Hi CTD

I know this is what you believe, but can you prove it?

Sure, start here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang. This is a primer, Big Bang 101 if you will, but goes into and links to quite a lot of detail on how we know the details of the big bang. If you have any trouble understanding any parts of it please rasie them here and I’ll see if I can clear them up for you.

The old "it must have happened because we're here" game?

It’s a game to point out the truth? I wasn’t aware of that. If matter had never formed we would not be here.

That's no excuse for improbable/impossible stories.

Well there’s no ‘excuse’ for impossible stories anyway. Improbable is what evolution does, that was the great insight that Darwin provided, a mechanism to overcome high degrees of improbability.

How probable is god? What evidence do you have for this?

What they need to do is fix the story to match the laws of nature; not conclude the laws didn't apply. The big bang, if that's what you're talking about, violates most all physical laws.

It does? I wasn’t aware of that. You’ll have to show me where.

The big bang describes a time when the conditions in the universe were very very different to today. At one point in the process as we look back to the very early moments of the universe we pass beyond a point in which the laws of physics as we currently understand them apply. That’s not to say that the laws of physics are contradicted, the laws of physics include limiting conditions. When conditions in the early universe exceed these limit conditions the laws don’t apply and they tell you exactly when they do and don’t apply. Experiments such as the LHC have been pushing back our understanding of the physics involved closer and closer to the initiating event of the big bang. Currently our understanding of what occurred reaches back to a few billionths of a second after the initiation, before that we don’t know much about what happened but even at the earliest point we do understand what I have said was true, there was no matter just energy, there was no information and today theory and evidence show us that that has changed.

Mighty odd "proof", if I may say so. I'm guessing you're simply defining "order" as "lack of entropy", right?

We have very good evidence that the universe used to be a small, hot place without matter and incapable of containing energy, today it has cooled and matter has formed. We know that matter has formed simply by looking around us. Order and Entropy are opposites yes.

As you heat matter it passes a point beyond which it can’t contain information or form ordered structures. Even hotter and matter cannot exist. Lack of heat is necessary for order to exist.

Fields can convey information from matter to matter, they don’t produce it or contain it and they scatter it to oblivion at the speed of light without matter to intervene.

Now you may have a problem or two. For information contained in fluids can be lost if the fluids become "more orderly" and change their state to solid.

It’s true that different states of matter can hold more or less information but the point is without the matter the information is lost only with the matter can it continue to exist.

"Maximum entropy"? Strange concept. But then what about "minimum entropy"?

What about minimum entropy? And what’s strange about the state of maximum entropy?

Evolutionists like to use definitions which omit meaning from information. This is because meaningless random gibberish can be generated by random processes. Happens all the time.

Sure it does, random information is part of life, part of the universe. To take that randomness and convert it into ‘useful’ information you need a process. Natural selection is proven to do this without intelligence so what is your point. Meaning is a human invention, nature works just fine without it thus ToE does not talk of meaningful information because it is an unnecessary complication that adds nothing to our understanding of how the world around us works.

Why don't you talk sense? Is ToE your god or not? If not, why do you refer to it in this manner? If so, why not just say it?

Should I also talk of the needle valve in my oil pump as my god because it regulates the oil pressure in my care engine? It’s a mechanism not an intelligent agent. ToE is a mechanism without intelligence; my understanding is that god’s are supposed to be intelligent conscious being, is that not so? Evolution is not conscious; it is not intelligent so in what sense could it be considered a god? You have very low standards for gods it seems. I could never call the waves on the beach gods but they have the same claim to it as evolution under your definition it seems.

You just got done asking what purposeless information was, did you not? If you don't know what it is, why do you claim it is "pulled" from the environment?

Actually the point I was making was that “purposeful information” appears to be a meaningless term, all information appears purposeless unless a mind gives it a purpose and I wanted you to try to define it. Is there a purpose to the information that the rock on the left over there is red? That may be useful information to an organism who lives here but it has no purpose I would suggest.

Why don't you supply the definitions, since you've been so freely using the terms already? Then we'll examine them and see how circular they are, right?

Now you’re asking a difficult question. My ESP powers are not good enough to see into your mind but lets give it a go.

Purposeless information is all information in the universe with just one exception. See below

Purposeful information is that information which conscious minds create.

Does that about do it? If this is not your definition please have a go and see if you can define the terms rationally from your perspective.

In reason

Russell