An Explanation of the Big Bang and Evolution that doesn't exclude God.

As for the gross misrepresentation of Big Bang, relativity and thermodynamics in this thread, see my posts on the subject in pages 100-102 in the Atheism thread. I don't have the strength to do it all again.

So, if you accept that the human mind is a discrete system of smaller parts which together have unpredictable, emergent properties, then does free will exist?

Heisenbergs uncertainty principle assures free will is truly "free".

"Free" is of course a vague term.. any fool can give some probability to some actions (I hit you in the head, you will say "ouch" is very probable ) is that "free"?

The problem is that omiscence negates free will. Hence God baing omniscent and omnipotent logically contradicts free will.

So it's like the old "cheap, fast, good... pick two". It's "free will, omnipotent creator, omniscence ... pick two". The three together is logically impossible.

/Z

 

"As for the gross misrepresentation of Big Bang, relativity and thermodynamics in this thread, see my posts on the subject in pages 100-102 in the Atheism thread. I don't have the strength to do it all again."




Ya didn't do it then.

It was more a case of "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with bovine scatological matter."

The only thing you got quite right was that the crystalization of the "snowflake" was not an example of evolution. Which is a canard oft presented by radical evolutionists proffered to the "unintiated." I give you kudos for conceding that the analogy is fallacious.


EDIT:

So, offhand we are implicitly talking about 2 corroborated scientific laws with no observed or recorded violations;

1.)The specialized 2nd Law of Thermo.

2.)The Law of Abiogenesis.


Regardless of all the argumentation presented, how aptly or brilliantly loquacious we might semantically forge it upon paper or in debate, neither of these have ever been overcome by actual observed occurrence.

Two quick examples of organisms which can readily be observed through successive thousands of generations, flys and bacterium, have never presented anything akin to common descent, merely the inherent variation posited by Mendelian genetics.


Where 'the rubber meets the road' there is no corroboration, and such empirical corroboration is what differentiates true science from mere speculative science-fiction.

 

Ya didn't do it then.

Correction: you ignored what he did then, choosing to instead drop snide comments about how you know so much more about the situation, despite having never provided a single shred of proof for your position. Which you haven't, might I remind you. The best you can do is try to disprove evolution, but you have provided no evidence for creationism in its place.

1.)The specialized 2nd Law of Thermo.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics does not in any way inviolate evolution. "Disorder" and "entropy" are not synonymous, and the Earth is not a closed system.

2.)The Law of Abiogenesis.

A fiction created by creationists (not that Pasteur came up with it, but that it has any applicability here). Pasteur's conclusion is an entirely inductive one, and thus only applicable under the circumstances he was studying (reproduction of existing organisms). What you're doing is exactly like saying special relativity can't be true because of Newton's second law of motion. When in both cases, the truth is that the scientists' conclusions are only true under the environments they were studying (in Pasteur's case, reproduction, in Newton's case, low velocities). To try to use them outside their scope reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how those theories were arrived at and their limitations.

And abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution, anyway.

 

MasterZap wrote: Heisenbergs uncertainty principle assures free will is truly "free".

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that it's impossible to know for certain both where an object is and how fast it's moving. I don't see anything philosophical "assuredly" arising from that.

You need to watch that sort of thing if you're going to claim that everybody else's understanding of science is substandard.

The best you can do with the uncertainty principle is to argue that since there is unpredictability at the foundation of matter, the universe is not deterministic. (That's debatable from an instrumental standpoint, anyway.)

Saying the universe is not deterministic is not the same thing as saying people have free will. Marvin Minsky's theory isn't deterministic, and he believes that descrete, unpredictable particles add up to exactly as much "consciousness" as an ant swarm has. Can an ant swarm have free will?

You're going to have to work harder at presenting your argument than just invoking Heisenberg.

Lord_Hydronium wrote: The Second Law of Thermodynamics does not in any way inviolate evolution. "Disorder" and "entropy" are not synonymous, and the Earth is not a closed system.

Okay, then refute one of the following:

1) Entropy is a measure of disorder
2) The disorder of energy in the universe is increasing
3) Evolution shows a progression of increasing order
4) On the face of it, this is strange

Of course, evolution or no, the net disorder in the universe is *still* increasing, even if it decreases in one small corner. However, it's profitable to ask what makes evolution *appear* to defy the second law of thermodynamics. One theory is recursion, a phenomenon with very interesting properties, and probably the key to understanding consciousness.

Have you got a better explanation?

 

From PhysicsWorld:

The second law of thermodynamics prohibits the construction of a perpetual motion machine "of the second kind." There are two usual statements of this law. Kelvin's formulation states that it is impossible for a system operating in a cycle and in contact with one thermal reservoir to perform positive work in the surroundings. Clausius's formulation states that it is impossible for a system operating in a cycle to produce positive heat flow from a colder body to a hotter body.

Nothing in that has anything to do with evolution, note. It's about heat flow, not what people percieve as order.

An alternate form that I learned in physics is that in any interaction of systems, S = S1 + S2, where S is the total entropy, and S1 and S2 are the entropy of the two systems before interacting. Which brings us to what entropy is.

Entropy is a measure of disorder in energy. Not some human perception of what we think is ordered or not (for example, a star seems much more ordered than a nebula, but with the rapid movement of the particles in it and the higher temperature, it has significantly higher entropy), but a specific mathematical definition correlated with the number of possible states of a system (proportional to the natural log of that number, to be exact).

Let's say there are ten balls in a row in one system (System 1). There's another system with ten balls scattered (System 2). The human mind looks and says "Hey, System 1 is more ordered". That's the common definition of order, the one creationists use. It has nothing to do with entropy.

Now, two hyopthetical events:

1) We roll the balls in System 1 around until they're scattered.

2) We roll the balls in System 2 around until they're in a row.

The misconception of entropy makes people think that we've just increased the entropy of System 1, while decreasing the entropy of System 2 (since this isn't a closed system, of course this misconception still wouldn't violate the 2LoT). This is wrong. In both cases, the way the balls are arranged has absolutely nothing to do with the entropy of the system. What does affect the entropy is the friction if the balls rolling, and the heat transferred from this. Which means entropy increases in both cases, notice.

However, it's profitable to ask what makes evolution *appear* to defy the second law of thermodynamics.

And the answer to that is that the second law of thermodynamics is being misunderstood, since evolution doesn't appear to defy it at all. Only a misconception of what the 2nd Law says and what entropy is makes it appear that evolution is in defiance.

Evolution is not an exception at all. In fact, it's quite in the bounds of thermodynamics: every life process, including reproduction, DNA replication, etc. releases heat when chemical bonds are broken. This heat, of course, raises the entropy of the system.

So that's the answer: not only does evolution not violate 2LoT, not only does it not even appear to violate 2LoT, but it does in fact have several examples of 2LoT in action.

 

Lord_Hydronium wrote: Nothing in that has anything to do with evolution, note. It's about heat flow, not what people percieve as order.

I know that. One form of energy can be converted into another, but the power to do work goes downhill. Heat is the lowest state of energy, and it can't be converted back "up" into anything.

Stop panicking about evolution. I'm not making an argument of intelligent design. My disclaimer from page four of this thread:

Disclaimer: This theist is not trying to prove the existence of God. If she were attempting to prove the existence of God, she would have mentioned something like the first cause argument, or made an appeal to intelligent design, or tried to argue for the literal inerrancy of the Bible, instead of saying this in her first post to the thread: "I'm afraid, for all the reasons stated. There is no way to "prove" that God exists, and if there were, faith would become extinct, and so would free will. (Imagine the moral equivalent of gravity--a force which can't be denied or even resisted, except temporarily. How much free will would exist in a world with such clear "proof?")" /Disclaimer

The development of life from a non-living universe is interesting. Why are you and I able to bicker over the Internet, but two cups of coffee are not? Humans and coffee are both collections of organic molecules. What's so different about the human? How did such a thing as a human come to be?

I say the key lies in recursive processes, which we can talk about, unless everyone would rather continue to debate the definition of "entropy."

 

A huge amount of organzied energy was needed to create all the matter in the universe. You know E=MC2 that type of thing. This energy didn't just happen, it can't. The formation of all the atoms in the universe, didn't just happen either.

If our puny minds can accept that all the matter in the universe at some point billions/trillions of years ago never existed, and the universe was void of it. There had to be a source that generated enough energy to form all the matter in the universe.

 

Stop panicking about evolution. I'm not making an argument of intelligent design.

The creationist stuff wasn't directed at you, it was directed at the people who make that same argument (like Brooks, even though he's never going to respond to it) ad nauseum trying to prove something. Those arguments generally sound something like this: "I read a dictionary and it said entropy is disorder and I think a man is more ordered than a bacteria so I've single-handedly disproven your theory!"

I know that. One form of energy can be converted into another, but the power to do work goes downhill. Heat is the lowest state of energy, and it can't be converted back "up" into anything.

OK, but I still don't see the connection with evolution. As I said, all processes that are a part of evolution (more on this below) emit heat in some way. The Second Law in action.

The development of life from a non-living universe is interesting. Why are you and I able to bicker over the Internet, but two cups of coffee are not? Humans and coffee are both collections of organic molecules. What's so different about the human? How did such a thing as a human come to be?

Coffee isn't life. Reproduction, homeostasis, change, and metabolism are a few of the criteria I remember. Coffee can not reproduce itself, can not maintain any internal state, does not change, and does not consume energy. On the other hand, even simple life, like bacteria, due to its ability to control its environment, can communicate with chemical signals. It's not any scientific criterion, but I believe all life can communicate in some way. More complex creatures, like animals, have more sophisticated ways to communicate. Any animal that makes noises is complex enough that it can use one piece of tissue to oscillate air and another to receive that signal, for example. Humans are complex enough (through that intangible quality we call intelligence, which is a topic I admit I don't know too much about) that we can build machines to generate electrical signals that are carried through wires to other machines that receive and interpret them. And so forth.

OK, my footnote on evolution. The fact is, creationists are not arguing against evolution. That wouldn't make sense, since evolution is easily observable (pepper moths and so forth). What creationists are arguing about is common descent. In regards to my above note, evolution is not some magical process of its own. It's the synthesis of several separate processes, all of which can be proven to exist by simple observation:

1. Reproduction.
2. Mutation/genetic variation.
3. A selection mechanism.

Organisms obviously reproduce. Genetic variation also obviously occurs. And traits do differentiate organisms, allowing mechanisms such as natural selection to cause organisms with certain genes to reproduce more than others. There is absolutely nothing in this that makes evolution impossible. Going after common descent by targeting evolution is thus a false argument.

Evolution is simply change in allele frequency over time. I don't think anyone can honestly say that that doesn't or can't happen.

 

That's the first cause argument, and while it does give us cause for pondering the origins of the universe, it is not an argument for God's existence that would convince--or even suggest anything--to a non-theist. After all, why does the first cause have to be God? Even if it's supernatural, it could be C'thulhu or something.

I still think it's an error to move away from divine revelation alone as the means by which we come to know God. Some say you can see the echo of God in "natural law," those pillars of every civilization that tend to mirror the 10 Commandments: "Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal," etc. I won't argue with that, but all by itself, natural law doesn't get us to faith.

Suggesting that we can get to God on our own, rather than having him come down to us, is the seed of Gnosticism, generally considered to be a heresy. (Altough the last time I said that on a message board, somebody started freaking out and saying they were a Gnostic, and I was an evil oppessive bigot. But just FWIW.)

What we *can* do is look carefully at the natural world--and the human created world, in particular AI--for clues about what the human mind/spirit/soul is like, and how it relates to the rest of the world. If you are a typical Christian theist, you believe that man was made in God's image, so studying man, especially the intelligent and spiritual aspects of man, is as close as you can get to seeing God in the natural world.

I think AI is important because it's the closest thing we've got to being able to perform direct experiments on consiousness. The roots of AI lie in recursive loops, which appear in mathematical concepts like fractals, among other things. There appears to be a profound connection between what I'll call "fractal math" for lack of a better term (well, actually, a "better" term would be repeated iterations of a recursive mathematical formula, but that's lousy to have to say) and parts of the natural world. From space, mountain ranges and fjords look an awful lot like Julia fractals. (Slartibartfast won an award for the fjords, you see.)

I am not handing you a bunch of PhenomeNews crap. We seem to have caught on to a formula, or a "trick," whatever you want to call it, that causes order to arise out of disorder. Related lecture topic from the University of Northumbria. (Just FYI, the "Church-Turing hypothesis" has nothing to do with going to church. It is a hypothesis partially developed by a man named Alonzo Church. Okay? okay.)

I now have a new manual sig for just this thread:

Disclaimer: This theist is not trying to prove the existence of God. If she were attempting to prove the existence of God, she would have mentioned something like the first cause argument, or made an appeal to intelligent design, or tried to argue for the literal inerrancy of the Bible, instead of saying this in her first post to the thread: "I'm afraid, for all the reasons stated. There is no way to "prove" that God exists, and if there were, faith would become extinct, and so would free will. (Imagine the moral equivalent of gravity--a force which can't be denied or even resisted, except temporarily. How much free will would exist in a world with such clear "proof?")" /Disclaimer

 

To derail the thread for a moment:

And on the Science Channel they showed onece this craxy idea that there are 10 dimensions. The 10th is the dimension that inludes all dimensions. And other dimensions ripling and their ripples bumpig into each other creates matter/energy, and all that matter/energy was drawn together by gravity, and then after that was the Big Bang. But I don't buy it, it's totally unecassary.

Incorrect. According to current theories (which are based on many, many experiments and observations of subatomic particles, how they react, observations of gravity, etc) in order to unify the forces (which is something that does happen... take eletro-magnetism for example) one must postulate that there are multiple dimensions that we do not experience as 3 (or 4 if you include time) dimensional creatures.

 

To derail the thread for a moment:

No, we could probably work string theory and Calabi-Yau spaces in there somewhere. I went through a phase where I was trying to find ways to unify science with philosophy, and I remember I had a use for string theory . . . I just don't recall what it was at the moment. Gotta go dig those notes out. My mildly deranged friend who believes that "God is math" has progressed further than I have on his Grand Unified Theory of science and philosophy. He wrote a book called "The Metaphysician's Desk Reference" that talks about it some. Last I heard, he was starting a new book that explained it more fully. Amazon URL's are too long for IGN's markup code to handle, so here's a text version of the link to Jon's book.

link=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/141071909X/qid=1102045849/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-2020592-4577564?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

 

L. Hydronium,



"Correction: you ignored what he did then,..."

Really?
1.)Explain to us what "he did?"
2.)I have written in posts on that thread that I will be addressing the 2nd Law,...albeit in much more abbreviated form than was my original intention, due to unavoidable personal obligations and responsibilities.


"...choosing to instead drop snide comments about how you know so much more about the situation,..."

Well, since this is an outright falsehood, I think you'll understand why after this I probably won't pay much more attention to your posts. It was clearly stated in that thread that I am not an expert. I suggest you reread.

Zap, not I, claimed to be the resident (verbatim, here)"expert."


"...despite having never provided a single shred of proof for your position."

This is another blatant falsehood, again reemphasizing why I don't find it worthwhile to continue our discussion.
I presented argumentation via the following link;

Thermodynamics and Evolution

That page, in fact, is what Zap was attempting to contest in such ambiguity and lack of specific citation that I am still trying to figure out what point he was trying to make.


"Which you haven't, might I remind you."

Well, I think I just "reminded" you, that your accusation is baseless.


"The best you can do is try to disprove evolution, but you have provided no evidence for creationism in its place."

That's a logically fallacious premise. There's no necessity to present argumentation for "special creation" in order to demonstrate the deficiencies of "evolution."



"The Second Law of Thermodynamics does not in any way inviolate evolution. "Disorder" and "entropy" are not synonymous, and the Earth is not a closed system."

The universe is a "closed system."
"Open system" or "closed system" are both susceptible to the 2nd Law.

Quote;

"The evolutionist rationale is simply that life on earth is an "exception" because we live in an open system: "The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things." This supply of available energy, we are assured, adequately satisfies any objection to evolution on the basis of the second law.

But simply adding energy to a system doesn?t automatically cause reduced entropy (i.e., increased organized complexity, or "build-up" rather than "break-down"). Raw solar energy alone does not decrease entropy--in fact, it increases entropy, speeding up the natural processes that cause break-down, disorder, and disorganization on earth (consider, for example, your car?s paint job, a wooden fence, or a decomposing animal carcass, both with and then without the addition of solar radiation).

Speaking of the general applicability of the second law to both closed and open systems in general, Harvard scientist Dr. John Ross (not a creationist) affirms:


"...there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated [closed] systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems ... there is somehow associated with the field of far-from equilibrium phenomena the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself."
[Dr. John Ross, Harvard scientist (evolutionist), Chemical and Engineering News, vol. 58, July 7, 1980, p. 40]


So, what is it that makes life possible within the earth?s biosphere, appearing to "violate" the second law of thermodynamics?

The apparent increase in organized complexity (i.e., decrease in entropy) found in biological systems requires two additional factors besides an open system and an available energy supply. These are:


1.)a "program" (information) to direct the growth in organized complexity
2.)a mechanism for storing and converting the incoming energy.

Another quote;

"Another quibble about ap

 

Darth Brooks, your continuing violation of the TOS will be reported. If you have something of substance, post it.

The specialized 2nd Law of Thermo

Oh it's specialized now? How quaint.

You know that law (and the other one) only exists in the mind of creationists?

But we've been through that.

I already explained it.

Now you wiped your memory clean and go back to this same tired broken-record routine again. Why? Because this is a new thread? Come on.

I wont dignify it with a response beyond this, and direct you back to the Atheism thread for all the refuation you could ever need on this subject.


ophelia:

One thing I forgot to comment on; You tried to make a distinction somehow that Neo waking into the "real world" would be somehow "different" because (in the analogy to "dying") it would be a "supernatural" realm.

But that doesn't fly, because that difference is not relevant. The higher level may be higher, but by there is no evidence it is the highest. The very fact that layers have been shown to exist, casts in doubt that any level is "the highest", even God's.

As I see it, you see reality either as layered (the Matrix, the 'Real world', Gods Realm, Baal's palace of Pleasure, 42), or you say there are no layering, reality is reality period.

You try to argue that only the layered model (which you arbitrarily terminate at "God" for no particular reason that you can justify logically to me) sees truth with a captial T.

I say that the layered model makes truth with a capital T by-definition unattainable, since you can not know where the layering ends.

Hence, I see the non-layered model the only one where Truth-with-a-T is actually reachable. Is that truth "objective"? If no other standards exist by which to measure "objective" (since no layers exist) then... why not?

It's like Morals. A human idea of some arbitrary standards of do's and don'ts.

Some like to appeal to a universal "absolute" moral to try to justify them. But why? The layered model is inherently un-absolute. Why not be satisfied with the fact that we came up with these ideas of what is good and bad, and just leave it at that? Much easier. "Absolute"? No. But who cares?

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that it's impossible to know for certain both where an object is and how fast it's moving. I don't see anything philosophical "assuredly" arising from that.

Heisenbergs uncertainty principle forbids determinism.

Determinism = no free will.

Now, what exactly is "free will"? I'd say "free will" would be not being able to predict what choices will be made. If the universe is deterministic, this means that free will is at best illusory. And that can be okay, really. Your computer program example excercising "free will", is it really?

It's a semantical game. Do WE excercise "free will"? How predictable are we really? If we could go down to the neuron level, maybe we are completely predictable? Is that still free? YOU tell ME.

But with Heisenberg, the neuron level still contains some level of randomness that is nondeterministic. So there is our only hope for "true" free will, the kind that could never ever be pre-processed and predetermined the outcome.

But if God knows the subatomics too, and can predict everything exactly? I.e. God sees beyond heisenberg? Then sorry, it cannot be "truly" free, only illusory free.

And I'm fine with illusory free, in general. Truly I am.

But in the devine perspective it doesn't work, if you create a being with illusory free will (which is at best just an entertainment show for the benefit of this 'human simulation' anyway) which is still completely pre-determined to do X then Y.... and you then punish or reward this creature based on the pre-set map you set up at creation? How meaningless is that?

Saying the universe is not deterministic is not the same thing as saying people have free will.

Saying the universe [i

 

Zap,


"Darth Brooks, your continuing violation of the TOS will be reported. If you have something of substance, post it."


It's a violation to threaten as well, isn't it?
As is your condescension, isn't it?



"You know that law (and the other one) only exists in the mind of creationists?"

This is blatantly condescending and insulting. Your continued slurs and bigotry directed against those of us who subscribe to religious belief in creationism is a violation isn't it?

"I already explained it."

No, Zap, you presented more "just/so," and explained nothing. In fact some of your statements were refuted in the very body of the article...and your comments suggest, then, that you may not have actually read the essay.

Ergo,...the content of the essay had in advance already addressed and refuted the very disarrayed argumentation you presented after have allegedly read it...let that say what it will.





"Now you wiped your memory clean and go back to this same tired broken-record routine again. Why? Because this is a new thread? Come on."

How incredibly rude and insulting.
This is also in violation isn't it?




One standard for me and another for you? Is that what you are suggesting, Zap?


One last question, Zap;

Are you an atheist or a God-hater?
There is a difference.

You said you were an atheist, but many of your words are more accurately expressive of a God-hater.

I'm curious to know.

 

That page, in fact, is what Zap was attempting to contest in such ambiguity and lack of specific citation that I am still trying to figure out what point he was trying to make

If you do not understand the points I make, you should ask yourself what level of understanding you have of the topic at hand?

I explained the numerous fallacies in the document you linked. Summarily, I admit, but in my own words, not by a bunch of links or cut-and-paste. If you want that, you can Google for the refutations yourself, if this interests you.

The very quotes you put into this thread are already refuted. Why shoul we waste thread-space to re-do whats been done? Google is your friend.

Life itself as lived on earth clearly "violates" the 2LoT by the creationist "reading" of it. You can observe this every day. Yet amusingly, the same creationists hold this law as "immutable" and say "no violation has ever been found" (conveniently using a different "interpretation" of the law for these cases).


I suggest you read the side links on that page, where real scientists confront the article, and see how Mr Wallace treats them, how he is unable to refute their points, goes ad-hominem, and finaly la-la-la-not-listeniniiiing. It is quite amusing to read, actually, especially if you take the time to google for the uncencored versions).

/Z

 

Well, Zap, I suppose that's as close to an admission that you actually didn't say anything coherent in your putative rebuttal.


"If you do not understand the points I make, you should ask yourself what level of understanding you have of the topic at hand?"


Zap, I am one of three individuals who did not understand your words. I copied your post and distributed it to two gentlemen who do have credentials labelling them authentic "experts."

I always give the benefit of the doubt.

The expert opinion I received is that your post did not indicate that you are, as alleged, and I quote, an "...expert."

In my post to Hydronium I included a quote, intentionally of an expert in Thermodynamics, who has worked on 10 academic textbooks.

And, if you are an "expert" why must I google?

The 2nd Law applies to everything, Zap.


"I suggest you read the side links on that page, where real scientists confront the article, and see how Mr Wallace treats them, how he is unable to refute their points, goes ad-hominem, and finaly la-la-la-not-listeniniiiing. It is quite amusing to read, actually, especially if you take the time to google for the uncencored versions)."


Really? Provide us with a link, Zap.
Tim Wallace is a friend of mine, I'll be glad to ask how e-mails sent to him and answered on his pc and posted to his personal web-site have somehow leaked out of his pc to be distributed "uncensored."

In fact, Tim wrote some of the content in my posts awhile back. I may repost them in here for you.


Finally, Zap, since you did claim to be an "expert" in the atheism thread, why are you "googling" for answers?"

 

I was pressed for time at the time, so were you. You were supposed to come back with some comment on 2LOT in the *Atheism* thread (this ain't it, if you check the thread title) which you havn't.

I also direct you to a couple of points you conveniently skipped:

Life itself as lived on earth clearly "violates" the 2LoT by the creationist "reading" of it. You can observe this every day. Yet amusingly, the same creationists hold this law as "immutable" and say "no violation has ever been found" (conveniently using a different "interpretation" of the law for these cases).

Finally, Zap, since you did claim to be an "expert" in the atheism thread, why are you "googling" for answers?"

I am not googling for answers. I know the answers. I am Googling for already-typed-up fully formulated answers (with references, if available), in English (not my native tongue, if you recall).


The exchange you request is here (summary) and here (complete transcript).

/Z

 

Zap,

You're repeating yourself.

But you have convinced me...that my initial assessment of your putative argumentation was correctly surmised after all.

You are not an "expert" as you have claimed.


"I am not googling for answers. I know the answers. I am Googling for already-typed-up fully formulated answers (with references, if available), in English (not my native tongue, if you recall)."

That's called plagiarism, Zap. Usually references are given or an indication of a quotation. An "expert" would know that, Zap.


You've not given fully formulated responses, you've presented a reiterated jumble of lines to be taken as your own. Your bluff. Nor did you give references, only the occasional link.

This explanation coming after the fact, when confronted by your own slip up, seem a contrived sort of alibi lacking credulity and a heavy blow to credibility.

 

Brooks accusing others of being condescending and insulting. Now I've seen it all.

That's a logically fallacious premise. There's no necessity to present argumentation for "special creation" in order to demonstrate the deficiencies of "evolution."

But until you do, your side of the argument has diddly-squat. Even assuming your logic was correct, the best you could do would be to disprove common descent. You can not (I'm assuming that since you haven't even tried to) prove creationism.

Great, then, you should have no trouble presenting an irrefutable example of spontaneous generation occurring.

The creation of the first life form. No matter how you think it came about, it could not have come from life, seeing as how it is the first.

And weren't you the one who kept saying "absence of proof is not proof of absence" (paraphrased)? Yet as soon as we get to this topic, you drop that line of argument like a sack of hot potatoes.

Oh, and abiogenesis is not spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation is fully formed complex pre-existing lifeforms arising from inanimate matter. Again, absolutely no relation to the topic on hand.

Your assertion here is very confusing, you seem to be saying that it occurs outside of what Pasteur was studying? Okay, where?

Pasteur's topic was spontaneous generation of pre-existing complex lifeforms. That is all that he studied. That is all that he based his conclusion off of. Therefore, his conclusion can not be applied to any topic outside that scope, i.e. biogenesis.

To use my Newton's law analogy, Newton only studied low velocity motion. In that scope, his law was correct. Outside of that scope, as Einstein proved, he was wrong. Much like with your request, if you asked someone of Newton's era to find a single example of a violation of Newton's law, they couldn't have. But it was still wrong, because Newton's conclusions did not apply outside the environment he was studying.

To use a simpler analogy, Pasteur looks in a trunk with all blue socks. He says, "Aha! All socks are blue!". I find a bunch of white sock threads lying on a carpet near a couch. I determine that there is a white sock under the couch. You say: "There can't be any white socks, because Pasteur said all socks are blue. Show me one example of a white sock." My response: "He only looked at socks in the trunk. His conclusion can not be used to determine the color of socks under the couch."

Uh oh, I detect the willful ignorance of the party-line here. The bob-and-weave-shift-a-roo.

And I detect you don't even understand the terms you're arguing.

Biogenesis: formation of life. Not directly observable (since it's a one-time event), but determinable through evidence and deduction.
Evolution: process by which speciation occurs from that first life. Directly observable.

You said you were an atheist, but many of your words are more accurately expressive of a God-hater.

How can he hate something that doesn't exist?

The 2nd Law applies to everything, Zap.

Exactly. But the creationist interpretation of the second law is not the second law itself. It's a fiction, created through a misinterpretation of words.

Did you even read my post on what the second law means?

 

That's called plagiarism, Zap. Usually references are given or an indication of a quotation.

What are you talking about?

If I google for something, and find it, I give a link. If I quote something, I indicate that by quoting it in the post.

Everything I type in plain text is my own words.

See also my edit above on the wallace/schneider correspondence.

An "expert" would know that, Zap.

Compared to any of the creationist websites you have linked so far, I obviously know more about thermodynamics than them!

You've not given fully formulated responses, you've presented a reiterated jumble of lines to be taken as your own. Your bluff.

They are my own.

Yet you apparently has bits of your posts written by Tim Wallace suddenly? I'd say.

Pray tell, was any of these 3 "experts" on 2LOT you presented my writing to Wallace? If so, allow me to fall off my chair laughing hysterically.

Nor did you give references, only the occasional link.

You yourself didn't want this to become a "battle of the links" (which is also spamming by this boards definition).

Hence I kept the links to a minimum. I could easily have only posted links, bust instead chose to use my own words.

You baseless ad-hominem accusation of plagarism is duly noted. I suggest you try to adress the point, instead of using these TOS-unfriendly tactics. Did you learn this from Wallace?

/Z

 

Hydronium,

Please do not address me.

 

Why? Because he is right?

/Z

 

Zap,

"You baseless ad-hominem accusation of plagarism is duly noted. I suggest you try to adress the point, instead of using these TOS-unfriendly tactics. Did you learn this from Wallace?"

It wasn't baseless at all, and that is the point.

Did I learn to pay attention to details from Wallace?
He'd take that as a compliment.


I read the Tom Schneider's article, most of which was sour grapes. He majored on petty minors and the committal of ad hominem out of one side of his mouth while accusing Wallace of exactly that out of the other side.

The most one can say is the two gentlemen both got heated at varying points and both maintained their respective positions while Schneider in conclusion tried very hard to put words in Wallace mouth the contradict his express opinion.

I fail to see what you find particularly significant.
Schneider maintains he was correct and Wallace maintains his position is correct.

 

I fail to see what you find particularly significant

The little detail that Wallace is wrong? That Schneider points out some clear errors that Wallace "dodges" (at best)?

Besides, there is no way you read all that in this short time.

/Z

 

Zap,

"Besides, there is no way you read all that in this short time."

I only type slow.
Apparently I read faster than you. Probably because English isn't my second language.


Wallace wasn't wrong.

Further;

"t?s always disappointing when people go to great lengths to disparage those with whom they disagree, and it?s particularly sad when a reasonably intelligent individual does so under the misguided belief that science is an ally to the dogma of philosophical naturalism. Tom Schneider presented himself to me as such a person. While I find his credentials and occupation noble and worthy of respect, his standards for objectivity and ethics in advancing his religious views appear to be of a lesser caliber.

Schneider initiated a dialogue with me on 07/21/99 with a single question about my treatment of the Second Law of Thermodynamics vis-à-vis biological macro-evolution. The exchange is archived here at the TrueOrigin site in a reader-friendly format, and again at the government-funded website of Mr. Schneider, featuring message headers and all. While the contents of either archived version might have spoken for itself, Mr. Schneider saw fit to publish a summary to which I am pleased to respond with this document.

Mr. Schneider begins his summary of our discussion by describing it as his ?attempt to understand what happened in my discussion with Tim Wallace??as if perhaps he were the victim, left confused and without understanding as a result of our discussion. Yet Mr. Schneider displayed remarkable lucidity throughout our dialogue, so I suggest he knows very well ?what happened?.

?My final conclusion was a surprise!? Schneider announces. But neither before, during, nor after our dialogue did he give a credible hint that he expected to arrive at any conclusion other than the assumption with with he began the exchange. (I think the technical term is ?prejudice.?) One may well wonder that he not only assumes the posture of a ?victim? (God knows, America is ?full? of them), but also pretends his purpose in our exchange was something other than to impress upon me (and all who would listen) his empirically unsubstantiated conjectures about the second law of thermodynamics.

What follows is a point-by-point response to the balance of Mr. Schneider?s summary, following the order of his own document as it appeared as of 5 January, 2000:

An Agreement on the Second Law!
?After much hullabaloo Mr. Wallace finally agreed in a single, clear, direct statement (with only one typo) that the Second Law does allow for a decrease of entropy...

?However as of 1999 September 8, Mr. Wallace's web page still states that:

?The second law presents an insurmountable problem to the concept of a natural, mechanistic process ... by which biological life could have arisen and diversified (also spontaneously) from a non-living, inanimate world.?
?Since he has not removed or corrected this quote, (and the entire web page for that matter) Mr. Wallace still does not understand that since the Second Law does not prevent decreases of entropy, it cannot be an impediment to evolution.?

The remainder and all links, including to the one you presented are included at Wallace's site (without need for "googling.");

Wallace/Scneider


Tim apparently didn't feel that readers should have to search for any "uncensored" letters.


So, if you read that exchange at Tim's site, as you previously affirmed...how did you end up needing to go "googling"?

Your insinuation has been that Wallace covered something up, yet everything is linked to in highlights on the relevant pages of documentation.