Microbes Sleeping 100M Years on the Ocean Floor WERE INTENTIONALLY Awakened Move along if you expected this to be a story on climate change effects.
I expected it to be about Cthulhu.
Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)
21–30 of 87 posts
Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
And how did life start on the asteroid? :D
I don't want to derail anything. Also disclaimer that I'm not religious. Off topic: This reminds me of what annoys me about "Intelligent Design" vs science. It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old, he/she/they created all animals separately with no evolution, etc, etc. And likewise what came before the big bang? Ultra dense, hot steady state? And before that? While If I were any denominational god, I'd have…
> It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old [...] And likewise what came before the big bang?
The mistake here is to treat both of these equally. One is a set of very specific but unsubstantiated claims about the nature of the universe, and the other is a scientific theory supported by observation and models. Since it is way easier to churn out unsubstantiated claims than viable scientific theories, relying on a mindset that gives equal consideration to everything is a surefire way for science to be simply drowned out.
In this specific case, I'd also like to point out that the big bang model does not claim to yield, or is required to yield, information on what came "before". There are multiple hypotheses around for what could have happened, a fundamental part of which is usually a proper definition of what "before" means in this context. Again, none of these are doctrinal claims, they're just a process of finding out more about the universe. Religious claims on the other hand are a method of asserting you already know something.
> While If I were any denominational god, I'd have created the rule set and frameworks for the entire system and then boot it up.
Consider that most religions want people to behave in very specific ways, mostly because deities and their spokespeople say so. The "god" you are describing does not fit into that. You are being very charitable towards religious claims by allowing them to retreat into this generic fold.
On a scientific level, your hypothesis is not immediately contradicted by observation. But it's also not clear how an unsupervised universe would be different from a curated one. If it doesn't really matter to the outcome whether the universe was created intentionally or not, a good bet is to assume the simpler model.
Any such god would themselves have to exist in order to create a universe. They would presumably also have to have had a creator themselves, or have come into existence by natural means. This pushes the problem of the origin of the universe up the chain without necessarily resolving anything. It's not impossible that the universe is such a stack of simulations, and I'd argue it's worth looking into that, but it's not a solution to the question what the root of existence itself is.
Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)
#23Are the microbes themselves that old, or simply made of old material?
Edit: quoting the article, it doesn't say the microbes themselves are 100M years old, only that they're in sediment which is that old. Big difference!
"99.1% of the microbes in sediment deposited 101.5 million years ago were still alive and were ready to eat"
Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)
#24Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to derail anything. Also disclaimer that I'm not religious. Off topic: This reminds me of what annoys me about "Intelligent Design" vs science. It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old, he/she/they created all animals separately with no evolution, etc, etc. And likewise what came before the big bang? Ultra dense, hot steady state? And before that? While If I were any denominational god, I'd have…
> It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old [...] And likewise what came before the big bang? The mistake here is to treat both of these equally. One is a set of very specific but unsubstantiated claims about the nature of the universe, and the other is a scientific theory supported by observation and models. Since it is way easier to churn out unsubstantiated claims than viable scientific theories, relying o…
> The mistake here is to treat both of these equally.
Oh, I absolutely am not, or at least did not aim to. I'm well aware that I don't have to explain where an egg came from just because I'm stating a chicken came out of it.
> Consider that most religions want people to behave in very specific ways, mostly because deities and their spokespeople say so. The "god" you are describing does not fit into that.
Sorry, yes, I meant nondenominational.
I don't disagree with anything you wrote, and did not intend to convey anything contradicting to that.
Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
And how did life start on the asteroid? :D
I don't want to derail anything. Also disclaimer that I'm not religious. Off topic: This reminds me of what annoys me about "Intelligent Design" vs science. It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old, he/she/they created all animals separately with no evolution, etc, etc. And likewise what came before the big bang? Ultra dense, hot steady state? And before that? While If I were any denominational god, I'd have…
Can I quote Matrix?
Anyway, the Matrix counterpoint (as explained by the Agent to Morpheus) was that the original Matrix was a perfect world. No famine, no poverty, everything was perfect, but the captive humans minds couldn't cope with such perfection, there had to be disorder for the environment to self-regulate and the original Matrix collapsed.
Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to derail anything. Also disclaimer that I'm not religious. Off topic: This reminds me of what annoys me about "Intelligent Design" vs science. It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old, he/she/they created all animals separately with no evolution, etc, etc. And likewise what came before the big bang? Ultra dense, hot steady state? And before that? While If I were any denominational god, I'd have…
> It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old [...] And likewise what came before the big bang? The mistake here is to treat both of these equally. One is a set of very specific but unsubstantiated claims about the nature of the universe, and the other is a scientific theory supported by observation and models. Since it is way easier to churn out unsubstantiated claims than viable scientific theories, relying o…
Still, science can't explain why we are aware of the universe (i.e. we're not philosophical zombies).
Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)
#28> we found that up to 99.1% of the microbes in sediment deposited 101.5 million years ago were still alive and were ready to eat > But the real secret of their remarkable survival lies in their metabolic rate. It is just slow enough for them to survive for such long periods. That would imply their metabolic rate to be practically zero, 101 million years is such a long time that even the tiniest amount of activity wou…
> were ready to eat
Am I the only one who pictured the lab workers munching on 100M year old microbe colonies?
Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
And how did life start on the asteroid? :D
I don't want to derail anything. Also disclaimer that I'm not religious. Off topic: This reminds me of what annoys me about "Intelligent Design" vs science. It's always about how the Earth is 6000 years old, he/she/they created all animals separately with no evolution, etc, etc. And likewise what came before the big bang? Ultra dense, hot steady state? And before that? While If I were any denominational god, I'd have…
There are multiple creationist theories. The one you described is close to sanctioned Roman Catholic view, for example.
Since _Humani Generis_ by Pope Pius XII, the accepted view is that evolution, indeed, goes as it does, under divine supervision, and then when bodies reached a form fitting the pinnacle of creation (human), another act of creation occurred - that of human soul. And that miracle of creation keeps happening daily for every human born (or conceived?).
So, definitely not a Darwinian materialist view, but certainly evolution-friendly.
Generally, largest blocker to marrying salvation religions and materialist worldview is with a human. Salvation only concerns humans, and that implies that humans are very special in the Universe. Paganism wasn’t that arrogant, so might be more compatible with scientific method, funnily enough.
I’m an atheist, so this, naturally, this is my interpretation of other interpretations I’ve read and heard here and there.
Re: Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea is that life starts on one planet and can spread from there to other planets (for example on rocks ejected through volcanic activity). We have found Martian rock on earth [1] 1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite
I think the intended point was "and before that?".
God doesn't solve that issue, for identical reasons.