Fossil Challenge for Evolutionists

[VirOptimus]

OK so you're saying that all science believes that WE originate from a one celled organism...

Then I listen to Meyers or Tour and they're scientists and they don't agree...so do they have an agenda?

Science does not have beliefs.

Its all about data and evidence.

The evidence for common descent is overwhelming.

 

[Tinker Grey]

Is that what you meant??

I said
↑
What not all science can agree on is us coming from a single celled organism


You said

Well, not all scientists can agree on intelligent design, so ...

I'm not saying I believe the majority....
I believe what I think to be correct....
I didn't understand your reply.

You seem to be suggesting that a few scientists disagree with the majority that that minority view is as probably true as the majority view.

This seems like a bad strategy. Either tentatively accept the majority of experts or become an expert yourself.

 

[GodsGrace101]

You seem to be suggesting that a few scientists disagree with the majority that that minority view is as probably true as the majority view.

This seems like a bad strategy. Either tentatively accept the majority of experts or become an expert yourself.

I'm an expert in theology and it makes sense and it's a rational belief system.

However, I do have an open mind and would never say that science is an enemy. I think we're all trying to understand our life, our habitat, and our origin.

As I've said before....I think we just need to wait and see...right now I, personally, don't see any definite information -- maybe I just don't know enough.

 

[Tinker Grey]

maybe I just don't know enough.

Well, as they say, admitting this is a good first step.

 

[Steve Petersen]

Is the universe a closed system?

If a multiverse exists, then our universe is probably an open system. Else, closed.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

What provocative title?

"A Universe From Nothing"

What I say is not a mistake, it's how I understand.

I meant it's a mistake to use a word that someone used in one sense or meaning as if they used it with a different sense or meaning; it's form of straw man or equivocation fallacy.

On reflection, I was over critical.

I've heard Krauss a lot talking about his book...He's desperate to figure out a way to explain how nothing means something different because NOW science has to deal with the universe coming into creation FROM nothing....Before science just said it always existed...so they have a bigger problem now.

Sort of, but not exactly. The objective is to explore how a universe with properties like our own could arise, in terms of the big bang, and in terms of some more fundamental state, using models based on general relativity and particularly quantum mechanics, i.e. assuming that the laws of quantum mechanics apply in any such state.

At a fundamental (particle) level in our spacetime, interactions are completely reversible, so there is no directional arrow of time and no causality; the arrow of time, and consequently causality, are emergent statistical properties of a very well-ordered state undergoing large numbers of interactions (the state at the big bang). The simple fact that there many more ways to be disordered than ordered means that the random reversible interactions will tend to disorder the initial state, causing an asymmetry with respect to time - a present , past, and future generated by increasing disorder. This increasing entropy (disorder) is where we get the laws of thermodynamics from, and what drives the development of the universe and the complexity it produces.

Two areas for investigation are why there was a highly ordered initial state. i.e. why was entropy so low at the big bang, and how the space & time of our universe emerge from a more fundamental state. There are numerous theoretical models for how universes like ours are 'born'; our best current description of how the big bang progressed to the universe we see today predicts that our universe is likely one of many universes produced by the same mechanism. This is the 'universe from nothing' concept - universes created by this mechanism, like ours, have zero overall energy - the mass and energy they contain are balanced by the tension (gravity) they generate in spacetime; like wave and trough, they sum to zero.

The idea of some fundamental state that has quantum instabilities from which spacetime itself emerges makes an ultimate temporal origin moot; ultimately, questions of existence, God or no God, must come down to brute fact. God ideas may be useful in human psychology and social organization but have no utility in physics.

And all this saving us stuff is nonsense.

What 'saving us' stuff?

Jesus is the Word of God...He spoke for God.
To teach us how to be here and now...and, if we're interested, how to be with God forever after death.

So one story goes. Other stories are available...

I don't think people that don't believe in God are dumb or ignorant...I do feel like they haven't accepted the Light.

Likewise, I'm sure

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Not as stated, no. There is a law of the conservation of energy, although it's not clear whether that applies to the universe itself or not.

As I understand it, it doesn't even necessarily apply on cosmological scales - conservation of energy is a result of time-translation symmetry (via Noether's theorem), so, as Special Relativity tells us there is no absolute time, it must be a (cosmologically) local phenomenon.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Is the universe a closed system?

Yes, but there are other constraints (see #567).

 

[Subduction Zone]

Regarding the 9th commandment....
You don't know theology do you?
If you commit a sin, but don't know it's a sin...
Is it a sin?

Maybe Krauss would like to take me to court for
defamation of character?

Science is not desperate to prove that something could come from nothing because the fact that the universe had A START goes against everything science believed till about the second half of the 20 century.

This is a fact.

Who says that breaking a commandment is necessarily a sin? If you make false claims about someone, whether you believe them or not then you have "borne falsewitness" and broken the commandment. You can decide whether or not that is a sin. As a Christian you should strive to avoid breaking the Commandments.

 

[Subduction Zone]

OK so you're saying that all science believes that WE originate from a one celled organism...

Then I listen to Meyers or Tour and they're scientists and they don't agree...so do they have an agenda?

If one does not follow the scientific method can one claim to be a scientist? When it comes to evolution Meyers at least is not a scientist, I am unfamiliar with the other.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I think I need to explain what NOTHING means....!

Energy. Energy doesn't go away,,,it just changes to something different.

Where does energy come from?

See...I go all the way to the beginning --- there either was ALWAYS something, or , something caused all we see to happen.

If there was always something---what created it?
Energy is an "it"...where did it come from?

If everything came into being...the same question applies: What sparked it to come into being?

WHAT caused the big bang? Where did all that heat come from? What created that mass?

Too many questions for many to accept that they just started somehow. This is why I say that it's easier to understand that a supreme being started it...or sparked it.

To some here this sounds like believing in magic...
To me it sounds like magic to believe that all this comes from "nothing" .... kind of like REALLY pulling a real rabbit out of an empty hat with no tricks involved. Is it possible?

Actually energy is merely bookkeeping. I know it seems like a solid something to you but that is not the case. For example; light is made up of photons. If you have a well tuned laser beam almost all of them have the same energy. But the energy of them varies depending upon one's relative motion to the source. Move towards the source and you will measure a higher frequency and therefore a higher energy, move away from it and the opposite occurs. There is no "right" energy to those photons. But the theory of relativity does guarantee that the books balance.

Now if you understood Krauss's lecture you would understand that the total energy of the universe is zero. There is both positive and negative energy and as close as we can measure they balance out. As a result a universe from nothing does not violate conservation of energy.

 

[46AND2]

It IS putting me down...when all along I've been very civil. I've studied enough to know that I don't agree...can I not agree?

You don't agree with what? That something can come from nothing? Great. I don't agree with that either. That DNA came together randomly? Fantastic. I don't agree with that either. Neither do the people with whom you are speaking about all this. So why not try to understand what we actually do believe?

You said you don't believe something came from nothing. Is what we see around us something?
Where did it come from?

You think the things around you came from nothing? What things are you talking about specifically?...cause where raindrops come from is a lot different than where babies come from.

Until the 60's or 80's science believed the universe always existed. Ooops. NOW they don't and science says it came into being but they don't know how.

You keep saying this, but I really have no idea what you are talking about. Many scientists STILL think that the universe always existed...just in a different form. As it stands, virtually none of them think it came from nothing. It's pretty much the consensus that our universe came about from the expansion of a singularity. Beyond that, there is no consensus.

Would you say this is SOMETHING from NOTHING?
I THINK SO....

That's a pretty huge leap. I go back to the very first question I asked of you...how do you know this state of "nothingness" has ever existed?

You don't believe the info in DNA happened by chance?

Then how did it happen?

As sfs explained to you, it happened through FILTERING by natural selection. If you have random inputs, then filter those inputs, you get a NON-RANDOM output.

If I'm inserting positions no scientist holds.
Then tell me:

WHAT POSITION DO SCIENTISTS HOLD NOWADAYS?

I see Lawrence Krauss trying to prove now that SOMETHING can come from NOTHING....
What more needs to be said?

As Frumious explained to you, Krauss' "nothing" is not really nothing...at least, not the same kind of nothing that you are trying to argue. What YOU mean by nothing, is not the same thing as what he means by nothing. Regardless, it's not like he speaks for the whole scientific community. His ideas are relatively controversial. But all he's really doing is trying to find a natural explanation, because natural explanations are the only ones that have ever worked out.

 

[sfs]

OK so you're saying that all science believes that WE originate from a one celled organism...

Then I listen to Meyers or Tour and they're scientists and they don't agree...so do they have an agenda?

Meyers isn't a scientist. Tour is a chemist, not a biologist, and he's stated publicly that he doesn't understand evolution. Certainly neither one is doing any science that undercuts common descent.

 

[sfs]

As I understand it, it doesn't even necessarily apply on cosmological scales - conservation of energy is a result of time-translation symmetry (via Noether's theorem), so, as Special Relativity tells us there is no absolute time, it must be a (cosmologically) local phenomenon.

In Special Relativity, energy is frame-dependent but it is conserved. That is, you measure a different value for the energy of a system depending on the frame you view it from, but the value never changes when viewed from a single frame. Another way of saying the same thing is that relativistic models of physics are invariant under time translation.

The situation under General Relativity is much murkier -- the question exceeds my competence.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

In Special Relativity, energy is frame-dependent but it is conserved. That is, you measure a different value for the energy of a system depending on the frame you view it from, but the value never changes when viewed from a single frame. Another way of saying the same thing is that relativistic models of physics are invariant under time translation.

The situation under General Relativity is much murkier -- the question exceeds my competence.

Yes, I got that wrong - it's the curvature of spacetime under GR changes things.

 

[pitabread]

Then I listen to Meyers or Tour and they're scientists and they don't agree

Can't speak for Tour, but Meyer's opinion on the subject is about as relevant as calling your local plumber for advice on tax accounting. Meyer has neither the relevant credentials nor the professional background for the subjects he writes about.

 

[GodsGrace101]

"A Universe From Nothing"

I meant it's a mistake to use a word that someone used in one sense or meaning as if they used it with a different sense or meaning; it's form of straw man or equivocation fallacy.

On reflection, I was over critical.

Sort of, but not exactly. The objective is to explore how a universe with properties like our own could arise, in terms of the big bang, and in terms of some more fundamental state, using models based on general relativity and particularly quantum mechanics, i.e. assuming that the laws of quantum mechanics apply in any such state.

It's my understanding that quantum mechanics to not help Krauss' theory of something coming from nothing --- this is what he's trying to convince us non-scientists of,,,or, at least, he's trying to find things in the universe that we have not seen yet to explain HOW we got here from a nothingness state.
General Relativity seems to be holding up. I've always admired Einstein.

At a fundamental (particle) level in our spacetime, interactions are completely reversible, so there is no directional arrow of time and no causality; the arrow of time, and consequently causality, are emergent statistical properties of a very well-ordered state undergoing large numbers of interactions (the state at the big bang). The simple fact that there many more ways to be disordered than ordered means that the random reversible interactions will tend to disorder the initial state, causing an asymmetry with respect to time - a present , past, and future generated by increasing disorder. This increasing entropy (disorder) is where we get the laws of thermodynamics from, and what drives the development of the universe and the complexity it produces.

Of course, I can't say that I fully understand what you're stating above...but I get the general idea.
What I find interesting is this disorder you speak of and the laws of thermodynamics. From what I understand some Christian scientists say that it's exactly the 2nd law of thermodynamics that proves there's a power holding everything up. If things are becoming more disorderly, they claim,,,then why are they renewing themselves and things just keep continuing on....
They use this argument to show that God exists.
I don't really know if it's valid.

Two areas for investigation are why there was a highly ordered initial state. i.e. why was entropy so low at the big bang, and how the space & time of our universe emerge from a more fundamental state. There are numerous theoretical models for how universes like ours are 'born'; our best current description of how the big bang progressed to the universe we see today predicts that our universe is likely one of many universes produced by the same mechanism. This is the 'universe from nothing' concept - universes created by this mechanism, like ours, have zero overall energy - the mass and energy they contain are balanced by the tension (gravity) they generate in spacetime; like wave and trough, they sum to zero.

The idea of some fundamental state that has quantum instabilities from which spacetime itself emerges makes an ultimate temporal origin moot; ultimately, questions of existence, God or no God, must come down to brute fact. God ideas may be useful in human psychology and social organization but have no utility in physics.

You've reduced God to an idea that could be helpful n some cases...like in social order and psychology -- you know,,,man made God up so we could "use" Him.
I think we should be ready to accept whatever we find.

What 'saving us' stuff?

You mentioned something about how Jesus saves us.
I'm not much into this "saving us" stuff...but I do believe Jesus is our salvation -- but I'm not here to discuss Jesus. I DO say that we should be ready to accept a god of some type. Maybe He's the electricity running through space? Who can know for sure?'

 

[GodsGrace101]

Who says that breaking a commandment is necessarily a sin? If you make false claims about someone, whether you believe them or not then you have "borne falsewitness" and broken the commandment. You can decide whether or not that is a sin. As a Christian you should strive to avoid breaking the Commandments.

How do I make a false claim about someone if it's my belief that it's the truth?

To make a false claim against my neighbor, I'd have to know it's false.

This is from Wikepedia and is correct:
Christian hamartiology describes sin as an act of offence against God by despising his persons and Christian biblical law, and by injuring others. In Christian views it is an evil human act, which violates the rational nature of man as well as God's nature and his eternal law.

So, how am I committing an evil act if I don't know it's evil?

Will a just and moral and merciful and loving God hold against us an act that we are not aware is sinful?

 

[GodsGrace101]

If one does not follow the scientific method can one claim to be a scientist? When it comes to evolution Meyers at least is not a scientist, I am unfamiliar with the other.

They both do not believe in the primordial soup theory.
They both do not believe a one celled organism could have resulted in becoming a human.

 

[GodsGrace101]

Actually energy is merely bookkeeping. I know it seems like a solid something to you but that is not the case. For example; light is made up of photons. If you have a well tuned laser beam almost all of them have the same energy. But the energy of them varies depending upon one's relative motion to the source. Move towards the source and you will measure a higher frequency and therefore a higher energy, move away from it and the opposite occurs. There is no "right" energy to those photons. But the theory of relativity does guarantee that the books balance.

Now if you understood Krauss's lecture you would understand that the total energy of the universe is zero. There is both positive and negative energy and as close as we can measure they balance out. As a result a universe from nothing does not violate conservation of energy.

Yes, I understand what YOU are saying, but you're not understanding my point.

WHAT caused the energy?
What caused the first spark of life?

Science has no answer.
Christianity says it's God,,,but then we need to understand what caused God.
Nothing caused God because He's a first cause...
but it's still a problem we don't understand....