God, Evolution or Extraterrestrial Creationism?

Zombrex

5uspect wrote:

this and tell us where exactly it says that natural selection is a simple lottery.

Wow, that was 20 years ago. the objections of the creationists is a strange sense of deja vu

Scofflaw

Schuhart wrote:

I'm probably going off point, but then if the topic is extraterrestrial creationism its sort of hard to set a limit. I'm interested in this comment, because I'd sort of noticed statement of the Second Law here and there approaching the idea from very different directions. I remember one being something like 'a closed system becomes progressively less capable of work' which sounds like the story of my life.

I'm interested in the point that disorder is not necessarily a part of the idea. Yet, any definition I've seen seems to involve some kind of balance sheet. Up to this, the idea I had was something like an alarm clock with the spring wound. It will eventually run out over time. Looking at the clock at a particular time, any movement forward of the hands can be accounted for by the unwinding of the spring.

In popular refutations of creationist citation of entropy tend to use this kind of balance sheet explanation. They are along the lines 'you can have an increase in complexity in one part of a closed system, because some other part might be paying the price in terms of increased disorder'.

Hmm. Actually, the best refutation is that neither the Earth, nor any given organism, is actually a closed system, so the concept is meaningless as applied by Creationists, since it only applies to closed systems.

The 'balance sheet' you're referring to is actually a combination of two concepts.

1. From an energetic point of view, a spring under tension is in a more energetic state than when unwound - you supplied the original energy when you wound it up (thus storing the energy in the spring). If nothing prevents the spring from unwinding, then it will do so, because a less energetic state is more "stable" (which is a second-law effect).

Since the energy contained in the wound spring is of a kind that can be converted into other forms (essentially by the push/pull of the unwinding spring), we can use the energy stored in the spring to do work.

2. Since energy is neither created nor destroyed*, the total amount of work we get out of the spring unwinding can at most be equal to the amount of work put in - hence the idea of the balance sheet.

Actually, of course, the amount of work will be less, because some of the energy you originally put in will be lost as heat and noise when the spring unwinds.

*the caveat is that mass can be converted into energy - the amount you get from doing such a conversion is the famous E=mc2.

Schuhart wrote:

In visualising that, I've sort of posed a question 'how is this Neaderthal a little bit smarter than mom and pop'. Up to this, my understanding is the increase might, ultimately, be traced back to whatever tiny part of the Sun's energy that might have found its way into the processes that caused that child to be that tiny bit more developed. So, taking a scenario where we assume the Sun to be the only external feature to the system, the 'Evolution' account would ultimately be balanced by the Sun burning itself out.

Hmm again. Going back to the first part of my answer, and changing the analogy a bit, you can visualise the sun as the source of a stream - a sort of wellspring of energy, some of which flows to us here on Earth (a miniscule fraction).

Now the miniscule fraction that flows to us is still a vast amount of energy, but it is limited. Living organisms - you, me, maggots, trees, MRSA - are all energy throughput devices. Like billions of tiny watermills along the Sun's stream of energy, we all put our millwheels into the energy stream. Like watermills, we use the flow of energy to do work - grinding our daily bread, if you like, and building ourselves up. If we are separated from the stream, the second law takes hold, and we wither away in the darkness.

Primary producers - mostly plants - use the Sun's energy directly, by utilising incident photons to knock electrons off chlorophyll molecules, setting off a chain of reactions that allow the plant to make ATP, the primary energy currency of all terrestrial life. I personally like to see that as the photon falling down a cascade to drive the little watermills - which in turn produce tiny golden bricks of energy...totally fanciful, but not entirely inaccurate.

Plants, then, actually have their millwheels directly in the stream. The rest of us, the so-called organotrophes, basically rob the mills (herbivores), or rob the robbers (carnivores, parasites), or both (omnivores). For greater efficiency, most life is organised into multicellular organisms, like gangs of robbers with specialised members.

All of us fit into a vast network of robbers and robbed that spreads away from the stream of energy. Humans have long organised parts of this network into the local protection rackets we call farming. As you can imagine, however, the further from the stream itself you go, the more of the energy that has been wasted - dropped, spilled, lost - so farming carnivores is extremely wasteful of energy, and even farming cattle is more wasteful than farming plants.

So, the energy that drives human beings does what, then? Well, all organisms seek to maximise the energy they recieve, and to use it most efficiently. Every organism has a personal balance sheet - the carnivore must expend so much energy to hunt, kill, and eat his prey (outgoings), and this needs to be less than the amount he gains by so doing (income). If the carnivore turns enough of a profit (fat and easy prey), he can devote the excess to finding a mate and reproducing.

So, those organisms with the best balance of income and outgoings will dominate. If the market is fat, the pressure to change will be slight, and they will probably become inefficient. If the market is tight, competition will be fierce, and tiny advantages will mean life or death. Those that survive are those best suited to their market.

So, to come round after a long wander to your original thought - the sun itself does not drive improvement. Instead, the organism is improved by accident. As to who gets the improvement - it's a lottery. Those that receive it are only improved in the sense of being a better fit to their particular way of energy use/theft, better able to capture some of the sun's energy and better able to use it efficiently. The rest go down into the dark, and with them perish all their possible descendants, to make room for us, the survivors.

You yourself are the descendant of millions of generations of survivors. Your ancestors crawled out of the sea, survived the meteors, lived through the ice ages and survived the great plagues. None of which means that you would survive in the conditions of the early Earth, despite being "more" evolved than anything else thenon the planet, simply because the environment for which you are fitted is not that environment. You would die like a king in the desert.

Schuhart wrote:

All of which terribly elaborate stuff may be completely irrelevant. Are those usual refutations of the creationist position barking up the wrong tree?

Er. Sorry about all that. See first point...

grandiloquently and orotundly,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

Wow, that was 20 years ago. the objections of the creationists is a strange sense of deja vu

By the way, I see you got your wish...

cordially,
Scofflaw

Zillah

RayMondo,

Are you just copying and pasting this stuff from a Raelian "What to say" document? I promise you, the people here are generally far far too intelligent to fall for your silly ploys, not to mention the fact that it would appear that the average poster on this forum has an understanding of evolution leagues beyond your own. With that being the case I'd suggest you actually try and understand what we're saying, or just go away; the "come be a Raelian" gambit isn't going to work, you're not making sense. Now if you can present us with evidence for the alien origins of life rather than making laughably awful arguments against evolution, I'm sure you'll catch our interest.

Sincerely,
Zillah.

Zillah

Sangre wrote:

Its more like shaking a bag full of shapes and the bag has a triangle shape at the bottom. Eventually the triangle will fall out.

(right?)

Perfect metaphor for a single step of natural selection.

5uspect

Wicknight wrote:

Wow, that was 20 years ago. the objections of the creationists is a strange sense of deja vu

Just goes to show their unwillingness to act with an open mind when looking at the evidence. I wonder will they ever just get over it.

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

By the way, I see you got your wish...

cordially,
Scofflaw

Kelly Brooke covered in honey lying naked in my bed room horny as hell ...

Zillah

Zillah wrote:

RayMondo,

Are you just copying and pasting this stuff from a Raelian "What to say" document? I promise you, the people here are generally far far too intelligent to fall for your silly ploys, not to mention the fact that it would appear that the average poster on this forum has an understanding of evolution leagues beyond your own. With that being the case I'd suggest you actually try and understand what we're saying, or just go away; the "come be a Raelian" gambit isn't going to work, you're not making sense. Now if you can present us with evidence for the alien origins of life rather than making laughably awful arguments against evolution, I'm sure you'll catch our interest.

Sincerely,
Zillah.

I suppose it's a step up from quoting the "dr dino" questions...

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

Kelly Brooke covered in honey lying naked in my bed room horny as hell ...

Ah, no - you wished for a nutter, I'm afraid. Rather than, er, hard to shift stains.

sympathetically,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

5uspect wrote:

Just goes to show their unwillingness to act with an open mind when looking at the evidence. I wonder will they ever just get over it.

Hmm. 2-3000+ years of Creationism vs 150 of evolution? I reckon they figure we're just a passing fad.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Dades

Scofflaw wrote:

Ah, no - you wished for a nutter, I'm afraid. Rather than, er, hard to shift stains.

Only a nutter would cover themselves in honey if you ask me.
What's wrong with whipped cream, I say?

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

Ah, no - you wished for a nutter, I'm afraid. Rather than, er, hard to shift stains.

sympathetically,
Scofflaw

oh right, my other wish ....

bonkey

RayMondo wrote:

I think we must adapt (no pun intended) to the new realisation of ‘atheist intelligent design’, which makes considerably more sense than all life on Earth being one big accident, or lottery.

Why do you think we must?

So far the only reason you've given is that you don't subscribe to the other possibilities that you've enumerated. YOu haven't shown or explained why there can be no other options, which would be the only justification for coming to a conclusion through a process of elimination.

NASA scientists are already planning on implanting new life forms on other planets.

And? We've already created new life forms. What do you think GM foods are?

However, you are again making the mistake of assuming that because something can be done one way, it must have been done this way in the past.

You haven't shown why there are no other possibilities.

Even if your criticism of the leading theory were correct, you still haven't established why we should arrive at your conclusion through a process of elimination.

Evolution has never been reproduced in a laboratory, which is why it’s called a ‘theory’.

Firstly, thats not why its called a theory.

Secondly, evolution has been reproduced artificially.

(by the way Charles Darwin’s theory was very quiet on man’s evolution mostly he concentrated on animals)

Would you care to explain how man is not an animal?
This would be the only reason why an evolutionary theory regarding animals wouldn't apply to man.

and still today we haven’t found the missing-link

Nor have we found God or the Raeliens.

Do you agree that creationism (divine or elien) is therefore equally incomplete?

So after 150 years evolution hasn’t gone down well with everyone and I’m not just talking about the theists,

Science isn't a popularity contest.

There is no reason to believe the universe actually cares whether or not you approve of how it functions.

Just because we find support for something doesn’t mean that one’s idea is the truth,

Correct. Thats why science doesn't work that way, but rather on the principle of falsifiable predictions.

UFOs (which have to be taken into account, because they go back to ancient times)

UFOs can be taken into account when you show how they lead to falsifiable predictions. If you can't do that, then you can either leave them out, or accept that you are abandoning the field of science.

So which is it? Are you talking non-scientifically here, or have you falsifiable predictions to offer us regarding UFOs???

put all these pieces of the jigsaw together and see the big picture,

Bad analagy. With a jigsaw, we know the picture we want to see, and we attempt to make the pieces fit. What we have here from your "lets include everything" approach is a chunk of pieces that may or not be part of the picture and no idea what the picture actually looks like.

For me, teh first step is to agree on a method of determining which pieces are and are not part of the picture. I defy you to provide a better approach then the scientific one. And if you wish to tread the scientific path, your first task will be to establish the existence of any piece you wish to include...which includes your UFOs, God, and the rest of it.

it’s useless looking at just one area.

Good thing science doesn't do that then.

well then what’s outside this universe holding it up – nothing?

Holding it up from what? And what do you mean by "outside" the universe?

If there is something holding it up then isn’t that part of the universe, and what’s holding that part up etc wouldn’t it make more sense that there was always something there in the first place, ie infinity in space and time?

No.

Why is one infinity (an infinite time-and-space) more reasonable than another (an infinite number of layers of "holding the univese up"...whatever you mean by that)???

Why do you find that one infinity is logical, but the other not?

More importantly, if you're willing to believe in infinite time and space, then you have to allow that you have an infinity of possibilities within that. Why then do you find your "shake a bag with watch-pieces and get a watch" to be unacceptable? It doesn't matter how unlikely it is, in an infinity of timem surely it must happen.

How can you meaningfully attack both ideas? If you reject the finite age of the universe, then your grounds for objecting to evolution (although wrong in and of themselves) are no longer logical. The reverse is also true. If you reject evolution based on your (incorrect) understanding of it, it can only be because you think the odds are too great...which wouldn't make sense if you had an infinity of time in which to meet those odds.

OK I can see that there are quite a lot of astute people here, it was a baptism of fire of sorts but I think I can pick myself back up…

It would seem that you're implying that you can do better and will do so because you're dealing with people who aren't gullible, idiots, or ignorant of the subjects being discussed. That's not a terribly good way to redeem yourself.

It suggests your aim is to "win" people over to your way of thinking using whatever technique works best on them. Personally, I find such intellectual dishonest to be distasteful, so I hope that this is just another point you've made badly and need to recover from.

Scofflaw

and still today we haven’t found the missing-link

Well, we can't, can we - by definition. We have found lots of intermediate forms, but unless every single one of our ancestors were fossilised (and dug up), we would still have a missing link.

regards,
Scoffllaw

Schuhart

Scofflaw wrote:

Hmm. Actually, the best refutation is that neither the Earth, nor any given organism, is actually a closed system, so the concept is meaningless as applied by Creationists, since it only applies to closed systems.

Very useful post. I’m just trying to tie it down into a simple, illustrative, statement.

Creationist: Second law of thermodynamics says things in a closed system should fall apart unless something from outside sustains them.

Response: It can sometimes be taken to mean that. Essentially, the Second law points out that if you close up a potted plant in a box, it will die. Put it in sunlight, and it grows. The Earth is not a closed system in a box. It’s in sunlight. So things grow.

The things that grow best will do better than the things that don’t. The reason some things will do better than others has nothing in particular to do with the second law.

bonkey

Schuhart wrote:

Very useful post. I’m just trying to tie it down into a simple, illustrative, statement.

Creationist: Second law of thermodynamics says things in a closed system should fall apart unless something from outside sustains them.

Response: I agree, but earth isn't a closed system, so what is the relevance?

Schuhart

That’s grand except it looks too much like the issue is being defined out of existence. I think it needs some expansion to make it clear for the general reader. Specifically something to say

1. the ‘openness’ of the Earth is not just a technicality, like a pub knocking a wall down so they can say ‘smoke away, we’re not a closed system any more’.

2. the essential process of evolution is not dependant on the second law – otherwise your creationist mate just extends the scope to cover the whole universe and says ‘right, now how do we get evolution on that planet over there’.

Zillah

Surely if we look at the universe as a single, closed system, then it does obey the second law. Its just on a time scale bigger than most people appreciate? A few billion blips of dynamic, organised systems are nothing compared to the grand universal entropy?

I'm really just chewing logic on a topic I'm not that familiar with though.

Scofflaw

Zillah wrote:

Surely if we look at the universe as a single, closed system, then it does obey the second law. Its just on a time scale bigger than most people appreciate? A few billion blips of dynamic, organised systems are nothing compared to the grand universal entropy?

I'm really just chewing logic on a topic I'm not that familiar with though.

The Universe is assumed to be a closed system, as far as I know, and so the second law would have exactly the effect described - everything will run slowly down towards a sort of generic state. Used to be called the "heat-death of the Universe" as far as I recall.

cordially,
Scofflaw

fulofh20

I agree on evoluation, but the topic of any religious belief can be made extreme to affect others adversely. Any religion including Atheism can argue it's point to extreme and mock or condemn others behaviours/beliefts etc.
Keep your beliefc clean, respectable and unbiased.
As for extraterristrial, I have had an ususual experience that has prompted by thinking to consider the possibility of ET lifeform.
I am not a crazy person, not religious, open minded and suspicious, but I believe there is more to the ET story that, some people will agree, some deny.

Zillah

fulofh20 wrote:

Any religion including Atheism can argue it's point to extreme and mock or condemn others behaviours/beliefts etc.

Atheism is a religion in the way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.

And I disagree with your implication that you must become extreme to mock and condemn. All sorts of world views are very mockable and worthy of condemnation without verging into extremism.

fulofh20

Zillah wrote:

Atheism is a religion in the way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.

Did I say it wasn't? Why are you on the defensive about that small detail you jumped to conclusion about?

Zillah

Uh, you said "Any religion including Atheism". That statement means Atheism is a religion, which it isn't.

For example:
"Any flavour including chocolate" is fine. If I said "Any flavour including purple" I would be wrong, purple isn't a flavour. See?

5uspect

Why are these guys always getting banned?

edit: tho it looks to be the same guy...

RayMondo

I'm not asking anybody to be anything, just putting another side, I'm not making sense, well that's your opinion, maybe I need a degree in evolution or something, and a good doctor for all the pills Maybe I'll evolve into something better or die out, anyway respect:)

5uspect

Did you at least watch the Blind Watchmaker documentary and see that your belief that evolution is simply eyes and watches etc suddenly appearing is completely wrong? Has your understanding of evolution improved since your previous posts?

Killaqueen!!!

I'm so confused after seeing Dawkins on the Panel a while ago (yes, only then was I confused cos I've never really thought about it before!).

I believe in God. I am a Christian. I may not be a very good Christian unfortunately, but I do believe in God. But I also believe in evolution..because you can't really not believe in evolution because it is basically a fact. There is so much proof to support it.

Am I basically contradicting myself? Because I know that you can believe that God created evolution or whatever, but it has no mention at all in the bible. It just says in the first book of the Bible that God created the seas and the skies, Adam and Eve etc.

I don't know what to believe now...

Myksyk

It is difficult. Catholicism 'solves' the dilemma by inventing the notion of ensoulment (the intervention of God to place a soul in a person). It squares this with evolution by saying that the same event happened on some global scale within humanity at some point during evolution so that they became children of God so to speak. I don't buy it myself. I think it does require intellectual gymnastics to square evolution with belief in a personal God.

pH

Myksyk wrote:

It is difficult. Catholicism 'solves' the dilemma by inventing the notion of ensoulment (the intervention of God to place a soul in a person). It squares this with evolution by saying that the same event happened on some global scale within humanity at some point during evolution so that they became children of God so to speak. I don't buy it myself. I think it does require intellectual gymnastics to square evolution with belief in a personal God.

Have you a link to an 'official' explanation of this? Given that the current belief is that the soul is present from birth it would require a generation of children being born to soulless animals.

If this did indeed happen, God left us to figure it out himself, he certainly didn't mention it in any of his published works. In fact his published works lead us off in another direction completely, which begs the question why would he not have just let then know the truth, and if Genesis I was indeed revealed by God and it isn't literal, and it is metaphorical as some of the devout claim, what exactly is it a metaphor for?

Myksyk

It is not only present from birth but present from conception. I think this is when the ensoulment is said to take place. So ... no soulless children!!

I am of course open to correction on my ramblings which may not be as well informed as I'd like to think!!!