Subject: Physics and creation

Topics:
}Creationism deserves equal time
}Evolutionists themselves admit they have no proof
}evolutionists themselves have admitted to flaws in their arguement.
}some scientists don't agree 
}Evolution isn't a science 
}Life is too complex to have happened by chance. 
}Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
}Methods of dating the earth are inaccurate. 
}Radioactive dating can't be calibrated. 
}radioactive decay rates did not remain constant
}the creation of matter or energy is not now taking place,

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}- Creationism deserves equal time because evolution is only a theory.
But a theory in the scientific sense of the word, meaning that it explains
a wide range of phenomena and that there's lots of data to back it up.
    Creationism, on the other hand, isn't even a theory; it's an assertion.

"Equal time" in what? In schools in general, or in science classes?
Science classes are suppose to teach science.  There are two criteria
for this:
1. It must be falsifiable i.e. there must be some way to show that the
   theory is incorrect.  The theory must be testable.  Evolution is,
   in that there can be things specified which, if they can be verified,
   would disprove evolution.  Creationism allows no such test.
2. It must be able to make predictions i.e. it must be able to tell
   you how something WILL occur (and then you must be able to verify
   the accuracy of the prediction).  The theories which compose
   evolution are useful in this regard in that they have made predictions
   concerning population densities, physiologies, chemistries, fossil
   find forecasts,...  Creationism does none of this.  At best, its
   "predictions" are either in the past (already happened) or 
   unverifiable.

}- Evolutionists themselves admit they have no proof. 

That is because science doesn't "prove": it shows possibilities and disproves
things and makes predictions.  
Science doesn't deal in proof.  It deals in evidence.  Evolution has LOTS of
evidence.


}   Twenty objections admitted: evolutionists themselves have admitted
}   to flaws in their arguement.

Isn't it nice to have a system that you can critize and test?
The only system which has no flaws is one in which those flaws are either
defined away or ignored.  We call this "dogma".  The presence of these
flaws reveils the presence of active investigation into the limits.
We call this "science".

}   Scientists condemn evolution: some scientists don't agree etc. ....

Then the same argument disproves Creationism, too, since many (most?)
theologians don't agree with it.

What else has 100% concurrence?  Gravity is not 100% concurred with, either.

}- Evolution isn't a science because you can't observe things that happened
}  millions of years ago.

Buy you can observe the RESULTS of things that happened millions of years
ago.  And then, by using basic scientific knowledge, extrapolate back.
And by observing trends within the period you can derive general rules
which may then be used for predictions into the future.
Just the historical observation is not evolution.

}Evolution is not so much a science as it is a philosophy or an attitude
}of mind... it is manifestly impossible to prove they (evolutionary
}changes of the past) actually did take place.

I suppose that, if he saw a open square in the wall and pieces of glass
by it and a rock sitting amongst the glass that he could draw no conclusions
about the possible presence in the past of a window...
 
}- Life is too complex to have happened by chance. 

	Another is the "randomness argument". What is "random",
anyway? We are never told. It says that self organization cannot
occur because the process is "blind" and "random" that is supposed to
drive it. Never mind that the system has a finite number of states it
can occupy and its history can constrain its future states. This
borrows from the thermodynamic argument the confusion over entropy and
open system states.

The theory of evolution doesn't say it did happen by chance.  This argument
completely ignores natural selection.
Please read:

Life in Darwin's Universe
        G. Bylinsky, Omni Sept 79
 
The Evolution of Ecological Systems
        May, Scientific American, Sept 1978
 
Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life
        Dickerson, Scientific American, Sept 1978
 
The Evolution of the Earliest Cells
        Schopf, Scientific American, Sept 1978

The Evolution of Multicellular Plants and Animals
        Valentine, Scientific American, Sept 1978

It is easy to get VERY complicated systems
containing a tremendous amount of information starting from very simple,
low information systems.  Two methods:

1. fractal structures - start with a very simple rule and repeat it over
and over and over.  The resulting structure can be (usually is) VERY
complicated, but the formation equations can be very, very simple.  And
the universe has had a long time to do so.  Example:  Look at a snowflake.

2. chaos - You can get very, very complicated systems if you use nonlinearities
in the progression.  That is why weather forecasting doesn't work.

Complexity does not imply design.  Recursion or nonlinearity work quite well.
And the word is recursive and very non-linear.

}- Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Not true.  The 2nd law of thermodynamics applies only to closed systems.  The
Earth is not a closed system.

That if thermo could somehow forbid evolution, then it would also 
forbid babies from growing to be adults, and parents from having children. 
In fact, we are agents of entropy: we organize our bodies at the expense 
of the organization of our environment, which we digest and burn.

Creationists often (ab)use
the Second Law of Thermodynamics, apparently not realizing that it explicitly
states, "...in a closed system...".  By definition, a closed system cannot
contain anything external to itself.  A Creator who is entirely bounded by
His own creation seems non-sensical, and I can't imagine that many creationists
would accept such a limited God anyway.  Thus, God and Thermodynamics are
mutually exclusive; to invoke the Second Law is to claim that God left!!!!!

A subsequent portion of the outline again invokes entropy, stating that
 "all species are degenerating, since disorder must increase".
Ignoring the Theological arguments for the moment, we reiterate,
"...in a CLOSED system...".  Earth is hardly a closed system.  To find a
*LARGE* source of negative entropy, one need only look upward on a clear day.
The sun delivers approximately 1 horse-power per square meter (sorry for the
mixed units, I don't recall the conversion factor to joules/sec)
of free energy to the biosphere.  Likewise, meteors shower us with several
tonnes per day of extra mass, some of it in pre-biotic form - i.e. complex
carbon molecules such as formaldehyde and others.  Larger objects such as
comets and Icarus class asteroid strikes transfer huge amounts of mass,
energy, and momentum to the earth.  Orbital perturbations and decay, friction
from the moon's gravity, and radioactive decay, all add to the total.
Sorry, entropy as a disproof of cosmological and biological evolution simply
won't wash.  Spread the word.  
[It appears that, more recently, the creationists have been hammered enough
with the inapplicability of the Second Law of Theormdynamics that they
have modified it slightly -- the reference is now to a closed *universe*,
not a closed Earth; the rest of the argument remains essentially 
unchanged.]

Creationists say that systems cannot self-organize because that would violate
the second law of thermodynamics, never mind that such systems are not at
equillibrium and are open systems.

}- Methods of dating the earth are inaccurate. 

Exactly what is meant by "inaccurate" leaves much to be desired.  
Please see the August 1989 Scientific American article on the Age
of the Earth. (page 90, by Lawrence Badash, "The Age-of-the-Earth
Debate")

}  - Radioactive dating can't be calibrated. 
You are in this case Dead Wrong. Dating of ancient rocks by
radiometric methods (e.g., Uranium-Lead, Potassium-Argon, Rubidium-
Strontium) does NOT, repeat NOT depend upon our having available a sample
of known age to calibrate the method. Indeed, this is PRECISELY WHY these
methods are so useful. The only calibration required is the measurement
of decay rates, which can be done IN THE LABORATORY. Furthermore, these
methods can be used in ways that do NOT, repeat NOT depend on any
assumptions about the initial amounts of the various isotopes involved.
Please read the section in Chapter 17 of Strahler's book, _Science and
Earth History_.

It is true that Carbon-14 dates must be calibrated for variations in the
amount of 14C produced in the atmosphere; however, the corrections are
small (~10%) and affect only recent ages (~50,000 years). This method is
not used to date rocks.

- The guy who thought that radioactive dating required knowing the
  initial amount of lead. He apparently had never heard of isotopes,
  either. He made a big thing about a science he was a master of: he wrote 
  its name on the blackboard: "numerical analysis". He indicated how this
  allowed him to "proved" that radiodating was wildly inaccurate. No
  mention of the fact that the earth was still real old. He encouraged
  people to go buy a book on numerical analysis: he gave its name. He
  didn't bother to encourage people to buy a book on dating, perhaps
  because he hadn't read one himself ?


} radioactive decay rates did not remain constant, so you can't
}accurately date things

    If radioactive decay rates were to change, the structure of stars 
    would be affected. But even very distant stars (whose light has been 
    travelling towards us for very long times) have the structure that is 
    predicted by theory assuming present decay rates. They do not have 
    the structure that would be predicted for them if the decay rates 
    were many orders of magnitude larger.
    
    There are two major kinds of radioactive decay, alpha decay and beta 
    decay. They are due to different physical processes and are governed 
    by different natural constants. If the decay rates were to change in 
    time, this would produce discrepant dates in rocks that can be dated 
    independently by several different decay series. These discrepancies 
    are not observed. 
    
    If the decay rates were large enough to produce 4.5 billion years' of 
    apparent ageing in only 6000 years of wall-clock time, the decay 
    rates would have had to have been millions to billions of times as 
    large when Adam and Eve were around as now. The heat generated would 
    have melted the earth, which would still be molten. Furthermore, the 
    earth would have been too radioactive to support life then. Adam and 
    Eve would have glowed for other reasons than their nearness to God.

}These laws affirm the fact that the creation of matter or energy is not
}know taking place, and, in fact, that the available energy of the universe
}as a whole is continually running down rather than building up.

Point of fact, matter IS being created currently.  Also destroyed.
See "virtual particles".  And the "available energy of the universe
as a whole" says nothing about localities within it...