Zentraedi

What is your purpose to life. What is the reason the first entity that could reproduce(earliest form of RNA?), reproduced itself? There is so many things going on around you right at this moment that are happening for no reason that I can comprehend unless some outside intelligence, or collective intelligence has a hand in it. The only reason I can come up with is, strictly entertainment for this unknown outside or collective intelligence.

[ November 15, 2002: Message edited by: Zentraedi ]</p>

bluefugue

Because it could -- that's the whole point. Of all the possible arrangements of molecules, the one that happens to be able to copy itself, will copy itself, and willy-nilly (as Dawkins would say) the world will soon be full of them.

The rest of your post seems to boil down to argument from design -- the complexity of the universe is too improbable to have come about without intelligent guidance. That explanation has always bothered me on the "infinite regression" grounds (who designed the designer?) but theists seem peculiarly unconcerned about this point. Maybe I'm just dense. Another possibility is that there are many universes, 99.99999999999% of them consist of really boring laws of physics where nothing ever happens, and we happen to be in the one that got interesting (because we could only exist in the one that got interesting). But without knowing the possibility of other universes' existence, and without knowing the underlying meta-laws that determine the laws of nature in this universe, all of this is mere speculation.

Aquila ka Hecate

Zentraedi ,
You anthropomorphize life.
Why should there be any 'reason'?
I don't need any reason...since I stopped looking for it, that is.
I doubt if a fisheagle or an amoeba needs any either.
As for a 'designer' giving life 'reason'-how does this follow?
What are the designer's 'reasons'?
And so on.

Jamie_L

To live. And be happy.

Your question assumes that there was a reason. What basis do we have for making that assumption?

Again, you are discounting the possibility that you can't comprehend a reason because there is no reason.

I think it was Dawkins or someone similar who said the universe behaves exactly as we would expect it to if there were no guiding intelligence manipulating things. I agree. It makes much more sense to me that all this seemingly purposeless stuff is really purposeless.

Jamie

[ November 15, 2002: Message edited by: Jamie_L ]</p>

K

Zen:

How do you know it did. All we know is that an entity that could reproduce did. We have no idea whether or not it was the first one that could. I know this seems like a minor point, but when you deal with large numbers, probability will handle a lot of things that you seem to attribute to an outside intelligence.

Oxymoron

There's no reason to suppose that early life used DNA or RNA or proteins or any of the other complex mechanisms we associate with life. One really neat idea by a chap called Cairns-Smith suggested a really early form of life was clay-based. These have layers of crystals that have "kinks" in them. When a new layer of crystals form, the kinks in the layer below are propagated - a primitive kind of inheritance. Systems that grow and inherit characteristics are perilously close to being "alive" in a simple sense.

There is no evidence that this particular clay system ever existed, or even if it did, if and how it evolved into the ridiculously complex DNA/RNA/Protein systems we know and love. But it does suggest that evolution could start with something very simple and, given the appropriate context, turn into something bigger and grander over time.

Zentraedi

purpose requires a reason. If there is not a purpose, then why continue?

Autonemesis

Consider the alternative, then grow an ego.

K

Zen:

Because we're programmed through our genes to do so.

tronvillain

Perhaps your next thread could have a stronger connection to the Existence of God?