August Spies

hey, i hope someone can answer this quickly for me. Im debating the existance of god/gods with someone and they used as their central argument that all matter has a half life which means all matter is not eternal which means God must have created it.

I responded by saying that matter as a whole does not decay but that particular energy systems decay relative to each other...

however, I haven't taken a single chemestry class since 10th grade in High School and am pretty unclear about the nature of half-lifes. Any help would be appreceated.

Nikolai

Well I happen to be in 10th grade chemistry now, so I'm not too sure about this either As far as I know half-lifes only apply to to radioactive elements.

Wyz_sub10

When something decays it doesn't vanish. Potassium 40, used in one form of radiometric dating, is the "parent" of Argon 40, for example.

They are wrong to assume something is not "eternal" because it decays. My body (such that it is) is not "eternal" in structure, but it will someday degrade into the ground surrounding it (unless I'm entombed in a wall somewhere).

Besides, how are they defining eternal? Decay plays by the rules - it follows the conservation of energy, so matter that decays isn't vanishing from existence.

Even if it did, how on earth does that speak to god as a creator?

Shadowy Man

Ask him what the half-life of an electron is.

Undercurrent

He may be referring to proton decay. That would eventually degrade all baryonic (normal) matter into leptons. It's a theorhetical possibility, but has never been observed. If it does occur, protons would have a half-life of at least several hundred times the current age of the universe.

Even if this mode of decay was demostracted, it would just argue against an eternal universe, not for the existance of gods. Although some apologists argue unsuccessfully that a non-eternal universe imples a god, which may be what he's going for.

I'll bet that AS's friend's "has a half life" is some sort of confused reference to the creationist 2nd law of thermodynamics (i.e. thinking "Everything decays" implies "Everything has a half life".)

Wiploc

Some points which may help:

1. His unspoken assumption is that particles aren't being replaced. This is treatable with parody: "You're saying that since people don't live more than 120 years, there must not have been any people 130 years ago?"

2. Even if you grant his unspoken assumption, his conclusion (god exists) does not flow from his premise. You deal with this the way you deal with any cosmological argument. See, for instance, the Bicycle Argument at http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=44372

crc

lpetrich

However, all that the proton-decay argument would prove is that nucleons (protons and neutrons) had had some origin.

And that origin is early in the Big Bang, the great explosion that has produced all of the accessible Universe. And as it expanded, it cooled, with the nucleons freezing out of it at a temperature of around 10^13 K (ten trillion degrees!).

echidna

I don’t see how even that follows. How does finality prove god anyway ?

1) Radioactivity
2) Therefore god created matter.
3) Therefore god exists.
4) Huh ?????

Aside from that, there are stable forms of matter as already pointed out. They seem to be confusing some form of an ontological argument for god (but maybe getting it backwards). To be fair science is weaker here.

Albion

Does this person think that radioactive nuclei decay into nothing? Decay means that things change, it doesn't mean they go away altogether.

Sue Sponte

Assuming that all matter is not eternal, it simply does not follow that God must have created it. It is a non sequitor.

I'd simply observe that you can re-phrase his argument in any terms with the same conclusory answer, without offering a lick of proof that God is the culprit.

"The sky is blue, which means God must have created it."

The conclusion has no logical connection to the premise.

"Peanut butter is fattening, which means pigs can fly."

Equally logical.