nogods4me

Indeed Peez, you never hear them say "Geology is Evil and resposible for Racism and Nazis and Communism". And yet for YECs geology is as dangerous to their worldview as evolution.

Undercurrent

This is just the creationist law for the conservation of angular velocity; "The angular velocity of an object remains the same for all time. If the object breaks up, the parts will have the same angular velocity as the whole did."

It doesn't have any relation to Law for the Conservation of Angular Momentum that occurs in real physics, and is conveniently forgotten when the creationist tries to assert that the earth can't be old because its rotation is slowing down.

Incedentally, Kent Hovind has a slide for this argument showing the planets popping fully-formed from the big bang. So the rotation of the big bang would be the principal cause of the rotation of the planets.

m.

DMB

I read this as being originally about plants rather than planets and can't resist posting this song by Flanders & Swann:

wade-w

It sounds probable. I don't think many of them really understand what science is. I saw a poll a couple of months ago that claimed that 70% of Americans don't know what the scientific method is.

I was once talking to a YEC. I pointed out that evolution has nothing at all to say about the origin of life, but only how life changes once it did get started. He got this very puzzled look on his face and then said "But then its only about natural selection."

I hesistated before answering, becasue thats such a gross over-simplification. I doubt he'd have understood if I'd tried to explain gene flow, founder effect, et al. I wonder what he'd have thought if I had mentioned punctuated equilibrium? So I let it go at that point.

More recently, I was trying to make the same point to a creationist who then said evolution takes many forms, and tried to use the phrase "stellar evolution" to support his position. I thought I was going to fall out of my chair from laughing so hard. What does genetic drift have to do a star's path along the main sequence? What selection pressures are stars subject to?

[ September 04, 2002: Message edited by: wadew ]</p>

tgamble

The stars still change from one type to another. Maybe that's all he meant.

beausoleil

I love Flanders and Swann, and that song is one of their best. Comedy from one you could assume the audience was educated.

"They'll never receive any blezzzing from me." as sung on stage.

"Stellar Evolution" is the usual term for how a star changes, but of course there isn't natural selection. It's a good example of what evolution really means: change. In fact, stars are born and die, and early generations affect what happens to later generations.

For once I do have a little sympathy with the creationists. If one subscribes to a model of human origin without any supernatural involvement (as I do), I think saying the origin of life isn't part of evolution is a little pedantic when debating with someone who sees a role for a creator. It's not part of evolution, but I also assert it plausibly happened through the operation of natural law so it is part of my argument about the absence of need for a creator. In the sense of the debate, they use evolution as a catch-all term for a non-supernatural account for the origin of life.

Feather

What the...? In a closed system (and I suppose we can reasonably assume that the whole universe is a closed-system), the only thing that is conserved is total angular momentum (at least by observations thus far this is true).

So if there is net angular momentum at the beginning, then all that is required is that today there be the same net angular momentum. So one huge massive planet could be rotating in the "correct" direction (the same direction that the big-bang matterball was) while all the rest were rotating in the opposite direction. As long as the total momentum were conserved.

So what the hell was the guy's point?

And what does it have to do with Evolution? I don't get it. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

wade-w

Yes, stars change from one type to another as they age. Which is why astronomers and astrophysicists use the term Stellar Evolution. He was just trying to confuse the issue after I pointed out to him that biological evolution makes no claims about the origin of life.

crownboy

But notice, the stars only change according to there "own kind" (the star kind). They don't evolve into "other kinds".
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KeithHarwood

Yes they do. Some evolve into the planetary nebula kind and some into the supernova remnant kind and some into the black hole kind. But this is only after the Fall, before that stars were perfect (like everything else) and therefore didn't change.