Does evolution contradict creationism?

Talk Origins ^ | 1998 | Warren Kurt VonRoeschlaub

[shubi]

There are two parts to creationism. Evolution, specifically common descent, tells us how life came to where it is, but it does not say why. If the question is whether evolution disproves the basic underlying theme of Genesis, that God created the world and the life in it, the answer is no. Evolution cannot say exactly why common descent chose the paths that it did.

If the question is whether evolution contradicts a literal interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis as an exact historical account, then it does. This is the main, and for the most part only, point of conflict between those who believe in evolution and creationists.

[muir_redwoods]

"When the evolutionists explain how the universe evolved then we can pay attention to them."

There are many questions to which I do not know the answer. That lack of information will never prompt me to accept a superstition.

[shubi]

Plus, the biological theory of evolution contains nothing about the evolution of the universe. Thus, he is saying he will never accept the fact of evolution until something else is "proven" to him, but nothing is ever proven so he will believe nothing.

Nihilism is a good thing in purported Christians.

[ThinkPlease]

So, ThinkPlease, could you think, please? We know that you can try to avoid defending your faith by attacking others, but ad hominems aren't recognized as great alternatives.

Did you, or did you not, lift large parts of the content of your post from: here? There's no assumption that you plagiarized, just a quick hit of Google, and BANG, instant source.

I just want to know, because I can do google searches of whole sentences of your post and find them there, specifically under posts 5 a)-e). Any professor would call that plagiarism, and run you right up to the Dean's Office.

Now for the rest of the story,

It is true that 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is not violated. It is true that according to the that law the universe should be uniform and have a homogeneous and isotropic background radiation. But examination of the cosmos has revealed that we have a "lumpy Big Bang". As a brilliant scientist, no doubt, you are probably quick to throw away Newtonian physics because maintenance of an unprovable theory is tantamount to the ends of erasing God. Under the Creation model, everything works.

First of all, as longshadow noted, the Big Bang was not an explosion. Second of all, we've known about the anisotropy for working on 25 years now, it's a fundamental part of the CMB. It's also not a big bang killer, since we know that physics was obviously different when the universe was dominated by photons, and not matter (which is the time period from when the CMB originates. By the way, the 2Lot says: "Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused or dispersed and spread out. " (From http://www.secondlaw.com/two.html) Now, some people would have you think that an anisotropic universe defies this. Why? Gravity clumps things together. Molecules attract. Other physics on the other side of the CMB take effect. On local scales, things are allowed to flaunt the second law all the time! In a young universe, fledgeling anisotropies can have more of a lever arm on the surrounding matter before the expansion of the universe makes it impossible.

Of course, under the creation model everything works because you just say "God did it." and Wow! It's so! We can close up all of the science departments, close up all the universities because we know the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, and 42==God. I don't think so. If you are the Biblical Literalist, then I'm sorry to say that you are up a creek, the universe doesn't correspond to the box that you've put God into (namely that the Creation Story is true). (What does God say about limiting what he can do?)

Instead of having all matter appear ex nihilo in one central place in the universe and having it explode in such a way where chaos turns magically into order, we believe, as Scripture plainly states, that the stars and planets were put into place for a purpose and that is to determine signs and seasons. Under intelligent design, it should be expected that the universe is not uniform. Because we are told that the stars were put into their place we should expect a "lumpy universe" in accordance to accomplishing the goals of providing signs and seasons.

(P.S. There is no center of the universe.) Oh, so are you a member of the Church of Last Thursdayism? I haven't seen one of those in a long time! It so happens that I am too, except in my religion the Universe really was created Last Thursday...by my cats. It's a great bargain, I appease them with much food and scritches, and they don't end the universe arbitrarily. It's a great deal. (Though I'm not sure I believe such a thing, after all, why would the creators lie to me by making up all of these clues out of whole cloth, while actually just creating the universe some other way? I'm not sure I trust gods who would do such a thing. Oh well, just better feed them and scritch them, just in case!)

In short, we don't have a contradiction. You do, by the mere fact you have anisotropic universe and a theory that requires scientists to abandon well understood physical laws. We have a beautiful universe, masterfully and wonderfully made, you have an ugly accident that defies explanation. Why is this important? Because as Creationists, we believe that there is a purpose to the order in which we see. Because we believe that there is purpose, we can rely on those things which we discover to be true. As God haters, you can't even trust natural laws anymore. You look at the 2nd Law and see it as an impediment to your faith. You can't even trust your own findings to be true.

Of course, in your universe, all is harmonious, because Hey! God did it! and that means we don't have to figure things out, because God did it and all is harmonius! That's a great circular argument, and there's a reason why it was abandoned...4 centuries ago. That's a really specious argument. The scientific universe is just as wondrous, and very rewarding, as we figure out more and more of the knotty problems out there. If we had gone about it your way, I doubt we'd be having this conversation, the technolgy for the internet would never have been developed. We could have the great comforts of 19th century civilization, right down to the influenza and the plague epidemics! Great fun!

But I'm getting off message here. The bottom line is that the universe isn't harmonious when you look into it. You seem to suffer under the misconception that scientists seek to discover what is true. That's not the case. Science seeks to discover the closest approximation of physical processes.

My initial reaction was what does a snowflake have in common with the Big Bang?

Pretty simple...both "disregard" the 2Lot. You were babbling about how the BB theory disregarded the 2nd law, and I want to see if you are on your toes....after all the universe creates order locally ALL THE TIME! From star formation to snowflakes, entropy is decreased on a local scale temporarily to allow the formation of larger objects before disorder is allowed to take over again. I don't suppose that occurs in your "beautiful" universe, does it?

So to sum up:

"God did it" is boring.

There is no center of the universe.

The Big Bang was not an explosion.

Last Thursdayism sucks. (So does it's equivalent when Creationists think them up).

The Second Law doesn't always act on local scales. Order CAN come from disorder.

It doesn't matter if Big Bang theory is harmonious or beautiful, it just has to best explain the universe that we see better than anything else. It does that. I would love to see a scientific theory of ID, if one existed. I have yet to see one, and am beginning to doubt I ever will. I'm instead beginning to think we'll see nothing but legal challenges instead.

[general_re]

Creationists lifting material wholesale from other places and passing it off as their own? Surely not - that would be completely unprecedented! Shock, horror, et cetera, et cetera...

;)

[Reuben Hick]

Did you, or did you not, lift large parts of the content of your post from: here?

Absolutely not. I have never read that document prior to your posting it.

If you persist with your vicious libel, I will forward this post of yours to the Administrator demanding some sort of action for your inexcusable behavior.

[shubi]

Oh for pete sake.
You have been posting crap from the beginning. Lighten up.

[ThinkPlease]

You are definitely under some fundamental misunderstandings here:

According to these two statements, it is pointless to say that Creationism or Evolution is a product of scientific inquiry, since none of "the phenomena can be reduced to a testable hypothesis". You can't reproduce the Big Bang, abiogenesis, or even one case of macro evolution, and I can't create the heavens and the earth and all that is within them in six literal days.

Nonsense. Just because we lack the technology to accurately reproduce such a thing, doesn't mean we should throw the theory out. No, instead, we craft theories on aspects of the theory we CAN test, and go from there. It can be something as simple as: "Computer models based on local physics say that any galaxies of redshift z=3 will have the following properties: They will be undergoing violent star formation, they will be highly irregular, and they will have bluer stars than galaxies at redshifts of z=1 (older galaxies). They then go to the telescope, obtain said data, and compare their observations to the models. The process continues ad-infinitum. I see this occurring every day as a valid application of the scientific method, and the fundamental aspects of the Big Bang theory remain unchanged from the results of these observations.

That's total Bravo Sierra. There is no mechanism for producing heavy metals from energy according to Big Bang. The best you folks have is a mathematical formula to make hydrogen, but there isn't the consolidated energy to fuse heavy metals. There is even argument that what we claim to know about the sun's fusion isn't even close to being correct.

It is you who are spouting BS. Give me a break. Any student of an undergraduate astronomy program knows better. Even students of a physics curriculum know better! There are books and books of tables and tables of fusion reactions that we have SEEN (yes SEEN) occur in experiments here on Earth. For example, you take two 511KeV photons,and voila, you have an electron and an anti electron. This reaction has been seen on earth, and also has been seen in space near distant galaxies in the X-ray spectrum. Likewise, two photons of a certain energy combine to create a proton and anti-proton.

In the BB model, the early universe was so compact, that the universe was extremely hot (hotter than any phoenomenon we see today). At that temperature it was so hot that matter couldn't exist for very long, photons were so energetic that they could create protons and electrons, but they would strike an anti-particle and because photons again. At some point, as the universe expanded, the universe cooled (constant energy in a larger space), and finally it was cold enough that much of the photons condensed into matter, much of which was simple electrons and protons. (The universe decoupled matter from energy) As the universe cooled further, things cooled enough for hydrogen to form, and some helium and deuterium).

From there, just let gravity take over, and you get stars. Fusion reactions take over from there (which have been seen in bombs and reactions (at least up to Carbon) all over the planet)). The Proton-Proton chain takes you from Hydrogen to Helium, the triple alpha cycle takes you from Helium to Carbon, and in larger and larger stars, it gets hot enough to be able to fuse Carbon and Helium into Oxygen, Oxygen and helium into Neon, Neon and Helium into Magnesium, and so on. There are fusion reactions (according to the chemists) all the way up to Fe that creates energy for the star to use to keep alive, but at Iron, there are no reactions that give energy, but instead take energy. So the supernova collapses, which releases the iron and all sorts of free energy to react with Iron to make other elements. So, as you can see, the Big Bang can manufacture the necessary elements.

(See Anders, E. and Grevesse, N., Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 53, 197 (1989). for a very complete list of modes of nucleosynthesis in the universe).

[general_re]

LOL.

Let's go back to the tape for an instant replay. Everyone mind the bolded portions now. You wrote:

1. The primordial explosion should have propelled all the matter/energy of the cosmos out radially from its center, and by the principle of conservation of angular momentum, none of it could ever thereafter have acquired any kind of curvilinear motion. Yet there are all kinds of curving and orbiting motions of the stars and galaxies of the cosmos, a situation that seems quite impossible if the universe began with the Big Bang.

THEY wrote:

(a) The primordial explosion should have propelled all the matter and energy of the cosmos out radially from its center, and by the principle of conservation of angular momentum, none of it could ever thereafter have acquired any kind of curvilinear motion. Yet there all kinds of curving and orbiting motions of stars and galaxies of the cosmos, a situation that seems quite impossible if the universe began with the Big Bang

You wrote:

2. Sensitive measurements in recent years have increasingly been showing that the background radiation is not homogeneous and isotropic (that is, the same in all directions), as it should be if it had been produced by the Big Bang, but is anisotropic in all directions.

THEY wrote:

(b) Sensitive measurements in recent years have increasingly been showing that the background radiation is not homogeneous and isotropic (that is, the same in all directions), as it should be if it had been produced by the Big Bang, but is “anisotropic” in all directions.

You wrote:

3. The universe is anything but uniform in large-scale structure, as both the Big Bang and Steady State theories require, but instead is full of huge agglomerations of matter in some regions and vast empty spaces in others, scattered around the cosmos in far from any uniform manner. Some astronomers are now trying somehow to to imagine a primeval lumpy Big Bang.

They wrote:

(c) The universe is anything but uniform, as the big bang theories require, but instead is full of huge agglomerations of matter in some regions and vast empty spaces in others, scattered around the cosmos and far from any uniform manner.

You wrote:

4. In the context of the primeval fireball it is hard to justify the accumulation of any amount of matter in any one location such as a star. If the explosion is driving all galaxies apart in the resulting expansion, how could it fail to drive all atoms apart before they came together in galaxies?

THEY wrote:

(d) If the explosion is driving all galaxies apart in the resulting expansion, how could it fail to drive all atoms apart before they came together into galaxies?

You wrote:

5. And saving the best for last, the most serious objection comes back to the second law of thermodynamics. Explosions produce disorder, not order. The primordial superexplosion surely would have produced absolute chaos and the most utter disorder. If the universe is indeed a closed system as evolutionary cosmogonists allege, then how in the name of sense and science could this primeval chaotic disorder have possibly generated the beautifully organized and complexly ordered universe that we now have?

They wrote:

(e) The most serious objection comes back again to the second law of thermodynamics. Explosions produce disorder, not order! The primordial super explosion surely would have produced absolute chaos and the most utter disorder. If the universe is indeed a closed system, as evolutionary cosmogonists allege, then how in the name of sense and science, could this primeval chaotic disorder have possibly generated the beautifully organized and complexly ordered universe that we now have?

Give it up, man - you're busted. F-minus.

[VadeRetro]

A plagiarist in denial. Creation science is a symphony of brazen offenses blandly denied and endlessly repeated.

[PatrickHenry]

Creationism means never having to say you're sorry.

[ThinkPlease]

Don't thank me, thank longshadow for all of the hard work of finding it. I just posted the reference. :-)

[longshadow]

Give it up, man - you're busted. F-minus.

"He's dead, Jim!"

[longshadow]

Don't thank me, thank longshadow for all of the hard work of finding it. I just posted the reference.

Very kind of you to give attribution, something which your interlocutor seems unable, or unwilling to do.

;-)

[js1138]

Not so much fun since ALS got busted for his phony Darwin Quotes.

[VadeRetro]

"He's dead, Jim!"

"Rube" Hicks -- b. Nov 28, 2004, d. Dec 3, 2004 ...

WHETHER HE EVER ADMITS IT OR NOT!

[VadeRetro]

Dec 3, 2004

Dec 4, 2004. (Not as expensive as messing up a real tombstone, anyway.)

[Reuben Hick]

Give it up, man - you're busted. F-minus.

I contend that I never read that document prior to it being posted here today. Actually I personally know the source of the information in question. The document referenced here is borrowed from that.

Nevertheless, I never called any of it my own which is a requirement for plagiarizing, and I believe that ThinkPlease was looking for any excuse to avoid having to debate the topic because ThinkPlease is intellectually incapable of forming a cogent argument.

I am also not surprised to see that all the other evolutionists in this thread are totally incapable of dealing with issues and must resort to pointless side shows, lies, insults and other foolishness. You have learned well from your masters.

I bet it must really bother you that a Creationist has you folks reduced to scrambling for anything to silence the opposition. Typical.

I just feel the love from you God haters... :)

[ThinkPlease]

Nevertheless, I never called any of it my own which is a requirement for plagiarizing, and I believe that ThinkPlease was looking for any excuse to avoid having to debate the topic because ThinkPlease is intellectually incapable of forming a cogent argument.

Since you have your name signed to the post, I can only assume that you called it your own. No matter what you think, since you have not actually dealt with any of my arguments since last night, the latter part of your statement isn't very believeable.

[js1138]

Nevertheless, I never called any of it my own ...

I gues that depends on the meaning of "called". Always good to see the clinton defence in action.

[VadeRetro]

I contend that I never read that document prior to it being posted here today.

You cut and pasted it without reading it? Why would you do that?

Actually I personally know the source of the information in question.

If true, this helps you how?

The document referenced here is borrowed from that.

Without attribution. Which was then falsely denied. Now you seem to be backpedaling.