Evolution? How?

Here we go with the anti-gravity again!OK I'll bite, what are the external influences is gravity subject to? The gravity of your words being very uplifting?

Not.

Not.

I think you should all leave your student floundering in his own gross mis-conceptions and let his preacher explain why evolution is still an unprovable theory. You can lead a horse to water but if the horse is deaf, dumb and blind.

Argghhh.

It's very weird, but Real Life has a penchant for endorsing anti-gravity!

Maybe it can play a mean game of pinball?


Who?

Undermining the theory of gravity must be his new flanking attack on evolution.

Hi Chumly,

Birds overcome gravity and fly. Not because gravity is not a law, but because they use energy and information to supersede gravity using the principles of flight (lift, thrust, etc)

If gravity was 'absolute' nothing could ever leave the ground. In the strictest sense, you wouldn't be able to lift your arm.

Of course gravity is subject to external influence. But it is a law of science just the same.

Same thing with entropy.

Timber wants to softpedal entropy to the point that it doesn't apply to anything. He stated that entropy doesn't apply to 'open systems' , which he defined as anything receiving energy from an external source , such as the sun.

By that standard , entropy would apply to nothing on Earth, would it?

Raw energy alone is not sufficient to overcome entropy, in fact it increases it (remember the examples of the A-bomb and the forest fire?).

The relevance to evolution and the formation of life from non-life is apparent.

Non-living chemicals, subject to entropy, will not spontaneously generate into living organisms. The construction of complex and interdependent systems contained in the constituent sub-units of living organisms requires information.

rel wrote:
Of course gravity is subject to external influence. But it is a law of science just the same.

ROFLMAO
"Gravity is a law of science...." I always presumed from all his rhetoric, gravity is a law of god.

If entropy undermines the evolutionary argument then the existence of diamonds must also be attributed to divine intervention and not to the -- well, hell, let's say tendency -- of elemental carbon to form a precisely arrayed crystalline matrix under great heat and pressure.



This is not softpedaling. This is the scientific definition of entropy, as addressed in introductory chemistry and physics.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

Hi, how yah doing theses days? Birds do not overcome gravity. Gravity stays constant for them as they do not get far enough away from the earth for it to change.Nope, if gravity was tendency you wouldn't be able to lift your arm (much less take up any space). Perhaps an advantage when flying on a plane I asked you "what are the external influences is gravity subject to? But you have not answered at all.I'll let Timber defend Timber (unless you want me to give my arguments) but I do not want to take all his fun away.I'll let Timber defend Timber (unless you want me to give my arguments) but I do not want to take all his fun away.Try not filling your tank with gas and see if you need to view entropy in it's totality. Actually the other way around, all other things being equal, the more energy you pump into a system, the more entropy must take place before equilibrium.This may come as a revelation but everything is subject to entropy, and yes non-living chemicals can become life, it happens all the time. What is this so-called "information" you keep making reference over and over. CNN?

I thought this would be easy.

Are you expecting a rhetorical trap? That was not my intent.

But go ahead. You define natural law.

Let me watch, OK?

Hi Real Life,
I meant to say

I was simply asking for a definition of terms, I have no idea how you meant natural law, nor if you meant conclusion beyond all doubt, or beyond reasonable doubt, or beyond present generally accepted scientific knowledge, or beyond doubt from my individual perspective and how I rationalize that perspective etc.

As a religious feller, and as one who believes god has selective knowledge, god might also have said

rl
Evolution and biogenesisare 2 separate inquiries, youve been told this many times and its getting quite tiresome how you take information in, deny it, thenwait for opportunities to merely restate your incorrect primary thesis. Evidence for evolution focuses from many coalescing disciplines whereas your "belief " has no cogent theory even using all the data and evidence that science can provide. Your ideas just dont "fit any model"


As far as biogenesis, who says that chemicals CANNOT or WILL NOT react in a series of stacked reactions that ultimately lead to life. You forget that entrpy includes cooling of things like magma, and this cooling generates differentiation of types of chemical "veins" in the earth, many of which are important to living reactions.Life attains a body temperature from 130 degrees C down to room temp for lizards and toads. Your use and refernce to absolutes like you mentioned CANNOT TAKE PLACE is rejected by science because there is much inquiry into such stacked reactions and surface reactions presently going on.

. we can see non living chemicals , like organics of certain carbon chains can form as either unsaturated fatty acids by heat and undergoing hydrolysis. They will do this without anybody there. Also These long chain organics can form in pyrolysis reactions (heat in a reducing encvironment) This is similar to earths early environment. We know this by evidence of sediments that had formed in reducing environments (These layers , are found in early Archean sediments before the Isua formation in Greenland and the similar formations in the Australian and African shields.)There is a list in most any coal geology book that shows the similarity of these early organic (fossilized0 FATTY acids and polynuclear aromatics . All these chemical can do is react urficially to pick up other organics , like phosphates and sulfides and iron groups as functional "enzyme analogs) then these chemicals can happily move on to connect and bond end to end, either by sorption or by chemiocal bonds through esterification. All these types ofreaactions can occur now in a sterile lab condition. If we add swelling clays these reactions can take on another dimension
or direction.
We do know that proteins were not formed until quite after the Isua formation (at least thats what the evidence suggests) However , subunits like nucleotides and, one or two life important amino acids were formed early in the "steam pot earth"

All this is , from what Ive seen in seminars with data and full color glossy photos with lines and arrows drawn on them to indicate the perpeptrators.
When the Creationists come up with something other than thegainsay of whatever hard working scientists with expertise in these areas, can come up with and can substantiate with great gobs of evidence, then maybe we can talk.
Your denial of the ability for chemicals to react when in contact , is almost humorous . By doing so, you are denying the basic chemical goings on of the planet.


Im not going to further enter the entropy discussions because youre just sounding like some high schooler ( I know that you are an adult because youve told us youve just had a new baby). Youre sounding like some high schooler who, after studying for the test and shwing up for class, is just arbitrarily denying what we know on the kinetics of entropy in biological systems. Once more , simply stated . Entropy is countered by life , while life lives. Creation of new life by transfer of the germ cells is well understood. After we are of child bearing years, our job is done evolutionally and , at that point we may argue when life ends and entropy (or at least sensescence) kicks in. These nickel dime bricks in the road mean nothing to the living systems as a whole. Once the parents biological bar code is affected by environmental changes or is randomly selected by genetic variability from parent to parent, and the new phenotype is developed to term, the evolution job of the individual is done. Its then a function of number of individuals in an environment , their variability, and the environment itself to see which direction that evolution takes the population, individual by individual.
All the effects to the single individuals pile up as a series of favorable(or unfavorable) traits and adapatations to the environment at that time.

For none of this does Creationism have a good explanation

Just pick a definition and be done with it.

Chumly, while I appreciate the sentiment, for a defence to be required entails an attack have been made or be impending. Frankly, I do not perceive the specious, afoundational, uninformed, circular, sophistic, absurd ID-iot ramblings in which rl persists to be an attack, extant or imminent; I see them as amusements provided by the unwitting.

rl thus far has demonstrated - consistently and conclusively - thorough misunderstanding of scientific theory, of science itself, and of every scientific discipline into which he's ventured, along with non-existant forensic skills. His latest venture, into the realm of information theory, provides every bit as much amusement as have any of his past practices.

Assuming (I know - not alltogether a wise thing to do) rl typifies, if not exactly exemplifies, the proponents of ID-iocy, the proposition is at best in incompetent hands. Having failed to gain for their proposition any credence in academe, the courts, or the polling place, these ideologic throwbacks now seek to revive their absurdity of a proposition through generating doubt among the citizenry at large. Fine. Let 'em have at it; folks really are not so dumb as the proponents of ID-iocy suppose them to be. The Great Public Forum is ID-iocy's venue of choice now, and they've chosen their own opposition.

They may, likely will, get off a play or two, entertaining the crowd some, providing a bit of drama and bringing hope to the hearts of their fans, but they haven't a chance of outscoring their chosen opposition in the end; they have neither the training nor the equipment to prevail. Ultimately, what they will accomplish will be not the achievement of their luddite aim but rather will be the further, if not the ultimate, discrediting and dismissal of the entire Fundamentalist Protestant Christian movement itself. In that endeavor, I wish them, and am confident they will achieve, every success.

rl, I submit yet once more that no objective, forensically valid differentiation may be made between religious faith and superstition.

Searching for thread with just such a topic.

Back later.

Oh, there is a difference.

neo, pre-emptively, I'll point out tradition and social convention do not qualify as valid differentiators. Astrology, triskadecaphobia, salt-over-the-shoulder, broken mirrors, black cats, and imaginary freinds postulated through a scriptural canon all are the same fabric, regardless the weave.

neo, You are showing foot in mouth syndrome. Not good.

To me "natural law" just is. It incompases everything and anything.