I just got the life on earth 'odds' thing!

[Rum]

One of the refuges of religion is the 'wonder' of life and it's creation - and indeed its unique nature. I have tended to dismisses this for the obvious reasons but the image clicked tonight for some reason.

The odds of life arising in the form we know - developing on a celular evolutionary basis, are probably enormously remote. Possibly inncredibly so.

But consider this - if you win the lottery here in the Uk the odds are 14 million to one. The Euro lottery is something like 150 million to one.

Whatever the odds of something happening, unless they are so impossibly remote, the universe is so huge and the number of environments and combination of potential combination of circumstances so huge, that our existence is no real surprise at all.

Which begs the question, how freaky and weird are other examples of the universe developing systems capable of looking at itself out there!?

[Cormac]

Cool isn't it?

Or perhaps scary!

[klr]

Boy, I pity the next street preacher to draw your ire. You're going to make mincemeat of him.

[klr]

On a more serious note: "Cracking" this on an individual intellectual level is very liberating IMHO. You can stand outside Earth and Humanity and look at them from a distance, almost in an abstract fashion.

[Rum]

Boy, I pity the next street preacher to draw your ire. You're going to make mincemeat of him.

Except he/she will counter that the universe (which is probably rather smaller than we know it to be by about 200000%) is only 4700 years old and that trumps my misguided scientifically corroborated opinion..

[klr]

Boy, I pity the next street preacher to draw your ire. You're going to make mincemeat of him.

Except he/she will counter that the universe (which is probably rather smaller than we know it to be by about 200000%) is only 4700 years old and that trumps my misguided scientifically corroborated opinion..

Ask him for his evidence, especially if there's a big audience. If he really holds to the YEC (Young Earth Creationist) line, then presumably he believes in "the Flood" as well. That's a goldmine to bait believers with.

The more dangerous kind of preacher (IMHO) is the modern waffler who won't be pinned down to anything concrete, and resorts to vague statements and beliefs that are all just avoiding the hard questions.

[Robert_S]

One of the refuges of religion is the 'wonder' of life and it's creation - and indeed its unique nature. I have tended to dismisses this for the obvious reasons but the image clicked tonight for some reason.

The odds of life arising in the form we know - developing on a celular evolutionary basis, are probably enormously remote. Possibly inncredibly so.

But consider this - if you win the lottery here in the Uk the odds are 14 million to one. The Euro lottery is something like 150 million to one.

Whatever the odds of something happening, unless they are so impossibly remote, the universe is so huge and the number of environments and combination of potential combination of circumstances so huge, that our existence is no real surprise at all.

Which begs the question, how freaky and weird are other examples of the universe developing systems capable of looking at itself out there!?

Just like it is almost certain tht someone will eventually win the lottery, even though any particular person faces very steep odds; It was not so improbable that life would arise somewhere in the universe, but it was very improbable that it would arise in any particular place an observer would have placed bets on.

[Robert_S]

Boy, I pity the next street preacher to draw your ire. You're going to make mincemeat of him.

Except he/she will counter that the universe (which is probably rather smaller than we know it to be by about 200000%) is only 4700 years old and that trumps my misguided scientifically corroborated opinion..

Ask him for his evidence, especially if there's a big audience. If he really holds to the YEC (Young Earth Creationist) line, then presumably he believes in "the Flood" as well. That's a goldmine to bait believers with.

The more dangerous kind of preacher (IMHO) is the modern waffler who won't be pinned down to anything concrete, and resorts to vague statements and beliefs that are all just avoiding the hard questions.

Atheists in denial the lot of them. I spent a few years in that mindset.

[klr]

Boy, I pity the next street preacher to draw your ire. You're going to make mincemeat of him.

Except he/she will counter that the universe (which is probably rather smaller than we know it to be by about 200000%) is only 4700 years old and that trumps my misguided scientifically corroborated opinion..

Ask him for his evidence, especially if there's a big audience. If he really holds to the YEC (Young Earth Creationist) line, then presumably he believes in "the Flood" as well. That's a goldmine to bait believers with.

The more dangerous kind of preacher (IMHO) is the modern waffler who won't be pinned down to anything concrete, and resorts to vague statements and beliefs that are all just avoiding the hard questions.

Atheists in denial the lot of them. I spent a few years in that mindset.

I usually call them "Catholics"

One of the refuges of religion is the 'wonder' of life and it's creation - and indeed its unique nature. I have tended to dismisses this for the obvious reasons but the image clicked tonight for some reason.

The odds of life arising in the form we know - developing on a celular evolutionary basis, are probably enormously remote. Possibly inncredibly so.

But consider this - if you win the lottery here in the Uk the odds are 14 million to one. The Euro lottery is something like 150 million to one.

Whatever the odds of something happening, unless they are so impossibly remote, the universe is so huge and the number of environments and combination of potential combination of circumstances so huge, that our existence is no real surprise at all.

Which begs the question, how freaky and weird are other examples of the universe developing systems capable of looking at itself out there!?

Just like it is almost certain tht someone will eventually win the lottery, even though any particular person faces very steep odds; It was not so improbable that life would arise somewhere in the universe, but it was very improbable that it would arise in any particular place an observer would have placed bets on.

Although some places are a better "bet" than other, insofar as we can make informed assessments about what are relatively "good" conditions for live (and complex life) to arise and evolve. That's why we look for other planets like Earth, as opposed to any old sort of planet.

[Rum]

I mean - what are the odds of the Klimgon language developing?

[klr]

Well, there needs to be Klingons first, doesn't there?

If it's a question of how prevalent intelligent life might be in the cosmos ... then we are probably back to the Drake Equation again, which is less an answer than a whole series of very awkward questions.

[Rum]

Steps required:

1. The chemistry for DNA to develop.
2. Evolution by natural selection to develop.
3. Self aware human beings (with language [seems to be the key] ability to develop.
4. Above beings to develop capitalism based entertainment systems in which to postulate future cosmic human endeavour in the course of offering entertainment diversion the Star Treek franchise.
5. Sad twat invents enemy alien language.

I mean - what are the odds?

[Feck]

Since God did not want Humans to have any knowledge (yeah blame the snake and the woman because You put the tree there !) and The world is going to end (no mention of humans living elsewhere) Then the whole complex almost infinite set up was just to give us a few dim lights in the sky ? what is the chance of that (or how insane is god )

Creotards are cosmic narcissists ..

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Life would only take one second or so to get started.

3,500,000,000 years of life on Earth (mimimum) X 365 =
1,277,500,000,000 days X 24 =
30,660,000,000 hours. X 60 =
1,839,600,000,000,000 minutes X 60 =
110,376,000,000,000 seconds.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'll just leave this here.

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

13.7 billion years ago - The Big Bang: beginning of the universe as we know it!

13.3 - 13.7 billion years ago - The Dark Ages, after the formation of hydrogen and before the first stars.

13.3 billion years ago - Reionization: the first stars heat and ionize hydrogen gas.

4.55 billion years ago - Formation of the Solar System.

4.5 billion years ago - Formation of the Moon: according to the Giant Impact Hypothesis, this happened when Theia collided with proto-Earth.

4.45 billion years ago - Formation of Earth complete; storm of asteroid impacts.

4 billion years ago - First life on Earth.

3.8 - 4 billion years ago - The Late Heavy Bombardment: a period during which the Earth, Moon, Venus and Mars were subjected to many asteroid impacts, after a relatively calm period of several million years.

3 billion years ago - Formation of the first known continent, Ur.

2.4 billion years ago - The Great Oxidation Event: the Earth's atmosphere gets oxygen.

1.6 billion years ago - First blue-green algae.

1.3 billion years ago - First plants.

1 billion years ago - Formation of the supercontinent Rodinia

800 million years ago - The supercontinent Rodinia begins to break up.

630-850 million years ago - The Cryogenian Period, also known as Snowball Earth - the worst ice age in the Earth's history.

670 million years ago - First animals.

440 million years ago - The Ordovician-Silurian extinction. Most marine species died out.

415 million years ago - The Old Red Sandstone Continent, also known as Laurussia, is formed by the collision of Baltica and Laurentia at the beginning of the Devonian.

395 million years ago - First insects on land.

365 million years ago - The Late Devonian extinction. 70% of marine species died out! First amphibians, trees.

313 million years ago - First reptiles.

250 million years ago - The Permian-Triassic extinction. 90% of all species died out! Formation of the supercontinent Pangaea, with surrounding ocean Panthalassa.

235 million years ago - First dinosaurs, flowers.

205 million years ago - The Triassic-Jurassic extinction. End of large amphibians and many reptiles.
200 million years ago - Pangaea began to split into separate continents: Gondwana to the south and Laurasia to the north, separated by the Tethys Sea.

150 million years ago - First birds.

114 million years ago - First modern mammals. World begins to cool.

67 million years ago - Asteroid hit Mexico, causing the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. End of dinosaurs. 50% of all species died out! Intensification of world cooling trend.

50 million years ago - India begins to collide with Asia, eventually forming the Himalayas.

34 million years ago - Gondwanaland finishes breaking up, with Australia and South America separating from Antarctica.

24 million years ago - Cooling trend causes the formation of grasslands; Antarctica becomes covered with ice.

21 million years ago - Apes split off from other monkeys.

5 million years ago - Humans split off from other apes (gorillas and chimpanzees).

3.9 million years ago - First known Australopithecus afarensis.

3 million years - Cooling trend causes year-round ice to form at the North Pole.

2.5 million years ago - First Homo habilis. Beginning of a period of repeated glaciation (loosely speaking, "ice ages").

1.9 million years ago - First Homo erectus.

1.4 million years ago - First firemaking by humans.

620,000 years ago - Beginning of the Cromerian interglacial.

450,000 years ago - Beginning of the 3rd most recent glacial period: the Kansan glaciation, during which ice sheets reached their maximum extent in the Pleistocene, down to Kansas and Slovakia.

380,000 years ago - Beginning of the Hoxnian interglacial.

350,000 years ago - First Homo neanderthalensis.

250,000 years ago - First Homo sapiens.

200,000 years ago - Beginning of the 2nd most recent glacial period: the Wolstonian glaciation.

125,000 years ago - Beginning of the Eemian interglacial.

100,000 years ago - Homo sapiens arrives in the Middle East.

70,000 years ago - Beginning of the most recent glacial period: the Wisconsin glaciation.

50,000 years ago - Homo sapien arrives in central Asia.

35,000 years ago - Invention of the calendar, extinction of Homo neanderthalensis. Homo sapiens arrives in Europe.

32,000 years ago - Oldest known cave paintings.

21,000 years ago - Last glacial maximum: ice sheets down to the Great Lakes, the mouth of the Rhine, and covering the British Isles.

18,000 years ago - Cultivation of plants, herding of animals. Homo sapiens arrives in the Americas.

12,700 - 11,500 years ago - the Younger Dryas.

10,300 years ago - End of the most recent glacial period: the Wisconsin glaciation.

8,800 years ago - The first cities.

7,600 years ago - Sahara desert starts forming in northern Africa.

5,500 years ago - Invention of the wheel, writing.

540 years ago - Invention of the printing press.

180 years ago - Fossil fuel revolution: coal, trains.

130 years ago - Invention of the telephone.

60 years ago - Invention of the computer.