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I wonder whether the record will ever be set straight...

Panspermia doesn't answer the question; rather it punts the question into the cosmos, saying life evolved elsewhere and somehow got here. That doesn't explain how life evolved. It's a supposition; an hypothesis - it's not a theory.

The irreducable complexity of DNA argument is not a theory either; because an inability to explain how DNA formed is not evidence of ID, anymore than it's evidence for the alien lunchbox supposition; which is rather the point!

One of the more interesting ideas is 'fine tuning' of physical constants, but that runs into the anthropic principle - namely, if the universe weren't just so, we wouldn't be here to notice that it's just so. So again, that's not evidence.

This has relevance to an interesting distinction made recently by Ricky Gervais of all people, between knowledge and belief. He said, 'We're all agnostic because we don't know; but that's knowledge, not belief.'

I don't know, and I know I don't know. So I'm agnostic on epistemic grounds. I believe in agnosticism because I'm an epistemic philosopher, and beliefs should be formed, as justified true beliefs.

But proponents of ID; they believe God exists, and seek to justify that belief - and call those post rationalisations evidence. Similarly, atheists believe God doesn't exist; someone mentioned Krauss above, and suggested he seeks to post-rationalise his belief. I believe 'I don't know' is the only legitimate position.

I don't know what any of that means!!!

The term "theory" in science is different from everday use. The title of this thread uses the everyday meaning of the word theory; as in "it's just a theory." That's not what science means by theory.

A better title for this thread might have been 'Intelligent design - a reasonable hypothesis?'

Science can entertain any hypothesis; because an hypothesis is different from a theory.

An hypothesis is a supposition; for example, suppose life on earth began because an alien dropped a cheese sandwich. There's no evidence for this hypothesis; it's not a theory.

In science, a theory is a logically coherent framework that explains a variety of evidence. Evolution is a theory; an underlying mode of explanation - which becomes valid, the more it explains.

Intelligent Design is an hypothesis; a supposition for which there's no evidence. That doesn't mean Intelligent Design is an invalid hypothesis; just that there's no evidence that supports or refutes it. It may be that the universe within which we exist was created, and designed in just such a way as to allow life to exist. But equally, it maybe that life on earth sprang from an alien's misplaced lunchbox!

I'm not talking about the politically correct "woman's right to choose". I'm talking about the supposed "miraculous nature" of living a lifestyle in which having to have an abortion is always in sight. What is so "miraculous" in damaging one's health with hormonal contraceptives, and, if they fail, with abortions? You think it's "miraculous" to TOLO, like a robot? — baker

A woman's right to choose is not related - in my mind, to political correctness. It's more fundamental than that. It's about freeing women from the imprisonment of biological fate. There are some men; indeed, some cultures that would rather keep women barefoot, pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink. These cultures are invariably over-populated and poor. Women's rights are an enlightened value, fundamental to the prosperous sustainable future I'm working for.

(That's when I thought by 'enlightened' the OP meant secular democracy and scientific rationality - and not psuedo-spiritual hocus pocus. )

I wonder what you have to say about people who don't feel that way about food, animal or plant based. — baker

I'd say, if not a consequence of some medical condition, in all likelyhood, that their thinking is warped by a false distinction between the spiritual and the mundane, inherent to religions. It's a fundamentally abusive dynamic - to require acolytes to disregard worldly possessions, bodily integrity - and things like the enjoyment of food. Aesthtic religions set people up to be robbed, sexually abused and starved. Hallelujah!

It's also a dynamic carried forth in the subject/object distinction in western philosophy - wherein over-empahsis on the subjective frees governments and industry from real world responsibilities.

"I think one has to respect a woman's right to choose, precisely because we are the only animals who cook, rather than simply eat. An animal killed in nature suffers a worse death by far than humane slaughter at the hands of humans; and there's a parallel to a child brought into the world unwanted - in that, your bleeding heart humanity would be the cause of greater suffering of which you'd wash your vegan pro-life hands."

You missed the forest, not just the tree to bark at. — baker

Huh?

I do not engage with disrespectful people. — Athena

Your desperate need to be validated stands in the way of learning something - or failing that, at least providing a service by being there for me to bounce my ideas off; given my quite obviously superior knowledge and intellect. I wish you well ploughing your own furrow, but if the most successful idea you're able to muster is to take offence at the descriptive term 'green commie' - I fear your journey into philosophy will be short an uneventful! Tata!

Yes.

Yes, I know about the very large numbers of people killed by Stalin, and during the famine of the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward. There are some differences between the Nazi plan for Jews and Slavs, and the actions directed by Stalin. The same comparing Hitler or Stalin with Mao: the differences make little difference. There are millions of dead, whether caused by efficient planning, paranoia, or colossal, malignant incompetence. — Bitter Crank

There wasn't an explicit racist motive in Communist genocides, however in the 1920s the policy of korenization (nativization) promoted national minorities into the lower administrative-levels of local government. Stalin reversed Lenin's policies, signing off on orders for exiling multiple distinct ethnic-linguistic groups brandished as "traitors", including the Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, Karachays, Kalmyks, Koreans, and Meskhetian Turks, who were collectively deported to Siberia or Central Asia.

The holocaust is the example par excellence of inhumanity, and goes downhill from there. — Bitter Crank

Sadly, it's not. In Russia, Communists killed somewhere between 20 and 60 million people, and in China, around 50 million people.

My worry is that censoring speech is where it begins; and genocide is where it ends. Freedom of speech is a bulkwark against the mob, and should not be dismantled - because there are far worse things than being slightly offended by someone's stupid opinions.

No. I don't think so. I think she's wrong - but so what? Asking her to explain her opinion, and debating the question is potentially a learning experience - lost due to offense culture.

Isn't life chaotic, even without the human's in picture? — ssu

Is this a roundabout way of saying "climate is always changing"? While nominally true, it's a climate denialist meme, that given any amount of thought, obviously does not imply that adding 45 gigatonnes of carbon to the atmosphere, year after year after year, is not also a problem.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/BF5F/production/_123119984_lauvauxmap.png

You keep using insulting labels like "green commie". There are respectful people and disrespectful people. I have a preference for respectful people. — Athena

I give respect where it's due. If 'green commie' seems disrespectful, that's because it is. Since the 1960's the left have campaigned on environmental issues - using population and climate change to level a Marxian critique of capitalism. Rather than asking how we sustain human welfare, instead, the left have cast the sustainability crisis as a 'contradiction of capitalism' - hoping it would undermine the system. Meanwhile, communism, as an economic system has failed everywhere it has been attempted, frequently resulting in authoritarian government, corruption, widespread poverty and genocide - to which they happily turn a blind eye.

I've been worried about sustainability for a long time; and it's taken a long time to identify the right questions, and longer still to find truly adequate answers. Adopting a scientific worldview, there's realistic hope for the future. It's technologically possible to sustain a large human population - with high levels of welfare, almost indefinitely. This could be the dawn of humanity - not 2 minuets to midnight.

Your belief that there's 40 years worth of oil, and that the world is over-crowded, are common misconceptions - generated by politicised narratives. In fact, less than 2% of the landmass of the UK is built upon; yet population density is quite high by global standards. Also, there's plenty of oil, gas and coal in the ground; hundreds if not thousands of years worth. Only we cannot use it because of global warming.

Similarly, the green commie vegan cyclist crowd do not seem to understand that fossil fuels impose an energy cost on everything we do; therefore limiting what we can do. Take landfill as an example - we dump and bury waste because it's energy efficient. The cost of processing waste would be too great using scarce and expensive fossil fuel energy. Wind and solar will never provide enough energy; and if you resrict supply, the price rises. But given limitless clean energy to spend, we can recycle all waste - mince it all up, and process it for raw materials.

There are rivers that no longer reach the sea, lakes that have dried out completely - like the Aral Sea; formerely the fourth largest lake in the world. It's gone, because upstream have taken all the water, mostly to produce cotton. It takes 2600 liters of water to produce the cotton for one t-shirt. Nature cannot withstand that burden - but, with limitless clean energy, we can produce clean water to irrigate farmland, to produce cotton, food and everything else.

In short, limitless clean energy would fundamentally change our relationship to the environment. Thus, capitalism is sustainable - and sustainable capitalsim is what environmentalists should have been pushing for all along; not least because, as mentioned above, poor people tend to have larger families. Also, poor people don't care about the environment. The only way to secure a sustainable future is to increase and extend prosperity, and the only way to do that is to harness magma energy - to meet all our energy needs, plus, capture carbon, deslainate, irrigate and recycle.