Probability of Earth and life being how it is (page 2)

peacefulpete

Notably, some sources highlight that he fulfilled 27 prophecies in a single day.

It's almost as if the writers of the Jesus story were using the Old Testament as a source.

joey jojo

There is potentially other life that exists in the universe, or our galaxy, maybe still even in our solar system.

The problem is the vast distance. The recent planet they believe has indicators of biological signatures in its atmosphere is 125 light years away. That means that a signal sent today would take 250 years before we get a reply - if there is intellligent life on that planet that is capable of sending radio signals.

Just for context, travelling at 400 000km/h, it would take almost 200 000 years to reach that planet. Broadly speaking , this is a close planet when you consider the milky way is 100 000 light years across.

For arguments sake, if there is a civilisation exactly like us, with all the exact same technology etc, that has evolved somewhere else in our galaxy, chances are we will never know about it.

However, using the same argument, lets say that the civilisation like ours is 1000 years more advanced than us? If humans dont self-destruct, what technology will we have in 1000 years? Will it be possible to crack all the problems involving space travel distances in that time? What if the civilisation is 10 000 years more advanced? 10 000 years is the blink of an eye in evolution and maybe humans could make breakthroughs in science that seem impossible today, once again - if we dont annihilate ourselves in the meantime.

If life is common in the universe and if there are civilisations that have developed like ours and are thousands of years ahead of us, then there is a chance that aliens are here already.

Sea Breeze

@peacefulpete

Surely you are not naive enough to believe that people (orthodox Jews) made up this story and were willing to be ostracized by family, shunned by their community and die horrible deaths for something they knew to be a lie.

How do you know you are not just believeing something as far fetched as 1975, then living in denial of the facts like your dad did? Is it possible that you are more like your dad than you care to admit?

JohnR1975

The Earth's moon is unique in its ability to cause total solar eclipses.

The probability of a moon having the right size and orbital characteristics to cause total eclipses is considered low.

Why choose the Moon's eclipses as part of this? Because it is our only moon, and clearly visible to everyone on the planet. If you wanted to design a planetary system and put a "signature" out there for everyone to see (more visible than the pyramids for example), choose the moon.

It’s must be obvious to anyone with clear thinking abilities that there is no option that it was all just chance. A big bang explosion and whoosh the sun moon and earth by chance all just happened to land in the right places.

in an eclipse the moon matches up perfectly to the sun from our point of view here on earth. The sun is said to be 400 times larger than the moon and 400 times the distance away, and we are told this was just an amazing coincidence that they landed there after a chance big bang ?

jhine

Ballistic, there is an awful lot more to this fine tuning lark that the things that you mention . Atmospheric pressure for one thing needed to be exactly right.

There is a book called The Improbable Planet written by an astrophysicist called Hugh Ross which describes how Earth got to be called The Goldilocks Planet.

It's very sciency ( technical term ) and much of it went over my head . However well worth a delve into if this interests you as the amount of fine tuning needed is mind blowing .

Jan from Tam

Jeffro

The probability of things being the way they are is precisely 1.

The chance of a shuffled pack of standard playing cards being dealt in order is less than one in 10⁶⁷. But the chance of it being in any particular order, including all the ones that appear to be ‘random’, is exactly the same. This means that something with the chance of less than one in 10⁶⁷ happens not only every day, but millions of times every day. It’s only ‘remarkable’ if the order it happens to be in is predicted in advance. All ‘fine tuning’ arguments fail for the same reason.

Jeffro

Sea Breeze:

I think that if someone were to predict their own death and then claim that they would resurrect themself from the dead afterwards, then do it - that would pretty much do it for me.

Sheesh. Not this drivel again. The stories about Jesus were written much later than his lifetime. We know that to be a fact. They are unverifiable stories, many of them (especially in Matthew) desperately trying to make things in the Old Testament falsely appear to be ‘prophetic’. It is entirely unremarkable that someone with access to older stories could make up other stories based on those. And as for the supposed ‘proofs’ of the ‘resurrection’, dealt with at https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/280710/how-would-you-define-religion-why?page=8#4884876684165120.

slimboyfat

Cause and effect arguments for a God simply end with special pleading in the case of God. Not just God himself but the space/dimension it which that God exists. Which came first the space/dimension in which God exists or God?

To say that God can’t exist because he would need to have a cause or exist in space or time is really no different than saying that “God can’t exist because God can’t exist”. It’s not an argument it’s an assertion.

God is outside time and space by definition. The point of God is that he doesn’t have a location in space or time and is self-caused. As Aquinas pointed out, causes either proceed in an infinite series or else there is an ultimate cause. Reflection (which is what the five ways call for) leads many, including myself, to conclude that an ultimate cause makes intuitive sense. It’s not a deductive or an inductive argument, but it seems like the best explanation.

Anony Mous

The thing is, fine tuning is not needed when you have a large enough testing grounds for your probabilities.

We can only ask the question because we happen to be in the right place at the right time. What is the likelihood that you have a device in your hand that can communicate across the world and you are rich enough to afford these luxuries and you happen to do this on a JW forum: compared to the entirety of human history, that is a very low chance, your parents must have been really intelligent to have produced you at just the right time 40-50-60 years ago and joined the JW just so we can have this conversation, by the logic used above, your own parents must be deities.

TD

This means that something with the chance of less than one in 10⁶⁷ happens not only every day, millions of times every day.

^^This^^

Probability of Earth and life being how it is

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