mistermack

The argument against that, is that the clays have had billions of years of contact with organic life to pre-load them with the chiral tendency. You would need some clays from a dead planet to be sure that it's genuinely happening unaided by previous life. I think that argument will always be trotted out, any time someone makes progress in the field using materials sourced on Earth.

It's impossible to say what the max spin rate would be. It depends on the mass, the shape and the material, and probably other factors. You also have the problem of what could make it spin. It would generally be a collision with something similar. And the higher the spin rate, the more violent a collision is needed. So there will be a limit, beyond which the thing would just shatter as they collided.

That's true, but "the above" was rich in assertions that there has to be a creator. I'll cherry pick a few, to show what I mean. I find that much of the rest of the OP is working from a fundamental fallacy. Pointing to the huge complexity of the human brain, etc, is an irrelevant point. We have the evidence of humans evolving from less clever apes, and those evolving from fish, through amphibians, etc etc. So claiming that complexity can't arise from far more simple organisms is clearly wrong, and the evidence it clearly there in the fossils. What we don't have fossil evidence for is the origin of the first reproducing unit. But we have fossils for most of the following process, so expressing wonder at human complexity is attempting to mislead. The complexity is explained. The very first part of the origin of the process is not. Yet.

I thought that the obvious point of the OP was that natural physical and chemical processes couldn't produce life, and by implication, the OP was a thinly disguised argument for a creator. So if you want this aspect of the OP to be ignored, that's fine. Maybe there should be a special category for threads that purport to be about science, but are actually about the existence of the supernatural.

My intention was to argue how unlikely the idea of a creator actually is. Since the OP is arguing about the odds of life evolving from non-living ingredients "by chance alone", I'm arguing that the alternative, of a creator god, is in fact far more unlikely. If a god created the Universe 6,000 years ago, as it says in the bible, then he went to great lengths to make it LOOK far older, and also, he must have created life to LOOK like it evolved over billions of years. That's the problem for Young Earth Creationists. Other creationists have to explain where the creator came from, who created him, or alternatively explain how an infinitely old creator, that has always existed, could make any sense, and explain their evidence for it. Almost all arguments for the existence of a god are using the "god of the gaps" argument. Find a gap in our current knowledge of the Universe, and just claim that a god did it. There's nothing impossible about it all. I'm just pointing out that the odds against it are in the region of infinity against.

Moontanman, I don't think you have understood my post.

I mean not directed by an intelligent creator. Of course, you have to calculate the odds on such a creator coming into existence spontaneously, without being created by a creator. The odds against an infinitely old creator existing, are of course infinite.

You can buy hand warmers that work by oxidising lighter fluid. They don't use a flame, you light them initially, and the flame goes out, and then a catalyst keeps an oxidising reaction going without the flame, till the fuel is exhausted. (about five or six hours later !) I own three and they work well. They get too hot to hold, they come in a cloth sleeve to make them cosy to use. I paid about three pounds each for them brand new, made in China, bought on ebay. You would need to work out how to place them under the plate, and keep the heat in. But it's one suggestion that might work.

Someone's probably already said this. But anyway, just in case : What are the odds of a being so advanced as to be able to create an entire universe from nothing existing from infinite time ago, deciding to create the entire universe so that it looks 14 billion years old from every angle, and then create various forms of life, and cunningly designed it all to give the illusion that life started and evolved without any outside help. I would say that the odds against that are nearly infinite. Billions of times longer odds, than life starting through non-directed chemical events.

You seem to have led a very sheltered life. Have you never spent a night with a girl you've just met, who lets you sleep with her, but just wants to "cuddle" ? I have on more than one occasion, and have never got forceful. But it doesn't take much imagination to see that going wrong. That sort of stuff is going on all the time, in bedrooms near you. You responded to my posts, so what's wrong with me responding to you? But your post comes across as a bit of a threat, so I'm not going to post again.

No, right from the very beginning, I've made it clear I was talking about behaviour that is clearly risky. It's you lot who have come back with non-risky examples. Where have I ever criticised women for being female, or even gone an inch in that direction? There's enough genuinely risky behaviour going on out there to fill a library of threads. In my early post, I quoted two women on a tv program from a few days ago. They were both raped by a serial rapist. Both were self critical and the police had to really work on them to convince them to go through with the prosecution. One accepted a lift from a stranger, and got attacked, the other did the same, and actually got home ok, but then let him in for a drink of water, and got attacked in her own home. To be honest, I've seen far more risky behaviour than what they did. Mercifully, it doesn't always lead to a disaster.

A nice sidestep, avoiding the real question. No, I'm talking about when the victim has behaved in a way that MOST people would agree was risky. Why would I or anyone blame myself for what you described? What about a girl who is in the habit of going out and getting blind drunk, and walking home or begging strangers for a lift? Do you imagine this doesn't happen? It's obvious risky behaviour that I'm talking about. There's loads of it out there. And Strange, the same goes for you. I'm talking about risky behaviour that is obvious to anyone, not marginal stuff.

You telling victims they are being irrational. I'd love to see you try that, to a bunch of them. I find it extremely patronising. And it's not as if it is a rare occurrence. This is an extremely common response to attacks of all kinds.

If you subscribe to this fallacy that apportioning blame for recklessness by a victim excuses the perpetrator, then you are obviously of the opinion that victims are regularly excusing their rapists. It's a ludicrous position to take. John Cuthber is constantly asserting it, and even talks about blame being transferred from the rapist to the victim. As if blame exists in a fixed quantity, and must only ever rest with one individual. Where this idea comes from, I really don't know, but that's the fundamental point of the discussion. I'm asserting that rapists are evil, and should be given much longer sentences. But I'm also agreeing with an awful lot of victims, who with the gift of hindsight regret behaving carelessly and tempting fate. And I do think it's patronising in the extreme to portray that as some kind of victim syndrome. Especially by people who have never been through such an experience. You can fully blame the rapist, AND blame yourself in hindsight, if you want to. The one has no effect on the other. In my opinion. And I'm equally sure that victims would not say that they are excusing rapists when they say that they blame themselves. Not would they agree that they have got it wrong, or are suffering from some sort of syndrome.

Yes. Over and over again on this thread. But of course, in the form of "are you making excuses for rapists?" That seems to be the silly point we've reached. When a victim blames herself, she's misguided. When someone else says exactly the same thing, they are excusing the rapist.

So in a case where a woman goes back to the same psychotic boyfriend, who has put her in hospital five times already, she's wrong to blame herself, when she ends up battered and broken for the sixth time? And if she does blame herself, does that mean that she's automatically excusing the psycho that put her there? Can someone actually explain how blaming yourself actually excuses someone else? Is that the nature of blame, that only one person can hold it, at any one time? It's a really simplistic view of the world that bears no relation to reality.

You don't seem able to comprehend that people can regret their own actions, without "letting their rapist off the hook". Is that really so hard to get, that victims can blame themselves, without in any way excusing the rapist? And very often do exactly that? You seem to be in some sort of denial of the real world here.

That really is paternalistic mansplaining. A victim gets their own attack wrong, and need you to clarify it for them. It's in the nature of this kind of thing that people who haven't experienced it, are the ones who get it wrong, not the victims. Jump off a bus while it's moving nineteen times, and it might not appear stupid. Do it again, and break your hip and nearly die, and you will then realise just how stupid you had been. This is how victims often feel. That's why so many are loathe to report the crime. And that applies to men who were mugged, as well as women who were sexually assaulted. A big proportion don't report it out of shame and embarrassment. Just because you do something stupid, it doesn't mean you ARE stupid. Otherwise, we would all be classed as stupid. Intelligent people can do the most stupid things.

In the last 120 years, we've gone from a man in a kite gliding a few yards, to people living in space for a year, or travelling to the Moon. In a billion years, we should be able to live as far away from the Sun as we like, and have plenty of humans orbiting other stars. In any case, the odds of a major extinction event on Earth are very high due to a major collision, long before the Sun starts to swell.

Yes, it's a different story if you want to get to Mars, say. It would be theoretically possible to accelerate at 9.81 m/s2 for half the trip, and then turn around and point the other way, and decelerate at the same rate for the other half to slow down. The problem is the huge amounts of fuel that would take, as mentioned above. So they will probably send a spinning ship, and work out how to cope with the effects of accelerating that, and slowing it down. Or, the travellers would have to be weightless for a long time on a non-spinning ship, which would affect their health. Edit: There's loads more of this on the "What does it take to create a planet" thread, in the same section of modern physics :

The obvious way to create artificial gravity in space is using a rotating space station, creating artificial gravity. Once it's rotating at the correct speed it needs no further fuel. And you don't end up millions of miles from where you started. You just spin it up, till you weigh the same as you would on Earth. Going outwards from the centre of rotation, the magnitude of the artificial gravity will increase, so you will probably put the main floor just inside the outer casing. The only problem with it, is that the rotation causes a sickly feeling in humans because of it's effect on the inner ear. The bigger the diameter of the spinning floor, the less noticeable this is, and it's reckoned to be undetectable at diameters of more than 200 metres, and forces of 1g. So the space station needs to be big, but you can live as normal in space, just by spinning. In some ways, it will be better than living on Earth, because if you are old or sick, you can choose to live closer to the centre, and feel lighter. But for most people, 1g would be the best environment, for normal health functions.

That's a fine bit of "mansplaining". The victims I'm referring to blame their own actions, not unhappy chance. The most recent I'm referring to (a couple of days ago on tv) said that she was ashamed and embarrassed that she got into the car of a total stranger, when she of all people had always warned others never to take those kinds of chances. The cop tried telling her that it wasn't her fault, but it didn't cut much ice. And in no way was she excusing the rapist. A lot of women don't even report the attack, because they feel ashamed that they behaved so stupidly. It's really paternalistic to say, "no, you shouldn't feel that way" . These are not idiots, who need to be told what to feel. The one on the tv a couple of days ago knew exactly what she meant, and so do many other victims, who bitterly regret what they now view as something stupid that made them particularly vulnerable. They make their feelings perfectly clear, and don't need someone to come along afterwards, and explain what they really mean. One thing you don't hear very often from victims is a call for changed attitudes of society. They usually want better advice given to girls on staying safe, and longer sentences for the thugs. Maybe when you've been face to face with one of these animals, you get to realise the futility of trying to reason with them.

No need for locks on your house or car then. Or insurance. Or passwords on your computer. Or police stations or courts if it comes to that. The flaw in your argument is that once is too much, when it comes to a lot of these incidents. Walk safely across a dark park after midnight nineteen times, and you will still regret it, if it goes wrong the twentieth time.

I accept that that's your view. But it's not what victims say. As I pointed out much earlier, victims very often bitterly regret some of their actions, in the wake of an attack. Whether it's drinking so much that they passed out, or accepting a lift from a stranger. Their advice, afterwards, is generally that it's not worth the risk.