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Early Earth Atmosphere Favourable to Life
mathinator writes "A study by researchers at the University of Waterloo indicates that Earth in its infancy probably had substantial quantities of hydrogen in its atmosphere, a surprising finding that may alter the way many scientists think about how life began on the planet. The new study indicates that up to 40 percent of the early atmosphere was hydrogen, implying a more favourable climate for the production of pre-biotic organic compounds like amino acids, and ultimately, life. The paper was authored by doctoral student Feng Tian, Prof. Owen Toon and Research Associate Alexander Pavlov of CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, and by Prof. Hans De Sterk of University of Waterloo's Applied Mathematics department. The paper was published in the April 7 issue of Science Express, the online edition of Science Magazine"
to make sure the late Earth atmosphere is not.
i saw the baby, and the baby looked at me
When do we get to put a sticker on the bible?
When you publish the Bible.
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Well, the atmosphere could have been methane, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, radon, helium, neon, argon, or any of the other gases emitted by volcanic activity.
But it was hydrogen. So the question I guess most scientists would ask is: did this hydrogen combine with oxygen to form the oceans, or did the water come from comets and asteroids?
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Einstein was atheist, sometimes scientist say god, speaking metaphorically. Einstein said:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
And by the way, what purpose will it serve to teach people lies? Even if they are not going to study science, they have to be tought facts, not lies. If you keep a population ignorant, they'll be easilly manipulated. As an example, I'm not a biochemist, I'm a Computer Scientist, but all the Organic Chemsitry I learned in high school has been very helpful in my life, to improve my nutrition, and hormonal profile, as part of my goal to be faster and stronger. It has also been helpful to identify all the crap about nutrition and health popular media barfs.
I know you are trying to be funny... However, `evolution`, or what ever you want to call it is a theorem, not a theory. You can prove it happens based on some simple axioms. The only thing you can argue about is timescales. (Which is what modern biologists are doing: "Is evolution proceding uniformly, or does it happen in bursts?", for example.)
:-) i.e. People `tend` to give birth to people, not other animals and plants.
In case anyone is interested, the axioms are:
1) Parents have children.
2) Children tend to look like their parents.
3) Mutations happen. i.e. children do not always inherit all their traits from their parents.
4) Organisms are different
5) Such differences yield to different probabilities for a given organism to survive and reproduce.
6) More children are born than survive to adulthood.
The proof goes as follows: Given a distribution of 'fitness' for a population, given by axioms 4 and 5 we can calculate which 'parents' will survive to have 'children' (that some do is axiom 1). From axiom 6, many children will be born, and from axiom 2 those children will be like their parents. From this you can calculate the new distribution of 'fitness'. Noting that it will be different due to axioms 6 and 5 (ignoring singular cases where everyone has the same fitness), gives the initial stages of evolution. Now, for evolution to continue, you need new variation (infinite inbreeding is bad, the population tends to a set of clones, and the singular case above is the result), so axiom 3 is needed to fix that.
Now, it is even possible to prove that the axioms happen.
For each axiom:
1) Obvious, really.
2) If you don't believe this, then you are an idiot.
3) You need a little science for this one, but it is possible to sequence DNA, and show mistakes happen.
4) Obvious, really.
5) This one can be measured as well. For example albino tigers have trouble surviving in the wild since they have trouble hiding.
6) I know one class mate who died before adulthood, and that one example is enough to prove this one.
Done! Well... if you want more, you can start doing mathematical models of the various axioms. You can try different mathematical functions for axioms 4 and 5 and see how the different results affect the timescales involved.
First off, note that to say Catholics pray to Mary, the definition being used for prayer must be "making a request" or "spiritual communication" for the statement to be true at all. Catholics do *not* worship Mary.
Regarding communication with the dead: Mary and the saints are alive in Heaven. If you mean that they are 'dead' by not being in the physical world, then God Himself is also dead in the same sense.
The Pope has been given authority by Christ Himself as the rock upon which the Church is built (Jesus founds the Catholic Church on His rock/Peter in Matthew 16:18-19). No, this doesn't mean everything the Pope says or does is correct or true, but it does give him the authority the lead the Church.
Now, on the topic of unbiblical teachings, Protestant beliefs are quite fallicious:
- Protestants reject Jesus's teaching that the bread and wine becomes his actual body and blood. People took it literally when Jesus said it was so and Jesus did not say "no, no... I meant that symbolically"
- Protestants believe that the Bible is the sole source of theological truth. The Bible itself opposes this view and points people toward the Church.
In addition, the original protestant (Martin Luther) also originated the idea of anti-semitism. The WWII holocaust might never had occured if Martin Luther had not rebelled against the Church. Is protestantism worth the lives taken by WWII?
Luke-Jr
The [insert religious denomination here] didn't publish the science textbooks. Why should the bible be subject to special treatment?
Because,
The [insert public school here] doesn't use the bible as a textbook.
They're not in the same category.
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your attempt at reconciliation is almost admirable but it's totally misguided.
here's a good reason why from the Creationist point of view things must be "static", and why you can't stick the scientific "Big Bang" into the 6-day creation story: the bible says nothing about astronomical phenomena as we understand them today. the official written account of creation says ZIP about anything we have learned about the cosmos: hydrogen fusion, the structure of our planet, structure of our solar system, galaxies, stars, the SPEED OF THE [STAR]LIGHT that we see in the sky, etc.
not to mention the fact that the bible says NOTHING that a wiseman goat-herder would/could have known 2,000 years ago. nothing about biology, germs, nothing about the entire WESTERN HEMISPHERE-- which was full of interesting people, unbeknownst to the smartest most "prophetic" people of biblical times.
are we supposed to believe that humans simply purged these aspects from God's Word, or that god himself simply chose to "dumb it down" for humanity?
people had no freaking clue what the "heavens" even were, 2000 years ago.
and all the bible's tips about human folly and human relationships certainly don't constitute "divine" information.
only the VAGUEST notions of Evolution and Creation can be "compatible" in the way you're attempting. yeah: bla bla bla, hey, the BigBang was actually the Creation!!!
no, nice try. the 6-day story says nothing about the physical changes that our planet (and any planet) undergo: geological changes, etc etc. maybe you haven't noticed, but the account of creation in the bible LITERALLY/UNEQUIVOCALLY does NOT expound on any long time-scale, not for physical-geological evolution, nor for biological evolution. you'd think that god might have made some passing mention of this, since he was going through the trouble of giving ANY explanation at all, right? (i suppose he works in mysterious ways; humans couldn't handle the absurd truth; bla bla bla)
you're making a foolish mistake. "if you're in the evolution camp, where did the Big-Bang come from?" that's an old, tired argument. you're basically saying that since we CANNOT ANSWER (right now; maybe not ever) the question of where the Big-Bang "came from" or how it got initiated, THEREFORE it must have been god.
that's totally foolish. it's not a folly that's very becoming of somebody living in the 21st century. wake up. smell the coffee. science is a project, an enterprise. we have a single vantage point in time and space: planet Earth, recent times. so you see it's kind of hard to really figure out the big astronomical/cosmological questions from this vantage point. aside from the practical obstacles, the concepts and events in question do not accord with our normal, human, earth-bound notions of matter, reality, physics, and so on.
and you have yet to define "intelligent." it's a vague, useless, fluffy statement to say "BOTH SIDES are filled with intelligent people." even apart from that word "intelligent", the word "filled" is pretty contentious.
you're also demonstrating absolute cultural ignorance and discrimination: other so-called religions have their own accounts of creation, with nothing about "6 days." it's idiotic to suggest we should equate the astronomical BigBang with the "6 days", since in this vague/useless model you're proposing, we're simply talking about an omnipotent creator or a divine creation, NOT about the specific mythological tenets of christianity.
you're ignorant. i mean that in the best possible way. most people who try to reconcile evolution Vs creation are only familiar with the vaguest outlines of either "position". try getting an education, in both theology and science. it will do you good.
The problem with Fundamentalism is that it takes God--which represents the most ethical part of us--and makes him less ethical than we ought to be.
The most ethical part of myself believes in tolerance for all, yet the God of the fundamentalists will torture everyone who has a different belief system, and condones anti-Gay prejudice. The most ethical part of myself believes in having an open mind, yet the God of the Fundamentalists believes in stubbornly believing that the Earth was created 6,000 (6 thousand, non-Americans) years ago despite all of the evidence to the contrary.
I have no problem with the majority of Jesus' teachings, including the ones that Fundamentalists ignore (e.g. Like 12:15 "One's life does not consist in the abundance of one's posessions"). I have a lot of problems with modern fundamentalism, that takes a God which respresents perfect love (1 John 4:13), and makes Him something which is less than perfect love (Intolerance towards non-Christians, intolerance against Gays, and intolerance against Science).
This is why I don't go to church today.
You know, creationists started this slander to attempt to discredit radiometric dating. Basically, so the slander goes, radiometric dating is based on a scientist saying to a lab "Make this rock look like as though it's 100,000 years old", and the lab does just that.
However, this argument falls completely apart when it is pointed out that blind tests on the age of given rocks have been done multiple times, and those blind tests agree on the age of the rock.
Let me give you a case I understand: Carbon Dating. Creationists groups insist that we can only confirm carbon dating by comparing C14 levels with items with a known age of 4,000 years or less. However, Creationists are ignorant of how a C14 calibration chart is made.
A calibration chart is made by looking at something whose age we can know, such as a tree with rings. We compare C14 levels and count rings. When we get to the inside of the tree, we can now go back 2000 or 3000 years. So how do we go back farther? We look at a petrified tree which died 3000 or 4000 years ago (we know when it died because we measure the C14 level on the outside of the tree, a C14 level establish from ring counting and C14 checking from our other tree).
We can do this multiple times to get C14 dates going back 10,000 or 15,000 years. Creationists completely ignore the process of creating C14 calibration curves because they know it completely destroies their belief that the earth was created 6,000 (6 thousand, non-Americans) years ago.
Is this a conspiracy to make the earth look older than 6,000 years old? If so, where is the conspiracy. Do we really need to entertain notions that scientists deliberately miscount rings? Do we really need to entertain the notion that scientists deliberately change the amount of C14 measured inside these trees? Once people start putting forward theories like this, they sound like as though they are desperately trying to continue believing in a young earth despite any and all evidence to the contrary.
"'Descarte also wrote, that God would never decieve us'. Yes, of course, according to the opinion of some guy that died 355 years ago, God would never deceive us. "
Actually, Descartes asserted that because his senses could be deceived, that perhaps nothing was real. In asserting that, however, he proved the existence of his own mind. From there, he concluded that since he was able to learn and be deceived, that something more complete or more perfect existed.
From there, Descartes lays the groundwork for the scientific method we (should) know and love. Philosophy has always been a search for truth, and as such has given us our modern machine for truth: science. And just as Descartes was concerned with the omnipotent and omniscient, scientists today still seek the truth about the only omnipotence and omniscience in the universe: Nature. The conception of God has since the beginnings of Philosophy been synonymous with our current word Nature. However, the use of God in the christian faith (written by philosophers for the purpose of morals, law, and order) has perverted our sense for the word.