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ORIGINAL: BVZ

Is it really that surprising that when you find life, that the planet you find it on can support life?

Isn't that a given?

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Exactly! A slight wind can cause a domino effect. A tiny spark can cause a great fire. An effect does not require a cause greater than the effect.

Well, I didn't make that claim - I was simply pointing out that the argument of an infinite regress isn't the result of such an argument.

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Interestingly, your argument seems to counter the claim Dawkins makes that a designer must be more complex than his design.

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I am quoting myself here, because no one has answered the question yet.

The argument seems to be that since Earth has life on it, it MUST have been designed that way. But Earth is suited for life, so why would it be strange to find life on it?

I am not saying that it was not designed. All I am saying is that this specific argument is bankrupt.

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Also, the argument in the OP relies very heavily on proving a negative, namely that life is NOT common in the universe. The OP does not actually show how this conclusion is reached.

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If every effect requires a cause that is greater, then you will have infinite regress.

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I'd like to read where Dawkins makes this claim. Do you have a reference? Do you agree with Dawkins?

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Would you agree that a tiny spark can cause a great fire, and therefore an effect does not require a cause that is greater?

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Would you agree that a tiny spark can cause a great fire, and therefore an effect does not require a cause that is greater?

I certainly agree a spark can begin a great fire, but I would say that it would require more than a spark for it to begin and grow into a great fire - it would require sufficient fuel for the fire to grow.

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ORIGINAL: Consecrated2God

It's also not always that simple to start a spark. It usually requires something to make the spark.

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Yes, it would require fuel, but fuel is not the cause of a fire any more than being female is the cause of a pregnancy.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Yes, it would require fuel, but fuel is not the cause of a fire any more than being female is the cause of a pregnancy.

Being female is certainly a neccesary condition for pregnancy to occur - among humans at least.

So far.

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Yes, a necessary condition, but not a cause.

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No. I would say a spark will not get a woman pregnant.

I've answer that question. Do you understand the difference between a cause and a condition? Would you agree that being female does not cause pregnancy?

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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I am quoting myself here, because no one has answered the question yet.

The argument seems to be that since Earth has life on it, it MUST have been designed that way. But Earth is suited for life, so why would it be strange to find life on it?

I am not saying that it was not designed. All I am saying is that this specific argument is bankrupt.

Nobody is making that argument, that is why no one is responding to it.

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Also, the argument in the OP relies very heavily on proving a negative, namely that life is NOT common in the universe. The OP does not actually show how this conclusion is reached.

And the positive argument the OP makes (supported by recent findings) is that the earth is uniquely suited for life - it is an eminently falsifiable statement.

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Your argument is that the conditions needed for life are very specific. You also assume that these conditions are rare. From this you come to the conclusion that the conditions must have been chosen by a designer.

Could you show me the logic you used to do this?

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You can't prove a negative. When you say "the Earth is uniquely suited to life", basically what you are saying is "no other planet is suited for life". That is what 'unique' means. We don't even know of the planets in our own solar system is devoid of life, how on Earth can you say that NO PLANET IN THE UNIVERSE other than Earth has life on it?

For your argument to work, you need to prove a negative. Good luck with that.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Your argument is that the conditions needed for life are very specific. You also assume that these conditions are rare. From this you come to the conclusion that the conditions must have been chosen by a designer.

Could you show me the logic you used to do this?

I don't think you really read the OP. The conditions for life are certainly specific. According to the most recent findings, those conditions appear to be rare.

This contradicts the Copernican Principle, that being that our solar system, earth, and the life it contains are ordinary occurences in the universe - so far they seem not to be.

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You can't prove a negative. When you say "the Earth is uniquely suited to life", basically what you are saying is "no other planet is suited for life". That is what 'unique' means. We don't even know of the planets in our own solar system is devoid of life, how on Earth can you say that NO PLANET IN THE UNIVERSE other than Earth has life on it?

For your argument to work, you need to prove a negative. Good luck with that.

No, that is a positive argument, and can easily be falsified by the finding of a single other planet suited for life. It is stated the way proper scientific statements should be stated per Popper. That it is difficult to disprove there is no doubt (which is a interesting point in and of itself), but we have significant and growing body of evidence that gives a pretty good idea of what's out there, and it doesn't seem to be alive.

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Your notion that we, "don't even know of the planets in our own solar system is devoid of life" is actually the scientifically impossible proposition - we could never 'prove' that, because it is actually a negative statement - but we don't need to prove your negative statement to consider my statement to be scientifically sound.

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Now had I said "No other planet in the universe other than earth has life on it" it would be problematic per Popper; but I didn't say that.

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ORIGINAL: BVZ

Excelent. So you are not saying that there CANNOT be any life other than the life found on Earth. What you are saying is that life can only develop under certain conditions, and these conditions SEEM to be rare, based on out current knowledge about planets outside out solar system. Which is not a lot.

How exactly do you get from this position to a position where a designer is required?

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Lets say you have a billion closed boxes. You check one or two of them. Both are empty. Is is reasonable to come to the conclusion that they ALL must be empty? Of course not. The best you can do is come to the conclusion that : "We dont know."

This is not what you are doing. You are coming to the conclusion that Earth is the only planet with life, based on pretty much nothing.

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Exactly. Why then do you come to this conclusion if you yourself agree that you cannot?

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Excelent. So you are not saying that there CANNOT be any life other than the life found on Earth. What you are saying is that life can only develop under certain conditions, and these conditions SEEM to be rare, based on out current knowledge about planets outside out solar system. Which is not a lot.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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You still have a long way to go before you reach a designer. Could you walk me through your logic?

Well, I don’t think that the fine-tuning of the universe, the precise location of our planet in the galaxy, the uniqueness of the organization of our solar system, the necessary atmospheric and geological make-up of our planet as well as the the unique series of events leading to life’s origin cause us to ‘reach a designer’ per se, it just causes conclusions to the contrary to appear absurd, or at least a great leap of faith, which they are of course.

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And Privileged Planet by Guillermo Gonzalez would go further to suggest that there are a lot of things that make this planet/solar system/galaxy/universe uniquely suited for life. It seems that we can add another great fact to how unique our solar system is.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

You still have a long way to go before you reach a designer. Could you walk me through your logic?

Well, I don’t think that the fine-tuning of the universe, the precise location of our planet in the galaxy, the uniqueness of the organization of our solar system, the necessary atmospheric and geological make-up of our planet as well as the the unique series of events leading to life’s origin cause us to ‘reach a designer’ per se, it just causes conclusions to the contrary to appear absurd, or at least a great leap of faith, which they are of course.

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Lets say you have a billion closed boxes. You check one or two of them. Both are empty. Is is reasonable to come to the conclusion that they ALL must be empty? Of course not. The best you can do is come to the conclusion that : "We dont know."

This is not what you are doing. You are coming to the conclusion that Earth is the only planet with life, based on pretty much nothing.

I don't know if the scientist in the article would consider the 300 hundred exoplanets discovered thus far to be nothing, but that is irrelevant to the point.

The conclusion is not of course that they are all empty, the conclusion is the only one science can come to – that as far as our current and increasingly verified knowledge is concerned, our box is unique. Of course, as science can never have absolute knowledge, so this contention can only be made to be more certain by opening more boxes (which we are doing with increasing regularity) and should something appear to contradict the hypothesis, then it will be disproved – but thus far it is proved true.

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Exactly. Why then do you come to this conclusion if you yourself agree that you cannot?

By saying, “according to everything we know” of course. That is true for all scientific knowledge.

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Excelent. So you are not saying that there CANNOT be any life other than the life found on Earth. What you are saying is that life can only develop under certain conditions, and these conditions SEEM to be rare, based on out current knowledge about planets outside out solar system. Which is not a lot.

How exactly do you get from this position to a position where a designer is required?

Well, again, I never claimed to draw a line between our unique planet and the existence of a designer – only to contradict the materialist Copernican principle which claims our planet is ordinary – all the evidence thus far contradicts this notion.

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Now it may be that life sustaining planets do arise regularly as the product of ordinary processes in our universe, but there is no evidence to support this, so I find it reasonable to consider that something more is required – and I suggest intelligence as a possibility.

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So you have no argument, you have an opinion. Based on incrudulity. Since all ID arguments seem to follow this pattern I am not surprised.

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Of course our solar system is unique. All solar systems are unique.

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But you cannot get around the fact that you don't know if there is life out there, and neither do we.

Also, you still have not adressed the following problem: We still don't know if our solar system is devoid of life (since you can't prove a negative), so how can you come to the conclusion that the solar systems containing the exoplanets must be devoid of life?

Again, you are left with nothing but an opinion based on incrudulity.

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Of course it is. Our current scientific knowledge does not show that there is a designer for instance.

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Exactly. Which is why scientists refrain from coming to conclusions about the existance or non existance of life off of Earth. They do the same thing about the existance/non existance of a designer.

The fact that ID does not do the same, indicates that ID is not science.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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So you have no argument, you have an opinion. Based on incrudulity. Since all ID arguments seem to follow this pattern I am not surprised.

Of course not - I listed what we currently know about the universe - based on that set of facts, the idea that it fell together incidentally is the incredible position.

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Of course our solar system is unique. All solar systems are unique.

Actually, so far most other solar systems are similar - ours is exceptional.

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But you cannot get around the fact that you don't know if there is life out there, and neither do we.

Also, you still have not adressed the following problem: We still don't know if our solar system is devoid of life (since you can't prove a negative), so how can you come to the conclusion that the solar systems containing the exoplanets must be devoid of life?

Again, you are left with nothing but an opinion based on incrudulity.

But you are the one basing your belief on gaps in our knowledge, not I.

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While it is true we don't know if their is life 'out there', we do know the conditions for life's existence - and the exoplanets we know of so far aren't fit for life, thus no life. So the latest set of fact show our solar system to be unique in it's ability to support life, and while one discovery could change all that, it requires one discovery to make it so, not speculation about such a discovery.

It's the same for all science.

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Of course it is. Our current scientific knowledge does not show that there is a designer for instance.

The designer is an inference based on certain facts, the same for all science.

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Exactly. Which is why scientists refrain from coming to conclusions about the existance or non existance of life off of Earth. They do the same thing about the existance/non existance of a designer.

The fact that ID does not do the same, indicates that ID is not science.

But if their were evidence for life off of earth (like a signal from a planetary system) we could make that iference without seeing the designers - as we do with life.

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So... you DO have an argument? Why then, when I asked you to walk me through it, did you say that you can't because you didn't have one?

Explain to me how you get from "earth is unique" to "there must be a designer". Walk me through your logic please. If you have an argument, surely you can do this?

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What are those? Examples please.

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But you agree that you don't know if there is life outside out solar system or not?

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What are those facts?

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Off topic. We are not discussing how scientists will know if a signal was generated by an intelligent entity. We are discussing how the fact that Earth supports life (by itself) supports the idea that it must have been designed.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
You are claiming that if we "don't know if there is life out there" we can't claim that the only known instance of life is a special circumstance; that logic is backwards - until we know if there is other life out there, the only known circumstances in which life is known to occur can certainly be considered to be special - unique even.

That is the only proposition which can be falsified, and thus the only real scientific claim in this discussion.

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But you agree that you don't know if there is life outside out solar system or not?

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It's like the whole unicorn argument. If I claim that there are no unicorns, such a claim is scientific because it's falsifiable. Arguing that, "we don't know if there is a unicorn out there and we don't know that they don't exist" does not negate the scientific nature of the statement that unicorns don't exist.