[Religion] Religious Discussion

[Uwsar-Hat-Anupuw]

Originally Posted by jackripped

entropy lol ''the measure of decay in the world due to mans sin '' all you guys that dont believe these religions are still trying to brainwash people are a little numb.

Its like cancer, religions, they should be outlawed and irradicated.Teach science and maths, .....

Do you always look at the negative side of things? One can say what you believe in is no worse then religion, look at your post there are nothing but filled with venom. I think I understand your point of view, did a priest take advantage of you? Thats quite funny accusing us of brainwashing people, on can say the same thing about you as well.

Originally Posted by Uwsar-Hat-Anupuw

I can easily say so is Science as well, the A-bomb, H-bomb, the Nuke, Biological weapons and so forth. Everything can be perverted to evil, not religion only.

[crisissuit3]

Jack, every time you post, I eat a baby.

Originally Posted by jackripped

entropy lol ''the measure of decay in the world due to mans sin '' all you guys that dont believe these religions are still trying to brainwash people are a little numb.

Though I cant speak for the decay being sin thing. I can say that your still being an ignorant jerk.

Tell me, FREAKING TELL ME, how religons are brainwashing people. and don't pull the suicide bomber crap because I doubt they have a decent education system in the middle east. I have never EVER see any kid at any school I've gone to go "everything in this science class is a lie and heresy!"

I've said it before and I will say it again. We are NOT in the dark ages, every human being is not so easily brainwash as you think. unless its a very popular underaged singer of the female species.

Its like cancer, religions, they should be outlawed and irradicated.

HEIL HITLER!

Teach science and maths, .....

I'm going to go with others and say teach spelling and grammar.

[Warforger]

Originally Posted by crisissuit3

FREAKING TELL ME, how religons are brainwashing people. and don't pull the suicide bomber crap because I doubt they have a decent education system in the middle east. I have never EVER see any kid at any school I've gone to go "everything in this science class is a lie and heresy!"

What about the parents pulling there children out of school because they teach Evolution?

[evildude]

Originally Posted by Warforger

What about the parents pulling there children out of school because they teach Evolution?

Then the kids can not get an education and fail at life?
Personally I think it should be up to the kid if he wants to learn Evolution or not, Show the kid both ideas and let them choose what they want! Not what the parents want.

[jackripped]

What he said [ evildude ] is why.......^^^^^ Brainwashed at an early age. Point of fact. At that age its not the choice of the children, but the adults....
And the adults have made a decision to teach untruths, things that have no proof, pretty much brainwashing them into believing god...etc....you know its true.

[necrosect]

I don't particularly want this argument to advance any further before I get a chance to reply, however I am too tired, and don't have enough time nor effort to devote at the moment, so I (if the mods don't mind) am leaving this post in place of one I will edit in later to address the following subjects:

Entropy
Entropy vs. Evolution
Evolution vs. The "evolution" of the universe

I would in particular, like to expand on Nemmerle's post; while we disagree on many points I have to say that is quite a decent summary of entropy as a concept - and hopefully by lending quotes I will expand on this in the current context.

Also Afterburner, thank you for having some degree of faith in me, while I know I sometimes come across as an "ass" when it comes to topics like this it is nice to know that my input, in some regards, is appreciated.

Anyway, like I said, I will expand on this tomorrow during my lunch break (mostly likely around 13:00 gmt)

nn guys.

[crisissuit3]

Originally Posted by Warforger

What about the parents pulling there children out of school because they teach Evolution?

How many people have you seen do that?

Originally Posted by evildude

Then the kids can not get an education and fail at life?
Personally I think it should be up to the kid if he wants to learn Evolution or not, Show the kid both ideas and let them choose what they want! Not what the parents want.

Thats all fine, let the kids decide, though you have to know that its a life long process.


OM NOM NOM NOM NOM

Originally Posted by jackripped

Point of fact.

what fact? you're obviously not going to back yourself up.

At that age its not the choice of the children, but the adults....
And the adults have made a decision to teach untruths, things that have no proof, pretty much brainwashing them into believing god...etc....you know its true.

Then if they believe in god why is that so bad? In case you didn't know humans live for a long time and the brain is still growing for 21 years. 21 years to decide if you want to believe in god or not.

My parents forced me to go to church every sunday, I never really learned anything nor I didn't care if god loved me or not. this was advanced even further until I probably would be talking like you (but with better grammar and spelling of course)

guess what, for 16 years I basically told myself, God doesn't exist and if he does, I don't care. now I gladly go to church and learn what they teach and I enjoy to read my bible. And don't you dare say I'm brainwash because I still have 5 more years of growth, I could be a hindu when I turn 20.

(How I expect you to respond) "Well... uhm... Your still brainwashed by religon! RELIGON BRAINWASHES PEOPLE!!"

[Warforger]

Originally Posted by crisissuit3

How many people have you seen do that?

In the news? I haven't seen it because in my area no one's that religious, but Its probably pretty common when the News doesn't report it, just like the people who jump the Golden Gate Bridge, I remember a letter on the fail blog which was the reason the parent wouldn't let her child go on a geology trip and it was just a paragraph is religious bullshit and "I'm not going to let you mislead my child te Earth is obvosly 6000 years old" etc.

[TheDarkInvader]

For entropy to really be lost, the sun has to have some order.

I fear the end point of PhasmatisApparatus's argument here is that all order in the universe violates the law of entropy and thus, everything that ever happens is God's miracle, or something.

If I get into another "debate" about evolution it'll be another year of group therapy sessions, so...

[necrosect]

Ok, I realised that I have probably left this too late now with the extra posts going on after mine - and that it would be better to have this at the bottom of the thread so it might stand a chance of getting read and maybe clearing things up

As I said, I will try and cover three points briefly, and hopefully relate this back to the religious debate so we can drop all this "entropy" crap. And I mean that; this is more about peoples' misunderstanding or lack of understanding of what is a regularly abused concept (entropy), that also (unfortunately) is quite difficult to get a grasp on.

When reading this I would ask, particularly of Jackripped and PhasmatisApparatus, that you understand I have no real view point on the evolution vs. creation argument. I simply wish for science to be accurately represented where it is used, and for people not to misuse scientific ideas to further poor arguments. As such, please don't over-extend my arguments to suggest "OMG creation is therefore wrong", I will remain relatively neutral on that for now.

Anyway - enough with the useless chat,

Entropy
This, even among undergraduate physicists, is quite a misunderstood concept, and within any given system it might be quite difficult to understand what "entropy" means for that system, let alone what "increasing entropy" would mean physically.

I find the most helpful definition, surprisingly, to be that of wikipedia;

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Within thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, entropy is a measure of the number of ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of "disorder" (the higher the entropy, the higher the disorder).

(my emphasis).

This is in good agreement with the post that Nemmerle made earlier. This idea of the "number of possible arrangements of a system" being a measure of entropy will be very important as such:

entropy is a measure of the number of ways in which a system may be arranged

Moving forward with this definition,

Entropy and Evolution
This is where a lot of confusion seems to come into play. There are regularly arguments presented, starting with

Originally Posted by PhasmatisApparatus

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of the universe is always increasing

and usually moving on to

Originally Posted by PhasmatisApparatus

Evolution is, by any definition I've ever heard, order arising from chaos,

Sometimes followed by

Originally Posted by PhasmatisApparatus

a bunch of hand-waving about "well there are tremendous lengths of time involved harrumph harrumph" and "well there tremendous amounts of energy involved hurrp de durp durp"

in an attempt to discredit, ahead of time, scientists or anyone who rejects their argument.

It is, in fact, quite a simple matter to follow through the definition of entropy I have used above to demonstrate that a system like evolution, in the biological sense, actually does represent the increase of entropy in the universe and as such one does not need to resort to these "hand wavey" arguments that PhasmatisApparatus apparently hates so much.

Starting with the simple definition of entropy, which just in case you missed it above I will restate: "entropy is a measure of the number of ways in which a system may be arranged". And obviously any "evolutionary" theory would suggest that organisms, in almost every regard, have become more and more complex over the course of their individual evolution. A more complex system would suggest that there are more ways in which it can be arranged - hence an increase in entropy - consistency of evolution with the 2nd Law of thermodynamics is achieved. That wasn't too hard was it.

I would also like to move on to a slightly different approach, in case you don't think that is quite satisfactory or just prefer to think about it a different way.

If one were to accept the claim, which I don't, that "evolution shows order arising from choas, necessarily contradicting the 2nd law of thermodynamics", you leave yourself in quite a quandry. This is simply because you are sat on a planet. In a second generation solar system. This by the same merit is the result of "order arising out of chaos". This is obviously not true at all. I think this may help one to see the fallacy in this line of reasoning - namely that the notion of "order" and "chaos" when applied to entropy are not necessarily apparent as to what they mean, and as such one should be very careful when claiming that "order has arisen out of chaos" and claiming this is a violation of the 2nd Law. What may appear as "order" to you, physically probably isn't.

Evolution vs. The "evolution" of the universe
This is simply a quick note; biological evolution is not the same idea nor the same word that is meant when someone says "the universe has evolved", and to be honest this misappropriation of terminology is what leads to some confusion I imagine. The universe has simply changed, and expanded, and aged. This isn't really "evolution", as there is no real "selective" process in which the universe changes and adapts to any stimulus.

Anyway, this has been a rather long post, and I hope it doesn't just get swept away. I don't expect any replies if I'm honest, but I hope it helps clear up the confusion about the second law of thermodynamics.