Malaise Posted:

I salute you sir or madam as the first person to correctly use the phrase “begs the question” in the history of Forumwarz. Possibly in the history of the internetz.

I came close to reflexively saying that begging the question doesn’t mean raising the question, but then I re-read it and realised it was actually being used correctly.

Mind. Blown.

Inertia Posted:

I’ve heard of something like that… Alien civilization about to perish and came to Earth so life on Earth are basically offshots of those aliens.

That would provide an answer to the origins of life on Earth, but just shifts the question to “Where did the aliens come from?” Also an alien civilisation would likely already be a highly specialised organism, so we wouldn’t see the evidence of a very simple common ancestor for life on Earth.

Panspermia in general though, could be plausible – they’ve found amino acids formed naturally on comets, so a ridiculously simple form of life might have been able to come about in such an environment then come crashing down to Earth. Other theories abound though.

Shii Posted:

Except supernatural entities aren’t bound by physics, namely the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You can’t have an infinite system because everything shuts down. This would include the universe, and requires that the universe have a starting point.

EDIT: Furthermore, Law of Conservation of Mbum states matter can not be created or destroyed, only its form changed. Combine that with the Second Law as stated above and you have a nice paradox in which the universe can’t be infinitely old yet could not have been created.

I don’t know enough of quantum mechanics to argue it properly, but I remember reading ideas for origins involving higher-dimensional branes colliding (and their intersection being our universe, with fewer dimensions) or the observable universe originating with a bubble of low entropy, formed as a fluctuation in a mostly homogeneous background of higher entropy.

Like I said, don’t know enough to argue about these, but I know there are theories out there that aim to explain things without resorting to the supernatural. Bringing in god as an entity who, by definition, can break all the normal rules just seems like way to do a sneaky end-run around the rules, rather than actually answer anything.

EDIT: Ack ****, why aren’t my quote tags working properly? Log in to see images! man-man edited this message on 09/04/2009 12:12PM