Your Thoughts on Creationism/Darwinism Debate
Reader Comments
Physics Abuse
"first Law of Thermodynamics states that the total amount of energy in the universe is constant." If it is constant, then you cannot use up / decrease the amount of energy in the universe. Duh.
I don't understand why you are arguing against yourself Daniel. The First Law of Thermodynamics states the conservation of energy. You mentioned and agreed with this. Then, by your own reasoning energy cannot be consumed/destroyed, so why do you shift to saying the universe is using up energy in the next sentence? The universe is not using up energy like a car uses up fuel, because energy cannot be destroyed. Energy is merely rearranged. They way you interpreted the 2nd Law, to mean that it decreases the amount of energy in the system, violates the First Law. Are you being purposefully deceitful, or are you just this clueless?
I do like Norman Geisler
Daniel, the book you quoted from was not written by scientists but apologists Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. Scientists agree that the universe had a beginning. They call it the Big Bang.
It is worth noting that your reference to the "2nd Law of Thermodynamics" is often erroneously applied to evolution by creationists, claiming it cannot then occur because of this. This is of course false, since it only applies to closed systems, and our Earth (which gets plenty of energy from the sun) is not a closed system.
It is also worth noting that Norman Geisler was involved in the court case of McLean v. Arkansas, defending creationism vs evolution. In that court, under oath of course, he admitted to UFO's connection with Satan.
The Universe had a Beginning.
Thermodynamics is the study of energy, and the Second Law states, among other things, that the universe is running out of usable energy.
You say, “So what? How does that prove that the universe had a beginning?” Well look at it this way: the first Law of Thermodynamics states that the total amount of energy in the universe is constant. In other words, the universe has only a finite amount of energy (much as your car has only a finite amount of gas). Now, if your car has only a finite amount of gas (the Second Law), and whenever it’s running it continually consumes gas (the Second Lasw), would your car be running right now if you had started it up an infinitely long time ago? No, of course not. It would be out of gas by now. In the same way, the universe would be out of energy by now if it had been running from all eternity. But here we are—the lights are still on, so the universe must have begun sometime in the finite past. That is, the universe is NOT eternal—it had a beginning.
Source: “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist” pg.76
Wesley
(continued)
<".The geology books to be honest..I thought they proved a great flood more than anything else..despite their insistence on millions and millions of years..Everything I saw screamed flood ,from the Grand canyon to the extinction of the dinosaurs..the great salt deposits ,coal and oil deposits all scream flood">
Only for those who aren't trained in geology and are looking to find ways to validate their faith. There are numerous reasons as to why a global Flood did not happen if one interprets the Biblical version literally. A global flood does not explain how layers of fossils got trapped INSIDE rock. It does not explain how male leatherback turtles didn't end up at the bottom of the geological column (since they don't go on land and they sink like a rock when they're dead). It does not explain how humans were able to outrun velociraptors. It does not explain how it is able to carve the grand canyon, burn the Earth to a cinder (due to the energy involved) but leave a tiny wooden boat untouched. Young Earth Creationists employed in the oil industry only find oil deposits not by using a creationist view of geology, but an evolutionary one. So they have to compartmentalize their faith (or some have decided that God did indeed use evolution). Floods happened, yes, many times. But not THE Flood.
<"The most interesting were books that had alot about genetics, the way species change and adapt was incredibly interesting...However when they made the leap to one speicies evolving into an entirely new species..I examined their evidence..honestly I couldn't see it, again to me it seemed like speculation">
Not when you find that nested hierarchies fall into the same patterns across DNA, the fossil record and retroviral markers. Evolution is the only explanation so far that makes sense. That or magic.
If there is a God, there is no reason to think it could not have used evolution, and all the evidence certainly points that way so far. After all, who are we to say what God is and is not capable of?
Wesley
<"what makes it such hard reading is you have to already agree with the premise that all living things have a common ancestery and plants and animals evolved from a single cell organism..they spent little or no time trying to prove it.. if you are not yet convinced, to be honest it seems more about speculation than science">
Evolution does not rely on abiogenesis. Evolution can and does make predictions from what is found in the fossil record (among other things). It is not really speculation when the theory works and produces repeatable testable results.
<"Some of the books I got from the Library spent so muuch time ridiculing people of faith they were too laborious to finish..a lot of it was subtle and ment to wound and was hard to endure">
It may seem that way if you read books by atheists like Dawkins for example. It may also feel that way if you are theologically inclined not to believe in evolution in the first place. However, no matter what their philosophical opinions are, that in no way diminishes the validity of their scientific claims. But if you prefer something more palatable, you may like "Finding Darwin's God" by evolutionary biologist and Christian, Francis Collins.
<"The billions of years talked about.. are simply not needed to a person who belivies God created the universe">
And the 6000 years (some) creationists talk about are simply not needed either. God could have made everything as is, last Thursday. Now you understand the problem with claims supported only with faith - there is no way to prove them right or wrong. Hence science looks for the evidence of what is. If God did make a young Earth, it certainly made it look like it used evolution over a much longer period of time. This leads to a possible theological quandary - is God lying to/tricking us for some reason? Not something science need worry about though.
(continued)
The Ancestor's Tale
Wesley of IL (and any other interested creationist...or anyone for that matter): I realize Richard Dawkins has become a kind of Satan figure for his outspoken atheism, but he has written some of the clearest explications of evolutionary theory anywhere.
If you can set aside his reputation and your probable disgust for it, it would be very worth your while to read The Ancestor's Tale in particular. This fascinating book walks you backwards in time, common ancestor by common ancestor, from homo sapiens sapiens to Lucy all the way back to jellyfish, redwoods, sponges and bacteria. You may decide to disagree with Dawkins'/Darwin's/the-whole-of-contemporary-biology's understanding of our origins, but you will at least understand the logic of it.
And you'll learn an enormous amount about nature and natural history along the way.
to Wesley
"The geology books to be honest..I thought they proved a great flood more than anything else..despite their insistence on millions and millions of years..Everything I saw screamed flood ,from the Grand canyon to the extinction of the dinosaurs..the great salt deposits ,coal and oil deposits all scream flood....."
Science doesn't INSIST on millions and millions of years. The evidence leads to millions of years. Your word choices lead me to believe that you have read accounts of the history of the world, not the evidence for our understanding of the world. If it was the former, I suggest reading the latter.
If you really were reading the evidence, then you might need more background information or a change in your medium. It's possible that you just don't have the ability to understand the evidence from book reading. That's not meant as a slight, just an explanation. I could understand Hyperbolic Geometry and Topology by reading a couple books on my own, but without classroom discussions, I would have never understood properly how the philosophical positions of De Cartes differed from those of Socrates. Everyone has different abilities in learning, and this might be one field where you need feedback. The way sciences builds upon other science, one misunderstood sentence can cause you to see problems where there aren't any 100 pages down the road.
It's clear to me that you're making a good faith attempt to understand the evidence. You might want to try reading brief sections and then discussing the evidence with other well informed people. This might be one place to go, but there are others online and possibly in your community that would be willing to help.
"The most interesting were books that had alot about genetics, the way species change and adapt was incredibly interesting...However when they made the leap to one speicies evolving into an entirely new species..I examined their evidence..honestly I couldn't see it, again to me it seemed like speculation..."
From this, I understand that you agree that adaptions and changes are made through genetics, but don't believe the evidence is there that species can evolve into a new species? What is a species other than a list of attributes, all determined by genetic material? If some attributes definitely do change over time, and those changes are causes by processes that work on the building blocks of all attributes, then it logically follows that all attributes can change by the same mechanism. There is no actual leap from changes inside a species to changes outside a species. You are assuming that species are special despite the counterevidence.
Creatures
Wesley of IL said: "the creatures God created know they are created and are aware of his soverignty and or providence. People who deny God do it for different reasons other than a lack of knowledge.Because they choose to not keep God in thier knowledge they begin to worship God's creation and not God Himself..."
I honestly do not know what it means to say people are "created." It seems to mean that people are molded like puppets and arbitrarily permitted to be alive. I was not molded. I developed, according to "blueprints" in my inherited DNA out of an egg in my mother's womb that was fertilized by my father's sperm.
There is something to the idea that those who have life are very lucky, considering how many attempts to reproduce fail--some biologists say the vast majority of attempts, over 90%.
I know it's tempting to think our luck owes entirely to "providence," i.e., to God's grace, etc. It's flattering to think "the creator" has singled little old us out to be part of his great plan.
I can't help but think that idea is irrelevant.
The universe itself is awesome. We are privileged to be in its presence and among its numbers. We are extremely forunate to be members of a species that has the brain power to understand what the universe actually is. And it does require tremendous brain power to understand it. It's nice to think that the rules are all spelled out for us in a 2,500-year old book; no more thinking necessary. Unfortunately, if you want to know what's really going on, what the universe is really about, you have to actually get your hands dirty and try to wrap your mind around it. But the effort rewards itself.
Response to Burt
My choice of the word mature probably was not the best to describe what I was talking about..I am not an expert in any field so I am not trying lecture anyone..but i will share my thoughts as the site requests...The apostle Paul told the romans that the creatures God created know they are created and are aware of his soverignty and or providence. People who deny God do it for different reasons other than a lack of knowledge.Because they choose to not keep God in thier knowledge they begin to worship God's creation and not God Himself...Just a thought...Thank you for responding to my post..
Respectfully Wesley
A mature universe
"If God can create Adam and Eve already mature...He certainly could create an earth and a galaxy that was already mature."
"Mature" has a meaning that doesn't fit what you're describing. Maturity involves time--sufficient time. You are free to imagine a god who wishes or manipulates a complete universe and adult humans into existence in an instant. But your use of "mature" betrays to me an understanding that what he essentially created, on your view, was a universe and individuals with false histories. To me, this seems literally incredible. It seems like a wish to ignore the real, material universe as it actually is, a wish to have a simple explanation that reassures, because, assuredly, the real universe can seem like a cosmically frightening place. Personally, I think it's also a beautiful place, and I feel privileged to have the consciousness and reason to experience it honestly.
