Would you say Ron O is running away from this post?

[pnyikos]

Ron O has very liberal standards for accusing others of "running away"
but here is a case that even someone with more conservative standards
might consider to be a case of running away. I did a reply within two
days of an October 5 post by Ron O:

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/25886b90d378b17e

You can read my October 7 reply here:

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/ec50b887a870eeb1

Someone who knows the past history of my encounters with Ron O might
even be able to guess at the probable reason for Ron O. failing to
reply to this post in all this time. Except for a mild suggestion
that he might be wasting his time by asking a question "for someone
that I know," it is very polite and factual; and it is highly on-
topic,

In it, I discuss the first post in the thread in harmony with what
science has uncovered about the history of evolution on earth. Then I
tell Ron O. exactly what my directed panspermia hypotheses are really
all about. And Ron O is ill equipped emotionally to cope with that
kind of discussion with me.

In fact, if he were to try to respond maturely and intelligently to
the post, I believe he would be risking a nervous breakdown.

This is because the three hypotheses are my SOLE rationale for
thinking Intelligent Design (ID) is a scientific theory, and he has
concocted an elabortate fantasy, based on a serious paranoia of the
Discovery Institute (DI), about how I am a dupe of the DI. In
reality, all my posting is in harmony with my belief (shared by
Phillip Johnson) that the DI does not have a scientific theory that
could rival neo-Darwinism.

That would remain true even if some DI members were to wholeheartedly
embrace my directed panspermia hypotheses. These hypotheses have to do
with abiogenesis, not the sort of evolution that the modern neo-
Darwinian synthesis is all about. But if they did embrace them, they
would at least be well on the way towards developing a scientific
theory of ID.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
nyikos @ math.sc.edu

[Boikat]

Just out of curiosity, why do you exclude forms of undirected
panspermia?

Boikat

[Ron O]

On Nov 28, 4:56 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

Actually, I never knew that you posted this post. Google doesn't tell
you when one of your posts is responded to, and this was just a joke
thread with a post from some troll or worse. I just never went back
to it. Don't you wish that you had that excuse? Really, you know
that I would have responded to it if I knew about it, so what is your
problem?

Aren't you the guy that claimed that I was running from a post for
three whole days when there was no reason that I should have known
about the post because you had posted it to someone else? How could a
degenerate like that, who had been running from some posts for weeks
or months by that time, claim that someone else was running for three
whole days? How could this person start this thread when there are
so many posts that he has yet to address? I'll have to look up
projection as a psychological problem to try to figure out what you
get out of doing it. It just seems stupid to me.

Isn't it some type of sad joke that I miss one post and you have to
start another bogus thread about it? What kind of low life, who is
guilty of what you are, would even think that it was something worth
doing?

This is just another pagnoistic loser post of yours. Bogus threads
with bogus titles. Who was the one that was talking about shedding
light on the subject in their last post or so to me? Just look at the
degenerate threads that you have started. Your first one was the
misdirection thread so that you could do what? Projection is a way of
life for you. You are running from posts, so you have to claim that I
was running from posts. Look at how many posts that you are currently
running from that you posted in your last posting spree. What is
tragic is all that you can think of to do is something like this.

You boasted about the second and third knock down that you were going
to administer, but your first knock down fizzled out when you had to
stoop to lying about not getting a rebuttal to the bogus "first knock
down." Is this post the second knock down? What kind of pathetic
knock down would that be?

You have all those posts that you are running from and what do you
do? Again, project your stupid behavior onto someone else. What was
your next projection thread? Who was the dirty debater? You just
started to lie about that in your last post when all you did was run
in denial before. Then when you found out who the dirty debater was
you started the Scottish verdict thread. That worked out so well for
you that you ended up starting the Insane Logic thread to do what? In
your own words you started the thread to make me look bad, but what
happened? You had to lie about not getting a rebuttal, and what all
else? How sad is that?

You have all the opportunities to go back and address what you are
running from and all you can do is this.

Remember this series of posts that you haven't gone back to since the
Nov 5?

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/1e32a14c787f0796

The above post is noteworthy because Nyikos may have lied in every
point that he tried to make. The documentation is in the post above.
Nyikos ran.

That weird Hell thread that seems to have gotten you stirred up, but
not enough to keep you from running away.

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/593add6441751963

The insane logic thread that you haven't been back to since Oct 11.

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/04b1a972cd519762

The other threads that you are running from are linked to in the By
their Fruits thread

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/1b79ab72833a2e4e

As sad as it may seem Nyikos has run from some posts since last
December. You have to wonder about a person with that track record
ragging on someone for missing one post.

Well I guess that I will go back to the old thread that this thread is
about and see if there is anything worth responding to. Why not show
some honesty and integrity and, at least, pretend to try to do the
right thing instead of the Nyikos bogus thing. Really, starting this
thread has to be sad even for someone as lost as you are. Your
behavior is so pathetic that I can't imagine what it is like to be
you. The sad thing is that you understand that everything that I have
written is true, and that is why you have to start threads like this
one instead of deal with reality in an honest and forthright manner.

Ron Okimoto

[pnyikos]

I do not exclude them, but I believe they are less likely than the
directed version. And this is because I know what intelligent species
like ours are capable of doing. We could undertake a directed
panspermia project ourselves, although the actual seeding would only
come after we have identified suitable planets for it.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Actually, the really identifiable joke was by a troll who posts as Ron
Okimoto.

> I just never went back
> to it.  Don't you wish that you had that excuse?  Really, you know
> that I would have responded to it if I knew about it,

Utterly false. See above about a nervous breakdown, and all that.

I see you've responded on the original thread now, but in a ridiculous
way that ignores all that I have written about clotting. You pretend
that I am backing up some long-refuted claims about the clotting
mechanism by Behe. So you still aren't taking what I wrote seriously.

Remainder of non-response by you deleted, to be replied to when I have
more time. But I'll reply to your half-assed response to my post
first.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 28, 5:56 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Ron O has very liberal standards for accusing others of "running away"
> but here is a case that even someone with more conservative standards
> might consider to be a case of running away.  I did a reply within two
> days of an October 5 post by Ron O:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/25886b90d378b17e
>
> You can read my October 7 reply here:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/ec50b887a870eeb1

But since so many people don't bother to click on urls, I thought it
would be good to repost it here, especially since Ron O. has puked all
over me in this thread, as though I were mere vermin. People should
be able to judge for themselves just how far off base he is.

___________ begin included post_____________

Local: Fri, Oct 7 2011 4:55 pm
Subject: Re: Ibn Khaldun on Evolution

On Oct 5, 6:38 am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:

> On Oct 5, 3:55 am, Ibn Khaldun <IbnKhal...@no-spamming.com> wrote:
> > One should then look at the world of creation. It started out from the
> > minerals and progressed, in an ingenious, gradual manner, to plants and
> > animals. The last stage 269 of minerals is connected with the first
> > stage of plants, such as herbs and seedless plants.


This is closer to the truth than Genesis, which already had fruit
trees with seed in their fruit on the third day. But unless "herbs
and seedless plants" refers to algae (and also cyanobacteria, which
used to be called "blue-green algae") he is just a small improvement
on the authors of Genesis.


> >The last stage of
> > plants, such as palms and vines, is connected with the first stage of
> > animals, such as snails and shellfish which have only the power of
> > touch.


As one can see, this medieval Islamic writer was way off the mark.
Shellfish predate even the primitive vascular plants by well over a
hundred million years. As to palms and vines--forget it!


> > The word "connection" with regard to these created things means
> > that the last stage of each group is fully prepared to become the first
> > stage of the next group.


Palms and vines morphing into snails and shellfish? I hope that
isn't
what this medieval writer was trying to say, especially since his
last
paragraph is surprisingly modern:

> > The animal world then widens, its species become numerous, and, in a
> > gradual process of creation, it finally leads to man, who is able to
> > think and to reflect. The higher stage of man is reached from the world
> > of the monkeys, in which both sagacity and perception are found, but
> > which has not reached the stage of actual reflection and thinking. At
> > this point we come to the first stage of man after (the world of
> > monkeys). This is as far as our (physical) observation extends."

> > The Muqadhimah


> > About the author


> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun


> > Also see this video


> >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugu3cZN-3jU


> Did Space aliens have anything to do with arranging the 269 minerals
> to get the first plants? When did prokaryote bacteria get arranged
> and did the space aliens create the bacteria or did they just
> manipulate what had already been arranged out of the minerals? I'm
> just asking for someone that I know.


> Ron Okimoto



Did you have me in mind? If so, your question is completely wasted.
I don't expect us to have answers to any of these questions for the
next 10,000 years except the "when" of prokaryotes [bacteria and
archae] to which I think we may get an answer of "3.9 billion years"
if we send out enough instrumental probes on flybys in that time
period.

The questions I am asking have a far better chance of being answered,
even within the next century, although I don't expect a huge amount
of
progress in my lifetime. They have to do with the relative
probability of four different kinds of hypotheses:


(1) Earth organisms are due to abiogenesis that took place right here
on earth, without any outside intervention.


[The remaining three have to do with directed panspermy:]


(2) Earth was seeded by a species that had pretty much the same
genetic code we do. ["The Xordax Hypothesis."]


(3) Earth was seeded by a species that had a biochemistry based on
protein enzymes, but a much simpler genetic code than ours. ["The
Golian Hypothesis"]


(4) Earth was seeded by a species whose own biochemistry was based on
nucleotide-string enzymes, perhaps RNA ribozymes, perhaps with a
translation mechanism for producing simple structural proteins. ["The
Throom Hypothesis"]


In assessing the relative probability of (2), (3) and (4), there is
on
the one hand the fact that the initial efficient self-replicators,
without the intervention of intelligent design, are easiest to
envision in (2) and hardest in (4), but then the probability of
evolving intelligent life from that basis comes in just the reverse
order. And so, it's a tossup at this stage which is the most
probable
and which the least.


The three probabilities then combine in some way in any assessment of
which is more probable, homegrown abiogenesis ("Mother Earth did it")
or directed panspermia.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
nyikos @ math.sc.edu

================= end of repost

And now, I should add that Boikat has mentioned a fifth possibility,
undirected panspermia. May the best hypothesis win.

Peter Nyikos

[Roger Shrubber]

Generally, no.
It all sounds too much like meta-discussion and
ill-mannered children resorting the primate poo
flinging.

At some point, notorious hit-and-run posters
deserve to be called on their avoidance, perhaps
the initials TP could be invoked, but overall it
sounds like crybaby nonsense and I suspect most
people turn off when they see the claim.

And for the notorious ones, it isn't news anyway.

[Rolf]

How would we detect a 'suitable' planet?
To begin with, wouldn't it have to be a planet devoid of all life?
Next, why wold we want to do it, what rationale?
Why not trust nature to take care of itself?
Are we masters of the universe?
BTW, find panspermia and frontloading theories very unlikely and not worth
specualting about.
We have plenty enough of things in acute need of being taken seriously but
we still are in the modus of business as usual.

> Peter Nyikos

[Rolf]

Well said!

WTF is the purpose?
I'd rather discuss YECism instead and let panspermia, crop circles, flying
saucers, Bigfoot and Yeti take care of themselves.

Rolf

[Ron O]

Is this all that you can come back with? You know who the liar and
pretender is. You brought up the Monty Python Knight in one of your
bouts of projection. Look at this thread. All that is left of you is
a twitching sphincter. If that isn't a joke I don't know what is.

>
> > I just never went back
> > to it.  Don't you wish that you had that excuse?  Really, you know
> > that I would have responded to it if I knew about it,
>
> Utterly false. See above about a nervous breakdown, and all that.

What would make you believe that I was lying? Why wouldn't I have
addressed the post? It was just an inane bunch of speculation on your
part. You are just slandering someone to cover your own dishonest
butt. Who keeps projecting the claim that others are slandering
Nyikos? If anyone had a breakdown it was you when you started to post
like a hamster on No Doze (I changed it so that I wouldn't offend your
sensitive nature). Who ran from most of the posts in that posting
spree? His name is Nyikos. What triggered that posting spree?
Didn't someone named Nyikos get caught lying about stupid things?
Wasn't it Nyikos who could not cope with reality? Projection is a way
of life for you.

>

> I see you've responded on the original thread now, but in a ridiculous
> way that ignores all that I have written about clotting.  You pretend
> that I am backing up some long-refuted claims about the clotting
> mechanism by Behe. So you still aren't taking what I wrote seriously.

You must have that post mixed up with another. Maybe you can supply
the clotting problem that I was supposed to be addressing. I only
mentioned clotting because it evolved over 400 million years sgo and
it was likely one of the reasons why Behe claimed that the designer
could be dead. He doesn't hzve a more recent example of designer
design to put forward. 400 million years is a big gap in
visitations. What was the clotting issue in context? Did I need to
address anything else? I don't even know what your bogus ideas about
clotting are, so why would I address them?

>
> Remainder of non-response by you deleted, to be replied to when I have
> more time. But I'll reply to your half-assed response to my post
> first.
>
> Peter Nyikos

Run. It doesn't matter. It only makes you look more pathetic the
next time you produce something as stupid and degenerate as this
thread.

Ron Okimoto

[Ron O]

On Nov 28, 11:23 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Nov 28, 5:56 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > Ron O has very liberal standards for accusing others of "running away"
> > but here is a case that even someone with more conservative standards
> > might consider to be a case of running away.  I did a reply within two
> > days of an October 5 post by Ron O:
>
> >http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/25886b90d378b17e
>
> > You can read my October 7 reply here:
>
> >http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/ec50b887a870eeb1
>
> But since so many people don't bother to click on urls, I thought it
> would be good to repost it here, especially since Ron O. has puked all
> over me in this thread, as though I were mere vermin.  People should
> be able to judge for themselves just how far off base he is.

You are vermin. There are no ifs ands or buts about it. Anyone can
look at the post and see that there was absolutely nothing for me to
run from, and that the plain and simple fact is that I never saw the
post to respond to it. Google doesn't tell you when someone answers
one of your posts. The thread was so lame that I never went back to
look at it.

Who could make such a big deal about missing this post? One post
compared to all the ones that Nyikos is currently running from.
Really running from. He knows that they are there. I have even
linked back to many of them, so compared to this post what is he
whining about?

Searching TO for this type of junk means that Nyikos really has no
other excuses. He must have gone through all of my posts to him and
looked for the smallest mistake and has come up empty. He keeps
making the bogus claims about me, but all I have to do is put up the
links to show who the bogus one is. Nyikos can't do that. He has to
whine about a missed post in a thread that wasn't even worth talking
about.

> University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

> nyikos @ math.sc.edu
> ================= end of repost
>
> And now, I should add that Boikat has mentioned a fifth possibility,
> undirected panspermia.  May the best hypothesis win.
>
> Peter Nyikos

My response to this lame post:

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/3bb785449ca7400e?hl=en

There was nothing worth responding to.

What kind of pathetic person would make such a big issue about one
missed post? What kind of person would even try to defend their
stupidity with a post like this?

Projection is a way of life for Nyikos. He is running from posts so
others have to be running from posts. You can't make this junk up. I
don't even know what he gains from it. In the end he is the one that
is still running from all of those posts.

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:01:11 +0100, "Rolf" <rolf.a...@tele2.no>
wrote:

>Roger Shrubber wrote:
>> Generally, no.
>> It all sounds too much like meta-discussion and
>> ill-mannered children resorting the primate poo
>> flinging.
>>
>> At some point, notorious hit-and-run posters
>> deserve to be called on their avoidance, perhaps
>> the initials TP could be invoked, but overall it
>> sounds like crybaby nonsense and I suspect most
>> people turn off when they see the claim.
>>
>> And for the notorious ones, it isn't news anyway.
>
>Well said!

Seconded!


>WTF is the purpose?


Whatever it is, you can be sure they know its designed :)

>I'd rather discuss YECism instead and let panspermia, crop circles, flying
>saucers, Bigfoot and Yeti take care of themselves.

Don't forget Nessie.

[Burkhard]

On Nov 29, 9:27 am, Roger Shrubber <rog.shrubb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Generally, no.
> It all sounds too much like meta-discussion and
> ill-mannered children resorting the primate poo
> flinging.
>
> At some point, notorious hit-and-run posters
> deserve to be called on their avoidance, perhaps
> the initials TP could be invoked, but overall it
> sounds like crybaby nonsense and I suspect most
> people turn off when they see the claim.
>

Yep
Just excessive egos that feel all hurt when someone doesn't respond
to their pearls of wisdom to a time scale they themselves impose

[Kleuskes & Moos]

To be fair. I think everybody would feel bad if ignored by everyone else,
and given the nature of usenet, that's what not responding amounts to.
Psychologically being ignored is far worse than being flamed, negative
attention is better than no attention at all.

For that reason i would perhaps view the claim as a cry for attention.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
__________________
< My NOSE is NUMB! >
------------------
\
\
___
{~._.~}
( Y )
()~*~()
(_)-(_)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Burkhard]

On Nov 29, 7:17 pm, Kleuskes & Moos <kleu...@somewhere.else.net>
wrote:

> On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:57:19 -0800, Burkhard wrote:
> > On Nov 29, 9:27 am, Roger Shrubber <rog.shrubb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Generally, no.
> >> It all sounds too much like meta-discussion and ill-mannered children
> >> resorting the primate poo flinging.
>
> >> At some point, notorious hit-and-run posters deserve to be called on
> >> their avoidance, perhaps the initials TP could be invoked, but overall
> >> it sounds like crybaby nonsense and I suspect most people turn off when
> >> they see the claim.
>
> > Yep
> > Just  excessive egos that feel all hurt when someone doesn't respond to
> > their pearls of wisdom to a time scale they themselves impose
>
> To be fair. I think everybody would feel bad if ignored by everyone else,
> and given the nature of usenet, that's what not responding amounts to.
> Psychologically being ignored is far worse than being flamed, negative
> attention is better than no attention at all.

I really should have ignored this post ;o)
Yes, I agree, though it seems to work out by and large OK on t.o -
everybody seems to have at least someone who responds to them.

[Roger Shrubber]

Kleuskes & Moos wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:57:19 -0800, Burkhard wrote:
>
>> On Nov 29, 9:27 am, Roger Shrubber<rog.shrubb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Generally, no.
>>> It all sounds too much like meta-discussion and ill-mannered children
>>> resorting the primate poo flinging.
>>>
>>> At some point, notorious hit-and-run posters deserve to be called on
>>> their avoidance, perhaps the initials TP could be invoked, but overall
>>> it sounds like crybaby nonsense and I suspect most people turn off when
>>> they see the claim.
>>>
>>>
>> Yep
>> Just excessive egos that feel all hurt when someone doesn't respond to
>> their pearls of wisdom to a time scale they themselves impose
>
> To be fair. I think everybody would feel bad if ignored by everyone else,
> and given the nature of usenet, that's what not responding amounts to.
> Psychologically being ignored is far worse than being flamed, negative
> attention is better than no attention at all.
>
> For that reason i would perhaps view the claim as a cry for attention.

In which case, how exactly would it differ from every other post?

x-posted to alt.talk.lookie-lookie.here.

[pnyikos]

Instrumental probes sending back signals. There are actually two
factors that go into assessing "suitability":

1. How likely are organisms we send to prosper and evolve on this
planet?

2. How unlikely is this planet to develop life "as we know it"
spontaneously?

By "life as we know it" I mean it must include self-replicators that
take in simple compounds from the environment and use them to build
themselves up; and having the potential to evolve into intelligent
life.

Unless 2. is as unequivocal as one can get, I would want the planet to
be off limits to seeding.

My hypothesis includes the feature that the panspermists investigated
thousands of planets where one might reasonably think conditions for
life were favorable, yet not one showed appreciable signs of
developing "life as we know it," before undertaking even the first
seeding project.

> To begin with, wouldn't it have to be a planet devoid of all life?

See above.

> Next, why wold we want to do it, what rationale?

To begin with, there are the reasons suggested in the original
directed panspermia paper by Crick and Orgel:

Icarus 19 (1973) 341-346:
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBCCP.pdf

I have gone into more detail than they did, and will be glad to do so
again soon, but I am short on time right now.

> Why not trust nature to take care of itself?

Part of the reason I believe directed panspermia to be the most likely
origin of life ON EARTH is that I believe spontaneous abiogenesis to
be a less-than-once-in-a-galaxy event. And I would expect the
panspermists to confirm that pretty strongly before embarking on their
project. See 2. above again.

> Are we masters of the universe?

No, just its servants, like the servants I hypothesize to have seeded
earth ca. 4 billion years ago.

> BTW,  find panspermia and frontloading theories very unlikely and not worth
> specualting about.
> We have plenty enough of things in  acute need of being taken seriously but
> we still are in the modus of business as usual.

Business as usual being the unreflective assumption that "Mother Earth
did it easily"?

I shared it until sixteen years ago, thanks to the optimism in popular
science accounts; but reading two books made me realize how shaky the
assumptions behind it are. These are _Life Itself_ by Francis Crick
and -- paradoxically -- _Vital Dust_ by Christian DeDuve. Both are
(or were -- Crick is dead, and I don't know about DeDuve) Nobel
Laureate biochemists.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Nov 29, 7:01 am, "Rolf" <rolf.aalb...@tele2.no> wrote:
> Roger Shrubber wrote:
> > Generally, no.
> > It all sounds too much like meta-discussion and
> > ill-mannered children resorting the primate poo
> > flinging.
>
> > At some point, notorious hit-and-run posters
> > deserve to be called on their avoidance, perhaps
> > the initials TP could be invoked, but overall it
> > sounds like crybaby nonsense and I suspect most
> > people turn off when they see the claim.
>
> > And for the notorious ones, it isn't news anyway.
>
> Well said!
>
> WTF is the purpose?

Grabbing y'all's attention, partly. How many of the people posting
here would have looked at a thread titled simply, "Directed Panspermy
III"?

Now I've added those words.

> I'd rather discuss YECism instead and let panspermia, crop circles, flying
> saucers, Bigfoot and Yeti take care of themselves.
>
> Rolf

As the British would say, "Underline the odd man out." For clues, see
the reply I made to you just now.

Peter Nyikos

[Ron O]

SNIP:

The next step after changing the tread title will be running away and
starting a new thread.

Really, what kind of jerk would have started a thread like this, only
to run from what he had done?

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:41:43 -0800 (PST), pnyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Nov 29, 7:01 am, "Rolf" <rolf.aalb...@tele2.no> wrote:
>> Roger Shrubber wrote:
>> > Generally, no.
>> > It all sounds too much like meta-discussion and
>> > ill-mannered children resorting the primate poo
>> > flinging.
>>
>> > At some point, notorious hit-and-run posters
>> > deserve to be called on their avoidance, perhaps
>> > the initials TP could be invoked, but overall it
>> > sounds like crybaby nonsense and I suspect most
>> > people turn off when they see the claim.
>>
>> > And for the notorious ones, it isn't news anyway.
>>
>> Well said!
>>
>> WTF is the purpose?
>
>Grabbing y'all's attention, partly.

No surprise there.

[jillery]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:18:43 -0800 (PST), Ron O <roki...@cox.net>
wrote:

ISTM several posters have adopted that strategy. Perhaps it's just a
passing fad.

[Kleuskes & Moos]

Not that much. Everybody posts here for entertainment of a somewhat
academic flavor and occasionally to make a (minor) point.

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/ over in west Philadelphia a puppy is \
\ vomiting ... /
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[Rolf]

BAU refers to the sad state of world affairs today.

> I shared it until sixteen years ago, thanks to the optimism in popular
> science accounts; but reading two books made me realize how shaky the
> assumptions behind it are. These are _Life Itself_ by Francis Crick
> and -- paradoxically -- _Vital Dust_ by Christian DeDuve. Both are
> (or were -- Crick is dead, and I don't know about DeDuve) Nobel
> Laureate biochemists.
>

You shared the steady state universe and panspermia with the crackpots
Wickramasinghe & Hoyle too, I presume.
Including the theory of why the human nose looks the way it does. Declaring
Arceheopteryx fossil a fake even before having seen it.

I don't have much respect for scientist speculating beyond what's
reasonable. Including the theory that the ET's who seeded Earth 4 billion
years ago were just one in a series of infinite regress. Our descendants
probably will embark on the noble project of seeding as soon as we discover
a suitable planet. Hoping that someday an intellignet race will evolve.

Or something like that, all like improbable. Idle and purposeless
speculation.

I won't be converted to solipsism either.

> Peter Nyikos

[Paul Ciszek]

In article <jb5ofu$bti$1...@news.albasani.net>,

Rolf <rolf.a...@tele2.no> wrote:
>
>I don't have much respect for scientist speculating beyond what's
>reasonable. Including the theory that the ET's who seeded Earth 4 billion
>years ago were just one in a series of infinite regress. Our descendants
>probably will embark on the noble project of seeding as soon as we discover
>a suitable planet. Hoping that someday an intellignet race will evolve.

A failed attempt at colonization sounds more plausible to me than that
degree of altruism.

--
Money is Speech
Corporations are People
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

[pnyikos]

CC: Rolf, because this reply has been delayed due to other threads
taking priority

Did you catch the import of the "paradoxically"?

Christian de Duve believes that life arises spontaneously on planets
like the early earth with the greatest of ease. But my eyes were
opened when he swept a colossal amount of explanation under the rug,
jumping from simple acetylamino-tRNA-like molecules to the whole grand
protein translation mechanism after spending oodles of pages in the
slow progression to the aa-tRNA-like stage.

I had never learned about the protein translation mechanism in detail
before and I quite agree with Crick's assessment of the difficulty of
getting to that point, with all the concomitant things: DNA
polymerase, RNA transcsriptase and reverse transcriptase, and a number
of other essentials for life as we know it.:

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available
to us now, could only state that in some sense, the
origin of life seems at the moment to be almost a miracle,
so many are the conditions which would have had to have
been satisfied to get it going.
--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_,
Simon and Schuster, 1981, p. 88.

> You shared the steady state universe and panspermia with the crackpots
> Wickramasinghe & Hoyle too, I presume.

NEVER!!! I first learned of both when I was in high school, and both
seemed incredibly farfetched to me then.

I've slowly moderated my initial disdain for the steady state theory,
after Hoyle modified his original steady state theory to give a more
plausible explanation for the spontaneous appearance of hydrogen, but
it still can't compare with the Big Bang theory.

Also the idea of organisms traveling deep inside comets is more
plausible than the original Arrhenius theory of naked spores drifting
through space, but still the interstellar distances are just too
formidable IMHO.

> Including the theory of why the human nose looks the way it does. Declaring
> Arceheopteryx fossil a fake even before having seen it.

HUH??? who or what are you referring to here?

Are you really THIS clueless as to where I am coming from?

> I don't have much respect for scientist speculating beyond what's
> reasonable. Including the theory that the ET's who seeded  Earth 4 billion
> years ago were just one in a series of infinite regress.

That is NOT my theory. My theory is that life arose spontaneously
once in our galaxy, and that even that was a fantastic stroke of luck--
but given enough universes like this one, even such things become
"commonplace".

As I said, I subscribe to the Big Bang theory. Earth formed ca. 4.5
billion (milliard in European lingo) years ago, the universe ca. 9
billion years before that. The planet of the panspermists could have
been as early as 8 billion years before the earth AFAIK, giving them
plenty of time to evolve from the first prokaryote-level organism,
which may have been as much as 6 billion years in the making.

> Our descendants
> probably will embark on the noble project of seeding as soon as we discover
> a suitable planet. Hoping that someday an intellignet race will evolve.

Are you being sarcastic here? You seem to contradict yourself in what
you write next.

> Or something like that, all like improbable. Idle and purposeless
> speculation.
>
> I won't be converted to solipsism either.

Why would you expect anyone be converted to such a dead end
philosophy?

[pnyikos]

On Nov 30, 7:36 pm, nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote:
> In article <jb5ofu$bt...@news.albasani.net>,

>
> Rolf <rolf.aalb...@tele2.no> wrote:
>
> >I don't have much respect for scientist speculating beyond what's
> >reasonable. Including the theory that the ET's who seeded  Earth 4 billion
> >years ago were just one in a series of infinite regress. Our descendants
> >probably will embark on the noble project of seeding as soon as we discover
> >a suitable planet. Hoping that someday an intellignet race will evolve.
>
> A failed attempt at colonization sounds more plausible to me than that
> degree of altruism.

Yes, but this is a classic case of YMMV. I do believe that any
technological civilization that doesn't self-destruct eventually comes
to the point where its biological, etc. needs are taken care of, and
it wants to do something besides indulge in various entertainments. A
grand project like directed panspermy is ideal for harnessing all the
energies and aspirations of the more far-sighted beneficiaries of that
civilization.

Peter Nyikos

[Steven L.]

"pnyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:46375f67-5dc8-449e...@b32g2000yqn.googlegroups.com:

So unlike the creationists who are motivated by religion, you're
motivated by science fiction.




-- Steven L.

[pnyikos]

On Dec 9, 1:31 pm, "Steven L." <sdlit...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> "pnyikos" <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message

Until now, Steven L. has struck me as someone who is mature enough not
to make speculative snap judgments. I hope the following was just a
momentary lapse:

> So unlike the creationists who are motivated by religion, you're
> motivated by science fiction.

100% wrong. My original motivation came from purely factual writings
of "science for the layman", one of which was a book by a Nobel
Laureate in biochemistry:

The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
combine all the desirable properties within one single type
of organism or to send many different organisms is not
completely clear.

--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_

Simon and Schuster, 1981


The "senders" to which Crick refers are hypothetical directed
panspermists: intelligent creatures of almost 4 billion years
ago who sent microorganisms to earth, which according to the
hypothesis had an ocean rich in amino acids and various
other organic materials but no living things as yet. He developed
this hypothesis together with Leslie Orgel. They did not claim
this is more likely or less likely than life arising here
spontaneously, and indeed, nobody knows what the odds are to this day.

Later I read the original article by Crick and Orgel, and was quite
surprised to see that they hit many of the themes that I had worked
out for myself in talk.origins in 1996-2000:

Icarus 19 (1973) 341-346:
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBCCP.pdf

I've been exploring these themes ever since my return to talk.origins
almost exactly one year ago.