We're all doomed!

[amateur51]

Me, too.

(Or should I say, "I think I would, under any of the circumstances that occur to me at the moment"?)

Sound approach, all. I'm going to secular funeral tomorrow which is the right thing to do for the person who has died and for most of her friends. I wonder how many of us, most of whom had a 'traditional Christian' upbringing, will however have a flash of heaven & St Peter?

"Do you really believe that this is all there is?" I have been asked several times by people at funerals eager for a flicker of doubt. And I have replied " Yes as far as I know, this is it!"

[Padraig]

"Do you really believe that this is all there is?" I have been asked several times by people at funerals eager for a flicker of doubt. And I have replied " Yes as far as I know, this is it!"

I would call that a flicker, amateur. And rightly so.

[scottycelt]

"Do you really believe that this is all there is?" I have been asked several times by people at funerals eager for a flicker of doubt. And I have replied " Yes as far as I know, this is it!"

In that case surely life after death must be reckoned to be a cast-iron certainty ... ?

[Serial_Apologist]

I was somewhat amused by the Buddhist nun on The Big Questions this morning saying Buddhists believe in reincarnation, and making a point that consciousness being incapable of coming out of matter is now accepted by the sciences.

I tend towards a Buddhist view of an interconnected whole, in accordance with ecological theory; in fact not all Buddhists believe in reincarnation. Zen Buddhists don't take the idea literally. As Alan Watts said, enlightenment is regarded as liberating one from the very reincarnation that so many cling to, pinning all hopes on some form of future for the individual soul.

[teamsaint]

I was somewhat amused by the Buddhist nun on The Big Questions this morning saying Buddhists believe in reincarnation, and making a point that consciousness being incapable of coming out of matter is now accepted by the sciences.

I tend towards a Buddhist view of an interconnected whole, in accordance with ecological theory; in fact not all Buddhists believe in reincarnation. Zen Buddhists don't take the idea literally. As Alan Watts said, enlightenment is regarded as liberating one from the very reincarnation that so many cling to, pinning all hopes on some form of future for the individual soul.

It would be interesting to know if anybody has studied this specific area of (Buddhist)thought, in connection with quantum physics.

Edit, and we need to watch those carbon emission traders like a hawk....

[Serial_Apologist]

It would be interesting to know if anybody has studied this specific area of (Buddhist)thought, in connection with quantum physics.

Edit, and we need to watch those carbon emission traders like a hawk....

I would recommend a read of Watts's "Psychotherapy, East and West". Written as long ago as 1960, he predicted a growing coalescence between the ancient wisdoms of Taoism and Buddhism and modern scientific enquiry, pointing out that, basing their approach on the Christian belief (which helped precipitate scientific enquiry) that God made the universe as a builder builds, scientists had investigated the tiniest elements for signs of fundamental building blocks to discover that the microlevel reveals everything in constant flux and interconnection. The parallel in Taoism is the Madhyamika, symbolised in the image of a spider's web covered with jewel-like water droplets, each one of which reflects all the others. A beautiful image for an interconnected world.

Lovelock's Gaia is probably the closest. What was important about it in terms of relating to ancient eastern wisdoms is that in revealing a self-sustaining world it, like Taoism's idea of the brain which makes itself and the heart which pumps itself without any need for intention, it dispenses with any need for a creator-god and relies on unimpeded spontaneity. (Which, cultivated in the spiritual traditions, is distinct from impulsiveness). Suzuki, cited by John Cage in "Silence", had a phrase for the principle on which the world governs itself: unimpededness and interpenetration.

[teamsaint]

Thanks S_A, I will try to follow up.

This is an entertaining and thought provoking read for those without an expert background, or perhaps starting out on a path.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Punk-Science-Inside-Mind-God/dp/1905047932

[Pabmusic]

I was somewhat amused by the Buddhist nun on The Big Questions this morning saying Buddhists believe in reincarnation, and making a point that consciousness being incapable of coming out of matter is now accepted by the sciences.

I tend towards a Buddhist view of an interconnected whole, in accordance with ecological theory; in fact not all Buddhists believe in reincarnation. Zen Buddhists don't take the idea literally. As Alan Watts said, enlightenment is regarded as liberating one from the very reincarnation that so many cling to, pinning all hopes on some form of future for the individual soul.

There is clear evidence that 'living' matter can develop from non-'living' matter. By 'living' I mean 'able to replicate' (thinking and understanding comes rather a long way down the line). One rather good illustration of something that is not exactly 'alive' by our everyday criteria, yet which can replicate and evolve is a virus. Viruses are, in effect, miniature programmes that can insert themselves into other programmes, but they can replicate and change. Bacteria, on the other hand, are living organic things, vastly more complicated than viruses.

Perhaps the best current view of how life began (there are a few) is that it happened around undersea vents, where hot gases and other matter emerge from the subterranean depths. A particular mix of chemicals and heat allowed sulphur-based life forms (prokaryotes) to emerge from the chemistry of the rocks themselves about 3.6 billion years ago. We see something a little like this happening around vents now, although conditions are very much different. Because there was much less oxygen then, these sulphur-based forms could thrive until early forms of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) developed - nowadays they'd succumb to the oxygen if they spread far - oxygen is deadly to most things. They in turn helped create what we call stromatolites in shallow water. These are rocks - there are a few areas of them still - that produce oxygen by photosynthesis (like plants do now) from chemicals like sulphur dioxide. The action of the cyanobacteria, stromatolites and other similar things over the first billion years or so produced an atmosphere in which more complex things emerged (including, in the last 200,000 years, us).

The evidence from DNA is that however many times life may have begun, all DNA-carrying forms that we have ever encountered (that is, all life forms, past and present) came from one ancestor. So Bhuddists are near the mark to believe in the interconnectedness of life and even the rocks.

Reincarnation is another matter, though...

[Dave2002]

The evidence from DNA is that however many times life may have begun, all DNA-carrying forms that we have ever encountered (that is, all life forms, past and present) came from one ancestor. So Bhuddists are near the mark to believe in the interconnectedness of life and even the rocks.

Do all plants and animals have a common ancestor? Yahoo answers says yes, but that's not scientific proof! I have seen mappings of animal development which tend to show that there was a common ancestor for animals - but I'm not sure that I've ever seen anything convincing about plants and animals sharing a common ancestor. I guess we have to go down to cell level, or even lower, to argue that.

Further, given that there must surely have been a time at which inanimate (and non plant) structures were all that existed (minerals, in the game animal, vegetable, mineral), and slightly later a self replicating structure emerged which eventually developed into differing types of life form, is it not possible that the conditions which gave rise to one such self replicating structure could have occurred at different times and different places? Different kinds of life form which may have arisen at different times and places may, or may not, have been compatible with each other. In that case would it not have been possible for different life form strands to co-exist?

Yet another possibility is that several different strands of self replicating life form came into being, but only one form survived. Looking at the quoted sentence though, there is the possibility that the set of "all DNA-carrying forms" is not necessarily the same as the set of "all life forms, past and present". It is possible at least to imagine life forms which are not based on DNA.

I accept that there is strong evidence that all humans came from one common ancestor, but it might be over generalising to suggest that every "living" thing has a common ancestor.

[Pabmusic]

Do all plants and animals have a common ancestor? Yahoo answers says yes, but that's not scientific proof! I have seen mappings of animal development which tend to show that there was a common ancestor for animals - but I'm not sure that I've ever seen anything convincing about plants and animals sharing a common ancestor. I guess we have to go down to cell level, or even lower, to argue that...

Yes, is the simple (and surprising) answer. Since we've been able to examine DNA in great detail, we have not found any living thing (or extinct thing, come to that) that shares no stretch of its DNA with everything else, suggesting very strongly that all life (animal, plant, fungi, and whatever else) is descended from one common ancestor. It certainly surprised many biologists, although it's been speculated for years (Darwin alludes to it and Richard Dawkins claimed in The Blind Watchmaker (1986) that it was as near as proven conclusively).

Further, given that there must surely have been a time at which inanimate (and non plant) structures were all that existed (minerals, in the game animal, vegetable, mineral), and slightly later a self replicating structure emerged which eventually developed into differing types of life form, is it not possible that the conditions which gave rise to one such self replicating structure could have occurred at different times and different places? Different kinds of life form which may have arisen at different times and places may, or may not, have been compatible with each other. In that case would it not have been possible for different life form strands to co-exist?...

You're right, but we've not found evidence of any, and the likelihood lies with a single ancestor because of the similarities within our genetic code. Of course, the fact that only one line exists now does not mean there weren't others once. It's just that everything now contains evidence of having descended from one ancestor.

Yet another possibility is that several different strands of self replicating life form came into being, but only one form survived. Looking at the quoted sentence though, there is the possibility that the set of "all DNA-carrying forms" is not necessarily the same as the set of "all life forms, past and present". It is possible at least to imagine life forms which are not based on DNA...

Yes this is possible, likely even. There may have been other origins of life forms that became extinct and that have left no trace.

I accept that there is strong evidence that all humans came from one common ancestor, but it might be over generalising to suggest that every "living" thing has a common ancestor.

Here's a quote from Wikipedia (and I'm not putting anything from that source forward as being definitive, but it's easy enough to find confirmation):

All known forms of life are based on the same fundamental biochemical organisation: genetic information encoded in DNA, transcribed into RNA, through the effect of protein- and RNA-enzymes, then translated into proteins by (highly similar) ribosomes, with ATP, NADPH and others as energy sources, etc. Furthermore, the genetic code (the "translation table" according to which DNA information is translated into proteins) is nearly identical for all known lifeforms, from bacteria and archaea to animals and plants. The universality of this code is generally regarded by biologists as definitive evidence in favor of the theory of universal common descent.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent)

Here's a Scientific American article from 2010:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=universal-common-ancestor

And this goes into more detail:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/default.html

[greenilex]

Whatever happened to the "life on a meteorite" theory? Has it crashed and burned?

[scottycelt]

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/150417-astrobiologists-discover-fossils-in-meteorite-fragments-confirming-extraterrestrial-life

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/11/meteorite_life_claims_of_fossils_in_a_meteorite_are_still_wrong.html

Take your pick ...

[Pabmusic]

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1...rrestrial-life

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/11/meteorite_life_claims_of_fossils_in_a_meteorite_are_still_wrong.html

Take your pick ...

There really is a paucity of evidence for panspermia (the seeding of life from outer space). However, there's some confidence that most of Earth's water came from outer space as comet ice:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6779463/Earths-atmosphere-came-from-outer-space.html

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The meteorites from Mars theory is a strange one. I picture these gravity defying rocks jumping off the surface of the Red Planet and hurtling towards Earth. Presumably we can expect some lumps od basalt to break off from the Giant's Causeway in order to reciprocate.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

... posts remind me of this book by Capra which i greatly enjoyed some years ago