

Originally posted by PhoenixOD





So still abiogenesis has only ever happened once on this planet as far as we can tell which proves that life spotaneously happening is more complicated than most people would like to think.

Its probably just a pet peeve of mine and this could easily be considered a gratuitous aside (i.e. rant) , but I'm glad you qualified this with "as far as we can tell" - such sweeping statements usually fail to include such a thing, and always gives me a grinding feeling of wanting to raise my hand and say "but wait, you mean as far as we know at this time, right???".I always find it somewhere between pretentious to outright misleading when people - especially experts - state the "abiogenesis/life has only ever arisen once on this planet" and the myriad similar statements on what has and hasn't happened in history, or is and isn't possible in reality, because of course humans in the 21st century know absolutely everything and can make such declarations with absolute certainty. :-)Granted I'm not a biologist or an expert in a related field, but it seems to me to be hopelessly small minded when humans state most of the absolutes they do, failing to remember all the times that then-current theories have been proven inadequate or wholly inaccurate, and that science is constantly being revised as new data are discovered.In the case of Life's origins as currently & generally accepted, there are other ideas than that it just happened once here, from the theory that perhaps life originated elsewhere elsewhere entirely and came here on comets or such (Panspermia) given how soon evidence of life turns up after the planet is thought to have developed, to the idea that life may not always have unique characteristics and thus several "go lives" may not be as distinguishable as currently theorized, or even the more survival of the fittest-esque ideas that life may have developed many, many times but that any evidence of it has simply yet to be discovered or was devoured by the existing dominant life, or that it somehow combined with the existing life to make new, even advanced combined forms.It's like reading the people who authoritatively state UFOs cannot possibly be from another world because the distances to travel are too great to overcome, and that the chances of any alien life just happening to stumble across earth to be astronomical. On the latter, in the just the past few years humans have developed technology to find other planets that are likely to have conditions suitable for life as we know it, something generally thought impossible mere decades ago. For the former, even Einstein didnt know everything, and it takes just one discovery to revolutionize human thought on what is and isn't possible (which is quite distinct from what truly is and isn't possible, though it seems few can make that distinction). And that's while ignoring that they base that on the very limited human life span, human current technology (could be robotic probes, bioengineered forms piloting them with life spans fantastically long, they may have discovered loop holes (erm worm holes) to limitations to space travel -limitations that may only exist in the minds of some humans rather than as an absolute objective reality. But such exceptions never even seem to occur to these people, who believe themselves qualified to make such sweeping declarative statements. Argh! :-)I recently read a humorous - or perhaps sad, depending on how one views such things - in which the Astonomer Royal in 1956 declared "space travel is utter bilge" with the first man in space a scant 5 years later. It underscores the fact that even experts - the cream of the crop even - can be completely wrong about what is possible or at the very least should qualify their comments to what is possible as being accurate only at the time such comments are made, and that's assuming they are privy to the very latest cutting edge experimentation and data on the subject. But to do so would presumably undermine their position as the de facto expert, something their egos simply would not, apparently, allow. I feel that is a serious disservice to their fellow man who rely on them for accurate info given their position as a leading authority on whatever topic or field on which they are dictating.Perhaps a pet peeve, but I think if an expert isn't humble enough to preface declarative statements on what is and isn't possible or what has and has not happened in the whole of existence, with a simple "as is currently agreed upon by knowledgeable experts in relevant fields of study" - that its good to remember to include it with your own acceptance of such statements. :-) Then we might have greater numbers of people thinking outside the box, and humanity as whole advancing much faster than we seem to now be. :-)