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From: gordon@uw-june (Gordon Davisson)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: A new voice.
Message-ID: <11@uw-june>
Date: Thu, 27-Jun-85 12:38:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-june.11
Posted: Thu Jun 27 12:38:34 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 1-Jul-85 06:44:17 EDT
References: <2156@ut-sally.UUCP> <347@scgvaxd.UUCP>
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 246

>>[derrick@ut-sally.UUCP (Derrick Hartsock)]
>>
>>I am interested in ONE piece of evidence that even suggests that Creationism
>>could have possibly happened. If anybody posts instead something that
>>knocks evolution and doesn't defend creationism they can be sure of being
>>Flamed. Now come on, just ONE (1) , that's all I want. Now don't just jump
>>for the first thing that comes to mind, think awhile.  

>[dan@scgvaxd.UUCP (Dan Boskovich)]
>
>	Any evidence against Evolution is evidence for Creation and vice
>	versa. This point is discussed in depth by the notable evolutionist
>	scholar, Douglas J. Futuyma.
>
>	"Science On Trial", chapter 11, page 1   "Creation and Evolution,
>	between the two, exhaust the possible explanations for the origin
>	of living things. Organisms either appeared on the earth fully
>	developed or they did not! If they did not, they must have developed
>	from some preexisting species by some process of modification."

Futuyma is *wrong*.  Just being an evolutionist is not, after all, proof
of infallability.

>	If you find this difficult to accept, please state the alternative
>	to Creation/Evolution!

Ok, here's Davisson's first origins theory -- steady-state nonexpanding
universe with multiple advanced abiogeneses:

   The universe is finite and uniform (on a large scale) in all
   dimensions, both spatial and temporal.  It appears to be expanding,
   perhaps because light from distant sources loses energy as it travels
   (the tired light theory).  Some of the planets making up this universe
   are capable of supporting large, self-replicating systems, or what we
   would call life. Statistically, we would expect to see such life
   arising occasionally by accidental combination of atoms, and once
   they had arisen, they would tend to reproduce themselves and thus
   stick around (most become extinct eventually, though).  We and all of
   the species we see around us are the products of such accidents. 
  
Uh, before someone takes this the wrong way, maybe I'd better explain
that I don't claim that there is any evidence supporting the above theory,
or even that there isn't a lot of evidence against it.  If it were a good
theory, people would be considering it seriously alongside evolution.  But
it's possible (barely -- the second law of thermo would have to be in
error for it to work, and it requires a *lot* of infinitessimally likely
events), and it involves neither creation nor evolution.

>	But since you asked for evidence for Creation, I will just give
>	you Kukuk/Brown's latest evidence which is similar to a past posting
>	of mine.
>
>	    The First Law of  Thermodynamics  states  that  the  total
>            amount  of energy in the universe, or in any isolated part
>            of it, remains constant. This  law  states  that  although
>            energy (or its mass equivalent) can change form, it is not
>            now being created or destroyed. Countless experiments have
>            verified  this.  A  corollary  of  the  First  Law is that
>            natural  processes  cannot  create  energy.  Consequently,
>            energy  must  have  been  created  by some agency or power
>            outside of and independent of the natural universe.

Wait a minute... Energy cannot be created, therefore it must have been
created?  Sounds like you're arguing *against* creation here.

>	    If  the  entire  universe  is  an  isolated  system,  then
>            according  to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the energy
>            in the universe that is  available  for  useful  work  has
>            always  been  decreasing.  But as one goes back further in
>            time, the amount of energy available for useful work would
>            eventually  exceed  the total energy in the universe that,
>            according to the  First  Law  of  Thermodynamics,  remains
>            constant.  This  is an impossible condition.  It therefore
>            implies that the universe had a beginning.

I have a number of objections to this, some of which are minor and at
least one is major.  Let's start off small.

The second law of thermodynamics doesn't say that entropy will increase,
just that it won't decrease, and it certainly doesn't give a (finite)
minimum rate of decrease.  This essentially means that the universe
could have existed forever in a low-entropy state, with nothing much
happening.  Things gradually got unstable and entropy started rising
fast (the current situation).  Eventually, things will level out again
with a very high entropy value, and get very boring (heat death).

The second law of thermodynamics may not be correct; like most (all?)
other physical laws, it may (correction: *is*.  See below) be only an
approximation that is very close to correct under the circumstances it
has been tested under (e.g. it's never been tested anywhere the
gravitational field wasn't very close to 32 feet per second squared),
but may not be at all close under radically different circumstances
(e.g. the vicinity of the big bang).

Since the universe is expanding (excuse me, *appears* to be expanding),
its phase space is changing, and the second law *is* only an 
approximation that holds for small systems.  The entire universe is 
clearly not such a system.  Actually (I don't want to go into the 
reasoning here), I would expect that a corrected version of the second 
law would say that in a closed, expanding universe, entropy will go up, 
at at least some finite rate (exactly what I said the second law doesn't 
say earlier).  But for a closed, contracting universe, it would allow 
entropy to decrease at a bounded rate.  Thus, in a cyclical universe (an 
infinite series of big bangs alternating with big collapses), entropy 
could increase, then decrease, then increase, then...  All of this 
trying to generalize entropy to expanding and contracting universes is 
pure speculation on my part, of course.  If anyone out there knows of 
anyone who has actually done the math, I'd be interested in hearing 
about it.

The universe may not be closed.  Creationists argue that it is open to
the influence of God.  The steady-state universe theory (no longer 
popular) suggests that matter is created by the tension in space.

Finally, and most importantly, the universe may be infinite.  What, you 
ask, has this got to do with anything?  Well, if the universe is 
infinite, its entropy is almost certainly infinite, so no matter whether
it increases or decreases, it always stays the same (infinity plus or
minus just about anything is infinity).  Perhaps a better way of putting
this is that the universe cannot be (well, is very unlikely to be) both
infinite and closed.

Your argument for a finite age of the universe based only on the second 
law of thermodynamics is suggestive, but on the whole rather weak.  I 
think you could have put forward a much stronger case by including the 
evidence (collected by astronomers over the last few years) which 
suggests that the universe was created suddenly about 15 billion years 
ago, in what they refer to as the big bang.  (Derrick: will you accept 
this as evidence for "creationism"?  Or did you mean creationism as 
including the origin of life?)

Incidentally, most of the (religious) astronomers (and laymen) who
believe in the divine creation by big bang also believe that the
species originated through evolution.  Creation and evolution are not 
only not the only possibilities, they are not mutually exclusive.

>	    Derrick, you are not the first one to ask such a question.
>	    What if I were to ask you to give me one piece of evidence
>	    that life arose by chance. Would you talk about the Urey/
>	    Miller experiments.

I don't know about Derrick, but I wouldn't.  Those experiments only 
suggest a possible explanation for the origin of life, they don't give 
direct evidence.

Incidentally, what do you mean by "by chance"?  Is it chance that if you
flip a (fair) coin a large number of times you will tend to get nearly 
equal numbers of heads and tails?  Is it chance that if you distill 
salty water, the salt left behind tends to be in regular crystalline 
structures?  If you (or perhaps God) were to design an experiment which
had a number of possible outcomes, one of which was much more likely 
than the others, and that outcome occured, would you say that it 
happened by chance? 

>	                        Those experiments could just as easily
>	    be cited as reasons to believe in special creation.

How so?

>	    I was flamed for saying that design is evidence of a designer.
>	    The replies were filled with the idea that design is a totally
>	    subjective description and all existance could just as easily
>	    be attributed to chance and natural processes.
>
>	    I did not reply to those arguments, but I believe that now is
>	    the time to do so. Sure, design is subjective. But subjectivity
>	    is not akin to irrational. I can't believe that a scientist
>	    who prides himself in being rational, intelligent, and
>	    objective can look at a world that behaves according to certain
>	    laws of nature and mathematics, at a race of individuals who
>	    can reason, learn, experience a myriad of emotions and argue
>	    that all of this can just as reasonably be explained by chance.

Again, what do you mean "by chance"?  Consider, if you will, Davisson's
second origins theory -- John Horton Conway, Creator:

   Once upon a time, God got bored with consideration of Himself and His 
   glory, so he decided to try messing about in his workshop and see 
   what he could come up with.  He invented a set of rules which a 
   universe could be made to follow, which he figured would tend to lead 
   to some very interesting results, and then made a number of universes 
   along these lines.  Most of them did indeed have very interesting 
   results, not the least of which was the one in which we evolved.  God 
   has since derived great entertainment from watching our various 
   follies.

This theory is, in large part, based on John Conway and his invention of
a "game" he calls life (which is why I call it what I did at the top). 
It is played in a two-dimensional, square-grid universe (graph paper was
originally used, but computer simulation has become more popular
lately), each square of which, at each generation, either contains a
cell or doesn't.  He gave rules for which squares had cells in them at
generation n as a function of the pattern at generation n-1.  People
have since created many interesting "life organisms", including some
that move, some that produce offspring (though the offspring are not
like their parent), and some which simply sit in one place and look
busy.  Nobody (as far as I know) has invented a self-replicating life
form, but then, Conway's life is much simpler than our universe.  If you
want to know more about this (highly interesting) game, look in the
Scientific American, Mathematical Games column, October 1970 and
following.  Or ask me. 

>	    And, in light of this, you have the gall to ask for a reason
>	    to believe in Creation.

I have a tendency to think that there *is* a creator, for approximately 
the same reasons.  On the other hand, this doesn't prevent me from 
believing in evolution.  It also doesn't keep me from considering the 
possibility of the nonexistance of a creator.  I just don't have 
absolute faith in my own intuition.  Do you?

>	                            Please, Derrick, give me one reason
>	    to believe in Evolution. Be careful now. Don't give me any
>	    subjective answers like commonality of species which can either
>	    imply common ancestor or common design.

I'm not Derrick, but I'd like to respond anyway:  You should believe in 
evolution because it has been observed.  Many times.  Moths turning dark 
for camouflage when pollution darkens trees, then back when pollution is 
restricted.  Insects developing resistance to DDT and other 
insecticides.  Flies developing stub wings in high-wind conditions.  
And, in one of the longest-running and least-well-recorded experiments 
ever done, dogs diversifying into hundreds of separate breeds.

Standard objections to these observations include that they only show 
selection, not beneficial mutations (but the Flies definitely got their
stub wings by mutation, and the dogs almost certainly got a lot of their 
diversity through mutations [not necessarily beneficial mutations, but 
not harmful either]), and that there are limits to "microevolution" (I
have yet to see any evidence for these limits.  Creationists can't even 
agree on where they are!).

>	                                            Give me a real solid
>	    concrete reason to believe that you and I are accidents and
>	    serve no real purpose.

No thanks.  I don't believe it myself, and anyway, it's a religious 
question, and this is (supposed to be) a scientific forum.

--
Human:    Gordon Davisson
ARPA:     gordon@uw-june.ARPA
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