Trending away creationism, 3 planets
Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2013 8:08 pm
Trending away creationism, 3 planets
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Mankind's understanding of the natural world has exploded since the first half of the 19th century. Since then, more data has flooded in from both cosmic realms and the nanoscopic realms. As our data and theories of the world expand, the trend is moving conspicuously away from creationism. The gaps in our knowledge, where the creative acts of a supernatural god could be inserted, grow ever smaller and ever more sparse.
Join me on a six-part series as we travel along and discuss the evidence that is most disastrous for creationist accounts of nature's origins.
Part 3 covers planets and mankind's place in the cosmos.
Genesis chapter 1, verse 1.
Most probably not. With the highest confidence, we can say that the earth probably formed by natural processes. The earth is a planet which orbits a star. There are 200 billion other stars in the milky way galaxy. In andromeda, there are over a trillion of them. If you want to continue this line of thinking, then notice that there are more stars in the sky than there are total grains of sand on all beaches on earth.
In part 1, we stated that stars form naturally. In part 2 we explained where the substance of planets originate. It takes absolutely no leap-of-faith to conclude that the planet earth formed naturally as well. Around our own sun there are seven other planets, an asteroid belt, outer icy bodies, and an oort cloud very farther out than those. We have no problem stating that the frozen dead rocks of the asteroids are natural occurrences. We have no problems stating that Neptune's moons are the result of natural processes of gravity. The next rational step is to realize the earth and its moon are also the results of natural processes.
The distribution and relative make-up of the planets in the solar system are in harmonious agreement with the story that they formed through gravity bringing together elements fused in earlier stellar deaths. The number of "heavier" elements (silicon, iron, calcium) are rarer, precisely because they are more difficult to fuse, where "difficult" means higher energies and higher pressures less likely to occur. Lighter elements such as nitrogen and oxygen are more plentiful, precisely because they are easier to fuse. The sizes of the inner rocky planets in our solar system (venus, earth, mars) are miniscule compared to the enormous sizes of the gas giants farther out (jupiter, saturn, neptune). This is exactly in agreement with what we would expect from the relative abundances of these elements. Their locations , wherein heavy elements are nearby the star, lighter elements are father away, is what would be expected from gravity. Heavier elements would trend over time to smaller orbits. If the reader of this essay detects "design" in the configuration of our solar system, the author must state unambigously that he does not sympathize with that thinking. The solar system looks suspiciously, in all considerable ways, like a natural occurance.
Astronomy has confirmed the existence of over 800 planets outside the solar system. Depending on your level of scrutiny of evidence, there are many more planets detected around stars, as many as 18 thousand "unconfirmed" cases of extra-solar planets. Scientists have a rough estimate of the average number of planets per star in the milky way. This number is now around 2. This means we can roughly estimate the number of planets in the milky way at 400 billion. If the reader would assert a divine act of creation for our planet, does the reader also assert 400 billion other specific acts of creation? Or is there some nuance to be added to that assertion?
In a handful of cases, the entire star system is understood, with the relative orbits and speeds of all the planets around the star.
At the header of each of these articles, I mentioned the beginning of the 19th century as the start of the historical trend where evidence has grown steadily against creationism. Some people like to start earlier and posit a different trend. It is crucial that this other trend gain a voice in this article. Those people trace the trend back to Galileo. The trend is that humans have been removed from their traditional place in center of the universe. The initial break was when Galileo showed that the earth orbits the sun. After being removed from that position, mankind's place in the universe has slowly eroded until his existence seems rather insignificant. We can quote some heretofore estimates to uphold this line of thinking. Namely, the sun is a star, and the earth is just another planet, out of 400 billion planets zipping through the vacuum of space. Compared to the size of galaxies, our entire species is a speck. Compared to the cosmos, we are a speck in a speck.
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Mankind's understanding of the natural world has exploded since the first half of the 19th century. Since then, more data has flooded in from both cosmic realms and the nanoscopic realms. As our data and theories of the world expand, the trend is moving conspicuously away from creationism. The gaps in our knowledge, where the creative acts of a supernatural god could be inserted, grow ever smaller and ever more sparse.
Join me on a six-part series as we travel along and discuss the evidence that is most disastrous for creationist accounts of nature's origins.
Part 3 covers planets and mankind's place in the cosmos.
Genesis chapter 1, verse 1.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Most probably not. With the highest confidence, we can say that the earth probably formed by natural processes. The earth is a planet which orbits a star. There are 200 billion other stars in the milky way galaxy. In andromeda, there are over a trillion of them. If you want to continue this line of thinking, then notice that there are more stars in the sky than there are total grains of sand on all beaches on earth.
In part 1, we stated that stars form naturally. In part 2 we explained where the substance of planets originate. It takes absolutely no leap-of-faith to conclude that the planet earth formed naturally as well. Around our own sun there are seven other planets, an asteroid belt, outer icy bodies, and an oort cloud very farther out than those. We have no problem stating that the frozen dead rocks of the asteroids are natural occurrences. We have no problems stating that Neptune's moons are the result of natural processes of gravity. The next rational step is to realize the earth and its moon are also the results of natural processes.
The distribution and relative make-up of the planets in the solar system are in harmonious agreement with the story that they formed through gravity bringing together elements fused in earlier stellar deaths. The number of "heavier" elements (silicon, iron, calcium) are rarer, precisely because they are more difficult to fuse, where "difficult" means higher energies and higher pressures less likely to occur. Lighter elements such as nitrogen and oxygen are more plentiful, precisely because they are easier to fuse. The sizes of the inner rocky planets in our solar system (venus, earth, mars) are miniscule compared to the enormous sizes of the gas giants farther out (jupiter, saturn, neptune). This is exactly in agreement with what we would expect from the relative abundances of these elements. Their locations , wherein heavy elements are nearby the star, lighter elements are father away, is what would be expected from gravity. Heavier elements would trend over time to smaller orbits. If the reader of this essay detects "design" in the configuration of our solar system, the author must state unambigously that he does not sympathize with that thinking. The solar system looks suspiciously, in all considerable ways, like a natural occurance.
Astronomy has confirmed the existence of over 800 planets outside the solar system. Depending on your level of scrutiny of evidence, there are many more planets detected around stars, as many as 18 thousand "unconfirmed" cases of extra-solar planets. Scientists have a rough estimate of the average number of planets per star in the milky way. This number is now around 2. This means we can roughly estimate the number of planets in the milky way at 400 billion. If the reader would assert a divine act of creation for our planet, does the reader also assert 400 billion other specific acts of creation? Or is there some nuance to be added to that assertion?
In a handful of cases, the entire star system is understood, with the relative orbits and speeds of all the planets around the star.
At the header of each of these articles, I mentioned the beginning of the 19th century as the start of the historical trend where evidence has grown steadily against creationism. Some people like to start earlier and posit a different trend. It is crucial that this other trend gain a voice in this article. Those people trace the trend back to Galileo. The trend is that humans have been removed from their traditional place in center of the universe. The initial break was when Galileo showed that the earth orbits the sun. After being removed from that position, mankind's place in the universe has slowly eroded until his existence seems rather insignificant. We can quote some heretofore estimates to uphold this line of thinking. Namely, the sun is a star, and the earth is just another planet, out of 400 billion planets zipping through the vacuum of space. Compared to the size of galaxies, our entire species is a speck. Compared to the cosmos, we are a speck in a speck.