Friday, February 20, 2009

 

Bad Arguments for ID # 1656


From a Letter to the Editor in the Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Republican Herald:

Adherents to religion agree that something or someone created the universe. Is it not possible that "God's" creation involved careful design of the hierarchical natural laws that comprise it?

Here's the scenario as I see it: God creates physics, physics dictates chemistry and chemistry dictates the rest —including evolution.

Actually, that part is not unlike Darwin's own beliefs. But wait ...

The problem is that scientists studying a particular branch of science get bogged down in the minutia, not contemplating the bigger picture. This is precisely why evolutionary biologists have taken flak before, and will, no doubt, continue to do so.

A scientist tries to understand nature empirically, but not its physical origin; this is, for now, the realm of pseudoscience.

So as not to open a veritable Pandora's box, I'll close with a parable from Thermodynamics Laws: Verse 2. Disorder (or entropy — for those concerned with vernacular) always increases.

How then does life stay together and function, when it's thermodynamically unfavorable even to keep water from evaporating?

From a physical standpoint, judicious invocation of "intelligent design" appears more legitimate than randomness.

Ouch!
.

Comments:
*L*

I imagine this designer as some sort of octopus, holding each of the atoms in our body in place, preventing the 2nd law ("Disorder (or entropy — for those concerned with vernacular)") from blowing it apart.
 
I came across a paper about the early geochemistry of oxygen in Science a few months back and had to quote from its excellent closing paragraph:
Each mole of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere required ~450 kJ equivalent of photon energy to produce
and ending:
Nature certainly has provided an incredible source of potential energy for the evolution of life on Earth.
 
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