Hi slevesque, I thought I would give you my input on this question, in case you want to get back on topic.
We know that the universe has not existed forever, that is, it had a beginning, a start. Either be it the Big Bang or God creating everything, the universe hasn't always existed. This is a logical deduction from thermodynamics, because if the universe has an infinite past, then there should be no mroe energy 'transfer'.
Unless the process that began it - be it an inflation event or god/s - is a intermittent but somewhat continuous or recurring event. "White holes" that "inflate" new materials\mass\energy into an existing system, extending the thermodynamic "life" of the universe in question. "Branes" could also provide a "ripple" effect, a wave of continuous creation of universe that spreads out within another dimension extending the universe (perhaps just not visible to us).
However to reduce speculations upon speculations we can limit the discussion to what we know about the solar system, and how long it has existed.
Age of the universe - Wikipedia
quote:
The age of the universe is the time elapsed between the Big Bang and the present day. Current theory and observations suggest that the universe is between 13.5 and 14 billion years old.[1] The uncertainty range has been obtained by the agreement of a number of scientific research projects. Scientific instruments and methods have improved the ability to measure the age of the universe with a great accuracy. These projects included background radiation measurements and more ways to measure the expansion of the universe. Background radiation measurements give the cooling time of the universe since the big bang. Expansion of the universe measurements give accurate data to calculate the age of the universe.
So the universe that we think we know is ~13.5 billion years old, minimum, in the "neighborhood" that we can observe.
We also (think we) know that the materials that make up the solar system, including the earth - the elements that are more complex than hydrogen and helium and lithium - have been forged in the furnaces of older stars that then exploded in super\nova events, releasing these higher elements into space to form clouds that can condense into new stars.
Star - Wikipedia
quote:
For most of its life, a star shines due to thermonuclear fusion in its core releasing energy that traverses the star's interior and then radiates into outer space. Almost all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were created by fusion processes in stars. Astronomers can determine the mass, age, chemical composition and many other properties of a star by observing its spectrum, luminosity and motion through space.
So it took the birth and death of older stars to form the materials that make up the earth before the solar system could form.
Age of Earth - Wikipedia
quote:
Modern geologists and geophysicists accept that the age of the Earth is around 4.54 billion years (4.54 109 years 1%).[1][2][3] This age has been determined by radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples.
Following the scientific revolution and the development of radiometric age dating, measurements of lead in uranium-rich minerals showed that some were in excess of a billion years old.[4] The oldest such minerals analysed to date - small crystals of zircon from the Jack Hills of Western Australia - are at least 4.404 billion years old.[5][6][7] Comparing the mass and luminosity of the Sun to the multitudes of other stars, it appears that the solar system cannot be much older than those rocks. Ca-Al-rich inclusions (inclusions rich in calcium and aluminium) - the oldest known solid constituents within meteorites that are formed within the solar system - are 4.567 billion years old,[8][9] giving an age for the solar system and an upper limit for the age of Earth. It is hypothesised that the accretion of Earth began soon after the formation of the Ca-Al-rich inclusions and the meteorites. Because the exact accretion time of Earth is not yet known, and the predictions from different accretion models range from a few millions up to about 100 million years, the exact age of Earth is difficult to determine. It is also difficult to determine the exact age of the oldest rocks on Earth, exposed at the surface, as they are aggregates of minerals of possibly different ages. The Acasta Gneiss of Northern Canada may be the oldest known exposed crustal rock.[10]
So we can be fairly certain that ~4.55 billion years ago the earth was condensing from a cloud in interstellar material left over from the nova death of previous stars, and was likely to be sterile at the time, due to the processes involved.
Knowing this, it seems that there are two option concerning the development of life:
...
Now, in a Naturalistic, or atheist etc. point of view, there seems to be only one option: the second one. I come to this conclusion because there are no naturalists that I have ever heard of who are proponents of the first option.
The
secular naturalistic point of view is that life formed after the earth formed through similar "natural" laws that control/direct the formation of such things as planets and life.
Whether this view is "atheistic" or not depends on your point of view - if you believe that the universe was designed in such a way that pockets of heavy elements like the solar system would form via created\designed laws of nature, and that life could form in certain conditions within such systems via created\designed laws of nature, then such a view is not atheistic, but theistic.
Certainly we know that, like the heavy elements (heavier than lithium), there are pre-organic molecules existing in the far reaches of space, hydrocarbon molecules containing bits and pieces of such higher elements (sodium, potasium, nitrogen, oxygen, etc) providing a basis for the formation of carbon-based life as we know it.
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/mmw/mmwlab/websitepdf/132.pdf
quote:
Over 130 molecules have been identified in the interstellar gas and circumstellar shells, the largest among them is a carbon chain with 13 atoms and molecular weight of 147 (twice that of the simplest amino acid glycine). The high reliability of astronomical identifications, as well as the fairly accurate quantitative analysis which can often be achieved, is emphasized. Glycine itself has been claimed, but a recent analysis indicates that few, if any, of the astronomical radio lines attributed to glycine are actually from that molecule.
Note that there is some
skeptical discussion on just which molecules exist in space, but that there are still many molecules that are currently known. These molecules can form the building blocks for the formation of life through natural laws of chemistry and physics, so that in one sense the universe could be created in a manner primed and loaded to form solar systems capable of bearing life
and charged with life forming systems.
Certainly for theists that want to argue the anthropic principle, it is only a matter of widening the view of what is involved to include the formation of life, which can then evolve by fine tuned natural means to develop the diversity that we know on earth today, or similar, and resulting in the formation of an observer of the universe.
Anthropic principle - Wikipedia
quote:
In physics and cosmology, the anthropic principle is the collective name for several ways of asserting that physical and chemical theories, especially astrophysics and cosmology, need to take into account that there is life on Earth, and that one form of that life, Homo sapiens, has attained rationality. The only kind of universe humans can occupy is one that is similar to the current one.
Originally proposed as a rule of reasoning, the term has since been extended to cover supposed "superlaws" that in various ways require the universe to support intelligent life, usually assumed to be carbon-based and occasionally asserted to be human beings. Anthropic reasoning assesses these constraints by analyzing the properties of hypothetical universes whose fundamental parameters or laws of physics differ from those of the real universe. Anthropic reasoning typically concludes that the stability of structures essential for life, from atomic nuclei to the whole universe, depends on delicate balances between different fundamental forces. These balances are believed to occur only in a tiny fraction of possible universes ” so that this universe appears fine-tuned for life. Anthropic reasoning attempts to explain and quantify this fine tuning. Within the scientific community the usual approach is to invoke selection effects and to hypothesize an ensemble of alternate universes, in which case that which can be observed is subject to an anthropic bias.
It is something of a tautology that an observer within a universe can only form in a universe that can form an observer.
- Either animal kinds are static
- Or they are not static, and so they can become other animal kinds given enough time. (I use the word 'kind' instead of 'species' because it has a broader sense then the later)
...
Also, it seems a logical conclusion from the fact that we know the universe does not have an infinite past, and so since animals do not pop out of thin air, the only option is that they evolved from a lesser state, and a lesser state, etc. up to a primordial soup. I have to be careful here and make a precision: I am not saying that Neo-Darwinism (as natural selection+mutation are the mechanisms of this evolution) is the only option, but only that evolution is.
Well evolution is "neo-darwinism" - in science anyway, where "neo-darwinism is the result of the synthesis of "classical darwinism" with genetics, and where genetics forms the explanatory mechanism of how hereditary traits form and are passed from one generation to the next, the mechanism that was unknown in Darwin's time.
And once again, we have the natural laws that govern the behaviors of things, laws that could have been part of the creation\design package, the anthropic essence within the created universe, the "fine tuning" necessary to form the observer.
Genetic variation and natural selection inevitably resulting in increased diversity of the forms of life, striving to outcompete other life forms by a number of mechanisms, eventually resulting in the intelligence of the observer in at least one type of life.
One could posit that life as we know it - from the world around us, from history, from prehistory, from the fossil record and from the genetic record - developed via evolution plus "X" (where "X" is some other non-observed process that "tweaks" the fine tuning of life to become capable of observation of the universe).
Evolution is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation. This is observed to be a virtually continuous process in all known life forms, such that there is no known population of organisms that are not visibly changing in this manner.
Reproductively isolated populations of similar organisms will inevitably evolve in different ways due to (a) having different sets of new mutations causing new variations within the populations, and (b) living in different ecologies that cause different selection pressure on the variations within the populations. This too is observed to occur up to and including the point where speciation occurs - the division of a parent population into reproductively isolated daughter populations - producing new diversity in the process.
The question is whether the process of evolution within populations and the process of speciation dividing populations, alone are capable of explaining all the diversity of life as we know it - from the world around us, from history, from prehistory, from the fossil record and from the genetic record - without involving "X" as an additional process.
So far, it seems, there is no need for an "X" process to be included in the "natural laws" governing the formation of the observer. Whether those laws are "fine tuned" by design is still a philosophical\theological question, one not able to be solved by science.
Enjoy.
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