Musings on Family Comments...

Slightly Updated: now that I'm at home and had the time to flesh out a few of these thoughts a little more...

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Comment #1: "Science will always simply prove what is found to be true in Scripture..."
--Tom N. Hughes, my father; while working on his porch one weekend.

I have to say, I forget the actual context of the discussion, but I think it had to do with my brother Tom's reading and my mother's take on And Knowing is Half the Battle post.

My father is a Young-Earth believer. That is, he believes in that the 7-day creation process described in Genesis is literal scripture and absolute truth. That it took seven mornings and evenings (literal 24 hours), everything was created that day in its present state (no macro evolution has occurred), and that dinosaurs simply went extinct (I'm guessing on this last one--remind me to ask my father what he believes happened to the dinosaurs...) I believe the popular term for person's like my father these days is he's a believer in ID.

My issue isn't so much that he believes this. If he had actual scientific theories and hypotheses on the issue, and could say, "Look at this" or "look at that," the point would be moot until an answer was happened upon. My issue does lie in the fact that science has already told him that the young-earth theory isn't only not viable, but a simple purview of human history will blow this theory out of the water--even without a deep discussion on evolution, the big bang, or the gravitational proponents of black-hole/worm-hole density. If you take the literal version of history in the bible and lay out a time line, the earth (and everything on it) is only between 6,000 and 10,000 years old--and if that isn't silly enough--the fact that even with literal interpretation you can't come up with a solid year!--today's man and his artwork and past has already been proven by science to have been in America at least 50,000 years, let alone when we first showed up on earth at all! Most recently, the fosilized remains of a child dating 3 million years old have been found in Ethiopia! 3 million years old! Humanoid, though not human, how does one take this into account while still believing in a young earth? Do you just dismiss it as evil scientists trying to disprove a god? (Clue: Science has better things to do with its free time than try to disprove what you believe!)

How does science know? One method is called carbon-dating. (To learn about what carbon dating is, its reliability, and how it works, visit the following links: here, here, or even here.)

And even if you go with the argument of fundies that carbon dating isn't accurate, please explain to me the following:

1. The hundreds of millions of fossils that are in display cases around the world. Where did they come from? What happened to these creatures in the few thousand years since god created them?
2. How did that all the dinosaurs, mammoths, early humans, heavily-armored fishes, trilobites, ammonites, and the rest actually live together?
3. How did the marine creatures die (like the Nothosaurs, Plesiosaurs, Ichthyosaurs...) during the flood? (i.e., if the earth really is that young, what happened to all the deep sea dinosaurs? The ones that Noah's flood wouldn't have wiped out?)

It's fine that you want to ignore scientific evidence; it's no skin off my back; but don't expect science to back you up when the evidence for it certainly isn't there.

And even further, even if you are going to assume that one day, science will somehow "back up the bible," who's to say which bible reader it is going to back up? One could say it already backs up evolution-believing Christians who take a non-literal reading of the creation days! (perhaps more on that at a later date). So, then, if Bob Schmoe from Irving, Illinois, believes the bible literally says that the animals were made first, then Adam and Eve (as in Gen. 1) and Billy-Joe Blow from Tucson, Arizona, believes the bible literally says that Adam was made first, then the animals, then Eve (as in Gen. 2), and both are hard-core, literal bible-believing Baptists, one of them has to be wrong, and science isn't going to back one of them up! So who's to say when the bible actually has been backed up by science? Of course, then there's taking them as allegorical; or as Gen. 2 simply going into detail about Gen. 1; or as two differing accounts by two different authors as a study of the writing styles and features of the two accounts will lead you to conclude...

Do you see the issue here? It all comes back to someone's interpretation over another, which is why there are already so many damn denominations, it ain't even funny!

So, no, Dad, I'm going to have to say science is never going to back you up until you've decided that it does.

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Comment #2: "All things in the universe lead to entropy."
--Brother Tom, later that same day, I believe.

In essence, and in very general terms, he's right. All things lead back to entropy. Hence, I think this makes up a large part of his belief in old-earth creationism (i.e., god had to start it all as nothing seems to be self-starting, only self-destructive). He has been able to marry his belief in the bible and in evolution. But if you look into the second law of thermodynamics, you will see that, not only is entropy a very very slow process in most cases, once there is enough "entropy," or disorder, an MEP happens, or "law of maximum entropy production," in which entropy actually leads to the creation of something else (see here, here, and here).

And not only does creation-type physicality happen at a much greater pace than entropy, the whole law of entropy is based on a closed system; that is, a system that has no influence from an outside source. Now, I'm no scientist, and perhaps some of you may be able to explain it better than my rudimentary understanding of things thus far, but science has never ruled out the possibility of outside forces and their effect upon our universe (be that god, something the universe may be inhabited in, or any of the 11 dimensions that string theory has placed on the table that may or may not be part of the universe; there is also an explanation about why gravity seems to be such a weak force in our universe, and string theory proposes that's because gravity is spread across multiple dimensions, or several universes...). The second law, as stated, is "The entropy of a closed system shall never decrease, and shall increase whenever possible." So if you are to use this theory, which incorporates a whole host of other physical laws, as the basis for stating that someone (namely, a god) as the cause for all creation (even though things create and produce in this world of entropy), you must take into account that

1. we may not be inhabiting a closed system
2. entropy is a slow, gradual process in most instances anyway, and
3. entropy itself leads to creation

Perhaps I am misunderstanding something here, but from what I can tell, and from what I have read on these links and other various sites, entropy is not only not a guaranteed constant (in that, entropy is all there is happening), entropy itself leads to something new and different just through the disorder it causes to happen.

Does that make sense to anyone else?

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I'll end it for now--I could keep adding onto this for weeks... Perhaps this may become a running series as well--who knows?

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I have yet to hear back from Santorum (probably remembers me from my e-mails of constant disagreement with him, and I got a "form" reply from Specter. My state legislators have said that I could come in to learn or volunteer with them, but I need to work... and volunteering doesn't pay, which means I lose my house... I have to ask myself how much I can do before I sacrifice something (like money) in order to gain something (like office), but either way, I need money...

Hmm...