Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests Creationism vs Evolution

Ok, this will be a long post, but hang in there, cuz there will be a good point at the end!

In Classical Thermodynamics, the term “entropy” is the measure of the amount of energy unavailable for work in a physical system. Left to itself over time, any such system will end with less available energy (i.e., a higher measure of, or increase in, entropy) than when it started, according to the 2nd law. In this classic form, the 2nd law applies specifically to probability of distribution with regard to heat and energy relationships of physical systems, and as such, the entropy involved may be described specifically as thermal entropy.

Similarly, the “generalized 2nd law” applies the same entropy principle to information systems in such a way that, left to itself over time, the information conveyed by an information-communicating system will end more distorted and less complete than when it began (again, a higher measure of, or increase in, entropy—in this case informational entropy), and likewise, applied to Statistics, left to itself over time, the order or regularity of a system will be less than when it began (and again, a higher measure of, or increase in, entropy—in this case statistical entropy).

The vital point to be grasped here is that the presence of a system (whether organizational or mechanical) hardly guarantees continuous enhancement, but more realistically is subject to continual degradation, if it is not kept to the pre-determined standard defined in its original design. Evolutionistic thinking often ignores this principle, despite the fact that it is a profoundly and empirically established scientific fact.

OK, now that we got all that established, we can get to the good part.

Evolutionists claim that order from disorder is common in nonliving systems. They use the examples of snowflakes and crystals.

All living things (down to even a single-celled organism) are highly complex and organized—each component in its proper place and functioning according to its instructions to keep the organism going. They don't just “happen” in nature—the notion of spontaneous generation was long ago and often disproven [Redi (1688), Spallanzani (1780), Pasteur (1860), and Virchow (1858)], establishing the Law of Biogenesis, which remains confirmed in that man has never observed life coming from anything but life itself.

On the other hand, simple “order” such as that found in a snowflake or a crystal, for example, is exceedingly trivial, when compared to the increase in information, organization or complexity that would be required for either spontaneous generation (the beginning of biological evolution), or any form of progressive macro-evolution itself. The formation of molecules or atoms into geometric patterns such as snowflakes or crystals reflects movement towards equilibrium—a lower energy level, and a more stable arrangement of the molecules or atoms into simple, uniform, repeating structural patterns with minimal complexity, and no function.

Thus, crystals are not examples of matter forming itself into more organized or more complex structures or systems even remotely parallel to those inherent in living organisms, even though they may certainly reflect “order” in the form of patterns (the very structure of which is both enabled and limited by the molecules which comprise them), and they certainly cannot serve realistically as “proof” that life can therefore create itself.

jlanger wrote:

"Bacteria split apart (by themselves) all the time I have actually seen this. a crab can grow a new leg, plants grow new limbs etc. Now while this isn't exactly spontaneous generation as it does require energy to happen, things can grow from things that don't appear to be. A few chemicals mixed together can create a very primitive organism."

Bacteria is already a living organism with DNA. It can split apart by itself because it has the instructions to do so. Also, a crab can grow a new leg because the required instructions are written in it's DNA.

But, how could have life formed from some chemicals mixed together? What set of instructions told it how to organize? Wouldn't this be "order from disorder"? Has this been done in a lab, without any external forces acting as "instructions"?

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Note: Some of my information here was obtained from Timothy Wallace, and his site www.trueorigin.org

Umm Chaos Theory in regards to mathematics and fractals..

And the links were more as a joke.. if your taking flat earthers seriously.. I'm outta here.

jlanger:

How about that - both of our posts appeared at the same time.

I swear my wife is gonna divorce me if I keep spending so much time on this thread! So, on that note, an in-depth reply to you genetics questions may be a while coming - I am going out of town for Easter. But I will try to give a quick response now.

I am definitely not an expert on DNA (or anything else, for that matter), but a lot of what you talked about sounded like variation or adaptation. Please correct me if I am wrong. Will the process you described lead to new species, or show how a whale could evolve into a land animal? Please be as simple as possible so I can follow your reasoning.

Well I guess it's like when you take a picture of a person taking a camera and the flashes go off at the same time. (as for the posts going up) anyway I think we both kinda misunderstood each other on the net loss factor. I thought you were discussing the the changes in the actual genes in a species (that is the different combos of base pairs) What you really meant was the fact that humans have so many more base pairs. I will recheck my sources and get back to you on this. The article from wallace was interesting. I did find the argument between him and the ?duck guy quite interesting.
The stuff about adapting is exactly that adaptation as the mechanism for evolution. There are two boats on this one, one is the slow change boat and the other is the slow change periods followed by times of rapid fluxes. Most evolutionists agree on the rapid fluxes. In the short time (only a couple million years)after the dinosaurs became extinct there was a virtual population explosion as there were when every other predominate family lost its predominance. Humanity could take into accoutn the extinction of the megafauna (giant bison, giant wombats, giant birds, etc) as its oppurtunity to rise.
Sorry about the ramble. I do understand the argument of natural selection keeping the current population stable, however, in times of environmental crisis, ie ice ages, any small advantages can rapidly become the norm and eventually become a new species. One example of this woudl be the bacteria that are becoming resistant to antibiotics.
As for the dating issue I think that we can be civil abotu this but we are both using some assumptions to explain our argument. The bible is seen as an assumption by me and the assumption that the various radioisotopes degrade at a constant rate is seen as an assumption by you. I think that we could bang our heads together on this one for a while.
Now as I said before I think labs have been able to make a combination of compounds into a primitive organism. (or maybe I'm confused with the fact that they were able to produce the amino acids that are the building blocks) I'll look into it more as I will have a great deal of time over the holiday to research (hopefully)
As for the wife, mine's isn't really upset by the fact so many things that she is really good ar are at times going over my head my basic understanding, (remember that I am an anthropologist, not an evolutionary archeologist) these topics get quite advanced and deal with people who work entire lifetimes things like the dating techniques, the genetics, etc. The whole evolutionary idea uses numerous branches of science (my wife works with physicists, herbologists, orthonologists, ichthyologists, chemists, mathemeticians etc) I'm not an expert on any of these least of all the physics and mathematical sciences.(I did take anthro for a reason:) Now as we both try to bumble onto a reasonable conclusion I will be goign to bed. Thinking of this darn forum again!
PS sorry about doing all the editing everyone, I really need to learn how to preview my post before I post them.

jlanger wrote:

"Now as I said before I think labs have been able to make a combination of compounds into a primitive organism. (or maybe I'm confused with the fact that they were able to produce the amino acids that are the building blocks)..."

Amino Acid Synthesis (1953). Stanley Miller produced a few amino acids from chemicals, amid a continuous small sparking apparatus. But the experiment actually had disproved the possibility that evolution could occur.

The amino acids were totally dead, and the experiment only proved that a synthetic production of them would result in equal amounts of left- and right-handed amino acids. Since only left-handed ones exist in animals, accidental production could never produce a living creature (R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution, 1990, p. 274).

One more note on DNA:

At the Wistar Institute Symposium (1966),Murray Eden of MIT explained that life could not begin by "random selection." He noted that, if randomness is removed, only "design" would remain,--and that required purposive planning by an Intelligence. He showed that it would be impossible for even a single ordered pair of genes to be produced by DNA mutations in the bacteria, E. Coli (which has very little DNA), with 5 billion years in which to produce it. Eden then showed the mathematical impossibility of protein forming by chance. He also reported on his extensive investigations into genetic data on hemoglobin (red blood cells). Hemoglobin has two chains, called alpha and beta. A minimum of 120 mutations would be required to convert alpha to beta. At least 34 of those changes require changeovers in 2 or 3 nucleotides. Yet, Eden pointed out, if a single nucleotide change occurs through mutation, the result ruins the blood and kills the organism! For more on the Wistar Institute, read the following book: Paul Moorhead and Martin Kaplan (eds.), Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, Wistar Institute Monograph No. 5.

jlanger:

You had mentioned the Neanderthal in an earlier post. Isn't the Neanderthal considered human? Also, wasn't their brain 17% larger than a current human brain is today? I read that a couple of days ago and found that interesting.

Dave Andrews and Sam Sampson:

Thank you for finally getting around to (I think) what you were hinting at with the Double Blind Study. (Reguarding Darwin and somebody coming up the same theory at the same time.)

However, it isn't much of an arguement. Statistically, there is a very good chance that 2 out of millions of people can have the same idea at the same time.

Note that I say Homo Sapiens Neanderthal(ensis) (Homo Neanderthal, since corrected by my wife as homo neanderthalensis)It is being debated about how close to homo sapiens Neanderthal really were. There physical structures were much different then sapiens. They were literally built like brick ****houses and woudl though short would probably be able to do a number on a good many NFL players. As for the brain size, homo sapiens average 1300-1500cc and neanderthal go 1300-1740cc. Fairly similar to sapiens. One could compare the similar debates between the red mained wolf and the timber wolf or the florida panther and mountain lion. How far in the species variation does one go before you call it a different species? The scientific answer woudl be unitl they cannot produce viable offspring (offspring that can produce offspring) together, however DNA testing shows no trace of Neanderthal DNA.
The thing with science is everytime one question is answered a whole bunch more arise. As for the theory of everything where everything will be explained. I don't think that is really possible. Many of the physicists looking into this theory don't call it that because its misleading. Most think that as soon as this theory is worked out more questions will pop up. Around the end of the 20th century a historian claimed that all of history was over. ha ha.
In the meantime I am very interested in the results of the study of the human genome as they could disprove/prove some theories on modern genetics, such as neutral mutation, negative mutation etc.

Let me quote
In 1953 Miller placed together in a glass aparatus methane ammonia, and hydrogen gasses. He generated an electric spark in a a large 5 liter flask, and bouled water in a smaller flask to provide vapor to the spark as well as to circulate teh gases. Compounds formed by the sparking were then condensed or recirculated if they were volitale. AFter one week of continuous electrical discharge, he chromatographed and analyzed the products accumulated in the aqueous phase. Note that a large portion of these compounds are relatively simple and include both amino acids and other substances such as urea found in living organisms. In fact the wide array of possible complex molecules that such apparrantly random chemical reactions could have produced, it is remarkable that significant amounts of such relatively simple compounds essential to life actually formed. These experiments adn others that followed therefore point to strongly to the likelihood that the chemical environment that existed before the orgin of life was probably not 'chaos.' Rather, the Earth had a significant amount of simple organic molecules that could participate in forming living organisms" (Evolution, Monroe Strickberger, 1996) Now as for the amino acids being dead well they are essentially dead, they aren't living breathing creatures yet, so a scientist could basically say that they are dead. Anyway as much as I would love to go on about proteinoids adn the labwork done with them, I need to go to work. Been spending to much time on this and I should really take a bit of a break.

Ok guys, I really hate to do this, but I am calling it quits to this thread. Please do not take this as accepting defeat; I just do not have the time it takes to properly reply to all of the remarks. Every good question deserves a well thought out answer and I just do not have the time to answer everyone properly. As several people in this thread have said, it is a never-ending argument.

I have been posting on it since the beginning (March 19th), and it has taken up a huge amount of my time. (I am even dreaming about this stuff now!) However, I thank everyone for posting their points - I have truely learned a TON of stuff! (And I hope people have learned some stuff from my posts.) I have been very impressed with some of poster's knowledge on the subject.

See ya around...

Wow, what a thread

(Post whore)

Well this topic is while certainly not finished, pretty well discussed (both sides) I'm kinda sorry to see cpursor go, as I was just getting warmed up. Anyway I do really see his point this thread has taken a lot of time out of the past few days. Way too much (according to the wife). So I think that I will go the way of cpursor, I may be back so feel free to answer my counter arguments just don't be surprised if it takes a few days or weeks for me to answer back.
As I have said before I do thank all who participated in keeping this an orderly discussion and do thank the moderators for letting the thread stay.
See ya'll later.
Jim