USAToday: Evolution is Settled Science and Not a Religious Proposition

Lincoln Phipps

Cornelius Hunter claims that “Evolution” is founded on a position that the “world arose spontaneously” and he then continues with “In reality there is no such empirical support. No overwhelming evidence and no unambiguous proof. ” Perhaps Hunter needs to contact Brent Dalrymple and get corrected ? The evidence is that the Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago and that evidence of living things appears a long time after that.

spon·ta·ne·ous [spon-tey-nee-uhs] adjective 1. coming or resulting from a natural impulse or tendency; without effort or premeditation; natural and unconstrained; unplanned: a spontaneous burst of applause. 2. (of a person) given to acting upon sudden impulses. 3. (of natural phenomena) arising from internal forces or causes; independent of external agencies; self-acting. Spontaneously doesn't mean recently. Hope that helps.RexTugwell

January 12, 2014

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Astronomers Discover Planet That Shouldn't Be There - Dec. 5, 2013 Excerpt: Weighing in at 11 times Jupiter's mass and orbiting its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance, planet HD 106906 b is unlike anything in our own Solar System and throws a wrench in planet formation theories. "This system is especially fascinating because no model of either planet or star formation fully explains what we see," said Vanessa Bailey, who led the research. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131205141629.htm Our Very Normal Solar System Isn't Normal Anymore by Robert Krulwich - May 07, 2013 Excerpt: As of this month, we've discovered 884 planets, 692 planetary systems, 132 of them with more than one planet and, strange to tell, almost none of them look like us.,,, "Before we ever discovered any [planets outside the solar system] we thought we understood the formation of planetary systems pretty deeply." We had our frost line. We knew how solar systems formed. "It was a really beautiful theory," he says. "And, clearly, thoroughly wrong.",,, "It really is something that I find deeply weird," he (an astronomer) writes. "What does it all mean? I don't know. I am certain that this single-minded emphasis on planets-in-habitable-zones is making people forget that there is still a lot of weird stuff happening out there and that we still don't even understand the basics of how we ourselves got here." http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/05/06/181613582/our-very-normal-solar-system-isn-t-normal-anymore Ancient alien planets shake up view of our early universe - March 2012 Excerpt: Astronomers have discovered a planetary system that formed nearly 13 billion years ago, suggesting the early universe harbored more planets than has been thought. The system consists of a star called HIP 11952 and two Jupiter-like alien planets. It is just 375 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Cetus (the Whale). The planets are likely the oldest yet found; at 12.8 billion years old, they're just 900 million years younger than the universe itself, according to the commonly accepted Big Bang theory.,,, It is widely accepted that planets coalesce from the swirling disks of dust and gas that surround young stars. Classical models of planet formation hold that metal-poor stars are unlikely to harbor planets, while worlds should form far more easily around metal-rich suns. But recent discoveries, including the HIP 11952 system, have astronomers rethinking these models. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46910290/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.T3dzpdX5a6N Medium size worlds upset “Earth is not unique” planet modelling - January 2012 Excerpt: But what has puzzled observers and theorists so far is the high proportion of planets — roughly one-third to one-half — that are bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. These ‘super-Earths’ are emerging as a new category of planet — and they could be the most numerous of all (see ‘Super-Earths rising’). Their very existence upsets conventional models of planetary formation and, furthermore, most of them are in tight orbits around their host star, precisely where the modellers say they shouldn’t be. https://uncommondescent.com/cosmology/medium-size-worlds-upset-earth-is-not-unique-planet-modelling/ Rocky Exoplanets - Reasons To Believe - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7DDPqyZED8 The solar systems that scientists are currently finding, in our corner of the universe, simply do not match the 'predictions': Exoplanet Hunters Fail Predictions – August 2010 Excerpt: There are so many surprises in this field—almost nothing is turning out as we expected. There are Jupiter-mass planets in three-day orbits. There are planets with masses that are between those of the terrestrial planets in our solar system and the gas giants in the outer part of our solar system. There are Jupiter-mass planets with hugely inflated radii—at densities far lower than what we thought were possible for a gas-giant planet. There are giant planets with gigantic solid cores that defy models of planet formation, which say there shouldn’t be enough solids available in a protoplanetary disk to form a planet that dense. There are planets with tilted orbits. There are planets that orbit the poles of their stars, in so-called circumpolar orbits. There are planets that orbit retrograde—that is, they orbit in the opposite direction of their star’s rotation. There are systems of planets that are in configurations that are hard to describe given our understanding of planet formation. For instance, some planets are much too close to one another. But a lot of those surprises have to do with the fact that we have only one example of a planetary system—our solar system—to base everything on, right? What’s interesting is that we’ve found very little that resembles our example. http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201008.htm#20100831a More Evidence Our Solar System Is Uniquely Suited for Life - October 16, 2012 Excerpt: Most planetary systems found by astronomers so far are quite different than our own. Many have giant planets whizzing around in a compact configuration, very close to their star. An extreme case in point is a newly found solar system that was announced on October 15, 2012 which packs five—count ‘em—five planets into a region less than one-twelve the size of Earth’s orbit!,,, The fact that almost all solar systems found so far are so different than our own has astronomers wondering if we are, in fact, the oddballs.,,, Fact is, “We don’t know why this didn’t happen in our solar system,” the spokesperson said. It’s going to require “a new generation of theories to explain why our solar system turned out so differently.” http://crev.info/2012/10/solar-system-suited-for-life/ How the Moon Supports the Privileged Planet Hypothesis - December 5, 2013 Excerpt: Planetary scientists were optimistic that the Apollo missions would help decide among three leading hypotheses: capture, fission, and accretion. After Apollo, all three were rejected, leaving theorists without a theory until the "giant impact" hypothesis came along in the 1980s. Till recently, the scenario of a Mars-sized object striking the Earth at a glancing blow was hailed as accepted truth. TV documentaries animated the event handsomely, in vivid color. However, new observations have cast doubt on the (impact) idea. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/12/our_moon_still079861.htmlbornagain77

January 12, 2014

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Mr. Phipps, please do enlighten us with the scientific evidence as to how the world arose completely spontaneously Does the Probability for ETI = 1? Excerpt; On the Reasons To Believe website we document that the probability a randomly selected planet would possess all the characteristics intelligent life requires is less than 10^-304. A recent update that will be published with my next book, Hidden Purposes: Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, puts that probability at 10^-1054. http://www.reasons.org/does-probability-eti-1 Linked from Appendix C from Dr. Ross's book, 'Why the Universe Is the Way It Is'; Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters ? 10^-1333 dependency factors estimate ? 10^324 longevity requirements estimate ? 10^45 Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters ? 10^-1054 Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe ? 10^22 Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^1032 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracles. http://www.reasons.org/files/compendium/compendium_part3.pdf Hugh Ross - Evidence For Intelligent Design Is Everywhere (10^-1054) - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4347236 "If some god-like being could be given the opportunity to plan a sequence of events with the expressed goal of duplicating our 'Garden of Eden', that power would face a formidable task. With the best of intentions but limited by natural laws and materials it is unlikely that Earth could ever be truly replicated. Too many processes in its formation involve sheer luck. Earth-like planets could certainly be made, but each would differ in critical ways. This is well illustrated by the fantastic variety of planets and satellites (moons) that formed in our solar system. They all started with similar building materials, but the final products are vastly different from each other . . . . The physical events that led to the formation and evolution of the physical Earth required an intricate set of nearly irreproducible circumstances." Peter B. Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe (New York: Copernicus, 2000) Is There Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God? How the Recent Discoveries Support a Designed Universe - Dr. Walter L. Bradley http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9403/evidence.html Many people simply presume that solar system formation is fairly well understood by science but that simply is not the case: New study sheds new light on planet formation - July 4, 2012 Excerpt: The study,, began with a curious and unexpected finding: Within three years, the cloud of dust circling a young star in the Scorpius-Centaurus stellar nursery simply disappeared."The most commonly accepted time scale for the removal of this much dust is in the hundreds of thousands of years, sometimes millions," said study co-author Inseok Song,,, "What we saw was far more rapid and has never been observed or even predicted. It tells us that we have a lot more to learn about planet formation.",,, "Many astronomers may feel uncomfortable with the suggested explanations for the disappearance of the dust because each of them has non-traditional implications," Song said, "but my hope that this line of research can bring us closer to a true understanding of how planets form." http://phys.org/news/2012-07-planet-formation.html Are Saturn’s Rings Evolving? July - 2010 Excerpt: Not all is well in theories of planet formation, though. Astrobiology Magazine complained this week that many of the exoplanets discovered around other stars do not fit theories of the origin of the solar system. http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201007.htm#20100710a Lava World Baffles Astronomers: Planet Kepler-78b 'Shouldn't Exist' - Oct. 30, 2013 Excerpt: Kepler-78b is a planet that shouldn't exist. This scorching lava world circles its star every eight and a half hours at a distance of less than one million miles -- one of the tightest known orbits. According to current theories of planet formation, it couldn't have formed so close to its star, nor could it have moved there. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131030142915.htm Planet-Making Theories Don’t Fit Extrasolar Planets; Excerpt: “The more new planets we find, the less we seem to know about how planetary systems are born, according to a leading planet hunter.” We cannot apply theories that fit our solar system to other systems: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201102.htm#20110223bbornagain77

January 12, 2014

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Of somewhat related note: ENV has a somewhat humorous article detailing the futile attempt of two materialists who tried to reduce the ‘sense of beauty’ to mere material mechanism.,, Beauty Evades the Clutches of Materialism – March 27, 2013 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/03/beauty_evades_t070321.html Though the article was somewhat technical, it was almost comical to read how every approach, in which the materialists tried to reduce the subjective sense of beauty to a mere material mechanism, was thwarted.,, But alas, don’t those materialistic researchers have even the faintest clue that,,, All Things Bright And Beautiful – poem http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4082996/ ,,,come from God?? What Encourages Belief in God? Amazing Sights of 'Planet Earth,' Says New Study - November 27, 2013 http://www.christianpost.com/news/what-encourages-belief-in-god-amazing-sights-of-planet-earth-says-new-study-109644/cpf The argument from beauty needs no words... 22 Unbelievable Places that are Hard to Believe Really Exist - photos http://www.boredpanda.com/amazing-places/ Beauty. . . can be appreciated only by the mind. This would be impossible, if this `idea' of beauty were not found in the mind in a more perfect form. http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/williams-aesthetic.shtml MercyMe - Beautiful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vh7-RSPuAAbornagain77

January 12, 2014

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Today's sermon by Cornelis Hunter shows just how confused people can get with the boundaries of the science of Evolution. It is not stellar nucleosynthesis, it is not planetary formation and it is not even abiogenesis. It is noticing the fact that alleles change over time and working out how and why. Cornelius Hunter claims that "Evolution" is founded on a position that the "world arose spontaneously" and he then continues with "In reality there is no such empirical support. No overwhelming evidence and no unambiguous proof. " Perhaps Hunter needs to contact Brent Dalrymple and get corrected ? The evidence is that the Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago and that evidence of living things appears a long time after that.Lincoln Phipps

January 12, 2014

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