Mod Idea: Simulating surfaces -> Borg Technology -> Twinkie Physics -> Worldviews

[Phoenix-D]

I really shouldn't read threads I said I'm not going to participate in.

"Because of the law of Conservation of Angular Momentum, objects thrown off from a spinning mass will retain the direction of their parent in orbit and revolution (i.e., clockwise objects result in clockwise spinning and orbiting objects). Why then do several moons in our solar system alone rotate "backwards" and one moon orbit its planet backwards, if the Big Bang threw off all the matter originally?"

Because the monentum and angle didn't come from that explosion. It came from a -later- event. If the moon in question is a captured one, that is simply the orbit it stablized in.

"Why are the oldest living organisms (trees) found in the world only ~5,000 years old?"

Because surviving for that long is extremely difficult. Why do humans live less than that? Because before that they get killed by something.

"Why isn't the earth's magnetic field weaker? It's steadily decreasing in strength. Or on the other hand, how did life survive when it was so much stronger? Too strong, and it would prohibit life."

IIRC exactly how the field is generated isn't understood. However when rocks solidify they take on properties of any field they are exposed to (it's strength and direction). Rocks have been found with a weaker magnetic field and a stronger one, as well as a completely reversed one. The field apparently weakens gradually, then flips directions and strengthens again.

Phoenix-D

[Fyron]

Now forces sound more like the Force. I get the idea that the answer for anything dealing with stellar evolution, etc, is "It's always been there." Doesn't sound too scientific (i.e., verifiable) to me. Sounds more like a belief or faith.

No, they sound nothing like the Force. The Force sounds more like religious mumbo-jumbo than any natural laws. Again, give me a time machine, and then we can go back in time until we see if there was a beginning, or if it is continuous. That is really the only way to prove beyond a doubt what happened that long ago in the past.

I defy you to tell me what was in the primordial goo or what the conditions on earth were like. That's unverifiable. To come up with some soup in a laboratory, hook up a spark plug, come out with some amino acids, and then assume that you somehow must have hit on the combination that existed is unscientific. To say, "Well, it must have existed--after all, here we are!" is so far from logic that it's not worth debunking. Also, there is a world of difference between organic molecules and life. The "simplest" cell is orders of magnitudes more complex than the most complex organic molecule. (I know. Given enough time and the random chances of enough of the right molecules landing in the right places in this worldwide primordial goo...)

The "simplest cell" is made of organic molecules. But, the first organism-like things were not full cells.

There is a world of difference between continued production of organic molecules and cellular reproduction.

Not that much of one.

Hume's argument stretches the premises beyond their logical extension, by cleverly wording the design argument. No creationist would say that man's creation and God's creation are like results from like effects. If the universe is without edge and without center (as is commonly said), then God would have created an infinite creation. Man never comes close to infinite creation. In fact, man never comes close to the complexity found in "simple" organisms. Given enough time and chance, though, I'm sure we could come up with something.

A number of your arguments sure sound like the Design Argument to me.

Where did I say this? I'm wondering what allowed intermediate forms to live with partially developed 1) circulatory systems, 2) respiratory systems, 3) transportation systems, 4) digestive systems, etc. For that matter, if the "super-carp" is better, why do we have carp today? If each step up is better by definition, we should have run out of lower forms quite some time ago. The answer, of course, is random chance.

You said it continuously. Not explicitly, but implicitly.

All 4 of those systems exist in ALL LIFEFORMS. Single-celled organisms have all of them. They are not as complex as in animals and such, but they are there. As organisms started becoming multicellular, the cells started to become more specialized. Then, you eventually got macroscopic organisms that have what you would call "1) circulatory systems, 2) respiratory systems, 3) transportation systems, 4) digestive systems". There was never such a thing as a lion with no circulatory system. That is just absurd. All of those became more complex as the organisms became more complex.

Not all carp evolve into other creatures. Only some do. Each step up is not necessarily absolutely better, it is different. Sometimes it is better, sometimes equal, sometimes worse.

First, you missed the point of the question. The entire system needs to be present to function. How did species with one or two parts survive before the rest of the system developed? Random chance saw to it that it all worked out.

THEY DIDNT! All parts evolved simultaneously.

How did it happen that DNA and RNA both happened in the same cell (all surviving cells, actually), with DNA in an incredible double-helix, and DNA unwound itself and unzipped, and an RNA molecule snuggled up to it and made a copy, and the DNA then zipped back up and rewound. Random chance?

The first organisms did not have as complex DNA as exists in the modern day.

Typo. What is so scientific about the idea of hydrogen becoming human? In other words, life from unlife. What about the experiments of Redi and Pasteur? Are they bogus? Or didn't they have enough time (or just bad chance)?

I have already explained how life comes from "unlife", as you put it.

Your verifiable, testable, provable scientific explanations included "random" or "chance" at least ten times. In fact, we're to believe that everything in biological evolution (not to mention planetary, stellar, and elemental evolution) is the amazing result of random chances. I believe in a supernatural (i.e., non-verifiable, non-scientific) miraculous creation of the universe and everything in it. You believe in a materialistic, statistical miracle of such proportions based on so many unverifiable, unsubstantiated assumptions that I'd be ashamed to admit it.

Sigh...

[Will]

Just a comment...

Originally posted by Krsqk:
No, belief isn't a switch, but it is a choice. Either you choose to believe in God, or you choose to believe in evolution.

Ummm, I'm pretty sure you didn't mean to word it like that. I know quite a few people who tell me they believe in some god (most of them the Christian God), and that they believe evolution happens. I know a few people that believe in several gods, not just one. So, as you typed it, that statement is utterly and completely wrong

As for the whole evolution/randomness thing... I have come to believe that the reason so many people cannot accept it is because humans in general have a hard time grasping the concept of how large the universe is, and how long the time is it's actually been in existance. Probably doesn't help that, from what we understand of the mind, subconsiously, we don't recognize anything larger than 4 (I was suprised when I heard about this, but I did some quick testing on myself. If you flash cards with varying numbers of items on it, very quickly, you can tell if there are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or more than 4 items on it with accuracy. Pinpointing in the more than 4 catagory is very inaccurate.). So, consiously, the numbers we understand are lots of Groups of 4 added together, and at some point, this breaks down.
Think of one million dollars. "Wow, that's a lot of money." But, if you have one million dollars right in front of you, in one dollar bills, the reaction would be more like "WOW! That's a LOT of money!"

And back to the actual point: it is hard for humans to believe the randomness behind evolution and other theories (BTW, another digression... for scientists, a theory is something that has been continually substantiated by facts, while a hypothesis more acurately describes what "lay" people term a theory. The "Theory of Evolution" is more accurately the "Theory of Microevolution", as this has been substantiated several times. Macroevolution is infered from this, but as it is difficult to prove this within a human lifespan, it would still be classified a hypothesis).
Hmmm... back to the point again... it is hard to believe the randomness behind these theories because in order for that randomness to give the results, it would require the processes going on in a very, very large number of places, over a very, very large amount of time. Since we can't really fundamentally understand numbers greater than 4, we must rely on abstractions to understand what is happening. For religious people, the abstraction is god(s) of some sort(s). For scientific people, the abstraction is a universe that is amazingly, mind-bogglingly huge, we can't even begin to grasp it, and if we actually did, it would probably kill the graspee (read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, chapter 10... The Total Perspective Vortex). So, just accept that the Universe is "one heck of a big place" and work on that assumption

Hopefully all of that made some sort of sense...

[Fyron]

Made perfect sense to me.

[dogscoff]

When my kids go to school I want them to learn all about how the Frost Giant Ymir was formed in the great void Ginnugagap, and that Odin (son of Bor, son of Buri who was formed in a block of ice and freed by the mystical cow Audhumla) slew him and made from his body the Earth (Midgard)...

The Norse creation myth.

[Krsqk]

I don't want religion taught in public schools. I also don't want hypotheses taught as fact. I'd much rather have students be told, "Here's the universe, and either it was made, or it made itself."

As for the theory/hypothesis labels, I would greatly prefer that. It hasn't happened often in the past, and isn't happening now, and probably isn't likely to change much in the future, though. Creationists would feel happy if every evolutionist would use the word "hypothesis" in public. No one will argue with the Theory of Microevolution, and the Hypotheses of Cosmic/Stellar/Elemental/Planetary/Biological/Macro-Evolution still leave room for disagreement, by definition. That might reduce the frequency with which this type of discussion ends in shouting matches. It's not a religious disagreement with a scientific theory; it's a supernatural hypothesis disagreeing with a materialistic hypothesis.

Fyron, it should still sound like the design argument. Hume mischaracterized the design argument--a nice straw man. Again, man's creation and the universe are infinitely different in magnitude. It's not a question of like results, like effects. The part about maybe we will make something that complex given enough time was late-night mild (and apparently not obvious) sarcasm.

The problem I'm having with the "systems evolved all at once" guess is 1) all systems would have to evolve at the same time--a pretty major accomplishment, even for a simple organism/living organic macromolecule/whatever; 2) we have no evidence of anything like that existing. In fact, we still have no evidence of any transitional forms existing (yes, the old no-missing-link thing). You'd think that, with the untold trillions or quadrillions of creatures that must have died here, that we'd find some of an in between species. We should find endless examples of them in at least one or two places on earth.

[dogscoff]

I don't want religion taught in public schools. I also don't

I take it that's in response to my Last post. Sorry, I was being facetious...