Why the Butter Zone idea can sod off.

To put this into perspective:

So what are the chances of a planet being in the butter zone? How many stars are there in the universe?


In any case, it's more than likely that if we hadn't evolved to live in the butter zone, we would have evolved to be something else entirely. Perhaps there are creatures who live in frozen tundra declaring that their god created a planet so perfect that it doesn't ever get warmer than the melting point of water.

Newsflash: We can only ask these questions because we live in the butter zone, if we weren't here then we wouldn't exist and these questions would be senseless.

There is life out there somewhere, that life is us and the probability of us surviving at this present moment is exactly 100%.

The distance of Earth from the sun varies more than that in the course of its orbit.

It has to be said, the chances that life in the universe exists in environments that can support it is 100%. This is a triple whammy because life also alters its environment, and evolves to be able to survive in that environment.

There is not a single intelligent life form in the universe looking at its own habitat and thinking "my word, my home planet is pretty hostile to life as we know it, isn't it".

I mean hostile as in "Holy crap, we're on Venus!" as opposed to "Holy crap, the Earth is trying to kill us!" Because it is. This is not exactly the paradise we like to think it is. It's closest to one we'll find in the universe, but not a lot of this planet will support human life, and in many of the places that do, it periodically stops supporting human life during short periods we refer to as "natural disasters".

And the idea that no other place in the solar system can have liquid water is a joke. If Mars was large enough ad magnetic enough to hold on to its atmosphere, it would still have running water. If Venus did not suffer a runaway greenhouse effect, it would still be pretty hot, but well within the limits of Earth extremophiles (some people think that even the real Venus might have places such as this in its atmosphere).

This is the fifth or sixth time you've completely killed my interest in something.

I hope you're happy.

This is around the twentieth time that BM has totally expanded on my scientific knowledge after I get the foundations down >:

Surely it should increase your interest in things? Particularly when I agree with you. Well, your sentiment, I had to deviate from some of the details.

And the rest of you: there's nothing I know that you don't have immediate access to via means besides me. Here's a basic assumption to make about everything: "This is probably more interesting than I think, so I should find out more."

Even the Theological argument 'Do Angels have navels'?

If men have nipples then angels have navels.

I wish that there WERE 234 more earths.

I can't back that up, actually. I just wish it.

You would think.

But it makes me go "Oh... Well... Okay."

You're not a scientist at heart, are you? All children are. They just need a little training before their curiosity gets browbeaten out of them.

I suppose. Because to answer that, you must answer whether or not angels exist. This leads to a very interesting journey of discovery, particularly if you have grown up in the fog of western religion.

I enjoy trying to get a deeper understanding of how the Universe works, so I would say that I am a scientist.

You need to use phrases with less baggage than "deeper understanding". I've seen it used many times before to describe claims conspicuously devoid of scientific understanding, deep or otherwise.