Message 16 of 65 (501885) 03-08-2009 12:43 PM

Reply to: Message 15 by alaninnont 03-08-2009 8:59 AM

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This is from Curious about Astronomy" but I've seen several references to it.

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That quote is so riddled with elementary grammatical errors I cannot help but conclude that it was written by someone who lacks sufficient education in the subject to speak authoritatively about it.

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A possiblility is that an alien or alien race is the creator.

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That's a possibility, but there's no reason to adopt it as a position in the absence of evidence. A related concept that some scientists are pursuing is what is call "panspermia." That's the theory that precursors to life, or very simple one-celled organisms, arrived here via meteorites billions of years ago.

For someone who's seeking an answer to ultimate questions of origin, however, this only pushes things back a step. Where did that life come from? So, while these things are interesting to contemplate, like any creator hypothesis they do nothing more than add a further complication without really explaining anything. Thus unless there is actual evidence to support the hypotheses, there's no real reason to believe in them

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So, what have we got so far? There are a number of options for how the universe initially came into existence. Science doesn't really help us because the event is not reproducible or testable.

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But science does much, much more than reproduce and test. And there are ways to test and reproduce besides laboratory experimentation. Science studies the evidence, makes predictions based on that evidence, then looks for more evidence to support the prediction. Let me give you an example.

Einstein proposed, among many other things, that gravity produces a curvature in space. If this is accurate, light waves will be curved as they pass objects in space and, if the object is massive enough, this curvature will be detectable. So, in 1922 a number of scientists went to Australia to take pictures of a solar eclipse to see if they could detect the curvature. They did, thus providing very powerful confirmation of Einstein's theory.

The same thing can be done for evolution. Biologists predicted that a certain type of fossil, with certain fairly specific characteristics, would be found at a particular time in the past. Paleontologists went looking in rocks that were of the proper age and, lo and behold, they found Tiktaalik, just as predicted. This provided powerful confirmation of the Theory of Evolution.

So, while we can't re-evolve the history of life on this planet, we can test the predictions of a theory. And, while nobody can reproduce Tiktaalik, any other scientist can do the same work that the Tiktaalik scientists did and come up with the same results. Thus while the event is not reproducible or testable, the science investigating is both testable and reproducible.

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Logic tells us that some of the possibilities are more probable than others and that one of them could be (there may be others we haven't thought of yet) the truth. You think the Big Loop theory is the most logical way to explain the observable data and I think the existence of a creator is most logical way to explain the observable data.

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Yes, but I was careful to point out that I don't believe that that's what happened, because as far as I'm able to determine, there isn't sufficient evidence to support the theory. Logic only gets us so far. Logic is a vital part of science, but logic alone gives us philosophy, not science. Science depends on evidence.

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Message 17 of 65 (502102) 03-09-2009 4:21 PM

There are some that believe that a creator was responsible for the creation of the universe, set up the world to be able to sustain life, created the first cell, and then left evolution to take its own course. There is some feeling amongst those that the first cell was created with a number of front loaded mechanisms to give the first cell its best chance to evolve successfully.

Message 18 of 65 (502827) 03-13-2009 2:40 PM

Anyway, on to the second point.

To me, it looks like the world is a setup. We need very specific and limited conditions for life to exist. It makes more sense to me that something set it up than it happened by chance. First of all, in the beginning the universe expanded at precisely the right rate. Any slower and it would have collapsed back onto itself. Any faster and stars and galaxies wouldn't have formed. Stephen Hawking in "A Brief History of Time" says that if it had been a thousand million, million parts slower, the conditions for life would not have existed. I can see the elements, stars, and planets forming following only the physical laws of the universe.
Then you have the earth setup. We need water. Early earth was cooling down and there was no atmosphere or water. It was too close to the sun and probably too hot for water to condense. The prominent theory is that comets hit the earth during a period of about 150 million years and with no atmosphere to burn them up, delivered water to earth. Considering that there is about 326 000 000 000 000 000 000 gallons of water on earth, that would mean that comets brought 16 500 tons of water every minute for 150 million years. There may have been some water contributed by the outgassing of volcanoes but separately or combined, it is hard to concieve of this much delivery. And that doesn't include the amount of water we have lost every year to space.
Theoretically there should be an equal amount of right-handed and left-handed amino acids on earth. If there were, life could not exist. The current theory is that amino acids were seeded on earth by comets (again) and polarized light from neutron stars eliminated the virtually all of the right-handed amino acids. I see some problems with this explanation also.
For life to begin you would need complex nucleic acids together with their sugars and phosphates, amino acids for the enzymes, ATP or some equivalent energy producing molecule, fatty acids or something to make a semi-permeable cell membrane, and all in very dense proportions that would allow for close interactions. Seeded to earth?
The atmosphere is an incredible piece of technology (yeah, I know I'm taking license) providing us with protection from cold, radiation, heat, etc. There is the anthropic priciple but the probability of the conditions for life here happening by chance seem astronomically small which means quadrillions of loops statistically would have occured before we got to this one. It seems more logical to me that a creator set it up.

Message 19 of 65 (503162) 03-16-2009 3:40 PM

Reply to: Message 18 by alaninnont 03-13-2009 2:40 PM

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First of all, in the beginning the universe expanded at precisely the right rate. Any slower and it would have collapsed back onto itself. Any faster and stars and galaxies wouldn't have formed. Stephen Hawking in "A Brief History of Time" says that if it had been a thousand million, million parts slower, the conditions for life would not have existed.

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Well, "a thousand million, million parts slower" hardly seems like "[a]ny slower" to me. But beyond that, can you cite me to an online, non-creationist source for the Hawking quote? It smells fishy.

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We need very specific and limited conditions for life to exist.

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No, we need very specific and limited condition for our life to exist. There's no reason to assume that different life can't arise under different conditions.

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Then you have the earth setup. We need water. Early earth was cooling down and there was no atmosphere or water. It was too close to the sun and probably too hot for water to condense. The prominent theory is that comets hit the earth during a period of about 150 million years and with no atmosphere to burn them up, delivered water to earth.

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Source?

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The atmosphere is an incredible piece of technology (yeah, I know I'm taking license) providing us with protection from cold, radiation, heat, etc. There is the anthropic priciple but the probability of the conditions for life here happening by chance seem astronomically small which means quadrillions of loops statistically would have occured before we got to this one. It seems more logical to me that a creator set it up.

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I have no idea what you mean by "quadrillions of loops," so I can't begin to guess what point you're making.

Once we've cleared these up a little bit, I'll move on to the amino acid part.

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Message 20 of 65 (503437) 03-18-2009 10:46 PM

Reply to: Message 19 by subbie 03-16-2009 3:40 PM

It's in his book, "A Brief History of Time" on page 121. (I had to skim through half the book to find it. I have an amazing memory for some things but page numbers, not so much.) I don't know if you can get a source on line. Here it is from the book.

"Why did the universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion that separates models that recollapse from those that go on expanding forever, so that even now, ten thousand million years later, it is still expanding at nearly the critical rate? If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size."

As for where a point came from, I believe a point should stand or fall on its own merit. The source, the number or people who believe it or the credentials of the submitter do not determine if a point is valid or not.

Wikipedia. And speaking of water, isn't it weird how its unusual characteristics allow life. Frozen water is 9% lighter allowing it to float and sustain life in water. Its polarity. These special properties are needed for life. Why haven't we found water in any amounts on any other planets?

My point is that it is highly improbable that all the conditions for life just happened to come together. It is more logical that something or someone set it up.

More situational stuff. "If protons were 0.2 % heavier, they could decay into neutrons, destabilizing atoms. If the electromagnetic force were 4 % weaker, hydrogen would not exist; if it were much stronger, supernovae would fail to seed interstellar space with heavy elements. If the cosmological constant were much larger, the universe would have blown itself apart before galaxies could form."
Max Tegmark - Scientific American, May 2003

Message 21 of 65 (503514) 03-19-2009 6:26 PM

Reply to: Message 20 by alaninnont 03-18-2009 10:46 PM

You wrote

The Hawking quote you supplied does not support what you said. Hawking says nothing about conditions for life, at least not in the quote that you supplied. I haven't read his book, so I can't guess what else might be in it.

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As for where a point came from, I believe a point should stand or fall on its own merit. The source, the number or people who believe it or the credentials of the submitter do not determine if a point is valid or not.

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The problem with this is that creationist sources lie about quotes. That's why I'm always going to ask for a non-creationist source for any quote.

So, you propose a quote from Hawking to support your belief in a creator. Do you know what Hawking himself says about this? Here are a couple of quotes:

It seems to me that you are free to come to whatever conclusions you wish to regarding Hawking's quote, but the evidence that you've cited isn't enough to support such conclusions in someone who certainly understands the subject quite a bit more than you or I do.

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Message 22 of 65 (503515) 03-19-2009 6:35 PM

Reply to: Message 20 by alaninnont 03-18-2009 10:46 PM

1. Wiki says there's 326,000,000 cubic miles of water.

2. Wiki says the question of the origin of water on this planet isn't settled.

Hardly a compelling argument that there must be a creator.

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Message 23 of 65 (503516) 03-19-2009 6:38 PM

Reply to: Message 20 by alaninnont 03-18-2009 10:46 PM

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My point is that it is highly improbable that all the conditions for life just happened to come together. It is more logical that something or someone set it up.

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Yes, I know that's been your point. However, because nobody can present any credible analysis of exactly what conditions are required for life, much less how likely is it that any of those conditions will occur, your point is really nothing more than, "I don't think it's likely so I don't believe it." Again, hardly a compelling argument.

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Message 24 of 65 (503534) 03-19-2009 10:06 PM

I'm not sure I'm getting this point across but I'm not trying to "argue" anything. I'm exploring this issue and am telling you why I currently am holding that idea that the existence of a creator is more probable than not. I am a firm believer in the disconfirmation bias.
I see it like a court room and I am the jury. I am trying to evaluate all the evidence to be able to say which is more likely, creator or no creator. Some of the evidence is weak, some is strong, some is scientific, some is circumstantial, but I want to hear it all. I realize that we are not in the area of hard evidence but evaluating the setup, it seems more logical that something or someone set it up rather than it happened by chance. Chance would mean that there are a long list of coincindences that happened to fall into place and that seems highly improbable to me. If I see an aquarium with specific conditions for some tropical fish, my first assumption is that someone set it up for them.

Message 25 of 65 (503537) 03-19-2009 10:25 PM

Reply to: Message 21 by subbie 03-19-2009 6:26 PM

So what you're saying is that any quotation (the word "quote" is a verb. You're using it incorrectly) from any creationist site will always be a lie and any quotation from a non-creationist site will always be the truth? I'd like to see evidence for this theory.

Message 26 of 65 (503542) 03-20-2009 1:02 AM

Reply to: Message 25 by alaninnont 03-19-2009 10:25 PM

Edited by NosyNed, : No reason given.

Message 27 of 65 (503585) 03-20-2009 9:47 AM

Reply to: Message 25 by alaninnont 03-19-2009 10:25 PM

Edited by AdminModulous, : hid content, added Great Debate banner

Message 28 of 65 (503758) 03-21-2009 9:14 PM

Yes it does. The universe had to expand at a very specific rate for the condions of life to exist. Any slower and matter would have collapsed back onto itself. Any faster and stars and planets would not have formed.

Message 29 of 65 (503871) 03-22-2009 11:38 PM

Reply to: Message 24 by alaninnont 03-19-2009 10:06 PM

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I'm not sure I'm getting this point across but I'm not trying to "argue" anything.

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Whether you personally are arguing for anything or not is immaterial; you are presenting arguments for a particular point of view. It is these arguments that I am responding to.

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I see it like a court room and I am the jury.

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Since I'm an attorney, we ought to get along just fine.

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I realize that we are not in the area of hard evidence but evaluating the setup, it seems more logical that something or someone set it up rather than it happened by chance. Chance would mean that there are a long list of coincindences that happened to fall into place and that seems highly improbable to me.

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And the point that I've been trying to make is that it's impossible to assign any kind of meaningful probabilities to the "long list of of coincindences [sic]" you keep referring to. For a start, you've yet to even begin to describe what you think these coincidences are.

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If I see an aquarium with specific conditions for some tropical fish, my first assumption is that someone set it up for them.

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Agreed. However, that bears no relationship whatsoever to the topic at hand. You assume that the world was created with specific conditions suited to the life that exists here. You ignore the possibility that instead life evolved to fit the conditions that existed here before life began. This solves the mystery completely.

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Message 30 of 65 (503872) 03-22-2009 11:45 PM

Reply to: Message 25 by alaninnont 03-19-2009 10:25 PM

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(the word "quote" is a verb. You're using it incorrectly)

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From dictionary.com: quote: noun, a quotation.

From merriam-webster.com: quote: noun, quotation.

If you wanna get pedantic on my ass, you better check a source first, mate.

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I'd like to see evidence for this theory.

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Seriously? You want to see evidence for the proposition that creationist sources lie?

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat