Origin of species is traced to pond life

Oops! I just noticed your #213.

I will only accept the possibility if it refers just to the evolvement of Democrooks.

Sorry, I can't accept that statement. You're attempting to imply that they evolved, and from all I've seen, heard, and read...they're still pond scum.

I have always thought of space as a potential, not as a cause. That is an interesting thought. I wonder if anyone out there is well enough versed in string theory to comment.

The universe still has to have a source, and appealing to arbitrary necessity by saying that it just happens to exist is not a reasonable or satisfying explanation.

To say the universe just happens to exist is no more or less reasonable or satisfying than saying that a creator just happens to exist. Neither statement is scientific - they are both metaphysical. (One physicist has said that the universe must exist because it is logically impossible for it not to exist. Now, repeat that slowly 3 times, then say it backwards 3 times for good measure.)
I have my doubts that this question can ever be resolved in a “scientific” sense.

To Be, or not to Be, that is the question.

I have always thought of space as a potential, not as a cause.

I don't know what that means.

The universe still has to have a source

I disagree. "Source" implies causality, which implies time. But time is a property of the universe, and a malleable, manipulable one at that. Time exists in the universe; the universe does not exist in time.

But what you boys are driving at is Heidegger's fundamental question of philosophy: why does anything exist, instead of just nothing? In my opinion, the only meaningful resolution is that of Rand, who declared "Existence exists" to be an axiom.

If you are indeed a physicist I would like to get another physicists imput on quantom events. Astrophysicist Dr Hugh Ross argues that quantom physics is dependent on probabilites for events to take place within certain intervals of time, hence without time no events take place. Based on my undergraduate study, and reading of Paul Davies and Hawking I understand this point of view. However, since the math is for beyond my comprehension I simply have to take one's word for it.

By the way I'm not one to except uncaused events. While quantom mechanics is a great mystery, I believe some time in the future we will understand the apparent contradictions assoiciated with it. Maybe extra-dimmensions. In my humble view science is finished if there are really uncaused effects.

Source" implies causality, which implies time. But time is a property of the universe, and a malleable, manipulable one at that. Time exists in the universe; the universe does not exist in time.

You're right that time is a property of the universe, which started up with the universe. But being a property of the universe it is therefore not nothing. But I used the word 'source' because the issue is not merely the "beginning" of the universe but the source of it. I am trying to emphasize that it couldn't pop into existence out of absolute nothing. Even if it has always existed with no actual beginning is beside the point because it has to have a source of origin even if it doesn't have a starting point in time. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but a quantum vacuum is not nothing, but a state of physical conditions with mathamatically describable properties.

Cordially,

I am trying to emphasize that it couldn't pop into existence out of absolute nothing.

You're right, but once you remove that from a historical sequence (i.e. time), it is equivalent to saying that there isn't just nothing. In other words, existence exists.

The concept of "causation" presupposes time.

…who declared "Existence exists" to be an axiom.

I agree whole heartily with this. You can argue until the cows come home whether the universe or the creator has first claim on existence, but this is where it stops.

Next point:

Nimdoc (#223) I have always thought of space as a potential, not as a cause.
Physicist (#224):I don't know what that means.

I will try clarify my statement since this is why I bumped you to this thread.

Let me quote from Diamond (#211);
A quantum vacuum is not nothing, and fluctuations in a quantum vacuum do not constitute an exception to the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause.

I agree that the quantum vacuum is something, it is space (whatever that is). I agree that space is required for a quantum fluctuation to exist, but does the existence of space require that the quantum fluctuations exist? A given volume of space can potentially have quantum fluctuations, but is it required to? Can this requirement be labeled "a cause" of the fluctuations?

I have heard it said that if physical laws do not prohibit an event, it will occur, eventually. For example, based on quantum probabilities, it is possible to compute the probability of a beer can spontaneously falling off the table to floor. The answer involves some huge number of zeros, but the possibility is there. Does this "potential to fall" constitute a cause?

Thanks for your thoughts on this. I realize the answer to this may dwell more on the semantics of the word “cause”, rather than a definitive statement that can be rigorously defended, but give it your best shot.

"...the latest incarnation of this theory, Steve Gould and Niles Eldredge's "Punctuated Equilibrium or punc-eek" attempts to claim that these wholesale violations of probabilistic laws all occurred so suddenly as to never leave evidence in the fossil record, and that they all occurred amongst tiny groups of animals living in "peripheral" areas. That says that some velocirapter who wanted to be a bird..."

Excellent post. The length will make it easy for most to ignore but that will be their loss.

One thing missing from your rant -- and I mean that in the most respectful of ways, was a discussion on what must take place for a cold-blooded being to transition into a warm-blooded being. Talk about amazing!

For me, that was the first glaring proof of evolution's weakness.

A given volume of space can potentially have quantum fluctuations, but is it required to?

Yes. The saying in physics is, "whatever is possible is compulsory".

From a quantum field theory point of view, the fluctuations constitute the vacuum. They are the vacuum.

Can this requirement be labeled "a cause" of the fluctuations?

No.

I have heard it said that if physical laws do not prohibit an event, it will occur, eventually. For example, based on quantum probabilities, it is possible to compute the probability of a beer can spontaneously falling off the table to floor. The answer involves some huge number of zeros, but the possibility is there. Does this "potential to fall" constitute a cause?

Quantum fluctuations don't involve sudden, unconserved changes in momentum that would be necessary to fling a beer from a table. Energy and momentum are conserved. So instead of the beer, I'll use an example of neutron decay. Does the potential to decay constitute a cause? Not in any meaningful sense, I'd say.

Astrophysicist Dr Hugh Ross argues that quantom physics is dependent on probabilites for events to take place within certain intervals of time, hence without time no events take place.

There's an old saying, "time is that which prevents everything from happening at once."

By the way I'm not one to except uncaused events. While quantom mechanics is a great mystery, I believe some time in the future we will understand the apparent contradictions assoiciated with it.

But there aren't contradictions in quantum mechanics. The mystery exists only in our prejudiced minds. The equations work out perfectly, and they match the experimental reality perfectly. What more is there?

The reason people have trouble understanding quantum mechanics is that they are trying to describe quantum events in terms of everyday experiences. The problem with that is that everyday experiences are composed of quantum phenomena. You simply can't describe the more fundamental in terms of the less fundamental; it can't logically be done. It's like trying to describe a page as being made up of books, or even of libraries.

In my humble view science is finished if there are really uncaused effects.

I don't see why you'd say that. Indeed, it is our ability to "compartmentalize"--to treat as random many things which, if we were omniscient, we would be able to calculate from previous states--that enables us to do science at all. Even if the trajectories of air molecules are completely deterministic inside the volume of a soap bubble, I don't need to know those trajectories to understand or predict the behavior of the bubble.

The honest truth is that there are enough different lines of reasoning which demolish evolutionism that, if we were actually dealing with a theory rather than an ideological doctrine, it would have died a natural death 50 years ago.

Some useful references:

Talk.origins/Sci.Bio.Evolution Realities

(because most of the evoglop links typically posted on such discussions originate with talk.origins...)

Major Scientific Problems with Evolution

Many Experts Quoted on FUBAR State of Evolution

(Steve Jackson's Web Site)

Social Darwinism, Naziism, Communism, Darwinism Roots etc.

Creation and Intelligent Design Links

Catastrophism

Intelligent Versions of Biogenesis etc.

Thanks for the links... Does one of those point me to a cold-blooded vs. warm-blooded discussion?

Also, somewhere earlier in this thread there was a reference made to Earth revolving around Saturn? What's that all about?

Thank You!

Thanks for the links... Does one of those point me to a cold-blooded vs. warm-blooded discussion?

That discussion is out there but I don't have that right to hand.

Also, somewhere earlier in this thread there was a reference made to Earth revolving around Saturn? What's that all about?

Oh boy..

I don't go around the internet trying to introduce people to the Saturn theory out of the blue. If somebody walks straight up and asks me about it, however...

All antique religions were astral in nature, the name associations between gods and planets being primordial. Now, if you were to pay some group of primitives in our modern world, such as democrats or evolutionists, to devise an astral religion outright from scratch, they would invariably end up worshipping the sun and the moon. Whatever's in third place in the sky today is WAY back in third place.

The two chieftain gods of all antique religious systems, however, were invariably the planets Jupiter and Saturn, Zeus and Kronos. That makes no sense given present realities, but it gets better.

The littlest bit of reading into antique sources turns up a wealth of information pointing to a different kind of sky in the antique world. Writers like Hesiod and Ovid constantly refer to a golden age prior to the flood as an age of Kronos (Saturn), when Kronos was the "king of heaven", and they refer to antediluvians as "children of Kronos". The languge is fairly simple; the sun is the "king of heaven" now.

But it gets better. Articles in the journals of Assyriology in the early 1900s turned up the fact that virtually all of the names used for the sun in the ancient near east were names which had originally been used for the planet Saturn, and then had been transferred to the sun.

Like I say, this stuff is JUST A THEORY; without owning a time machine, I've got no way of proving any of this to anybody, and you sure as hell do not see me jumping up and down demanding that any of this be taught as a fact in public schools at public expense.

But the simplest possible interpretation of what Hesiod, Plato, Ovid, and numerous others are claiming is that Jupiter and Saturn very recently comprised a small double star system, and that we were part of that system. The flood and the various cosmic disasters you read about in ancient literature amount to descriptions of the mayhem which ensued as that elder system was captured by our present sun and the component bodies began to orbit the sun separately.

Saturn and the Antique System

Egyptian enclosed crescent (prototype cosmic ship) and Babylonian Shamesh petroglyph

What the artists actually saw...

The Shamesh glyph is, in fact, the same thing as the familiar Islamic icon which is normally taken to be a star-moon icon. In real life, that cannot happen, i.e. a star will never be seen inside the crescent of the moon, simply because the unlit part of the moon will occult the star.

Egyptian artwork consistently replicates the cosmic alignment shown above as noted in several of the articles linked below. Here, the Mars/Venus alignment shows up on a piece of jewelry (shen-bond). The alignment which Egyptian and near Eastern art depicts consistently shows Earth, Mars, and Venus lined up in a sort of a stack below the gas giant. This is similar to what we saw when the string of comets followed eachother like a shish-kabob into Jupter a few years back.

The Saturn Myths: A brief introduction to what is emerging as the grand unifying theory of catastrophism.

Images courtesy of Kronia Communications

At this point, the authors of several of the variants of a Saturn thesis have their own WWW sites and generally do a better job of expounding those theories than I can. What I am attempting to provide which those sites do not is a sort of a businessman's big-picture view of the manner in which a number of the various puzzle pieces fit together, including the question of Jaynsian anomalies. My own general estimation of Saturn theory variants at this point is as follow: I believe that Ev Cochrane and David Talbott have done a better job of excavating and describing the Saturn system (the age just prior to ours) than other authors have. Nonetheless, they do not offer a plausible theory of how anything like the Saturn system could have come about in the first place or any sort of a general system of cosmology; Al DeGrazia and Earl Milton do that, and their "Solaria Binaria" is therefore my choice for first book to read on the topic. The fact that it can be had in PDF form for $10 along with twenty some other published works doesn't hurt.

Major WWW sites dealing with the Saturn thesis include:

Further Thoughts on the Topic

The Ship of Heaven: Egyptian Iconography and the antique system.

Petroglyphs: Images of the former sun on the walls of caves.

Intimations of an Alien Sky: Article on the antique system (Cardona)

Darkness and the Deep: Dwardu Cardona on the early stages of the antique system

Harold Tresman's Version of this whole business; an article posted to talk.origins, summer 1995. Geological Genesis, (C)1993 Harold Tresman, Chronology & Catastrophism Workshop (ISSN: 0951-5985) August 1993 Number1.

From a dwarf to a giant and back again, over and over: Ev Cochrane on the recurring myth of the warrior-hero who changes his size periodically.

Green Star: Egyptian descriptions of the green sun which they worshipped.