User talk:Photolysis

About Evolution

Many people might not know this, but science is about knowledge, not naturalism. It is the search for the underlying causes of why things happen. No one ever said that this must exclude a divine being. Also, modern science as we know it virtually disproves the basic parts of the theory of evolution. For Darwinian Evolution to be true, the world must have existed for billions of years, as most scientists claim. However, not one scientist has been able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that their methods of dating are accurate. They reject, on average, close to 50% of all their test results because the answers aren't what they expected them to be. On the other hand, so-called 'Creation Scientists' have deduced that based on factors such as the amount of salt added to the ocean each year by runoff, the decay of the Earth's magnetic field, and even population growth dynamics (all of which are perfectly 'scientific' and naturalistic by any definition), the Earth cannot possibly be any older than a few thousand years.

• [submitted comment by accident, wasn't quite done ;)] Also, those who say evolution is the antithesis to religion are completely wrong. More religions in today's world center around evolutionary philosophies, though not neccesarily Darwinian Evolution (for example; liberal Christianity/Islam/Judaism, Bhuddism, Hinduism, Taoism, Humanism, Bahaism, Unitarianism, to name just a few) than do Special Creation. In fact, as far as I know, only three main religions and sub-religions are based around Special Creation - Christianity, Islam, and Judaism (interestingly enough, all worship the God of Abraham).
  

Even mathematically, Evolution does not fit. Here's an interesting problem; assuming the known universe is 5x10^9 lightyears in radius, if it were to be packed to the brim with matter, there would be approximately 10^130 sumatomic particles in existence. Now, if we also assume for a moment that the universe has existed for 3,000 bilion years, (even longer than most Evolutionists would give it), and that each particle can take part in 10^20 reactions/events per second, this gives us a total of 10^170 possible events in all of history. For life to appear, one or more of these events must take place in a certain combination. A famous scientist by the name of Golay figured that the odds of this happening were 10^450 : 1 - and this was allowing for 1500 successive events, each with a probability of 1 in 2. Therefore, the highest possible probability of life spontaneously arising is 10^170/10^450, or 1 in 10^280. Now, I'm not sure if you realize this, but mathematicians say that if the chances of something happening are less than the greatest number of possibilities (10^170), the probability is considered zero. Therefore, it is utterly impossible for life to spontaneously arise. It must have been created.
Whew! Did you get all that? --Yamawhata? 14:09, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

Re: About Evolution

Okay let's go through this briefly

• Creation 'science' is not science. There is only one type of science; creation science is not true science because it seeks to validate a single claim (which is ironically what you acuse actual science of doing later).
• Yes, science is about knowledge, you are right; it's in the name (comes from the Latin word for "knowledge"). It is based around naturalistic explanations for the phenomena that we observe in the world. Even if for the sake of argument, a god did actually set the gravitational constant at X, this does not advance our knowledge. "What causes cancer? God did it. "
• Modern science does not disprove evolution, it is one of the most established scientific theories we have. It has essentially universal acceptance amongst Biologists, and there is 150 years of solid evidence for it. To claim otherwise - this is coming from someone who did degree level science - is either lying through your teeth, or displaying a complete ignorance of science. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. That's not to say the theory might be disproven at some point (that's how science works, unlike dogma), but it would take a large mountain of evidence to demonstrate evolution is wrong.
• The Earth's magnetic field has been demonstrated to reverse every 250,000 years or so, by looking at the structure of ferromagnetic ores and suchlike. There is a large body of evidence to back this up.
• Radiometric dating has an enormous body of evidence for it. I'd like to see where you got this 50% figure from. And in any case, any 'scientist' who rejects results simply because they were not what they were expecting is not practicing science. Scientists have to explain anomalous results, and by documenting exactly what steps they took, others can - and do - come along and carry out the experiment themselves. You can ignore anomalous results, but you at least have to suggest where they might have been caused by. Science does not only look for proof for one conclusion known in advance, this would be dogma.
• No proper scientist claims that life spontaneously arose on Earth. It took millions of years, and like all things to do with life, would have happened in stages. The only problem left to solve is quite how the first self-replicating molecules, which were not life - like viruses - formed.
• Ignoring the figures in your chance equation, this shows a complete lack of an understanding of Chemistry. Chemical reactions are not governed by chance, but by the electromagnetic force. The states explored in a system are not random, but but the EM force, and the laws of thermodynamics. I did some searching and can't find any reference to "Golay" in peer-reviewed literature, so he doesn't appear to be remotely famous ... certainly I've never heard of him either.

I could carry on arguing about the ineptitude of the 'scientists' who came up with these downright fraudulent claims but there is little point. However, if you truely wish to see how science actually works, instead of listening to propaganda and misinformation, there are plenty of excellent places on the internet to look. http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs.html is a fantastic place to start, and contains peer-reviewed scientific literature backing up the claims. If you wish to challenge these conclusions, you can get your hands on the evidence itself, and if you can disprove all these countless scientific fields, you would be known as one of the greatest intellectuals in history, with a Nobel Prize in each of the fields you can overturn. If nothing else, that's a lot of prize money!

Ultimately however, you can believe what you want, as we are entitled to do in the Western world. But please do not spread propaganda and misinformation about how one of the most extensively researched and established scientific theories is scientifically disproven when it is accepted, and how science seeks to validate specific claims, whilst the source of your 'information' does this very same thing. Photolysis 15:25, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

"Inert" abilities

Hi, I'm not so sure inert would be an accurate description, it implies that the user still retains their abilities, and are just unable to access it, which according to Arthur's statement that he leaves nothing behind, would be incorrect. Intuitive Empath 11:17, 28 October 2008 (EDT)

Hey, I wondered about the wording for this as well, but I didn't want to write anything more definitive. One thing is definite though, whilst Peter can't access any of his abilities we don't know whether Arthur can use them all (empathic mimicry for example), so I'd be reluctant to label them as "stolen", but "inert" or some other label like that does imply the ability can't be used by the holder. "Absorbed" is used elsewhere and "stolen" implies taken without permission, which wasn't the case with Maya, which is why I'd be reluctant to use those phrases.

We also don't know quite how truthful Arthur's statement is either; certainly I find that leaping to conclusions on this show has a habit of being wrong, or at least partly wrong ;) Photolysis 11:43, 28 October 2008 (EDT)