Anthropic Principle

[Obvious Leo]

Phil. You seem to be stuck in some sort of Goldilocks mindset and thus find it remarkable that life could have evolved in the way it has instead of some other way. This is very muddle-headed thinking because life evolved in the way it did because that's simply the way it happened. There is absolutely no reason at all why life should have evolved in this way other than through necessity and circumstance and the likelihood of life evolving elsewhere in the universe along the same lines is NIL. The universe is no doubt teeming with life but there are practically an infinite number of different ways in which life can evolve.

[Obvious Leo]

Oxygen wasn't always in our atmosphere:

Of course it fucking wasn't. Why don't you read what I said. Every gram of oxygen in our atmosphere was produced by living organisms.

[Philosophy Explorer]

Oxygen wasn't always in our atmosphere:

Of course it fucking wasn't. Why don't you read what I said. Every gram of oxygen in our atmosphere was produced by living organisms.

You didn't get my point from before because apparently you didn't understand.

PhilX

[Obvious Leo]

You didn't get my point from before because apparently you didn't understand.

What point? You asked where animals got their oxygen from immediately after I'd just finished explaining where the planet's oxygen came from. What point are you trying to make?

[Philosophy Explorer]

Phil. You seem to be stuck in some sort of Goldilocks mindset and thus find it remarkable that life could have evolved in the way it has instead of some other way. This is very muddle-headed thinking because life evolved in the way it did because that's simply the way it happened. There is absolutely no reason at all why life should have evolved in this way other than through necessity and circumstance and the likelihood of life evolving elsewhere in the universe along the same lines is NIL. The universe is no doubt teeming with life but there are practically an infinite number of different ways in which life can evolve.

Where is this teeming life you speak of? What planet or location have this life besides earth?

PhilX

[Philosophy Explorer]

You didn't get my point from before because apparently you didn't understand.

What point? You asked where animals got their oxygen from immediately after I'd just finished explaining where the planet's oxygen came from. What point are you trying to make?

That the plants and animals are mutually dependent on each other today. The article I posted explains conditions were very different when life first started and brought out details you overlooked.

PhilX

[Obvious Leo]

Tralfamadore has a very interesting intergalactic zoo which you should make a point of visiting. You may even get a gig in the breeding programme for exotic ephemera.

[Philosophy Explorer]

Tralfamadore has a very interesting intergalactic zoo which you should make a point of visiting. You may even get a gig in the breeding programme for exotic ephemera.

Sounds like your speed.

PhilX

[Hobbes' Choice]

Phil. It is photosynthesis which produces the oxygen in our atmosphere and the overall contribution of plants to photosynthesis is relatively minor. The vast majority of the oxygen in our atmosphere is produced by bacteria, algae and phytoplankton. Animals evolved some hundreds of millions of years before even the most primitive of plants.

I definitely think you are on a sticky wicket here.

Bacteria and SIngle-celled organisms predate macro-organisms, as they offer oxygen and Co2 producing metabolisms. How are you defining "plants and animals" in this context.
Plants or plant-like bacteria has to split water and CO2 to make Oxygen for 'animals' to exist.

Like I said in another thread CO2 was in high concentrations before life on earth.

[Obvious Leo]

How are you defining "plants and animals" in this context.

I'm trying to guess what Phil understands by the term because they have no technical meaning in biology. I'm assuming he means land-based plants and animals with motility and thus a central nervous system of some description. By these definitions animals predated plants by some 200 million years, although I guess it's possible that some kelp-like marine vegetation existed prior to the invasion of land and left no trace of its existence. It is generally assumed that plants evolved on land.

Plants or plant-like bacteria has to split water and CO2 to make Oxygen for 'animals' to exist.

What you mean is photosynthesising organisms, the vast majority of which by no stretch of the language could be called plants, even in the modern day.

[Necromancer]

Phil. Every gram of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere has been produced by living organisms. There is no known mechanism by which a planetary atmosphere can contain oxygen in the absence of life to produce it.

That's not necessarily true. Fusion processes of the planets/stars can possibly produce oxygen though it may clash with carbon and burn up.

[Obvious Leo]

Phil. Every gram of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere has been produced by living organisms. There is no known mechanism by which a planetary atmosphere can contain oxygen in the absence of life to produce it.

That's not necessarily true. Fusion processes of the planets/stars can possibly produce oxygen though it may clash with carbon and burn up.

There could be minute traces of oxygen which find their way into the atmosphere via stellar fusion and indeed there are also some planetary inorganic chemical processes which release small amounts of oxygen so you are quite correct. However oxygen is a highly reactive element and any such traces would be very quickly absorbed into other molecules via oxidation. However your point is taken and I acknowledge that my statement is something of a hyperbole.

[Necromancer]

Just a note: These fusion processes are very different from those you find in the atmosphere of the Earth. Oxygen is highly reactive, but that's under the chemistry how we experience it on Earth and 101 kPa (Pa-unit for pressure). It's stellarly hot and there's not any reaction like we think of it. (I'm no authority. You are advised to look up literature.)

Cheers!