Intelligent Design: An Insult to Gods Intelligence?

LCKob says:

"Actually no, it requires factual data and a working hypothesis as to how this information fits within an existing framework of similarly researched theories."

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Patriot Replies:

"which evolution does not have anymore then creation."

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LCKob Responds:

Totally wrong ... Scientific Methodology incorporated the Hypothsis concerning Evolution has evaluated the data collected within the methodology (as supplied directly or as related interdisciplinary areas i.e. Paleontology, Astronomy, Physics , Geology, Astrophysics , Chemistry ... to name a few associated disciplines.

... followed by the tentative incorporatation into the information network and database known collectively as "The Sciences" or "Scientific Methodology".

To recap:

Hypothesis: Evolution as postualated by Darwin etal.

Body of data provided by: Paleontology, Astronomy, Physics, Geology, Astrophysics, Chemistry ... to name a few associated disciplines.

Process of Evaluation to include verifiable and repeatable test results as confirmed by multiple sources, documentation of basic procedure available for scrutiny, access to raw data for review, open to vigorous and demanding scientific (read rational and linear) scrutiny for points of theoretical discontiniuity or discrepancy ... (forgive me if I missed additional points, but these were "off the top of my head so to speak ... suffice it to say that a highly difined critera IS DOCUMENTED AND REQUIRED FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEACH FINDINGS.

Framework: The collective, documented paradigm of Scientific Methodolgy.

Now you turn Patriot ...



[edit on 15-11-2005 by LCKob]

Patriot says:

"there is no way I can "prove" that to you, because of your faith in evolution. "

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LCKob responds:

Looking at it objectively, all you are saying is that you cannot prove your point. ... as for my supposed "faith" in Evolution ... read on.

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Patriot say:

"that is something you will have to decide on yourself. you have faith that evolution is true based on your experience and what you have seen, but what if I could propose to you that I could disprove everything youve been told about evolution, what would you say then?

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LCKob responds:

disprove
One entry found for disprove.
Main Entry: dis·prove
Pronunciation: (")dis-'prüv
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French desprover, from des- dis- + prover to prove
: to prove to be false or wrong : REFUTE
- dis·prov·able /-'prü-v&-b&l/ adjective

LCKob the scientist says without reservation, by all means bring forth all of your proofs against Evolution.

I will keep you to your word as to "proof" and not "evidence" or "coincidence".

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Patriot says:

"and then the question is what could I say that you would believe? I mean Ive already brought up that the law of entropy pretty much destroys the evolution theory,"

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LCKob responds:

As I have REFERENCED SOURCES FOR MORE THAN ONE CASE against what you claim ... you make the assertion, but the Scientific Process can and does provide the entire package regarding Hypothesis to a viable WORKING MODEL that demonstrates the potential for phenomena prediction (see sight on Computer Model Prediction from reference listing).

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Patriot says:

and thats not a statement from the Bible thats a law that is taught in every single public school and college in America, the Law of entropy states that everying falls apart over time and no exceptions have been found, yet you have so obviously ignored that, so what will you believe?

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LCKob responds:

I personally BELIEVE in very little, I much rather acertain for myself what is the most accurate view on things given the available information and research.

... and by accertain, I mean hold to the greatest accuracy or probability given the context. Not faith, not subjective desire, not want. Of course, you may well argue that I have "faith" in the results ... in which case, I would put it this way ...

I have "faith" in the goodness of mankind.

... as opposed to ....

I have a fair understanding of how an automobile works ... as such, do not consider my use of the vehicle "an act of faith" ... I use the automobile within the context of how it works, why it works and how I can use it - in regards to its given capacity, none of this involves faith. ... and this includes the concept of component / vehicle failure ... which merely points to mitigating variables which promote malfuction given the right operational context.



[edit on 15-11-2005 by LCKob]

Originally posted by LCKob
Patriot says:

belief is not proof. I can believe something and it not be true. lets say I grew up in the congo all my life, and I believe the earth is flat. used to be a major theory. yet we all know the earth is round.

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LCKob Responds:

Hmmmm ... Does Galileo ring a bell here? Darwin and the Galapagos?

hmmm Galileo was a devout christian and creationist, dont see how that plays in, darwin and tha Galapagos? where he saw different varieties of finches and claimed that they were proof of evolution when in reality they were all finches? no intermediate forms? he saw finches bear finches? variation within a species happens. even modern evolutionary scientists will tell you that, and that Darwin was grasping at straws there.

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Patriot says:

Yet I can believe with all my heart that the earth is flat, but that doesnt make it flat, the earth is still round whether or not I believe it is, and I propose that God exists whether or not you believe in Him or not.

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LCKob responds:

Subsititute "the Earth is flat" with "God" and see what you get ... as for proposing ... does your religion actually allow for supposition or proposition? I was under the impression that the presense of this "God" is without question. So can you actually (within the strictures of your religion) prospose or support ANYTHING that is not accepted doctrine?

Well??

I base my beliefs on what I see in the world, I propose that there are only 2 ways we got here, by chance (evolution) or by intelligent design, there are no other possibilities, and well looking at the evidence I see in the world, even if I were to throw the Bible completly out I dont see how I could believe in evolution, the evidence points away....
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Patriot says:

but lets get onto a science here, neither creation nor evolution fall into it. Do I have to bring in the scientific method again? apparently you ignored that part of my reply as well. science is testable, observabe, and repeatable, and neither creation nor evolution fall into this category, leaving them to both be hypothesis.

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LCKob responds:

Actually yes, lets get into science here ...

... as for testable, observable, and repeatable, these criteria are MANDATES FOR SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY. I think I provided enough examples exemplfying these three requirements in my previous post. And you?

... once again your religion requires this?

Show me these requirements please?

requirements? excuseme the scientific method is not religion it is science, as has been accepted by every public school and university in the nation, it has nothing to do with religion and to say that it does is ludicrous. and no you havent provided any such proof that falls into that criteria, just evidence, and rather faulty evidence at that, to support your hypothesis.

[edit on 15-11-2005 by LCKob]

Originally posted by LCKob
Patriot says:

"there is no way I can "prove" that to you, because of your faith in evolution. "

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LCKob responds:

Looking at it objectively, all you are saying is that you cannot prove your point. ... as for my supposed "faith" in Evolution ... read on.

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Patriot say:

"that is something you will have to decide on yourself. you have faith that evolution is true based on your experience and what you have seen, but what if I could propose to you that I could disprove everything youve been told about evolution, what would you say then?

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LCKob responds:

disprove
One entry found for disprove.
Main Entry: dis·prove
Pronunciation: (")dis-'prüv
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French desprover, from des- dis- + prover to prove
: to prove to be false or wrong : REFUTE
- dis·prov·able /-'prü-v&-b&l/ adjective

LCKob the scientist says without reservation, by all means bring forth all of your proofs against Evolution.

I will keep you to your word as to "proof" and not "evidence" or "coincidence".

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Patriot says:

"and then the question is what could I say that you would believe? I mean Ive already brought up that the law of entropy pretty much destroys the evolution theory,"

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LCKob responds:

As I have REFERENCED SOURCES FOR MORE THAN ONE CASE against what you claim ... you make the assertion, but the Scientific Process can and does provide the entire package regarding Hypothesis to a viable WORKING MODEL that demonstrates the potential for phenomena prediction (see sight on Computer Model Prediction from reference listing).

your making no sense, you still havent explained how evolution can happen with the Law of entropy in place...since no examples have been found of plants or animals gaining information.
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Patriot says:

and thats not a statement from the Bible thats a law that is taught in every single public school and college in America, the Law of entropy states that everying falls apart over time and no exceptions have been found, yet you have so obviously ignored that, so what will you believe?

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LCKob responds:

I personally BELIEVE in very little, I much rather acertain for myself what is the most accurate view on things given the available information and research.

... and by accertain, I mean hold to the greatest accuracy or probability given the context. Not faith, not subjective desire, not want. Of course, you may well argue that I have "faith" in the results ... in which case, I would put it this way ...

I have "faith" in the goodness of mankind.

everyone has faith, its just what in, I have faith in God, an evolutionist has faith that we came from apes, even an athiest has faith, he has faith that there is no God. the only person without faith is a dead person...

... as opposed to ....

I have a fair understanding of how an automobile works ... as such, do not consider my use of the vehicle "an act of faith" ... I use the automobile within the context of how it works, why it works and how I can use it - in regards to its given capacity, none of this involves faith. ... and this includes the concept of component / vehicle failure ... which merely points to mitigating variables which promote malfuction given the right operational context.

yet you do you have faith that that vehicle will get you from point A to point B, faith all the same. yet your statement has some truth, you base how you live by what you see, how you interpret the evidence. are you sure your interpretation is correct? now were still debating over which is theory and which is religion? how bout this how bout we settle for both being theory and start pulling forth evidence, which I have yet to see you pull forth anything of value....perhaps its the lack of evidence for evolution that makes me believe in creation.

[edit on 15-11-2005 by LCKob]

LCKob:

Hmmmm ... Does Galileo ring a bell here? Darwin and the Galapagos?

Patriot:

hmmm Galileo was a devout christian and creationist, dont see how that plays in, darwin and tha Galapagos? where he saw different varieties of finches and claimed that they were proof of evolution when in reality they were all finches? no intermediate forms? he saw finches bear finches? variation within a species happens. even modern evolutionary scientists will tell you that, and that Darwin was grasping at straws there.

LCKob:

Galileo was castigated for presenting astronomical evidence that the Earth was not the Center of our system ... his telescope was alleged to house "demons" which were bent on distorting the truth ...

hmmmm ... did you even bother to read or scan throught the sites on Evolution? Also keep in mind, Darwin was but one proponent for Evolution, and one of its earliest promoters. As with all working models, the model of Evolution has become more refined and cohesive ... you would know that if you actually read any of the references.


Patriot:

Yet I can believe with all my heart that the earth is flat, but that doesnt make it flat, the earth is still round whether or not I believe it is, and I propose that God exists whether or not you believe in Him or not.


LCKob:

Subsititute "the Earth is flat" with "God" and see what you get ... as for proposing ... does your religion actually allow for supposition or proposition? I was under the impression that the presense of this "God" is without question. So can you actually (within the strictures of your religion) prospose or support ANYTHING that is not accepted doctrine?

Well??


Patriot:

I base my beliefs on what I see in the world, I propose that there are only 2 ways we got here, by chance (evolution) or by intelligent design, there are no other possibilities, and well looking at the evidence I see in the world, even if I were to throw the Bible completly out I dont see how I could believe in evolution, the evidence points away....

LCKob:

There you go again ... "you propose" ... within the constraints of your religion, what can YOU propose? Remember if you adhere to dogma, as in one of the faithful ... you take the word as absolute truth -yes? ... or are you deviating from the divine truth? Remember by christian doctrine, the bible is the source of truth ... that being the case how can you propose anything outside scripture?

Patriot:

but lets get onto a science here, neither creation nor evolution fall into it. Do I have to bring in the scientific method again? apparently you ignored that part of my reply as well. science is testable, observabe, and repeatable, and neither creation nor evolution fall into this category, leaving them to both be hypothesis.


LCKob:

Actually yes, lets get into science here ...

... as for testable, observable, and repeatable, these criteria are MANDATES FOR SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY. I think I provided enough examples exemplfying these three requirements in my previous post. And you?

... once again your religion requires this?

Show me these requirements please?

requirements? excuse me the scientific method is not religion it is science, as has been accepted by every public school and university in the nation, it has nothing to do with religion and to say that it does is ludicrous. and no you havent provided any such proof that falls into that criteria, just evidence, and rather faulty evidence at that, to support your hypothesis.

LCKob: hmmmmm.... still waiting for those "requirements" .... ''

Hahaha ... and where is the PROOF you promised? Remember, Science does not deal with Absolute Truths ... that has been stated many times before ... evidence yes, working models yes, ... absolute truth ... NO.

Remember, you were the one insisting that your religion had a HYPOTHESES - which by the way for all to see you ducked answering ... well?

Actually you have something right here ... Scientific Methodology is definitely NOT Religion ... as you now say ... although earlier, you claimed that it was religion ... what can't make up your mind?


Patriot:

"there is no way I can "prove" that to you, because of your faith in evolution. "

LCKob:

Looking at it objectively, all you are saying is that you cannot prove your point. ... as for my supposed "faith" in Evolution ... read on.



Patriot say:

"that is something you will have to decide on yourself. you have faith that evolution is true based on your experience and what you have seen, but what if I could propose to you that I could disprove everything youve been told about evolution, what would you say then?


LCKob:

disprove
One entry found for disprove.
Main Entry: dis·prove
Pronunciation: (")dis-'prüv
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French desprover, from des- dis- + prover to prove
: to prove to be false or wrong : REFUTE
- dis·prov·able /-'prü-v&-b&l/ adjective

LCKob the scientist says without reservation, by all means bring forth all of your proofs against Evolution.

I will keep you to your word as to "proof" and not "evidence" or "coincidence".


Patriot:

"and then the question is what could I say that you would believe? I mean Ive already brought up that the law of entropy pretty much destroys the evolution theory,"



LCKob:

As I have REFERENCED SOURCES FOR MORE THAN ONE CASE against what you claim (PLEASE READ) ... you make the assertion, but the Scientific Process can and does provide the entire package regarding Hypothesis to a viable WORKING MODEL that demonstrates the potential for phenomena prediction (see sight on Computer Model Prediction from reference listing).


Patriot:

your making no sense, you still havent explained how evolution can happen with the Law of entropy in place...since no examples have been found of plants or animals gaining information.

LCKob:

(sigh) ... thats right, you did not read any of the sources I posted ... I only gave about 20 or so ... what, afraid of what you'll find?

Patriot:

and thats not a statement from the Bible thats a law that is taught in every single public school and college in America, the Law of entropy states that everying falls apart over time and no exceptions have been found, yet you have so obviously ignored that, so what will you believe?


LCKob:

I personally BELIEVE in very little, I much rather acertain for myself what is the most accurate view on things given the available information and research.

... and by accertain, I mean hold to the greatest accuracy or probability given the context. Not faith, not subjective desire, not want. Of course, you may well argue that I have "faith" in the results ... in which case, I would put it this way ...

I have "faith" in the goodness of mankind.

Patriot:

everyone has faith, its just what in, I have faith in God, an evolutionist has faith that we came from apes, even an athiest has faith, he has faith that there is no God. the only person without faith is a dead person...

LCKob:

You really have a weakness for meanings don't you ... try finding out what terms really mean, they will help your cause ...


I have < trust > in the goodness of manking ...

As opposed to your: 2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof


Main Entry: 1faith
Pronunciation: 'fAth
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural faiths /'fAths, sometimes 'fA[th]z/
Etymology: Middle English feith, from Old French feid, foi, from Latin fides; akin to Latin fidere to trust -- more at BIDE


1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : LOYALTY b (1) : fidelity to one's promises

(2) : sincerity of intentions

2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust

3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs





LCKob continuted:

... as opposed to ....

I have a fair understanding of how an automobile works ... as such, do not consider my use of the vehicle "an act of faith" ... I use the automobile within the context of how it works, why it works and how I can use it - in regards to its given capacity, none of this involves faith. ... and this includes the concept of component / vehicle failure ... which merely points to mitigating variables which promote malfuction given the right operational context.

Patriot:

yet you do you have faith that that vehicle will get you from point A to point B, faith all the same.

LCKob:

Actually no, check the definitions ... I don't have what you would call "faith" in my going from point A to point B. What I have is reasonable expectation based upon an acceptable probability that I will get from A to B. Its not "Total Trust" ... nor is it any off the other definitions ... and if you want to get realy nitpicky .... then the statetment "I have faith in the goodness of Manking" is more accurately translated as ...

I have < reasonable expectation based upon an acceptable probability > in the goodness of mankind.

Haha ... see what happens when one is charitable ... my bad ...


Patriot:

yet your statement has some truth, you base how you live by what you see, how you interpret the evidence. are you sure your interpretation is correct? now were still debating over which is theory and which is religion? how bout this how bout we settle for both being theory and start pulling forth evidence, which I have yet to see you pull forth anything of value....perhaps its the lack of evidence for evolution that makes me believe in creation.


LCKob:

Lack of evidence? ... and what exactly have you broght forth?

I have given quite a bit in the way of research with a robust body of evidence ... nothing you have said so far leads me to believe that you even read any of it ... speaking of which,

YOU DID PROMISE PROOF ...


... NOW SHOW IT if you can. Now remember, YOU SAID PROOF.


Anytime your ready ....


[edit on 15-11-2005 by LCKob]

[edit on 16-11-2005 by LCKob]

you know weve gone over this and you keep throwin around the "restraints of your religion" etc. etc. and ask where my evidence is? yet I have not listed one Bible verse, and you ask where my evidence is? I have brought it forth, the stink bug is one that you all ignored, oh and how about the laws of nature (again the Law of entropy for example) the scientific method, Ive even brought forward the orbit of the moon, and you just gloss over it and rant and rave over "religion" I ask for evidence for evolution and instead of giving it you just tell me its on the sites-yes Ive read countless different sites on evolution, science textbooks, even heard evolutionary scientists talk on the matter. I didnt ask for what they believed or for their evidence, where is your evidence. Im not debating religion, Im debating science, so wheres your evidence? how do you explain evolution working around the Law of entropy? how bout the moons orbit? you say evolution keeps moving forward but theres no evidence? so go on, present it, if it is in such high demand then stop debating religion and bring forth your evidence.

Patriot:

you know weve gone over this and you keep throwin around the "restraints of your religion" etc. etc. and ask where my evidence is? yet I have not listed one Bible verse, and you ask where my evidence is? I have brought it forth, the stink bug

LCKob:

Stink Bug? THAT IS YOUR TRUTH ... THAT IS YOUR PROOF ONE EXAMPLE OF WHAT APPEARS TO BE AN IRRUDICIBLY COMPLEX PHENOMENA?

ARE YOU SERIOUS YOU REALLY CALL THIS PROOF?

SORRY, but I am only offering EVIDENCE on Flagellum ...

ID tells us that things with "irreducible complexity" couldn't have evolved by natural means. They therefore conclude that since Darwinian evolution can't explain how complicated biological structures came to be, that scientifically proves that there is a "designer" to life.

They don't say that it is God. ID proponents are too careful for that. If they were to say God made things the way they are, their true intention would become clear.

They want to provide an intellectual framework for religious people to reject evolution without feeling totally illogical.

This is flawed in two ways.

First, their examples of "irreducible complexity" are in fact reducible. The bacterial flagellum is the most frequent example cited by ID proponents.

The 30 or so protein components do need each other to make a functioning flagellum. However, they didn't need to evolve together, as ID people claim, to be selected by evolution.

The question is whether fewer than the 30 subunits of the flagellum could have had any other function. By comparing gene sequences for similarity with computers, we can see that the answer is clearly "yes."

The pore-forming base of the flagellar structure is very similar to the base of the type III secretion system, which allows many bad bacteria, like Salmonella, for example, to infect host cells.

Other parts of the flagellar structure are also similar to the sex-pilus (yes, bacteria can have "sex" too), that allows conjugation and gene transfer.

In Actinobacillus, an operon of just seven genes, and only three with homology to flagella and secretion system genes, forms its own rudimentary secretion system, dubbed the tad operon. This bacteria lives in your mouth and is mostly responsible for making the slime that forms on your teeth when you don't brush. Without the secretion system, it can't make slime.

In fact, an even more rudimentary homologous secretion system, with just four genes, is found in many other bacteria (including the Mycobacteria we study in my lab).

Irrefutably, the complexity of the flagellum is reducible. The ID people will probably go on to think of new "irreducible" examples of complexity, and the real scientists with some free time and a blog will reduce those as well.

The second flaw in ID is more fundamental. That is, their basic argument has no logical basis; because something is very complex, it doesn't necessarily have a "designer."

Patriot:

is one that you all ignored, oh and how about the laws of nature (again the Law of entropy for example) the scientific method, Ive even brought forward the orbit of the moon, and you just gloss over it and rant and rave over "religion" I ask for evidence for evolution and instead of giving it you just tell me its on the sites-yes Ive read countless different sites on evolution, science textbooks, even heard evolutionary scientists talk on the matter. I didnt ask for what they believed or for their evidence, where is your evidence.

LCKob:

One of the nice things about the Scientific Methodology is the fact that due to such rigid standards ... it is not only possible, but effecient to site sources ... so you are tired of reading ... thats too bad, because obviously you have not delved deep enough.

Patriot:

Im not debating religion, Im debating science, so wheres your evidence? how do you explain evolution working around the Law of entropy? how bout the moons orbit? you say evolution keeps moving forward but theres no evidence? so go on, present it, if it is in such high demand then stop debating religion and bring forth your evidence.

LCKob:

Entropy did you say:

It is often asserted by creationists that the evolution of life is impossible because this would require an increase in order, whereas the second law of thermodynamics states that "in any natural process the amount of disorder increases", or some similar claim. "Entropy" is frequently used as a synonym for "disorder".

Of course, this represents a serious misunderstanding of what thermodynamics actually states. It can be explained patiently (or less than patiently, after the 1000th iteration or so) that entropy only strictly increases in an isolated system; that there are no completely isolated systems in nature, save maybe the universe as a whole; and that the whole idea of isolated systems is really an abstraction for pedagogical purposes; but still the creationist won't let go. There just has to be some reason why "order cannot come from disorder", and the reason must be in thermodynamics. That's the science that talks about order and disorder, isn't it?

In fact, it isn't. Look through any thermodynamics text. You will find discussions about ideal gases, heat engines, changes of state, equilibrium, chemical reactions, and the energy density and pressure of radiation. Entropy and the second law are powerful tools that allow one to calculate the properties of systems at equilibrium. At the very most, there may be a paragraph or two somewhere in that thick book alluding to some kind of relation between entropy and "disorder". Writers of pop science books like to make the same kind of relation, and will ask their readers to consider things like the state of their rooms--tidy or messy--and compare the (supposed) decrease in orderliness of the room over time to the "tendency of entropy to increase". But what of entropy and disorder? Where does that identification fit into the structure of thermodynamics?

The answer is, nowhere. It is not an axiom or first principle, it is not derived from any other basic principles, and nowhere is it required or even used at all to do any of the science to which thermodynamics applies. It is simply irrelevant and out of place except as an interesting aside. The only reason that that identification has been made stems from the different field of study called "statistical mechanics". Statistical mechanics explains thermodynamics, which is a science based on observed phenomena of macroscopic entities, such as a cylinder full of gas, in terms of more basic physics of microscopic entities, such as the collection of molecules that comprises the gas. This was a great achievement of nineteenth-century physics, led by Ludwig Boltzmann, who wrote down the only equation that connects entropy with any concept that might be called "disorder". In fact, what is commonly called "disorder" in Boltzmann's entropy equation has a meaning quite different from what creationists--and some writers of pop science--mean by disorder.

The equation in question reads:

S = k ln W.

That admittedly won't tell the reader much without some background. Boltzmann's entropy equation talks about a specific kind of system--an isolated system with a specified constant total energy E (although the constant E does not explicitly appear in the equation, it is implied and crucial) in a state of equilibrium. It tells us how to calculate the entropy, S, of that system in terms of the microscopic particles (molecules) which make it up. On the right hand side, k is a universal constant now known as Boltzmann's constant [1.38 × 10-23 joules/kelvin, for the curious --Ed]. The function "ln" is the natural logarithm, and the argument of the logarithm function is the quantity W. W is a pure number that connects the microscopic with the macroscopic.

Suppose the system we are looking at is a volume of gas inside an insulated container. The gas is specified to have total energy E, which is constant because the container is insulated so that no heat can enter or leave and rigid so that no work can be done on the gas by compression. There are roughly 1022 molecules of gas in a wine-bottle-sized container if the gas is at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. At any particular moment, each molecule is at a particular position inside the container and has a particular velocity. The position and velocity of a particle constitute its state, for Boltzmann's and our purposes. The collection of the states of all the molecules at any moment is called a microstate of the whole volume of gas. A microstate of the gas system is constrained by two requirements: first, the positions of the molecules are constrained to lie within the container (which has volume V); and second, each molecule's velocity determines its energy, and the sum of the energies of all the molecules must equal E, the total energy of the gas. An interesting question is, how many different microstates are there that satisfy these requirements at energy E and volume V? The answer to that question, provided we can calculate it, is the number W, which is the number sometimes referred to as the measure of "disorder".

Right away it can be seen that there are some problems squaring this with the everyday concept of "disorder". For one thing, this number is not even a property of any single completely specified state (microstate) of the system, but only a property of all possible microstates--in fact, it is the number of possible microstates. And W is a very large number indeed. Consider the bottle of gas: moving any one of the 1022 different molecules in it slightly from a given position counts as another microstate. Imagine then moving them two at a time in all possible combinations, then three, then four...

(As an aside, it turns out that the number of microstates, though enormous, is not infinite, as it might seem from considering that space is [so far as we know] continuous, so that one could consider moving a molecule [or adding to its velocity] by ever smaller amounts, racking up microstates with no limit. The uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics puts a lower limit on the difference in position or velocity that can be distinguished as a separate state.)

The point of thinking about the number of possible microstates consistent with the observable macroscopic state is that the system never stays in one microstate for long. In a gas in equilibrium, the molecules collide with each other constantly; with each collision their velocities change and the state changes. This happens something like 1014 times per second for every molecule in a gas at normal pressure and temperature. The states are so randomized by all these collisions that that at any given moment, every single microstate is equally probable. This is a postulate of statistical mechanics for an isolated system at equilibrium. The collection of microstates is called a statistical ensemble; it is the universe of possible states from which the system draws its actual state from moment to moment.

So in what sense can a system with large W be said to be highly disordered? Just this: the larger W is (the more possible microstates there are), the greater is the uncertainty in what specific microstate will be observed when we (conceptually) measure at a predetermined moment.

It can be seen from this that a liquid has less entropy than an equal mass of gas, and a solid has less still. In a solid, the molecules are constrained to stay very near their original positions by intermolecular forces (that is, they cannot move very far without acquiring a large amount of potential energy and thus violating the requirement that the total energy be constant and equal to E), and have average velocities much smaller than the velocities of gas molecules; but they do vibrate around their average positions and so contribute some uncertainty in the instantaneous microstate. If the solid is heated up, the vibrations increase both in size and velocity and the entropy of the solid also increases, all in agreement with thermodynamics. In fact, the statistical definition of entropy reproduces all the results of thermodynamics.

Does it make any sense to apply this to the arrangement of furniture and other items in a room in the classic pop science analogy? To do so, we would have to be sure that the situation fits all the postulates of statistical mechanics that are applicable to the statistical definition of entropy. The room could be assumed to be at least approximately isolated, if the building was very heavily insulated with no windows. We might think the room was approximately at equilibrium, if it was left undisturbed for a long time. But something is wrong here. There are an abundance of possible "microstates" of the system--as many as there are possible ways of arranging all the items in the room, and moving any item by less than a hair's breadth counts as a rearrangement. In principle, a rearrangement could be made without altering the total energy E of the system, unlike in a solid object.

But in fact, there is very little uncertainty in the actual arrangement from moment to moment. The system stays in a set of very few "microstates" for as long as we can watch without becoming bored. What's wrong? The room is not truly in equilibrium in the statistical sense--the "microstates" are not equally probable, because they are not being randomized between "measurements". The statistical definition of entropy fails, and it makes no sense to talk about the thermodynamic "disorder" of the room.

Creationists sometimes point to the complicated molecules in living cells as examples of highly "thermodynamically ordered" systems that need some special explanation, or that can only "degrade" from that highly "ordered" state because of the second law, etc. But the identification of a specified molecule with a well-defined state of thermodynamic "order" fails for a similar reason that the example of the untidy room failed.

The argument goes something like this: "There is only one possible arrangement of amino acids that makes up a specified 'functional' protein (or only one possible arrangement of nucleotides that makes up a specified gene in DNA), while there are an astronomical number of possible arrangements that are 'nonsensical' with respect to the life functions of the cell." Therefore, the functional protein (or gene) is presumably in an extremely low-entropy state, as calculated according to S = k ln W.

Is this true? This line of argument considers the overall macroscopic state of the system to be not a particular protein or a particular gene, but just "a protein" or "a gene", and considers the statistical ensemble to be the whole group of possible configurations of the same set of smaller constituent molecules. In other words, the actual "specified" macromolecule that is observed is not taken as the overall state, but only as one of the microstates.

But this runs into the same problem as the untidy room did: the configurations of molecules in cells are not randomized moment to moment; the supposed microstates are not equally probable, because once in one configuration, a molecule tends to stay in that same one. In this case, it's because there is generally an energy "bump" that has to be gotten over in the process of converting from one configuration to another. At a fixed energy less than the peak of the "bump", a pre-existing configuration will stay the way it is. If the molecule is in the same supposed microstate every time we look at it, its state is not being randomized, and it makes no sense to apply to it a statistical calculation that assumes that the probability of observing that particular "microstate" at any time is vanishingly small, when in fact, that probability is near one.

By the same token, if this line of reasoning were correct, one could look in one of the reference books where the thermodynamic properties of various chemical compounds are tabulated, and find that nearly all of them would have zero or very small specific entropies, because "there is only one way" to combine two hydrogens and an oxygen to form a water molecule, for instance. Of course, this is not the case. So how do we calculate the entropy of a molecule statistically? We calculate the number of ways it can vary--these could involve vibrational states, changes in overall shape, bond angle bending, and similar effects. These changes all leave the molecule recognizable as the same specific combination of atoms. By this calculation--the only one that matters--all the possible configurations have very similar entropies. There is no thermodynamic reason why a molecule or gene cannot, by slight changes, go from one configuration to a different one that turns out to work better."

... and lets not forget the Moon ....

Controversy on the age of the Earth and Moon....

(There were helpful diagrams ... but since you can't be bothered to check site references ... too bad)

one of the common arguments made in support of young-Earth creationism is that the dynamic age of the Earth-moon system (as determined by the physics of the Earth-moon tidal interaction) is too young to support a multi-billion year age for the system. In this article I will (a) review the basic physics of gravity and tides, (b) review the history of theoretical models for Earth-moon tides, (c) review the paleontological evidence relevant to the history of the Earth-moon system, and (d) demonstrate that the combination of theory and observation refute the young-Earth creationist arguments, with reference to specific young-Earth arguments and their specific failures. This is intended as a review for readers not versed in physics and math, so the arguments are presented as non-technically as possible. There are references to more technical work, for those who are interested in following up any of the arguments presented here as accepted assertions.

While this article is intended as a refutation of yet another ill conceived young-Earth argument, the introductory reviews do not refer to creationism at all. Therefore, the article should work just as well as an introduction to the physics of the evolution of the Earth-moon system, even for those readers not interested in the issue of creation vs. evolution.
Introduction to Gravity

Although gravity has been known to exist since people knew they could fall, it was not until Isaac Newton came along that a mathematical description of gravity was forthcoming. It was Newton who showed that the force of gravity obeyed a simple algebraic equation, shown here as equation 1.
Fg = Gm1m2 / R2 equation 1

In equation 1, Fg is the gravitational force between two objects of mass m1 and m2 and R is the distance that separates the two masses. This equation is important because it is the fundamental equation for describing the force of gravity in Newtonian physics. It is, however, an idealization; it assumes the masses m1 and m2 are point masses, in that they have no physical size. But, of course, all real masses are not point masses, and therefore do not exactly obey Newton's equation. However, as an approximation the equation works very well for masses that are separated by distances that are very large compared to their physical size. For instance, in analyzing Earth's orbit around the sun, one needs to include the gravitational effect of the other planets, as expressed by equation 1, but one need not worry about the fact that they are not point masses, since the differential effect is not measurable.
Introduction to Tides

A tide is what happens when the masses we see in equation 1 are not separated by distances that are large compared to their physical size. A tide is a "differential gravity", the result of the fact that extended bodies do not pull equally on all parts of each other, as equation 1 would imply. In figure 2, below, we see how the tidal force operates between Earth and the moon, where the red arrows show the relative pull of the moon's gravity on Earth.
Figure 1. The action of the Earth-moon tidal force
(Acknowledgement) The Earth-moon tidal force

As figure 1 shows, the force is not constant over the distance between the moon and the various parts of the Earth. The moon, being rather closer to the near-side of Earth, pulls harder on it (where the red arrows are longer), while it pulls more lightly on the side of Earth that is farther away (where the red arrows are shorter). In physics, we call this kind of effect a "gradient", and it represents the differences in force applied at different points. The strength of that gradient is represented in equation 2 below.
DF / DR = 2Gm1m2 / R3 equation 2

In equation 2, DF / DR represents a change in the force (DF) with respect to a change in distance (DR). That variation in force, or tidal gradient, is what produces the distortion in the shape of both Earth and the moon, while the force seen in equation 1 is what keeps Earth and the moon in orbit around each other. As the red arrows in figure 1 imply, there is a "inward" pull on the poles of the Earth, towards the equator, which would tend to squeeze the planet. Squeeze a rubber ball that way, and you can see for yourself that the inward squeeze causes an outward squish at the "equator" of the ball. Add to that the effect that the moon pulls harder on those parts of the Earth that are closer to it, and the result is that the Earth is squished, bulging towards the moon, and away from the moon. The effect is illustrated below, in figure 2.
Figure 2. The results of the Earth-moon tidal force
(Acknowledgement) The Earth-moon tidal bulge

The illustration in figure 2 above shows the solid earth (green) and the oceans (blue) in schematic form. The "solid" Earth really isn't all that solid, and it does bend under the moon's tidal stress, but the water oceans are clearly far less "solid" than the rest of the Earth, and so they will be much more deformed by the moon's tidal squeeze. Hence, the bulge is mostly ocean, and only a little bit ground. The gaseous atmosphere is tidally squished too, but it does not figure much in the total system, and I will ignore it here (a detailed study of tides should not ignore atmospheric tides, I only do it here because it does not figure prominently in this particular discussion).

In a static system such as in figure 2, the mostly ocean bulge points right at the moon. But the real system is not static; the moon goes around the Earth, but the Earth spins on its daily axis much faster than that. So the spin of the Earth pulls the bulge out in front of the moon. The result of this is illustrated below in figure 3, and we are now ready to understand the greater mysteries of tides and the Earth-moon system.
Figure 3. How tides transfer momentum to the moon
(Acknowledgement) How tides transfer momentum to the moon

The ocean bulge is pulled in front of the moon by Earth's spin; since the ocean is gravitationally stuck to the Earth, it has to go where the Earth goes. But it can't go too far, because it is pulled back by the moon. The result, illustrated in figure 3, is that the ocean bulge is in equilibrium, remaining essentially fixed with respect to the Earth and moon, while the solid Earth spins under the ocean. The ocean is gravitationally bound to the Earth, but it is still fluid, and not stuck to the Earth the way a rock or a mountain is. There is an interface, namely the ocean bottom, where the water and the Earth are free to move with respect to each other. That interface, like any other real physical interface, is not totally frictionless, and that too is illustrated in figure 3 by the small caption that reads "Friction force". But in this case, "friction" includes all of the ways that the ocean and the Earth impede each other. The ocean runs into the continents and has to wash around them (so how they are distributed around the Earth makes a difference).

Since the Earth is trying to spin forward, but the ocean is held back by the moon, the Earth winds up trying to move through the oceans. Just as you can feel the resistance if you try to walk through water, so the Earth feels the resistance trying to move through the water of the oceans, and that resistance transfers energy from the Earth (causing its spin rate to slow), and to the oceans (sloshing them around and heating them up). But the Earth-ocean system also exerts a torque (a "twisting" force) on the moon, because the line along the arrow labeled "B" in figure 3 is at an angle to the line that connects the center of the Earth to the center of the moon. As a result of that torque, the Earth also transfers energy (causing its spin rate to slow) through the ocean bulge, and gravity, to the moon (causing it to speed forward in its orbit, and therefore move farther away from the Earth).

At this point we are ready to understand two important observations. First, the high and low ocean tides we all know about, are caused by the Earth moving through the high and low parts of the ocean, seen in either figure 2 or figure 3. Since we are on the Earth, it looks to us, from our frame of reference, as if the ocean is doing the moving, but however you want to look at it, the result is the same. The Earth and its oceans move with respect to each other, because of the pull of the moon, and we see that motion as what we call high & low tides. Second, the moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth. That means that the moon is not where it has always been with respect to the Earth; the Earth-moon system clearly must have evolved over time. Can we figure out how the Earth-moon system has evolved? I will review the answer to that question in the next section.
Tidal Evolution of the Earth-Moon System

The description I have given so far is necessarily general, and leaves out a lot of details. But there is a lot of physics and mathematics hidden behind that layman's facade, and it has to be dealt with in order to understand the real nature of the tidal relationship between Earth and the moon. I will not develop any of that mathematics here. I will concentrate instead on reviewing the history of the scientific efforts to understand the Earth-moon tidal system. Along the way I will make reference to numerous original sources, books, journal papers and the like. Those sources will provide the reader with all of the mathematical and/or physical details one could wish to see. Readers eager to know more are encouraged to consult those sources.

It was not possible to study tides in any quantitative, physical or mathematical sense, until Isaac Newton essentially invented the science of mechanics, with the publication of his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687. Since then a number of eminent scientists have struggled with the problem of tides, including Edmond Halley, Pierre Laplace, and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin). But it was the celebrated English mathematician and geophysicst George Howard Darwin Who really attacked the problem of Earth's rotation and the Earth-moon system with analytical zeal (G.H.Darwin; 1877, 1879, 1880; with an ironic twist on the creation-evolution issue, he was the son of Charles Darwin, the founding father of biological evolution). Darwin considered ocean tides, and made some significant advances there, but he concentrated mostly on solid body tides in a homogenous Earth. Today we know that ocean tides are much more important than solid body tides. Thomson was the first to show that tides transferred angular momentum from Earth to the moon, and that transfer of momentum is what causes the moon to recede from Earth. But Darwin was the first to cast the problem into analytical detail, setting the stage for explorations in the early 20th century.

Through most of the first couple of decades of the 20th century, the chief investigator of this problem was Harold Jeffreys. Jefferies published a number of papers during the early 1900's, and extensively summarized the then current state of affairs in the first edition of his landmark book The Earth (Jefferys, 1924). In that book (chapter XIV, Tidal Friction, pp 205-237 of the 1st edition) Jeffreys uses an estimate of tidal friction to derive a maximum age for the Earth-moon system of 4 billion years. That estimated age remained unchanged in later editions at least through 1952. The main problem that vexed Jeffreys, and later researchers, was their inability to fully describe ocean tides analytically, or even to know the numerical values of oceanic tidal friction. But it is quite clear that by then, about 44 years after Darwin's work, Jeffreys knew that oceanic tides were more important than solid body tides. The search for oceanic tidal response functions was on.

Later researchers came to the conclusion that Jeffreys had rather severely underestimated the true numerical value for oceanic tidal dissipation, and had therefore overestimated the age of the Earth-moon system. Although they do not offer an age, Munk & McDonald (1960) said that Jeffreys had the oceanic dissipation wrong by a factor of 100. It soon became apparent that the pendulum had swung the other way, and that there was a fundamental problem. Slichter (1963) reanalyzed the Earth-moon torque by devising a new way to use the entire ellipsoid of Earth rather than treating it as a series of approximations. He decided that, depending on the specifics of the model, the moon would have started out very close to Earth anywhere from 1.4 billion to 2.3 billion years ago, rather than 4.5 billion years ago. Slichter remarked that if "for some unknown reason" the tidal torque was much less in the past than in the present (where "present" means roughly the last 100 million years), this would solve the problem. But he could not supply the reason, and concluded his paper by saying that the time scale of the Earth-moon system "still presents a major problem"; I call this "Slichter's dilemma".

Despite the effort expended on the problem over the years, a truly complete mathematical method for handling the tidal dissipation had not yet been forthcoming. That problem was redefined by Peter Goldreich. Goldreich (1966) extended the realm of the problem well beyond the limits that Slichter had set, as Goldreich had included solar tides and precessional torques. However, the age of the system being dependent on observed quantities, and arbitrary factors in the model, Goldreich did not approach the question of age.

The years that followed saw the rise of plate tectonics and a major shift in geophysical thinking because of it. The mobility of the drifting continents is a matter of major import, for by this time it was well realized that tidal dissipation in shallow seas dominated the interaction between Earth and the moon. Kurt Lambeck was a major player in the tidal game at that time, authoring several papers. His study of the variable rotation of Earth (Lambeck, 1980) remains the most extensive such study ever done. Lambeck noted that after the struggles of Slichter, Goldreich, and others, the observed and modeled values for tidal dissipation were finally in agreement (Lambeck, 1980, page 286). However, this still left a time scale problem. According to Lambeck, " ... unless the present estimates for the accelerations are vastly in error, only a variable energy sink can solve the time-scale problem and the only energy sink that can vary significantly with time is the ocean." (Lambeck, 1980, page 288). In section 11.4, "Paleorotation and the lunar orbit", Lambeck explicitly points out that paleontological evidence shows a much slower lunar acceleration in the past, and that this is compatible with the models for continental spreading from Pangea (Lambeck, 1980, pages 388-394). It is important to remember that by 1980, Lambeck had pointed out the essential solution to Slichter's dilemma - moving continents have a strong effect on tidal dissipation in shallow seas, which in turn dominate the tidal relationship between Earth and the moon.

While Lambeck pointed the way, Kirk Hansen (1982) got on the right road. Hansen's models assumed an Earth with one single continent, placed at the pole for one set of models, and at the equator for another (the location is chosen to simplify the computations, but the basic idea of a one-continent Earth may not be all that bad; Piper, 1982 suggests that our current multi-continent Earth is actually abnormal, and that one continent is the norm). His continent doesn't move around as a model of plate tectonics would do it, but Hansen was the first to make a fully integrated model for oceanic tidal dissipation directly linked to the evolution of the lunar orbit. As Hansen says, his results are in "sharp contrast" with earlier models, putting the moon at quite a comfortable distance from Earth 4.5 billion years ago.

Hansen had already all but eliminated Slichter's dilemma with his integrated model of continents and tides. Kagan & Maslova (1994) treat the oceanic tidal dissipation with fully mobile and arbitrary continents. Like Hansen, their models show time scales that are not a problem for matching the radiometric age of Earth with the dynamic age of the Earth-moon system. Kagan & Maslova (1994), Kagan (1997), and Ray, Bills & Chao (1999) have continued the study in even more detail, with plate tectonics fully integrated into their models of Earth-moon tidal evolution. Touma & Wisdom (1994) do the calculation in a fully integrated multi-planet chaotically evolving solar system.

Although it may seem to the casual reader that the Earth-moon system is fairly simple (after all, it's just Earth and the moon), this is only an illusion. In fact, it is frightfully complicated, and it has taken over 100 years for physicists to generate the mathematical tools, and physical models, necessary to understand the problem. Slichter's dilemma, as I called it, was a theoretical one. He lacked the mathematical tools, and the observational knowledge, to solve his problem. But those who came after got the job done. Slichter's dilemma is today, essentially a solved problem. Once all of the details are included in the physical models of the Earth-moon system, we can see that there is no fundamental conflict between the basic physics and an evolutionary time scale for the Earth-moon system.
The Paleontological Evidence

I have thus far illuminated the theory, the construction of the mathematical methods used to understand the details of the Earth-moon tidal interaction. But theory and observation, theory and evidence go hand in hand in the empirical sciences, and this is no exception. Tides, and the Earth's rotation leave behind tell-tale clues about Earth's past. So, when Lambeck (1980) or Stacey (1977) say that tidal dissipation must have been lower in the past, that's neither an idle guess, nor a knee-jerk reaction. It is an attitude consistent the evidence.

The first critical observation is How fast is the moon moving away from Earth now? This linear motion away from Earth had to be estimated from the observed angular acceleration, or it had to be calculated from theory, the former being preferred, since it is an observed quantity. Stacey uses an astronomical estimate of 5.6 cm/year (Stacey, 1977, page 99). Lambeck gives 4.5 cm/year (Lambeck, 1980, page 298). It's an important number, because it reveals the true strength of tidal dissipation. But today the number can be observed directly, as a result of three-corner mirrors left behind by Apollo astronauts. Lunar laser ranging establishes the current rate of retreat of the moon from Earth at 3.82±0.07 cm/year (Dickey et al., 1994).

But what about the past rate of retreat? Paleontological data directly reveals the periodicity of the tides, from which one can derive what the rate of retreat would be to match the frequency. It is also a non-trivial point that it proves the moon was physically there. After all, if your theory implies that the moon was not there at some time in the past, but your observed tidal evidence says that it was there in the past, then it's pretty clear that the theory, and not the observation, needs to be adjusted.

This paleontological evidence comes in the form of tidal rhythmites, also known as tidally laminated sediments. Rhythmites have been subjected to intense scrutiny over the last decade or so, and have returned strong results. Williams (1990) reports that 650 million years ago, the lunar rate of retreat was 1.95±0.29 cm/year, and that over the period from 2.5 billion to 650 million years ago, the mean recession rate was 1.27 cm/year. Williams reanalyzed the same data set later (Williams, 1997), showing a mean recession rate of 2.16 cm/year in the period between now and 650 million years ago. That these kinds of data are reliable is demonstrated by Archer (1996). There is also a very good review of the earlier paleontological evidence by Lambeck (1980, chapter 11, paleorotation)

As you can see, the paleontological evidence indicates that moon today is retreating from Earth anomalously rapidly. This is exactly as expected from the theoretical models that I have already referenced. The combination of consistent results from both theoretical models and paleontological evidence presents a pretty strong picture of the tidal evolution of the Earth-moon system. Bills & Ray (1999) give a good review of the current status of this harmony. Without realizing it, they have also explained well why the creationist arguments are unacceptable.
The Creationist Arguments

I don't know who first brought up the age of the Earth-moon system as a pro-creationist argument. But the first example I am aware of is Barnes (1982, 1984). Barnes says, "It has been known for 25 years that the earth-moon system cannot be that old", and assuring us that "Celestial mechanics proves that the moon cannot be as old as 4.5 billion years", goes on to quote the last sentence from Slichter's (1963) paper, "The time scale of the earth-moon system still presents a major problem" (in fact, Barnes should not have capitalized the "T" since this is a sentence fragment, not a full sentence, but in this case the oversight is inconsequential). It is noteworthy that Barnes is happy to quote a paper already 19 years old in 1982, and 21 years old in 1984, yet despite a research physics background, declines to bother researching anything post-Slichter. If he had, he would have found Lambeck (1980), a major work which clearly indicated the real nature of Slichter's dilemma (or even Stacey, 1977, which already showed the conflict between Slichter's theoretical dilemma and the paleontological evidence available at the time). And, of course, Kirk Hansen's 1982 paper predates Barnes' 1984 reiteration by two years, yet is ignored despite being recognized even then as a major step forward. Barnes shows the same kind of sloppy and lazy approach to "research" that permeates young-Earth creationism, although his is a particularly egregious case (as it also was for his arguments concerning Earth's magnetic field).

DeYoung (1992) offers his own model. Actually, he offers an equation. DeYoung asserts that the rate of change of the lunar distance as a function of time must be proportional to the inverse 6th power of the lunar distance (presumably because the lunar tidal amplitude is proportional to the inverse cube of the distance, and the tidal acceleration is proportional to the square of the amplitude, though DeYoung does not say this). He then runs some numbers in the equation, and concludes with remarkable poise that he has demonstrated a maximum possible tidal age for the Earth-moon system of 1.4 billion years. The same calculation can be found in Stacey (1977), with reference to more precise versions. They all get about the same answer as DeYoung, and there is no doubt but that what DeYoung did he did right. However, if you do the "wrong" problem, you may not get the "right" answer! As Stacey pointed out (Stacey, 1977, pages 102-103) it makes more sense to assume that the oceanic tidal dissipation was smaller in the past, which would have the effect of making the calculation that of a minimum age, as opposed to the maximum age proposed by DeYoung. But, of course, we are comparing DeYoung (1992) with Stacey (1977), a gap of 15 years (it's nice to see that DeYoung, like Barnes, is keeping up with the tempo of current research). That gap includes Lambeck (1980) and Hansen (1982) (wherein it was demonstrated that a 4.5 billion years age was compatible). Granted that DeYoung (1992) wrote before the 1994 papers of Kagan & Maslova or Touma & Wisdom, which are directly contradictory to his results. However, Hansen's (1980) results also directly contradict DeYoung, but come 12 years before. This observation does not inspire confidence in the value of DeYoung's one-equation model for the evolution of the lunar orbit. But, as made clear by Bills & Ray (1999), the constant of proportionality, which Stacey suggests is not constant, is in fact a ratio of factors that represent dissipation, and deformation. It is clear that neither of these can be constant, and once that is understood, we can see clearly that DeYoung simply did the wrong thing right, and curiously wound up with a correct form of the wrong answer.

Walter Brown (Brown, 1995) presents essentially the same model as DeYoung. I have seen only the online technical note, but not the printed book. Unfortunate, for the equations do not appear on the webpage, despite being referenced as if they were there. However, Brown does offer the quick-Basic source code for his program that calculates the minimum age of the Earth-moon system. His equations are there, and he seems to be using the inverse 5.5 power of the radius rather than the inverse 6th power used by DeYoung (Brown's usage here is consistent with the equation given by Bills & Ray, 1999; whether one chooses to use the inverse 6 or inverse 5.5 power seems an issue of model dependence). Otherwise, Brown's approach appears to be quite the same as DeYoung's, and subject to exactly the same criticism. He ignores the time variability of dissipation and deformation. It is perhaps humorously ironic that both DeYoung and Brown fail, because they are implicitly making an improper uniformitarian assumption (the constancy of dissipation and deformation), which evolutionists have learned to avoid.
Conclusions

I don't know if there are other, "authoritative" creationist sources for the "speedy moon" argument. But if there are, it is unlikely that their arguments presented differ much from those seen here. I spent quite a bit more time reviewing the actual science of the Earth-moon tidal interaction because once it is well developed, the flaw in the creationist arguments becomes so obvious that it hardly seems necessary to refute them. The most remarkable aspect of this, I think, is the somebody like DeYoung, who certainly has legitimate qualifications (a PhD in physics from Iowa State University), would offer up such a one-equation model as if it was actually definitive. That kind of thing works as a "back-of-the-envelope" calculation, to get the order of magnitude, or a first approximation for the right answer, but it should have been clear to an unbiased observer that it could never be a legitimate realistic model. It is also of considerable interest that both DeYoung and Brown published their refutations of evolution only after evolution had already refuted their refutations! Barnes didn't do all that much better, having overlooked Hansen (1982) for two years. My own conclusion is that my intuitive expectations have been fulfilled, and creation "science" has lived up to its reputation of being either pre-falsified, or easy to falsify once the argument is evident.

As for the real science, remember that science is not a static pursuit, and the Earth-moon tidal evolution is not an entirely solved system. There is a lot that we know, and we do know a lot more than we did even 20 years ago. But even if we don't know everything, there are still some arguments which we can definitely rule out. A 10,000 year age (or anything like it) definitely falls in that category, and can be ruled out both by theory and practice.


Actually I am just surprised and disappointed .... you did say PROOF after all .. not incidental elements of explainable ID doctrine. .... not evidence ... but proof positive ...


Okay, now I am ready for your REAL PROOF ... as in ...

Main Entry: 1proof
Pronunciation: 'prüf
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, alteration of preove, from Old French preuve, from Late Latin proba, from Latin probare to prove -- more at PROVE

"3 : something that induces certainty or establishes validity"



[edit on 16-11-2005 by LCKob]

More on the phenomena of the "Irriducibly Complex" dilemna ....

So let's review what the article that is going to be the "nail in the coffin" of Darwinian evolution actually proves, according to its author. But first, let's bear in mind something very important: the evolution of a new binding site between two proteins of the type described here by Behe's own article is, by his own definition, an example of irreducible complexity:

An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.

And remember, the core of Behe's entire argument for ID is that irreducibly complex systems cannot evolve. Yet what does he admit under oath that his own study actually says? It says that IF you assume a population of bacteria on the entire earth that is 7 orders of magnitude less than the number of bacteria in a single ton of soil...and IF you assume that it undergoes only point mutations...and IF you rule out recombination, transposition, insertion/deletion, frame shift mutations and all of the other documented sources of mutation and genetic variation...and IF you assume that none of the intermediate steps would serve any function that might help them be preserved...THEN it would take 20,000 years (or 1/195,000th of the time bacteria have been on the earth) for a new complex trait requiring multiple interacting mutations - the very definition of an irreducibly complex system according to Behe - to develop and be fixed in a population.

In other words, even under the most absurd and other-worldly assumptions to make it as hard as possible, even while ruling out the most powerful sources of genetic variation, an irreducibly complex new trait requiring multiple unselected mutations can evolve within 20,000 years. And if you use more realistic population figures, in considerably less time than that. It sounds to me like this is a heck of an argument against irreducible complexity, not for it.

www.stcynic.com...

[edit on 16-11-2005 by LCKob]

Evidence for Evolution continued ...

Nothing in the real world can be proved with absolute certainty. However, high degrees of certainty can be reached. In the case of evolution, we have huge amounts of data from diverse fields. Extensive evidence exists in all of the following different forms (Theobald 2004). Each new piece of evidence tests the rest.
* All life shows a fundamental unity in the mechanisms of replication, heritability, catalysis, and metabolism.
* Common descent predicts a nested hierarchy pattern, or groups within groups. We see just such an arrangement in a unique, consistent, well-defined hierarchy, the so-called tree of life.
* Different lines of evidence give the same arrangement of the tree of life. We get essentially the same results whether we look at morphological, biochemical, or genetic traits.
* Fossil animals fit in the same tree of life. We find several cases of transitional forms in the fossil record.
* The fossils appear in a chronological order, showing change consistent with common descent over hundreds of millions of years and inconsistent with sudden creation.
* Many organisms show rudimentary, vestigial characters, such as sightless eyes or wings useless for flight.
* Atavisms sometimes occur. An atavism is the reappearance of a character present in a distant ancestor but lost in the organism's immediate ancestors. We only see atavisms consistent with organisms' evolutionary histories.
* Ontogeny (embryology and developmental biology) gives information about the historical pathway of an organism's evolution. For example, as embryos whales and many snakes develop hind limbs that are reabsorbed before birth.
* The distribution of species is consistent with their evolutionary history. For example, marsupials are mostly limited to Australia, and the exceptions are explained by continental drift. Remote islands often have species groups that are highly diverse in habits and general appearance but closely related genetically. Squirrel diversity coincides with tectonic and sea level changes (Mercer and Roth 2003). Such consistency still holds when the distribution of fossil species is included.
* Evolution predicts that new structures are adapted from other structures that already exist, and thus similarity in structures should reflect evolutionary history rather than function. We see this frequently. For example, human hands, bat wings, horse legs, whale flippers, and mole forelimbs all have similar bone structure despite their different functions.
* The same principle applies on a molecular level. Humans share a large percentage of their genes, probably more than 70 percent, with a fruit fly or a nematode worm.
* When two organisms evolve the same function independently, different structures are often recruited. For example, wings of birds, bats, pterosaurs, and insects all have different structures. Gliding has been implemented in many additional ways. Again, this applies on a molecular level, too.
* The constraints of evolutionary history sometimes lead to suboptimal structures and functions. For example, the human throat and respiratory system make it impossible to breathe and swallow at the same time and make us susceptible to choking.
* Suboptimality appears also on the molecular level. For example, much DNA is nonfunctional.
* Some nonfunctional DNA, such as certain transposons, pseudogenes, and endogenous viruses, show a pattern of inheritance indicating common ancestry.
* Speciation has been observed.
* The day-to-day aspects of evolution -- heritable genetic change, morphological variation and change, functional change, and natural selection -- are seen to occur at rates consistent with common descent.

Furthermore, the different lines of evidence are consistent; they all point to the same big picture. For example, evidence from gene duplications in the yeast genome shows that its ability to ferment glucose evolved about eighty million years ago. Fossil evidence shows that fermentable fruits became prominent about the same time. Genetic evidence for major change around that time also is found in fruiting plants and fruit flies (Benner et al. 2002).

The evidence is extensive and consistent, and it points unambiguously to evolution, including common descent, change over time, and adaptation influenced by natural selection. It would be preposterous to refer to these as anything other than facts.

www.talkorigins.org...

Amazing your previous post was a long length of long words that prove nothing and didnt answer my arghument-which formed first the organs or the chemicals. either way the bug would have gone extint ages ago, and the odds of them forming together is 10 times higher then that of one of them forming by chance which is astronomical...and your answer of the law of entropy-its not just in isolated areas its all over, everything degenerates. every time that a species reproduces, every time a baby is born, that baby has lost DNA from its mother and father, not gained. loss of information, not gaining. I mean its simple, it doesnt take a rocket scientist, a high schooler will know that. thats where mutations come from, loss of information. and with that whole spiel you failed to show me a single example where an animal gained information from one generation to the next, and no examples of a beneficiary mutation. Thats all I have to say about that post, but I found this one far more interesting, let me break it down.

Originally posted by LCKob
Evidence for Evolution continued ...

Nothing in the real world can be proved with absolute certainty. However, high degrees of certainty can be reached. In the case of evolution, we have huge amounts of data from diverse fields. Extensive evidence exists in all of the following different forms (Theobald 2004). Each new piece of evidence tests the rest.
* All life shows a fundamental unity in the mechanisms of replication, heritability, catalysis, and metabolism.

good so far, shows a common designor.

* Common descent predicts a nested hierarchy pattern, or groups within groups. We see just such an arrangement in a unique, consistent, well-defined hierarchy, the so-called tree of life.

the only place this tree of life exists is in the textbooks.

* Different lines of evidence give the same arrangement of the tree of life. We get essentially the same results whether we look at morphological, biochemical, or genetic traits.

what evidence-all we observe today is one type of an animal has the same time. a dog came from a dog, is a dog, and when it breeds will have dogs.

* Fossil animals fit in the same tree of life. We find several cases of transitional forms in the fossil record.

show an example. to my knowledge these do not exist, not counting all the various hoaxes and lies. like Nebraska man, need I bring that up again? scientists found a single tooth and from that know what he looked like ate and everything. from a single tooth, man what an imagination. irony of it is they later found the rest of the skeloton, and it wasnt a man or an ape, it was an extint form of pig. got even more ironic is that they found the pig still living in the congo. bet the public schools dont tell you that...now tell me if evolution is such a science why do they have to make up evidence?

* The fossils appear in a chronological order, showing change consistent with common descent over hundreds of millions of years and inconsistent with sudden creation.

Ah yes the geologic column. go out and look, the only place the geologic column can be found is in the text books. Human fossils have been found underneath Dinosaur fossils, sea creatures all the way through, the fossils are in no determined order. Human footprints have even been found inside dinosaur footprints in Oklahoma, and certain scientists tried to cover that up, unfortunatly a reporter got a shot of them and they got all over, how unfortunate. now evolutionists are making up evidence and covering up evidence that doesnt support their theory. any geologists who goes out and looks at the actual layers and fossils can tell the geologic column doesnt exist outside the textbook.

* Many organisms show rudimentary, vestigial characters, such as sightless eyes or wings useless for flight.

hmmm vestigial organs, you know back in the early 20th century there were several human organs thought to be extra, like the tonsils, only to find that they help with the immune system today. perhaps we just dont know the purpose, or better yet in comes the law of entropy. Loss of DNA leads to mutations such as that. Look at the fruit fly, a certain species developed an immunity to pesticides, yet when scientists looked at the DNA found it was actually an inferior to the original, to develop the immunity it lost information. and sightless eyes such as in cave fish, well their under ground they had no use for their eyes they adapted to the environment by losing the ability to use their eyes. again, loss of information not gaining.

* Atavisms sometimes occur. An atavism is the reappearance of a character present in a distant ancestor but lost in the organism's immediate ancestors. We only see atavisms consistent with organisms' evolutionary histories.

while this is an observed happening it is not proof or evidence for evolution it just means by chance genes got together to form that traight again. the creature it happenned in is still the same creature.

* Ontogeny (embryology and developmental biology) gives information about the historical pathway of an organism's evolution. For example, as embryos whales and many snakes develop hind limbs that are reabsorbed before birth.

or what they lead you to believe are limbs, perhaps their just part of the process, look at the human baby, at one stage of the growth in the mothers womb it has what appears to be gill slits, and for awhile they thought they were, but now we know that they are not gill slits, but parts of the body in the early stages of development. and as for the snakes, well going by the Biblical model serpents originally had legs and walked-when the serpent tricked Eve in the Garden God cursed it to crawl on its belly, otherwise taking its legs away.

* The distribution of species is consistent with their evolutionary history. For example, marsupials are mostly limited to Australia, and the exceptions are explained by continental drift. Remote islands often have species groups that are highly diverse in habits and general appearance but closely related genetically. Squirrel diversity coincides with tectonic and sea level changes (Mercer and Roth 2003). Such consistency still holds when the distribution of fossil species is included.

let me present another theory theory. at one point after the flood waters of a worldwide globe resceded the water was frozen on the caps and the animals came off the ark and traveled to the different parts of the planet, and when the ice caps melted and filled the earth with water it trapped certain spieces of animals in different parts of the world.

* Evolution predicts that new structures are adapted from other structures that already exist, and thus similarity in structures should reflect evolutionary history rather than function. We see this frequently. For example, human hands, bat wings, horse legs, whale flippers, and mole forelimbs all have similar bone structure despite their different functions.

evolution does not predict this, the scientists just took something they observed in nature and applied it to their theory, and again let me present another theory with an example. lets say you see two trucks, say a chevy 1500 and a GMC3500 but both have had all the brand information taken off. you can still tell that they were both made by GM by the similarities in the design. their not the same truck, one can pull more then the other, the frames different, etc. etc. but their still similar. One was made in Canada and the other in the US, but both had a common designor so their will be common design traigts. so, perhaps similar (their not exact at all) but similar bone structures and characteristics are evidence for a common designer, not evolution.

* The same principle applies on a molecular level. Humans share a large percentage of their genes, probably more than 70 percent, with a fruit fly or a nematode worm.

again, common designor. if evolution were true we would only share genes with those along our evolutionary line. and molecular level, did you know that humans, jellyfish, and clouds all 98% water? so does that mean clouds were our great-great-great-grandpappies? and evolutionists love to point out how close we are to apes, yet its that small difference that makes all the difference we need. and heres my question, going with the whole survival of the fittest that the creatures that evolved lived and those who didnt died, and that is if man evolved from monkeys why do we still have monkeys?

* When two organisms evolve the same function independently, different structures are often recruited. For example, wings of birds, bats, pterosaurs, and insects all have different structures. Gliding has been implemented in many additional ways. Again, this applies on a molecular level, too.

this is not evidence really either way, it is an observation that animals have different structures. duh, they all do that is science proven time and time again we can see that. what is theory is how they got that way. to say that they "evolved" or were "created" is mere speculation since no one has seen them evolving into the current structure.

* The constraints of evolutionary history sometimes lead to suboptimal structures and functions. For example, the human throat and respiratory system make it impossible to breathe and swallow at the same time and make us susceptible to choking.

thats evidence against random chance, seriously. thats a safety feature of the human body to help protect it from stuff like that. what are the odds of that happenning by chance? astronomical. its like saying I put the parts of the safety mechanism of a gun in a bag and shaking them for a million years and pulling out an operational gun with a working safety.

* Suboptimality appears also on the molecular level. For example, much DNA is nonfunctional.

nonfunctional, or has modern scientists just not figure out what its function is for yet? modern science does not know everything and there is so much that they dont know. DNA in itself is so infinitly complex to make any logical mind wonder how it could have come about by chance.

* Some nonfunctional DNA, such as certain transposons, pseudogenes, and endogenous viruses, show a pattern of inheritance indicating common ancestry.

or, like I said a common designor.

* Speciation has been observed.

where, list an occurance. there has not been one example of one species turning into another ever found in nature.

* The day-to-day aspects of evolution -- heritable genetic change, morphological variation and change, functional change, and natural selection -- are seen to occur at rates consistent with common descent.

how. micro evolution occors, or variation within a species, where a species will adapt to the environment it lives in, but does not change into a different species. If 5 white rabbits and 5 brown rabbits are placed in antarctica, within a few generations you will find the white rabbits outnumber the brown ones by a large number. not evolution, its just certain genes coming out. they came from rabbits, are rabbits, and will reproduce rabbits.

Furthermore, the different lines of evidence are consistent; they all point to the same big picture. For example, evidence from gene duplications in the yeast genome shows that its ability to ferment glucose evolved about eighty million years ago. Fossil evidence shows that fermentable fruits became prominent about the same time. Genetic evidence for major change around that time also is found in fruiting plants and fruit flies (Benner et al. 2002).

how do you know? where you there? theres no way to know that they evolved this ability 80 million years ago.

The evidence is extensive and consistent, and it points unambiguously to evolution, including common descent, change over time, and adaptation influenced by natural selection. It would be preposterous to refer to these as anything other than facts.

extensive and consistent? no there not! the evolution theory changes year to year. every new textbook that comes out contains something new that contradicts the old one, i even found one example of a textbook written by a renowned evolutionary scientist that contradicted itself. and like I pointed out earlier, much evidence has been faked, covered up, and even more is mere speculation and wild spins on the truth. another example besides Nebraska man is evolutionists famed "lucy". Lucy is totally ape, the ape skeleton was found in the riverbed, and the finder wanted to prove evolution so much he went two miles downstream and dug 200 feet deeper to find the human kneebone, placed them together and said look! the missing link. he even admitted to doing this on his deathbed. bet they dont teach you that in the public schools either do they?

www.talkorigins.org...

Patriot:

Amazing your previous post was a long length of long words that prove nothing

LCKob:

Proves nothing? The Scientific Method provides EVIDENCE for phenomena as structured by an introductory Hypothesis ... absolute proof does not exist for us, the best that can be achieved is for the collection and correlation of COMPELLING EVIDENCE.

Patriot:

and didnt answer my arghument-which formed first the organs or the chemicals. either way the bug would have gone extint ages ago, and the odds of them forming together is 10 times higher then that of one of them forming by chance which is astronomical...

LCKob:

I still contend that this is an issue of an Irriducible Complexity ... but for the sake of the Scientific Methodology, why don't you post your collected data and research findings and sources so that I can review them for myself.

Patriot:

and your answer of the law of entropy-its not just in isolated areas its all over,

LCKob:

Yes and the answer in the early part of the explanation did take that into account It can be explained patiently (or less than patiently, after the 1000th iteration or so) that entropy only strictly increases in an isolated system; THAT THERRE ARE NO COMPLETLEY ISOLATED SYSTEMS IN NATURE , save maybe the universe as a whole;

Patriot:

everything degenerates. every time that a species reproduces, every time a baby is born, that baby has lost DNA from its mother and father, not gained. loss of information, not gaining. I mean its simple, it doesnt take a rocket scientist, a high schooler will know that. thats where mutations come from, loss of information. and with that whole spiel you failed to show me a single example where an animal gained information from one generation to the next, and no examples of a beneficiary mutation. Thats all I have to say about that post, but I found this one far more interesting, let me break it down.

LCKob:

While it is true that most mutations are either harmful, as suggested by the creationists, or neutral, the creationists gloss over a crucial fact: beneficial mutations do occur, though they are very rare. Can a beneficial mutation that occurs once in million individuals ever really contribute to evolution? Yes it can, since a rare beneficial mutation can confer a survival or reproductive advantage to the individuals that carry it, thereby leading -- over several generations -- to the spread of this mutation throughout a population. Beneficial mutations occurring in several different individuals in several different genes can simultaneously spread through a population, and can be followed by successive rounds of additional mutation and selection.

Does the fact that we know many human detrimental mutations but essentially no clear beneficial ones mean that there are have been no beneficial mutations in human history? Not at all, since there is a clear bias in what medical scientists have studied. The human mutations we know most about are detrimental because medical scientists preferentially study illnesses that cause significant morbidity and mortality. Consider the theoretical possibility that a beneficial mutation has occurred in a particular human gene; even if this mutation were identified by a comparison of the mutated gene in a child versus the unmutated version of the same gene in both parents, there is no way that this mutation could ever be recognized as beneficial. If the mutation increased intelligence, strength, longevity or specific disease resistance, this would never be apparent without long-term breeding experiments that could obviously never be done on humans. Therefore, since such beneficial mutations in humans could never be recognized in humans, our ignorance of examples cannot be taken as evidence that they don't exist. However, the experiments necessary to demonstrate a beneficial mutation can be done with laboratory organisms that multiply rapidly, and indeed such experiments have shown that rare beneficial mutations can occur. For instance, from a single bacterium one can grow a population in the presence of an antibiotic, and demonstrate that organisms surviving this culture have mutations in genes that confer antibiotic resistance. In this case (in contrast to the situation with the peppered moth populations described above) origin of the population from a single bacterium allows comparisons of the mutated genes with the corresponding genes from the original bacterium, verifying that the variant sequences were not present before the culture with antibiotics and therefore arose as de novo beneficial mutations.

The Evolution of Improved Fitness
www.talkorigins.org...

[edit on 16-11-2005 by LCKob]

LCKob:

Nothing in the real world can be proved with absolute certainty. However, high degrees of certainty can be reached. In the case of evolution, we have huge amounts of data from diverse fields. Extensive evidence exists in all of the following different forms (Theobald 2004). Each new piece of evidence tests the rest.

* All life shows a fundamental unity in the mechanisms of replication, heritability, catalysis, and metabolism.

Patriot:

good so far, shows a common designor.

LCKob:

Actually it exemplifies consistency in a global process ... it does not "show a common designer. This is not to say that there was not a cosmic designer ... merely that you are biasing the comment by adding a valued element to the statement.

LCKob:

* Common descent predicts a nested hierarchy pattern, or groups within groups. We see just such an arrangement in a unique, consistent, well-defined hierarchy, the so-called tree of life.

Patriot:

the only place this tree of life exists is in the textbooks.

LCKob:


I will use this as break point (I am late for work) will continue this facinating debate haha.







* Different lines of evidence give the same arrangement of the tree of life. We get essentially the same results whether we look at morphological, biochemical, or genetic traits.

what evidence-all we observe today is one type of an animal has the same time. a dog came from a dog, is a dog, and when it breeds will have dogs.

* Fossil animals fit in the same tree of life. We find several cases of transitional forms in the fossil record.

show an example. to my knowledge these do not exist, not counting all the various hoaxes and lies. like Nebraska man, need I bring that up again? scientists found a single tooth and from that know what he looked like ate and everything. from a single tooth, man what an imagination. irony of it is they later found the rest of the skeloton, and it wasnt a man or an ape, it was an extint form of pig. got even more ironic is that they found the pig still living in the congo. bet the public schools dont tell you that...now tell me if evolution is such a science why do they have to make up evidence?

* The fossils appear in a chronological order, showing change consistent with common descent over hundreds of millions of years and inconsistent with sudden creation.

Ah yes the geologic column. go out and look, the only place the geologic column can be found is in the text books. Human fossils have been found underneath Dinosaur fossils, sea creatures all the way through, the fossils are in no determined order. Human footprints have even been found inside dinosaur footprints in Oklahoma, and certain scientists tried to cover that up, unfortunatly a reporter got a shot of them and they got all over, how unfortunate. now evolutionists are making up evidence and covering up evidence that doesnt support their theory. any geologists who goes out and looks at the actual layers and fossils can tell the geologic column doesnt exist outside the textbook.

* Many organisms show rudimentary, vestigial characters, such as sightless eyes or wings useless for flight.

hmmm vestigial organs, you know back in the early 20th century there were several human organs thought to be extra, like the tonsils, only to find that they help with the immune system today. perhaps we just dont know the purpose, or better yet in comes the law of entropy. Loss of DNA leads to mutations such as that. Look at the fruit fly, a certain species developed an immunity to pesticides, yet when scientists looked at the DNA found it was actually an inferior to the original, to develop the immunity it lost information. and sightless eyes such as in cave fish, well their under ground they had no use for their eyes they adapted to the environment by losing the ability to use their eyes. again, loss of information not gaining.

* Atavisms sometimes occur. An atavism is the reappearance of a character present in a distant ancestor but lost in the organism's immediate ancestors. We only see atavisms consistent with organisms' evolutionary histories.

while this is an observed happening it is not proof or evidence for evolution it just means by chance genes got together to form that traight again. the creature it happenned in is still the same creature.

* Ontogeny (embryology and developmental biology) gives information about the historical pathway of an organism's evolution. For example, as embryos whales and many snakes develop hind limbs that are reabsorbed before birth.

or what they lead you to believe are limbs, perhaps their just part of the process, look at the human baby, at one stage of the growth in the mothers womb it has what appears to be gill slits, and for awhile they thought they were, but now we know that they are not gill slits, but parts of the body in the early stages of development. and as for the snakes, well going by the Biblical model serpents originally had legs and walked-when the serpent tricked Eve in the Garden God cursed it to crawl on its belly, otherwise taking its legs away.

* The distribution of species is consistent with their evolutionary history. For example, marsupials are mostly limited to Australia, and the exceptions are explained by continental drift. Remote islands often have species groups that are highly diverse in habits and general appearance but closely related genetically. Squirrel diversity coincides with tectonic and sea level changes (Mercer and Roth 2003). Such consistency still holds when the distribution of fossil species is included.

let me present another theory theory. at one point after the flood waters of a worldwide globe resceded the water was frozen on the caps and the animals came off the ark and traveled to the different parts of the planet, and when the ice caps melted and filled the earth with water it trapped certain spieces of animals in different parts of the world.

* Evolution predicts that new structures are adapted from other structures that already exist, and thus similarity in structures should reflect evolutionary history rather than function. We see this frequently. For example, human hands, bat wings, horse legs, whale flippers, and mole forelimbs all have similar bone structure despite their different functions.

evolution does not predict this, the scientists just took something they observed in nature and applied it to their theory, and again let me present another theory with an example. lets say you see two trucks, say a chevy 1500 and a GMC3500 but both have had all the brand information taken off. you can still tell that they were both made by GM by the similarities in the design. their not the same truck, one can pull more then the other, the frames different, etc. etc. but their still similar. One was made in Canada and the other in the US, but both had a common designor so their will be common design traigts. so, perhaps similar (their not exact at all) but similar bone structures and characteristics are evidence for a common designer, not evolution.

* The same principle applies on a molecular level. Humans share a large percentage of their genes, probably more than 70 percent, with a fruit fly or a nematode worm.

again, common designor. if evolution were true we would only share genes with those along our evolutionary line. and molecular level, did you know that humans, jellyfish, and clouds all 98% water? so does that mean clouds were our great-great-great-grandpappies? and evolutionists love to point out how close we are to apes, yet its that small difference that makes all the difference we need. and heres my question, going with the whole survival of the fittest that the creatures that evolved lived and those who didnt died, and that is if man evolved from monkeys why do we still have monkeys?

* When two organisms evolve the same function independently, different structures are often recruited. For example, wings of birds, bats, pterosaurs, and insects all have different structures. Gliding has been implemented in many additional ways. Again, this applies on a molecular level, too.

this is not evidence really either way, it is an observation that animals have different structures. duh, they all do that is science proven time and time again we can see that. what is theory is how they got that way. to say that they "evolved" or were "created" is mere speculation since no one has seen them evolving into the current structure.

* The constraints of evolutionary history sometimes lead to suboptimal structures and functions. For example, the human throat and respiratory system make it impossible to breathe and swallow at the same time and make us susceptible to choking.

thats evidence against random chance, seriously. thats a safety feature of the human body to help protect it from stuff like that. what are the odds of that happenning by chance? astronomical. its like saying I put the parts of the safety mechanism of a gun in a bag and shaking them for a million years and pulling out an operational gun with a working safety.

* Suboptimality appears also on the molecular level. For example, much DNA is nonfunctional.

nonfunctional, or has modern scientists just not figure out what its function is for yet? modern science does not know everything and there is so much that they dont know. DNA in itself is so infinitly complex to make any logical mind wonder how it could have come about by chance.

* Some nonfunctional DNA, such as certain transposons, pseudogenes, and endogenous viruses, show a pattern of inheritance indicating common ancestry.

or, like I said a common designor.

* Speciation has been observed.

where, list an occurance. there has not been one example of one species turning into another ever found in nature.

* The day-to-day aspects of evolution -- heritable genetic change, morphological variation and change, functional change, and natural selection -- are seen to occur at rates consistent with common descent.

how. micro evolution occors, or variation within a species, where a species will adapt to the environment it lives in, but does not change into a different species. If 5 white rabbits and 5 brown rabbits are placed in antarctica, within a few generations you will find the white rabbits outnumber the brown ones by a large number. not evolution, its just certain genes coming out. they came from rabbits, are rabbits, and will reproduce rabbits.

Furthermore, the different lines of evidence are consistent; they all point to the same big picture. For example, evidence from gene duplications in the yeast genome shows that its ability to ferment glucose evolved about eighty million years ago. Fossil evidence shows that fermentable fruits became prominent about the same time. Genetic evidence for major change around that time also is found in fruiting plants and fruit flies (Benner et al. 2002).

how do you know? where you there? theres no way to know that they evolved this ability 80 million years ago.

The evidence is extensive and consistent, and it points unambiguously to evolution, including common descent, change over time, and adaptation influenced by natural selection. It would be preposterous to refer to these as anything other than facts.

extensive and consistent? no there not! the evolution theory changes year to year. every new textbook that comes out contains something new that contradicts the old one, i even found one example of a textbook written by a renowned evolutionary scientist that contradicted itself. and like I pointed out earlier, much evidence has been faked, covered up, and even more is mere speculation and wild spins on the truth. another example besides Nebraska man is evolutionists famed "lucy". Lucy is totally ape, the ape skeleton was found in the riverbed, and the finder wanted to prove evolution so much he went two miles downstream and dug 200 feet deeper to find the human kneebone, placed them together and said look! the missing link. he even admitted to doing this on his deathbed. bet they dont teach you that in the public schools either do they?

www.talkorigins.org...

LCKob:

Yes and the answer in the early part of the explanation did take that into account It can be explained patiently (or less than patiently, after the 1000th iteration or so) that entropy only strictly increases in an isolated system; THAT THERRE ARE NO COMPLETLEY ISOLATED SYSTEMS IN NATURE , save maybe the universe as a whole;

only strictly increases in an Isolated system? where did you get that, I can walk outside and tell you that thats false. leave a house for 40 years without takin care of it and come back and it will fall apart. People with genetics will tell you that every time a baby is born it has lost DNA from its parents. to say that entropy only increases in Isolated systems is an outright lie and is not science, any braniac can tell you that. as for the rest of your post, I do not have time to post a reply at this point as I have college homework to do, but I will when I have the chance.

LCKob:

Yes and the answer in the early part of the explanation did take that into account It can be explained patiently (or less than patiently, after the 1000th iteration or so) that entropy only strictly increases in an isolated system; THAT THERRE ARE NO COMPLETLEY ISOLATED SYSTEMS IN NATURE , save maybe the universe as a whole;


Patriot:

"only strictly increases in an Isolated system? where did you get that, I can walk outside and tell you that thats false. leave a house for 40 years without takin care of it and come back and it will fall apart. People with genetics will tell you that every time a baby is born it has lost DNA from its parents. to say that entropy only increases in Isolated systems is an outright lie and is not science, any braniac can tell you that ..."


LCkob:

Just to make sure I am understanding you correctly, you totally endorse this statment?

"that entropy only increases in Isolated systems is an outright lie and is not science"

If so, I would be very interested in the comprehensive data and evidence to reinforce your claim ... then I can compare it with the accumulated data, rationale and assessment provided to me by the scientific community which dispute your assertion.


Hmmmm ... this sounds very familar ....

When I was in my first or second year of college, a friend of mine who belonged to a fundamentalist Christian church in Sri Lanka said that he had heard of a convincing scientific proof against the theory of evolution. He said the proof centered on the concept of entropy. I had already heard of the term entropy at that time, but I definitely did not understand the concept, since I had not as yet studied thermodynamics in any detail.

Anyway, my friend told me that there was this law of physics that said that the total entropy of a system had to always increase. He also said that the entropy of a system was inversely related to the amount of the order and complexity in the system, so that the greater the order, the lower the entropy. Since I did not have any reason (or desire) to challenge my friend, I accepted those premises.

Then came the killer conclusion. Since it was manifestly clear that the theory of evolution implied increasing order (under the theory, biological systems were becoming more diversified, complex, and organized from their highly disordered primeval soup beginnings) this implied that the entropy of the Earth must be decreasing. This violated the law of increasing entropy. Hence evolution must be false.

It was a pretty good argument, I thought at that time. But in a year or two, as I learned more about entropy, that argument fell apart. The catch is that the law of increasing entropy (also known as the second law of thermodynamics) applies to closed, isolated systems only, i.e., systems that have no interaction with any other system. The only really isolated system we have is the entire universe and the law is believed to apply strictly to it.

For any other system, we have to make sure that it is isolated (at least to a good approximation) before we apply the law to it, and this is where my friend's argument breaks down. The Earth is definitely not a closed system. It continuously absorbs and radiates energy. It especially gains energy from the Sun and radiates energy into empty space and it is this exchange of energy that is the engine of biological growth.

So nothing can be inferred from the entropy of the Earth alone. You have to consider the entire system of the Sun, the Earth, and the rest of the universe, and you find that this leads to a net increase of the entire closed system. So the second law of thermodynamics is not violated.


blog.case.edu...


LCKob



[edit on 17-11-2005 by LCKob]

Nice little post. I recall going through the same set of logical arguments in my head when I was in college. I came to the same conclusions after I learned enough to finally understand that danged law.

Entropy is a poor argument against evolution, but is a completely legitimate and devastating argument against abiogenesis.

How so?

I like this quote from Study Suggests Component of Volcanic Gas May Have Played a Significant Role in the Origins of Life on Earth:

"Anybody who thinks they know the solution to this problem [of the origin of life] is deluded," says Orgel.

"But," he adds, "anybody who thinks this is an insoluble problem is also deluded."

EDIT: To add, ignoring the "loss of information" bit, evolution makes perfect sense from a SLoT view - that energy basically dispersed and spread out from a LUCA to several self-sustaining batteries of life...

As for abiogenesis, I like this quote:

(Source)
Second, whenever a system experiences a decrease in entropy, a wider price must be paid. When a biological organism absorbs energy and grows — thus increasing in complexity — work is done. When work is done, it is not done with 100% efficiency. Some energy is always wasted and some given off as heat — this means that in the larger context, overall entropy is increased even as entropy decreases locally within an organism. Thus, the Second Law is not violated.

Zip

[edit on 11/17/2005 by Zipdot]

Originally posted by Zipdot
How so?

I like this quote from Study Suggests Component of Volcanic Gas May Have Played a Significant Role in the Origins of Life on Earth:

"Anybody who thinks they know the solution to this problem [of the origin of life] is deluded," says Orgel.

"But," he adds, "anybody who thinks this is an insoluble problem is also deluded."

Zip

First of all, I neither said I knew the solution, nor did I say the problem is intractable.

Of course Leslie is going to make a statement like this concerning the plausibility of abiogenesis theories; it’s where his grant money comes from. Orgel is one the foremost abiogenesis researchers in the world. It would be career-suicide for him to admit the problem is insurmountable. It’s like saying “The experiments will never work, but fund my grants for the next 5 years anyway.” It makes complete sense that he would say this.

I did however state that the second law of thermodynamic argues against abiogenesis. And I stand behind that. The link you posted is all well and good, but the issue is hardly one of making a few tetrapeptides, and does nothing to address the issue of entropy.

Briefly: Consider the equation for Free energy: G= H – TS, where G is Energy, H is enthalpy, T is Temperature, and S is entropy. Stick “delta” in front of G, H, and S, and you have the formula for change in free energy. Delta G of less than zero = spontaneous chemical reactions, Delta G of Greater than zero are non-spontaneous reactions, Delta G of Zero represents a system at equilibrium. Reactions that have a positive Delta G require the input of energy for reactions to occur.

The formation of ALL biological polymers are reactions that are associated with POSITIVE Delta G values. That is the reactions require an input of energy; why do they require this, because (among other things) there is an overall decrease in the local entropy. This in and of itself is not a problem though.

What is the problem is this: In a system with undirected energy (the system that NECESSARILY exists prior to life), the formation of biological polymers is inhibited by enthalpic and entropic constraints. The reaction occurs non-spontaneously, and thus requires an input of energy. In a living system, this is no problem, the energy is obtained via ATP, and subsequently harnessed and directed by the action of enzymes. Enzymes are critical in coupling an energy release (to drive the positive Delta G) with an DECREASE in entropy.

Without enzymes energy interacts with a system in a random manner. Yes, occasionally, enthalpic inputs will drive the formation of small amounts of polymer, as the presence of ‘tetrapeptides’ indicates. However, since undirected energy interacts randomly, this is a miniscule… an infinitesimally small portion of what’s happening, mostly what’s going on is an increase in entropy… amino acids are being broken down and in fact the system itself is tending towards greater entropy. Yes occasionally polymers will form, but these will be rapidly broken down or joined together in other unproductive ways.

In order for abiogenesis to have occurred significant biological polymer formation must have occurred, despite the enthalpic and entropic constraints that have been observed to prevent them from forming both in the absence of enzymes or highly elaborate organic synthesis protocols that compensate for unwanted reactions. An undirected input of enthalpy increases entropy. Study the equation and convince yourself of this. This is not my opinion; it’s a fact of the equation. The enthalpy that could in fact drive polymer formation, instead drives competing reactions that increase the entropy of the local system, not decrease it.

Quite simply, both the enthalpic and entropic constraints associated with the formation of biological polymers in the absence of living systems argue against abiogenesis theories. And this completely ignores stereochemical considerations, information theory, and several other things that are related but somewhat peripheral.

Wow, that's the most technical sounding "Free Energy Equation" SLoT arguement against abiogenesis I've ever read, but it's not the first. I'll spend some more time on this later, but for the moment,

However, since undirected energy interacts randomly, this is a miniscule… an infinitesimally small portion of what’s happening, mostly what’s going on is an increase in entropy… amino acids are being broken down and in fact the system itself is tending towards greater entropy. Yes occasionally polymers will form, but these will be rapidly broken down or joined together in other unproductive ways.

The most up to date extensions of the Miller Urey experiment include carbonyl sulfide in the reactions. Keep in mind that the MU experiment is essentially a closed system except for the introduction of electricity, and the reaction of alpha amino acids with carbonyl sulfide at room temperature amazingly yields up to 80% peptides. Keep in mind that this system is "closed" compared to the "open" system of a prebiotic planet-in-a-galaxy system. We might want to take this over to the Abiogenesis: Hypothetical Origins of Life - The Real Enemy of Creationism thread.

First of all, I neither said I knew the solution, nor did I say the problem is intractable.

I... Know that...

Orgel is one the foremost abiogenesis researchers in the world. It would be career-suicide for him to admit the problem is insurmountable. It’s like saying “The experiments will never work, but fund my grants for the next 5 years anyway.” It makes complete sense that he would say this.

Disregarding a possible agenda, do you disagree with the quote, then?

Zip

Originally posted by FEMA
Has anyone considered that intelligent design corroborates God's intelligence?

No, but those guys seem to love to argue over beliefs. I'm just go look around ATS/BTS/PTS a little more and see what else I can give an opinion on.