And what if that probability curve was explicitly defined by Chaos?
You are getting more random with each passing statement. Your scientific thought pattern is indeed Chaotic, I will grant you that.
You and I are on the same side in most arguments (I am as anti-christian as they come, for example), I just don't think that you are helping by being on my side.
And how would that be possible if quantum fluctuations are entirely random?
Because many systems don't depend upon quantum mechanics? If I get a ball and drop it from a certain height in a vacuum under the force of Earth's gravity, I can calculate exactly what's going to happen to that ball between the time I drop it and the time it hits the ground. The outcome is in no way affected by quantum mechanics.
It seems that we are about to embark upon a new direction in the thread. Do you believe in Destiny?
My question was how does life come from non-life and how does order come magically into order, and even stay there?
What is saying "God did it!" other than an explicit appeal to a magical answer?
Thermodynamics provides the answer to your order-from-nonorder question, even if you don't see that it does. Such order can be self-sustaining and increasing so long as there's a steady incoming stream of energy and a place to dump waste heat. Life is just a particularly complex form of ordered matter. Given time and enough opportunites, it seems like life can simply happen. Not magic, just thermodynamics and statistics.
Does that answer every last possible question you could ask? No. But faulting science for not answering every conceivable question is like faulting last night's dinner for not feeding you eternally. Science tries to expand our knowledge and understanding, finding the best answers it can, the most unifying, consistent, and cohesive answers it can, but those answers often lead to new questions. In fact, figuring out what the good questions are is just as important as getting answers. It's foolish to treat the fact that many answers lead to more questions as some sort of failing of science.
Can I tell you explicitly, step-by-step, molecule by molecule, with a precice time log how life first arose from inanimate matter? Of course not. Not even close. Does that somehow make everything science says about evolution (and biogenesis, which is really a separate matter from evolution, although Creationist hardly ever seem to be able to understand the difference, or the difference between evolution and cosmology for that matter) wrong until you get that answer?
Newton came up with the "law" of gravity, F = GMm/r^2. He couldn't explain squat about why one mass was attracted to another mass, but he found that if he assumed that such an attraction existed, the same kind of attraction seen on Earth when an apple falls to the ground, and applied that assumption to the planets... boom! Everything fell (so to speak) neatly into place.
Was Newton's science bad science because he assumed some weird invisible force, an unexplainable "spooky action at a distance" that drew objects toward each other?
Newton's science was good science because:
It explained known facts about the motions of the planets.
It was immediately useful for predicting the motions of the planets with better precision than ever before.
It allowed others, like Edmund Halley, to make predictions of events -- like the reappearance of a comet -- that no one had been able to make before.
It didn't pretend to answer what it couldn't answer -- it did not insist upon or rely upon any unproven model of how gravity worked.
By demanding that an evolutionist explain where life came from, how are you any different from someone demanding that Newton explain how gravity works, dismissing Newton's science until he does explain that "how" to his complete satisfaction, and pretending that a theory stating that the planets move by angels pushing them around is every bit as good as Newton's theory until Newton answers every conceivable question about his so-called gravity?
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All religion asside, I just can't believe that life would magically form out of nothing, and random things form into not random things unless there is something making it.
Saying little more than "God did it!", and pretending that answers everything, is by definition a magical belief. What specific predictions about the nature of life does "God did it!" lead to? What conceivable observations would make one have to revise or abandon the "God did it!" theory? What supporting evidence is there for Intelligent Design? Is there anything other than (very poor) attempts to refute evolution, with "God did it!" as the fallback because evolution supposedly doesn't cut it?
Creationism and ID fail as science because the "answers" provided leave exactly the same questions open which were supposedly being answered. Where did the complexity of life come from? God created it! Okay, where did the complexity of God come from? Gee, I dunno. He just is that way, always was. If one is going to end up assuming that something exists which is capable of the spontaneous generation of complex life, why not assume that the thing so capable is the observable universe itself? What do you gain by needlessly multiplying entities and bringing a new agency into the scene which is at least, if not more, inexplicable?
I can't prove to you that there aren't big angels out there pushing the planets around in their orbits. But F = GMm/r^2 tells me something I didn't know before, even if new questions arise. What would believing in planet-pushing angels gain me that I didn't know before? What would a fanciful combination of the two ideas -- angels who have a fancy for the equation F = GMm/r^2 -- gain me that the equation alone doesn't provide?
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You don't dump a bunch of brick and concrete down and a building is formed. Things have to be specifically placed, and designed, so that the building is stands. The only explanation I can think of that would account for order is if there is a mind behind it.
All I can say is that it's a good thing the universe isn't limited by your terrible analogies, your lack of understanding of thermodynamics and self-organizing systems, and your limited scope of imagination.
Because many deterministic systems don't depend upon quantum mechanics? If I get a ball and drop it from a certain height in a vacuum under the force of Earth's gravity, I can calculate exactly what's going to happen to that ball between the time I drop it and the time it hits the ground. The outcome is in no way affected by quantum mechanics.
It seems that we are about to embark upon a new direction in the thread. Do you believe in Destiny?
No - you can calculate what is going to happen based on the scale you happen to chose to work with. Can you calculate exactly what is going to happen to the ball down to planks length or time? And thats the problem - we cannot say because at the moment, because we do not have the ability to track the ball at the quantum scale when we are looking at the whole ball.
And thats the same reason why it is not yet established that Chaos is built into the quantum scale, because if you are looking at the quantum, you cannot see the whole ball.
And when it does become possible - you very well might see what I am sugessting.
If not, then you need to ask at what scales Chaos theory starts and ends and why, and invent the mechanism for this to be so - because at the moment, this isn't known, and as far as we can see - we see chaos 'working' at pretty much all scales we look at - if we can see the whole picture.
Ps 'destiny' really depends on what mood im in. Which is goverend by the quantum interactions of my brain.
If one is going to end up assuming that something exists which is capable of the spontaneous generation of complex life, why not assume that the thing so capable is the observable universe itself?
If you believe that absolutely nothing is random, I don't see how you can possibly not believe in Destiny.
I dont believe that absolutely nothing is random - I cannot know that yet because it isn't known, however I believe that we have discovered a mechanism for showing how order is made out of 'apparent' disorder - and it is far simpler and more beautiful to extend this principle to the extremes of scales - because this is what Chaos is all about, repeating scales, than it is to invent a new mechanism to explain why this theory of repeating scales has certain artificial boundaries and cut off points - when nothing in the theory suggests there is a cut off point - infact quite the opposite. All that really is uncertain is not knowing what happens in pictures we can only see a small glimpse of at the moment. And we have no reason to believe that anything different 'should' happen. Unless you believe in God.
Which I do and don't depending on what mood im in.......
this is a buddhabrot fractal, created using a very simple repeating mathmatical formula that has no element of design or intelligence built into it. All it has is Chaos - and it makes something quite beautiful, entirely unrandom.
This is a funky julia fractal, no intelligent design, just a fundamental natural mathmatical formula. But its not random at all.
Now lets suppose the ball represents the large pink central part - we can see this easily, but on the scale of the ball to an electron - we would have to zoom up pretty radically on the fringes of the fractal to see how the fractal looked - yet we know we could do this and see a very similar image - but at that scale we would not be able to see the ball - or the central part.
All you would need to do to establish that the radically zoomed image is part of the same formula as the overview is a) know the formula that created both pictures is the same one or b) calculate the zoomed image so many times that you recreate the large image.
Possibly, as no-one yet has ever calculated the fluctuations of every miniscule bit of the ball at the electron level to recreate the whole ball, then it is not yet enough zoomed in images of the electrons to say that they are of the same mathmatical formula that creates Chaos on the level we can work at - at the moment.
A fractal image is calculated by a mathmatical formula, and each point is coloured by an escape test to see whether that particular point escapes or goes into an infine cycle.
Now, anything that goes into a repeating cycle is traditionally coloured black, and in the image you can see that the central area is black along with common shaped offshoots. The yellow/red bits are a funky place where the formula doesn't settle on a cycle OR go of to infinty after a set number of iterations. Kind of like a 'limbo' sort of place - not reality or unreality.
What these images dont show though is the degrees in which the common black was calculated - think of these areas as 'reality' and the colours (which show how many iterations through the formula the point took to escape to infinity. - Think of these as 'unreality'
Now - what would happen if we calculated 'subtle shades of the black' - I dont know if this has been done - im trying to find out and also trying to write my own program to test this 'blackness' to see if there is anything in this idea.
Now if we used a common sense theoretical approach, I would expect to find that the degree of blackness right at the centre of the image is 'pure black' and as we travel outwards - we see that the black becomes less black - but still 'reality' so to speak.
Now this is a probability curve of the uncertainty principle here
Visualize the graph as areas of 'reality' as per the fractal - anything under the line is black - where we would expect to find our particle in 'reality' and everything above it is blue or 'unreality' in the fractal.
now looking at the black areas of the fractal (which i propose are graduated blacks) - and then looking at the curve - dont the peaks of the curve 'correspond' to the areas of the 'degrees of black' in the fractal if you were to cut a horizontal cross section through 'reality' ??
IF the blackest area of the fractal corresponds with the greatest peak of the probability curve, and is where we would expect to find our 'particle' most of the time, being 'reality' as opposed to 'unreality'. Its not definately here but most probable. It certainly isn't likely in an area of 'limbo', just like the chances of finding our particle aren't likely at the far left of the graph - but still possible - and certainly not in an area undefined by the graph (which would be at the top far right) - but we know the fractal goes on forever as does the graph with less and less probability - and it is very remotely possible that we will find our electron at the other side of the universe.
Now, if it is shown that the fractal is a mathmatical representation of a probability curve, if the peaks on the graph correspond to the levels of blackness if we extruded the levels of blackness perpendicularly to the fractal image - then I suggest that probability has Chaos built right into it and then quantum fluctuations won't be 'random' as we currently suppose, and then destiny is definately written into the most basic laws of nature.
GR and QM aren't in conflict, as if you get to the end of a series of equations and one theory concludes the other "impossible!" The two theories just don't mesh as well as we'd like, each covers different aspects of physics, and each has to be applied piecemeal to problems which cross both domains. It's messy, it's ugly, and yes, it's a problem physicists would love to solve, but it is NOT an example of anyone accepting two mutually exclusive ideas as true at the same time.
Damn you and your semantics! If there's a God, he's against semantics!
EDIT: I was going to reply but I just realized my previous post didn't turn out right (taking a circuitous route to get to the point but didn't bother completing it). It was supposed to be the Point 1 + Point 2 = Point 3 argument, where 1 and 2 are obvious and innocuous. I forget what that kind of argument is called. Therefore, you win. I'm a bit hungover today. Where's my bloody mary?
EDIT2: PS: I was referring to Descartes 'dream' argument. Think Matrix 1.
What are you doing!?!? This is the Internet! You can't concede anything! Are you trying to destroy everything we've built here? By Godwin's Law, what were you thinking!?
Now buck up, get back in there, try to ignore or misconstrue anything I might have said that might have lead to this... this... concession-sounding sort of thing. If not that, you could try getting huffy about how we're all being unfair to you, trying to censor you, how we're all hopeless cases, and storm out of the thread. Or, at the very least, make some weak-sounding excuse about needing to get back to doing real work or something like that.
Anything, anything but... this.
We'll all try to forget that this ugly and unfortunate incident ever occurred.
but why would he do this? why would he want/need/desire to be deceptive?
There is absolutely no reason why God would create a universe 3000 years ago and make it appear to be 15 billion years old. Why 15? Why not make it appear infinitely old? Why not create it last week and give us all fake memories of our lives?
If God represents anything but the truth, then God is not God. Creating something with a fake history is not in Gods realm.
I think you're right about that. I don't think God had any intention of deceiving us when He created the universe. If God lies, then He is not God. God cannot lie. He could have created an earth that did have an age to it. It seems that it's impossible to tell whether the earth is billions of years old, or thousands. The non-creationists tend to think it as billions and a lot through carbon dating and such methods. The accuracy of those methods can be in question sometimes. Creationists (most of them) will say the earth is only thousands of years old. I've heard plenty of evidence for that too. No one knows how long the days of creation were anyways. There wasn't a sun, so the whole 24 hour thing doesn't quite make sense for those days. It's really irrelevant though. my guess is that God created the earth while in process. He didn't create 1 day old trees, but whole, aged trees. The same goes for animals, all plants, and Adam obviously wasn't a newborn when he was created. Nothing would have survived if the whole food chain and ecosystem wasn't in motion. It had to start already in motion. That's just my guess. It's as good as anyone else's i suppose.
To use a more scientific example: Newtonian Physics + Quantum Mechanics = impossible. Most physicists still think they're both true, and have been searching endlessly for the missing piece that's supposed to tie them together. .
The models we use in physics are only aproximations. Both the classical mechanics and quantum mechanics models work very nicely, but on different scales.
Can I tell you explicitly, step-by-step, molecule by molecule, with a precice time log how life first arose from inanimate matter? Of course not. Not even close. Does that somehow make everything science says about evolution wrong until you get that answer?
That certainly doesn't make everything science says about evolution wrong, I agree with you on that completely. It's the whole, "we can't know everything" coming back again. The thing is, evolution gives an idea, but it isn't supported. If we have seen life come from non-life, or evidence from it, then I'll believe that. If we had all the transitional fossils that Darwin deemed necessary if his theory were to hold water, I would. We don't though. Of the millions that we should have, we have none. We don't see any animals between species in transition either. What Darwin said HAD to be there, is clearly not.
I hereby declare Shetline and Slughead to be intellectually superior to the general population. Good posts, both of you.
I hereby declare Homestar06 to have unshakable faith. Christians everywhere should admire you.
I hereby declare MarkUK to be slightly addled, and an expert in generating amusing debates and contesting points made by others in ways that tend to strike them silent.
I hereby delcare preference to be preference, opinion to be opinion, and myself to be needing to get back to studying (yes, I'm bowing out, shet, ;D.) I think we've seen pretty much all the arguments in here that I care to comment on, and so, having done so, I leave it to our Monkey descendents to decypher the meaning of all this mush.
What are you doing!?!? This is the Internet! You can't concede anything! Are you trying to destroy everything we've built here? By Godwin's Law, what were you thinking!?
Now buck up, get back in there, try to ignore or misconstrue anything I might have said that might have lead to this... this... concession-sounding sort of thing. If not that, you could try getting huffy about how we're all being unfair to you, trying to censor you, how we're all hopeless cases, and storm out of the thread. Or, at the very least, make some weak-sounding excuse about needing to get back to doing real work or something like that.
Anything, anything but... this.
We'll all try to forget that this ugly and unfortunate incident ever occurred.
That certainly doesn't make everything science says about evolution wrong, I agree with you on that completely. It's the whole, "we can't know everything" coming back again. The thing is, evolution gives an idea, but it isn't supported. If we have seen life come from non-life, or evidence from it, then I'll believe that. If we had all the transitional fossils that Darwin deemed necessary if his theory were to hold water, I would. We don't though. Of the millions that we should have, we have none. We don't see any animals between species in transition either. What Darwin said HAD to be there, is clearly not.
First of all, evolution has nothing to do with where life came from. It has to do with explaining the abundance and variance of species. Does the book title "Origin of Species" sound familiar? Evolution doesn't need to answer where life first came from any more than Newton has to explain how gravity worked. Evolution starts with the idea that life is somehow "there" to begin with, and proceeds from there.
The species evolutionary paradigm can be extended to what one might call pre-biotic evolution, to the way complex chemical systems might have developed from simpler systems, but that is a completely different matter. Whether "we have seen life come from non-life" is not only a ridiculous standard of evidence, as a bonus it's entirely beside the point.
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If we had all the transitional fossils that Darwin deemed necessary if his theory were to hold water
I have no idea what specific number of fossils, if any, Darwin might have stated were required as proof of his theory, but that hardly matters. As far as I know, this is just some Creationist fantasy. Even if not, so what? Darwin was the first word on evolution, not the last. "Origin of Species" is not a Holy Book for which every Word must be Undying Truth, lest the whole enterprise fail.
Fossil formation is rare. We're terribly unlikely ever to unearth enough fossil evidence to create something that looks like a stop-action animation of every single existing species morphing from its predecessor. We don't need to either -- the pattern established by those fossils which we have managed to find fits beautifully with evolutionary theory. It's certainly a far, far better fit than "God did it!", which doesn't even establish much of a pattern to look for. The more specific Christian Creationist "God did it!" concept (it does not merit being called a "theory") does lend itself to a prediction -- a lot of fossil repetition and sameness with very little variation, interrupted by one Big Flood, after which everything should more or less be the same.
Hah! Yeah, that works out well.
Creationists accuse evolutionists of cherry-picking data and "just so" stories and such -- and then completely outdo anything any evolutionist might ever have been guilty of with the breath-taking tapdancing they try to pull off in a vain attempt to shoehorn available evidence into a story that fits Genenis and The Flood and Noah's Ark.
Beyond fossil evidence, forms of evidence Darwin couldn't have even dreamed of have come along since his day, especially the discovery of DNA (just what the doctor ordered to explain fairly robust inheritence with some possibility of random variation) and analysis of DNA connections and rates of divergence across species and within species.
No one piece of evidence cinches the case, but the preponderance of evidence in favor of evolution is overwhelming. Despite long-discredited, yet still oft-repeated, creationist chestnuts, like that idiocy about the Moon, stupidly done calculations which claim odds like 10^500 for this or that protein, or "polonium halos" and so forth, viable evidence against evolution simply doesn't exist.
And then there's the one thing you keep failing to address... what have you got that's better?
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And what if that probability curve was explicitly defined by Chaos?
You are getting more random with each passing statement. Your scientific thought pattern is indeed Chaotic, I will grant you that.
You and I are on the same side in most arguments (I am as anti-christian as they come, for example), I just don't think that you are helping by being on my side.
And how would that be possible if quantum fluctuations are entirely random?
Because many systems don't depend upon quantum mechanics? If I get a ball and drop it from a certain height in a vacuum under the force of Earth's gravity, I can calculate exactly what's going to happen to that ball between the time I drop it and the time it hits the ground. The outcome is in no way affected by quantum mechanics.
It seems that we are about to embark upon a new direction in the thread. Do you believe in Destiny?
My question was how does life come from non-life and how does order come magically into order, and even stay there?
What is saying "God did it!" other than an explicit appeal to a magical answer?
Thermodynamics provides the answer to your order-from-nonorder question, even if you don't see that it does. Such order can be self-sustaining and increasing so long as there's a steady incoming stream of energy and a place to dump waste heat. Life is just a particularly complex form of ordered matter. Given time and enough opportunites, it seems like life can simply happen. Not magic, just thermodynamics and statistics.
Does that answer every last possible question you could ask? No. But faulting science for not answering every conceivable question is like faulting last night's dinner for not feeding you eternally. Science tries to expand our knowledge and understanding, finding the best answers it can, the most unifying, consistent, and cohesive answers it can, but those answers often lead to new questions. In fact, figuring out what the good questions are is just as important as getting answers. It's foolish to treat the fact that many answers lead to more questions as some sort of failing of science.
Can I tell you explicitly, step-by-step, molecule by molecule, with a precice time log how life first arose from inanimate matter? Of course not. Not even close. Does that somehow make everything science says about evolution (and biogenesis, which is really a separate matter from evolution, although Creationist hardly ever seem to be able to understand the difference, or the difference between evolution and cosmology for that matter) wrong until you get that answer?
Newton came up with the "law" of gravity, F = GMm/r^2. He couldn't explain squat about why one mass was attracted to another mass, but he found that if he assumed that such an attraction existed, the same kind of attraction seen on Earth when an apple falls to the ground, and applied that assumption to the planets... boom! Everything fell (so to speak) neatly into place.
Was Newton's science bad science because he assumed some weird invisible force, an unexplainable "spooky action at a distance" that drew objects toward each other?
Newton's science was good science because:
- It explained known facts about the motions of the planets.
- It was immediately useful for predicting the motions of the planets with better precision than ever before.
- It allowed others, like Edmund Halley, to make predictions of events -- like the reappearance of a comet -- that no one had been able to make before.
- It didn't pretend to answer what it couldn't answer -- it did not insist upon or rely upon any unproven model of how gravity worked.
By demanding that an evolutionist explain where life came from, how are you any different from someone demanding that Newton explain how gravity works, dismissing Newton's science until he does explain that "how" to his complete satisfaction, and pretending that a theory stating that the planets move by angels pushing them around is every bit as good as Newton's theory until Newton answers every conceivable question about his so-called gravity?All religion asside, I just can't believe that life would magically form out of nothing, and random things form into not random things unless there is something making it.
Saying little more than "God did it!", and pretending that answers everything, is by definition a magical belief. What specific predictions about the nature of life does "God did it!" lead to? What conceivable observations would make one have to revise or abandon the "God did it!" theory? What supporting evidence is there for Intelligent Design? Is there anything other than (very poor) attempts to refute evolution, with "God did it!" as the fallback because evolution supposedly doesn't cut it?
Creationism and ID fail as science because the "answers" provided leave exactly the same questions open which were supposedly being answered. Where did the complexity of life come from? God created it! Okay, where did the complexity of God come from? Gee, I dunno. He just is that way, always was. If one is going to end up assuming that something exists which is capable of the spontaneous generation of complex life, why not assume that the thing so capable is the observable universe itself? What do you gain by needlessly multiplying entities and bringing a new agency into the scene which is at least, if not more, inexplicable?
I can't prove to you that there aren't big angels out there pushing the planets around in their orbits. But F = GMm/r^2 tells me something I didn't know before, even if new questions arise. What would believing in planet-pushing angels gain me that I didn't know before? What would a fanciful combination of the two ideas -- angels who have a fancy for the equation F = GMm/r^2 -- gain me that the equation alone doesn't provide?
You don't dump a bunch of brick and concrete down and a building is formed. Things have to be specifically placed, and designed, so that the building is stands. The only explanation I can think of that would account for order is if there is a mind behind it.
All I can say is that it's a good thing the universe isn't limited by your terrible analogies, your lack of understanding of thermodynamics and self-organizing systems, and your limited scope of imagination.
Because many deterministic systems don't depend upon quantum mechanics? If I get a ball and drop it from a certain height in a vacuum under the force of Earth's gravity, I can calculate exactly what's going to happen to that ball between the time I drop it and the time it hits the ground. The outcome is in no way affected by quantum mechanics.
It seems that we are about to embark upon a new direction in the thread. Do you believe in Destiny?
No - you can calculate what is going to happen based on the scale you happen to chose to work with. Can you calculate exactly what is going to happen to the ball down to planks length or time? And thats the problem - we cannot say because at the moment, because we do not have the ability to track the ball at the quantum scale when we are looking at the whole ball.
And thats the same reason why it is not yet established that Chaos is built into the quantum scale, because if you are looking at the quantum, you cannot see the whole ball.
And when it does become possible - you very well might see what I am sugessting.
If not, then you need to ask at what scales Chaos theory starts and ends and why, and invent the mechanism for this to be so - because at the moment, this isn't known, and as far as we can see - we see chaos 'working' at pretty much all scales we look at - if we can see the whole picture.
Ps 'destiny' really depends on what mood im in. Which is goverend by the quantum interactions of my brain.
If one is going to end up assuming that something exists which is capable of the spontaneous generation of complex life, why not assume that the thing so capable is the observable universe itself?
Excellent post, Shetline.
Ps 'destiny' really depends on what mood im in. Which is goverend by the quantum interactions of my brain.
If you believe that absolutely nothing is random, I don't see how you can possibly not believe in Destiny.
If you believe that absolutely nothing is random, I don't see how you can possibly not believe in Destiny.
I dont believe that absolutely nothing is random - I cannot know that yet because it isn't known, however I believe that we have discovered a mechanism for showing how order is made out of 'apparent' disorder - and it is far simpler and more beautiful to extend this principle to the extremes of scales - because this is what Chaos is all about, repeating scales, than it is to invent a new mechanism to explain why this theory of repeating scales has certain artificial boundaries and cut off points - when nothing in the theory suggests there is a cut off point - infact quite the opposite. All that really is uncertain is not knowing what happens in pictures we can only see a small glimpse of at the moment. And we have no reason to believe that anything different 'should' happen. Unless you believe in God.
Which I do and don't depending on what mood im in.......
This is a funky julia fractal, no intelligent design, just a fundamental natural mathmatical formula. But its not random at all.
Now lets suppose the ball represents the large pink central part - we can see this easily, but on the scale of the ball to an electron - we would have to zoom up pretty radically on the fringes of the fractal to see how the fractal looked - yet we know we could do this and see a very similar image - but at that scale we would not be able to see the ball - or the central part.
All you would need to do to establish that the radically zoomed image is part of the same formula as the overview is a) know the formula that created both pictures is the same one or b) calculate the zoomed image so many times that you recreate the large image.
Possibly, as no-one yet has ever calculated the fluctuations of every miniscule bit of the ball at the electron level to recreate the whole ball, then it is not yet enough zoomed in images of the electrons to say that they are of the same mathmatical formula that creates Chaos on the level we can work at - at the moment.
Thats all im saying.
A fractal image is calculated by a mathmatical formula, and each point is coloured by an escape test to see whether that particular point escapes or goes into an infine cycle.
Now, anything that goes into a repeating cycle is traditionally coloured black, and in the image you can see that the central area is black along with common shaped offshoots. The yellow/red bits are a funky place where the formula doesn't settle on a cycle OR go of to infinty after a set number of iterations. Kind of like a 'limbo' sort of place - not reality or unreality.
What these images dont show though is the degrees in which the common black was calculated - think of these areas as 'reality' and the colours (which show how many iterations through the formula the point took to escape to infinity. - Think of these as 'unreality'
Now - what would happen if we calculated 'subtle shades of the black' - I dont know if this has been done - im trying to find out and also trying to write my own program to test this 'blackness' to see if there is anything in this idea.
Now if we used a common sense theoretical approach, I would expect to find that the degree of blackness right at the centre of the image is 'pure black' and as we travel outwards - we see that the black becomes less black - but still 'reality' so to speak.
Now this is a probability curve of the uncertainty principle here
http://people.ccmr.cornell.edu/~much...ics/node7.html
Visualize the graph as areas of 'reality' as per the fractal - anything under the line is black - where we would expect to find our particle in 'reality' and everything above it is blue or 'unreality' in the fractal.
now looking at the black areas of the fractal (which i propose are graduated blacks) - and then looking at the curve - dont the peaks of the curve 'correspond' to the areas of the 'degrees of black' in the fractal if you were to cut a horizontal cross section through 'reality' ??
IF the blackest area of the fractal corresponds with the greatest peak of the probability curve, and is where we would expect to find our 'particle' most of the time, being 'reality' as opposed to 'unreality'. Its not definately here but most probable. It certainly isn't likely in an area of 'limbo', just like the chances of finding our particle aren't likely at the far left of the graph - but still possible - and certainly not in an area undefined by the graph (which would be at the top far right) - but we know the fractal goes on forever as does the graph with less and less probability - and it is very remotely possible that we will find our electron at the other side of the universe.
Now, if it is shown that the fractal is a mathmatical representation of a probability curve, if the peaks on the graph correspond to the levels of blackness if we extruded the levels of blackness perpendicularly to the fractal image - then I suggest that probability has Chaos built right into it and then quantum fluctuations won't be 'random' as we currently suppose, and then destiny is definately written into the most basic laws of nature.
This is what I am trying to find out.
GR and QM aren't in conflict, as if you get to the end of a series of equations and one theory concludes the other "impossible!" The two theories just don't mesh as well as we'd like, each covers different aspects of physics, and each has to be applied piecemeal to problems which cross both domains. It's messy, it's ugly, and yes, it's a problem physicists would love to solve, but it is NOT an example of anyone accepting two mutually exclusive ideas as true at the same time.
Damn you and your semantics! If there's a God, he's against semantics!
EDIT: I was going to reply but I just realized my previous post didn't turn out right (taking a circuitous route to get to the point but didn't bother completing it). It was supposed to be the Point 1 + Point 2 = Point 3 argument, where 1 and 2 are obvious and innocuous. I forget what that kind of argument is called. Therefore, you win. I'm a bit hungover today. Where's my bloody mary?
EDIT2: PS: I was referring to Descartes 'dream' argument. Think Matrix 1.
Therefore, you win.
What are you doing!?!?
Now buck up, get back in there, try to ignore or misconstrue anything I might have said that might have lead to this... this... concession-sounding sort of thing. If not that, you could try getting huffy about how we're all being unfair to you, trying to censor you, how we're all hopeless cases, and storm out of the thread. Or, at the very least, make some weak-sounding excuse about needing to get back to doing real work or something like that.
Anything, anything but... this.
We'll all try to forget that this ugly and unfortunate incident ever occurred.
but why would he do this? why would he want/need/desire to be deceptive?
There is absolutely no reason why God would create a universe 3000 years ago and make it appear to be 15 billion years old. Why 15? Why not make it appear infinitely old? Why not create it last week and give us all fake memories of our lives?
If God represents anything but the truth, then God is not God. Creating something with a fake history is not in Gods realm.
I think you're right about that. I don't think God had any intention of deceiving us when He created the universe. If God lies, then He is not God. God cannot lie. He could have created an earth that did have an age to it. It seems that it's impossible to tell whether the earth is billions of years old, or thousands. The non-creationists tend to think it as billions and a lot through carbon dating and such methods. The accuracy of those methods can be in question sometimes. Creationists (most of them) will say the earth is only thousands of years old. I've heard plenty of evidence for that too. No one knows how long the days of creation were anyways. There wasn't a sun, so the whole 24 hour thing doesn't quite make sense for those days. It's really irrelevant though. my guess is that God created the earth while in process. He didn't create 1 day old trees, but whole, aged trees. The same goes for animals, all plants, and Adam obviously wasn't a newborn when he was created. Nothing would have survived if the whole food chain and ecosystem wasn't in motion. It had to start already in motion. That's just my guess. It's as good as anyone else's i suppose.
To use a more scientific example: Newtonian Physics + Quantum Mechanics = impossible. Most physicists still think they're both true, and have been searching endlessly for the missing piece that's supposed to tie them together. .
The models we use in physics are only aproximations. Both the classical mechanics and quantum mechanics models work very nicely, but on different scales.
Can I tell you explicitly, step-by-step, molecule by molecule, with a precice time log how life first arose from inanimate matter? Of course not. Not even close. Does that somehow make everything science says about evolution wrong until you get that answer?
That certainly doesn't make everything science says about evolution wrong, I agree with you on that completely. It's the whole, "we can't know everything" coming back again. The thing is, evolution gives an idea, but it isn't supported. If we have seen life come from non-life, or evidence from it, then I'll believe that. If we had all the transitional fossils that Darwin deemed necessary if his theory were to hold water, I would. We don't though. Of the millions that we should have, we have none. We don't see any animals between species in transition either. What Darwin said HAD to be there, is clearly not.
I hereby declare Homestar06 to have unshakable faith. Christians everywhere should admire you.
I hereby declare MarkUK to be slightly addled, and an expert in generating amusing debates and contesting points made by others in ways that tend to strike them silent.
I hereby delcare preference to be preference, opinion to be opinion, and myself to be needing to get back to studying (yes, I'm bowing out, shet, ;D.) I think we've seen pretty much all the arguments in here that I care to comment on, and so, having done so, I leave it to our Monkey descendents to decypher the meaning of all this mush.
mmmmm.... mush. <makes a bowl of oatmeal>
[EDIT: in seven days]
What are you doing!?!?
Now buck up, get back in there, try to ignore or misconstrue anything I might have said that might have lead to this... this... concession-sounding sort of thing. If not that, you could try getting huffy about how we're all being unfair to you, trying to censor you, how we're all hopeless cases, and storm out of the thread. Or, at the very least, make some weak-sounding excuse about needing to get back to doing real work or something like that.
Anything, anything but... this.
We'll all try to forget that this ugly and unfortunate incident ever occurred.
ARG! sorry!
Here, I'll end this according to Godwin's Law:
EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH ME IS A NAZI!
Thread over.
That certainly doesn't make everything science says about evolution wrong, I agree with you on that completely. It's the whole, "we can't know everything" coming back again. The thing is, evolution gives an idea, but it isn't supported. If we have seen life come from non-life, or evidence from it, then I'll believe that. If we had all the transitional fossils that Darwin deemed necessary if his theory were to hold water, I would. We don't though. Of the millions that we should have, we have none. We don't see any animals between species in transition either. What Darwin said HAD to be there, is clearly not.
First of all, evolution has nothing to do with where life came from. It has to do with explaining the abundance and variance of species. Does the book title "Origin of Species" sound familiar? Evolution doesn't need to answer where life first came from any more than Newton has to explain how gravity worked. Evolution starts with the idea that life is somehow "there" to begin with, and proceeds from there.
The species evolutionary paradigm can be extended to what one might call pre-biotic evolution, to the way complex chemical systems might have developed from simpler systems, but that is a completely different matter. Whether "we have seen life come from non-life" is not only a ridiculous standard of evidence, as a bonus it's entirely beside the point.
If we had all the transitional fossils that Darwin deemed necessary if his theory were to hold water
I have no idea what specific number of fossils, if any, Darwin might have stated were required as proof of his theory, but that hardly matters. As far as I know, this is just some Creationist fantasy. Even if not, so what? Darwin was the first word on evolution, not the last. "Origin of Species" is not a Holy Book for which every Word must be Undying Truth, lest the whole enterprise fail.
Fossil formation is rare. We're terribly unlikely ever to unearth enough fossil evidence to create something that looks like a stop-action animation of every single existing species morphing from its predecessor. We don't need to either -- the pattern established by those fossils which we have managed to find fits beautifully with evolutionary theory. It's certainly a far, far better fit than "God did it!", which doesn't even establish much of a pattern to look for. The more specific Christian Creationist "God did it!" concept (it does not merit being called a "theory") does lend itself to a prediction -- a lot of fossil repetition and sameness with very little variation, interrupted by one Big Flood, after which everything should more or less be the same.
Hah! Yeah, that works out well.
Creationists accuse evolutionists of cherry-picking data and "just so" stories and such -- and then completely outdo anything any evolutionist might ever have been guilty of with the breath-taking tapdancing they try to pull off in a vain attempt to shoehorn available evidence into a story that fits Genenis and The Flood and Noah's Ark.
Beyond fossil evidence, forms of evidence Darwin couldn't have even dreamed of have come along since his day, especially the discovery of DNA (just what the doctor ordered to explain fairly robust inheritence with some possibility of random variation) and analysis of DNA connections and rates of divergence across species and within species.
No one piece of evidence cinches the case, but the preponderance of evidence in favor of evolution is overwhelming. Despite long-discredited, yet still oft-repeated, creationist chestnuts, like that idiocy about the Moon, stupidly done calculations which claim odds like 10^500 for this or that protein, or "polonium halos" and so forth, viable evidence against evolution simply doesn't exist.
And then there's the one thing you keep failing to address... what have you got that's better?
Here, I'll end this according to Godwin's Law:
EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH ME IS A NAZI!
Thread over.
That's the spirit!
(Oops! I made the thread keep going...)
That's the spirit!
(Oops! I made the thread keep going...)
It's OK, I like the creationism debate.. and the purdy colors