Blowing all religions out of the water and finally discovering the mystery behind the origin of all life on earth. Traces of DNA are being found in many meteorites since the 60s. Not mud and the 'breath of god' or any other hokus pokus you might believe.

Google translated article

That's pretty much what I would have imagined all along: Life on Earth is either a random occurence where several pieces fell into the right places or the basic components came from space which, if you're really stretching it, means that we're all aliens on our own planet.

Google translate has got good...

Interesting stuff, but love to read the reasearch itself.

If the research is sound, then the chances of life else where, goes up a (bit of a joke here-->) HELL of a lot.

Nucleobases aren't the start of life though, amino acids are. What this could possibly do is accelerate an already existing but DNA devoid organisms into a higher state of life. DNA though is such an advanced part of life, an uninformed person like me can only speculate how this 'order' could have sprouted into existence.

Anyway, you don't need Portugal for this: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/fea...meteorites.html

It is interesting to speculate on the theory that certain aspects of our life could have only originated in conditions not found on our planet.

I fail to see how this contradicts any "religion". Science has nothing to do with religion.

oohhh Science Kills God, no way in hell.

Being an atheist myself, I really don't care what other people want to believe in as long as they don't use it as an excuse to oppress others or threaten my freedom. I used to be lot less lenient towards general religiousness back during my later teenage years when I was a bit of a hipster douchebag, constantly poking fun at how 'foolish' or 'gullible' religious people would have to be but as with quite a few other things, I grew out of it. I still think of myself as a rather scientific-minded individual but I understand that religion, as long as people don't take it too far, can act as a personal foothold in times of constant changes and as one source of moral principles, the latter of which too many people lack nowadays. Mocking and provoking moderately religious people simply for being religious strikes me as bitter, spiteful and needlessly confrontational these days. In my opinion, a rabid 'god is dead/if Jesus came back today we should just kill him again'-atheist is literally no better than any ultra-religious fanatic.

PS: We usually have a rule against reviving long-dead threads but I'll make an exception due to the general lack of activity outside the RotR forum; can't just stamp out what might become a discussion just because it was necro'd.

Inb4 "only religious people can have morality" falacy.

Hence why I said that it can act as one source of moral principles; one among several.

Agreed on that - atheism is unfortunately becoming the new fundamentalism, not that I'm generalizing all atheists, but for every 1 hateful religious fundamentalist, I'll see about 9-10 hateful atheistic fundamentalists. Plus a lot of them were probably raised in a religious fundamentalist home, and became PO'd about it and now just hate God and religion because they think it's "trendy". The thing is a lot of them came from fundie childhoods, and act more or less, the same as some fundie Baptist - they just think that it's any different because they call themselves "atheist" instead of Christian.

Plus the whole premise is illogical - because DNA existing outside of earth doesn't "disprove" Christianity or any religions.

Who created the meteor and the DNA? I guess that's the next mystery. Why could God have not used the meteor to create life - the Bible says that man was created from "dust", and rocks/meteors are essentially the same. Doesn't contradict Christianity or the Bible at all - some fundie's literal interpretation of it maybe, but religion is still alive and well.

Useful Notes about Atheism. I would appretiate that you read this to understand the atheistic mindset.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism

I'm a romantic guy, I like to imagine things like emotions and personalities are products of the human 'soul', although perhaps this soul is not in the literal sense of a word but rather of things we can't comprehend or explain. Does that mean I'm a theist? No. An atheist? Wrong.

If the world was full of yes and nos, of 0%s and 100%s it would be a very boring place. So I like to keep an open mind about things so maybe there's a tiny bit of chance, so ridiculously and nearly negligibly small chance that there's some kind of 'god' figure we may never understand or ever be able to even aknowledge it's presence. Although I strongly and severely doubt it, I remain open to be proven otherwise (although that day will very likely never come.)

This is different from a more liberal thinking Theist, although he thinks humans can never understand or even prove the presence of a god he still fully believes it, who's very different from a Strong Theist that thinks God is everywhere and is responsible for everything.. While an Positive Atheist would just dismiss everything because of the lack of scientifict fact, while a Strong Atheist would deny the existance of god even if scietinfic fact would surface (a contradiction).



The blue is belief (such as religion, philosophy) while orange is truth (scientifically proven fact).

The gray area is true belief (fact that you believe in) while yellow is knowledge.

All things must be inspected from all angles and people must remain with an open mind. I think the world would be a better place if so.

I used to be a Baptist, then I was an atheist, now I'm more of a generic theist. I believe in God and the Bible in a philosophical (non-literal) sense. I don't believe things such as that Noah's ark was literally real, or that evolution is a hoax, or things like that.

My point is just that the evidence in this article doesn't disprove a god or religion, since even if life began from DNA in meteorites - then where did they come from? Sure it might disprove a literalist account of the Bible or the Koran, but most religious people aren't fundamentalists or literalists, and the majority of mainstream Christians, Muslims, etc would say that the religious extremists are wrong anyway.

I don't understand the grudge that some secular people have with religion as a whole. Most arguments that I see used against religion as a whole don't hold water and are faith-based themselves. Such as the assertion that without religion, then "good people" wouldn't do bad things. There's no way to prove that for a fact so that's just a faith-based belief. Plus it's as true with any extremist ideology (political or religious), so the fact that it's made out to be a religious-only problem doesn't hold water either.

As long as any religion whose deity is a lazy jackass claims to be the only source for morality I'll stay away from them. I have no need for a deity or for wars of nerds who fight about who has the better imaginary friend. I don't mind other people doing their stuff as long as they let me do mine. Religion is a personal thing and if everyone would keep it to themselves all would be fine.

HAD to use that.

Anyhow, you sure the DNA wasn't left on the meteor after impact?

The theory you guys are referring to is called Panspermia AFAIK.