The total amount of liquid water on earth is only 1.4 billion cubic km and not 10 billion cubic miles. Of that 1.4 billion cubic km the majority is completely non relevant for origin of life. For origin of life, we are interested in hydrothermal vents or superficial drying pools. Both have a volume that is very, very small compared to the total.
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It’s not the time that counts. When you repeat an experiment that doesn’t work a billion times, that will not help
Mile shmile. The oceans are a billion cubic kilometres, the troposphere seven billion, the upper lithosphere OOM a hundred million. OOM the biosphere is 10 bn cubic km. All the chemistry you can want to make life obviously occurred in that over a hundred million years. The ocean is not ‘just water’. All the lab chemistry from the alchemists and earlier proto-scientists onward is nothing.
If you want to believe that God sprinkled pixie dust on the trillions of life worlds in this mediocre, insignificant, infinitesimal universe, let alone the parallel infinity of infinities from eternity, knock yourself out. Such fallacy based superstitious pseudoscience does faith no service whatsoever.
Hey, some of us like it here. 
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It does get hard to feel exceptional, however, in comparison to expanding eternity and infinite shots on goal. But when magnificence is the space where average resides, it’s no put down.
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It is peculiar to hear someone who claims Stendhal’s to be making grandiose statements about the mediocrity of the beauty here.
May be a better idea: labs are part of the biosphere. Live originated from a mad neanderthal scientist lab.
Riiiiight. So life originated life up to 40,000 years ago. 15?
If it’s from a lab, time doesn’t matter.
Greetings, Mr VanEngelen. Welcome! I have been watching some of your thoughtful replies. I wonder-can you tell us more about yourself? Are in the Netherlands? What brought you here? What is your main science (or other) interest?
I’m a family physician in West Michigan. I was a missionary kid (son of missionaries) in West Africa, and was born there, and lived there for 11 years.
Thank you!
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Dear Randy, that is right. I am from the Netherlands. I have MSc Biology, DVM, PhD in physiology and work as specialist veterinary microbiology. Besides that I am christian, and so interested in this topic. A dutch website pointed to this website about Ard Louis. I am intrigued why christians use the god-of-the-gaps argument since at its own it is not a proper argument, There must be some metaphysical assumptions behind. It thought it to be nice to make that clear.
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That’s a non sequitur. And meaningless.
Well said that man.
And meaningless.
First of all this is not a world which is neutral morally. This is a world which is amoral.
the deepest type of pure evil.
Second, we need to ask ourselves, does the universe support and encourage life, esp. human life? The answer is Yes, or we would not be here. If the universe gave us life and sustains it, the HOW can it be Evil or without meaning?
Third, we need to ask ourselves, is the universe rational? Can we understand it our using our brain? Again, the answer is Yes. That being the case, then the universe must have meaning and purpose, because humans cannot understand that which has no meaning or purpose.
Dawkins has decided that there is no God, so there is no Creation, rather than the other way around. Symmetry is definite evidence of Creation and needs to be recognized as such.
She was quoting Dawkins.
I think you contradict yourself. If the world is amoral, how can you make a moral statement about it. (“Amoral: Lack or absence of morality.”)
Hi Roger!
It’s been a long time since I looked at what I had posted, but I think I remember this was a segment from a longer quote from the Podcast. Ard was quoting and discussing Dawkins.
I’m not sure how you make the logical connections that lead.to your conclusions.
Maybe you would be willing to go through the steps of your thinking.
Thanks
It is! And this is not the first one.
The nice thing is: fortunately, there is morality. And this is really a problem for Dawkins. He relies on morality which he denies to exist. The importance of the presence of morality is nicely explained by CS Lewis: Mere christianity and by the atheist Thomas Nagel: Mind and Cosmos.
When I was a student, I read the book The selfish genes: I had a bad time. If that was true: We are only the slaves of our genes. Nothing more. Free will is an illusion. There is no real altruism. Absolute dystopia.
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