RE: Atheistic Nonsense

What you originally said was:

Now I feel that it would be Disingenuous for anyone to suggest that all of the information stored in the DNA &RNA in all the various forms of life could assemble itself purely by chance or accident. What makes this third point so emphatic is that ‘instinct’, knowledge amassed by the parent, can be passed on to the offspring through DNA. Many animals, & especially birds, gain knowledge from their parents without demonstration. A fine example is the blackpoll warbler. These birds when fledged can follow a seemingly illogical path to get from Alaska through New England to South America. It has been seen that they don’t need a companion that has previously made the trip.

The Blackpoll Warbler is not “a fine example” of this if the path it follows isn’t the “seemingly illogical” one. Since the path is still disputed, it’s not at all clear to me that the example shows what you’re suggesting.

As I read this, you’re suggesting that the fledgling’s path derives directly from its parent having earlier made the trip, and that “learned” knowledge being passed on genetically. Well, sorry, but that doesn’t happen. I doubt you could find a single reputable scientist who’d argue that it does. That’s just not how genetic inheritance works.

You’ll have to give examples, then. The link you gave is dead, and I say you’re simply wrong.

First, “indemonstratable theories” aren’t theories. They’re, at best, conjectures. Second, there is a quite clear picture of the formation of the “atomic universe”, as you call it, starting from the Big Bang. The theory that goes with the Big Bang is pretty well established back to about one picosecond (a trillionth of a second) after the “singularity”. The details of what happened during that picosecond are still debated, but the general outline of it isn’t.

The main reason for the remaining debate is that we can’t generate sufficiently high energies in laboratories, yet, to make observations. But we can use what we know of the 400 million billion trillion (4 × 10²⁹ps) since then to make some educated guesses.

Yes. And that’s what physicists today generally mean when they talk about a vacuum. Atoms, the weak and strong forces, and electromagnetic fields are the result of interactions between particles — a vacuum has no particles, and therefore, none of these. Gravitation is believed (though not yet proven) to be the result of interactions between Higgs bosons — again, more particles. Experiments planned with the new LHC at CERN are expected to go a long way towards proving that.

So, the vacuum we’re talking about when we talk about “vacuum fluctuations” is exactly the same as the “perfect vacuum” you’re thinking about, and it’s that vacuum that fluctuates, and it’s that vacuum that Stenger was talking about in his “plausible scenario”.

Incorrect. I’m sorry if this seems counterintuitive to you, but quantum theory says you’re simply wrong.

You may not understand the theory, but the theory’s backed up by experiment. Again, you may not understand how experiments in the “atomic universe” can allow us to draw conclusions about a vacuum, but that doesn’t make it wrong. You’ve already admitted your education in these areas is weak.

And what relevant point do you think that paper you linked makes?

No, I don’t.

We’re still working at building an understanding of these things, so it’s not surprising at all that we don’t have a good handle on what goes on several more steps up the causal chain. The question you’re asking is a mostly meaningless one, sort of like asking “how do we tell the male germs from the female germs?” during the formation of germ theory.

Let me turn the question around, though — do you see why it’s asinine to go from “the perfect vacuum needs something that causes it to fluctuate” to “Jesus Christ died for our sins”?

That’s the point — the “creator” theory would explain it, if it were true. The theory “explains” anything at all. Which is the same as saying it explains nothing at all.

It’s an open forum, feel free.

The person who posted the message to which you replied gets an email notifying them of the reply — in this case, you replied to wyldeling’s comment, so he got an email. I just happened to see the message in the “last ten comments” box. There really isn’t any way of changing that.