God, Evolution or Extraterrestrial Creationism?

RayMondo

Dear all...

Following on from Friday's "Late Late Show" on RTE ONE, which featured a discussion about Dr. Richard Dawkins' latest book, "The God Delusion", unfortunately only two of the main ideas for our existence on this planet were discussed, i.e., theism - the belief in a supernatural God, which created
everything in the universe, and evolution - which says that the existence of all life on Earth is due to random genetic mutations which occurred over billions of years. But there is now a third option which wasn't represented, which says that all life on Earth was created by extraterrestrials who created all life from scratch through genetic engineering.
There are many groups in the world which represent each of the three options
stated above but the following are the best I could find that have plenty of information.

God -
Catholic Church
http://www.vatican.va/

Evolution -
http://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/

Extraterrestrial Creationism -
Raelian Movement
http://www.rael.org/

For those who missed the discussion on the Late Late, go to http://www.rte.ie/tv/latelate/ and scroll down to the appropriate screen.
So in your opinion which of the three is the most likely and why?
Let the discussion begin...!

Regards, RayMondo!

Zillah

The alien answer isn't in the same league as the others.

The question is more "Where did life come from?", not so much "Where did life on Earth come from?"

The alien answer begs the obvious, "Where did the aliens come from?"

Myksyk

The ET solution is not an alternative to evolution. Once there life definitely evolved on earth. How it 'started' is another question, the answer being currently unknown. The current suggested answers include natural causes (chance or something akin to it), god and others such as aliens came down and did it. The ET solution is particularly poor as Zillah points out because it simply then pushes the question onto another planet ... where did the ETs come from?

Dades

What they said.

In the absence of actual evidence, the ET explanation is mere speculation.

stevejazzx

We don't know the answer to the this, the most impossible question ever because our puny earth logic is restricted to our current point of evolution and scientific undertanding.
We'd have to make massive leaps in thought to propose scenarios where something arose from absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing itself is actually something...so the best idea I've heard is the idea of circular time having always existed, how something has just always existed is beyond our current understanding but we get closer, albeit marginally.
If the entire time scale of human race is a fingernail shaving in relation overall planetary time then we might have quite a while yet to go.

RayMondo

Thank you all for replying to my post, it is most interesting. I'll try to address the points raised by each of you, as best I can from the extraterrestrial idea.
The theory of evolution hasn't been proved, that's whyn it's still a theory and more and scientists are finding the holes in it's argument, we can't prove evolution in the laboratory but we can prove creationism because it's happening in our laboratories right now, genetic engineering etc, scientists are nearly finished reading the genetic code, it's only a matter of time before scientists can write the genetic code, so if it can be done today, why couldn't it have been done thousands of years ago by advanced extraterrestrials, we can't prove the existence of God, or evolution, not matter how much we try, however scientifiic creation, well we are beginning it right now.
Raelianism explains that there is no beginning and no end in the universe, that infinity exists, much like in Buddhist teachings, the universe has always existed and always will, 20 years ago there were so many galaxies, now with our technology advancing there are twice that much, it's never going to end, and so we will go one day to another planet and create life, just like life was created here and the cycle will continue, man is always make the universe in terms of size because he is always trying to limit things.
Evolution goes against the law of entropy that everything in the universe is in absolute chaos, only intelligence can create life and I understand, not believe that we are simply recreating something that is written in our genetic codes, to create, whether it's art, or genetic engineering.
The big bang explains that something came from nothing, which is ridiculous, mightn't it be that there was always something there anyway - infinity?
Time doesn't exist, only man talks about time, because he is born one day and dies the next, infinity in time and space?
I disagree that there is no evidence of an extraterrestrial nature here on earth, we only have to look at civilisations like the Sumerians, rose about six thousand years which had tremendous scientific progress, and many others, which said that there technology was a gift from the gods, the pyramid at Giza, the technology to build such an infrastructure with such accuracy and skill with stone tools, the same for Tiwanaku in South America, not to mention all the early writing of all religions describing people coming from the sky in their chariots of fire etc.
Before people told of gods coming from the sky, in their image, are all those civilisations wrong or stupid, that would be arrogant.

pH

RayMondo wrote:

The theory of evolution hasn't been proved, that's whyn it's still a theory and more and scientists are finding the holes in it's argument, we can't prove evolution in the laboratory ...

How wrong can you be?

Firstly evolution is a FACT, there is indisputable evidence that over 4.6 billion years the species living on this plan have changed over time. That is a fact, things have 'evolved'.

Now in addition to this fact there is also the 'theory' of evolution by natural selection. This theory tries to explain the 'fact' of evolution (what has caused life to change over time on this planet). It's called a theory because so far it explains the evidence, it is falsifiable, but in the last century no one has been able to produce one piece of evidence that would invalidate this theory. It has withstood years of testing and has not been found wanting.

That is why it's elevated to the status of theory.

Son Goku

The theory of evolution hasn't been proved, that's whyn it's still a theory and more and scientists are finding the holes in it's argument, we can't prove evolution in the laboratory

Evolution goes against the law of entropy that everything in the universe is in absolute chaos

RayMondo wrote:

The big bang explains that something came from nothing, which is ridiculous, mightn't it be that there was always something there anyway - infinity?
Time doesn't exist, only man talks about time, because he is born one day and dies the next, infinity in time and space?

Such a flawed understanding of several basic concepts is poor basis from which to criticise evolution.

18AD

It's interesting to note however, that living systems tend to go against the laws of entropy. Trying to become more ordered and retain free energy to the best of their ability at this time.

At least I thought it was interesting

Unless I've completely misunderstood it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy
http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/MaeWanHo/negentr.html
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/NEGENTROPY.html

Zillah

RayMondo wrote:

The theory of evolution hasn't been proved, that's whyn it's still a theory

You really don't understand the situation.

In science, a "theory" is very different to the day-to-day useage of the word theory. One should not make the mistake of thinking that the fact that it is called a theory implies doubt. In science, a theory is something which attempts to explain something else.

and more and scientists are finding the holes in it's argument

Really...? Like whom? What holes?

we can't prove evolution in the laboratory

Technically true. However, we can compare fossil records to show compelling support for evolution.

but we can prove creationism because it's happening in our laboratories right now, genetic engineering etc, scientists are nearly finished reading the genetic code, it's only a matter of time before scientists can write the genetic code, so if it can be done today, why couldn't it have been done thousands of years ago by advanced extraterrestrials, we can't prove the existence of God, or evolution, not matter how much we try, however scientifiic creation, well we are beginning it right now.

No, we can't prove creationism. We can prove Intelligent Design, but only in terms of "designed by humans". Proving that life can be designed by human minds/hands is completely pointless because then we don't know where humans came from. If humans came from aliens then where did aliens come from? Super-aliens? And where did they come from....

Raelianism explains that there is no beginning and no end in the universe, that infinity exists, much like in Buddhist teachings, the universe has always existed and always will, 20 years ago there were so many galaxies, now with our technology advancing there are twice that much, it's never going to end, and so we will go one day to another planet and create life, just like life was created here and the cycle will continue, man is always make the universe in terms of size because he is always trying to limit things.

Complete nonesense. And Rael is a fruit loop.

Evolution goes against the law of entropy that everything in the universe is in absolute chaos

Further nonesense. This is classic anti-evolutionary fallaccy number 2 (number one is "Its only a theory!!"). Thermo dynamics are not applied like this.

only intelligence can create life and I understand, not believe that we are simply recreating something that is written in our genetic codes, to create, whether it's art, or genetic engineering.

Blah blah blah infinate chain of alien races. Everything we know points to a begining to the universe about 14 billion years ago.

The big bang explains that something came from nothing, which is ridiculous
mightn't it be that there was always something there anyway - infinity?

Why is infinity any less ridiculous a concept than oblivion? At least with oblivion we're not talking about a universe that would instantly become a super blackhole due to infinite gravity.

But hey, cool, we got ourselves a Raelian to poke. To those who are unfamiliar with this territory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ra%C3%ABlism

Zombrex

RayMondo wrote:

The theory of evolution hasn't been proved, that's whyn it's still a theory

Everything is a theory. The theory of gravity is a theory. The theory of light is a theory.

In science everything is a theory, the issue is how much support a theory has, and if anything has shown the theory to be incorrect.

The theory of neo-darwin biological evolution has tons of support. In fact it is one of the most supported theories in modern science.

It has been shown that life on Earth evolves. We know this because it is happening right now all around us.

It has been shown through the fossil record that life on Earth did evolve in the past, and probably used the same methods that it current uses.

Therefore there doesn't seem to be much need for the ET's to come swooping in and do anything. Sure it might have happened, but with no real evidence it did then this seems little more than the produce of an over active imagination.

RayMondo wrote:

and more and scientists are finding the holes in it's argument

Scientists have been finding "holes" in the theory of evolution for the last 100 years. That is what scientists do. And they have been redefining the theory so it closer matches what is observed to be happening. Which is why evolution as a model of biological systems is pretty good a scientific models go.

RayMondo wrote:

we can't prove evolution in the laboratory but we can prove creationism

Actually we can show evolution happening in a laboratory. And we have.

The question isn't if evolution happens or not. We know it happens. The only remaining question is if evolution was happening for the last 4 billion years. And the smart money is on "yes, yes it did"

RayMondo wrote:

why couldn't it have been done thousands of years ago by advanced extraterrestrials

It could have been. But there doesn't seem to be any reason to think it was, beyond flights of imagination.

RayMondo wrote:

Evolution goes against the law of entropy that everything in the universe is in absolute chaos

Evolution does not go against the second law of thermodynamics. The Earth is not a closed system. You might have noticed the massive atomic fireball above us commonly known as the "sun"

I would point out that intelligent life managing to travel the great distances between stars in manageable time frames does actually break a few laws of physics, which would be a reason to think that alien life making it to Earth is unlikely.

RayMondo wrote:

only intelligence can create life

Actually that isn't true. When researchers simulated conditions that they believe the early Earth would have had they found simple self-replicating molecules formed under certain energy sources. Once you have a self-replicating molecule you just need a billion years or so of replication and you have fundamental life (genetic material, cells, growth etc).

We know that life can be produced by natural processes. Again that doesn't answer the question as to if this is how life on Earth started, but given that fact it seems a bit strange to go searching for extraterrestrial explanations, when the more plausible one is possible.

RayMondo wrote:

The big bang explains that something came from nothing, which is ridiculous

No, it doesn't. The Big Bang explains that our universe came from what ever existed before our universe. We have absolutely no idea what that was, so we can't even claim it was "nothing".

RayMondo wrote:

I disagree that there is no evidence of an extraterrestrial nature here on earth, we only have to look at civilisations like the Sumerians, rose about six thousand years which had tremendous scientific progress, and many others, which said that there technology was a gift from the gods, the pyramid at Giza, the technology to build such an infrastructure with such accuracy and skill with stone tools, the same for Tiwanaku in South America, not to mention all the early writing of all religions describing people coming from the sky in their chariots of fire etc.

How is this evidence of extraterrestrial interaction?

RayMondo wrote:

Before people told of gods coming from the sky, in their image, are all those civilisations wrong or stupid, that would be arrogant.

They also told of a flat earth, and the stars and sun moving around the Earth. Would it be arrogant to assume they got that wrong as well?

robindch

> The theory of evolution hasn't been proved

As others have pointed out above, roughly speaking, proof-wise, evolution is on a par with gravity, light and electricity. You can disagree with this, of course, but you'd be demonstrating a fair degree of cluelessness of the natural world if you did.

> Before people told of gods coming from the sky, in their image, are all
> those civilizations wrong or stupid [...]

And they all thought the sun revolved around a flat earth, and that some supernatural deity would kill you if you didn't believe it existed. So what? They weren't stupid. They were just wrong because they either rejected the evidence because it didn't suit them, or because they couldn't understand it. Just the same as today's creationists. Plus ça change!

Scofflaw

18AD wrote:

It's interesting to note however, that living systems tend to go against the laws of entropy. Trying to become more ordered and retain free energy to the best of their ability at this time.

At least I thought it was interesting

Unless I've completely misunderstood it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy
http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/MaeWanHo/negentr.html
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/NEGENTROPY.html

Fortunately, the law of entropy only dictates that overall entropy will increase in a closed system:

"The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the universal law of increasing entropy. In simple terms, it is an expression of the fact that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and density tend to even out in a physical system which is isolated from the outside world. Entropy is a measure of how far along this evening-out process has progressed."

If the Universe overall is a closed system (do we know?) then overall, entropy in the universe will increase with time.

The Earth, however, is not a closed system. Nor is a living being a closed system. Both take in energy from external sources (the Sun, food) and give energy out (radiated heat, excretion, work) - and so both are far from being isolated systems.

If you have supplies of energy, you can use it to do work - to become more organised. Each organism does this for itself, as we can easily observe - and the sum total of all the work done by, and on, all the organisms can be thought of as producing evolution.

In a sense, just as you see patterns form in boiling liquid - as a result of the heat being applied - it would be rather more surprising if the massive energy input from the Sun did nothing at all.

In a sense, what anti-evolutionists would have us believe is very similar to claiming that you put a pot on the cooker, turn the heat up, and nothing happens.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

In a sense, what anti-evolutionists would have us believe is very similar to claiming that you put a pot on the cooker, turn the heat up, and nothing happens.

Don't forget "...because the Bible says so"

Schuhart

Scofflaw wrote:

The Earth, however, is not a closed system. Nor is a living being a closed system. Both take in energy from external sources (the Sun, food) and give energy out (radiated heat, excretion, work) - and so both are far from being isolated systems.

Apologies on the delightfully non-scientific vagueness of this, but would it be fair to say that the Earth shows signs of stress from being a sort of semi-closed system?

I understand what you mean when you say, for instance, the Sun is supplying a power source that sustains things like evolution of life. But presumably someone could point to global warming as a sign that an output of the emergence of an increasing number of more complex organisms doing more and more complex things (i.e. us) is degradation of the wherewithal needed to support those complex activities until such time as they collapse.

I suppose what I’m getting at is that it is surely possible to see some reflection of the second law just in the world around us, and that reflection is seen in the impact of the product of evolution on the rest of the world.

Scofflaw

Schuhart wrote:

Apologies on the delightfully non-scientific vagueness of this, but would it be fair to say that the Earth shows signs of stress from being a sort of semi-closed system?

I understand what you mean when you say, for instance, the Sun is supplying a power source that sustains things like evolution of life. But presumably someone could point to global warming as a sign that an output of the emergence of an increasing number of more complex organisms doing more and more complex things (i.e. us) is degradation of the wherewithal needed to support those complex activities until such time as they collapse.

I suppose what I’m getting at is that it is surely possible to see some reflection of the second law just in the world around us, and that reflection is seen in the impact of the product of evolution on the rest of the world.

Hmm. I know what you're saying....but I think this runs the risk of elevating the law of entropy to eschatology!

Actually, it would be fairer to see us as an additional energy source (although we're mostly using re-using stored energy already in the system) - we are adding our own heat to the boiling pot, so to speak, with unpredictable results. Since we are in the pot ourselves, some might call this foolish....

cordially,
Scofflaw

18AD

Scofflaw wrote:

"...tend to even out in a physical system which is isolated from the outside world. Entropy is a measure of how far along this evening-out process has progressed."

But would it not appear that organisms are progressing in the opposite direction...

"It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of 'equilibrium' that an organism appears so enigmatic....What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy."
-E. Schrödinger What is Life?

Although it appears he was talking about free energy overall as opposed to just entropy.

Son Goku

Schuhart wrote:

Apologies on the delightfully non-scientific vagueness of this, but would it be fair to say that the Earth shows signs of stress from being a sort of semi-closed system?

I understand what you mean when you say, for instance, the Sun is supplying a power source that sustains things like evolution of life. But presumably someone could point to global warming as a sign that an output of the emergence of an increasing number of more complex organisms doing more and more complex things (i.e. us) is degradation of the wherewithal needed to support those complex activities until such time as they collapse.

I suppose what I’m getting at is that it is surely possible to see some reflection of the second law just in the world around us, and that reflection is seen in the impact of the product of evolution on the rest of the world.

Entropy is nothing to do with decay, disorder or collapse.
Rather entropy is a measure of how "generic" a state of a system is. Generic in this sense means how special the state's history is.

As a simple example is a role of 7 on two dice, is the state of highest entropy because you could have rolled {1,6}, {2,5}, {3,4}, {4,3}, {3,4}, {2,5} and {6,1}. 7 could be the result of seven completely different histories. This is in contrast with a roll of 2 which can only be the result of {1,1} and thus has low entropy. (In fact it has 1/7 the entropy)

Entropy is a measure of how many different histories could have lead to the state.

How this usually gets tied into disorder is because messy states, such as an untidy bedroom or a completely destroyed house are very generic states compared with their oposites, a clean bedroom and a fully functional house. Simply because there aren't as many ways to build a house as there are to wreck it, as several things could have lead to the house being destroyed. So the wrecked house has more entropy.
(These are very blunt examples, examples were I can actually give the numerical value of entropy are usually very complicated)

In contrast to the usual examples of decay and disorder, take a black hole. They are incredibly ordered systems. Perfect spheres with predictable orbits, there is rarely a more ordered system than them. However they have huge entropy because a black hole could have come from a vast collection of completely different stars. All the hole records is what the star's mass was, which means stars with completely different chemical compositions and densities would give rise to the same hole as long as they had the same mass.

The second law of thermodynamics then states that it is "genericness" that increases with time. As time goes on it becomes harder to tell what the past was like.

Jimoslimos

RayMondo wrote:

not to mention all the early writing of all religions describing people coming from the sky in their chariots of fire etc.
Before people told of gods coming from the sky, in their image, are all those civilisations wrong or stupid, that would be arrogant.

Add to this the numerous UFO/alien sightings/abductions by Texan rednecks. Damn those pesky scientists and their irrelevant calls for physical, reproducible, peer-reviewed evidence.:rolleyes:

RayMondo wrote:

we can't prove evolution in the laboratory

Time - you don't happen to have a couple million years free so I could definitively prove it to you. Also not all science is laboratory-based.

RayMondo wrote:

but we can prove creationism because it's happening in our laboratories right now,

Yep, I've lost count of the amount of times I've been able to explain away any discrepencies in experimental results by pointing to the heavens.

RayMondo wrote:

The theory of evolution hasn't been proved, that's whyn it's still a theory and more and scientists are finding the holes in it's argument,

You've (inadvertently of course;) ) summed up what science is about. Continually observing the evidence available and drawing logical conclusions from that - Darwin didn't have access to the tools modern scientists have now (DNA sequencing etc.,), he drew logical conclusions from observing the world around him at the time (funnily enough extraterrestrial creationism wasn't one of these).

Can current scientific evidence prove/disprove ET as being the source of life on earth? - NO, then again we can't prove that we weren't all placed on this Earth yesterday, (our memories implanted to make us believe we've been here longer and the world shaped to re-affirm this belief), by some higher deity/alien life-force. Putting forward an unproveable argument to science and then claiming victory is a common tactic by creationist/ID groups.

Scofflaw

Son Goku wrote:

Entropy is nothing to do with decay, disorder or collapse.
Rather entropy is a measure of how "generic" a state of a system is. Generic in this sense means how special the state's history is.

As a simple example is a role of 7 on two dice, is the state of highest entropy because you could have rolled {1,6}, {2,5}, {3,4}, {4,3}, {3,4}, {2,5} and {6,1}. 7 could be the result of seven completely different histories. This is in contrast with a roll of 2 which can only be the result of {1,1} and thus has low entropy. (In fact it has 1/7 the entropy)

Entropy is a measure of how many different histories could have lead to the state.

How this usually gets tied into disorder is because messy states, such as an untidy bedroom or a completely destroyed house are very generic states compared with their oposites, a clean bedroom and a fully functional house. Simply because there aren't as many ways to build a house as there are to wreck it, as several things could have lead to the house being destroyed. So the wrecked house has more entropy.
(These are very blunt examples, examples were I can actually give the numerical value of entropy are usually very complicated)

In contrast to the usual examples of decay and disorder, take a black hole. They are incredibly ordered systems. Perfect spheres with predictable orbits, there is rarely a more ordered system than them. However they have huge entropy because a black hole could have come from a vast collection of completely different stars. All the hole records is what the star's mass was, which means stars with completely different chemical compositions and densities would give rise to the same hole as long as they had the same mass.

The second law of thermodynamics then states that it is "genericness" that increases with time. As time goes on it becomes harder to tell what the past was like.

While I hate to argue physics with a physicist (mostly for fear of looking like a fool) - I have to point out that the above is very much a physicist's definition, with little immediate relevance to the practical experience of scientists in other disciplines because of its precision.

It is true that a solution, or a mixture of miscible liquids, does have the characteristic described - that as mixing progresses the number of possible routes to the current state increases - that is not the way it would normally be described, or considered, by a chemist. Instead, it would normally be considered in a statistical sense - that dispersion is more likely than concentration. It may also be considered in an energetic sense - that systems tend, over time, to the most stable energetic configuration - and this is a particularly powerful way of viewing the concept of entropy, since it is capable of allowing a prediction of the lowest-energy state (which may not be the least ordered).

Curiously, the definition given above is probably more useful in geology, which in other sense is a very imprecise science. It is useful there because geology is a forensic science, in which we are specifically interested in possible histories.

For the geologist, an ordered sediment is a sediment whose history can be told from the characteristics of the organisation - whereas a disordered porridge-like mess can tell us virtually nothing, because of the millions of possible histories.

So, it is worth noting when a physicist makes a statement about entropy being "such and such", that he/she is giving you a physicist's definition and conceptualisation. Entropy can be conceptualised in many different ways, and no one way represents the whole truth.

cordially,
Scofflaw

much like in Buddhist teachings the universe has always existed and always will

Buddhism teaches that everything is impermanent, not permanent

everyone else seems to have covered the science rebuttals well so I'll leave it there

Son Goku

Scofflaw wrote:

While I hate to argue physics with a physicist (mostly for fear of looking like a fool) - I have to point out that the above is very much a physicist's definition, with little immediate relevance to the practical experience of scientists in other disciplines because of its precision.


So, it is worth noting when a physicist makes a statement about entropy being "such and such", that he/she is giving you a physicist's definition and conceptualisation. Entropy can be conceptualised in many different ways, and no one way represents the whole truth.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Yeah, what I'm giving is the bare bones "abstract" definition of entropy. All increases in entropy in thermodynamical situations can fundamentally be reduced to what I said, but in the majority of situations it is a useless way of cenceptualizing the concept.
(Similar to a lot of concepts in physics, you should see what Magnetism's correct precise definition is. In short, nobody could think about magnetism the way it is defined and there is about eight other ways to think about it.)

It is more useful, even in phyaics, to consider Entropy in a statistical sense or several other ways. (I myself think of it as increase in heat energy being constrained by temperture.)

The bare bones explanation is useful, I think, for showing that the concept really has nothing to do with disorder or chaos fundamentally, even though the two are commonly seen together. The black hole example (the best example of high entropy alongside a lot of order) is difficult to explain with the fundamental definition.

Scofflaw

Son Goku wrote:

The bare bones explanation is useful, I think, for showing that the concept really has nothing to do with disorder or chaos fundamentally, even though the two are commonly seen together.

Certainly it helps prevent "disorder increases" being taken as an eschatological statement, or "disorder must increase" being taken as a universal statement applicable to absolutely everything.

I can see why it appeals to Creationists, of course, since they put a lot of energy in, but never do any useful work...just generate heat.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Schuhart

I'm probably going off point, but then if the topic is extraterrestrial creationism its sort of hard to set a limit.

Scofflaw wrote:

Entropy can be conceptualised in many different ways, and no one way represents the whole truth.

I'm interested in this comment, because I'd sort of noticed statement of the Second Law here and there approaching the idea from very different directions. I remember one being something like 'a closed system becomes progressively less capable of work' which sounds like the story of my life.

I'm interested in the point that disorder is not necessarily a part of the idea. Yet, any definition I've seen seems to involve some kind of balance sheet. Up to this, the idea I had was something like an alarm clock with the spring wound. It will eventually run out over time. Looking at the clock at a particular time, any movement forward of the hands can be accounted for by the unwinding of the spring.

In popular refutations of creationist citation of entropy tend to use this kind of balance sheet explanation. They are along the lines 'you can have an increase in complexity in one part of a closed system, because some other part might be paying the price in terms of increased disorder'.

In visualising that, I've sort of posed a question 'how is this Neaderthal a little bit smarter than mom and pop'. Up to this, my understanding is the increase might, ultimately, be traced back to whatever tiny part of the Sun's energy that might have found its way into the processes that caused that child to be that tiny bit more developed. So, taking a scenario where we assume the Sun to be the only external feature to the system, the 'Evolution' account would ultimately be balanced by the Sun burning itself out.

All of which terribly elaborate stuff may be completely irrelevant. Are those usual refutations of the creationist position barking up the wrong tree?

Son Goku

It is impossible to calculate or measure the entropy of something like a living system and it isn't even clear if it's a useful measurable quantitiy for living systems.
It's like trying to use quantum mechanics to talk about the atmosphere. Like saying "QM says the wind is in a superposition of two different wind states".

RayMondo

Evolution is not a fact, it is merely a set of heavily contrived ideas which have been dogmatically defended even to the same extent as theism has for thousands of years.
I think we must adapt (no pun intended) to the new realisation of ‘atheist intelligent design’, which makes considerably more sense than all life on Earth being one big accident, or lottery. Evolution is akin to puting all the pieces of an intricate watch in a bag and shaking it up and down, then pouring out the contents and voila one has a perfectly working watch, of course not, no matter how long one tries it aint gonna happen, life is too complex.
NASA scientists are already planning on implanting new life forms on other planets.
In the history of humanity first we didn’t have the belief in a god, but many gods, ie like I said before the ancient Sumerians said that their civilisation was a gift from the gods, or the Vedic scriptures from Asia which mention many flying gods, we can find references to these gods all over the world.
Now that scientists like Dr. Craig Venter are moving from reading the genetic code to writing it,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2499119.stm
and hundreds of others are creating new forms of life right now and all this only 50 years after the discovery of the structure of DNA, so in my opinion it is perfectly plausible, certainly much more so than evolution, but that we are in fact the result of an intelligent design by extraterrestrial scientists.
Dr. Craig Venter’s recent announcement that he had started the process of designing and creating the first totally synthetic unicellular organism. The essential prerequisite in true science is that phenomenon can be reproduced in a laboratory. Evolution has never been reproduced in a laboratory, which is why it’s called a ‘theory’. The same of course is true for ‘God’. After almost 150 years of the theory of evolution (by the way Charles Darwin’s theory was very quiet on man’s evolution mostly he concentrated on animals) then everyone else jumped on the bandwagon and came up with their theories concerning man’s evolution from Darwin’s initial model, and still today we haven’t found the missing-link which will of course explain how homo sapiens suddenly appeared around 200,000 years ago from their nearest rival homo erectus which cohabited with homo sapiens with an increase in brain size of 50 percent, together with language capability(when a couple of grunts would have been sufficient) and a modern anatomy . According to the theory of natural selection this is statistically near-impossible.
So after 150 years evolution hasn’t gone down well with everyone and I’m not just talking about the theists, if everything was well with the theory then we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Not all scientists agree with Darwin's evolution:
http://www.physorg.com/news70208347.html
Just because we find support for something doesn’t mean that one’s idea is the truth, so ok we can all learn from that, I must admit, it’s best to take everything into consideration, that for me makes more sense, if we want to explain our existence here, after all, ‘common sense is the greatest intelligence,’
The way I look at it is, I think we should take all the pieces of humanity’s development, ie, science, religion, UFOs (which have to be taken into account, because they go back to ancient times) etc, and put all these pieces of the jigsaw together and see the big picture, it’s useless looking at just one area.
OK I can see that there are quite a lot of astute people here, it was a baptism of fire of sorts but I think I can pick myself back up…
By the way am I right in saying that if the universe is 14 billion years old, ie expanding since the so-called ‘big bang’, that it then has a definite shape, well then what’s outside this universe holding it up – nothing? If there is something holding it up then isn’t that part of the universe, and what’s holding that part up etc, wouldn’t it make more sense that there was always something there in the first place, ie infinity in space and time?

Sangre

But where the hell did the aliens come from? If they can come from 'nothing', why can't we?

The ET scenario, much like the deity one merely pushes the question a step back (and out of mind). It goes from who created us to who created the creator?

Myksyk

Evolution is akin to puting all the pieces of an intricate watch in a bag and shaking it up and down, then pouring out the contents and voila one has a perfectly working watch,

Oh sweet holy mother all that's clueless ... this is such a tired analogy ... actual whole books have been written explaining why this is NOT what Darwinian evolution is. If you don't know what you're talking about please make an effort to get the very very very basics correct. Really. This is such a fundamental error in understanding about the nature of natural selection that it absolutely undermines everything you have to say on the subject and makes a rational discussion on the issue at hand practically impossible.

Sangre

Its more like shaking a bag full of shapes and the bag has a triangle shape at the bottom. Eventually the triangle will fall out.

(right?)

5uspect

RayMondo wrote:

Evolution is not a fact, it is merely a set of heavily contrived ideas which have been dogmatically defended even to the same extent as theism has for thousands of years.
I think we must adapt (no pun intended) to the new realisation of ‘atheist intelligent design’, which makes considerably more sense than all life on Earth being one big accident, or lottery. Evolution is akin to puting all the pieces of an intricate watch in a bag and shaking it up and down, then pouring out the contents and voila one has a perfectly working watch, of course not, no matter how long one tries it aint gonna happen, life is too complex.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Watch this and tell us where exactly it says that natural selection is a simple lottery.

Zombrex

RayMondo wrote:

Evolution is not a fact

As I said, the process of evolution is a fact. You can actually watch the main points of the theory happening, if you have the correct set up (and could be that bothered).

It is a fact that evolution is happening now. Based on the evidences presented by fossil records (and a bit of common sense thrown in for good measure) it is not exactly a leap of faith to suggest that since it is happening right now, it also happened in the past.

RayMondo wrote:

Evolution is akin to puting all the pieces of an intricate watch in a bag and shaking it up and down, then pouring out the contents and voila one has a perfectly working watch

No actually evolution isn't anything like that. That statement simply serves to demonstrate you don't actually know what the theory of neo-darwin biological evolution actually states. For a start there was no "bag". It took close to a billion years of constant evolutionary changes for the first self-replicating molecules to form any kind of celluar structure, let alone form inot complex organisms.

RayMondo wrote:

Evolution has never been reproduced in a laboratory, which is why it’s called a ‘theory’.

Firstly that isn't what a "theory" is. A theory is not something that has not been reproduced in a lab.

Secondly most of the major stages of evolution have been observed in laboratory settings or reproduced by modelled.

Again, that statement merely serves to show you don't really seem to understand what you are talking about.

RayMondo wrote:

So after 150 years evolution hasn’t gone down well with everyone and I’m not just talking about the theists, if everything was well with the theory then we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

You would think wouldn't you :rolleyes: Yet some people find the theory of evolution far to boring and prefer a much more exciting explanation (God did it!!!! Aliens did it!!!). As such they invent problems with evolution that aren't really there. Personally I don't understand why they do this.

RayMondo wrote:

If there is something holding it up then isn’t that part of the universe, and what’s holding that part up etc, wouldn’t it make more sense that there was always something there in the first place, ie infinity in space and time?

What has that got to do with evolution, or aliens? You seem to be getting a bit confused about what you are arguing. For a start, if aliens designed life on Earth where did these aliens come from? If they evolved then is that not evidence for evolution? Or maybe some other aliens made these aliens.

Secondly discussing what is outside our universe, or before our universe, using the natural laws of this universe such as space and time is rather pointless, since they are properties of this universe.

For example how can something exist forever if time itself as we understand it doesn't exist. And how can something go on for ever if space itself as we understand it doesn't exist?

The truth is not only do we not know what is beyond or before our universe, but we have no frame of reference to even imagine what could be before or beyond our universe. We can't imagine it so what is the point in guessing.

But again I don't really see what this has to do with evolution or aliens?

Zombrex

5uspect wrote:

this and tell us where exactly it says that natural selection is a simple lottery.

Wow, that was 20 years ago. the objections of the creationists is a strange sense of deja vu

Scofflaw

Schuhart wrote:

I'm probably going off point, but then if the topic is extraterrestrial creationism its sort of hard to set a limit. I'm interested in this comment, because I'd sort of noticed statement of the Second Law here and there approaching the idea from very different directions. I remember one being something like 'a closed system becomes progressively less capable of work' which sounds like the story of my life.

I'm interested in the point that disorder is not necessarily a part of the idea. Yet, any definition I've seen seems to involve some kind of balance sheet. Up to this, the idea I had was something like an alarm clock with the spring wound. It will eventually run out over time. Looking at the clock at a particular time, any movement forward of the hands can be accounted for by the unwinding of the spring.

In popular refutations of creationist citation of entropy tend to use this kind of balance sheet explanation. They are along the lines 'you can have an increase in complexity in one part of a closed system, because some other part might be paying the price in terms of increased disorder'.

Hmm. Actually, the best refutation is that neither the Earth, nor any given organism, is actually a closed system, so the concept is meaningless as applied by Creationists, since it only applies to closed systems.

The 'balance sheet' you're referring to is actually a combination of two concepts.

1. From an energetic point of view, a spring under tension is in a more energetic state than when unwound - you supplied the original energy when you wound it up (thus storing the energy in the spring). If nothing prevents the spring from unwinding, then it will do so, because a less energetic state is more "stable" (which is a second-law effect).

Since the energy contained in the wound spring is of a kind that can be converted into other forms (essentially by the push/pull of the unwinding spring), we can use the energy stored in the spring to do work.

2. Since energy is neither created nor destroyed*, the total amount of work we get out of the spring unwinding can at most be equal to the amount of work put in - hence the idea of the balance sheet.

Actually, of course, the amount of work will be less, because some of the energy you originally put in will be lost as heat and noise when the spring unwinds.

*the caveat is that mass can be converted into energy - the amount you get from doing such a conversion is the famous E=mc2.

Schuhart wrote:

In visualising that, I've sort of posed a question 'how is this Neaderthal a little bit smarter than mom and pop'. Up to this, my understanding is the increase might, ultimately, be traced back to whatever tiny part of the Sun's energy that might have found its way into the processes that caused that child to be that tiny bit more developed. So, taking a scenario where we assume the Sun to be the only external feature to the system, the 'Evolution' account would ultimately be balanced by the Sun burning itself out.

Hmm again. Going back to the first part of my answer, and changing the analogy a bit, you can visualise the sun as the source of a stream - a sort of wellspring of energy, some of which flows to us here on Earth (a miniscule fraction).

Now the miniscule fraction that flows to us is still a vast amount of energy, but it is limited. Living organisms - you, me, maggots, trees, MRSA - are all energy throughput devices. Like billions of tiny watermills along the Sun's stream of energy, we all put our millwheels into the energy stream. Like watermills, we use the flow of energy to do work - grinding our daily bread, if you like, and building ourselves up. If we are separated from the stream, the second law takes hold, and we wither away in the darkness.

Primary producers - mostly plants - use the Sun's energy directly, by utilising incident photons to knock electrons off chlorophyll molecules, setting off a chain of reactions that allow the plant to make ATP, the primary energy currency of all terrestrial life. I personally like to see that as the photon falling down a cascade to drive the little watermills - which in turn produce tiny golden bricks of energy...totally fanciful, but not entirely inaccurate.

Plants, then, actually have their millwheels directly in the stream. The rest of us, the so-called organotrophes, basically rob the mills (herbivores), or rob the robbers (carnivores, parasites), or both (omnivores). For greater efficiency, most life is organised into multicellular organisms, like gangs of robbers with specialised members.

All of us fit into a vast network of robbers and robbed that spreads away from the stream of energy. Humans have long organised parts of this network into the local protection rackets we call farming. As you can imagine, however, the further from the stream itself you go, the more of the energy that has been wasted - dropped, spilled, lost - so farming carnivores is extremely wasteful of energy, and even farming cattle is more wasteful than farming plants.

So, the energy that drives human beings does what, then? Well, all organisms seek to maximise the energy they recieve, and to use it most efficiently. Every organism has a personal balance sheet - the carnivore must expend so much energy to hunt, kill, and eat his prey (outgoings), and this needs to be less than the amount he gains by so doing (income). If the carnivore turns enough of a profit (fat and easy prey), he can devote the excess to finding a mate and reproducing.

So, those organisms with the best balance of income and outgoings will dominate. If the market is fat, the pressure to change will be slight, and they will probably become inefficient. If the market is tight, competition will be fierce, and tiny advantages will mean life or death. Those that survive are those best suited to their market.

So, to come round after a long wander to your original thought - the sun itself does not drive improvement. Instead, the organism is improved by accident. As to who gets the improvement - it's a lottery. Those that receive it are only improved in the sense of being a better fit to their particular way of energy use/theft, better able to capture some of the sun's energy and better able to use it efficiently. The rest go down into the dark, and with them perish all their possible descendants, to make room for us, the survivors.

You yourself are the descendant of millions of generations of survivors. Your ancestors crawled out of the sea, survived the meteors, lived through the ice ages and survived the great plagues. None of which means that you would survive in the conditions of the early Earth, despite being "more" evolved than anything else thenon the planet, simply because the environment for which you are fitted is not that environment. You would die like a king in the desert.

Schuhart wrote:

All of which terribly elaborate stuff may be completely irrelevant. Are those usual refutations of the creationist position barking up the wrong tree?

Er. Sorry about all that. See first point...

grandiloquently and orotundly,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

Wow, that was 20 years ago. the objections of the creationists is a strange sense of deja vu

By the way, I see you got your wish...

cordially,
Scofflaw

Zillah

RayMondo,

Are you just copying and pasting this stuff from a Raelian "What to say" document? I promise you, the people here are generally far far too intelligent to fall for your silly ploys, not to mention the fact that it would appear that the average poster on this forum has an understanding of evolution leagues beyond your own. With that being the case I'd suggest you actually try and understand what we're saying, or just go away; the "come be a Raelian" gambit isn't going to work, you're not making sense. Now if you can present us with evidence for the alien origins of life rather than making laughably awful arguments against evolution, I'm sure you'll catch our interest.

Sincerely,
Zillah.

Zillah

Sangre wrote:

Its more like shaking a bag full of shapes and the bag has a triangle shape at the bottom. Eventually the triangle will fall out.

(right?)

Perfect metaphor for a single step of natural selection.

5uspect

Wicknight wrote:

Wow, that was 20 years ago. the objections of the creationists is a strange sense of deja vu

Just goes to show their unwillingness to act with an open mind when looking at the evidence. I wonder will they ever just get over it.

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

By the way, I see you got your wish...

cordially,
Scofflaw

Kelly Brooke covered in honey lying naked in my bed room horny as hell ...

Zillah

Zillah wrote:

RayMondo,

Are you just copying and pasting this stuff from a Raelian "What to say" document? I promise you, the people here are generally far far too intelligent to fall for your silly ploys, not to mention the fact that it would appear that the average poster on this forum has an understanding of evolution leagues beyond your own. With that being the case I'd suggest you actually try and understand what we're saying, or just go away; the "come be a Raelian" gambit isn't going to work, you're not making sense. Now if you can present us with evidence for the alien origins of life rather than making laughably awful arguments against evolution, I'm sure you'll catch our interest.

Sincerely,
Zillah.

I suppose it's a step up from quoting the "dr dino" questions...

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

Kelly Brooke covered in honey lying naked in my bed room horny as hell ...

Ah, no - you wished for a nutter, I'm afraid. Rather than, er, hard to shift stains.

sympathetically,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

5uspect wrote:

Just goes to show their unwillingness to act with an open mind when looking at the evidence. I wonder will they ever just get over it.

Hmm. 2-3000+ years of Creationism vs 150 of evolution? I reckon they figure we're just a passing fad.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Dades

Scofflaw wrote:

Ah, no - you wished for a nutter, I'm afraid. Rather than, er, hard to shift stains.

Only a nutter would cover themselves in honey if you ask me.
What's wrong with whipped cream, I say?

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

Ah, no - you wished for a nutter, I'm afraid. Rather than, er, hard to shift stains.

sympathetically,
Scofflaw

oh right, my other wish ....

bonkey

RayMondo wrote:

I think we must adapt (no pun intended) to the new realisation of ‘atheist intelligent design’, which makes considerably more sense than all life on Earth being one big accident, or lottery.

Why do you think we must?

So far the only reason you've given is that you don't subscribe to the other possibilities that you've enumerated. YOu haven't shown or explained why there can be no other options, which would be the only justification for coming to a conclusion through a process of elimination.

NASA scientists are already planning on implanting new life forms on other planets.

And? We've already created new life forms. What do you think GM foods are?

However, you are again making the mistake of assuming that because something can be done one way, it must have been done this way in the past.

You haven't shown why there are no other possibilities.

Even if your criticism of the leading theory were correct, you still haven't established why we should arrive at your conclusion through a process of elimination.

Evolution has never been reproduced in a laboratory, which is why it’s called a ‘theory’.

Firstly, thats not why its called a theory.

Secondly, evolution has been reproduced artificially.

(by the way Charles Darwin’s theory was very quiet on man’s evolution mostly he concentrated on animals)

Would you care to explain how man is not an animal?
This would be the only reason why an evolutionary theory regarding animals wouldn't apply to man.

and still today we haven’t found the missing-link

Nor have we found God or the Raeliens.

Do you agree that creationism (divine or elien) is therefore equally incomplete?

So after 150 years evolution hasn’t gone down well with everyone and I’m not just talking about the theists,

Science isn't a popularity contest.

There is no reason to believe the universe actually cares whether or not you approve of how it functions.

Just because we find support for something doesn’t mean that one’s idea is the truth,

Correct. Thats why science doesn't work that way, but rather on the principle of falsifiable predictions.

UFOs (which have to be taken into account, because they go back to ancient times)

UFOs can be taken into account when you show how they lead to falsifiable predictions. If you can't do that, then you can either leave them out, or accept that you are abandoning the field of science.

So which is it? Are you talking non-scientifically here, or have you falsifiable predictions to offer us regarding UFOs???

put all these pieces of the jigsaw together and see the big picture,

Bad analagy. With a jigsaw, we know the picture we want to see, and we attempt to make the pieces fit. What we have here from your "lets include everything" approach is a chunk of pieces that may or not be part of the picture and no idea what the picture actually looks like.

For me, teh first step is to agree on a method of determining which pieces are and are not part of the picture. I defy you to provide a better approach then the scientific one. And if you wish to tread the scientific path, your first task will be to establish the existence of any piece you wish to include...which includes your UFOs, God, and the rest of it.

it’s useless looking at just one area.

Good thing science doesn't do that then.

well then what’s outside this universe holding it up – nothing?

Holding it up from what? And what do you mean by "outside" the universe?

If there is something holding it up then isn’t that part of the universe, and what’s holding that part up etc wouldn’t it make more sense that there was always something there in the first place, ie infinity in space and time?

No.

Why is one infinity (an infinite time-and-space) more reasonable than another (an infinite number of layers of "holding the univese up"...whatever you mean by that)???

Why do you find that one infinity is logical, but the other not?

More importantly, if you're willing to believe in infinite time and space, then you have to allow that you have an infinity of possibilities within that. Why then do you find your "shake a bag with watch-pieces and get a watch" to be unacceptable? It doesn't matter how unlikely it is, in an infinity of timem surely it must happen.

How can you meaningfully attack both ideas? If you reject the finite age of the universe, then your grounds for objecting to evolution (although wrong in and of themselves) are no longer logical. The reverse is also true. If you reject evolution based on your (incorrect) understanding of it, it can only be because you think the odds are too great...which wouldn't make sense if you had an infinity of time in which to meet those odds.

OK I can see that there are quite a lot of astute people here, it was a baptism of fire of sorts but I think I can pick myself back up…

It would seem that you're implying that you can do better and will do so because you're dealing with people who aren't gullible, idiots, or ignorant of the subjects being discussed. That's not a terribly good way to redeem yourself.

It suggests your aim is to "win" people over to your way of thinking using whatever technique works best on them. Personally, I find such intellectual dishonest to be distasteful, so I hope that this is just another point you've made badly and need to recover from.

Scofflaw

and still today we haven’t found the missing-link

Well, we can't, can we - by definition. We have found lots of intermediate forms, but unless every single one of our ancestors were fossilised (and dug up), we would still have a missing link.

regards,
Scoffllaw

Schuhart

Scofflaw wrote:

Hmm. Actually, the best refutation is that neither the Earth, nor any given organism, is actually a closed system, so the concept is meaningless as applied by Creationists, since it only applies to closed systems.

Very useful post. I’m just trying to tie it down into a simple, illustrative, statement.

Creationist: Second law of thermodynamics says things in a closed system should fall apart unless something from outside sustains them.

Response: It can sometimes be taken to mean that. Essentially, the Second law points out that if you close up a potted plant in a box, it will die. Put it in sunlight, and it grows. The Earth is not a closed system in a box. It’s in sunlight. So things grow.

The things that grow best will do better than the things that don’t. The reason some things will do better than others has nothing in particular to do with the second law.

bonkey

Schuhart wrote:

Very useful post. I’m just trying to tie it down into a simple, illustrative, statement.

Creationist: Second law of thermodynamics says things in a closed system should fall apart unless something from outside sustains them.

Response: I agree, but earth isn't a closed system, so what is the relevance?

Schuhart

That’s grand except it looks too much like the issue is being defined out of existence. I think it needs some expansion to make it clear for the general reader. Specifically something to say

1. the ‘openness’ of the Earth is not just a technicality, like a pub knocking a wall down so they can say ‘smoke away, we’re not a closed system any more’.

2. the essential process of evolution is not dependant on the second law – otherwise your creationist mate just extends the scope to cover the whole universe and says ‘right, now how do we get evolution on that planet over there’.

Zillah

Surely if we look at the universe as a single, closed system, then it does obey the second law. Its just on a time scale bigger than most people appreciate? A few billion blips of dynamic, organised systems are nothing compared to the grand universal entropy?

I'm really just chewing logic on a topic I'm not that familiar with though.

Scofflaw

Zillah wrote:

Surely if we look at the universe as a single, closed system, then it does obey the second law. Its just on a time scale bigger than most people appreciate? A few billion blips of dynamic, organised systems are nothing compared to the grand universal entropy?

I'm really just chewing logic on a topic I'm not that familiar with though.

The Universe is assumed to be a closed system, as far as I know, and so the second law would have exactly the effect described - everything will run slowly down towards a sort of generic state. Used to be called the "heat-death of the Universe" as far as I recall.

cordially,
Scofflaw

fulofh20

I agree on evoluation, but the topic of any religious belief can be made extreme to affect others adversely. Any religion including Atheism can argue it's point to extreme and mock or condemn others behaviours/beliefts etc.
Keep your beliefc clean, respectable and unbiased.
As for extraterristrial, I have had an ususual experience that has prompted by thinking to consider the possibility of ET lifeform.
I am not a crazy person, not religious, open minded and suspicious, but I believe there is more to the ET story that, some people will agree, some deny.