Creationism and Evolution Debate

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on September 21st, 2010, 12:40 pm

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on September 21st, 2010, 8:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

typo in second paragraph?

yeah, janeway had the choice of installing useful bussard collectors or pointless mechanisms for tilting the nacelles. and she chose to have the nacelles tilt.

Only in science fiction.  Only in science fiction.  Name one other "M-Class" planet that we have found!  Mars doesn't count.

Yes, we are talking about science fiction, any reason you needed to repeat yourself?  In the Star Trek universe there are thousands of M-Class planets.  In reality we have found evidence of lots of planets orbiting other stars, its pretty much a certainty that in our galaxy there are planets with lots of water and an atmosphere which is either already Oxygen-Nitrogen or capable of being converted given enough time and resources.  After all, our own planet's atmosphere in the Hadean Era (around 4000 million years ago) was largely carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, and ammonia.  It took the plants quite some time to generate the oxygen we enjoy today.  Earth was not Class-M to start with.

Do we have thread derailment yet?

Dom EDIT: Sorry for the move - TCR requested it, and as he pushed it offtopic I felt it was only fair  Split from Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - A Few Requests

posted on September 21st, 2010, 2:23 pm

Now we're in Creation Science vs Evolution!

You dodged my question.  Have we found any M-Class planets?  The answer is no.  We have found other planets orbiting other stars, but so far, none of them seem habitable.  And as for terraforming, it takes a bit more than "adding the right elements".  Life doesn't appear just because there is water.  Actually, it's been proven that life can't even form from decaying organic matter.

http://www.earthage.org/intro/odds_of_evolution_by_chance.htm

Evolutionist Harold Morowitz estimated the probability for chance formation of even the simplest form of living organism at 1/10[sup]340,000,000[/sup].  By comparison only 1020 grains of sand could fit within a cubic mile and 10 billion times more (1030) would fit inside the entire earth.  So, the probability of forming a simple cell by chance processes is infinitely less likely than having a blind person select one specifically marked grain of sand out of an entire earth filled with sand.

Add in the fact that everything has to be in place at once, including gravitational balance of the universe, gravitational constant, auto-cleansing system, correct planetary orbit, Axis-tilt, planetary gravity, magnetic field, ozone layer, etc, well, you get the picture.  Without the ozone layer, every organic molecule on this planet would be destroyed in seconds by UV radiation.  No magnetic field means navigation and certain life functions would be impossible, plus the solar radiation would erode the atmosphere.

posted on September 21st, 2010, 3:07 pm

tcr obviously when i said there are loads of m class planets with oceans i meant in star trek. i mean you are just being pedantic

so the question of whether there are earth like planets in the real universe is not relevant here.

planets dont need to be like earth though, as long as they have water they most likely have heavy water and thus deuterium available.

mars may have once had polar caps of ice.

jupiter and other gas planets probably contain some deuterium in gaseous forms as well.

posted on September 21st, 2010, 3:44 pm

Now we're in Creation Science vs Evolution!

You dodged my question.  Have we found any M-Class planets?  The answer is no.  We have found other planets orbiting other stars, but so far, none of them seem habitable.

And how many planets have we found? A few hundred? In a galaxy with potentially billions of stars, and a universe with even more, this is a tiny, tiny, tiny amount to assume that there are no other M-class planets that support life out there from. And that's not even counting moons that could potentially support life...

posted on September 21st, 2010, 4:09 pm

we did discover around 500 planets outside of our sol-system. But most of these discoveries are made due to the gravitation influence of a planet or cause it passes by between its star and earth. We do have almost no knowledge about atmospheres or whatelse would be required to classify a planet as "earthlike"

There are indeed some stats about what a planets atmosphere contains (for example messured by analyzing the spectrum of light on the very border of a planet as it passes by between its sun and earth). But they should not be confused with the "star trek like" class M classifications, which means that they support life. the discovery that a planets atmossphere contains water, for example, is not thaaaat important. thats true for half the planets of your system too.

We dont even know what uranus or even some jupiter and saturn moons are like in terms of their atmossphere we should not start judging about planets lightyears away


so, still hope for vulcans, although they are quite late by now!

posted on September 21st, 2010, 4:37 pm

so, still hope for vulcans, although they are quite late by now!

  Hear Hear!

  Give a conversation long enough and it will become an argument about race or religion.  Boom.

posted on September 21st, 2010, 6:18 pm

I didn't mean to dodge your question TCR but i think it was implied in my response.  I agree, we haven't found yet despite having found plenty of evidence for planets ranging from gas giants to smaller terrestial planets.

But you have to keep in mind that the astronomers are uncovering more all the time, its a very difficult job to ascertain for sure the composition of a distant planet, and comparing the sample size with the size of even just our local arm of the galaxy its still a very small sample.

What amazes me is that they can actually tell there is a planet at all there considering the distances involved, not to mention they can figure out roughly its size and atmosphere.

I very much doubt "M-Class" planets will be as abundant as in sci-fi in the real universe, but planets capable of supporting life i'm pretty sure will be found eventually... the real problem is getting there to check out if there is life at all.

We really need FTL like a priest needs a choirboy... badly.

posted on September 21st, 2010, 6:56 pm

tcr obviously when i said there are loads of m class planets with oceans i meant in star trek. i mean you are just being pedantic

so the question of whether there are earth like planets in the real universe is not relevant here.

planets dont need to be like earth though, as long as they have water they most likely have heavy water and thus deuterium available.

mars may have once had polar caps of ice.

jupiter and other gas planets probably contain some deuterium in gaseous forms as well.

Define Pedantic.

I think I see your point.

Didn't you read my post.  Life can't exist simply because a planet has water.  Water is only one element in a system that supports life.

Mars does have ice caps.  Mixed in with "dry ice" or solid carbon dioxide.

Is deuterium supposed to be an element?  Or is it just sci-fi.



Even if we find a planet with similar gravity, if the planet does not have the right orbit by even 1%, it won't matter.  Plus there are many, many other factors that play into a habitable planet.

The closest star is a trinary system about 4.5 light-years away.  Any planetary orbits there wouldn't last long due to the gravitational field geometry.  And I don't think they can really tell the exact size or whether or not the planet has an atmosphere.  How would they be able to tell solar refraction from an atmosphere tint?  The planet is usually guessed to be there by star movement and fluctuations in star brightness at regular intervals.

Personally, I don't think we'll find any Teraformable planets out there.  Mars is the closest we can get, but since it doesn't have a stable magnetic field, it's atmosphere is being eroded by solar radiation.  And, the probability of life being on that planet is so low, that you are more likely to run out of molecules in the universe hundreds or thousands of times before finding a single living cell.  However, in science fiction, anything can happen.

[Anonymous]

posted on September 21st, 2010, 7:11 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on September 21st, 2010, 7:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Define Pedantic.

it was obvious i was talking about the abundance of m class planets in star trek, not real life, yet you still raised the point.

pedantic: overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, esp. in teaching.

from dictionary.com

Didn't you read my post.  Life can't exist simply because a planet has water.  Water is only one element in a system that supports life.

didnt u read mine? i never said life can exist simply because of water. i said there are plenty of planets in the star trek galaxy where water can be found.

Is deuterium supposed to be an element?  Or is it just sci-fi.

deuterium is an isotope of hyrdrogen containing 1 proton and 1 neutron and 1 electron. having atomic weight of 2. it is naturally occuring in earth's ocean (look up heavy water). and can be used for nuclear fusion, which many assume impulse reactors do. the supply of deuterium in our ocean would last longer than the age of the universe assuming our energy needs do not increase.

The closest star is a trinary system about 4.5 light-years away.  Any planetary orbits there wouldn't last long due to the gravitational field geometry.  And I don't think they can really tell the exact size or whether or not the planet has an atmosphere.  How would they be able to tell solar refraction from an atmosphere tint?  The planet is usually guessed to be there by star movement and fluctuations in star brightness at regular intervals.

the rest of your post is about planets in the real univserse which i didnt mention.

also the closest star to earth is 4.2 lys away, and is proxima centauri.

---

EDIT:
the alpha centauri binary system is slightly farther away.

posted on September 21st, 2010, 7:15 pm

Define Pedantic.

Here you go: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pedantic

Wow, this is a proper thread derailment.  What i don't get is what is your problem with the potential for other planets to be capable of supporting life... are you against the idea?

Oh, just seen your latest post.  Stop trying to get your thread back on-topic!  :innocent:  Its worse than that, he's dead Jim.  :D

Seriously, still can't say I would vote for any of your revised options either.  Maybe for for specific ships, but there again that already exists to some extent with Romulan ships such as the Rhienn and Generix refits.

And still very much against self-destruct.  >:(

Damn, ninja'd by Myles 

posted on September 21st, 2010, 7:29 pm

I'm just going by statistics.  And statistics show that life is impossible to form by chance and requires a designer.

posted on September 21st, 2010, 7:42 pm

I would get into the discussion at this point with a long, complicated talk about why I disagree with the whole "random chance can't have created life" argument, but then I would be a fool.

Now where is Boggz with those duck quacking videos he loves to post?

[Anonymous]

posted on September 21st, 2010, 8:05 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on September 21st, 2010, 8:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

now this looks plain weird as there are quotes to the other thread lol

there are still bits about deuterium here, which should be in the other thread lol.

as for the argument about creationism i'm not gonna bother joining it, my original point was completelely confined to the star trek universe. and ive learned that arguing about these things is rarely anything other than a complete waste of everyone's time.

so quack on brothers

posted on September 21st, 2010, 8:12 pm

I'm just going by statistics.  And statistics show that life is impossible to form by chance and requires a designer.

Oh, you are one of those.  You do know statistics can be used to prove anything?  9/10 statisticians agree with that statement.

I tried to put it back on topic, but it didn't seem to work.

Guilty as charged! 

Maybe a topic split plus some post deletions would help.  The other topic can be called "Creation vs Evolution".  I have a lot more mathematical statistics I haven't mentioned yet and other statistics that are not mathematical but geological, astronomical, chemical, etc.

I would highly recommend we don't do that here.  Let's let this topic get back on-topic and NOT start a thread about Creation vs Evolution.  The mods here really don't need that sort of debate (trust me mods, you really don't, they usually get very messy).  If you want that then I recommend you get yourself over to RatSkep, Rationolia, or Athiest Forums, they all love a good chew toy to play with, or ChristianForums if you want everyone to agree with you and send you lots of blessings.

posted on September 21st, 2010, 8:14 pm

Oh noes!  It happenz.  Not here please.  I have enough of this over on RatSkep.... i won't take part here.