I invoke them because it does have reference in regards to evolution. I do understand the forces at work regarding them as well.

Seems everyone wants to believe that we're supposed to get better and better as we go along, nature doesn't work that way. Grass withers, trees rot, water evaporates, metals rust...when left their own devices. No meddling. No rustoleum. No weed killer. Yet pond scum is supposed to morph into a fish, a fish to a bird, a bird to a monkey and a monkey to man? I don't think so.

The mere notion of the laws of thermodynamics deflates whatever levity people put upon evolution. Oh how desperate they want to believe in Darwin's theory that they'll through natural law out the window. The case of the "missing link" is the same arguement as Saddam's WMD. They must be somewhere...find them...well? They've had countless centuries to find them and they haven't yet, but there are some that won't even give our soldiers 5 years to find the WMD's!

I believe that humans have issues regarding the belief in a higher power, oh how they want to be the cure all be all so they can exclaim their might. A lifetime isn't long enough to get there so they'll skip steps and profess their intelligence to those that want to go along for the ride. The miracles I've seen in my own life and with my own eyes are a testament to God's power. If you want to believe that you're from some pond scum, or a crashed UFO then by all means go ahead but when we have to learn about evolution being a theory crammed as factual proof then I have a problem with it. Even now they're finding more and more proof that the Bible is more accurate and it gets no press. Noah's ark, Egyptian chariot wheels and sheilds in the Red Sea, coins with King David's likeness, John the Baptist's cave home, and so many more that I'm convinced that the Bible is the inspired work of God to Man.

That's something I believe.

coda

"Pride is actually one of the reasons that humans have a need to believe in a personal creator. "We are so special that we have a purpose; it took an omnipotent being to make us; there's a special place reserved for us later," etc.

bingo!!

we are stupid little violent creatures who kill others of our specie for silly little reasons.

DrMaddVibe

Perhaps you do understand the forces at work in nature, yet your examples are all of short term downswings in natural life cycles, not long term "entropy". "Grass withers, trees rot, metals rust..." Fairly negative, if I may say so, and very selective. You very obviously don't mention little things like mighty trees growing up from compost, minerals, water, and sunlight, or the crystaline structure of frost forming on windows.

Pond scum? Well, a metaphor by any other name... but yes, in essence. I didn't choose my origin, I accepted it. (There's probably a good reason that human embryos look like fish embryos early in their development, although CigarPrimate would have a different way of saying it. DNA looks like something that adapted, rather than being designed from scratch. When we humans design a house today, it is a nice, clean structural definition. However, our genes contain wrong turns, genes that turn on or turn off other genes, like something that, well, for lack of a better term, "evolved". Imagine having to build a house in a process that starts as building a lean-to, then modifing it to be a thatch hut, then adobe, then timber, then brick --- That's what our DNA is like.)

Can a forest of scattered, growing trees become a well-ordered row of houses? (Yes.) Is that a violation of the laws of thermodynamics? (No. Man, who builds, is part of nature, and subject to the laws that govern it.) Look at the long term, and I mean the Lonnnnnggggg Term, and the Big Picture (i.e., the universe). If I (incorrectly) consider my house a closed system, then my heat pump violates the laws of thermodynamics, and I've personally seen it work.

There is no "missing link" -- it's only something that didn't leave a track we could find after millions of years, so don't dwell on it. We have merely a few sparse clues that have been found in the dirt so far. The gaps are only what they are. The absence of proof doesn't prove or disprove anything. (Ditto for Saddam's WMD!)

I could write a fiction novel that makes references to provably existing things (e.g., New York City, quarters with Washington's likeness, cars that run on fossil fuel, people with red blood); but that would not make my novel factual.

If there were a time limit on proving any beliefs, we'd probably both have heard the buzzer by now.

Crashed UFO? Where did that come from? 8{)

Rickster

I don't thing a "bingo" is possible here; I'll settle for a "good sweat, man!"

CigarPrimate

Again, in english. And break it up into paragraphs.

I like your stuff, and I'm on your side, but cut it up into little four-syllable bites, please!

The examples noted were there because they're living. Grass, trees, metals...same as they were when the earth was formed. Not evolved. Now hybrids and cross breeding, smelting...that would be meddling.

Your heat pump...did you make it? It's there and you know it works. How do you come to the conclusion? Will it operate the same 50 years from now as it did when it was made?

If you want to split hairs for the sake of splitting hairs then by all means say it and be done.

DrMaddVibe,

No, I didn't make my heat pump, but it does add heat to my little closed universe, which I call my house... which would seem to violate one of the laws of thermo.

I may have an unintentional problem with where your coming from. Have grass, trees, and metals not changed since the earth was formed?

And even if man "meddles", is he not a part of nature and subject to its laws?

Splitting hairs is not my intention; I merely hold that thermo is compatible, in the long run, with evolution.

With respect, could you be more specific in your objections?

How many billions of years will you give thermodynamic laws to substantiate a scientific theory?

go doc go.......

DrMaddVibe,

As many billions as it takes. Thermodynamics works over millions or billions of years, like it or not, graspable concept or not. You can't describe a blade of grass over 2 months and claim eternal truth. You can't look at the stock market for one day and predict what will happen over a year.

Do you accept the law of thermodynamics as valid (since you asked Rickster how he explains away the laws of thermodynamics)? Or was that bait?

Respectfully, what specifically is your objection to thermodynamics and evolution?

----------------------------------------------------

mrs18delta

"go doc go..."

Sorry, that's not much to respond to. I really hope I didn't interrupt something.

I don't believe laws of nature supercede scientific theory.

Strike that...reverse that.

DMV

your correcting post is more confusing then your first one.

start all over with "I-------------

Hey, Coda, after you write your fiction novel, an educated man might claim that it wrote itself after a few billion years.

What a bunch of blowhards.
I wish that I could put you all to work on a chaingang so you wouldn't have to "think" so much.

prev. darwinist now creationist

PS:Darwin recanted his theories late in life & regretted the damage that he had caused...

bloody spaniard

first he demonstrates his theory, then when he gets old he recants. just hedging his bets

from rick, former mud and now a model citizen and remote control executive.

Per my previous e-mail to you Master Rick, my buddy John (green beret)& I (paper- shuffling executive) once ran into a certain "lush" (per JonR) at the Black Rooster Pub in the early eighties.

We talked about everything (including your topic) for hours as John & I downed boilermakers like newborns suckling on a teat. I believe that we also smoked trash cigars I supplied, named after a clothes designer (Weiss).

If Mr. Breslin had been 1/10th as dry as some of the posters on this thread, I would have gone home & hung myself.

Looking for rope as we speak...

I have nothing against lies, per se, as we all lie, and sometimes for very good reasons. But despicable lies, like the ones started and propogated by certain institutions, which we'll not name here, are almost as unbelievable as the folks who keep repeating them. And this from a supposed organization that identifies itself as keepers of virtue? Goebbels himself would have been proud of disinformation and propoganda utilized by such serepticious purposes.

Three outrageous myths that cannot be used realistically without making the speaker seem like a (fill in the blank) and a (fill in the blank) of the 1st order, are:

I. Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

This shows the lack of even a rudimentary understanding of the laws governing the behavior of heat in physical systems. Delta S, or entropy, can have a positive or a negative sign. A system becoming ordered not only does not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, but is as common as cleaning up your room or making a battery.

II. There are no missing links.

Another statement that should immediately throw up red flags about the person making this claim. There are more transitional species, both in the fossil record, and in currently living populations, than you can shake a stick at. This argument is as faulty and incredulous as the 10,000 year old earth claim.

III. Darwin recanted evolution on his death bed and became a christian.

Not that it would change anything about the history of life on earth if he had, just that it's false. Darwin was always a christian, living in a christian society. He was also an evolutioniist, and sometimes questioned the biblical dogma he had grown up with when confronted with the data coming out of his and others' studies at the time. For more information on this topic, here's a website that discusses events in Darwin's life:

http://www.origins.tv/darwin/darwin.htm#Evolution_Website 

Go to this site, scroll down to "Misquoting Darwin," and read up for yourself.

Remember, heaven isn't friendly to those who lie to little kids.

``Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. As the world, which to the naked eye exhibits the greatest variety of objects, appears very simple in its internall constitution when surveyed by a philosophic understanding, and so much the simpler by how much the better it is understood, so it is in these [prophetic] visions. It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion. And therefore as they that would understand the frame of the world must indeavour to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so it must be in seeking to understand these visions.''

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being...This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all, and on account of his dominion he is…called Lord God Pantocrator, or Universal Ruler; for God is a relative word, and has a respect to servants; and Deity is the dominion of God not over his own body...but over servants. The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect...And from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and from his other perfections, that he is supreme, or most perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done."

The words of a man with a much stronger grasp on the subject than either of us. If you don't mind, I'll accept his thoughts on the matter before I believe the hand of a cut and paste artist with a penchant for puffing up his chest.

You're the one pasting "edit-->copy" excerpts DMV, and apparently from some cutting edge mind from the 18th century. Hard to say since you didn't cite your reference.