[insickness]

"From the moment the invaders arrived, breathed our air, ate and drank, they were doomed. They were undone, destroyed, after all of man's weapons and devices had failed, by the tiniest creatures that God in his wisdom put upon this earth. By the toll of a billion deaths, man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet's infinite organisms. And that right is ours against all challenges. For neither do men live nor die in vain."

[hinkley]

There's a concept in domestication that it's not always clear in a symbiotic relationship as to which party is in 'control' of the relationship, especially when one party gets a huge boost in reproductive rates from the other. Did humans domesticate dogs, or did dogs domesticate humans?

Viruses are specialized. They won't attack aliens. Bacteria might. It's the fungi in many respects that are the masters of this planet. If we manage to destroy ourselves so badly that we take out most multicellular organisms as well, it'll be the fungi that rebuild the ecology.

It'll probably be the fungi that the aliens have to worry about too.

[burnte]

Viruses will attack anything they can successfully reproduce in, they have absolutely no preferences. They are binary, they survive and thrive or they don't. That's why some viruses can sucessfully jump species, and some can't, some viruses are able to survive in multiple hosts through dumb luck. Yes, they all need specific types of conditions in their hosts to survive, but they don't care if it's a big, a dog, a human, or an alien. If it gets what it needs, it'll go there.

Note: I'm not saying viruses don't have conditions they need met, they do, obviously. I'm saying they can attack an alien just as likely as they can a human.

[mrkstu]

Viruses have evolved to hijack DNA- I'd find it highly unlikely a truly alien biology would be susceptible to earth viruses. Maybe some truly primitive precursor virus may have been able to, but I'd think any of those would be long gone.

[burnte]

We have no idea if they'll be DNA based or not, but there's a nonzero chance they might. If Earth found DNA the easiest path, so might another world.

[TheAdamAndChe]

DNA is "translated" from code to proteins using codons. There's a very good chance that the codons used would be completely different from our own, disrupting viral replication.

[WalterBright]

But will the alien viruses attack us?

[charwalker]

If they operate on a chemical/biological structure that humans have then yes. Just nobody go designing viruses for hypothetical aliens, ok?

[maxerickson]

We don't really know whether other forms of life would use proteins, or make the same ones the same way we do.

Both of those things are important to all of the viruses we have experience with.

[burnte]

Proteins are just groups of amino acids which occur in stellar nebulae. It could easily be a widely used building block of life.

[maxerickson]

I'm saying they can attack an alien just as likely as they can a human.

For that to be true, you need some governing rule of life, not 'could easily be a widely used'.

(You'll note, I phrased my other reply in terms of us not knowing)

[kiba]

Yes, viruses don't care. But at the same time, I am doubtful that they could.

[Verdex]

This is one of the things that I like about the expanse series. When people first start moving out to alien ecosystems, they specifically go into how alien viruses etc are probably not going to be a problem. The metaphor they use is "mining" basically. Where they're not concerned that people will get infected, but they're concerned that some organism will find out that people are full of some resource that the organism can use.

And in fact they bump into some sort of algae that lives in the atmosphere that really likes the saline mixture that makes up most of the liquid in our bodies.

[elliekelly]

I’ve never heard of the Expanse series but your mining comment is both terrifying and intriguing! DuckDuckGo tells me it’s both a series of novels and a Syfy TV series - I’m curious which one (or perhaps both?) you’re referring to so I can add it to my read and/or watch list.

[ido]

They both tell more or less the same story (the show is based on the books) but I believe they were referring to the tv show.

[elsonrodriguez]

I experienced the Expanse by watching the first season, binging all the books because I was impatient, then watching the rest with my partner.

I feel I've gotten the best of both by doing that.

[Verdex]

I prefer the books but the episodes I saw were all really good. I think I watched to seasson 3.

[cbsks]

The series is streaming on Amazon Prime, FYI

[dehrmann]

> which party is in 'control' of the relationship

Any one taking care of a cat knows this well.

[toast0]

It's the toxoplasmosis in control, right?

[gumby]

HG Wells?

[Vrondi]

Yes: War of the Worlds

[hutzlibu]

It is.

[WhompingWindows]

"the tiniest creatures God in his wisdom put upon this earth"

The writing is nice but flawed. Since War of the Worlds, we have advanced tremendously and no longer need intelligent design or creation myths to explain microorganisms.

Reproducible, testable science demonstrates that in the primordial oceans, self-replicating molecules which were slightly better at self-replicating produced globules of matter capable of inheritance. Small mutations over millions of years led to the tiniest organisms, not "creatures", and most microorganisms don't even interact with higher life forms. It's only after epochs of time that complex mammals arose, breathing air, and these mammalian hosts then did provide the harbor for pathogens we know today.

[corobo]

The writing is nice because it's nicely written. It's fiction, Wells was a fiction author.

Give the dude a break on the athiest rant, he's been dead half a century.

[shadowofneptune]

HG Wells would have been well aware of this, being an athiest of a kind we'd consider close to New Athiesm nowadays.

[Vrondi]

Yeah, you'd almost think he was writing in the voice of a fictional character or something bizarre like that.

[junon]

Or that God was maybe a writing device instead of literally referring to God.

[hutzlibu]

"Reproducible, testable science demonstrates that in the primordial oceans, self-replicating molecules which were slightly better at self-replicating produced globules of matter capable of inheritance."

Hang on. Are you implying that science created artifical life from just elements? Because that would be news to me.

[michaelmrose]

We don't understand how abiogenesis happened exactly but we do know that electricity from lightning is liable to be able to produce amino acids from simpler chemicals and we have theories as to how the early earth would have been amenable to such formation in a way the current earth is not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment

Given the history of shamanistic figures explaining the natural world in terms of magical spirits and having magical definitions replaced with natural ones thousands of years one can perhaps be forgiven for concluding that the original of life was just another domino waiting to fall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

[mensetmanusman]

This is interesting, but it also says nothing about fine-tuning, which is likely outside the realms of the scientific method.

[michaelmrose]

Why is it outside of the scientific method? Speculate based on the other things we know about the universe, devise way of test theory, rinse repeat.

[mensetmanusman]

By definition, you can propose theories that are untestable. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/

[gher-shyu3i]

Science does not and will not be able to explain the origin of life. The statement still holds. It's very arrogant of us to assume otherwise.

[tremon]

That depends on whether your question to the origin of life begins with "How" or "Why".

[elif]

Of course science informs us about the origin of life.

Science is a matter of theorization and subsequent development of confidence through testing theorization.

It is arrogant and manipulative to view science as black and white and then call everything white due to a lack of 100.000% confidence.

[gher-shyu3i]

It's simply a matter of science being limited to observations in the natural world. We will not be able to go back to before t=0 when the universe was created. Such knowledge is beyond the real of space and time, and we do not have access to it.

[techrat]

Is the theory of gravity still something to be considered only a theory?

[hanche]

A theory, yes. Those who say “only a theory” tend to confuse theory with hypothesis, which is much looser. A theory is a coherent set of principles serving to explain a range of phenomena. Emphasis on coherent, meaning not only internally consistent, but also consistent with related knowledge. The road from hypothesis to theory can be long and tortuous.

[techrat]

My question was meant to be rhetorical in response to the OP.

We have many things labelled to be a theory that are complete enough to be acceptable answers while still being considered relatively incoherent or insufficient to science.

[michaelmrose]

Presumably so especially since both Newton's and Enstein's understanding of gravity is obviously incomplete.

[behringer]

Why wouldn't it. If it has an answer science can find it.

[nanis]

> science can find it.

There is no thing called "science" that finds answers. There are scientists who can form hypotheses about the universe they can see and perceive and check whether they are consistent with what they can see and perceive.

We are mostly ants on a balloon:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-the-fact-tha...

We do not know where the balloon came from.

[Retric]

> There is no thing called "science" that finds answers.

That’s equivalent to suggesting people can’t do chess. Semantically it may be accurate, but it’s intentionally obtuse.

Language doesn’t actually work that way.

Anyway, science isn’t experiments and building hypothesis etc. That’s part of the process, but really quite small pieces of a greater whole. It’s the long processes of generations refining and testing earlier ideas that finds truth.

[nanis]

I am not sure I understand the statement about chess.

It is important to understand that scientists are individuals with individual incentives. While some have an inherent drive towards getting closer to truths via the application of the scientific method, others may find other things more important.

Abstracting "the science" from scientists is a convenient way of training other people in the acceptance of the proposition that there are inherently qualified arbiters of truth.

[behringer]

science is our method of finding answers. When we say science can find it, we mean scientists using the scientific method.

[gher-shyu3i]

Science is a method of finding answers, it's not the only one.

[gher-shyu3i]

Because it's beyond the realm of space and time. We can't go back before t=0 when the universe was created.

[behringer]

Until we know the nature of the universe, that may not be correct.

[__s]

It may not be correct, but it may be correct

Your statement "If it has an answer" only holds if you say that any truth science can't prove doesn't exist

But this isn't true. See Halting problem etc. There are things for which the answer can exist & yet be undeterminable

This is fine. I prefer to look at it this way: science is searching out a subset of knowable truths. The origin of the universe is interesting only insofar as we can dredge up relevant information, but coming up with an origin story or not isn't what proves the validity of science

Science isn't about getting all the answers, it's about getting the answers right & at it's best admitting when we got the answers wrong

When someone asks "If God doesn't exist what created the universe?" I say "I don't know, I don't care"

[michaelmrose]

Life is believed to have emerged at ~t=9 billion why couldn't we formulate a theory of how it emerged?

[mensetmanusman]

Life connects back to time zero because everything prior was an important boundary condition, e.g. heavy metals made through exploding stars supporting elemental composition of life, etc.

[marshmallow_12]

He means to say that science does not have the tools to reproduce the beginning of the Universe. If it's not reproducible it's not Science. Confident assertions non-withstanding, the Human mind is a slave to nature, in that can never hope to uncover it's deepest secrets and thus, it's true.....nature?

[michaelmrose]

By that definition science is entirely unreal because we can't reproduce an apple pie from scratch without first creating the universe. We explore geology including theories about the formation of the earth without making new planets.

What is supposed to be reproducible is the act of collecting and processing data to ensure that your conclusion isn't based on error, falsehood, or happenstance. What he is promoting is a basic misunderstanding of both science and logic.

People with preconceived anti science attitudes do this all the time. They face you down at high noon in their fancy duds, six guns ready at their hips sure of themselves and ready to kill and draw pearl handled.... water pistols.

They went looking for the correct answer to satisfy their religion not a commitment to truth and found cheaply manufactured baubles they are sure are deadly weapons because the very skills that would enable them to see it clearly would prevent them from looking for such easy answers in the first place.

[marshmallow_12]

let me rephrase; science has limited itself to understanding the laws of Nature. It can never tell us how the world -and thus life- came to be. I admit your argument was a good one. But not the anti religious points. Essentially atheists has declared Nature as the true god. In the rules he has imposed, he has left us with no choice. Science has hardly managed to do away with god, it has merely managed to exchange him as it were.

I will also argue that atheism is a religion. There is nothing more exciting than being able to throw off the rules of one god by replacing him with another who asks for nothing.

[mensetmanusman]

This article by an MIT prof might be interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/03/miracles...

tl;dr At some depth, you ask questions beyond the scientific method itself.

[gher-shyu3i]

Your argument is a straw man.

[michaelmrose]

I suggest you defend that position instead of stating it so boldly and asking us to accept your reasoning.

[gher-shyu3i]

I mentioned in another comment just one counter example: we cannot go back to before t=0 when the universe was created. There is knowledge beyond the realm of space and time which we have no access to.

[zuminator]

If the universe "began" at t=0, and life began at, let's call it t=100, then all we need is access to t=99, not all the way back to the beginning. I'm not saying that's actually achievable, I'm just saying your argument is not persuasive.

[gher-shyu3i]

I gave it as an example to close the debate fully, because I'm aware of this line of arguing. The point remains, (1) life will not be possible without the universe, (2) the universe exists, and (3) we do not have access to the knowledge about how the universe was created, nor before it was created.

[Shorel]

Neither will religion.

It is very arrogant of any ideology to pretend it can explain things it can't.

[gher-shyu3i]

Depends on which religion. It's a fallacy to group all religions under a single umbrella called "religion", no such thing exists.

[Shorel]

You can create a list of religions that don't try to explain things with superstitions, and then we can discuss them one by one.

[gher-shyu3i]

Superstition: "A belief, practice, or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature or by faith in magic or chance."

Islam passes with flying colors because it isn't superstitious.

[Bancakes]

I don't see the contradiction honestly. They are creatures and they are here. Maybe you misinterpret what a creature is.

[knolax]

It's a figure of speech...

[KoftaBob]

It's always those that are the least confident in their atheism that feel the need to constantly defend it.

[hanche]

Doesn’t that go for any ‘ism?

[KoftaBob]

Sure, I was just being specific for this case.