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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. {--Percipient answering Shannon}
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1)The scientific community would have us believe that the universe is expanding and contracting.{--Shannon}
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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.{Percy}
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b) This is not the case. The universe is expanding at a very fast rate and not contracting.{-Shannon}
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Science does not believe the universe is contracting. Science simply goes by the evidence, and the evidence is for an expanding universe.{--Percy}
The fair thing to do would be to help your scientifically less-knowledgeable opponent formulate her argument, and I believe she must have come across scientific statements that the universe is expanding and contracting to have posted what she did. Your flatly saying that science does not say that is not helpful and not fair to Shannon.
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2) To believe in most evolutionist concepts you must look at it one of two ways to make it work as I can tell.
b) Either you believe in jump theory (which would mean that we just suddenly went from the closest ancestor to what we are).
Or you would have to believe that it took extended time.{--Shannon}
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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.{--Percy}
Again, you are not being fair. I've certainly heard of something along the lines of "jump" theory and I'm very surprised if you haven't. Also I defined evolution on another website in an argument with a biologist as operating "through gradual change over long periods of time" and got told that is not the case scientifically. If you only want to argue with people at your own level of scientific knowledge you should make that clear up front. Otherwise you should expect to be more helpful than this.
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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.
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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.
If no evolutionary pathway can be envisioned this should be a point for creationism. Sure, evolutionists may come up with a plausible scenario -- they're good at that -- but as it stands this is a decent argument against and should be tallied for the creationists. [I wish she would answer you, but since she hasn't I'm taking the liberty simply because your answers to her leave me frustrated.]
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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.
That was not the point. The point was that irreducible complexity argues against evolution. Nobody said there's an inability to formulate a scientific explanation here, but only that you do not have a case. You beg the question by assuming you will someday have one. Meanwhile give that point to the creationists.
Also, just because "the divine" has been used to explain the unexplained doesn't mean that once you have a scientific explanation for how something works that God is expendable. In fact the more lawful the universe turns out to be, the more God can be seen behind it.
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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.
There is no necessary either/or here, nor is it implied by Shannon's statement. All she said was that irredicible complexity argues against evolution, and that is a fact. Anybody can win an argument by saying oh well someday we'll see how it fits in and justifies our theory.
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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.
Again, the argument is that irreducible complexity/intelligent design undermines the theory of evolution, and it has far more to it than just "yelling 'God,'" which is not how I read Shannon's post in any case.
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