I have some very helpful friends - one of them pointed this out to me the other day on youtube. There are others that go with it, but this one had me literally rolling on the floor.

When I came to my senses, though, I was terrified - to how many people does this kind of argument actually make sense?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZFG5PKw504

The basic argument here is that if new life could happen by accident, then, with all the jars of peanut butter sold in the last 100 years, new life should have been discovered in at least one of the jars.

So that's what that odd greenish speck was in my peanut butter. It must have been new life. Pity I ate it. Or maybe they were expecting something a bit more impressive like the time I opened up a jar of vegemite and discovered the yeast had evolved into a superintelligent civilization of telepaths. I ate them too for the good of humanity. A whole jar of vegemite at once. Never before has one man sacrificed so much for so many.

LOL -

yeah.. The government should award you something for that. Personally, I think all taxes should be revoked for anybody who eats *any* Vegemite.

Truly, you should get international recognition for your great deed.

There was that time when something came out of the fridge that looked like the creatures on "Alien" but I'm not supposed to discuss it. National security regulations and all that.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Come to Brisbane China town. Face hugger is on the menu.

Mmmmm, picante!

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

Actually peanut butter has had a history of developing new life forms. These were called "stale makers" and had a good living before the management at the processing plant decided to add preservatives to their product.

The effects of peanut butter and other foods are discussed at this scientific website.

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Okay, I broke down and watched the youtube thing, which I don't usually do in these threads.
What they ignore is just how long four billion or so years is, prior to the first life. These folks want to see evolution happen in front of their faces.

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

I distinctly remember the long-faced guy who said that Skippy actually took out the Stale Makers. I am devastated that I can no longer remember his name. Probably wiped away by Manners, the Butler, the little guy who told everyone that Kleenex napkins cling like cloth while hanging around underneath the dining room table looking up at people's laps.

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

but, you see, more to the point, they're expecting a frog or somthing visible to the nake eye - instead of some small colony of.. oh, virii or bactreria Not only are they ignoring the initial billions of years, but also the multiple millions that lead from the first stage to the second.

In any event, unless they have examined each and every one of those jars of peanut butter, there is no possible validity to any claim that new life did NOT spring forth.

Come to think of it - how sure are they that that fungus they showed in the video isn't something entirely new, starting from scratch?

And to point out that the speaker is identified as "Engineer and AUthor" - as though either undertaking qualifies him to have an informed opinion on the matter. (And, BAUT company excepted - I've met far more engineers who are completely ignorant outside their chosen field than 'scientists')

And when it does demonstrably happen (maybe not in front of their faces per se, but observed in real time), they dismiss it. Sad, really, how far some people will go to dismiss evidence that disagrees with their worldview.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

A new life form evolved in my pizza last night. I wish I had noticed before I ate it.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

I often think a new life form evolves in my bowels after eating some foods - doesn't stop me though

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N6MAA10816
Faber '62 ΔTX
Are you a Bright?

My theory is that life is continually created, and is just as continually eaten in the passing by something that spent 10¹⁴ generations on becoming the meanest thug in the hood.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Did it say "ZOOL!"?

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Original life was very simple compared to even the most simple forms of life, today, and even then, it took millions of years to evolve into the next step that was still less complex than the simplest forms of life today.

That was so bad, I didn't want to click on the next video in the series.
An athiests nightmare: The Banana.

Maybe we should set out a jar of PB for about a million years, and hit it with lightning now and then.

Besides; even if it did happen, then what's to say HenrikOlsen's idea is not correct:

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

But the real questions are whether creamy and chunky are separate species. Or whether the new life evolved to look just like peanut butter to escape detection.


And don't know if anyone noticed, but when the Author and Engineer opened the bottle, the safety seal had been previously partially pulled up. How do we know if the new life didn't escape at that point?

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

When creamy peanut butter first appeared in the marketplace, it was a miserable failure. One Mad Ave ad man referred to it as "The Hydrogenated Bomb".

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I guess they were not very confident with their aurgument and had to check the contents first to make sure that there was nothing but peanut butter.

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At this rate, by Tuesday it will be Thursday; By Wednesday, it will be August and by Thursday, it will be the end of existence as we know it.
- Prof. Farnsworth.

Oy, that hoits.

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

Speaking of squirrels Caution: Prepare to spend some time on this page...it starts with an audio link to a Solar symphony and ends with "...a transgenic mouse with a glowing brain..."

probably just the opposite, ne?

Sarongsong, cool link. I had to bookmark it.

Oh, I wanted to say, since viruses were mentioned, that viruses are are product of life. Since "most" viruses are more closely related to their primary hosts than to other viruses, its thought that their origins lie in incomplete cell mitosis. So that would make them rogue chemicals as opposed to a life form.

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

Quite, I would expect that new life would tend to be outcompeted by older and more established life where ever it were to come into existence.

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Game over, you lose, we hope you enjoyed playing the exciting game of Thermodynamics...

I asked my teacher this very question back in fifth grade, (Circa 1970) and he said the same thing. Most proto-life is going to be a nutrient to existing life.

(Mmmm, nitrogen-carbon-phosphorus compounds, yummy. A little sunlight and chlorophyll and you have breakfast)

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

There's that.

And they are confusing, the origion of life with it's evolution.

Also the chemistry in peunut butter isn't the same as what was going on in the primordial earth.

And they only checked creamy peunut butter.

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If this writing is blue you're going too fast!

And peanut butter in the jar has been sterilized before it leaves the factory.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Well, yeah.

I don't think they are talking about contamination though, comming from excisting life.

They want completly new life to spring out of nowhere.

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If this writing is blue you're going too fast!