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In contemplating the complexity of life, recall the fact probability demonstrates the amount of time required for each step in the
increasing complexity of biological processes to occur from random chemical reactions exceeds the estimated age of the universe. A designer, no The Designer, fashioned the amino acids that make up the proteins that catalyze chemical reactions as enzymes that make up the cells that make up the tissues and the organs that make up the animals. Religion unequivocally states it could not have been an accident, and science can not prove it was an accident.
It seems to me this places both arguments on the same side of the fence.
And scientists are still discovering new very basic concepts about life. For instance, an interesting discovery of a newly identified kind of life was reported in Science on October 20th of 2006.3.197 This newly discovered microbe species thrives over a mile under the surface of the earth using sulfate reduction,
much as anaerobic bacteria are believed to have done for at least a billion years. Slow radioactive decay of uranium and thorium provides enough energy to spit some of the water into hydrogen and oxygen, and by combining this hydrogen with geologically produced sulfate, the newly discovered microbe species thrives far from the light of the sun. The estimated doubling time of these microbes is 45 to 300 years, and dating the helium and argon isotopes in the water reveal the
ground water where these microbes exists is between 16 and 25 million years old. Certainly there are feedback loops between this type of life and the water and matter it grows in. These feedback loops, like the the feedback loops where animals die and become fertilizer for the growth of new plant life, are all examples of how biological systems are being acted upon.
Along these lines, even more important than the length of time life lives, or the extent of life - in terms of numbers of different
organisms, is the volumes of life existing to be acted upon. Plant life volumes exceeds animal life volumes by orders of magnitude. Cutting up the oak and pine trees which blew down on people's houses in Vidor and Orange, Texas, when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast certainly taught me this simple fact. A three foot (1 meter) length of tree trunk weighs a couple of hundred pounds. We could roll them, and it took several of us to pick up one of these pieces of scrap.
Trees are mostly water, and water weighs 8.33 pounds (31.7 kilograms) per gallon (3.8 liters). One oak tree consists of the equivalent of hundreds of 5-gallon cans (19 liter). This translates a couple of tons (over 4,000 pounds or 1,800
kilograms) for each 100 5-gallon cans, just in water weight. There are innumerable ways to review the volumes of life which exist in different areas.
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paradoxes