The Neck of the Giraffe

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I have no doubt that there are many planets out there that support life. Due to the vastness of space, however (which makes such life-sustaining planets a no-brainer) it would take massive improvement in our ability to explore space if we are to ever encounter them.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
We are indeed very fortunate that the right conditions existed for our planet to exist. This, however, has nothing to do with design or God. Nothing whatsoever.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
The universe is so infinitely massive that every now and then conditions are right to sustain life. (The right distance from a sun etc etc). Indeed, due to its size, it would be peculiar if the right conditions didn't present themselves now and then.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I have no doubt that there are many planets out there that support life. Due to the vastness of space, however (which makes such life-sustaining planets a no-brainer) it would take massive improvement in our ability to explore space if we are to ever encounter them.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
We are indeed very fortunate that the right conditions existed for our planet to exist. This, however, has nothing to do with design or God. Nothing whatsoever.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
We are indeed very fortunate that the right conditions existed for our planet to exist. This, however, has nothing to do with design or God. Nothing whatsoever.

@kellyjay said
So none except this one you’re sure of, and due to what you see with respect to the size, you believe that there are more even though you don’t see them? You believe it to be the case then correct?

@kellyjay said
You think it odd you see one example of life (here on this planet) while looking at the vastness of space and you conclude that there must be more life elsewhere! While you see neatly limitless examples of information and specific fine tuning all around you by intelligent beings, yet you deny all of these examples as evidence for someone in imparts information and does the tuning!?

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Sitting here in my living room, enjoying a cup of coffee, I am absolutely certain of the existence of Venus, even though I can't see it and have never been there.
Science has shown that the universe is mind-bogglingly vast. The very idea that out of 'all of that' it's only here on Earth that we would find life is simultaneously illogical and, dare I sir, egotistical (from 'an Earthling' perspective).

@whodey said
You have never seen Venus?

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Not from my living room.

@KellyJay

Ghost wrote to you.

Science has shown that the universe is mind-bogglingly vast. The very idea that out of 'all of that' it's only here on Earth that we would find life is simultaneously illogical and, dare I sir, egotistical (from 'an Earthling' perspective).

"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and the sea is no more." (Rev. 21:1)

"And He who sits on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And HE said, write for these words are faithful and true." (v.6)

"He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be God to him, and he will be a son to Me." (v.7)

"To the extent of His government and His peace there is no end,
Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it in justice and righteousness from now to eternity.

The seal of Jehovah of hosts will accomplish this." (Isaiah 9:7)

@whodey said
What about from your front porch like Sarah Palin can?

@Ghost-of-a-Duke

Just for you, I will pain snakingly type out something from the book "Genesis and the Big Bang", by Dr. Gerald Schroeder. If it sparks an interest, go read it.

"But what of the fossil record on which I have relied so heavily to outline the appearance and flow of life on Earth and which is used so frequently to repudiate the validity of Genesis? Does it provide a satisfactory explanation of life's origins and development? A study of its details reveals that it is no more satisfactory than George Walk's erroneous assumption that random processes produced life on Earth. Wald was 100% correct in his thesis. Given enough time random chemical reactions would lead to life. Wald assumed that the needed time would be found. But it was not. Life appeared almost immediately on the newly formed Earth. Those people who assume that the fossil record provides proof for the theory of evolution through natural selection have fallen into the same trap as did Wald.
The fossil record of the mid 1800's, the time of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, indeed contained organisms ranging from the primitive to the complex. But there was no continuity within this record. with its gaps in fossil evidence, it did not demonstrate an evolutionary flow from the primitive to the complex. Darwin realized this and acknowledged its deficiency. Darwin also qualified the meaning of the struggle that led to survival. But as so often happens within a movement, his followers were more certain than he of his theory's truth. It was obvious to them that evolution must have occurred. They were certain that with more fossil evidence, the glaring gaps in the record would be filled. The step like increases in complexity of life that the fossil record showed would give way to a smooth trend, a life curve as it were, leading from bacteria to trees and mankind.
But the intense paleontological efforts of the past hundred years have not produced the evidence. The fossil record of the late 1900's contains a hundred times more information than the record as it existed at the time of Darwin (who on learning that Alfred Russell Wallace had also developed the concept of evolution through natural selection and was planning to publish it) published his On the Origin of Species. Yet today's fossil record is as discontinuous as that of Darwin's (and Wallace's) time. In the past, the discontinuities have been brushed aside as temporary phenomena, problems that will disappear as our store of paleontological information increases. This is no longer possible. As Dr. Niles Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History in New York stated so definitively, "The pattern in the fossil record that we were told to find for the past one hundred and twenty years does not exist."
In regards to Wald's arguments, the finds of early microfossils essentially disprove the possibility of randomness as the answer for life on Earth. In regard to the concept of gradual evolution in the forms of life, the expanding fossil library has shown that while the theory of evolution, defined as the natural selection of those forms of life best adapted to their environment, is excellent as a principle for organizing into systemic groups the various current and past morphologies, the theory of gradual evolution is unsubstantiated by the fossil record. Gradual evolution is a fundamental tenant of Darwin's theory. But there is no rhythmic description of the record. Most serious paleontologists now accept that a form of punctuated evolution is the best that can be derived from the information that fossils present to us. A life form appears, remains until it disappears and a new, different structure arises in its place "suddenly".

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Castles don't have porches.