Posted on 11/30/2004 3:53:55 PM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at talkorigins.org ...
Oh and by the way, your arguments contradict each other. 5 doesn't make sense in the light of 2 or 3, right?
If 5 were true, how can snowflakes be formed in a cloud? Order from disorder, right? And 4? Just a bad argument. Whoever thought it up has no concept of gravity, or just how long billions of years is. That's not surprising, since whoever thought these arguments up has no problem limiting God to a little book written by men thousands of years ago.
OK, I would be happy to discuss any part of the first 9 verses with you. It has been a passion of mine for over 20 years.
What I have been advocating is a non-literalist translation that comports with reality as we have found it in science. For instance, it is obvious to me that "let there be light" comports with Einstein's formula for energy to matter conversion.
Evolution is man's limited attempt to explain the miracle of God.
1. The primordial explosion should have propelled all the matter/energy of the cosmos out radially from its center,....
The Big Bang ("BB") Cosmology posits no "explosion," nor any center to the universe. Whoever wrote this doesn't understand the theory he's arguing against.
.... 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.
Only someone who doesn't understand the BB theory and what conservation of angular momentum actually means could have written something like this. Conservation of Angular Momentum in no way poses an impediment to orbital motion of stars, galaxies, or anything else.
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.
The author blunders again. The CMBR IS isotropic down to a relatively fine level of temperature resolution, below which point the Inflationary Model of the BB specifically predicts an amount, and distribution, of anisotropy that is exquisitely in agreement with the most recent observations of the W-MAP probe. Contrary to what the author proposes, the currently accepted BB theory (the Inflationary Model) predicts exactly what has been confirmed observationally.
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.
The author errs again. On a Cosmological scale, the OBSERVED distribution of matter is homogeneous; it is only on smaller scales that the clumpiness is noted, but at cosmological distances, the clumpiness averages out, just as the BB theory predicts.
..... Some astronomers are now trying somehow to to imagine a primeval lumpy Big Bang.
The author appears to not understand, or misrepresents the degree of "lumpiness" in the early Universe. The subtle anisotropies observed by the W-MAP probe (as mentioned in my response to your item #2 above) are all that is needed to "seed" the universe for galaxy formation. So, in fact, the lumpiness WAS predicted, and has been found to be in agreement with the predictions of the BB theory.
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.
It is not even clear what the author means by this statement.
.... 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?
Again, the author implies the BB is some sort of "explosion" -- it wasn't. Secondly, he suggests that the BB is "driving the galaxies apart" when, in fact, under the BB theory, galaxy formation didn't take place for several million or even a billion years afterwards. He also seems to believe that the expansion of the Universe somehow imparts momentum to objects within it, which is NOT the case.
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.
Once more, the author incorrectly characterizes the BB as an "explosion."
.... 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?
The author clearly doesn't understand thermodynamics any better than he understands the BB theory. Adiabatic expansion is isentropic, and there is nothing about the Second Law of thermo that precludes localized decreases in entropy as long as the net entropy of the system and its surroundings increases.
If you are interseted in learning about what the BB theory actually is, I suggest you abandon the website from which you plagerized your response, and check this out instead:
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmolog.htm
It is written by a real astronomer who is knowledgeable in the subject.
"The fish that are not good swimmers now have defense mechanisms, did your proto-amphib have defense mechanisms?"
What defense mechanisms do the fish have now?
This is rather besides the point seeing as the first amphibean fossils were fishlike with adapted fins. Unless you are claiming that the fossils are fake, they must have existed and survived.
"Gee I wonder if they have a vested interest?"
now its really getting into the realm of conspiracy theories. How can we even trust NASA landed on the moon when they have a "vested interest" in telling us that?
"Name one! Give me an identified transitional species between two known and distinct species!"
homo erectus between homo habilis and homo sapien (us)
"WRONG! Not only is it closer to some turtles, think of this, they are not even mammals."
I looked up phylogenetic trees based on hemoglobin a and b, and in both primates were closest to humans. While turtles weren't on there, the reptile/amphibean groups that were, were on a different branch. Try as much as I can I cannot find anything on google by searching for "turtle human hemoglobin evolution". If it was a good argument against evolution then it would most likely be online.
"For reference the book is called "Darwin was Wrong" Put out by some biologists probably 30 years ago"
I appreciate the reference but I cannot find anything about this book online either. I will take your word for it though.
"Funny thing is that this book kept disappearing from the library stacks at the University I attended. The University would keep buying it, but some (fair-minded) evolutionists must not have liked its utterly damning evidence that micro-evolution does not follow any Darwinian model."
In fact evolutionists usually go around in packs of 5 in libraries so they don't get scared by all the damning evidence left right and center.
"So what? Mankind sorts and categorizes, that we would based on morphology should surprise nobody. Just because we sort animals into forms and types does not mean they descended from one to the other."
It isn't just a sort based on morphology, the date of the fossil is a large restriction. If a human fossil was found in the cambrian for example then that is common descent done for. No amount of morphology categorisation is going to fix that.
"You have no idea what so ever if paleo-horses are related in anyway to modern horses"
I don't know for sure but there are several things that make it very likely.
-If proto-horses and modern horses are not related, then where did modern horses come from and where did proto-horses go?
It it far to convenient that protohorses disapeared and then suddenly a similar looking beast appears. It makes far more sense that the proto-horses became the modern horses. This accounts for both the disapearance of protohorses, and more importantly accounts for the appearance of modern horses. Especially considering that old modern horse fossils show that they were morphologically different than present day modern horses.
"Tell me if horses got longer and longer legs cause sabertooth was chasing them...how come the tigers didn't get longer legs to catch them?"
I dont know whether that was the reason why they developed longer legs. I doubt it though, it was probably just group behaviour driving it where the slower members didn't get to mate and stuff. Also a long legged tiger would find it harder to sneak up on anything.
"The Universe was spawned at some point. Therefore some body of mass must have existed before the creation of the universe, that is the make up of what is now the universe. We know this is true because of the given that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. So in order for the universe to exist as it is now, some reaction must have taken place to get the result of the universe. However there can be no reaction if there is no action to begin with.
THEREFORE THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT EXIST.
Or, if you prefer, the universe does exist, and the original first cause must be that some deity triggered the reaction that resulted in what is now the universe."
Or the law of causation does not apply to the origin of the universe, because the law of causation requires time to preceed the event in order that it can work.
The beginning of time is literally an event without a cause, because time did not exist before the event.
It is the law of causation that that causes the contradiction, so it is the law of causation that is not necessarily true.
The law of causation is a rule we have made because every event we have ever observed, we also observe a cause. So we assume it is always true and turn it into a universal law.
All laws are assumptions based on a repeated observation holding true. The assumption is that they apply everywhere in the universe and every time throughout the universe despite the fact that we have not checked them everywhere. But it is extremely reasonable to assume that because other places in the universe do not differ too much, the laws apply there too.
But applying laws to places or times that are very different to the one we observe the laws holding may not be reasonable.
It's like observing that every mark on a long tape measure has a mark preceeding it. So we make the rule "every marked inch on the tape measure has a marked inch before it" and if we stick to around the middle area of the tape measure, it will hold true for every point we test. But as soon as we test the beginning of that tape measure, we find that the rule no longer works there. An exception which should have been considered seeing as the beginning of the tape measure is a unique place.
Outcome is measured by the veracity of the process, checked against proven standards set by a record of past successes in like fields of study. We cannot allow the process to be prejudiced by our cherished notions of an ideal cosmology. Nor can we be true to the scientific process if we expect the outcome to champion our political agendas or justify our religious faith.
Advocates of creationism or ID seem to fall into two categories. Some don't appreciate that science is as essential to our survival as raising children to be the mature, intelligent and moral adults needed to propagate our species. Then others - often in a paranoid tone - mischaracterize science as a religion or cult, and they typically fixate on the theories of cosmology and evolution as potential threats to their own religious faith and family values.
Again, I'm not a scientist, nor would I ever be tempted to embrace a false concept of science as religion, and revere its theories as absolute and involiable doctrine. I hope I'm wrong when I suggest you would suspect a reasonable person of such a travesty.
A great example of natural selection driving beneficial mutation is the common flu virus. Every year we concoct a new vaccine to combat the outbreak, and every year, a new strain finds its way into our bodies from diseased chickens in China every year. Last year's vaccine killed of the virus strain with genetic traits we predicted when we devised the serum. Any viroids that inherited beneficial traits from last year's survivors will be immune to last year's vaccine. So the cycle begins anew. Every so often a superstrain emerges, and we find ourselves vulnerable until we can work out a winning vaccine. Of course, thousands of generations of the flu strain come and go in the course of a year, each organism living only hours or days.
How can a dead fish remain unmolested on the ocean floor and never decompose? I take it you're wondering how science can address the issue of fossils. Well, oceans are big places, and not every deceased fish will draw the attention of a scavenging shark. So over the centuries and eons sediment piles up, and the combined wieght of the water and sediment compress the body, and over a million years perhaps the fish is fossilized.
Abiogensis, the theory that inanimate matter is transformed into animate life. Hmmmm....this cannot be a true scientific hypothesis, let alone a theory. Why do you demand that science explain this fiction? I'm waiting for quantum physicists to provide me with their overdue explanation for vacuum-genesis....
How does new (genetic) information enter into a "closed" biological system? I have no idea. Don't all lifeforms have to eat and then eliminate? Don't they procreate and bear offspring? Ask a microbiologist.
And now a space question! Ever heard of nucleosynthesis? Essentially, it is a theory - successfully proven by observation - that explains how all the chemical elements, the atoms that compose our planet and our very bodies were produced inside long gone stars through the process of fussion. I'm no astrophysicist, so I suggest you find a book written by one that explains this more consicely than I can.
I'm not really into evolution as much as astrophysics, so I'm going to pass on this issue. I suppose the more specimens they can classify from field study, the better they get at predicting what specimen goes with what species. Another opportunity for independent study.
And finally, my crack about creationists as liberals. I couldn't help pointing out what I see as a common trait shared by those who present an alternative view to a genuine scientific theory, but cannot muster any evidence of their own to win over the skeptics. If ID can explain the origins of phenomena that current science cannot address, I'd like to read your White Paper. If you can't publish your proposal and defend why you believe ID is a likely source of empirical knowledge missed by science, you won't get any further in your inquiry. Meanwhile, though my science IQ doesn't qualify me to teach String Theory at Columbia University, I'll continue to appreciate and defend the scientific process, and the notion that humans are a speicies of advanced primates, that dark energy is speeding up the inflation of the universe and......that for reasons neither I nor any scientist can explain...praying with my rosary and reading Psalms and Ecclesiastes heals my soul. - PEACE!
Nope.
Evolution does not include first creation of life.
Genetics explains every form of life on Earth from that point through the Theory of Evolution.
Creationists think in terms of individual changes, rather than changes in populations. This is where your problem lies in understanding the point.
"This is a fallacy called post hoc ergo proctor hoc. It would simply be more logical to say that rather than becoming something else, that the design merely repeated itself because it is a more resilient design, and leave whether or not one actually did become the other to actual scientific evidence, which has, up to date, failed to provide anything supporting that argument."
Not at all. The design obviously repeated itself, but leaving it at that does not explain where it came from and is scientifically useless as an explaination. Common descent however does explain it, and is able to predict what sort of fossil forms we should expect to find in the future.
"Are you suggesting that by some fluke, that at one point actual time did not exist, that seconds, and hours, and days and all other units of time were simply meaningless. That is impossible with the fact that the space the universe is now contained in must have existed forever."
The universe is not contained in any space. Space and time exist within our universe. The universe contains -everything- we observe: space, planets, stars, time, matter is all part of the universe.
If time began at the start of the universe, then there is no such thing as "before the universe", because a point cannot exist in time without time existing.
"The phrase "beginning of time" is not literal, rather it refers to the point where the universe was created upon the number line of time. Time cannot simply exist at one point and then *poof* not exist.
The universe contains "everything" and this includes time.
Time is a part of the universe so whenever time has existed, so has the universe. What you are talking about is that for an infinite amount of years no space, stars or planets existed. Your creation event is not the beginning of the universe, it is the beginning of space and matter. In this regard you are essentially saying that the universe has existed forever, but only very recently has matter and space appeared.
"I drop a can. Gravity causes the can to fall. Therefore gravity exists. Saying that the laws of physics can suddenly not exist is more of a leap of faith than I am willing to take."
You have only demonstrated that the law of gravity worked in that one example. You only assume on faith that it will again, and does elsewhere in the galaxy. But it is unreasonable to assume otherwise.
"And yet your theory that time at one point did not exist has zero evidence to support it, whereas my theory that the laws of physics are, and must remain a constant does have evidence to support it."
Well space and time are pretty intertwined with one another. I imagine that it is a large possibility that before space existed, neither did time. Especially considering there would be no frame of reference for it to exist.
"This is a very poor analogy. In this analogy a tape measure is used to represent time. On your tape measure we know that there are points that are not marked. For example, there is no -1 in."
Okay if you want to get picky then say the tape measure is a gradient of color from blue to red. You make the rule "each color is preceeded by a bluer one". But the beginning of the tape measure is unique, it is pure blue and no possible bluer color preceeding it.
Hey ThinkPlease, are you still beating your domestic partner?
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.
Let's look at your well thought out response to the five matters brought to bear:
Oh and by the way, your arguments contradict each other. 5 doesn't make sense in the light of 2 or 3, right?
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. 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.
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.
But I do thank you for the belly laugh this morning for this particular comment:
If 5 were true, how can snowflakes be formed in a cloud?
My natural response was to assume that you were being sarcastic and thus put something this stupid out there as a joke, but on later consideration I figured it would be best to assume that you were serious. If you did submit this as a joke, I apologize in advance.
My initial reaction was what does a snowflake have in common with the Big Bang?
I can continue, but you may project again and assume that I have plagiarized...
If the whole research facility believes it and everyone who doesn't is stupid, it must be true.
(/sarcasm)
It's the same in a number of fields...
"Science is an accumulation of ordered knowledge acquired by rigorous observation and documentation of phenomena, and the investigation of possible causes of the phenomena, which can be reduced to a testable hypothesis, either debunked or qualified by process."
And...
"We cannot allow the process to be prejudiced by our cherished notions of an ideal cosmology. "
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. Now try convincing the God haters of this, who won't even permit the consideration of Creationism in a public forum without the usual calls of legal action, heckling, and gratuitous insults. We don't even need to go that far, for instance, your next paragraph is a outright lie and gratuitous insult at all Creationists.
Advocates of creationism or ID seem to fall into two categories. Some don't appreciate that science is as essential to our survival as raising children to be the mature, intelligent and moral adults needed to propagate our species. Then others - often in a paranoid tone - mischaracterize science as a religion or cult, and they typically fixate on the theories of cosmology and evolution as potential threats to their own religious faith and family values.
I can only assume that this statement arises from a projection of your own paranoia, fear of religion, and little appreciation that science is as essential to our survival. I don't believe for a minute your original statement: "I'm not a scientist, but a student of its development in history and its applications in our world." unless your definition of "student of its development" allows you to only read Scientific American or intellectual dreck from talkorigins.org. How is it possible for you to be "a student of its [science's] development" and not read about Creationists Sir Frances Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Robert Boyle, Nicolaus Steno, Sir Issac Newton, Carolus Linnaeus, Samuel F.D. Morse, James Simpson, Louis Pasteur, Henry Margenau, William Paley, August Friedrich Leopold Weismann... to name a few?
I am further offended by the insult to suggest that Creationists are the antithesis of scientists. We are not narrowed eyed hill scoggin that marvels at the flashlight as some sort of magical firestick. After lecturing us on the scientific principle, you turn around, ignore your own words and universally announce all Creationists, by virtue of them being Creationists, as opposed or scared of science. The ultimate slander is that you completely ignore the beliefs of science's founders and state just the opposite by claiming that Creationists stand in the way of science - imperiling the lives of our children. These Creationists who you scorn and mischaracterize (presumably for a person vendetta and agenda) are those who were the founders of modern science. Who in the evolution community has founded a science that benefits mankind based on their evolutionary world view? You talk about endangering the lives of our children, but it is an evolutionary world view that brings us the death cult of abortion, euthenasia, eugenics, communism, moral relativism, extreme environmentalism, genocide, and the destruction of human rights.
Also, I observe that you are very confused about the place of science and religion in world history. Even the pagans in Egypt and Central America furthered their studies of the heavens based on their religious beliefs. The early world based confidence in their finds because they believed that the cosmos had a purpose. Evolutionary cosmogonists categorically reject purpose and have a world view that must accept in toto an accidental, impersonal, pointless, chaotic universe. What do you think is a better legacy to pass on to one's children? A world view that devalues human life and equates it to the same value as a bug, or one that says that all men and women are made in God's image - the very God who created the entire universe. Who is man that the Creator of all things would take special interest in him? It is ignorant and desperate to state that evolutionary cosmogony is superior to monotheism due to its dependency on idle speculation.
A great example of natural selection driving beneficial mutation is the common flu virus. Every year we concoct a new vaccine to combat the outbreak, and every year, a new strain finds its way into our bodies from diseased chickens in China every year.
This statement proves the danger in evolutionary thinking. You accept the contradiction to science that information appears ex nihilo, and that new species of viruses appear out of nothing, or exist out of a beneficial mutation from preceding viruses. You completely and totally ignore history and science when making this foolish statement. When Europeans visited the New World, they brought with them diseases of their own country that did not previously exist in the New World. These people had not developed an immune system (an immune system that defies rational explanation by the evolutionary crowd). No new virus was formed ex nihilo, no mutation was made to an existing strand; no sheep or dandelion turned into a virus that killed the natives; it was simple exposure to a foreign virus on a people who had no built in immunity to it. Similar to your chickens from China.
Another statement based on blind allegiance to a flawed concept. Do sharks have to be the only hungry critter in the ocean? There are countless critters in the ocean, not necessarily with fins, nor those that will bite your hook, that feast upon the dead. It is crazy talk to assume that the ocean is so devoid of life that not one single critter will touch a dead fish for thousands and thousands of years. It requires a mind that unquestionably accepts Alice's Wonderland to think that there are no processes in the ocean that would separate the fish's bones within thousands of years of open exposure. Is this science to you? Blind allegiance to a religious faith, worshipping at the feet of the god of Chance and declaring yourself an accident of birth to an unknown ape who had its origins as lifeless goo?
Ever heard of nucleosynthesis? Essentially, it is a theory - successfully proven by observation
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 perfectly clear to me that you have confused "science" with scientists speculating, despite your opening statement.
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