New guy who believes in God

@TheAuthor

You are an antagonist. The way you are corresponding with others is in direct opposition to the teachings you are arguing for.

What is that?

Tell me how proclaiming that you have someone by the short hairs represents anything other than your hot head?

If you feel you are an expert on faith, then considering another aspect of personal reality should not bother you. It should bring you joy. In the process, you might even learn something new.

Research what you are disagreeing with, rather than aggressively regurgitating words you learned less than 15 minutes before. You might find there are many things that can educate you beyond what you were raised believing. Judging by your posts, that is a high probability. You don’t have to agree to learn.
A challenge received with an open mind and an unshakable character can only make you a better person.

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Your “armour of god” is strong but your bible glasses are cloudy, so called “christian”!

Congratulations, you have successfully observed that we live on a planet, and that universe is complicated.

Where was the proof for god?

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Leaving off from where I continued earlier, it’s now time for this …

And now it’s time for this bullshit to be shredded:

Ahem, over 1½ million peer reviewed scientific papers, document in exquisite detail, the evidence for evolution. This includes direct experimental test and verification of evolutionary postulates, and replication in the laboratory of speciation events.

And it’s at this point, that your scientific ignorance is starkly on display. Because, wait for it, Looby Loo, scientists don’t postulate that a population of organisms “turns into something else”, and they certainly don’t postulate the sort of farcical clade jumping that is a feature of the more preposterous creationist assertions.

Strap yourself in, you’re in for another hard ride.

Quite simply, a species, from the standpoint of biology, is nothing more than a population of organisms that can produce multiple generations of offspring, when the members thereof pair off and mate with each other. That is IT. Of course, taxonomists have a habit of confusing the issue with their approach to the matter, but the complications of that are properly the subject of another, and lengthy, dissertation.

Now, if a population of such organisms splits for some reason, then there is no reason why those two new populations should follow identical genetic trajectories. The workings of meiosis alone will make those trajectories diverge, and once mutations are added to the equation, that divergence becomes even greater. Among the genes that can diverge, once gene flow between the new populations ceases, are the fertillin genes, that are responsible for maintaining egg and sperm compatibility. Those two populations will eventually reach the point where some individuals of population A will be unable to produce fertile offspring with individuals of population B, and vice versa. The proportion thereof in each population will increase over time, until eventually, both populations are completely reproductively incompatible, at which point, we have a fully-fledged speciation event.

The point here being, that no one regards those species as “a whole new kind of organism” in the naive sense you’re peddling above. Not least, because those two new species manifestly share a common ancestor, and the clade within which they reside is a subclade of the clade of their ancestors. Indeed, Linnaeus embedded both clade nesting of this sort, and the relatedness of organisms in the biosphere, in his taxonomic system, and did so fully 62 years before Darwin was born. He treated relatedness of organisms (on the basis of comparative anatomy, a discipline he did much to add rigour to) as a useful brute fact, and left it to Darwin to devise an explanation for that brute fact.

For example, let’s imagine a scenario in which all the world’s cat species become extinct. After this somewhat alarming event, some dog species start moving into the requisite niches, and over time, start acquiring anatomical features of the sort that were previously seen in the now extinct cats. The point here is that these new dogs have NOT “turned into cats”, they are still dogs, courtesy of their ancestry, but have merely acquired features that result in them resembling the cats of old. Properly, they are cat-like dogs. So kindly drop the fatuous clade jumping idea you picked up from creationist propaganda, because it’s bullshit.

Indeed, it’s time for this:

Why The Business Of Defining ‘Species’ As A Class Entity Is Interesting - Part One

First of all, “species” is a dynamic concept. A distinction needs to be drawn between the taxonomic concept of species, which is a snapshot sample of a given population of organisms at a given moment in the history of the population for the purposes of cataloguing, and the actual reproducing population thus sampled. Now it so happens that for the majority of species that are thus sampled for taxonomic purposes, gross changes are not going to occur in a few generations (though for some fecund species with rapid reproduction cycles, cumulative changes over time are more noticeable than in less fecund species with slow reproduction cycles). Consequently, the ‘snapshot’ that is taken is likely to remain a valid reference point for that species for a considerable period of time, contributing to the illusion of fixity. However, as Streelman et al in their paper on Cynotilapia afra, a Cichlid fish from Lake Malawi that has been extensively studied, have already pointed out, we’re about to see this situation change in a vertebrate eukaryote. For reference, the paper in question is this one:

Hybridisation and Contemporary Evolution in an introduced Cichlid Fish from Lake Malawi National Park by J. Todd Streelman, S.L. Gymrek, M.R. Kidd, C. Kidd, R.L. Robinson, E. Hert, A.J. Ambali and T.D. Kocher, Molecular Ecology, 13: 2471-2479 (21 April 2004)

Basically, Cynotilapia afra was originally endemic to one restricted location in Lake Malawi. It belongs to that group of Cichlid fishes known as the Mbuna or Rockfish, which all exhibit characteristic behaviour patterns both in the wild and in an aquarium. They remain close to the rock screes that are abundant in Lake Malawi, and base their territories upon those rock screes. However, these rock screes are divided into isolated formations separated by wide stretches of open water, with open stretches of sandy bottom devoid of cover in the shallower parts of the lake. Mbuna do not cross from one scree to another across open water for good reason - the open water stretches are patrolled by other, predatory Cichlids such as Nimbochromis venustus that would make a meal of any Mbuna that strayed too far from the rocks. Over time, the Mbuna have become increasingly behaviourally tied to the rocks, and rarely stray more than a few metres from their ‘home patch’. This results in the appearance of isolated populations of Mbuna that hardly ever interact with each other, and thus the scene is set for speciation via isolation.

Now, because these fishes are valuable to the aquarium trade, and because some of the fishes in question are in locations that are troublesome for collectors to visit for various reasons (in the past these have included civil wars and other instances of political strife) one enterprising collector decided to take a number of Cynotilapia afra in the 1960s and relocate them to a less troublesome part of the lake. Thus the scene was set for an interesting biological experiment.

The fishes that were relocated set about breeding in their new location, and spreading slowly across the stretches of rock scree available to them, which happened to encircle a small island in the lake. The spread was relatively slow, but once it became entrenched in the early 1980s, scientists noticed that widely separated populations around this island were diverging from each other. Thus, the fishes were sampled on a regular basis for DNA in order to track the changes. Now, Streelman et al cited in their paper that these fishes are diverging at such a rate that they could provide the first documented example in the near future of a speciation event with a genetic audit trail. Which is going to be interesting not only because it will provide many useful insights into speciation mechanisms at the genetic level and inform us much more thoroughly about what constitutes ‘specieshood’ from a genetic standpoint (though already, scientists consider that major histocompatibility complex genes, which are already implicated in ‘self’ versus ‘nonself’ identity from an immune standpoint, will be implicated here), but also because it will bring the taxonomic problem into the limelight. It will also have an impact on cladistics, because interfertility tests with the original population could yield some interesting results once speciation has been documented to take place.

I shall illustrate this as follows. Let our original population from which the stock was taken prior to relocation (and the source of the original taxonomic specimens used to describe the species) be population A. The transplanted fishes became population B, which then diverged into populations B1 and B2, with decreasing mating interaction between them. Now, let us jump to the future, and arrive at the point where the fishes in populations B1 and B2 fail to be interfertile, and thus constitute new species. Four possibilities are now open and available for experimental testing:

[1] Individuals from populations B1 and B2 continue to be interfertile with individuals from population A;

[2] Individuals from population B1 fail to be interfertile with individuals from population A, but individuals from population B2 continue to be interfertile with individuals from population A;

[3] Individuals from population B2 fail to be interfertile with individuals from population A, but individuals from population B1 continue to be interfertile with individuals from population A;

[4] Individuals from populations B1 and B2 fail to be interfertile with individuals from population A.

If experiment should establish option that [1] holds true, we’re in a bit of a pickle. Because the fishes from populations B1 and B2 are still interfertile with the fishes from population A, but not interfertile with each other. Here, we would have to treat them as being ‘ring species’, and devise suitable new taxa to accommodate this.

If [2] or [3] hold, we’re in less trouble. The population that continues to be interfertile with A can keep the name Cynotilapia afra and we can erect a new species identity for the other. However, it’s still a conundrum for the cladistic purist, because the original Cynotilapia afra population is still extant and reproducing happily. It hasn’t undergone the ‘pseudo-extinction’ of splitting into two new species that is the more usual case considered.

If [4] holds, then we will have to erect new species identities for both populations B1 and B2, and again, the cladistic purist will have a conundrum to address because the original population A will still be extant. Worse still, the original population A will still be extant, AND we will have TWO new species to fit into a cladogram.

All of which demonstrates that our concept of ‘species’ will be in serious need of refinement once the appropriate real world results are in.

This is going to be fun when it happens, and I can hardly wait. I probably won’t live long enough to see it happen, but some of the other posters here may well do. I hope you all remember what I’ve posted above when it does happen! :slight_smile:

Meanwhile, it’s also time to expand upon the above, as follows:

Why The Business Of Defining ‘Species’ As A Class Entity Is Interesting - Part Two

As I’ve mentioned above, in any population of organisms, variation will be disseminated from one generation to another even before we factor in the appearance of mutations. This variation will be disseminated with respect to every gene in the constituent genomes of the parent organisms - the offspring will inherit different combinations thereof even if they share the same parents, let alone the differences that will be present between two organisms that have different parents in the population.

Now, even if we assume relatively stable environmental conditions, with no large-scale changes occurring over time, that environment will have an effect upon the inheritance patterns of some of those genes. Many genes will be neutral, and will themselves not determine competence with respect to survival and reproductive fitness. Other genes will have such an effect, and will thus be subject to the appropriate selection pressures. Genes resulting in reduced competence will eventually disappear over numerous generations, as the individuals possessing them produce fewer and fewer offspring, and genes resulting in increased competence will eventually dominate in the population, slowly but surely raising the bar of competence as it were.

Now, let us perform a little experiment. Let us sample some individuals at a given generation, say generation N, and by some suitable means, preserve their genomes so that these genomes can be resurrected at a later date. This is in effect what Richard Lenski did in his 20-year experiment with E. coli - he created what was in effect a genomic “fossil record” of past reproduction that could be resurrected and replayed at will in the future, though he did this on multiple occasions in order to track the generational point at which certain mutations appeared. My purpose with this thought experiment is related, but different in a key manner as shall be seen.

Now, let the organisms continue reproducing, through generation N+1, N+2, N+3 … all the way to, say, N+100,000. I choose this figure as being one that is likely to exhibit the requisite variation, but depending upon the organism chosen, the phenomenon I am about to describe could occur sooner. Now, after this extended period of reproduction and dissemination of variation across generations, one can ask the question “can the individuals in generation N+100,000 reproduce with their distant ancestors?”

So, we perform the requisite trial.

Now, it may happen that when we resurrect generation N, and mate individuals containing generation N genomes with individuals containing generation N+100,000 genomes, that mating is possible, and viable offspring result. It is also possible that this trial mating may FAIL to produce viable offspring, indeed it is possible that the generation N+100,000 individuals will never choose to mate with the generation N individuals if given a free choice, because those generation N+100,000 individuals recognise the generation N individuals as being substantively different in some way. The moment such a back-cross fails to result in compatible mating, we have a speciation event. The individuals of generation N+100,000 now, in effect, constitute a different species from those of generation N, because they can no longer mate with those ancestral individuals. Thus, the sampling that is performed for taxonomic purposes is necessarily a historical artefact, because it is entirely possible that after 100,000 generations have elapsed, the descendants of generation N (i.e., in this instance, generation N+100,000) will be reproductively incompatible with their generation N ancestors, and will in effect constitute a different species. The taxonomic sampling performed at generation N will therefore be a historical record of what that species once was, but a new sampling will have to take place in order to represent the species as it is now.

Taxonomic holotype specimens are chosen as “benchmark” specimens representing a given species in order to provide a reference standard for precise scientific work, but they are chosen on the understanding that they represent a particular generational sampling and that at some distant point in the future, they will fail to represent the species when the reproductive incompatibility described above takes place. A species is properly defined by reference to the reproducing population, and sampled individuals for taxonomic purposes do not constitute the species itself - they merely constitute a snapshot of that species at a particular instant for comparison purposes. The species itself is the reproducing population, and because that population undergoes changes with each new generation, it is a dynamic entity.

Of course, if the above experiment is ever performed, and that experiment results in reproductive incompatibility between generation N and generation N+100,000, despite the fact that generation N+100,000 is being back-crossed with with its own distant ancestors, then this will not only make a mockery of the idea that a species is a static entity (a certain creationist comes to mind here with respect to assertions about species being static), but it will mean that we have to think long and hard about how ‘species’ is defined rigorously. Because, if the above experiment is performed, and yields reproductive incompatibility between ancestors and descendants after a large number of generations, then according to the biological species concept, the two populations will constitute different species. But, here we will have two populations, A and B, that are reproductively incompatible, and hence deserving of separate and unique species identifiers, but population A will be the ancestors of population B. If this doesn’t tell you that a species is a dynamic entity, then nothing will. But, let’s move on …

Now, if we partition our generation N population into two separate populations, and keep them separate, then there is NO reason whatsoever to suggest that the two populations will produce identical versions of generation N+1, N+2, N+3 etc., precisely because of the dissemination of variation across generations. It is FAR more likely that the two separated populations will diverge. The genomes extant in Population 1 in a given future generation will be different from those extant in Population 2 in the same future generation. Allow a sufficient number of generations to elapse, and again, a trial mating between individuals of Population 1 and Population 2 could fail. When this happens, the two populations have become reproductively incompatible, and we have a speciation event. That’s what speciation means - populations becoming reproductively incompatible with other populations of the same ancestry.

And, lo and behold, this has been directly observed in the laboratory with various model organisms. Theodosius Dobzhansky produced such a speciation event in 1971 with a laboratory population of the fruit fly Drosophila pseudoobscura. After just five years in the laboratory, his isolated population was no longer able to produce viable offspring with the wild flies. The requisite scientific paper describing this process is this one:

Experimentally Created Incipient Species of Drosophila by Theodosius Dobzhansky & Olga Pavlovsky, Nature 230, pp 289 - 292 (2nd April 1971)

Other papers describe other speciation events generated in the laboratory, namely:

Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory by J.R. Weinberg V. R. Starczak and P. Jora, Evolution 46:1214-1220 (1992)

Founder-flush speciation in Drosophila pseudoobscura: a large scale experiment by A. Galiana, A. Moya and F. J. Alaya, Evolution 47: 432-444 (1993)

In other words, speciation is an established fact, has been documented as such in the peer reviewed scientific literature, and indeed, there are other papers in the literature describing observed instances of speciation in the wild. A good one is the frog Hyla versicolor. This arose from an ancestral population of the frog Hyla chrysocelis. How do we know this? Because analysis of the genomes of the two species demonstrates that all of the genes of Hyla versicolor arose from Hyla chrysocelis. What makes Hyla versicolor different is that it has inherited two complete copies of the Hyla chrysocelis genome. Instead of being diploid, it is tetraploid - it has its chromosomes not in pairs, but in sets of four. It has, in effect, two entire sets of Hyla chrysocelis chromosomes. But, as a result of this, it can no longer reproduce with other frogs sharing the same ancestors. It can no longer reproduce with the diploid Hyla chrysocelis because triploid offspring (which would result from a fusion of gametes from one diploid and one tetraploid individual) are not viable. Again, this is established scientific fact, and no amount of wishful thinking can alter this.

Looks like you have at least three decades of scientific study to catch up on.

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Thanks for the warning, Cali. Gave me time to cover everything in plastic sheeting before you started.

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Claim.

We have empirical evidence by scientists that says otherwise and none of that evidence points to “creationism” or the existence of a deity.

But wait. You already dismissed all of that as lies. Even though that evidence is all factual now because the empirical evidence speaks for itself while your Bible offers no evidence. Not a shred.

Bullshit. it’s at this point that you need schooling on the true nature of information.

The infamous canards surrounding “information”.

Now this is a particularly insidious brand of canard, because it relies upon the fact that the topic of information, and its rigorous analysis, is replete with misunderstanding. However, instead of seeking to clarify the misconceptions, creationist canards about information perpetuate those misconceptions for duplicitous apologetic purposes. A classic one being the misuse of the extant rigorous treatments of information, and the misapplication of different information treatments to different situations, either through ignorance, or wilful mendacity. For example, Claude Shannon provided a rigorous treatment of information, but a treatment that was strictly applicable to information transmission, and NOT applicable to information storage. Therefore, application of Shannon information to information storage in the genome is a misuse of Shannon’s work. The correct information analysis to apply to storage is Kolmogorov’s analysis, which erects an entirely different measure of information content that is intended strictly to be applicable to storage. Mixing and matching the two is a familiar bait-and-switch operation that propagandists for creationist doctrine are fond of.

However, the ultimate reason why creationist canards about information are canards, is simply this. Information is NOT a magic entity. It doesn’t require magic to produce it. Ultimately, “information” is nothing more than the observational data that is extant about the current state of a system. That is IT. No magic needed. All that happens, in real world physical systems, is that different system states lead to different outcomes when the interactions within the system take place. Turing alighted upon this notion when he wrote his landmark paper on computable numbers, and used the resulting theory to establish that Hilbert’s conjecture upon decidability in formal axiomatic systems was false.

Of course, it’s far easier to visualise the process at work, when one has an entity such as a Turing machine to analyse this - a Turing machine has precise, well-defined states, and precise, well-defined interactions that take place when the machine occupies a given state. But this is precisely what we have with DNA - a system that can exist in a number of well-defined states, whose states determine the nature of the interactions that occur during translation, and which result in different outcomes for different states. indeed, the DNA molecule plays a passive role in this: its function is simply to store the sequence of states that will result, ultimately, in the synthesis of a given protein, and is akin to the tape running through a Turing machine. The real hard work is actually performed by the ribosomes, which take that state data and use it to bolt together amino acids into chains to form proteins, which can be thought of as individual biological ‘Turing machines’ whose job is to perform, mechanically and mindlessly in accordance with the electrostatic and chemical interactions permitting this, the construction of a protein using the information arising from DNA as the template. Anyone who thinks magic is needed in all of this, once again, is in need of an education.

As for the canard that “mutations cannot produce new information”, this is manifestly false. Not only does the above analysis explicitly permit this, the production of new information (in the form of new states occupied by DNA molecules) has been observed taking place in the real world and documented in the relevant scientific literature. If you can’t be bothered reading any of this voluminous array of scientific papers, and understanding the contents thereof, before erecting this particularly moronic canard, then don’t bother erecting the canard in the first place, because it will simply demonstrate that you are scientifically ignorant. Indeed, the extant literature not only covers scientific papers explicitly dealing with information content in the genome, such as Thomas D. Schneider’s paper, handily entitled Evolution And Biological Information, to make your life that bit easier, but also papers on de novo gene origination, of which there are a good number, several of which I have presented here in the past in previous threads. The mere existence of these scientific papers, and the data that they document, blows tiresome canards about “information” out of the water with a nuclear depth charge. Post information canards at your peril after reading this.

Whilst dwelling on information, another creationist canard also needs to be dealt with here, namely the false conflation of information with ascribed meaning. Which can be demonstrated to be entirely false by reference to the following sequence of hexadecimal bytes in a computer’s memory:

81 16 00 2A FF 00

To a computer with an 8086 processor, those bytes correspond to the following single machine language instruction:

ADC [2A00H], 00FFH

To a computer with a 6502 processor, those bytes correspond to the following machine language instruction sequence:

CLC
ASL ($00,X)
LDX #$FF
BRK

To a computer with a 6809 processor, those bytes correspond to the following machine language instruction sequence:

CMPA #$16
NEG $2AFF
NEG ??

the ?? denoting the fact that for this processor, the byte sequence is incomplete, and two more bytes are needed to supply the address operand for the NEG instruction.

Now, we have three different ascribed meanings to one stream of bytes. Yet, none of these ascribed meanings influences either the Shannon information content, when that stream is transmitted from one computer to another, or the Kolmogorov information content when those bytes are stored in memory. Ascribed meaning is irrelevant to both rigorous information measures. As is to be expected, when one regards information content simply as observational data about the state of the system (in this case, the values of the stored bytes in memory). Indeed, it is entirely possible to regard ascribed meaning as nothing other than the particular interactions driven by the underlying data, once that data is being processed, which of course will differ from processor to processor. Which means that under such an analysis, even ascribed meaning, which creationists fallaciously conflate with information content, also requires no magical input. All that is required is the existence of a set of interactions that will produce different outcomes from the different observed states of the system (with the term ‘observation’ being used here sensu lato to mean any interaction that is capable of differentiating between the states of the system of interest).

Moving on …

This is bullshit and lies, plain and simple. The sequence from Rhipidistian fishes to tetrapods alone falsfies this lie of yours. As for the accusation of fabrication, that’s creationist territory.

Here’s a list of relevant fossils from that sequence:

Osteolepis : Originally found in Scotland;

Eusthenopteron : Originally found in Miguasha, Quebec (along with other Crossopterygian fishes such as Miguashaia, which is named for the location);

Gogonasus : Originally found in Western Australia;
Elpisostege : Originally found in Quebec, Canada;
Panderichthys : Originally found in Latvia;
Ventastega : Originally found in Latrvia;
Hypnerpeton : Originally found in Pennsylvania, USA;
Tulerpeton : Originally found in Russia;
Tiktaalik : Originally found at Ellsemere Island, Nunavut, Canada;
Jakubsonia : Originally found in Russia;
Elginerpeton : Originally found in Scotland;
Livoniana : Originally found in Latvia and Estonia;
Metaxygnathus : Originally found in New South Wales, Australia;
Obruchevichthys : Originally found in Latvia;
Sinostega : Originally found in north west China;
Acanthostega : Originally found in eastern Greenland;
Ichthyostega : Originally found in eastern Greenland;
Densignathus : Originally found in Pennsylvania, USA.

By the way, you do realise that palaeontologists now have something like 17 different species in the theropod to bird series? Here’s an incomplete list:

Shuvuuia … 81 million years ago
Protarchaeopteryx … 122 million years ago
Sinosauropteryx … 122 million years ago
Sinornithosaurus … 122 million years ago
Caudipteryx … 125 million years ago
Beipiaosaurus … 125 million years ago
Yixianosaurus … 125 million years ago
Jinfengopteryx … 125 million years ago
Sinocalliopteryx … 125 million years ago
Cryptovolans … 130 million years ago
Dilong … 130 million years ago
Microraptor … 130 million years ago
Archaeopteryx … 155 million years ago
Pedopenna … 160 million years ago
Epidendrosaurus … 170-120 million years ago (date yet to be more precisely determined)
Scansoriopteryx … 170-120 million years ago (date yet to be more precisely determined)

The critical thinkers here will be interested in this scientific paper which contains an extensive family tree of theropods and pre-Avian dinosaurs, namely:

A Basal Dromaeosaurid And Size Evolution Preceding Avian Flight by Alan H. Turner, Diego Pol, Julia A. Clarke, Gregroy M. Erickson and Mark A. Noreli, Science, 317: 1378-1381 (7th September 2007)

This paper includes a good number of illustrations of the fossils of a recent discovery among the Dromaeosaurids, namely Mahakala omnogovae - indeed, the paper describes the holotype.

Once again, you’ve been found to be disseminating easily exposable lies.

Oh dear, you just had to wade into this territory, didn’t you?

Strap yourself in again, you’re in for another hard ride.

Creationists have a totally fuckwitted understanding of what the Second Law of Thermodynamics actually says. Moreover, when Rudolf Clausius formulated the 2LT in the 19th century, he was careful to be specific about the nature of thermodynamic systems, and classified them into three groups:

[1] Isolated systems are systems that engage in no exchange of matter or energy with their surroundings. Such systems are therefore reliant upon the internal energy that they already possess. However, isolated systems constitute an idealisation that is almost never achieved in practice, and are mostly useful as a starting point for developing thermodynamic theory prior to extending it to the other classes of system.

[2] Closed systems are systems that engage in exchange of energy with the surroundings, but no exchange of matter. A good example of a closed system would be a solar panel, which does not exchange matter with its surroundings, but which, when illuminated, is a net recipient of energy in the form of visible light, which it then converts to electricity, which we can use.

[3] Open systems are systems that engage in exchange of both energy and matter with the surroundings. Living organisms plainly fall into this latter category.

When Rudolf Clausius erected his original statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, he stated it thus:

The trouble with the 2LT is that it applies to all of these systems, but the exact manner in which it applies differs between the three classes of system. Clausius’ original statement about the application of the 2LT to an isolated system does not apply to the other classes of system in anything like the same manner. Trouble is, creationists alight upon the statement about entropy increasing, which was originally erected by Clausius to describe isolated systems, and think that the formulation Clausius erected to apply to isolated systems applies to all systems in the same manner, when Clausius himself plainly stated that it doesn’t.

In a non isolated system, if there is an energy input, that energy input can be harnessed to perform useful work, such as locally decreasing the entropy of entities within the system in exchange for a greater increase in entropy beyond those systems. As long as there exists inhomogeneity within the universe, i.e., there exist regions of differing conditions with respect to material content, energy flux, etc., any net recipient of energy from an outside energy source can harness that energy to perform useful work, including work that results in a temporary local decrease of entropy. The Earth constitutes such a system, because it is engaging in both matter and energy transfer with the surroundings, and is in fact a large net recipient of energy from the surroundings. See that yellow thing in the sky? It’s called The Sun. It’s a vast nuclear fusion reactor 866,000 miles across that is irradiating the Earth with massive amounts of energy as I type this. Energy that can be harnessed to perform useful work such as constructing living organisms.

Incidentally, as a tangential diversion, the classical formulation has again required revision to take account of more recent developments with respect to observed phenomena, which is why we now have a scientific discipline called Quantum Thermodynamics … a discipline that was contributed to by, among others, Stephen Hawking, when he published his landmark paper on the radiative nature of black holes that brings them into equilibrium with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I don’t recall him ruling out evolution as a result of this.

Another common fallacy is the wholly non-rigorous association of entropy with “disorder”, however this is defined. This has been known to be non-rigorous by physicists for decades, because there exist numerous documented instances of systems whose entropy increases when they spontaneously self-assemble into ordered structures as a result of the effect of electrostatic forces. Lipid bilayers are an important example of this, which are found throughout the biosphere.

The following scientific paper is apposite here:

Gentle Force Of Entropy Bridges Disciplines by David Kestenbaum, Science, 279: 1849 (20th March 1998)

Phospholipids being an excellent example thereof. In fact, any chemical system in which there exists the capacity for electrostatic forces to apply to either aggregating or reacting molecules can exhibit this phenomenon. Which is why scientists have long since abandoned the notion that “entropy” equals “disorder”, which requires a thorough statistical mechanical treatment in terms of microstates in any case.

This is applied to the physics and physical chemistry of lipid bilayers in the following paper:

Electrostatic Repulsion Of Positively Charged Vesicles And Negatively Charged Objects by
Helim Aranda-Espinoza, Yi Chen, Nily Dan, T. C. Lubensky, Philip Nelson, Laurence Ramos and D. A. Weitz, Science, 285: 394-397 (16th July 1999)

in which the authors calculated that the entropy of the lipid bilayer system increased when it arranged itself spontaneously into an ordered structure in accordance with the laws of electrostatics.

Entropy, as rigorously defined, has units of Joules per Kelvin, and is therefore a function of energy versus thermodynamic temperature. The simple fact of the matter is that if the thermodynamic temperature increases, then the total entropy of a given system decreases if no additional energy was input into the system in order to provide the increase in thermodynamic temperature. Star formation is an excellent example of this, because the thermodynamic temperature at the core of a gas cloud increases as the cloud coalesces under gravity. All that is required to increase the core temperature to the point where nuclear fusion is initiated is sufficient mass. No external energy is added to the system. Consequently, the entropy at the core decreases due to the influence of gravity driving up the thermodynamic temperature. Yet the highly compressed gas in the core is hardly “ordered”.

More to the point, there are scientific papers in existence establishing that evolution is perfectly consistent with the 2LT. Two important papers being:

Entropy And Evolution by Daniel F. Styer, American Journal of Physics, 78(11): 1031-1033 (November 2008) DOI: 10.1119/1.2973046

Natural Selection As A Physical Principle by Alfred J. Lotka, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 8: 151-154 (1922) [full paper downloadable from here]

Evolution Of Biological Complexity by Christoph Adami, Charles Ofria and Travis C. Collier, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 97(9): 4463-4468 (25th April 2000) [Full paper downloadable from here]

Order From Disorder: The Thermodynamics Of Complexity In Biology by Eric D. Schneider and James J. Kay, in Michael P. Murphy, Luke A.J. O’Neill (ed), What is Life: The Next Fifty Years. Reflections on the Future of Biology, Cambridge University Press, pp. 161-172 [Full paper downloadable from here]

Natural Selection For Least Action by Ville R. I. Kaila and Arto Annila, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Part A, 464: 3055-3070 (22nd july 2008) [Full paper downloadable from here]

Evolution And The Second Law Of Thermodynamics by Emory F. Bunn, arXiv.org, 0903.4603v1 (26th March 2009) [Download full paper from here]

Let’s take a look at some of these, shall we?

First of all, we have this:

So, even as far back as 1922, scientists were arguing that evolution is not in violation of the Second law of Thermodynamics. Interesting revelation, yes?

Lotka continues with this:

Now this, as I’ve jsut stated, was written as far back as 1922, which means that scientists have been aware that thermodynamic laws and evolution are not in conflict for eighty-seven years.

I’ll cover the other papers in more detail in a separate post, as I’m in danger of exceeding the post size limit. Watch this space :slight_smile:

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And it’s time for the other papers I promised.

Moving on, let’s look at the more recent papers. Let’s look first at the abstract of the Adami et al paper:

Oh look. A point I’ve been arguing for a long time here, namely that a rigorous definition of complexity is needed in order to be able to make precise categorical statements about complexity. I also note with interest that the authors of this paper perform detailed experiments via simulation in order to establish the fact that complexity can arise from simple systems (the behaviour of the Verhust Equation I’ve mentioned here frequently establishes this, and indeed, the investigation of such systems as the Verhulst Equation and similar dynamical systems is now the subject of its own branch of applied mathematics).

The authors open their paper thus:

Moving on, the authors directly address a favourite canard of creationists (though they do not state explicitly that they are doing this), namely that information somehow constitutes a “non-physical” entity. Here’s what the authors have to say on this subject:

Nice. In brief, the authors clearly state that information requires a physical substrate to reside upon, and a mechanism for the residence of that information upon the requisite physical substrate, in such a manner that said information constitutes a mapping from the arrangement of the physical substrate upon which it resides, to whatever other physical system is being represented by that mapping. I remember one creationist claiming that because the mass of a floppy disc doesn’t change when one writes data to it, this somehow “proves” that information is not a physical entity: apparently said creationist didn’t pay attention in the requisite basic physics classes, or else he would have learned that the information stored on a floppy disc is stored by materially altering the physical state of the medium, courtesy of inducing changes in the magnetic orientation of the ferric oxide particles in the disc medium. In other words, a physical process was required to generate that information and store it on the disc. I am indebted to the above authors for casting this basic principle in the appropriate (and succinct) general form.

The authors move on with this:

Quite a substantial mathematical background, I think everyone will agree. I’ll let everyone have fun reading the rest of the details off-post, as they are substantial, and further elaboration here will not be necessary in the light of my providing a link to the full paper.

Moving on to the Kaila and Annila paper, here’s the abstract:

Ah, this dovetails nicely with Thomas D. Schneider’s presentation of a form of the Second Law of Thermodynamics applicable to biological systems that I’ve covered in past posts. This can be read in more detail here. Note that Thomas D. Schneider is not connected with Eric D. Schneider whose paper is cited above.

Here’s how Kaila and Annila introduce their work:

I advise readers to exercise some caution before diving into this paper in full, as it involves extensive mathematics from the calculus of variations, and a good level of familiarity with Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics is a pre-requisite for understanding the paper in full.

In the meantime, let’s take a look at the Schneider & Kay paper. Here’s their introduction:

Finally, I’ll wind up by introducing Emory F. Bunn’s paper, which is a particular killer for creationist canards, because it involves direct mathematical derivation of the thermodynamic relationships involved in evolutionary processes, and a direct quantitative analysis demonstrating that evolution is perfectly consistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Here’s the abstract:

Here’s the opening gambit:

Once again, I’ll let you all have fun reading the paper in full. :slight_smile:

So, that’s five scientific papers containing detailed rebuttals of creationist canards about the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I think that’s sufficient to establish that the creationist canards ARE canards, don’t you?

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Oh, dear, you just had to wade into this, didn’t you?

Apparently you’re unaware that dozens of interesting and in some cases bizarre fossils have been found in Precambrian strata, and this includes complex multicellular eukaryotes. Off the top of my head, I’m aware of Dickinsonia, Wiwaxia, Anomalocaris, Halucigenia and Opabinia, all of which are far removed from “algae and microorganisms”.

I just did. Read my posts and fucking weep, mythology fanboy.

As for your fatuous resurrection of Paley’s watchmaker bullshit, this apologetic garbage is an entirely typical (and duplicitous) mythology bait and switch, which in part relies upon the mendacious and false conflation of human design processes with magic poofing by a fantastic magic man. The latter is asserted by the requisite pedlars of apologetics, to involve purported “perfect foreknowledge” of the behaviour of parts both in isolation and when integrated into larger assemblages, but human design processes have never exhibited this feature, so on this basis alone, Paley’s watchmaker garbage is dishonest.

Indeed, human design processes have consisted of the following steps:

[1] Try out some new ideas;

[2] Discard the obvious failures;

[3] Build upon the successes.

Now what other observed process operates in this manner? Oh that’s right, EVOLUTION.

In short, human design processes bear FAR more connection to evolution, than to fantastic magic poofing by a cartoon magic man. As an illustration of this, here’s a nice video clip showing some of the early (and hilarious) failures that were tried out during the attempt by humans to build a working aeroplane:

Hilarious early aviation failures

But, it gets even better, because, wait for it, the history of watchmaking itself refutes Paley’s apologetic garbage.

when one traces the history of watches, one finds again a process of gradual development involving trial and error. The first portable clocks were still far too big to be carried in a pocket, let alone worn upon a wrist, and the first such instances of these, back in the 15th century, only had an hour hand. The accuracy of these devices was so low that they were little more than expensive toys for rich people. It took finite time for watchmakers to learn, for example, that the force delivered by a mainspring is not a constant, and that some means of taking account of this had to be devised, and the first of these, a device known as a stackfreed, was abandoned after about 100 years because of the undesirable friction it introduced into the mechanism.

The fusee, a different device, persisted for longer, but was eventually abandoned in the 19th century when a superior solution arose. The balance spring only appeared in 1657, and the first watches with a minute hand only appeared around 1680 as a result of the development of the balance spring. The verge escapement, which had been used in large pendulum driven clocks since the 13th century, was replaced by the cylinder escapement in 1695 - it took humans three hundred years or so to move on to this better idea.

We had to wait until 1759 for the lever escapement, which, ironically, only made major inroads into Swiss watchmaking around 1900. We had to wait until 1923 for the first successful self-winding system, based upon converting the wearer’s arm motion into rotary motion that kept the mainspring tension constant. The Incabloc shock protection system, to protect jewel bearings from critical failure stresses if the watch was dropped, wasn’t invented until 1934. The first working electrically powered watches did not appear until 1957.

Once again, the history of watches is replete with trial and error, discarding of failures, and building upon successes, and the development of the modern wrist watch bears more resemblance to an evolutionary process than to magic poofing by a magic man.

As for your excrement about the bacterial flagellum, I’ll deal with that in a later post, and you’d better strap yourself in, because you’re about to experience a minimum of 100g acceleration when I do.

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OH FUCK: My physical evidence debunked your physical evidence and everyone clearly sees that. I spoke with Jesus yesterday and he told me you were an ass and to just ignore you. Apparently you do this all the time and make him look really bad. He keeps hoping you will find the light and turn yourself around so he does not have to send you to hell with the resto of the idiots you used his name to profess utter and complete stupidity.

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Cog, wait a minute! You almost forgot to mention that Jesus wanted you to pass along that message where he wants to check Author’s prostate later this week. Damn! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Oh yeah. And Jesus said, make sure you give my message to “The Author” and tell him to quit touching himself in the bedroom. It’s gross. Use the damn shower and clean up afterwards. (I don’t know what he meant by that but he made me memorize it.) Do you not take showers? That’s gross. Everyone should take a shower or at least bathe. I always take mine around Christmas time. Just hop on down to the river for a quick dip. Cleanliness is next to godliness you know. Anyway, Jesus said you would eventually get frustrated and just fade away. So, we shouldn’t worry. He is used to your ignorance. And he thanked us for being so patient with you.

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lol @Cognostic didn’t Christians forsake Jesus AGAIN when he came back in the 60s, told everyone he was indeed Jesus, tattooed a swastika on his forehead, made a bunch of women shave their heads, and had them kill a reputable actress and a bunch of non believers? Wasn’t his name Chuck? No Bob? Or was it Charles? Man they should have really let him off. Instead they let their phrophet die in prison. Sons of ungrateful bitches.

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That’s just par for Jesus. Every time he returns to earth someone kills (forsakes) him. Just look at his many reincarnations…

John Nichols Thom, he was killed by British Soldiers

Arnold Potter: ascended to heaven (died) by jumping off a cliff.

Haile Selassie I, denied his own divinity but his followers knew he was Jesus. After he died, they all ran away and found another Jesus to worship.

Ernest Norman, was another incarnation of Jesus. But he was also Confucius, Mona Lisa, Benjamin Franklin, Socrates, Queen Elizabeth I, and Tsar Peter The Great.

Krishna Venta, was also Jesus, and he, possibly where L Ron got his idea, led a convoy of rocket ships to Earth from the extinct planet Neophrates.

Jesu Oyingbo, the Jesus who proclaimed he would never die. Unfortunately he was gripped by the cold hands of death in 1988.

Ahn Sahng-hong: the Korean Jesus, Who died and then watched his family carve up his church into various sects all claiming to be teaching his true message.

Sun Myung Moon: The second coming of Jesus who is here to complete the mission. Kicked out of the USA for fraud but his organization is still growing strong in Korea. He croaked in 2012.

Jim Jones was a reincarnation but no one in the outside world believed him so he killed all his congregation members and then himself. Praise the Lord!

Marshall Applewhite was Jesus too. Even after he chopped off his balls and caught the Hailbop commet to escape this fucked up planet.

Charles Manson: You previously mentioned ole Charly boy, nuff said.

Wayne Bent, was the true embodyment of god. Hmmm, I wonder what happened to him?

Tony Quinn was Jesus too, but he got arrested for forgery and something about running Yoga centers. Hey, this guy is responsible for perpetuating the “10% of the brain myth.”

Shit this list is long… other notible reincarnations of Jesus include: [José Luis de Jesús] [Thomas Harrison Provenzano] [Hasan Mezarcı] [Shoko Asahara] … Oh well, there were about 20 more but I had to teach and lost the page… you get the idea. David Koresh was among them. Jesus expects to be forsaken. He has been forsaken every single time he has popped his nose up down her.

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Wait… He had to go DOWN to go UP???

Lmao Christians have no faith at all. :joy:

Ahhh… But Tin: We are on a globe in space. There is no up! There is only up. So he went up both ways.

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Once again, your ID is exposed;

The id (Latin for “it”) is oblivious of the external world and unaware of the passage of time. Devoid of organization, knowing neither logic nor reason, it has the ability to harbour acutely conflicting or mutually contradictory impulses side by side. It functions entirely according to the pleasure-pain principle, its impulses either seeking immediate fulfillment or settling for a compromise fulfillment.

You lack focus, the point of the identification of the God, isn’t at issue, only that your entire life is based on lies, deceptions, and beliefs which at every point even defined never truth and never reality.

The only point is Atheism, human science, human educational systems, and even your own reality have been stripped from underneath you by one person. One none of you given every scientist on Earth at your disposal can disprove. What you are experiencing isn’t arrogance it is confidence, which comes only when you possess real knowledge, not what you have, which is and will always be opinions, and most not even your own.

Incredibly it isn’t even apparent to you why, you cannot disprove me, and the reality I present. You see, despite your delusion, imagining and desperation to retain even a modicum of what used to be normal to you. it can’t and won’t ever happen again, because I have given (its appropriate use is gifted you) the pure scientific proof Earth was created and even the pure science to prove it! The Creator is not the issue at this early stage of your growth. First you must know your reality has been eliminated, leaving only the Real world which I and apparently I alone exist in. See, I have no belief … I have Reality. I have no belief in God, I know God, and this is the difference you seek.

Only reality is reality, reality is never belief … you understand this? Those other beliefs you state, are just that beliefs alone, unproven, unprovable under you all. I on the other hand; gave you the proof you asked for and your ancestors asked for. Unlike all others I have no interest whether you accept or even believe it in this lifetime, you will come to know it, in any case, in life or in death, as only you (atheist and false believers) die, and you are slated to die twice!

To understand the totality of that message requires understanding, comprehension not possible for an atheist nor a false believer, but followers, disciples of Christ alone.

Having restrictions of the times I am allowed on this forum I must hold my responses to those actually looking. I chose you because your questions are intelligent if based on a false World not your doing.

The answer to your question though is simple … they ALL have been disproven long ago. Because they can’t BE PROVEN, meaning they are just beliefs, and you must accept your worlds definition, even if you don’t want to.

Merriam Webster: Definition of belief

1**:** a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing

2**:** something that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion : something believed an individual’s religious or political beliefs especially : a [tenet]

3**:** conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon

So, despite your reticence you are quite wrong, and because every thought is based on one of two LIES

Earth as eternally existing
Earth as sterile formed

both I have disproven with pure science alone … the science of a Sterile Universe, which sterilizes and maintains sterile universally. Liar, liar pants on fire, doesn’t work here, only evidence of a physical nature. Knowing you can’t get it, is my in to everything else. It lets you know that unlike those you have met here before I can lead you to The God after I expose the lies to you. But you must lose the delusion and start seeking Reality itself. Not what scientist or someone else tells you is a reality absent every proof but opinion.

your every thought begins the second it leaves your mouth … a lie, untruth or delusion. Having no Truth in your entire lifetime. You can ask no questions save the kind, aimed at giving you the REALITY, which helps you to see the delusion lived under. you haven’t done this yet. You keep resorting to a delusional world and the questions which come with it!

See your scientist friends, and allies must demonstrate LIFE can form in a sterile that is never lost, that is as impossible as attempting to prove those other gods you speak of. While mine is already been proven under the purest science, discovered (pure science) only since 1668C.E., 1859 C.E, 1954 C.E. and 2022 C.E. as a matter of fact, AND remains unused to this point.

seek to prove Earth can exist eternally unsterile IN a sterile Universe , or that a Sterile Earth could ever lose that sterile in open Space, as a fact not as a delusion of a scientist. Read the box of a Band-aid carton, sterile wrapper … sterile till opened. Ask yourself who opened Earth?

@TheAuthor You are out of bullshit, stop.

You are now requested to atop proselytizing and support your assertions.

No more bullshit, stop the nonsense. You shall now support your assertions.

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But what if a person believes reality is a belief? Or maybe another person realistically lives in a belief that is their reality? Then there is the possibility of a realistic belief that has nothing to do with reality. Of course, a belief in reality that really isn’t a realistic belief can’t be ruled out. But when all is said and done, if reality is real and a person really believes in said reality as being realistic, then realistically that belief doesn’t really matter. For real.

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Who gives a shit WHO did it? I would just love to see the size of the goddamn can opener they used.