--- In [email protected], "hugheshugo" <fintlewoodle...@...> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "PaliGap" <compost1uk@> wrote: > > > > --- In [email protected], "Hugo" > > <fintlewoodlewix@> wrote: > > > > > Amongst all the staggering coincidences and apparently > > > rare requirements that common organic molecules have to > > > go through in order to become complex life forms I forgot to > > > mention that the trigger (for their always is one in leaps > > > of evolution) for life to go from the happy bacterial state > > > it was in for 3 billion years into it's post-cambrian > > > cornucopia is the fact that the Earth was frozen solid for > > > millions of years thus the only survivors were the bacteria > > > that mutated into the cell that make up *all* living things > > > today. > > > > > > This isn't creationism, it's hard empirical science and is > > > easily checkable. > > > > I don't get this Hugo. > > > > Are you saying that "snowball earth" was a pre-requisite for > > our planet's rich life-status? > > It might very well have been yes. On one side of the freeze > you have just bacteria no the other you have everything we know > today. > > And that this is hard science? > > I did a quick-and-dirty wiki check and got the impression Life > > arose *despite* the conjectured snowball Earth, not > > *because* of it. > > Can't believe everything you read on the internet I'm afraid. > > I'm talking about the change from simple single-celled stuff > before a major cataclysm to a stronger type of cell (that ALL > life now shares) the improvements in cell structure may well > have been forced on us by environmental pressure. Bit too > much of a coincidence otherwise. > > > The fact that one event precedes another event does not in > > itself make it a "trigger" does it? Or have I misunderstood > > you? > > Probably. In this case you'd have to prove that the freeze > *wasn't* the trigger and come up with some other explanation > for the arrival of complex life when, for 3 billion years, > before a sudden massive change in climate there wasn't any.
And that's the "hard empirical science"? No mechanism (it seems) and just a lack of other explanations? ;-) Actually, when you say this: "Bit too much of a coincidence otherwise" - doesn't that really count against the more general point you are trying to make? Viz. *Our* Life may be just some highly improbable coincidence. After all, if there is an *explanation* for turbo-boosted Cambrian explosions, and the explanation is just this: That the biology needs serious stress testing to fire it up... Then what you need to show is that such stressing is rare and unusual around the galaxy. Which is...unlikely? *Probably* not! if the only explanation is a Gallic shrug and "coincidence!", then yes, maybe so. (By the way - who is it that is asserting this theory viz. "a snowball planet may be a necessary condition for complex life"? It's not a HugoFintlewoodLewix *special* is it?)
