Hi again Bex

Purpose is such an ill defined term as you have used it that I can’t see what you mean by it in this context. Can you explain better where you see purpose in this world other than where humans or animals create it for ourselves?

Order/information is the opposite of chaos/disorder/entropy. As I explained before all you need for order is for the second law of thermodynamics to be true which is a very well established truth of science and for the universe to be expanding which again is well established. Given just those two characteristics order will follow no god’s etc required.

Force is a consequence of that same order, in an expanding universe that has not yet reached thermal equilibrium force will exist again no god’s required.

So given 2LoT and that our universe is expanding order will condense out of chaos on it’s own just as water condenses out of the sky to form snowflakes no god’s / intelligence required. It may sound nonsensical but I would suggest that that is simply due to a lack of understanding of some of the foundational principals of the scientific world view.

To assume that it came out of some kind of explosive event to my mind is actually unscientific.

It is indeed. To assume it without proof would be unscientific in the extreme and to accept it given that the evidence speaks against it would likewise be unscientific. The ‘big bang’ was neither, this was a term coined by an author not a scientist and it does not characterise the event realistically at all. The big bang was actually very small indeed, the initiating event occurred before the universe was the size of a single atom and there was no explosion rather just an expanding of space time and the release of pure radiation energy. There was no matter, there was no rapid combustion of any form of explosive or anything even remotely resembling it. It was not a chaotic event such as an explosion. The big bang was more akin to a flash of light created by the expansion of the universe itself. 2LoT demands that order would spontaneously form under these conditions and the big bang theory explains in great detail the composition and form of today’s universe and the existence of a number of signatures since observed that clearly speak to the truth of the theory.

I don't see how our beginnings could ever be in chance, since our own world dictates that life/information exist before anything meaningful can arise/continue.

Actually that is not true, we have seen information arise by evolutionary means in the lab while we watch without intelligent input. Evolution can pull information from the environment by natural selection and the environment must contain information or 2LoT is wrong. Given that 2LoT is an astoundingly well supported theory that seems improbable in the extreme. [/b]

I would suggest that evidence trumps the commonly held gut feeling that all of this must have had an intelligent designer behind it. Not to say that god couldn’t not have done it, logically he must have been capable of doing so, but if he did he has gone to very great pains to make it look exactly as if the universe was created spontaneously without him.

Can you give me an example of what doesn't? It seems scientifically impossible, given the information required for even the most "simple" of life (If you can call any life truly simple. Since the most "simple cell" is still incredibly complex).

We can see order form without intelligent input all around us, watch a snow flake forming. Life is orders of magnitude more complex than that but we have also observed very simple RNA self replicators, simple strings of just a dozen or so RNA bases, that are orders of magnitude simpler than anything we would recognise as life yet they can self replicate and they can evolve. The bases required occur spontaneously in nature so we know that the building blocks required already exist without life to produce them. We don’t know how life got started yet and we may never do so but we have yet to find any single problem that would prevent it from doing so by naturalistic means.

The information contained in the DNA code is a specific programme and is also ordered. Dictating by its very information exactly what the product is (whether human or animal). Do you think given billions of years that somehow time has the magic to produce anything?

Sure, we observe DNA collecting information from the environment in lab experiments all the time at a rate far greater than that required to produce us with half a billion years to work on it, that’s easy, we can emulate the process in computers that program themselves using evolutionary algorithms and we have observed very simple RNA self replicators simple enough to have arisen by chance alone in a realistically short period of time. None of that is proof but it all points clearly to the possibility that life could arise spontaneously and that once it existed it could evolve into very complex forms even as complex us you and I in the time span available. There is no known scientific reason to doubt this though many of the steps are currently unknown. None have yet been shown to be impossible which is the real test at our current level of knowledge.

can you really give credit to a "process"? Since even a process requires a starting point of information to unfold.

Sure given that we understand how information must arise in an expanding universe if 2LoT is true which it clearly is.

No I do not believe we are simply "animals", but you are free of course to believe this. I believe the "human animal" (if you wish to call us that) has within a living soul that is subject to judgement by it's ultimate law giver/designer. Animals, unlike us, are not subject to personal judgement according to my belief. However, we are polar opposites on what we believe about our beginnings and endings, so I'll leave that part where it is and carry on below.

Do you understand the evidence that leads most scientists to conclude that we are descendants of animals? Do you know of the shared DNA and the patterns of that sharing that spell out a genealogy which groups us with the great apes? The very same group that anatomical studies group us with. Do you know of the shared genetic defects and insertions that we share exactly and specifically with just these same animals? So no we are not simply animals but we are animals. We may be the most intelligent species on this planet but we are just one of the species on this planet special only because we deem it so IMHO.

Finally on this point do you know of any objective evidence to support the idea that we have a soul?

All life (as far as I'm aware) has a beginning and end .....even stars have a beginning and an end. If you can let me know of anything around us that is not actually wearing down (wearing out) let me know.

No that is true as far as I know. The only exceptions are temporary, DNA passed from one generation to the next can improve rather than winding down but the individuals it creates all wear out and die. Only the information defeats this inevitable undoing and even that is only temporary as time will catch up with DNA too at the very least when our plant is destroyed by our sun some billons of years hence unless we’ve worked out how to get off this rock by then and even that would only be a temporary reprieve as the universe too will die taking all life that remains with it eventually.

If there is a beginning, then there is a purpose.

Ahh now we see the fallacy behind so much of your reasoning. There is no logical connection between a beginning and a purpose that I am aware of though I know that religious people will often claim without logical foundation that it is otherwise.

The start of anything has intent.

What is the intent behind the start of a snow flake?

Can you give me an example of meaning/form coming from chance without already ordered information?

Snowflakes? Chemical crystals, plant and star formation, RNA self replicators, organic molecules formed in space. Each represents an increase in order by chance without meaning.

So as evolution is a scientific theory, theories should be tested. Can you give me an example of a test that proves what i have asked above? If you have done this already, I apologise. I am not always on this forum and have been unwell and not up to debate these days.

Tell me if my answers above have not answered your question. Maybe I’ve missed some of what you asked. Yes scientific theory’s should be tested and evolution is no exception. ToE has been tested in many ways, it is tested hundreds of times a year by so many different labs, and field researchers that counting them is not possible. The bacterial evolution experiments are a classic example that I have described elsewhere on this forum but I can do so again in brief if you missed it. There are many other examples such as the continual agreement between new fossil finds and the tenants of evolutionary theory. This has taken what in Darwin’s day was a very limited set of fossils and multiplied it many orders of magnitude yet the information in all that new evidence continues to support Darwin’s theories. We have, since Darwin’s day, added new scientific fields that he could not have dreamed of yet these too continue to support his central idea. I’m thinking of genetics among others here so ToE is very well tested time and again and it works time and again and in great details.

Does that answer your 20 questions? LOL if not please tell me what I have missed or where you’d like more detail and I can flesh it out some more for you.

All the best till next time Bex.

Russell