[quote]rlawrence wrote:
Just one more:
Questions for Evolutionists:[/quote]
I would first like to say that I find the term evolutionist to be stupid. Second, these questions do not all pertain to the realm of evolution. A lot of them are cosmological in nature, and some although they are related to evolutionary biology deal in a way with information theory. I suppose the main reasons I am choosing to reply are these: I have degrees in physics and computer science, and I am extremely bored and cannot sleep.
Forgive me if these answers seem somewhat cryptic or incomplete. One could, and several people have, write several books on the subjects you have brought up.
The technically correct question would be where did the space-time that our universe exists “in” come from (as space and time in cosmological terms are quite intertwined). The best answer that I know of to date is that it is the result of a quantum fluctuation in the ground state of absolute vacuum.
The more fundamenteal cosomological question would be…where did all the energy come from…as once you have energy, the creation of matter appears quite academic. The answer, brace yourself, a quantum fluctuation in the ground state of absolute vacuum. How could such a thing account for the massive amount of energy that we see around us in the universe? The answer to that is that it appears that the total sum of all the energy in the universe is indeed zero, or very nearly zero…which is what would be expected of a universe that was the product of a quantum fluctuation.
I have no idea. Do you? If so, please prove it to the best of your ability. At the very least give some reason why I should believe your idea over holding the position that they didn’t need to come from anywhere.
How is it exactly that matter is “perfectly organized”? And for that matter…to what end? Your question contains a rather huge assumption in other words. In a cosmological sense, matter really isn’t all that organized. Of course we do see organization of some kind in both large and small scales. However, this is to be expected whenever you have a system of rules such as the physical laws that appear to govern our universe. Our universe, however, seems to consist of large numbers of small pockets of organization surrounded by an incredibly vast sea of almost complete chaos.
As said above…the total energy seems to be practically or actually zero. That is over the very large scale though, and in such a system small pockets of large positive energy can indeed form and give rise to what we call organization. Where the initial small amount of positive energy to kick it all of came from is again…a quantum fluctuation in the ground state of absolute vacuum.
Wow…hmmm…I can only give you vague answers for the first two of those questions, the third is not within the realm of science to discuss, and I can of course speculate (with supporting evidence) on the fourth. When? Some time in the distant past, I don’t really feel like looking up the best current estimate for you. Where? Presumably somewhere on this planet at that time (although the idea that “life” could have first formed somewhere else and been transplanted here through stellar collision cannot be dismissed out of hand). Why? I have no idea. Why not? Why does it require some underlying meaning at all? Please prove that there is such a necessity. How? Basic organic chemistry. The formation of self-replicating organic molecules that once formed, evolved according to chemical laws and the force of natural selection into the first self-replicating organic entity that we would call “life”. We can of course produce many kinds of self-replicating organic molecules. We can also currently produce “life” depending on your definition of the word, as last I checked scientists were actually creating viruses in a laboratory environment.
Do chemical structure really need to “learn” the laws that govern chemical interactions? Hmmmm…
This is just off the top of my head…but perhaps it reproduced with itself. Never heard of a hermaphrodite?
I don’t really think your treatment of group dynamics will stand up here. Reproduction, increasing the number of entities in a group, does not always lead to a decrease in the chance of survival. Increased numbers can in fact lead to several things that drastically increase the chance of survival. It is only when the environment cannot support larger numbers that reproduction at a rapid rate ends up being a negative. As for an underlying reason why living things seem to be “driven” to reproduce…perhaps because we seem to be the direct descendants of organic molecules whose sole function was reproducing themselves.
That is a horrible analogy. Here is a question for you…has everything that could possibly be written in the English language already been written? In other words, is it impossible for me to combine words in this language to produce a “meaningful” result which has in fact never been produced before? If not, then someone has already written this exact post before I actually wrote it…hmmm…
Along the language line as well, if genes must be letters, new words are being created all the time (as well as new meanings being ascribed to old words when place in new contexts). Language evolves.
Possible? Sure. Now, tell me why I should prefer that conclusion over the conclusion that it is because they share common ancestors. One has utility, in that it fits with a theory that is both descriptive and predictive. It tells me something about my world, and seems to fit with other available evidence quite well. What are the reasons I should choose another conclusion over it?
The fact that something is possible is not a reason to believe it.
There is again, an assumption there. Who says that natural selection only works with available information and tends to keep species stable? What exactly does that mean in the first place?
First, just because there are limited numbers of possible combinations in a genetic code…does not mean that they have all manifested themselves (in fact I’m willing to bet that only a vanishingly small percentage of them actually have). So when these combinations that have never existed before emerge, are they not “new”? There are all kinds of simulated systems that can be pointed to that start with a set of basic rules and an initial condition and then become increasingly complex and ordered.
This is a rather deep philosophical question here. I don’t know if we are really capable of grappling with the actualities of it. The very idea of NOTHING is troubling at best. Can there really be nothing? The very phrasing of the question implies that nothing is in fact something in itself. So I guess I would have to answer this with a very conditional yes.
How would you answer it? Did God not create “everything” from nothingness? From whence then came God?
