Do you believe in human evolution?

Originally Posted by Arainach

Darklink: Consider THESE amazing odds.

The Universe is Billions of Years Old. It contains Trillions of Trillians of Solar Systems. The odds that life would NOT evolve on at least some of these worlds is mind-boggling.

That's the way I see it.

Originally Posted by a lurker

There are insane odds against winning the lottery but the lottery has been won. I'm just saying that arguing that poor odds prove a theory wrong when the result has already happened is silly.

This always reminds me of what some kid said with regard to FFVII: "What are the odds that of all the people on Gaia, the game focuses on Cloud and company, who just happen to save the world!"

If we were the unborn product of any of those inordinate number of failed or unrealized possibilities, we wouldn't be here. DUH. People tend to focus on the prayer that was answered and forget about the thousands that weren't. That is religion.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Traumatized Rat

Small gap? I studied origin of life in my molecular evolution class and it's a gaping gorge the size of the grand canyon.

You have to have a lot of faith in capricious events if you believe that something like this can occur apart from supernatural intervention. Either that, or you really haven't studied the information in any great detail.

Jesus, it's not a one-shot deal.

You must have no concept of the shear magnitude of time and space if you believe something like this can't occur apart from supernatural intervention. Either that, or you really haven't studied probability.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

How do I put this? The prevailing notion is that time is linear or cyclical, but time is actually constant. Since everything exists constantly, it's impossible to move "forward" or "backward" in time, and therefore it doesn't exist.

Wait, what? I hope, as RR alluded to, this is just an homage to Slaughterhouse-Five. As far as I remember, spacetime can be modeled as a 4-space through which everything in the universe moves with a constant speed. When we move through space, our time-speed is slowed so that the magnitude of the vector sum remains constant.

We can't ask what came "before" the universe or define a point in time at which the universe began, because time is contingent upon the existence of the universe. We understand the rules which apply within the universe, but we can't assume that these same rules apply to the universe itself, end of story.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Time is essentially a fourth linear dimension. The second is related to the meter by a factor of c. Velocity is, in fact, unitless. By extension, energy can be measured in kilograms.

The only difference between space and time is the way we perceive it. Somehow we experience time in a "compressed" form. It's sort of flattened onto a three-dimensional page, so that no matter where you are in time in relation to everything else, you still perceive everything else as being in your space. This is how special relativity works. This is also, I believe, why we can't travel back in time, in the traditional sense. Even if an observer moved backward along the time axis, everything else would still move forward as usual. Though on the bright side, it might reverse the aging process.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by DarkLink2135

...barring the obvious moral reasons, and the repulsion the very idea brings up =/...

What are the moral reasons? I'm not familiar with that aspect. I always assumed it was socialization, but now that I think about it, I can't recall any explanation beyond genetic defects (which have to do with inbreeding, not incest) and, "ew, gross, that's your mom." Now, socialization is obviously the cause of your disgust, but apparently even when social pressure works the other way, there is disinterest between members of the same household (who are not necessarily related), so it's largely an issue of instinct. So I ask again, what are the moral reasons?

I was speaking idiomatically.