Suppose we found a planet around another star, with living creatures on it?
We wouldn't be unique anymore.
By this logic, that means that ID would be proven false, I guess.
So where is that planet with others living on it???? I must have missed that in Astronomy 101.
If I pull a number out of a hat with a million numbers in it, the probability is 1x10-6 that I will get any one number. However, the probability is 1 that I will get a number. His idea presupposes that the Earth as it is today was the end goal, and that there are no alternatives.
Hi Izzy,
We all loved uncle Carl Sagan on Johnny Carson telling us that there were "billions and billions of galaxies" seething with life containing planets. But old Carl, the science mafia mouthpiece, based his extrapolations on a theory of planetary formation that now has more holes than a wheel of swiss cheeze in a Baghdad ambush.
The disk accretion theory of planetary formation is dying a slow, reluctant death in the face of new data from observed solar systems. ALL systems discovered so far consist of large Jupiter, Saturn proto-sun bodies revolving very close to the parent star. These should really be considered binary star systems since the satellite body is so huge.
Disk accretion in no way accounts for the enigmatic "asteroid belt", the retrograde rotation of Venus, the various tilted axes of the planets or the lack of uniformity of impact craters- Moon, heavily impacted; Venus, Mars, no impacts, Mercury, heavily impacted; some planetary moons impacted (find a picture of Mimas!), some not, the lack of circularity of the planetary orbits, their interval distances from the sun, the size and composition of the planets themselves, and many other observations of the solar system that are exceptions to the disk accretion theory. Basically it's "disk accretion" is one huge duct tape and tie strap kluge, almost as stupid as "dark matter".
There is a competing theory of planetary formation first hypothesized by Immanuel Velikovsky in his best seller, "Worlds in Collision"- that planets can be ejected from the heart of a sun due to changes in the electrical properties of the sun interacting with the plasma Birkland currents of the parent galaxy (Try to explain the "barred spiral galaxy" in gravitational terms). Do a search on the term "electric universe" and discover that there are entire branches of science that need to be radically pruned in order to conform to observation.
Walter
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no, the IDers would then claim the universe was designed for life. Since we cannot (yet) detect other universes, they would assume themselves to be right without any way of testing their claims.
No. Intelligent Design would not be disproven by a second planet with living creatures. There's no reason why a Great Designer wouldn't place life elsewhere in the universe.
But a second planet with living creatures would place many Biblical principles in doubt, such as the one that called mankind God's special creation. This and a couple other references compel Christians, which I count myself as one, to believe that there cannot be sentient life elsewhere in the universe. It would shake to the core the foundation of Christianity.
That's another reason why scientist are so adamant about funding SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). They want to disprove the Bible.