Do you believe in evolution?

[Nightson]

And what exactly is this force that gets to shuffle the decks? Is it as random force or a creative one? Wouldn't the path of least resistance be to become even more disordered, not more ordered?

Water going down a drain doesn't seem to think so.

[Yosarian2]

Earth is not a closed system, and you're completely misunderstanding the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Then again, you're probably doing so intentionally.

No, I'm afraid that entropy is considered by many creationists - especially those in the ID movement - to be the silver bullet for evolution.
_____

When you take a new pack of cards and shuffle it, it becomes more disordered (on average, obviously). Shuffle it again and it becomes still more disordered. Shuffle it a third time. Seriously, do. Then glance through the pack and see the lack of a pattern. Then deal out to yourself and two or three friends. Play "Cheat". Then, when a big stack has arisen, grab it (your friends will be annoyed at your disruption of the game but don't let this stop you) and look through it. It's not ordered, is it? Not perfectly. But it's a good deal easier to predict what's coming next than it would be with the thrice-shuffled pack you had earlier.

now, could someone who knows what they're talking about tell me if that's a good analogy or not?
With the cards being like genes or genetic sequences and survival over a course of generations being the game; order arises because that's where the "path of least resistance" lies; and that's what entropy really is, that things will follow the path of least resistance.

Like a river will become bendier (more complicated) as a simple result of water going faster on the outside of kinks and slower on the inside. Depositing on the inside and eroding the outside, causing big meanders in the river; wouldn't a face-reading of entropy claim that rivers should be straight? Same for fjords.

The thing is that entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, only applies in a closed system.

For example, in a closed system, if you start out with two things of different tempatures, the difference will tend balance out, until they're the same tempature; an ice cube in a glass of water, the ice will melt while the water it's in gets cooler until they're the same tempature. That's part of what entropy is. However, if you turn on the fridge in your kitchen, the inside of the fridge will get colder, and the rest of the room will get hotter! So, does that violate the second law of thermodynamics? No, because it's not a closed system; energy (electricity) is coming in from outside the system. When the coal plant burns coal to make electricity, it creates a lot of entropy (by turning the chemical energy of the coal into heat and electricty), so the entropy in the total system (house-refigerator-coal plant) increases.

It's the same with the Earth. It's possible for entropy on the Earth to decrease, but only because it's not a closed system; the sun generates vast amounts of energy by using nuclear fusion to turn matter into energy, and that increses the total amount of entropy in the universe. The entopy on Earth can decrease, so long as the total entropy in the Earth-Sun system increases.

[Seol]

so how do you explain that the second law of thermodynamics means evolution is impossible unless there's some huge energy source out there pumping energy into earth

hehehe

Any creationist who considers the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics an objection to the theory of evolution either does not understand thermodynamics, or is cynically trying to appeal to those who do not understand thermodynamics.

The laws of thermodynamics aren't even laws, not in the true sense of the word. They're results.

[vollkan]

Yosarian2 is completely correct.

The overall entropy of any closed system (ie. the universe) is always increasing, but the entropy of any localised open system (ie. earth) can decrease if there is an external energy supply (ie. the big yellow thing)

It's a ridiculous argument to anyone who has even the slightest comprehension of the science, but it sounds impressive to those who don't, because it relies on (and abuses) scientific terminology (much like the crack-pot alternative therapists who talk about "quantum crystal energy" and the like).

We can't really blame the creationists: Their brains are closed systems which are therefore continually getting more and more disordered

[Foolster41]

Nightsun: I'm not sure the anallogy of gravity works. If I were to shuffle a deck, would it become more shuffled or more ordered?

Volkien: Just because some Intelligent Desaigners use faulty logic doesn't mean their wrong. Just how just because your mom and dad lied about santa claus means that God/Jesus doesn't exist. This doesn't mean he does exitst, but it is not suficent evidence to say he doesn't.

Good science is about looking at the world and trying to figure out how it works making no assumptions. There are plenty of things that bother me about evolution that have no been answered to completely trust it. I don't believe science proves God, but I don't believe it rules him out either.

Also, evolution and adaption is most certainly not the same thing. It gets grouped together all the time. It appears the same, but just isn't.
change of slight variations over generations is repeatable and observable. changing of one species has not. I haven't heard any credible evidence of half-specifies (If the evolution mistakes died off, wouldn't we find all kinds of half-specie fossils?)

1.)The sheer chance of life happening, and everything happening perfectly, The odds are I believe 10 to the 100th power. That's a big number. We have a moon that rotates around our planet, keeping it perfectly in orbit, we have solar eclipses which doesn't happen on other planets. We have good supplies of carbon and water, the materials needed for life. Alternate universes (using Quantum Physics and String Theory) is a cheat, since there is no observable way of proving the existence of said universes since they are outside ours.

2.)The Flagellem, a microscopic engine that has over 30 intrequite parts. Take away one peice and it doesn't work. only 2 parts can be found anywhere else.

I find it quite sad that IDers are dismissed out of hand, even though there are perfectly good reasons to possibly question Darwinist evolution.

[vollkan]

Volkien: Just because some Intelligent Desaigners use faulty logic doesn't mean their wrong. Just how just because your mom and dad lied about santa claus means that God/Jesus doesn't exist. This doesn't mean he does exitst, but it is not suficent evidence to say he doesn't.

Intelligent design is bad science, plain and simple; creationism in a cheap tuxedo.

Evolution requires no design and no designer. There is nothing found yet which is irreducibly complex such that it could not possibly have come about via evolutionary means, which is the root of the ID movement's claims.

No, they are not necessarily "wrong", if you mean that in the sense of "proven incorrect", but their ideas do not deserve to be taken seriously until they can establish a positive case for their arguments over that of evolution.

Goodf sceince is about looking at the world and trying to figure out how it works making no asumptions. There are pleanty of things that bother me about evolution that have no been answered to completly trust it. I don't beleive science proves God, but I don't belive it rules him out either.

Please, tell me what bothers you about evolution. I really want to explain whatever it is that you don't like about it.

We've been over the "it doesn't rule God out" thing already in the appropriate thread. All I will say on it here is remind you that absence of negative proof is no cause for assertion of existence.

1.)The sheer chance of life happening, and everything happening perfectly, The odds are I beleive 10 to the 100th power. That's a big number. We have a moon that rotates around our planet, keeping it perfectly in orbit, we have solar eclipses which doesn't happen on other planets. We have good supplies of carbon and water, t he materials needed for life.

The odds of life developing appear to be very small, judging by the fact we have not yet been contacted by an extraterrestrial species.

I will use a chapter from the Dawkins book "The Blind Watchmaker" for this; it is on this precise issue of probability of life's generation.

Let's see: Self-replicating molecules (life) can be produced by chemical reactions but it requires a large amount of time, on the human scale of things. On earth, it took about a billion years. If there are a billion billion planets in the universe, at a likely conservative guess, and each lasts as long as earth on average, then we are looking at a billion billion billion planet-years to play with.

To put it a different way: If there are a billion billion planets and the odds are a billion to one, we would still expect life on a billion planets.

The point: The exceptionally low probability of life generating randomly via chemical processes is actually very very high. Now, it is less likely that life will evolve to reach the point of intelligence, but still hardly so unlikely that we should really be bemused and astounded.

You say the odds are 10 to the hundredth power. I disagree. The odds of life chemically forming appear (DNA as a specific example) appear to be significantly lower than that (it simply requires enough chemical reactions to form something like DNA). We've already seen the formation of amino acids by Urey-Miller-eqsue experiments.

Once natural selection takes hold, life evolves and becomes more complex.

As for the orbit and sun and stuff, you are saying that earth is in the "Goldilocks zone" - not too hot, not too cold but just right.

Now the "design" argument says god made the universal porridge around earth that way.

There are is another better way to look at this.
1) The anthropic principle - If life arises on one billion earth-like planets, then it makes sense that life would evolve on earth because earth, funnily enough, is especially earth-like.
2) Moreover, life itself has evolved to thrive in the conditions on this planet, complementing the former.

2.)The Flagellem, a microscopic engine that has over 30 intrequite parts. Take away one peice and it doesn't work. only 2 parts can be found anywhere else.

Parts of the flagellum actually do serve a function as a toxin transporter. What we see here are parts not evolved for the purpose of being a "flagellum" coming to serve that purpose. It makes sense really. An organism which has parts which more closely resemble a flagellum gets more of an advantage and, thus, eventually those parts form the flagellum.

This really is a non-issue just raised by ID advocates who don't understand that a part does not have to specifically evolve on its on.

I find it quite sad that IDers are dimissed out of hand, even though there are perfectly good reasons to possibly question darwinist evolution.

No. They are dismissed once their arguments are proven to be poor. If they ever find real irreducible complexity, then we need to look at what is wrong with the theory of evolution is as we understand it. Even then, it is not positive proof for their argument, but it would require some re-examination of evolution.

[Nightson]

Nightson: I'm not sure the anallogy of gravity works. If I were to shuffle a deck, would it become more shuffled or more ordered?

Assuming a already very shuffled deck, it could be either closer or further away from the arbitrary pattern we would call ordered. Neither one would be terribly more likely then the other and the chances of it getting back into the right pattern are pretty small. But imagine if instead of repeatedly shuffling the deck, you shuffled two cards at a time, and if a card ended up closer to the pattern, is has a 5% to be fixed there there. Now give it a billion years to work while shuffling every hour.

Edit: And just for kicks, say that there's 8 trillion possible combinations of a 52 card deck. In one billion years you'll see 8,760,000,000,000 combinations shuffling every hour. Which means you'd see every single possible combination once and about 760 million of them twice (in a perfectly not really random world)

[Seol]

It appears the same, but just isn't.
change of slight variations over generations is repeatable and observable. changing of one species has not. I haven't heard any credible evidence of half-specifies (If the evolution mistakes died off, wouldn't we find all kinds of half-specie fossils?)

There's no such thing as a half-species. Biology isn't simply divided into discrete units with vague areas between them. As for "evolutionary mistakes" dying off, that's what happened to the dinosaurs - in terms of, say, cats with six legs (if that's what you mean), then they're very rare and generally die without reproducing or are infertile and as such there are very, very few of them, so the chances of seeing a fossil of that specific organism are obviously very low.

[vollkan]

I missed this point before, and Seol just brought it to my attention:

Also, evolution and adaption is most certainly not the same thing. It gets grouped together all the time. It appears the same, but just isn't.
change of slight variations over generations is repeatable and observable. changing of one species has not. I haven't heard any credible evidence of half-specifies (If the evolution mistakes died off, wouldn't we find all kinds of half-specie fossils?)

Evolution is not adaptation, and I don't know of any scientist who says that the two are equivalent. Evolution is a very specific scientific idea, whereas adaptation is a generic process.

Adaptation, specifically by natural and sexual selection, is the driver of evolution however. By a tremendous number of small adaptations, new species form.

The fallacy in your thinking, is that you are suggesting that a large accumulation of small gradual changes cannot result in a change of "species" (which is a hideous word in this context).

The key is not to think in terms of species. Think in terms of DNA. All we are talking about here is certain genetic combinations which are favoured over time, due to favourable phenotypes. Over time, the cumulative effect of continued favouring of particular traits (remember, we are talking about situations where a variety of phenotypes may be selected) dramatic changes will occur, such that we may say a "new species" has arisen.

If I still have not answered this aspect of your problem, could you word a specific question to voice your concern?

As for the half species thing, again, the trouble lies in the us eof the word "species". What do you mean by a "half-specie fossil"?

If you mean intermediatory links, we do have many fossils. Of course, the record is not complete, but it would be a bizarre phenomenon if it were. We should expect to have an incomplete fossil record because fossils are very rare things.

[Adele]

The odds are I believe 10 to the 100th power.

A Googol? Really? Seems awfully round. Seems like a guesstimate to me, if not outright bollocks.

[Seol]

The odds are I believe 10 to the 100th power.

A Googol? Really? Seems awfully round. Seems like a guesstimate to me, if not outright bollocks.

Especially when he's factoring in things like our planet can have solar eclipses. Yes, it is very rare to have planets with satellites of exactly the right size and relative distance

and

which shares the plane of rotation exactly to lead to such a phenomenon, but to say that life wouldn't exist without solar eclipses is nonsense.

We need - the right chemical makeup, which is reasonably likely, the right size of planet (to retain an appropriate atmosphere), and the right temperature. That's about it.

[Yosarian2]

Right. There are probably a LOT of earth-like planets in the universe with pleanty of carbon and such chemicals and the right distance from their star to have liquid water, and that's probably all you need to have life develop.

Now, of course we don't know what the odds of life arising given the proper enviorment are, you can't do statistics with a statistical sample of 1, but there's no reason to think there's anything like the "1 in a google" odds Foolster picked out of thin air. The only real way to answer that question would be to go to a bunch of earthlike planets and see how many of them have life. Either way, though it dosn't really matter; even if the odds of life forming are very low, the universe is big enough that it's likely to happen somewhere.

The odds of life developing appear to be very small, judging by the fact we have not yet been contacted by an extraterrestrial species.

The Fermi Paradox (basically, "considering how common life should be, why haven't they found us yet?") is an interesting point, but it dosn't say really anything about the frequency of life in the universe. At most, it might say something about the frequency of intellegent life that dosn't destory itself or otherwise die off before leaving it's own solar system, and even that is subject to debate. Again, we can't know how common life is until we have a bigger sample size.

[Seol]

The Fermi Paradox (basically, "considering how common life should be, why haven't they found us yet?") is an interesting point, but it dosn't say really anything about the frequency of life in the universe. At most, it might say something about the frequency of intellegent life that dosn't destory itself or otherwise die off before leaving it's own solar system, and even that is subject to debate. Again, we can't know how common life is until we have a bigger sample size.

It may also be that interstellar transport is simply impractical, and every star has intelligent life around it that just hasn't chosen to brave the void of space.

Or maybe they did, but the dark matter ate them. It's 90% of the mass of the universe, and it's

still

hungry.

Or maybe did, and they came here, and now they're wondering why we didn't return the call they left 2,000 years ago.

[Adele]

The Fermi Paradox (basically, "considering how common life should be, why haven't they found us yet?") is an interesting point, but it dosn't say really anything about the frequency of life in the universe. At most, it might say something about the frequency of intellegent life that dosn't destory itself or otherwise die off before leaving it's own solar system, and even that is subject to debate. Again, we can't know how common life is until we have a bigger sample size.

It may also be that interstellar transport is simply impractical, and every star has intelligent life around it that just hasn't chosen to brave the void of space.

Or maybe they did, but the dark matter ate them. It's 90% of the mass of the universe, and it's

still

hungry.

Or maybe did, and they came here, and now they're wondering why we didn't return the call they left 2,000 years ago.

oh, that was me, sorry. I

meant

to, but then Buffy was on, and I forgot.

[Seol]

The Fermi Paradox (basically, "considering how common life should be, why haven't they found us yet?") is an interesting point, but it dosn't say really anything about the frequency of life in the universe. At most, it might say something about the frequency of intellegent life that dosn't destory itself or otherwise die off before leaving it's own solar system, and even that is subject to debate. Again, we can't know how common life is until we have a bigger sample size.

It may also be that interstellar transport is simply impractical, and every star has intelligent life around it that just hasn't chosen to brave the void of space.

Or maybe they did, but the dark matter ate them. It's 90% of the mass of the universe, and it's

still

hungry.

Or maybe did, and they came here, and now they're wondering why we didn't return the call they left 2,000 years ago.

oh, that was me, sorry. I

meant

to, but then Buffy was on, and I forgot.

what, you ate 90% of the universe? o_O

[Stewie]

1.)The sheer chance of life happening, and everything happening perfectly, The odds are I believe 10 to the 100th power. That's a big number.

That's a made up number.

Anyways, probability is irrelevant. Winning the lottery is hard, but it still happens. It's not about how likely it is for things to have happened the way they did, but rather to explain how things happened.

Oh, and both orbits and chemical makeup can be explained with physics and chemistry. The moon is not the only orbit, many other planets have natural satellites, some have several. I believe that if something is moving at the right distance and velocity relative to another body, it will revolve around it. Chemical composition has more to do with stages of stars, iirc.

ID is dismissed so quickly because it has no positive proof. Evolution, flawed as you think it is, has lots (and I mean lots) of positive evidence supporting it. Scientific-minded people need positive evidence to believe something or even consider it, lack of negative evidence is just crap.

[Thok]

Edit: And just for kicks, say that there's 8 trillion possible combinations of a 52 card deck. In one billion years you'll see 8,760,000,000,000 combinations shuffling every hour. Which means you'd see every single possible combination once and about 760 million of them twice (in a perfectly not really random world)

Minor complaint: This isn't how randomness actually works. What will happen is that most combinations will show up 0, 1, or 2 times, but a small number of combinations will randomly show up a lot (where a lot means something like 10,000 times or so). It's impossible to predict which one will show up a lot. Basically, some amount of unevenness in the distribution is significantly more likely than perfect evenness.

Fun fact-people are bad at recognizing and creating random sequences, mainly because they confuse random with chaotic.

[Nightson]

Edit: And just for kicks, say that there's 8 trillion possible combinations of a 52 card deck. In one billion years you'll see 8,760,000,000,000 combinations shuffling every hour. Which means you'd see every single possible combination once and about 760 million of them twice (in a perfectly not really random world)

Minor complaint: This isn't how randomness actually works. What will happen is that most combinations will show up 0, 1, or 2 times, but a small number of combinations will randomly show up a lot (where a lot means something like 10,000 times or so). It's impossible to predict which one will show up a lot. Basically, some amount of unevenness in the distribution is significantly more likely than perfect evenness.

Fun fact-people are bad at recognizing and creating random sequences, mainly because they confuse random with chaotic.

Hence the not really random comment.

[Fritzler]

Why are people still posting in this thread?

I won it on page 1.

[mathcam]

10 to the 100th power.

That's a made up number.

Good point. Also, I always thought 496 was made-up. It just seemed too good to be true.

Cam

[Seol]

Also, I always thought 496 was made-up. It just seemed too good to be true.

heh

[Foolster41]

Thew number was an approximate of something I heard somewhere. Or I had thought I had remembered from somewhere. My memory is most likely wrong. It seems beside the point anyway. It was not meant as a hard number (Though I suppose I should have said i was estimating.)

I understand that eclipses is hardly neccisery for life, but it is one more feature that shows up nowhere else that seems to have the sole purpose of being for the species on that planet's visual enjoyment. It's not a major proof, but a small thought.

I had thought someone here said that "evolution=adaption". Not sure who, but this does come up more times than you'd think.

"ID is dismissed so quickly because it has no positive proof. Evolution, flawed as you think it is, has lots (and I mean lots) of positive evidence supporting it. Scientific-minded people need positive evidence to believe something or even consider it, lack of negative evidence is just crap."

The problem is evolution (changes between speciies over millions and billions of years) is completely unobservable and unrepeatable. If you could give some examples of proofs, I'd appreciate it. I've never seen any particular proof that evolution is true and so that's why I'm having a hard time just accepting it.

[Thestatusquo]

10 to the 100th power.

That's a made up number.

Good point. Also, I always thought 496 was made-up. It just seemed too good to be true.

Cam

I did literally just laugh out loud. Thanks a lot, Cam.

[Adele]

Thew number was an approximate of something I heard somewhere. Or I had thought I had remembered from somewhere. My memory is most likely wrong. It seems beside the point anyway. It was not meant as a hard number (Though I suppose I should have said i was estimating.)

I understand that eclipses is hardly neccisery for life, but it is one more feature that shows up nowhere else that seems to have the sole purpose of being for the species on that planet's visual enjoyment. It's not a major proof, but a small thought.

See, but if we didn't have them, it would

never occur

to us that we lacked them. We don't sulk for lack of Saturnic rings, do we? How many other "cool" properties did we miss out on that we don't miss - because you can't miss what you never had?

On the same note, in how many alternate universes are we, like, way angry because we never developed? I'm guessing

lots

.

[Yosarian2]

Thew number was an approximate of something I heard somewhere. Or I had thought I had remembered from somewhere. My memory is most likely wrong. It seems beside the point anyway. It was not meant as a hard number (Though I suppose I should have said i was estimating.)

I understand that eclipses is hardly neccisery for life, but it is one more feature that shows up nowhere else that seems to have the sole purpose of being for the species on that planet's visual enjoyment. It's not a major proof, but a small thought.

...what does our visual enjoyment have to do with anything? If it was the other way around, you'd be saying "See, ours is the only planet without eclipses, and that's clearly just God helping us so we avoid the hassle of sudden unexpected darkness".

The problem is evolution (changes between speciies over millions and billions of years) is completely unobservable and unrepeatable. If you could give some examples of proofs, I'd appreciate it. I've never seen any particular proof that evolution is true and so that's why I'm having a hard time just accepting it.

Well, where do you think the MRSA germ that's now in all the news came from? It evolved, over the last few decades, as the straph germs that could survive the antibiotics we hit them with did so and spread, and therefore had an evolutinary advanage against the older version of the germ. That's a perfect example of natural selection in it's purest form; when the enviorment changes, examples of a species with certain adaptations that can better handle the new enviorment thrive and eventually become dominant. The more time passes, the more changes happen, and if you take the same species and put it into two different enviorments where the needs for survival are different, you will eventually get two different species.

Evolution, mutation, natural selection, and the genetic passing down of traits are all things that can be observed and proven quite easily by modern day science. No, we can't observe species over millions of years, but species with a much shorter lifespan then us, we can observe for many generations and watch as natural selection happens just the way Darwin described it in his theory.