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REPLY #35 TO "EVOLUTION VS. CREATIONISM"
Boldfaced statements are parts of the original essay (or a subsequent reply) to which the respondent has directed his comments.
Italicized/emphasized comments prefaced by (R) are those of the respondent and are presented unedited.
My replies appear under the respondent's comments in blue text and are prefaced by my initials (MB).
There is no reliable evidence to suggest any other age of the Earth.
(R) What about the dust on the moon? Ultraviolet light changes moon rocks
into dust. Over a period of 4 billion years, there should be a layer of dust
that would cover the moon's surface. But there is only about 2-3 inches of dust,
the amount that should be there if the moon was only a few thousand years
old.
(MB)The amount of dust on the moon is exactly as it should
be. Ultraviolet light is not strong enough to break down rocks into dust over
any possible length of time. The amount of dust on the moon is attributable to
the amount of dust particles in the solar system which have impacted the Moon
over its lifetime. Measurements conducted by the instruments left on the Moon
by the Apollo astronauts have verified the rate of deposition.
(R) Also, the moon is relatively close to us. Due to tidal friction, the moon
is gradually moving away from us. Based on the location of the moon, it can't be
very old. If it were even 500,000 years old, at some time it would have been so
close that it would have been in our planet.
(MB)This is another golden oldie that doesn't take into
consideration the fact that the arrangement of the Earth's land masses have not
always been the same. When the Earth's continents were all together in a single
land mass, there was only one mass of water on Earth and this would not have
produced the amount of tidal friction we see today when the Atlantic and Pacific
Ocean are on opposite sides of the globe. This causes their respective tides to
set up harmonic forces which have a larger effect on the tidal friction applied
to the Moon. Another proof that the Moon can't be young is the fact that it is
in captured rotation (i.e., it always shows the same face to an observer on the
Earth). This would not have been possible if the Earth/Moon system was only a
few thousand years old.
All other elements are created in the titanic explosions of supernovas.
(R) Where did the energy and matter needed to cause this come from?
(MB)The matter (in the form of protons and neutrons)
already exists within the star itself. The energy comes from the gravitational
collapse of a massive star after it uses up its hydrogen fuel supply and can no
longer support its own weight via the expansive forces produced by the burning
of that fuel.
(R) A few more questions. How did life form from non-life when it is a
biological law that life comes from life?
(MB)This is a confusion of biology with chemistry. Since
all living things contain the exact same atomic elements as all non-living
things and that different non-living things are only "different" due to the
arrangement and composition of those elements, it should be obvious that living
things are just another arrangement of those same elements. Chemistry shows how
elements combine to produce different things. Biology is the study of how
living things live, die, and reproduce.
(R) Would you be willing to say that all of the governing forces of the
universe, such as gravity and energy, were created by accident?
(MB)Yes, I would. Current theory says that universes are
being created all the time. Only those whose creation produces the proper mix
of forces and constants will end up producing universes which can support the
same sorts of things that we observe. Other universes may also be able to
support life, but the life in those universes would be quite different from that
found in our universe. Obviously, we only know the universe in which we live
and, if our universe wasn't the beneficiary of certain random events, it
wouldn't be as we observe it. This does not require divine intervention of any
kind.
(R) The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the opposite of evolution. According
to evolution, order has increased over time, but without any energy.
(MB)This is not true. The Second Law of Thermodynamics
(SLT) has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution. Evolution is the change in
gene frequency in a population over many generations. The SLT says, in short,
that in any closed system to which no energy is input, that the total amount of
disorder in that system will always increase. A living thing is not a closed
system since energy is always being input into it in the form of the food it
eats or the energy it absorbs from other sources (such as sunlight). The
tiniest fraction of the energy contained in that food is converted into a
localized increase in order in the form of body mass in the creature while the
rest is converted into a far larger amount of disorder in the form of expelled
heat energy and other waste products. You can easily prove this by considering
how much food you eat in the course of a year. Do you ever gain weight exactly
equal (or anywhere close) to the mass of the food you ate? So, where does the
rest of the food go? It doesn't disappear.
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