Creation vs. Evolution

[Danoff]

Your brain is much more powerfull than any computer/gadget on the latest jet aircraft

And you believe it appeared due to math and time? That is a stretch

But my brain doesn't have a jet engine. Why are we comparing people and aircraft again? Math can be seen all over the place.

I think my brain appeared because of the nature of procreation.

 

[tabs]

You never seen life rise spontaneously, yet you seem to believe it 100%.

I can't speak for danoff, but I've never said I believed in anything 100%. I did say Evolution is not perfect, but it's the best we've come up with so far. It makes the most sense.

Why do you dismiss God?

Why do you believe in God?

I didnt misunderstand anything. My PC motherboard represents a cell. Quite well too.

What the...?

 

[Swift]

Ok, the Earth goes around the sun because of math. Birds fly and currents flow because of math. Seriously was that necessary?

But, did they ORIGINATE because of math. I'm thinking.....no.

 

[code_kev]

Earth, the points you made are utterly terrible. It's people like your self that actually HELP to back up Evolution. Thanks!

It scares and saddens me to think that people still believe in this Adam and Eve stuff . I can at least be happy in the fact that less and less people in the UK believe this, and chances are that one day, these beliefs will die away.

Creationists, to say that believing in Evolution and all that goes with it "is a stretch", after you claim that we come from 2 people, created in a garden with talking snakes, in a land where small boats can carry huge quantities of animals, made by people hundreds of years old is abit...odd. I find that rather funny! Your asking people to ignore science, and embrace what sounds like bad fantasy writing on a whim that god "might" exist and that the Bible "could be" the word of God thus not made up with no proof to support anything what so ever. Don't get me wrong, I respect peoples religions, but 90% of Christians (a figure I just made up, but hell, you guys don't seem to need evidence to believe stuff anyway) these days ignore the less plausible stuff anyway, prefering to believe that Evolution and all that goes with it is how God worked. See, it's called having flexiblity, the ability to change your mind based on new information. I advise trying it.

 

[PS]

That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. First, that is not evolutionary theory. As explained by famine about 50 pages ago. Evolutionary theory deals with how life matured and changed, not how it began.

But I want you to think really hard. You actually accept/believe that when these protiens are just sitting there, sooner or later they become a cell that's alive? I know you think creationist are crazy because we believe in adam and eve and the garden of eden and Noah's ark and all. But to have life just appear because of math? Now that's a pretty serious stretch if you ask me. Even before I was a christian I never believed that.

I'll use plants as an example. They take in sunlight and carbon dioxide, and convert it to sucrose and oxygen in return for nutrients and energy. Imagine a single-celled organism doing something similar, only it reproduces on it's own, instead of relying on runners and polination and budding. It gets its own food without relying on another organism. As plants also evolve, this does too. Just slightly better. That's life.

 

[PS]

Wrong! They were invented by man. Mankind is alive. Protiens are not alive. That is not the same.

What's the difference between a 2 week old fetus and a strand of muscle tissue?

 

[Duke]

You never seen life rise spontaneously, yet you seem to believe it 100%. Why do you dismiss God?

Because physical evidence deems it not only possible but probable.

Why do you dismiss the Flying Spaghetti Monster? He is an equally valid proposition for the Creator.

I didnt misunderstand anything. My PC motherboard represents a cell. Quite well too.

No, it doesn't; not in any meaningful way for this discussion.

The simple proteins and amino acids that coalesced to form the proto-life were chemically attracted to each other by the laws of physics, for the same physical-chemical reasons that certain elements attract each other to form compounds and certain other elements will not combine. Given time and exposure to each other (provided by, well, billions of years, and the constant geotechnical shifting of the young Earth), these proteins will chemically bond to each other in increasingly complex ways.

There is no physical-chemical imperative between the pieces of your PC motherboard, however. You can hold them against each other for millions of years and nothing will happen between them because they are not of the right chemical makeup.

Look, give up. Believe what you want to believe, but admit to yourself that it's founded entirely on something non-rational, and quit trying to convince us that it is rational.

 

[Swift]

What's the difference between a 2 week old fetus and a strand of muscle tissue?

physically, genetcially, on a cellular level? In what way do you mean? But it still doesn't matter, because neither one of them originated itself.

 

[Danoff]

But, did they ORIGINATE because of math. I'm thinking.....no.

You're thinking wrong. Yes they did originate because of math.

Planets fromed because of the gravitational attraction between clumps of matter. The more matter clumped together the larger the gravitational pull and the more matter would continue to clump together - until all of the nearby matter was clumped in one big ball we call a planet.

So yes, planets originate because of newton's law of gravitation. Or rather, newton's law of graviation describes the interaction between massive objects and that interaction caused the formation of planets. But we describe that process in the universal language of mathematics.

Prior to the planets forming, there were just a bunch of particles floating around out there - but because of math (or the processes we describe through math), they formed into planets.

 

[sicbeing]

It wasn't BECAUSE of math, math is just what we use to explain the process. But you knew that =p

 

[Swift]

You're thinking wrong. Yes they did originate because of math.

Planets fromed because of the gravitational attraction between clumps of matter. The more matter clumped together the larger the gravitational pull and the more matter would continue to clump together - until all of the nearby matter was clumped in one big ball we call a planet.

So yes, planets originate because of newton's law of gravitation. Or rather, newton's law of graviation describes the interaction between massive objects and that interaction caused the formation of planets. But we describe that process in the universal language of mathematics.

Prior to the planets forming, there was just a bunch of particles floating around out there - but because of math, they formed into planets.

It wasn't BECAUSE of math, math is just what we use to explain the process. But you knew that =p

Yeah, what he said.

But that still isn't where the planets originated from. That's like saying a cake originated from eggs, flour, milk and sugar. Those are the ingredients that compose it, but the cake did not "originate" from those ingredients.

What I'm saying is that math may be a decent foundation for evolution, but it can't be used do show the origin of life or of the universe. Or at least I've never seen it done logically.

 

[Danoff]

Yeah, what he said.

But that still isn't where the planets originated from. That's like saying a cake originated from eggs, flour, milk and sugar. Those are the ingredients that compose it, but the cake did not "originate" from those ingredients.

What I'm saying is that math may be a decent foundation for evolution, but it can't be used do show the origin of life or of the universe. Or at least I've never seen it done logically.

No. I'm describing how things can originate from natural processes. For example, a mountain originates from the natural process of plates shifting benieth the Earth. A planet forms from the natural process of gravity. We describe natural processes with mathematics.

My fundamental claim is that life originated via natural processes the same way planets and mountains do.

 

[sukerkin]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that you chaps are talking a little at crossed purposes here, Dan and Swift.

What Dan is describing is how the processes can be mathematically described once the preconditions are in place whereas what Swift is asking is how those precursive conditions came into being in the first place.

That is fundamentally the problem I have with our current level of understanding of the universe. Given that certain conditions are accepted as being in place then we can define and explain processes that from that point give rise to something like what we see in the observable universe. However, what we cannot do is show what happened to bring those initial conditions about in the first place i.e. what is behind the 'event-horizon' of the 'Big Bang'?

Have to dash as it's time to depart the place of slavery (I mean work, sorry). I hope to dip my toe into this thread more deeply later.

 

[Danoff]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that you chaps are talking a little at crossed purposes here, Dan and Swift.

What Dan is describing is how the processes can be mathematically described once the preconditions are in place whereas what Swift is asking is how those precursive conditions came into being in the first place.

Swift is asking how life first came into existance. I'm giving him parallel situations about how a planet or a mountain comes into existance - both are natural processes. It is true that if you go back far enough science does not have any theories... but if you're looking at the origins of life on Earth, we can describe it through natural processes mathematically.

 

[Pako]

Swift is asking how life first came into existance. I'm giving him parallel situations about how a planet or a mountain comes into existance - both are natural processes. It is true that if you go back far enough science does not have any theories... but if you're looking at the origins of life on Earth, we can describe it through natural processes mathematically.

We (Science) CAN:
- Describe how a mountain comes into existance through natural processes.

We (Science) THINK we have an IDEA through natural processes how:
- The earth came into existance.
- How life on earth originated.

 

[Danoff]

We (Science) CAN:
- Describe how a mountain comes into existance through natural processes.

We (Science) THINK we have an IDEA through natural processes how:
- The earth came into existance.
- How life on earth originated.

There is little difference between these three cases in terms of our scientific understanding of them. Why do you think we understand the formation of a mountain better than the Earth or life?

 

[Pako]

There is little difference between these three cases in terms of our scientific understanding of them. Why do you think we understand the formation of a mountain better than the Earth or life?

Mountains are still coming into existence. They are continuing to grow. We can document measurement differences, for example, as we continue to collect current data.

We don't have such a luxury with the other two examples. Life or the earth is not currently "originating" would be the major difference.

 

[Danoff]

We don't have such a luxury with the other two examples. Life or the earth is not currently "originating" would be the major difference.

But life and the Earth continue to evolve and we continue to monitor that process gaining insight into the early stages of its evolution. We observe nebulae at other stars and the geological activity on other planets in our solar system to gain insight into how the Earth formed. We observe comets impacting Jupiter and otmospheric conditions on Mars and Venus. We observe the chemical conditions on Titan and Neptune and look at the composition. We can look at rocks and craters on Earth that date very far back into the Earth's history.

We can simulate the conditions of Early earth and look at the interactions between chemicals to try to recreate our best estimate of what conditions were like.


I don't see a huge distinction between the three cases. In all three cases we are still gathering data about the processes. All three cases take many lifetimes to complete so no researcher can ever see the full process. All three cases are in a constant state of flux (life, the Earth, and mountains).

The differences lie in little places like where we get the data or what kind of data we can get - but from a scientific standpoint they're all three natural processes that we can observe in the present tense (including the origination of life) and that we can observe the histories of through the evidence left behind.

 

[Famine]

It's an american thing Famine. Packardbell had to be the biggest piece of junk computers out there. But for some reason, people bought them! So now when we see that mess, it's a sickening reminder. That's all, nothing personal. But I'm glad you didn't pay for it.

Just an update on this. So insanely off-topic, but hey. Threads evolve...

 

[Swift]

Just an update on this. So insanely off-topic, but hey. Threads evolve...

That looks like some serious goodness there Famine.

But life and the Earth continue to evolve and we continue to monitor that process gaining insight into the early stages of its evolution. We observe nebulae at other stars and the geological activity on other planets in our solar system to gain insight into how the Earth formed. We observe comets impacting Jupiter and otmospheric conditions on Mars and Venus. We observe the chemical conditions on Titan and Neptune and look at the composition. We can look at rocks and craters on Earth that date very far back into the Earth's history.

We can simulate the conditions of Early earth and look at the interactions between chemicals to try to recreate our best estimate of what conditions were like.


I don't see a huge distinction between the three cases. In all three cases we are still gathering data about the processes. All three cases take many lifetimes to complete so no researcher can ever see the full process. All three cases are in a constant state of flux (life, the Earth, and mountains).

The differences lie in little places like where we get the data or what kind of data we can get - but from a scientific standpoint they're all three natural processes that we can observe in the present tense (including the origination of life) and that we can observe the histories of through the evidence left behind.

IF you can't see the difference between the origin of something and the evolution of something, then, well I don't know what to say.

 

[Danoff]

IF you can't see the difference between the origin of something and the evolution of something, then, well I don't know what to say.

Tell me the difference between the origin of a mountain and the evolution of the Earth's crust.

 

[Swift]

Tell me the difference between the origin of a mountain and the evolution of the Earth's crust.

The origin of a mountian is the same as the origin of a valley or any other land mass. It came from some disturbance in the earth's crust. Now, where did the earth's crust come from? and so on and so forth.

Basically you just said the same thing in different terms. If I asked you to describe the "origin" of life and then I asked you to describe the "evolution" of life. Every scientist would give very different papers on the two. I thought we had this done a while back?

 

[Pako]

Just an update on this. So insanely off-topic, but hey. Threads evolve...

[off-topic]
Thanks for the update. Glad to see we don't need to flog you now. Much nicer monitor ( if that's even your monitor and not someone elses ). 👍
[/off-topic]

 

[Danoff]

The origin of a mountian is the same as the origin of a valley or any other land mass. It came from some disturbance in the earth's crust. Now, where did the earth's crust come from? and so on and so forth.

Basically you just said the same thing in different terms. If I asked you to describe the "origin" of life and then I asked you to describe the "evolution" of life. Every scientist would give very different papers on the two. I thought we had this done a while back?

Yea. The origin of life is a different process than the evolution of life. But the origin and evolution of the Earth are much more closely related, as is the origin and evolution of mountains. I was just pointing out how the evolution of some processes can be used to determine their origin.

Anyway what were we talking about again? Oh right, I was saying that the origin of a mountain or a planet or life are all very similar because we can observe these processes currently and can see their history.

 

[Swift]

Yea. The origin of life is a different process than the evolution of life. But the origin and evolution of the Earth are much more closely related, as is the origin and evolution of mountains. I was just pointing out how the evolution of some processes can be used to determine their origin.

Anyway what were we talking about again? Oh right, I was saying that the origin of a mountain or a planet or life are all very similar because we can observe these processes currently and can see their history.

uh, yeah. But to compare the evolutin of nonliving things to the living doesn't make sense. Infact, I wouldn't even say that a mountain evolves. It emerges, it grows, but it doesn't evolve into something else.

 

[Duke]

Sure it does. It evolves into a hill, and then eventually, a plain, and, finally, a canyon.

 

[Danoff]

uh, yeah. But to compare the evolutin of nonliving things to the living doesn't make sense. Infact, I wouldn't even say that a mountain evolves. It emerges, it grows, but it doesn't evolve into something else.

You're trying to distinguish humanity from the rest of nature - I'm trying to show you how I view us as part of nature.

 

[Swift]

You're trying to distinguish humanity from the rest of nature - I'm trying to show you how I view us as part of nature.

Ah, and there lies the fundamental difference in our viewpoints. You believe that human life was a natural occurence of nature. I don't. Well, at least we got down to what the root of the argument is.

 

[Danoff]

Ah, and there lies the fundamental difference in our viewpoints. You believe that human life was a natural occurence of nature. I don't. Well, at least we got down to what the root of the argument is.

Yup.

Even more fundamental than that, I don't think human beings have souls. I think we should be classified right next to monkeys in the big classification tree. That's pretty much the gist of it.

So to me the formation of the planets and the formation of life is quite similar - both of which are continually evolving processes. But since you see human beings as special in the universe, you distinguish us from all other living and non-living things.


Anyway what started all of this was that comment "you think this happened because of math??" and my answer is yes. I think that the natural processes (atomic bonds, gravity, gene sharing, natural selection, reporduction etc.) which are all completely necessary in my mind for reality to make any sense at all are what caused all of this - the Earth, the start of life, the mountains, the evolution of species etc.

 

[Grand Prix]

Will religions live on after we find alien life that is more intelligent than humans? That's the question.