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"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 ha
by insickness 6y ago
"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."
- gumby 6y agoHG Wells?
- WhompingWindows 6y ago"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.
- shadowofneptune 6y agoHG Wells would have been well aware of this, being an athiest of a kind we'd consider close to New Athiesm nowadays.
- Vrondi 6y agoYeah, you'd almost think he was writing in the voice of a fictional character or something bizarre like that.
- junon 6y agoOr that God was maybe a writing device instead of literally referring to God.
- brazzy 6y ago> athiest of a kind we'd consider close to New Athiesm twitch It's Atheism. "A-" as a negation like in apolitical, atypical, aseptic. And "theism" meaning "belief in god", same root as theology or theocracy.
- shadowofneptune 6y agoI do not understand what you mean here.
- JonathonW 6y agoGrandparent comment misspelled atheism; parent comment is being obnoxious about it.
- Izkata 6y agoI read it as aversion to the "New" part of "New Atheism", a term I don't think I've heard of before.
- JonathonW 6y agoNew Atheism refers to a specifically anti-religious/anti-theist viewpoint-- see Dawkins, Sam Harris, etc. I am not familiar enough with H.G. Wells's religious leanings (or lack thereof) to make any kind of comparison between Wells's views and those of New Atheism's proponents, although I will note that War of the Worlds was written early enough that Wells may not have been atheist yet.
- corobo 6y agoThe 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.
- gher-shyu3i 6y agoScience 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.
- behringer 6y agoWhy wouldn't it. If it has an answer science can find it.
- gher-shyu3i 6y agoBecause it's beyond the realm of space and time. We can't go back before t=0 when the universe was created.
- behringer 6y agoUntil we know the nature of the universe, that may not be correct.
- __s 6y agoIt 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 6y agoLife is believed to have emerged at ~t=9 billion why couldn't we formulate a theory of how it emerged?
- Bancakes 6y agoI don't see the contradiction honestly. They are creatures and they are here. Maybe you misinterpret what a creature is.
- hutzlibu 6y ago"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 6y agoWe 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 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
- mensetmanusman 6y agoThis is interesting, but it also says nothing about fine-tuning, which is likely outside the realms of the scientific method.
- michaelmrose 6y agoWhy 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 6y agoBy definition, you can propose theories that are untestable. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/
- KoftaBob 6y agoIt's always those that are the least confident in their atheism that feel the need to constantly defend it.
- knolax 6y agoIt's a figure of speech...
- hinkley 6y agoThere'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.
- dehrmann 6y ago> which party is in 'control' of the relationship Any one taking care of a cat knows this well.
- toast0 6y agoIt's the toxoplasmosis in control, right?
- Verdex 6y agoThis 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 6y agoI’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.