Thanks for the correction. But in my defense it has been 50 years since I took Thermo.
2 Likes
@Dale, @Medicodon, @Russell2 @Bill_II
It is not either God or evolution. It is both God and evolution. God intelligently designed evolution using the Logos, and then used evolution and the Logos to create us and the rest of the biosphere.
We know the history our species, homo sapiens. Several species developed before us, including the Neanderthals, indicating that were not created ex nihilo Humans took final shape after Europe emerged from the Ice Age and the adaptions of the Neanderthals were no longer needed, but some of them were incorporated into us.
God creates through history, the interplay of the changing environment with the biosphere, which is not random. This is how God guides and control our evolution and how God is working today. Except now humans using our God given abilities are polluting the environment and endangering our own existence.
1 Like
I don’t blame you Bill for this is the standard argument that is used. “The second law of thermodynamics doesn’t apply for open systems. The earth is an open system with solar energy so quit bringing up the second law - stupid creationist.” The irony is that the stupid creationists know more than the doctorates espousing this. The second law does apply and you need a thermodynamic auxiliary device to harness the energy. For example, put a bunch of puzzle pieces mixed up in the sun. Will the sun put together the puzzle pieces? Of course not! You would need an ID system to convert the sun to power and a robot to assemble the pieces.
There would be no basis for the statements of the second law if just anything could happen with open systems. The Clausius statement says:
It is impossible for any system to operate in such a way that the sole result would be an energy transfer by heat from a cooler to a hotter body.
If the second law doesn’t prohibit anything then why even have the statements? Naturally, you don’t find refrigerators because there are too many boundary conditions needed that don’t happen naturally. The same problem is found for abiogenesis where you don’t have any natural mechanisms to explain the development of the first cell. The same can be said for evolution where once you get outside of the information of the genome where you need to integrate new systems, you lack a thermodynamic mechanism to constrain the mutations enabling the highly improbable mutations. There are 6.4 billion base pairs in a human genome and considering you would need about 30 specific mutations to get a typical added functionality in biological systems, this is a very small probability. An approximation is (6.4e-9)^30 which is smaller than the universal probability bound. Now certainly, I didn’t consider the population but even with a large population you need the added function to get the selection. Without selection, you still need to explain how all the mutations coalesce into one genome. This should make most people have a lot of skepticism about the evolutionary mechanisms.
So you are saying that those who put forward evolution have no need to back up there theory with evidence? Interesting!
Why do you ask rhetorically if that’s what I say? That’s really interesting and goes to motive. There is nothing but evidence for evolution as the rational have known since Anaximander. Nature was found guilty on Darwin’s counsel for the prosecution two centuries ago.
What does any of this have to do with the theory of God as revealed solely in Christ?
2 Likes
Bill is only stating what PHD’s in Biology (and many others) say. Why are they so dishonest in saying this? I already stated below why we should be skeptical of evolution.
An Oak tree can grow true because you have the biological nanomachines all programmed in the DNA to allow new life from the seed. Once you get outside of the programming found in the genome, it is nearly impossible to integrate in new systems without many mutations. The genome is so large that the ability to enable evolutionary advancement is just too improbable.
This is science fiction! Show me reasonable probabilities and I will believe you. But I don’t see it!
So there are honest non-biology Ph.Ds telling what truth that biology Ph.Ds are all lying about biology?
Star light: you assume the cosmological model is accurate. When you consider the fudge factor needed to get the model to work (over 95% of all Matter and energy is unknown) then one should ask if the model is even accurate.
Retro viruses are found in human and Ape genomes in 99.8% the same locations. Is this due to the similar immunological storage locations in the genome between humans and apes? Similar designs you would expect similar storage locations.
What about starlight?
What has your application of probability got to do with reality? Starting with the reality of Hadean abiogenesis? Reality doesn’t happen backwards.
All of those doctorates – the physicists, chemists, and biologists – know what the 2nd Law actually is. They’re telling you you’re wrong because you’re wrong.
You’re free to argue that some kind of machinery is needed to harness the energy of the sun – but that’s not the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. There is nothing in any statement of the 2nd Law that says ‘except in the presence of machinery’. Machinery has to obey the laws of physics just like the rest of the universe: if a process can happen with the aid of machinery, then the process doesn’t violate the 2nd Law.
What you’ve got is not the 2nd Law and entropy but a law you made up and a concept that has nothing to do with thermodynamic entropy. Since you made up the law, you’re responsible for demonstrating that it’s correct.
6 Likes
The problem with this claim is that it’s simply wrong. We can watch genomes change, generation after generation, incorporating new mutations and changing the form and function of the organisms that carry them. We can measure the rate at which they change and we see that it is far, far faster than the rate needed to explain the changes that have occurred over the history of life. We compare organisms and their genomes, and we see that they all look like they’re relatives of one another, and that all of the differences look like the result of lots of mutations accumulated over time. Every piece of evidence we have says that life evolves and that evolution explains the history of life on this planet.
5 Likes
There are 17,576 possible strings of three letters in the English alphabet, of those, 1292 are considered English-language words. The probability that a 100-character string contains a given 3-letter word is 0.55%. The probability that it contains any three letter english-language word is 99.9943%. Here is an example: dkdhgvbnsiycgvsDjdkvbakutcmbnsdlkfjgejfnfduoegfkdskjvnwoudfvlkeglwiorriqhporrigvkvbsfouegpioqhiuwvos. It contains two three-letter words.
Likewise, the probability of any given mutation happening is quite low, but there are a huge number of possible mutations.
It is accurate to the bounds of our current knowlege. If you wish to create a new theory of how gravity works that magically acts exactly as if there is extra mass, evenly spread through space, then you can legitimately claim this.
What dark matter is is “We can directly detect extra mass that increases the orbital speed of stars around the galaxy, and speeds up interactions among galactic clusters. Whatever composes it only interacts with gravity and the weak nuclear force.”
Dark energy is “something is causing space to stretch at an increasing rate, what causes it, we do not know.”
If those can be realistically categorized as “fudge factors”, then so can claiming that you have found an undescribed species based on dozens of specimens.
6 Likes
The irony is you still don’t realize this is not correct.
Of course not. Silly made up example.
The previous link is a very good explanation of the second law with a discussion of why evolution doesn’t violate it when it is understood correctly. Come back after you have read it and let us know what you think, if you dare.
3 Likes
There are no “storage locations” in the genome. The insertions occur in random locations. You like probabilities. What is the probability that you can flip 2 fair coins 100,000 times and have them match every time?
This has been discussed several times on this forum. For example here Why Aren't the Twin Locations of >100k+ ERV's (human vs. chimp) Discussed More?
2 Likes
It is 1/10^30103.
“So you are saying that those who put forward evolution have no need to back up their theory with evidence?”
The burden of proof should be on the person proposing a position. Those who put forward evolution need to back up their theory with evidence. Those who put forward anti-evolution need to put forward their theory with evidence. The scoffers’ position of putting all the burden of proof on the other and none upon oneself is all too popular.
As to probabilities of possibly suitable mutations, we simply do not have adequate data to determine that. The ID anti-evolutionary argument requires that we do know those probabilities. But we would have to know both how many different ways there would be to make a set of biochemical molecules that would function like those in known organisms and how many alternative biochemical systems might exist for life to function with a different suite of biochemical molecules. We don’t know that, and it is unlikely to be practical to determine the answer. What we do know is that there are a huge number of different ways to make proteins with any one particular function, some with minor differences and some with huge differences in structure. The range of functional DNA sequences is similarly huge. Also, starting with very simple life, evolution is tweaking something that already works, not starting from scratch to produce each result. Thus, we can be quite confident that the probabilities cited in “it couldn’t happen” are wrong, but not very certain of the true numbers.
Even Answers in Genesis admits that calling dark matter a “fudge factor” is untrue. Some young-earth advocates have slandered astronomers by making that claim, because dark matter is (1) also involved in big bang-related calculation and (2) part of the explanation of why spiral galaxy arms continue to exist, invalidating a young-earth argument.
2 Likes
That’s been done till the cows came home, but it can’t work against magical thinking.
1 Like
I detect a certain pride in this sentence. “Those of us who have not spent decades of professional study on the evidence know more those who have.”
Really? I learned in high school biology that chlorophyll stores the sun’s energy into carbohydrates, and metabolic processes use carbohydrates to perform work.
Maybe you think that’s wrong because it was those crazy “experts,” biologists, who were talking about biology. What do they know? They’ve only spent entire careers as a scientific community that maintains high standards of evidence for publication…
Uncharitable attributions of motive are strictly forbidden on this forum. Please be more careful about following the forum rules. @moderators
These sentences combine the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy with a deep misunderstanding of biology (because a series of mutations can be incremental and selectable, which changes the probability by dozens of orders of magnitude).
I am not sure what you are trying to say in this sentence, because population-level genetic mutations by definition occur in the genome of a single population.
Perhaps you meant to say “gene” instead of “genome”? If so, you may not be aware of the work that biologists have done on this very question. Have you carefully read this recent article in Nature, for example?
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03061-x
Best,
Chris Falter
4 Likes