[quote]haney wrote:
Open letter by 33 top scientist who are blasting the idea of the Big bang
[quote]jbeno wrote:
Just wanted to weigh in on this topic…
1st Issue - Literal Interpretation of the Bible:
I don’t think any of us are equipped to discuss the literalty of the Bible. Any of you who have seriously studied a foriegn language or been immersed in a foriegn culture can understand this. If you take something like Russian or Chinese and compare it to English, there are concepts that just don’t translate properly or entirely effectively because the cultural background is too different.
If someone were reading modern day English 2000 years from now, do you think they would get it completely right? Do you think they would totally understand our vernacular; when we were using sarcasm, metaphor, simile, etc.? I do not believe so.
So how can we expect to have a perfect translation of Hebrew from several thousand years ago? I’m not saying the Bible wasn’t written to be taken word for word or that it can’t be understood to have probably 95+% of its intended meaning, but how are we supposed to understand what that last 5% was? It might have made total sense literally in Hebrew. I might tend to put SLIGHTLY more weight in the opinion of a Hebrew scholar, but they weren’t around 2-3K years ago either.
There are all kinds of inconsistancies in English-language Bibles that apologetics explains by going back to the Hebrew and examining the context. Well, when you actually go through one of those excercises, you see that when the verse is taken in the proper context, it often has a slightly different meaning than just the plain English might suggest. Verb tenses might get changed slightly, chronology might be a little skewed, English nouns might not capture identical meanings as those in Hebrew.
So I don’t think the Bible’s literalty can be completely proven or discredited using any inconsistancies found in English translations, which everyone on this site is quoting from.
2nd Issue - Evolution:
We have scientific proof and observation of natural selection at work; microevolution I guess some would call it; bacteria, small bird population, or whatever changing in response to their environment.
The proof for long term macroevolution is of course not as solid, because we haven’t been observing directly observing it. That’s why its a theory.
What I hate is when hard-core, “we-all-came-from-goop” “Evolutionists” extrapolate our short term measurable scientific proof back thousands and even millions of years into areas of theory and say that that proof applies to the theory as well.
I also hate it when hard-core “Creationists” completely disregard verifiable scientific evidence because…I don’t know why. Maybe they’re afraid that acceptance of that evidence means they’re siding with the Evolutionists. It just makes Creationists look less credible.
For me, there is a middle ground. We can’t disregard scientific observations, but we also can’t assume that we can extrapolate that proof back indefinately to areas we don’t understand. We don’t know how the process of “evolution” started. Why wouldn’t God have created everything to adapt? Why does life’s evolution in response to random change need to disprove God? I think it actually points to His work all the more.
You have two engineers designing a car. The first one designs a nice car that lasts a long time, has great features, great engine performance, etc.
The second engineer designs an equally impressive looking car. But this one does some things differently. If a driver has a long highway commute every day to work, the car changes to have better and better gas milage, and engine efficiency increases. Or if the driver lives on a ranch, the car’s tires grow larger and the car’s clearance increases for off-road use. Its engine torques and power output increases as you use it to tow heavier and heavier loads.
Which of those two designs looks more impressive? As an engineer, a design that is truly adaptable is infintely more complicated than one that is not. The fact that life on this planet adapts to its surroundings through natural selection via “accidents” is actually even more of a statement that God designed life. If you could design something that could change and improve itself naturally in response to “accidental” stimulation, that would be an amazing invention.
For me, the further back you take evolution, the more strongly it supports a God orginated creation. In going back to the two car example, the second design is obviously more impressive. But what if there was a third engineer who came along with just a pile of metal and plastic that was designed to form itself into a car? Wouldn’t that be more impressive than either of the previous designs? Wouldn’t that be considered the more advanced design, even though it started from the less advanced state?
Hard-core Evolutionists extrapolate all the way back to the “primordial ooze”, and Creationists insist that evolution is wrong because it says in Genesis God created man, not ooze. But why couldn’t God have just started the chronology up somewhere in the middle? Why wouldn’t he create life in a certain mold, but then give it the ability to adapt and change?
In answering that question, think about this: God created MAN, he did not create BABY. God created Adam as a full-grown man and Eve as a full-grown woman. He told us that he started with full-grown humans, but obviously that didn’t mean that babies don’t exist. He had to start somewhere in a creature’s natural life cycle, so why couldn’t he have started somewhere in LIFE ITSELF’s natural life cycle of Evolution?
This is how I believe it is fully possible to believe in tenets of both Evolution and Creationism.[/quote]
I appreciate your opinion.
I would add this only for Biblical reasons.
Both Paul and Jesus seem to take the account of there being a literal Adam and an Eve. I will not say that it makes the rest of the story literal. It is without a doubt in their minds that they existed.
I still believe in a literal six days, but I am not closed to the idea of being wrong. There are just many theological areas that must be explained before I could jump to that point in my beliefs
[quote]haney wrote:
I appreciate your opinion.
I would add this only for Biblical reasons.
Both Paul and Jesus seem to take the account of there being a literal Adam and an Eve. I will not say that it makes the rest of the story literal. It is without a doubt in their minds that they existed.
I still believe in a literal six days, but I am not closed to the idea of being wrong. There are just many theological areas that must be explained before I could jump to that point in my beliefs
[/quote]
Haney,
I see your Biblical reasons, and I’ll raise you one scientific one: I actually do believe that there was a literal Adam and Eve. Interestingly enough, I read a study once that traced mitocondrial DNA through maternal lines that seems to point to a single genetic mother, or Eve, occuring roughly about the timeframe Eve was thought to live.
As for the Genesis timeline, I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if we are understanding the timeline laid out in the Bible correctly. The science behind material dating of the earth is pretty well-understood physics. But I can never get past the thought that God is all-powerful and just like he created Adam as a man instead of an infant, he could have created the earth as a 4.5 billion year old planet, complete with dinosaur fossils and all. He also created our aforementioned “well-understood physics” too. So maybe he’s pulling one over on us. I think its just not something we’re meant to ever know for certain. I think its also not something that is crucial to my salvation. But it does seem to be crucial to people trying to disprove the legitimacy of the Bible. Maybe its just meant to teach us that we can’t prove God for certain with science. We are only meant to believe in him through our faith.
I’m all theologized out for today…
[quote]Professor X wrote:
lothario1132 wrote:
No it’s not. In fact, my whole point is that the bible is not true at all in any literal sense.
If you truly don’t believe in any part of the bible being true (some of which has been clearly found to be true by historians and Haney did a good job of bringing some of those points up) then why are you in this thread?[/quote]
What I meant was that the magical powers and miracles and acts of God, all the times he literally spoke to the people and so on and so forth weren’t true. My bad. I don’t care how many people tell you you’re the son of God, you’re not going to turn water into wine. Or raise guys from the dead. Also, this thread was about merging bible mythology with science, which is kinda like trying to genetically splice a carrot covered in mayonnaise with a giraffe. My original post was to state that the whole idea is silly.
That’s right. I’m saying that the bible is wrong about God creating the earth and all life, etc., in six days. That is what creationism is. The bible is just some book. Why don’t y’all believe the mythology from some other pantheons? The ancient Norse creation myth is pretty cool. Odin and Thor and all those guys were real T-men. Isn’t that more appealing than some sandal-wearing hippie? And as to having knowledge of how life started… well, you’re right. I don’t know for sure. But guess what? Neither do you. So there.
My imagined theory is quite a bit different from what I’ve read here. Y’all are pretty familiar in some way with Chaos Theory, so maybe this won’t be such a stretch for everybody. We see
in very large sample sizes, and given enough time to react, that complex chaotic systems will start to conform to some degree of order. This is shown mathematically by the fractal images and so on which resemble nautilus shells, or the leaves of trees, or branches on bushes, etc. I’ve seen that a lot of you guys don’t buy evolution theory because it is somehow just so improbable that some elements came together in some orderly fashion which created a self-replicating strand of some protein precursor, which lead to an early type of cell structure, which then became a singular cell, and so on. I would postulate that the idea of quadrillions of elements given enough time and enough varieties of environments and energies (say a couple of billion years or so) coming together in some orderly fashion is not improbable at all. In fact I would say that it is pretty damn close to 100%. What I’m saying is that the formation of life of some kind may not be that rare in this universe at all. The more we get to know our neighboring planets, the more we are starting to see that we are not so special on this Earth after all. Life and complex order just may be ubiquitous. What remains to see is whether the quality of sentience is readily formed in complex organisms like us, and is it as common as it is on this planet? So far, we know that besides the human being, there are a few species like the dolphin and chimpanzee and to some lesser degree, the octopus, which probably possess this incredible quality of self-awareness.
Simply because you do believe doesn’t mean that it can.
I have been contributing to this thread, and its original intent, and continue to do so. I stand by my original post in saying that melding storytelling and mythology with science in some vain attempt to justify the mythology as truth is a goofy idea. Why aren’t we using the theory of evolution in conjunction with some other story?
Here’s something just as plausible as some quasi-dimensional dude saying “LET THERE BE LIGHT…”:
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/creation.html
Oh, and by the way, thank you. I am having a great God-free day… just like you.
[quote]haney wrote:
Well I understand what level of knowledge you have by saying that Hellieum does not escape the atmosphere.
It is a well known “SCIENTIFIC” fact that Helliuem does escape the atmosphere. It is in a constant state of trying to get out.[/quote]
No it’s not. It rises to level of density of air where it is the same “lightness”, if you will, and then pretty much stays there. Our planetary gravity affects all matter, even a light element like helium. There is no “anti-gravity” element. Although sucking helium makes you talk funny, it is not magical, and still conforms to basic physics.
Erosion, like any other geological process like weather patterns, etc. does not follow a constant linear progression. You cannot back-calculate data for these things, because you introduce tremendous errors in magnitude.
[quote]Well good point too bad the Bible does have literature where it talks about dinosaurs. Wow just imagine one book that talks about dinosaurs thousands of years before we ever unearth them!
Doesn’t prove the Bible but it sure does make you think![/quote]
You are definitely right. It makes me think that the bible is even more good evidence that man and dinosaur did not co-exist. Imagine if you will, that your world is inundated with these forty-foot tall “thunder lizards”. I mean, from the fossil record, they were in every environmental niche, and literally ruled the planet due to their sheer numbers. Imagine being a caveman or something during this. I think that the first order of business would be to mind the big, hungry dinosaur, don’t you? And yet there is what… a reference or two, maybe three, I don’t know, about something in the bible which could be construed as a dinosaur? Don’t you think that there would be a constant, ongoing theme of the dinosaur’s presence in every nation’s archeological history? And yet, there isn’t. The scant references you refer to just serve to prove my original point. If man and dinosaur were co-existent, and the bible was literal truth, then the bible would be FILLED with dinosaurs. Everywhere.
[quote]I think you are the one with the dogma. I am fully willing to accept science when it has more evidence. At this point all I have seen is how someone interprets the data.
Do us a favour if you don’t agree with the Bible that is fine, but at least bring some knowledge about it to the table before you start talking about something what you think it says or doesn’t say.[/quote]
I have no dogma, because I have no illusions to live by. No one has all the answers. And that’s good. Think about how boring this singular existence would be without some mystery. But just because there are questions that we don’t know the answers to doesn’t mean we should throw away everything we know to be real to embrace the idea of some book having those answers for us. I am no bible scholar, and I daresay that this fact does not make me unqualified from posting on this thread. But I thank you for your response, and look forward to further discussion.
LOL!!!@[quote] Isn’t that more appealing than some sandal-wearing hippie? [/quote]
Lothario, I always enjoy yours and The Prof.X’s posts. This has been a very interesting thread, it gave me a headache pondering all the possibilities and theories. Peace Out!!!
“Sancho”
lothario and all, this may provide some illumination on the question of what started it all…
http://dookaloosy.dyndns.org
/wail_-thoughts_on_a_book-
_Asimov1.htm
To dignify this with a response or not…?
ehhh. why not…
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
My imagined theory is quite a bit different from what I’ve read here. Y’all are pretty familiar in some way with Chaos Theory, so maybe this won’t be such a stretch for everybody. We see
in very large sample sizes, and given enough time to react, that complex chaotic systems will start to conform to some degree of order. This is shown mathematically by the fractal images and so on which resemble nautilus shells, or the leaves of trees, or branches on bushes, etc. I’ve seen that a lot of you guys don’t buy evolution theory because it is somehow just so improbable that some elements came together in some orderly fashion which created a self-replicating strand of some protein precursor,
[/quote] It seems that you don’t really understand chemistry of proteins - no offense intended - but this is a vast stretch of credulity - then, to assume that something (a cell) which is vastly more complex (irreducibly complex if you will) just happens to come from that imagined strand is beyond the scope of reason.
[quote] which lead to an early type of cell structure, which then became a singular cell, and so on. I would postulate that the idea of quadrillions of elements given enough time and enough varieties of environments and energies (say a couple of billion years or so) coming together in some orderly fashion is not improbable at all. In fact I would say that it is pretty damn close to 100%. [/quote] Do the math again[quote] What I’m saying is that the formation of life of some kind may not be that rare in this universe at all. The more we get to know our neighboring planets, the more we are starting to see that we are not so special on this Earth after all. [/quote] Actually, the more we learn about our neighboring planets, the more scientists see that earth is indeed a very special place and the more they have to look far, far away for any hope of finding anything that resembles life… A dozen peer reviewed articles on the recent Mars missions have devastated hopes for finding pre-earth orgins of life there… [quote] . . .
I have been contributing to this thread, and its original intent, and continue to do so. I stand by my original post in saying that melding storytelling and mythology with science in some vain attempt to justify the mythology as truth is a goofy idea. Why aren’t we using the theory of evolution in conjunction with some other story?
[/quote]Perhaps another thread on diverse literary genre including comparison and contrasts between mythology and historical narrative might be appropriately mixed with more in-depth chemistry lessons.
Don’t want to slam but the more I think about your content, the harder it is for me to hold back.
If you take the time to consider the creation accounts of major world religions, even without deciding about the truth of the religion, you may see why those of the jewish-christian tradition carry so much weight in the discussion
t-d
[quote]T-Doff wrote:
It seems that you don’t really understand chemistry of proteins - no offense intended - but this is a vast stretch of credulity - then, to assume that something (a cell) which is vastly more complex (irreducibly complex if you will) just happens to come from that imagined strand is beyond the scope of reason.[/quote]
I understand protein chemistry just fine enough for our purposes here. What I think you missed was my reference to how complex chaos can lead to patterned order. Given that I am basing the rest of my ideas about the origin of life on that, can you not see why I find the emergence of complexity and self-replication of atomic structures not so hard to swallow? It follows that from an early precursor to a molecule which orders itself along the lines of a carbon-based simple protein or whatever, that more complexity and order can arise. Given enough time, I don’t see how primitive cousins of the prokaryotes couldn’t have arisen, complete with a few adaptable organelles. Keep in mind that I am imagining that the complexity we see in adaptable cell structure like the cell membranes, etc. is a consequence of some natural proclivity for a pattern of order to arise out of complex chaos. Does this seem like a stretch? Maybe. But our brains can’t even grasp the concept of one million, let alone the concept of one thousand millions. Take a couple of those, and there’s no telling what can happen.
We can’t even begin to describe with any certainty a model for a system like our planetary surface for more than a few days in advance. This year, Tallahasse was supposed to be wiped out by no fewer than three hurricanes. It didn’t even rain here on one of the days we were supposed to all be blasted to hell by one of the storms. To think that we are capable of surmising what happens in a complete model of our planet over a thousand years is complete and utter conceit. Now to take that same model, and project it even more, say into a million years, and then take that a couple thousand more times, and then draw the conclusion that life having an opportunity to seed itself is impossible, well, I can’t even begin to wonder how unbelievably naive/arrogant that is. I am of the opinion that we are probably never going to know for sure how life arises anywhere. All we can do is give it our best guess. Like haney said, there’s not enough science knowledge to know for sure.
Okay, cool. I haven’t read any of those yet. I’m not saying that we’re probably gonna find life on every planet, I’m saying that life may not be as rare as we think right now.
[quote]Perhaps another thread on diverse literary genre including comparison and contrasts between mythology and historical narrative might be appropriately mixed with more in-depth chemistry lessons.
Don’t want to slam but the more I think about your content, the harder it is for me to hold back.
If you take the time to consider the creation accounts of major world religions, even without deciding about the truth of the religion, you may see why those of the jewish-christian tradition carry so much weight in the discussion
t-d[/quote]
Hehehe… you can keep your chemistry lessons, bro. I’m done with school for a while, believe me. And as for your statement about the jewish creation myth carrying weight, I would suppose that this is because we are a bunch of english-speaking folks. This same thread in China would not read the same. It’s just our culture – it’s not the truth. And don’t worry about slamming me, this is the internet. You can say whatever you want.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
What I meant was that the magical powers and miracles and acts of God, all the times he literally spoke to the people and so on and so forth weren’t true…blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…My original post was to state that the whole idea is silly.
Blah
Blah
Blah
That’s right. I’m saying that the bible is wrong about God creating the earth and all life.
blah
blah
load of crap
blah[/quote]
Whew, now that I have read all of that, I am STILL waiting on you to show me what the energy of life is and how it can be created on this planet without procreation. Go on…it is your time to shine.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
lothario1132 wrote:
What I meant was that the magical powers and miracles and acts of God, all the times he literally spoke to the people and so on and so forth weren’t true…blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…My original post was to state that the whole idea is silly.
Blah
Blah
Blah
That’s right. I’m saying that the bible is wrong about God creating the earth and all life.
blah
blah
load of crap
blah
Whew, now that I have read all of that, I am STILL waiting on you to show me what the energy of life is and how it can be created on this planet without procreation. Go on…it is your time to shine.
[/quote]
Piece of cake, doctor. I would think that with your rather high degree of medical training, you could answer this better than me. The energy of life is bioelectricity. It was never “created” by some unseen hand, the ionic differentials across various membranes such as we see in the human red blood cell with sodium and potassium are the molecular “drive” for the various processes that we see in lifeforms. Although the very first primitive organisms would have probably used simple heat from the sun or from underwater volcanic vents to develop mechanisms to capture and utilize energy.
Now if you meant “where does our SOUL come from?” That’s an even easier answer. We don’t have one. Not in any way other than a metaphorical one. I will assume that you are someone who believes that you possess an undying immortal “piece” of yourself somewhere. That’s cool. I don’t. I’m not afraid of death. I was dead until the late night of October 18th, 1971. Then, I wasn’t. I will die again sometime. Maybe soon. And I won’t be going on to anywhere or coming back.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
Piece of cake, doctor. I would think that with your rather high degree of medical training, you could answer this better than me. The energy of life is bioelectricity. [/quote]
Bioelectricity is your final answer? Are you sure you don’t want to use a life line? The electricity in your body isn’t much different than that which powers your computer. The difference is the use of electrically charged molecules of different polarities. If life were that simple, we could initiate life like in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Unfortunately, this has never resulted in life from non-life except for the rare occurance that it can restart the heart (which is even regarded by many in the medical community as being a “miracle” at times).
Even with your sunlight explanation (as if all life began as plant life) you can’t take a non-living cell, lay it in the sun and have it become active. I was expecting more from you since you seem to have it all figured out. Maybe your explanation was just too deep for me to grasp.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
No it’s not. It rises to level of density of air where it is the same “lightness”, if you will, and then pretty much stays there. Our planetary gravity affects all matter, even a light element like helium. There is no “anti-gravity” element. Although sucking helium makes you talk funny, it is not magical, and still conforms to basic physics.
[/quote]
Since you probably didn’t read the links I posted, I will post the important part
“Scientists can work out how fast helium is forming, how fast it escapes from rocks, how much enters the air, and how much can escape from the air into space. They can also measure the amount of helium in rocks and in the air. From this, they can calculate the maximum age of rocks and of the air. The results are puzzling to those who believe in billions of years. Of course, all such calculations depend on assumptions about the past, like the starting conditions and constant rates of processes. They can never prove the age of something. For that, we need an eye-witness”
Oh so what you are saying is we cannot account for anything that has ever happened before but there is no constant. Why not apply that to your trusted scientist who say that they can prove all of these things? I would suspect that since our universe has all kinds of things we cannot account for, planet formation and the likes do not follow a “constant linear” than we would be unable to back-calculate those too? So the science is good when it agrees with you, and it is wrong when it doesn’t. I would think scientist would be jumping all over this geology saying there is no constant. Yet you are the only one.
Ok the Bible was not a book about big lizzards. It is a book about God and man. Why would they record dinosaurs? They most likely would not have survived for very long after the flood. So the only records would have been pre noah. Which the only book which would of fit with in that time frame is Job. That does record such animals. They are barely mentioned in it. Why because they are not important. It is not a book on animals. It is a book on God and man. We have no written information about anything pre-dating 2200 bce. So why would any writings be preserved save what someone kept copying? Maybe someone did write about it, and we just don’t have a preserved record. If the beasts lived during the flood, and didn’t survive after we could rational assume that the carving on the walls were either a.) none existant. b.) washed away.
While that is not a definative, it is most certainly as plausuble as any idea that you have had.
I would not ask you to stop responding. I am just not a big fan of someone coming in and basically blasting the open ideas that all have brought to this discussion. I would not say for certain that your post is closed minded, but it certainly comes across that way.
I am not trying to convert anyone, I am merely trying to keep people open to the fact that there are still too many unknowns.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
That’s right. I’m saying that the bible is wrong about God creating the earth and all life, etc., in six days. That is what creationism is. The bible is just some book. Why don’t y’all believe the mythology from some other pantheons?
[/quote]
I won’t respond to the rest of it because we have shed plenty of light on the idea of random chaos not being very plausible.
I will only say this. We are not pantheons (god is nature, and has no personality).
We are monotheists (singular God). The two terms are totally different.
The examples of pantheons you gave were not pantheons. They were polytheists(many Gods).
[quote]jbeno wrote:
haney wrote:
Haney,
I see your Biblical reasons, and I’ll raise you one scientific one: I actually do believe that there was a literal Adam and Eve. Interestingly enough, I read a study once that traced mitocondrial DNA through maternal lines that seems to point to a single genetic mother, or Eve, occuring roughly about the timeframe Eve was thought to live.
As for the Genesis timeline, I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if we are understanding the timeline laid out in the Bible correctly. The science behind material dating of the earth is pretty well-understood physics. But I can never get past the thought that God is all-powerful and just like he created Adam as a man instead of an infant, he could have created the earth as a 4.5 billion year old planet, complete with dinosaur fossils and all. He also created our aforementioned “well-understood physics” too. So maybe he’s pulling one over on us. I think its just not something we’re meant to ever know for certain. I think its also not something that is crucial to my salvation. But it does seem to be crucial to people trying to disprove the legitimacy of the Bible. Maybe its just meant to teach us that we can’t prove God for certain with science. We are only meant to believe in him through our faith.
I’m all theologized out for today…[/quote]
Well I will match yours. I have read a study that linguist have determined that we all lanugage came from one beginning language.
As I said in an earlier post Seeking after God is nothing more than a pursuit of the truth.
Paul said it clearly if Christ is not raised from the dead then our preaching is in vain.
So if what I believe about God is not true than my faith is in vain. There is no salvation for me. I have wrestled with my pursuit of truth for a long time. I took my leap on faith, I have landed upon many rock solid truths.
Well I will match yours. I have read a study that linguist have determined that all language came from one beginning language.
As I said in an earlier post Seeking after God is nothing more than a pursuit of the truth.
Paul said it clearly if Christ is not raised from the dead then our preaching is in vain.
So if what I believe about God is not true than my faith is in vain. There is no salvation for me. I have wrestled with my pursuit of truth for a long time. I took my leap on faith, I have landed upon many rock solid truths.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
I understand protein chemistry just fine enough for our purposes here. [/quote]
it appears that you don’t really…but perhaps I underestimate you
[quote] What I think you missed was my reference to how complex chaos can lead to patterned order. Given that I am basing the rest of my ideas about the origin of life on that, can you not see why I find the emergence of complexity and self-replication of atomic structures not so hard to swallow?
[/quote]
I DO understand why YOU find the “self-replication of atomic structures not so hard to swallow” and that is simply because you don’t understand the size of the leap of faith you take while arrogantly dismissing the faith of others. Order from chaos? Sure, water molecules align and form ordered crystals from chaotic liquid. Fractal geometry can produce regular patterns that look like rivers (non-living things, BTW) or trees, at least from a distance, but, unlike trees, they contain virtually no information. Much, much less information than trees, or branches, or leaves, or a leaf, or the cells in a leaf, or the membrane of a cell, or even just the molecules that makes up the cell wall. Still a long, long way from life.
Actually, there is a lot of telling what will happen. Thermodynamics, kinetics, chemical physics are all reliable predictors of what will happen if the supposed chemicals in a hypothetical “prebiotic soup” are mixed and allowed to react at given temperature and pressure for given amounts of time. The experiments have been done. The answers keeps pointing to Intelligent Design"
Based on evidence? . . .or just opinion?
No problem for me if you keep choosing to remain comfortably uninformed.
later
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
Please explain the rate at which Helliuem escapes (into) the Atmosphere.
Helium doesn’t escape the atmosphere. Gravity prevents matter from just leaving the surface of our planet. Our atmosphere has undergone countless changes, as has our planetary climate, etc. We know this from the study of fossilized plants and animals, and study of rock strata and ancient riverbeds, etc. It is really neat to read a little about paleontology, because you start to understand just how insignificant and tiny a part the human race has played in the history of our planet.
[/quote]
Also You mis-quoted me. As you can see my post clearly says into the Atmosphere. I origionally didn’t say it escaped the atmosphere, only that it escapes to the atmosphere. Which is the crux of the problem. There is too much staying in and not leaving. It is a problem for there being an old earth.
Please don’t mis-represent my statements.
[quote]haney wrote:
Since you probably didn’t read the links I posted, I will post the important part
“Scientists can work out how fast helium is forming, how fast it escapes from rocks, how much enters the air, and how much can escape from the air into space. They can also measure the amount of helium in rocks and in the air. From this, they can calculate the maximum age of rocks and of the air. The results are puzzling to those who believe in billions of years. Of course, all such calculations depend on assumptions about the past, like the starting conditions and constant rates of processes. They can never prove the age of something. For that, we need an eye-witness”[/quote]
Sorry. You’re right. I did mis-quote you. But you mis-quoted your source. I was speaking to the point of your link. And notice the last few sentences of your quote? I think this answers your point on the erosion thing too. Do you honestly think that geological stuff like erosion of topsoil or anything to do with weather or climate follows a linear progression, or a constant rate? You do think that there was an ice age, right? Well, has the earth always been that cold? This means that it was warmer, then colder, then warmer again. Not linear.
There are near-constants like the degeneration of carbon 14, or the rate of evaporation of water at a certain pressure of air and temperature and humidity, the changing boiling points of water at different altitudes, etc. But these are singular measurable observations, not complex systems such as our planetary weather, or the interaction of the oceans and seas with the land, or partly what this thread was about: the complex interaction of an extremely large sample of different elements in a certain environment which might have given rise to an early self-replicating molecule.
[quote]Ok the Bible was not a book about big lizzards. It is a book about God and man. Why would they record dinosaurs? They most likely would not have survived for very long after the flood. So the only records would have been pre noah. Which the only book which would of fit with in that time frame is Job. That does record such animals. They are barely mentioned in it. Why because they are not important. It is not a book on animals. It is a book on God and man. We have no written information about anything pre-dating 2200 bce. So why would any writings be preserved save what someone kept copying? Maybe someone did write about it, and we just don’t have a preserved record. If the beasts lived during the flood, and didn’t survive after we could rational assume that the carving on the walls were either a.) none existant. b.) washed away.
While that is not a definative, it is most certainly as plausuble as any idea that you have had.[/quote]
The flood that you speak of didn’t cover the entire earth, because there would be obvious evidence in geological strata in every land mass on our planet. Dinosaurs were everywhere. That means that there would still be some alive, possibly to this very day. And you’re also forgetting about the enormous variety and quantity of dinosaurs and other ancient creatures such as the plesiosaur or the icthyosaur which lived in the water just like the dolphin. These guys would have had a field day in the flood which is described in the bible. The flood didn’t kill the dinosaurs, it was most likely a large meteor which struck the Gulf of Mexico. This, of course, occurred eons before the dawn of man. And that is why there are no major acheological references in any nation’s culture or history to the co-existence
of dinosaurs with man.
[quote]I would not ask you to stop responding. I am just not a big fan of someone coming in and basically blasting the open ideas that all have brought to this discussion. I would not say for certain that your post is closed minded, but it certainly comes across that way.
I am not trying to convert anyone, I am merely trying to keep people open to the fact that there are still too many unknowns.
[/quote]
I would say that I am close-minded about religion. I’m not superstitious, and I don’t buy any of it. And this thread is basically about the attempt to take religious beliefs and justify them with science. This is like using an abacus to try to understand the point of poetry. Do you see why I’m “blasting” your “open ideas”? Science has a limited place in our lives. You cannot use it to discover or explain everything. Especially faith. I am someone without it, and yet I can see this. I would think that you guys would know this better than me by a long shot.
The bible is not an accurate historical record, it is a story book. If you want to use the mythology to live your life by, I think that’s great. What kind of hurtful message is “love thy neighbor”? How damaging is it to “turn the other cheek”, or “do unto others, etc.”? I am NOT knocking the bible, I am knocking the folks who take it as literal truth. Because it’s not.
And I will agree with you that there are too many unknowns. The idea of the precursors of life coming together in just the right way to form that first early form of primitive cellular structure is the best that science can do right now.
[quote]T-Doff wrote:
I DO understand why YOU find the “self-replication of atomic structures not so hard to swallow” and that is simply because you don’t understand the size of the leap of faith you take while arrogantly dismissing the faith of others. Order from chaos? Sure, water molecules align and form ordered crystals from chaotic liquid. Fractal geometry can produce regular patterns that look like rivers (non-living things, BTW) or trees, at least from a distance, but, unlike trees, they contain virtually no information. Much, much less information than trees, or branches, or leaves, or a leaf, or the cells in a leaf, or the membrane of a cell, or even just the molecules that makes up the cell wall. Still a long, long way from life.[/quote]
I guess I still have some of that precious naivete which wonders at how remarkable it is that a very large sample set in a random distribution, when graphed in several dimensions will form beautiful repeating patterns. You must be right, I am taking a pretty big leap of faith. The fact that fractal geometry mimics the shapes of lifeforms hasn’t really moved you either, has it? That’s cool. You see, without the idea that order arises from complex chaos, my whole idea of the self-replicating molecule leading to the early cell is just about as unlikely as Oprah Winfrey spending the rest of her life as a bag lady. Which is why we are at odds right now on this.
And don’t try to tell me that you can mentally grasp the concept of one million. I’ll bet that you will find it pretty much impossible to hold the simultaneous thought of more than five different things at once. That’s the limit they discovered in laboratory testing. A million things is truly mind-boggling for us simple homo sapiens.
Hmmm… five things. Five fingers. Five toes. Five extremities (head, arms, legs). A repeating pattern? 
The answers actually point to “we can’t scientifically replicate the conditions of billions of years in a variety of environments and temperatures of the early earth, and have it lead to anything remotely resemble what must have been an early cellular structure.” The fact that we can’t model something as incredibly complex a system as our entire planet emerging and changing over billions of years just speaks to my point about how we may never definitively know about the origins of life.
[quote]I wrote: Okay, cool. I haven’t read any of those yet. I’m not saying that we’re probably gonna find life on every planet, I’m saying that life may not be as rare as we think right now.
You wrote: Based on evidence? . . .or just opinion?[/quote]
As I mentioned before, I base my ideas about our life origins on a mix of scientific evidence and best-guessing. I’m sorry, but being an atheist kinda prevents me from accepting the idea that some all-powerful intelligence said: “Ya know what this party needs? Some human beings!!” And then he magically created Adam and Eve.
[quote]I wrote: Hehehe… you can keep your chemistry lessons, bro. I’m done with school for a while, believe me.
You wrote: No problem for me if you keep choosing to remain comfortably uninformed.
later
[/quote]
Not having all the answers doesn’t make me ignorant or uninformed. And yes, I’m comfortable with being able to say “I don’t know” every once in a while. Are you?