Bread_of_Life

Hi fiosh, Let me go through these one by one: I believed that the doctrine of there being no salvation outside of the church was tempered by the baptism , in that sincere non Catholics who through no fault of their own did not know of the church or that it was the true Church of Christ, could through responding to the calling of the Holy Spirit be baptised by desire. The catechism, for example, says:

Hi there Fiosh, I was wondering about the doctrine of baptism in voto. I am a member of the Church of Scotland, a reformed church that claims to be the (Scottish) branch of the Holy Catholic Church (although it protests against Rome). I know that our churches cannot celebrate communion together, because of our differences, but if I truly believe that my church is correct and the Holy Catholic Church, and through no fault of my own remain part of it and do not join the Roman Catholic Church - do I still recieve the sacrament of communion, and can I still be a member of the church in voto? Many thanks, Nikolai

Dinosaurs are an interesting case study in the fossil record, because they appear between two very sharp "cut-offs" in the fossil record. One the End-permian extinction, before which we find zero dinosaurs. And the other the K-T Boundary extinction, after which we find zero dinosaurs. Flood geology that. Of course, there are plenty such examples, dinos are just famous.

You've obviously not talked to me. It's a big statement saying that "nobody" can provide sound scientific proof of what they believe. I can. So can pretty much any geologist or physicist you speak to. They'll also be able to disspell the flawed creationist "proofs" that the earth is young. I suggest you ask one.

As may be, doesn't mean I'm responsible for it. He could have taken my sin by dying of old age, for the method of his death, I blame Jesus for electing it (for whatever reason he did) and the Romans for carrying it out.

The world and universe are not 6000 years old. The world is 4.5 billion years old, and the universe 13.7 billion. So you made a false assumption about what we all believe, and our rationale. *sigh* The second law of thermodynamics is universal, in closed or open systems. I should know, I'm a physicist. However, the second law only implies that entropy cannot decrease in a closed system. In an open system, the second law still applies, but it just doesn't necessitate an increase in entropy. At least you kindof knew the answer AAA, Arthur Durnan wouldn't know thermodynamics if he fell over it, he did well to get the spelling right.

Not really, no. I think he might have died of old age, peacefully in his sleep, so long as he did so in my sin. How many spear jabs and whips does it take? 1, 2, 60? Would the sin of the world have not been expiated had the Roman soldiers been slightly less cruel?

Graphic violence is okay so long as noone says any bad words or gets naked. Got it. Also, can anyone answer the question as to why jesus couldn't have been killed less violently? Like getting run over by the number 38 to from Victoria to Hackney?

Yes, because God has 2 arms, 2 legs, opposable thumbs, bowels to digest food, and is an obligate biped. So how can evolution be true? *rolls eyes* Think it might have been talking about his spiritual image there dude

No, that's not the only reason they were harmful. If you artificially massively increase the rate and extent of mutations, you are far more likely encourage maladaptive forms. Large mutations, or large numbers of mutations, are almost bound to be negative, because there are relatively few well adapted possibilities compared to many mal-adaptive possibilities. However, you're right that they weren't adapting. The reason is, they were not under the influence of ordinary natural selection. They weren't adapting "to" anything - they hadn't undergone a change in environment that would make the adapt. It means that, 99% of the time, natural selection acts to keep what is there that is well adapted, rather than change what is mal-adapted. It conserves what we already have that is good most of the time, and changes rarely. But we already knew that - most evolution and selection is conservative. These are not new findings, and they do not disprove evolution.

Carbon-14 dating can only date samples up to 55,000 years old, at a maximum. This is therefore a cock and bull story. And so is this. As for this so called experiment that disproved evolution, it proves only that: a) Large macro-mutations are almost always harmful, which we knew already b) That evolution is conservative, not adaptive, most of the time, which we knew already. *sigh*

Floatingaxe, Actually, a zygote is a single undifferentiated cell. It is a lot less ordered than I (by the physical definition of order) - a human being made up of billions of cells - each differentiated and forming complex organs with their own functions. In other words, going from a zygote to a fully grown human being implies a decrease in entropy - something that can only be achieved through the input of energy. Going from an ape-like ancestor to a man, may or may not involve a decrease in entropy. Is an ape-like ancestor more or less ordered than a human? It is a good question, and one that is not simply answered, even if we had the specimen in front of us. However, this is not a debate about evolution, it was a simple question about entropy, and I explained how entropy worked. Perhaps you should read the question as context for how I answered it, before criticising my answer.

No. I do not "believe thus and such" and fit everything around a belief. Beliefs are secondary. Things shouldn't be fitted around beliefs. Rather beliefs should fit around evidence. Evidence is primary in my life, not my belief in any one theory or religion. If my faith is in contrivance to the evidence, then the faith is gonna have to budge.

I look at it from a viewpoint of evidence, my dear girl. I proportion my belief to the evidence. Faith is important in my life, don't get me wrong, but it oughtn't replace or usurp what the evidence tells us. And the evidence overwhelmingly tells us that the earth is a very old place indeed, and that all life is related, including ourselves. This I will believe, and my faith is just going to have to fit around it.

Hello Keilan, my name's Nikolai, I read physics at Imperial College, London. Maybe I can help answer your questions. The second law of thermodynamics is actually a restatement of the first law of thermodynamics, but with one thing added - entropy. Entropy is effectively a made up variable (that is, it doesn't *directly* represent something we've observed, like heat, or motion) - but the reason we need it in there is to represent the fact that heat can only flow in one direction, from hot to cold, not from cold to hot. The first law of thermodynamics allows for heat to flow either direction - but we know from experience that in this universe, heat flows naturally and exclusively from hot to cold. So we made a variable called entropy that expresses this fact, and hence the second law of thermodynamics. Now, the consequence of this law and this new variable is that, when you do the maths, you find that in a closed system (one in which no energy is added or taken away) entropy can only ever increase. If you're allowed to put energy into a system (an open system), entropy can increase or decrease - but if the system is closed, if no energy goes in, entropy will either stay the same or increase. It cannot decrease. Now, because entropy is a made up variable, scientists have long argued as to exactly what it "represents" in real life. There are various ways that we can think of entropy in real life. One way is the capacity of a system to do useful work. The higher the entropy, the lower the capacity of a system to do useful work. The lower the entropy, the more useful work a system can do. Another way of thinking of entropy is as a measure of order or disorder. The lower the entropy, the greater the order of a system. The higher the entropy, the greater the disorder of a system. What that means is that a closed system can only ever get more disordered, overall, although be careful, there is a very specific scientific meaning to the word "disordered" here - I won't go into it, but it's just a warning! So, back to your question: And this is why I warned you about the scientific meaning of order and disorder. The original big bang nucleus - the particle that exploded to make everything - was just about as ordered as you can get, by the scientific definition. It had extremely low entropy by necessity. Everything after it has had higher and higher entropy, including the entired universe. It may look more ordered to you, but in actual fact, it's becoming more and more disordered by the entropic definition. Even better question my dear boy, how can a zygote turn into a man? 25 years ago I was a single cell in my mother womb - how can it be that I am now a fully grown man - with much greater order? The answer is, here, the input of energy. I am not a closed system - I eat food, and excrete food. Energy goes in one end, and comes out the other. I am not bound physically by ever increasing entropy. Similarly, earth is not a closed system, and nor are other animals, so evolution is not bound by ever increasing entropy either. By the way, just a side point of correction, monkeys and man came from the same ancestor, they are cousins - monkeys didn't turn into man. The law you refer to is called "the conservation of angular momentum". What it actually states is that, if something is spinning and breaks apart - if you ADD UP all the angular momenta of the pieces, they will ADD UP to the same as the original. It's the same if two spinning things collide - if you add the angular momenta before and after the collision, the addition will be the same. So let's imagine a sphere breaks up in to 5 pieces. The original angular momentum of the sphere is 10. The 5 pieces have angular momenta: 1 3 5 2 -1 In other words, one of the pieces, the fifth piece, is moving with backwards spin. Perhaps it collided with piece 3 awkwardly and got sent spinning slowly backwards. However, if you add up all these angular momenta, they still add up to 10. In other words, the law of conservation of angular momentum has not been broken. This is how some moons and planet have "retrograde" or "backward" spin. It is notable that these planets usually have weird off centre axes as well - because usually what caused them to spin backwards was a collision, knocking their axes off centre at the same time. I hope this answers your question.

No, not if you mean two people who literally were a founder human population. I don't know. It doesn't really matter to me. If I knew the first sinner was called "ug" and lived 250,345 years ago, it wouldn't much change the basis of my religion, or particularly interest me.

I believe in the evolution of man. That is, man is related to all other animals by common descent just like any other animal, and any other African Ape. I sense a follow up question.

You asked me to get involved - I am happy to answer your questions - what are they?

We and apes evolved from the same ancestor, we did not evolve "from" apes. There are two processes of speciation, orthogenesis, and cladogenesis. Orthogenesis is a gradual change in one species until eventually it becomes reproductively distinct from its ancestors. Cladogenesis is when a species splits into two species. Effectively, cladogenesis is what happened a long time ago between us and chimps - we were one species, they went one way and evolved into chimps, we went another and evolved into humans. Both make a decent living, we in cities, they in trees.

No, it doesn't, permineralisation can happen much quicker than that. It's 4.5 billion, give or take a few hundred million. There are many legends even in the modern day - look at the Loch Ness Monster. My mum lives near the shores of Loch Ness, lovely place. But there aint no monster in there - like dragons, and thunderbirds and sea monsters - it's a myth. They were hoaxes, of that there is no doubt. Even most creationists now accept this. More damningly my dear boy, almost no modern creatures are found with dinosaurs. I mean, there are millions of modern animal species, but we only know of a couple that are found at any time outside of the modern - far less in the cretacious or back to the end-permian. It's not even like we've found one close by. The oldest remains of humans are a few hundred thousand years old. The newest dinosaur remains are 64 million years old. That's not a small discrepancy. It's about 20000% off. But hey, the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is no evangelical mind - in my experience there is no ammount of evidence or reason that will reach our lost brothers and sisters, before they make the decision to be found.

No mockery, I'm a physicist. I was just hoping there was another one on the boards. Unusual to study the second law of thermodynamics at school. The furthest we went at high school was the first law, and we tend to go further than the US at high school. I'm slightly suspicious, would you like to state the second law in its differential form, and explain the terms therein?

Oh I'm so excited, so do I! How do you know?

What a shame, given that I'd just asked you a specific quesiton in another topic. Oh well, take care.

Inj, How's about defining what you mean by information. Information has a very specific scientific meaning, it even has a unit. Most people who talk about "informational" challenges to evolution just don't know what information really is, if they did, they would understand that getting information isn't the challenge to evolution, rather getting useful information. But anyway, over to you, let us know how you define information, what your unit of information is, and how you plan to measure it? Thanks, Nikolai