Not_Now.Soon : you seem to find it challenging to believe that some things can change from a simple state to a complex state. This is quite a common issue that many people have. Quite often they feel this way because of their misunderstanding of the concept of entropy. However, if you study physics you will realize that our theories do certainly allow this. How this works is that while it is "true" that overall entropy always increases (or to say naively that things become disordered) it is allowable for a subpart of a system loss entropy (become more ordered) as long as the rest of the system gains entropy (becomes more disordered) and that overall there is a gain.

Here's a perfect example. Snow is formed from water vapour in the atmosphere. Water vapour is a gas and is the most disordered state of water (there's almost no inter-molecular structure/complexity/order to a gas but rather it is just agitated random movements/collisions of molecules) but snowflakes are crystalline solid and have vastly greater order/complexity than water vapour. The reason why water can go from disordered gas to beautiful snowflakes is because when the water vapour cools to form the flakes in releases its energy (ie: heat) to the surrounding atmosphere thus heating it up and causing the atmosphere to become more disordered. This increase in the disorder in the atmosphere is greater than the increase in order of the water itself changing from gas to solid.

To Thinkabit.

I'm glad to see you're still in this conversation. For a second I thought my stance on evolution pushed you out of the conversation. Just like when someone say "enough of this," and leaves. Let me explain where I'm coming from regarding evolution and entropy.

Though entropy is only considered a law in the form of thermodynamics, the idea is still justifiable in just about any other subject matter. You don't get more order out of disorder. But instead, out of an ordered and organized structure, over time it becomes less organized, loses it's structure and moves to a type of disorder (comparatively speaking to how it was before).

With evolution, though there are observations of changes in species that get passed down from one generation to the next, the idea is that through diversity the strongest attributes survive. In this way I've compared evolution to a farmer breeding a crop with certain qualities he wants to keep, or a cattle breeder doing the same thing with his cattle.

These two theories work well enough in modern times but they both fall apart when they are theorized to the point of how the earth began and how life started on it. At that point neither theory is within is scope of reference. Yet in evolution, many people pose the theory to outside it's scope, to both where life began and even to the idea of one species (single cell led organisms) being the great great great... grandfather of any of the modern species that are multicellular, multi tissue (a tissue in anatomy is a group of one type of cell), and even multi-organ creatures with vastly different types of cells in it.

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With the observations of entropy as they usually apply, if life sparked in the chaotic world that it would start from, there's no reason to think that it would survive to a point of a few generations. Yet here we are. In the face of viruses, hostile and extreme conditions that would decrease the chance of life surviving, and any number of factors that would cause a life form to breakdown and die; in the face of all of this life is discovered in just about every environment we've come across and had the resources to study it. Even in the extreme environments of the cold in glaciers, and the environments of great heat near thermal volcanic vents at the ocean's floor.

Life as it would seem just finds a way. Unless you look past earth and into space. Then the diversity and the amount of life drops to a dramatic zero amount discovered.

By the first observation that we are here, it stretches the conclusions of how life started, and was maintained. Even more so though is the idea that life doesn't just go away, but instead that it gets more complex. This is the part of evolution that I don't think will be discovered in a lab or within one person's lifetime. It's the untestable, unobservable part of evolution.

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Move past that point of complexity back around to the idea of entropy once more though, and the scope of how well the world fits together is bewildering. Hence my examples of anatomy that your knee works the way it does or that your skin both protects you and helps keep your body temperature the same regardless of the outside temperature around you (within a certain range of temperatures at least). Or amazing and bewildering that similar forms of complexity and engineering in other species. Even to the point of ecosystems seem to be in a state of well balanced systems instead of growing states of entropy should be something to marvel at.

All of this can point to, and hint at the reality that God exists, and is not only the clock maker of the world that set the wheels in motion, but must also be a constant sustainer of the world from not falling apart and becoming a lifeless rock circling our sun.

I hope this makes more sense, and answers where I'm coming from on that aspect. There's more out there though for evidence that God is real, and I gave some of those things in the same set of posts where I tried to explain to Opinion, that if all you do is look for God, I'm sure you'll find Him.

For reference that was way back here:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=20871#368539

And the next post here:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=20871#368540

OzSpen,

You just asked me: "Why must you talk in the third person about Not_Now.Soon and me when it would be courteous to address your questions or comments to us directly?"

Ahhhh, yes ............ Well that is because I was talking to someone about you.

Would you like to engage in a debate with me on the religious view versus the scientific view? How about we pick a topic say LIFE which you believe God created and I believe is a product of the building blocks of our Universe viz atoms.

I think you should go first. What is LIFE?

To OzSpen.

Opinion states:

<<Ahhhh, yes ............ Well that is because I was talking to someone about you.>>

But regarding why he didn't just be courteous and speak directly to either you or me. I have an easy explanation that is easily observed in any conversation he's in.

He's a dick. Plain and simple. Wash your hands of him now or latter, either way eventually that's all he is is someone to wash up from after dealing with.

To Opinion.

Your attitude and your behavior are all that it is that make you this way. Change your behavior and you won't be thought of as the troll pretty universally on OLO. Or you know, be civil as I'm sure there was some kind of discussion and study on in any study of sociology (which you claim to have studied).

Back to topic (any topic or subtopic so far), why don't you give your version of what life is, or give some contributing substance to the conversation. Add to the topics and subject matter discussed instead of only trying to poke at other people.

You know, as a general rule, stop being a dick.