Image by Mads Boedker via FlickrLife on Mars? Yikes, this sounds like life on earth!
The evidence for this?
To paraphrase scientist Dr. Emmett Brown, "Evidence? Where we're going, we don't need evidence".
Or, as an eminent Mars explorer once put it, "To infinity ... and beyond!
Evolution News and Views has the full story.
20 comments:
To sum this up nicely using two words: RENT SEEKERS!
The 'scientists' at NASA are trying to justify their existence again. Personally I would love to see a split between Scientism and State. I know I know that's not going to happen Scientism has become the state religion,.
I posed a question to people about our moon, and it's only because it doesn't make sense to me that is broke off from earth after being hit by a huge rock.
The moon revolves around the earth at the same rotation for one day on the moon. Thus we see the same side of it all the time as it faces us, but this confuses me because it can't explain how all those impact crators that hit the moon dead on straight to make those beautiful startbust images during a full moon tah are very clear.
The moon is about 220'000-240'000 miles from the earth, how do those meteors not get grabbed by the earth's force, and how could a rotating orb with near 0 atmosphere deflect it to draw down into a 90degree slam right into the moon for a perfect circle.
I said for 20 years now the the moon had to have been hit from all side near the astroid belts and as it came by earth it was pulled in and began its orbit. The earth and moon are moving threw space and rotating.
Moon mission are now for the sole purpose to harvest the Helium3 that will make our Nuke plants look like a diesel generator.
I would stick to the unprovable stuff if I were you. 'Can God make a rock so heavy that even he can't lift,' that sort of thing.
There might not be life on Mars now or at any time, but then again there might be some fossils there for us.
..It would be funny to hear about how the great flood went all the way to Mars to drown and lay down uniform layers of exquisitely segregated isotopes and corresponding fossil markers. God can do anything after all. He can even extend his collective yet meticulous revenge to other planets! ;)
Yes. It does sound like life on earth. The scientist quoted was describing how life on earth works, and how it could work on Mars, given that conditions observed on Mars may support life.
They are drawing conclusions based on what they have observed about life on earth.
From the article you link to: "Materialists assume that if you've got some water, life will result". No assumption needed. Whenever we observe water, we almost always observe life. Even comets can contain organic compounds. This isn't an assumption made without evidence. It's a hypothesis reached through observation and induction, and it is a hypothesis that can be (and is being) tested. I can't wait till the next Mars Rover (launch scheduled for later this year) gets there.
Of course, as the scientists quoted in the article you link to admit, there may or may not be life on Mars.
But if I were you, I'd be trying to think about ways to make life on Mars, if it exists, compatible with your faith. You'd want to avoid another earth-is-the-centre-of-the-cosmos-sun-spins-round-the-earth scandal...
Hi Anonymous,
I hadn't thought much about the moon rotating before. Though apparently, lots of moons in the solar system do the same thing, with the same side of the moon always faces its planet.
http://www.universetoday.com/19699/does-the-moon-rotate/
"Whenever we observe water, we almost always observe life."
So, wherever water is, life naturally and readily emerges? Then why has life only emerged on earth, according to scientific theory, exactly once? If life only emerged once on earth, then your don't have "almost always" you have a sample size of exactly one -- and billions of years where no new life has since emerged.
Why isn't new life emerging today -- conditions not right? Then, it appears for life to form the conditions must be exactly right. If this is true, what are the odds of these exactly right conditions being hit on Mars?
You can't have it both ways.
I do have my "almost always". Whenever we find water, we almost always find life. Even when the water is very hot, or freezing cold, or without any sunlight, or highly acidic, or super salty (the dead sea isn't dead... a fact discovered with the help of microscopes).
Scientific theory isn't committed to life only having emerged once. What makes the search for life on Mars interesting is that it might answer questions about the origin of life. Did it only emerge once in our solar system? Did it emerge twice, separately? It is possible that life emerged on Mars, and somehow was transported to earth. Martian rocks find there way to earth and vice versa all the time. Maybe life on Mars and Earth had some interstellar origin... Maybe new life is emerging today. The universe is a big place.
What I like about the scientific perspective here is a recognition of ignorance, and a desire to learn more, to test hypotheses, to gather more information, analyze it, draw conclusions... That's what sending probes to Mars is about. Hopefully someday soon we'll send humans. If there is no life on Mars, I can say "OK. No life on Mars. Scientific question asked and answered." The same can be said if there is life on Mars. What would you say/think/do if they discover evidence of life (past or present) on Mars in the near future?
I wasn't sure what you meant by life only emerging once, according to scientific theory. Now, on rereading this a couple of times, I think you're referring to the idea that all life on earth today has a common origin. I wonder about this too. Did it all begin in a single puddle of goop? If so, why not in innumerable puddles of goop? Perhaps it did begin all over the place and the transfer of genetic information between early bacterial life gave later life it's shared genetic code? I'm not sure. But more scientific research on this planet and on others can help us understand these questions, and perhaps even find some answers.
"What I like about the scientific perspective here is a recognition of ignorance"
Yes and no. Science assumes materialism is true. That is a whopper of a presupposition that narrows the range of "acceptable" answers.
But I agree with you that science is a wonderful thing.
"why not in innumerable puddles of goop?"
Why not, indeed. And if it's so simple a brain-dead universe can do it, why can't scientists replicate it in the lab? I mean, we can reverse-engineer the Colonel's secret herbs and spices, can't we? Can it be more complicated than that?!
I wasn't quite sure (or haven't been quite sure) what you meant by materialism. My dictionary says:
noun
1 a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values.
2 Philosophy the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.
• the doctrine that consciousness and will are wholly due to material agency
*
I assume you mean definition number 2. I'm not sure that all scientists are materialists. But much depends on what you think materialism means. A while ago I came across a very interesting comment by Kant about the body and soul. He said that this was a useful distinction... but that it could be that everything we experience as body/soul is all material.
And of course, matter and energy are interchangeable... or commensurable.... or something like that. I forget my E equals MC squared stuff.
"why can't scientists replicate it in the lab?"
Good question. One answer might be that scientists don't have millions or billions of years to conduct experiments. Another answer might be to point to some famous (well, as famous as these get) experiments from the 50s where scientists put some gases in a sealed jar (gases that were supposedly around when the earth was young... hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon... no oxygen since that requires Plants... here on Earth anyway...) and added some energy (sparks, to simulate lightning) and after a short while amino acids formed. No little man came out of the jar... but... perhaps in millions of years something might have...
*
Also... Can we reverse engineer the Colonel's recipe? Has that been done? I thought we'd be waiting until life was found on Mars before someone could do that...
"Science assumes materialism is true. That is a whopper of a presupposition"
Pray tell, how is that any MORE of a whopper of a presupposition than saying that the supernatural exists? Like I've said before, if you can "explain" anything by simply waving your hands and sayiong "oh, it must be magic", you haven't explained ANYTHING. Superstitions like yours are the REAL whoppers of presupposition, because they are, in their entirety, based on nothing more than wishful thinking.
"2 Philosophy the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications."
Yes, in the context of darwinism and scientific method, this is the definition to use.
A materialist general believes that a human being has no immaterial part, so there is no mind apart from the brain, no inner spirit. You could put it this way: a human being is a machine, and there's no "you" inside of it to direct the machine. So, free will is an illusion. You think you freely chose to post to this blog; you didn't. At least, that's what the hard materialist would insist.
Most materialists want to have their cake and eat it to. They want to insist that the material universe is all that exists, but then posit the reality of things like free will and "themselves" as a real entity distinguishable from their body/brain machine.
E.g., when I choose not to post something from a blogger and he is "hurt" -- what exactly is hurt? His body? No. His brain? No. _He_ is hurt.
Materialism is reductionist, and it doesn't fit the common-sense experience of life by human beings.
The 1950s Miller-Urey experiment has been shown to be fatally flawed. However, it still shows up in science books seeking to promote the darwinian story-line.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
Anon @ 11:32, your moon questions are good ones, and can be answered by anyone with moderate astronomy training.
First, the moon did not always face the earth with one side only. Shortly after formation, it both spun much faster, and was closer to the earth. Due to tidal force, much of the spin energy of the moon was converted to orbital energy, which had the effect of moth slowing the spin and causing the moon to move further from the earth. Once the spin and orbit became the same, those tidal forces stopped working on the moon and it settled into it’s now-stable orientation.
Of course, this tidal force still effects the earth, as it is not always facing the moon with the same side, so this is causing two effects, the spin of the earth is continually slowing and the earth is moving away from the moon. But the moon is only 1/80th the mass of the earth, so the effect is small. The moon moves away by about 10 feet a year at current rates.
The same effect can me seen in other orbiting objects, such as Mercury, which is so small compared to the sun that all it’s spin momentum has been eaten up, and it always faces the sun with the same, really hot, side. The earth would eventually have this fate, but the effect is so small at this distance that the sun will nova before we run out of spin momentum.
Also, note almost all of the craters you see on the moon happened a long time ago, shortly after the moon formed. The phase of early bombardment ended about 3 billion years ago, while the moon was still spinning faster than it orbited.
As for the apparent straight-on impacts of all the craters, there are three answers. First, the gravity of the moon will cause any incoming object that is going to hit it to bend towards the surface before impact. Second, circular or very-nearly-circular craters can result from non-vertical impacts, especially when the impact is big enough to cause liquefaction of rocks. At this energy, the impact is more like an explosion than it is like a golf ball hitting a car. Even that said, throw a golf ball at your car at a 45 degree angle, and the dent will be basically round. Thirdly, many of the impacts we do see on the moon are not round, especially the smaller ones.
How are the Miller-Urey experiments fatally flawed? Perhaps I should first ask... what you mean by that?
"Materialism is reductionist, and it doesn't fit the common-sense experience of life by human beings."
I might agree with you here. But... common sense experience is not always indicative of the truth. For example: it is said that matter is made up of tiny atoms, which are themselves made up of sub-atomic particles, and that all of the matter that we experience is mostly empty space. I am periodically skeptical of this, and like to keep it in mind when someone believes something that "sounds crazy" because they read it in a sacred text. I think: "well, I heard in a highschool science textbook that matter is mostly empty space, and I believe it, but..." and then I bang my head on a nearby desk or wall.
By the way: do you believe that matter as we know it is actually made up of atoms, which are made up of protons, electrons, neutrons, etc, and that it's mostly empty space?
I find it interesting that you say "science assumes that materialism is true", yet the wikipedia article on Materialism that you provide includes a section on the "scientific rejection of materialism". Not all scientists are materialists; at least, not in the sense of the term that you are using.
And... one can deny the existence of free will, and be a theist... including a Christian theist.
e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_in_theology#In_Calvinism
And... you can be an atheist or agnostic or scientist (and I consider those categories to be quite distinct, conceptually) and believe in free will.
You say: "Most materialists want to have their cake and eat it to. They want to insist that the material universe is all that exists, but then posit the reality of things like free will and "themselves" as a real entity distinguishable from their body/brain machine."
A lot depends on what you mean by materialism. And you seem to have an unstated premise that all atheists/agnostics/scientists/people-who-disagree-with-you-on-this-issue are all "materialists." Why can't someone say (in good faith, without any logical incoherence) that there is no God, at least no God as described in the Bible (or indeed any ancient holy text), and also say that there is such a thing as free will?
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