Well, my last full day in Montana is a beautiful one. It's still only 4:10pm here, so I've got a few hours left. We're in for the day though. This morning we went to a place 10 miles out of Great Falls called Buffalo Jump. The Native Americans used to herd the buffalo off of the cliff to make it easier to kill them. Brutal, but effective. There was a 3.5-mile round-trip hike to do, so my siblings and I did it. The views from on top of the jump were spectacular. We could see 5 mountain ranges. My camera won't do it justice, though I took pictures anyway. I saw 3 deer, hundreds of prairie dogs, a rabbit and a bunny, and even a rattlesnake. Once again, let me say, it was beautiful! I also duked it out with some mosquitoes :( On the way back, I got to see some F-15s do some quick maneuvers and land! They were on the other side of the car, though, so I didn't get a spectacular view. Still, I got to see some military jets in the sky!
I'll get back to the original intent of this blog hopefully Thursday. I've been reading Psalms, so I'll post my thoughts :)
For the Kingdom,
Stuart
So I’ve looked into this blood coagulation thing and feel rather unimpressed. I admit that I am quite a bit out of my league here, and knowing scientific communities like I do, I doubt that either of us ever won’t be; in order to really tell if someone knows what they’re doing or if they’re just making stuff up requires a vast wealth of existing knowledge that only a select few that really care about the topic (i.e., not us) will ever have.
ReplyDeleteHowever, my general impression is that Behe (the guy who appears to have started the ‘irreducibly complex’ argument) seems to be assuming an awful lot. For example, he seems to be assuming that a body part which is necessary now must always have been necessary, which I don’t find particularly persuasive. That strikes me as being like claiming that the middle blocks of a block tower have always been necessary, without considering that in the past, the tower was much shorter. Also, this guy seems to be comfortable with all the major points of evolutionary theory, except the unguided part, so I really don’t see this as a particularly strong gotcha against evolution. His main issues seem to stem from probability, but the fact that something would be rare does not mean that it could not have happened naturally. Beyond that cursory analysis, I’m afraid I won’t be much help.
To answer your question about atomic space, the short answer is forces. Without forces, we could conceivably pass through each other. Of course, without forces, we’d just be point clouds of atoms and would quickly disintegrate. As an experiment, get two strong magnets and try to get the like poles to touch; even though there is an empty space, you will feel the magnets ‘hit’ something and you will not be able to get them to touch.
Another thing that gets me is clouds. They're so high up and the air temperature is below freezing. If water's supposed to freeze, why don't we have to avoid iceberg-like clouds.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing is gravity. When something spins at an accelerated rate, it doesn't pull things closer, it expels them. Like a merry-go-round, you have to hold on for dear life or go flying off. The Gravitron at carnivals, you're pressed against the wall, not pulled to the center. The bottoms of graduated cylinders face away from the center in a centrifuge. This spinning Earth should throw us all off.
For the Kingdom,
Stuart
Okay, just saw this after looking for where I left off before...
ReplyDeleteThe cloud question is a little weird. If you're asking why we don't have giant blocks of ice in the sky, the answer is gravity pulls it to the ground first. The only time we get large chunks of ice falling from the sky (i.e., hail) it's because a funnel cloud toss the smaller particles back up into the colder air masses for several more rounds.
There are two key difference between the merry-go-round/person system and the Earth/person system. The first is a vast difference in mass. You aren't that much lighter than the marry-go-round, such that the gravitational force between the two objects is negligible. This is most certainly NOT the case between you and the Earth. Second, on a merry-go-round you have a very tight orbit, such that there is a significant deviation between your instantaneous momentum (where your body's going) and the path of the curve (where your body is supposed to be going). This is why you fall off. However, on a larger curve like that formed by the surface of the Earth, this deviation is slight, and so this deviation represents only a minor course correction. While there is an outward (upward) force, it is more than compensated for by the inward (downward) force mentioned above. Hence why we don't go off flying into space.