Wow. Okay, let's see how much I can write before I have to go do other things.
Also, if the universe needs a created, why doesn't God? Surely He/She/It would need a source. Yeah. That argument is pretty silly.
Sure. I see where you're coming from there. Since (according to my view) God created the universe, he is not confined to its laws of physics. The example of that applying here is that he is not confined to time. There's at least one verse in the Bible that makes it fairly obvious that God's perception of time makes absolutely no sense from a human perspective. (I can probably find it if you want.) If something created him, that would imply that he had a beginning. Personally, although the basic premise is that "
we're not going to understand it, because he's God"
, I find it easier to swallow than the idea that the universe came from nothing, or from something else which lacks such transcendent qualities (and thus needs an origin and an origin for its origin and so on).
[A citation is needed for the idea that] All galaxies must have reached entropic equilibrium on an astronomic time scale.
My argument there was a reference to a different explanation for the existence of the universe: that it has always been here. There are still people who hold that idea. And for those that don't, the time of the universe is limited by their other ideas already, which is for my point that there was not an infinite amount of time, which is what makes the low chance of evolution a valid point.
life on the molecular level, to me at least, shows vanishingly little HIGHLY SUBJECTIVE evidence of design
I'm not sure how else you could explain DNA, the means by which to use it, the means by which to replicate it, the means by which to double-check it (how sure are they on that part?), the means by which to obtain energy, the means by which to hold itself together, and so on
all happening to appear at the
same place at the
same time. To me, that says 'design', but I understand that I'm predisposed to come to that conclusion.
if you really need them to justify your faith
Nah. If all of this could be conclusively proven, faith would not be necessary.
And religion will not, indeed cannot, ever offer explanations
Often, the purpose of religion is to explain the meaning of life. It's also worth noting instances like Greek Mythology, in which the myths are largely used to explain phenomena in the real world. How else
can you explain things like the fact that humans conceive of such concepts as "
good"
, "
evil"
, "
justice"
, or even "
God"
?
Good thing we have ways of measuring the age of a geologic layers by other means than pure location, eh. Like, oh I dunno, the level of decay of radioactive elements in the rocks...
This isn't to say that I would scrap them altogether, but these methods (or 'this method', if you prefer to talk about all radiometric dating collectively) are terribly inconsistent. There are several major assumptions involved: that the initial amount of the element used to date the rock is known (although there are some basic generalizations for often-dealt-with materials), that there were no outside interferences adding or removing any of said element from the sample (although they can track such interferences
to some extent by dating more than one mineral in the sample), and that the rate of radioactive decay was constant (which, so far as I've seen, remains completely unverified). These methods have also sometimes generated enormous numbers for rocks which have formed within some of our lifetimes.
Phew. I've got more to say, but I've also got more to do. I hope I can get to it all soon.
I'd still like to know how it is that evolution and entropy can coexist.
____________________________
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Detention Complex,
Archipelago,
Cube of Memories
[Last edited by Penwielder at 04-05-2011 11:26 PM]
