I still find it hard to believe the complexity of the universe to be mere chance

[QuantumT]

My point stands as is. Compared to what the possibility of knowledge is, we have very little. Yes we are making advances, however, even with all the information we have, we are still (comparatively) stupid. Billions of people in the world should be able to make up for the "time before humans existed",

Really? Cause billions of years is a really long time. I think the advances made in just the past 500 years though show the rate at which we're capable of advancing. Heck look at what we've done in the past 100 years. We now do things like fly to other continents for vacation.

And while there may be billions of humans in existence, it's not like all of them are making advances in science, or are even capable of making advances in science for that matter. That number is 1 million tops.

[Kamietsu]

The world will not be destroyed by humans, but the world in which we know it will be, that I have no doubt. But i guess it's how you are defining world. World as in the Earth? Or as in one entire country? etc. Regardless what happens, humans will find a way to continue living, even if every nuke went off right now. The only thing we won't survive is the sun expanding. But hopefully we will have left Earth by then. But that's somewhat off topic.

I do not believe everything was created by a higher power. Im on the fence of all the materials for the universe as we know it being created by a higher power and then everything falling into place over such a long time. The reason why i think this is because, although not all, but a lot of what we have studied over the years, we have figured out, understand, or came up with very probably theories.

But whether or not a higher power is the cause for everything, Scientist have figured out how a whole lot of things work, which shows to me that a higher power is not needed. All that is needed is the right ingredients and enough time.

[killybob]

personally i believe in an omnipotent being. but i also believe that evolution did take place. i think that God set everything off. i think this because of the infinitely small probability of a planet existing that could sustain life. well that's bound to happen at some stage in this huuuuuuuuge universe you say. well i don't know if you heard (it was on the news a few months ago) but the have found a planet with equal capacity to sustain life within such a small proximity to our own area that it seems there may be a reoccurring pattern going on throughout the universe. coincidence? why not consider a bigger picture. one where an all powerful being has set everything up. additionally they have not observed any life on this planet as of yet (though it is hard to tell). if the planet is vacant and it is perfect for life then how do all you scientists explain us being here?

here's a version of the article http://www.ksbw.com/r/25246207/detail.html (http://www.ksbw.com/r/25246207/detail.html)

[Mark_Tran]

World as in the Earth.  I was not referring to nuking ourselves when I said that we would destroy the world, although it is one of the possibilities.  What I was talking about was the fact that we are facing many crises that could lead to us being wiped out long before the sun expands far enough to affect us.  For example, we are rapidly running out of room to dump our garbage, our water supplies are continually becoming more and more contaminated, our atmosphere is becoming ridiculously polluted(to the point where we have drastic weather anomalies), and the fact that we are running out of resources.  We may be able to travel into space sure, but we are nowhere near the point where we could survive long enough to reach another habitable planet.

[killybob]

yes we could if we went into some for of cryogenic suspension. i know it sounds science fiction-y but it is possibly and has actually been done in medical practices. also read my post about new inhabitable planets being closer than we thought.

[Mark_Tran]

yes we could if we went into some for of cryogenic suspension. i know it sounds science fiction-y but it is possibly and has actually been done in medical practices. also read my post about new inhabitable planets being closer than we thought.

We are currently still unable to cryogenically freeze humans because the ice crystals puncture our cells.  If only we could figure out how to emulate what these buggers do:  http://www.wimp.com/woodfrogs/.  Nonetheless, I don't see what cryogenic freezing has anything to do with the continuation of our species.

As for the inhabitable planets being closer than we thought:  "Closer than we thought" is still pretty damn far away...  I read your article and it says the planet that you're referring to is 20 light years away;  maybe you do not understand distances but 20 light years is a ridiculous distance that we are currently nowhere near capable of traveling.

[killybob]

have you heard of an Einstein/Rosen bridge? it's still a theory (very likely to exist and has been said [although not proved] to have been observed). anyway by the time that said crisis occurs we may well have been enhancing them for years. and yes, 20 light years is a long way but not as far as expected by the disoverers of the planet.

[Mark_Tran]

"The purpose of the paper of Einstein and Rosen was not to promote faster-than-light or inter-universe travel, but to attempt to explain fundamental particles like electrons as space-tunnels threaded by electric lines of force. However science fiction took the idea of Einstein-Rosen Bridges and applied it to moving spaceships faster than the speed of light through what was now being called ‘wormholes’. So what Einstein originally theorised was now being used by science fiction writers to get around the problems with not being able to go faster than the speed of light that Einstein’s General Relativity had inflicted upon them. However in the Einstein-Rosen theory the idea of objects larger than electrons being able to pass through a wormhole was not even considered and so the scenario that science fiction writers portray about the Einstein-Rosen Bridge is not correct."

Even if wormholes were real and we could figure out a way to travel through them, what are the chances of it connecting a place close enough for us to get to and an inhabitable planet?  What are the chances of it connecting to a parallel universe?

[killybob]

like it has been said we are progressing rapidly. only 10 years ago we were still trying to get a good crt screen to work. now we have touchscreen plasma viewing. by the time the crisis happens we would have perfectly figured out what to do with wormholes. besides i have my doubts that the crisis will ever happen.

[Daxx]

personally i believe in an omnipotent being. but i also believe that evolution did take place. i think that God set everything off. i think this because of the infinitely small probability of a planet existing that could sustain life. well that's bound to happen at some stage in this huuuuuuuuge universe you say. well i don't know if you heard (it was on the news a few months ago) but the have found a planet with equal capacity to sustain life within such a small proximity to our own area that it seems there may be a reoccurring pattern going on throughout the universe. coincidence? why not consider a bigger picture. one where an all powerful being has set everything up.

I follow news of exoplanets quite closely and I think it would have been bigger news if this planet was actually capable of sustaining life. About all we know is that it potentially exists around what might be that particular star's goldilocks zone, which says very little about whether it contains life or not.

However, let's take this at face value. Why would you attribute the existence of these planets to a god? There's no reason to do so, especially when there are decent cosmological explanations for planets like this existing. It sounds like you're altering the standard teleological argument to take into account the fact that we are no longer as special or unique as once thought.

And finally I think it's very important that you read about the Anthropic principle, since you more-or-less ignored that from my last post. It will explain why talking about probabilities and incredulity is a red herring.

additionally they have not observed any life on this planet as of yet (though it is hard to tell). if the planet is vacant and it is perfect for life then how do all you scientists explain us being here?

That's making a pointless and unwarranted assumption. We know nothing about this planet and we are unlikely to for some time. It's like asking "there are unicorns under the sea, how does science explain why we've never seen them?"

[EvaRia]

Let's assume for a sec that the universe, one way or another, is infinite.

Either it lasts an infinite amount of time, or it takes up an infinite amount of space.

Now consider the chance that a planet like Earth exists. It's probably one in trillions, if not more.

BUT, if the universe is infinite, you get an infinite amount of one in a trillion chances.

This means that in an infinite universe, no matter how unlikely something is, there is a 100% chance of it happening eventually.

I have no proof that the universe is infinite, but this is something to consider.

[killybob]

the universe is not infinite. the Hubble telescope and other viewing devices have confirmed the boundary line where the body of super clusters and stuff stop. this is where the universe as we call it has expanded too so far.

and by the way daxx the planet did make big news more than a year back. it probably wasn't picked up by the whole media perhaps for a number of substantially explanatory reasons. one is we haven't found life yet so they weren't so excited. also there may have been a very large, more terrestrial incident that absorbed a lot of the other big news (maybe an earthquake or some other natural disaster). also if the discovery was from a particular nationality they may have kept it much more hidden from elsewhere and other people (unlikely but possible). additionally scientists have a reputation for bringing news at the wrong time. take the man who theorized the fact that the earth was round in the middle of the period where stereotypical middle ages Catholics and got severely persecuted.