logically speaking... say you took off your watch,took it completely apart, and threw all of the parts into a big grassy field. how many millions of years would it take for those parts to 'evolve' into your watch again?

    how much more faith it takes to believe that all things generate into something a little more advanced if left alone,even though we have examples to the contrary all around us.


  if anyone of you anti-Creationists would take a close look at how ORGANIZED this world is, you would realize that the odds of all this happening by accident are next to zero.



  oh yeah. almost forgot. to accept that this world is created is to accept that YOU are created. Can't do that, right? that would mean
that you would be held accountable to a Creator for all of your actions. What would you do THEN??

In Chaos Theory the answer is YES!

if 'the chaos theory'came from something other than nothing, where did it come from?

Quiet, now. I am trying to think......

It came from a riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

(thank you. Churchill!)

(whispering)here's another one for you...

  define energy--without using descriptions such as,"well this is what energy does..."

In physics it is "the ability to do work".

oh yeah. sound logic there, Winston.

THE Tao is like an empty bowl,
Which in being used can never be filled up.
Fathomless, it seems to be the origin of all things.
It blunts all sharp edges,
It unties all tangles,
It harmonises all lights,
It unites the world into one whole.
Hidden in the deeps,
Yet it seems to exist for ever.
I do not know whose child it is;
It seems to be the common ancestor of all, the father
of things.

doesn't ability refer to action? i.e.-what energy does; not what energy is?

"can you really get order out of disorder?"

Did your mother ever make you clean your room?

K-Mart?

Evolution on certain levels is basically a proven science. But the kind of evolution we commonly think of, such as slime to man, is conjecture.

My good friend and business partner is a trained physicist and statistician. He teaches graduate courses in quantitative methods at a local university for fun. To him, that level of mathematics is child's play.

According to him, and no one knows the math like he does, the odds of man evolving from slime to man, are zero. He believes it's much more likely that one or more "divine" events took place in which we were given a push, along with the ability to adjust to our environment as need be.

This man is a not a bible thumper or anything of that nature. He has spent quite a few years looking at this stuff just as a hobby and doing the math for fun.

Theologically, I agree.

And yet, try this expeiment:

Take a cardboard flat like is used to hold 4 6-packs of soda.

Toss in about 2 boxes worth of empty plastic shotgun hulls, like AA's, in a very careless way, so they are all laying in different directions on their sides.

Then pick up the flat and start to shuffle it a little an make it go up & down a bit.

You will start to see order coming out of chaos.

If you are really interested in grappling with these issues, read "Complexity" by James Gleick. It is very eye-openning. One thing it did for my was teach me not to mix a poor understanding of science with faith. For example, the statistician mentioned above is playing with math which most likely  assumes probablities of X*Y*Z =astronomical number of impossibilty. If his assumptions are wrong, the answer will be wrong. Take the shotgun shells. What are the chances of them aligning all in the same direction randomly? Nil. Add the influence of gravity as mentioned above, and the probablility becomes almost 1. If you realize that true randomness is extremely difficult to achieve, and that there are many events in Nature that are not random, then the natural events in question may, and sometimes will have a bias toward order that a statistician is not taking into account. I do not call into question his ability to solve a problem, but his ablilty  or insight to formulate it correctly may be another matter.

I wouldn't be too quick to assume anything about the methods this guys uses. He's a theoretical physicist first and statistician second. His knowledge of mathematics and physics is astounding. I would never assume his methodology is incorrect or lacking. The guy is too anal for that. He covers all the bases.

Well there is another difficulty in detecting randomness. It has to do with psychology and bio-psychology. The human brain is hardwired to search for and interpret patterns. Everything we hear, see, we try to fit in some sort of pattern. Randomness and mathmatical uncertainty drives humans crazy. We just cant process that kind of data.

I impose order onto chaos on a daily basis.
I clean my house and work in my garden.
I feel I can hold the Universe and Entropy at bay this way.
Just doing my part. [:D]

A case could be made that the scattered watch parts are more orderly than the assembled watch. Consider that the watch is comprised of a number of components that were all fabricated, molded or otherwise manufactured, ultimately from raw materials. As the watch parts are strewn about the field in your hypothesis, they begin to break down, over time, into their original component elements. In the big picture, the discreet collection of perhaps incompatible materials will ultimately exist as a generally uniform distribution of the original elements.

Take the same argument from the reverse angle: what if all the elements required to make said watch were manufactured to make as many watches as possible. Now, instead of having a somewhat regular distribution of certain elements, we now have a very irregular specific distribution of watches. Not only is the huge mound of watches a disorderly system, but the Earth has been cast into further disorder by mining and extracting the raw materials from the generally uniform environment.

Or maybe I just don't feel like working right now.

Anyone read "The Ninth Configuration" ?

An interesting short novel on this subject.

Ever get that feeling that you're just moving the mess around.  Thats what you are doing.  You define a control volume (your house) and you clean the disorder.  What you actually do is move the disorder out of your control volume hence the perception that S < 0.  but if you consider the entire universe as your control volume S > 0.  The best you can hope for is S (entropy) = 0.  But if we did things so S = 0, they would happen so slowly that nothing useful would ever happen.  So, HR, you really arent keeping the universe in check, you are contributing to the ultimate demise of the universe [;D]

I guess with that in mind, guys are better @ keepping entropy in check, because it takes us forever (so I am told) to get anything done.  he he he [peep]

here ends the lesson.

Oooops you made a mistake in reporting what your friend and partner said....slime----man= 0 probability. no one with half a brain would say this naked without qualifiers. It would go something like this" In a closed system without outside influence, including but not limited to acts of god, aliens, or DNA factors that are not understood at this time, the possibility of man evolving naturally from slime are approaching zero probability. Otherwise you have an idiot with a degree and an axe to grind against Christians. Unfortunately the Earth is not a closed system and continuing to argue this point without knowing exactly what objects or manned craft or gods have walked here, is pointless and only reveals the personal bias of the people involved.

Belfry, this brings to mind the Laws of Conservation of Dirt.

Law 1: Dirt can be neither created nor destroyed, merely moved.
Law 2: To get something clean, you must get something else dirty.
Law 3: You *can* however get everything else dirty without getting anything clean.

 What are the odds of galaxies occuring by chance?  None!  Add to the mix the presence of gravity, and voila, chance is gone and is replaced with a foregone conclusion.

[ROFL2][ROFL][LOL]

There is another problem with the original argument.

Watches are inanimate, inorganic object incapable of evolution themselves.

HOWEVER they ARE a product of HUMAN evolution. We evolved to the point we could make such a device. The watch is the product of intelligent design-by us-and therefore offers no point of reference to the natural world.

what is it with these 'anti-evolutionists' and their ridiculous strawman arguments against it?

If you want to dispute the theory, fine, but do it one its merits or lack there of, to use silly things like 'cat/dog' crossbreeding (which was in another thread) or 'disassembled watches' to 'prove' that it cannot happen is not worth it to debate.  

One idea though about chaos and order.

Which is more 'orderly' a uniform universe with each molecule seperated by a perfectly equal distance from each other, or one in which Galaxies have formed?

The "Who Created The Creator" bit has always bothered me, its one of many reasons i belive Christianity is BS.

If God created Earth. Who created him? who gave him this power? Is there someone bigger we should be worshiping.
Standard Christian Response : He just came into being.
So they belive he came into being like i belive the universe just came into being.

What about all the other planets? Failed Experiments? Why all the other stars? whats the point of them if we are it. we only need our own sun to survive. also our planet and moon are really all that we need. not very orderly to have so much extra useless stuff lying around.

not_by_works, how do you know what is logical? It is entirely possible that the most disorganized form of certain chemicals is actually what we know as life. Is it not? Maybe life evolved because it is more efficient than the original conditions from which it evolved.

not_by_works,

WADR your watch example carries a misapplication of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  Of course the probability of the parts organizing themselves into a watch is incredibly low, but in fact evolution of ever more complex life forms is favored by the tendency for entropy of a closed system to increase.

First of all, the Earth is not a closed system.  The planet is constantly bathed in energy from an outside source:  The Sun.  All physical and biological processes on Earth are driven ultimately by solar power, except for the few that are powered by heat flowing outward as the Earth gradually cools.  Once you introduce an external power source, any assumption that the Second Law requires chaos to increase within a system like the Earth becomes totally invalid.

Think about a campfire.  You organize pieces of fuel in a manner conducive to evolution of the fire, and as the fire grows the flames get larger and more organized.  That process continues until the fuel supply dwindles.

As living organisms our "job" in the world of thermodynamics is to consume fuel ultimately (in most cases) by combining carbon and hydrogen with oxygen.  The resources of the Earth which contain stored solar energy in the form of chemical bonds, are the wood, and we as organisms are the flame.  Without us the energy would stay stored except when fires break out and release some of it.  Our presence ACCELERATES the progress of increasing entropy, therefore the Second Law of Thermodynamics is completely supportive of biological evolution.

Go ahead and believe whatever your faith requires, if that is the focus of your life.

[peep]

BTW - The following is REQUIRED READING for anyone who wishes to argue about chaos or entropy or "time's arrow":  [url]http://www.secondlaw.com/[/url]

And for a more advanced discussion of the mathematics of probability in this context see [url]http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probability.html[/url]

Huh, I've never heard a single Christian say God just came into being. In fact, every Christian I've talked to about it said God has always been, and always will be. Maybe we just have the Bible believing Christians where I'm from...

But then the ATF busts in and claims you are making a bomb.

[b]can you really get order out of disorder ?  [/b]

Not on this board!
[img]http://www.click-smilie.de/sammlung/mittelgrosse/medium-smiley-124.gif[/img]

Hell, I can't even get someone to take my order at Dairy Queen!

Your whole premise is ludicrous for several very simple reasons.
1)The terms "chaos" and "order" are human conceits, not real states.  The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that higher energy states tend toward equilibrium with lower energy states.  This means, for one thing, that the original state of the universe just after the Big Bang, a morass of supercharged, superhot plasma was a HIGHER energy state than the stars and planets into which it congealed as it cooled.  The stars and planets LOOK more "orderly" to us humans, but they are actually a LOWER energy state.  
2)Life reverses entropy locally and temporarily.  You can argue that life was created and you might be right, but the fact is that if it was NOT created then no divine power was necessary for it to get to where it is today.  
3)The world is highly INTERCONNECTED but it is not organized in the sense that everything is efficient.  Most natural processes are highly wasteful and ruthlessly efficient only in reproducing life.  Humans are actually pretty poorly designed for the way we live...if you think they are designed at all.
4)Lastly, your comparison would be apt ONLY if we had a designed vs a non-designed universe to compare with one another.  We do not.  We can't make inferences based on us, because that is circular reasoning.