I wrote:On Tuesday 18 April 2006 05:45 am, you wrote:
Randall Phelps wrote:Dear sir:
I am disturbed by the tone of the posts on your website. The irrationality evident in the e-mails you have posted and your responses to them detract from the positions they espouse. I am a mechanical engineer. I am a "young Earth creationist". My belief is motivated by my relationship with Jesus Christ. Science is the tool used to reveal the link between cause and effect. I have not seen evidence which reveals evolution as the cause of life on Earth.
What professional association do you belong to? The Engineering Code of Ethics prohibits the use of your title in such a manner as to fraudulently misrepresent yourself as an authority in areas where you lack the necessary training and/or experience, and by presuming to contradict qualified biologists on their own field of specialization rather than accepting their conclusions, you appear to be doing just that. Especially when you make a point of attaching your professional qualifications to your claim.
Randall Phelps wrote:What I have seen is methods of science used to form a plausible story. It is always easier to believe a story you like and to not look too critically at it. I applaud the forum you have developed, not for its quality or format, but because of your efforts to be open to presented evidence. I applaud your committment to your family. The well-being of family is something that should concern everyone. So that you may feel that my e-mail has some intrinsic value, I will attempt to present some arguement(s) in supporting creationism.
A.)The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, upon in-depth study, in reality declares that the result of any process is the furtherance of the lowest energy state. There are arguements that the sun could supply the energy to the life form and that the entropy of the whole system could still increase even though the organism developed into a higher state of organization. This is a plausible arguement, except that the supply of energy alone would cause degradation. Processes such as oxidation and fermentation are such that complexity can be a midpoint in the progression between energy states.
That's utter nonsense, and if you are actually a practicing mechanical engineer rather than a bluffer, then I have serious misgivings about your professional competence. Structure and entropy are not related in the manner you describe, as any university thermodynamics professor should have explained to you at the undergrad level. It is possible to have a very complicated structure which also has a high level of entropy. Moreover, this "degradation" argument should lead to the conclusion that a newborn baby is "degraded" compared to a newly fertilized egg, since it has absorbed enormous amounts of mass/energy relative to its original size. Yet we know that a newborn baby is far more complex and developed than a newly fertilized egg.
Randall Phelps wrote:Much of what is presented as the case for evolution is based on examples without telling the whole story. A "smoke and mirrors" approach to rationalism. The apparent complexity is at the expense of information or sustainability, either of which make evolution quite difficult.
This is a meaningless argument. If you are a REAL mechanical engineer, then show me the thermodynamic equations controlling the relations you describe.
Randall Phelps wrote:B.)Radiometric dating is valid if the assumptions inherent in its application are true. However, even radiometric dating does not conclusively give an age to once living organisms due to the variation of carbon 14 in the atmosphere and the margin or error inherent in dating young ages by elements with long half-lives.
A real mechanical engineer would understand that every type of measuring device or procedure has a margin of error, and the margin of error for C14 dating is based on the change in C14 atmospheric levels with environmental conditions and solar activity: parameters that are not absolutely fixed but whose range of variation is nowhere near great enough to compress 30k year datings into a 6k year timeframe. As for dating young ages by elements with long half-lives, that is not done; elements with long half-lives are used for dating very OLD objects, not young ones. That's the whole point of having different methods based on elements with different half-lives. You use short half-life elements to date newer objects, and long half-life elements to date older objects.
Randall Phelps wrote:I wish to encourage you to examine data presented by both sides of the arguement. I have seen that the data presented is that which most agrees with the favored idea. My point is that if it is an indeterminate result then admit it and move on to a more productive area of research.
I have examined both sides' arguments thoroughly, and found the creationist arguments to be lacking not only in technical merit, but also in honesty. It goes without saying that those arguments have not survived peer review by qualified personnel in the appropriate fields, they are not in agreement with accepted conclusions in the appropriate fields, and their proponents have a nasty habit of fabricating their credentials, most notably in the case of "Dr" Kent Hovind, whose degree comes from a diploma mill with no faculty, no campus, and no full-time students.
