I have to admit, Im actually enjoying the exchange. Pastor Miller: where did the dying star come from? What caused the Big Bang? What energized the God particle? If God didnt start it all didnt nothing create everything? These are particularly intriguing questions to me when there is such order in the universe and the systems that maintain life work so perfectly and are so interconnected. If not, In the beginning God what drives evolution and for what purpose? Me: The dying star came primarily from massive and dense clouds of molecular hydrogen. Matter compacts into smaller clumps, and then gravity causes them to collapse and they form stars. This process usually takes 100 million years, but could take more or less time depending on a wide variety of factors. The Higgs-Boson (colloquially called the God Particle, though its original name was the God Damn Particle since it was so difficult to find) essentially provides everything in the universe with mass. It was the missing link in the Standard Model of particle physics that ties it all in together beautifully. Quantum mechanics is very difficult to explain and even harder to comprehend, so if youre interested in some reading materials that cover it (which help nonscientists like us to understand it) Ill be happy to provide those to you. Your question regarding nothing creat[ing] everything is a logical fallacy called False Dilemma. Its an absolute that assumes there are only two possible outcomes (e.g., either God created everything or nothing did) when there are in fact more. For one, scientists do not assert that the universe came from nothing. We dont have a nothing to study. The word nothing is used in a colloquial sense to describe matter-less areas of space. Gravity, for example, is not nothing, but it doesnt possess mass - as its a force that acts upon mass (it would be similar to asking what the color red smells like). You cant really invoke literal terminology, here. Its sort-of like how people misunderstand what the word theory means versus what scientists infer when they use the term scientific theory. These two things are not at all even remotely the same, but plenty conflate them regularly. Furthermore, the answer to what caused the Big Bang is we dont yet know. Theres no harm in admitting that we dont have an answer when none is yet available, but the intelligent approach is to keep searching until the answer is found. Were pattern seeking mammals, so its in our nature to look for ones even if they do not exist. You see a so-called order in the universe, and to a certain extent youre correct; but that order can be explained and demonstrated with evidence via physics. However, the universe is both chaotic and completely indifferent to our existence. Long after weve shuffled off this mortal coil, the universe will still continue to exist and expand. It didnt require us to exist for the 13.699998 billion years before us; and when our sun begins to die and swells, it will annihilate all life on this planet (assuming asteroids, comets, rogue black holes, etc do not kill us first). Our galaxy will also collide with the Andromeda galaxy, and whats left of our solar system at that point will be scattered in the recesses of space. As per your last question, what drives evolution and for what purpose, that would be natural selection. The explanation for it is rather long, but to give you a basic idea: natural selection is the process by which organisms adapt to specific environmental pressures (predators, climate, food supply, mates, etc). The way this is achieved is via mutations, some of which are good, some are bad, but most tend to be ambiguous. So, for example, lets say that a mutation in a birthed Finch causes its beak to be slightly bulkier than its parents or other Finches. This increase allows the Finch to break seed shells easier and scavenge for foodstuffs less than its kin, which in turn means it can eat more. This Finch then passes on the trait to its children, and those Finches can now multiply with this shared trait. The Finches with the smaller beaks cannot eat as much as Finches with a bulkier beak. Over time, the smaller-beak Finches begin losing population numbers due to increased competition with bulkier-beaked Finches that can eat not only the seeds the former Finches did, but also seeds with heavier shells. Eventually, the smaller-beak Finches will die out and get replaced by the Finches with bulkier beaks. Thats a very small change that would only take a few generations to entirely replace the smaller-beak Finches. There are a lot more complex examples (some of which are really cool), but thats the gist of it. Natural selection does not have a process, and is most certainly not forgiving nor empathetic to any one species. Over 99% of all lifeforms that have ever existed are now extinct. Hard to talk about fine tuning when one considers the facts. I look forward to anymore questions you might have. Thanks!
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 19:49:27 +0000
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