Is it impossible for you to misunderstand something?

That's not the point, I simply consider it bad discussion style to insinuate other participants are unable or unwilling to understand when they lay out the arguments for their disagreement.

It is not conceived of as a force of nature by biologists.

So it's...

...

...supernatural? Metaphysical? Paranormal?

You might get something out of researching the terms "procedural generation" and "optimizing process", which evolution is an example of. When you understand what it fundamentally is, it's demystified.

I have been playing around with Mandelbrot sets on a Commodore 64 20 years ago and have translated the Matlab code for 2D L-Systems into 3D for POV-Ray as a finger exercise and have run thousands of generations of boxcars2d.com on "The Hills" for the heck of it. This is not an argument from authority, just mentioning it so you know you don't have to talk to me like someone who just came crawling out of some dark cave.

Your counter still doesn't address my argument; you have only given examples for some computational parallels I mentioned earlier, which have to be programmed, engineered intentionally and purposefully with a given set of rules/laws in order to mimick the very thing we are talking about; they do not emanate by themselves out of random noise.

I am not arguing against evolution. I am arguing that it is reasonable to suggest that the very existance and reliability, despite all cosmic odds against it, of such a process/algorithm/ruleset/chain reaction betrays some form of energy unaccounted for by the "consensus".

If you consider predictions of any given theory to be pure speculation. But then evolution has a pretty good track record where predictive confirmation is concerned.

I was not talking about evolution, I was talking about the assumption that life developed (or exists) outside the realm of earth.

I don't rule it out. I look forward to it.

Some would simply proclaim "none has been found on the moon, none on Venus, none on Mars, so obviously, there is no basis to suggest that any will exist anywhere else and those crackpots still trying to prove otherwise shouldn't be allowed to waste any more funding" – if you know what I mean ;)

The terminus is the process of abiogenesis itself, about which more is known than you imagine. I should probably write another article just devoted to that, hopefully I can prevent discussions like this going forward.

Looking forward to it!

There are fundamental, self-defeating aspects of the supernatural as a concept, such as the Problem of Interaction.

It wouldn't be _super_natural if it obeyed the known laws of nature...

Sure, they all laughed at Columbus. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

So you understand what I mean when I say that the laughter is a terrible metric for those seeking understanding and enlightenment.

A skeptic does not hold onto a cool idea despite centuries of experimentation failing to prove it has any merit whatsoever.

Sure, that's the lunatics' job. When a lunatic can present a reproducable result however, he stops being a lunatic and is hailed a "genius", if not, he'll be forgotten together with all the other lunatics of history.

It's a gamble of sorts. High risk, high reward. It seems the men staring at goats at least thought the game was worth a try. I'm not a gambler, but I obviously wouldn't bet against every lunatic; one day, one of them might make an egg stand up and show the way to a whole new world of possibilities. That would be terribly awkward and reflect poorly on skepticism. So I simply don't rule it out and encourage experimentation. Experiment is the key to science.

Since staring at a goat costs only a fraction of what it costs to send a probe to Europa or Enceladus, there isn't even any harm done.

Except for the goat.

Maybe.