Edtharan

Not at all. As I said, that energy has to go some where. It could go into changing wind patterns, or rain fall patterns, it could go into increasing evaporation or even decreasing it. It is the consiquences of this extra energy that we should be looking at, and the main consiquence is that in a complex system extra energy can change the behaviours of that system (and is likely to do so). So my argument is not irrelevent, it is extremely relevent because there are people arguing that green house gasses do not effect how much energy is within the Earth's climate systems (and if ther eis no increase in energy, then there would be no disturbance to the system). Once this basic science is accepted (it has been confirmed) then we know that we are causing an effect and we are responsible for it. And, we can start looking to what the consiquences of this are. First we need to know how the system works. Knowing the budget is not as important as knowing how the system changes as the budget changes. Take the wine glass as a simple example: It is not as important to know how much force is applied as to know that if enough force is applied then the wine glass will tip over. If you also know that after a certain amount of force is applied, the glass will tip over, then it wouldn't matter if twice that force is apllied,a s once you know that enough force is apllied to tip it obver, any more force becomes irrelevent. With the climate systems, they are much more complex, and the consiquences are also more complex. However, scientists are getting better and better at understanding the way the system works, and what we know is that undercertain conditions we will get changes to the climate that are harmful to us as a society. Yes, the Earth's climate does fluctuate. However, it is not about whether life can survive it (we know it can), what is in question is whether our scocieties can survive it. I am certain that Global Warming, even the type expressed by warming extremists, will not even make us extinct. This is alarmism to suggest taht it could make us extinct, or that it will destroy life on Earth. Global Warming can't do that (there is not enough GHGs on Earth to force that much warming - and even then, it will eventually cool down as the gasses breck down or are converted by plants). Some ecosystems will be disrupted, and some that are now rare will get a boost. However, as top predators in an ecosystem, Humans are sensitive to disturbances in their underlying ecosystems. Fortunately, Huamns are also omnivorous and are highly flexable in their predations. This means we will survive as a species, but as a society we can still be easily disrupted. Short answer: It has. Actually there has been melting of permafrosts in past interglacial periods ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBC-41XM80M-6&_user=10&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F2001&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1555866986&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=53b2402f19ad729ec1a5e694bb6120be&searchtype=a ), however, there is one crucial difference between then and now: Humans. We are active deforesters on large scales. During these other interglacial periods, large forests grew in these thawing areas which acted as temporary carbon sinks. It is these forests that have become our curent permafrost sites. The fact that there is vegitation there confirms this, as how else would that vegitation get there if it has been permanently frozen since the last interglacial period. Because humans are deforesters, it is unlikely that enough vegetation will grow to counter act the emission of GHGs due to rotting. Also, we are in an interglacial period, this means that the permafrost areas we have are likely to have only melted in very warm interglacial periods before. The permafrost that did melt due to the interglacial period we entered would have melted thousands of years ago, and was likely instrumental in tipping us into this interglacial period in the first place.

Have you got any objective means of showing that any other human has those characteristics too? You have already said that you can't objectivly determin them, so why are you asking this if you agree you can't even do it for humans? So, because I damage the montior sockets on my computer and can no longer see the output of the computer, then this proves that my computer has an imaterial mind. This is the same thing. Somtimes the brain damage is in the morot cortex of the brain. This will prevent the person being able to respond, and be classed in a vegitive state. However, their inputs and other parts of their brain might not be damaged, so they would be able to understand what people around them are saying and their brain can still function well enough to try and perform these actions (but because the circult that allows the body to move is damaged, these instruction can't get out). In the computer analogy, the monitor (the muscles of the body) does not display anything, but the rest of the computer works fine (actually this has happened to my computer and the video card was faulty, but everything else about the computer worked fine - I could even operate it without being able to see what should have been on the monitor). So your argument is false unless you can show that it was brain damage that should have prevented the person from being able to recive input or understand that inpot. Persistant vegetative state does not mean that the person is incapable of conciousness, only that they can not act. Yes, it is well known that the brain is 'plastic" (btw Plastic means maliable and changeable). The mechanisms on how the brain does this is well known. The brain is made up of neurons, which are living cells. That is they grow, reproduce and can even move around. This has been observed both in labs under microscopes, and directly in brains (by staining cells and and seeing how they have changed after a period of time has passed). This means that a brain is not static, but is changeable (plastic). As the brain is a network of neurons, changing the network changes the brain. The mechanism that the brain uses to do this is chemical signaling. Neurons will grow towards chemical signals put out by other neurons, and as neurons fire according to signals in the brain, then it is not suprising in the least that the brain can cause changes in the brain. This does not confirm that there is a "mind", but it does confirm that the brain functions as it is described in science without reference to an external influence (as the signal that releases the chemical orriginates in the brain, and the neuron grows towards that chemical signal). As there is a causal link *that has been confirmed in both labs and live subjects) as to how the brain is plastic, without the need to reference an external actor (ie: mind), then this argument does not distinguish between them. It does not provide evidence to support your claim at all. You have not provided any evidence that distinguishes between the two arguments. All the evidence you have provided either confirmes materialism or, at best says that either could be true. No they are not properties of matter, but they are properties of systems (or don't have any objective evidence that they actually exist - remember you have already dismissed behaviour as an objective measure of internal states). Using fMRI they have shown that "concious" experience occurs after the brain has taken action (see: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19046374). So if concious experience is directing our actions, then it must have some wierd backwards in time effect. This actually disproves that conciousness is what drives our actions, at most conciousness is a passenger. So, from these studies, they have mapped the activation of the brain and how conciousness effects it. What they have found is that conciousness reacts after the fact to correct the unconcious reaction. Now, this can actually answer your question. As the brain has a feedback circuit designed to critisise actions and change them if needed, this creates self awareness, as this is what is needed for such a circuit to work. This circuit needs to know about the self, the goals, the actions taken and the consiquences of those action to make an assesment. However, humans have a capacity of abstract actions, that is actions that are not actually performed, but take place inside the operation of the brain. As these too are subject to this feedback circuit, we have the ability to be aware of such abstract activity: We are concious of our own thoughts. This is a materialist explaination, and based on scientific (and objective) evidence. As this answers your question and only uses materialism, your conclusions that materialism can't explain subjective experience is false (and just saying it doesn't won't actually prove you right - you have to show where the evidence I have provided is wrong or how my conclusions are wrong).

What goes on within the Earth's climate does not effect this. It can increase or decreasae the amount lost, but then that is regulated by GHGs. Earth is close to a black body radiator. It is not exactly one (as there is some reflection), but Earth can not loose energy by convection or conduction as there is nothing for it to convect to and nothing for it to conduct to. Therefore the only way Earth can loose energy is by radiation. And as Black Body radiation state, the frequency of energy the Earth looses energy at is in the infrared radiation band (you even tried to argue this). Therefore, if anything reduces the ability of the Earth to loose infrared radiation must therefore reduce the rate that Earth looses energy. As this energy has to go somewhere, it stays within the Earth's climate systems. What I think you are thinking I am saying is that this energy has to go into warming up the Earth. This is not the case, I am just talking about energy here. It could go into making the winds faster, it could change their direction, it could heat up the atmosphere, or any number of other things (it could even cause cooling). But according to the conservation of energy, it must still be within the Earth's climate systems because it can't be destroyed. If it hasn't left, then where could it be. If you have some other place it can go, please tell us. These are mechanisms that change how much goes out, or where it is stored, but it does not address my argument at all. From this I can see you have absolutly no understanding of what I am saying. Let me repeat: I am not saying that this excess energy has to go into heating up the Earth. Please read that sentance several times until you actually get what I am writing. It is a key aspect and dispite several posts and it being repeated several times in them, you still don't seem to have read it. I have even stated this excess energy can COOL the climate. So why do you keep arguing that I am saying that it must WARM the climate. That is just one posibility. I am talking about the amount of energy in the Earth's climate systems. This is dictated solely by the rate that energy comes in and the rate that it goes out. If you decrease the rate it goes out without change the rate it goes in, then it MUST increase the amount stored. If you need objective proof, just look at your bank account. The amount of money that is in there is dictated solely by the amount that goes in and the am ount that goes out. If you decrease the rate you take money out without changing the amount that goes in then it MUST increase the amount stored in your bank account. It is very simple. However, what goes on within the climate systems are not simple, but the amount of energy stored is ONLY determined by the amount the goes in and the amount that goes out. If you really want to dispute the maths of this, you can increase the amouont of money going out of your bank account by giving me some.

Although the practice of card throwing is certainly a skill, there is a fiar amount of science behind it. When you throw a card, you have to spin it quite quickly. This causes a gyroscopic effect that keeps the card stable in flight. If this gyroscopic effect didn't exist (ie you just threw that card without spinning it), then any imperfections, or slight turbulance in ther air will cause the card to either tilt up or down. This tilt would allow more air to impact on one side so as to increase the tilt. This is why cards will flip end on end if thrown without spin. Howver, when throwing a card, by putting spin on it, this movment reduces the force in the direction you are trying to throw it, which means that it won't go as far. So a good thrower will know how to balance the amount o feffort they put into the spin to the amount the put into the throw. There is probably a perfect ratio that will allow the bets throw posible, but mostly you will learn this by trial and error (and yes, like in mythbusters, I have managed to get the card to stick into various objects, like foam).

This is wrong. Sure, higher entropy states are more likely, but that does not preclude that a low entropy state could not occur. Take for example the string "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10" You would agree with me that it is an ordered state. If we were to introduce random changes to it, say randomly swapping two positions with each other, then it is going to be unlikely that any two random swaps would reproduce the orriginal position. However, if you did this long enough, you certainly would get the orriginal sequence again at some time. Even if you started off with a random ordering, it will, if you did it long enough, get to a higly ordered state at some time. This is a mathematical fact, and the basis of probability. It also completly disproves your claim that an ordered system can not arise out of random actions. What I am trying to show is that an algorithm that is shorter than a data set, but will produce that data set is more likely to occur than the data set itself (being longer it contains more information to arrange). For example: An algorithm that is onlt 10 instructions long, is far more likely to occur from randomness, than the output which is 1000 pices of information long. This is basic probability. You don't seem to understand this. I never called it life. I said it was evolution, but I didn't say it was life. So your argument here is not valid. All I am saying is that if these chemcials come together (and they spontainiously do based on simple chemistry), then you will get evolution. It is a long way from life, and as I never called it that, either you are not readin what I wrote, or are trying to use strawman arguments again. But, those lipids, if you want to check if what I say works, you can test similar molecules that are found is soap. You can blow bubbles. Bubbles form when the molecules that make up soap form a bi-layer with water inbetween them. The oily side of the molecules tries to get as far away form water as it can. The other side of the molecule is attracted to water and pulls a thin film of water onto it. The oily side is attracted to oily molecules and this causes the molecules to line up in a layer. However, some molecules are already lined up with the film of water, but pointing in the opposite direction, but then these too will also attract other oily molecules (the oily ends of the soap molecules) and cause these to line up on that side of the water film. This same attraction to oily molecules will also cause the soap molecules to curl around into a sphereical shape, what we see as a bubble. The lipid molecules I was talking aobut have the same properties, they have an oily end and a hydrophilic (which means water likeing) end, the same as the soap molecules (natural soap is actually made from lipids). If you want to check if the neucleotide molecules behave the same way, then you have to look no further than RNA or DNA (These are just two types of neucleotides). Neucleotides do have pair bonding, and can spontainiously polymerise, if you don't believe that then go read a chemistry text book (preferably one on organis chemistry - fyi organic chemistry is not specific to living systems but deals mainly with carbon chain molecules). Lastly, all you need to do to understand this "just so" story can occur, is to understand permiability. That is: some molecules are small enough to fit between other molecules, but others can't. Larger molecules find it harder to fit through small gaps, where as smaller molecules might be able to fit through those smal gaps. As polymers are joined together strings, or sheets of monomers, polymers are by their very nature larger than monomers. So, if neucleotide monomers can fit through the gaps between the lipids, then it stand to reason that at some point the neucleotide polymers will not be able to do so. Experiments with these molecules shows that the neucleotide monomers only just fir through these gaps, so even small polymers of them won't be able to fit though. As spontainious polymerisation with these neucleotides occur easily, then it is even more likely if they get concentrated as small polymers that they will continue to polymerise into longer chains. Actually don't take my word for it, go read what Dr. Jack Szostak had done. He is a Nobel winning scientist, so he certainly knows what he is talking about. If you can find that his work violates known physical laws then you yourself could write a paper disputing his work and win yourself a Nobel prize. But I don't think you really can, you are just using strawmen and other logical falacies and not reading what it written. If you can show me where his work have factual errors and does not conform to known physical laws, I'll start believing you. Science works by disproof. If you can disprove someone, then you can show that their theory is wrong. So far, you have not sone this, oyu have not provided one single piece of evidence for your claims and yet we have provided pages of evidence, but you just reject it because it does not conform to your beliefs. Give us evidence rather than saying that you don't think it sounds reasonable. Reality does not care what you think. What I was saying is that you call it a "Just so" story. I had to simplfy the actual processes and data as it would have made my post far too large (and I did link to it though), and my posts are quite large as they are . I provided evidence in the form of links, but you don't seem to want to read them (as you also seem to have trouble reading my posts - and also some of the "evidence" you thought supported your claims but didn't). Here is some things to watch (but you might like to follow where they got the evidence form too): http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_650300&v=EDFJviGQth4&feature=iv (A lot of what you are arguing is dealt with in this video) http://www.youtube.com/user/cdk007#p/c/0696457CAFD6D7C9/0/U6QYDdgP9eg (this is what I was referencing with my "just so" story. It goes into more detail and has links to Dr Szostak's work). Parts 1 and 2 of how evolution can increase information: And this is just from one source. Go learn something.

But if the model matches reality, then can't one say that the model is a good description of reality (although not reality obviously). Since the whol epuropse is to describe reality as best we can, is not a good model useful? So, if you can't objectivly tell if I am self aware, then may be you are the only self aware entitiy in the universe. that means, by your definitions, that Huamns are animals, but you are not. So, how does this prove your point? As there is now no objective way to prove that any other humans are anything other than animals by your own admission. And as you objection to including other animals as being sentient was there was no objective way to prove they were or weren't. As this, by your own admission, can now no longer even apply to humans, then your objects that Humans are objectively different from animals is disproved. This is what I was getting at about delusions. How can you now, objectivly determine that you are not delusional about your self awareness? You have no other reference to go off, you have admitted that you can not tell if any other huamns are self aware, so what refernce do you have that you are not deluding yourslef that you are self aware? How? How can you objectivly tell the difference? If you can provide an objective difference between the tow, then I'll discuss this further, otherwise you are just making wild unsupported claims. As you seem to have a problem of others doing this, that would make you a hypocrit. It is the logical equivelent of your claim. So although you didn't use those words, you are still making that same claim. I am just applying your claims to their locical conclusions. If you have a problem with them either show wher the logic is wrong, or admit your claims are not valid. Based on the post I quotes, No you do not have an undersntaing of Set Theory. I have provided evidence of your lacxk of undersntading. So you don't have an understnading, and this has been objectivly verified by your post. You have used mind as a differnce (and now admitted you can not objectivly determine if it exists or not in anything other than your self - and even then you could be deluded in thinking that you have it as you have admitted there is not way you could tell if you were or wern't). But every single orgnaism (not just animals) hase unique difference to any other animal (if they didn't they would be the same as another organism and so would not be single out as being different). So why have you chose Mind as being something that is the difference between us and animals. One could equally point to some other ability of any other organism and use that to claim it is not part of whatever group of organisms it has been classed under. It is only because you assume that we are the only ones with it (and you have just admitted you can't prove that Huamns have it, only your self - so you could be a robot constructed to think it is human and to be physically indistinguishable form huamns, but not huamn and the only being in the universe with a mind) that you use it as something to differentiated us. The only OBJECTIVE way to determine anyhting about something is to observe its behaviour. But, as you seem to reject behaviour as being indicitive of anything about the internal workings of an organism, then you are rejecting the only way of objective observation. But as you seem to think everyone else needs to use this, but you yourself are exempt, you are acting in a hypocritical manner. Well as it has been objectivly determined that neurological activity causes behaviours, then we could use some kind of "magical" device that allowes us to look at neurological activity and match it with behaviours. Oh wait, we do have such devices. they are called Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging systems, and these are accurate enough to allow us to see an image someone is looking at just by looking at the pattern of nuronal activity (including if thery are just imaginine the image rather than looking at it with their eyes). Hey there are enven computer perhipherals that you can get designed so you can play computer games (they are about $300) that use systems like this. So, that neural activity drives behaviour is so well established that they use it for games now, means that it is a very well established process. To claim otherwise is to be willfully ignorant. And, because of that, it is objective proof I am right. It is pointless to posit that gravity is caised by invisible pink fairies. Sure, it is a possible explaination, but it is pointless as there is no objective evidence (which you seem find of saying yourself) that invisible pink fairies exist. But there is no objective evidence of a soul. So, on the same grounds that you want to reject things, I can reject that. the only way I will accept that is if you accept everything else posited without the need (even if it was given) of objective evidence, or you can provide objective evidence of a soul. It is under your own criteria (and a criteria I also requier anyway) that I reject it. If you ask me to accept the existance of a soul wihtout objective evidence, but reject things because you don't have objective evidence then that is hypocritical.

What you are getting hung up on is that I have to describe the system. This means a form of naritive in the description so that we humans can make sense of it. It is the fact that the description is a narative that leads you to these conclusions. Yes, they are just so stories, becuase they are a description of a system. The system has to be described for the system to be described. Because of this the systems, if just taken at their descriptions will seen as a "just so" system. However, if you actually read what I wrote, you wilol see that I told you that these had been obsevered in the lab in in the environment. In other words, even though I have described them as "just so", the fact that these chemcials I am talking aobut can be found outside the lab (even outside the Earth), means that they can form naturally without the aid of setting them up first, or setting up a system specifically to produce them. Also, as the behaviours of these chemicals are, to put it simple, based on the laws of chemistry and not on human minds, and the laws of chemistry cause them to behave in the way I explained, then you dismissal of these system as "just so" or "huamn desinged" is so com pletly wrong as to be laughable. To describe them as such you have to ignore completely that I gave evidence that these are naturally occuring systems and have been found (ie observed) to occur naturally. The fact taht i wrote that they were, and then you go and say that they weren't means you have had to willfully ignore evidence, and the fact that I actually posted that evidence. Yopu say Ididn't provide evidence, and yet if you read my post, the evidence was there. From this I can conclude that you are willfully ignorant. You don't see the evidence becaue you choose to ignore it. There are none so blind as those who choose not to see. Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/user/cdk007#p/a/0696457CAFD6D7C9/0/U6QYDdgP9eg Go do a google search on Dr. Jack Szostak. And actually READ what I post next time. Have done it. You chose to ignore it. Yes, It models reality. So a mathematical model is a description designed to model reality. And, what was I trying to do, give you a description (ie a model of reality). I was trying to describe a real system and how it worked. And, yet, you dismis it as "just a maths", but by your own words "mathematics is a tool invented by the human mind, a model that attempts to describe the universe.", so if what I describe is mathematically sound, then it can be considdered as a valid potential model of reality. As the model does match with actul real systems, and describes a broard range of systems, and not just a single islolted system. Then it actually is a good model of reality nad cna be objectivly tested. It fits all you criteria, and yet you dismissit for fiting your criteria. Come off it. Please. I am not that stupid. But an experiment designed to test between two claims is a valid experiment. The claim I was testing was that a mathematical model produced the results claimed. As the model claimed that evolution, using game theory, could produce behaviours that could be seen as "Ethical", then the experiment was a success. Also, if you have a real concern that the expeirment was specifically designed (ie that I put in hidden code to force the situation), then why not program it yourself? Genetic algorithms are just an implimentation of evolution. The genetic string of the algorithm must allow for the development for the behaviour you seek, but it does not force it. For instance, in my expeirments, I found that the critical feature was the social interaction that caused the formation of ethical behaviours. If I did not include this, regardless of the genetic code I used, I could not get ethical behaviours to form. As the experiment was to test that specific claim (that social interactions and evolution can form ethical behvaviours), then the experiment was a success. I was not testing if evolution could form social interactions (although I have and it does - but that is a much more complex issue and interesting, but not part of what my post was about), but if your claim that evolution could not create ethical behaviour. Actually, if you accet that my experiment worked, that I did get ethical behaviour out of it regadless of whether there was a special set up or not, then you have to conceed that evolution can produce ethics, which is counter to your claim I was arguing against. If you wich to actually counter my argument, you have to show that evolution was not used at all in my experiment for you to support your orriginal claim, or conceed that your orrignial claim is wrong and that Evolutoin can indeed produce ethics. The fact that this obvious counter argument was not used by you is idnicitive that you now accept that evoltuion can produce ethics, jsut that you think it reqwuiers special circumstances to do so. And remember about the probability, if these circumstances can exist, then it is only a matter of probability that they could occur without a human mind to set them up. Also, in line with my argument about probability applied to algorithms and data set, the set up is a data set, and so could be produced by an algorithm. If an algorithm works to produce a data set, rather than tries to compact an already existing data set, then it is not a compression algorithm as no data is being compressed (you have to have data that already exists to compress it). So even if you will only accept it as being the result of a special set up, that set up can exist just by chance, or produced from an algorithm which could be produced by chance. However, as I also showed, the algorithm to produce that set up is an evolutionary algorithm (and the existance of evolutionary algorithms has not been disputed by you, even though you have had plenty of opertunity to do so), you havae to conceed that the set up is not as special as you claim. In other words, if you accept probability, and that algorithms exist that produce data sets (compression or otherwise), then the logical conclusion is that the set up is not special and my example disputes your arguments. So, if you are going to attempt to dispute my argument here, there is onyl 3 ways you can do this: 1) Prove that statistical probability can never produce an organised set of data (even by chance) 2) Prove that algorithms can not produce data sets (compression algorithms or otherwise) - that is computers don't work. 3) That the logic I used does not work (ie that computers don't work). If you can prove that maths doesn't work, and that computers don't work, I'll be happy to agree with you. However, as I am using a computer to write this (and you are using one to read it), and these computers are using maths, then I think you will have some difficulty in doing this. Actually any model can do that, regardless of wether it describes a real system or not. This is a logical falacy here. Just because it can come from a designer, does not mean that it had to come from a designer. Also, because it is a description written by a human for the sake of human understanding, then it will more likely appear as if it was designed. Now, as you said earlier "mathematics is a tool invented by the human mind, a model that attempts to describe the universe.", then this shows that I am right and you are wrong (thanks for that ). I used amthematical model, and as you saym this is a description of reality. So if this mathematical model is tested to see if it affecty evolution in the way claimed, and it does, does that not say that the claim that evolution can really do what it was is real? Yes. As the model of reality said that in situations where two organisms interact and they can choose to wither act for their own benifit or a mutual benefit (eg, mating, parenting, protection, food, etc) then in situations where the actions in that interaction have no relevence to future interactions (ie they don't repeatedly interact, or they don't exist as part of a social group that exchanges information about interactions), then the outcome will be for self interest. If the actions have future consiquences for interactions exist, then you will get ethical behaviour. This is why I said to go learn about animal behaviours. If you look at animals that don't exist as part of a social group, then you will see that they do indeed act self interestedly when they do interact. When aniamls interact repeatedly in social manners, they actually behavie in ethical ways. This is an objective way you can measure my claims. Sure, there will appear to be a few exceptions, but you will also see when you look closely, that these behaviours are in the process of evolving (ie: the species in question is evolving into a social species or is only of small social groups - and then the ethical behaviour is only displayed between members of that group), or there is no longer a need for them (ie: the species in question has stopped being asocial species). And, yes, there are probably one or two cases where there is ethical or unethical behaviour of a speices that is against this, but I can't actually think of even one. If you remember the algorithm of evolution (which by the way you have not disputed), then you will know that evolution favours organisms that have an advantage. As the mathematical models of game theory are about looking for the advantages in descisions, then it is no real jump to accept that evolution would favour organisms that chose the advantagious choice voer the non advantagious choice. It wouldn't matter what caused the organism to make the advantagious decision (ie what neuro chemicals, neural straucture, or any other cause), as long as the change favoured the organism making the advantagious choice. Do you dispute that? Because you claimed it isn't. As I showed that it does, youur argument is disproved. Your claim was that it couldn't occur except as dicted by a creator. So all I had to do was to show that there was another option (not that my option was the only one as that was not what I claimed). As my aguement shows that, I can state that your argument was wrong. If you actually read what I said, I never claims that a creator couldn't do it, only that there were other options available. It is this reason your counter arguments fail. you can argue all you want that a creator could do it. I never disputed that. The only way you can support your argument is to show that there is no other way, besides direct intervention by a creator, to produce the outcomes. So, do you dispute that evoluton could do it (not that it did, just that it could - even if highly unlikely situations had to exist and that even though they are unlikely they can exist naturally)? If you can accept that, then you have to accept your initial claim of there having to be a create is false. Ok, so I gave a mathematical explaination, with full working out, and you still can't see the causal link? Ok, her eit is in point form: 1) An algoriothm can be described as a set of processes. 2) It does not matter what the hardware that carries out these processes are, so long as the processes are carried out. 3) The arrangement of these processes for the algorithm 4) Processes can arrange thelves naturally through random events 5) If a process is a self sustaining system, it can still occur as the result of random arrangemnt 6) Once a self sustaining system forms through random arrangment, it will persist untill it is disrupted (and being self sustaining it can be hard to disrupt). 7) A self replicating system can also form through random arrangement, just like any other system. 8) A self replicating system is not only a form of self sustaining system, but it is one that can cause the arrangment of processes around it become new coppies of the self replicating system 9) Beyond self replicating, a self replicating system need not contain any other information 10) However, a self replicating system that is not a perfect replicator will change any information it has, as well as have the potential to add capacilty for more information to itself 11) If these changes give it's coppies an advantage, then these coppies will produce more coppies than ones that don't have the advantage (as that is what "advantage" is defined to mean - that it produces more coppies than others) 12) Self replicating systems will replicate at exponential rates 13) This means that any self replicating system will quickly dominate over all other systems 14) It also means that even smal advantages act as exponential improvements to the replicator Conclusion: Even if self replicting systems are unlikely, if one does exist, then they will quickly come to dominate all systems and compete with each other for any advantage (in other words evolve). Now, if one can show that to make an initial replicator can occur naturally, without the need for a creator, then a creator, even if it was the way it did get started, is not necessary. If one can then show that such self replicating systems are not all that unlikely, then a creator is not only unnecessary, but unlikely. As I showed that self replicating systems can occur naturally (I even gave you the chemicals that were needed - how is that for an objective test, you can see if those chemicals exist and have the properties I claimed), and I also showed that these chemicals will spontainiously form the structures to arrange the processes into a self replicating system. As the system can occur naturally, and if the chemicals exist in proximity, then self replicating systems will spontainioulsy form, then to show that these systems are not unlikely, all I need to do is to show that the chemicals in question are common enough and would exist in proximity. And, I did show this. these chemicals are found all through the universe and can be created by simple processes. In other words, not only is it physically possilbe for such self replicating systems to form, it is also likely because of the abundance of these chemicals and that they will often form and can be found in proximity to each other. I have give a causal answer backed up by scientifc evidence. If you choose to ignore this, it is not because I am wrong, it is because you are willfully ignorant. Yes, but you must firs have a target data set that you are trying to achieve. That is, you can't compress data that does not yet exist. If the algorithm produces the data, and the data does not yet exist, you are not compressing anything. As my argument was, a small algorithm is more likely than a large data set. So if you accept that chance can order information (and processes area type of information - think of a computer program, it is just a series of bits arranged in a certain way), then you have to conclude that the arrangment of information in a small algorithm (regardless of the final output) is mroe likely than the arrangment of information in the enventual larger data set. As you would be well aware, not all data sets are larger than the algorithms needed to produce them. In these cases, the data set is therfore more olikely to occur than the algorithm. It has been established what a Universal Turing Machine is. It is a theoretical system that can emulate any other Turing Machine. A practicl aplication is that of the computer. As the Turin Machine is a mathematical model (in your words a model "that attempts to describe the universe"), then the Turing Machine is an attempt to model soemthing about the universe: namely that it is not the specific hardware that makes up a system, it is the processes that system performs that is important. So, if one can show that a system performs the correct functions, then it can excecute an algorithm that uses those functions. This is computing 101 and is the basis of all information technology. So I gather you don't dispute this. As I have established that the processes necesary for evolution as a computer program (and there is plenty of objective evidence that such algorithms work), then all I have to do to show a system is potentiall capable of executing the same algorithm is to show that it can perform the requiered functions. These function are: 1) Replicte data sets with variation in them 2) Test these resulting data sets against either a chaning or static criteria 3) The ability to repeat these steps So accoring to comutational and information theories (and maths), if a system shows these processes, then it is potentially capable of excecuting evolution. When we look at living systems they can do all of these: 1) Living systems replicate and DNA is the data set. 2) It is the ability of the system for its coppies to copy themselves that is the criteria tested against as a replictor that does not replicate is not a replicator and ones that do it better will exponentially produce more than those that are not good replicators 3) As the offspring of living organisms are able to replicate, then this system is on going (untill a mass extinction wipes out all living systems). Yes, living systems do exhibit all of these necessary processes, therefore living systems can evolve. The last thing that is needed here is that the processes have to be arranged in the correct sequence. Just have the ability to run the various processes is not enough, they have to be arranged so as to form the algorithm. As there is only 3 processes needed for the algorithm and it is a cycle, there is actually only two ways they can be arranged which can be written as: 1,2,3 or 1,3,2 As 231, 312 and 123 are identical in a cycle as is 132, 321, 213 equivlent. If living systems match the 123 and not the 132 arrangment then living system have to excecute the evolutionary algorithm. So does it? Well: A) Living system need to survive until they are capable of replicating (this is 2) B) When a living system replicates it produces a new entity capable of replicatin (this is 3) C) After it has survived long ehough a living system can replicate and these replications can have mutations (this is 1) As 231 is the same as 123, then living systems have to exhibit evolution if computers work. As you are using a computer to view this, that is objective proof that this is true. Living systems evolve. ALso, there is nothing in the algorithm that limits changes, only that they occur gradually. So large changes can occur if they happen onver a long enough period of time. No, we have established a causal explaination, I just don't know how many time I will have to repeat it until you will accept it. You say we havne't and yet offer no valid counter argument against the one I have proposed. You ownly counter argument is to claim that it isn't without evidence. Go on, show me that computational theory is wrong. As I keep saying, a process can turn low entropy energy into information. A process, if it does nothing can not produce information. But, if you make it dynamic (ie excecute the program, or have the system function) then it will do its "thing" and produce that information. As I have also explained (and posted links to scientific evidence to support it), it is not the production of information that uses energy (and thus produce entropy), it is it's destruction. In the case of physical system, where information is stroed in physical objects (eg in a computer), when you change any of these to store information you have to destroy the information that is in there (even if it is not meaningful information). With living systems, DNA is their information store, but to change the DNA it requiers either change the DNA that is already there (thus destroying information) or taking it from some where else (which also entials destruction of it from where it was taken). So living systems, if they want to increase or even just chage the information they have, must use energy to do so as it would requier the destruction of existing information. "Food" does not have to a low entropy information source if an algorithm is the thing produceing the information. I think this is your problem here: You are hung up on a single definition of information "entropy" which has been shown to be wrong by the very evidence you linked to. As such, any conclusions you draw from it are also going to be wrong. Youa re relying on Shannon's definition of information, and Shannon states that the "complexity" (or as you would put it "entropy produced") of the information is measured by the size of the smallest algorithm or data set needed to accurately produce the data set. However, you keep dismissing algorithms, saying that any algorithm smaller than a data set is just a "compression algorithm" and so can not be used. Sorry, Shannon disagrees with you on that. He explicitly states in his work that the algorithm is also important. Shannon complexity defines randomness of a data set by the difference between the size of the smallest algorithm needed and the size of the data set (with "random" being a data set that is smaller than the smallest algorithm that can produce the set). Maybe you aren't clear enough on what you mean by "steps". Do you mean that there is a certain trait, and it is changed 4 or more times? Or do you mean that 4 or more changes are need to reach a particular trait? In either case, ther is plenty of exmamples, but as you have shown the willingness to ignore what is right in front of you, and just make stuff up from that (as you have done so to my own posts as well as links to evidence that you think supports your claim - whas if you paid attention you would have seen it disproved you claim), I am not suprised you can't find any examples.

But, as I said, it makes no difference (so I am not going to get into a discussion that has no impact on my argument) as it is about the amount of radiation that goes up as compared to what goes down. Even if (and that is an if) the atmosphere behaves as you claim, then it makes no difference as the amount of energy that would be re-emitted would be in a random direction. As this means that some will go up and some will go down, it behaves exactly as a scattering effect. It does not matter one iota if the frequency shifts. Conservation of energy and the effect of random radiation vectors means that it will trap extra energy in the Earth system. That is the only important factor, and you have not argued against this. So, answer this: In your scenario of black body (like) behaviour of the atmosphere, is the direction the radiation re-readiated in random vectors, or is it in a vector directly away from the Earth? If it is random, then my argument stands. Not at all. It is simply applying conservation of energy. Are you trying to suggest there is some complicating factor that allows the conservation of energy to be violated. If not, then my argument stands. One does not have to know the exact energy budget to know that if you stop energy leaveing the system and have a constant input to the system, then the amount of energy in the system will increase. Think of this like a bank account. One does not need to know how much money you have in the account, what your expense are and what your income is to know that if you reduce your expense then you will end up with more money. This is what I am arguing. We might not know what the total energy input to the Earht is, we may not know the total amount of energy currently stroed in the Earth's claimate system and we might not know how much is being lost. But we can know that if we reduce the amount leaving, then we will have more energy in the system. It is that simple. And that is why it is so simple. Not at all. We don't need to know all the details of the system. Maths and the laws of conservation of energy dicatate that it must be so. Did you eve read that article. Here is the quote about irriversability (bold me for emphasis): "The tipping event may be irreversible, comparable to wine spilling from the glass—standing up the glass will not put the wine back." It saiys may be, not has to be, not is, "may be". In other words I was right. Ice ages are a good example of a tipping point as tipping points may be irriversable (but they don't have to be). And, if you were correct, then once you tip over a wine glass, then it owuld be impossible to stand it back upright by whatever means. As we know that this is not the case, your arguemnt here is abolutly ridiculous (including the fact that the article disagree with you). Come on, you can do better than that. You are posting to articles that prove my point in an effort to disprove me. I feel embaressed for you . If Earth did not have the greenhouse effect from the current GHGs in the atmosphere, it would be about 30 degrees C cooler. That is Earth would be around -15 degrees C (on average). We would be locked in a permenent ice age. It is calculated that pre-industrial the Earth have around 260 – 280 ppm per volume CO2. Measurement now put it at around 390 ppm per volume. That is an increase of 44% (at best) and a 50% (at worst). Now if the temperature increase was linear (it is not), then we could be expecting average temperatures of 27 to 45 degrees C based on current atmospheric CO2 levels. Fortunately it is not a strict linear realtionship as not all the infrared light radiated off the Earth encoutners the GHGs, and that as the energy increases more energy will be emmited. So, it is less than linear and we don't know exactly the effect (but good models forcast it will be around 4 to 5 degrees if the amount does not increase. The other problem is that ther eis a lag time between the amount of CO2 and the temperature increase. But, as I said, all of this is specific effects, and I was not going to talk about specific effect. I was going to dhow that the physics behind global warming means that if we increase HGHs, then the amount of energy in the Earht's climate system has no option but to increase. And I think the bank account annalogy is a perfect example. You don't need to know the specific details of the back account. In fact you don't need to know anything aobut it at all. All you need to know is the conservation law (money doesn't grow on trees) and that there is an amount going in (that is effectivly constant over the time periodyou are looking at) and that you reduce the rate that money is leaving the account. Such as it is with Earth. We don't need to know any details about the amount going in or out, but we only need to know there is a conservation law (conservation of energy) and that the amount going out is being reduced (and the random vector of the radiation from the greenhouse gass absorbtion/re-emmision or scattering is the cause of this). I am not peculating. The physics is pretty simple here. If you raise the temperature above 0C, then ice will melt. Do you disagree with that. If you have dead vegitation it will rot and the products of that rotting includes CO2 and Methane. DO you dispute that. If you do not sispute either of them then you have to agree with my argument. Again I will restate this: I was not talking about specific effects or consiquences of global warming. I was just trying to show that the accepted science requiers certain things to occur. Basically melted permafrost has dead vegitation in it and this vegitation will rot releasing greenhouse gasses. There is a lot of permafrost and this will melt if the local temperature rises (for whatever reason). As local temperature rise is a specific effect of global warming, I did not try to say that this would occur (in fact I gave two other possibilities). I only said IF there is a local rise in temperature above 0C then you will get greenhouse gasses released from the permafrost. It is basic Conservation of energy. If you stop (or restrict) the amount of energy leaving a system that has an effectivly constant input, then you will get an increase amount of energy in the system. Actually it doesn't even have to be energy, it only has to have the property of conservation (so money in your bank account, matter, etc). Yes, we can not specify the exact amount of energy that would be retained, but it has to be retained unless the conservation of energy is violated (and if we could do that, then we could make a perpetual motion machine to give us unlimited, cleen, free energy and Global Warming would not be a problem). Again, these are specific effect. At no point did I say that the climate was static. There are natural variations in the climate. ALso I did not say that the energy retained would necesarily be in terms of increased temperature. I made it a point to say that it wouldn't always be a temperature change. I even said that it could make it colder. You are trying to argue specific outcomes of a complex system, where I am trying to explain the system's over all behaviour. I agree, we can not state that these specific changes that you or anyone else is claiming will come to pass. But, the physics of conservation of energy, the maths of random vectors means that what I am saying is indisputable. I eve said I agreed with you that such specifics can't be predicted. So I don't know why you are trying to argue them against me. I agree with you in so far as the specific can't be predicted, but the basic physics of conservation and geometry means that what I am saying has to be true. that is unlees you are saying that energy is not conserved, or that random vectors are not random vectors. If you accept either of these, then you have to agree with my argument because they are a direct consiquence of them. What is more, is that these properties (conservation and random vectors) are common to many other systems, and all these systems share the same behaviours because of these. You would have to accept that withdrawing money form your bank account does not change the amount of money in your account at all if you disagreed with my arguemnt. All that is needed to be know is that: 1) Stuff goes in 2) Stuff goes out 3) We change the amount of stuff that goes out. These 3 things are all that is needed to be known to know that reducing the amount that goes out will cause a build up of stuff. That is all I am really trying to argue.

I will give you morality and Alturism as these can be expressed mathematically through game theory. However, Introspection and Self awareness are not at all objective. Can you tell me a way to objectivly determine if I am an actual self aware human sitting at a keyboard, or a very clever robot (or AI) typing this? If I am a clever enough robot my response can be indistinguishable from a human, but then I would not be a human or self aware. However, there are plenty of animals that disply moar behaviours that we think of as human. Ants will defend the other members of their nest (even to the death). Earwigs (yes the tiny insects) will nurture and protect their young. Meerkats will aid each other and take on various responsability within the family, including careing for the young of other meerkats (including giving them milk). Go look at animal behaviour. Every sinlge behaviour that humans considder as "Moral" or "Ethical" is also performed by some other animal. Actually, go and read a book called: "Bonobo Handshake" by Vanessa Woods (ISBN 9781863954846). It will open your eyes to "Ethical" behaviours, especially as to what is happening in the Congo. And this just contradicts your previous claim. You are actually destroying your own arguments. Not at all. There are objective differences between cats and Dogs, but does this mean that Cats are not animals? No, ofcourse not. Animals are living organisms that have a set of properties and share a common ancestor. We have these properties and therefore are animals. It is as simple as that. Just because we have technology, or have more advanced brains does not mean we are not animals. Gibbons could be said to have a more advanced writs than us (it is a ball and socket, we only have a hinge joint), does this mean that Gibbons aren't aniamls? No, not at all. Just because there are differences, does not mean we are not animals. Being an animal is about having certain properties and being decended from a common ancestor. And just because someone can point to a difference, does not negate this. It would be like saying that My cosin has brown eyes and I have blue eyes, therefore he is not related to me. We have a common ancestor (grandparent) and we have certain properties (genetic code), so we are related, and just because one of us has blue eyes and the other brown does not mean we are not related. It is that silly the argument you are putting forward. Physiologically all organisms are different, but they have similarities. Does this mean that each organism is not related to another. What about organisms that we know are related because humans have continiously bred them over long periods of time. Domesticated bannanas are unable to reproduce via seeds. Wild bannanas can. But, we know that domesitcated bannanas orrigianlly were wild bannanas. OVer time huamns have influenced their breeding by making cuttings and growing new bannana plants and selecting for the traits they wanted. This included larger fruit (wild bannans have small fruit), more fleshy fruit (wild bannanas have woody fruit) and many other traits. If you looked at a wild bannana and a domesticated bannana, it would be hard to actually see them as the same type of plant. But yet, they are and the recods who that they did actually decend from wild bannanas. Does these differences that have been selected for by huamns mean that Domesticated bannanas are not plants. Of course not. This is what you are arguing. You are arguing that because you can point to a percieved difference, then you have to remove it from the group. What you are trying to argue is actually a violation of maths (set theory - go learn it - it is the basis of all mathematics, including computing and programming). The thing is the "Differences" you are talking aqbout are a biased perception. WHy, for instance are brains considdered so good? Why is a mind better than venom, or a long tail. The ony reasonis that we have it (or at least we think we are the only ones with it). Go learn about Bonobos and Chimpanzees. Also look up African Grey Parrots (and what one in particular learned to do). You will be suprised to learn that Humans are not the only animals that show the behaviour of "Mind" (or self awareness, or morality, or ethics or any other trait you think is unique to humans). Before one can state that "the brian is the medium by which mind interfaces with the environment", you first have to establisht eh fact that there exists a thing that is "mind". You have to establish that "mind" is not an emergent property of the brain, as if it is, then the brain is not "the medium by which mind interfaces with the environment", but it is the medium that creates the mind. But then, what is "mind" anyway. can you give an objective definition of what mind is? One that would enable someone to use it and objectively determine if any other animal has one or not.

You are wrong here about my example. It only needs chemistry and thermodynamics to work. No "functional information" is needed to begin with. You can start from a complete random set of Oxygen, Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen (and a few other chemicals as well), and then through an input of energy, these chemicals will develop into the organic chemicals needed. The Urey/Miller Experiement proves this as the chemicals requiered were present (although not in large amounts) in the experiment. Not only that, some of these chemicals have been found in molecular clouds, that will one day form into stars and solar systems. So the path from molecular gas cloud to such chemical structures and processes has actually been established. No "starting" information is needed. However, one does need a low entropy starting situation, and a collapsing gas cloud is a low entropy situation (as the energy of the gas molecules ends up being radiated into enpty sapce over the life time of the star that it forms). No, we are talking aobut how some system can turn low entropy energy into information, but at the cost of increasing entropy in the wider system. You have what we are saying completely wrong. This is why you think we are wrong, you can not see that you have misunderstood what we are saying. True, evolution by its self does not specify that morality will evolve, this is because morality is a human concept, and evolution is not sentient, and has no inteligent designer. However, mathematics (which is actually based on the conservation laws of the universe) does have an explaination. It is a branch of mathematics called "Game Theory" (I may have even mentioned it in this thread at some point - but it was too far back to be sure). Strictly speaking it is more about economics and how people make decisions than games as most would probably know them (however it does apply to how people make decisions within those games). If you look at one "game" called the Ultimatum Game, then it will show you how morality will help a social species. In the Ultimatum game, one Player (P1) is given an amount of money to split between themselves and another player (P2). However, if P2 disagrees with the amount they recieved, then they can reject the offer and both P1 and P2 recieve nothing. If P2 accepts the offer, then they each get the amounts allocated by P1. As long as P1 offers more than $0 to P2, then it is always in the interest of P2 to accept the offer as something is better than nothing. An interesting effect occurs when you introduce elemnts of social interactions. Specifically, that the game is played multiple times with the same or different players, and that all players have the opertunity to discuss what the other players offered, and accepted. What occurs is that now, it is actually advantagious to reject unfair splits of the money. If you start rejecting unfair offers, then other players, when seeking to maximize their earnings will do better if they offer you a fair deal. This is because a missed opertunity puts them a round of the game behind. So by rejecting an unfair offer, you only loose the amount that was offered (which being unfair would not be a large amount). However the person who offered the deal would fall behind what other players who offered a fair deal would get. Also, as players can see that the players who deal fairly are getting ahead, they will quickly change their behaviours to match. To someone who does not understand the maths behind this, or the process by which it works, this would seem like aultruism as one person is sacrificing themselves to better help the group. They have given up something of theirs to help strangers (the other players not currently interacting with the player who rejected an unfair offer). If we apply this and other similar "games" to evolution, then groups that practice these behaviours will do better than groups that don't. As these "moral" groups do better, then any genetic variations that re-enforce this (releasing endorphines, oxytocin, etc when an individual does these self sacrificing behaviours) become more prevelent in the gene pool. This is a mathematical basis of how morality can be evolved. I have done experiments where I evolved "agents" that were able to make such decisions and use genetic algorithms to evolve the best strategy. In the programs where there was no repeat interactions (or at least they didn't know it was a repeat), I got the behaviours that mathced with the first scenario (where no repeat interactions could take place). In the second program (exactly the same except that I allowed the agents to rate the other agent they played with. The rateing was based on the amount of "food" (I called it food, but in the examples above, I have use "Money"). After each round the agents could swap ratings about the other agent they played against. What ended up occuring was exactly what was predicted by game theory and "morality" evolved, that is they offered fair deals and accepted fair deals. However, one effect that I called "one born every minute". If an agent learned that their next opponent accepted unfair deals, then they would offer unfair deals. However, some still offered fair deals in this situation. I also found that these "con artists" never grew to be a large portion of the group as when they started to become too numerous, their reputation would preceed them and the others were more strict about what was "fair" (and some would never accept any offer from them). These are very simple agents that use a very simple algorithm to make a single decision, but they exhibited behaviours that most people would considder moral (and in some cased heroic self sacrifice). But, not only did it directly demonstrate morality based on Game Theory, it also evolved. The genetic code for these (if you want to know) was just a string of 101 "genes". Each Gene could have 1 of 3 values: Yes, No, Maybe (and I used the same genetic code for both experiments). Yes was represented by the value -1, No by 0 and Maybe as a value greater than 0. Each gene position represented a food amount between 0 and 100. So the 10th gene along represented the food amount offered of exactly 10. With the Maybe gene, it used based the Yes/No decision on the reputation of the player they were against. If the reputation * offered amount was above the value of Maybe, then the they accepted the deal. Where the reputation was a value between 0 and 1. If any of you have any programming skills, then it can be quite educational to do this experiment your self. Read what I said about algorithms and data sets and how with a small algorithm it is possible to make a large data set more likely to happen by chance. As I said, you are looking at the end result of a process, and then because that end result (the data set) is so unlikely to form randomly you conclude that it is impossible. Well for a start, something that is unlikely is not impossible (if it was it would be called impossible, not unlikely), and secondly, as I said, the data set/end result can be due to a process that is simpler and thus more likely. These aren't "Compression algorithms", as with a compression algorithm you start with the data set and then apply some process to shink the data set. This is the exact opposite, you start with an algorithm and the data set is created by the processes. You don't start with the data set. With living system, the Algorithm here is the DNA of the organism, and as this algorithm also describes how the components of the processor (the cell), then as one changes it in turn changes the other in a feedback loop. As part of the process that certain cells do, such as Neurons, if to release hormones (like Oxytocin and Endorphines) when theya re triggered. Also, the DNA instructs the cells to form in certain ways (but not necesarily explicitly, the way cells form can also be the result of a process, and we know from Mandelbrot that a finite algorithm can produce an infinite data set) and out behaviours are encoded into these Neural Networks (there is a whole branch of computing that deals with this and proves it true), including when the hormones get released. As I showed above, Game theory rewards social groups that act "moraly" (as the ones that don't end up with less in the long run because of missed oppertunities). As the way the brain opperates derives from the DNA, and DNA is subject to evolution, then we now have established a causal path that allows evolution to evolve moral behaviours. Therefore your claim that one does not exist is wrong. In this case the "Mind" is fed a massive amount of low entropy energy in the form of food. This food is either animals (which eventually ate plants) or plants and plants get their energy form the Sun. Oh wait, I said this before. I said that the source of low entropy that allowed information can be traced back to the Sun. Were you listenting? Go look at some fo the research done on fruit flys... ...or bacteria... What you are claiming not have been observed has been observed.

I never said that Greenhouse gasses generate energy. They also don't "store" it better. Also greenhouse gasses are not the same as a botanical greenhouse. So you got 3 out of 3 wrong there. Using the correct information: Yes, during the night the Earth does indeed have very little energy incoming, but this does not actually change the rate that heat is lost. It just means that for that time there is a net loss. But during the day there is a net gain. If you add these together, for the climate to remain stable, they need to equal exactly 0. No in reality this is never precicely 0, but for a stable climate it should at least average 0. What is happening when greenhouse gasses are added to the atmosphere is that the amount lost (even at night) is reduced due to the extra scattering effect (although this is not a reflective scattering effect) caused by the increased greenhous gasses. As less energy is lost, this means that the sum ends up being biased in favour of a net gain of energy, thus global warming. But you did get it mostly right with vocanos. It is not as simple as that. The particulates from a volcano that cause a reduction in energy reaching the Earth (which itself is a scattering effect) will leave the atmosphere in a few months to a few years. However CO2 will remain in the atmosphere for decades. Thus you will get a cooling effect from vocanos, but this is only in the short term (a year or two). In the long term (decades) you will get a warming. And, yes, if you did get a volcano large enough (or long term volcanism) it could cause a significant cooling effect, however, the CO2 produced by these vocanos, over the long term, will eventually cause an increase in termperature. CO2, like Swansont said, is not a black body radiator. For starters, it selectively absorbs certain frequencies of radiation (IR is one) and re-emits it at that frequency. So it is not the same as a black body, which re-emits it in different frequencies specified by the amount of energy it has (its temperature). the sun and the Earth do this, but not CO2. Actually, even if GHG acted like black body radiators, my argument would still stand. As these black body radiators would radiate it in all directions, it would give the same scattering effect. Now, as it is not the specific temperature of the radiation emitted that is important, but the fact that this radiation carries energy is. Even as a black body radiator, increasing GHGs would still cause an increased amount of energy within the Earth's climatic systems, again leading to global warming. If you look at it as a Black Box (not to be confused with black bodies) system, the inputs and outputs are what matter (not what goes on inside them - hence the "Black Box" as you can't see into it). Using this, we can easily understand the effects of increasing GHGs in the atmosphere (regardless if you use your Black Body or not). Increasing GHGs reduces the amount of energy leaving the system, but as the system heats up, it will increase the amount of energy radiated. thus, increasing GHGs will cause a change in the equilibrium between the amount of energy incomeing and the amount of energy trapped in the system. As Global Warming is concerned with the amount of energy trapped in the system, then this analysis shows that increasing GHGs is a problem for the climate. Ok, yes, not all complex systems. My mistake. I ment to say that complex systems can exhibit that behaviour, and that it is the feedback systems (both positive and negative) that were common to all. Well it is easy to identify a system as having tipping points. It is one where inputs into the system cause a specific type of change in the system. That it has mroe than one stable state and it can rapidly change from one to the other, and that the scale of these changes is not a linear relationship to the inputs. If a system displays this behaviour, then you can be certain that it has tipping points. Ice ages area good example as the amount of warming or cooling that goes on is not a linear realtionship to the amount of energy recieved by the Earth, and there are at least two "stable" states (one of interglacial and one of glacial). As this clearly demonstrates the properties of systems with tipping points, we can say for certain that the climate system has tipping points. The amount of methane (and other GHGs) generated by permafrost is the same as would be produced by vegitation of that type. I am not sure of the exact amount emmitted over an area, but it would be comparable to other, similar vegiation. The amount of permafrost effected would depend on the local rise in temperature. This is hard to calculate so it would not be an accurate prediction. However, we can make some predictions by looking at what might occur: 1) There is a local temperature rise: If this is the case, then if the local temperature increased above 0 degrees, then you would get thawing at that location. 2) There is no local temperature change: Then things remain the same. 3) There is a local temperature drop: Actually, this is quite possible, even in a global warming world. It is actually possible that the end result of increaseing the energy in the Earth's climate systems could actually cause a global cooling by shifting ocean and air currents. Even if there is a global warming, there can still be local cooling and this could even local up more area into permafrost. So basically, if, there is a local rise in temperature above 0 degrees, then we could get thawing of the permafrost and this would cause the frozen vegitation to rot and release GHGs. This would cause an increase in the amount of GHGs being emmitted and thus giveing a positive feedback to the GHG situation. As Methane is a GHG and scatters IR radiation, this would cause the same effect as CO2, however, Methane is more effective at this than CO2, but fortunately does not last as long in the atmosphere. As surface temperature is a combination of complex factors, and I am not talking about making such prediction (remember I agreed with you about how the prediction models are not good at predicting specific effects of Global Warming). What we can say is that increaseing GHGs in the atmosphere causes more energy to be trapped in the climate systems (Atmosphere and Oceans). What this energy does specifically is where the problems come in. It is the large scale consiquences that I am talking aobut, and that means the amount of energy trapped, as opposed to the amount of energy incomeing and being released by the Earth. The effects can be demonstrated, using GHGs in a lab, you can get them to scatter the IR radiation that passes though them. You can measure this. Then you can use mathematics to show that trapping an extra portion of energy that would normally leave the system, with a specified level of energy input will cause a build up of energy in the system (you can also demonstrate this in a lab as well if you want). So yes, everything that I am talking about can be demonstrated in a lab, and can even be seen occuring in real, natural systems. But, like I agreed with you, the specific effects on the climate systems can not be easily predicted, and climate scientists don't use the word "prediction" because of that (they use "forcast" instead - which tries to tell you the chances of all of the possiblities occuring). But, because the system energy retention is based on physical laws that are not all that complex, they can be predicted, and that prediction is that by reducing the amount of energy leaving the system, you increase the amount of energy in the system. This is based on the conservation of energy law. It is only by violating this law can you not have a build up on energy in the climate systems because of increased GHG.

Only because compression algorithms are the easiest to explain and demonstrate the concept easily. But I will try and explain an algorithm that can produce new information that is not a compression algorithm: 1) Start with an initial data set. 2) With each data set you have make many coppies of that data set. 3) With each copy of the data set make a random number of changes of these types: a) Remove a Bit B) Add a Bit c) Change a Bit from 1 to 0 d) Change a Bit from 0 to 1 4) Test each data set against a set of criteria and remove any that are less than the average score 5) Repeat steps 2 to 4 until you have no data sets or some other criteria is reached Ok. This process can be carried out by natrual means without the need for an inteligence to work it or design it. As the ability to add in new Bits to the data set means that the size of the data set can grow in size. Also, if the data set defines another algorithm, then the output of this secondary algorithm can produce information itself. This is not a comprssion algorithm, and yet, it is capable of produceing information. Also, if the output of this process (the data sets) are an algorithm, then the amount of information this can produce is enormous. You might also note that this is also the algorithm for evolution. Now to prove that natural things can perform this without the need for inteligent intervention: We know that organic chemicals can be produced by natural chemical processes. They can even be found in molecular clouds in space. They are quite easy to produce without external inteligent intervention. Specifically, I am looking at simple fatty acids and simple neucleotides (one in particular that fits the requierment is Phosphoramidate DNA). Fatty Acids will spontainiously form vesicles as one end of them is repelled by water (and is attracted to fatty acids) and the other end is attracted to water. This causes them to line up in a bi-layer. You are familiar with this as soap bubbles do the same thing. With the simpler fatty acids they are permiable to small organic molecule monomers, but not their polymers. This will allow the simple neculeotides to penertrate through the fatty acid bi-layer and if they polomerise inside the fatty acid vesicle, they can then no longer get out. If more neucleotide monomers enter, then they can polymerise into loonger and longer chains. If you look at the algorithm I explained earlier, one of the modifications was to add to the data set. Well this fulfills that requierment. Now, one of the features of Phosphoramidate DNA, is that like DNA that we are used to, it can pair up and form a double strand. It has partner neucleotides that it connects with. When it does this, it encourages the spontainious polymerisation that it does. However, it only does this at lower temperatures, when it is exposed to higher temperatures it will break off from its pair bonds (unzips into the two chains). This means a cycle of heating and cooling (say in a small puddle heated by the warmth of the sun, or by a convection current cycle near a hot volcanic vent) will cause these chains to split and then allow them to bond to a new set of monomers to replicate the matching chain. Here we have replication, another part of the algorithm. When it does this, the pairing is not always exact, sometime a mistake will be made (this would be the same as changing a Bit from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 0, or even not including a monomer that should have been there). This now fulfills all the changes to the data set as described by my algorithm above. ALso, the fatty acid vesicle can grow if they encounter any other fatty acids in the environment by absorbing them into itself. When these vesicles get too big, they can easily be split into two or more vesicles and the way they do this does not cause the vesicles to loose any of it's contents. So now we even have replication. All we need is some way for them to be tested against a criteria. Well, one of the things about the way the fatty acid vesicles absorb other fatty acid vesicle is that a vesicle with a higher osmotic pressure will steal them from one with a lower osmotic pressure. The Neucleotide polymers produce ions that increase the osmotic pressure of the vesicle that they are in. Thus a vesicle with more neucleotide will be able to steal fatty acids from one with less neucleotides. So what we have here now is a selection process that eliminates vesicles with lower osmotic pressure. ALso, some of the neucleotides have some extra chemical effects that can cause other effects that can help or even hinder the vesicle they are in. Some, as individuals or as specific sequences, can catalyse the formation of other chemicals (including fatty acids and even neucleotides), increase or decrease the osmotic pressure, and so on. However, these sequences are not likely by themselves, but if they do form, then the advantage they provide will cause the vesicle they are in (and any vesicle that breaks off from it) an advantage over other vesicles. Again, this is competition, but with a kind of arms race as successful vessicles will becomes more numerous, but then they will end up compeating with each other to both "eat" weaker vesicles, or against each other to be the better vessicle at stealing fatty acids. If you even give this a moments thought, then you will see that only the vesicles that have "information" (that is have sequences of neucleotides that give these advantages) will do better than those that don't. This means that over time more "information" will be created. There is not inteligence, not mind at work here, this is straight forward chemistry and requiers thermodynamics to work (so it doesn't even violate that - remember there is a heat/cool cycle that is needed, so there is energy input and output to the system and thus even though we are getting a more organised system locally, in the larger system there is an increase in disorder/entropy). Does this satify your need for a non-compression, naturally occuring system that increase information and does not violate entropy? I think the example I just gave shows this quite nicely, also it has been confirmed in the lab (See Dr Jack Szostak's work for more infrmation) Maybe I should have said: "can know". But, it is possible for many algorithms like this to know the extent of the data set produced, and this would mean that for them you can know many things about the data set, and even calculate the parts of the data set you want as you want it. This would allow you to "know" the data set, it just takes time and effort (remember I never said you would instantly know the data, just that you can know the data set). No it does not. You are right there, but as I never said to repeatedly copy the same sub-set of data, this argument against me is a pure strawman. Also, as I showed in the example eariler, it is indees possible to produce new information without the need for a mind, nor violating entropy (information or other wise). What you are forgetting is that the Mind is a process. It takes in information from the environemnt and fro our genes and does some processing on that information and produces an output. If oyu have ever heard of a Neural Network (as in computer program) then you know that the processes that our brains do matches up with these models, and as these neural networks are run as an algorithm on a computer, then we can say for certain that the way our neurons work in our brain is a process and an algorithm (although a very complex one). So, even if you were correct, then the result would end up proving you incorrect. This is a problem for you as the only way you can win is to loose the argument. You have to prove yourself wrong to win. This paradox means that it is imposible for you to be right. It is logically imposible for your position to be correct. You are fighting a loosing battle and your greatest opponent is yourself.

You talk about Sannon, have you heard of Shannon Complexity. It is what I was talking aobut. The reason you need to use the smallest algorithm as the measure of complexity in information theory is that small algorithms can produce very complecated outputs. Take for example the Mandelbrot Set. It is infintley complex, but it only has a very simple algorithm to produce it. Does this mean that the mandelbrot set must therefore be infinite in entropy too? No. It is much easier to produce (by random) a small algorithm than it is to produce a large data set. Therefore, if you want a real measure of the probability that an given data set exists, you have to take into account that there might be a more probable algorithm that could produce it. Taking the Mandelbrot Set again, which is more improbable: 1) An infinite data set that perfectly mathces the mandelbrot set or 2) The algorithm that produces the mandelbrot set which consists of a few instructions. I know which one would be more probable if I was using a random generator to create bits in computer memory. The algorithm is actually infinitly mroe probable because it is equivelent to a finite data set, where as the Mandelbrot Set itself is infinite. This is why you are wrong. You are saying that because the Mandelbrot set is infinite and the chances of it being created in th whole is also infinite, then it it should be that the algorithm to produce it has to be of the same probability. Clearly it is not as the Algorithm is finite and the Set is infinite. Yes, I had not heard of it, but I did read up on what you posted and learned about it. Actually I had heard about it under a differnet name: Shannon Complexity. Yes, the Same Shannon you are talking aobut is the same Shannon that I am basing my arguments on. However, Shannon Complexity clearly states the final data set is not important in determining the complexity (or the chance that it could form from randon events), but wheter the algorithm is smaller than the data set. Sure, in the case where the data set is smaller than any algorithm that would produce it, you are correct, but then as you are ignoreing the posibility that an algorithm can produce data sets and might be smaller, then you are not applying Shannon's theories properly (and that is why you get incorrect results). And that is why I don't use my expereince as proof of my arguments. It does not matter how much experience you have, you can still be wrong. I am not talking aobut compression algorithms. I am talking about Shannon Complexity. Yes, Shannon complexity is used when designing compression algorithms, and in that case you would be correct, but as I never mentioned compression algorithms and as it is only one application of what I am talking about, then you are misunderstanding what I am talkingaobut or misrepresenting it. It is as I have said before: It is not the complexity of a final data set that is important as the final data set can be vast (infinitly so in the case of Mandelbrot), but the algorithm can be small (finitely in the case of mandelbrot). Even if you had to look at the physical system to run the algorithm, it is still infinitely more probalble that a machine and the algorithm to produce the Mandelbrot set will form by chance than the Mandelbrot set would. This is proof that your application of information theory is not correct as to apply it like you have you have to ignore the fact that the size of a data set (and hence the probability that that data set could form) produced by an algoritm does not relate to the size (and hence the probability that the algorithm could form by random chance) of the algorithm that produces it. As your "proof" relise on the violation of this fact, then you can be assured that your "proof" is false. Yes, it is called learning... No, it recieves low entropy energy which it uses to create these bits of order. It is because the physical matter that makes us up is also a data store, thus organising it one way takes energy (and thus increases entropy), but then if you organise it another way it also take energy. the reason it does is because you erase the organisation that it had before (remember that I said it takes energy - and thus increase entropy - to destroy information). Information can be created by processes. Processes requier energy (if they are less than optimal efficiency or destroy information). Therefore running a process to create information will requier energy to do so. Thus it will create entropy. Think back to the Mandelbrot set algorithm. This algorithm can be written in a few instructions. The information contained in that can be directly measured in the number of bits needed to encode it. You can work out the probability that that particular algorithm could randomly come about (as bits can be 1 or 0 you can lable them as a 50% chance of either). This means you know the information content of that algorithm, but yet the output of that algorithm is infinite, and thus infintely unlikely. If you are correct and it is the final output of an algorithm that determine hthe "entropy" of the system, then just writting down the mandelbrot set sould cause an infinite amount of entropy in the universe. As the Mandelbrot set algorithm has been written and even excecuted many time, and the universe is not in a state of infinitel entroy, then you are obviously wrong.

In some ways I do agree with Cypress. Our ability to predict the consiquences of climate change are not perfect. However, the physcis behind it are not in question. Simple put, We know 1) The Earth is constantly getting energy from the sun in the form of sunlight. 2) This energy is turned into heat which is radiated out as infrared light. 3) The only way the Earth can get rid of energy is to radiate it out into space (mainly as infrared light). 4) CO2 and other greenhouse gasses scatter infrared light. 5) Thus any infred light radiated out from Earth is scattered bythe greenhouse gasses. 6) Just under 50% of the light scattered will be scattered back towards Earth, this reduce the amount of energy leaving the Earth. 7) If less energy is leaving than is arriving, the amount of energy stored in a system will increase. What this amounts to is that if we increase the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, then we will increase the amount of infrared light scattered and reduce the amount of energy that leaves the Earth, which will cause an increase in the amount of energy in the Earth's climat and Oceanic systems. This energy does not exist as a thing, but causes "things" to move. This means that the climate becomes more energetic and unpredictable and more extreme. This is the undisputed physics. What is in dispute is wether a particular location will get warmer, or how quickly it will change or how great an effect a certain amount of greenhouse gas increase will cause. But the physics says that change will occur. Think of it like a bowling pin. A bowling pin can stand upright without much problem. It is stable. It can also take a certain amount of a knock and still stay upright. However, hit it hard enough, or just keep pushing it further and further over, it will eventually reach a "tipping point" and fall. This is a property common to all complex systesm, that is they can take a certain amount of disturbance, but there will come a point where it will "tip" into a new configuration. Sometimes the amount of disturbance needed is only small, and some times it is large, it depends on the system, its current state and what other influences are affecting it. We know the Earth's climate is a complex system (that is why it is so hard to make predictions about what it will do). The Ice ages are a good example of such tipping point effects. Another thing we know about the Earth's climate system is there are feedback effects, some positive feedback which amplifies any change, and others that are negative feedback which tends to suppress changes. We, of course, don't know all of them, but we do know some big ones with a lot of influence. One is Albedo, that is the reflectivity of the surface of the Earth. We know that light coloured areas will reflect sunlight instead of converting it into heat (and eventually infrared light). Thus, if you reduce the amount of reflective surfaces (like ice caps), then you increase the amount of energy that gets eventually turned into infrared light and potentially scattered back (ultimately decreaseing the amount of energy lossed from the system). ANother is permafrosts. These areas are frozen areas with usually vegitation in them. This vegitation is frozen and dead, but because it is frozen it does not rot. Rotting vegitation releases Methane and CO2 boith greenhouse gasses (with Methane a more poten greenhouse gas than CO2). As the area warms, the permafrost melts, thus releasing more greenhouse gasses, and thus trapping more energy which increases the haet which melts more permafrost, etc, etc. As for the amount of greenhouse gasses release by humans, I heard that with the recent Icelandic vocanic erruption, the amount of CO2 emmitted by the vocano was less than the amount of CO2 that would have been emmitted by the aircraft that were grounded. As the vocano was only a temporary event, and planes are running all over the world every day 24/7/365, then air travel is emitting far more CO2 than the volcanoes, and volcanoes are often touted as a source of greenhouse gasses that is greater than what humans could ever produce.

Here I disagree quite strongly with your interperetation of that wikipedia article. Take for example there two sets of numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 8, 8, 3, 10, 2, 9, 4, 9, 3, 2 Which has a higher entropy (lower order) and which has a higher level of information? The first one can be described by a simple algorithm (print A=A+1, repeat 10 times). The second I got by rolling a 10 sided die 10 times. The article you pointed to used work by Shannon. In his work he describes the entropy of a system as being equivelent to the amount of information needed to describe it. If you don't have enough information to describe it, then you get uncertainties (and this is where I think you have misinterpereted the article). The first set has a simple algorithm that describes how to create it (two instructions or 3 if you need to define A first). However the second is a random string of numbers (and therefore needs 10 instructions to recreate it), and as the only way to describe it is to describe each number in turn, then the first set has a much higher information density than the second, however, the second is a much more disordered set and requiers more information to describe it. This is in direct contradiction to what you are claiming, and therefore proves you wrong (as in mathematically you are wrong). Yes, the outputs have the same amou8nt of information, but you can't jsut use outputs of processes as determining the amount of entropy the process starts with or produces (if you only know how much it ends with and not how much it starts with, you can not determine how much it has increased or decreased). When you are using concepts in ways they were not intended, it is like trying to use gravitation theory to explain litterary critacisms. It just does not work. I hav read the article, and understand it quite well (I was educated as a programmer and system designer and have been programming for over 20 years). Based on my education, you have misinterperested that article as I showed you above. Ok, you are using thermodynamic principals directly as information theory. They are two different things. Information "entropy" is about the amount of informaiton needed to avoid uncertainties in the data. part of this is that processes are important. To apply entropy to information theory correctly, you need to look for the smallest process that will produce the data set you are after. You are not doing this. You are instead just looking at the output. This is a false application of information theory. Is that specific enough. As you have demonstraed ignorance of these thnings, then yes, you are ignorant. Ignorance is not a bad thing, it just means you have things to learn. It is only bad when your lack of knowledge is pointed out and you insist that you are right, even in the face of mountains of evidence that you are not. I am quite conversant with information theory (although I do not use this as proof that I am right, which is why I haven't mentioned it before). No, you were arbitarily closing a system and then trying to us that as proof of your claims. For instance you asked me to provide an external source that would allow information to increase locally. If you had read the post in which your question was directed at, then you would have realised that I did provide a source. You seem to be under the impression that Earth is a closed system, in that you keep making the claim that entropy (whether information or thermodynamic) can not decrease, and hence entropy is violated by evolution. Well, as I keep saying, the Earth is NOT a closed system, and if you arbitarily think of it as one, then you will get the wrong results (which you have). As the Earth is not a closed system (we get plenty of energy from the sun), then you can't think of it as a closed system. As it is not a closed system, then a local descrease in entropy (whether information or thermodynamic), is certainly posible and does not violate any conservation laws. You keep insisting that it does, but your fundamental mistake is that you keep trying to arbitarily close the Earth as a system. It is not a closed system, so there is no voliation of any conservation laws. Because of the energy input from the sun, information can increase and disorder can decrease. Thus, your arguments are proved wrong.

Not at all. Information, in this sense is the number and accuacy of variables needed to describe a system. In information theory random systems need greater amounts of information to describe them than ordered systems. This means that a high entropy system has a higher information content than a low entropy system (but low entropy systems can also contain a high amount of information - this is because tthe information content is not equivelent to entropy, unlike what you are trying to say). This is basic infromation theory here. The fact is, you are using concepts completly different from information theory, entropy and envolution and claiming that they are these things. It is like I was using the religious writings of the Norse to claim things about the bible, it is a completely different set of concepts youa re using, and therefore, the conclusions you draw form them are not what the conclusions that you would reach if you were using the real concepts. Until you are willing to use the actual concepts you claim to beuseing, none of your arguments are going to be persuasive to anyone who knows what these actual concepts are. It is this reason that creationists are unable to convinvce people who know about these things to convert to their beliefs. All they do is keep proposing the same strawman arguments to people who can see how obvious these strawmen are. Of course, if one was ignorant about these concepts, then the arguments put forward sound reasonable, but then if the strawman arguments were true then they would have a point. Bus as these arguments are false, right form the concepts they are using, they just don't hold and weight to people who are not ignorant. I did identfy one such influence: The Sun. Also it is not the creation of information that requiers energy, but its destruction (see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle ) Remember what I said about entropy? Increaseing entropy is only inevitable in a closed system. By just having a system where energy can enter and leave a system you can decrease the entropy. As the Earth gets energy from the Sun and radiates energy, it is therefore NOT a closed system. This by itself is proof enough that entropy can decrease on Earth without the need for an inteligence. But lets look at a system you might be familiar with. Take a galss of water. When in a liqud state, this glass of water is disordered and therefore has a high entropy. However when we freeze it and trun it into ice, it looses entropy as it gains order (rigid ice crystals are more ordered than sloshing water). Now, to cause a glass of water to freeze, you need to get the energy out of it. So, if you have a region of less energy, then the energy in the water causing its disorder can leave and the temperature drops. When the temperature drops low enough the energy causing the bonds between the water molecules is not enough to force them apart and they join together and crystalise, turing into ice. However, where I am sitting now, the temperature is 22 degrees centigrade. This is far too hot for ice to form, but yet, in my freezer in my fridge I have ice. How can thes be? The way it is done is the fridge uses energy to compress gass, cool it and then pipe that into the freezer. As this cooled gass is colder than 0 degrees the freezer looses energy (heat) and the water in the freeze freezes. But, where does this energy come from? Well, the energy comes from the electricity company who get their enegy from coal, oil, wind, etc. All these sources of energy get their energy form the Sun. Remember, I said that the sun is a source of energy that can be used to decrease entropy. Well, there is proof of it. I have used the SUn to reduce the entropy in my glass of water to turn it into ice. Ahh, I hear you say, but fridges are made by inteligent entities. Well there is a natural process that does not requier inteligence and works the same way. The sun heats the surface of the Earth, and this heat the air above it. And this hotter air evaporates a bit of water. The hotter air is less dense than the air around it (as hot air expands) and this causes the hot air to rise. As the air rises the air aorund it becomes less dense and the air is allowed to expand. This causes the air to cool (forceing air to expand cools it). This is the same process that goes on in a fridge to allow it to cool its contense. If the air rises high enough, it cools enough to cause the water vapor in it to first become liquid and then freeze. So we have the same processes going on (and the same original source of energy too) but this time it is not one instigated by an inteligent entity and we are gettign the same result (energy input and a loss of entroy from that part of the system). However if we include the Sun as part of the system, then we do indeed have an increase in entropy as the Sun is converting mass into energy through fusion, an in doing so it is loosing mass. The photons produced from the sun as it converts mass into energy is an increase in entropy because matter is more ordered than photons. Yes, and that is your problem. You have incorrect physics applied here. You are using concepts that have not been subject to such requierments. We are, and have given references, you have not. We have even given experiments that you can perform that would verify what we are saying. Have you done them? Everything we have been saying is repeatable and has been confirmed by experiment. It is you who are rejecting this. Yes, creationism has influenced science, but when the experiments were done based on these creationist claims were done, the claims were found to be wrong. New hypothisis were put forward and tested, and it is these that have been confirmed by experiment. You seem to be stuck with the creationist claims that were disproved. Time to update by a couple of hundred years now. Yes, reality trumps all. If reality is confirmed to be one way, no matter "the patent absurdity of some of its constructs", then we have to accept that. For instance, it seems absurd that when you heat a gass it expands, but if you expand a gas it cools. But this is the case (you can confirm this with a bike pump). So even though such a "construct" is absurd, it is none the less real. This is the difference between philosophy and science. Science makes these reality checks, and it is only by these reality checks that we can check what we are claiming is real. Actually, it is time you started doing this. You have been making claims about evolution and entropy that is in direct contradiction to what science says about them. In other words, you need to make a reality check about the claims that you say science is making. It is no wonder that we don't agree with your conclusions when you keep trying to twell us that what we know is not what we know, but it is what you think we should believe. Sorry, you can't tell us what we know, and just claiming that you know it differently does not change what is in our heads. Until you understand that what you claim we are claiming is wrong, then your arguments have absolutly no substance to them. Either stick with what you know or learn what we actually are saying. Yes, and this doesn't occur in creationism or religion? We are only human and people will always try to influence things. One of the asapects of science that make it hard to corrupt is the need for constant reality checking and the freedom for anyone to attempt to disprove a claim. In religion, there is none of these checks and balances. So it is far more easy for someone to corrupt it to their own ends. Yes, science isn't perfect, but it is far better than other methodologies as any corruption will eventually be found and eliminated. Actually, most of the corruption is science is about who discovered what, and is only rarely applied to theories, and when it is it is usually quickly found out. Morality and Ethics are constructs of human intelect. It is a clasification of certain types of behaviours that are used to maintain social systems in animals. You could grind the universe into atoms and sort them and you will not find a single particle of Morality. You could clasify and measure every field or fluctionation of energy and you would not find a sinlge twitch of Ethics. Morality and Ethics do not exist as a physical law. However, if you look at the way social animals behave, then you will be able to find morality and ethics. they are therefore an emergent property of the interactions of animals in social structures. If you look at mathematics of how such system work (specifically look at game theory), then you can see how and why moral and ethical behaviour will confer an advantage to social animals (but in non social animals it doesn't). ANd, all social aniamls follow these core moral rules for the same reason (evolution selects for groups that apply them and selects against one that do not). Have a look at the "Ultimatum Game" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game ) and research how it is applied when the participants play multiple games and are allowed to exchange information about other players between rounds.

I have neaver heard of "information" entropy, but from the context I can guess you mean something like standard entropy applied to information. As entropy is a measure of disorder, then it would apply to information anyway and so you don't need to use the word "information" at all. However, entropy says that any closed system will increase in disorder, but it says nothing about open systems. That is when energy can flow into and/or out of the system. In these cases, disorder (entropy) can decrease. As the Earth is an open system (we get energy from the sun), then it is perfectly possible for entropy to decrease here on Earth, however, when you take into account the Sun and the Earth as a single system, then entropy is indeed increasing (and quite a lot too). So there is no voliation of entropy (information or otherwise) and so no exception to it. Nope. There are many different environments on Earth, and as each organism evolves and changes it changes the environment (along with other environmental processes like erosion, plate tectonics, climate shifts, etc). This crease a lot of ways that organisms have to adapt and each being a different solution to the problem of survival. This creates selection for a large variety of diversity in organisms. And, as I explained above, as the Earth is not a closed system and we are getting energy input form the sun (and Earth radiates energy too in the form of infra-red light as the energy from the sun heats the Earth), then no voliation of entropy occurs. As your arguments seem to rest on your belief that evolution can't occur because it violtes entropy, this sort of nullifies your argument as there is no violation of entropy as the Earth is not a closed system and increasing entropy only applies to closed systems and not open systems. Design is a decrease in entropy, so your argument would also apply to this. However an extranl creator (like God) forms a closed system (there is nothing greater than God, so the dogma goes), this means that a creator has to violate the entropy laws that you are relying on as your argument, where as Evolution and Biology have the fact that entropy is increaseing in the Sun/Earth system. But, as Earth by itself is an open system it can decrease entropy if it gets an energy input (from the sun which is increasing massivly in entropy to compensate the decrease here on Earth). In other words, your arguments disprove your position that a creator had to have made life as that would entail a decrease in entropy in a colsed system (which is exactly what you are arguing against).

Actually it doesn't. It is only simplifications of evolution or misrepresentations that assume a fixed environment. As a week is not long enough to have multiple generations, the pressures on these animals over their migration will all have an effect. So animals won't evolve to suit just one of these environments, but would have to evolve to suit all of them (at least while they are migrating), and then only enough to get them through that patch. This would be a better example if they were boardered by these environments and the population size was large enough that any increase in population would force some of them into these new environments. Then, any individuals that had a mutation that enabled them to exist better in these new environments would do better than others in those environments. And, over many generations, as these better evolved groups increased in number, they would be under pressure to evolve better tolerances for those environments. There would come a time where the changes that have enabled thes new "subspecies" to deal with their particular environments would cause a selective disadvantage when combined with traits from other gene pools. At this point a new pressure developos, one that reduces the hybridisation between that group and another. This is when you get speciation occuring as the ones that interbreed will be less capable of surviving than the ones that don't. This, I think, is what this whole debate surounding the Nazis and evolution is centred on. What they were proposing sounds a lot like this, but it is actually completely different as with actual seciation there needs to be a far greater difference in genetic, and there has to be significant trait incompatability. As it is, the Nazis used ideological and cultural differences to split groups of humans up, and these do not have a genetic cause (Yes, the ability to have culture is genetic, but the minutia of the culture is not). As I was saying, it wouldn't be a migrating species that would do this, but it would be a static species that was forced to expand into new territories (eg: population pressures). No, it would occur over generations, not months. It was only in your example that ignored actual reality and the actaul theory of evolution that allowed them to do so in months. It was just a strawman argument. Using these does not help you position as a logical falalcy does not logically prove your point in an argument. Also, if you have to resort to logical falacies then it indicates that you have no logical reason to hold your position. It just weakens your position in the argument and weakens it for anyone else that holds your position.

But this is exactly what leads to new function. Evolution proceeds in small steps, as I have heard it put (but can't remember the source) evolution proceeds to "the adjacent possible". This means that everytime we see change it is this "adaptation of existing function", but then this adaptation gets readapted again and again until it no longer resembles the original function. Have a look again at my earlier post (#75). In this I gave an experiment were you use evolution to evolve one word into another word. But now repeat the experiment, but when you get to the target word, the experiment continues, but you choose a new target word and use the old target word as the starting word. What you get with this is that you get that limited adaptation, but then as it repeats and repeats you get wholy new function (new target word) that can be achieved. Actualy, as each generation has to produce a viable word, you can see it in micro as well. Each changed letter leads to a new word that is almost identical to the orriginal (changed by 1 letter), but over time these changes can lead to a completely different word. This is "new function" appearing from "limited adaptation" which disproves your argument here. In a way I do agree with you here. We can't rule such things out, but where I disagree is that it does not mean we have to include these unprovable things. As an extra caveat: If something has an effect on a system, then that thing can in principal be detected and its existance verified. This means that there can be no unprovable influences on a system. What this also means is that any cause that acts on a system can be considdered part of that system. Thus if there is somthing "outside the universe" then it, by definition, is outside the system. As it is outside the system it can have no influence on the system. However if it does have an influence on the system, then by definition, it is part of the system which means that it is part of the universe and can not exist out side of it. This is why it is a completly incorrect argument to posit something outside the universe as having a causal effect, as if it does have a causal effect, then it is part of the universe and if it doesn't have a causeal effect then it is not part of the system and has no influence (and thus be ignored as far as an understanding of the system is concerned).

It has to do with inertia. More massive objects are indeed more strongly pulled by gravity, however, more massive objects have a greater inertia and so requier a greater force to achieve the same rate of acceleration. As it is the mass of an object that governs both the force felt by gravity and inertia, then as the mass increases the force felt and the amount of inertia both increase. It just so happens that these two influeces increase at the exact same rate. That is the force requiered to reach a certain rate of acceleration (inertia) matches the amount of force provided by gravity. But, when you have a situation where the is an extra effect, say air resistance, then the two effects start to diverge and we get a different rate of acceleration for objects of different masses.

However, labouring under a delusion does not make it true. Reality trumps all beliefs. That is if the reality is we are an animal, then no amount of thinking we are not will stop us being an animal. Yes, an arbitary line can be drawn, but it is arbitary and therefore to think of it as a real distinction is a delusion. Even just to ackowledge it as arbitary is to deny that is is real. Unfortunately this is not true. It can create it own delusions of reality, but it does not "create" its own reality. Nope. Delusions are not only limited to huamns. There are many cases where animals come to think of themselves as another species, even against the obvious differences in them. One might see that, but it is an entirely false perception. No matter where the arbitary line is drawn, and regardless of where different people draw it, the distance we are removed is a constant. It is only wishful thinking and delusion that make it seem closer or further away. The reality is our physiological processes are exactly the same as what occur in animals. Physiologically speaking, we are definitly animals. If your belief is that our mental processes are not based on physiology, then how would one explain brain damage and impaired mental and congnitave function due to that damage, or even recovery from such damage. The only other explaination is that our mids are a result of biological function, but if our mental faculties are biology and our biology is definitly animal, then the conclusion is that even our minds are animal, leaving nothing for us to be, but animals.

It wasn't that it was inferior, it was that it wasn't thought through and seemed benieth what you have demonstrated in the past. As a side note, I heard on the news the other day that the Pope was touring Spain and trying to convince them to stop using birth control. So although Spain is a predominently Catholic country, they are currently ignoring the church prohibition on birth control. This is what I was meaning about how people just use statistic without thinking them through. You used the statistic because they seemed to support your point because birth control is prohibited in Catholocism and because Spain is highly Catholic then on the surface it would suggest that Spain does not have strong birth control policies. But just a quick examination of Spain shows that they do have strong birth control acceptance, even among the Catholics. They may be Catholics, but they disagree with the church on this policy. As my argument was that strong birth control acceptance reduces birth rate and a lower birth rate is an indication of a more proserous economy, then the statistic you supplied exactly agreed with my argument. It was that you only looked at the surface and then made assuptions about the conclusions that made your attempt so weak. Wehn people do this, they only weaken their side of the argument, and if you want to be effective in discussions, then you need to use arguments that don't weaken your position.

Yes there are differences, but the differences are not enough to lable them as different "races". Human genetic diversity went through a bottle neck a few hundred thousand years ago. The estimated population of humans at this time number in the thousands. We were almost extinct. This bottle neck means that the variation within human genetics is actually highly constrained compared to other species. There is often more genetic diversity within a breed of an other animal than there is in the whole human popualtion of Earth. The differences they were basing these on were due to very small differences in the genetics (almost point mutations), things like the amount of melenin produced in hair, skin or eyes (eg: to produce blond hair or blue eyes rather than brown hair and dark eyes or skin). These differnces were so minute tha any definition of "breed" or "race" based on these is not supported by biology. When you are stateing as Fact certain aspects of biology and gentitics that are false, then you have mixed fact with lies. Fact: Variation is essential to evolution. Any action that is taken to reduce variation is to reduce the ability of evolution to work. This has been known for thousands of years. Inbreeding has been known to be a bad thing for thousands of years. Evolution does not say any different and confirms this. The Nazis, by using genocide were in direct contradiction to this fact of biology and evolution Fact: Evolution does not state there is a "Master Race". Actually evolution does not even say that any species is "more evolved" than any other species. Thus any claims that state evolution says this is in contradiction to evolution. The Nazis stated that they were superior and thus are in contradiction to evolution. So either the Nazis were not basing their actions on evolution, or you are wrong that the Nazis stated this. In either case the Nazis were not using evolution as a basis of their actions. Nope, their actions are in direct contradiction to what evolution states. So they could not have their actions driven by their belief in evolution. It would be a bit like me justifing a disbelif in God because of God telling me that He didn't exist. It is that big of a contradiction. This means you either have no idea about evolution, or someone lied to you about all this. And his journals of his voyages on the Beagle... Nope. Read what occured in Tierra del Fuego, it was one of the key moments in his voyages that lead him to evolution and his understanding that huamns are subject to it. Can you actually quote where he says this? IF they believed they were acting in accordance with evolution, then they got it wrong. The actions taken are in direct contradiction to what evolution and biology state (and much of this has been know for thousands of years anyway). No. What they were acting on is a belief in a religious ideology that states that one "race" of people are superior to other "races" of people. You can not come to this conclusion if you correctly apply evolutionary theory, thus if they were doing so then it was not evolutionary theory they were using but their own beliefs not derived from evolution. And it does so quite well actually. Nope. It doesn't. Name one.

Actually it was your quoting of what I wrote that didn't add to the conversation. You quoted out of context, leaving off the next sentance I wrote that showed why it was obvious (ie: basic maths that most people learn in primary school). Either you deliberatly made that chocie or you just didn't read what I said. The fact that anyone who actually read my post would have seen this glareing mistake is why I facepalmed. Too often people only grab the first thing that seems to support their case, but so often it is that with a little bit of thought, the "evidence" they provide actually disproves their arguments. I do find it amusing when people do this because it shows they are not really taking the argument seriously, or at least not seriously enough to think about their responses. See your statistics, on the surface, seems to support your position, but with a little bit of thought, you would have known that Spain has active family planing centres and education. Where as Niger does not and discourages family planing. My point was that in countries with family planning and education then the birth rate is lower, but in countries where these things are discouraged then the birth rate is higher. As your statistics directly demonstrated this, you obviously did not put much effort into it and so indicate that you are not taking this seriously at all. If I laughed, it was because the statisitics were a joke.

Genocide is not about religion. It is about thinking that one group of people have the right to kill another group of people. With Humans there is not real differences genetically between people. What the Nazis believed had nothing whatsoever to do with biology, it was an irrational and completely wrong belief. If they had any understanding of biology, or even of history, then they would not have been able to justify their actions. If you trace the ancestory of any person curently alive in Europe back a few hundred years, then you will find that they are realated to any other person in Europe. The genetic mixiing of all the peoples in Europe is so great that the beliefs of the Nazis is not supported by biology. If the beliefs are not supported by biology, then they could not be using Evolution as a justification as it is part of biology. You are trying toi use emotive arguments to prove your point, but the facts say other wise. Besides there has been many incidences over the last 2000 years where christians have killed christians, so the fact that christians were killed does not make a single bit of difference. There were also people of other religions and even Athiests killed by the Nazis, so where does this leave your arguments that it was an Athiests attack against religions? I am not denying they happened, nor have I ever denied that they happened. I know people who were in the death camps. I am insulted that you think I am denying them and it appears that you are using this to further your arguments by trying to lable me as a holocaust denying. I too have releatives killed by the Nazis. You aren't alone in this. And because this attrocity occured to your family does not automatically make you right. Now, did you know that in the Congo there have been more people murdered because of genocide than were killed in the Nazi holocaust. The beliefs that lead to genocide are still around and it is centred on beliefs that are in direct contradiction to biolgy and evolution. Have you read "On the Origin of Species"? Nowhere does it say that humans are seperated into races. In fact, Darwin was against this because of what he saw in Tierra del Fuego. He saw people (christian priests) that "reverted" to a primitive state because of the isolation and the environment that they were in. The belief at the time was that Europeans were more civilised because they were of a different race. This very fact alone means that anybody who claims that Darwin, evolution or "On the Origin of Species" supported seperating humans into different races did not get it from him, or his book. So your claims that the Nazis used Darwin's work to justify their crimes is factually wrong. Darwin provided evidence that it was not the case. If the Nazis were using Darwin's work to justfy their actions, then they were lying. And, if you just repeat these claims, the you are just repeating Nazi lies. He may be well read, but that does not mean that he actually followed what Darwin wrote. The fact that he was extremely racists prove that he didn't follow it as Darwin's work disproves racism. Actually, if you have read the bible, the belief of a superior or favoured race is a core part of the bible. The Israleites were the favoured race of God and they were allowed to commit genocide against other races (there are even parts of the bible where God helps them to commit genocide). The whole concept is rooted deep within the Abrahamic religions (Judeism, Christianity and Islam). It is a core tennent of how their religions were created. See the problem is that it does not matter if Hitler believed in evolution, or was an Athiest. It doesn't even matter if he was right in his beliefs (As I believe I have made clear I do not in any way think he was right in his beliefs). What matter in this discussion is whether or not Evolution exists. None of your arguments have even come close to addressing this question. All you have said is that people can be evil. So, that does not address the quesiton and is completely off topic.