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

I did not say I supported it. I asked your opinions on it. Why are you lot always jumping down my throat. I'm not surprised you don't have anyone in here disscussing these things.

Adib

Do you support it?

IMO, it's full of the same sort of misunderstanding of evolution and the evidence for it as any other sort of creationism, even if it doesn't come to quite the same conclusion as the standard Christian Fundamentalist model.

I can do a refutation, if you have the time.

Noggin

If you want to. I have time.

Adib

correct me if i'm wrong, but isnt the gardener illustration used to disprove verificationism? the theory states that anything which cannot be verified with sense data is meaningless; you cannot verify the gardener, but neither can you say that the concept of such a gardener is meaningless. but congrats on being the first person to refer to any philosophy in what i think is a philosophical debate.
i'm not going to put forward my own point of view, because i dont really have one, and there are people who have devoted their lives to thinking this through, and they deserve to be recognised.
the best theory i think i have come across (although it will prob change if i ever make up my mind whether i believe in god-still confused at the mo) was put forward by Berry.
he is a christian, but doesnt believe in straight creationism. An interesting point he makes is that if you read the 6 days of creation as a hebrew poem, where views are expressed and then parallelled, instead of getting;
light, sky/sea, land/vegetation, sun, fish/birds, animals/humans,
you get

light, sky/sea, land/veg
sun, birds/fish, animals/humans
and the second line seems to mirror the first, just being expressed differently
Berry's view on evolution was that it was basically right, but there were 3 points where God had to intervene, to reach his desired end;
1) big bang. there is a debate currently running about this, but i dont know how to link to it. basically, whenever matter is created (however it was created) so is an equal amount of antimatter, and both are destroyed. however, in the big bang, there must have been more matter than antimatter, or we wouldnt be here. no-one has been able to explain how this happened
2) when life came out of nothing; i have yet to hear a satisfactory explanation as to how life first began. how can a living cell come from rock?
3) the first humans. Berry thinks that if we had evolved purely from apes, then we wouldnt have morals, consciousness, etc etc, so that God must have implanted a 'soul' at the time humans evolved.
I think it was Berry who also had the view that Adam and Eve werent the first two humans, but the type of humans around when they first evolved.
hope this helps-i'm not trying to offend anyone, just putting forward a theory that i think covers most angles.

Three mysteries:

1) The big bang. This is mysterious, and like all creation stories, both religious and secular asks more questions than it answers. There is evidence that it happened, but in the nature of things no real explanation as to why. From the scientific point of view the key thing is that the laws of physics start there. All subsequent explanation is in terms of those laws.

2)How can a living cell come from rock? It doesn't. Complex carbon based chemistry is required. It's still a difficult question without a definitive answer, in part because there is no remaining record. However life has not yet been found out doing anything incompatable with the laws of physics/chemistry.

3)Any highly social animal with the capacity to reflect on its own motivations and actions, and their consequences, cannot avoid developing an ethics. No additional input is required.

Noggin

To your question about life coming from rocks research the Urey miller experiment. It is a basic experiment thst simulates lightning in an atmosphere composed of the compounds founds in the earths atmosphere millions of years ago. This lightning produced nitogen oxides/ and carbon-oxides and nitrides and even amines anf amides (due to water in the atomosphere) These are the building blocks of amino acids, in turn the biulding blocks of DNA and hence life, it is easy to see given the earths warmer temperatures and the long time scale that these biulding blocks would have had the nessesary time to follow reaction paths leading to DNA.

Millers experiment was the perfect example that life could start in a perfectly controlled labertory. The head he applied was a constant heat that would aid the process and not the temperture of medieval earth, the chemicals he put in it where those needed to form thouse thoughts of bonds and more importantly he used chemicals that was not present in early earth and missed out some that where present like oxygen. The voltage of electricity he used was just the right amount according to science to aid this process and did not have the real voltages or flucuations of real lightning and he had to use a cold trap to keep the amino acids that formed from being distroyed the instant they wheree made. The Acids he made were completly useless as well and could not advance in to proteins. (am i getting this the wrong way round?) So yeah he proved in a perfectly controlled experiment with all the right chemicals you could make useless ones. But early earth was not stable, had the right chemicals or just the right levels of every thing needed.
(If I have got it the wrong way round at least you can't say I copied it from some where.)Anyway the point is all he had at the end of it was some unorganic molecules.

Adib

http://ghcaonline.com/_discussion/00000007.htm

http://www.icr.org/pubs/btg-b/btg-152b.htm

Look at this book:
J. P. Ferris, C. T. Chen, "Photochemistry of Methane, Nitrogen, and Water Mixture As a Model for the Atmosphere of the Primitive Earth", Journal of American Chemical Society, vol 97:11, 1975, p. 2964.

Adib

Some preliminary thoughts Adib.



What would the author accept as "unequivocal evidence"? And what does he mean by a specie "type"?



There are many facts about the present state of the earth that are the result of its history. The challenge is to link these together in the most economical way consistent with the laws of physics. This is what the theory of evolution set out to do. Where does the author think that it has failed?

The author writes as if the Fossil Record was now more or less complete. But this is is not so. It is, as one would expect, radically incomplete. The number of known fossil species is tiny compared to the number of species that one would have expected in the life of the earth, but fossilisation is generally a rare event.

Darwin's theory deals with unique events, but not with unique types of events.



This is just muddled. The program here is simply the laws of physics, and the information is internal to the program. What else is supposed to be needed?

<...classify cells as evolved. This is not true. 99% of cellular structures are identical. Darwinists have not shown to date how the cell with its irreducibly complex features could have evolved.>

Read Lynne Margulis on the evolution of eukaryote cells from prokaryote cells by symbiosis.

That's enough for now, as I have to w**k tomorrow.

The key question is the first one.

Noggin

I was hoping you could shed some light on it. Oh well guess not.

Adib

Arwen, I am a Christian, but I believe that God created *by means of* evolution and going back to the origin of the Universe, the Big bang. Why do *some* Christians have to be such literalists that they refuse to accept the evidence of their eyes? I know there's a possibility that what I am saying has been covered/refuted/agreed with before, as I've chosen not to read a *massive* backlog, - I don't have time! However, what I want to say, Arwen, is that what you have to say is most interesting. Can you give me more information about Berry? (Who/what/where etc) Thank you!

I don't have a problem with being a monkey's nephew. Has anybody posted the old saw (was it Huxley?):

"I'd rather be an evolved ape than a degenerate son of Adam."

we didnt study berry in any more depth than i wrote, as it was only a small part of an a-level course in philosophy, but i googled him, and this is what came up;
R. J. Berry, Creation and Evolution, edited by Derek Burke, Leicester, England, Inter-Varsity Press: 1985, p. 80).
i havent read the book myself, but thats the name, if you want to look it up. he was a scientist, writing fairly recently i think, so knew what he was talking about with regards to big bang and life coming out of nothing
there are quite a few websites that mention him; i'll give the addresses instead of just pasting what they say;
http://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/nbi/619.html
www.lawyernet.com/members/jimfesq/ wca/1996/26/deep.html
http://www.humonc.wisc.edu/clark/archives/EvCreationist2.htmlwww.infidels.org/library/modern/ jim_lippard/manrev.html
hope this helps

Noggin:

Go for it with the refutation. Don't forget to point out the outright lies (only one Creationist quoted - Behe and Denton are definitely both creationists, haven't checked all the others; that the number of differences between ape DNA and human DNA is greater than the number of electrons in the universe (erm - how is that even possible?); and that no physicist believes the sun goes round the Earth (Dawkins is drawing a parallel with the Flat Earthers)). Then you can move on to the author's failure to understand that 'directed evolution' still requires evolution, that punctuated evolution does not contradict Darwinism, his woeful belief that evo predicts 'pre-adaption', or that transitional species are in some way 'incomplete'.

Arwen:

I'd say there's certainly still room for God in 1) and 2). I think the gaps are pretty much plugged in 3) though.

Adib:

In case you didn't guess, I was pretty disappointed with the article too. It's (mostly) the same old stuff that I replied to in my first long post. Not trying to jump down your throat, though, just wondering whether this means that you didn't agree with something I wrote? Or just that you ignored it? Bird respiration is more interesting, I'll see what I can find on that.

On the subject of black holes, I think you are describing the deflection of light caused when a B.H. distorts space-time; it's not the same thing as an eclipse, and the B.H. is never visible (it is not precisely between the star and us, and even if it were it's too small). Black holes are a good way of explaining why there is a minute distorion in the light from some stars.

Gif

Well the program I watched it showed this one star over a long period of time (fast of course) and it was like a normal star then as the scientist said a black hole millions (or was it billions) of lighy years away from it passed in front of it and the light did this wierd distortion thing. Can't remember exactly. Anyway then after the black hole had passed by the light from the star returned to normal. ie if looked like a star again.

As for the web site I just wanted to know what you thought about it. As if there was any good points in there that I asked about I would be accussed of a few of you for copying. Why do you think I'm not really posting anything these days?

Adib

Just for interests sake: "Well the program I watched it showed this one star over a long period of time (fast of course) and it was like a normal star then as the scientist said a black hole millions (or was it billions) of lighy years away from it passed in front of it and the light did this wierd distortion thing. Can't remember exactly. Anyway then after the black hole had passed by the light from the star returned to normal. ie if looked like a star again." This effect is called gravatational lensing causing the star to appear as a ring of light around the black hole.

As to your web pages on the urey miller experiment, i notice they are both on creationists websites, they are also wrong on several rather matters. Firstly Left and right handed amino acids. a mixture of both is not fatal to life. Right handed amino acids are useless to life forms that use left handed amino acids and visa versa, the fact that both left and right handed amino acids formed merely means that 2 possible forms of life were made possible(life does not only use one, while most life uses left many bacteria and simply life forms use right handed amino acids).
Secondly free oxygen- I assume by this they mean ozone since only this readily damages organic compounds, it also only exists in the ozone layer(as even they say), to be fair some is formed in lightning but not very much and not enough to be an influencing factor. The second web page claims water readily breaks down into oxygen, yes if water vapour passes over a tranistion element at about 1000 degrees, unlikely to happen. Also the argument that oxidised rocks are proof of oxygen, rubbish, as any chemist knows oxidisation is more then capable of taking place without any free oxygen being involved(the fact they fail to realise this simple proves therse people don't even know really basic chemistry).
also the second one claims that ozone must haver been present to prevent harmful uv radiation destroying early life, one again not true for starters the earths early atmosphere would have been nearly imnpenertrable to solar radiation due to its thick cloud cover, also any uv radaition would have helped the process as much as hindered, uv radiation created free-radicals that are able to react further to create organic molecules.
Finally as to the conditions being wrong, yes the experiemnt was preformed under ideal labratory conditions however we are talking millions of years for these processes to form dynamic equilibrium and find the right conditions under which to happen. Yes there are lots of variables but over a long period it is easy to see how they would all become correct for the formation of amino acids.
These web-sites are using scientfic terms to confuse and are quite frankly wrong in terms of the chemistry involved.

Adib

Millers experiment has been carried out only a relatively small number of times and does indeed show that the conditions required for the necessary reactions to occur are quite specific. What the experiment doesn't explain is how that relates to reality.

The conditions on our primeval earth would have fluctuated wildly over a considerable range and over a very long time. In fact when you start to look at the actual conditions mathematically it becomes a near dead-cert that the conditions of Millers experiment would have occurred millions of times in millions of locations over millions of years.

Is it too much to ask that at least one of them got it right?

Yes maybe but how long would those conditions stay in a safe range that would not destroy the amino acids and give them time to form simple proteins. that is why Miller had to use a cold trap other wise they would have been distroyed an as for the inviroment he used Miller himself said that he did not use accurate conditions.

Stanley Miller, Molecular Evolution of Life: Current Status of the Prebiotic Synthesis of Small Molecules, 1986, p. 7.

Plus Richard Bliss says that with out the cold trap the chemicals produced would have been distroyed by the very thing that had created them. Its all very well saying you can produce some dead matter in a experiment and that it may have been formed in the early earth but how was they proteceted from the elements?

Richard B. Bliss & Gary E. Parker, Origin of Life, California: 1979, p. 14.

Adib

DW:

Free oxygen in this context does refer to the diatomic gas. Before plant life existed on Earth, there would have been a highly reducing atmosphere, because atmospheric O2 comes from plant respiration. Miller/Urey needed to use an oxidising atmosphere to get their experiments to work - if they used a reducing (N2-dominated) atmosphere, it didn't work.

Gif

No scientist worth anything would ever claim that science has all the questions, let alone all the answers. Science cannot explain a lot of phenomena. But so what. Fifty years ago science could also not explain a lot of other things, the difference is that yesterdays' unexplained phenomena is today's high technology.

The scientific approach is to identify the gaps and other areas where current theories do not fit the latest set of collated data and do more research to arrive at new or better theoretical models of reality.

The fundamentalist approach (and it seems to make little difference as to whether we prefix that with Christian or Muslim), is to jump up and say, "Aha! You don't have all the answers and this bit of theory doesn't quite work properly, therefore there is a God."

I'm sorry but there are two separate issues here.

Scientists should be (and hopefully are) big enough to realise that the constant research of the 20th century has increased the gaps between the scientific theories and data that we do have. Sure we have some more data and sure we have some newer and/or better theories, but the gaps aren't getting any smaller. Having this pointed out constantly is a little frustrating because it has a tendency to detract from the good stuff.

For example, quantum physics. The fundamentals of quantum physics completely underpin the principles of operation of the IC. Yet quantum physics is rather less well understood than the theory of evolution and (if I understand correctly the little that I've read) is an even greater threat to the "fundamentalist" concept of religion. It is not I hasten to add a proof that there is no god, but that if there were a god, then they are not the sort of agency promoted by fundamentalists.

So why don't the fundamentalists attack quantum physics? They have no ammunition.

Quantum theory is so totally outside of the descriptions of reality offered by any of their religious texts that it is totally ignored. Whereas evolutionary theory, which is fairly high profile in comparison, appears to run counter to many of the central tenets of fundamentalist beliefs.

Separately, it is faulty logic to go from the first part of the argument "You don't have all the answers and this bit of theory doesn't quite work properly" to the second part "therefore there is a God" without any proper basis and to attempt to argue this using the tools of science shows a very poor understanding of science.

Science is founded on the principles of philosophy, reason and logic.

To properly justify the role of a god in the process of evolution requires a lot more than pointing out the flaws in the scientific argument and then trotting out a religious text to fill in the gaps.

Concepts like "irriducible complexity" and the "anthropic principle" are rubbish, introduced by fundamentalist pseudo-scientists in an attempt to muddy the waters and claim some justification for their stance on there being a god.

"Irriducible complexity" is nonsense. Just because it is hard to understand how a structure like an eye can evolve doesn't mean it cannot.

No-one questions the complexity of the eye, it is enormously complex. But that doesn't mean it cannot evolve. Plants have a well documented reaction to sun light and will trace the passage of the sun across the sky. This is just the first step on the road to developing a highly complex structure like an eye.

The problem with this concept is that it starts at the end and says, "look how complex this is," and then tests your credulity by saying, "surely it cannot have evolved, can it?" Try looking at it the otherway around. A structure that complex certainly doesn't just "appear", it evolves from simpler structures ....

The "anthropic principle" would have you believe that we live in an environment that is perfectly suited to mankind. What tosh.

Mankind has evolved to become a highly adaptable species. There is not an area on the surface of the planet that we cannot reach. We can do this because we have the ability to think, to make and use tools and because we are incredibly flexible. These are survival traits.

We don't rely on our own skin for warmth, we use the skins of the nearest animals. We don't rely on eating nuts and berries. We can eat nuts and berries if we have to, but it is a lot more efficient to catch them after something else has eaten them.

There is virtually nowhere we cannot survive, from the heat of the desert to the cold of the arctic, from the heights of the Himalayas to the lowlands of the Netherlands.

The "anthropic principle" would however have you believe that we live in not just an environment but an entire universe that is perfectly suited for us. Fundamentalists claim that if the universal constants were slightly different we would not exist. And in large part, it's a claim that can't be refuted.

But the bit that the fundamentalists skip over is that the conditions that would result needn't necessarily be inimicable to other forms of life. (Other forms of life who would then no doubt go on to argue their own equivalent of the "anthropic principle.")

Neither of these concepts "prooves" anything. Especially not the existence of a god.

I've had enough of reading the same arguments, based around the same faulty logic and with the same references to the same small bunch of mavericks that have been adopted by fundamentalists of every stripe.

I am still open to a sensible argument, but please let it be based on a scientific rationale.