Evolution v. Creationism

[Woodznutz]

What stuff was created?

Everything that exists whether visible or invisible.

 

[Woodznutz]

It did in China. Come to think of it I guess we do it everywhere. But China's one child policy is the best example of destroying people that don't make the grade.

Thankfully that has changed once they realized that their whole society was in danger of disappearing because there weren't enough gals to have kids. In some cities the men outnumber the women 50 to 1.

 

[Hollie]

Everything that exists whether visible or invisible.

Because you say so?

 

[Woodznutz]

It would be nice, however, if they didn't feel the need to force it on everyone else.

You have it backward. Creationists are defending against the encroachment of godless evolution, which by the way is winning the day.

 

[Woodznutz]

Because you say so?

It's what the overwhelming evidence says. Recall the expression, "You can't get here from there"? Apply that to evolution.

 

[Hollie]

It's what the evidence (ignored by science) says.

What would that evidence be?

 

[Woodznutz]

What would that evidence be?

Read "Gray's Anatomy", then try to reconcile the ToE with what you learn.

 

[Hollie]

Read "Gray's Anatomy", then try to reconcile the ToE with what you learn.

Was Gray's Anatomy authored by the gods?

I was hoping you could provide some evidence of supernatural gods and then follow with some evidence for supernatural creations created by those supernatural gods. Something of a logical, rational progression of causation. That would be nice.

 

[Woodznutz]

Was Gray's Anatomy authored by the gods?

I was hoping you could provide some evidence of supernatural gods and then follow with some evidence for supernatural creations created by those supernatural gods. Something of a logical, rational progression of causation. That would be nice.

Gray's Anatomy was authored by scientist(s). He/they unwittingly support creation by revealing complexities not possible through evolution.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

You have it backward. Creationists are defending against the encroachment of godless evolution, which by the way is winning the day.

Actually my point was exactly that. Their sense of their relationship with their God is threatened by Evolution. Which is why it isn't really all that important for most Christians.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

Intelligence created the universe.

How do you know this?

Everything is made manifest by mind.

Do you believe there is an external reality independent of your mind?

How else do you believe the universe was created from nothing?

Special pleading to assume that it required "intelligence".

I don't know how the universe was created. And the cool thing is you don't either. No one does and arguably no one ever can know.

It's like asking "what happened before time existed?" It's a meaningless and unknowable question.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

You don't know what you are talking about.

Thus sayet the Lord.

If the protons and neutrons were closer in mass to the electrons, whether light or heavy, then the motions of the electrons would be reflected in reciprocal motions by the others. All structures composed of such atoms would be fluid; in such a universe nothing would stay put. There could not be the fitting together of molecular shapes that permits not only crystals to form, but living organisms. The universe could have been created exactly the same way but it would be devoid of life.

Wow, that's a lot of pseudoscientific gobbledy gook.

Do you want me to go on or you going to be making a ridiculous argument that life doesn't have to be carbon based?

Are you capable of having a conversation with anyone? OR does everyone have to agree with you 100% or they are idiots?

Life doesn't have to be carbon-based. WHY WOULD IT?

Carbon has the relatively unique (but not absolutely unique) ability to bond with itself in a variety of orbital hybridizations but that isn't anything magical. There's about 91 other elements on the periodic table available.

 

[Cardinal Carminative]

Life and intelligence exists precisely because the laws of nature are so finely tuned for it. Physicists consider a life filled universe to be an unnatural universe as in it shouldn't exist. That's how finely tuned the laws of nature are.

"Physicists consider..." Sounds like Trump's usual "People are saying..." No one ever knows who those people are.

 

[ding]

How do you know this?

Because the laws of nature existed before space and time and because the presence of matter/energy creates its own space and time and is subject to change so matter/energy cannot be an eternal source. So the only thing that can exist eternally (i.e. unchanging) is no thing. Consciousness is no thing.

 

[ding]

Do you believe there is an external reality independent of your mind?

I believe as long as consciousness exists reality is made manifest.

"Physicists live with the problem of consciousness day in and day out. Early in this century it became evident to all physicists that the observer is an intrinsic component of every physical observation. Physical reality is what physicists recognize to be real. One cannot separate the recognition of existence from existence. As Erwin Schrödinger put it: “The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories. It is convenient to regard it as existing objectively on its own. But it certainly does not become manifest by its mere existence." George Wald​

 

[ding]

Special pleading to assume that it required "intelligence".

I don't know how the universe was created. And the cool thing is you don't either. No one does and arguably no one ever can know.

It's like asking "what happened before time existed?" It's a meaningless and unknowable question.

We know from science that space and time had a beginning. Specifically, red shift, cosmic background radiation, Friedmann's solutions to Einstein's field equations, quantum mechanics, the First Law of Thermodynamics, the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Inflation Theory. If the universe is expanding then it must have a beginning. If you follow it backwards in time, then any object must come to a boundary of space time. You cannot continue that history indefinitely. This is still true even if a universe has periods of contraction. It still has to have a beginning if expansion over weights the contraction. Physicists have been uncomfortable with the idea of a beginning since the work of Friedman which showed that the solutions of Einstein's equation showed that the universe had a beginning.

Inflation Theory, the First Law of Thermodynamics and quantum mechanics tells us that it is possible for matter to have a beginning. In a closed universe the gravitational energy which is always negative exactly compensates the positive energy of matter. So the energy of a closed universe is always zero. So nothing prevents this universe from being spontaneously created. Because the net energy is always zero. The positive energy of matter is balanced by the negative energy of the gravity of that matter which is the space time curvature of that matter. There is no conservation law that prevents the formation of such a universe. In quantum mechanics if something is not forbidden by conservation laws, then it necessarily happens with some non-zero probability. So a closed universe can spontaneously appear - through the laws of quantum mechanics - out of nothing. And in fact there is an elegant mathematical description which describes this process and shows that a tiny closed universe having very high energy can spontaneously pop into existence and immediately start to expand and cool. In this description, the same laws that describe the evolution of the universe also describe the appearance of the universe which means that the laws were in place before the universe itself.

 

[ding]

Wow, that's a lot of pseudoscientific gobbledy gook.

Actually it's just science. Science I got from a Nobel Laureate.

George Wald: Life and Mind in the Universe

 

[ding]

Are you capable of having a conversation with anyone? OR does everyone have to agree with you 100% or they are idiots?

I believe that growth filled communities should explore all sides of an issue to arrive at objective truth. That's what you and I are doing here. I'm just better at it than you because I am objective and you are emotional. So, no, not everyone must agree with me 100% of the time or at all or anything in between. Just because you are wrong about something does not necessarily make you an idiot. That can only be determined by what you do afterwards.

 

[ding]

Carbon has the relatively unique (but not absolutely unique) ability to bond with itself in a variety of orbital hybridizations but that isn't anything magical. There's about 91 other elements on the periodic table available.

I'm going to let George Wald, Nobel Laureate respond....

"...Now, to leave the elementary particles and go on to atoms, to elements. Of the 92 natural elements, ninety-nine percent of the living matter we know is composed of just four: hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), nitrogen (N), and carbon (C). That is bound to be true wherever life exists in the universe, for only those four elements possess the unique properties upon which life depends.

Their unique position in chemistry can be stated in a sentence: They -- in the order given -- are the lightest elements that achieve stable electronic configurations (i.e., those mimicking the inert gases) by gaining respectively one, two, three, and four electrons. Gaining electrons, in the sense of sharing them with other atoms, is the mechanism of forming chemical bonds, hence molecules. The lightest elements make not only the tightest bonds, hence the most stable molecules, but introduce a unique property crucial for life: of all the natural elements, only oxygen, nitrogen and carbon regularly form double and triple bonds with one another, so saturating all their tendencies to combine further.

Now, professors sometimes tell their students foolish things, which the students carefully learn and reproduce on exams and eventually teach the next generation. When chemistry professors teach the periodic system of elements, one has those horizontal periods of the elements and the professors say, “If you go down vertically, the elements repeat their same properties.” That is utter nonsense, as any kid with a chemistry set would know. For under oxygen comes sulfur. Try breathing sulfur somethime. Under nitrogen comes phosphorus. There is not any phosphorus in that kid’s chemistry set. It is too dangerous; it bursts into flame spontaneously on exposure to air. And under carbon comes silicon.

If that chemistry professor were talking sense, there are two molecules that should have very similar properties: carbon dioxide (CO2) and silicon dioxide (SiO2). Well, in carbon dioxide the central carbon is tied to both of the oxygen atoms by double bonds O=C=O. Those double bonds completely saturate the combining tendencies of all three atoms, hence CO2 is a happy, independent molecule. It goes off in the air as a gas, and dissolves in all the waters of the Earth, and those are the places from which living organisms extract their carbon.

But silicon cannot form a double bond, hence in silicon dioxide the central silicon is tied to the two oxygens only by single bonds, leaving four half‑formed bonds -- four unpaired electrons -- two on the silicon and one on each oxygen, ready to pair with any other available lone electrons. But where can one find them? Obviously on neighboring silicone dioxide molecules, so each molecule binds to the next, and that to the next, and on and on until you end up with a rock -- for example quartz, which is just silicone dioxide molecules bound to one another to form a great super-molecule. The reason quartz is so hard is that to break it one must break numerous chemical bonds. And that is why, though silicon is 135 times as plentiful as carbon in the Earth’s surface, it makes rocks, and to make living organisms one must turn to carbon. I could make a parallel argument for oxygen and nitrogen.

These four elements, Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, also provide an example of the astonishing togetherness of our universe. They make up the “organic” molecules that constitute living organisms on a planet, and the nuclei of these same elements interact to generate the light of its star. Then the organisms on the planet come to depend wholly on that starlight, as they must if life is to persist. So it is that all life on the Earth runs on sunlight. I do not need spiritual enlightenment to know that I am one with the universe -- that is just good physics...."

George Wald: Life and Mind in the Universe

 

[ding]

"Physicists consider..." Sounds like Trump's usual "People are saying..." No one ever knows who those people are.

It's your lucky day because here's one.

Naturalness and the Standard Model

Matt Strassler [August 27 – September 9, 2013] What is “Naturalness”? [This subject is closely related to the hierarchy problem.] What do particle physicists and string theorists …

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