Black Egypt
I’m really loving this new Blogs of the Day plugin. True, it is a popularity contest, but the thing I like most about it is the amount of people using it and getting their sites listed. It allows for some very interesting reading. Case in Point is Alun’s post about Black Pharoahs. Being a history major, I was drawn to this title and read the article. It was a great read and I would like to quote it on my blog.
This comes in part from an email I was sent over a month back about the National Geographic cover with Tutankhamen on the front. The author was upset that Tutankhamen was white and asking me to take a stand. I wrote back that I wouldn?t on the grounds that the issue in question hadn?t been released in the UK, though it has in the past couple of weeks. Was she a crank? That?s the easy answer but there were a couple of comments that made me think we should think seriously about the issue of race and recontruction of ancient peoples. Read the rest of this great article here
Evolution, Entropy, and Open Systems:
The law of entropy in science teaches that the spontaneous tendency of all matter is towards greater disorder or randomness – not greater order or complexity, as evolution would teach. Contrary to popular belief, entropy does occur in open systems as well as in closed systems. After all, we discovered entropy here on Earth which is an open system in relation to the Sun.
The difference between an open system and a closed system is not entropy but the availability of useful energy. Evolutionists believe that in an open system, such as the Earth, the unlimited energy available from the Sun will provide matter with the ability to overcome entropy so that matter can evolve towards greater levels of complexity, order, and organization.
However, it is not sufficient to have just enough energy to produce substantial levels of order. There also has to exist some way of converting and directing energy to accomplish specific goals. Living things possess complex energy converting and directing mechanisms to temporarily overcome entropy so that a seed, for example, can develop into a tree. The question is how did biological order and such mechanisms come into being in the first place at a time when there was no energy converting and directing mechanism in nature to overcome entropy.
Even Prigogine, the father of Chaos theory, has acknowledged that his highly theoretical concepts, even if they could be scientifically proved, will allow for only a very minimal level of order due to chance or spontaneous processes.
It has always been the case that chance can only produce a minimal level of order. For example, amino acids have been shown to come into existence by chance (spontaneously) but not proteins. Functioning protein molecules require that the various amino acids be in a precise sequence, just like the letters in a sentence. There is no evidence that chance processes can accomplish this – especially the many millions of protein molecules found in even the simplest cell.
There is no innate chemical tendency for amino acids to bond with one another in a sequence. Any one amino acid can just as easily bond with any other. The only reason at all for why the various amino acids bond with one another in a precise sequence in the cells of our bodies is because they’re directed to do so by the sequence of molecules found in the genetic code. If they’re not in the proper sequence protein molecules will not function.
If the cell evolved it would have had to be all at once. A partially evolved cell cannot wait millions of years to become complete because it would be highly unstable and quickly disintegrate in the open environment.
The great British scientist Sir Frederick Hoyle has said that the probability of the sequence of molecules in the simplest cell coming into existence by chance is equivalent to a tornado going through a junk yard of airplane parts and assembling a 747 Jumbo Jet!
What if we should find evidence of life on Mars? Wouldn’t that prove evolution? No. It wouldn’t be proof that such life had evolved from non-living matter by chance natural processes. And even if we did find evidence of life on Mars it would have most likely have come from our very own planet – Earth! In the Earth’s past there was powerful volcanic activity which could have easily spewed dirt that contained life into outer space that eventually could have reached Mars. A Newsweek article
of September 21, 1998, p.12 mentions exactly this possibility.
Contrary to popular belief, scientists have never created life in the laboratory. What scientists have done is genetically alter or engineer already existing forms of life, and by doing this scientists have been able to produce new forms of life. However, they did not produce these new life forms from non-living matter. Even if scientists ever do produce life from non-living matter it won’t be by chance so it still wouldn’t help support any argument for evolution.
We are so accustomed to seeing evolution of technology all about us (new cars, planes, boats, ships, inventions, etc.) that we assume that Nature must work the same way also. Of course, we forget that all those new gadgets and technology had a human designer behind them. Nature, however, doesn’t work the same way!
Entropy is still the biggest scientific obstacle to evolution. Entropy is the opposite direction of evolution. The natural and spontaneous tendency of matter is always towards greater disorder and randomness – not greater order and complexity.
Science cannot prove we are here by either design (creation) or by chance (evolution), but people should be free to study the evidence from both sides and decide for themselves which has better scientific support.
Researchers and highly qualified scientists at the Institute for Creation Research (www.icr.org) of San Diego, California can provide much helpful material to the interested public on this and other issues in science concerning creation and evolution.
Sincerely,
Babu G. Ranganathan**
(B.A. Theology/Biology)
http://www.religionscience.com