Creation vs. Evolution

[Lisa0825]

The string theorists are always going on about how they're looking for the one theory of everything explained by an equation you can fit on a T-shirt. I think you guys just delivered.

Oh man.... I have struggled to fit some comprehension of string theory into my brain... now it is all crystal clear!

 

[lamont]

The First Law of Creationism: People who profess to have Faith in the existence of God will argue endlessly about Proof of God's existence without noticing the inconsistency.

If you think that God created the Earth 10,000 years ago then you are wrong and you're going to have to deal with it. If you like to believe that God may have created the universe in the Big Bang that's fine, just don't try to argue like its Proof. Also feel free to believe that God may have given Evolution a push in certain directions in order to wind up with a unique endpoint out of the many that Evolution may have generated, just don't try to find Proof that Evolution fails. Faith is what it is supposed to be about, so have Faith. And when someone else bets on the other Pony in this race, try not to be such an ******* about it with veiled threats about "sure hope you're not wrong" and such (and stop using :lol: :lol: :lol: its really childish).

As long as you keep God out of Physics and Evolution so that scientists can't detect it, then we'll be happy -- and you'll be free to have actual Faith. Stop trying to cram God into observables. That would by definition take away Faith and you tend to use embarassing logical fallacies and misunderstanding of physical phenomina and philosophical argument which greatly annoys the Atheists and Agnostics.

 

[rookers]

It has often struck me that those who insist on trying to merge science with religion are those of the weakest faith. I would assume those with the strongest would be content within their faith to let the folly of science proceed apace, secure in their knowledge that all those bespectacled geeks in lab coats cutting up frogs on foundation grants would be learning the 'lake of fire crawl' (christian mythology end game) in the end. It seems a strong desire to reconcile science with their mythology/faith that drives these folks.

 

[Lisa0825]

It has often struck me that those who insist on trying to merge science with religion are those of the weakest faith. I would assume those with the strongest would be content within their faith to let the folly of science proceed apace, secure in their knowledge that all those bespectacled geeks in lab coats cutting up frogs on foundation grants would be learning the 'lake of fire crawl' (christian mythology end game) in the end. It seems a strong desire to reconcile science with their mythology/faith that drives these folks.

:sarcasm: Oh, but they are actually, out of the goodness of their hearts, trying to save us from eternal damnation /sarcasm

I find it so insulting when someone feels the need to proclaim my faith wrong and theirs right, and "pray for me" to see the light before I go to hell.

And fundamentalists wonder why there is so much backlash?

 

[Potapko]

I can provide mountains of evidence that 12-18 billion years ago the universe was substantially 'smaller' than it is now and that it had a temperature of roughly 3000K and that when matter and energy decoupled as the plasma cooled the energy gave rise to a 3000K blackbody, which due to the expansion of the universe 'cooled' to 2.7K and is observed now as the cosmic microwave background radiation. There is literally reams of empirical evidence to back this up, and there's reams of emperical evidence which is against competing theories like 'tired light' theories.

What exploded and where it came from is, basically, "not my problem". If you want to lay bets down that it was God that sparked the big bang, that's fine. But the fact that we cannot currently explain it, does not invalidate the reams of evidence in favor of the big bang theory, and it also does not *prove* that it must have been created by God. Trying to wedge *proof* of the existence of God through any uncertainty in our knowledge of the universe is not logically solid ground. You can wager on it all you like, but you get nowhere when you argue that it *must* be the work of Creation.
.

Empirical evidence? I think not. Speculative evidence, I am sure you have mounds of that.
Where it came from is exactly your problem. Without that evidence your "theory" is unfounded and contrary to accepted Scientific "law".

Of course the second law does away with the "Energy always existed" argument. so the foundation of the natural explanation of the origin of the universe is flawed and unscientific on it's face. Although I would defend your right to believe it if you want.

One more equation
Multitude of words does not equal truth
The simple logical conclusion is that the origin of the universe HAD to be supernatural. After that is clear we could move on to the next argument being the origin of life.

I would say you have already saying this is correct by the admission that perhaps some God gave a push, or God sparked a bang, or other statements like this.

 

[lamont]

Empirical evidence? I think not. Speculative evidence, I am sure you have mounds of that.
Where it came from is exactly your problem. Without that evidence your "theory" is unfounded and contrary to accepted Scientific "law".

Sorry, its all empirical. The foundation of it is just the General Theory of Relativity (Gravitation) which is exceptionally well tested in explaining the motion of the Sun and Planets. To get to a steady-state universe the Einstein equation would have needed to have been modified to include a cosmological constant which is not actually what has been observationally measured -- in fact recent observations indicate the cosmological constant is nearly zero, but of the wrong sign to produce a steady-state universe. We can conclude from those observations that the universe simply cannot be metastable and must be expanding. That implies that at some time in the distant past the universe must have been hotter and denser and the theory predicts the existance of a radiation signature that occured when matter and radiation decoupled in the early universe. This was observed by Penzias and Wilson and won them a nobel prize and is the observed 2.7K Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. The big bang theory further explains the observed redshift of distance galaxies, it explains the anisotropies in the CMBR, it explains the Sunyaeev-Zeldovich effect where we can see the exitation lines in distant galaxies due to the CMBR at a hotter blackbody temperature in the past (i.e. a blueshift of the CMBR relative to the redshift of the galaxy, which is difficult to produce in any competing theory). It actually has reams of experimental evidence in favor of it, you just choose not to see it. We can also just measure distance out billions of light years now and that means the light we were seeing has travelled billions of years to get here. If you can't believe that, the milky way is tens of thousands of light years thick, which implies that the light that we see in the night sky left ten thousand years ago. We can also look at the andromeda galaxy and use Cephied variable stars similar to ones in our own galaxy to determine the distance to it which is 2.5 million light years away. You can actually see Andromeda on a clear night and the light hitting your eye left that galaxy 2.5 million years ago. As you look out, you inevitably look backwards in time. Eventually you wind up observing the distance-redshift equation and the hubble constant which confirms the entire big bang theory. The evidence is all there, you just choose not to see it.

 

[lamont]

I would say you have already saying this is correct by the admission that perhaps some God gave a push, or God sparked a bang, or other statements like this.

And no, I didn't say it was correct. I said it was possible that God started the Big Bang since I can't prove it otherwise. However, if this was a horserace I'd be betting big against that idea. I also can't prove that God didn't select from among the different possible outcomes of Evolution. Again, I'm betting heavily against it, but I can't prove it either way. This is substantially different, though, from allowing that the "cambrian explosion" idea proves the existance of God. I'm still going to argue that Evolution is consistent with observation and prediction and that you will fail to try to disprove it and you will fail to try to Prove the existance of Design. And since Proof would inherantly imply lack of Faith I cannot fathom why so many supposedly of the religious faith seem to require Proof so badly...

 

[Kim]

The evidence is all there, you just choose not to see it.

I suspect that he's looked at the night sky...so he's SEEN it. He certainly CHOOSES not to believe what he's looking at though!

I never understand why so much fuss is always made over the contents of a book that was hobbled together by some Roman emperor :huh: It's contents and what was allowed into it have been argued about since before it was ever made....and ever since. Talk about 'Leap of Faith'. To attribute literal truth to such an obvious allegory as the Book of Genesis is truly awsome. Maybe in another 50 years some will petition for schools to teach that the world is the centre of the universe and actually flat....:11:

I wonder what sort of scientists will ever be produced out of educational systems that take this stuff seriously and teach it as true, or possibly true? I wonder how old kids will become before they stop believing in Santa or the Tooth Fairy?

I'm really glad there's no chance that someone is going to try and teach this stuff to my kids. I've got my own magic thanks!

 

[Thalassamania]

Lamont has already answered all the points with complete clarity. I just want to amplify one.

The simple logical conclusion is that the origin of the universe HAD to be supernatural. After that is clear we could move on to the next argument being the origin of life.

What your saying is that anything that we do not clearly understand at this moment "HAD TO BE SUPERNATURAL." That's a very strange approach to knowledge. So, if we don't yet understand it, there's no point in looking into it since you've already got all the answers, e.g., it must be supernatural.

 

[Mike Veitch]

I suspect that he's looked at the night sky...so he's SEEN it. He certainly CHOOSES not to believe what he's looking at though!

I never understand why so much fuss is always made over the contents of a book that was hobbled together by some Roman emperor :huh: It's contents and what was allowed into it have been argued about since before it was ever made....and ever since. Talk about 'Leap of Faith'. To attribute literal truth to such an obvious allegory as the Book of Genesis is truly awsome. Maybe in another 50 years some will petition for schools to teach that the world is the centre of the universe and actually flat....:11:

I wonder what sort of scientists will ever be produced out of educational systems that take this stuff seriously and teach it as true, or possibly true? I wonder how old kids will become before they stop believing in Santa or the Tooth Fairy?

I'm really glad there's no chance that someone is going to try and teach this stuff to my kids. I've got my own magic thanks!

hahahaaaaa....

love it