cap, what do you mean by “boundless randomness?”
Are you trying to say that if there is order there must be God?
What I’m saying is that creativity, is, in essence, randomness bounded in a series of rules and laws. Can randomness by its nature bind itself by itself?
Good thing Natural Selection is a non-random process, then.
capacitor, have you ever read the book “Jurassic Park”? There’s a great few pages where the mathematician, Ian Malcolm, explains the nature of randomness, and how, as it becomes more and more complicated, branches off into unique fields and organizes itself. If it’s hard to accept that, just know that it can all start with the attraction of certain atoms to certain other atoms, molecules to molecules, types to types, for reasons of weight, temperature, size, and so many other things. That’s what I mean by unintelligent organization.
“Lost World” is also good to read for these theories, which do make alot of sense.
As for the eternal randomness, it’s not quite that eternal. It stopped being eternal the moment our most basic ancestor flourished. Then it became chemical, and with time, many many things.
Maybe.
Randomness: A big jumble of elements, energies and forces.
A series of rules and laws: Physics.
If you’re going to cite a book, it would be better to cite a textbook, not a science-fiction novel. This is like citing Star Wars to support theories on intelligent life on other planets!
From what I understand, Michael Crichton doesn’t understand chaos theory nearly as well as he thinks he does. Chaos theory merely states that leaving out even ONE factor in an equation would make the predicted outcome different from the actual one, but not catastrophically so. IOW, a weather forecast that calls for a high of 80 degrees and light rain and you get 78 degrees and moderate rain instead.
And he simplified the Butterfly Effect and its implications almost to the point of misrepresentation.
I don’t beleive there is an answer you (or me) would find acceptable, the “proof” to the creationist is in their faith and that isn’t for anyone else to justify.
Actually chaos theory says that complex and unpredictable results will occur in systems that are sensitive to small changes in their initial conditions. That result could very eaily be catastrophic. For example, a few inches difference in the location of a raft in a river could result in being pulled into a whirlpool and dashed on the rocks rather than being carried safely down stream.
However, if that is the source of their proof, then it’s not a scientific claim, and should not be treated as such.
And I contend that the ‘eternal’ randomness stopped well before the creation, or rather, development, of man. The Earth has to be set up and aligned in its with rotation around a star that in itself is rotating around the Milky Way. Then this planet has to be somehow relatively stabilized on the surface, while it has hot molten magma in its core that always want to bubble or burst up into the sky. Then it has to be stabilized enough to support the conversion of a set of amino acids into DNA in some primordial ooze. These steps alone I am not too willing to leave it up to pure chance.
[hijack]I say it is. Remember, random fluctuations at the quantum level lead to every law of classical physics out there.[/hijack]
Do you know how many planets there are in the universe? I don’t either, but it runs into lots of digits, and covers a lot of possible combinations of conditions. The fact that we even exist, much less have the ability to wonder why, shows we were one of the lottery winners. Somebody was almost certain to, given the number of opportunities.
The person who wins Powerball has just as much right to claim that the hand of Divine Providence picked the numbers as we do to claim that Earth was specially chosen - and yet somebody was probably going to win eventually. Let’s keep our humility and not claim that we’re Special just because we’re here.
The earth’s crust is just like the skin that forms on custard, why does that need a supernatural explanation for it’s behaviour and existence?
I’m going to reiterate the question just once before I give up:
Because nobody’s done justice to these questions yet, what I want is for a creationist to debunk evolution based on evidence, not reasoning (show me a fossil human in strata where the evolution camp say only dinosaurs should be found, or show me something which cannot be accounted for by the theory of evolution)
capacitor wrote:
Buddy, if you can show me one scientist who says that amino acids were converted into DNA, I’ll eat my hat. The two molecules are nothing like one another, and no molecular biologist claims they are.
However, if that is the source of their proof, then it’s not a scientific claim, and should not be treated as such. **
[/QUOTE]
You won’t get an argument from me on this point. So as long as creationist dismiss evolution out of hand, creationists vs. evolutionists may have to agree to disagree. I’ve had discussions with a co-worker about this and his only rebuttal to the fossil record, evolution etc. etc. is “scientists are wrong” and anything that didn’t fit into his belief system was just plain wrong. If you can change his mind good luck, I wasn’t able to.
That is exactly what I was thinking, and then I read your post.
Erek
jab1: Were you talkin to me?
What I menat was, snowflakes look intricately created but they aren’t.
Oh, okay.