Scientific Reasons to believe in God:
The laws of probability will tell you that this universe with all of its ordered complexity, could not have come into being by chance. To have that much order and complexity, the universe had to be designed by an intelligent creator. There is enough coded information in one human chromosome to
fill a small library of books. This had to be designed by an
intelligent creator.
The probability against that happening by chance is very
very high. It's like giving a chimpanzee a typewriter and letting him hit the keys at
random. The probability against his being able to type a small library full of books by hitting keys at random is so high that for all
practical purposes you can consider it impossible.
Because of this, there are some scientists and mathematicians who are forced to
believe in the existence of God by logic alone.
In order for a single cell to live, all of the parts of the cell must be assembled before life starts. This involves 60,000 proteins that are assembled in roughly 100 different combinations. The probability that these complex groupings of proteins could have happened just by chance is extremely small. It is about 1 chance in 10 to the 4,478,296 power. The probability of a living cell being assembled just by chance is so small, that you may as well consider it to be impossible. This means that the probability that the living cell is created by an intelligent creator, that designed it, is extremely large. The probability that God created the living cell is 10 to the 4,478,296 power to 1.
[The probability of this was calculated by Fred Hoyle, famous astronomer and mathematician.]
There are no existing physical rules, that have been observed by science, that indicate that ordered complexity can evolve by random chance occurences. In Science there is an observed law of entropy. In all natural occurences in science, the amount of disorder increases. In other words, the physical laws that are observed in nature lead to more disorder; they do not lead to ordered complexity.
The only thing observed to cause more complexity is an intelligence, of some sort deliberately assembling something together.
Example: A pile of building materials stacked in a pile is hit by a tornado. When the pieces come down, they do not assemble themselves into a house. They just fall into a more disordered pile of building materials. An intelligence must deliberately assemble the materials into a house to get ordered complexity.
God created the ordered complexity in the universe. There are no observed scientific processes that can account for it happening by itself.
Natural selection has not been observed to cause one species to change into another new species, only into a new breed or subspecies of the same animal. Fish do not change into amphibians; amphibians do not change into reptiles; reptiles do not change into mammals. Natural selection cannot account for the origin of the different species. There are a million missing links in the fossil record as it has been found. The intermediate stages that would be necessary for fish to become amphibians, and reptiles to become mammals, have not been found in the fossils. The fossils show evidence that all of the species were originally created by God and they did not evolve into one another.
"Biochemical systems are exceedingly complex, so much so that the chance
of their being formed through random shufflings of simple organic
molecules is exceedingly minute, to a point indeed where it is
insensibly different from zero"
- Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, p.3

"No matter how large the environment one considers, lfe cannot have had
a random beginning. Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on
typewriters could not produce the works of Shakespeare, for the
practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough
to contain the necessary monkey hordes, the necessary typewriters, and
certainly the waste paper baskets required for the deposition of wrong
attempts. The same is true for living material"
Ibid., p.148

"The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the
chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is one one part in
(10^20)^2000 = 10^40000, an outrageously small probability that could
not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If
one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific
training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth [by
chance or natural processes], this simple calculation wipes the idea
entirely out of court"
Ibid., p.24

"Any theory with a probability of being correct that is larger than one
part in 10^40000 must be judged superior to random shuffling. The
theory that life was assembled by an intelligence has, we believe, a
probability vastly higher than one part in 10^40000 of being the correct
explaination of the many curious facts discussed in previous chapters.
Indeed, such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not
widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological
rather than scientific."
Ibid., p.130

"All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn
out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it."
- Lee Spetner, "Not by Chance"(Brooklyn, New York: The Judaica
Press,Inc.) p.138

"It appears that the neo-darwinism hypothesis is insufficient to explain
some of the observations that were not available at the time the
paradigm took shape. ...One might ask why the neo-darwinian paradigm
does not weaken or disappear if it is at odds with critical factual
information. The reasons are not necessarily scientific ones but rather
may be rooted in human nature"
- Christian Schwabe "On the Validity of Molecular Evolution", Trends in
Biochemical Sciences, July 1986, p.282

"The really significant finding that comes to light from comparing the
proteins' amino acid sequences is that it is impossible to arrange them
in any sort of evolutionary series" - Ibid. p.289

"Thousands of different sequences, protein, and nucleic acid, have now
been compared in hundreds of different species but never has any
sequnces been found to be in any sense the lineal descendant or ancestor
of any other sequence." - Ibid. pp. 289-290

The God of Israel is God. The Word of God is the King James version Bible. What God wants you to do is in the King James version New Testament.

[deleted long quote]
*************
M*W: Welcome to sciforums. Somehow I must have missed all the scientific evidence for God. Could you please prove how the citations you've quoted allude to the existence of God.

Theres no order in the universe; hence this is a common flaw of theists thinking that everything has order. Fact is the Universe is chaotic.

Buy the book; have a nice read: http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/4374.html

Nuf Said!.
Godless.

ghost,

There is no precedent for anything having been created outside of an evolutionary process. Based on direct observations we can see that those items with the greatest complexity take the longest to evolve and in an infinite universe time is not a limitation.

welcome ghost, I would go back and revise you thinking.
it's already been said, but I to would like to see the evidence, for such assertions, thank you

whenever one proposes a 'designer' of the universe, we are back with the image of the male 'God' making 'his' universe as though from OUTSIDE
This is old-fashioned (ie., patriarchal)

read the CHAOS book, that's much more hip.
the CREATION is both transcendental AND immanent. think positive negative and earthed. Nature Is Intelligence

Scientific Reasons to believe in God:
The laws of probability will tell you that this universe with all of its ordered complexity, could not have come into being by chance.

snip bad/out of context science and maths

The God of Israel is God. The Word of God is the King James version Bible. What God wants you to do is in the King James version New Testament.

Ok so what created god ?

Ok so what created god ?

What do you mean!?? No one created god. He's the creator, you know, he's not creatED.

Also, read the blind watchmaker by richard dawkins. somebody on sciforums turned me on to it and it helped explain a lot of naive questions about evolution. It even adresses the "monkey typing shakespeare" argument and puts it down.

The idea behind the blind watchmaker is putting an end to the idea that life was a product of intelligent design, but instead relied completely on random chance and the laws of evolution.

-ZERO MASS

Lets blow the straw men down. And, ghost7584, you actually need to know something about science before you can make remotely sensible claims about what science proves. Leaving aside the fact that whatever science proves is by definition not God - since science explores the explorable and explains the explicable. If something is explicable (by some previous scientifically testable source or cause) then it isn't God. Maybe the start of the Universe was by God - in which case it will be impossible for Science to determine the exact cause of the Universe. If it is not impossible for Science to determine the exact cause of the Universe, if in other words the creation of the Universe becomes inevitable due to the laws of physics, science will again have disproved the God theory - but the God theory is untouchable by science anyway. You can then say, "who or what created the laws of physics?" to which you can suggest that God created the laws, or that the laws just are, or (as in my case) that the laws are at root due to the absolutely immutable (not even by God) laws of Mathematics.

The laws of probability will tell you that this universe with all of its ordered complexity, could not have come into being by chance. To have that much order and complexity, the universe had to be designed by an intelligent creator. There is enough coded information in one human chromosome to
fill a small library of books. This had to be designed by an
intelligent creator

The probability against that happening by chance is very
very high. It's like giving a chimpanzee a typewriter and letting him hit the keys at
random. The probability against his being able to type a small library full of books by hitting keys at random is so high that for all
practical purposes you can consider it impossible..The first item and the second item are different issues. The Universe with its supposed ordered complexity is in fact quite chaotic. The problem arises that the laws of physics appear to be fine-tuned to allow for the creation of a Universe that is almost flat - ie that doesn't re-collapse immediately or just expand into nothingness. It requires a flat universe to create stars and planets and to have sufficient time for the evolution of intelligent life. So how can that low probability incident have come about, then? But the answer, taking full congizance of the laws of probability is that there are an infinitude of different Universes with different values for the various constants and which cause different laws of physics to apply - in an infinitude of Universes there has to be one in which the laws are correct, (in fact many many of them) - there cannot possibly be a non-valid Universe in which we would evolve to debate the matter; we can only evolve in those Universes in which the conditions are right. And so, the probability argument does not stand up.
Because of this, there are some scientists and mathematicians who are forced to
believe in the existence of God by logic alone.The fact that scientists and mathematicians believe in God is not a valid argument for the belief in God, as they themselves would tell you. Those of us who do not believe frequently have reached this position as a revolt against blind acceptance of "authority". True rationalists will not turn to other authorities just because they are supposedly espousing the same world view, ie scientists. One of the greatest writers on science and rationality and a thorough debunker of all nonsense, is nontheless a Deist: Martin Gardner. With all due respect to everything he has taught me, I do not follow him to his final acceptance of a God.
In order for a single cell to live, all of the parts of the cell must be assembled before life starts. This involves 60,000 proteins that are assembled in roughly 100 different combinations. The probability that these complex groupings of proteins could have happened just by chance is extremely small. It is about 1 chance in 10 to the 4,478,296 power. The probability of a living cell being assembled just by chance is so small, that you may as well consider it to be impossible.Fortunately the operation of Natural Selection is in fact the diametric opposite of "random chance" which is why proteins etc. evolved without the necessity of an enormous dice roll. An individual mutation is random - whether it is good or bad for the organism is not random. The chances are that the mutation will be bad for the organism, but even a rare event will occur occasionally - and a mutation which was beneficial for the organism will survive to be passed on. This has nothing to do with randomness, I'm sure you will agree. The question is not if a beneficial mutation will occur, it is only a question of when. And beneficial mutations by definition will survive, and consequently will act cumulatively. I see no reason why this process would not have applied to the very first chemicals that were self-replicating to eventually "evolve" into a working cell.
This means that the probability that the living cell is created by an intelligent creator, that designed it, is extremely large. The probability that God created the living cell is 10 to the 4,478,296 power to 1.But in fact not, because that is a nonsensically small chance for any kind of molecule to spontaneously generate - and complex amino acids have already been formed using just gases available on the primordial earth and an energy source. If it was that unlikely, Urey and Miller's 1952 experiment would never ever have worked.
[The probability of this was calculated by Fred Hoyle, famous astronomer and mathematician.]Another "authority figure" - a firm atheist, by the way, and someone who hated the very concept of the (now accepted) Big Bang Theory, because it possibly opened the door for a God.
There are no existing physical rules, that have been observed by science, that indicate that ordered complexity can evolve by random chance occurences. In Science there is an observed law of entropy. In all natural occurences in science, the amount of disorder increases. In other words, the physical laws that are observed in nature lead to more disorder; they do not lead to ordered complexity.I've just been arguing this with Woody. The entire system must be considered when calculating the amount of energy involved. In this case, a small localised decrease in Entropy (the formation of complex molecules leading to Life etc) occurs under the lash of energy from the Sun. The total entropy of the whole system (which includes all the energy from the Sun which bleeds off in all other directions apart from the tiny angle subtended by the Earth) is what you should be accounting for when calculating the entropy of the system. If you put put hydrogen and oxygen gases into a container and apply an input of energy, you will create water. This is an increase in "order" caused by a higher temperature - and yet no violation of the laws of thermodynamics has resulted. If it wasn't for local decreases in entropy evidenced simply by the stars and the formation of the Earth, there wouldn't even be a Universe for us to talk about!
The only thing observed to cause more complexity is an intelligence, of some sort deliberately assembling something together.
Example: A pile of building materials stacked in a pile is hit by a tornado. When the pieces come down, they do not assemble themselves into a house. They just fall into a more disordered pile of building materials. An intelligence must deliberately assemble the materials into a house to get ordered complexity.
God created the ordered complexity in the universe. There are no observed scientific processes that can account for it happening by itself.I suggest you read actual science books as opposed to Creationist literature. Science may be wrong about the ultimate answer, but please don't pretend that it hasn't advanced rational explanations for nearly everything in the Universe, and is still seeking the answers. That is the job of science - to find the rational explanation. God is a priori not a rational explanation, so science does not advance God as an explanation. Neither does it do so for that which Science has currently no explanation (for example the ultimate Origin of the Universe). It carries on looking on the assumption that a rational, non supernatural explanation can be found - and in the meantime we find out many other useful things about life and the Universe around us.
Natural selection has not been observed to cause one species to change into another new species, only into a new breed or subspecies of the same animal. Fish do not change into amphibians; amphibians do not change into reptiles; reptiles do not change into mammals. Natural selection cannot account for the origin of the different species.Evolutionists will tell you that it would not be expected for species to be seen to evolve within our normal human lifespan, or even over the entire length of recorded human history. The evidence for evolution has nothing to do with seeing species evolve in front of us. Starting with fossils of dead creatures which share characteristics with those still living, and seeing how less developed fossils always precede more developed fossils in the record is a point in evolution's favour. Nobody expects there to be anything other than huge gaps in the record, and evolution is still the best theory to account for the development and obvious filial relationships between species. In the last century, Gregor Mendel discovered genetics and the digital form that characteristics take. This was a vindication of evolution. In the early 20th century, the theory of natural selection was vindicated again by the develpment by RA Fisher of mathematical genetics. He showed that if natural selection was true, this would result in specific mathematical laws regarding how species develop (for example, how a species with sibling-sex taboo will develop with roughly equal number between the sexes, and how a species which uses sibling sex to procreate inevitably leads to a preponderance of females - since this is what we observe, evolution and natural selection are vindicated).

There are a million missing links in the fossil record as it has been found. The intermediate stages that would be necessary for fish to become amphibians, and reptiles to become mammals, have not been found in the fossils. The fossils show evidence that all of the species were originally created by God and they did not evolve into one another.The absence of evidence does not in fact constitute evidence that God created the individual species. The gaps in the fossil record was explored thoroughly by Darwin himself, and again he was able to maintain the justification of his position.

The rest of your post was citations from dubious authorities. Hoyle is praised and respected for those parts of science he advanced and got right. He is not praised or respected for those parts of science he got wrong. You know someone else who actually suffers from the same thing? Albert Einstein. The scientific establishment accepts and makes use of his great discoveries in the fields of relativity and quanta. It does not take any notice of his divergence from the standard model of quantum mechanics because he is considered wrong on those points. Hoyle, incidentally, was an astronomer, so his authority is not respected as far as biological sciences anyway. The other book makes statements about molecular biology that I suspect are outright lies. In any case, since Dawkins was able to write The Blind Watchmaker several years after the Christian bloke in 1986, and continues to argue the same points, as do all other molecular evolutionists would seem to imply that they simply don't accept his evidence as evidence.

The God of Israel is God. The Word of God is the King James version Bible. What God wants you to do is in the King James version New Testament. And here it is. Never mind accepting the word of God from Bible text, it has to be one particular (far from perfect) translation made just short of 400 years ago (in fact 400 years ago today, the translators were busy at work - it started in 1604).

Isn't this argument from incredulity? Like Dawkins wrote, their argument is that the universe is more complicated than they can imagine, therefore it is the product of an intelligent entity. That only speaks to your lack of imagination.

There is nothing scientific about Ghost's reasoning. Of course, it would be extremely unlikely for a fully formed DNA molecule, much less an entire cell to pop into existence spontaneously, but THAT'S NOT THE WAY IT HAPPENED!

The probability of organic chemistry in the Earth's early ocean forming a runaway chain reaction is almost 100% In fact, it may have happened more than once. Even chemical reactions can have the property of heredity, and evolve without DNA. DNA came later, cells came later -all built upon previous layers of "complexity" (everything is complex, or... everything is simple, depends how you look at it).

but,

There is a scientific reason for God, or rather, an evolutionary explanation for the success of religion. Basically, people believe religion because they are bred to. Religion is a mental enzyme that serves as a catalyst for making more religious people. Every generation becomes more adapted for belief, and the "sheeple gene" becomes more and more common.



What do you mean!?? No one created god. He's the creator, you know, he's not creatED.
That may or may not be true (no way to prove a negative), but scientifically, it's a cop-out. If you want to believe in God, fine, but don't pretend to justify it through science.

What do you mean!?? No one created god. He's the creator, you know, he's not creatED.

Of course, the complex universe must have a creator, whilst the more complex god doesn't. Thers logic for ya.

Scientific Reasons to believe in God:
/.../
The God of Israel is God. The Word of God is the King James version Bible. What God wants you to do is in the King James version New Testament.

Those are not "scientific reasons to believe in God". What you are trying to argue for is God by inference.

True, we can infer a God, but I am sure that nobody would really, heartily pray to such a God, that, at best, has the status of a philosphical construct.

The God, even in that Bible version that you postulate as the one and only right one, is said to love people.

Now, since when can a God by inference (=a philosophical construct) love?

Of course, the complex universe must have a creator, whilst the more complex god doesn't. Thers logic for ya.
Obviously life evolves into a God at the end of the universe, then acts as the designer of the next one.

There is a scientific reason for God, or rather, an evolutionary explanation for the success of religion. Basically, people believe religion because they are bred to. Religion is a mental enzyme that serves as a catalyst for making more religious people. Every generation becomes more adapted for belief, and the "sheeple gene" becomes more and more common.
This would also explain the political careers of Adolf Hitler and George Bush.

There are no existing physical rules, that have been observed by science, that indicate that ordered complexity can evolve by random chance occurences. In Science there is an observed law of entropy. In all natural occurences in science, the amount of disorder increases. In other words, the physical laws that are observed in nature lead to more disorder; they do not lead to ordered complexity.
The only thing observed to cause more complexity is an intelligence, of some sort deliberately assembling something together.Uh, no. I’d suggest you go read a physics book and come back when you know what entropy actually is.

me thinks "ghost"needs to read here www.talkorigins.org and here www.talkdesign.org/

Ok so what created god ?

Men.

G.

Prester John

Ok so what created god ?

Exodus 3:13 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?
Exodus 3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

Well, how would you interpret that? Maybe - I exist that I exist
Is that the answer to your question?

itopal

Genesis 7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that [are] not clean by two, the male and his female.

There were plenty enough to do the offering and have some left over. 7-1=6.

"Biochemical systems are exceedingly complex, so much so that the chance
of their being formed through random shufflings of simple organic
molecules is exceedingly minute, to a point indeed where it is
insensibly different from zero"
- Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, p.3

"No matter how large the environment one considers, lfe cannot have had
a random beginning. Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on
typewriters could not produce the works of Shakespeare, for the
practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough
to contain the necessary monkey hordes, the necessary typewriters, and
certainly the waste paper baskets required for the deposition of wrong
attempts. The same is true for living material"
Ibid., p.148

"The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the
chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is one one part in
(10^20)^2000 = 10^40000, an outrageously small probability that could
not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If
one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific
training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth [by
chance or natural processes], this simple calculation wipes the idea
entirely out of court"
Ibid., p.24

"Any theory with a probability of being correct that is larger than one
part in 10^40000 must be judged superior to random shuffling. The
theory that life was assembled by an intelligence has, we believe, a
probability vastly higher than one part in 10^40000 of being the correct
explaination of the many curious facts discussed in previous chapters.
Indeed, such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not
widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological
rather than scientific."
Ibid., p.130

"All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn
out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it."
- Lee Spetner, "Not by Chance"(Brooklyn, New York: The Judaica
Press,Inc.) p.138

"It appears that the neo-darwinism hypothesis is insufficient to explain
some of the observations that were not available at the time the
paradigm took shape. ...One might ask why the neo-darwinian paradigm
does not weaken or disappear if it is at odds with critical factual
information. The reasons are not necessarily scientific ones but rather
may be rooted in human nature"
- Christian Schwabe "On the Validity of Molecular Evolution", Trends in
Biochemical Sciences, July 1986, p.282

"The really significant finding that comes to light from comparing the
proteins' amino acid sequences is that it is impossible to arrange them
in any sort of evolutionary series" - Ibid. p.289

"Thousands of different sequences, protein, and nucleic acid, have now
been compared in hundreds of different species but never has any
sequnces been found to be in any sense the lineal descendant or ancestor
of any other sequence." - Ibid. pp. 289-290

There are no existing physical rules, that have been observed by science, that indicate that ordered complexity can evolve by random chance occurences. In Science there is an observed law of entropy. In all natural occurences in science, the amount of disorder increases. In other words, the physical laws that are observed in nature lead to more disorder; they do not lead to ordered complexity.
The only thing observed to cause more complexity is an intelligence, of some sort deliberately assembling something together.
Example: A pile of building materials stacked in a pile is hit by a tornado. When the pieces come down, they do not assemble themselves into a house. They just fall into a more disordered pile of building materials. An intelligence must deliberately assemble the materials into a house to get ordered complexity.
God created the ordered complexity in the universe. There are no observed scientific processes that can account for it happening by itself.

Isaac Newton, the scientific genius, and founder of physics, was a Christian believer and a Bible scholar. He rightly believed that God created the scientific laws that he was discovering.
Newton was probably a greater scientist than you will ever be, and he believed in God and Jesus. Don't try to hide behind science to back up your atheism.

Manuel, Frank. The Religion of Isaac Newton.
Manuel, Frank E. The Religion of Isaac Newton . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. ISBN 0-19-826640-5.

"About the time of the End, a body of men will be raised up who will turn their attention to the prophecies, and insist on their literal interpretation in the midst of much clamor and opposition."
--Sir Isaac Newton

Silas
Lets blow the straw men down. And, ghost7584, you actually need to know something about science before you can make remotely sensible claims about what science proves.

I have a Bachelor of science, physics degree. I know alot about science and the scientific method.

itopal
No that’s not actually the answer (not 1 in 64 mil.)
The correct answer is 1 to 1. I said he “won”; not if.

Well, now you make your error more evident. You simply don't understand probability.
It is really, 1 in 64 mil. and yet he won.

Just because he won, it does not change the probability to 1 to 1. You don't understand probability.

silas

The main argument agains evolution is the fossil record. All theory must line up with the evidence. The evidence found in the fossil record shows that fish did not evolve into amphibians, and amphibians didn't become reptiles, neither did reptiles become mammals or birds. In the fossils there are millions of missing links. If that did happen as evolution is trying to say, then those links would be in the fossils. They are not.
Natural selection is true, but it is only observed to go as far as creating a subspecies or new breed of the same species. It does not create a totally different type of animal. [example: The white moths by have a mutated brown moth that is more hidden to birds. The birds eat less of them, so the brown moth takes over. So the species has changed from white to brown. Yes, but it is just another breed of moth. It don't change to a butterfly or bee. A great dane and a basset hound are very different, but they are both still just dogs.] Natural selection has only been observed to go that far. It won't account for a fish becoming an amphibian or a reptile becoming a mammal as evolution is trying to say. [So dormant genes get activated and a species adapts to its surroundings; that is as far as it goes.] It will not account for the origin of the different species. God creating them differently, matches what is found in the fossils better than evolution does. Where are the supposed missing links???? There are many MISSING links.

"Each class at a molecular level is unique, isolated and unlinked by
intermediates. Thus molecules, like fossils, have failed to provide the
elusive intermediates so long sought by evolutionary biology." - Ibid
p.290

"There is little doubt that if this molecular evidence had been
available one century ago it would have been seized upon with
devastating effect by the opponents of evolution theory like Agassiz and
Owen, and the idea of organic evolution might never have been
accepted." - Ibid pp.290-291

"In terms of their biochemistry, none of the species deemed
'intermediate', 'ancestral' or 'primitive' by generations of
evolutionary biologists, and alluded to as evidence of sequence in
nature, show any sign of their supposed intermediate status" - Ibid
p.293

Duane T. Gish, The Origin of Mammals : If this view of evolution is true, the fossil record should produce an enormous number of transitional forms. Natural history museums should be overflowing with undoubted intermediate forms. About 250,000 fossil species have been collected and classified?Applying evolution theory and the laws of probability, most of these 250,000 species should represent transitional forms.

Dr. Walt Brown, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, page 10: Fossil links are missing between numerous plants, between single-celled forms of life and invertebrates, between invertebrates and vertebrates, between fish and amphibians, between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and mammals, between reptiles and birds, between primates and other mammals, and between apes and other primates. The fossil record has been studied so thoroughly that it is safe to conclude that these gaps are real; they will never be filled. ---

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: ?
the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed [must] truly be enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory [of evolution].

W. I. Bird, The Origin of Species Revisited, 1954, p. 48.: The reason for abrupt appearances and gaps can no longer be attributed to the imperfection of the fossil record as it was by Darwin when paleontology was a young science.

Dr. Niles Eldredge, paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, "Missing, Believed Nonexistent", Manchester Guardian, 26 November 1978:?
"The search for 'missing links' between various living creatures, like humans and apes, is probably fruitless?because they probably never existed as distinct transitional types...But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures?If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory."
Lyall Watson, "The Water People", Science Digest, May 1982:
"Modern apes, for instance, seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They have no yesterday, no fossil record. And the true origin of modern humans?of upright, naked, toolmaking, big-brained beings?is, if we are to be honest with ourselves, an equally mysterious matter."

Dr. Collin Patterson, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in Britain, when asked why he hadn't included any illustrations of transitional forms in his book, Evolution, he replied in a letter: "I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them?I will lay it on the line?there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument."

silas
I've just been arguing this with Woody. The entire system must be considered when calculating the amount of energy involved. In this case, a small localised decrease in Entropy (the formation of complex molecules leading to Life etc) occurs under the lash of energy from the Sun. The total entropy of the whole system (which includes all the energy from the Sun which bleeds off in all other directions apart from the tiny angle subtended by the Earth) is what you should be accounting for when calculating the entropy of the system.

It is only going to work that way if designed to do so.
Example: Heat is disordered energy, in thermodynamics. A refrigerator will remove heat from one area, the freezer section, and put the heat somewhere else. The overall system of the refrigerator is throwing off the heat that it took from the freezer section plus the heat generated in the functioning of the motor. Overall, the ammount of heat or disorder has increased. But locally, in the freezer section, the heat or disorder had decreased. The impotant thing to note is this: The refrigerator is designed to function that way by its designers. It does not do that from random processes. Just like what you are trying to say about the universe. The only reason there are small localised decreases in entropy is because an intelligent designer, God, designed it like that. Random chance shufflings of atoms doesn't produce ordered complexity or decreases in entropy. Only a designer does.
Entropy is observed to increase in all natural scientific processes.
Twisting words around is not going to discount that. If entropy decreased to any significant amount, it is because it was deliberate and by design, which implies a designer. God designed it like that. Chance cannot account for that.

zero mass
Also, read the blind watchmaker by richard dawkins.

I wouldn't hire a blind watchmaker. He would take far too long to do his job and might not accomplish it at all.

itopal

. . . And now mythos-god destroys all life; that’s right all life (ALL LIFE - get it); all life is destroyed (killed in entirety) from the face of earth;

BIBLICAL FLOOD EVIDENCE
Evidence from widely diverse cultures of people: [A Race Memory]
In Sumerian clay tablets dating from the third millennium BCE there is an
account of a great flood whose hero is called Ziusudra. There is also a
flood story in the second millennium BCE Babylonian legend of Gilgamish.
In the Babylonian legend, preserved in much greater detail than that of
Sumeria, the hero is named Utnapishtim. It is interesting that elements
of these two flood stories appear almost verbatim in the Genesis account
of the Noachan flood. In these stories the heroes receive a divine
warning of an impending flood. It seems that god was displeased with man
and wanted to start afresh. They were told to build an ark and take
aboard it living creatures in pairs. In the Sumerian and Babylonian
accounts birds were sent out after the rains ceased. In all stories the
ark landed in mountainous areas and sacrifices were made to their gods
for a safe landing. Fragments of the Babylonian flood story were found in
excavations at Megiddo at the fourteenth century BCE level. So the Great
Flood legend was already firmly established in the middle east long
before there was an Israelite kingdom or a Bible.

The Australian Aborigines also tell of a flood story, yet this time there
are not many similarities to Genesis.5 Wickedly, mischievous children
caused it by hurting an innocent bird, and this act angered the gods.
Filling the sky, a storm cloud appeared, and the earth was flooded so
high that only the tops of a few enormous mountains were not covered. One
man rapidly tried to escape the flood by rowing his canoe to the top of a
mountain, where he arrived safely with several other survivors. The
people who did not reach the mountaintops were killed. This legend
differs in respect to the mountaintops not being covered. Although the
acts of the children were not found in Genesis, this symbolically
represents the evil of the people upon the earth



Chinese legends tell of a massive flood as well. This story seems quite
similar to that of Genesis. Immense flooding covered the entire earth,
and only one family, the family of Fuhi6 was saved. This family consisted
of a man, his wife, three sons, and three daughters, who were all saved
alive in a boat. The story continues to draw similarities to the Genesis
account as it says that these eight people were the only souls alive upon
the earth and thus had to repopulate it.

In conclusion, we should examine the two possible causes of the
differences in these accounts. First, these early cultures may have
simply gotten the facts confused as the story was passed around many times for centuries. Or
secondly, they may have changed it purposely, trying to fit an actual
historical event into their mythology.
The american indians also have there stories about the flood. A race memory for their culture as well.

The Great Flood Evidence
Physical evidence
There is much evidence for a global flood in geology and fossils. Rubble
drift and ossiferous fissures are but two observations that show great
movements of water. Rubble drift shows sediments consisting of massive,
angular unrolled meterial deposited in local pockes and catchment areas.
These are many times full of shattered bones. Ossiferous fissures are
found all over the surface of the world some measuring 140 to 300 feet in
depth. These fissures were filled with debris soon after they were opened
and this could explain why the did not close again. An examination of
the debris in these fissures shows remains of elephant, rhinoceros,
hippopotamus, raindeer, horse, hog and oxen. These bones must have filled
in these fissures after death because there are no complete skeletons and
the bones have not been rolled or weathered. The bones are cemented
together by calcite indicating hydralic deposition.

These deposits are all around the earth but a look at the fissures on the
Rock of Gibraltar running 300 feet deep and are found at different
elevations(highest one is at 100 feet). These deposits show also contain
many different animal bones as described above and in one of them man-made
stone implaments have been found.

Deposits on the Island of Sicily hold a huge number of hippo bones so well
preserved that they can be carved. More that 20 tons of these bones were
shipped for commercial purposes. In Russia a large deposit of these bones
contained 4500 bones of bear coming from at least 100 animals along with
cats, hyenas, horses, boars, mannoth, rhinos, aurocheses, and deer, as
well as insectivores, rodents, sahres, otter, martens, wolves and foxes.
All these bones found in these fissures appear to be the product of huge
masses of water moving at great speed.

Yorda,

What do you mean!?? No one created god. He's the creator, you know, he's not creatED.

But, something so astonishingly vast and complex could not possibly have occurred by chance – therefore God must have been the result of an intelligent designer.

Hi Ghost; since you like posting long ass posts full of BULL SHIT!! I would like you to read this one based on FACTS!!.

"Telling Lies for God"?
One Man's Crusade


Professor Ian Plimer has been a geologist for 30 years.... Like most dedicated scientists he is a passionate advocate of analytical research and the scientific method.

His discoveries have convinced him that the earth is old - about 4 and a half billion years old - old enough to accommodate the evolution of the world as we know it today.

But that presents a problem for those who take the teachings of the Bible literally .Creation scientists believe that god created the world and all its creatures just a few thousand years ago.

Prof. Ian Plimer: “I think there is a responsibility to tell the lay audience that we have very good evidence to show that the planet is old. And the leaders of the creationist movement are not using that evidence.

“Telling Lies For God” ?

...One Man’s Crusade

The courthouse in Dayton Tennessee. Here in 1925 John T Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution alongside creation. He was fined one hundred dollars.

Seventy years later Dayton is home to a Christian university named after the Prosecutor in that case. William Bryan College is a privately funded, teaching and research school.

Dr Kurt Wise: “I believe according to again scriptural claims that the earth is young, and the universe is young, I would suggest that it’s less than ten thousand years in age.”

Kurt Wise has a degree in palaeontology from Harvard University. He is one of a small group of academics who believe science supports a literal interpretation of the bible.

Dr Kurt Wise: “We have plenty of physical evidence in the geologic column that there was a catastrophe or many catastrophes as some people would like to say. We would argue one large catastrophe in earth history. The rocks of the world are full of evidence of catastrophism, which is a claim of Scripture”

To Plimer, such interpretations of geological data are scientific blasphemy.

Creation Scientists claim there is evidence of a global flood four and a half thousand years ago. The rapid movement of the floodwaters deposited a sedimentary layer, burying the creatures we find today as fossils.

In his book “Telling Lies for God’ Ian Plimer argues that these claims are untenable.

Prof. Ian Plimer: “There is no evidence really for a great flood. We have sequences of rocks with fossils in them having undergone numerous changes of uplift, weathering, erosion, removal, and new periods of fossilisation and new periods of sediments laid in top. So the evidence doesn’t support the idea of a great flood for any of the sedimentary rocks or for any of the fossils within those sedimentary rocks”

Prof. Ian Plimer:Almost anywhere you go in the bush you can show that the flood model doesn’t hold water. This material here was once mud silt and sand, so if we believe the creationists, that would have formed in a year long great flood. But there is a problem, that granite. That granite has got sparkly mica in it, and this sort of granite could only have formed at about 12 kms. deep down in the earth. The minerals tell us that. We can copy that in the laboratory. so if this great flood was 4000 years ago for us to see this we would have had to have removed 12km of material by erosion in the last 4000 years. The story of the great flood is just too bad to be true.”

In Australia the creationist message is getting through. And it’s not purely a matter of religious faith. Science is invoked as proof of creation and it’s even called upon to disprove evolution.

Keith Piper: “So this morning we’d like to look at 15 scientific facts that clearly refute the evolution theory as a gigantic fraud on mankind.

If the earth is 5 billion years old, where is all the meteorite dust on earth, it should be piled up at least a hundred feet high all over the globe

And also the moon is receding from earth 2 inches a year. And if you backtrack that, 2 billion years ago the moon would have been touching the earth.

They’ve also found human and dinosaur footprints in the same rock strata, in places like Turkmenia, in Nicaragua.

If the earth was 4 billion years old as evolution requires, there would be so much helium we’d all be talking like chipmunks”

Congregation: “I believe in creation because I believe in the bible, I believe God created the heavens and the earth and he created man.”

“I’ve listened to all the arguments for evolution, and they were presented by people who had influence over my life. But when I came to read the bible and to read other explanations they were more compelling and more powerful.” “We see these wonderful drawings of half monkey, half man coming from one little bone or one little tooth or a jawbone or a skull. And they are not established from the evidence, they are just from the imagination of the artist.”

Keith Piper: “If Creation’s right, evolution can’t be right and vice versa. Having seen the scientific and archaeological evidence for creation I realise that creation fits the facts but evolution doesn’t and I am convinced that evolution is not scientific and that they are mutually exclusive.”

The mutually exclusive view is not shared by mainstream churches in this country. In fact they fear it’s consequences.

Archbishop Hollingworth"The Creation Science view tends to be a kind of closed view of the world. That is God spoke, it’s recorded in the Scriptures, that’s it. It doesn’t leave much room, perhaps any room , for debate, discussion, dialogue.”

“It conveys the impression to children, whose minds are very malleable and flexible a false view of what the bible is and what the Christian faith is. And if that’s all they hear about Christian belief you could hardly be surprised that many are likely to reject it as being incredulous.”

“Young people in school today, many still think that there is some inherent conflict between religion and science. There isn’t and there can’t be.”

This is the evangelical front-line of the Creation Science movement in Australia. Peter Sparrow, formerly a High School science teacher and his wife Cathy take their Creation Bus around the country spreading the word.

They appear at churches and schools, giving lectures and showing films with titles like:

“The Genesis Solution” and The Evolution Fallacy

In Kadina in South Australia, they were denied access to the local schools but spoke at the Assemblies of God Church. The topic was “The Scientific Case for Creation” Unfortunately, the Sparrows declined to speak to us or allow us to film their presentation.

The Creation Bus is run by the Creation Science Foundation, from this Brisbane industrial estate.

They too refused to participate except under conditions unacceptable to this program. Their head, Dr Carl Wieland insisted on several minutes of uncut statements in this program, as well as a guarantee of the final word.

The foundation distributes books, magazines and videos, some by qualified scientists, supporting their Creationist beliefs .

Plimer claims that some of those scientists contradict their own findings.

Prof. Ian Plimer: “I’ve had to read their scientific writings, and it’s very clear that the leaders of the creationist movement on the one hand are writing in the scientific literature that the planet is billions of years old, and on the other hand writing that the planet is thousands of years old for their lay audience. Now I argue that that’s scientific fraud.”

Prof. Archer: “When you first come to university, I mean everybody understands you’re coming to university to be stimulated to learn new things. And the most important instruction you get is open your mind to new ideas, back off the old prejudices and preconceptions. And let it all run in. And knock, knock, knock on their door as soon as they set foot in the university are door knocking creationists.”

In 1986 Prof Mike Archer surveyed first year biology students at the University of New South Wales. 15% of them accepted Creation as fact.

Prof. Archer: “So in a way I was kind of reassured but the Creationists were telling me ‘don’t worry about the 15%, we’re going to get that percentage up, we’re going to get everyone here into Creationism in Australia. So I thought well the only way to check this is to monitor, do this every single year, same group of students and see what happens”

Over the years the number of believers has stayed fairly stable. However Archer believes that 15 % is still too high.

Prof. Archer: “I think it’s a terrible mistake to think that this is one of those things in which you should have everybody having a go. After all in science classes we don’t encourage people to come in and teach our students about fork bending, we don’t encourage flat earthers to come in and tell our students that the earth is as flat as a pancake like we used to believe hundreds of years ago. Creation Science is one of these sorts of things, it’s a kind of a fringe lunacy that cannot qualify now as science.”

Science treats the age of the earth like any other question.

The available evidence is assessed and a theory proposed that fits that evidence. Then it’s tested.

If more or better evidence is unearthed, theories are changed and retested.

The current, and almost universally accepted, theory has the continents moving very slowly about the globe on massive plates.

Prof. Ian Plimer: “If we look at a major mountain range like the Himalayas, we can see that the Himalayas are where we’re having rocks that have been folded when India collided with Asia and we are getting folding, we’re bending rocks, we’re bending a massive thickness of rock. Now this doesn’t happen overnight. To bend 15 km thickness of rocks is going to take tens of millions of years.”

Dr. Kurt Wise: “We have recently introduced a theory that I nickname ‘catastrotectonics’. It is officially called catastrophic plate tectonics. It’s very similar to conventional plate tectonics which moves continents at centimetres per year, but in this case the continents are moving at metres per second. “

“In that model we have continents moving as fast or faster than you can run and colliding with the momentum that two continents would have, thus erecting the mountain fold belts like the Himalayas and the Appellations and so on and so forth.”

But the scientific method does not rely on any single proof. To check the findings of one discipline , it employs another, in the case of the age of the earth... chemistry.

Prof. Ian Plimer: “When we are dating rocks we look at methods which are interdisciplinary methods, methods which are not dependant upon each other. The first method is relative time, and that is basically the sequence of events. And the second method is absolute time, and this is where we can look at radioactive decay.”

“With radioactivity we can actually measure various time periods on planet earth. And we could use something like this little hour glass. What we see is sand dropping down here at a constant rate, and we can measure how quickly that sand is dropping down. We can measure the amount of sand at the top and the amount of sand at the bottom, and then we know how long I’ve been holding this little egg timer.

“Now that’s what we do with radioactivity, we can measure the amount of Uranium here. We know how quickly Uranium breaks down into lead. We can measure the amount of lead there and back calculate how long that process has been going. Now just to check we haven’t got it wrong, instead of using uranium breaking down at a fixed rate into lead, we could maybe use rubidium changing into strontium, or neodymium changing into Sumerian. So these are dating techniques that used tried and proven physics... the physics that we use in everyday life.”

“ When we look at all the isotope systems, we can calculate the age of our planet, the age of the moon , and the age of the solar system. And the figure we get is four thousand five hundred and fifty million years plus or minus forty. This is why we know the age of the earth is very very old”

Dr. Kurt Wise: “There are some suggestions at this early date that there might be another solution to the radiometric dating method / problem. At this point though, we don’t have a better answer for the radiometric dating that is given by the old age folks, by those who believe that it suggests the universe is old.”

In 1992 Ian Plimer found an opportunity to publicly attack the claims of creation science.

Dr. Allen Roberts: “Here we have it seems a real boat. It is in the right place to be Noah’s Ark, it is about the right size to be Noah’s Ark.”

Dr. Allen Roberts, a minister and historian, made a public lecture tour, speaking about a site in Eastern turkey.

Dr. Allen Roberts:“ If it’s not Noah’s Ark, then what is it?”

Prof. Ian Plimer: “It is a normal hill There are lots of hills like it It is a normal geological structure called a syncline.”

When Ian Plimer questioned Roberts Geological knowledge he was removed from the meeting.

Prof. Ian Plimer: “I found that this was really quite an insult to my science and I found that this was quite an insult for what I stand for in the education system. As one who is committed to education I thought well no I have to stand up and be counted.”

“I’d seen previous people who had worked on this problem as writing articles and writing books, and that had no effect. I thought it was much better to come out and make it public and to really stand up to the one thing that I saw in every creationist writing and every creationist argument and that was misleading and deceptive conduct.”

Half a world away in San Diego another Ark Hunter was to give Plimer a chance to expose that misleading and deceptive conduct. Dave Fasold had been to the same site as Roberts, and believed he had found the Ark. His book “the Ark of Noah “detailed his research.

David Fasold: “ I first heard of Allan Roberts when he left a message on my answering machine. He said, my name is Allan Roberts, and / I’d like to talk to you

By that time I’d probably spent over 200 thousand dollars on it, and to me it was beginning to get like a hole in the ground that you throw money into. So I really didn’t care if I ever talked to him again.”

However, Roberts used Fasolds work in his own lectures, and that was the crucial link for Plimer.

David Fasold: “Plimer then got back in touch with me and said that he had read my book and seen that these people had pinched my work and what was I going to do about it.”

Plimer and Fasold agreed to meet at the sight in Turkey.

Fasold was still trying to prove it’s authenticity. He had previously taken samples from the area that were identified at the time as man made iron.

David Fasold: “I really believed I had found Noah’s Ark because I was surrounded by people who wanted to find Noah’s Ark. It had all the right dimensions it was in the right location and I had people telling me that the evidence we were finding was good evidence.”

But as the digging continued, the evidence began to mount against the ark. Fasold could not find the iron he had previously identified. And worse still, a revaluation of his original samples showed that they were not after all, man made.

Fasold no longer believed in the Ark and the former Ark Hunter and the Geologist now became allies.

He had discovered that a diagram published by Roberts bore striking similarities to one in his own book.

To strengthen his own case Fasold made a joint claim with Plimer, who was accusing Roberts of misleading and deceptive claims. Plimer was now using his case against Roberts to question the integrity of creation science as a whole.

David Fasold: “Well, I don’t think that anyone should have to do a court case like this on their own. I think that you bring it out into the public, after all Roberts lectures were public lectures, and he paid for advertising in newspapers to bring this to everyone’s attention. So we are bringing the real story to the public.”

Early in 1997 Dave Fasold, and Ian Plimer met in the mountains outside Sydney. With their legal team, they made final preparations for the case.

Maya Plimer was also at the end of a long and difficult road to the trial. She had been a driving force behind Ian.

Maya Plimer: “We have been living this case for 5 years now. We have sold one house, we are living in a tiny cottage. I don’t care about the money, but my wish is that every parent in Australia would become aware of what Creation Science is about.”

After such a long preparation, the trial lasted only seven days. Although the media called it another Scopes trial, the judge was careful to confine the court to the much narrower legal issues.

Justice Sackville: “ The applicants case insofar in that it is based on the Trade Practices and the trading Act fails. Mr Fasold succeeds in his claim for infringement of copyright against Dr Roberts, but he is awarded damages of only 2,500 dollars. “

Justice Sackville found that Roberts had made some false and misleading representations. However, as they were not made in trade or commerce, Plimers case failed.

Fasold won his copyright claim. Roberts was ordered to pay him damages, but he still claimed a moral victory.

Dr. Allen Roberts:“ I’m delighted particularly because the judgement that was handed down by his honour has in fact preserved the free speech of anyone that has something important to say publicly.”

Although his side of the case failed, Plimer still took some satisfaction from the judges statements.

Prof. Ian Plimer: “We were able to show legally that this work was misleading and deceptive, and I have argued for decades that the one golden thread that unites creationists is misleading and deceptive conduct......”

If Plimer felt defeated he did not show it. Since the trial he has lodged an appeal, hoping that the court will this time find that Roberts was acting in trade and commerce. For him the fight goes on...

Prof. Ian Plimer:“I feel very strongly about what Creation Scientists are doing to Science because they completely denigrate the value of inquiring, the value of not knowing, the value of exploring the unknown the value of being a critical thinker.”

“There was another arena in which this was being discussed, and that was in the public, and I’m very very happy that it actually opened the issue to the public. There were numerous letters to the editor, there were numerous editorials, articles. And this is really what I wanted to do, I wanted to do in many ways. I wanted to expose creationism for what it is, and it’s bad religion, bad science and bad business.”

G.

You have got to be joking, Im not reading all of that !

"Biochemical systems are exceedingly complex, so much so that the chance
of their being formed through random shufflings of simple organic
molecules is exceedingly minute, to a point indeed where it is
insensibly different from zero"
- Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, p.3




I'd return that degree ghost and demand a refund, doesn't look like they taught you much about science. Tell me whats wrong with this statement? You are using it to suggest that evolution can't happen/. That is a misrepresentation, or as i prefer to call it a lie. hmmmmm

I'll give you a clue, evolution is not caused by random shufflings of simple organic molecules.

Anyway explain to me again why god doesn't need a creator but the universe does. Sounds like special pleading to me.

/rant The thing that really annoys me is thats people like ghost don't care for the truth, they will lie and bend facts to fit their preconcieved ideas, and then claim the moral high ground! It wouldn't be so bad if they could follow their own bloody rules. Jesus /rant

You have got to be joking, Im not reading all of that !

LOL, LOL. What ya expect? Did ya see ghost's first post?. I had to retort with the same ferocity, and you can't explain the "great flood fraud" in a paragraph or two. ;)

G.

silas

The main argument agains evolution is the fossil record. All theory must line up with the evidence. The evidence found in the fossil record shows that fish did not evolve into amphibians, and amphibians didn't become reptiles, neither did reptiles become mammals or birds. In the fossils there are millions of missing links. If that did happen as evolution is trying to say, then those links would be in the fossils. They are not. Natural selection is true, but it is only observed to go as far as creating a subspecies or new breed of the same species. It does not create a totally different type of animal. [example: The white moths by have a mutated brown moth that is more hidden to birds. The birds eat less of them, so the brown moth takes over. So the species has changed from white to brown. Yes, but it is just another breed of moth. It don't change to a butterfly or bee. A great dane and a basset hound are very different, but they are both still just dogs.] Natural selection has only been observed to go that far. Quite right, natural selection has only been observed to go that far. Dawkins says something like "It's taken 10,000 years or so to evolve all the different species of dogs from wolves. There are many different species of dog and they all "evolved" in just 10,000 years. 'But they are still dogs', say the Creationists. This is true, but fails to take into account the immense lengths of time involved. If it's one step from where we are now back to the first dogs, then to go back to the common ancestor of dogs, cats and humans you'd have to walk from here to Johannesburg." In other words evolutionary theory, backed up quite firmly by the gappy fossil record shows that speciation does take place, as long as you allow long enough for it to happen. No evolutionist would expect, as the Creationists seem to, the white moth to evolve into a butterfly over the period of a mere century and a half. When looked at over the period of time, the term "species" becomes somewhat misleading.

Say it's 10,000,000 years in the future, and there are species of beetle and species of wasps. They are traced back, and traced back, and traced back until finally we find an ancestral moth of each type, one white and one brown. Is the brown moth, which evolved into wasps a wasp? Is the white one a beetle? There is no real "one day this moth gave birth to wasps", it simply doesn't happen that way.

It won't account for a fish becoming an amphibian or a reptile becoming a mammal as evolution is trying to say. [So dormant genes get activated and a species adapts to its surroundings; that is as far as it goes.] It will not account for the origin of the different species. God creating them differently, matches what is found in the fossils better than evolution does. Where are the supposed missing links???? There are many MISSING links.There are missing links, but there is quite sufficient data amongst individual species to indicate that they are genetically related to each other. The rational thing is to believe there must actually be familial relationships between them. God creating different creatures matches every piece of evidence going, including millions of year old fossils on a 6,000 year old earth - because God can match every theory you'd care to make up. But as I pointed out before, science's job is to find the naturalistic explanations.

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: 1859
the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed [must] truly be enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory [of evolution].
Darwin here is doing what every good scientist should do, finding and highlighting possible objections to his theory and then going on to meet them as best he can.
W. I. Bird, The Origin of Species Revisited, 1954, p. 48.: The reason for abrupt appearances and gaps can no longer be attributed to the imperfection of the fossil record as it was by Darwin when paleontology was a young science.Wendell R. Bird appears to be "God's Attorney" (http://www.birdlawfirm.com/bird.html), who has fought the Creationist corner in court and is a contributor to the Institute of Creation Research (subtitle: "A Christ Focused Creation Ministry"). Here (http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-173.htm) he details a great deal of scholarly work which is primarily anti-Darwinian. But he doesn't appear to have noticed that not one of his citations would revert to the God hypothesis, neither would any of them deny the facts of palaeontology and geology and claim a Young Earth. (Incidentally, I think you got the date of the book wrong, 1954 is probably when Bird was born).
Dr. Niles Eldredge, paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, "Missing, Believed Nonexistent", Manchester Guardian, 26 November 1978:?
"The search for 'missing links' between various living creatures, like humans and apes, is probably fruitless?because they probably never existed as distinct transitional types...But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures?If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory." And does Eldredge go on to claim that God must have created all the species? Precisely the opposite: in fact alongside his co-worker the late Stephen J. Gould, Eldredge was in fact in the process of providing an explanation for the gaps in the fossil record that in no way removed one iota from the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. This was the theory of punctuated equilibria which denied that evolution proceeds at a steady state, but explained fast transitions between species by the fact that the evolution of the new species took place at a faster rate than fossilisation can catch except by a small chance, and the kind of places suitable for fossil digging are not in fact the best places to see the actual evolution of a new species. This is fully explained in The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins.
Dr. Collin Patterson, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in Britain, when asked why he hadn't included any illustrations of transitional forms in his book, Evolution, he replied in a letter: "I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them?I will lay it on the line?there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument."
Once again, a reputable scientist behaving in the most rigorous, scientific way. He didn't put transitional forms in his book because there is no evidence for them - unlike more regrettable episodes in which unsubstantiated illustrations have indeed found their way into scientific texts. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and Eldredge and Gould advanced a very good explanation for the absence of transitional forms.

In the fossils there are millions of missing links. If that did happen as evolution is trying to say, then those links would be in the fossils. They are not.
Not every animal gets fossilized.
There are environments antagonistic to fossil formation.
When evolution occurs more rapidly, it is statistically less likely for those "transitional" forms to get fossilized, since they exist for relatively shorter periods of time.

There are also many so called missing link fossils that have been found. Dinosaurs with feathers, fish with fingers, etc...

The difference between changing a species slightly, and turning into another species is just a matter of degree. Radically different body forms, as has been pointed out already, take a longer time to manifest.

It is not relevent to look at the complexity of the final body form, the number of amino acids, etc. All species are formed by differing combinations of just 4 "letters" in the DNA.

But, something so astonishingly vast and complex could not possibly have occurred by chance –
It didn't. Chance only factors in to mutations. Natural selection weeds out the less fit, resulting over time in a creature well adapted to it's environment. It a kind of passive self-design.

Your astonishment is understandable but not sufficient proof that evolution does not occur.

cris
But, something so astonishingly vast and complex could not possibly have occurred by chance – therefore God must have been the result of an intelligent designer.

Exodus 3:13 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?
Exodus 3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

Well, how would you interpret that? Maybe - I exist that I exist
Is that the answer to your question?

prester john
Tell me whats wrong with this statement? You are using it to suggest that evolution can't happen/. That is a misrepresentation, or as i prefer to call it a lie. hmmmmm

I didn't say that evolution can't happen. I said that natural selection and evolution does happen, but it only goes so far as to produce a different breed, or sub-species of the same species. That is only as far as it has been observed. [example: Crickets get lost in caves. Dormant genes are activated and generations later the crickets are white with no eyes. They have adapted to their environment.] This is true. But they are still just another breed of cricket. They never change into a grasshopper, or a roach. Evolution has only been observed to go that far and no further. To try to use that process to say that fish became amphibians, and reptiles became mammals, is error. To try to use that process to explain the origin of the different species is error. There are many thousands of missing links in the fossils. There are no intermediate stages found in the fossils to show reptiles becoming mammals or amphibians becoming reptiles. Evolution for the origin of the different species is false.

silas
But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,...

Go and tell that to the ufo skeptics and see how far that will go with them.

prester john
Tell me whats wrong with this statement? You are using it to suggest that evolution can't happen/. That is a misrepresentation, or as i prefer to call it a lie. hmmmmm

I didn't say that evolution can't happen. I said that natural selection and evolution does happen, but it only goes so far as to produce a different breed, or sub-species of the same species. That is only as far as it has been observed. [example: Crickets get lost in caves. Dormant genes are activated and generations later the crickets are white with no eyes. They have adapted to their environment.] This is true. But they are still just another breed of cricket. They never change into a grasshopper, or a roach. Evolution has only been observed to go that far and no further. To try to use that process to say that fish became amphibians, and reptiles became mammals, is error. To try to use that process to explain the origin of the different species is error. There are many thousands of missing links in the fossils. There are no intermediate stages found in the fossils to show reptiles becoming mammals or amphibians becoming reptiles. Evolution for the origin of the different species is false.

Firstly define breed, the go here

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

and tell me again about no observed speciation. I expect you to redefine your argument to exclude the examples in the link but, hey lets see.

It's kind of fascinating that some creationists will acknowledge microevolution, yet are unable to comprehend that an accumulation of micro changes over millions of years will result in macroevolution.

It's like saying the movement of tectonic plates explains earthquakes, but not continental drift, or the puzzle-like fit between the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa.

Part of the problem is that some scientists are eager to place a label on the fossils they find- like reptile or mammal or bird, but these distinctions would not make sense in a creature with attributes of more than one classification. In fact such fossils have been found- reptiles with feathers, fish with limbs and fingers, apes that walked upright with large brains, etc...

There are no intermediate stages found in the fossils to show reptiles becoming mammals or amphibians becoming reptiles.
Uh, reptiles never became mammals and amphibians never became reptiles, however they all had common ancestors at some point. It is disturbing that you don't even know the most basic aspects of the story of evolution. If you want to debate it, which is fine, you should at the very least be aware of how the theory goes.

Well, how would you interpret that? Maybe - I exist that I exist

I would interpret it to mean the same thing you interpret it to mean- "shut up, put your fingers in your ears and go la la la la la la la...".

If creationists point to our capacity for knowledge as that which distinguishes us from animals, and it was Satan who encouraged us to eat of the tree of knowledge, then should we be worshipping Satan? Maybe Satan is God, and God is Satan? God always seems to want the same old thing, while Satan encourages change.

water
The God of Israel is God. The Word of God is the King James version Bible. What God wants you to do is in the King James version New Testament.

Those are not "scientific reasons to believe in God". What you are trying to argue for is God by inference.

THAT is not arguing anything. I am simply preaching to you the truth.

1 Corinthians 1:21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
1 Corinthians 1:22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:
1 Corinthians 1:23 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;
1 Corinthians 1:24 But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
1 Corinthians 1:25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
1 Corinthians 1:26 For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, [are called]:
1 Corinthians 1:27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
1 Corinthians 1:28 And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, [yea], and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:
1 Corinthians 1:29 That no flesh should glory in his presence.

On the judgement day you will not be able to say that no one told you. I did.

This was your life! tract
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0001/0001_01.asp

spidergoat
It's kind of fascinating that some creationists will acknowledge microevolution, yet are unable to comprehend that an accumulation of micro changes over millions of years will result in macroevolution.

That macroevolution that you are referring to did not happen. The reason that it is known that it did not happen, is because of all of the missing links in the fossils as they are found. The intermediate stages between the different species would have been found in the fossils if such macroevolution did happen. Those intermediate stages are not found anywhere in the fossils, so that macroevolution did not happen.
The evidence as it is found shows evolution for the origin of the species to be false.

spidergoat
It's kind of fascinating that some creationists will acknowledge microevolution, yet are unable to comprehend that an accumulation of micro changes over millions of years will result in macroevolution.

That macroevolution that you are referring to did not happen. The reason that it is known that it did not happen, is because of all of the missing links in the fossils as they are found. The intermediate stages between the different species would have been found in the fossils if such macroevolution did happen. Those intermediate stages are not found anywhere in the fossils, so that macroevolution did not happen.
The evidence as it is found shows evolution for the origin of the species to be false.
Wrong, in fact. If a new species of fossil were discovered that was intermediate, that's a new species and then you'd be claiming that there were no intermediates between that one and its predecessor. As I explained Eldredge and Gould advanced a theory as to why we don't see evolution "in action" in the fossil evidence. But apart from anything else, the fossil record is always going to be very spotty because the chances are against any individual organism becoming fossilised. The absence of every individual change from one form to another does not, in fact, disprove evolution, which in any case is a known fact. I believe Darwinism or Natural Selection is the underlying root cause for evolved complexity, but it's possible there is some other reason it happens. That evolution occurred is not doubted by any reputable biologist, geologist, palaeontologist, geneticist or any other scientist for whom the facts of evolution impinge on how they do their work and increase the knowledge of the human race.

ghost7584: But, something so astonishingly vast and complex could not possibly have occurred by chance – therefore God must have been the result of an intelligent designer.
*************
M*W: Please provide proof of your statements.
*************
ghost7584: Exodus 3:13 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

Exodus 3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

Well, how would you interpret that? Maybe - I exist that I exist
Is that the answer to your question?
*************
M*W: Well, I interpret that as Moses was most likely a fictional character. The story goes that Moses was the leader of the Habiru in the desert (nomads, you know), and he was having a hard time controlling those nasty Habiru. So, he goes upon the mountain as people did in those days to talk to "god," and he comes down with some rules (that god wrote, yeah, right) to make those nasty Habiru behave. The "god" that Moses knew was the sun, Aten, Ra, Sol Invictus, etc. That's why they went upon the mountain, to get closer to "god."

Moses started the worship of one monotheistic god, but you should know by now that Moses's god was Aten, the sun.

Bottom line, there is no monotheistic god. There is no "sun" of God, and there is no "salvation." The only thing you have is the dying demigod sun followed by the resurrected sun every 12 hours.

ghost7584:
The God of Israel is God. The Word of God is the King James version Bible. What God wants you to do is in the King James version New Testament.

I am simply preaching to you the truth.

On the judgement day you will not be able to say that no one told you. I did.
*************
M*W: Man! Did you come to the wrong place! Preaching is NOT ALLOWED here! Get lost!

ghost7584: But, something so astonishingly vast and complex could not possibly have occurred by chance – therefore God must have been the result of an intelligent designer.
*************
M*W: Please provide proof of your statements.
*************
Silas: ghost's position is based upon his ignorance of thermodynamics, of chemistry, of molecular biology, of genetics and of the laws of probability. He can't provide proof of something which is simply predicated on stuff he doesn't know anything about.

*************
M*W: I figured as much!

I think the idea that our entire universe was created by a "creator" is very reasonable. It's unfortunate that this idea is usually only interpreted by religion. Religion is silly. But belief in a higher power is not.

i am wondering why you put creator in commas? in other words how do you define creaor? thi is how i see the different ideas about creation simply:

that A CREATOR, 'God' created it and us, and 'HE' is our creaTOR

Then you have the idea of evolution, whereby by sheer 'fluke' intelligent life happens

But i am interested about Intelligence being actualy IMMANENT. ie., that 'matter' Is active intelligence. are you with me? that there is no 'outside' 'creator', but that inherent IN manifest reality Is Intelligence. or better put, all you can see and not see Is Intelligence, which is natrually creative and prolific

spidergoat
It's kind of fascinating that some creationists will acknowledge microevolution, yet are unable to comprehend that an accumulation of micro changes over millions of years will result in macroevolution.

That macroevolution that you are referring to did not happen. The reason that it is known that it did not happen, is because of all of the missing links in the fossils as they are found. The intermediate stages between the different species would have been found in the fossils if such macroevolution did happen. Those intermediate stages are not found anywhere in the fossils, so that macroevolution did not happen.
The evidence as it is found shows evolution for the origin of the species to be false.
Creatures are undergoing constant change, that is what microevolution means. But, it is rare for any creature to get fossilized. So, there will always be gaps in the fossil record. But, there are enough fossils to show macroevolution. Early fossils and later fossils are distinctly different. If what you are saying is true, then there should be recognizable representatives of all modern creatures at all levels of the fossil record, and there aren't. There was a time (meaning the older layers) when there were no apes, no horses, no bats, etc... How do you explain that?

My second question would be what would stop microevolution before a species branches off from its ancestor? Look at the horse and zebra, they are different species, but recognizably similar in structure. Before a certain time, there were neither, but there was a small hoofed creature resembling both.

I think the idea that our entire universe was created by a "creator" is very reasonable. It's unfortunate that this idea is usually only interpreted by religion. Religion is silly. But belief in a higher power is not.
What if the entire universe IS the creator. More accurately, because it doesn't have foresight, the universe is a seed.

spidergoat: What if the entire universe IS the creator. More accurately, because it doesn't have foresight, the universe is a seed.
*************
M*W: What if the entire universe was created by humanity? What if? Just what if?

There is evidence of a universe before humanity.

Ghost,
It wouldn't even matter if there were no fossils whatsoever to support macroevolution, since there is ample molecular evidence in the DNA.

read this:
Study suggests whales may be related to hippos (http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/01/24/whale.hippos.reut/index.html)

I'm curious as to why ghost thinks quoting the bible at what would appear to be a predominantly athiest audience would have any effect. I might as well quote the Silmarillion as prove that middle earth exists.

i am wondering why you put creator in commas? in other words how do you define creator?

I put creator in commas to disassociate the idea of a creator from it's usual religious context. Religion does not have exclusive rights to the creator concept. It's possible that a team of advanced beings from a higher dimension created our universe. It's possible that an advanced species from a higher dimension designed a computer program capable of creating universe senerios and we are just part of one of those senerios. It's possible that we are alien/ape hybrids. It's possible that we were designed by an alien species far from being God-like. It's possible that our entire universe was created by an "allpowerful" and "allknowing" God who believes He is all that there is, but in fact he is only a test subject himself(perhaps because He was designed to believe exactly that). So many things are possible(including the idea that we were not created at all).

Religion is stupid. People have been believing stupid things for all of human history and continue believing and doing stupid things everyday(just watch the news). My point is that it is easy to see why religion still exists today and why it was ever believed in the first place(people are generally stupid). Religion is like a "wise" old man in a nursing home. He believes what he believes and there's no way to change his mind. His mind is set. Yet we are expected to respect him and trust him since he's so old. He couldn't possibly be wrong....or could he?

An extract from a wonderful talk / lecture given by the late great Douglas Adams:

Where does the idea of God come from? Well, I think we have a very skewed point of view on an awful lot of things, but let’s try and see where our point of view comes from. Imagine early man. Early man is, like everything else, an evolved creature and he finds himself in a world that he’s begun to take a little charge of; he’s begun to be a tool-maker, a changer of his environment with the tools that he’s made and he makes tools, when he does, in order to make changes in his environment. To give an example of the way man operates compared to other animals, consider speciation, which, as we know, tends to occur when a small group of animals gets separated from the rest of the herd by some geological upheaval, population pressure, food shortage or whatever and finds itself in a new environment with maybe something different going on. Take a very simple example; maybe a bunch of animals suddenly finds itself in a place where the weather is rather colder. We know that in a few generations those genes which favour a thicker coat will have come to the fore and we’ll come and we’ll find that the animals have now got thicker coats. Early man, who’s a tool maker, doesn’t have to do this: he can inhabit an extraordinarily wide range of habitats on earth, from tundra to the Gobi Desert—he even manages to live in New York for heaven’s sake—and the reason is that when he arrives in a new environment he doesn’t have to wait for several generations; if he arrives in a colder environment and sees an animal that has those genes which favour a thicker coat, he says “I’ll have it off him”. Tools have enabled us to think intentionally, to make things and to do things to create a world that fits us better. Now imagine an early man surveying his surroundings at the end of a happy day’s tool making. He looks around and he sees a world which pleases him mightily: behind him are mountains with caves in—mountains are great because you can go and hide in the caves and you are out of the rain and the bears can’t get you; in front of him there’s the forest—it’s got nuts and berries and delicious food; there's a stream going by, which is full of water—water’s delicious to drink, you can float your boats in it and do all sorts of stuff with it; here’s cousin Ug and he’s caught a mammoth—mammoth’s are great, you can eat them, you can wear their coats, you can use their bones to create weapons to catch other mammoths. I mean this is a great world, it’s fantastic. But our early man has a moment to reflect and he thinks to himself, ‘well, this is an interesting world that I find myself in’ and then he asks himself a very treacherous question, a question which is totally meaningless and fallacious, but only comes about because of the nature of the sort of person he is, the sort of person he has evolved into and the sort of person who has thrived because he thinks this particular way. Man the maker looks at his world and says ‘So who made this then?’ Who made this? — you can see why it’s a treacherous question. Early man thinks, ‘Well, because there’s only one sort of being I know about who makes things, whoever made all this must therefore be a much bigger, much more powerful and necessarily invisible, one of me and because I tend to be the strong one who does all the stuff, he’s probably male’. And so we have the idea of a god. Then, because when we make things we do it with the intention of doing something with them, early man asks himself , ‘If he made it, what did he make it for?’ Now the real trap springs, because early man is thinking, ‘This world fits me very well. Here are all these things that support me and feed me and look after me; yes, this world fits me nicely’ and he reaches the inescapable conclusion that whoever made it, made it for him.

For the full transcript: click here (http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/index.html)


Ghost, you quote from a book that undoubtedly has some historical benefit.
But where is the evidence?
You have postulated that God must exist through nothing more than incredulity that he doesn't (a logical fallacy that has been pointed out to you again and again). If only it was that easy - 'cos I can't believe I don't have $millions$ :D

"Scientific Reasons to believe in God:"

LOL.

"Superstition based reasons to believe in science:"

You're either kidding, stupid, dishonest or naive. Note that the probability of something happening in the past is 100%, so calculations regarding the remote chances of the development of life are moot. Perhaps it's indicative of lacking physics. Of course the first place despots arrive when failing to accept that certain knowledge is beyond our grasp is god. LOL. "God did it!"

Lamest. Answer. EVER.

whenever one proposes a 'designer' of the universe, we are back with the image of the male 'God' making 'his' universe as though from OUTSIDE
This is old-fashioned (ie., patriarchal)

read the CHAOS book, that's much more hip.
the CREATION is both transcendental AND immanent. think positive negative and earthed. Nature Is Intelligence


Not hip, eh? Well, I guess that is a good qualifier for rejecting the traditional idea of God. Damn! I'm not hip! I really need to catch up with the times. It sounds like to me that you are saying you don't believe in God because it is not hip. Very interesting way to determine what to believe.

There are two arguments I see:
1. Out of nothing came the universe (atheism/evolution) and
2. A Creator created the universe (creationism)

It seems to me that proving the universe came out of nothing is just as difficult to prove. Prove God does not exist.

Personally, I am in love with God. He has proven His existence and faithfulness to me. Everyday He shows me His blessings and no matter how silly it seems to others I will remain in love with my Creator.

Very interesting way to determine what to believe.

Hehe.. it's little different than "how about a 'one size fits all'" answer.

There are two arguments I see:
1. Out of nothing came the universe (atheism/evolution) and
2. A Creator created the universe (creationism)

Then you simply haven't been looking. Plus your second answer is fundamentally flawed. Who created the creator? Perhaps you've failed to consider the possibility that "perhaps the inception of the universe is the result of processes that cannot be concluded from evidence within the universe" - or something that effect. Oh wait, how about his one: "I don't know how the universe came to be, but if we investigate it long enough... we may figure it out". Oh wait: "Out of something came the universe, but I don't know what." Can't accept anything but a definitive answer eh? It's your perogative, however mislead. Seems to me there is no definitive answer, yet SO many folks spew their opinion as if IT is the one and only. It's ridiculous, but practical. It keeps them happy - which is IMO, one of the more important aspects of being so long as it's not at the expense of someone else's, well... unless they're a bastard. Hehe.

It seems to me that proving the universe came out of nothing is just as difficult to prove.

Obviously it came from something, and it wouldn't be interesting if it weren't difficult to prove.

Prove God does not exist.

You can't prove negatives. How about proving it does? What is proof?

Personally, I am in love with God. He has proven His existence and faithfulness to me. Everyday He shows me His blessings and no matter how silly it seems to others I will remain in love with my Creator.

Well, we adopt delusions all the time to get through the day. If that's the one that suits you, I wish you the best with it.

Sarkus

Ghost,

you quote from a book that undoubtedly has some historical benefit.
But where is the evidence?
You have postulated that God must exist through nothing more than incredulity that he doesn't (a logical fallacy that has been pointed out to you again and again). If only it was that easy - 'cos I can't believe I don't have $millions$

I was an agnostic physics major in college arguing against the existence of God in philosophy class, in the 1970s. But someone talked to me about God and I decided to use the scientific method of experimentation to determine if God exists. So I did an experiment to test for the existence of God. Part of the evidence I got, from my experiment, was the Lord Jesus Christ appearing to me and paraphrasing something from the New Testament, as it applied in my case. Based on the evidence from my experiment, I became a born again fundamentalist Christian and a bible believer, like Isaac Newton was.
I have the experiment I did and its outcome recorded in my files, if you want I could email it to you.

wesmorris
You're either kidding, stupid, dishonest or naive. Note that the probability of something happening in the past is 100%, so calculations regarding the remote chances of the development of life are moot. Perhaps it's indicative of lacking physics. Of course the first place despots arrive when failing to accept that certain knowledge is beyond our grasp is god. LOL. "God did it!"

There is only two possibilities:
The universe developed by random chance or
The universe was deliberately designed.

"Biochemical systems are exceedingly complex, so much so that the chance
of their being formed through random shufflings of simple organic
molecules is exceedingly minute, to a point indeed where it is
insensibly different from zero"
- Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, p.3

"No matter how large the environment one considers, lfe cannot have had
a random beginning. Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on
typewriters could not produce the works of Shakespeare, for the
practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough
to contain the necessary monkey hordes, the necessary typewriters, and
certainly the waste paper baskets required for the deposition of wrong
attempts. The same is true for living material"
Ibid., p.148

"The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the
chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is one one part in
(10^20)^2000 = 10^40000, an outrageously small probability that could
not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If
one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific
training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth [by
chance or natural processes], this simple calculation wipes the idea
entirely out of court"
Ibid., p.24

"Any theory with a probability of being correct that is larger than one
part in 10^40000 must be judged superior to random shuffling. The
theory that life was assembled by an intelligence has, we believe, a
probability vastly higher than one part in 10^40000 of being the correct
explaination of the many curious facts discussed in previous chapters.
Indeed, such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not
widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological
rather than scientific."
Ibid., p.130

Apparently you don't understand the probabilities involved, so I will repost part of it:










"Biochemical systems are exceedingly complex, so much so that the chance
of their being formed through random shufflings of simple organic
molecules is exceedingly minute, to a point indeed where it is
insensibly different from zero"
- Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, p.3

"No matter how large the environment one considers, lfe cannot have had
a random beginning. Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on
typewriters could not produce the works of Shakespeare, for the
practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough
to contain the necessary monkey hordes, the necessary typewriters, and
certainly the waste paper baskets required for the deposition of wrong
attempts. The same is true for living material"
Ibid., p.148

"The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the
chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is one one part in
(10^20)^2000 = 10^40000, an outrageously small probability that could
not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If
one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific
training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth [by
chance or natural processes], this simple calculation wipes the idea
entirely out of court"
Ibid., p.24

"Any theory with a probability of being correct that is larger than one
part in 10^40000 must be judged superior to random shuffling. The
theory that life was assembled by an intelligence has, we believe, a
probability vastly higher than one part in 10^40000 of being the correct
explaination of the many curious facts discussed in previous chapters.
Indeed, such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not
widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological
rather than scientific."
Ibid., p.130

Sorry if I sounded crass before, but I've plenty of education in statistics. Much more than most for certain.

Having thought about it so much for a few years, I came to understand its application quite well. It's a tool for prediction based on functions and assumptions. Note prediction. In this case, to calculate the probability of life forming in the universe... it must be presumed that the current accepted model of physics is complete and accurate. It must in fact presume we comprehend what gives cause to life in a manner we can capture in our probabilistic expression.

Regardless, one can draw a number of conclusions from the results of the calculations you offer. One way to interpret "damn near impossible" as a result, is "we got lucky". Another might be to consider the validity of your assumption that the model in use captured all the pertinent conditions/functions required to give us a result that's reflective of reality. Given the fact we exist, it seems apparent the model is missing something at best.

Further, that we exist shows clearly that the probability that we might is 100%. The experiment is not repeatable. So attempts to calculate probability are exactly irrelevant, even without consideration as to the validity of the model. It can't be done again, so the probability of it happening simply doesn't matter. When we do consider the validity of the model and look at the results of our calculations, we must re-examine the model. So basically, these calculations tell us we're wrong or that they're pointless to perform.

If there were a body of evidence in support of a 'unified theory of everything' and an army of rational scientists in agreement of its accuracy, the argument might bear more weight... but there isn't - yet.

Did you hear that the voyagers are off course? I think the model has a way to go and this calculation at this time is exactly moot.

Regardless, this is no proof of god, unless of course you already believe in god in which case of course it proves god because you already believe it.

In that case, you're in the sanctity of circular logic, sheilded from the sway of logical reasoning.

It seems to me that there is some sort of life forceish kind of thing that infuences the behavior of matter in the universe... whatever it is that makes the difference between random molecules and life. Science at this time can't really explain the difference. When and if they can, perhaps the model should be updated and the calculations performed again.

It seems to me the probability of life forming in the universe must be 100%. So our model should reproduce this result. Certainly the catch all "god did it" explains it away, but at the high price of accepting a useless model. "god did it" doesn't teach me anything but what I must have already presumed to reach that conclusion. What's the point? I'm here, I might as well try to learn something. I don't consider dogmatic recursion very educational.

There is only two possibilities:
The universe developed by random chance or
The universe was deliberately designed.This is a logical fallacy known as a false dilemma. There are more than two possibilities. For instance:

There might be many (or an infinite number of) Universes.
There might be an underlying, eternal, law or principle that explains the Universe.
The Universe might be an unintentional side-effect of some unknown.
The Universe might be eternal.
The Universe might be a finite pattern of order within an infinite realm of chaos.

All the Hoyle arguments boil down to straw-man fallacies. They are calculations of complex components arising by pure chance. This is invalid for several reasons: 1. The laws of chemistry do not allow for pure chance. Molecules form and interact according to certain rules and restrictions. 2. Abiogenesis and Evolution do not hypothesize that life or the complex components we find in life today arose spontaneously, wholly formed, but from a series of simpler components. 3. Evolution is not random. Once we allow for even the simplest and most basic form of "life" all subsequent increase of complexity is easily explained.

An analogy would be to physically examine a human being and deciding that it is impossible for a human to have built a car. A human body cannot melt, forge, or cut metal. A human body cannot distil gasoline from oil or make glass from sand. Therefore it is impossible that a human could make a car. What this conclusion overlooks, however, are the intermediary steps involved in making a car. A human body can make tools that make it possible to forge metal, make tires and glass. Similarly, Hoyle's argument neglects the intermediary steps that make it possible for the complex components of life to arise naturally.

~Raithere

Boy
"Well father it seems that we lack the intelligence required to convince people of our beliefs through logic." :confused:

Priest
"Then, my son, you shall go blindly and convince them by force and appeals to their emotional weaknesses and wishful thinking. It doesn't matter who, just blindly convince as many of them as you can." :rolleyes:


And by the way, the bible is no longer considered evidence of truth or facts. It was written by human beings thousands of years ago and has since been through a number of translations through different languages.
Not only is it false, and has been socially irrelevent for hundreds of years, but it is spiritually no longer necessary.

Even the most famous christians fail to abide by its word.
George W bush. Turn the other cheek? Have mercy / forgiveness?
don't think so.


This facts are party responsible for the inevitable demise of christianity in our world, which has already begun.
This makes christian believers very upset, but they are stubborn and unable to adapt, so they continue what they've always done, forcing their beliefs on others.

Here are some versus from the bible that demonstrate its ridiculously obsolete nature:

Book of Deuteronomy 21

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
21:19
Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
21:20
And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
21:21
And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.


Deuteronomy 22

10 " You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. 11 " You shall not wear a garment of different sorts, [such as] wool and linen mi