Creation versus Evolution - Worldview determines your perception of truth...Part Two The Comments
On to the comments, example one. I will intersperse remarks with this font and color so you do not confuse the commenter with my responses.
Jon Woolf has left a new comment on your post "Charles Darwin wins the Indianapolis 500! Or does...
":A former druggie and drug dealer tells me I have no morals?
ROFLMAO
You never fail to amuse, Radar.
Very nice that I amuse you. The point is that I am a FORMER criminal who has been reformed by the working of Christ in my life. You would have no idea whatever that I ever took or sold drugs if I had not revealed it myself. George Washington was formerly a loyal subject of England who became the brilliant general who led the colonies to win freedom from England and help found the United States. Abraham Lincoln was a former political loser who never won an election but became President of the United States and the man who officially ended slavery in this nation. George Washington Carver was a former slave who became a brilliant inventor, innovator, scientist, educator and inspiration to men of all colors and creeds. Kurt Warner was the former failed quarterback prospect stocking grocery shelves who worked at becoming a truly great NFL quarterback, one who led three teams to the Super Bowl and won a championship for his team while playing the second half with broken ribs (not revealed to the press at the time). Josh Hamilton was the baseball prospect whose career was derailed by his dependence upon drugs. Former drug user Hamilton later became an American League batting champion and MVP and has led his team to consecutive American League pennants. Notice a theme of men who trusted God making great changes and/or accomplishing great things in the face of failure and opposition?
You miss the point by so far you are upside down! The power of Christ converted a guy who only looked out for number one and got away with whatever he could into a man who seeks to do the will of God. How many people kick the needle, all other illegal drugs, alcoholism and cigarettes and sex outside of marriage to become a Christian elder and pillar of the community known by hundreds and thousands of people for doing good rather than harm? I did not redeem or change myself, I just had to agree with God and let His power make the changes in me.
"With no explanation for existence, life, information or fantastic complexity and precise fine-tuning of the Solar System and the Universe,"
The first two are answered adequately by "Why not?"
"Why not?" That is what you consider "science?" I will tell you why not, because there is no evidence for a naturalistic explanation for the very existence of the Universe, let alone life, information or irreducibly complex systems and symbiotic relationships. Might as well toss the Easter Bunny and Godzilla in there while you are at it. Why not? A Creator God who transcends the material has the power to create a Universe in which logical laws exist and designed organisms full of information exist because that God made sure that said Universe would provide a suitable habitat for mankind to both have a chance to comprehend the laws of the Universe and especially to be able to have a relationship with that Creator God. God is an answer. Why not? A total cop-out!
The last is a matter of probability. "Life" is an emergent property of a sufficiently complex chemical system. And information arises naturally, without need of any hand to aid it.
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"Life" is an emergent property of a sufficiently complex chemical system. This is just about as unscientific a statement as a man can make. The Law of Biogenesis states clearly that it has been proven by numerous experiments that life only comes from life. The statement is science-y sounding gobbledygook! What property of chemistry is "emergent" when the subject is life? What a bunch of complete garbage! Any scientist worth his salt will admit that there is no set of conditions found on Earth today that even begin to produce the raw materials for life. In fact scientists know that even if the proper amino acids could overcome the many hurdles that stand as chemical barriers to their production, they would be racemic (half right-handed and half left-handed) and the chirality problem is insoluble. DNA strings are made up of all left-handed components and, oh yes, they are full of information. They are arranged in a very complex manner to transmit the code by which life is replicated and maintained and furthermore the process by which reproduction takes place is fantastically more complex than just a few amino acids bopping into each other. The statement is a complete humbug.
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And information arises naturally, without need of any hand to aid it. Just like "Dumb and Dumber" was followed up by "Dumb and Dumberer" Jon Woolf then utters this statement! Information just kind of pops into existence all by itself? Really? So the collected works of Shakespeare just fell from the sky? James Michener didn't write all those books, they simply went *poof* and appeared on bookshelves in libraries around the world? This is exactly the opposite of the dictionary definition of information:
in·for·ma·tion (
n
f
r-m
shn)n.
1. Knowledge derived from study, experience, or instruction.
2. Knowledge of specific events or situations that has been gathered or received by communication; intelligence or news. See Synonyms at knowledge.
3. A collection of facts or data: statistical information.
4. The act of informing or the condition of being informed; communication of knowledge: Safety instructions are provided for the information of our passengers.
5. Computer Science Processed, stored, or transmitted data.
6. A numerical measure of the uncertainty of an experimental outcome.
7. Law A formal accusation of a crime made by a public officer rather than by grand jury indictment.
infor·mation·al adj.
for·mation·al adj.The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
So Information is associated with knowledge which is associated with intelligence which means that it requires a sentinent source. If you are collecting data, the data itself may be the product of natural processes but it requires intellect to identify what to quantify and what conclusions to draw from that data. In the case of organisms, it is necessary for God to have input the initial information into organisms and in fact it is also necessary for the organisms themselves to have begun intact. DNA requires cells, cells require DNA and both require ATP Synthase production to exist and operate. In fact far more than those three primary components of life are required to be in place and operational for life to exist and to reproduce. The remarkable complexity and obvious coding and design involved in making an organic hardware/software/operating system/self-replicating/self-healing being is still beyond our ability to completely understand and yet despite the fact that there are myriad such creatures both prokaryote and eukaryote that are found pretty much everywhere on Earth.
WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY-FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS
Not sure what to say here. Jon, the entire story of that message was in effect the disastrous consequences of mutation entering into the intended message. Just as mutations are harmful to creatures and therefore there are complex systems in place intended to keep mutations from being passed on during the reproduction of organisms, this mistaken insertion combined with a mistaken reading of said message was an embarrassment to Admiral Halsey and all parties concerned. DNA has stop codons that would be the equivalent to the "RR" portion of the message. A properly working DNA decryption recognizes stop codons so that such a mistake would be unlikely to happen within an organism. So Jon Woolf has inadvertently made fun of the very mechanism he thinks causes simple organisms to become more complex, mutations, which are actually mistakes, broken things, garbled messages - the kinds of things that tend to harm and not help. Jon, again, you are shooting yourself in the foot. You are out of feet!!!
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Example two - Jon Woolf has left a new comment on your post "Turning the tables and questioning Darwinists. Yo...
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Radar, you're ranting again.
True transitional forms have to show the transitions of systems that must develop according to Darwinism in steps, like going from a bump on the head to an eye, or some way a woodpecker tongue could be seen to grow step by step while allowing the organism to exist.
This is exactly what the therapsid-to-mammal sequence shows. See also the transition from primitive archaeocete to modern mysticete, especially the changes in skull anatomy that moved the nares from the muzzle to the middle of the forehead.
Let's see the complex system of valves and chambers of the neck of the giraffe being evolved in the fossil record.
a) soft tissues generally don't fossilize.
credit fossil jelly and living jelly
Yet we have fossil jellyfish and other soft-bodied organisms. We have seen a great deal of partial fossilization of soft parts on various specimens and we have also found flesh and blood remains that are not even fossilized! The fossil record becomes less friendly to Darwinism year by year.
flesh and blood remains of dinosaur
b) the elaborate system of valves and chambers that exist in the giraffe's neck also exist in every other mammal living today, and presumably in every mammal that ever lived in the past.
Say WHAT??!!! You think every mammal in existence has an elaborate system of valves and chambers to keep the blood pressure to the brain relatively constant? That is like saying all mammals have a covering of quills like the porcupine or that all lizards are able to change their coloration to blend into the environment like chameleons. The very unique giraffe is unlike virtually any other mammal. Darwinists really have no explanation for their existence. Lamarck once posited that they were ordinary mammals which kept stretching out their necks to reach leaves on higher tree branches. But no matter what, very few mammals have anything even vaguely resembling the complex system of valves and chambers that keep the giraffe from either exploding its skull when drinking or from passing out when quickly raising its head.
The Amazing Giraffe
What is so amazing about the Giraffe?
The 25 pound giraffe heart is probably the most powerful in the animal kingdom! Bristol Foster commented in National Geographic on the giraffe’s heart: “To drive blood eight feet up the 500 pound neck to the head, the heart is exceptionally large and thick-muscled, and the blood pressure—twice or three times that of man—is probably the highest in any animal.” But the brain is a very delicate structure which cannot stand high blood pressure. The elevated pressure on the brain should cause the giraffe to faint when he bends down to take a drink? Does he ‘blow his mind’? Fortunately, three design features were included in the giraffe to control this and related problems.
1. First, the giraffe was designed to know that it must spread his front legs apart in order to drink comfortably. This lowers the level of the heart somewhat and so reduces the difference in height from the heart to the head of the drinking animal. This results in excess pressure in the brain being less than if the legs were kept straight.
2. Second, the giraffe’s jugular vein was designed with a series of one-way check valves which immediately close when the head is lowered, preventing blood from flowing back down into the brain. But what of the blood flow through the carotid artery from the heart to the brain?
3. A third design feature is the ‘wonder net’, a spongy tissue filled with numerous small blood vessels located near the base of the giraffe brain. The arterial blood first flows through this net of vessels before it reaches the brain. When the giraffe stoops to drink, the wonder net controls the blood flow so that the full pressure is not exerted on the brain.
Equally amazing is the fact the blood does not pool in the legs. This is prevented by an extremely tough skin and an inner fascia. This skin combination has been studied extensively by NASA scientists in their development of gravity-suits for astronauts.
How can this be?
If the giraffe evolved, along with developing a longer neck, it had to generate a huge heart to push blood up the neck, special valves to maintain its blood pressure, and an anti-gravity suit to resist the extreme pressure that is routinely produced. Did these structures come about merely by coincidence?
Wolf-Ekkehard Lonning wrote in March of 06” “No data from giraffes then (in Darwin’s time) existed to support one theory of causes over another, and none exist now. The spotty evidence gives no insight into how the long-necked giraffe species arose.”
The most likely conclusion must obviously lead away from evolution. The giraffe’s amazing abilities are a testament to design in the animal kingdom. From its long neck to its anti-gravity-suit skin, the giraffe’s diverse nature defies the theory of evolution, and embraces the opposite concept—design. When design is evident then the obvious conclusion is THERE MUST BE A DESIGNER. It takes far more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in God as designer and creator of our amazing world.
Courtesy Just2Amazing! blog
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If you have wet sediments or newly formed-still pliable sediments and there is an massive influx of magma shooting up through them, voila, LIPS.
Wrong-o. Do some research, Radar. Learn what Large Igneous Provinces really are and the form they really take. Those LIPs known as 'traps' and 'flood basalts,' such as the Deccan Traps and the Siberian Traps, are clearly made up of numerous extrusive lava flows deposited one atop another to depths of hundreds of meters, interspersed with fossiliferous sedimentary strata.
Again, LIPS and BIFS are catastrophic formations. The Noahic Flood and the volatile post-Flood Ice Age were responsible for producing the sedimentary rocks and also innumerable fascinating canyons, buttes, mesas and etc. I see no reason to doubt that LIPS and BIFS were formed primarily during the time the floodwaters were abating and during the dynamic post-Flood period when the sedimentary layers were mudrock and capable of being twisted like taffy or easily penetrated by a lava flow or flows, in fact, far more likely to be the conditions that allow for the formation of such as LIPS and BIFS as opposed to what we observe today.
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Example three - Jon Woolf has left a new comment on your post "Thermodynamics versus Darwinist Mythology. Read a...
"The conditions we see on Earth now and can predict about in the past would not tend to allow for it because it appears that the atmosphere has always been an oxygen-rich environment and one in which water is present.
Nope. The existence of certain minerals such as uraninite in Archaean strata demonstrate that at the time those strata were laid down, Earth's atmosphere was anoxic.
Nope squared. Evidence of the presence of an oxygenated atmosphere is found in every rock layer. Besides that, there are steps in the theoretical assembly-by-chance of the components of life that are threatened by oxygen and steps where oxygen is required. How do you get away from that problem?
Oh, and Gentry's nonsense about polonium radiohalos was conclusively refuted more than twenty years ago
Rather, your source nonsense about polonium radiohalos was poorly researched and thoroughly refuted by extensive testing as scientists followed up on Gentry's hypothesis and found that further research supported radiohalo formation as evidence for granites being formed in periods of from days to perhaps tens of years.
As for the subject of thermodynamics: it's really fun to watch you and your creationist pals claim to know something about thermo, and then argue with a straight face that reproduction and growth in organisms are violations of the laws of thermodynamics.
Ignorance is bliss. When it comes to Thermodynamics I suppose Darwinists consider the subject whenever they need a shot of it. Every aspect of Darwinist teaching from the supposed Big Bang (which is almost entirely composed of supposed forces and matter that has never been observed and begins with a singularity that cannot be explained and admits to including Planck Time in which all the laws of physics are to be ignored) to the formation of stars and galaxies to the formation of the Solar System to the formation of life and the source of information and the alleged ascent of life from a simple one-celled mythical progenitor to the untold billions of billions of various organisms extant today is a violation of the Laws of Thermodynamics. Dr. Jeff Miller's article on Thermodynamics which you laugh at is a very logical and orderly destruction of your worldview's foundation. I think I detect a whistle while passing a graveyard rather than a genuine laugh, since the joke is on you.
Let's go ahead and pretend we accept the naturalistic materialistic point of view. No God, no purpose or intention to the Universe, it just happened to happen. Thermodynamics tells us nothing is being created or destroyed. How did the Universe create itself in violation of that law? Cue Jeff Miller for a follow-up post!
“The Laws of Thermodynamics Don't Apply to the Universe!”
| by | Jeff Miller, Ph.D. |
Many in the atheistic community have realized various problems with their theories in light of what we know about the laws of thermodynamics. In order for atheism to be a plausible explanation for the origin of the Universe, matter must either be eternal or have the capability of creating itself (i.e., spontaneous generation).
Yet the Second Law of Thermodynamics implies that the first option is impossible, and the First Law implies that the second option is impossible (see Miller, 2007 for a more in depth discussion of the laws of thermodynamics and their application to the origin of the Universe). Upon grudgingly coming to this conclusion, but being unwilling to yield to the obvious alternative (i.e., Someone outside of the Universe put matter here), some have tried to find loopholes in the laws that will allow for their flawed atheistic ideologies to survive.
A common assertion being raised today by some is that the laws of thermodynamics do not apply to the Universe as a whole, and therefore cannot be used to prove that God played a role in the origin of the Universe. More specifically, some question whether our Universe can be considered an “isolated system” (i.e., a system in which mass and energy are not allowed to cross the system boundary; Cengel and Boles, 2002, p. 9). In their well-known thermodynamics textbook, Fundamentals of Classical Thermodynamics, Van Wylen and Sonntag note concerning the Second Law of Thermodynamics: “[W]e of course do not know if the universe can be considered as an isolated system” (1985, p. 233). Dr. Robert Alberty, author of Thermodynamics of Biochemical Reactions, is quoted as saying, “I do not agree that the universe is an isolated system in the thermodynamic sense” (as quoted in Holloway, 2010).
What if the Universe is not an isolated system? How would that fact impact the creation/evolution controversy? First of all, the creationist has always argued that the Universe is not an isolated system, or at least has not always been one. According to the creationist, in the beginning, God created the Universe’s system barrier, then crossed it and placed energy and matter within the system—thus making the Universe non-isolated. So, recognizing that the Universe is, in fact, not an isolated system would really mean that some evolutionists are starting to move in the right direction in their understanding of the Universe! Acquiescence of this truth by atheists in no way disproves the existence of God. In fact, quite the contrary is true. Admission that the Universe is not isolated does not help the case for atheism, but rather tacitly acknowledges a creator of sorts. [More on this point later.]
What this admission would do, however, is make some of the creationists’ arguments against atheism less applicable to the discussion about the existence of God—specifically some of the uses of the laws of thermodynamics and their application to the Universe as a whole. For instance, if the Universe is not an isolated system, it means that something or someone outside of the Universe can open the proverbial box that encloses the Universe and put matter and energy into it. Therefore, the Universe could be eternal, as long as something/someone is putting more usable energy into the box to compensate for the energy loss and counter entropy. Thus, the argument against the eternality of matter by way of the Second Law of Thermodynamics could potentially be null and void. Also, with a non-isolated system, it could be argued that the original, imaginary pre-Big Bang ball (which never actually existed—since the Big Bang is flawed [see May, et al., 2003) was not eternal in its existence. Further, it could be contended that it did not have to spontaneously generate in order to explain its existence. Rather, energy and matter could have been put here from a source outside of this Universe other than God.
From a purely scientific perspective, one of the problems with claiming that the Universe is not isolated is that such an assertion presupposes the existence of physical sources outside of this Universe (e.g., multiple universes outside of our own). And yet, how can such a claim be made scientifically, since there is no verifiable evidence to support such a contention? Stephen Hawking has advanced such an idea, but he, himself, recognizes the idea to be merely theoretical (Shukman, 2010). Speculation, conjecture, assertion—not evidence. As Gregory Benford wrote: “This ‘multiverse’ view represents the failure of our grand agenda and seems to me contrary to the prescribed simplicity of Occam’s Razor, solving our lack of understanding by multiplying unseen entities into infinity” (Benford, 2006, p. 226). Belief in the multiverse model is like proclaiming the existence of fairies just because you can imagine one. But such speculation is hardly scientific evidence—and that is the problem.
What does the scientific evidence actually convey today? We live in the only known Universe, and it had to come from somewhere. That is a fact. If the Big Bang occurred, and all matter and energy in the Universe—everything that exists—was initially in that little imaginary sphere the size of the period at the end of this sentence (or much smaller, depending on which “expert” cosmologist you ask), by implication, the evolutionist admits that the Universe is of a finite size. That is a fact. A finite Universe is an isolated system. Since the Universe as a whole is the only true isolated system, the laws of thermodynamics apply perfectly. That is why some reputable scientists examine the evidence, draw reasonable conclusions, and articulate statements in reputable textbooks like the following:
- “Isolated system: It is the system which exchange [sic] neither matter nor energy with the surroundings. For such a system, the matter and energy remain constant. There is no such perfectly isolated system, but our universe can be considered as an isolated system since by definition it does not have any surroundings” (Senapati, 2006, p. 64, emp. added).
- “A spontaneous process in an isolated system increases the system’s entropy. Because the universe—our entire surroundings—is in contact with no other system, we say that irreversible processes increase the entropy of the universe” (Fishbane, et.al., 1996, p. 551, italics in original).
Ironically, when the atheistic community asserts alleged creative agents outside the Universe, they tacitly acknowledge a creator of some sort. What is the difference between these concessions and the true Creator? Why not accept the God of the Bible? The answer is obvious. Their brand of designer comes packaged without the demands and expectations that come with belief in God. Very convenient—but sad and most certainly unscientific.
Note also that accepting the possibility of alternative creative causes leaves atheists with the same problem with which they started. They claim to use the laws of physics to arrive at the multiverse conclusion (Shukman, 2010). But if the laws of physics apply to their conclusion about multiple universes, why would the laws of physics not apply to those universes? If the laws of science apply to those hypothetical universes (and it would be reasonable to conclude that they would since, according to atheists, the universes interact), then the matter of origins has merely shifted to those other universes. How did they come into being? There are still only three options—they always existed (in violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics); they created themselves (in violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics); or they were created. The laws of thermodynamics still echo the truth from the remotest parts of the created order: “You cannot explain it all without God in the equation!”
The truth is, the scientific evidence leads unbiased truth-seekers to the conclusion that there simply must be a Creator. How do we know that the laws of thermodynamics are true on Earth? No one has ever been able to document an exception to them (except when divine miracles have occurred). They always hold true. Why does the same principle not hold when observing the rest of the Universe? As Borgnakke and Sonntag articulate in Fundamentals of Thermodynamics concerning the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics:
The basis of every law of nature is experimental evidence, and this is true also of the first law of thermodynamics. Many different experiments have been conducted on the first law, and every one thus far has verified it either directly or indirectly. The first law has never been disproved.... [W]e can say that the second law of thermodynamics (like every other law of nature) rests on experimental evidence. Every relevant experiment that has been conducted, either directly or indirectly, verifies the second law, and no experiment has ever been conducted that contradicts the second law. The basis of the second law is therefore experimental evidence (2009, p. 116-220, emp. added).There has been no verifiable evidence that the laws of thermodynamics have been violated throughout the Universe. Sure, there has been speculation, conjecture, and theory that it “could” happen. Yet, through it all, the laws still stand unscathed. Granted, atheists may cloud the air when they blow forth their unreasonable, unproven, jargon-filled, imaginary fairy-dust theories, but when the fairy-dust settles, the laws of thermodynamics still declare the truth to all who will listen (Psalm 19:1). The scientific evidence shows that there is unmistakable order and design in the Universe. Design implies a Designer. The God of the Bible. Now that’s scientific.
REFERENCES
Benford, Gregory (2006), What We Believe But Cannot Prove, ed. John Brockman (New York: Harper Perennial).
Borgnakke, Claus and Richard E. Sonntag (2009), Fundamentals of Thermodynamics (Asia: John Wiley and Sons), seventh edition.
Cengel, Yunus A. and Michael A. Boles (2002), Thermodynamics: An Engineering Approach (New York: McGraw-Hill), fourth edition.
Fishbane, Paul M., Stephen Gasiorowicz, and Stephen T. Thornton (1996), Physics for Scientists and Engineers (New Jersey: Prentice Hall), second edition.
Holloway, Robert (2010), “Experts on Thermodynamics Refute Creationist Claims,” http://www.ntanet.net/Thermo-Internet.htm.
May, Branyon, et al. (2003), “The Big Bang Theory—A Scientific Critique,” Reason & Revelation, 23[5]:32-34,36-47, May, http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2635.
Miller, Jeff (2007), “God and the Laws of Thermodynamics: A Mechanical Engineer’s Perspective,” Reason & Revelation, 27[4]:25-31, April, http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/3293.
Senapati, M.R. (2006), Advanced Engineering Chemistry (New Delhi: Laxmi Publications), second edition.
Shukman, David (2010), “Professor Stephen Hawking Says No God Created Universe,” BBC News, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11172158.
Stein, Ben and Kevin Miller (2008), Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Premise Media).
Van Wylen, Gordon J. and Richard Sonntag (1985), Fundamentals of Classical Thermodynamics (New York: John Wiley and Sons), third edition.
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A Darwinist walks into a bar. He immediately begins reaching for and beginning to pick up an apparently imaginary glass.
The bartender asks him, "What are you doing, mate?"
The Darwinist replies, "Just providing the proper conditions for a Guinness Stout to spontaneously generate."
The bartender thinks on that. "Well let's just let us have your wallet and we'll see what we can evolve?"
The Darwinist agrees. The bartender takes the wallet. After several minutes the Darwinist asks about his wallet and/or his Stout?
"Sorry, mate, not yet. But you have an infinite amount of time to spend, right? So no worries!"