h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>Let's use our imagination and get beamed back in time where no life existed. No cells, no humans, no gods. No life. I don't know how it looked like then - void? suns? plantes? Probably not very inviting.<<
I'd love to be there, see a world fresh from the protoplanitery disk, still hot and cooling, with a young sun burning in the inky void, freshly made from the remenants of a suopernova.

No, that's taking God to be a living organism rather then someting beyond our comprehension of life.

And why is the point before life existed the time before God existied. God was present at and before the Big Bang, infact he is void of time, exists outside it.

When the first amino acid was hit by a nutrino and some DNA was formed then this was the begining of life, probably some sort of ameobea. Primus has a creator but that happened to be a neurtino, possibly caused by God, or just an amazing stoke of luck.

Don't get God confused with the first life. Were not decended from God, but are made in his immage (wheat ever that is like). And made in the sence of moulded through time.

I'm so very sad that you don't want to follow my trail of logic.

I'm sorry, try to lead me in simple easy to manage steps. I get ?:-| easily

If someone says "A created B" he establishes a chain of cause leading to the question: "who created A?". Maybe "X created A" could be an answer. Or "nobody created A" is an answer, implying "A has no creator" leading to the question: "then why coudn't it be that B has no creator?".

Do you follow me?

Yeah I see where your going with that.

So you go for the universe created itself. Of just came into existance. Yes?

Do you feal that there is any reason for it? Or any point in living*?

*I mean living and obeying any set of rules.

The point in living is to make the best of it.

Why?

If it is just to produce decendents then why bother with a social system. Surly everything should fall to pieces.

I feal that we have a special spomething that gives us the choice to choose between write and wrong.

Many creatures have social systems of one complexity or another. Fish, for example, swim in schools. Social systems arise naturally in both nature and in humanity. And?

That is a very good point, however that act is purly a "don't want to get eaten" thing. Not a "if I steel I may get jailed". Everyting naturally has a defence/staying alive and breeding instinct. (it was my wording, sorry). My thought is that why bother about human laws when there is no point to them if we all just die at somepoint anyway.

Animals kill others and arn't put to death or locked up by the others. Surly if there is no God to have laws to follow why doesn't everyone just live in essence like animals.

There is something different. A great divide between us. Something that makes us separate. What is that then?

(I'm sorry if I repeat stuff that's already been said, but we only get threescore and ten on this Earth and I can't be bothered to read all the other postings. Feel free to ignore me completely.)

Social systems have evolutionary advantages. If you catch some horrible disease or do yourself serious damage, where do you go?

On a more general note, the point about evolution is that it doesn't require some huge 'quantum leap' at any stage. You start off with a load of molecules just bouncing around. One molecule that is a tiny bit more stable or whatever forms. And then it mutates into something a tiny bit better again. And so on...

There's a lot of steps to get to you or me, but three and a half billion years is a long time.

In an infinite universe, it isn't necessarily true that everything that can happen, does. I'm afraid this will take a little maths, but basically it's because there are different sizes of infinity:

Say you have a universe with infinitely many suns in it, each with a planet and a person on the planet flipping a coin. The person flips the coin for ever and writes down the sequence of heads and tails they get. Each person will get one of the possible sequences (eg HTHTHTHT.... or HHTTHTTTHTHHH...) but between them they will not get them all.

This is a fact. The number of people flipping coins is 'countably' infinite (which means exactly what it says - you can count them, eg by picking a point to be the centre of the universe and calling the person whose sun is closest #1 and so on. It would take for ever but you would count all the suns.). But the number of sequences of heads and tails is 'uncountably' infinite, which is a bigger infinity. I can explain to you why if anyone would like me to, it's not hard.

Lucinda:

>>Many creatures have social systems of one complexity or another. Fish, for example, swim in schools. Social systems arise naturally in both nature and in humanity. And?<<

Fish form social systems out of instinct brought on by necessity. Humans have something more. If you love someone, is that just biological preference or something more? I believe that love is a commitment of the will to the true good of another person. Taking an evolutionary stance on everything denies will, denies good and to some extent denies personhood. If evolution is true and the sum of what we are, love as I know it cannot exist.

Yeliab:

>>Animals kill others and arn't put to death or locked up by the others.<<

Sometimes they are, but animals do not have a system of justice. For example, even though revenge is not directly related to justice, to animals revenge is limited to what helps them survive.

Swiss:

>>On a more general note, the point about evolution is that it doesn't require some huge 'quantum leap' at any stage. You start off with a load of molecules just bouncing around. One molecule that is a tiny bit more stable or whatever forms. And then it mutates into
something a tiny bit better again. And so on...<<

To me that is just nonsense. No one has ever told me HOW. You can keep saying that small changes build up and make large changes, but if you don't take it to the biochemical level that is essentially meaningless. Biochemically speaking, any small change in any reaction will do one of three things. It will destroy that reaction, make it totally useless or not affect it at all. No small change will improve it. You have to totally overhall the entire process at once to change what something does at that level.

Naturally, nosretep, you neglect to recall that we already know how the nice little DNA polymers work, biochemically. It's fairly easy to reverse engineer a system such as that; actually, it's simplistic. Kind of like computer code, and we all know that God didn't create that on the third or fourth day... Or did he do that, too?

As I believe:
God is the creator, as the Bible says he is.

Evolution was the method he used to creat us. The Bible here gives the highlights of what happened so it gets to the bit with Jesus.

Science explanes how it all happened, through evolution from amino acids to algea to .... to primates to humans. When he go the Humans as he wanted them he breathed into them and gave us an aweareness of him and allows us to have a relationship with him. We then promptly said "Oh yeah right God, like were going to follow you." and so we didn't. Then God did the best thing he could to, he sent his son to die for us. And the rest is in the Bible.

So that's the crux of the argument. The Jesus bit. But if you think about it (refering to Christians here) God also created science, he allows us to have science so that we can satisfy our curiosity. And God allows us to investigate the early history of the universe and find that is started 15 Bn years ago. We find fossils to show what early earth was like, and I could go on (allready have - Nick)

But I would like to hear a creationists explanation for fossils. Like how/why they got there. That interests me. Science isn't evil, it's a tool, just as a fork is.

Thanks, Yeliab. I can respect that opinion.

-jb

jbliqemp:

You didn't understand what I meant.

>>we already know how the nice little DNA polymers work, biochemically.<<

Let's say you change one part of the DNA to change a certain chemical reaction sequence. This would be considered one of the smallest evolutionary steps, correct? The problem is that if you do change the chemical reaction sequence of say vision by altering just one step, everything falls apart. There is no way that the complicated multistep process of vision could have arisen in stages. It must have originated all at once.

Yeliab:

>>Evolution was the method he used to creat us.<<

How do you arive at that conclusion? I believe that the creation as accounted in the Bible is what God used to create us. I believe this because of faith. Even if you have what scientists would consider "solid" facts, you still somewhere use faith to come to your conclusion. I would rather believe in God than man.

>>Science explanes how it all happened<<

Science provides a logical physical progression of disjointed steps. I will not call this an explanation. By the way, you do not believe in natural selection - the driving force of evolution - so you do not really accept science's explanation of "how," you accept science's explanation of "what."

>>But I would like to hear a creationists explanation for fossils. Like how/why they got
there.<<

I believe that most fossils originated at the time of the flood. Almost all animals that die do not leave a fossil behind. There has to be extraordinary conditions for it. A worldwide flood provides that.

By the way, scientists now say that there might have been a flood on Mars. Why not on Earth. Scientists also now say that there was at least two global extinctions to account for the fossil record. The philosophy of uniformitarianism is looking worse all the time.

Problem is, nosretep, if you change one set of DNA sequence in a biological entity, it doesn't necessarily do anything. Even if you change whole strand, it might have no affect on the entity.

DNA coding only operate using four variables, with complementary variables on the opposite side. Change one in a strand of millions of variables, and maybe nothing happens. Or, maybe the thing dies. Or maybe it grows some mildly light sensitive tissue somewhere near it's thyroid. Who knows?

The fact is, DNA doesn't make my eyes blue. The proteins DNA codes to be sythesized, and the chemical processes they allow for do. Change DNA, and you might change protiens. Change protiens, and you might change chemical processes. Change the chemical processes, and maybe, just maybe... you have a legitimate genetic mutation, for better or worse. Slap it together in 10,000 years, like you think, and we might be up to the stage of lesser mitochondria.. not even cellular. Do it over a few billion years, complete with adverse conditions, multiple mass extinction events, and it could happen. Missing bits and pieces of the puzzle after all that? Good, because I really don't think your version is quite complete either.

What on Earth would cause a flood like that?

-jb

Interesting points, and I now understand your grounds too.

>>I believe that the creation as accounted in the Bible is what God used to create us.<<
Doen't really give much clue about how he did it. In fact he skims over it in less than a page. If God had wanted to explain exactly how then he would have, but that's not the point. He did it, and personally, logicaly, and with a knowledge of God, the beauty of the world (e.g. a leaf or tiny flower and insect relationship) indicates an involved creator. One concerned with beauty and subtelty, not just big crashes and lumps of earth. That's a very OT view of God, large crashes and it was done. Not so much in the NT, where God shows his passion for us by Jesus.


>>I believe that most fossils originated at the time of the flood. Almost all animals that die do not leave a fossil behind. There has to be extraordinary conditions for it. A worldwide flood provides that.<<

there isn't enough water to flood the earth. If it was truly global God would need to break the rules of physics that he created. I this is to account for the fossils then for one thing fossils just don't form that quickly (within last 6000 years) (and I've heard thet they can be made in labs - yadder yader)
Also if there is a flood then all the fossils would be in one rock layer entirly and would have every species of fossil found alive at one time. Er no.

Also what about continental drift, that can be calculated and tracked back. Land masses fit together. Magnetic stripes in the sea floor match each other. Have you never been to a naturalk history museum?! The amount of common sense that is used to show these scientific theories is astounding.

Mars: no global flood just large seas, like here now.
Two extinctions: large commet/meteorite - dinos say bye bye.
: super volcano - ginetic pool nearly eradicated
: ice ages - mass loss of vegitation.
Your point is? Are these ment to disprove the fossils that i hold in my hand?

>>uniformitarianism<< - long word, don't understand, please explain.

Please counter
*draws fencing sword*

As I remember, there is (pretty good) evidence that the Black Sea used to be a landlocked lake with its surface well below sea level, until a few thousand years ago when the Mediterranean Sea broke through the Bosphorus and flooded it. This moved the shoreline a long way, thus flooding rather spectacularly all the people living on the shoreline.

This was, as you can imagine, such a seriously memorable event that people, well, remembered it, and attributed it to whichever god they were into at the time. One of those gods was the one in the OT.

This flood, while definitely not small, was not in the least bit global, and therefore cannot account for all the fossils it supposedly made.

Any anyway, how can a flood account for marine fossils? Surely they'd have just gone "Wahey! More real estate!" (OK so they could have died when the flood receded but then how come we find fossils of things that are now extinct? Surely their stay-at-home cousins would have survived?)

*Draws sword and stands shoulder to shoulder with Yeliab*

>>Any anyway, how can a flood account for marine fossils? Surely they'd have just gone "Wahey! More real estate!"<<

Oh fabulous. Roling on the floor! :D

jbliqemp:

>>Problem is, nosretep, if you change one set of DNA sequence in a biological entity, it doesn't necessarily do anything. Even if you change whole strand, it might have no affect on the entity.<<

There is very little that we understand about DNA now even though we have mapped it. I believe that everything does something, we just might not know what it does.

>>Change protiens, and you might change chemical processes.<<

If you change the proteins that are used in the chemical processes, then you will change the processes.

>>Change the chemical processes, and maybe, just maybe... you have a legitimate genetic mutation, for better or worse.<<

Do you have any examples of a biochemical process that could be changed to do something else in just one step? You need to do some major changes to a biochemical process to change its function.

>>What on Earth would cause a flood like that?<<

There are several theories, but it is not known. Dr. Baumgardner (I can't remember how to spell his name so that is probably wrong) who has developed computer models of the mantle believes that all of the oceanic crust could subside into the mantle rapidly. This would temporarily raise ocean depths. I must admit that I don't really understand how this could happen.

Yeliab:

>>Doen't really give much clue about how he did it.<<

He did it by using His infinite power. It is true that He only gives a what, not a how.

>>If God had wanted to explain exactly how then he would have, but that's not the point.<<

I dispute evolution is because it runs counter to the what (accepting the days as approximate 24 hour periods) and because I believe it is not scientific..

>>there isn't enough water to flood the earth.<<

How do scientists believe mountains came into existance? Some come from coastal-coastal convergence. I believe that there was once a large supercontinent. I further believe that the earth was a lot less mountainous back then. The flood waters shoved the land around underneith and mountains formed.

>>I this is to account for the fossils then for one thing fossils just don't form that quickly (within last 6000 years) (and I've heard
thet they can be made in labs - yadder yader)<<

I don't know what "yadder yader" means, but if fossils can be made in labs then they can be made in the last 6000 years.

>>Also if there is a flood then all the fossils would be in one rock layer entirly and would have every species of fossil found alive at one time. Er no.<<

Not if the flood formed the rock layers. Most rock is sedimentary. Sedimentary rock must be formed underwater. This is why you hear about a lot of shallow marshes millions of years ago. The flood allows water to cover land with enough pressure to form rock around dead animals. Other models use local floods to explain how animals could be inside of rock without decaying.

>>The amount of common sense that is used to show these scientific theories is astounding.<<

I agree.

>>Mars: no global flood just large seas, like here now.<<

Not according to what I've read.

>>>>uniformitarianism<< - long word, don't understand, please explain.<<

Uniformitarianism is the main principle of geology. It says that use can use the present to explain the past because processes tend to stay the same. This principle came about to counter the catastrophy model which included things like the flood. The problem is that things like the asteroid collisions were added to explain what scientists found. This shows that things were not always as they are now.

I am now out of time. I will try to respond to the rest later.