Kansas school board - intelligent design questions

[ksbluesfan]

In the Kansas City Star Letter's section, there was a letter supporting Intelligent Design being taught in Kansas classrooms. There were seven questions asked that I feel are answered by science, but I would like a little support in answering these questions.

Here are his questions:
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1) What was it that went "bang"?
2) Where did it come from?
3) Where did the energy that caused the explosion come from?
4) How did life come forth from that which had no life?
5) How did the life forms make the change to sexual reproduction?
6) Is evolution a faith-based theory?
7) Is a person stupid for asking these questions?
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Questions 1, 2, 3, and 4 have nothing to do with evolution. The first three deal with the Big Bang Theory, and would take several pages of the KC Star to provide an adequate explanation. The fourth question is a matter of abiogenesis, and has yet to form a generally accepted scientific theory. I can't answer question #5, but maybe somebody can. Question 6 is easy - evolution is based in faith only as much as the theory of general relativity (which explains gravity) is based in faith. Question #7 is also easy - of course these are not stupid questions, and they are being asked by biologist and physicist all of the time.

I want to be able to respond to this letter in a way that will encourage the KC Star to print it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[sol invictus]

In the Kansas City Star Letter's section, there was a letter supporting Intelligent Design being taught in Kansas classrooms. There were seven questions asked that I feel are answered by science, but I would like a little support in answering these questions.

Here are his questions:
---------------------
1) What was it that went "bang"?
2) Where did it come from?
3) Where did the energy that caused the explosion come from?

This might help with the first three. You have my permission to use anything from this in whatever form you like.

What we know from astronomical observations is that the matter in the universe is expanding - moving out away from us (and from every other point). If you measure the current positions and velocities of that matter, you can use the known laws of physics (mainly Einstein's theory of gravity) to find out what must have happened in the past to lead to what we are seeing today. What you discover is that about 13 billion years ago all that matter was clumped together and had an extremely high density, as well as a very high outward velocity. That explosive expansion is what's referred to as the big bang.

We don't know where it came from. We do know that the total energy of the universe was constant throughout the expansion (it's probably zero, but that might be confusing to some) - just as the total energy of a projectile is constant even though its velocity and altitude changes. But we don't know where the energy came from since we don't know what (if anything) came before the big bang.

There are a number of theories that address those three questions more fully, but all of them are speculative (so far). However it's important to note that it's quite possible we will someday know the answers - there are some theories which predict specific effects which, if observed, would tell us what came before the big bang. So those are good scientific questions - we just don't know the answers yet.

 

[Vorpal]

1) What was it that went "bang"?
2) Where did it come from?
3) Where did the energy that caused the explosion come from?

As you say, answering these in full would take pages, so perhaps it's better to address the frequently perceived problem instead: the belief that Big Bang theory has the universe coming about from nothing. The Big Bang happened everywhere, and since time is a property of the universe, it follows that the universe quite literally existed "for all time" regardless of whether time is finite or infinite in the past direction. If there is nothing before the Big Bang as GTR suggests, then the answers to questions 2&3 are simply "they were always there." If there is something before the Big Bang, e.g., if GTR fails to apply under those conditions (and on this last part many physicists would agree that this how singularities should be interpreted), that still doesn't mean that the Big Bang has the universe coming about from nothing. Rather, it just means that we don't know what happened before. "We don't know" is a perfectly fine answer if in fact we have no good evidence at what might have been there, and is in fact much better than any answer unsupported by evidence.

4) How did life come forth from that which had no life?

Edit: fixed link.

5) How did the life forms make the change to sexual reproduction?

talk.origins is always useful for general outlines and pointers. As above, the perhaps it's better to address the implied difficulty instead of giving an account, which sees the change from asexual to sexual reproduction as a kind of sudden transition. But that need not be the case: we have examples of organisms (today, mainly bacteria and plants) that can reproduce both sexually and asexually. The ability to reproduce asexually might have been lost due to selection pressures.

6) Is evolution a faith-based theory?

No. It's an evidence-based theory.

7) Is a person stupid for asking these questions?

Not at all. Somewhat ignorant, perhaps, but ignorance itself is no shame. We're all ignorant in most matters.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

Evolution is not faith based. It's based on observable and catalogued evidence. It just takes time to learn, and an open mind to actually learn it and observe it in same. In one year a person can get an appreciable understanding at least. Throw in some good courses on current genetics, and light bulbs go on all over the place. There is no believing, just seeing. It's an odd concept for those who are not used to actually seeing something, observing it through studies of actual life on the planet.

 

[Mojo]

In the Kansas City Star Letter's section, there was a letter supporting Intelligent Design being taught in Kansas classrooms. There were seven questions asked that I feel are answered by science, but I would like a little support in answering these questions.

Here are his questions:
---------------------
1) What was it that went "bang"?

God An unnamed designer.

2) Where did it come from?

Another unnamed designer designed it.

3) Where did the energy that caused the explosion come from?

The unnamed designer had a very large curry the night before.

4) How did life come forth from that which had no life?

Contamination from leftover curry.

5) How did the life forms make the change to sexual reproduction?

Contamination from leftover naan bread.

6) Is evolution a faith-based theory?

No

7) Is a person stupid for asking these questions?

That depends on why they're asking them, and whether they're prepared to listen to the answers.

 

[Dancing David]

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1) What was it that went "bang"?

First off it didn'y go bang, it went wooshaaa. That is a term started by Hoyle, a detractor of the theory.

We can't know what it is or was because it is outside of our closed universe. It is not 'nothing', it is 'something we cant study directly.' It is unknowable at this time.

2) Where did it come from?

More, we don't know.

3) Where did the energy that caused the explosion come from?

More we don't know, but there are some great guesses.

4) How did life come forth from that which had no life?

Do-hickeys, thingamabobs and huge amounts of time. Say that there is a one in one million chance that two dohickeys will combine to make a thingamabob and that they bumb into each other once a year. That means that over a billion years these two molecules that interact just once a year will make 1,000 thangamabobs over a billion years.
It doesn't sound like much but that is a one in a million chance once a year. It gets better if you are using say 1/1000 and 1000 bumbs per day.
So you have dohickeys making thingamabobs and thingamabobs increase the chance of making woozles (catalysts) and suddenly you have got a huge number of woozles. More time and random (or semi random) processes.
You eventauly end of up witha set of chemical that help to make each other out of the precursor, and when they help to make each other then you have a 'self catalyzing set'. have this stuff sitting around in a pool, and maybe it catalyzes a lipid layer , blow some of this off the top of the pool and now you have a self catalyzing set, in a lipid layer, that sustains itself in the precense of the precursors and makes a lipid layer around itself.
A cell.
The trick is that there are huge numbers of precursors and huge amounts of time. You can set the parameters within reasonable numbers and end of with self catalysing sets over huge amounts of time.


It is never stupid to ask questions.

 

[ksbluesfan]

Thanks for the help. I will post my reply letter later today.

 

[Delvo]

The fundamental problem with those "questions" is that even if it were true that science can never answer them, that wouldn't mean religion does either. Religion's answers are simply made up with no evidence to support them.

Abut sexual reproduction, though: even cells that aren't thought of as sexually reproducing do trade DNA sometimes. True sexual reproduction is just an extension and modification of that.

 

[ksbluesfan]

Is this an adequate answer? Keep in mind that it has to be short enough to be printed in the letters section.

I'm writing this letter in response to the seven questions that appeared in the Kansas City Star's Letters page on Saturday, August 2.

The first five questions are difficult questions, and would require answers that would be too long to print in the KC Star. Of the first five questions, only question five is addressed by the theory of evolution.

An in-depth study of physics, including the Big Bang theory and the laws of thermodynamics, is required to adequately explain the first three question. The fourth question is addressed by the fledging field of abiogenesis, and there are several competing hypotheses that may one day become scientific theories.

Evolution does answer the fifth question. Cells that aren't thought of as sexually reproducing do trade DNA sometimes. True sexual reproduction is just an extension and modification of that. Some plants and bacteria reproduce both sexually and asexually. Due to natural selection, the ability to produce asexually was lost.

Evolution is not a faith-based theory. All scientific theories are evidence-based. Any student who attends the proper science courses can observe evolution at work.

There are no stupid questions. Scientists have asked the first five questions. The important matter is how these questions are answered. Are the answers based on observable, empirical and measurable evidence? Are the answers subject to the principles of reasoning? Are the answers supported by observation, experimentation and the testing of hypotheses?

 

[leon_heller]

There is also Occam's Razor: evolution provides the simplest explanation as to how the various species came into being.

Apart from problems with how an intelligent designer created all the species, a major problem with ID is who or what created the designer; we get into an infinite regress situation.

Leon

 

[Wowbagger]

FWIW, here are my quick answers:

1) What was it that went "bang"?

No one is 100% sure, but science continues to work on the problem, and we make progress every-so-often. We have developed calculations that show how a small fluctuation at the quantum level could have started the whole thing, which agrees with everything we know about physics.

Unfortunately, you will have to do some reading to understand the details. Some of the books by Brian Greene are my favorites. Though, I am working on a list that includes books with more updated information.

2) Where did it come from?
3) Where did the energy that caused the explosion come from?

Before the Big Bang, there was an Initial Condition. Scientists are still working out what this Initial Condition would have been like. However, it is important to note that it is NOT nothing. It is wrong to claim that the matter in the Big Bang "came from nothing".

It is also important to note that the Big Bang really has nothing to do with evolutionary biology. We can confirm the findings of evolution independent of whether or not the Big Bang actually occurred.

4) How did life come forth from that which had no life?

There are various theories, that are being tested. Most of them get into the nitty-gritty details of chemical oscillations, though they can often be generalized using self-organizing network theories: The relationships between any given set of items could yield complex networks between them, and if the opportunity for replication of any portion arises, it could certainly take over the place!

Historically, there have been two camps of abiogenesis theories: "RNA-World", which postulates that basic chemical replicators preceded most other organic life components; and "metabolism-first", which focuses on how chemical oscillations were maintained through very primitive metabolisms (thus working around the problem of thermodynamics breaking down the system), before anything else.

As the ideas of each one of these gets tested, they are actually converging into one theory, as we speak.

A good book on this subject is The Emergence of Life on Earth by Iris Fry.

That answer was kinda long, but unlike most of my colleagues, I feel it is legitimate to talk about abiogenesis when debating creationists. (It is not as many degrees of separation from the topic, as Big Bang theory, for example.) But, we should also understand that the findings of biological evolution seem to work independently of how life actually first came about.

5) How did the life forms make the change to sexual reproduction?

The best theory I heard has to do with a difference in the size of gametes.

First there was asexual reproduction, then a mechanism by which genes could be traded came about (bacteria have plasmids that can be traded). Once whole genomes could be recombined, it might require two of a species to reproduce another.

But, we would not have separation of genders, until one group started evolving slightly smaller gametes than the other. This small difference in size would lead to different survival strategies on each group: The smaller-gamete folks, who can spread their seed far, acting more parasitic than the larger-gamete folks who have to devote more resources to the eggs they carry. This could lead to a run-away effect leading to separate genders.

There is a good chapter about this, in The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins.

6) Is evolution a faith-based theory?

Evolution is a model that helps us understand life with ever greater precision. Each step of the way, its ideas are tested, revised, and retested, and each step yields new facts about life we never would have discovered, otherwise.

The end result, is that Evolution has passed so many tests, it is now relied upon in medical research and animal conservation sciences, (and has been for many decades, in fact).

For examples of this, see here: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/search/topicbrowse2.php?topic_id=47

7) Is a person stupid for asking these questions?

Of course not! No one is born with scientific knowledge already in their heads. And, a lot of it is non-intuitive. Never be afraid to ask questions! You might become "stupid" when you stop doing so.

 

[ksbluesfan]

The KC Star only allows 150 words in letters. A good answer isn't possible in that few words. I revised my letter to shorten it.

I'm writing this letter in response to David F. Robinson's "Questions about evolution" that appeared in the Kansas City Star's Letters page on Saturday, August 2.

The first five questions are difficult questions, and would require answers that would be too long to print on the KC Star Letters page. Only the question about the origin of sexual reproduction is addressed by the theory of evolution.

Evolution is not a faith-based theory. All scientific theories are evidence-based. Any student who attends the proper science courses can observe evolution at work.

There are no stupid questions. The important matter is how these questions are answered. Are the answers based on observable, empirical and measurable evidence? Are the answers subject to the principles of reasoning? Are the answers supported by observation, experimentation and the testing of hypotheses? If not, they do not belong in science classes.

 

[fishbob]

7) Is a person stupid for asking these questions?

Depends on whether that person is willing to listen to the answers.