Posted on 10/06/2021 4:23:34 PM PDT by Pontiac
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It’s something of a miracle that life on our planet has been left to evolve without fatal interruption for billions of years.
Such a long unbroken chain of survival, however unlikely, is necessary for bags of mud and water like ourselves to eventually sit up, and just recently, to wonder how we got here. And like the bullet-riddled—but safe—planes, our planet has survived countless near-fatal blows.
There have been volcanic apocalypses, body blows from supersonic space rocks the size of Mount Everest, and ice ages that might have frozen the planet almost to the tropics.
Had any of these catastrophes been worse, we wouldn’t be here..
But they couldn’t have been worse for precisely that reason.
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Earth history teaches us that something as seemingly benign as briefly having a supercontinent can very nearly end the world several times over, illuminating just how fragile the entire project of complex life really is.
And not only have we benefited from this astounding series of fortunate events, through it all we’ve somehow never been set back to square one over 4.5 billion years—even while potentially sterilizing comets like Hale-Bopp keep eerily sailing past us.
Perhaps this fantastic luck—one that’s necessary to someday produce observers like ourselves—implies that the great Elsewhere is filled, to un-traversable distances, with indifferently swirling gas and lifeless rocks.
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(Excerpt) Read more at getpocket.com ...
The author throughout the article states how unlikely it is that the Earth and humanity have beat the odds and escaped annihilation for billions of years.
But no where did it ever occur to him to suggest the hand of God in the preservation of humanity.
Even with scientist continually find new and more bazar ways that the Earth or at least mankind should have been wiped out the possibility of an intelligent designer is ignored.
The sheer number of synchronized unlikely conditions which render Earth capable of life could make it the only such one in the galaxy. Or there could be a hundred million others. We have no basis by which to form a statistic.
It’s something of a miracle that life on our planet has been left to evolve without fatal interruption for billions of years …So “evolution” is now a “miracle”. Just cannot use the M-word in a different context, eh? even though they are compelled to admit the supernatural.
The Left is currently pitching for The Malevolent Universe.
The author throughout the article states how unlikely it is that the Earth and humanity have beat the odds and escaped annihilation for billions of years.
But no where did it ever occur to him to suggest the hand of God in the preservation of humanity.
I believe the intention of this statement is to suggest that it is unlikely that ANY life exist on the planet.
But I assume that your statement is meant to be humorous.
The author, Peter Brannen, obviously was not introduced to the Bible at a young age. And if he was introduced, he obviously rejected it.
He is not alone.
That notion would not work with the Left’s insistence on a godless universe.
Malevolence necessitates consciousness and intellect.
If the universe is Malevolent then the universe is God or at least the Devil.
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My generation, Boomers, were largely left to our own devises as to an Education of the bible.
Succeeding generations only more so.
So, naturally we were ripe for being indoctrinated into an irreligious / nihilistic / / pro-communist / atheistic education in the public screwels.
The Earth’s history seems miraculous because it is miraculous. Look at all the planets around us - with all the great learning we have, we now have certainty that these planets are barren of life, except for here and there maybe a tardigrade from a crashed Earth drone.
Jupiter and Saturn with their gravity consume comets and asteroids - things orbiting the Sun that might destroy us. The many craters on our Moon give evidence that it too shields the Earth from impacts.
And there’s our atmosphere that burns up or deflects lots of space garbage that might otherwise cause lots of problems.
We are truly fortunate. And yeah, the article stupidly states that life has continued on Earth, blah, blah - NO IT HASN’T. Life has nearly been destroyed - more than 90% wiped out - on Earth a couple of times according to the geologic record. Human civilization has risen and fallen - humans have nearly been obliterated a couple of times. Our current civilization is less than a thousand years old. That’s nothing in geologic terms.
But humanity is according to science more than a million years old. (Budgies have been around in their present form, apparently, for 6 million years or so. Those are your tiny pet parrots that you can buy from a pet store for about $15. They’re little, tiny dinosaurs that can fly and highly intelligent for something with a brain the size of a pencil eraser. We have four of them.)
We’re not the strongest. We’re not the most aggressive. We don’t even have the biggest brains. There are other species more adaptable than we are. Sometimes we’re just limping along, evolutionarily speaking. But then we seem to gain an advantage and make it through somehow - and then there’s the issue of our awesome luck.
It’s almost like someone is looking out for us.
it’s a miracle because God made it in 6 days, 6,000 years ago.
Only avian dinosaurs are left. He could talk to a parrot.
Dont use logic against a leftist. They want your money and they want it now. End of discussion.
1% is actually quite a lot. (As a basis to restart.)
Yes any life is enough to spread and proliferate, but the point is the earth was almost as dead as the moon except for that threadbare fraction that held on somehow.
Faith in "luck" explains it all, since luck does not judge us for immorality.
The strange, cosmic reason our evolutionary path will look ever luckier the longer we survive.
That is, our forecasts about the future could be blinded by our necessarily lucky past.
that their existence depends on them being very, very lucky.
Perhaps this fantastic luck—one that’s necessary
they were lucky it was me on shift that night.”
where everything is obliterated and a luckier version that’s spared.
very rare observers that see him being very, very lucky.
Yet they would likely call this story fictitious, thus Snopes got called but affirmed it:
Church Explosion Spares Choir. Snopes Staff Published 31 December 1998
Choir practice at the West Side Baptist Church in Beatrice, Nebraska, always began at 7:20 on Wednesday evening. At
But every one of the choir’s fifteen members escaped injury, saved by a fortuitous coincidence: All were late for practice that night. Considering the sanctified site of the explosion, it was not surprising that some attributed the near miss to divine intervention.
They supposed rightly that the odds of unanimous tardiness were slim indeed, especially when the reasons were examined. Car trouble delayed two women. The minister and his wife and daughter were delayed by a dress that needed ironing at the last minute. Others were late because they paused to complete homework, finish a letter, or hear the end of a favorite radio show. One awoke late from a nap. Some could think of no special reason; they were just late.
It is impossible to calculate precise odds for all these events occurring at once. But past performance indicated that each person would be late for practice one time in four — producing a one-in-a-million chance that the entire choir would be late that night.
Exactly, we all have the same evidence, it is simply which lens we determine to see it through, the “hand of God Almighty” or the “random chance of untold eons” which leads us to draw conclusions.
Choosing which lens determines whether one has hope or is by logic, a nihilist.
Life or death. I choose life.
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