I will, however, make a few last points here.

First of all, this galaxy contains approximately 100 billion stars. The observable universe contains in excess of 100 billion galaxies. (1 x 10^11)^2 = 1 x 10^22 stars. We are only now starting to be able to find planets orbiting distant stars, and yet, around a significant fraction of the stars we’ve looked at, there have been planets. This is in spite of the fact that our primary method for finding planets is only capable of finding planets not much smaller than Jupiter, orbiting no further out than Jupiter is. Our other methods all rely on very rare circumstances, and yet, we have found multiple planets using them. This indicates that the vast majority of stars have planets around them. Although we cannot, generally speaking, detect multiple planets around a star yet, it is highly likely that the vast majority of stars have multiple planets in orbit.

Next, the habitable portion of a star system. It is true that there is a limited band in which water will be found as a liquid. In the case of our sun, that band is from .95 AU to 1.37 AU (a difference of 39 million miles, nearly 63 million km). The distance varies with the size and energy output of the particular star, but that 39 million miles is a good estimate of how wide that zone will be. There may also be other situations in which water can exist as a liquid; a moon of a gas giant may be heated by tidal forces, for one example.

Further, regarding the composition of planets. The elements that make up a planet are highly dependent on the composition of the proto-stellar disk, and also on the distance from the star. First generation stars consist almost exclusively of hydrogen, helium, and lithium, so only gas giants will be found around them. Later generation stars include increasing amounts of heavier elements, so rocky planets similar to mercury, venus, earth, and mars can form. As I said previously, the distance from the star determines which elements will be found in which planets, so a star with a composition similar to the sun (which is quite common) is fairly likely to have planets in the habitable zone with a relatively earthlike composition.

Now, Earth today is very different from the Earth of 4 billion years ago. Aside from the different locations of the continents and the lack of life, the atmosphere was very different. For one thing, there was very little free oxygen, if any. That was the product of photosynthetic bacteria. The atmosphere instead consisted largely of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and sulfur dioxide. With a ready source of energy, like the sun, or even natural radioactivity, these readily combine to produce a wide variety of organic molecules, including the sugar ribose (the backbone of RNA, and a very close relative of the backbone of DNA) and amino acids (the constituents of proteins). In fact, many organic compounds have formed places other than earth; comets, for example, and meteoroids are known to contain a variety of organic compounds.

So, we know that the conditions on earth were ripe for life. We know that there are likely to be many hundreds of billions (or more!) of earthlike planets throughout the universe. Even if the odds of life forming were very low on any individual planet, the odds of life forming SOMEWHERE were pretty good. Especially over however many billions of years these conditions persist on any given planet.

Now, my specialty is biology, not astronomy, yet most of what I’ve covered so far is astronomy/cosmology (and the rest is chemistry, not biology). I’ve been addressing mostly the background information which refutes ignorant notions of what is or is not probable. Because this is already getting long, I will not provide the sources and evidence for how we know these things, but if you come to rants n raves we can cover it to your hearts’ content (although we will probably need to cover more basic concepts in science first, so that you will understand the material well enough to be able to understand the evidence presented).

All this, and I haven’t even started on evolution. Evolution is one of the best supported theories in science, period. In the interest of saving space, I’m not going to go into it in this post, but I will happily discuss it on the forum- as will plenty of other people, I’m sure. However, I will address, specifically, a few posts that have been made here.

First, manal:
“EXPLAIN THIS: If the sun was a little smaller, the earth would freeze, if it was a litle bigger, the earth would melt. The earth happens to be the exact right amount of distance away to allow life. There is explanation on another site, based on science, that says that if Jupiter wasn’t there and didnt have its size, the earth wouldnt sirvive. There are many other things in the solar system that even have such great systems to it. I mean in the entire universe, there is one solar system and one earth with life, it is god’s work.”

I have addressed this above. And there is only one planet with life that we know of, presently. However, we have no reliable way to find others that may exist, presently. If 99% of all of the stars in the sky had their own life-bearing planet, it is likely that we would not know it. And we know that the conditions needed for a planet which can bear life are quite common.

“On what you said. In the quran it talks about the Big Bang which made the universe from a explosion, (modern science), big rip to destroy the universe (scientific theory). and clearly says how the universe was made from the explosion and is expanding (scientific theory).”

The universe was not made from an explosion, nor do we know that it will end with a ‘rip’. An explosion is a metaphor which is used to convey to people the idea of what actually happened. I would be interested in seeing the verses you claim talk about the big bang and ‘big rip’. Somehow, I suspect that it will be like all the other religions that claim that their book predicted some aspect of modern science; to wit, an outright fabrication. Of course, if your claim is true, it leaves one to wonder why moslems didn’t come up with the big bang theory, rather than secular scientists.

“YOUR WEBSITE IS ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO NOT BELIEVE IN GOD OR ANY KIND OF RELIGION… AT THE TOP IT SAID:Imagine there’s no Heaven. It’s easy if you try.”

That is a line from a song. Anyhow, if it is… so what? Why shouldn’t she encourage people to not believe in gods or religions? Particularly on her personal website?

“god was from before and will remainnnnn fore everr , i do understand bilogy, also everything would jus create by it self what if der was more oxygen in the atmospere what if der was more carbon dioxide oh it jus happen by mistake did it. oh the big bang happen and we wer created through evolution yh and alll happen by mistake.”

This is such poor english that it’s almost unreadable. Nonetheless; free oxygen is quite reactive, and tends to oxidize reduced materials quite readily. As a result, large quantities of free oxygen generally do not occur without life also being present. And there was lots of carbon dioxide present in the early atmosphere. However, to answer your question: if things which prevented life from developing on earth had been present, life wouldn’t have developed on earth. Obviously. So what? If it hadn’t happened here, it probably would have happened somewhere else in the universe.

A couple other notes:
Muneeraah and seyhan =]’s story about derek and abdullah is almost certainly a complete fabrication. You can tell because every single question “Derek” asks is phrased specifically to be answered by a talking point. It doesn’t actually address any questions someone who didn’t already agree with islam would ask.

Also, the teleological argument is remembered by history only because it is one of the worst pieces of reasoning imaginable. As an analogy: say I have a piece of pure gold, 1 mm in diameter, and another 1cm in diameter, and a third 1m in diameter. Are they different colors? Of course not. Pure gold is always a golden color, right? No matter the size of an object consisting of a pure element, the color will be the same, right? WRONG, it turns out that very small particles called quantum dots can be constructed, which have diameters approximately the same size as the wavelength of visible light. And, depending on the size of the quantum dot, it will have a different color, even though the different sized particles have the exact same composition. Similarly, equating human manufactured mechanical devices with organic chemistry is ridiculous, because the two are far, far, far more different than they are alike. Organic molecules are found throughout the universe, mixed with other organic molecules, and they are constantly reacting to form new compounds (generally in very small amounts). To make an analogy to pieces of a watch, we would need a factory with a nearly unlimited store of all of the pieces of a watch, which combines pieces at random, and sometimes disassembles them into their components. And it tests trillions of combinations simultaneously each second. Suddenly, finding a watch built by the process is a lot less unlikely. And that’s just random chemistry; once we involve processes like evolution, it becomes much faster.

I hope that at least one of the moslems posting to this thread has actually learned something from this post, and I invite all of you to come to Rants N Raves to discuss this topic further.

Jack Chick is an infamous Christian evangelist cartoonist and tract-writer; his creations are available online at http://www.chick.com His pamphlets are full of fast conversions to Chickianity after only a few minutes of conversation.

As to science and mathematics, the idea of explicit mathematical proof originated in ancient Greece, likely among Pythagoras and his followers. Pythagoras lived around 570-500 BCE, over a millennium before Mohammed had lived, so Islam can’t get any credit for him. He also was something of a religious nut, believing in reincarnation and the wickedness of eating beans (I’ve never been able to figure that one out). Some of his notable successors were Euclid, around 300 BCE, and Claudius Ptolemy, around 83-161 CE — also long before Mohammed.

As to the argument from design, if you visited a museum of watches and clocks and hourglasses and sundials and other timepieces, would you conclude that they were all designed by a single super designer who makes absolutely perfect designs?

And it’s not Charles Darwin who thought of that watch analogy, it was Archdeacon Paley some decades earlier. Furthermore, how can one be sure that the argument from design does not demonstrate the existence of some other religion’s god? And the same with other such philosophical and scientific arguments.

There is a simple alternative: natural selection. The Earth seems convenient for us because it is a place that can allow us to come into existence, and with enough planets forming around enough stars, it’s almost inevitable that some very Earthlike planet will come into existence. Likewise, the planets have well-separated, nearly circular, and nearly coplanar orbits because any early-Solar-System objects that did not had collided with some other one.

Also, you Muslims here seem incoherent, semiliterate, and belligerent; aren’t you concerned about your reinforcing the image many people have of Muslims as thin-skinned, bloodthirsty barbarians?

Here is the crux of the problem. People who cannot seem to grasp that what one believes makes absolutely no difference to what is actually fact.

I can believe there is a Porsche parked in my shed with a fluffy bunny mascot on the hood…. but that won’t make it real.

Convincing a bunch of other people that the Porsche really is there, with or without bunny, also won’t change what is real.

Threatening people with violent murder if they don’t believe in my Porsche might intimidate them into agreeing with me, but it won’t make them believe; nor will it make said Porsche actually real.

I can believe that some invisible force exists that was created by some even more complex invisible force… but what I believe won’t make the invisible force real or even tangible.

It boils down to this: “real observation and comprehension of reality.” Belief is reality only within the mind of the believer.

Manal says:
February 21st, 2008 at 4:43 pm

shut your mouth watch me change my computer ip address and i dont live in d netherlands u dum shit yuur gnnaaa get killed gimme ur email so i cn sort yu u racist hoe!

That statement was made subsequent to my first post and it specifically referenced my statement about Manal’s IP, suggesting that Manal’s threats about being “killed” and “sorted out” were directed at me.

It is not a new discovery, it is simply what biologists have been saying for years.

^^^^^HAHAHAAAAAA U SADOOOOO UR SUCH A LOOOSER, U STARTED DIS OFF WHICH IS GONNA TURN OUT 2 BE UR NIGHTMARE AND WE FINISH DIS OFF…
I BEG U GIVE UP!..
HUN U NEED TEH FRESH AIR LOOK AT U FIGHTIN WIV TEENAGERS BEHIND A PC SCREEN YET, U WUDNT DARE TO SAY DIS UP FRONT!