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Author | Topic: Irreducible Complexity | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22479 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
While I'm sure some here do not believe in a divine being, the key point is that many who do believe in God accept evolution and an ancient universe.
1)The scientific community would have us believe that the universe is expanding and contracting. I think what you're referring to here is that we're not sure whether the universe is open or closed. If the universe possesses sufficient mass then the universe will eventually stop expanding and contract, and the universe that began with the Big Bang will end in the Big Crunch. But if the universe has insufficient mass to halt the expansion, then the universe might go on expanding forever, finally experiencing heat death some 1000 billion years from now. We've recently uncovered evidence, not yet fully conclusive but still fairly persuasive, that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating. b) This is not the case. The universe is expanding at a very fast rate and not contracting. Science does not believe the universe is contracting. Science simply goes by the evidence, and the evidence is for an expanding universe. 2) To believe in most evolutionist concepts you must look at it one of two ways to make it work as I can tell. Science does not propose any jump theory associated with evolution. Evolution is believed to operate through gradual change over long periods of time, at least thousands of years. c) However you still run into one problem called irreducable complexity. For example the extreme complexity of some parts of the human body require real attention that just is not really possible through a random series of changes and selection. FOr instance the eye, the mind, and the blood clotting system. The primary advocate of irreducible complexity, Michael Behe, accepts an ancient earth and universe (the Big Bang and all that), and he believes in evolution. What he's saying is that some biological structures could not possibly have evolved because no evolutionary pathway can be envisioned, and that they are therefore evidence of the divine at work. At one time we believed the motion of the planets around the sun was evidence of the divine, simply because we had no scientific explanation for what could possibly keep all the planets neatly in their orbits. Then Newton came along and revealed it was just the same force of gravity we're already familiar with. In other words, inability to formulate a scientific explanation for something could stem from more than one cause. It could be because we don't know enough yet. Or we might know enough, but no one with sufficient insight and genius has yet come along to provide a theory. Or it might be evidence of the divine. The problem for intelligent design advocates (irreducible complexity is a sub-topic of intelligent design) is that there's no way to tell the difference between a yet unsolved scientific mystery and the fingerprints of God. Merely yelling "God" every time you come upon a problem for which you have no answer is not only unjustified, but also has a very long history of being wrong. --Percy [This message has been edited by Percipient, 11-25-2001]
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Percy Member Posts: 22479 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
Shannon's post was very strangely organized, and I think you've confused what she was saying. Point 1 was an assertion of what she thinks science says, while point b was her assertion of what is really the case. So point 1 said that "The scientific community would have us believe that the universe is expanding and contracting," then point b said "That is not the case. The universe is expanding at a very fast rate and not contracting."
All I did was point out that point 1 must have been a misunderstanding on her part, even explaining where I thought the misunderstanding might stem from, and that point b was correct. Faith wrote: Since you've heard of "jump theory", why don't you fill me in? None of my books on evolution mentions it, and I've never heard of it. A search of the web finds Creation vs. Evolution, which purports to be partly based upon the Hovind and ICR websites, and it says, "Because of this, evolutionists have postulated a jump theory, that each species was birthed suddenly." Evolutionary theory certainly postulates nothing of the kind.
The entire history of science is of exploring the unknown and making it known. The goal is explanatory power and building theoretical frameworks around bodies of knowledge. It would be a kind of silly exercise to credit Creationism for whatever science doesn't understand yet. Most of the time when science solves something it opens up new unanswered questions. Many of the problems science is working on today weren't even known to exist 20 years ago.
The ability to develop plausible scenarios is an example of evolution's explanatory power and is measured in its favor.
They're not my answers. The information I've provided so far can be found in any science book on the appropriate topic.
Sounds fine to me.
ID, the claim that what we do not know is evidence for the divine, has a long history of failure. It began its retreat with the discovery that the sun is not pulled across the sky by a god in his chariot, continued with the discovery that the planets orbit the sun because of gravity and not because they're propelled by the wings of angels, and continues today with the rapidly accelerating progress in the sciences. --Percy [This message has been edited by Percipient, 11-25-2001]
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Percy Member Posts: 22479 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
Faith wrote: I may be right? You mean you're unaware that science believes the universe is expanding? No wonder you didn't like any of my answers to Shannon - you had no idea whether I was describing current views within science or was just blowing hot air. All science is tentative, and so we may one day discover that we've misinterpreted the evidence, or new evidence may surface that forces a different interpretation, but Hubble's discovery of the red shift back in 1927 immediately convinced astronomers and cosmologists of the expanding universe. This view has held sway right through the present day, unless something really big has come down in the last hour or so. Evidence gathered since the 1920's has only reinforced the view of an expanding universe. Backward extrapolation of the expanding universe bred suspicions of a distant Big Bang, eventually confirmed when Wilson and Penzias detected the cosmic background radiation in 1965, receiving the Nobel Prize in physics in 1978. We're exploring the cosmic background radiation in great detail today, hoping to uncover the origins of the structure of today's universe. Expressing the current views of science on things like the expanding universe is a pretty simple exercise. Save your "you may be rights" for more ambiguous topics. --Percy [This message has been edited by Percipient (edited 11-23-2001).]
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Percy Member Posts: 22479 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.7 |
Hi Faith,
I apologize if I came across as heavy handed. Being right is no excuse for rudeness and pomposity, especially since most of us aren't lucky or smart enough to always be right. Even worse, you can't be sanctimonious about ill-treatment if guilty of it yourself. Faith wrote: The average level of scientific sophistication in this country is lamentable, but I believe people should follow their own interests and desires. If that doesn't include science, so be it. But I think by "we" you probably meant people who participate in this debate, in which case I couldn't agree more. Faith wrote: This is a tough one. I'm getting accused of setting the stage in favor of evolution a lot these days. I argue that that's not the case, that Creationists set the stage when they claimed Creationism is legitimate science. Religious beliefs are not a factor where science is involved. Evolutionists could care less what evangelical Christians choose to believe about evolution and creation. But they take great interest when the Genesis account of creation is presented to school boards of education and state legislatures with claims that it is legitimate science that should be given equal time with evolution in public school science classrooms. And that's all this debate comes down to. If you are claiming Creationism is science, then we have a lot to talk about. If you believe it is something else then we agree with you and there's nothing to debate. The recent challenge, and this may be where you're heading, comes from Creationists who concede Creationism isn't science, but assert it warrants attention by science none the less. I've read the justifications for this view, but to me they all boil down to treating revelation as evidence. God placed his Word not just in the Bible, but in the whole universe. The universe gives us the facts, the Bible the poetry of life itself. --Percy [This message has been edited by Percipient, 11-25-2001]
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