User
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 718
Wisconsin
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I see now the reason for your con-fusion. Iron is the element with the highest binding energy per nucleon. Thus, fusion indeed ends with iron. Synthesis of elements higher than iron is an energy consuming process.
Fusion - energy gain (elements <= iron)
Nucleosynthesis - energy loss (elements > iron)
For overcoming the electrical potential barrier, you need to accelerate ions to a high velocity for getting new elements higher than iron. The required temperatures are reached only in heavy stars at the very end of their life span: in supernovae.
Ok. I guess I'm just wondering how that helps out out here on earth. 'Dying' is not the word I would use to describe our sun. So my only problem with this is where do all these heavier elements come from on earth?
Maybe I'm mistaken on this, I really don't care too much for astronomy, but I have yet to hear a decent explanation for this.
I suppose the explanation might be that these heavier elements, caused by a supernova, formed clouds that then formed into solar systems, but I suppose I'll have to ask where the proof of this happening is. Except that its the only explanation in a materialistic universe.
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I do not understand what you mean with "no energy left".
The energy would be unusable, and the universe would be uninhabitable.
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The Big Bang is unrelated to the finiteness or infiniteness of the universe.
Ok, unless you believe that the big bang was the beginning to the universe. Which is the impression I get from many of the big bang believers. If the universe had a beginning then its finite. If it didn't have a beginning, then matter is eternal (making it supernatural) and you've managed to stealthily sidestep the question of 'Why'? Namely, why should the universe exist when in fact there is no reason for it to exist (excluding God). I would love to see proof that the universe is infinite. We can hardly even predict tomorrow's weather, but we'll know 'beyond the shadow of a doubt' what the universe was like back into infinity. I'm looking forward to the proof myself.
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Until then, you're free to put everything into that first split second - God, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whatever.
There's that FSM argument you love so much.  Science is about possibility (among other things). I find it interesting that people have turned speculation, theory, and probability into absolute certainty. You've morphed nature into a Flying Spaghettie Monster by trying to remove God. Science can't avoid the fact that the universe is steeped in a supernatural source. Either the oxymoronic supernatural nature, or a supernatural creator. I don't get how you can even begin to try and make my belief look irrational while thinking your belief is somehow enlightened.
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What is the difference between the above statements? An action by God is certainly a supernatural action.
The difference is pretty simple. There are some things that are simply inescapably unnatural. Namely the beginning of the universe and the beginning of life. I'll stick to the beginning of the universe for now. What I've seen in the last, however many years, is simply a succesive ladder of excuses from secular science.
"Ok, we have to find a way that the universe could exist without God."
"How could it start without God?"
"We don't know yet, but we will know."
Lo and behold, the big bang! Suddenly there was an excuse to believe the universe could start without a creator (maybe not the first excuse, but the first 'serious' one). At least on the surface. But you have problems. You named one of them. The other problem is that it requires a belief that nature can create itself, which goes against everything we know about nature.
The big bang was pretty good for a while, but after a while the idea started to wear thin because there are unavoidable problems.
"Well, we still know that God didn't create the universe. So now we have to figure out how this big bang is possible without God."
Strings! That's right, vibrating strings control the universe. Its only a matter of time until that explains the exact origin of the universe. Another rung on the ladder has gotten you closer to the origin of the universe, but you're still not any closer to answering the big question. Where did it come from? Whether the question is about elements, or strings, the question remains.
I'm sure the ladder could lead to explanations for strings, and so on and so forth. But the ladder will never end. Its just a bunch of excuses.
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As you've stated earlier, creationists believe that nature's laws, although created by God, are still not good enough to produce life.
Yeah. Is it coincidental that dead elements don't come to life and eventually accidentally cause a consciousness that would understand the universe it accidentally came from. I would call it scientific common sense. But nowadays scientific common sense is that no matter what God can't exist, even if it seems like God does.
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Thus life required additional supernatural events, like some god physically placing species on earth. That was the line of my arguments and, as to my knowledge, essential creationist faith. Why is this now a "strawman"?
See, I thought you were talking about us attributing the rising of the sun to direct actions by God. We know that God created a self sustaining universe that He doesn't need to tinker with in order to keep it running. That's what's so great about his creation, and another trademark of his work.
The reason I assumed you were giving such a simplistic argument is because you mentioned 'observations of nature'. Spontaneous life goes against all natural observations. So there's no correlation. Even in horribly overexaggerated conditions that are highly unrealistic according to idealistic evolutionary models of early earth, we still couldn't get all of the materials of life to form, nor could we even get the right KINDs of what materials we did get to form. What we found is how exactly nature CANNOT cause life to spontaneously erupt out of non-living chemicals.
Science is with God on this one, I'm afraid. So yes, we do attribute the things that science has proved nature cannot do, to a creator. I fail to see how this is a bad argument to make. If you (and a bunch of other people, and a video camera) saw a dog sprout wings, fly into the air, and begin singing 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' I doubt you would say, "There's that crazy nature, goin at it again." Yet, this is exactly what you do with the origin of life. Or the origin of the universe for that matter.
"The task force finds that...the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine."
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