Now I'm worried that I'm becoming like Boazy (trolling UTube and finding clips - no mossie bashing clips though)

This one is Stephen Hawking talking about some of the Big Questions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjBIsp8mS-c&NR=1
or for an alternative site http://www.oculture.com/2008/08/stephen_hawking_asks_big_questions_about_the_universe.html

He makes the point that we have fossils from about 3.5 billion years ago. The earth is about 4.6 billion years old and was probably too hot for life during the first 1/2 billion years or so. Life appeared within about 1/2 billion years of it being possible which compared to the estimated 10 billion year lifespan of a planet like earth means that life could be common.

R0bert

How many billion years will it take for runner to discover that nounS have pluralS ?

Or maybe the S key's missing from his typewriter.

Poly,

Check out the link R0bert provided and you will see what he means by: "There is room for a lot of monkeys."

When you take into consideration how many billions of galaxies there are in the universe, and how many millions of stars are within each of those galaxies, and how many of those stars have planets revolving around them, then the chances of life evolving are probably not all that small.

The reason I posted those links earlier, was to demonstrate to you that it is impossible to calculate the probabilities of life evolving on Earth. They may not even be small.

Hoyle may have had a certain intelligence about him, but intelligence is not always synonymous with common sense.

Runner,

<<Their are many Astronomers who believe in Creation.>>

Not really. Only about 0.015% of them. But since Creationist Astronomers base their opinions on mythology rather than empirical observations, they can only ever be considered pseudo-scientists.

Here's a few links that debunk Creationist Astronomy...

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=T8O46wUCw5A
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=iOMfVmLVhVA
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=XkcE5kQQiH4
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=UZI58kSl0MM
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=j46FXXnDKWk

Of course, I don't expect you'll have the courtesy to check them out. But at least you won't be able to make this claim anymore.

<<Your [Oliver's] 300000 year old photo is really a joke isn't it?>>

Why would anyone want to joke about that? Is this how you persuade yourself to ignore evidence? By telling yourself that it's a joke?

<<Again if you are going to be dogmatic about your faith please give a plausible explanation for beginnings.>>

That's cute.

You hear words like "faith" and "dogmatic" applied to religion, so you then incorrectly apply them to Atheism and science in order to denigrate them. You mustn't hold religion in very high esteem.

It's a little hypocritical though, to insist on a plausible explanation for beginnings considering Theists can't do the same.

God is not a plausible explanation, because if God exists, then he would be by far the most complex thing in existance. And everything we know about the universe shows us that everything starts from simple beginnings, then evolves to more complex entities. Therefore, it is illogical to believe that everything started with something as complex as a God.

Explaining this away by declaring that God is not of this universe and therefore, by decree, beyond explanation is weak - anyone could make that up. Especially primative Hebrew tribes looking for an explanation to the unknown.

So could I ask that you come-up with a plausible explanation too?

<<Many more school text books we have to be revised again (as they have several times) with the latest theory to confirm your faith.>>

Yes, because science is self-correcting. Our knowledge get's better all the time.

But I understand the panic in your tone. The more we learn about the universe, the more religion slowly fades into irrelevance.

Dear Oly,

Thank you for the COBE link.

It's awesome!

I want to know more. It's a bit late at the moment,
and I'm tired, but I want to look up other sites
on this NASA satellite's data tomorrow.

Again, thanks for pointing me in this direction.

Greatly appreciate it.

Thanks Foxy. Its amazing is isn't it?

AJ,

I have read and seen on TV documentary that the Vatican astronomers would not look through Gallileo's telescope. To do so would have expanded the limits of the natural world into God's realm. Alernatively, they said, the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus are an illusion created by the Devil.

runner,

Actually the image is over 12 billion years old. Before the sun, before the star before the sun; before the star before the star before the star befor the sun; and definitely; most definitely before anyone wrote Genesis. Adams Atoms let alone his Apple did not exist!

The symmetry can still be seen around the periphery, even after 300,000 years! Symmetry, as forecast by those nasty scientists, before the pic., in order for the transmutation of the primal force into gravity and eletromagnetism, and, subsequently, the first proto-particles (in th first instant of an instant. Three hundred thousand years before the pic., space and time had not emerged from infinite density. Causal relationships are irrelvant when there is no time.

As mentioned above, admire the symmetry of the neonate Universe. Science predicted this:

http://aether.lbl.gov/www/projects/cobe/COBE_Home/cmb_fluctuations_big.gif

What I am requesting from Genesis via you, is something, bi-lateral to the COBE and Planck, using Noah and Adam & Eve to illustrate. If you can't does it not, an least in this instance, demonstrate the Ascendancy of Science.

runner, you think the COBE picture is a joke. Do you believe Jupiter has moons?

Oly.