To all the Christian evolutionists/Old Earth Creationists

[Archbob]

You have no real explanation why particles come and go out of existence. The explanation that "God makes them do that", while not scientific, is just as good as any other theory.

I mean we have evidence that the Big Bang actually happened but we don't have any explanation of what caused the big bang or will we ever.

Your hypothesis that the Universe just popped out of nowhere from a time where space and time were meaningless is just as believable as The flying spaghetti monster creating the Universe or any other religious theory. The point is there are many things I don't think science can ever explain, and in those cases, for some people its logical to point to a greater power.

 

[ironduck]

The point is there are many things I don't think science can ever explain, and in those cases, for some people its logical to point to a greater power.

I don't deny that, but as history has shown the 'god of gaps' become of less and less importance as the gaps are filled one by one. The god of gaps came naturally in ancient ages when people wondered what the sun was and how it moved across the sky and where the rain come from and so on. But the function of those gods no longer exists. So if people consider a god a logical explanation to things that are not known at present, does that mean that this god is no longer valid when the answers are known?

 

[betazed]

You have no real explanation why particles come and go out of existence.

Why do you say that? We have perfectly valid (and as real as you get) explanation of why particles come and go out of existence.

 

[El_Machinae]

for some people its logical to point to a greater power.

Especially those people with more development of the "God module" in their temporal lobe, right?

 

[Archbob]

Ok, enlighten me on why particles just seem to come and go out of existence randomly.

All I got from perfection was "given enough time, particles will come and go out fo existence". That is not a valid explanation.

 

[MRM]

You have no real explanation why particles come and go out of existence. The explanation that "God makes them do that", while not scientific, is just as good as any other theory.

So you have a problem with an universe coming out of nothing but no problem with a god coming out of nothing ?

 

[betazed]

Ok, enlighten me on why particles just seem to come and go out of existence randomly.

Yikes. That is always the hard part isn't it?

the easiest way of doing it would be to take recourse to math, but that would be cheating. So lets see if I can do it without math.

Don't think of a particle as a small ball that is going from here to there. That picture leads to many problems. Rather think of a particle as a disturbance in a field. {For a field imagine a long 2d rubber sheet. There is a depression on the sheet. As the depression moves from here to there, and if you look at the sheet from a distance while sqinting your eyes what you see is a particle moving from here to there. But there is no particle really. There is only teh sheet and the depression on it. The particle is an illusion because you are squinting and standing at a distance}

Now how did teh depression come about? It came about because the sheet interacts with another sheet or better yet interacts with itself. If it interacts with itself it can do so anywhere anytime without any reason. hence a particle can be born anywhere.

Now, you can ask do these sheets actually exist or is it just a mathematical gimmick? To test that you need to come up with a testable scenario where nothing but a sheet explanation makes sense and then test teh scenario.

Such a scenario actually exists and has been tested to a great accuracy telling us that the sheet explanation of particles coming in and out of existence is as close to reality as we can possibly get.

 

[Archbob]

According to that explanation of the Casmir effect, you are not creating any mass with the particle, they are simply distortions. The Universe does indeed have mass. How do you explain the generation of mass? To get mass you must have either mass or energy and according to the Big Bang theory, there was nothing before the big bang happened. The Casmir effect, still doesn't explain where all the mass came from.

Don't give me the stuff about the negative energy to cancel the generation of positive energy thing, it already mentioned in the Casmir effect that people mistakenly call it negative energy.

As for Abiogensis, until you create a life from non-life simulating early earth conditions, it doesn't hold too much water.

As for God coming out of nothing, that part isn't particulary relevant to create/evolution. The debate is really did the Universe just randomly form, or did God create the Universe.

Even if there were to be something before God, it wouldn't really matter too much if God created our known Universe.

 

[El_Machinae]

As for Abiogensis, until you create a life from non-life simulating early earth conditions, it doesn't hold too much water.

We acknowledge that conditions are one in a trillion, do you really want experiments trying to replicate that one in a trillion chance? That's like saying "You can't win the lottery. Prove to me that you can win the lottery by winning."

Aren't intermediate steps enough to convince you that life 'could' come from chemical reactions?

 

[ironduck]

We acknowledge that conditions are one in a trillion, do you really want experiments trying to replicate that one in a trillion chance? That's like saying "You can't win the lottery. Prove to me that you can win the lottery by winning."

Aren't intermediate steps enough to convince you that life 'could' come from chemical reactions?

I think it's highly likely that we will be able to create life in labs from modeled ancient earth conditions. Here's a bit on Rasmussen's project: http://davidecastelvecchi.com/protocells.html

We also can't rule out that life came to earth through a meteor strike from Mars or other planets since bacteria have been shown to survive such travels.

FAL - it's the Casimir effect, not Casmir. And why are they distortions? Quantum fluctuations are real enough..

 

[Perfection]

There you go. You said it. As long as you can extrapolate off observed evidence (and not necessarily needing direct observational evidence) you can give empirics somewhat lesser importance.

Empirics are still of foremost importance here. That is the information must still be an explanation of empirical data, but instead must provide a simpler or more unifying explination. The difference between Brahe's universe and Copurnicus' would be an excellent example.

Actually, it has zero confirmatory evidence.

Zero is little, (I said little just so I didn't have to get into a debate about things considered semi-confirmational). Needless to say the empirical evidence is lacking.

But that is all string theory is. It is for all practical purposes pure math. And it makes lots of positive claims about the universe.

But underlying it is the simpler or more unifying explination and the addition of explaining more data

All i wanted to say is that empirics can be misleading.

As can anything

Agreed. I was arguing whether it was the only way to go. I don't think it is. It is too restrictive.

I would argue that empiricism is numero uno and other factors for theories act as a sort of tie breaker. Copernicus and Brahe had the same observations, it's just that Copernicus' was simpler.

 

[Archbob]

Still, your still not creating any matter. Its just energy being turned into matter according to what it says in that wiki entry. If you don't have either before the big bang, neither can come out.

The probabilites are actually much less than 1 in a trillion. I give to to you that they are not like 1 in 10^1000 as some people would have you think, but they are extremely tiny. If the chances are tiny, what makes you sure it actually happened?
Its been tried many times in labs and every time, it has fallen way short of producing life.

I understand that disproving abiogensis and questions about big bang does not prove creation and God(You actually can't do that) but if you can't prove ht order of everything, then that leads me to believe in a higher power.

Technically the only empirical way for me to prove God would be to stand in front of the Red Sea and say "If the Lord, my God lives, then may the seas part in front of me" and then I stuck out my hand and the Red Sea parted. That would be empirical proof.

 

[Perfection]

Your hypothesis that the Universe just popped out of nowhere from a time where space and time were meaningless is just as believable as The flying spaghetti monster creating the Universe or any other religious theory. The point is there are many things I don't think science can ever explain, and in those cases, for some people its logical to point to a greater power.

Well if space never existed before the big bang then how could time? Time without space has no meaning.

 

[Perfection]

According to that explanation of the Casmir effect, you are not creating any mass with the particle, they are simply distortions. The Universe does indeed have mass. How do you explain the generation of mass? To get mass you must have either mass or energy and according to the Big Bang theory, there was nothing before the big bang happened. The Casmir effect, still doesn't explain where all the mass came from.

The Casimir effect doesn't explain it, but a virtual particle based explination may. Now, I can't delve that much farther into this though. My physics knowledge stops short here.

As for Abiogensis, until you create a life from non-life simulating early earth conditions, it doesn't hold too much water.

Why not? Numerous potential steps have been demonstrated, and shows plausibility. Isn't that enough to justify it over throwing up our hands and quitting?

 

[Perfection]

Still, your still not creating any matter. Its just energy being turned into matter according to what it says in that wiki entry. If you don't have either before the big bang, neither can come out.

It's coming from "vacuum energy" which is as it sounds energy from nothing.

The probabilites are actually much less than 1 in a trillion. I give to to you that they are not like 1 in 10^1000 as some people would have you think, but they are extremely tiny.

Did you draw that number out of a hat or can we all see your methodology?

If the chances are tiny, what makes you sure it actually happened?

The chances of the air molecules in your room being the way there are now are vanishingly small. Should we dismiss that as not happening?

Its been tried many times in labs and every time, it has fallen way short of producing life.

I don't think many have seriously tried to create more than creating smaller basic machines. Usually they try to replicate a step in abiogenesis.

QUOTE=Fallen Angel Lord]I understand that disproving abiogensis and questions about big bang does not prove creation and God(You actually can't do that) but if you can't prove ht order of everything, then that leads me to believe in a higher power.[/QUOTE]The use of god as a crutch to answer current mysteries in science seems rather dubious to me. It's bad religion and even worse science.

 

[Fifty]

Why not? Numerous potential steps have been demonstrated, and shows plausibility. Isn't that enough to justify it over throwing up our hands and quitting?

Are you not aware of the first law of YEC?

If any scientific theory on any random subject is not 100% complete and infallible, YEC is, by default, correct.

 

[ironduck]

Still, your still not creating any matter. Its just energy being turned into matter according to what it says in that wiki entry.

No, it's really energy coming from out of nowhere, if only for a brief moment.

I understand that disproving abiogensis and questions about big bang does not prove creation and God(You actually can't do that) but if you can't prove ht order of everything, then that leads me to believe in a higher power.

That's just accepting the god of gaps, and I already addressed that above. Again, if we are able to explain some of the gaps that you ascribe to god, does that make god invalid? It did to the ancient religions, and it has also wrecked havoc with christianity several times when people took the bible literally.

 

[magritte]

I understand your concern about where the energy from the Big Bang come from, but don't you have the same problem with God? Where did he come from?

 

[El_Machinae]

Technically the only empirical way for me to prove God would be to stand in front of the Red Sea and say "If the Lord, my God lives, then may the seas part in front of me" and then I stuck out my hand and the Red Sea parted. That would be empirical proof.

That would be evidence. Sadly, this entire scenario could be mimicked with sufficiently advanced technology. The 'Moses' could be in on it, or not - you just need sufficient technology. An alternate, and viable, theory was that aliens did it.

 

[MRM]

Still, your still not creating any matter. Its just energy being turned into matter according to what it says in that wiki entry. If you don't have either before the big bang, neither can come out.

The probabilites are actually much less than 1 in a trillion. I give to to you that they are not like 1 in 10^1000 as some people would have you think, but they are extremely tiny. If the chances are tiny, what makes you sure it actually happened?
Its been tried many times in labs and every time, it has fallen way short of producing life.

Don't know where this number comes from ( saw the same argument in an other forum ) but in fact even a tiny chance becomes almost certain if you try often enough.

f.e. if you play in the lottery and there is only a 1 to 140 Mio ( german lotto ) chance that you win the jackpot, than you can asume that this you will almost certain not win if you play next weekend. But if you could play over millions of years once a week, than it's almost certain that you win at least once in all this time. And thats what happens in nature - all it needs is enough time ( millions of years ) and enough tries ( bring the right chemicals together in a kind of bubble for example ) if there is at least a very tiny chance ....

And the argument that this didn't happend in the labor doesn't really count either, because they are maybe just to impacient and aborted the experiment a few million years to early