Mr Skeptic

Like ashes, water is already "burnt" and so at a very low energy level. All that energy released when burning hydrogen with oxygen would have to be put back in to separate them back into hydrogen and oxygen. However you can burn magnesium in water, and the magnesium will steal the oxygen from the water and release the hydrogen.

Right, you're saying that perhaps for god to be perfect he'd have to be less moral than he could be (due to a competing good), ie a perfect god is morally imperfect. That still leaves him morally imperfect. Then could become more morally perfect at the expense of being less perfect overall (by neglecting the competing good). But it's not like every entity possible must try to maximize the competing good. I disagree with the idea that there can be a competing good to morality since morality is what judges what is good or not, so any moral system must acknowledge all goods possible and not be at odds with any, ie if your morality has competing goods your morality is wrong.

No, I don't want you broadening the question to include things I haven't, neither in time nor in space. A system means nothing more than a part of the universe that I'm talking about, and everything else is the environment. I ask whether entropy can decrease in a system and again you answer that entropy will in increase in the universe. I'm not asking about the universe, I'm asking about the system. Please read and learn what a system is: http://en.wikipedia....Physical_system But I'll try to be extremely clear. Suppose you have a system defined as such: a volume of air of 1 cubic meter, enclosed by the walls of a refrigerator, which is not turned on, all at room temperature and in equilibrium with the environment. You turn the refrigerator on. Does the entropy of the system (1 cubic meter of air) decrease within the next 30 minutes, or does it not? Please refrain from trying to include in your answer anything other than what I have specified, 1 cubic meter of air within 30 minutes of turning on the refrigerator. OK then, my proof: Take a plant, lets say with a mass m. Burn the plant in a heat engine and check how much work you get out of it; this will be proportional to the mass. Now suppose the plant were to grow to a mass of 2m. Burning the same plant would yield twice the work (assuming consistent composition). Thus after plant growth there is more available energy for doing work, proving that entropy has decreased. If you don't know what entropy is, you can read up on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy Personally, I find it surprising that you would think that an isolated container containing plants and materials needed for plants to grow would result in plants growing despite lack of sunlight rather than decaying (ie entropy increasing in an isolated system as required by the laws of thermodynamics). I asked you for the formula you said you used, could you provide that? And if a random process increases entropy (changes a state to one of higher probability) but a deterministic process changes the state back to the original without decreasing entropy, that doesn't seem to add up. Hence why I suspected that you confused change in entropy and total entropy, and why I asked for your formula to verify whether that is the case. It's "created" if you consider the system in isolation, its "imported" if you consider the system with the surroundings and consider random interactions to be information. It makes no difference to my arguments, since either way information in a system (eg DNA) can increase, and we can agree on that. What is extremely likely to have happened anywhere on earth in 4 billion years does not necessarily translate to extremely likely to have happened while a human is looking. It is similar with evolution, you observe a limited subset of what happens to some of the millions of species over billions of years, and infer the rest. The difference is that trees fall in a few seconds rather than billions of years, which makes it easier to observe. But with a knowledge of gravity it is not even necessary to observe trees falling (I hadn't seen a tree fall for the first decade or so of my life, and I still understood how they fell), to know exactly why they fall. Using gravity and physics models one could simulate a tree falling and show similar effects to those observed in the fallen tree, and deduce that the tree must have fallen even without seeing any actual trees fall. why? I thought we were debating whether it is likely for evolution to have happened? All this shows is you have a complete lack of understanding of statistics. The researchers need only show that the difference is slight and logic demands that it must have happened via evolution or even just random mutation. Of course I know. It happened via mutation. Keep in mind the protein in question occurs in eukaryotes and has homologues in bacteria as well. There's plenty of opportunity for mutation of two specific amino acids (it is the function we are talking about not some specific rat in some scientist's lab, just in case you're wondering). If that's too hard for you, it turns out that the very same protein can be changed to/from a protein acting on ATP instead of GTP: Keep in mind our discussion about not seeing a tree fall but still being able to tell that it must have fallen.

Sure, but you just destroyed your own objection. How can there be any competing good if whatever god does is your definition of morality?

Because of the boundary condition. For example if I choose to be as moral as possible given a boundary condition of murdering people I don't like, how is that not being best? And how can you judge what is best other than by using morality? So you don't know any philosophers of religion who disagree with him either? Because if you gave him an example of one, his statement would become false. Can't get much easier than that.

Natural selection isn't perfect. For example, the equation [math]P(q) = \frac{1 - e^{-2N_esq}}{1 - e^{-2N_es}}[/math], where q is the initial frequency of the allele, Ne is the effective population size, and s is the selective advantage. This gives a probability for losing an allele, and note that a slight selective advantage is not even close to a guarantee that it won't be lost. See here for more details. The result is that beneficial mutations could be lost and for many organisms reduced DNA is not really particularly crucial to their success. For bacteria that are tiny and reproduce quickly having extra DNA is much more of a hindrance than for eukaryotes that are much larger (so dedicate much less proportion of their mass to DNA) and reproduce slower (so that DNA doesn't have to constantly be replicating). Also, in some cases junk DNA serves a different role, as structural/spacing element. I think I've heard something about it being protective from certain types of viruses too, such that if the virus is inserted in the inert region of the DNA it isn't read, which forces the viruses to either be more selective about where to insert themselves, or to include the necessary bits for their genes to be expressed. Well then provide evidence for your new process, either by direct observation or by correct predictions that can't be made with the currently accepted processes. I suppose it could have. But isn't it the job of science to say more than, "That's just the way it is" ? And there is your problem. Evolution as a generic theory tells you what can happen, not what did, no more than any amount of knowledge of chemistry can tell you what your product was/will be unless you tell it the reagents and reaction conditions. Evolution is not some magical theory that needs no data, it needs data like any other theory to make specific predictions. Add in the specifics of mutation and fitness and then see if it still can't give you the answers. Well that would be interesting. Can you give an example? Depending on the circumstances that is allowable by evolution, for example a gene could lose its ability to be expressed and later regain it, or junk DNA might be expressed and serve some function. But for that to happen frequently would require rethinking the theory. Well then why didn't they tell the biologists about all the junk DNA and the other bits you complained about them not knowing? The fact is that those theories predict nothing unless you give them a circumstance. If I say, I have some gas, now tell me the temperature pressure and volume of it, the chemists would give me the finger. But if I tell them any three of the four they can tell me the fourth. Evolution is similar, it can't predict things from no data. Give it the necessary data and it gives the appropriate predictions. No, it is a measure of their reproductive success, measurable numerically unlike all the mumbo-jumbo you are suggesting. You can take two organisms identical in every respect except for one allele, put them in the same environment, and measure which is more successful. That gives you the comparative fitness of the two alleles in the context of the organisms other alleles and environment. You can change other variables too, if you like, and measure those effects. Conversely, mumbo-jumbo isn't measurable.

There is however a difference between telling someone they can't have a child with a very small subset of the population (close family) vs telling them not to have a child at all. Of course now with birth control, its a different story, and likewise it is possible to genetically screen children for genetic diseases before it progresses past the stage of being a few dozen cells or so. But incest is traditionally taboo/icky, and there is some legitimate concern about family problems or abuse that could result from allowing incest. For example, you can't distinguish between consensual incest turned sour and sexual abuse. Likewise a lot of people tell you not to have sex with your best friend since it could ruin your relationship.

I think it's a little of each. Discrimination causes people to slightly underrepresent themselves in that field, which lowers interest in the field by others from their group, and shifts expectations that those of that group are less likely to go in that field, which leads to at least a little bit of discrimination, such as less encouragement to enter that field than others might receive. What I'm saying is I think there's a little bit of a feedback loop, so that discrimination from generations past is still felt today even if only slightly. But as more women join the ranks of scientists, the idea that women are less likely to do science will continue fading until the main difference left is simply due to lack of interest. As for certain different representations, I think some of them are explained genetically. This is best seen by looking at who dominates at the very highest of levels, for example the racial distribution of Olympic winners of the various competitions. Differences in fast-twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers, for example. You can't really reach the very highest levels unless you match your genes and training. http://www.kenanmali...s/olympics.html

If God chooses to be less moral than possible, even if he has a good reason, then that is not moral perfection. You're the one who brought up the argument of competing goods and now you forget what it means for them to be competing? It's not impossible to achieve perfection in one good, but it is impossible to achieve in two competing ones. If A and B compete you can't be perfect in one without being imperfect in the other, and being as perfect as possible in both simultaneously means necessarily being imperfect in at least one, or even in both. But that doesn't make the perfection in one impossible, just that you can't have both. All the competing goods argument would say would be that it might not be ideal to achieve moral perfection. But that seems like it would be quite the contradiction because morality is the basis for judging things good or bad, so how could it be bad to be good? In any case, love is the word Jesus says fulfills all the law (love god and love your neighbor). So I've seen no evidence that love and morality should or even can be in conflict. So show him even one philosopher of religion who disagrees and you prove one of his statements wrong. And if we're talking about the Christian version of morality, you have Jesus' word that love fulfills all the law.

Nope. Energy carries information!

Re-read the question -- it does not mention anything biological. That restriction is only in your imagination. The question immediately following it only applies if you answered no to the previous. Also, no cycles are mentioned. Would you prefer if I asked it slightly differently? 1) Can local entropy of a system at least temporarily decrease given energy inputs, or can it not? If not, how do you explain the entropy inside a refrigerator box when it is switched on? HINT: The answer is "yes", and there is nothing misleading about it other than that you don't like the answer. I neither said molecular nor thermal entropy. I said entropy. Don't you know what entropy is? Here, please learn and then come back: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy Are you just wasting my time? Alright, but first tell me: do you think the entropy of a plant is greater or lesser than that of its material components (air/water/land)? I noticed you avoid answering clear simple questions as much as possible. Is that because if you answer either way your answer will harm your argument? I think that just shows you have a weak argument. If the entropy is zero, then surely the entropy must have changed to a lower value from that of random information? Also, what exactly is this formulation you speak of? You aren't confusing the formula for total entropy and the one for change in entropy, are you? So you say the randomly created string has a high entropy but elsewhere you say changing it to a deterministically created string doesn't change the entropy? I don't think that makes sense. OK, created or imported into the system from the environment work equally well for my purposes. I'm not asking about useful information, I'm asking about information in this question. OK, let me demostrate with an example: String Set 1: ABCDE ABCDE ABCDE String Set 2: ABCDE ABCDE ABCDF #1 is an example of a repeated string, analogous to copies correctly made by a deterministic process. #2 is similar, but contains one different string, analogous to deterministic copies with occasional mutation. Using your measure of information, the second set has more information than the first. Therefore information was created (imported, if you prefer). It can be seen that the second string has more information than the first. As for quantitative values, your measure of information does not seem to provide me with enough data to calculate the value (I'd have to know the probability of the data, and if I knew that calculating the information content would be rather pointless), however if we use the mutual information of the information with itself, that allows calculation of the information content based on the string itself. No. I gave the example, of eyes, and mentioned that you would complain that you cannot see how evolution could be responsible, which I was correct about. There's plenty of good literature about the evolution of eyes, but it is too complicated for you. But I also included much simpler examples of new function, and mentioned that you'd find the opposite reason as being a fault, ie it is too simple a change. You're welcome to prove me right on that aspect as well. The significance is new function. Detecting adenine is a different function than detecting guanine, both of which are vital cell components. If you're curious about the other aspects, feel free to read up to your heart's content. As for whether it is known to have been derived from the other, I don't see how that is relevant. It seems just a ploy to limit our options to include only function that happened in the last ~50 years and then only while a researcher was looking at it under a microscope, or something like that. What matters to me is that since the changes are slight then it is extremely likely to have happened via known processes of mutation and so should be considered to have happened like all the others we've seen absent any evidence to the contrary (which you haven't and almost certainly can't offer). Again, if a tree fell in a forest and no one was there to see it do we assume the fallen tree and damaged vegetation were poofed into existence by some god or do we say the tree fell just like any other tree we've seen fall? Or are you saying that unless someone saw the tree fall they can't say it fell via deduction from other things they know and should instead assume some intelligent agent planted a fallen tree there? Does it matter? Surely you know how to calculate the odds of randomly creating specific mutations. Simply from a statistical point of view if something must have happened then you should say it happened, even if it was not observed. Alternately, there's no reason to believe anything you say because either you haven't observed it or its subjective. You do realize we have a pretty good understanding of reality and of maths, don't you? Enough so that someone observing something is frequently less credible than a theoretical calculation of what must have happened? Or are you saying that because researchers have made 2 amino acid substitutions that therefore it is impossible or unlikely for a random process to change those same 2 amino acids? If not then how is your question relevant? Anyhow, the answer to your question is "yes". The mutations happened in nature in one species, and the researchers also added the mutation to another to verify that those specific mutations were responsible.

Well there's the view of something outside the universe causing the B.B. In that case, the energy of the universe could be equal to that of the finite something that caused the B.B.

Marat you murderer, why is it that you're not a doctor providing free medical care to those who need it? What possible compelling interest do you have that is greater than the lives of all those people you could be saving? You see, it is not just governments that make tradeoffs of lives vs other things, but you and me as well. Face it: lives aren't really priceless.

I asked a yes/no question, and the answer you gave seemed to be the no. Care to answer again then? 1) Can local entropy decrease given energy inputs, or can it not? If not, how do you explain plants growing? Please note that growing is not a complete cycle. It seems to me that you'd rather not answer clearly on this one, because "yes" would undermine your arguments but "no" would profess ignorance of basic thermodynamics. So you're trying to change the question, as you have done so many times before. This time you're not getting away from it. There's no cycle in the question. Answer my question not your own please. No, growth involves taking mass from outside sources and incorporating into self. The plant is not making its own atoms, it is taking them from its environment. If you don't think that this is reducing entropy, that is equivalent to claiming that the entropy of these atoms in plant form is the same or greater than the same atoms in the environment (eg after the plant decays). Is this what you are saying? If not, then you agree with me that it is less. It doesn't quite answer the question. I'd like to see specifically how the entropy is measured. But taking your claim to the logical conclusion, then you are also claiming that the entropy in DNA does not increase when it is randomly changed, because when changed back its entropy is the same as it was before and therefore they are of equivalent entropy. While I don't accept that, it still does negate your claim of information entropy being a problem since all the strings have equivalent entropy per your claim. So information can be created/imported, as you say, so it is not a problem that information increases, qualitatively. Now had I let you get away with answering my question in a qualitative manner rather than a qualitative manner. If you wish to turn around and use numbers, then please answer my question again, qualitatively this time. 3) Can information be created by living organisms, or can it not? If not, then how do you explain the effects of occasional mutation of a bacterium using your measure of information, I = - log(P) rather than made-up nonsense? I think you'll find that your idea of "10^-30 bits of information per cycle with a cycle time of 15 years" is completely baseless in the context of my question. There's plenty of examples of new function. Your eyes for example. However, I was under the impression that you wanted new function that could very clearly be seen to be the result of evolutionary processes, because you don't seem to accept the ones that would have taken longer to evolve than can be directly observed. In addition, you have previously complained about other new functions I mentioned as being similar to the original function. You're trying to demand something impossible and use the failure to meet that demand as if it were evidence of something other than that you can make impossible demands. Whenever I offer an example you change your demand. Let me guess, when I offer examples with slight changes as necessitated by you need to be able to see the results must be a possible by evolution, you'll complain that the changes are too slight and you want an example with sufficient changes that you can complain that you can't see how it would be a product of evolution. Nevertheless, small changes still give new function. But to make new function with very little changes quite frequently involves "breaking" things, and only occasionally provides new function in a way that doesn't seem broken, which I'm sure is no surprise if you think it through. Now I've given also examples of riboswitches which can detect different chemicals with just one noteable change. http://www.pdb.org/pdb/static.do?p=education_discussion/molecule_of_the_month/pdb130_1.html Is the detection of one chemical (adenine) over another (guinine) not new function? Another example, it takes only a few mutations to convert soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC) from binding to NO to binding to O2. http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2010/03/15/jbc.M109.098269.abstract I noticed you specifically go out of your way to call such new function, despite acknowledging that it is new, beneficial (in a given context), and not the original function. What else can it be but new function? It's not just that the hemoglobin is broken, but it is in such a way that it marks infected RBCs for destruction, effectively switching part of its function from that of oxygen supply (which it still slightly does) to that of disease defense (which it didn't do before). You've yet to make a case as to why something with a new function must keep the original function at the same efficiency as before to be able to be called new function. And as for the accusation of moving goalposts and answering different questions, this is is in reply to your answer to my question #4, in which you did not ask any questions. While I do intend to use these questions/answers later in the debate, I will of course give you a fair chance to point out if it doesn't apply to what you are saying, although perhaps I will just ignore that and build a case for evolution. But for now, these are independent of that and simply an attempt to pin down exactly what you believe can be done or not, so that we don't talk past each other (as much). For example, pretty much everyone but you thinks you are the one moving goalposts, but my guess is no one is quite sure where who's goalposts are. With all the accusations of moving goalposts, I'd really like to know where everyone thinks they are.

Unless you're claiming that moral perfection and love are mutually exclusive in some circumstances, then it is irrelevant. I seem to recall there being a certain word used in the two commandments that Jesus said fulfills all the law.

Some interesting bits from your link: I suppose similar stuff happens all the time, but it's still a bit fishy.

Nope, not really a surprise for evolution. Or did we know just exactly what retroviruses and retrotransposons were doing before we knew of the junk DNA? The theory of evolution does not tell you what type of mutations happen, you need to look at the circumstances to find that out. Knowing what type of mutations happen in one organism plus the theory of evolution allows to predict similar effects in other junk organisms. Junk DNA is however a surprise for any design theories. Some of that "junk DNA" really is junk, even if a lot of it isn't. Conservation of DNA is exactly what is predicted by evolution. You know, the whole "descent with modification" bit. But people just didn't believe it, they thought there would be more differences. This is just the way life actually does work, but it could have turned out another way could it not? Again exactly what is predicted by the theory of evolution. New things don't just magically appear out of thin air; descent with modification requires the ancestors to have similar bits to the descendants. Does that make the genes "anticipatory"? No, the genes have to have a function in the organism in question. And the comparison to an embryo and adult is a false comparison, since the organism uses its genes none of those genes are anticipatory. In short, you seem to have trouble understanding that theories and people predict different things. Would you also say that the above reflects badly on physicists and chemists, since physics and chemistry should be able to predict the details of an organisms functioning (since biology is just a subset of chemistry and chemistry just a subset of physics)? No, to be able to make predictions with a theory you sometimes need very specific information. The theory of evolution is not limited to the discovered earth life, it is a very broad theory and what can be predicted using it depends on the specific details of the life-forms in question. In particular, the mutation function depends on the details of the life in question, and the fitness function does likewise.

I support marijuana legalization but oppose its use as recreation. Just because I think something should be legal (or rather, not be specifically outlawed) doesn't mean I think it is a good idea. For example, falling down the stairs is legal but not recommended, and throwing people in jail because they fell down the steps would be profoundly stupid. Similarly, procrastination is a bad thing and also a choice, but throwing people in jail just because we don't like procrastination just seems like it would make things worse. Trying to make all bad things illegal is impractical and expensive. I don't want people smoking marijuana but I dislike even more the idea of spending my tax dollars to throw them in jail on my behalf for smoking it. As ydoaps noted, there's many reasons why legalization would be a good idea, which in my opinion would have far greater positive effects than the slight increase in usage that would result from legalization (for example, you wouldn't smoke it even if it were legal, right?). Oh, and if you think smoking pot is bad for your health, compare that to jailtime and see which is worse for the person in question.

Well, I'm not familiar with your units but that doesn't matter so much. The heavier arrow will probably gain more energy from the bow, not necessarily by much but at least a little due to the bow not having as much kinetic energy if nothing else. All else being equal, the faster arrow will have a lot more air resistance, which goes up rapidly with speed, so the fast arrow will lose more energy to the air. Also, the heavier arrow will have greater momentum even if it had the same kinetic energy. But there's also another aspect to causing damage: how quickly the energy/momentum is transferred to the target. So for example if you have two arrows with the same kinetic energy and one is x times heavier as the other (m for the light one and xm for the heavy one), the speed of the heavy one will be [math]v=\sqrt\frac{2 KE}{xm}[/math] and the lighter one would be faster by [math]\sqrt{x}[/math]. The rate of transfer of kinetic energy would be proportional to KE*v, so that the lighter arrow would transfer energy by the same amount faster as it is moving faster. But the heavier one would have more momentum, by the same amount as the light one is faster. The rate of transfer of momentum will be equal because the more momentum cancels out the moving slower. So the fast arrow transfers the kinetic energy faster, and the momentum just as fast, as the heavy arrow, but the heavy arrow has more total momentum (and should have a very small bit more kinetic energy). I don't know exactly what that means, but my guess is that the light arrow can penetrate a harder target but the heavier arrow penetrate farther into anything it does penetrate. Since you're probably shooting at soft targets, I'd say you should expect the heavier arrow to penetrate farther.

Fish only have one, two-chambered heart. They can get away with that because they're cold-blooded, so need less oxygen, and in water so there's no huge pressure differences between head and legs. We mammals have a four-chambered heart providing for essentially separate circulation in the lungs and body. But cold-blooded is a good choice for aquatic creatures, otherwise making them huge would help reduce the problem of heat loss. As for technology, a lot of our tech requires heating/fire, electrical conductivity, plus seawater is corrosive to many materials, and on top of that seawater will block radiowaves. A lot of our type of tech just wouldn't work very well in the oceans and that's knowing how it works to start with. If aquatic creatures have tech, perhaps it would be more like biotech, or something else very different from ours.

That's an electromagnet though. I got the impression he was talking about permanent magnets.

Is that really that irrational? I know we all like to pretend that every life is priceless, but then we'd have to have everyone be a doctor or at least learn first aid/CPR skills. But no, people watch TV instead of taking a CPR course. Guess individuals don't really follow the ideal of lives being priceless either.

Unlikely. It would have to have some way of keeping some form of rigidity, otherwise parts would rotate to minimize their energy and cancel out the magnetic field. But maybe something like a liquid crystal might work?

Looks like someone doesn't like school uniforms. I don't either, and I've never quite understood what they're for. Maybe to create a certain environment?

I don't smoke anything, and I support marijuana legalization, much like I support alcohol legalization despite not drinking. This is an issue of freedom, of practicality, of economics. Do you have even the slightest idea how much it is costing us to try to tell people what not to smoke? Not just in economics terms either, check out how much of our prison population is there for marijuana for example, and compare our prison population to pretty much any other country. "Land of the free" my arse.