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User: grannyknot

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  1. Re:Creation of Life on Did Life Originate Underwater? · · Score: 1

    > Basically a design with out a designer.

    Your analogy is quite a bit off. The Big Bang theory uses gravity - a macroscopic force to build the universe. There really isn't any similar force acting on the PC. And worlds don't have any form of intelligence - they pretty much just sit around doing nothing until they fall into their stars or their stars melt them down.

    I think what you're trying to talk about is the theory of evolution. And if you are, your analogy is still flawed. In order to properly model evolution on the scale of PCs, you'd have to kick a nearly infinite number of PCs. And you'd have to kick them for a few million years - being careful after each kick to copy the data on the drives with the characteristics that you're looking for (an advanced OS) to the drives on the systems that aren't 'evolving' in the appropriate direction. It's possible that you'd get something out in the end. I'm serious - a million years is a LONG time.

  2. Re:You can�t base your calculations on Adam and Ev on Did Life Originate Underwater? · · Score: 1

    > our most recent common ancestors aren't Adam and Eve, but Noah and his family.

    Unless Noah and his family were created like Adam and Eve, they had to come from somewhere. The assumption of this thread is that everyone's geneology stems from Adam and Eve.

  3. Re:Creation of Life on Did Life Originate Underwater? · · Score: 1

    > big explosion in this place called "space"
    Some call it The Big Bang. It's the most reasonable explanation for the beginning of the universe (news flash: this process took longer than six days).
    > for no reason this Earth came about
    Exploding supernovae provided all the dust and gas that was needed to spawn the Solar system.
    > perfect place for a bunch of water
    It's true, Earth is in the perfect place to have liquid water oceans. If it were not in the perfect place, we likely wouldn't be having this conversation today.
    > Hydrogen and Oxygen and Carbon and some other stuff just randomly mixed together.
    If you hit the basic building blocks of organic molecules (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc. - all present in the ancient Earth) with lightning, you will acquire a sludge of organic compounds. With all the basic material floating around for a few hundred million years, it's almost inevitable that they will combine in useful ways.
    > one-celled creature became a two-celled
    It has been hypothesized that single-celled organisms became specialized and started living in colonies. These colonies, through integration (it's believed that mitochondria were originally a separate bacteria), eventually formed multi-cellular organisms.
    > so humans "evolved" out of nothing
    Exactly. We're not here to fulfill any higher purpose. We're not special. The only thing that sets us apart from other animals seems to be our brains which allow for things like consciousness.

    We're seeing the problem from fundamentally different angles. Religion tells us that we're special - we were created to rule the earth by a supernatural being that doesn't seem to do anything, ever. Science tells us that we're probably not that special - we're not much more than an advanced form of ape. It comes down to falsifiability versus dogma. Sure evolution could be wrong, and I'm willing to accept that - there is no such thing as absolute proof or a law in science. Are you willing to accept that your religious beliefs are wrong? Didn't think so.

  4. Re:Creation of Life (bwahahahaa) on Did Life Originate Underwater? · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't call them mutually exclusive - they're more complementary.

    Science tries to tell us why we're alive, religion tells us how to live.

  5. Re:Wait up a second on Did Life Originate Underwater? · · Score: 1

    This is news because it's a brand new theory about the origin of life on Earth. Before now, mosts of these theories centered around oceans full of organic molecules that would start forming membranes and then start dividing.

    What they're saying is that inorganic 'eggs' were already here and that organic membranes and cell division came later.

  6. Red Lobster on The Great Firewall of China - Samples of Filtered Sites · · Score: 2, Funny

    Perhaps the advertisements for "All You Can Eat Shrimp" are, in the eyes of the censors, indicative of Western excess... :)

  7. Economics on Economic Predictions Using Web Usage Data · · Score: 1

    "Economists say that the company's models need to be tested over several years before they can be considered accurate."

    Funny, they're making Economics out to be a bona fide science.

  8. Re:Off screen testing? on Ask 'Junkyard Wars Diva' Cathy Rogers · · Score: 1

    Most of the questions regarding how the show really works are answered on HowStuffWorks.com.