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Why is atheistic evolution absurd? [Spirituality & Religion]

“It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”
― G.K. Chesterton
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Why would an Evolutionist assume that there was ever nothing? The first law of thermodynamics states that: "Energy can neither be created no destroy it can only be converted from one form to another." The Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy states that: "Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be converted from one form to another." Mass is energy at a lower frequency. Mass can be converted to energy and energy can be converted into mass. Mass being converted into energy is what happens in nuclear fusion and fission. Some scientists feel that Energy being converted into mass is what happens when light particles are combined to create electrons and positrons.

The fabric of space has mass that can be measured by the gravitation effect of dark matter and dark energy.

The Big Bang theory is often misrepresented in media and oversimplifications of what it is, mislead people to believe that scientists believe that there was "nothing" before the Big Bang. In reality, the Big Bang Theory is simply an explanation of what made the universe to be what it is now. IE (when God decided he was sick of the way things were and decided to create the universe)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/09/21/the-big-bang-wasnt-the-beginning-after-all/#14dfbb3355df

The formation of life on earth could have easily evolved with the naturally occurring elements and processes on the planet. Laboratory experiments have reproduced the conditions that scientists believe existed at the time of early life developing and common amino acids have formed. The kicker is that it didn't take very long in a lab for these amino acids to form in laboratory conditions. So if you extrapolate that out to the thousands or billions (depending on what a person believes) of years since the earth formed or was created, simple amino acids could, in theory, quite easily evolve.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/primordial-soup-urey-miller-evolution-experiment-repeated/


Evolution is changes in the amino acids that make up a an organisms DNA. With small organisms that reproduce quickly, these changes can influence an entire population in a matter of days. With larger organisms, it takes longer only because the organisms reproduce more slowly. Changes in DNA can occur randomly because DNA is matter/energy, and matter/energy is constantly in a state of flux and interacts with other matter/energy like radiation, oxidation, or just because the molecules electric field happened to be influenced by some other electric field.

All these changes on the molecular level are dictated by a set of interactions that do not change. Someone or something had to make those laws and dictate how those mass-energy interactions should work. Maybe it was random and the universe just kept failing and restarting until it found a set of rules that allowed it to exist. Maybe the universe has always existed in some other form or another and a catalyst (maybe God) of some kind, caused the conversion of dark energy into regular energy into matter (the Big Bang), that resulted in our current universe and the conditions that would create life on Earth.

I really don't see how evolution and creation are mutually exclusive.
newjaninev2 · 56-60, F
@CleverFunnyNameGoesHere Just a couple of points...

thousands or billions (depending on what a person believes)


1. epending on the evidence, surely?

2. trying to introduce some sort of god as a catalyst merely moves the problem to the origin of that god... it’s unhelpful and has no explanatory power.
@newjaninev2

1. Some creationists believe that "God" created the Earth to appear as old as science tells us it is as a means of testing our faith. So they discount the evidence. Also, some geologists subscribe to a theory called cataclysmic geology, where huge cataclysmic changes occur in the earth's surface causing changes in a matter of hours/days/months that would normally take millions of years to happen through normal geological means. More and more evidence is being found for cataclysmic geology and in instances where this happens, fossils that had been previously dated based on the level of rock strata they are found in are incorrect because the rocks were not as old as traditional geology would indicate them to be.

2. The catalyst could have been entropy. It doesn't have to be god. I just included god because your post seemed more as if you were a creationist making fun of evolutionists. But Matter-energy is in a constant state of flux. It doesn't like to be in one form. It spontaneously converts from one form to another.

My point is that neither evolution nor creationism is mutually exclusive. We understand the physics behind why things happen but those rules are pretty orderly, they come together so nicely that many scientists take this to mean they were predetermined by some kind of intelligent design. Did these rules just make themselves, are they that way because it was the only way that it could be and result in what exists now? Nobody really knows. We haven't developed the technology to know yet. Is it possible that the fundamental functions of matter-energy were codified by some kind of sentience? Maybe, but then that begs the question where did it come from and what led to its existence.

The only really plausible explanation is that there has always been "something" existing, and that "something" changes and evolves and we are just a tiny blip in existence trying to figure out what is going on. Evolution can happen without a "god" to make it happen. That is the nature of our current reality based on the rules as science has understood them.

But, if "something" has always existed that changes and evolves it could be argued that "something" is god. Because that is the essence of the Judeo-Christian belief - all space-time and matter-energy is the body of god and that we are both created by him and are made up of him (which is gross sounding to me).
newjaninev2 · 56-60, F
@CleverFunnyNameGoesHere cataclysmic geology would affect the features of Earth, but not the age... that’s not determined by rock strata

many scientists

Why would they make such an assumption... it’s unscientific, and automatically disqualifies them from the epithet ‘scientist’.

It’s meaningless to say that something has always existed, because always requires space-time... and space-time became possible only with the Big Bang (there’s no ‘before’ the Big Bang).

Further, what’s the point of then trying to give ’something’ attributes and characteristics? if we’re going to say that it evolves, then we need a mechanism for that evolution, and (even more problematical) it then becomes completely unpredictable.. and if it has no origin then we can just say the same about any postulation we care to come up with. What I’m saying is that the entire postulation is vague, unnecessary and unhelpful.
Speedyman · 70-79, M
Why would you make such a postulation which is completely against all observation and all sense? We know that nonliving matter does not produce living matter. It is been tried and it doesn’t happen@newjaninev2
Speedyman · 70-79, M
The fact you are quoting the Miller/Urey experiment means that you are completely out of date. Even evolutionists except that doesn’t work. The problem is that even if we take on board what you say they’re still got to be an intelligent design who created all the laws and the finely tuned mechanisms which make about universe. Everything we see tells us there is intelligence behind it. In fact the more we discover about science the more we see that the universe is so finely tuned that it is quite obvious there is an intelligent designer behind it. That the more we see about nature the more obvious it is that however it was created that there was a creator. You are not telling me that a cell put it self together? About like saying a jumbo jet was created by a hurricane in a junkyard@CleverFunnyNameGoesHere
@newjaninev2 If you had read the articles I linked in my first response you would see that interpretation of the big bang is incorrect. There was in fact a time before the big bang according to scientific theory. The Big Bang is just when the current state of the universe began. Space-time existed prior to the big bang.
Speedyman · 70-79, M
Well this is just theory of course there is no proof of it any more than there is proof of a lot of other theoretical physics. But all that is saying is that the creator existed before the big bang which we know. The problem is with people like you who is that because you think you know the mechanism you think you can dispense with the agency which of course is a total misnomer. Because I know how my car was designed it does not mean to say I can dispense with the designer and say my car put it self together@CleverFunnyNameGoesHere
@Speedyman I don't think the universe has to have a driving intelligence behind it to make it function. I think that by random chance over an eternity, order can arise from chaos. That the order that is in place now was determined by pre-existing factors, that were determined by the interplay of matter-energy and space-time, and gradually over eons, the laws of physics codefied themselves, the universe became life could come to be, and because life evolves in an opposite of entropy, intelligence was inevitable.
newjaninev2 · 56-60, F
@CleverFunnyNameGoesHere I'm familiar with the articles, but there’s nothing there to say that spacetime existed before the Big Bang (and certainly no Theory as such). the article, you will notice, trails off into vagueness, and there’s a reason for that... it’s scientific doodling, just playing around with ideas and possibilities (the fun part of science)
@newjaninev2 I think you are misunderstanding the article. It specifically states that the big bang was not the beginning of the universe. Since the universe consists of space-time, that dictates that space-time existed. I mean the two concepts are mutually exclusive. As long as something exists, it has to take up space, and for changes to happen that lead to the big bang there has to be the passage of time. Hence spacetime existed prior to the big bang.
Speedyman · 70-79, M
Well I don’t believe that the big bang was the beginning of the universe side. The Bible says ‘in the beginning God‘. God was obviously in the space time. Again your problem is is that thinking you know the mechanism you think you can dispense with the agency. All you’re thinking about the mechanism only puts the agency back one step@CleverFunnyNameGoesHere
@Speedyman It is possible that the mechanism IS the agency. Why do they have to be two separate things?
Speedyman · 70-79, M
Not at all. Because the software of this computer is the agency it does not preclude the fact that it had a programmer. Forces and laws are a mechanism not an agency @CleverFunnyNameGoesHere
@Speedyman You are comparing two different things. First, you have to stop thinking of physics in terms of objects and designs. And just look at the physics. Stop assuming it has to have a creator and allow yourself to conduct the thought experiment of "what if it just happened this way?". Physics works the way it does, not because someone made it work that way, but because that was the only way it could work. Like evolution through random mutation. A change to the genes that kills the organism will not be passed on to the next generation. A law of physics that doesn't perpetuate itself will not continue to manifest. And a change in the state or nature of space-time that does not continue to perpetuate space-time as it is now will change space-time into a new format. Hence the mechanism is the agency.


But you don't have to believe that.
Speedyman · 70-79, M
Physics works the way it does because there are laws and the laws imply design. There are 35 finely tuned constants which make our universe work. Your problem is that you cannot see that behind the klaws there is an agency. You hav3 allowed secular thinking to give you a mental block. Your problem is not svience it is secular philosophy. Th3 nechanism is not the agency neither could it ever be. That is against any reasoning @CleverFunnyNameGoesHere
newjaninev2 · 56-60, F
@Speedyman
35 finely tuned constants which make our universe work

They’re not as ‘finely-tuned’ as you think.

Let’s examine them, shall we?

of course, you seem to miss the even greater picture. if this universe wasn’t as it is, it’d be different.

Lack of this particular universe doesn’t automatically mean no universe... there may well be a universe, but different from this one.

Your creationist arrogance leads you to assume that everything has to be as it now is, because otherwise you couldn’t exist
Speedyman · 70-79, M
I would say it’s sheer arrogance to assume that such a wonderful universe does not have a creator. Just sheer materialistic arrogance@newjaninev2
newjaninev2 · 56-60, F
@Speedyman lol! I take it that ‘materialistic arrogance' is your way of suggesting that it’s OK to be arrogant so long as you surround said arrogance with mumbo-jumbo. 😂
@Speedyman 😂😂🤣
Speedyman · 70-79, M
The problem is with you guys that you are the arrogant ones assuming your 30 lb brain can figure out the creator. Really quite pathetic. Now please tell me how did that first cell put itself together. How do nonpersonal forces make personality@newjaninev2 @CleverFunnyNameGoesHere
@Speedyman it happened by random chance. I'm not figuring out the creator because everything has always existed and the arising of life and intelligence is just random.

Isn't it arrogant to assume that there is a creator when no evidence points toward that other than a belief that there had to be a creator?
@Speedyman also. It has been delightful to debate with you. 🙂
Speedyman · 70-79, M
The chances are it happening is so negligible that it would take more than the time the universe has been in existence for it to happen. The chances are actually effectively zero@CleverFunnyNameGoesHere
newjaninev2 · 56-60, F
@Speedyman Are you seriously suggesting that it was necessary for cells to spontaneously assemble themselves ? lol! That’s hilarious! A typical creationist straw-man.

Cells developed from something slightly simpler, which itself developed from something simpler, which itself developed from something simpler,... you get the idea (or perhaps you don’t)
Entwistle · 56-60, M
@CleverFunnyNameGoesHere "As long as something exists it has to take up space"? You certain of that? What space does "thought" take up?