroids, and places to live for humans. So that's a check. Large scale aeroponic farms can be built up as well as out and are extremely efficient, that's a check. I suppose we could use Mars as a weapons' testing ground... or maybe psychological experiements... aside from that... I'm stumped.
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
Someone will eventually do it just to prove it can be done, but unless or until it becomes really cheap and fast I agree it is unlikely to happen often.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Actually, you know what, once it's done, there might be a lot of things that you and I could never think of there. (I'm saying that liberally) When we went to the moon, we went to the moon just for the Hel of it. ICBM tech came from it, and later, as our nuclear knowledge developed, it's a large source of Helium-3. Which could fuel our planet for half a billion years. I guess doing something monumental like that just for the sake of doing it could have unprecedented benefits. :3
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
The same kind of thing happened back with the discovery of North America. Noone knows exactly for sure why the Asians or Vikings came, but the Europeans found it trying to blaze a new path to China. You never know what the future can hold.
One benefit of a planet is a built in self defence system and a lot of durability. A space station would be highly vulnerable to all sorts of things that a planet wouldn't be remotely affected by. I'm sure that alone will be enough to push an attempt forward.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
According to some of the Icelandic writings Greenland was settled because a man named Erik the Red was banished from his homeland for manslaughter, he made his was across the North Sea and explored Greenland for three years. Then he came back and tried to get settlers to come to Greenland, which was named as it was to attract people to come under false pretenses that it was a sort of green " paradise." ( He actually said: "...that people would be more eager to go there because the land had a good name."
The colony lasted nearly 500 years. Occasionally trekking to mainland North America for resources, such as wood, a few settlements were attempted but none were permanent.
And the Planet V Space Station thing kind of reminds me of fission reactors.
High efficiency results in higher vulnerability/less safety. (SS)
Low efficiency results in higher durability/safety. (Planet)
I suppose it's all really about the technology available. If we are are able to properly shield our SS's then planets become moot. (Penal colonies maybe?)
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
Arthur c. Clarke contended that Jupiter's might be diamond.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
My take on ID is cosmological not anthropological.
You have the Universe which is billions of time larger than the Earth.
The ID I take It's broader terms not tiny details like to discuss whether it would be better if we don't eat and take a dump. That is self centered.
The broader terms have to do with cosmological constants, the fact that the Universe is intelligible and organized in sets of laws, an so on.
But that's me...
That's just it though. The universe isn't really intelligible. Infact it's one of the most random things in... well... the universe. Stars, Planets, Asteroids, all forms of electromagnetic radiation... are all spawn of the arbitrary decay of atoms... (indirectly of course) and that is something that is inherently random, to the point to where it is physically impossible to know when it will happen. Those un-knowable things that happen on a quantum scale spawn everything around us.
Also as a side note, I'd venture to say that the universe is Moles larger than the Earth. (That is 6.022E+23) and ever expanding.
As I wrote that I realized, even if the universe is an ever-expanding universe and the big-crunch never occurs, wouldn't everything eventually turn to gas due to lack of pressure. a la PV=NRT expanding universe means lower and lower pressure volume, if anything, is shrinking due to decay and the general conversion of matter to energy. Which would mean that the Number of mols is decreasing.. gas constant is the gas constant... and thus the temp should drop accordingly... So... heat-death regardless of the big-crunch?
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
Heat death would be inevitable, but for the possibility of the birth of a new universe within the universe. There may have been universes before this one. We can't know, because any evidence of them would never be detectable. Hell, in a few billion years most of the galaxies we can see today will be undetectable. The universe will have expanded sufficiently and at such a speed that the light can't ever reach us.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
There are already a plethora of universes that we will never be able t see due to the expansion of the universe. Other times when I have mentioned heat-death I have encountered many people who say that there will always be work to be done, and therefore the universe can't reach equilibrium... and thus heat-death can't occur. Can you think of any reasoning behind this? Or is it just people making things up?
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
People making things up. Without an injection of new energy, equilibrium is inevitable. Everything will decay into radiation. There won't be any matter left.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Of course the Universe is intelligible, if it wasnt science would not be possible! You can understand those things you are saying about moles and such! Dispite the complexity universal laws and relations are suprisingly simple! Look at E=mc2!
Uncertainty is a probability, not complete utter randomness. When the Universe started it's expansion it was already rigged to create stars, planets and the building blocks of life... and further ahead along the line... life itself.
This is because in the begining it was not complete and utter randomness (madness). It came with rules and relations that guided it into create what we have today.
Examples are the rate of the strong nuclear force, ratio of the strengths of gravity to that of electromagnetism, cosmological constant relative importance of gravity and expansion energy in the Universe... and most importantly the The Hoyle state of carbon! (not very known this one)
Yes this is all "life as we know it". I have thought of this before you argue... Bottom line is it seems that to create life you need "organized complexity" that's why no one even suggests creating AI from say... Cosmic background radiation... For organized complexity you need tight sets of rules. Like your DNA... your DNA is flexible (it can still create humans with just minor adjustments) but only to a certain extent... like the cosmological constants.
The questions that dwelve my mind are unlike most theists or atheists, like:
Why whatever created the Universe as we know it, keeps hidden from us and went through great ordeals to keep itself hidden from scrutiny.
"The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. ... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life." Stephen Hawking
You kinda missed the point. No single person can comprehend the universe. We can't even comprehend the Earth. Our minds aren't capable of it.
Also, technically, E /= MC^2. It's close enough to work for most things, but it has been acknowledged that it is not universally comprehensive.
The universe also doesn't have 'rules'. It has a behaviour, but we have already begun to suspect that the 'laws of physics' are not absolute or universal.
In short, the universe is quite incomprehensible at this time.
Finally, there is neither indication of, nor need for, a creator of any kind.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
A designer that is one part omnipotent and another part utterly tied to doing things precisely the way they are currently... in other words a completely nonsensical designer.
You are uncovering a key flaw in theism: they hold that there is an omnipotent god, yet point to contrivances as proof of this god. But omnipotence obviates any need, particularly for contrivances.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
@Teralek
You're presuming that the laws of physics as we know them are absolute and 100% correct.
The famous E=MC^2 was, well... a complete stab in the dark by a man that was borderline insane (as the intelligent often are.)
His theory of relativity was regarded as to be a *nearly* complete model of the universe, only lacking gravity. Which makes it break down on universal scales and on quantum scales. Though the people at the time had no way of knowing that they thought he was 100% correct. Just as the people of Newton's time did. Then Einstein came along and shattered that.
Also have you not heard of the uncertainty principle? That's what I was making my claims from. It's not improbable that we will ever know how to tell when an atom is going to decay, it's literally impossible. The closest we have come to quantifying that would be Half-life's. That is knowing roughly how much time it takes for half of matter to decay.
Also science can exist without the universe being intelligible. Haven't you ever played a word-scramble? You're given unintelligible information and then you, with your brain, correct it into something that make sense. We also do that with anagrams. The if the universe were ordered then science would have already been completed and would be an outdated term. c: Moreover any creator would have been found or disproven at that point.
If a god is both timeless and spaceless then how exactly does he interact with nature. Being spaceless means that an object with that attribute cannot physically interact with anything. Being timeless poses its own problems too, though they are a bit more than I have the capacity to explain.
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
No my friend Wladyslaw...
I'm not saying they are 100% correct... Newton is still correct despite E=mc2... science works on aproximations... It's laws, relations and logic: Universe
I fail to see in what way the uncertainty principle invalidates my point... but oh well I'm use to this here... I know it's literally impossible to predict the position of a particle, so what?! These are all laws, like many others.
Science is a man made thing... if the Universe was unintelligeble there would be no science.... we would live in world view purely built on myth nothing would show consistency on reality... at least not to a human understandable level. I'm not saying this out of the blue these ideas came to me from Paul Davies the astrophysicist...
How does a First Cause interacts with a naturalistic Universe that's a very good question that no one can answer. But it's either that or turtles all the way down... I choose to say it's a timeless/spaceless cause (time/space as we know).
Even someone like cosmologist Alan Guth "believes humans will in time be able to generate new universes. By implication previous intelligent entities may have generated our Universe."
So I really don't understand this outright denial of the possibility whatsoever... but well it's this forum agenda I guess.
Hey but don't miss interpret me! I like that! It's a challenge to my ideas! Even if it feel frustrating
You don't understand the uncertainty principle. We CAN know the position of a partical. We CANNOT simultaneously know the position and momentum of a partical. Measuring one changes the other. Therefore it is literally impossible to know everything, making the universe necessarily unintelligible.
That does not mean the universe is inconsistent and that we therefore can't know anything. We simply can't know everything.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Therak, that was my point, science DOES work on approximations. If the universe was intelligible then everything would be rather obvious once we figured out a bit.
A few posts back I explained the theory that blackholes are really another universe being generated, with the epicenter being the " portal" or line of movement into the next dimension. (Imagine an x-y grid, and we're say, (0,0), a black hole would be what allows us to go to say, (-1,0)) and thus there be another universe there. And that dark matter is really just matter, in another universe, whose gravity is screwing with ours. Or in an easier to visualize, an x-y-z grid, where we are an x-y plane, and another universe is another plane, and a black-hole being where our two planes cross. Anywho I digress.
And I mean, even if it were the case that I'm wrong, an unintelligible universe would not mean no science... after all, we'd still know that, say, everything on Earth ( and other objects with the same mass as Earth) would decelerate/accelerate down to its surface at 9.8m/s^2 because that is observable. That is, until air-resistance causes the object to reach terminal velocity. All one would need is to account for the air resistance of an object, and a clock, and a known height. And then we may reach a figure that is very close at first, and then is later refined through further and more extensive testing.
Going back to Newton, Einstein would not have been able to do what he did without Newton's incorrect theories. I mean these are people who still believed that the Earth was static and everything was moving around it. They desperately tried to work that into their theories, even to the point of making something up that made no logical sense. They were very intelligent people, but the dogma that had been beaten into them still gripped them, even in the face of contrary evidence. Particularly Einstein did this.
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
@ Therak and Wladyslaw
I think you two are mystifying science. Leading scientific theories are true because they best describe our observed universe. When they fail to describe observed phenomena they stop being true. Truth is a relative or subjective judgement call. Something can be true or false, relative to a given frame of reference, as perceived by a subject. When a scientific theory stops being true, we either append to it, or change it for a different theory that better describes what we observe. Case and point, Newtonian physics and the theory or relativity.
That is all that science is concerned with, there is no ultimate answer to everything. That is philosophy
If you want to dig deeper you have to narrow the frame of reference. The probability of something being true is indirectly proportional to it's frame of reference. In a very small frame of reference you can make very certain truth statements, such as:
If the universe were a well lit 10x10 room, and it contained two red apples, you can make a claim that all apples are red, and it would have a near to 100% certainty. Should you find a door, that leads to another room containing a green apple, you would then need to reevaluate your statement to fit the new frame of reference. This is how science works. There is on such thing as 100% certainty, because that would require absolute knowledge. This, in turn, doesn't mean that we cannot know anything, or that the universe is unintelligible. If we found a limit to the universe, and had enough time and computing power to calculate every atom, we would actually know everything within that frame of reference (the limits of the universe).
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
Such an instrument would require more mass and space than exists in the universe, hence it is not possible.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.