Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 18, 2013

It does explain a lotit does explain a lot…….

It certainly would! The problem is that MOST consequencesare unintended, and usually outweigh the intended one.

It’s much more to the liking of many ‘science-minded’ ones, though, to put that kind of thinking in the gloop bin.An increasing number of bio-chemists, however, are beginning to consider the incredible complexity of living things; their apparent DESIGN; and the inconvenient problem of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: stuff breaks down into simpler forms rather than becoming more complex.

The key word here being: “Theory”. We’re not here by some cosmic burp.

I no longer need to see Obama’s birth certificate.

You have to have a lot of faith to believe in gloop.

Evolution of the gaps?

Then add a few thetans…

“…star stuff…”

Ambassador Delenn (Babylon 5) borrowed that line… I kind of like the way she puts it too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhD0hbGEDSU

Wiley, you’re scaring me with how much sense this makes.

So basically, we are the product of an advanced species dumping their holding tank? Sounds about right!

I no longer need to see Obama’s birth certificate.

Not sure if this was intended as political or what, but your comment made me laugh. I took it at face value, a non-sequitur of its own, with humorous intent.

Could happen… We use cow manure to make plants grow and then we eat both the plant and the cow. So gloop is a big part of human life…

“An increasing number of scientists…”

Heh…if they are peddling creationism they are not scientists by definition. Just another pack of bible thumpers who don’t know (or care to learn) what a scientific theory is.

Buy that for a dollar, I will

Ah! Now I understand “Intelligent Design.”

As long as they can explain intelligent design without ONE reference to the Bible, I will listen – otherwise they need to keep religion out of the schools and out of science.

I believe I believe!

“So, how did a chlorophyll based life form become a hemoglobin based life form?”

Chlorophyll based life forms didn’t BECOME hemoglobin life forms. They developed independently, SEPARATELY from one another. Nice attempt to obfuscate reality, though.

I applaud ‘Scientists’ who believe in chance development of life. The short end is, it takes a greater faith to believe in your religion than it does to believe in others.

Here you have, and of course ‘scientists’ see these things much more closely than we do, one of the most complex molecule know to exist in the entire universe, that is also able to reproduce itself and needs to create food for itself by collecting and reforming proteins, and all you can say is ’It’s here by chance and we have no idea how it’s possible’.

Now that’s a stretch…

Oh yeah the religion part (cause I know I’m gonna hear about it). Don’t try to deny it.

1. You have a belief about the origin of life, and you worship it.2. You have a moral code, or lack of.3. You have prophets who give direction and guidance or misguidance down a path that they don’t even know the way, and you force feed your teachings to the masses just like the ‘Christians’ during the Crusades, by forcing out other beliefs.4. You propagate your beliefs as the only possible truth.

One evolutionist commented that ’man’s need to worship is an integral part of his existence that cannot be removed’.

Sorry mister ‘Scientist’, you simply worship another FALSE GOD!!

ge Eddie, always wanted to know ’bout dat….but how kum You? --now dats unintended consequences….

No, that’s dung…

Actually I think it’s basically panspermia.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia

Chemistry vs. life, and yet here we are, alive and on a world full of life, though chemistry and physics say life is virtually impossible.

Perhaps the “gloop” being dumped in space by our astronauts will start a new life form on another planet?

This idea was proposed by Arthur C Clarke in his essay “The Toilet of the Gods”:

http://realitystudio.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2101

As discussed on UK quiz show QI:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kndxsByVscA

I prefer Danae’s version anyway…

We call this the Big Flush theory, Scary thing is, it makes sense to me.

CATS definitely are.

Stop making everything about our president! You lost, move on!

I don’t know.I JUST don’t know. I wasn’t here eighty years ago, I won’t be in another eighty, either. Apparently, my main assignment in life is to tweak Omnius’s tea-bagger hating beard.

Life is good.

Any THEORY you give is just that, a THEORY! Let’s see you do better. C’mon…make a complete human from scratch…no? Ok, how about a cell, protein, tree, oxygen….ANYTHING from scratch that already doesn’t have the building blocks to work with…hello?

I don’t like to use the term “star stuff” — I prefer to think of myself as “star material.”

Night-Gaunt, we are stardust, we are golden…..

Pretty simple really…. you start with crap, you end up with crap… what’s so hard to believe about that?

I couldn’t agree more. Although this strip might start the ancient alien theorists off again.

Hm…sounds almost like what the belief of scientology is

I can only recommend taking into close consideration the mechanism whereby DNA is replicated within our cells.

As Isaac Asimov put it, entropy always increases. Complex systems break down into simpler systems. The majority of mutations are less viable than the original organism. In short, as Radish put it, this explains nothing… we simply now have to ask where did the beings in the space ship come from.

Somewhere there it is written…..which explains the reason no one has seen it….that science is not an exact thing…especially when Eddie gets a hold of it!

May we assume yoou mean TARDIS Blue?

It’s been done.

This is a comic strip. Why are there so many people fusing and fighting over it? I am starting to think some people need to realize this is not some kind of scientist research forum. It is a comic strip.

Not quite.From Wikipedia “Scientific Theory”:“A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of knowledge that has been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experimentation.Scientists create scientific theories from hypotheses that have been corroborated through the scientific method, then gather evidence to test their accuracy. As with all forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are inductive in nature and aim for predictive and explanatory force.”

Theories are strongly supported and haven’t, as yet, been disproved.

Examples:The current cycle of global warming is caused by human action. – Hypothesis, it does not explain previous, more extreme, episodes of global warming.

Species evolve over time to better fill ecological niches. – Theory. Hard to prove by experimentation due to the very long time frames needed, but one of the best theories to explain observations.

Two masses will be attracted by mutual gravitation. – Law. Fits all observations, can be tested experimentally.

You’ve yet to prove your “Theory”, and have yet to unprove my faith that there is a God that created this universe.

Will you accept a man made virus? Those have been around since 2002.Work is ongoing to produce man made bacteria.They’ve successfully made the complete chromosomes of several varieties of Mycoplasma, as well as modified versions that are viable when placed in a cell that has had its chromosomes removed.Next step is to build the cell without chromosomes, then install the man made chromosomes.Give them 10 to 20 years.

(In my best Maxwell Smart voice) Would you believe…..spare parts? I lost my appendix years ago due to an explosion of sorts….little bugger blew it’self to pieces!

Everybody under the table, the Evolution Police have arrived !

OK…

Take your watch, separate it into all it’s parts and put it in a ziploc bag and shake it till it comes together as a watch!!

Then we’ll talk! I still haven’t heard any logical retorts regarding ‘science’ as an alternate religion… which it is… yet scientific discovery used to be viewed as an understanding of our CREATOR!!!

The universe is a lot simpler than science will admit. A theory (whether scientific, or not) is still a theory and no amount of hypothetical sub atomic particles will prove otherwise. By the way, the word “prove” means to test.

Broadly speaking, doesn’t the fossil record indicate a general trend toward more complex living beings?

The strip reminds me of a story in which there were an assortment of varied intelligent races in one part of the galaxy—but only humanity had a sequence of species, partially inter-fertile. A scientist plotted the various human planets back to show that they fell on a sequence, albeit one broken in the middle. When they tracked down the origin planet, they discovered that a race, now extinct, had discovered vermin on its ship—vermin that were evolving rapidly due to the high radiation in its ship-board habitat. Some of the vermin had escaped at various planets, contaminating those systems. They had sterilized some of the nearer systems,but finally succumbed to shame and the hopelessness of exterminating all the vermin—leaving them to survive as the many human subspecies…

Clearly, both Joey and yourself don’t want to address the issue that Science in the modern day is a religion in itself!

One of Wiley’s best ever. Brilliant! :)