: Or were you not aware that water is formed from any combustion reaction? You know, things like volcanoes and forest fires and automobile exhaust?Well aware. I have a degree in Physics. I can quote hydrocarbon combustion equations for hours if you like.
If you examine things like forest fires, however, you'll see also that the things that combust to form water originally took in gases themselves; thus there is no net gain; merely a re-ordering of molecules.
Let's take forests and fossil fuels. These are either vegetable or animal in origin; they acquire hydrogen and oxygen from respiration and store it in organic compounds; which become compressed by long geological action after death. The substances are mined and burned, at which point the constituent atoms are released back into the atmosphere.
: Also, I have to admit. I admire how when an evolutionist argument is disproved -- meteroic dust, moon dust, etc. -- it's easy to discredit the one proposing the original theory or the one using the argument.
Would you care to say exactly where the scientific theory is disproved?
Or are you just claiming a (premature) victory to try and avoid examining your own arguments in detail?
Lay out your initial assumptions and logical principles and I will give you evidence that shows your initial assumptions to be incorrect.
: In fact, this is just one example of how time and time again theories are proposed and disproved to be replaced by other unsubstantial theories -- and it happens on both sides of the argument, creationist and evolutionist alike.
Except that science refines theories; Newton's theory of gravity has been superseded by Einstein's theory of general relativity; Newton's theory is known to be inaccurate but will serve to a certain level of accuracy; it is an imperfect model.
(It is still a model that got Apollo 11 to the moon within 8 seconds of the planned time.)
When a theory is shown to be untenable, such as Michelson-Morley's interferometer experiment's disproving of the "luminiferous aether", then it is abandoned. This can result in a major rewriting of science.
However, there are certain tenets of belief that are unshakeable; dogma. When was the last time that a Christian said that maybe God didn't exist? There are some things a believer will *never* abandon; and thus your freedom of thought is limited. Any and every part of a scientific theory is open to criticism and experiment. Heresy is a vital part of science.
: The fact is, the more we learn about our world and the molecules making it up, the more we ought to realize that such molecules and their interaction -- whether in living organisms or in non-living chemical reactions -- require a Designer.
Hello? Anyone home?
My very first point in this was that saying something "requires a Designer" is causal thinking; a product of causal logic. If you're going to say "the Universe exists, therefore there was a Creator", you open yourself up to the question "so, who created the Creator?"
If you maintain that a thing requires a Creator, then you require something to cause the Creator itself. The only way to escape this is to say that nothing created the Creator; but this contradicts your use of causality ("A Universe implies a designer"). Either causal logic breaks down between the Universe and the Creator, or causal logic breaks down between the Creator and the Creator's cause.
You are trying to say that B leads on to C whilst also maintaining that A doesn't lead on to B; which is inherently self-contradictory; if you believe that B causes C, you must either also believe that A causes B or believe that B doesn't cause C; either God was caused by something else, or the Universe does not necessarily require a Creator.
: By the way, what holds an atom together? Why doesn't the nucleus fly apart by the repulsion of positive charges or the electrons collapse inward by the attraction of opposite charges? I know physics has gone much further into elementary particles, but how could evolution result in even a single atom?
There are four basic forces in physics; the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, gravity and electromagnetism. The strong nuclear force holds things together with 100 times the force that the electromagnetic force pushes them apart. Thus the nucleus doesn't go boom because there is a stronger force holding it together than there is pushing it apart.
However, the strong nuclear force is a very short-range force when compared to the electromagnetic force; so if you have a large enough nucleus, the combined effects of the electromagnetic repulsion outweigh the strong nuclear force; cause the nucleus of the atom to split apart; this is more famously known as nuclear fission; the atoms that undergo fission readily are the very large atoms like uranium and plutonium.
As to why electrons don't collapse in on the nucleus, this is because you were taught an incorrect (but simple) version of the atomic theory at school. Electrons are not small green balls whizzing around a nucleus; it would be more accurate to say that they are like a cloud around the nucleus; and thus an electron receives equal attraction from all parts of the nucleus, not just the closest part; but a certain number of electrons exist in the same quantum level, which means that they actually repel each other; the more electrons you have in an orbital, the larger the orbital is; the modern day structure of the periodic table depends on the filling of electron orbitals in the atom.
It comes down to a balance of forces; in the end, the only reason that I can give for the balance being what it is is that we wouldn't be here to observe it in this form if it didn't appear to be the case. We appear to exist; that is all I can say; and the Universe appears to follow the physical laws I describe; this is the simplest theory which adequately explains all of the observed phenomena to date.
Gideon.
None.
