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To: Reuben Hick
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.

143 posted on 12/04/2004 12:25:04 PM PST by ThinkPlease (Fortune Favors the Bold!)
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To: ThinkPlease
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...

;)

144 posted on 12/04/2004 12:29:27 PM PST by general_re ("What's plausible to you is unimportant." - D'man)
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To: ThinkPlease
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.

145 posted on 12/04/2004 12:38:50 PM PST by Reuben Hick
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