If God Wanted Us to Believe...

aboveandbeyond said: If God is God, then couldn't he create a 4.5 billion year old planet in six days? I'll do it in six seconds. #=Geo-what, status: planet, age: 4.5 billion years old.
Time it took to create: six seconds.


Yes, and if God wants us to believe in him then he could've made his creation so haphazard that we couldn't even begin to explain the origin of the species. The separate species could be so far apart and distinct from each other that there would be no fitting the pieces together like scientists have done.

In fact, the creation of the law of predation among all creatures on earth is absolutely horrible. Something has to die for another animal to eat. With the existence of several species of vegetarians and the fact that human beings themselves could be vegetarians, I see no reason for creating meat eaters at all. In fact, I see no reason why God created animals at all, since they have no eternal purpose and there are no moral lessons that animals must learn. To see more of what God could've done see what would convince me Christianity is true.

43 comments:

Anonymous said...

What do you base any of what you say on John? It's all your opinion. Listen, it's God's creation not your's or mine. The problems you have with it are YOUR problems. Why is the grass green? Oh I know about chlorofil and all that, but that still does not answer the question "why green?" and it never will.

Obviously my statement hit a few cords in you guys. Good. And thanks John for responding to me. The way you did.

Take care all. I love you. I would not be here if that was not true. Peace.

Prup (aka Jim Benton) said...

The theory discussed by 'aboveandbeyond' was first brought out in a book called OMPHALOS by Philip Gosse -- in fact, two years before THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES. It was, rightly, looked upon with horror by the theologians of the time. Perhaps the best response was by Charles Kingsley. To excerpt it:
"...Your book tends to prove this - that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes God-the-Sometime-Deceiver. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in ... your newly created Adam's navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here ... I cannot ... believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind."

The one -- unspoken -- tenet of all religion based on 'revelation' is that God cannot lie. If we do not accept that, then every part of the religious doctrine could be some monumental prank played by God upon mankind.

Anonymous said...

You apostate! The Bible clearly says in Genesis 9:3 "Every moving thing that liveth, shall be meat for you."

The Lord has given us all the animals – whether there be a million of them or just one little, bitty one hiding in a tree somewhere – to smack over the head, rip the skin off and bar-b-que.

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0600/dinner.html

;-)

Anonymous said...

Agreed.

Anonymous said...

I googled this omphalos. I think it is pretty well... creative. Sorry.

"Was God being deceitful when he created the universe with an appearance of age?

Once again, from John Byl and Vern Poythress (some points were quoted verbatim) --

(a) man would be misled on the absolute age of things only if he assumed that the apparent age was real; and this assumption is not necessary;

(b) this assumption comes in only if one first denies the possibility of mature creation;

(c) and this denial presumes more than humans know; nobody was around when God created things;

(d) God can hardly be charged with deception if mature creation was revealed in the Bible in the first place;

(e) man may ignore the Bible and thus will get misled by what he examines, but he would have only himself to blame;

(f) if one got misled due to his insistence upon strictly naturalistic explanations, it is non sequitur to say that God meant to deceive;

(g) the line of reasoning of the objector denies the ability of God to perform miracles;

(h) hence, any scientific analysis when applied to miraculous events, must yield erroneous results; but then again, such arises only because the person insists on viewing things using his tinted spectacles;

(i) God is free to act as he pleases; the limitation one is faced with is one of human reasoning rather than one of divine action; and

(j) one does not have the right or the wisdom to question God; one must beware of imposing on God his standards of what he thinks God ought to do.

"A little humility would help", concludes Poythress.

Both authors also used Jesus' first recorded miracle (John 2:1-11), where water was turned into very good wine, as an apt illustration.

Said miracle resulted in a deceived governor, who marveled why the best wine was kept for last.

The query was then posed: can one conclude that Jesus was being deceptive?"

Yeah sounds fine if your a creationist but try telling that to the rest of them.

zilch said...

Now that is really creative apologetics, anonymous. What it boils down to is this:

a) God is omnipotent and thus the only source of truth.

b) Thus, any funny ideas we may have about contradictions in the Bible, or unfairness or deception on the part of God, are delusions.

Anonymous said...

I vote that this goes into the FAQ page.
anyone, anyone?

Steve Neumann said...

If God really wanted us to believe in him, if that is THE most important thing as the New Testament seems to say, then all he would have to do is to appear to us in this day and age, or perform indisputable, widely experienced miracles; not only appear or perform miracles in a pre-scientific, pre-CNN, pre-cell phone camera period of human history.

Juno

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

The last line of defense for believers: "God is a prankster and you fell for his prank".
Well I can only respond to this piece of stupidity with another one: "Allah is a prankster and christianity is one of his prank. All christians will become eternal virgin bitches for suicide bombers."

Anonymous said...

Um adrian, your prankster problem is unfounded. Sorry. Your up against something you can't dispute and so you choose to ignore it or pass it off as a prank. How is it a prank again? I understand your frantic tactic.
And it is not the last line of defense for believers just because you can't reconcile yourself with it.
Your reasoning in the Allah is a prankster and Christianity is on of his pranks is also unfounded and irrational and your use of again, violent religion as if that is all religion is shows that you can not at all confront the problem.

Also, what would prove to you that God existed. First he is outside of the natural material universe and therefore can not be proven through it, so what would be your criteria then.

Sure Jesus prefromed miracles back in the day, but he rebuked those who believed on the basis of his miracles. He said that if you know his father than you would no him also and because you know him not you do not know his father. Nobody comes to god except through him and nobody comes to god through him but those that God has sent him to bring to him.

Frantic panic ridden mumbo jumbo. Is that all you people have to offer.

Also according to our ways of knowing things, again your stuck in the natural material, the world is perceived to be older than six thousand years old, but it was only created six thousand years ago. Your problem is that you believe that your way of knowing and understanding is absolute. You have not shown how or why you feel God has deceived you but you insist on making that claim just to discredit something you have no answer to.

Anonymous said...

I was persuaded of the Gap Theory about six months ago, and I am constantly discovering new scripture to support it. But, much like the Calvinism vs Arminianism debate, there are verses which appear to support both sides of the argument.

YEC has the disadvantage of being in disagreement with geological evidence. In order to overcome this, YECs rely on bizarre proposals such as c-decay and the Omphalos hypothesis.

I know the Earth is very old - this is a FACT.

http://www.kjvbible.org/sediment.html

Based on the scriptures, I believe Lucifer and his Angels inhabited the Earth prior to their rebellion. God destroyed them, leaving the Earth without form and void. He then created the new world, including Adam and Eve, during a period of six 24-hour days.

Anonymous said...

Biblical literalism appears to be the reason why only in American
religious discourse do the oldest anti-Darwinist arguments survive in the
late 20th century, notably Bishop Usher's chronology (that the Creation
took place in approx. 4000 BC, calculated from the generations of man from
Adam to Jesus chronicled in the Bible) or Gosse's "omphalos" theory,
discussed in Darwin-L last year. Gosse belonged to a fervent but very
small Bible-oriented English dissenting sect called Plymouth Brethren,
that probably survives to this day.

(Incidentally, I question whether it is just to call the omphalos theory
"anti-evolutionary" or antiscientific. It seems to me to aim very
explicitly at reconciling pre-Darwinist signs of evolution with the divine
word of the Bible. Of course it is unfalsifiable, which makes it
"unavailable" to science -- where it is also not needed (cf. Ockham.) But
it remains available to religion, because of its strong orientation
towards valuing material science as the informed wonder and worship of the
inventive mind of God. Even none of his books is nowadays read for
pleasure, Gosse is on a continuum between the nature poets (obviously
Wordsworth, Tennyson, etc. and possibly earlier Pope and others influenced
by Newton -- and the anti-mechanistic Blake) and such contemporary writers
as Hubert Reeves and many environmentalists. This is why the omphalos
theory could still be practically useful at Abbotsford BC.)

Anonymous said...

Scientific Fact No. 1 - Birds Prove Natural Selection is Naturally Wrong

Scientific Fact No. 2 - Species Without a Link Proves Evolution is Wrong

Scientific Fact No. 3 - Single Cell Complexity Proves Evolution is Wrong

Scientific Fact No. 4 - Human Egg and Sperm Proves Evolution is Wrong

Scientific Fact No. 5 - DNA Error Checking Proves Evolution is Wrong

Scientific Fact No. 6 - Chaos From Organization Proves Evolution is Wrong

Scientific Fact No. 7 - Chromosome Count Proves Evolution is Wrong

Scientific Fact No. 8 - Origin of Matter and Stars Proves Evolution is Wrong

Scientific Fact No. 9 - Lack of Life on Mars Proves Evolution is Wrong

Scientific Fact No. 10 - Radio Silence from Space Proves Evolution is Wrong

zilch said...

One of you anonymice said:

"Your problem is that you believe that your way of knowing and understanding is absolute."

No, my "problem", from your point of view, might be more accurately formulated thus: I don't believe in the Bible. Sorry. Ask yourself: why don't I believe in Dianetics? I don't believe in the Bible for the same reason.

If you don't believe in the Bible, you don't have to go through all kinds of gymnastics to deal with theodicy, the age of the Earth, evolution, and the obvious mistakes in the so-called Word of God. It doesn't make life simpler- in fact, it opens up whole worlds of complexity- but you don't have to make up fantastic stories for stuff to make sense.

Anonymous said...

Gosse did not assert that God deceived us, only that any act of creation of human, animal or plant would at the instant of its creation present indubitable evidences of a previous history in far more subtle, microscopic and unavoidable ways than the presence or absence of hair or navels. He presented it not as an hypothesis but as a law or logical necessity: any created organism must be from the first marked with the records of a previous being. The alternative would have been a created earth where trees had no leaves or rings, birds had no feathers, animals had no skin, teeth, bones or blood.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget #11 from the "Top Ten List of Scientific Facts Proving Charles Darwin's
Theory of Evolution is Wrong, False and Impossible"


"Scientific Fact No. 11 - Timeline and Archaeology Prove Evolution is Wrong"

I shouldn't laugh but that page is a hoot:

"If natural selection were true humans in the tropics would have silver, reflective skin to help them keep cool, but they don't."

"Fossils prove the sudden emergence of a new species out of nowhere"

"Females cannot be a part of the evolutionary theory..."

Anonymous said...

An earth that appear billions of years old and yet was made by Jehova 6000 years ago is a prank played by your almighty. If Zeus did indeed exist the fact that we see lighting as an electrical discharge would be a lie or a prank whatever you want to call it.
Have you heard the Quran being preached by muslim priests with an open mind? It doesn't differ at all from how the Bible is preached. I reffer to the method. If the method of reasoning would be valid for the Bible than it would be valid for the Quran too. And according to the fastest growing religion in the world you have great chances of becoming an eternal virgin bitch. Maybe the muslim hell is the christian heaven. What would you say if your Jehova would send you to hell and tell you: "Well actually you are in heaven now but you don't have the correct perspective to see that. Enjoy!" Would the pain of hell tell you that you are in hell or you would credit Jehova once again and enjoy yourself?

If all the nuclear arsenal will disappear and the wars will suddenly stop, if all the priests that try to molest children will report that their dick fell of immediatly before raping a kid, if... if... It could be proven if God could intervene in our universe (I don't see why).
I would also find it easier to believe in your god if you would tell me that God is a montrous being that desires to see us in pain. It would certainly match with a pretty big part of our world. For example if you would tell me that your god enjoys to see his priests molesting children you might have a slight chance. That doesn't mean I would agree with him, worship him but there's 0,5% chances to become a believer in your God.

Regarding the supernaturalism that you claim superseeds naturalism or it is more likely you have to undestand to things:
1) any supernatural fenomenon that is tested and predicted by a scientific theory becomes natural. For example if any prayer that starts with "Your Almighty Assholeness please don't take a dump on thy sheep" would be answered it would become part of our natural view of the world.
2) accepting supernaturalism opens you up to any conclusion. If you believe in supernatural you cannot prove that Zeus is not in charge of the lightnings for example. According to the Legends of Mountain Olympus you would have to believe that Zeus exist just like 4 gospels of anonymous writers make you believe the Jehova exists.

You dismiss supernaturalism when you analyze other gods but your favourite one. And that is plain intelectual dishonesty. You are a person that cannot be trusted, a lier. Since you lie to yourself so easily you would definetly lie to others.

zilch said...

Anonymous- I've read Gosse too (Omphalos is available online), and it's pious nonsense, another example of the bizarre eddies thrown up by the crosscurrents of believing in a fairy tale yet wanting to make it jibe with the facts. As Charles Kingsly, a friend of Gosse, wrote:

"Shall I tell you the truth? It is best. Your book is the first that ever made me doubt [the doctrine of absolute creation], and I fear it will make hundreds do so. Your book tends to prove this - that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes God-the-Sometime-Deceiver. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in ... your newly created Adam's navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here ... I cannot ... believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind."

Anonymous said...

Holy ignorance, Batman! (more gems from the page of "scientific facts")

We are then led to believe that some birds got tired of carrying around a worthless half-size wing so they grew fingers on the end to help climb trees. The wings became arms and a new species was developed. Evolutionists actually believe this nonsense.

I haven't heard of anyone claiming that wings evolved into arms, except for fundies with a gross mis-understanding of biology and evolution.

If evolution were true all plants, animals and insects would be in a continual state of change. No two creatures would be identical because there would not be separate species. There would be a continual blend of characteristics without a clear definition among the species.

More of the same...

The fossil record has no intermediate or transitional forms.

Actually, it does.

[The Archaeopteryx fossils] is simply another forgery by evolutionists in a desperate attempt to prove Darwin's theory of evolution.

Not so.

One cannot deny the obvious conclusion that [the flagellum] has an Intelligent Designer. The evolutionists pray for an explanation to save the collapse of Darwinism. Creationism has become the true science and Darwinism has degenerated into a myth.

Just a good ol' argument from incredulity.

Males cannot be a part of the evolutionary theory...

nick, it appears it's not just females who are excluded :)

The mutation changes are random, unpredictable errors that cause crippling diseases, loss of function and the destruction of the host person or animal. Mutations destroy the species. They do not improve the species.

Wrong again.

The second law of thermodynamics proves that organization cannot flow from chaos. Complex live organisms cannot rearrange themselves into an organism of a higher form as claimed by evolutionists. This is scientifically backwards according to the second law of thermodynamics that has never been proven wrong.

I do not think that Law means what you think it means.

There is no scientific evidence that a species can change the number of chromosomes within the DNA.

See response 1, point 3.

Some people fail to see the connection between the Theory of Evolution and the Big Bang Theory, but the connection is very real. Evolution was conceived in order to ignore creation by an infinitely powerful God. The evolutionists soon realized that creation of the Earth and all the cosmos had to be ignored also. The Big Bang myth quickly gained the support of atheistic scientists. The two theories are intertwined to oppose creation as taught in the Bible. If one theory falters, both falter.

Beware the evil atheist scientific conspiracy!

I pity the fool who gets his science from sources like this...

zilch said...

"If natural selection were true humans in the tropics would have silver, reflective skin to help them keep cool, but they don't."

That's priceless. "If God were benevolent, humans would have been born in Heaven to help them keep happy, but they weren't." :lol:

Anonymous said...

http://www.trueorigin.org/

Two can play your frantic panic child's game. Links to a biased web site is all you have?

Anonymous said...

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

Similarly, the “generalized 2nd law” applies the same entropy principle to information systems in such a way that, left to itself over time, the information conveyed by an information-communicating system will end more distorted and less complete than when it began (again, a higher measure of, or increase in, entropy—in this case informational entropy), and likewise, applied to Statistics, left to itself over time, the order or regularity of a system will be less than when it began (and again, a higher measure of, or increase in, entropy—in this case statistical entropy).
The vital point to be grasped here is that the presence of a system (whether organizational or mechanical) hardly guarantees continuous enhancement, but more realistically is subject to continual degradation, if it is not kept to the pre-determined standard defined in its original design. Evolutionistic thinking often ignores this principle, despite the fact that it is a profoundly and empirically established scientific fact.

Anonymous said...

Clearly the majority of TO supporters belong to the atheist/agnostic/naturalist camp. Hence, to them there is no afterlife (certainly not one in the Christian sense) nor is there a personal God; a judgment by Jesus Christ; accountability to a Creator; heaven or hell. This belief is their choice and no one is denying their right to this choice. However...

To those that visit the TO site in search of answers—people that may be undecided and seeking unbiased information—to these people TO owes the courtesy of behaving in an informative capacity and not as an indoctrination site.

But it goes far beyond being just courteous or professional. It is morally irresponsible to misguide people through omission into any position that has eternal consequences—yes, eternal consequences. That last statement may sound religiously biased but is actually a logical result since, regardless of who is right or wrong in this matter, the ultimate end is of eternal consequences (whether an eternity in the grave, or an eternity in heaven or hell).

This, then, is my strongest criticism of TO. If TO is going to educate, then educate they should! To educate means to present all sides in truth and completeness and accuracy. Education is the antithesis of indoctrination. In this article I have presented but a small sample of the many cases where TO is guilty of being nowhere near complete, accurate or truthful. In some cases this may have been through their ignorance, and in other cases through deliberate intent—I’ll not pretend to know which of the two is the case.

One thing is clear, if intellectual integrity and ethics mean anything to the TO staff, then after this article I would expect to see one of two things—ideally it would be both:

1. A clearly stated disclaimer at their website indicating that their goal is about promoting the theory of evolution—to the point of demanding ‘special’ interpretations of the Bible—and, more generally, about promoting a naturalistic, materialistic view of the universe (a la Carl Sagan).
2. A truthful, accurate and complete presentation of views other than evolution or naturalism (e.g., intelligent design theory) alongside their own preferred views. If they are unclear as to what these other views are, then they should conduct a serious, scholarly inquiry and not simply post some incomplete or distorted version of what they believe the other side has to say on the matter.

I cannot see how Talk.Origins will be able to acquire a status of objectivity and truthfulness without adding at least one of these attributes to their site. As it stands, Talk.Origins is an affront to the ideal of intellectual integrity, scholarly pursuit and moral responsibility.

Jorge Fernandez

zilch said...

Sigh. Once again, for the nth time, the willful misinterpretation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics by Creationists.

Can't you get it through your heads? This information is available everywhere: on the internet, or in any good high school science class: the tendency for entropy to increase applies to a closed system. Living things are open systems, and they take energy from the environment to decrease their entropy- in other words, to increase their information.

So while the average entropy of the Universe increases, here and there are local eddies and whirlpools of entropy decrease: life. Nothing against the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Why should TalkOrigins, or anyone else, consider the Bible when talking about science? The Bible was written thousands of years ago by prescientific people who didn't know better. ID is not science- no theory, no data, no evidence. It doesn't merit any more consideration than cargo cults.

Anonymous said...

anonymous creationist,

TalkOrigins is biased? Sorry, but debunking creationist ignorance is not bias. I invite you to back up your charge of bias by showing us a factually false claim made by TalkOrigins.

Anonymous said...

"If TO is going to educate, then educate they should! To educate means to present all sides in truth and completeness and accuracy."

Okay, let's have some fun with this

So you are advocating that we should teach Holocaust denial, that slavery is biblically supported and should be reinstituted (many still hold to this nonsense), that various "minority" races are inherently inferior, etc etc. I mean, come on! You have to give all sides equal time to be fair right? We should present the above views when discussing these topics as well right?

No. It is possible that there is no reason to present the opposing view because it has no merit whatsoever.

By the way, many at TO are religious to one degree or another. Please read through the feedback section as this is a common accusation found in the feedback. There many from TO clearly state their religious beliefs and acceptance of Evolution. So please, how about you actually address their arguments instead of presenting red herrings in order to distract people from your total lack of a substantial response.

“1. A clearly stated disclaimer at their website indicating that their goal is about promoting the theory of evolution—to the point of demanding ‘special’ interpretations of the Bible—and, more generally, about promoting a naturalistic, materialistic view of the universe (a la Carl Sagan).”

From the TO site:

“The TalkOrigins Archive is a collection of articles and essays, most of which have appeared in talk.origins at one time or another. The primary reason for this archive's existence is to provide mainstream scientific responses to the many frequently asked questions (FAQs) that appear in the talk.origins newsgroup and the frequently rebutted assertions of those advocating intelligent design or other creationist pseudosciences.”

Learn to read.

“2. A truthful, accurate and complete presentation of views other than evolution or naturalism (e.g., intelligent design theory) alongside their own preferred views. If they are unclear as to what these other views are, then they should conduct a serious, scholarly inquiry and not simply post some incomplete or distorted version of what they believe the other side has to say on the matter.”

See here: http://talkorigins.org/origins/other-links.html#creationism

You can also find opposing views to nearly every article on TO linked at the side bar of the article.

Anonymous said...

According to Geology and the Young Earth from the trueorigin website:

"True knowledge begins with the Bible (Proverbs 1:7, Psalms 119:160; 138:2), and that is where we need to start. God was there when He created the world. He knows everything, does not tell lies, and does not make mistakes. It is from the Bible that we learn that the world is ‘young’."

Spirula said...

Well, I was going to respond to Jorge's distortions as well but I see someone else has. But as an apologist for intelligent design, his complaining about intellectual integrity and scholarly pursit really had me laughing.

Spirula said...

err...that should be "pursuit"

Anonymous said...

It's fun seeing you all squirm!

In face of all the evidence you look away and plug your ears.

Listen, I've read your responses. You all want to talk about intellectual honesty and academic integrity?

GIVE ME A BREAK!

You just don't know when you've been beaten. Give it up.

Thermo what?

http://www.trueorigin.org/steiger.asp

Hey my dad can beat up your dad! Na na na na na NA!!!!!

CUT IT OUT!

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Anonymous said...

anonymous creationist,

Your article employs more of the creationist trick of deliberate mis-representation when it gives this quote:

“The point is that in a non-isolated [open] system there exists a possibility for formation of ordered, low-entropy structures at sufficiently low temperatures. This ordering principle is responsible for the appearance of ordered structures such as crystals as well as for the phenomena of phase transitions. Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the formation of biological structures.”
[I. Prigogine, G. Nicolis and A. Babloyants, Physics Today 25(11):23 (1972)]

Click here to see why this was a deceptive mis-quote.

Do creationists ever try to make their case *without* mis-representing or fabricating things?

More later after I review the article in more detail.

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zilch said...

Thanks for the link, benny. Not only is the Prigogine article interesting in its own right, but how the quote was misused is a very good example of a typical Creationist tactic: to cherry-pick a quote out of context, or without the qualifying statements that went before and after.

How many apologists have quoted Darwin's misgivings about the complexity of the eye, and conveniently left out what came afterwards: Darwin's conviction that, difficult though it might be to imagine, it must nonetheless have happened, step by step.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said:

Thermo what?

http://www.trueorigin.org/steiger.asp


Heh, thermo what indeed. I'll take a brief look at this so-called rebuttal:

The debate between proponents of evolutionism and creation scientists concerning thermodynamics seems likely to continue without end. This is not because the laws of thermodynamics (and their ramifications) are subject to debate or relativistic interpretation, but because a handful of dogmatic evolutionists continue to vocally and energetically deny the truth concerning a simple matter of scientific knowledge

So in other words these unnamed "creation scientists" could win this "debate" if dogmatic evolutionists would just shut up accept the author's simple truth, which is:

The second law presents an insurmountable problem to the concept of a natural, mechanistic process: (1) by which the physical universe could have formed spontaneously from nothing, and (2) by which biological life could have arisen and diversified (also spontaneously) from a non-living, inanimate world. (Both postulates form essential planks in the platform of evolutionary theory in general.)

Leaving aside the bad grammar headache this gave me, the first problem is the author implies the biological theory of evolution and the prevailing theory about how the universe evolved are both part of the same process. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware of any quantum mechanical explanation for abiogenesis (which would be quite interesting,) or any hypothesis for how natural selection and genetic drift influenced the formation of stars and planets, so I think we'd be hard-pressed to say these two things can be put under the same heading. These are also two very different systems, the universe in its entirety (possibly a closed system) and a more localized system, namely the Earth, which is an open system.

Regarding cosmology, we know from quantum mechanics that "something comes from nothing" all the time, virtual particles, also known as vacuum fluctuations come into existence briefly out of empty space, and are detectable as forces. I would love to see the "you can't get something from nothing" argument go away, but I won't hold my breath. Further, the second law states: the entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, however time began with the big bang. Thirdly, I don't think we can really say what the universe came from, be it something or nothing, because we may never be able to know what happened before the Planck Era.

Looking at the biology aspect, first of all the crust of the Earth is an open system, which is to say it receives energy from the Sun, along with heat from the core. It also receives matter, 100 tons of space dust a day. So I don't think it makes sense to consider it a closed system. Second the process of self-organization is never mentioned. Thirdly, I don't think anyone is claiming evolution occurred spontaneously. Fourth, "entropy" is not the same thing as "disorder," disorder does not necessarily have to increase over time. And finally if we fall back to a creationist discussion of "information," it is my understanding that applying the second law of thermodynamics to "information" is rather problematic.

I'll leave it there, if our creationist friends would care to explain why the Earth is a closed system or why we should consider the theory of evolution to be applicable to cosmology I would be interested to hear that.

Anonymous said...

oops, (insufficient coffee intake,) that should read:

...dogmatic evolutionists would just shut up and accept the author's simple truth...

Anonymous said...

If God instantaneously created the universe it would have been a miricle and the universe would have the appearence of age. That would only be deceptive if you were assuming that in order for a statement to be true it has to be emperically verified. But you can't emperically verify emperical verifiability. So, the miricle of creation holds.

Anonymous said...

God started at the beginning and stretched everything out in fast forward mode up until the forming of the promised land which took six days of work. So, the universe has the appearence of age just like water being turned into wine.

Michael Ejercito said...

God created animals, including those animals that eat meat, because He felt like it .