quote:

open system eh.... we are talking about a time before everything....so open or closed..don't mean a thing....but the law still applies

No, the law only applies to closed systems. And the Earth is not a closed system. Evolution doesn't go against any thermodynamic law. All evolution says (essentially) is that natural selection exists (which it does), and over the period of many, many years, it can account for grand changes in populations of species. You take a population of Polar bears out of the arctic circle and force them to live isolated from all other polar bears in a warmer climate, and the population will change. It will only begin with something like the bears developing thinner coats of fur (which is an advantage in the warmer climate) but, over time (a long time) the changes mount up, until the point where this population of bears become so different from their cousins in the arctic circle, that breeding between the two populations becomes impossible because the genes/chromosomes/whatever have become too different to allow for sexual fertilisation. It is at this point that we say the two populations are different species.

It's not difficult to understand, it makes sense, and - most importantly - it is the best explanation to fit the evidence we currently have. Generally speaking, the only people who disagree with evolution are those who do not understand it and have no will whatsoever to understand it. If it wasn't the best explanation, or it could be shown to be inaccurate or unworkable, then science would not have accepted it, for the past 150 years, as the theory that best explains speciate change during the history of the world.

quote:

Darwin's theory was so flawed it was not funny, darwin made too many assumptions. I'll get into that at a later date.... If you are going to diss someone......read up on it.....don't assume things.

Now I don't want to seem as though i'm hounding you, but perhaps you could take your own advice.

You assert that Darwin's theory is flawed (even though Darwinism is quite different to the modern theory of evolution) yet provide no evidence to support this. You assume that evolution is wrong, I suspect, without really having made any attempt to understand it.

quote:

Its funny that u mention the Big Bang. In the same book i was reading about omnipotence vs free will, there was a article concerning a a a famous Harvard astrologer(i forget his name). Anyhow, he was able to trace the origin of the unverse back to a single point in time. It was not the big bang as many had thought. I'll have to dig up the article but, i remember that this thoery had been tested and proven as far as my memory goes.

I'm not sure if it was an unintentional typo or not, but "astrologers" have absolutely no place lending their scientific opinions. If you meant "astronomer" then it's obviously quite different if an astrologer sees himself fit to tackle the origins of the universe while still assuming that the way we view the arrangement of the planets in our sky somehow affects everything that occurs down here.

And yes, I think all astronomers/astrophysicists (like Steven Hawking as Elysium said) agree that the universe began at a singularity. Without claiming to understand the process, the universe can be traced back to 10^-43 seconds (Plank Time) after what we assume was the big bang. Earlier than this point in time, the mathematics break down, as we begin to deal with infinities (in terms of heat, energy, singularities and so on). However, even if we can't trance it back the entire way, we can still tell that the universe would have - in all likelihood - began with a singularity (the size of a pea according to Hawking) that contained all the energy we see in the universe today. This singularity "exploded" sending this energy travelling at virtually the speed of light in all directions. It was millions of years (I think) before the universe was cool enough to allow matter to form in even the most elementary of forms (the individual atom) which should give you an idea about the amount of energy contained in the original singularity.

Some may argue that "God" must have set the Big Bang off (invariably referring to their own specific denomination of God) but to me I think it makes little difference. You can call the force that triggered the Big Bang "God" or you can call it "nature" or you can call it whatever you want. However, if you wish to call the catalyst for the universe "God" then all you're really doing is defining your own ideas into existence by calling something you don't understand in terms of something that you do. By calling the beginning of the universe God, you lend unjustified credence to the view you are attempting to purport - language is a funny thing.

You can't just assume that your own definition of God must have created the universe, because, by all accounts, the forces that may have led to the creation as we know it are likely to be quite different from your God. The forces are not necessarily infinite or omnipresent, and certainly not omniscient or omnipotent. If you wish to say that God created the universe then so be it, but you're probably going to have to rapidly change your definition of God, or risk being disappointed and/or living in a state of self-delusion.

It's probably all a bit anal, but it's something I feel that I needed to get off my chest. (Erm, it wasn't directed at anyone in particular btw, just to anyone who can be arsed reading it).

quote:

I'm bemused that scientists have come up with such far-fetched ideas as to how we "evolved" into what we are now.

They didn't just "come up" with the ideas, they developed them over hundereds of years.

And they aren't far-fetched, just misunderstood.

Still, I'll agree with you on one point: I'm not sure I can really be arsed with this debate for much longer. :-/