Design on a Dime

I don't believe one can actually be construed as an adherent to a theory one doesn't understand. You evidently accepted evolution when you didn't understand it, and then you rejected it while still not understanding it. This would be like saying, "Often times a woman with child is pregnant." Science is always tentative. What varies is the amount of supporting evidence for theory, not the tentative nature of science itself.--Percy

Reasserting your original point more forcefully instead of supporting it with evidence and argument makes one wonder if perhaps inability to bolster one's claim isn't a better explanation than brutal honesty. I hope you're not really tracing life on earth back to the singularity at the beginning of the universe. Extrapolating cosmological evidence of the expanding universe back in time does indicate that the entire observable universe once existed in a tiny region of space, but this inference isn't even remotely related to the origin of life on earth.I think Dr. Adequate is reintroducing these points from another thread, and so it is probably all off topic. If you believe that Big Bang theory boils down to "0 + 0 = everything" then we can discuss that in another thread. And if you believe "0 + 0 = everything" describes abiogenesis then that, too, should be discussed in another thread. This thread seems to be about how creationists believe creation really happened.--Percy

Within science, evolution does have a theoretical framework and a body of supporting evidence that you appear unfamiliar with, and I was referring to the likelihood that you were just as unfamiliar with evolution when you accepted it. Rejecting something you don't understand isn't much of an indictment.Those who do understand evolution cannot properly be referred to as people who "think they own the title rights to the theory." They're just people who happen to understand something you don't. I was just trying to reinforce the point about your unfamiliarity with evolution by drawing attention to your apparently equal unfamiliarity with the principles of science. That you ask such a question is just further reinforcement.Noting that one has rejected evolution in favor of creation science can only be counted in creationism's favor after one has made clear through discussion one's familiarity with evolution. As was more than evident in the recent Behe Bit It (Michael Behe on "The Colbert Report") thread where you had trouble composing even a single correct sentence, you're not familiar with evolution at all. That you abandoned something so poorly understood is not surprising.But my understanding of this thread was that it represented an opportunity for creationists/IDists to discuss the details of their understanding of how creation came about. Questions from the opening post appear to be primarily focused on what really happened as well as God's degree of direct involvement.--Percy

Well, this isn't a science thread, so there's no need to present evidence if you don't want to, but no one's going to find increasingly forceful declarations of "it's self-evident" very persuasive. Plus it's repetitive and just sounds like bluster. Yes, I think the cosmology and evolution discussion is off-topic, I'm sure Dr Adequate read my post, and I'm not in Admin mode in this thread.But I will respond to this logical fallacy, not to continue discussion on the Big Bang or evolution, but just to highlight a common fallacy so that it will hopefully arise less frequently: The Big Bang gave rise to everything in the universe, not just evolution. If you could cast doubt on evolution by casting doubt on the Big Bang, then you could just as easily cast doubt on all of science, since everything that is science came from the Big Bang. In reality, there is no siginficant connection between the Big Bang and evolution. You can find trivial connections, of course, like matter and energy came from the Big Bang, and evolution concerns itself with life which uses matter and energy, but those are the only kind of connections you'll find.--Percy

Concerning infinity: Ringo has already answered this, but let me add a little more. Unfamiliarity with the mathematical ramifications of infinity is fairly common, and one popular explanation that you'll find helpful appears at Wikipedia's Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel entry. This hotel has an infinity of rooms and an infinity of guests and is presumably full. But a new guest arrives and wants a room, so the hotel clerk asks everyone in the hotel to move from room N to room 2*N, freeing up an infinite number of rooms, and he then places the new guest in room 1. In this way a hotel with an infinity of rooms and an infinity of guests can still accommodate an additional infinity of guests. Sure they can, you just add infinitely many times. Many series result in infinite values. For example, while this simple series is equal to a finite value: This series is not: The concept of infinity has many nuances. I won't attempt to explain, but I will mention the strange incongruity that apparently some infinities are larger than others. Weird, huh! You and Ringo have drifted a nearly infinite distance from where this point originally began. Way back in Message 78 you said: Bringing the discussion back to this original point, and not because it's on-topic but simply so we can dispense with it and resume discussing the topic, we don't really know how the universe sprang into existence, though there is much informed speculation (informed because of the wealth of available data). What we do know is that when we peer out into space we observe that the more distant the galaxy, the faster it is receding from us. This would be true for observations made from anywhere within the observable universe. Since everything is receding from everything else, if you project the motions back in time you find that about 13.7 billion years ago the entire universe was contained in a very, very tiny region.The known laws of physics break down at this point. We say this because applying them yields nonsensical results, such as infinite densities. Physicists have a number of proposals, but nothing definitive at this time.It is common for those on the science side to say that there was no time before there was a universe, but I think it would be more accurate to say that we don't know if there was time before the Big Bang. Certainly in the cyclical universe proposals (not considered one of the more likely proposals at present), where the universe goes through an endless series of expansions followed by contractions followed by Big Bangs and expansions and so forth, there was time before the Big Bang. Your initial assumption that infinity cannot be reached through addition is incorrect, but that has nothing to do with whether the past can be infinite. If the Big Bang was the beginning of everything then the past is finite. If there was something prior to the Big Bang then the past is longer than we think, and could still be either finite or infinite. But we don't know. A cell is alive and can die. A molecule is not alive and cannot die. How do you continue to make these amazingly simple mistakes? You repeat the error: Matter is not alive and cannot die. Cells are composed of matter, and of course cells can die, but the matter comprising the cell cannot be said to die.But matter is not eternal since it is convertible back and forth with energy: E=mc² Uh, Nem, you're having trouble stringing two correct statements together, you're certainly not capable of understanding that link, and nothing you've written here gives any indication that you've even looked at it. For instance, that link provides detailed summaries of a number of theories about the cause of the Big Bang, yet what you've written in this thread seems informed by none of it.--Percy

NJ might be thinking of the inferences we make about physical laws, namely that they are consistent and comprehensible. An example of such an inference is that the speed of light is the same everywhere, even though we only have data from a tiny proportion of the actual universe. Of course, that inferences of this nature have never given us any reason to doubt them means we can have great confidence in them.--Percy

I know what you mean, but I'm not sure NJ does. I think that when he asks why science relies on axioms, he's actually thinking of science's tendency to assign universality to that which we've only established locally or incompletely.--Percy

Well, remember, this is NJ. He doesn't appear to consider familiarity with a topic a prerequisite for discussing it, so consequently he has a very high error rate, and the errors are often of a fundamental nature. Perhaps he posts just because he disagrees. His messages are often just an opportunity to respond with correct information.So I don't think you can use NJ as a measure of whether your point has been clearly communicated. I'm not saying that you should cease pressing him on this point, just that you should take into account who you're debating with.--Percy