Part 1: In the Beginning
To start with I'd like to refer all first time readers to the post titled "the search for... Oh whatever" for the purpose of this post.
In the beginning, something happened. In the hypothesis of macro-evolution that something was *most commonly* the Big Bang. Somewhere just short of 15 billion years ago by this hypothesis matter erupted from nothing and exploded outwards into the nothingness of space and populated the know universe with stars, galaxies, planets, and assorted debris. Somewhere around 4.6 billion years ago earth solidified in more or less its current orbit. Somewhere around 3 billion years ago life emerged.
For people, both lay and scientists, there are two commonly held beliefs on what was before the Big Bang. The first is that this is a cyclical process that has always happened and will always happen. The second is that nothing existed before that moment and some 'unknown agent' acted upon nothingness to cause the Big Bang. Since the second allows for some 'unknown agent' it is generally rejected by the naturalistic evolutionist crowd as it requires a force outside of nature. I will be dealing with the first and likely the most popular belief.
First off, it fails logically. Specifically it uses the false logic of ad infinitum to place the answer further away from the question without actually answering the question. For those that say the universe has always existed, shall always exist, and the Big Bang we know of is simply the latest Big Bang in a string of Big Bangs that has happened into infinity still does not answer the fundamental question of "where did the matter come from?" And the question must be answered. According to the Law of Conservation of Matter matter can neither be created nor destroyed. *E=MCsquared is the exception but that only allows for the destruction of matter for the creation of energy* The First Law of Thermodynamics says that energy cannot be destroyed and the second law states that the total balance of enthropy in any closed system increases until all usable energy has been used. These three laws taken together are a devastating blow to an eternal natural universe. Energy can not be destroyed, nor can it be 'wound back up' that is, made to be usable after it has already been depleted. The universe is headed towards what is called heat death. Eventually, although it is a very long eventually, all usable energy in the universe will have been used and everything will reach 0 Kelvin and even on the subatomic level movement will cease. Even if all matter in the universe is destroyed to convert it to energy heat death will eventually happen as the total balance between matter and energy remains balanced. This is called the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy. Logically not only does the universe have an end it also had a beginning. Even if everything in the universe is 'wound up' there will still be a point in time that one can not go backwards into, that time itself came into being along with all of the possible matter and energy contained within the universe. There is no naturalistic explanation for this first moment when everything came into being as it requires, scientifically, some cause OUTSIDE of the system to have created it. Newtons Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Logically the reverse is true, for every reaction there is an equal and opposite action. This is called Initial Cause and was best and really first described by Leonard Susskind. Newton's law works both ways and you can no more violate it backwards as forwards. Which leads logically and scientifically to some sort of outside force that first acted upon the universe to cause it to come into being. This is usually called the "Cosmic Genome" but in actuality a force outside of the universe *this plane of existence* that has the power to create is, in essence, a deity.
I will skip the birth of the earth since evolutionists themselves can not agree on when or how that happened. Most sources will admit that the creation of the solar system and notably the earth through naturalistic means is not yet explained. Instead I will move forward to the supposed appearing of life about 3 billion years ago by leading evolutionary standards.
According to main stream evolutionists the first self-reproducing cell arrived by chance from dead matter. The first and most obvious problem with this is called the Law of Biogenesis. Louis Pasteur is most commonly seen as the father of this law although several scientists of his day contributed to it. It is his quote that echoed still in the halls of the scholars "Omne vivum e vivo" or, for you who didn't waste college credits on dead languages, "every living thing arises from a preexisting living thing." Since this flatly contradicts an evolutionary, naturalistic origin of life recently scientists have tried to say that this law only applies after life is already in existence, and wouldn't be valid for an initial lifeless earth. There is no logical reason for this objection and such an exception has never been proven or even successfully hypothesized. Its called abiogenesis and it is the belief that under the right circumstances life can spontaneously arise. No life has ever been seen to arise from non-living matter, despite very detailed attempts to produce such a process in the laboratory. Of those that tried Stanley Miller in 1953 probably came closest and certainly is the most well known. Hailed as a breakthrough it was actually a very carefully controlled failure. In life amino acids are either left or right handed and life only uses the left handed amino acids to build enzymes, the right handed ones being deadly to life. It takes about 400 amino acids to build an enzyme and the simplest free living cell has about 482 genes to code for those enzymes. In Miller's, and other's experiments, both left and right hand amino acids were combined and those that did bind together bound in dipeptides *pairs* with a few binding in tripeptides *threes*. The experiments only created some of the amino acids needed for life and no enzymes were formed. Also they were not self regulating, breaking down almost as soon as they were formed, some within seconds when exposed to high heat. And, finally, the experiment had to be terminated as the build up of useless right handed amino acids and gases deadly to the amino acids had blocked the further production of even those tiny dipeptides. Neither life nor anything like it was created. Not only that but a carefully controlled experiment, even if eventually successful, would only prove that intelligence can create life. In the face of their failure to figure out or reproduce how life could spontaneously generate from non-life evolutionists usually resort to time and chance. Saying that if enough time is given non-living matter will eventually come together in the correct order to produce self replicating life. And here they run into another problem. Even if one assumes that the possibility for life has existed since the 'big bang' in every moment in every place in the universe the often quoted figure, from famous mathematician Frederick Hoyle, for the probability of a single cell arriving by chance is 10 to the power of 57800. To put that into perspective there are only 10 to the power of 80 electrons in the whole universe. Mathematically and statistically speaking that means it CAN NOT HAPPEN. Evolutionists come back with the thought that theoretically a cell does not have to form, just some sort of self replicating organism that can change into a cell. They usually talk in terms of bacteria or viri. While this is impossible anyway since both bacteria and viri need living cells as hosts to survive it is the most common solution presented. According to Harold J Morowitz, Professor of Biophysics at Yale University, one of the smallest bacterium, a form of E Coli, has 3-4 million base pairs giving it a mathematical likelihood of arising by chance of 10 to the -100,000,000,000. Again, statistically and mathematically speaking this is impossible. Given this evolutionists hypothesize that the first bacteria or cell would be of a far more simplistic sense than those we see today. This runs straight into two hurdles, the first being fossils. While they have plenty of fossils of cells and mircoorganisms none have ever been found that are fundamentally different or more simplistic than we have today. On the contrary, fossilized cells and mircoorganims are the same as those found today, with very little change. The second wall is called Irreducible Complexity and was best described, in my opinion, by Michael Behe in his book Darwin's Black Box. Although an evolutionist and atheist himself Behe points out several cellular and microscopic systems that are irreducibly complex, meaning they can not function without all steps already in place. There are things in nature, from the microscopic to the massive, which by no means could have evolved since any possible step between the initial hypothetical protosystem and the current system would have been non functioning and ultimately deadly. Michael Behe deals with irreducibly complex systems in the 'simplest' of organisms. Please note, Behe himself is an evolutionists and does believe in molecule to man evolution, he simply does not believe in goo to molecule evolution, acknowledging that those first steps must have been created. Unfortunately having done a very good job at disproving the first step in evolution Behe goes on to suggest panspermia, that is that life was seeding to earth by some alien lifeform. He acknowledges that this does not answer the ultimate question of a beginning to the cycle but says he is unwilling to entertain the notion of special creation so panspermia is the only option left to him.
Unfortunately much of the evolutionist community is like that. Having stared in the face of the impossible and having rejected the supernatural as unthinkable evolutionists must put more and more faith in their belief and shout louder and louder to drown out reason. This is not my opinion, but their's, and to show that I end this segment with a few choice quotes from evolutionists. Please note these are not some backwards scientists, but professors and even noble prize winners.
"There are only two possibilities as to how life arose; one is
spontaneous generation arising to evolution, the other is a supernatural
creative act of God, there is no third possibility. Spontaneous generation
that life arose from non-living matter was scientifically disproved 120
years ago by Louis Pasteur and others. That leaves us with only one
possible conclusion, that life arose as a creative act of God. I will
not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God,
therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically
impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution."
(Dr. George Wald, evolutionist, Professor Emeritus of Biology at the
University at Harvard, Nobel Prize winner in Biology.)
"My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for
more than 40 years have completely failed.....It is not even possible
to make a caricature of an evolution out of paleobiological facts...The
idea of an evolution rests on pure belief."
(Dr. Nils Heribert-Nilsson, noted Swedish botanist and geneticist, of
Lund University)
"The pathetic thing about it is that many scientists are trying to
prove the doctrine of evolution, which no science can do."
(Dr. Robert A. Milikan, physicist and Nobel Prize winner, speech
before the American Chemical Society.)
"All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look
into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We
all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter
on this planet. It is just that life's complexity is so great, it is
hard for us to imagine that it did."
(Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Prize winner)
"I suppose the reason we leaped at the origin of species was because
the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores."
(Sir Julian Huxley, President of the United Nation's Educational,
Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO).)
"If I knew of any Evolutionary transitional's, fossil or living, I
would certainly have included them in my book, 'Evolution' "
(Dr. Colin Patterson, evolutionist and senior Paleontologist at the
British Museum of Natural History, which houses 60 million fossils)
"For over 20 years I thought I was working on evolution....But there
was not one thing I knew about it... So for the last few weeks I've
tried putting a simple question to various people, the question is, "Can
you tell me any one thing that is true?" I tried that question on the
Geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only
answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary
Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, A very prestigious body
of Evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and
eventually one person said, "Yes, I do know one thing, it ought not to
be taught in High School"....over the past few years....you have
experienced a shift from Evolution as knowledge to evolution as
faith...Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey
anti-knowledge."
(Dr. Collin Patterson evolutionist, address at the American Museum of
Natural History, New York City, Nov. 1981)
"I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any
evolutionary theory I know."
(Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory," Discover
2(5):34-37 (1981)
"Evolution is a fairy tale for adults."
(Dr. Paul LeMoine, one of the most prestigious scientists in the
world)
In the beginning, something happened. In the hypothesis of macro-evolution that something was *most commonly* the Big Bang. Somewhere just short of 15 billion years ago by this hypothesis matter erupted from nothing and exploded outwards into the nothingness of space and populated the know universe with stars, galaxies, planets, and assorted debris. Somewhere around 4.6 billion years ago earth solidified in more or less its current orbit. Somewhere around 3 billion years ago life emerged.
For people, both lay and scientists, there are two commonly held beliefs on what was before the Big Bang. The first is that this is a cyclical process that has always happened and will always happen. The second is that nothing existed before that moment and some 'unknown agent' acted upon nothingness to cause the Big Bang. Since the second allows for some 'unknown agent' it is generally rejected by the naturalistic evolutionist crowd as it requires a force outside of nature. I will be dealing with the first and likely the most popular belief.
First off, it fails logically. Specifically it uses the false logic of ad infinitum to place the answer further away from the question without actually answering the question. For those that say the universe has always existed, shall always exist, and the Big Bang we know of is simply the latest Big Bang in a string of Big Bangs that has happened into infinity still does not answer the fundamental question of "where did the matter come from?" And the question must be answered. According to the Law of Conservation of Matter matter can neither be created nor destroyed. *E=MCsquared is the exception but that only allows for the destruction of matter for the creation of energy* The First Law of Thermodynamics says that energy cannot be destroyed and the second law states that the total balance of enthropy in any closed system increases until all usable energy has been used. These three laws taken together are a devastating blow to an eternal natural universe. Energy can not be destroyed, nor can it be 'wound back up' that is, made to be usable after it has already been depleted. The universe is headed towards what is called heat death. Eventually, although it is a very long eventually, all usable energy in the universe will have been used and everything will reach 0 Kelvin and even on the subatomic level movement will cease. Even if all matter in the universe is destroyed to convert it to energy heat death will eventually happen as the total balance between matter and energy remains balanced. This is called the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy. Logically not only does the universe have an end it also had a beginning. Even if everything in the universe is 'wound up' there will still be a point in time that one can not go backwards into, that time itself came into being along with all of the possible matter and energy contained within the universe. There is no naturalistic explanation for this first moment when everything came into being as it requires, scientifically, some cause OUTSIDE of the system to have created it. Newtons Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Logically the reverse is true, for every reaction there is an equal and opposite action. This is called Initial Cause and was best and really first described by Leonard Susskind. Newton's law works both ways and you can no more violate it backwards as forwards. Which leads logically and scientifically to some sort of outside force that first acted upon the universe to cause it to come into being. This is usually called the "Cosmic Genome" but in actuality a force outside of the universe *this plane of existence* that has the power to create is, in essence, a deity.
I will skip the birth of the earth since evolutionists themselves can not agree on when or how that happened. Most sources will admit that the creation of the solar system and notably the earth through naturalistic means is not yet explained. Instead I will move forward to the supposed appearing of life about 3 billion years ago by leading evolutionary standards.
According to main stream evolutionists the first self-reproducing cell arrived by chance from dead matter. The first and most obvious problem with this is called the Law of Biogenesis. Louis Pasteur is most commonly seen as the father of this law although several scientists of his day contributed to it. It is his quote that echoed still in the halls of the scholars "Omne vivum e vivo" or, for you who didn't waste college credits on dead languages, "every living thing arises from a preexisting living thing." Since this flatly contradicts an evolutionary, naturalistic origin of life recently scientists have tried to say that this law only applies after life is already in existence, and wouldn't be valid for an initial lifeless earth. There is no logical reason for this objection and such an exception has never been proven or even successfully hypothesized. Its called abiogenesis and it is the belief that under the right circumstances life can spontaneously arise. No life has ever been seen to arise from non-living matter, despite very detailed attempts to produce such a process in the laboratory. Of those that tried Stanley Miller in 1953 probably came closest and certainly is the most well known. Hailed as a breakthrough it was actually a very carefully controlled failure. In life amino acids are either left or right handed and life only uses the left handed amino acids to build enzymes, the right handed ones being deadly to life. It takes about 400 amino acids to build an enzyme and the simplest free living cell has about 482 genes to code for those enzymes. In Miller's, and other's experiments, both left and right hand amino acids were combined and those that did bind together bound in dipeptides *pairs* with a few binding in tripeptides *threes*. The experiments only created some of the amino acids needed for life and no enzymes were formed. Also they were not self regulating, breaking down almost as soon as they were formed, some within seconds when exposed to high heat. And, finally, the experiment had to be terminated as the build up of useless right handed amino acids and gases deadly to the amino acids had blocked the further production of even those tiny dipeptides. Neither life nor anything like it was created. Not only that but a carefully controlled experiment, even if eventually successful, would only prove that intelligence can create life. In the face of their failure to figure out or reproduce how life could spontaneously generate from non-life evolutionists usually resort to time and chance. Saying that if enough time is given non-living matter will eventually come together in the correct order to produce self replicating life. And here they run into another problem. Even if one assumes that the possibility for life has existed since the 'big bang' in every moment in every place in the universe the often quoted figure, from famous mathematician Frederick Hoyle, for the probability of a single cell arriving by chance is 10 to the power of 57800. To put that into perspective there are only 10 to the power of 80 electrons in the whole universe. Mathematically and statistically speaking that means it CAN NOT HAPPEN. Evolutionists come back with the thought that theoretically a cell does not have to form, just some sort of self replicating organism that can change into a cell. They usually talk in terms of bacteria or viri. While this is impossible anyway since both bacteria and viri need living cells as hosts to survive it is the most common solution presented. According to Harold J Morowitz, Professor of Biophysics at Yale University, one of the smallest bacterium, a form of E Coli, has 3-4 million base pairs giving it a mathematical likelihood of arising by chance of 10 to the -100,000,000,000. Again, statistically and mathematically speaking this is impossible. Given this evolutionists hypothesize that the first bacteria or cell would be of a far more simplistic sense than those we see today. This runs straight into two hurdles, the first being fossils. While they have plenty of fossils of cells and mircoorganisms none have ever been found that are fundamentally different or more simplistic than we have today. On the contrary, fossilized cells and mircoorganims are the same as those found today, with very little change. The second wall is called Irreducible Complexity and was best described, in my opinion, by Michael Behe in his book Darwin's Black Box. Although an evolutionist and atheist himself Behe points out several cellular and microscopic systems that are irreducibly complex, meaning they can not function without all steps already in place. There are things in nature, from the microscopic to the massive, which by no means could have evolved since any possible step between the initial hypothetical protosystem and the current system would have been non functioning and ultimately deadly. Michael Behe deals with irreducibly complex systems in the 'simplest' of organisms. Please note, Behe himself is an evolutionists and does believe in molecule to man evolution, he simply does not believe in goo to molecule evolution, acknowledging that those first steps must have been created. Unfortunately having done a very good job at disproving the first step in evolution Behe goes on to suggest panspermia, that is that life was seeding to earth by some alien lifeform. He acknowledges that this does not answer the ultimate question of a beginning to the cycle but says he is unwilling to entertain the notion of special creation so panspermia is the only option left to him.
Unfortunately much of the evolutionist community is like that. Having stared in the face of the impossible and having rejected the supernatural as unthinkable evolutionists must put more and more faith in their belief and shout louder and louder to drown out reason. This is not my opinion, but their's, and to show that I end this segment with a few choice quotes from evolutionists. Please note these are not some backwards scientists, but professors and even noble prize winners.
"There are only two possibilities as to how life arose; one is
spontaneous generation arising to evolution, the other is a supernatural
creative act of God, there is no third possibility. Spontaneous generation
that life arose from non-living matter was scientifically disproved 120
years ago by Louis Pasteur and others. That leaves us with only one
possible conclusion, that life arose as a creative act of God. I will
not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God,
therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically
impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution."
(Dr. George Wald, evolutionist, Professor Emeritus of Biology at the
University at Harvard, Nobel Prize winner in Biology.)
"My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for
more than 40 years have completely failed.....It is not even possible
to make a caricature of an evolution out of paleobiological facts...The
idea of an evolution rests on pure belief."
(Dr. Nils Heribert-Nilsson, noted Swedish botanist and geneticist, of
Lund University)
"The pathetic thing about it is that many scientists are trying to
prove the doctrine of evolution, which no science can do."
(Dr. Robert A. Milikan, physicist and Nobel Prize winner, speech
before the American Chemical Society.)
"All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look
into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We
all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter
on this planet. It is just that life's complexity is so great, it is
hard for us to imagine that it did."
(Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Prize winner)
"I suppose the reason we leaped at the origin of species was because
the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores."
(Sir Julian Huxley, President of the United Nation's Educational,
Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO).)
"If I knew of any Evolutionary transitional's, fossil or living, I
would certainly have included them in my book, 'Evolution' "
(Dr. Colin Patterson, evolutionist and senior Paleontologist at the
British Museum of Natural History, which houses 60 million fossils)
"For over 20 years I thought I was working on evolution....But there
was not one thing I knew about it... So for the last few weeks I've
tried putting a simple question to various people, the question is, "Can
you tell me any one thing that is true?" I tried that question on the
Geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only
answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary
Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, A very prestigious body
of Evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and
eventually one person said, "Yes, I do know one thing, it ought not to
be taught in High School"....over the past few years....you have
experienced a shift from Evolution as knowledge to evolution as
faith...Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey
anti-knowledge."
(Dr. Collin Patterson evolutionist, address at the American Museum of
Natural History, New York City, Nov. 1981)
"I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any
evolutionary theory I know."
(Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory," Discover
2(5):34-37 (1981)
"Evolution is a fairy tale for adults."
(Dr. Paul LeMoine, one of the most prestigious scientists in the
world)
posted by Jespren at 2:22 PM
2 Comments:
just so you can see it here :). this piece was meant purely to prove the beginning being creation. This does not actually disprove molecule to man nor does it prove WHICH god created. This proof would be okay with the Hindu creation account. I'll be dealing with time in my next post. If there is a particular dating method you'd like me to deal with I'd be happy to include it.
Very interesting, though I have a couple comments...
1) Not all physicists believe that the laws of physics as you've described them (and as many of us know them) must behave in said manner throughout space and time. That is, it is possible for these laws to only exist under certain circumstances (which we now have) and other laws were relevant for the Big Bang. Not saying this *is* the case, but it's not addressed in this (very articulate) theory :) For more on this, I would recommend almost any of Hawking's books as I find he does a spectacular job of outlining this possibility (though he himself doesn't agree with it, well, fully).
2) Have you read Paul Bloom's Descartes Baby? I highly recommend it. But there's a bit at the end about the issue of God and the Brain. I won't spoil it - but take the book out of the library and even if you don't read the rest (though I recommend you do because it's wonderfully insightful and hilarious), go to the end to read up on the issue of neuroscience and God. It's not the issue of evolution per se, but raises doubts about the existence of any god.
All in all, though, it's a very interesting take. To add to your view, I will tell you about my friend who is a scientist and very religious Jew (her mother is a rabbi and lawyer - go figure). According to her, the first part of the Bible, which as you know was translated from Hebrew. The whole concept of 6 days is a known mis-translation. The word used in the Torah means a certain amount of time - nothing specified about a day - but the closest translation to that is a day, so it was used. So she believes that there is a creator who started things off, but also believes in evolution. That is, that what God created was the start of life that could evolve into myriad life forms depending on what happened. That view is not contradictory to the original Jewish account (or so I'm told). So God's hand was there at the start but did not create humans as such, but rather allowed them to come to form. Make sense?
Anyway, those are my thoughts at the moment :) Lovely piece though! Even from someone who does believe in the Big Bang ;)
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