I got an email from a creationist

[Zor]

Recently at university, i was talking with a woman who was interested in a book i was reading, which is Dawkins' The God Delusion which i had recently bought and we got into a bit of a debate on the issue of Religion and Atheism, eventually reveiling herself to be a YEC. We talked about the subject of evolution and eventually she asked for my Email adress. Today she emailed me on the subject of Evolution. The Email reads as below...

Hey Leighton,

Here is some food for thought concerning our discussion the other day!

I'm not exactly sure how to begin, but i think the origins of everything
would be a good place to start. The heavens and the earth were created by
God, in the beginning. God was, is and is to come...this would explain the
origins of everything. We exist because we were created by God to exist, to
serve Him, for His glory. Evolution cannot expain the origins of everything
because there is no way that everything that exists today and the order in
which it exists came from nothing and then evolved into what it is today by
random chance and selection. (even if evolution were true, it still does
not explain how everything got there in the first place).

It takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does creation because
creation has a Creator, a Maker of the earth, the heavens, life itself.
Evolution says that everything came from nothing. Doesn't it make a ton
more sense to believe that we were created by an Almighty God than from
nothing 'a bazillion' years ago?

Take for example, an airplane. There is careful design and thought put into
an airplane. It must be DESIGNED and then built, it wasn't as if there was
an enormous storm and then POOF! one day there is a brand spanking new
airplane sitting on the runway, ready for use. (the 'airplane' i am
referring to is the earth and how everything in it works, for example-the
water cycle, the human body, etc).

You had mentioned in class that there was plenty of evidence for evolution.
I'm wondering what the specific examples are and the proofs behind them.

Also, you had mentioned that everything that exists today is derived from
one cell. How is that possible, what with the diversity of living things on
earth? If everything that exists is derived from one cell, why would there
not continue to be more and more life forms evolving, coming into existence
(like bacteria reproducing-wouldn't more and more life forms continue to be
reproduced?) Its not as if the entire evolutionary process would be stopped!

I'm also just curious about what your basis for being an athiest is-do you
just not believe that God exists at all, or is it that you don't want to
acknowledge His existence?

There is so much more that I could and would like to write (as proof for
creation), but I'll just leave it at that for now. I look forward to your
response!

cheers,
nicole

Zor

[Surlethe]

She just doesn't understand what evolution is. If you're looking for a bit of fun, you could try to give her the Imperial Smackdown(TM), although that might not be the best idea. The other way you could do this is approach her carefully and ask her if she really understands what evolution is, and then explain it to her. If you have the patience, it's possible to "convert" someone from a YEC to a theistic evolutionist -- I've done it myself.

If you choose the latter approach, this website might be helpful.

[R. U. Serious]

That email is pretty unspectacular, which is a good thing, because it means, she simply might not have yet stumbled on any information which challenges her views. Try pointing out that this discussion has been had many, many times, and that she can read up on it by comparing talkorigins and AIG (or whatever) side by side. Not only will this clear up her knowledge-deficit, but it will also uncloak the dishonesty of creationists/IDists in how they will always misrepresent evolution to show it's supposed flaws.

This is a good starting point (leading to many other sub-faqs):
http://talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html

Of course she might be "stuck" in her ways, in which case there's not much you'll be able to tell her anyhow. Her having access to something like Talkorigins, and some time to ponder over what she'll be able to read, IMHO has the best outlook for success. Most of all, she'll be of the opinion that it was herself, who convinced her of the correctness (which is always easier for a lot of people), than if you tried to "correct" her.

[Vehrec]

Hey Leighton,

Here is some food for thought concerning our discussion the other day!

I'm not exactly sure how to begin, but i think the origins of everything
would be a good place to start. The heavens and the earth were created by
God, in the beginning. God was, is and is to come...this would explain the
origins of everything. We exist because we were created by God to exist, to serve Him, for His glory. Evolution cannot expain the origins of everything because there is no way that everything that exists today and the order in which it exists came from nothing and then evolved into what it is today by random chance and selection. (even if evolution were true, it still does not explain how everything got there in the first place).

It isn't the place of the theory of Evolution to explain how life came to be, or how the universe came to be. Evolution by Natural Selection is a theory about how life adapts to fill it's enviroment and adapt to changes in said enviroment. If you want to explore the origins of life, I'd be willing to talk about Ambiogenesis. If you want to explore the origins of Everything, the big Bang is what you want to look at. That theory at least, is Catholic Aproved believe it or not.
As to the theory that we were created to worship and serve some greater being, I don't think that he was so great. My back is killing me, couldn't God have done a better job designing somthing so critical as the human spine? Why do we need an appendix for if all we are for is being good Christians/Jews/Muslims?

It takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does creation because creation has a Creator, a Maker of the earth, the heavens, life itself. Evolution says that everything came from nothing. Doesn't it make a ton more sense to believe that we were created by an Almighty God than from nothing 'a bazillion' years ago?

Not really. God would have had to make somthing from nothing to and I've never seen evidence of God's ability to do so. I've never even seen evidence of God(bible doesn't count to me). On the other hand, Evolution produces a mass of evidence so great that it illuminates all of the science of biology. As a matter of fact Theodosius Dobzhansky once said that, and I quote.

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of Evolution.

Strong words, but words backed up by almost a centruy and a half of evidence. Evolution has been going on since that first metobolic mechanism managed to store itself in RNA, and it will hopefully continue long after we are gone.
And Bazillion isn't a number.

Take for example, an airplane. There is careful design and thought put into an airplane. It must be DESIGNED and then built, it wasn't as if there was an enormous storm and then POOF! one day there is a brand spanking new airplane sitting on the runway, ready for use. (the 'airplane' i am referring to is the earth and how everything in it works, for example-the water cycle, the human body, etc).

The earth is part lucky break, part result of life. It was pure luck that put it here. And the reason that we are here to observe conditions so well suited to us is because life has evolved in this enviroment for over a billion years, ever since the atmosphere became oxygenated.

You had mentioned in class that there was plenty of evidence for evolution. I'm wondering what the specific examples are and the proofs behind them.

One proof is found in your cells. Your DNA is remarkably similar to that of every other lifeform on earth. It uses the same coding sequence, and produces protiens in the same way. You have more in common with the Eukaryotes, who share with you membranes inside the cell, symbiotic Mitochondria with their own DNA, and the specific mechanism of DNA replication needed to work with your chromosomes as oposed to circular bacterial DNA. As we keep moving up the Bush of Life and aproach our own twig, more and more of how your cells, tissues and organs work are conserved. Fish have two chambered hearts, and jaws made of just a few bones. Reptiles have three chambered hearts, and more bones in their jaws because the bones from the gills have moved into them. Mammals either fuse these bones together or move them to our middle ear, and our hearts beat with four complete chambers.
Other Evidence? Sometimes Whalers pull a dead whale in with tiny legs. Some Amphibians, subjected to specific chemicals, never leave the larval stage, and keep their gills even as they become sexually active. There is an island in the Galapogos where in dry years the birds that survive are weighted towards the ones with thick bills that can crack seeds easily. If that last one isn't evidence of Natural Selection I don't know what is.

Also, you had mentioned that everything that exists today is derived from one cell. How is that possible, what with the diversity of living things on earth? If everything that exists is derived from one cell, why would there not continue to be more and more life forms evolving, coming into existence (like bacteria reproducing-wouldn't more and more life forms continue to be reproduced?) Its not as if the entire evolutionary process would be stopped!

I don't know myself how life got started. It's a bit of a mystery because the entire early Earth where life got started is lost to us now. We have to guess, and we can make some ok guesses based on what we do know. But those conditions where life got it's start are either gone or overrun with life right now. And let me tell you somthing, life likes to eat other life. If new life got it's start on Earth right now, it might find itself gobbled up before it even splits in two, and that's assuming it can find enough of the raw chemicals lieing around to assemble itself! It just wouldn't be well suited to its enviroment, being so new, and would be promptly devoured and outcompeted by species that have been in existance for billions of years.

I'm also just curious about what your basis for being an athiest is-do you just not believe that God exists at all, or is it that you don't want to acknowledge His existence?

You say that like God is a proven thing. I see the sun every day. It gives me heat, light and puts all the food on my table. I don't worship the sun, and it is very important to my life. Why should I worship somthing so utterly beyond my experiances as a man on the other side of the clouds? I don't need assurances that I am loved or that there is eternal life out there. One is great, thanks.

[Rye]

Well dude, this is how I would reply, I even tried to keep the meanness and argumentation to a minimum. It's

Hey Leighton,

Here is some food for thought concerning our discussion the other day!

I'm not exactly sure how to begin, but i think the origins of everything
would be a good place to start. The heavens and the earth were created by
God, in the beginning.

This is ethnic folklore, it is not a conclusion anyone can come to if they don't already believe in gods and then the specific judeo-christian one. This sort of statement is just proof you want to believe in christianity, it's not realistic or convincing to anyone who's not already believing it or wants to believe it or something really similar.

God was, is and is to come...this would explain the
origins of everything.

It doesn't explain anything. It's being ignorant about a given subject and then relabeling that absence of knowledge the patriarch of one particular mythology, it's no more an explanation than lightning coming from Zeus or kettles boiling because pixies magic heat into existence around the gas source. If you claimed God made cars work, what would that explain?

We exist because we were created by God to exist, to
serve Him, for His glory.

Glory is a facet of human ego. Why would an omnipotent entity feel compelled to make anything to sustain its own ego? Why can't you see "for his glory" is an obvious case of human psychological projection?

Evolution cannot expain the origins of everything
because there is no way that everything that exists today and the order in
which it exists came from nothing and then evolved into what it is today by
random chance and selection. (even if evolution were true, it still does
not explain how everything got there in the first place).

You are clearly ignorant of evolution, I won't speak any more about it because I doubt your sincerity on wanting to know more about it. If you actually want to know more about it, read about it from scientific rather than creationist literature. I will probably not do it justice.

It takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does creation because
creation has a Creator, a Maker of the earth, the heavens, life itself.
Evolution says that everything came from nothing. Doesn't it make a ton
more sense to believe that we were created by an Almighty God than from
nothing 'a bazillion' years ago?

No, it doesn't make sense. Even if your charicture of evolution was what biology as a field presented as the ToE (it isn't), even so, it wouldn't make life being made by magic, complete with clay men and riblet women and talking snakes anything believable. That would still be nonsensical any day of the week.

Think about it, does God make kettles boil, or is it just heat? Are the rules of heat laid down by God or are they just natural? Without resorting to the bible, why would you think any gods are involved in kettles boiling?

Also, you had mentioned that everything that exists today is derived from
one cell. How is that possible, what with the diversity of living things on
earth? If everything that exists is derived from one cell, why would there
not continue to be more and more life forms evolving, coming into existence
(like bacteria reproducing-wouldn't more and more life forms continue to be
reproduced?) Its not as if the entire evolutionary process would be stopped!

All life on earth shares most of its genes with everything else. It's a simple fact that all life on earth is one giant family. Look at you, you started out as two cells that mixed genetic material and that material gave one cell the chemical relationships to divide into multiple cells, grow limbs and organs and the rest of it so you would be able to survive outside your mother. Everything on Earth starts out much the same.

I'm also just curious about what your basis for being an athiest is-do you
just not believe that God exists at all, or is it that you don't want to
acknowledge His existence?

Every religion has to give some sort of rationalisation as to why their god seems to be imaginary. If you don't accept that rationalisation to begin with, it's easy. Just like if you don't accept the rationalisation for why santa doesn't exist, you can conclude that your parents made him (and millions of other gods that you find just as whacky as I find yours) up. Same thing with God, only this time, human societies made him up and most adults never grow out of it. He even has many of the same properties, he sees everything you do, he keeps a list of it all, he has a big white beard, and after death he either gives you eternal presents or eternal coal.

I have to ask you why you don't think Heaven and Hell were just made up by some guys that tried to make people behave just like Santa's presents and coal were made up to make kids behave? If you wanted people to behave, wouldn't the perfect place for a carrot and stick be beyond the grave, where nobody can prove you wrong? And they would teach their kids about these places (that you have no proof for whatsoever) and the kids would believe it just like they believe in Santa.

Only now, God is a cosmic Santa, he hides behind the big bang and people really believe hard in a collection of books and hymn sheet of anti-evolution arguments because their parents tell them to. Another way of thinking of it is that God used to be in a physical castle, above the clouds. Then we created planes and flew above the clouds, we saw there was only molten rock beneath the surface of the planet, no demons or wailing souls. Then God was in space, heaven a paradise planet, then we looked out into space with radio telescopes, we got to the moon, it's only a matter of time before we reach Mars. Now God hides behind the big bang and death. always retreating with every new bit of knowledge.

The more you think about it, the more imaginary he seems. It's no wonder hardcore christians are so antagonistic towards science and liberal philosophy that examines each case individually and weighs it on its merits instead of appealling to what may be the mistranslated and misinterpreted intent of a long dead, bronze-age goat herder. There's doing what other people tell you to do, out of fear of Santa and out of the desire to get in his good books, and then there's doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do, in which case it will stand on its own.

In closing, I only ask that you do one thing. This thing is not public, you don't even have to tell me you did it, it's up to you entirely. I would ask that one night, when you'd usually pray or talk to God in your mind, you make the decision to be totally honest with yourself and you ask the voice you think is God whether it is actually just you talking to yourself. Then don't let it answer straight away. Just give it a few moments and then be totally honest with yourself and let the answer that, under it all, you know to be true come forward. That's it.

[Zor]

My responce...

Hey, here is the response, I decided to address this sort of thing in a point by point format, hope you enjoy...

"Evolution cannot explain the origins of everything because there is no way that everything that exists today and the order in which it exists came from nothing and then evolved into what it is today by random chance and selection. (even if evolution were true, it still does not explain how everything got there in the first place)."

The last bit you got right, the theory of Evolution by means of natural selection does not cover the actual creation of the universe, evolution covers life and how complex life arises from simple life. The formation of stars and planets form is something that we have deducted from is based around gravity and centrifugal force, and we have observed Nebulae were stars that are forming in a similar fission to what stars formed as theory has predicted. Through observation of the natural world, in this case galactic drift, we have concluded that the entire universe comes from the Big Bang, in which a quantum singularity exploded under pressure. As for were the mass from a commonly an idea called the big crunch Theory. According to which before our universe, its major stars all burned up and became black holes, said black holes eventually sucked in the remaining matter and themselves, eventually all matter is brought into them and it and a new big bang happens. That universe began
in the same manner, as did the one before that and so on. Nothing is ultimately created or destroyed, just reshaped over and over and over again.

As for weather or not the universe needs a reason to exist, the answer is no. lets take for example a rock, a piece of Granite about twenty centimeters in diameter and five centimeters high that was once part of a greater lying at the bottom of a riverbed smoothed out by Erosion. Does it have a reason to exist, no. It just broke off and was smoothed by the forces of nature which are run by the forces behind the universe (Electromagnetism, gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces). It can gain a purpose if someone comes along and says that the rock would be useful for building a home or being thrown by a medieval siege weapon or something. The difference between a rock and a lifeform is that life does have a purpose to exist, in which to spread its genes to the next generation, sapient life like ourselves can transcend natural selection and give our lives its own purpose.

"It takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does creation because
creation has a Creator, a Maker of the earth, the heavens, life itself.
Evolution says that everything came from nothing. Doesn't it make a ton
more sense to believe that we were created by an Almighty God than from
nothing 'a bazillion' years ago?"

To be blunt No, It does not.

As for why, think of it like this. We know that the Material world exists, we can experience it through a series of sensory tools that our body possesses, we don't need faith that water is fluid because we can put our hands in it and watch it pour out of flasks. The world of the Divine however, is separated from our world, it can't be quantified and its existence not confirmed, we can't send a probe to it or investigate it under a microscope or with quantum equations. In non religious terms, think of it like this. Your walking across the bridge one morning next to the legislative building one day and you see gathered on the path along the shoreline a tight cluster of a few dozen adult white ducks and you think, during the night a alien spacecraft came in and dropped those ducks there because they know that people like feeding ducks. Its not as if you can say that it for sure did NOT happen and it does explains how in a nice little package. But chances are there is another ex
planation that does not need to invoke these extraterrestrial life forms randomly dropping ducks.

If we go back in time five hundred thousand years when our species was in its infancy and our ability to think we get this scenario arising. Back then people were curious as to things like why is there lightning during a thunderstorm or why does the sun rise or how did all this came to be. They did not have the tools nor had they developed the scientific mindset to study the world arround them and come up with the answers. They had no choice but to come up with a set of beliefs based on outside forces that made them and pushed the sun across the sky. And because humans have a tendency to anthromorpisize (to make things humanlike) things they slapped a human face on it. As humans spread across the world the different tribes came up with there own takes on it. Getting the gods to do you favors became a big thing so people developed rituals to appease them and those who were well versed in mythology became prominent. With agriculture you get specializations in jobs among people
such as potters, weavers and priests. People in power claim divine favor to back themselves up. Wars between civilizations become wars between pantheons of gods. Atheism is banned because people fear that if people don't conduct there rituals bad things will happen. Most religions develop a Head god with subordinate gods and eventually one group decides to drop the subordinates and has one god and declares that foreign gods are just demons and you get abrahamatic religion.

"Take for example, an airplane. There is careful design and thought put into
an airplane. It must be DESIGNED and then built, it wasn't as if there was
an enormous storm and then POOF! one day there is a brand spanking new
airplane sitting on the runway, ready for use. (the 'airplane' i am
referring to is the earth and how everything in it works, for example-the
water cycle, the human body, etc)."

This is one of the biggest misconceptions on this field of evolution and evolutionary biology is that stuff just spontaneously come together, fully formed out of chance alone. Chance does have a role to play in natural selection and the origin of life, but its not like randomly smashing keys to try to get Shakespeare. First off, there is the simple volume of atoms there are, there are in a drop of water 2 sextillion (two followed by 21 zeros) atoms in a drop of water, let alone a vast ocean. These atoms can only form into certain combinations (you don't get H40 or H30, but H20) and there was millions of years for the process to have start. They have confirmed that the building blocks of life can be formed in conditions similar to that of pre-historic earth in the Miller-Urey experiment. From the chemical reactive world of early earth you get early DNA and RNA molecules that would use nucleotides to replicate themselves and be mutated by radiation. From this DNA and RNA you t
he emergence of very simple single celled life forms from which all life emerges afterwards.

"Also, you had mentioned that everything that exists today is derived from
one cell. How is that possible, what with the diversity of living things on
earth? If everything that exists is derived from one cell, why would there
not continue to be more and more life forms evolving, coming into existence
(like bacteria reproducing-wouldn't more and more life forms continue to be
Reproduced?) Its not as if the entire evolutionary process would be stopped!"

If from the early seas full of proto-life (the chemicals from which life emerges) just one cell emerged from the mess, that cell would have an instant advantage in terms of survival and proceed to feed on whatever material that was around it, in this case the proto-life and would begin to reproduce and its offspring would do the same, having an advantage over the proto-life. Eventually they would have spread around the world and any new amino acids that would form would be quickly eaten up. Right now there are billions of bacteria living around you searching for material to consume so they may reproduce and they don't care were it comes from.

"I'm also just curious about what your basis for being an athiest is-do you
just not believe that God exists at all, or is it that you don't want to
acknowledge His existence?"

This question is something that christians tend to ask atheists alot, first off, yes, we don't believe in all-powerful beings lording over the universe like the Jehovah(the God of the Abrahamatic religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism) in the same manner you don't beleive in Zeus, Thor, Nuwa (Chinese creator goddess) and such. You are an atheist in respect to those gods and to fairies, I just go one god more, so to speek.

There is something i should bring up about this question. On the flipside, I could state or imply that its the other way arround, one could state that deep down no one believes in a god and that they think the idea is irrational. Does that sound Arrogant or even insulting, well it should. I admit that you beleive in God, that others beleive in diferent gods and you should be prepared to admit that atheists don't beleive in any of it.

Thank you for your time

Leighton White

I also decided to link Mike's creationism page.

Zor

[Enforcer Talen]

Ill be curious to see her response.

[Ariphaos]

I guess it depends on how you want to approach this, I try to avoid being insulting or condescending to more confused types like this.

I'm not exactly sure how to begin, but i think the origins of everything would be a good place to start. The heavens and the earth were created by God, in the beginning. God was, is and is to come...this would explain the origins of everything. We exist because we were created by God to exist, to serve Him, for His glory.

I'm sorry, but, what can this possibly mean to a non Christian? You believe in your God. That can be used to explain a lot of things, but it won't convince any dharmic practitioner, nor anyone with an areligious view. Those two groups make up half of the world's population

Evolution cannot explain the origins of everything

Evolution is the change in allele frequencies over time. No matter how broad you wish to take that, it does not even describe the origin of life, much less the Universe. For the former, the study is called abiogenesis, the latter is tied within particle physics and cosmology.

I'm fully willing to discuss those but it's important to realize the scope of your argument, here, as well as be clear with semantics - about what a word means.

because there is no way that everything that exists today and the order in which it exists came from nothing and then evolved into what it is today by random chance and selection. (even if evolution were true, it still does not explain how everything got there in the first place).

Evolution is a fact, as in, we observe the statement (change in allele frequencies over time) occurring in nature. Common descent (the theory that we all originated from the same protocell) is what you have an issue with.

Planetary science and geology cover the Earth, astrophysics and the former cover our Solar System. The beginning of the Universe utilizes a lot of different subjects, especially if you look into other cyclic models besides the Big Bang, such as ekpyrotic theory.

Who made the claim to you that all of this came from nothing? Where does science claim that? Quantum vacuum fluctuations are put forward as a possibility, but that is somewhat stretching the definition of nothing.

It takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does creation becausecreation has a Creator, a Maker of the earth, the heavens, life itself.

I can believe fervently that all things came into being three seconds after you read this message. Nothing can disprove that, but it's not useful. You can't make use of such a believe. We can - and have - made use of evolution, geology, and even astrophysics.

Evolution says that everything came from nothing.

Except that it makes no such claim. Never has - not even in the remotest sense of the term. Who told you it did?

Doesn't it make a ton more sense to believe that we were created by an Almighty God than from nothing 'a bazillion' years ago?

Not really, because even if you take that hypothesis that the Universe was created from nothing, it means that either something created God, or God has the same basic principle - God has no purpose, no reason.

Take for example, an airplane. There is careful design and thought put into an airplane. It must be DESIGNED and then built, it wasn't as if there was an enormous storm and then POOF! one day there is a brand spanking new airplane sitting on the runway, ready for use. (the 'airplane' i am referring to is the earth and how everything in it works, for example-the water cycle, the human body, etc).

Show me something that was clearly designed, then. That we live in a rare zone where water exists at a triple point (occasionally, Earth did not always have ice) is not particularly fascinating. The same could be said for the human body - a car's air intake is separate from its oil, gas, wiper fluid, steering fluid, and brake fluid. In us, our air intake shares the same passage with food and vocalization. This lets us choke. Amongst thousands of other issues, if humans are designed the designer was either cruel or not very bright.

You had mentioned in class that there was plenty of evidence for evolution.
I'm wondering what the specific examples are and the proofs behind them.

Begin with skin color. Six different genes code for this, combining to form the melanin tone that makes up our skin tone. Even ignoring mutations, the ratio obviously changes from generation to generation.

While there are countless examples of speciation among insects, plants, bacterium, and so on, those probably won't sway you. The faroe island mouse is probably the most famous example of a recent speciation.

Also, you had mentioned that everything that exists today is derived from one cell. How is that possible, what with the diversity of living things on earth? If everything that exists is derived from one cell, why would there not continue to be more and more life forms evolving, coming into existence (like bacteria reproducing-wouldn't more and more life forms continue to be reproduced?) Its not as if the entire evolutionary process would be stopped!

Indeed, evolution has not stopped. Nylon eating bacteria are new, for example, as it didn't exist before the 30's. The modern banana is another example, although a human-designed one (as is most of our crop). The original banana it derives from is rather small, green, and insanely difficult to 'peel'.

As to your first question - that of common descent, that is the theory. Which is to say, it began as a hypothesis (Darwin's, even - thus the title of his book 'Origin of Species'), and evidence has since been gathered in support of said hypothesis.

But I'm probably making your eyes glaze over already.

I'm also just curious about what your basis for being an athiest is-do you just not believe that God exists at all, or is it that you don't want to acknowledge His existence?

I'm a nontheist and this is a personal question anyway :-p

[Adrian Laguna]

As for were the mass from a commonly an idea called the big crunch Theory. According to which before our universe, its major stars all burned up and became black holes, said black holes eventually sucked in the remaining matter and themselves, eventually all matter is brought into them and it and a new big bang happens. That universe began in the same manner, as did the one before that and so on. Nothing is ultimately created or destroyed, just reshaped over and over and over again.

The idea of the Big Crunch has been pretty much discredited by the discovery that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating. The commonly accepted fate of the universe is the Big Rip, where the "dark energy" accelerating the universe's expansion will rip even atoms apart.

[Ariphaos]

The idea of the Big Crunch has been pretty much discredited by the discovery that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating. The commonly accepted fate of the universe is the Big Rip, where the "dark energy" accelerating the universe's expansion will rip even atoms apart.

Doh, posted too late. In any case, there are several cyclic models, and of them the Big Crunch is not entirely ruled out.

Two others are the ekpyrotic brane theory, wherein there are multiple Universe and they collide, and formation of the Universe (and probably a nigh infinite number of others) via vacuum fluctuations.

[Duckie]

The idea of the Big Crunch has been pretty much discredited by the discovery that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating. The commonly accepted fate of the universe is the Big Rip, where the "dark energy" accelerating the universe's expansion will rip even atoms apart.

Doh, posted too late. In any case, there are several cyclic models, and of them the Big Crunch is not entirely ruled out.

Two others are the ekpyrotic brane theory, wherein there are multiple Universe and they collide, and formation of the Universe (and probably a nigh infinite number of others) via vacuum fluctuations.

Of course, under that theory one could hardly consider the new universes the same as our own, as, in my little understanding of M Theory and so forth they would be entirely different locations in M-space (which is a term I am making up to define the space composed of all x-dimensional branes) and thus correspond to entirely different alternate universes and probably cosmological constants.

Of course, that's probably too much information for a layman. I don't understand it and most people besides cosmologists won't. Best just stick with the simple cyclical universe thing. While false, it's not too far from the potential truth and easier to understand.

[Ariphaos]

Of course, under that theory one could hardly consider the new universes the same as our own, as, in my little understanding of M Theory and so forth they would be entirely different locations in M-space (which is a term I am making up to define the space composed of all x-dimensional branes) and thus correspond to entirely different alternate universes and probably cosmological constants.

It's called the 'bulk'.

String theory is interesting but I don't really take to it. I can look up as much math for relativity and quantum mechanics as I want, and can actually work through some of it. String theory? All I hear is talk. MAybe that's changed recently but it's still annoying.

[defanatic]

A few points to make:

The writer is absolutely right. The theory of evolution, if it were to say that all matter came from nothing a "bazillion" years ago, would be ridiculous. The theory of gravity, if it were to say that all matter came from nothing a "bazillion" years ago, would also be ridiculous. But to those who have a greater than casual knowledge of both those theories, they don't say that.

There are actually documented cases of new species being evolved in labs. The process of evolution hasn't stopped. Of course, if you suggest that "kind != species", then give a working definition of "kind".

The aeroplane analogy is faulty. No one suggests that the entire world suddenly appeared by chance as it is now. Well, except for creationists.

Lastly, I would be willing to bet legal tender on this:
All atheists are atheists because they don't believe in God at all, and not because they don't want to. Anyone who knows me personally knows I live a more spartanic life than most Christians. Oh, sure, there's all that sex outside of marriage that I do, but I usually blink and miss that.

[wolveraptor]

The Big Rip wouldn't occur because dark energy accelerates the rate of the universe's expansion. It would occur if that rate of acceleration began to increase. Since we haven't observed that, it's not a "commonly accepted fate".

[Tolya]

Every creationist email starts to look the same to me. The exact same arguments, the exact same misunderstanding of evolution and the exact same ID propaganda.

In 2 years there will be a Word Office template for such stuff.

[wolveraptor]

[Rye]

Zor, if I were you dude, I would keep away from Cosmology and even evolution, you can show creationists to be full of shit without resorting to deluges of your understanding of the concepts, just pointing out their ignorance on the subject as a justification to not bring it up. Instead, I keep to the philosophy side of things and just demand justification for their assumptions about God being an appropriate proposal to explain things, and christianity being unbelievable and silly.

[Dalton]

You could also question her faith. If she believes so strongly, why does she feel the need to prove it?

[Adrian Laguna]

The Big Rip wouldn't occur because dark energy accelerates the rate of the universe's expansion. It would occur if that rate of acceleration began to increase. Since we haven't observed that, it's not a "commonly accepted fate".

So Big Rip would occur only if the size of the universe experiences jerk, not just acceleration as it is now?

[Metatwaddle]

[snip image]

Fuck you! You beat me to it. I just got finished making this.

[Ted C]

You know, I needed something as a basis for a Skeptics' Circle article for this week. I think this will make a good start. It's pretty standard fair for an uneducated creationist, but sometimes that's what you need for one of those articles.

You don't mind if I snag this, do you, Zor?

[wautd]

So did you get a reply or am I being too naive again?