Evolution's case evolves
By Ann Gibbons,
ANN GIBBONS is the author of "The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors," and a contributing correspondent for Science.
IT'S BEEN A TOUGH month for creationists. On April 6, evolutionary biologists announced the discovery of a fossil of Tiktaalik roseae, a giant fish whose fins were evolving into limbs when it died 375 million years ago. This scaly creature of the sea was in transition to becoming a land animal, the discoverers wrote in Nature.
A day later, molecular biologists reported in Science that they had traced the origin of a key stress hormone, found in humans and all vertebrates, back 450 million years to a primitive gene that arose before animals emerged from oceans onto land.
Both teams of scientists stressed that their findings contradicted creationists - and demonstrated how small, incremental steps over millions of years could indeed produce complex life, ranging from the intricate mechanisms of a hormone molecule to the assembly of limbs from fins.
But even as they were touting their results as yet another validation of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, biochemist Michael Behe, a leading advocate of "intelligent design," dismissed the hormone discovery as "piddling."
As if in response to Behe's challenge, paleoanthropologists raised the stakes last week with yet another example of evolution unfolding in our own lineage. In the journal Nature, a team of researchers from UC Berkeley and Ethiopia found an "intermediate" member of the human family that they say unambiguously fills the gap in the fossil record between two early types of human ancestors. Australopithecus anamensis was a creature the size of an orangutan that walked upright in the Rift Valley of eastern Africa about 4 million years ago, more than 2 million years after the human lineage split from the ancestor we share with chimpanzees
The team found the species in a mile-deep stack of sediment in northeastern Ethiopia, which has become the Comstock Lode of human evolution. Across 11 separate layers, researchers unearthed several types of early human ancestors, with the anamensis bones sandwiched between layers containing two other species - Australopithecus afarensis, the species whose most famous member was the diminutive skeleton Lucy that lived 3.2 million years ago; and the 4.4-million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus. (They also found the oldest known member of our species, Homo sapiens, in a layer dating back 155,000 years.) When researchers compared the teeth and bones of these various human ancestors, they saw a clear path from primitive to modern.
But lest you assume that the transition inevitably yields "intelligent" design, just think about the more problematic aspects of our own anatomy: How about arthritic backs and knees? Or the size of the birth canal in modern humans. Lucy's species had an easier time 3.2 million years ago delivering babies who would grow up to have brains the size of a large orange, compared with modern mothers whose infants grow brains four times larger. We did evolve wider pelvises, but these also mean that more force is put on the sides of our knees, which any soccer player can tell you is not optimal design.
The point is that all these changes evolved over time in response to specific environments. The competing demands of an expanding brain and upright walking, for example, had to be balanced and accommodated in a basic body plan that persisted for millions of years in apes that spent most of their time hanging out in trees.
From what they have seen so far, the discoverers of these fossils think that the evolution from Ardipithecus to A. anamensis was a rapid affair. It took only 200,000 years, if they are right, for natural selection to refit one early hominid body into a new model. In the realm of deep time, that may seem like a blink of the eye. But in human terms, that would allow for at least 13,000 generations - enough time for genetic mutations to change the shape and size of teeth, and for individuals to learn how to use them. More of their offspring would survive as a result, and the trait would become fixed in later populations.
Although there are still gaps in the fossil record, many dots have already been connected on the branches of the human family tree, connecting Lucy to our own genus Homo, to our Neanderthal cousins and maybe even to a dwarf-like species that lived on an Indonesian island just 18,000 years ago. Together these species of human ancestors reveal different ways to become a human. You can see evolution's work in the fins of the ancient Tiktaalik or the stress hormones of the venerable lamprey fish. You can also look in the mirror.
ANN GIBBONS is the author of "The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors," and a contributing correspondent for Science.
IT'S BEEN A TOUGH month for creationists. On April 6, evolutionary biologists announced the discovery of a fossil of Tiktaalik roseae, a giant fish whose fins were evolving into limbs when it died 375 million years ago. This scaly creature of the sea was in transition to becoming a land animal, the discoverers wrote in Nature.
A day later, molecular biologists reported in Science that they had traced the origin of a key stress hormone, found in humans and all vertebrates, back 450 million years to a primitive gene that arose before animals emerged from oceans onto land.
Both teams of scientists stressed that their findings contradicted creationists - and demonstrated how small, incremental steps over millions of years could indeed produce complex life, ranging from the intricate mechanisms of a hormone molecule to the assembly of limbs from fins.
But even as they were touting their results as yet another validation of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, biochemist Michael Behe, a leading advocate of "intelligent design," dismissed the hormone discovery as "piddling."
As if in response to Behe's challenge, paleoanthropologists raised the stakes last week with yet another example of evolution unfolding in our own lineage. In the journal Nature, a team of researchers from UC Berkeley and Ethiopia found an "intermediate" member of the human family that they say unambiguously fills the gap in the fossil record between two early types of human ancestors. Australopithecus anamensis was a creature the size of an orangutan that walked upright in the Rift Valley of eastern Africa about 4 million years ago, more than 2 million years after the human lineage split from the ancestor we share with chimpanzees
The team found the species in a mile-deep stack of sediment in northeastern Ethiopia, which has become the Comstock Lode of human evolution. Across 11 separate layers, researchers unearthed several types of early human ancestors, with the anamensis bones sandwiched between layers containing two other species - Australopithecus afarensis, the species whose most famous member was the diminutive skeleton Lucy that lived 3.2 million years ago; and the 4.4-million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus. (They also found the oldest known member of our species, Homo sapiens, in a layer dating back 155,000 years.) When researchers compared the teeth and bones of these various human ancestors, they saw a clear path from primitive to modern.
But lest you assume that the transition inevitably yields "intelligent" design, just think about the more problematic aspects of our own anatomy: How about arthritic backs and knees? Or the size of the birth canal in modern humans. Lucy's species had an easier time 3.2 million years ago delivering babies who would grow up to have brains the size of a large orange, compared with modern mothers whose infants grow brains four times larger. We did evolve wider pelvises, but these also mean that more force is put on the sides of our knees, which any soccer player can tell you is not optimal design.
The point is that all these changes evolved over time in response to specific environments. The competing demands of an expanding brain and upright walking, for example, had to be balanced and accommodated in a basic body plan that persisted for millions of years in apes that spent most of their time hanging out in trees.
From what they have seen so far, the discoverers of these fossils think that the evolution from Ardipithecus to A. anamensis was a rapid affair. It took only 200,000 years, if they are right, for natural selection to refit one early hominid body into a new model. In the realm of deep time, that may seem like a blink of the eye. But in human terms, that would allow for at least 13,000 generations - enough time for genetic mutations to change the shape and size of teeth, and for individuals to learn how to use them. More of their offspring would survive as a result, and the trait would become fixed in later populations.
Although there are still gaps in the fossil record, many dots have already been connected on the branches of the human family tree, connecting Lucy to our own genus Homo, to our Neanderthal cousins and maybe even to a dwarf-like species that lived on an Indonesian island just 18,000 years ago. Together these species of human ancestors reveal different ways to become a human. You can see evolution's work in the fins of the ancient Tiktaalik or the stress hormones of the venerable lamprey fish. You can also look in the mirror.
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Of coarse evolution is a hoax and a pack of lies. I know almost all
college professors teach it every day, they teach alot of things.
Lookup any evolution v creation debate video on google and watch
evolution collapse, it collapsed back in the 80's.
It's all part of the secular humanist agenda
http://contenderministries.org/humanism/humanschool.php
The only question left is.....Does the earth spin?
I'm here to tell you the earth neither spins nor revolves around the
sun. That is how big the lie is. Geocentrism set the groundwork for
evolution (an old idea taken from the kabbalah) during the
reformation of the church. Obviously the moon revolves around the
earth and we all say the "sun came up, the sun set".
www.reformation.org/stationary-earth.html
www.fixedearth.com0 -
God cares about intent, rather than precision.
I asked Him, and He told me.
D.0 -
The UN wants a rotating earth to disprove the Bible!!
www.reformation.org/united-nations.html0 -
quote:Originally posted by HAIRY
HEY!
I thought you g*d fearing folks believed in The Bible.
Now you are bringing up all sorts of bibles and all sorts of translations. Exactly which is THE REAL TRANSLATION AND THE ONLY TRUE BIBLE? After all, your fate depends on using only the correct one; a counterfeit will getcha to h*ll.
LOL [}:)][}:)]
I find it funny that you are so intimadated by God that you cant even type his name.
And you are also wrong in your above statement. Not being saved is what will send you to hell.0 -
Some of the responses are better than the one that my Baptist minister gave me years ago when I asked about dinosaurs and such.
"Those bones were put here by Satan"
But, not by much.0 -
quote:Originally posted by RevolutionJim
Of coarse evolution is a hoax and a pack of lies. I know almost all
college professors teach it every day, they teach alot of things.
Lookup any evolution v creation debate video on google and watch
evolution collapse, it collapsed back in the 80's.
It's all part of the secular humanist agenda
http://contenderministries.org/humanism/humanschool.php
The only question left is.....Does the earth spin?
I'm here to tell you the earth neither spins nor revolves around the
sun. That is how big the lie is. Geocentrism set the groundwork for
evolution (an old idea taken from the kabbalah) during the
reformation of the church. Obviously the moon revolves around the
earth and we all say the "sun came up, the sun set".
www.reformation.org/stationary-earth.html
www.fixedearth.com
Thanks for the post of those links. That's the funniest thing I've read in a long, long time! What a bunch of F'n retards! I forwarded it to a bunch of people that are going to get a great laugh too!0 -
RevolutionJim:
quote:Originally posted by RevolutionJim
The UN wants a rotating earth to disprove the Bible!!
www.reformation.org/united-nations.html
Welcome back, its been awhile.
SSDD, but still entertaining.[:)]0 -
Thanks for the laugh Jim, you are a funny guy! [:p] 0 -
quote:Originally posted by HAIRY
quote:Originally posted by gagirl
I find it funny that you are so intimadated by God that you cant even type his name.
And I find it funny that you don't understand the Jewish Orthodox respect for The Name.
In honor of my Grandmother, I'll respect her beliefs, even though I don't believe in them. [}:)][}:)]
And saved by who? By your belief in Paulism or in what?
Your scripture says (and I paraphrase) he will bring his Kingdom into being "before some of you living today have passed away." He didn't; he's a fraud. Next.0 -
quote:Originally posted by Doug Wilson
God cares about intent, rather than precision.
I asked Him, and He told me.
D.
LMAO.0 -
quote:he will bring his Kingdom into being "before some of you living today have passed away."
Hairy ! you know quite well that doesnt mean what it says. It means something else but was only said that way. Ever hear of a CIRCLE??0 -
Well I say kudos to all who are trying to disabuse people of their misconceptions regarding science, the theory of evolution, etc. I've lost faith in the utility of these discussions, but for what it's worth here's my $0.02.
True faith is unassailable. And that holds whether you believe that the earth is roughly 6000 years old, that the 47 (is it 47?) books of the Bible are the received wisdom of God, transcribed by the faithful, or whether you believe that the received wisdom of God also includes the Apocrypha and that the early Catholic Church strayed from God's word when they failed to canonize those several books. It's also unassailable if you believe that the angel Moroni (sp?) gave Joseph Smith the golden tablets on which were written the Book of Mormon, but then took them away again, but then also gave him special goggles that would allow him to dictate the Book of Mormon to a scribe by peering with the goggles into his hat (I think that's how it went). And it's just as true if, like me, you believe that the earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old, that life on earth arose as an accidental chemical reaction that relied on a particular mix of chemicals and (probably) some energy from lightning to touch the reaction off.
Somebody on this thread, attacking the theory of the big bang, pointed out that all of the universe was supposed to have come from a speck no larger than the period at the end of this sentence. That, in fact, would be generous. It is all supposed to have come from a speck with NO size. We who believe that the big bang is responsible for the universe take that on faith, because at the penultimate moment of BANG, our models require that we divide something by zero--the size of the speck that produced our universe. Consequently, there are some very small fractions of a second immediately following the big bang about which we can know nothing. Another consequence of the way the physics of the big bang is formulated is that we absolutely can not know anything that happened before it. For this reason, the Catholic Church has finally decided that the big bang theory is not heresy. It is at least consistent with the notion of a 'beginning of time.'
The scientific method and scientific explanations make more sense to me than any other form of faith. But I don't pretend to operate without faith.
Because I recognize that faith is part of my scientific world view, I have to agree with Stephen Gould when he defines a fact as a hypothesis for which there is sufficient evidence that to with-hold acceptance would be perverse. This means that FACTS, as defined by Gould, CAN CHANGE.
An explanatory hypothesis that has vast supporting data is elevated to the status of being a theory. Theories are stronger than facts because they have vast experimental and observational support. Hypotheses are plausible, facts have data to support them, and theories have lots of data from multiple experiments to support them.
The 'theory' of gravitation is JUST A THEORY. I defy anybody to suggest that an apple, when dropped, will travel upwards. The 'theory' of a heliocentric solar system is JUST A THEORY. Maybe we've missed something and the sun really does orbit the earth? Germ theory is just a theory. So perhaps it's a waste of time to wash your hands after going to the bathroom, or to wash the cutting board after dicing chicken breasts? On the other hand, the Gaia Hypothesis (that the earth system is properly interpreted as a mega-organism) is at best a hypothesis, and many scientists would argue that it's not a valid hypothesis because it is not testable, even in principle. All of the other theories mentioned in this paragraph (and the big bang theory, too) are, in principle, testable, which is what sets them apart from God as an explanation. God, by definition, is not a testable hypothesis.0 -
spurgemastur: Good points. Thanks. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by HAIRY
spurgemastur: Good points. Thanks.
I'm glad somebody appreciates it, but I think I'm preaching to the choir.0 -
quote:Originally posted by buschmaster
...it flies in the face of everything I want to believe, so I'll put a label on it... unimmportant... trifling... piddling.
if it would be any more, then it might be legitimate. and a threat to what I believe.
Ok. If that's what you need to do. But it doesn't make you right.0 -
quote:Originally posted by buschmaster
quote:Originally posted by Msut77
How old do you think the earth is?4-1/2 billion years. I was being sarcastic.
earlier, I thought I came up with quite a brilliant idea when arguing that the earth, along with the rest of "the universe", was older than 6000 years (that was the argument)- because if it was no older, then given the speed of light, every star you see could not be more than 6000 light years away, which can't be true. apparently other ppl had the same idea. here's a good web page on the age of the earth, using about the same logic.
http://www.geocities.com/questioningpage/Evolve1.html
It's a great idea, until you realize that if God created everything, He also could have put those photons in place 6000 years ago, just so that it would look to you like the earth was more than 6000 years old. (No, I have no idea why He would want to do such a thing, but if He wanted to, He could).
I've said it before and I'll say it again: God is not a testable hypothesis.
And if God is true, then he COULD put those effing photons in place so that it appeared that they were billions of years old.
You cannot argue with an argument for God.0 -
quote:Originally posted by Classic095
And Having "FAITH" is admitting that what you believe has no viable facts to support it..
Or else it represents the axiom from which any logical argument must begin.
There is no logical system that does not rely on an axiom, and an axiom is taken to be true without proof.
How is that not faith?0 -
quote:Originally posted by spurgemastur
quote:Originally posted by buschmaster
...it flies in the face of everything I want to believe, so I'll put a label on it... unimmportant... trifling... piddling.
if it would be any more, then it might be legitimate. and a threat to what I believe.
Ok. If that's what you need to do. But it doesn't make you right.
I was being sarcastic, repeating some of what the guy said that Hairy c&p'd to start off the topic.
I'm not sure which side of the argument you're taking on your last reply -pro or con- but no, I was saying that the earth&universe was not created by any god, and that was an explanation. for the universe to "appear" with light already in transit from stars farther than 6000 light years away would be unlikely, unless, as you say, you're arguing with the unarguable God. (it happened just because). I'm not a creationista.0 -
quote:Originally posted by alledan
I don't worry anymore about evolution. I have to many worries for tomorrow!
Besides if man evolved from apes and monkeys then why are there still apes and monkeys... and yeah we already know about the liberal democrats!
Humans, apes, liverworts, mosses, orchids and bacteria are all equally 'evolved.' All also share a common ancestor in the very distant past. Among the groups that I have listed, bacteria share the most distant common ancestor with everything else. Liverworts, mosses, and orchids share a more recent common ancestor with one another than they do with any of the other groups I've listed. Humans and apes share a common ancestor with one another more recently than they do with any of the other groups I've listed. In the end, humans are derived (evolutionarily) from ape-like creatures, and apes are derived (evolutionionarily) from ape-like creatures. Humans and modern apes are simply branches on an evolutionary tree, and the point at which our branches meet just looks a little more like an ape than like a human--but it is the common ancestor that binds us to the apes.0 -
Here is a question for believers of evolution.
WHERE DID EVERYTHING COME FROM? Before us, before dinosaurs, before our galaxy, before atoms. Science has an answer for everything, right?
You can tell me about a fish growing limbs or "Primate genes" in our DNA, that proves nothing but maybe a master plan to weed out all non believers from true followers in Christ that are easily swayed by scientific "fact". Just speculating.0 -
quote:Originally posted by Huntingnerd33
Personally, I have done a lot of reasearch in this area, I did a research paper on this recently. There are two kinds of evolution. Micro-evolution and macro-evolution. Evolutionists have taken micro-evolution, which is simply animals adapting to their environment, and put all of evolution into that category. Macro-evolution, which is species changing into a different species, is false.
As far as the age of the earth, it is impossible that the earth is however many billions or millions of years old. The dating of these fossils is very inaccurate. Anyone could take a fossil in and have one scientist age it, take it to 5 others and you would get 6 different ages. I would venture to say that the ages of the fossil would vary anywhere between 500,000 years and 500 million years.
One example that the earth can't be millions of years old is that Niagra Falls, at the current rate of erosion, would be all the way into the middle of the country. Another is that the Mississippi River delta would be so full of sediment that the entire Gulf of Mexico would be full. Evolution is as much of a religion as creation and the Bible. There is no proof either way which one is right or wrong. But even so, it takes just as much faith to believe in MACRO-evolution as creation.
Just a thought, when was the last time that anyone has seen one species evolve into another? Or even in the process of evolving?
First, scientists do not prove anything. We merely disprove the null hypothesis, and accept the next simplest explanation.
Second, we have, as you state, observed micro-evolution. Macro-evolution takes longer than the scientific procedure has been around, so it is not at all surprising that we have not observed 'one species evolving into another.' On the other hand, we have observed many of the mechanisms by which such a transformation could occur. We can see birds (western and eastern meadowlarks) that are biologically compatible, but which do not interbreed simply because their songs are different. Give them enough time and they very likely will become biologically incapable of interbreeding.
So although your contention that "there is NO proof that species have changed from one into another" is strictly true (because the scientific method does not allow us to PROVE anything), we have many lines of evidence to suggest that a single species can give rise to two new species (i.e. two populations that no longer interbreed, such as the eastern and western meadowlarks.)
You're right in that the carbon dating procedure is not as precise as our calendar years And it is not even calibrated properly to our calendar years. But your contention that the margin of error is 1000-fold is ridiculous. I've seen carbon-dates that were weird to within a couple thousand years, but they made sense within a 10,000 year frame, and you're suggesting that they don't make sense to within a 450,000,000 year time frame. I call bull. And if you call otherwise, please produce the reference.
Frankly, your argument sounds to me like a whole lot of hogwash that you can perpetrate simply because nobody has the time to check your 'facts.' If you can produce ONE peer-reviewed paper that supports your contention that carbon dates can be accurate only to within 450,000,000 years, I'll make a full apology, and I will investigate your claims with an aim to validating them. Maybe you can produce some other peer-reviewed paper that will have the same effect on me. If you come up with some peer-reviewed paper that sufficiently surprises me, I will investigate your claims with an aim to validating them.
But I think you're full of it, and I doubt I'll ever make an apology to you. I say that knowing that if you can produce ANY peer-reviewed article that is relevant to the discussion here and that sufficiently supports your contentions, I will be wrong in this statement.0 -
quote:Originally posted by biglou250
Here is a question for believers of evolution.
WHERE DID EVERYTHING COME FROM? Before us, before dinosaurs, before our galaxy, before atoms. Science has an answer for everything, right?
You can tell me about a fish growing limbs or "Primate genes" in our DNA, that proves nothing but maybe a master plan to weed out all non believers from true followers in Christ. Just speculating.
everything came from- as you requested, even before our galaxy came into existence- a singularity, made up of raw energy, which exploded into little blobs of energy, which when cooled, formed gas/dust clouds.
localized centers of gravity from the dust/gas pulled masses of dust/gas into formative galaxies, the centers of which (as you can still see today) spawn formative solar systems, which cool into a sun, planetary bodies and debris.
is that what you asked for?
like I said earlier, it's not necessary to have an explanation about where it all came from. here is a cut and paste from earlier, which I am repeating for your benefit.
quote:there doesn't have to be a theory of how the universe got started- the argument is whether the theory of creation is valid. which I find to be a misnomer, since creationists claim that they don't need facts to believe their theory. that makes it not a theory, but a belief and nothing more. if they want to elevate it to the status of theory, they need some facts to go along with it, which they don't have. yet at the same time, they'll pick at whatever inconsistencies they can find in the theory of evolution, to say that it's not a valid theory.
in other words, it's good enough for creationists to beleive their beleifs to call it a valid theory, but it's not good enough for evolutionists to simply beleive their theory, even though they at least have some facts to back up.
note that this parallels the disagreement between pro- and anti-gun people.
it should suffice to prove that the universe (and the earth along with it) was formed through phenomena described by astrophysics, and that the flora and fauna you see today were evolved through phenomena described by biology and the theory of evolution, to disprove the beliefs presented in the theory of creation. that is enough. there is no need to have a theory of where it all came from in the first place.
they say the earth is only a few thousand years old? we show it's much older.
they say that dinosaurs were put in rocks by demons to fool men? we show where they really came from.
they say that men did not evolve from anything? we show that they did.
they say that evolution does not occur? we show that it did and still does.0 -
quote:Originally posted by buschmaster
quote:Originally posted by spurgemastur
quote:Originally posted by buschmaster
...it flies in the face of everything I want to believe, so I'll put a label on it... unimmportant... trifling... piddling.
if it would be any more, then it might be legitimate. and a threat to what I believe.
Ok. If that's what you need to do. But it doesn't make you right.
I was being sarcastic, repeating some of what the guy said that Hairy c&p'd to start off the topic.
I'm not sure which side of the argument you're taking on your last reply -pro or con- but no, I was saying that the earth&universe was not created by any god, and that was an explanation. for the universe to "appear" with light already in transit from stars farther than 6000 light years away would be unlikely, unless, as you say, you're arguing with the unarguable God. (it happened just because). I'm not a creationista.
Well.....I'm on a bit of a mission here (which might be ill-advised), and I'm sorry to have offended you, because I DID misread your sarcasm. But if I'm a creationist (which I'm not), then I can't imagine anything other than an unarguable God. And I can't imagine it for the very reason that you suggested with respect to photons in transit.0 -
quote:Originally posted by biglou250
Here is a question for believers of evolution.
WHERE DID EVERYTHING COME FROM? Before us, before dinosaurs, before our galaxy, before atoms. Science has an answer for everything, right?
You can tell me about a fish growing limbs or "Primate genes" in our DNA, that proves nothing but maybe a master plan to weed out all non believers from true followers in Christ that are easily swayed by scientific "fact". Just speculating.
See my post on faith. http://forums.gunbroker.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=231263
I think all life came from the primordial slime, I think that the universe came from the big bang, and beyond that, I have no explanation. You have to go to the link above, and then to the link within that link to get my full answer.
But the short answer is, I just take it on faith that it was there, and I still think that the scientific method provides the best explanation for all that we observe in nature.0 -
quote:Originally posted by buschmaster Originally posted by biglou250
Here is a question for believers of evolution.
WHERE DID EVERYTHING COME FROM? Before us, before dinosaurs, before our galaxy, before atoms. Science has an answer for everything, right?
You can tell me about a fish growing limbs or "Primate genes" in our DNA, that proves nothing but maybe a master plan to weed out all non believers from true followers in Christ. Just speculating.
everything came from- as you requested, even before our galaxy came into existence- a singularity, made up of raw energy, which exploded into little blobs of energy, which when cooled, formed gas/dust clouds.
localized centers of gravity from the dust/gas pulled masses of dust/gas into formative galaxies, the centers of which (as you can still see today) spawn formative solar systems, which cool into a sun, planetary bodies and debris.
is that what you asked for?
___________________________________________________________
Then where did the singularity of raw energy come from?
To me there is more to it than BOOM! here we are. There has to be something behind it all, IMHO.0 -
quote:Originally posted by biglou250
Then where did the singularity of raw energy come from?I don't know. I don't think anybody else has a solid theory either, science falters at that point. I have my own theory of a phenomenon regarding how 'the singualrity' came into being, but it still doesn't explain how that phenomenon came into being.0 -
Science does not explain where the universe came from, it explains how it behaves.
Based on observations wholly within and of this universe, we can dedue the way the universe was, up until the point it came into existance.
Our science is derived from observations of the universe, and as such can only explain phenomenom that occurs within the universe.
Therefore before the creation of the universe, and the moment of creation, will not, and cannot be explained by science.
When we say science explains how the universe was created, we really mean science explains what the universe was like when it was first created, and gan give a rought outline of how things happened.
Even the catholic chuch recognizes that the theory of the big bang neccesitates a creation event.
The laws of physics do dictate that time had a beginning, if it didnt, then infitite time would have passed, and by the law of entropy the universe would be cold and lifeless.
Its okay in "my book", to beleive in a creator. But to beleive the universe is 6,000 years old and species evolving and branching and such, is ignorant.
Go ahead and beleive god made the "big bang", and that the properties of the sub atomic particles(which we cant explain why they have those properties, only that they have them) were determined by god as to allow matter to interact the way it does, ultimatlet leading to human kind.
Its taking things on faith, maybe its a flawed view and the truth is something different, but at least its a beleif in line with the obsevable truths.0 -
CA Sucks said, "...Based on observations wholly within and of this universe,...." which means that a deity, if such a thing exists, does not EXIST IN THIS WORLD. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by CA sucks
Science does not explain where the universe came from, it explains how it behaves.
Based on observations wholly within and of this universe, we can dedue the way the universe was, up until the point it came into existance.
Our science is derived from observations of the universe, and as such can only explain phenomenom that occurs within the universe.
Therefore before the creation of the universe, and the moment of creation, will not, and cannot be explained by science.
When we say science explains how the universe was created, we really mean science explains what the universe was like when it was first created, and gan give a rought outline of how things happened.
Even the catholic chuch recognizes that the theory of the big bang neccesitates a creation event.
The laws of physics do dictate that time had a beginning, if it didnt, then infitite time would have passed, and by the law of entropy the universe would be cold and lifeless.
Its okay in "my book", to beleive in a creator. But to beleive the universe is 6,000 years old and species evolving and branching and such, is ignorant.
Go ahead and beleive god made the "big bang", and that the properties of the sub atomic particles(which we cant explain why they have those properties, only that they have them) were determined by god as to allow matter to interact the way it does, ultimatlet leading to human kind.
Its taking things on faith, maybe its a flawed view and the truth is something different, but at least its a beleif in line with the obsevable truths.
all wrong.0 -
Care to explain Buschmaster?
I am a strong beleiver in evolution, and science in general.
But when discussing religion, it is important to note the one caveat, and that is all science is based on observations of this universe, and all it can explain, lies within the bounds of the universe.
So to speak of something at the boundary, ie when the universe started, and what was "before" the universe, is to be speaking outside the bounds of science. If you wish to beleive a sentient god made it happen, so be it, if you choose to beleive it just "happened" (as I do), then so be it. Its a matter of personal opinion, and science does not support either view.
But to beleive things dont evolve, and the universe is 6,000 years old, well, I just can't respect that viewpoint.0
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