Proof that god created the universe
 

This was posted by a friend of mine, I want to know what you guys thought about it. She makes some interesting points, what do you think? Do you see any major flaws with her logic?

"1.Whatever has a beginning had a cause
2.The universe had a beginning
3.Therefore, the universe had a cause "

Okay, A is equal to B and so B is equal to A... Thus god must also have a beginning.

"God is eternal and uncreated and doesn't need a cause." Self defeating of previous quote. Because it shows that there are exceptions to that rule.

"If this were not so we would have to search for God's cause- and so on and so on into infinity. " I though that humans were not suppose to understand gods meaing or cause..... so he doesn't have a cause? I'm sorry so he 'creates' a universe just for shits and giggles? That seems to have some form of cause.

"This cause we call "God". The first cause of all that exists must be eternal and uncreated in order to have the power to start everything else, including the universe."
In algabra we learn that we can use A or B to represent something now god can represent the big bang, I'll give that it is easyer to type but still is seems to misconstru the subject.

"The universe had a beginning. Several years ago, many scientists believed the universe was eternal, with no beginning. In the 20th century Scientists discovered new information that indicates the universe must have a beginning. First, by 1927, astronomer Edwin Hubble shocked the scientific community by discovering the expaning movements of our galaxy and beyond. Hubble found that galaxies were moving away from us at high speeds. This explansion is similar to a bomb exploding. This discovery was called the "Expanding Universe," it caused some scientists to change their view from an eternal universe ro one that must have a beginning. If you were to reverse the expansion, you would arrive back to a point of beginning beyond which there was nothing."

Now if the universe is expanding, like it's a huge fireball that got ignited and then must collapse.... Then this seems to be a bit similar to the big bang... no god there just a packed space exploding.

"If the universe had a beginning it must have a cause. "
Yes, the cause doesn't have to be a supreme being.

"The law of "Thermodynamics."" What law of thermodynamics? One of them says that the entropy of the universe is alwasy increaseing. Even if Earth is running out of fossil fules, it doesn't mean the universe is looseing entropy.

"2. Self-caused: Imposable beacuse somehting can't create itself. The universe would exist prior to it existing. "

I think the underline sums it all up. God can't be to blame because he can't cause him self so he is thus as plossiable as anything else, or it just is a hoax.

"Do you see any major flaws with her logic?"

Quite a few.

Forgive the spelling, I'm a bit out of it right now, I'll try to clean it up later.

God, is the choice to stop asking questions.

The universe had to start somewhere. That was God.
But?
...shhh, GOD.
But, what about...
GOD! THE END.

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of the universe increases over time.

That's still usable energy. Entropy is disorder. Sort of like if you don't clean your room for a while, it gets messier.

Note that the second law may not ALWAYS have been true, but it is now.

Who said God had to follow logic or rules?

To an extent, He must.

God can never make 2+2=5.


However, the point is that the second law of thermodynamics does not necessarily require nor does it prove the existance of a God.

Can you really have REAL proof for or against the existance of God?
Methinks no.

Actually the expanding universe theory doesn't know if the universe had a beginning. There's a theory that the universe expands, then contracts, collapses on itself, and another big bang happens and it starts all over again in an infinitely cyclical loop.


Deceitful sylligism. That's kind of like saying Any apple is a fruit, that cow is an apple, therefore the cow is a fruit. The second postulation in my example is not true. The second postulation in your proof is not proveable. We do not know that the universe had a true beginning because we were not there. Since we cannot prove that the universe had a beginning, we cannot prove that it had a cause.




Your theory writer needs to brush up on her quantum physics. Particles appear and disappear all the time, and there's no known cause. I highly doubt that a god is witching them all into existance.

Plus, even if we grant that every thing which has a beginning must be caused by something, that does not necessarilly mean it must be caused by a god


But who's to say that cause must be a god?


Says who? I hope you're not using the bible as proof - it's generally considered poor form to use a document to prove that document. So you'll need to find some other proof that 1) God exists and 2) God is eternal and 3) God is uncreated.


And if God is eternal and uncreated then logically that means it is possible for something to be eternal and uncreated. Therefore it is possible that the universe itself is eternal and uncreated. I'm afraid that blows a rather large hole in the divine causation argument.


Ahhh, so we say God is eternal and uncreated because it would be decidedly inconvenient to declare otherwise. Unfortunately principals declared out of convenience rather than research are valueless.

Conjecture conjecture conjecture. Write with a scholarly enough tone and you can get almost anyone to believe anything.


Prove it.

indicates teh universe MAY have a beginning. We have hypotheses, but when you get right down to it, we simply don't know.

That theory has been challenged. And the concept of an exploding universe is not correct anyway. It's more accurate to think of the universe as being drawn on the surface of a balloon which is being blown up.



No, it does not. It suggests that at one point in history the universe was very very small and dense, but it does not suggest that this means the universe began at this point.

Actually the word you are searching for is entropy, which is the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Not all of them.


No it does not because we do not have any proof that the universe has not always existed.


The universe and the laws that govern it are much more bizzarre than our little human minds can grasp. We simply do not know enough to be able to say that for certain. It's likely, but it is not a certainty. Unless you have a certainty you cannot prove anything with it.


So far your only reference is the document that you are trying to prove, namely the bible. That just doesn't work. And just because it is more reasonable to believe something does not make it true. It is more reasonable to believe that as an electron transfers from a lower to a higher orbit around its atom, it will travel between the two orbits in a linear fashion, much as you would do if you drove your car down the block. That's a very reasonable belief. It's also flat out wrong. The electron simultaneously disappears from the first orbit and appears in the second orbit, without crossing any points in between.

It is reasonable to believe that one particle cannot effect its mate if the one particle is in San Francisco and its mate is on the moon. But it's been shown that if you manipulate the first particle, its mate immediately reacts. How is THAT possible? We don't know, but it does happen, and these two examples do not follow reasonable conclusions. In short, just because it's reasonable to believe that a god started all of this does not in any way make it true.

It gets rather difficult to talk about things violating causality or to think in terms of "beginning" when one of the quirky facotrs of the situation you're describing is that time fails to behave in an explicable manner under the conditions in question.

The Big Bang, if nothing else, serves as the dividing line at which point physics as we understand it seems to come into effect. People havethis idea that "before the big bang" there was nothing. "Before the big bang" is a fundamentally meaningless concept as we only know that time behaved linearly after the big bang. All that cool stuff in the core of your argument about thermodynamics and causality is tightly dependent on a unidirectional linear function of time... and there is no basis for assuming that was the case "before".

In short, we don't know if the universe had a beginning. If it did have a beginning, we don't know if it required a cause or not. Normal Rules Did Not Apply.

Gods are, of course, superfluous.

1. Uncaused: No, this violates the Principle of Causality
Wrong - there is no such thing as the Principle of Causality. Read some quantum physics, causality was replaced with Undeterminism a long time ago (1920s?)

2. Self-caused: Imposable beacuse somehting can't create itself. The universe would exist prior to it existing.
Wrong Things create themselves all the time. Life is a great example of a self-creative process, so are the particle/anti-particle pairs that appear and disappear from and back into nowhere all over the place.

3.Caused by something or someonelse:Yes, it is the only reasonable explanation and is consistent with the principle of causality. It's more reasonable to believe the existence came from nothing by someone then nothing by nothing. (Hebrews 11:3)
Wrong No, it's not, because by definition, it is not an explanation. Why? Because it starts off by carefully stating that everything requires a cause, and then invents a causeless entity called God that breaks all the rules. Where's the logic in that? It's nonsense.

You're replacing an unknown with another unknown - that doesn't answer the question, it just deferrs it for later.

It takes more faith to believe there was no designer than to accept there was one, be it the God revealed in the Bible, space aliens, or whatever.

I heard an analogy the other day that I liked: Believing the world, with its ecosystem, and people, with their biological systems, just evolved from nothing is a bit like believing the dictionary on your shelf came from an explosion at a printing factory. It takes a WHOLE lot of faith to accept something like that.

AVOR

"1> Anything that has a beginning has a cause"

In everyday speak, this is reasonable. However, when you start probing the fabric of reality, things get wierd.

What do you mean by "beginning"? Quite often you cannot divide something from what came before.

At scales that you are not used to thinking on, time behaves wierdly. There is reason to believe that at distances near and under a "plank length" and times near and under a "plank time", position and time look very little like what you are used to on large scales.

On larger scales this may also be true.

"2> The universe had a beginning"

This may or may not be true. Using many models, the universe contains the dimension of time. Saying it has a beginning is like someone at the equater saying "every bit of Earth has another bit of Earth north of us." "The Earth is bounded." "The Earth north of the last bit of Earth is god."

"3> Therefore, the universe had a cause"

The universe denotes "all that is". Causes "are". The cause of something preceeds it. Anything that preceeds something is not part of it. If the universe has a cause, then that cause is not part of it. Everything that is is part of the universe. Therefore, the universe has no cause.

A and not A

Voila, a contradiction.

I like that. Consider it 'borrowed.' :)

Either the rules apply to all involved or they apply to none. You can't use physics to constrain the universe and then not use them on 'God.'

Either He lives by the rules of the universe he created and we let the world of science sort Him out or He lives outside those rules in the supernatural and we let the world of theology sort Him out.

I've seen this argument before. It's fundamentally flawed. Saying that there must be a god because it would be very improbable for the world to be this way randomly is a circular argument, and shows a lack of understanding of math. ALL outcomes of the universe were equally improbable before the universe started. By that I mean, if the laws of the universe were totally different from what they are today, we would still be sitting here saying "wow, isn't that improbable!"

Richard Feynman put it best - Today I was driving and I saw a license plate, AGN-934. That's amazing! Of all the possible license plates I could have seen, I saw that one. That's too improbable to be random - it must have been divine intervention!


As you can see, that concept is silly.

Strangely, did you realize that almost all the the free energy that feeds the world comes from a large exploding ball of gas millions of miles away?

This seems utterly unlikely. What does a large, exploding ball of gas have to do with baby gurgling? Anyone who claims that a large, exploding ball of gas has anything to do with carrots has far to much faith in the wrong things.

The large exploding ball of gas I'm referring to is the sun. It shines down on the earth. The plants use the sunlight to do photosynthesis. Various things eat the plants, which eventually give the baby the energy to gurgle.

Now, the chains involved have been researched and explained -- there are still tricky things involved (we don't understand biology perfectly yet), but mankind is pretty damn certain that the main energy source for life on earth is the sun.

But if you say "babys gurgle because of exploding gas", it looks ridiculous.

Methods that explain how life comes to be, with no need for a designer, exist. Experiments to see if "spontanious complexity" can occur have been done, and spontantious complexity has been found.

A designer hasn't been ruled out -- but there isn't any predictive value to the designer hypothesis. Things without predictive value are discarded in science, because experience has shown that predictive-value-less arguements tend to be hogwash.

Since the majority of the posters here echo my sentiments exactly, I'm going to go on a selfish tangent;

Do you have any resources/references on this? This and the following paragraph allude to quantum mechanics, but I've not heard it applied to electron configuration. Is it not just that the particle changes orbits at the speed of light (or a speed we cannot measure)? Or is it truly simultaneous?

Well.. I think that is based off of two assumptions:

1) That the existence (the universe) has a beginning - what if it doesn't? What if time is infinite?
2) That if it has a definite start time, that something had to have started it.. ie - that things cannot spring into being (something has to start things)..

These are bad assumptions with no real basis - therefore the proof is built on quicksand.

I believe that order spontaneously arises and life is simply a by-product of the spontaneous development of order. This suits me. God can suit you. But you cannot prove either of our philosophies.

Nope, it does not travel at the speed of light. It disappears from the one orbit, and reappears in the other without travelling between orbits.

Probably the most readable source for this (read: The only one I was smart enough to understand) is Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Everything" which btw is an EXCELLENT book about all sorts of science stuff.

Was so close to posting some real commentary but read everybody else's and realize that the original argument had already been torn to shreds.

One of my favorite quotations is:::

"If you take a copy of the Christian Bible and put it out in the wind and the rain, soon the paper on which the words are printed will disintegrate and the words will be gone. My bible IS the wind and the rain..... " Unknown author

Speculations about the nature of our existance (universe) and whether there is a god (whatever that is) or not are very interesting. Our brains and knowlegde seem to have advanced little since our ancient ancestors' beliefs.

Maybe in a few million years or so if we survive... I know it must be part of our nature but I really don't understand why we seem so inclined to develop a faith in anything (like a religion or a designer) when we are so ignorant.

shakran, I like your Feynman quote.

Hubble's observations suggested that there was a time, called the big bang, when the universe was infinitesimally small and infinitely dense. Under such conditions all the laws of science, and therefore all ability to predict the future, would break down. If there were events earlier than this time, then they could not affect what happens at the present time. Their existence can be ignored because it would have no onservational consequences. One may say that time had a beginning at the big bang, in the sense that earlier times simply would not be defined. It should be emphasized that this beginning in time is very different from those that had been considered previously. In an unchanging universe a beginning in time is something that has to be imposed by some being outside the universe; there is no physical necessity for a beginning. One can imagine that God created the universe at literally any time in the past. On the other hand, if the universe is expanding, there may be physical reasons why there had to be a beginning. One could imagine that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang, or even afterwards in just such a way as to make it look as though there had been a big bang, but it would be meaningless to suppose that it was created before the big bang. An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job! [Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), pp. 8-9.]

What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary. [Stephen W. Hawking, Der Spiegel, 1989]


Now if only I had the patience and understanding to read his book...

Bah. The electron was never not in both the second orbit and the first orbit. Electrons are not a localized phenomina.

And "Orbit" seems to be the wrong word to destribe how electrons bind to protons. "Cloud" seems better.

That is one interpritation of the experiement. I prefer locality -- observing the results of manipulating one particle changes which manipulations of the second particle you can see.

This means that every particle interaction slices reality along yet another axis.

The law of excluded middle does not hold with "reasonableness".

"It is reasonable to believe god started it all."
"It is reasonable to believe that god did not start it all."
Both of the above can be true without there being any conflict.

"It is unreasonable to believe god started it all."
"It is unreasonable to believe god did not start it all."
Both of the above can be true without there being any conflict.

Well, yeah, but I'm trying to keep it simple. We are not all quantum physicists on this forum ;)




Your science knowledge is very impressive, but this does not change my original point.





This doesn't really have anything to do with what I said. I said just because something is reasonable does not mean it is true. Even if it's reasonable to believe 2 different things, that does not mean one, or both, of those beliefs are true.

Bah, humbug. Accuracy is important. An arguement that results in a true conclusion, but includes inaccurate premises or logic, is not a good arguement for the conclusion.


The two different things in question where of the form "A" and "not A". It is often an axiom of logic that one and only one of "A" and "not A" is True -- this is sometimes described as the law of excluded middle. I was noting that reasonableness does not act like "truth" in that it does not obey this law of excluded middle.

A demonstration that "it is reasonable to believe in god" does not imply that "it is unreasonable to not believe in god". So even if the arguement given originally did not have holes, it doesn't show that there is no god in any way shape or form. It simply shows that it is reasonable to believe in god.

It seemed, at least to me, that a "proof" for "X" is an attempt to say "not X is false". The original "proof" for "got exists" is, at best, a demonstration that "it is reasonable to believe in god" -- it does not demonstrate that it is unreasonable to not believe in god, even if it was a flawless arguement.

I'm not disagreeing with your conclusions. I am commenting on your content.

When the accuracy doesn't change the outcome of the conclusion, but creates confusion in 99% of the people who read it, and who therefore will not understand the conclusion, then too much accuracy is not a good thing. Put another way, I'm sure you've used the phrase "in the future" which refers to a linear description of time, even though I'm sure you know that we only perceive time as being linear, because you realize that saying "in what you laypeople perceive as the future but which is really just another point in spacetime" would pointlessly confuse your audience

Thus god must also have a beginning.
----------------

That's illogicall.. . If everything had a beginning we would not exist....

There must be an uncaused cause.... and furthermore this uncaused cause must be outside of time... to avoid the fact that infinitiy in the past doens't logically work out. Therefore whatever began us all must have at least one quality we associate with God, and that is it must be outside the constraints of limitation, as in outside time.

I didnt read all the posts, but here are my two scents. First of all, ignorance does not prove the existance of god. And there are theories on how the universe came to be. It is pretty much a fact that we are in an expanding universe. The Big Bang theory is widely accepted. So, to explain where the big bang came from, you have an expanding universe. All the matter, stars and planets and everything else, has mass. Once the mass is big enough to slow and eventually stop the expanding of the universe, it begins to collapse. It pulls itself in on itself until it is immeasurably small and enormously massive. BANG!! It explodes. Big Bang and the universe starts over.

No, actually, a universe that constantly expands, contracts, expands, contracts, etc. is contrary to the laws of physics. I can't remember where I read this, but I think it was "A Brief History of Time". I'm generally sympathetic to the idea that the cosmological argument isn't sound, but bad physics isn't a good way to discuss it.

/shrug, "in my future" means "in my future light-cone". It is accurate and works in conversational logic and doesn't require naive time.

The times this breaks down is when you are talking about astronomical distances, or things far apart from each other (satalites in orbit), or events that are happening very rapidly (microprocessor levels). In these cases it is usually worthwhile to be extra careful about how you speak about "future" "past" and "present". And be willing to say "I don't know".

even if the known universe was proven to have required a cause to exist, what reason is there to believe that such a cause could not be scientifically explained given enough information?

how is it any more reasonable to believe that there is a god that is infinite or eternal than to believe that nature itself could be?

Because nature tends to not exist. Therefore anything that has the ability to not exist at one time didn't Therefore, at one time nature did not exist.

Ultimately, everything is a matter of faith. Therefore, there must be a prime mover outside of faith (God). Of course, a personal God is probably superfluous. Afterall, by definition, if God was personal, then it would not be God.

By the way, what is the point to question omnipotence and other characteristics of God. For example the unmovable rock or 2+2 cannot be 5 argument. The argument is that the world is limited and at one time did not exist, so there must be a God that is outside of this constrained world. This is the prime mover. So, why do people try to disprove him from elements that is not of God's existence such as a space and time?

since when did nature tend to not exist? =.=

also, people try to disprove things using space and time because those are the most prevalent frames of reference in basic sciences. and people with any interest in objectionally debating god are probably interested in some way of a scientific view.

but i dont we're thinking of the same thing when i say "eternal", maybe we are for "infinite" though. im talking eternal not in the sense of a limitless amount of time, more like timelessness; a lack of relation to time. and im thinking infinite in the sense of lack of physical boundry, not lots and lots of something. it doesn't make sense to me to consider either "infinite" or "eternal" in the context of the things that they are opposites of (space and time). theyre not quantitative in my mind.

There's also a problem with the entire series being finite. If everything in the series is finite, we still need (?want) a reason for the existence of the series. But God, if he exists, exists necessarily. So we don't need a reason for his existence -- he exists because he has to (cf. Peter Van Inwagen's article "Why is there something rather than nothing?")

Nature continually tends to not exist as demonstrated through the concept of change. For example, if it is necessary to preserve existence through change, it is possible that the object does not exist. It is not reasonable or rational to accept that it has always existed if it tends towards nonexistence. The flu is an example of this as is geological change of landforms.

My problem with your concept of space is fairly basic. Are we not really saying the same thing but just phrasing it differently then? For example, if I believe in a prime mover of all that exists is outside of the realm of constriction and you are referring to time and space being outside the realm of quantitative constriction, then how is our belief really any different?

Alot of people argue space and time on the practical level of science that most people understand. Besides certain very specific arguments, I feel many basic concepts such as the Heisenberg Principle can be shown to counter almost all arguments I've seen.

der. ignore this.

Really, they're not different. What I'm really arguing is, why personify that as God? but then again..
so.. :)


Just as easily, similar qualities can be assumed about Nature.

We can't prove that the universe exists because of a "big bang". Scientists theorize this because of the expansion of the universe. We also have only been able to track celestial movement on this scale for less than 100 years... for all we know, the universe expands and contracts on a regular interval. It could be 200, 200 thousand, or a number we can't even calculate to.

So in that, we've already shot the "universe has a beginning" assertion.

Also, using the old "cause and effect" adage: you can't look at a tidal wave and disregard the role of the butterfly. Just because you can't measure or observe something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There was a time with no electron microscopes, but those particles sure existed. If you took something as simple as a battery back in time as recent as maybe 200 years, you'd have been heralded as God, or burned as a witch, depending on your geographic location. The point is, the absense of calculable data to explain causation or existense of a certain thing does not indicate divine influence. I don't know myself, exactly, how a car is created. Sure, i'm aware of all the parts, but i'll be damned If I personally have any clue how it all comes together to make a car. Taking that the universe did "bang" or somehow come about rather than having "aways existed", there may well have been a host of factors that drove its creation... and we simply don't have the ability to know for sure.

I don't know if you guys are into string theory and such but there is a idea that thinks the 'big bang' was cause by 'membranes' - think other universe or dimension - coming together.

Of course this just moves the arguement to where did the 'membranes' come from. Doh!

The best test for an absolute 'proof' is if everyone is happy with it.
eg. E=mc2 took a while and for now it has been proven.

So it is obvious she does not have a proof as it equally obvious not everyone is happy with it. It may be a proof of God to her - but it is not an absolute proof.

When you say God do you mean Allah? Which God are we talking about . . . . exactly. Or does the logic prove the existence of all the worlds gods?

could be any god, even the pasta god the Flying Spaghetti Monster as worshipped by the Pastafarians.

Brilliant stuff Synthetiq! I actually laughed out loud! Thanks. Most excellent.

I'm too tired to read everyon'e responses, so I'll post first and reread later. Frankly, the statements quoted by the OP are flawed on so many levels it's silly. Also, these are out of order, my apologies.

1. There is no "proof" that the universe had a beginning, will have an end or any other such finite component. Until this is fact, everything relating to this is a theory at best.

2. The last comment about energy... you even had it right at the beginning... "usable energy". Remember that just about everything has some potential energy. Plants have tons of potential energy... we usually see them as calories. Fruits especially. These are caused, in part, by the consumption of energy (primarily from the sun, but also from other "digestive" measures of the plant) into the plant itself. When we drill up oil, we burn it off in cars or power plants. This energy is released as electricity, heat and motion. Electricity is used to power other things that all, to some degree or another, generate heat. Heat itself is energy. Motion is also energy. That energy is then transferred into other things. In essence, just because we can't harness the energy of our own momentum or the energy of our electrical offcast does not mean the energy does not exist.

3. I'm still trying to get past the first three numbers listed. Why does one assume 1 and 2 and therfore derive 3? "Whatever had a beginning had a cause"... why? Just because we do not have examples doesn't mean anything. Hell, we don't even understand gravity still, and it's a primary part of what makes our world work right. "The universe had a beginning"... this was covered in my #1.

Also, scientists didn't discover new information that means the universe MUST have a beginning... though more of them believe it is likely it did. There are also those, including Stephen Hawking, that believe it may have infinite expand/collapse periods. perhaps the energy created simply loops time...? Sound silly? Doesn't mean it isn't so.

Trying to use science to prove the existance of god, any god, IMHO is a moot argument. Yes, there are Christian scientists... yes, they may not be mutually exclusive. I believe both quite probably exist (science could be made up by humans to explain things that are actually divine). Also, there is an assumption that god is eternal, infinite, omnipotent and/or omnipresent. Why? What proof is there of this? In fact, until recently (in the big picture) most deities were born out of some form of chaos, or titans or who knows what. It's pretty much only modern religions that believe in an omnipresent god that has been around forever and will continue on as such.

Just food for thought.

"I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking."
H.L.Menken

Being a pastafarian has it's advantages.

Amoung other things, you can get married in a pasta house.

Few proofs that God exists
 

Hello, I’m new here. I work in the domain of advanced web development solutions, Portals and e-commerce. I believe in God and have the interest of exploring and hearing all kinds of opinions, objective and scientific analysis to the detail and discussions.

There's a lot of proof about God's existence, I’ll just mention a few now:

1- The universe could have not come by accident because a little change in the big bang would have made earth’s creation impossible.

2- All planets in our solar system cannot hold life except earth. Nipton and Pluto are 270 degrees below zero. That’s almost zero Kelvin degrees, the state when atoms stop to move and condense making huge mass and gravity impossible for any life.

3- Mercury and the planet after are several hundred degrees in heat. Mercury, the closest to sun gets 40 degrees cold below zero when not facing the sun. At the same its surface gets 400 degrees hot when facing the sun.

4- Everything, tons of things I’ve researched and read, indicate that any slight change in the earth’s atmosphere, anatomy, etc would make life impossible.

5- Scientific evidence shows that if the big bang was a little stronger, 1 in a billion, planets would have been moving apart and our solar system wouldn’t exist

6- If the big bang was just a little less strong, it would have collapsed before earth would have been created

7- One miracle of the Quran which came 1400 years ago said in a verse that there are 7 Heavens (skies). Heavens in the Quran refer to as skies. Indeed, the number of skies above earth is seven. Ionosphere, ozone layer, helium layer, others. They are scientifically proven as seven layers but I don’t remember the names now. Each layer has a vital function to life.

8- The nasal canal holds mucus and it has a layer filled with millions of tiny leg shaped protrusions (cilia) like the arms of the squid and above them is the mucus layer. These legs move the mucus in a continuous matter to our mouth so we can spit or swallow. The mucous layer has two sides. One is slippery (the side of the legs which shift the mucus) and one is sticky so that it can stick to the bacteria and inferior bodies that touch it. These bodies come from our breathing. If this micro tiny layer was upside down humanity would have not existed and every baby would catch disease and die when he was born. Because then, the cilia would stick to the mucous and cannot move and the microbes would slide on the other slippery side of the mucous and enter our mouth immediately. Therefore evolution cannot be true because this thing could not have come step by step. Beings and humans have incredibly large complexity inside that science have proven it impossible to have these come in step by step as evolution says. Because ONE and only ONE change in the billions of components that creatures are made of would have made it impossible to survive. Therefore it is impossible that the creatures would have existed without one thing as the cilia and then mated and revolutionized and had cilia. Because if they don’t have the complex structure of the cilia and the mucous layer they would have died from the beginning without the chance of having sexual intercourse and reproducing through evolution.

9- Evolution has been proven by science now to be false. Evolution will not make a new species. If you mate different types of dogs you will get a different breed of dog but it’s still a dog. You cannot get a dog with aqua features like fins so that the can swim better in the sea..

10- Science now says that the world came from the big bang. The big band was in the beginning a point of:
• infinite mass
• infinite gravity
• zero volume

11- Therefore the universe was created from nothing. That is the act of God

12- God created time. (personal opinion) [edited]

13- God knows the future because he is not bound by time.

14- Every human has a free will and every human will have a time of death and hell or heaven destiny known by God before his creation. This is because God can know time backwards, from the end to the beginning. Because he is not bound by time. So he gives you the choice of life but he knows if you are going to heaven or earth before you were born. (number 14 is based on my analysis)

15- God is not obliged to show himself to humans. In the Quran he says if you (the community) is not going to be believe he will replace them with ones whom he will love and they will love him and he will inherit them the land which the previous ones were one. He gave us the whole universe, complex bodies, blessings, life, mating, fruit and everything. He made all creatures under the control of human beings and he told us through many profits of his existence. He does not need to do more if you don’t believe.

16- You will know that God exists when you believe in him and pray to him. How? Because your life will improve and he will bless and you will have prosperity in all ways. God wants you to believe so he will bless you.

17- Human beings don’t have the power to see God. In the Quran, one of the early profits (Moses or Abraham) asked God to see him. God said that you cannot see him. But the profit insisted. So God said he will reveal to the mountain. The mountain then broke down and came to pieces from the revelation of God.

18- The final Major Blessing on human beings in the Quran. It says in the Quran that only those who enter the heaven will be given the blessing to see God. God says to the people of the heaven: “Wouldn’t I show you my blessing? The people said: You gave us everything and the heavens, what more could we want? He said “to see my face”. The people said “yes, we want to see your face”. Then he gave them the power to see him and it was the most beautiful revelation in the heavens. And then the revelation ended and God will not reveal to anyone.” These are verses I translated from the Quran

nanotech - excuse me for pointing this out, but none of those things are proofs.

Having read the Qu'ran....my interpretation of the text seems a bit different from yours....but regardless. Nothing you have posted even comes close to Proving a God exists.....and nothing you post ever will. This is reality, sorry.

It’s good to know you read the Quran, I've read it too and heard interpretations which I pretty sure to be correct. But we're humans, sometimes we make a mistake. Perhaps you want to discuss the readings you sought and tell me the versus so I can check.

About the proof, yes there's proof and I thought it was clear. I'll explain further.

1- The creation of the universe is a matter of design, not coincidence. Any tiny change in the strength of the big bang, earth's gravity strength, minute change in position, etc would have made life impossible. A proof is that earth among millions or billions of planets is the only one capable of life.

2- Any less features of the human complex body would have not allowed the survival of human beings; therefore evolution could not have created humans because sexual intercourse which evolution is based on could not have existed. Because the creatures would have died of diseases, inability to hunt, search for water, and shelter if their body systems weren't complete before they could have sex and give birth. So life was created by design not coincidence or evolution. So there have had to be a designer. A higher life form which made all this and gave the property of the entire universe to the human beings only. Who could it be that would give the whole universe to human beings? Aliens made the universe, humans, life and everything then vanished? Why?

3- No other life forms on other planets have been seen on other planets. The Quran says he gave the universe to human beings. True

4- The earth has 7 layers which was said in the Quran 1400 years ago when it was impossible to make such conclusions based on science.

5- In the Islam religion, God forbids to eat pork meat and the meat of carnivores and the dead creatures. Indeed, now it’s proven the pork meat is the only meat that has microscopic warms that do not die and can live inhuman beings even when boiled! This all came 1400 years ago when there was no science.

Beliefs are NOT proof.

Read on. . .


Wow, where to start? You BELIEVE the creation of the universe is design, not coincidence. That does not PROVE anything.

You're right in that slight changes in the big bang, etc, could have changed the outcome of the universe. We happened to come about because of changes like that.

I've used this argument before but it is a good one. Credit to Dick Feynman. This morning I drove to the grocery store and I saw a blue Ford Mustang with license number NXY-932. Of all the possible license plates and all the possible makes and models of cars and all the possible colors of cars I managed to see the ONLY blue ford mustang with license number NXY-932. That's just too improbable to be coincidence. God must have sent that car to me.

Put another way (and this could help you deal with the dual concepts of evolution and "divine" creation), if you drop a glass on the floor and it breaks, each shard of glass will land in a specific place, facing a specific way. Given all the places the shards COULD have landed, it's mathematically very improbable that they landed exactly where they did. But that does not make you a god, and it does not mean the shards landed where they did because of your design.



Regarding your theory that earth is the only planet capable of sustaining life, wow, I'm amazed. Thousands of scientists all asking whether or not other planets might be able to sustain life, and YOU'VE managed to find and classify EVERY planet in the universe, and examine them even at the microscopic level to make sure there was nothing alive on them.

You're good ;)



bzzt. Wrong. Sorry. If we had a 4 fingered hand, we'd still be here. We evolved this way. That doesn't mean it's the only way.

The only thing worse than that logic is that logic. Sexual intercourse exists even at the microscopic level. All sexual intercourse is is an exchange of genetic data. Sure it's more complicated (and more fun ;) ) in humans, but human or planaria, it's all the same at its most basic level.


Aha. Now we figure out where you're coming from. You have a fundamental lack of understanding of the teachings of evolution. Evolution does not say that one day a monkey woke up and morphed into a human. It says that slowly, over generations, genetic traits which increased the chance of survival were passed on. There is no one creature that was the LAST of one species and that gave birth to the FIRST of the next. There was no one creature that started out as an asexually reproductive species, and then suddenly one day decided to grow a penis and see what it could do with it.





Well as you can see from my above points, the premise that the universe MUST have been designed, is false. As for the aliens comment, the same can be said for god. God made the universe, humans, life, and everything, and we haven't heard from him in nearly 2000 years?


No one has seen the inside of the brick that makes up the outer walls of my house, but that does not mean the inside of the brick does not exist.

Until a new species is discovered, no one has seen it, but that does not mean it does not exist.

Until life on other planets is discovered, no one has seen it, but that does not mean it does not exist.



Let's examine that statement. You're using the Quran to prove what the Quran says. Christians do the same thing with their bible. Interestingly enough, we're talking about books which were passed down orally for over a thousand years until the invention of the printing press made it possible for mass distribution of books.

Let's shift gears a second. Most Americans believe Benjamin Franklin flew a kite with a key attached to it in a storm, and that's how he discovered electricity. In fact there is no evidence that this actually happened and there is good evidence that it did not. But that doesn't mean that most Americans aren't hearing the story, believing it, and passing it down to the next generation.

So how can you argue that, if we can't get the Ben Franklin story right after only 200 years, and with the advantages of the media to help us record events accurately. . . If we can't do that, then exactly how did they get the bible/quran 100% correct after so many more years of being passed down, and during an era where few could read, much less write this stuff down?



The earth has 5 layers. The crust, the upper mantle, the lower mantle, the outer core, and the inner core. 6 if you count the atmosphere (why would you do this?). If the Quran says it has 7 layers, then it is wrong and this would prove that the Quran is, at least partly, inaccurate.

Ahh but there were people who ate pork and then died from the parasites in it. And after enough people died, someone figured out the pork was to blame, and then had "god" tell them to knock it off. After all if Grog the Early Man ran around yelling "hey don't eat that tasty pork that's probably your only food for a week because I think it'll kill you!" no one's gonna listen. . .But if GOD says not to eat it, then suddenly people will listen.


If you analyze religion (not just Islam, but any religion) there's an awful lot of social control in it that would not work without scaring people about what the divine being will do to them.

I just want to add a bit to the arguments that Nanotech brought up, because I think they're decent arguments that don't deserve the short shrift they've been getting. Nanotech mentions the fine-tuning argument and what I'll call for the sake of short-hand, the 'evolution is impossible' argument. I don't have the science background to make the argument that these work, but I do know enough to say that the objections mentioned are insufficent. Unfortunately, both of these arguments get really technical really quickly, especially the fine-tuning argument.

1. The fine-tuning argument
The most sophisticated versions of this argument revolve around the great constants of the universe. Unfortunately, the only constant I know anything about is the gravitional constant, so I'll stick with that. The argument goes, if the gravitational constant was even slightly different, life, actually matter as we know it, would be impossible. The only rational explanation for this is intelligent design; not that it's impossible that a universe should randomly configure itself in such a way that stars and planets should form, but that it makes more sense to think that the universe was designed in such a way that this would happen.

The main difficulty with this argument, as I see it, is we simply have no idea why these constants are the way they are. So we have no way of computing the odds.

2. The 'evolution doesn't work' argument
This argument comes up quite a bit these days. The best version I've seen revolves around the complex structures that make up human beings. It's not that we have five fingers instead of four or whatever; it's that evolutionary theory cannot explain how something like the eye could have evolved. According to evolutionary theory, the eye must have evolved from some simpler form. But in fact the eye is so complex, and its components have no evolutionary value in themselves, so it couldn't have evolved.

Actually, the example I've seen most often is the flagellum. How did this come about? It just seems implausible that it would emerge randomly as a mutation. Other people have pointed out that the large majority of mutations are harmful, not beneficial. But, not to restate a point ad nauseum, I don't have the science background to properly evaluate these arguments.

Thank you asaris for making my point clearer. Shakran, 4 or 5 fingers doesn't matter, as asaris said. There are things that have to be PERFECT FROM THE BEGINING OF CREATION TO BE ABLE TO FUNCTION. Like the eye or breathing system and others. I beleive you had some mistaken arguments which I'll be happy to give further explanation when I get back from work. Today I hope. The reason is there's also a lot of important scientific and documentary videos I want to upload on my server and show you.

I'd like to help you guys out with your understanding of evolution - but I don't have the time right now to go into the details. Having said that, I think you're both falling for the primary misconception about evolution (which is understandable) due to Darwin's use of the phrase 'Survival of the Fittest'.

This is fine for grade-school explanations, but we should be thinking about these things along the slightly more grown-up lines of multi-dimensional, dynamically changing phase spaces, fitness landscapes and remembering that 'Survival of the Fittest' should sometimes be replaced with 'Survival of Everything that's not completely non-viable in it's current environment'.

When you've understood evolution in these terms, eyes, flagellum and man all become inevitable (yet still awe-inspiringly wonderous) results of a complex system, rather than the results of a piecing together by an invisible deity.

Oh, and there are 5 layers to the atmosphere.

nanotech and asaris are both outright wrong on both the constants and evolution arguments. the anthropic principle (http://www.counterbalance.net/physgl...prin-body.html) is notable because it strongly supports the fact that the constants weren't created for us specifically but that we exist in our form and time as a result of these random constants.

it has been reasonably suggested that there are multiple universes (see M-theory and superstring). the constants and ratios across the entire numerical gamut have equal probability of existing: ours is not special. rather, our version of life on earth exists because there *is* a probability of it happening with this set of constants, not because the constants were "created" for us.

even more damning is the fact that even in our single universe there are billions upon billions of planets, and even conservative statistics (http://www.thekeyboard.org.uk/Extrat...ial%20life.htm) put the number of planets with the potential for carbon-based (this ignores the possibility of other forms of life, which is limiting in itself) at 10 billion! to say that we are chosen by god to "own" the universe (of which we barely own our little blue marble as it is) as humans is absurd.

just admit that you only have belief...don't pretend that you have facts or evidence.

So, macmanmike, do you have any experimental evidence indicating the existence of multiple universes? Or the anthropic principle? Or any argument for these things, rather than just asserting them? So who is relying on belief here? I'll just note that the site that you cite to describes the anthropic principle as "A controversial cosmological principle".

Moreover, that there are 10 billion planets means nothing in itself unless we know the probability of life emerging. If this probability is one in a trillion, life emerging is pretty damn lucky.

The anthropic principle doesn't really proove anything either way.

I think that's the point. There's nothing wrong with belief - we all do it (even those of us who are scientifically inclined)

What I object to is people trying to pas off pseudo-science as 'proof' that their belief is the correct one.

All we can do is highlight the flawed conclusions, point out what 'proof' actually means, and try to explain (in calm, reasonable tones, while backing carefully away) that in arguing, we're not trying to debunk your beliefs, just your methods for backing them up.

Believe away - I know I do. But don't try to prop up your ideas with flawed science and silly (numbered) assertions. It makes the person doing it look like they're riddled with doubt and are desperately trying to find anything that looks as though it might support their world view. In short, in the language of belief, trying to proove something 'scientifically' normally has the effect of making it less believable to others, not more so.

nezmot,

I'm keeping this a scientific discussion and I'm not judging people, so don't say others have no scientific proof because all arguments I specified are scientific and many contain miracles. Miracles not come by chance but by an intelligent design, hence they are good and valid proofs. This survival of the fittest statement or argument you presented doesn't hold any weight. I will discuss this later but I came from work and gotta go sleep.

And no, the atmosphere has 7 layers not 5

Look at these charts please!
1- http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/LWS_GEMS/3/layers.htm
2- http://www.evidencesofcreation.com/miracles_01_08.htm

I have interesting videos scientific videos I need to upload and show very soon.


Shakran,

You are misusing, you have quoted a part of my paragraph of 2 lines. Thereby one line alone cannot be understood. Please don't quote part of the sentence or meaning. And NO, the Quran is the only book from all the profits that has been directly written and not ever passed orally. It’s considered a sin to change the letters of the Quran. When they copy to distribute the Quran, they make sure every letter and apostrophe and comma and syllables are exactly the same as the original. The events and life and experiences and wisdoms of the prophet Mohammad came in other books called hadeef (the talking), and seera (the journey of life) and others.


Note: I have taken proofs from Quran because I have good understanding of Islam; but I also believe in all religions by God including Christianity.

It comes down to a very simple concept:

For all things in this world, observation is key to understanding. Evolution is the culmination of hundreds of thousands of observations documented by learned people from multiplle fields, which form a theory we use to define how what is currently observed has become what it is . This theory exists because physical evidence has made it obvious to science that it is a likely explanation for the current state of life on Earth.
Any attempt to compare Evolution with a creation event is irrellevant, as Evolutionary Theory does not claim to, nor attempt to explain what created life in the fiirst place, but rather theorizes the steps that led to what we see today based on an enormous amount of indisputable Data. Those that redirect the debate on evolution by using a creation event do themselves a disservice in the eyes of anyone who understands what the theory entails.
Some God entity may very well have Made the first forms of life, I simply dont know. It may be guiding the changes that have taken place in that life over the last Billion years, again I dont know. But, in my opinion, anyone who cant see the reality of evolution, or at least see some part of it, deserves no further attention.

Belief in God requires faith. Any attempt to bypass the need for faith is in fact a sign that the person attempting to "prove" this is lacking in their own faith.

In other words, don't worry about proof. Proof is for people who don't believe -and then -if you gave them proof then it wouldn't be faith.

Explain to me the notion of the beginning of the universe. How can anyone say anything about the universe's beginning? It's impossible to even understand such a concept, much less understand the particular circumstances that surround it.

In order for there to be a beginning there must be a before, but there is no before time, so time could not have had a beginning.

No, actually you are not. You are saying "The Quran says. . . " and the quran is not a scientific text.


It depends on how you categorize it. If you, as most do, combine the troposphere and the tropopause into the lower atmosphere, and the stratosphere and the stratopause into one layer, then you have 5 layers.

Keep reading. I quoted a lot more. I broke it down because you changed subjects every sentence.

Read up on your history of the Quran. It was originally a recited text. It was never compiled as a single volume during the life of the Prophet. And in fact there were several versions until the canonical text was complied by the caliph Uthman, in 651 or 652. (source, Columbia Encyclopedia, 2003)

Furthermore, much as the christian bible came about, it was supposedly dictated to a prophit (Muhammad for you, Moses for them) by god when the prophet was mysteriously holed up away from the people. In other words, there's *no proof* that these prophets were telling the truth.

Yes, that's how it's done NOW. But originally it was not done that way. Your Quran went through issues much as the bible did - a whole bunch of different versions that someone finally decided to simplify and make one official version.



Yeah, that's fine. But you can't call them proofs. You cannot use the Quran to prove the Quran, just as I cannot just write a document and then say the document proves the document. It's circular, and it does not work. After all, if the mere existance of a document were enough to prove the document correct, all I really have to do to win this argument is type up a sheet of paper that says "the Quran is wrong" and then say that the Quran is wrong because my document says so.

nanotech - the first link you posted has 9 layers - count them! (exosphere, thermosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere, tropshere, mesopause, stratopause, tropopause and ozone layer) and the second one you posted has 6, the Troposhpere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, ionosphere and exosphere (as it states in the text, the Ozone layer forms a part of the stratosphere, and is not considered a layer in the same way as the others are). I can point you to a number of equally arbitrary web pages that will label ordinally (and equally arbitrarily) what is essentially a continuum of states merging into a single entity. But we're not interested in facts here, right? Just what fits the details as described in a holy book.

None of what you posted was scientific. None of it. Lets take the post apart (again) piece by piece and show the flaws in the thinking:

This makes the (incorrect) assertion that improbable behaviour = impossible behaviour and then makes the leap of faith that the universe must have been created deliberately.

By the same standard, we can claim that because it's so unlikely for anyone to win, the lottery machine must deliberately choose who it's going to pay out to.

Scientifically, the two statements are equally ridiculous.

This doesn't mean that the universe wasn't created by God, just that your proof is no more than an assertion.

First it states that all planets in the solar system are unable to hold life. This is wrong. There are candidates for life supporting planets throughout the solar system.

Secondly, and this is the one I find the most laughable - there is no planet Nipton! No wonder it can't support life. Maybe you meant Neptune. Go figure.

Then there's this classic nonsense about how low temperature allows particles to condense into huge masses, apparently making gravity so strong, it's impossible for life!!! Please, please please read some grade-school science books.

Low temperature does not affect mass, nor therefore, can it effect gravity.

I love the 40 degrees 'cold' used here - it's quite endearing. But apart from that, this statement seems fine. Why? Because it's a simple statement describing the temperature ranges that a planet goes through and it's not trying to suggest anything superstitious. Unfortunately, because it's just a statement, and no conclusions are being drawn from it, it can't be considered a proof.

Again, this is a statement, not a proof. It does suggest however that despite your no-doubt extensive research, you've not come across the reasonably well known Gaian concept that a planet upon which life gets a foothold, has the potential to self-regulate its own temperature in a range suitable for the continuation of life. And all without any Gods waving their magic wands. For more information about this, try reading about DaisyWorld.

Again, this is another statement. Not a proof. If you're hoping to assert that improbable=impossible=deliberate again, then you're not proving it here.

Yep, same thing as number 5

We've seen (from your own links!) that the number of 'skies' is not 7. Not that I understand what that would 'prove' if it was. Trying to link a number of heavens to various layers defined by their gaseous composition does seem a little like an act of desperation. I would have left this one out.

I'm going to pull out the one piece here that I think is important

Science has not proven it impossible to have come in step by step AND evolution does not say anything of the sort!

I can't begin to say how stupid this statement is. Who, exactly is 'Science' in this case? And when and how did they prove that? And who states that evolution creates things 'step by step'?

But let's go back earlier in this point where you say "Because ONE and only ONE change in the billions of components that creatures are made of would have made it impossible to survive." now look around you, does anyone you know have this upside down system? No? Why not? Perhaps it's because every time someone was born with that condition, they died without first having children of their own and passing their genes on, thus making it less likely to crop up again. Sounds familiar? Yes, that's natural selection you're describing right there. Who'd have thought it. An argument 'for' natural selection in a post trying to argue against it. Perhaps this miracle too is listed in the Qu'ran.

Ha - I like this one even more. Evolution has been proven by 'science'? Who, please tell me, is in charge of 'science' these days and decides what is and is not proven? Your statement is verging on being a downright lie.

Evolution will not make a new species? Oh really? In the same way that improbable<>impossible<>deliberate, your failure to understand evolution<>evolution is incorrect<>God made everything on his magic drawing board.

And the process you describe (different animals mating with one another) shows up once more, that you haven't understood what evolution is.

Again this mysterious 'science' character. Who is this guy? And again, this is a statement that doesn't prove anything. Is it true or false? I don't know, it doesn't really matter. You could have just as easily described the geography and primary exports of Mexico, it would have been equally a proof for the existence of God.

Plus, you typo'd the Big Bang, as the Big Band. Which is kind of funny.

I figure, you were so excited about making this post, that you lost count of when to put the numbers in and that this is probably the conclusion you are drawing from point 10. So you're saying that infinite mass, infinite gravity and zero volume = nothing, so therefore God did it? Is that right? That may be true, but this is not a scientific proof of anything. It's an (inaccurate) assertion with no facts to back it up or explain it.

That's fair enough.

Again, that's great - and it may well be the case - but is it proof that God exists?

Let's write it out in more formal language.

God exists because: God knows the future because he is not bound by time.

So what you're saying is that god exists because god knows the future? Is that really a scientific proof?

Is this a proof of God's existence? It looks more like a theory on how God might operate with regards to destiny, life and death, assuming, of course that he does exist. Have I read that wrong?

I'm not going to comment on the rest because they're more of the same - and I expect you've gotten the message by now.

OK - I look forward to hearing this. I am not judging you either - I'm just pointing out where what you are writing is inconsistent with itself, and pointing out ideas that might fill in the gaps in your knowledge. I respect your belief - but you cannot expect to get away with posting complete untruths (or at least make totally inaccurate and unsupported statements) and not be picked up on it.

I'll accept in this case that miracles might be acceptable as scientific evidence (many others wouldn't) but we need a way to decide what does and what does not constitute a 'miracle' - For example, I really don't buy the 7 heavens thing as a miracle at all.

Can't be bothered to read everything here so forgive me if I'm repeating. Haven't got time to make stuctured arguement either, just some points for consideration: -
E = mc*mc is just for particles without momentum.
Causality as we percieve it is only a fraction of what actually happens to any particle/wave, as I believe every other entity interacts with every other entity in existence in some sort of energy/wave flux, so there'd be too much complexity for our tiny little brains to comprehend.
Superstring theory is just a theory as is all other scientific theories, even quantum chromodynamics is only experimentally accurate to certain situations to some decimal point.
Even if a God entity exists it wouldn't correlate to anything any religion has ever contemplated and wouldn't be God as most people's faith deludes them into believing.
Logical fallacies make people appear stupider than they should be.
Unconcious meandeings are more insightful than any conscious thoughts.

Horace, Odes 2.11.13-14.: "Why do you torture your poor reason for insight into the riddle of eternity? Why do we not simply lie down under the high plantane? or here under this pine tree?"

I'm going to have a wank now. Cantona

Hi, I'm back. Sadly many false statements, let’s start with the job of correcting:

nezmot,

http://www.evidencesofcreation.com/miracles_01_08.htm

There are 7 layers, not 6, nor 7 nor 9

1. Troposphere
2. Stratosphere
3. Ozonosphere
4. Mesosphere
5. Thermosphere
6. Ionosphere
7. Exosphere

The mesopause , stratopause and tropopause are not atmosphere layers as you think
The Tropopause separates the Troposphere and Stratorsphere
The Stratopause separates the Ionosphere from the Mesosphere
The mesopause separates the Mesosphere from the Thermosphere

You count the ozone layer as a layer in the first sentence; you include that layer in the counting and you reach the number of nine. Then 2 sentences later you say the Ozone layer forms part of the stratosphere and you say it shouldn’t be counted. Don’t contradict yourself.

You mentioned 9 but 3 were not actual layers. So 9 – 3 = 6. But you forgot the Ionosphere. Hence 6 + 1 = 7.

The Ionosphere is a thick layer and not a pause. It serves as a reflectant to radio waves and humans used to transfer radio signals between continents.

Same.. The ozone layer or Ozonosphere is a thick layer = 24% of the atmosphere and it does a unique function between all layers to protect living creatures from deadly ultraviolet.

Tecoyah,

I know what evolution is and explained it previously. You can get different breeds but not different species. Let me tell you, giraffes had normal necks and they ate from the grass and the trees, but then the grass came hard to be found as the animals reproduced. The Giraffes with short necks died because they can’t reach tall trees to eat. The tall ones ate and reproduced.

Giraffe with tall neck + Giraffe with normal or tall neck have higher probability of giving birth to a giraffe with a tall neck. Hence evolution takes place this method.

That’s the maximum what evolution can do. A dog cannot grow a fin because he can swim better across the river because on the other side there is food. Let’s examine:

A dog with no fin but can swim + dog with no fin but cannot swim
or
A dog with no fin but cannot swim + dog with no fin but cannot swim
or
A dog with no fin but can swim + dog with no fin but can swim

They all have no fins. There is no DNA in the dogs body that tells it that if there is no food. And then the DNA will realize that there is food in the sea and grow a fin. The DNA cannot spy on the brain and know what the dog is thinking. Oh look.. the dog is thinking there is food on the other side, but! There is a river. Ah! So let me make a genetic code (as the DNA) and design a fin and make a reproductive cell such that when the dog has reproduction, he can have offspring that will swim to the other side…

Evolution exists, but is limited. Natural selection is the basis of evolution
Natural selection doesn’t have intelligence
Natural selection is not aware of its surroundings.
Natural selection operates on this principal:

Survival of the fittest -> the fittest reproduces and gets a fitter species
-> The fitter can survive and reproduce and get a fitter species.

But again, it’s about survival of the existing animal with the ALREADY existing DNA information.

New DNA information can only be created by adding or increasing already existing traits through reproduction.

Again, Giraffes grow a neck because its written in the DNA. The survival of the fittest occurs. The giraffes with long necks + other giraffes mate => Giraffes with long necks. The longer neck info is a result of the selection between XY(male) chromosome and YY(female) chromosome. The result offspring is nothing new. It’s the traits of the male, female, its grandfather or a genetic deformation, a mutation resulting in nonfunctional organs which may result in natural death for animals

Astrocloud,

I’m not afraid to say the truth but thanks, and I’m happy to hear from you. They believe, good, they don’t believe, I’ll provide more evidence to help it be understood and make it simpler. What I know is there is scientific important evidence that is proven through miracles of knowledge of the future. What’s unique about the miracle of the Quran is that it told us 1400 years ago what we are seeing now.

1- No body except a supreme being can know exactly the future 1400 years ago.
2- The Quran mentions that the Supreme Being is God

Hence by deduction God has existed.

Now since God shows in the Quran that he knows the future
 He is or was in the future.

So how can God be in the future and the past (1400 years ago) at the same time?
Its because he is not bound by time.

So:
1- God existed
2- God is not bound by Time
3- God told us what is happening know

 God still exists



Noahfor, I’ll be happy.

Yes the universe had a beginning it was created from a point of zero volume, infinite gravity and mass. This is what scientists say. So where was this point created from? That is creation. We cannot go deeper in understanding as human beings. There is a verse in the Quran:

“And you haven’t been given from science but a little”

Everyday there are new discoveries, new technology evolving rapidly
Micro technology (before and current)
Nanotechnology (current (development) and future)

Nano is one thousandth of a Micro. When nanotechnology comes, you will be able to buy a PC the size of a matchbox! They discovered that there is a particle even smaller than the atom. The atom is made of particles called Quarks.

Shakran,

Sorry, but no. Every verse came on the profit was written on the paper was written. It didn’t come as a whole book at one. These papers then became so much that they had to write a book. They got the papers and copied them in the order they came from on a book, without changing a letter.

As I said changing the text is considered a sin. There were a few attempts by people who meant harm to change few letters of the Quran and distribute it thinking it wouldn’t be noticed. But then they were stopped. Saudia Arabia is main country that does the task of printing and making sure all Qurans distributed as the original.

I have proved God’s existence through:
1- 1400 years ago events are coming true (not mentioned yet)

2- Miracles of science:
a- pork meat to be harmful
b- Sand as a cleaner
c- Structure of the mountain (not mentioned yet)
d- Other miracles will be shown on a new paged named “miracles” or similar

3- Miracle of the human anatomy and intelligent design wins by elimination. Evolution cannot create humans => superior life. Aliens created man and made him the superior and give him all the universe and vanished from the whole universe without a trace or a note or a book or a skeleton or anything? Very unlikely. Lets assume aliens made humans.. But aliens would be normal beings, of skeleton and muscle. So who created the Aliens? Only a supreme being as God can create Aliens.

BUT

If and only if, God did create Aliens and Aliens created man, then why and why might you, did the Aliens make a book from God where they say that God made the universe and they say in the Quran that God gave the universe to all human beings? They should have said he gave the universe to all human beings and the Aliens as well.

In either way, the Aliens if and only if they exist, they are dead, but in all cases mentioned above. God cannot die.

Therefore by elimination:
Neither evolution nor Aliens did create humans
God is the only Supreme Being left that could create humans

Now more about Aliens:

There is no way I say that science will ever find a life stronger or even more intelligent than human beings. It is simple; there is are verses in the last few pages of the Quran which gives us this info without spending billions of dollars of the US taxpayers’ money trying to find aliens:

“We gave you the universe, so pray to your God and be grateful...”

I insist on this point and say science has tried and tried and tried and will keep trying and trying and spending billions but it will not find anything. The budget for this thing (extraterrestrial search) is getting less btw because they are realizing it’s useless.

The answer is simple. Humans are the dominants in the entire universe. Anything found which is highly unlikely, will be a simpler life form as animals or unicellular organisms.

Question #1) Was it indeed....a Giraffe before the length in neck changed?

Question #2) What of this:



Whale Evolution:


"Call it an unfinished story, but with a plot that's a grabber. It's the tale of an ancient land mammal making its way back to the sea, becoming the forerunner of today's whales. In doing so, it lost its legs, and all of its vital systems became adapted to a marine existence -- the reverse of what happened millions of years previously, when the first animals crawled out of the sea onto land.

Some details remain fuzzy and under investigation. But we know for certain that this back-to-the-water evolution did occur, thanks to a profusion of intermediate fossils that have been uncovered over the past two decades."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/li.../l_034_05.html

The debate on evolution is somewhat heated, and in my opinion needlessly so. Once a basic understanding of the theory is understood, much of the dissagreement no longer exists, I would recommend you spend a few minutes reading up on current theory surrounding the evidence for adaptation.

Plus, one thing that's often overlooked is the role 'selection' plays. Nope, not the life-or-death type of thing we normally associate with natural selection, but the fact that lady giraffes who happen to have a genetic predisposition for finding long-necked mates attractive, will mate more often with long-necked giraffes with the result that their progeny will likely have a longer neck (due to the father's influence) and a natural predisposition towards finding long-necked mates more attractive than shorter necked ones (due to the mother's influence). Thus a natural feedback loop is created that can potentially rocket a species off into some entirely new arena of development extremely rapidly (in geological terms).

This becomes especially evident in the examples of Peacocks, and other birds where the male develops highly coloured or decorative plumage - often to the detriment of their chances of survival with regards to predators.

Tecoyah,

Q1) I watched documentaries many years ago. As far as I remember, the giraffes' necks all have the same number of bones but natural selection chose the taller bones.

This is very important because that means that evolution was a result of natural selection. The giraffes' with longer neck bones managed to reproduce and gave birth to giraffes' with longer neck bones. This is normal reproduction > evolution > adaptation.

Now if and only if the tallness of the giraffe came because the number of neck bones increased, then it would be a totally different story! This means that a new bone object was written in the DNA and fitted in the write manner to be in the neck. This would have meant that evolution was able to create. But its scientifically impossible for new information to be created on its own (in the DNA).

Q2) new info, sounds interesting. But gotta go sleep, I'll check it tomorrow.

good night

I included it in the first one, because it was included in your link, and I excluded it in the second one because it was excluded in your second link. They're your (biased) links - it's not my fault they're wrong.

Here's (yet) another link, only this one hasn't been created for the sole purpose of backing up your crazy theory: Non biased link number 1, non biased link number 2, non biased link number 3, and another one - and if I could be bothered, I could add more. But it's not going to prove anything, so I will leave it there.

I wrote a bunch of meandering crap a second ago and erased it. It boils down to the the opinion that I'm unconvinced we would ever know if the gravitational constant was a little different than it is now. We made up the theory of gravity, and we fit the constant. It seems to work pretty well. The same can be said for all the other constants and theories and laws. We extrapolated those laws from the world around us. I don't think we can use a mathematical model, which is based on constants which are extrapolated from the world, as we know it...then change some numbers around, and pretend that we're surprised that there is an inconsistency. I think all that these "fine tuning" go to show that the reality we experience is a much more interrelated holarchial structure than we commonly think of it to be. I'm not trying to single you out or attack you, or really even argue/debate with youasaris - no Christian bashing here, etc - I just enjoy the way you post about these topics in general.

nanotech,

I am glad that you have the beliefs yo have, and that you find evidence for your beliefs in the arguments you have posted. While I agree with some of the underlying ideas in your posts, namely that a purely scientific statistical argument is currently incapable of of explaining evolutionary development, and furthermore that the question of "why did the universe happen?" is strictly outside the realm of classical scientific inquiry, I have to say that I find much of your logic to be circular or incomplete. I don't have the time to go through all the posts, but I would like to mention that many people I know who are more familiar with evolutionary concepts that I, would say that you are cherrypicking your arguments. Take the dog vs. giraffe.

1. You state that the giraffe's neck is explainable through natural selection.

2. You state that a dog turning into a dolphin is not possible.

You have no proof for this claim. A dog turning into a dolphin in one big jump is very unlikely. A dog slowly undergoing mutations, such as webbed feet, smaller hing legs, loss of hair, etc, is not entirely probable, in one big leap...but evolution is not about big leaps.

I think you are correct in saying that the dog "wanting" the fins is unlikely to produce them. I notice you don't seem to think that the giraffe sat around wishing for a longer neck, but that it happened through natural selection.

I think, and I could be wrong, but if dogs always had to swim across a river to get their food, or were constantly in wet areas when hunting, that dogs that had webbed feet, or could otherwise swim better, would be favored. See Labarador Retreivers. If those dogs did develop any anomoly that allowed them to better adapt to their environment better, that would also be favored. Over a very, very very long time.

3. The 1400 years stuff. People have been making predictions about the future for a long time. Sometimes we can find ways to make them seem true. Sometimes it really is amazing the types of visions that people seem to have had about the future. I think that arguing for "God created the universe" because you find meaning in a prophesy is going to be difficult, within the context of a scientific discussion.

4. Let's not forget that this thread started off with a "proof that God created the universe." Evolution is in no way counter to that notion. One is a question, primarily, of why the universe was created, the other is a question of how did it unfold.

deleted....

I'm only going to respond to what you addressed to me. The stuff you said to the others is largely wrong as well, but I'll leave it to them to debunk it.

I know that it is considered a sin now. But before it was widely distributed as a text, it was recited orally. Or are you suggesting that the Prophet somehow figured out a system for mass distribution of text long before the invention of the printing press that made mass distribution of text possible?

That's not proof.
Contaminated pork is not a miracle of science. It is also not proof.


What?!?!

Then mention it. Don't say you've proved something based on something you haven't even said.

How about showing them here? And then prove that 1) they happened and 2) Allah made them happen.



Many of us have already shown you how you are completely wrong about this. If you will not listen, then further discussion is pointless, no?


I think first you should say where the aliens came in to this debate. . . .



This doesn't even make sense.

Sorry, but once again you are using a book of faith to attempt to prove a scientific assertion. That displays a lack of logic, and a lack of scientific understanding.

This is what you BELIEVE. What you take on FAITH. And that's really the whole point of this isn't it? What you take on FAITH is different from what you can PROVE. You cannot EVER prove faith. Otherwise it wouldn't be faith. Your constant attempts to (illogically) justify your faith is an insult to that faith. Believe what you want. Have faith. If you truly believe and truly have faith in this, you do not need to prove it to anyone.

I have a little trouble with evolution. But I can imagine creation from a pantheist point of view. God ( i.e. the whole deal :after big bang, during, and before[ especially]) is creating itself. That befuddles me, so for peace of mind I define God as the "Enduring rational reality". In a sense creation and evolution merge. I only think about personal immortality for fun. Real people interest me as well as ideas.

At the risk of sounding somewhat inflamatory, you will not win an argument with a fundamentalist. Everything nanotech posted above was either an outright falsehood or a gross misunderstanding of science. Let him revel in his ignorance. The original posters thesis has been debunked thoroughly by now, and the whole proof of Gods existence has been done to death, here and elsewhere.

Back from work, this is starting to look like a second job heh. Oh well :)

by pigglet:

pigglet, I understand what you're talking about. I watched a video about it. Mutation doesn't work as well as you imagine. Scientists tried to mate different breeds or species and always got mutated creatures which couldn't survive and died. You cannot get a good species with new traits that work by evolution alone. There is a scientist who said that information cannot result from no-information or something similar. There is a site that would explain to you the Darwinisim concept in terms of video and it addresses your subject. I classified all the videos to be easily found on
www.efox.tv

Shakran,

Yes, in the books it says that the verses came orally on the profit by the Angel Gabriel. Gabriel is mentioned in all religions btw. Each verse was individually written on a paper. Then the papers where compiled together in the order they came.

Actually it is because the Quran told the people about what is happening know in some verses and about the golden age (future). There is an interesting video for this subject I recommend you watch. It’s called "The Golden Age". Can be found in this page www.efox.tv

Actually it is. The Quran only said don't eat pork meat because it’s harmful and it stressed this to the fact that it is in the foundations of Islam. Then it turns out now that the pork is the only meat that has worms that lives in humans even when the meat is boiled. Who could know this at that time except a supreme being which can see microscopic creatures.

Yes, sorry to have not given more detail, but sand has microscopic objects which if you use the sand to wash your hands; it would clean you from germs and bacteria. In Islam God obliged people to wash with sand before praying if there is no water. This is a miracle of science.

There is so much info and I wish I have time to say it all but I have deadlines and projects in work so I got the assisteance of videos which hold all the info I can give in harunyahya.com. Sorry again about not going in detail, yes there is a miracle in the mountains structure. The mountain has a purpose under the earth. It has a function to act as a nail in the ground. This nail keeps the continents from shifting by the result of Lava. It was mentioned in the Quran that the mountain has this purpose in a verse. There is a video about this by the author Harun Yahya. You can find it maybe in the one that is called "creation of the universe" in the page

www.efox.tv

It is important since the proof of the existence of God depends on if there are aliens with high intelligence which have been proven to be false. In a verse in the Quran "We gave you the universe...” proves there cannot be a dominant species on man. Hence Aliens could not have existed which is proven because they cannot find any trace of aliens or possibility of life unless a supposition of billions of light years away. Does that mean that aliens created humans, which got into fast machines that run at 300,000 KM per second and went away to other galaxies without anyway that we see them? That is through telescopes etc.

This is not a lack of logic but a challenge based on the fact that neither aliens did come and talk to us, nor were we able to find them in many years and billions of dollars spent. I base this challenge from the verse of the Quran and so far it is valid.

----------

Excuse me? Who are you to say that I'm a fundamentalist? My statements happen to be more scientific and objective than yours. Furthermore I respect all religions and have friends from many religions, so how dare you call me a fundamentalist. If this is an insult, I will assume that insults are permitted here and will start doing the same.

You are very funny. I would like to compare your eye to a camera. You zoom out so far from the text and then see the whole paragraph but cannot read the words. Then you put an opinion based on how you feel.

That is untrue. I think many people who came and read, but not posted, have now increased their knowledge and found it beneficial as well as I did.

An assumption based on no proof, but based on where perhaps you live in. Perhaps you live in a community that doesn't believe God exists and made it a joke. So rather than trying to find the truth for yourself, you go with what they're saying.

But that is all ok. The purpose of this whole thing is to research and find the truth. After all I always say to myself. We are all humans of the same genetic design. So we must have been created by the same cause. But all the profits in many thousands of years had the same answer about who created everything. So as a result, I think that humans will have the same destination.

You believe in the fundamental and unwavering truth of the Q'ran. That is the definition of a fundamentalist.

And if you read the rules of the forum you will know that insults are not allowed.

Interesting, but it does nothing to validate the "science" in your original or subsequent posts.

Well, I am glad you are learning something.
No, it really has been done to death. Every BBS on the web with anything resembling a "philosophy" room has heard this argument a thousand times. Do not use science to prove God. You will either kill science or God.
I am glad that is what you think.



Here is information about the "7 heavens" argument, shamelessly ripped of from faithfreedom.org :

No...you will not...

For my purpose, we are going to use the following definition of fundamentalism;

A usually religious movement or point of view characterized by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism.

While it is my belief that you are demonstrating those characteristics, you seem to feel that you are being insulted. So be it. Make your case, to me, how being refered to as a fundamentalist, when you embody the tennants of fundamentalism, is an insult.

Regardless, you most certainly will NOT resort to insults. Do I need to be any clearer on that point?

hmmm so a Koran translated in english is exactly the same as a Koran in Arabic?

Language is not so rigid that words translate from language to language easily. This is also why the Bible could have flaws as well, translation alters words just as well as human minds interpreting those words.

As far as pork and worms is concerned, well if it "specifically" said, don't eat pork due to worms that can be seen microscopically I'd agree that it's handed down from God, but it does not. It states different reasons that were apparent to those that lived in the time it was written.

Wow. Just... wow.

In the old days in the USA people used to avoid going out at night because they believed the night air would make them sick and they might die. It has since been discovered that diseases transmitted by mosquitos, which fly in the evening time, were actually what was making people sick. The night air had nothing to do with it, yet people were able to associate getting sick with being out in the night air which happened to contain the mosquitos.

Its the same story with your pork example. If you eat a piece of pork and then you get sick, and then the next day you eat a piece of pork and then you get sick, and then the next day you eat a piece of pork and then you get sick, and then the next day you eat a piece of beef and you don't get sick, and then the next day you eat a piece of pork and you get sick, you will figure out that somehow the pork is making you sick. You don't NEED to know about worms or bacteria or whatever else is in the pork that makes you sick. That is what happened. Someone figured out pork was making them sick, and they told everyone else not to eat it. Simple as that.

And all that being said, worms do not survive in cooked pork as long as the pork was cooked at 137 degrees F or higher. The recommended cooking temperature of pork is 160 degrees F. Miracle of science, debunked.
Mountains are FORMED by the collsions of the tectonic plates. If they were "nails" holding the plates down then 1) they wouldn't have formed from the plates colliding, and 2) we wouldn't have earthquakes since the plates wouldn't be moving against each other.

This brings me to my real point. From your perspective you are arguing from a very comfortable position. While we who actually know real science have to check our facts and learn our facts, all you have to do is claim that all science comes from the Quran. If it's not in the Quran, it's not real. If someone shows you scientific evidence that's been checked and rechecked and peer reviewed, you shut your eyes and ears to it because it is not in your Quran. The only time you acknowledge actual scientific data is when you can somehow make it work with what the Quran already says. That's a great position to argue from because from your point of view, you can never have your world view altered. What you know now is what you will know tomorrow and the next day and sixty years from now. That's comforting, if a bit, IMO, boring.

Because of this fundamentalist point of view you fail to recognize the Quran/Bible/Bagvad Ghita/Pick-Your-Religious-Text for what it actually is. It is not a 100% accurate history. It is not a step by step chronicle of the existance of God/Allah/etc.

It is a collection of stories, parables, that tell us how we should live life. You can boil the bible down to a few simple phrases: Don't steal. Don't kill. Don't be a jerk. Try to leave the world a better place than it was when you got here.

But 2000 years ago if some guy had run around saying these things, they'd have crucified him. . .Oh wait. . they did. And that's my point. No one will listen to a MAN who tells them to stop doing what they like to do. But if that man disappears for awhile and then comes back and claims an all powerful being with a short temper told him to tell everyone to stop killing, stealing, and being jerks or he'd send them to a place that's always on fire, people tend to listen.

The truth is we cannot scientifically KNOW what created existence. We cannot PROVE God. People who try to prove the existence of their deity are, in my experience, people who are having trouble reconcililng themselves to their faith. Either you believe or you don't. If you believe, you don't need proof. I believe the sky will be there tomorrow. I don't need to seek out proof of that. If you truly BELIEVE in God/Allah, you should not need to PROVE his existence.

It seems the forum members have already addressed why the original argument doesn't work. I only wanted to point out the origin of the argument.
Roughly 750 years ago, Thomas Aquinas (St.Thomas Aquinas, for you Catholics) devised the "first cause" proof, also known as the "cosmological argument," insisting that God is the first cause of all cosmos. Your friend should be wary of misrepresenting others' ideas as her own. -esp. those with so many criticisms, like this one-

For the record, there is yet to be a sound argument for the existence of a God (gods). Mainly because theist concepts are closed systems based on unfalsifyable claims. To prove their statements through logic is more or less impossible.

EDIT: the pork thing nanotech mentioned. It is known by anthropologists, that previous to technological advancements, nearly all cultures -regardless of religious faith- abstained from the consumption of pork. And, it was not because of some divine revelation that this knowledge was apparent, it was through observation -like anything else that humans learn-. So while shakran's rebuttal seems uneccessarily condescending and inconsiderate, nanotech's point is not completely founded. "How else could..." Being unable to prove something does not prove the opposite. You're argument is ad ignoratium (from ignorance) and a common fallacy. Just my 2cents.

Ease up there bud. I'm not trying to be condescending. We're dealing with someone who has a huge lack of knowledge about real science. You have to explain it step by step.

Kinda like it would be condescending of me to tell an auto mechanic step by step how to change a tire, but saying the same thing to someone who's never held a wrench would just be breaking it down for maximum clarity.

While I'd be one of the first to say that shakran can be uneccessarily condescending and inconsiderate...I really don't see that he was...this time.

So...in that vein, people...given the volatile nature of this discussion, let's all try to be a just a little extra cautious, before we hit that reply button. Cool?

Why do people have ths need to point out where everybody else is wrong or at least they think they are wrong? Who cares what he/she believes and why? Keep it to yourself. I highly doubt the rantings os somebody on this forum has made them closer to God and taken them away. Why can't everybofy just let it be. I seems like people are atacking eachother and that just sucks.

I missed this the first time round - but it is interesting because it shows up something important about the way evolution appears to have shaped the world around us.

Specifically, the structure of the animals.

Have you ever noticed how everything with a backbone, from the smallest tree-frog, through to the largest whale, has analogous skeletal structures?

We all have spines, arms and legs (or at least, the vestiges of them as evidenced in snakes), a skull etc. Comparing the bones of a horse and the bones of a man is possible and while there may not be exactly the same number of bones, there is a distinct similarity in apparent structure and arrangement.

What does this tell us about evolution, creationism or adaption?

It tells us that either there was one population of animals (likely an early amphibious creature) from which lizards, snakes, elephants, mice, man and dinosaurs are all decended from; Or, that God had some form of general prototype, from which he copied and pasted into each species, tweaking at the edges in order to create different variations on the theme.

One thing that seems interesting is the role of the mammals that live in the seas; dolphins, whales etc. They have the bone structure of the (mostly land-based) animals, yet live their whole lives in the water like fish (with their entirely different skeletal structures) Why would God go through the whole process of bending all those bones out of shape, if he already had a perfectly working prototype for a sea-based life in the fish? If nothing else, it certainly shows poor design practice. More likely (to my mind), it displays a vivid example of the random, blind and accidental nature of evolution. Why? Because here, in the whale, we see evidence of an ancestry that started in the seas, drawing oxygen from the water around it, before evolving into a land-walking, air-breathing beast, before once again returning to the seas and re-evolving back again into an aquatic form. What a completely stupid way to evolve! No-one would seriously go about creating a creature this way on purpose.

It wouldn't make for a very interesting forum then would it?

Person A: I believe in this.

Person B: Oh, that's nice. Well done. I believe in that too.

Person A: Great :thumbsup:


Having said that, nobody is attacking anyone here for their beliefs. If someone puts forward one point of view, isn't it reasonable for others to then express their own in turn?

And some have been taught that conversion is their duty, which pretty much rules out a happy marshmallow roast.

Having thought about this a bit more - I might have been as robust as I have been here, due, in part to a feeling of personal insult. (Now I'm being completely personal and candid here.)

I felt offended that nanotech had dared to appropriate my personal belief system (scientific thought) and tried to subvert it in order to support his own. I found that really hard to deal with.

How would a person of any given religion feel if I started using their religion to justify my statements? Especially if I were to twist the words of that religion in the process to say things that were blatantly not true?

"Jesus lived and died to show us that trees are evil and should all be demolished."

"Mohammed tells us that the earth is flat."

If I seriously tried suggesting things along these lines, wouldn't it be reasonable for me to expect a little controversy?

Then why is it considered reasonable for people to try to say that 'Science' tells us this, or that, or the other? Science is a belief system, just like any other, but it's <b>my</b> belief system and I don't like it when people try to subvert it, or make out that it is something that it's not - specifically, in an attempt to use it as an authority on the truth.

Science is not an authority - it does not 'tell' us things. It is instead a process, a way of thinking - It is a philosophy. What it is not, is a set of stone tablets that tells us an incontrovertible list of facts. Science can never prove something - it can only disprove, and even then, only in limited circumstances.

I find it upsetting when people fail to realise this in the same way (to use another absurdist example) a Muslim might likely feel upset if someone were to suggest that Islam is all about blowing things up.

Is it reasonable for me to feel like this when someone violates, warps and twists something to their own ends discrediting it in the process? A particular something I happen to feel passionate about? You're damn right it is.

Ok, enough being Mr. nice guy, I'll just be like some people ;)

debaser,

This statement is made by an ignorant. By saying I have a complete misunderstanding and falsehood; you have ignored all prophets, books of God, all religions, God himself, and the proofs of creation. That is because these were the matters I was talking about and getting proofs from.


thanks, I learned how to increase my level of patience and to put up with pain in the butt

I can use science to prove God's existence. The Quran is a miracle of science because it has many verses that contain information about purpose of the mountains, the history of vanished nations, information from around the world, creation of human beings (further explanation) in the most perfect form (has humanity evolved into 4 hands people in thousands of years?)

Many prophets came, Mohammad said he will be the last one. Truly no other prophet came later. I think, "I think", its because God has given the miracle which is enough for people to beleive in him. The miracle of time. There is a video called miracles of the Quran. It predicts what happened now and in the future 1400 years ago. see it. Its a miracle which can occur always means, in time.

Bill O'Rights

That is my mistake, from the context of debaser when he used the word ignorance. I thought fundamentalists means people who believe in something without thought, logic, or evidence. The media these days, CNN, seems to use the fundamentalists word together with Muslims terrorist and so forth. Hence I thought it was meant this way which I'm certainly not. Anyway, if debaser calling people ignorant or saying everything you post is a falsehood is not considered an insult. Then I can call him the same.


Cynthetiq, thanks for asking. There is a translation for the Quran in many languages. This translation is made by someone who has spend years who has studied, analysed, the Quran and Hadeeth and other books. Also the translation holds the same rules in terms of publication. I think Saudia Arabia might be responsible for seeing and making sure the translated books are translated correctly. Would it hold a different meaning? The Quran is not complicated and as far as I know, it was explained(each verse) from the time it came. There are books for this too.




shakran, expand your thought. There are many countries and continents. There "could" have been many animals that hold this worm but there aren't. The Quran said only pork meat, meat of the dead, and carnivores. If it was by observation, how did the Prophet Mohammad 1400 years ago, who was poor (his job was a goat herder and he had no education, couldn't read or write), go across continents and gain this knowledge that pork meat is the only meat that has this worm? He couldn't, one miracle of Quran.

incorrect. 160 degrees needs a presto or a machine to hold the heat to get to 160 degrees Fahrenheit. At the time 1400 years ago till this age, there was no such device. Hence people would have died from disease if they ate pork.

Mountains do form by the collision of the Tectonic plates. The tectonic plate then forms an upright position. upright inside earth like a needle. The length of a mountain inside earth is bigger than outside earth. These help to get the lava stable, not 100% fixed, but stable. Without this "Natural technology" continents and islands would be shifting quickly. This has been mentioned in the Quran. Its in one of the videos, “creation of the universe" I think.

What is this... We, who know real science? You are obviously saying that people who beleive in God, don’t know real science and people who don't, they do know real science. This is absolute crap. Many people who believe in God are scientists. Even Einstein believed that there is a creator. My friend, a good beleiver and muslim, graduated as an honors list CCE and is working as a designer for logic circuits (CPUs) for a chip manufacturer. I studied computer science and program portals, ecommerce solutions, and can fix electronics Studied biology, probability, engineering, digital circuits and others. I don't want to and don't like to brag. I'm just showing you that your statement is unfounded "we, who actually know science.."


nezmot,

Why God made fish and whales of different back bone structures. Because he can. I'm sure it has a purpose, maybe we know it, maybe not.

How can dolphins use sounds to communicate, and hunt for food.
2 dolphins can communicate 200 Kilometers away from each other in the sea; by the use of the sonar waves.

First scientists said man came from dinosaurs or apes, then its rats, now its viruses. But this is another big subject we have to analyze.

Whales are mammals, humans are mammals, why didn't some people who supposedly inherited from whales did possess this ability to communicate via sonar?

Bats are mammals, humans are mammals. Why didn't some humans also possess the ability to see via sound as bats do?

If humans came from evolution, why doesn't science find 1, 3, 4 legged or 4 handed people in the museum. or one eyed people? Why no one eyed people? God created people with 2 eyes from the beginning because 2 eyes are needed to calculate distance and because of other things. Such as a backup system if one eye gets hurt. Shouldn't evolution have made 1 eye first as a first version of human vision? and perhaps later, it evolved into 2 eyes?

Human beings have not changed in overall structure in thousands or millions of years, and I don't think they will change naturally in the future, only artificially. There is a verse in the Quran which contains this info: "We created humans in the most perfect form..". I would conclude from this verse that the biology or physical structure of humans will not get more perfect.

florida0214, yes there's ranting as you said, but I can handle it via patience ;) . Btw, no I wasn't taken away I just have work todo. I cann't stay here waiting for the next post like nezmot or shakran.


That is exactly the opposite, you are the one who said my theory is crazy and that all my postings are complete untruths! At the same time I was not judging your thinking or even your statements and was getting proofs from the Quran and logical deductions.

Had dared to appropriate my personal belief system...?! You are either imagining this or making it up. I was giving scientific evidence that proved Gods existence, miracles of time from the Quran when there was no science 1400 years ago. And what you did is call my theory crazy and everything I said are complete untruths. And now you are acting like an innocent.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y29...lhandluke4.jpg

What we seem to have here...is a failure to communicate...

Wow.

Thank you for addressing the 7 heavens issue in my post instead of getting a persecution complex.

Because we don't live underwater.
Because we don't live in dark caves. We evolved larger brains that allow us to use fire.
What is the advantage of 1, 3, or 4 legs (although our arms are actually legs, technically) over our current form?

Protozoans do have one photoreceptor, the organelle that evolved into eyes. More advanced microbes have two of these so they can move toward or away from light. The species we evolved from already had binocular vision.
Human beings did not exist millions of years ago, however we have seen huge changes in the human form over the past 400 thousand years. This is clearly shown in the fossil record, which is a product of the scientific process. The Quran is a religious text. If you continue to link your "science" to your faith, you will continue to have your feelings hurt when we attack your "science".

I was trying to say was that appropriating someone else's belief structure (like nanotech has done here, by appropriating 'science') and then twisting it to tell untruths, is always going to be a controversial tactic, and one that is bound to upset people. I explained that I was upset by it. And I am. If that's an insult then I am sorry.

Having said that, my upset isn't nanotech's fault, I'm responsible for my own feelings, and no-one else. I was just describing what those feelings were, to put my earlier responses into context. I don't think I called anyone crazy, if I did, I apologise. But I will continue to explain why these theories are not scientific, and point out that nanotech refuses to argue within the principles of 'scientific' thought, while at the same trying to use science as an authority. It's this double standard that I find difficulty with, both logically, and as someone who believes in the principles of scientific thought.

To nanotech, there are plenty of scientifically defined arguments that could be used to point towards the idea of a creator, or to help support the credibility of the Bible, or the Qu'ran, Why don't you choose to use them, instead of sticking to these poorly formed ones?

Once again, I'll point out that this is not an attack on your belief in a creator. Nor is it an attack on your belief in the Qu'ran as the word of God. Nor is it an attack on what the Qu'ran might have to say.

All of that is quite safe.

The ONLY thing I have a problem with is they way you're using incorrect statements, or misunderstood concepts, calling them science and then using them to argue your point. If you want to focus on that, then we can. But we will have to focus. No flying off onto unrelated tangents, no resorting to quoting the Quran (because it has nothing to do with the very specific argument we're having here. vis. that you don't understand science)

So, in that vein - and with a deep breath, I'm going to gently try to answer your points quoted below:
Fair enough. You're quite right, God <b>may</b> have some purpose to it. I don't know, and I certainly can't prove it either way.

This is one of your tangents again - how is this relevant?

Think of a tree with man at the end of one twig, and some blob of jelly at the base. As you travel up the tree, you (generally) see more and more complex structures. If you follow the path from the twig to the base, you can go through many ancestors before you get back to the beginning.

This of course, is a massive oversimplification, because what you need to understand is that the rats, monkeys and dinosaurs all exist as end-nodes (twigs), but if they follow their respective paths to the beginning, they must, at some point, share a common ancestor with ourselves.

Because the ability to communicate via sonar evolved somewhere further up the whale's branch, a part of the 'tree' we don't share. We do however meet up with the whale further along the tree, closer to the base - at the point where the common ancestor to all the mammals exists.

For the same reasons described above - do you see how evolution works now?

Because no-where on the tree does there exist a point where an ancestor exists with a different number of eyes, or arms or legs.

Actually, that's not quite true. There is a place in the evolutionary tree where crazy three-eyed creatures exist. There is evidence to three-eyed, or twelve handed or 9 headed creatures in shale coming from a time way back in the pre-cambrian period. Investigations of shale formed around this time show a massive diversity of <b>very simple</b> multi-cellular life. In this microscopic zoo, there existed extremely outlandish creatures, the likes of which have died out now, and never been seen since. Soon after this time, the massive diversity appears to collapse into a much smaller set, the set from which all life can be shown to have evolved from today.

I can't argue with this because it draws from the Quran. That's your belief and it would both be wrong for me to argue against it. All I can say is that I don't share your belief.

In an attempt to express the opposing view of this threads intended path, I will post what is generally agreed upon in scientific circles as the rebuttal to the religious view of Evolution, based on th most common misconceptions of its premis:

*note-this will be somewhat lengthly, and at times quite boring*

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth.


GALÁPAGOS FINCHES show adaptive beak shapes.
In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.

2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.

"Survival of the fittest" is a conversational way to describe natural selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates of survival and reproduction. That is, rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances. Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and a slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the food resources. Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may tip to the slow breeders. In a pioneering study of finches on the Galápagos Islands, Peter R. Grant of Princeton University observed these kinds of population shifts in the wild [see his article "Natural Selection and Darwin's Finches"

3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.

This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time--changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.
These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant's studies of evolving beak shapes among Galápagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms--such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization--can drive profound changes in populations over time.

The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.

Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence.

It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.

No evidence suggests that evolution is losing adherents. Pick up any issue of a peer-reviewed biological journal, and you will find articles that support and extend evolutionary studies or that embrace evolution as a fundamental concept.

Conversely, serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all but nonexistent. In the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of Washington surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seeking articles on intelligent design or creation science. Among those hundreds of thousands of scientific reports, he found none. In the past two years, surveys done independently by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence M. Krauss of Case Western Reserve University have been similarly fruitless.

Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects their evidence. Yet according to the editors of Nature, Science and other leading journals, few antievolution manuscripts are even submitted. Some antievolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously.

5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.

Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics: how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology.
Unfortunately, dishonest creationists have shown a willingness to take scientists' comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the disagreements. Anyone acquainted with the works of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University knows that in addition to co-authoring the punctuated-equilibrium model, Gould was one of the most eloquent defenders and articulators of evolution. (Punctuated equilibrium explains patterns in the fossil record by suggesting that most evolutionary changes occur within geologically brief intervals--which may nonetheless amount to hundreds of generations.) Yet creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from Gould's voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution, and they present punctuated equilibrium as though it allows new species to materialize overnight or birds to be born from reptile eggs.

When confronted with a quotation from a scientific authority that seems to question evolution, insist on seeing the statement in context. Almost invariably, the attack on evolution will prove illusory.

6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.

The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.

9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.

This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts.

The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word.

More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.

10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.
On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)--bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example.

Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses.

Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.

Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species.

12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.

Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries. Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations--sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms' physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership.

Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection--for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits--and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment.

13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.

Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition [see "The Mammals That Conquered the Seas," by Kate Wong; Scientific American, May]. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans.

Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds--it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features. They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record.

14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.

This "argument from design" is the backbone of most recent attacks on evolution, but it is also one of the oldest. In 1802 theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures.

Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye's ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye's evolution--what good is half an eye? Anticipating this criticism, Darwin suggested that even "incomplete" eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin: researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.)

Today's intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different. They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence.

15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.

"Irreducible complexity" is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap--a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood's clotting mechanism and other molecular systems.

Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells.



I have placed this here as a way to further the discussion, and perhaps lend some meager justification to the distrust of the OP shown in many of the replys, in hopes that if anyone bothers to read the information, they may gain a somewhat better understanding of what current consensus most scientist hold, based on the Data availible. This does not mean anyone is Wrong, or that they have mispllaced faith.....it is simply meant to place information before you, that further understanding can be gained.

*My thanks to Scientific American for the Data