>You are either being stupid on purpose to be aggravating, or
>you lack fundamental abilities to seperate "probably true"
>from "no evidence of being true".
>
>>I look at speculation as boolean, meaning either you're
>>speculating or you are not.
>
>Where you would be wrong. You can speculate on the exact
>nature of gravity (which isn't decided) and come up with
>plausible answers for why it behaves the way it does on
>certain scales and why that isn't consistent with our current
>understanding. You can also speculate that gravity doesn't
>exist because it doesn't always line up with that
>understanding. One of them is being stupid, the other is
>not.

But either the you have concrete evidence or you do not. Consider a stock that you know for a fact dropped $20 last month. There was no news or any obvious cause for why that happened. You may find evidence pointing towards one way or the other, but since you cannot travel back in time to witness it, you are speculating.

You will never *not* be speculating, you're still hazarding your best guess with the information that is available. If you take the opinions of people regarding light before the turn of last century, the theories that were changed and altered or scrapped, you'd have said those people were speculating based on their observations. They were later proved wrong, and still someone may prove that further wrong.

To say someone is speculating more or less than someone else would have to involve one or the other not speculating. If one has an abundance of evidence which necessitates its validity then they aren't speculating. When you're talking about things that happened in the past, you're always speculating, since you cannot prove it one way or the other.

>>Either you know or you do not.
>
>This is the kind of rabbit hole thinking that leads to
>questions like, "How do I know everything isn't happening in
>my head and no one else exists?" They are pointless and lead
>to no greater understanding.

Neither does "Well, Ptolemy observes that we're at the center of the universe, therefore it must be true." Its important to recognize what is a fluid and growing understanding compared to certainty. We are now certain the earth orbits the sun, at one point Copernicus was speculating that it did. Similarly at one point we speculated that all dinosaurs were lizards, now we're saying some had feathers and some did not, but we're still not *certain*.

>>Being that extra-terrestrial is defined as anything not from
>>Earth, where do you draw the line in terms of "development
>of
>>our planet"?
>
>Easy, either life originated here, or it didn't and was
>transplanted here from extra-terrestrial sources.
>
>>At the very least, the planet itself is
>>definately affected by extra-terrestrial influence
>
>Yea, and the stars at night are pretty, but that isn't
>relevant.

What I was driving at is that if there was a castalyst event, such as a meteor impact or the like, do you consider that extra-terrestrial influence? Thanks for being a #### though.

>> - there's
>>definately evidence that Earth did not create itself and
>>there's "proof" to that effect.
>
>Huh?

Do you understand what extra-terrestrial means? It doesn't mean little green men with lasers.

"originating or located or occurring outside Earth or its atmosphere"

Therefore, if say, the first bacterium was from a meteor, or produced when a meteor hit, you could say it was extraterrestrial influence that caused it. Furthermore, when a meteor wipes out a species and determines an evolutionary path, its done via extraterrestrial influence (IE, influence of something not from earth). That's a bit different than saying we were planted in the soil by little green men with lasers.

>>Suggesting that there could
>>have been no external influence, either in the process of
>how
>>evolution works (physics of it), or specific paths it has
>>taken is equally lacking in evidence as saying the reverse.
>
>Suggesting there there has been external influence when there
>is no evidence of it is silly. Prove you aren't controlled by
>aliens, because even though I have no evidence that says you
>are, I think you should be able to prove to that you are not.

There's no evidence of much of anything in terms of the original formation of RNA. Read up on Hubert Yockey.

>>In other words, you're making this argument in terms of
>logic
>>:
>>
>>1) Evolution requires no extra-terrestrial influence.
>
>So far as we know, this seems to be the case.
>
>>2) Evolution can be observed in the development of life.
>
>Yep.
>
>>3) Therefore evolution is the sole development of life on
>>Earth without any extra-terrestrial influence.
>
>In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, this certainly
>seems the most likely, but FSM and his noodly appendages can
>work some craziness.

That's where you're wrong, logically that statement is false. Additionally supernatural phenomena has more evidence supporting it than your average RNA hypothesis. At least people have witnessed that. I brought up Yockey since he considers the currently accepted model for RNA development to be a scientific equivalent to a leap of faith, without evidence to back it up.