Evolution or Creation

And History has demonstrated cleary that whenever a nation begins to get too prideful (i.e., thinking they have all the answers, and those answers contradict God), that nation falls.



God's Word will "thrive" forever, as will those who follow It.

 

See, you say that, but that doesn't make it true. What an overgeneralization. Jesus exists only in your mind.

 

I don't know what history you are learning. All's I know is if science and religion quarell, religion goes down. That doesn't mean religion is bad or science is good or anything like that. It just means people should keep an open mind, and realize religion can be dated.

 

DLM, I explained it in it.

The third law of Thermodynamics says that we are getting worse. The second law only says that we can't break even.

How did the stars form? How?

I thought that everything was suppposed to settle out. And if the early universe was merely a ball of hydrogen and helium gas, then how did they condense? I thought everything was supposed to even out.

This is Evloution vs. Creation. Unless Stellar Evolution isn't a valid topic, how does this have nothing to do with anything?

 

The second law of thermodynamics and evolution



Introduction

Many fundamentalist Christians see the theory of evolution as a threat to their faith, evidently because it is not explicitly included in Genesis. (They also misunderstand the scientific application of the word "theory" that the chemist uses in discussing atomic theory or the kinetic molecular theory of gases, ideas as unquestioned by all chemists as evolution is by professional biologists.) This is tragic because it cuts off sincere individuals who are not scientists from understanding the powerful relevance of one of the most important concepts in all of science.

Most disquieting to chemists who are interested in thermodynamics are the misleading statements about the second law and chemistry that creationist spokespeople have made. A few emphases from previous pages in the present Web site and from www.secondlaw.com that bear on this unfortunate situation are developed below. At the end of this page are superior links to presentations of the second law of thermodynamics and its irrelevance to creationists? arguments against evolution.



"A watch must have required a watchmaker; a car could not have formed itself from parts."

(The following includes some excerpts from the previous section, "Obstructions..")

The above statements in italics from creationists are certainly true, but they have nothing to do with the behavior of atoms and molecules. Car parts in a junkyard don?t speed inside the yard at a thousand miles an hour, constantly colliding with each other, fusing together with a similar part (or different ones) so violently that enormous quantities of energy are given out ? enough to make them white hot.

Why give a silly illustration like that? Anyone knows that it is not an inherent quality of metal parts to spontaneously join with similar or quite different parts to form complex new arrangements. Yet, this IS precisely the normal behavior of most of the chemical elements that constitute the world and the universe. The value of the second law of thermodynamics is that it quantitatively describes the energetic aspects of the chemical elements and the compounds they form. The chemical potential energy bound in most of the 20,000,000 known kinds of molecules is LESS than that in their elements. Thus, energetically, the second law says that the majority of compounds now known could spontaneously form from the corresponding elements. Watches or cars are not lower in thermodynamic energy than the total energy of their individual components. Therefore, the second law says that it is completely inappropriate to compare them with chemical compounds and elements.

Incessantly moving at a few hundred to two thousand miles an hour at ordinary temperatures. hydrogen and many other atoms behave in a fashion that is impossible for car parts: Most atoms spontaneously "bond" when they vigorously collide, forming extremely powerful associations in very specific ways. These new arrangements can be molecules so stable that thermal energy transfer at temperatures of a thousand or two thousand degrees can?t tear them apart again. Molecules are not atoms randomly stuffed in a package. When three or more atoms join to form a molecule, they are arranged in precise order, normally unchanging over time, and with a relatively fixed geometric relationship. Finally, many kinds of molecules can strike other kinds very violently and produce totally new types of molecules ? another mode of formation of new complex ordered structures due to the same innate nature of atoms to form strong bonds. Amino acids when simply melted with other amino acids (to make them move more rapidly) form huge new compounds. These are NOT useful or valuable proteins, but are "proteinoid" in that they have hundreds to thousands of amino acid units firmly joined in many of the same kind of bonds that hold proteins together.

A simple example is the reaction of the behavior of elements is that of hydrogen gas wi

 

Hey, check this out...

Darth_SnowDog spills salt and vinegar on the floor.

*POOF*

Carbon Dioxide!

Look! I made a byproduct from these two unrelated compounds!

I knew it... I'm God.

 

Quit playing with your food. Bithy will get mad!

 

Ender, I said third law.

And I care little. Evolution is possible with the second law.

Please, explain stellar evolution.

You have a ton of helium mixed with hydrogen floting around in space. Does it even out? Or does it clump together and form big balls.

Prove this to me scientifcally.

Prove to me that hydrogen in a vacuum will compress.

 

Damn... I thought I edited that... it was supposed to read "baking soda and vinegar"... duh... well, you all know what I mean. Well, at least the scientifically inclined ones noticed my error in this 2nd grade example of molecular attraction and chemical compound reactions.

If they can't even catch my mistake in a gradeschool science experiment... how can we possibly expect creationists to comprehend the massive probability matrix that exists in the universe?

Furthermore, if there's no scientific relation whatsoever between organisms... why is it that life (as we know it on earth) consistently has these very basic, constituent elements: Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen.

To make even more staggering what Creationists seem to think is coincidence, how about the fact that organic and fossil fuels have all these aspects in common:


1. Both have carbon backbones with hydrogen ribs.
2. Both are oxidized to release energy which stops the molecule's existence yielding the offsprings of water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2).
3. Both have a source in the photo activity of the sun. The first is called a carbohydrate, and the other is called a hydrocarbon. (The difference is hydroxyl tail that changes biochemical properties.)
4. While hydrocarbons (coal and oil) are not readily digestible, carbonhydrates will readily burn, e.g., wheat fields and dead bodies.
5. Both can be quite explosive, natural gas and wheat dust.
6. The intracellular slow burn of carbohydrates is akin to the slow burn of a big paraffin candle.
7. The oxidizing of either yields time to the oxidizing source.

In other words, this proves the fossil record is directly linked to the living organic spectrum in a blindingly obvious fashion... provided you understand empirical observation is more valid than poetic conjecture.

Now, let me be conscientious enough to state clearly that none of this precludes the possibility of a creator... except for the fact that there are no absolute beginnings or endings in the universe to use as a basis for assuming the universe itself must be finite, with a beginning and an end. And please, no one dare mention life/death... because on a molecular level, our observable birth/death cycles of our complex bodies is irrelevant. Birth and death do not exist on the subatomic, atomic or molecular level... only on the organic level... but organisms break down and their constituent molecules and atoms give rise to new organisms... see? Everything exists in cycles!

No beginning, no ending... no boundaries... just as Hawking postulated. Not to mention the fact that the Hindus, along with most of the enlightened world of the time, were well aware of this at least a thousand years before the birth of Christ. It's not the scientists' fault that medieval Europe couldn't understand the math that proved the earth's circumference 2000 years after the Greeks and Indians first hypothesized it.

 

Obi-Zahn: What, you mean you missed my little comment on how disproving evolution doesn't prove creation? Hydrogen doesn't compress in a vacuum? Could've fooled me... since a) Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and b) it is often observed compressing in black holes and collapsing unto itself in dying stars.

 

OZK: Gravity is the reason that large objects coalesce over time. Gravity is a very, very, very weak force compared to electromagnetic force, but since most things in the universe are neutral, gravity is the only large-scale force that acts on all objects in the universe. It causes clouds of dust, particles, or whatever kind of thingies you want to eventually form discrete objects over time.

And by the way, you are most certainly confusing the laws of thermodynamics. Here's a simple explanation of what they all say.

Zeroth law: (Added to the other three as an afterthought, but more basic than they are, hence the number zero) Things in contact with each other eventually reach thermal equilibrium

First law: You can't get ahead, ie. the universe can't spontaneously gain in energy

Second law: You can't break even, ie. entropy increases over time

Third law: You can't quit the game, ie. absolute zero cannot be attained

(Look it up if you don't believe me.)

 

Where was the black hole it formed from then?

You know why t doesn't compresss in a vacuum? There's nothing in a vacuum.

What was the gravity source that made them come together? There must have been thousands of black holes.

No, quadrillions of them. The abundant hydrogen must have had a googleplex of black holes to form as manystars as it has now.

Tell me. Has evolution ever been observed?

Or stellar evolution?

Then it's not science.

sci·ence (sns)
n.

The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena.
Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study.
Methodological activity, discipline, or study: I've got packing a suitcase down to a science.
An activity that appears to require study and method: the science of purchasing.
Knowledge, especially that gained through experience.


Observation. No observation=No science.

 

Obi-Zahn, you don't even know what the laws of thermodynamics are? Maybe you should pick up a science book instead of regurgitating creationist arguments?

It's interesting to note that there are numerous Christian scientists in the field of biology that don't have a problem with evolution.


We have observed microevolution in the lab. Macroevolution works in the exact same way except it would require millions of years of time. We obvioulsy can't test this without a time machine.



What is macroevolution?

n science, macro at the beginning of a word just means "big", and micro at the beginning of a word just means "small" (both from the Greek words). For example, a macrophage means a bigger than normal cell, but it is only a few times bigger than other cells, and not an order of magnitude bigger.

In evolutionary biology today, macroevolution is used to refer to any evolutionary change at or above the level of species. It means the splitting of a species into two (speciation, or cladogenesis, from the Greek meaning "the origin of a branch") or the change of a species over time into another (anagenesis, not nowadays generally used). Any changes that occur at higher levels, such as the evolution of new families, phyla or genera, is also therefore macroevolution, but the term is not restricted to the origin of those higher taxa.

Microevolution refers to any evolutionary change below the level of species, and refers to changes in the frequency within a population or a species of its alleles (alternative genes) and their effects on the form, or phenotype, of organisms that make up that population or species.

Another way to state the difference is that macroevolution is between-species evolution of genes and microevolution is within-species evolution of genes.

There are various kinds of dynamics of macroevolution. Punctuated equilibrium theory proposes that once species have originated, and adapted to the new ecological niches in which they find themselves, they tend to stay pretty much as they are for the rest of their existence. Phyletic gradualism suggests that species continue to adapt to new challenges over the course of their history. Species selection and species sorting theories claim that there are macroevolutionary processes going on that make it more or less likely that certain species will exist for very long before becoming extinct, in a kind of parallel to what happens to genes in microevolution.

Here's a link for 29 Evidences for Macroevolution:

29 Evidences for Macroevolution

Not that I expect you to read it.

 

Ender: I don't think I can expect OZK to pay any more attention to the perfect example of observation I presented... the similarities between carbohydrate and hydrocarbon fuel sources. This observation links the livinng biological spectrum with the progressive fossil record.

Of course, for me to make it any clearer to you, Obi-Zahn, there's only one thing I can tell you... and that's to spend the next 15 years catching up to my education, experience, observation and relentless scrutiny in the search for truth. Then, maybe then, we can have a cogent discussion on the reasons why evolution is so widely supported by many... including, as Ender pointed out, devout Christians who are also devout scientists.

Then, maybe then, you will realize that the world around you isn't as polarized as words in a book can make it seem. If you want evidence of God, you can't just read about it by glancing at two lines in a book... Likewise, if you want evidence of evolution... you have to go to the same place you'd look for God... in the world around you. Scientists far before you and I were born, and long after we'll be gone, have been looking closely at the world and the universe to come to the conclusions they have.

Most importantly, I have to note two things:

1. That evolution was not an instantaneously universally-accepted scientific theory... It went through almost 100 years of scrutiny and had to wait for advancements in other disciplines such as genetic research to have more substantial evidence in its support. The search for truth does not occur with blind devotion, but with constant scrutiny, skepticism, invasive experimentation and repeated observation.

2. Evolution theory is not about how the universe was created. Creation theory is not about how life evolved from the moment of creation to the present.... and I might point out that while evolution theory is a continuing study, creation theory has remained static and unchanged for 2000 years. Why is this? Because the universe, if there was a moment of creation, was only created once. Life, however, has been evolving since then. Creation doesn't preclude evolution, nor does evolution preclude creation.

The only reason Creationists assume that the two views conflict one another is exclusively because of a gross mistranslation of Genesis. So far, Creationists have have gathered absolutely no other empirical evidence to support their theory which emerged only because of a particular interpretation of two lines in Genesis.... which, as I mentioned before, weren't even translated correctly.

Let me close by saying that even if Creationism has absolutely no evidence whatsoever... why should a person so sure of their faith and their god even care if the book is incorrect? God is not limited to one book. God transcends all... Is your belief and faith in God so entirely dependent upon a book, so circumstantial and conditional that it could be shaken by even the slightest inconsistency between the way he is presented in story and the way he really is?

 

Nice post, Darth_SnowDog. Nothing else I can add.

 

up

 

The subjects of Evolution and Creation are very technical, and beyond my ability to properly debate. However, I think it's revealing that, while evolutionists carefully investigate, theorise and publish their findings in scientific journals, creationists come directly to the uninformed public. To me, that indicates that creationism can only appear convincing to uninformed layman.

If you want to see a website made by someone who does know about this sort of thing, visit this site.

 

I believe in God. That being said, I have to admit there seems to be much more truth in evolution than the literal, 24-hour 7-day creation story. That is not to say that evolution holds all the answers. There are still some major hurdles for science to jump and I'm sure there are some finer points to the theory that will either be refined or replaced altogether as new evidence comes in. Good science cannot tolerate static theories.

But for me, it's not really that important. If God thought the exact processes of the universe's creation were that paramount, there would be more than 1 chapter in the Bible explaining it. Genisis 1:1 ("In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth") is good enough for me.

 

This thread is a most interesting read, I must say.

I started a thread on evolution (I didn't find this one). That was locked so I'll post my thoughts in here:

I believe in God. As said before this is a matter of faith since it cannot really be proven. I don't believe everything in the Bible, but I believe in the same God as in the Bible.

I don't believe in evolution.

I think there are certain common misconceptions about evolution. For one, people seem to think we are descended from chimps or something, whereas in fact we have a common ancestor (or so I understand it). I do not believe that. I do believe in changes over time though. The example I heard once was of a moth that was black and white in colour. Within the population, there were some that were mainly white, some that were mainly black and some about equally black and white. Along came the industrial revolution and things got very grubby so the blacker ones were better camoflaged and were more likely to survive. After a hundred years there were hardly any whitish ones left. That makes perfect sense to me, but that doesn't mean I believe the whole evolution thing.

Firstly, it does not make sense to me. I have little to no knowledge of biology, but I have a basic grasp of the main concepts, I believe. Proteins (or whatever) eventually formed single-cell life in the sea. This pond-scum, given a few million years, produces all the species we now have? Hmm. This does not seem very probable. But that is not a sufficient counter-argument, since many things are strange, yet true. This improbability, though, leads me to my second "problem": entropy.

I know there is the whole thermomdynamics argument discussed previously (I went back and read the whole thread). As I remember, entropy is disorder. For example, the random fluctuations or vibrations in matter. Entropy is the natural way of things. If you don't tidy your room, it becomes messy, for example (someone before me said this is a side-effect of energy dispersion, but bear with me). Now, given that disorder is the natural way of things, and humans are obviously an incredibly ordered arrangement of matter, how did this happen? (Again, I remember the thermodynamics argument, but it just seems so improbable in a "random" universe). I hear about how the body can repair itself and think, "How could that have just happened, by accident?" It seems more likely to me that a higher power made us somehow. Also, the World is a well-balanced eco-system in which millions of species co-exist in harmony (until people go round cutting down the rainforests, but let's not get into that here). This balance does not seem likely to have occurred by chance. One could argue that it had millions of years in which to happen, but it seems to me the longer you leave something, the MORE disordered it should become, not more ordered...

My final problem concerns sexual and asexual reproduction. Bacteria and amoeba and so on reproduce by splitting into two. We reproduce by, well, you know how. So, if we are descended from single cell life, then at some point there must have come the transition from one method to the other. How did this happen? (There may be a good scientific answer for this, but I have never heard about it, forgive my ignorance.)

 

Some good point, Edhel,

I'll add another. I forget who came up with the idea, but the problem is known as "irreducible complexity." The argument goes something like this.

Organisms are very complex things and evolution, driven by genetic mutations is a very slow process. This alone is not problematic until you come to systems like the lymphatic system. To make things simple, the author of the argument likened these complex systems to your basic mouse trap. Evolutionarily speaking, a mouse trap starts as a simple block of wood and begins going through random genetic mutations. Of these mutations, most will cause the wood block to eventually die, but a few will actually be beneficial to our little wood block and it will thrive. The problem arises when one considers that, in order for the mouse trap to trap mice, every single element must evolve at the same time. Each element alone does absolutely nothing advantageous for the wood block. A spring and a block of wood are no better at catching mice than the block alone. Neither is the metal rod plus wood block. There is absolutely no evolutionary advantage for the wood block until every element of the mousetrap is in place, and until such time each individual element would only be burdensome and therefore worthy of being removed from the gene pool via survival of the fittest.

This is not an attack on the theory itself, only the simplistic idea we currently have of how organisms evolve from one level to the next. But like I said before, I subscribe to Genisis 1:1. I'll let people smarter than me figure it out from there.

 

Delurks...some very good points Neon_Ninja. I think my microbio professor mentioned something similar.

 

is there a bathroom around here?...I need to go really bad.........

 

JESUS CHRIST ROCKS!!!! HE SAVED US ALL!!!!

 

Greetings all, a friend of mine sent me this topic, knowing that I might be interested in it.

Ok first of, I'm a Creationist. I believe in Creation, not in Secular Humanism/Evolution. Because I believe in my God and the Holy Bible, everything thing in it, 100%. I have strong Faith, it doesn't mean I can be right. But I do have some issues and proof that might change your minds on how you view Creation and Evolution. I'll seperate this artical into colums and such so it'll be easier to read.


1. "Evolution is 100% fact, Creation is not". Actually it's the other way around my friend, Evolutionists DON'T know 100% accuratly the history of the Earth and the Universe, they can only assume. Because they don't have no time machine, and nobody lived long enough back then to write down on HOW it happened, accuratly. So Evolutionists can only assume and predict on what happened back then.

Of course they have fossils, land markings and such, but that doesn't 100% on how old these things are. You don't see a Evolutionist Scientist dig in a fossil field and find a fossil that has a tag on it saying "65 billion years old".

However, there was one supernatural being who saw all, and that was the Almighty Lord. He's the ONLY one who saw all of time and even lived before time itself, he created TIME! He used man to write down, with His own Words to say what happened, when, how, why, and etc. It wasn't ONLY just men who decided to have fun by writing fictional stories and myths to screw up the whole Religion of Christianity. If they were to do that, God wouldn't allow it.

Some might say that "well that MIGHT be true, but it's still not scientific". Oh really, lets see hot shot. It's a KNOWN FACT that Creationists have MORE STABILE proof then do Evolutionists. Here are a few examples...

A) Creationists have the Bible, that is 100% fact, and that it was writen by man who was Inspired and Used by God.

B) The Big Bang couldn't have occured because before the Big Bang, there was no time, including NO Matter. But for something to evolve or be created, it has to at least have Matter to produce it. It's basically saying "Abra Cadabra" and BOOM! It's there, magic. But Evolution thought isn't based on supernatural powers, including magic. So I guess magic is out of the question. Which leads to "No explination on HOW the Big Bang can occur without Matter".

C) Creationists have writen proof that Dinosaurs exsisted with Man, because it says so in the Bible. How? Well the term "dragon" in the Bible was used mostly to describe Dinosaurs. Not satisfied? Well in the book of Job in the Bible, Job 40:15 it states...

"Behold now Behemoth, which I made with thee."

...Behemoth was a name to describe a particular Dinosaur, not including another term for another particular Dinosaur "Leviathan". "Well then if they were dinosaurs, why doesn't it say it just say it?", well my friend have you heard of "New-Naming?".

The term "Dinosaur" didn't exsist all the way back then, it wasn't till later on (probally around the 1800's) that the term was created. See what I mean?

D) There have been some cases on fossils (expecially dinosaur fossils) that prooved Creationism existed. For example, scientists at the University of Montana found T-rex bones that were not totally fossilized! The sections of the bones that were like fresh bone also contained what seemed to be blood cells. If these bones really were millions of years old, then the blood cells would have already totally disintegrated. Also, there shouldn't be "fresh" bone if it is really millions of years old.

Also, a creation scientist found "fesh" frozen dinosaur bones in Alaska. Now even evolutionists would not argue that this deposit of bones had stayed frozen for the many millions of years since these dinosaurs supposedly died out. The bones were not fossilized! They should not be in this state if they really were millions of years old.

AND, I forgot when it was, but it was a couple years ago or so, I saw it on a news channel (dont

 

Good post SSO i'm with ya!!!!!!!!!