Creation vs. Evolution

[lamont]

Soggy, I've done a lot of searching on the subject of "before the big bang", and although some speculate that there was "nothing" as in time or space, as you stated, not all the experts agree and others say there is absolutely no way of knowing ( which I agree with so, my statement, how can we know the age of it?). Just to clarify my post that started our discussion on this, this is what I meant when I said we don't know the age of the universe, which by my definition included whatever was there before the Bang. You are convinced there was nothing and I respect your belief, but there is no proof of it. I agree we can estimate the age of what we see now by measuring the expansion after the bang. What's ironic though, is that if there was "nothing", as in absolutely nothing before the bang (except hydrogen.....and the existance of helium on more distant stars, which casts possible doubt of the "nothing" theory as well as the big bang), that that definition is the epitomy of "Creation".

I had a really nice dissertation on the big bang and big bang nucleosynthesis written up and then I hit the wrong button and my editor ate it.

I think you have some fundamental misunderstandings about what the Big Bang model actually is.

To begin with, the big bang happened everywhere uniformly throughout space. If you take a sufficiently large volume of space around the Earth and compress it sufficiently tightly so that you get a 3000K plasma you have something which approximates the conditions in the early big bang when the CMBR was created. The entire universe (which is probably infinite in all dimensions) was compressed like this. Its kind of like a piston, except there's no walls.

If you go back further then it will become so energetic so that the hydrogen and helium no longer exists and you get quark-gluon plasma which is something like the conditions at the heart of a neutron star (once the entire universe is packed together at the same density as a neutron star).

If you keep increasing the temperature and going backwards in time you wind up in a radiation dominated universe where most of the energy of the universe (which has nearly infinite energy density) is going to be particles like photons. As the universe cools you get matter creation via matter-antimatter creation (you can create electrons and positrons in the lab this way very easily). At some point in the early universe there were CP-symmetry violating processes which favored the creation of matter over antimatter (which has now been observed in B-particle decay and Kaon decay), which was responsible for creating the hydrogen. Then some of the hydrogen fused to form helium and a trace of lithium (and the fractional abundaces of those in big bang nucleosynthesis is very sensitive to the conditions in a brief period of the big bang).

So, the question is not where the hydrogen came from, but where the initial infinitely dense universe came from...

(I actually had a longer writeup than this before my editor ate it...)

 

[The Chairman]

Why do creationists consistantly fixate on radiocarbon dating?

As a creationist, I take exception to this. I have no issue with radio carbon dating and have no issue with evolution. In creating evolution, God created us. It is a tool of his design and construct. It seems you have a problem with "anti-evolutionists" much as do I. Unlike you, I also have an issue with "anti-creationists".

 

[The Chairman]

I had a really nice dissertation on the big bang and big bang nucleosynthesis written up and then I hit the wrong button and my editor ate it.

The comfort in this statement, is that NO LONGER can this be attributed to our former lousy servers. [/hijack]

 

[JeffG]

The comfort in this statement, is that NO LONGER can this be attributed to our former lousy servers. [/hijack]

LOL. Nope its been stable for a while now.

 

[lamont]

How does convincing someone to believe in evolution benefit human progress? Accoridng to your theory, when we die - we're gone? What difference does it make what we believe in while we're alive?

Evolution says nothing either way about any afterlife.

However, I do believe that when we're dead we're gone and that makes it vitally important that what we do on this Earth matters and that it is our subjective experience of consciousness which makes that matter (And the one thing which leads me to not dismiss the possibility of a creator completely is the simple mundane everyday miracle of consciousness itself -- if there was a God that thought that one up then he/she was pretty clever...)

And the problem is that because what we do here matters, I believe that knowledge matters, and I believe in the pursuit of explaining how our universe works. And I believe that this pays off in terms of improving life on Earth for everyone. And, therefore, the belief in something so patently untrue as the 6000 year old age of the Earth is not something that I can ever approve of.

Anyway you are conflating belief in Evolution or belief in cosmological and astronomical models to be opposed to belief in the afterlife and they are actually orthogonal. There are a lot of scientists that are religious and believe in a creator and an afterlife, but they also believe in Evolution and do not believe the universe is 6000 years old.

And I definitely believe that Evolution and science benefits human progress. Without the theory of Evolution there is no Genetics and much less understanding of how the human body works, and ignorance is not a virtue...

 

[lamont]

As a creationist, I take exception to this. I have no issue with radio carbon dating and have no issue with evolution. In creating evolution, God created us. It is a tool of his design and construct. It seems you have a problem with "anti-evolutionists" much as do I. Unlike you, I also have an issue with "anti-creationists".

Well, yeah, but you're sort of a kinder, gentler creationist... =)

Anti-evolutionist is probably a better term...

 

[redacted]

Perhaps it would be helpful to have an idea how your beliefs categorize you:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html

I was surprised at how much wiggle room there is in many of the categories.

 

[lamont]

Perhaps it would be helpful to have an idea how your beliefs categorize you:

1. Secular Humanism (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (99%)
3. Liberal Quakers (87%)
4. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (85%)
5. Nontheist (70%)
6. Neo-Pagan (66%)
7. Theravada Buddhism (65%)
8. New Age (52%)
9. Reform Judaism (50%)
10. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (47%)

 

[Thalassamania]

Perhaps it would be helpful to have an idea how your beliefs categorize you:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html

I was surprised at how much wiggle room there is in many of the categories.

I can live with the results (although getting scientology over 50% scares me) Liberal Quaker comes rather close:
1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (94%)
3. Neo-Pagan (92%)
4. Secular Humanism (86%)
5. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (83%)
6. New Age (83%)
7. Mahayana Buddhism (79%)
8. Reform Judaism (78%)
9. Theravada Buddhism (70%)
10. Scientology (68%)
11. Nontheist (67%)
12. Bahá'í Faith (65%)
13. Jainism (65%)
14. New Thought (64%)
15. Taoism (61%)
16. Islam (59%)
17. Orthodox Judaism (59%)
18. Sikhism (55%)
19. Orthodox Quaker (50%)
20. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (48%)
21. Hinduism (47%)
22. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (45%)
23. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (43%)
24. Eastern Orthodox (40%)
25. Roman Catholic (40%)
26. Seventh Day Adventist (29%)
27. Jehovah's Witness (15%)

 

[rookers]

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (96%)
3. Theravada Buddhism (95%)
4. Secular Humanism (91%)
5. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (87%)
6. Mahayana Buddhism (69%)
7. Taoism (69%)
8. Nontheist (69%)
9. Bah�'� Faith (65%)
10. Neo-Pagan (63%)
11. Jainism (61%)
12. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (60%)
13. Orthodox Quaker (59%)
14. Sikhism (59%)
15. Hinduism (54%)
16. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (50%)
17. New Age (47%)
18. Jehovah's Witness (47%)
19. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (44%)
20. Reform Judaism (42%)
21. New Thought (40%)
22. Seventh Day Adventist (37%)
23. Scientology (31%)
24. Eastern Orthodox (26%)
25. Islam (26%)
26. Orthodox Judaism (26%)
27. Roman Catholic (26%)

Interesting result, considering that I am probably closest to a pessimistic (concerning a supernatural higher force (besides the Flying Spaghetti Monster)) agnostic.