Evolution

I was using the NIV.

Also... back to the idea of the sandcastle. You could also make the arguement that since you didn't see a human build it, and since you see no human being (except yourself) around that you can't really prove that a human made it. What evidence do you have to the contrary? Without seeing it yourself, you could always question whether an intelligent being made it. What if a child came back and said, "I made that sandcastle," what proof do you have that he made it, or that still it was made by any intelligence at all?

I guess there's always a slight chance that the ocean could have made it, anyway...

You know... I guess we'd all love concrete proof God existed... but to me, the world /is/ concrete proof. I don't need God to reshape a mountain, cause the mountain is already there, a testament to God's handiwork, magnificence and wisdom.

I watched Futurama a couple nights ago, and a character that might have been God said, "if you do everything right, they won't even be sure you're there." And that's pretty accurate. That's what "faith" is. Of course there are things I can't explain. But I don't try to fool myself into thinking that evolution or man's knowledge can discover it all for me. Science changes, quite frequently over the centuries, and what was once thought to be the solid-gold truth is now laughed at, and maybe what was once laughed at is now considered the solid-gold truth. Science is a great thing that man has created and cultivated, and continues to improve, but because it is man-made, like everything man creates, it is flawed in one way or another, and it never answers all of our questions, no matter how much knowledge we think we might have attained. Cause a few years from now, someone might discover something that completely changes our view of the natural world as we know it.

Can we ever be at the peak of human understanding? No, because there is always more to learn, always more to create, always more to understand. But I would in no way place my faith in a human creation such as science. Cause everything human has failed me at one point or another. Yet God has never failed me, and it takes less faith for me to believe in him than the faith it would require for me to believe in man.

I know we'll never peak...that was the entire point...we will never reach our peak intelligence, which means we can never be completely sound in our scientific guesses of whether God exists or whether he doesn't, because there still is, and always will be, a great deal we don't know.

I'm too fscking lazy to check where this conversation has gone, so I'll just respond to the original post.

No. Evolution presents no challenge to the idea of god or religion. You can just accept that you've interperated the Bible wrong, and go on with life. Some current religious institutions may have difficulty, but screw them. So side A, remember- God wants us todiscover the wonders of the world he's created, not deny them in, of all things, his name. Side B- Don't get cocky. Being right about one thing doesn't jusst extend to being right about the other things- that's why no debate can ever really end.

I say this because I just spent five HOURS doing god-things, and many more reading god-things, and it just seems poor timing to deny them right off the bat.

Originally posted by Vorpal@Sep 25 2004, 11:20 PM
You don't get it! You can't ever PROVE the existence of God under your criteria.

So? It's the criteria scientists use to prove anything. It's also the criteria sceptic Christians demand to see concerning Evolution. If you hold one side of the debate to one standard, the other side of the debate must also use that very same standard.

The basis for creation theory or intelligent designer theory is the fact that evolution does not follow the second law of thermodynamics whatsoever. Simply stated, as time progresses, the level of entropy in a system increases. Evolution is the exact opposite, as time progresses in evolution, entropy decreases, things become better suited to their environment, etc.

Your point being? Plants don't follow the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics either. Why should carbon and hydrogen and oxygen atoms suddenly become less chaotic and become more ordered into complex carbohydrates? That's right, because of sunlight and because of carbon dioxide and because of a huge complicated electron chain system that I can't remember because I learnt it about four years ago.

You look at certain species of animals that evolved at different times and through different chains, and yet they cannot exist without one another because they have a symbiotic relationship. You see similarities between animals that didn't have a common ancestor since the ameoba, but somehow they got similar bone structures or traits (like say some of the bone structures of a shark compared to the bone structures for a dolphin) that scientists can't explain through evolution, except that they are coincidences.

I'd like to point out an error in your argument. That's what I've been doing. Pointing out errors.

Current thought in evolutionism states that such things as bone structures and organs evolved pretty early on, so early on that they ended up as common features in all animals. Drugs testing on animals relies on this fact being true. If it wasn't true, then all drugs tests on animals so far has been irrelevant.

You look at a sandcastle on a beach and you don't say, "that was created by the ocean, there was a small fraction of a chance, but the waves hit just right to form it over the course of a billion years" NO! You don't! a sandcastle on the beach PROVES that there was an intellegent designer behind it. The sandcastle left to the ocean would eventually wash away (the system's entropy would increase)

Well, you just can't argue against the existence of God at the moment. How can you prove God's existence or disprove his existence empirically? You can't, partially because not everyone agrees exactly on what God is. God is so ill-defined that you cannot come up with a hypothesis and test it scientifically.

Can we ever be at the peak of human understanding? No, because there is always more to learn, always more to create, always more to understand. But I would in no way place my faith in a human creation such as science. Cause everything human has failed me at one point or another. Yet God has never failed me, and it takes less faith for me to believe in him than the faith it would require for me to believe in man.

Yet some people point to the Bible as if it is root of all knowledge and that all we need to know about God is in there. Since you agree that we can never be at the peak of human understanding, I assume you must also acknowledge that we can never reach the peak of understanding of God and how He created the Universe.

Thus Evolution could never challenge the existence of God, because as you stated yourself, we have not reached the peak of human understanding.

EDIT: Man, twisting other people's arguments is fun. Now I know why other Creationists I've met do it so much.

Seriously though, I hope you know that I am in no way trying to attack your faith. I hope you are not offended in any way by my comments and if you are, please accept my sincerest apologies.

Your point being? Plants don't follow the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics either. Why should carbon and hydrogen and oxygen atoms suddenly become less chaotic and become more ordered into complex carbohydrates? That's right, because of sunlight and because of carbon dioxide and because of a huge complicated electron chain system that I can't remember because I learnt it about four years ago.

You said it yourself: because of sunlight. If you pump energy into a system to make something happen, it's not spontaneous. The Second Law of Thermodynamics determines whether or not something will be spontaneous. What's pumping energy into DNA strands to make them mutate into more complex molecules?

Originally posted by SteveT@Sep 26 2004, 05:06 PM
You said it yourself: because of sunlight.  If you pump energy into a system to make something happen, it's not spontaneous.  The Second Law of Thermodynamics determines whether or not something will be spontaneous.  What's pumping energy into DNA strands to make them mutate into more complex molecules?

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Heat energy. Electrons. Free radicals. Sometimes DNA bases get mismatched. That sort of thing. You'd be surprised how easily DNA "mutates", even just a regular dose of UV can cause mutations.

That's what most people forget. DNA isn't just floating around in relative safety. Even within a cell, it's being attacked by free radicals generated from regular respiration (not breathing, respiration as in the generation of energy from glucose).

There are DNA mechanisms to repair the DNA, not to mention that you always have two copies and each two copies has one strand. Well, the DNA repair proteins use one strand as a template. There's a 50:50 chance of it attaching to the mutated strand and using that as the template, getting rid of the normal strand and replacing it with the mutated strand.

Once you realise how fragile DNA really is, even within a cell, you realise how easy it is for mutations to occur.

Your first two paragraphs supported your case, the second two went back to spontaneity.

So, I'll argue with the ones that are actually against me, and say, "yeah, that would probably do it." Although electrons aren't really that great for transmitting energy. At all. And "free radicals" seems kinda vague.

Originally posted by SteveT@Sep 26 2004, 05:14 PM
Your first two paragraphs supported your case, the second two went back to spontaneity.

So, I'll argue with the ones that are actually against me, and say, "yeah, that would probably do it."  Although electrons aren't really that great for transmitting energy.  At all.  And "free radicals" seems kinda vague.

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No, seriously, the last paragraph is paraphrased from a course I attended at University. DNA mechanisms, although great, sometimes aren't as great as we make them out to be. There is a chance that even repairing the DNA will go wrong.

Not to mention the fact that it's very easy in spermatogenesis or even in the formation of an egg (I forget its official name), for bits of DNA to get swapped round, for bits of DNA to go missing from one cell (I'll need to give you an entire lecture in order to explain this more, and frankly, I can't be arsed).

It's amazing what can go wrong with the cell and how frequently it goes wrong.

You look at certain species of animals that evolved at different times and through different chains, and yet they cannot exist without one another because they have a symbiotic relationship. You see similarities between animals that didn't have a common ancestor since the ameoba, but somehow they got similar bone structures or traits (like say some of the bone structures of a shark compared to the bone structures for a dolphin) that scientists can't explain through evolution, except that they are coincidences.

. Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden, Chapter five. READ!

Originally posted by Alakhriveion@Sep 26 2004, 12:35 PM
.  Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden, Chapter five.  READ!

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The Alak has spoken.

Not to mention the fact that it's very easy in spermatogenesis or even in the formation of an egg (I forget its official name), for bits of DNA to get swapped round, for bits of DNA to go missing from one cell (I'll need to give you an entire lecture in order to explain this more, and frankly, I can't be arsed).

That's still a random (or spontaneous) reaction that results in a more complex, ordered organism. That goes against the second law of thermodynamics unless some form of energy is shoved into the system in mass quantites.

Originally posted by SteveT@Sep 26 2004, 05:39 PM
That's still a random (or spontaneous) reaction that results in a more complex, ordered organism.  That goes against the second law of thermodynamics unless some form of energy is shoved into the system in mass quantites.

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And your point is?

My point is that it defies the second law of thermodynamics, and therefore can't just happen.

Look, about this Second-law violation thing... Just because it looks more special to use doesn't mean it's more orderly than the alternative. We are not special. We're just bags of charged chemicals, no better or worse or more or less orderly than the same chemicals floating around, ammounting to nothing pretty. The fact that those chemicals happened to have shifted in appearance over a quick three billion years doesn't violate anything.

Actually, any biologist will tell you that we're most certainly not just bags of chemical reactions. The biochemical pathways by which even a simple cell operates is far to complex to just appear without any large change in entropy.

If even simple cells were just bags of chemical reactions, then it'd be simple to artificially create a cell. However, we're still unable to do that.

"Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden, Chapter five. READ!"

The entirety of the Blind Watchmaker is good too...

On a side note, this thread is awful. None of you, including myself, have a strong grasp on the concepts and theories in modern evolutionary biology - we can talk about it's merits etc, but really, I don't think any one of us can actually debate it scientifically without looking on Google.

The point of this thread, I believe, was to examine whether or not evolution falsifies religion. So I'm going to respond to that, without even thinking about this other hubala.

In my opinion, evolution would show that a literalist interepretation of the creation stories of many religions, is impossible. However, it doesn't prohibit a contextualist interpretation in any regard. I don't think anyone actually disagree's with this assessment...

Originally posted by arunma@Sep 26 2004, 01:48 PM
Actually, any biologist will tell you that we're most certainly not just bags of chemical reactions.  The biochemical pathways by which even a simple cell operates is far to complex to just appear without any large change in entropy.

If even simple cells were just bags of chemical reactions, then it'd be simple to artificially create a cell.  However, we're still unable to do that.

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Actually, we're not. We synthesised polio, Summer '02 or '03. It was in the Times.

Second, it's still not complex enough. Remember, we're only talking three billion years here. That's, like, NOTHING in terms of that.

Originally posted by alak
Look, about this Second-law violation thing... Just because it looks more special to use doesn't mean it's more orderly than the alternative. We are not special. We're just bags of charged chemicals, no better or worse or more or less orderly than the same chemicals floating around, ammounting to nothing pretty. The fact that those chemicals happened to have shifted in appearance over a quick three billion years doesn't violate anything.

So you're trying to say that, for example, one molecule of glucose: C6H12O6 (if I'm not mistaken), is just as chaotic as 6 free carbon atoms, 3 oxygen molecules, and 6 Hydrogen molecules? One molecule is always more orderly than 15 by definition. Organic chemicals are much more orderly than nearly any other kind, which is why abiogenisis doesn't happen all that often.

EDIT: added some context

Remember the terms you're talking on when we're talking about entropy- there really isn't a difference there.

I don't suppose I could convince you to clarify what you meant by that.

You're picking- entropy is the gradual motion of everything towards a motionless universe of universe temperature. It's existance doesn't prevent things from happening until then, certainly not on such a small scale, certainly not in such a small time frame, in any meaningful way.

You don't quite have the concept down. That's the end point of entropy, but it does control pretty much everything.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is that for something to spontaneously happen, the entropy of the universe must increase. This means that overall, the universe becomes more disorderly. By extension, things can happen that seem to make things more orderly, but overall, entropy still increases.

For example, organic molecules (less entropy) only form when something somewhere else happens nearby to release large amounts of energy. For example, a Bunsen burner might be oxydizing--breaking up-- other complex molecules to release great deals of heat, which allows the reaction to occur. If you just have a pile of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen atoms sitting around, they aren't going to randomly form into benzene.

Another example include radioactive decay is spontaneous, while fusion is not.

This Law's rule over the universe is equal to, if not greater than, Newton's Laws of motion.

things can happen that seem to make things more orderly

Like life? I still don't have an authority that says we're more special (er?) than floating chemicals.

Yes, it rules over the universe. Yes, it effects everything. That does mean it's going to look like it's happening that way in, as I said, any meaningful way in such a small sample of time and material.

That does mean it's going to look like it's happening that way in, as I said, any meaningful way in such a small sample of time and material.

That remains the most ambigous sentence I've ever read.

Ok, we'll take this slowly. Can you agree that an organic molecule is more well ordered than it's floating chemical components?

No. I can agree that it's a prettier form, but that's not the same.

You need to take some chemistry classes, then.

Which has a higher degree of randomness? 5 seperate particles or one?

Uniform energy, not complexity. It takes energy to do that, which leads to more entropy.

Answer the question.

Five Particles. So you're say that never, under any circumstances, has a molecule formed? That's not what they told me in chemistry. Is it the hand of god every time, then?