Klein Meltsdown Over McCain

Talk about a meltdown. I'm thinking Joe Klein over-reacts so incredibly to a statement by McCain simply because McCain dared to challenge the messiah-in-chief.

John McCain said this today in Rochester, New Hampshire:

This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.

This is the ninth presidential campaign I've covered. I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.

Not only is McCain speaking the simple truth on Obama, he's echoing the thoughts of many good Americans ... like me, for example! ; )

Ever notice how liberals talk tough and pretend to be looking for a fight, then turn into whiny little biatches the minute you hit back? That - and the fact that they so readily eat their own might be their two most telling traits. Obama would disown Klein as a third rate hack if he ever wrote an item worthy of note, for something other than its stupidity, that disagreed with Obama.

Comments

[Worst President Ever]

"And the earth is about 5800 years old"

That's nuts.

[templar knight]

I hate to break it to a "genius" like Moe, but the price of gasoline in Iran has nothing to do with why that state is more like the Third World and less like the First World. It has to do with market capitalism, but shit, why would I want to argue with Moe, who has his mind made up.

Why, indeed, should we wish to develope our resources? Hell, let's just throw them away, and see what happens in the future. Trillions of dollars in oil and gas, coal and uranium resources should be pissed into the wind. We're too rich anyway. Moe says "let's make them eat our cake", and he don't mean yellowcake. Canada just bought all of Iraq's yellowcake, something like 535 tons, wasn't it? Hooray...uh...boo, Canada. Now where did that yellowcake come from, since Iraq didn't have a weapons program? The civilized world wants to know.

[seekeronos]

"---

"And the earth is about 5800 years old"

That's nuts.
---"

I'll tell you what's nuts.

What is nuts is believing in an unprovable theory based upon easily falsifiable "evidence" that we are descended from monkeys and in turn descended from an unlikely smattering of hydrocarbons and amino acids that somehow miraculously were in the exactly correct configuration to make the first bacterium from which we are all a part of.

Somehow, all this new and unique genetic information either crept in over billions of years that distinguishes us from those primeval bacteria, OR that first bacterium contained ALL of the genetic information to make every other form of life that has ever arisen FROM THAT BACTERIUM, that evolved into every bit of algae, every redwood tree, every fish, dolphin, sea squirt, trilobite, and monkey and human from that monkey... so as to make the original bacterium contain the complete genome of billions of life forms and otherwise unaffected through billions of years of environmental radiation and other causes of mutations of which bad mutations far outweigh beneficial mutations, and which never add novel information but destroy it or alter it....

... you mean to tell me that you believe in something that incredibly ridiculous but reject an Almighty and All Wise Creator who fashioned the universe and every living, mortal thing in it in six days?

I'll tell you that evolution takes much more faith to go by than it does in an Almighty, All-Wise Creator, whose name is Jesus.

Creation and evolution are both ideas that try to explain the source of the universe around us; both are unprovable by direct observation.

One idea (evolution) is deduced by man's fallible and often badly-guided (demonic) wisdom.

The other is direct, preserved revelation from the God who was both present at Creation and was the very Author of that Creation.

There is no question who should be believed: mortal, sinful men, or the Living, True God who does not lie nor ever changes.

[Worst President Ever]

Do you believe the Earth is 5800 years old?

[SacTownMan]

President Carter says:

"Do you believe the Earth is 5800 years old?"

No, but I do believe you are a troll!

[cindi]

Comments
President Carter says:

"Do you believe the Earth is 5800 years old?"

No, but I do believe you are a troll!

Posted by:SacTownMan | Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 01:09 AM

heh, best post of the day!

[Worst President Ever]

Wrong again, Sactownman. Seek posted it, not me. I just want to know if he really believes it:

Seek wrote: Actually, I'd tell you that evolution is unreliable as a theory, and that it is an alternative to the truth of God's creation. And the earth is about 5800 years old, if exactly traced through Adam to the present time following the Bible's allocation of patriarchal lifespans and lining them up with written history.

[Fred Beloit]

"And the earth is about 5800 years old, if exactly traced through Adam to the present time following the Bible's allocation of patriarchal lifespans and lining them up with written history."

Why what an impressive personage is Worst. A biblical scholar and an Historian. Wow. Or are you just repeating something you read at Kos? If so, Worst may be merely a person.

[Fred Beloit]

Oh, oh. A retraction of my comment below is submitted forthwith.

[Fred Beloit]

But I'm not the only monkey. At least I'm not an office-holder like these two nitwits:

"Harry Reid, the dimbulb from Searchlight and Botox Nancy Pelosi should both be ashamed of themselves for neglecting their duty to this nation and monkeying around with laws that affect so few, are virtually meaningless and are in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution they supposedly swore to uphold. Nice to see they’ve got their priorities straight!"

"By a vote of 302-96 last week, the House of Representatives passed the Captive Primate Safety Act, a bold step on the road to outlawing pet monkeys. The House bill boasts 26 co-sponsors, including three from Illinois, Republican Mark Kirk and Democrats Jan Schakowsky and Luis Gutierrez. The Senate is expected to take up the companion bill in the next few weeks."

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/congress_monkeys_around_with_meaningless_legislation/

[IslamoLlama]

"-- The THC Abuser, Sock Puppet, Lame-O, their new recruit Carpo and who could forget President Carter are as agitated as ever. --"

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/i_got_what_america_needs_right

We've never forgotten Jimmy Carter.

"-- I hate to break it to a "genius" like Moe, but the price of gasoline in Iran has nothing to do with why that state is more like the Third World and less like the First World. It has to do with market capitalism, but shit, why would I want to argue with Moe, who has his mind made up. --"

LOLS! Yes, market capitalism! Iran is actually quite affluent and turns a substantial profit off its oil exports (through - you guessed it - market capitalism). But simply plowing up natural resources and turning them over at a profit does not a first world country make. That said, I'm eager to hear you explain how entrepreneurship in Iran is significantly different from the US or Germany or India. What industry regulations make "market capitalism" so difficult in Iran? Could it be... the massive numbers of US and international sanctions being leveled against it over their nuclear energy program? Or is it because of their socialist policies - the wealth redistribution, tax rate system, land ownership rules, and business regulations I'm sure you'll be happy to list and detail? ($5 says TK doesn't know shit about the Iranian economy - any takers?)

"-- In NY, I expect to pay about $4.25/gal for my gas. About 62.5 cents of this is state and federal taxes: I'll drop the half-penny and say then that before any taxes, I am ponying up $3.63... so pretax gas to pretax gas, the our cousins in the UK are getting their gas cheaper as well. --"

Your argument was that higher priced gas would hurt economic growth and reduce the US to a third world country. While all the tax analysis is pretty, it still doesn't address your root claim that we need to do a bunch of off-shore drilling to save ourselves from economic collapse. The UK shows how an economy can function quite well even in the face of high petrol prices. Thus, this insistence that more drilling is somehow vital to American stability seems misplaced.

The insistence that wind and solar energy are simply impractical as a replacement is also rather misguided. This issue is addressed somewhat exhaustively right here.
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4316

The short of it? Wind energy alone has huge untapped potential and comes at very reasonable prices when compared to fuel-based counterparts.

"-- I'll tell you that evolution takes much more faith to go by than it does in an Almighty, All-Wise Creator, whose name is Jesus.

Creation and evolution are both ideas that try to explain the source of the universe around us; both are unprovable by direct observation.

One idea (evolution) is deduced by man's fallible and often badly-guided (demonic) wisdom.

The other is direct, preserved revelation from the God who was both present at Creation and was the very Author of that Creation.

There is no question who should be believed: mortal, sinful men, or the Living, True God who does not lie nor ever changes. --"

And here you really let your ignorance hang out. Evolution has been observed and tested exhaustively.
http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/a-natural-selection/
Knowledge of basic evolutionary theory stand as the backbone of a number of fields of biological study, most notably genetics. Random mutations happen. Genes are expressed and repressed in a manner that cause variation within a species. Groups of isolated species who undergo mutation and mating eventually reach the point at which they can no longer breed with each other and become distinct species. The living world is not static and all current living organisms were not pre-defined. We have seen and documented physical proof of this over centuries of biological study. There is no "faith" required to believe that your child will be born with hair and skin colors that match their parents and grandparents. You don't need to "believe" anything in order to breed dogs or cattle.

On the flip side, creationism stems from a single "infallible" book that - itself - contains numerous contradictions and inconsistencies. Even the number 5800 only gets reached when you pre-suppose certain ancient individuals living to be two or three hundred years of age. The legendary Methuselah, supposed grandson of Adam and grandfather of Noah, was said to have lived to 969 years of age. No one has ever managed to duplicate this feat and no evidence exists to back such an incredible claim. But Methuselah's age is a lynch pin in the Creationist model of the world, and it is handled entirely on faith. No "vapor canopy" theory or "post-Eden curse" has ever been confirmed. And even the Genesis-dictated number of "120 years" has been exceeded by one Jeanne Calment of Arles, France who was well-documented to live a solid 2 years in excess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment

Your scientific analysis just isn't worth the HTML its printed in.

[seekeronos]

It never ceases to amaze me how much time IslamoMonkey (I'll call him that since he seems to be content with insulting himself by believing he is descended from monkeys) has to waste here at RWV.

Alrighty then.

First up:

"--- Your argument was that higher priced gas would hurt economic growth and reduce the US to a third world country. While all the tax analysis is pretty, it still doesn't address your root claim that we need to do a bunch of off-shore drilling to save ourselves from economic collapse. ---"

That wasn't my argument. In fact, I argued that if we had taxed gas from the outset, when it was around $10-$15/bbl. and around $1.20-ish at the pumps as it was in 1998 when "all was right with the world" and progressively (as in incrementally progressive, not political-lefty-progressive) increased that tax (leaving diesel and jet fuel to trail a bit given its importance in air transport, shipping, and agriculture), we would have created an artificial demand destruction that would have tempered our lust for CO2-belching SUVs and long-distance commutes, and possibly even dampened the housing bubble in the exurbs.

As it happened, the same tax played out in a different form: dollar weakness and inflation.

However, we will need to take advantage of our own resources in our back yard, if we want to be less dependent upon Arab oil, as well as help transition to greener energy development AND advanced nuclear technology. Why did we let the Froggies and the Russkies get ahead of us in the nuke powerplant race? Because of mass-hyped fears surrounding Chernobyl and Three Mile Island? The technology and fail-safes have come quite a long way since then.

Additionally, we need to build up our refining capacity, as well as implement coal liquefaction and gasification technology (Fischer-Tropsch). Higher fuel taxes will NOT turn us into a third world country, but they must be administered in such a fashion so as not to cripple the lower income commuters who don't get much of a say as to what sort of car they drive. Not everyone is NBA player or a Hollywood star who can spring for a $120,000 Tesla car or one of those Scion eBox conversions for over $65,000, much less a $35,000 Prius.

Furthermore, diesel and JP-8 are critical to our national transportation infrastructure and commerce (not to mention that diesel and biodeisel is much more energy efficient and cleaner than gasoline or ethanol, containing more BTUs per unit). This should be kept from higher taxes.

"--- The UK shows how an economy can function quite well even in the face of high petrol prices. Thus, this insistence that more drilling is somehow vital to American stability seems misplaced. ---"

Au contraire!

What does the UK do that the USA does not? If you said "The UK drills and sources a significant percentage (not all, not even most, but a significant amount) of its oil from its North Atlantic backyard", you are correct!

And as I said previously, the transportation needs of the UK are nowhere near approaching that of the USA. Most of the UK's residence is rather old and built as a walkable city, back from the times when walking was the most likely way to get about. Smaller houses, smaller cars and lorries, small neighbourhoods, many small gardens, it would be really quite lovely if it weren't for the gloomy weather. I know, since I lived there.

Norway goes to the extreme, charging an extreme $10/gal tax (approximate) for a sticker-shocking $11/gal at the pumps, when they are a *net exporter* of oil. I think that is a little too much, but I reckon someone has to pay for all that nice socialism they have over there...

So what I am saying is, there has to be an acceptable balance. The Norwegian idea would wreck us, since our living situation is the result of 60 years of very horrible (sub)urban planning predicated on the illusion of an eternity of cheap oil. Our current idea of buying Arab oil but not really tapping our own is wrecking us, as it makes our trading partners exceptionally rich (for a time, until they find that they cannot squeeze any more oil out of the ground profitably) AND potentially threatens our national security when certain members of those nations decide to use our own money against us by ploughing jet liners into buildings.

Something between our current idea and the UK's idea may work better: drill often, drill hard, pump, refine, and consume, whilst using the bulk of any tax derived from it to crash-course us to BEV/PHEV vehicles driven by a hybrid nuclear/solar/green grid.

"--- The insistence that wind and solar energy are simply impractical as a replacement is also rather misguided. This issue is addressed somewhat exhaustively right here.
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4316

The short of it? Wind energy alone has huge untapped potential and comes at very reasonable prices when compared to fuel-based counterparts. ---"

As a total replacement solution, wind is completely unreliable. As an ancillary source of energy, it could be lovely. As in a smaller scale thing meant to power a farm or small community in addition to something else.

Now if T. Boone Pickens wants to dump his cash into windmills, he is more than welcome. I might even move some speculative cash that way, if it looks promising. But the trouble is, wind does what it wants: you can hope that it will follow the pattern of being a tornado magnet in some months, and a light breeze on others, but wind turbines are generally ineffective outside a certain narrow range of windspeed, taking into account defects and equipment failure from wind overspeed conditions.

I'd much rather bank on solar energy however, something much more plentiful in the Southwest (if we can keep it out of the hands of any secession-plotting Aztlanos). Solar turbines towers and micro-mirror solar concentrator towers that can boil water for steam generators in Arizona, that's something to get heated up about: a 1km² solar concentrator supposedly can power 800MW (compared to a small nuke plant turning out 2000MW), and 100km² worth could conceivably power most of the needs of the US.

And VALCENT show some promise (if they can ever get enough VC to bring them out of the pink sheets) with their CO2 sequestration project which grows algae in vertical growth vats to literally grow "oil".

http://www.scribemedia.org/2007/11/15/glen-kertz-valcent-vertigro-algae-biofuel/

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

AND now for the second leg of our journey...

"--- And here you really let your ignorance hang out. Evolution has been observed and tested exhaustively.
(link removed) ---"

REALLY? You observed, or know someone who has observed, one species evolving into another? That is truly remarkable!

Unless of course, you decide not to make a distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution: the former is on the order of a genus of canids giving rise to dogs, dingoes, foxes, wolves, and assorted other canids; the latter is the more odious matter of men coming from monkeys and lemurs, and chickens coming from velociraptors and salamanders, and on back to that single one lucky protist slime cell that so happily had her amino acids all lined up the right way when Darwin's Holy Thunderbolt of Illogic™ smote it 3 billion years ago.

I'll play ball with you on micro-evolution on the grounds that that is sound science: dogs, wolves, foxes, etc. all share a common gene pool with a certain kind (baramin) of beast which God created in Eden with a perfect set of "canid" DNA. Same with felids, simian-kind and primate-kind (except human-kind), cetaceans, hundred of orders of insects (all kinds of swarming creatures and crawling creatures), birds in all their kinds.

But to believe in macro-evolution requires a certain daft suspension of logic:

Birds and hippos have no more commonality than a brick and a baseball; nor are they sired by sea squirts or jellyfish or phytobacteria. God made the parents - genetic templates for each kind of bird and each kind of odd-toe ungulate (rhino-kind, hippo-kind, brontothere-kind or unicorn-kind if you prefer, and horse-kind)... each kind containing the full DNA needed to express the variety which developed later (such as horse-kind having the necessary DNA to produce horses, zebras, asses, onagers, kiangs, etc.)

Incidentally, this distinction of kinds and their incompatibility to each other reinforced by the Levitical (Kosher) dietary laws which came much later; certain classes of animals were "clean" and "unclean". Clean animals (generally) included certain birds (not birds of prey) and even-toed ungulate ruminant mammals, joint-legged hopping insects (particularly locusts) and scaly fishes. Everything else was off-limits.

And one in his lifetime can observe micro-evolution as much as a dog breeder can breed several generations of wolfish canids and derive specific characteristic until it could be classified as a breed (though it might take a rather long time to do this, as has been done with over 100 breeds of dogs, all with a wolf-like common ancestor.

However, unlike macro-evolution, there is no going back: no matter how hard you try, you will NEVER get a wolf from two poodles, or even a bunch of poodles mixing with Weimaraners. The reason for this is simple: the genetic information for all of the wolf-like characteristics has been bred out. Artificial selection, if you will.

Natural selection accomplishes a similar feat, especially following the global flood of Noah, where several kinds (note the word "kind" as used here) were taken off the Ark and set to reproducing. In short order there were massive herds of beasts, swarms of bugs, flocks of all kinds of birds... and these all migrated as they saw fit.

Some of these became isolated: certain giant felids became very diversified according to the availability of their DNA to re-sort as they could. Those felids splintered off into lions (Africa mostly), tigers (Asia mostly), leopards and pumas (the Americas mostly) eventually LOSING so much DNA that re-intermixing became unlikely (consider the Liger or Tigon)

Specifically concerning DNA, I should clarify that these animals didn't "lose DNA" as in losing cellular material or entire chromosomes or mitochondrial information; rather, it is a factor of the accumulation of thousands of generations of mutations within each kind and within each population re-sorted the DNA about in such a fashion so as to never fully recover what their parents had. (This is also part of the reason behind our vastly decremented lifespans from nearly a millennium to scarcely a century).

"--- On the flip side, creationism stems from a single "infallible" book that - itself - contains numerous contradictions and inconsistencies. Even the number 5800 only gets reached when you pre-suppose certain ancient individuals living to be two or three hundred years of age. ---"

Well, that can be turned around rather easily: you have an "infallible" theory, we have an infallible book - a revelation from the Lord Creator Himself.

Your "infallible theory" contains numerous contradictions and inconsistencies, some by a far greater margin of error (such as that famous ancestress of our called "Lucy" who has been "conclusively dated" between 2.5MYA and 4.3MYA depending upon who you ask. On the other hand, the convergence of Biblical scholarship agrees that God made the earth and the heavens in six days, and that this occurred somewhere between 5800-6300 years ago. Part of that 500 years may be accounted for in fixing the arrival of the Hebrews in Egypt, and the other part adjusting for the lunisolar calendar used by the Hebrews to our current solar calendar.

But when it comers down to it, it is much more easy to trust in God and His revealed words, than man's faulty and generally foolish thinking, except for when man's thinking is filtered by the purity of God's word.

"--- The legendary Methuselah, supposed grandson of Adam and grandfather of Noah, was said to have lived to 969 years of age. ---"

Methuselah was actually the seventh generation from Adam, and Noah, being Methuselah's grandson, is the tenth generation. You did get his age right; he was the longest living man recorded in the Bible. His name means "After (his) Death, Judgement".

"--- No one has ever managed to duplicate this feat and no evidence exists to back such an incredible claim. But Methuselah's age is a lynch pin in the Creationist model of the world, and it is handled entirely on faith. ---"

Indeed. the conditions that prevailed on the Earth prior to Flood cannot be measured or assessed to determine its effects on human longevity. However, we can conclude that it is possible that there was a much higher concentration of O2 and CO2 in the atmosphere relative to NO2, and that this contributed to a "hyperbaric" environment which encouraged growth, especially of reptiles, and fishes (given enough physical room) which never cease growing throughout their lives. And if a 150y.o. Galapagos tortoise can grow as big as it does in 150 years, imagine how big a lizard could get if it lived to be 500 years or 1000 years: you just might have a dragon (tannyn) or a behemoth on your hands.

Yet you are correct - little if any evidence remains from that period aside from the revealed fossil records: millions of dead things buried by water and then hardened into rock layers... all over the earth.

"--- No "vapor canopy" theory or "post-Eden curse" has ever been confirmed. And even the Genesis-dictated number of "120 years" has been exceeded by one Jeanne Calment of Arles, France who was well-documented to live a solid 2 years in excess. ---"

The post-Eden curse is very confirmable, even now. You will, barring your conversion to Christ and the occurence of the Rapture first, will grow old and die. You will gain some weight, your middle and hind end will spread, your joints will ache, your stomach will sour more easily, your hair will go gray; your womb, if you have one, will shrivel up, and your skin will wrinkle and get liver spots as you start to resemble something more like the distinguished Senator from Arizona, rather than the supple young flaxen-haired Llama-Monkey critter you are today. And eventually, you will die, and stand judged before a Holy and Righteous Creator, to give an account of yourself and why you hardened your heart against Him in disbelief.

Look outside: the curse is very alive. Perversion of the earth, pollution of our society, and corruption in the very ground we harvest our food from... there is "death is in the cooking pot", as one of the sons of the prophets once said. Females know the pains of childbirth - that is part of the curse. Males are cursed to till the ground in sweat and perhaps tears as well, whilst their wives vigorously contend against their authority.

And in all likelihood, you will live to an average of around 70 years, or 80 if you were particularly strong, the Biblical three-score and ten. (Psalm 90:10) This really is the bar for most people; although there are in recent years a greater number of 90-something and 100-something year old people, they are still statistically rare.

And God bless Mdme. Calment, whom the Lord called to rest at 122. By His grace, I hope she confessed the name of Jesus her Saviour. As for the rest of us, the 70, 80, or even the 120 is not a hard limit, as God is free to prolong the life of anyone He pleases, especially if it is to extend His mercy unto salvation: for He is the Master and Author of our lives.

Finally, as for vapour canopy, I can't say that I subscribe to that as is commonly discussed. I believe that the "waters gathered above the firmament" was more likely a reference to cometary bodies which may have been far more abundant in the first 1500 years of earth's existence, (there is some non-Biblical evidence of the presence of inner-solar system cometary bodies in the early history of the solar system) and were thrown down to the Earth by God in a fashion which added a lot of water and enough force to break open the "Fountains of the Deep" of any subterranean water that was available.

[Worst President Ever]

Truthfully, I find a guy that writes "but to believe in macro-evolution requires a certain daft suspension of logic" while arguing that the Earth is ~6000 years old hilarious. It's your disbelief in evolution that requires the suspension of logic. You have to make some major blackflips to fit the fossil record into your 6000 year Earth, explain how man roamed the earth with dinosaurs, discount carbon dating, and explain away much of modern science from biology to astrophysics.

[seekeronos]

"--- Truthfully, I find a guy that writes "but to believe in macro-evolution requires a certain daft suspension of logic" while arguing that the Earth is ~6000 years old hilarious. ---"

And so it would seem to someone convinced that the earth is billions of years old, based upon shoddy evidence (carbon dating of the likes of which dated a still-living shellfish to be over 52,000 years old!)

"--- It's your disbelief in evolution that requires the suspension of logic. You have to make some major blackflips to fit the fossil record into your 6000 year Earth,... ---"

No backflips required, just simple faith, and observation of the evidence through God's Word. Millions of dead things, buried by water, then hardened into rock layers layers... all over the earth. Everything is down there from unicorns (brontotheres or related kinds) to brontosauruses to millions of unrepentant sinners who rejected God's word through Noah. Most likely along with plenty of remains of giants (Nephilim) and other perverse, demoniacally hybridized experiments, corrupted flesh which God in His All-knowing Wisdom destroyed with the Flood.

"--- ... explain how man roamed the earth with dinosaurs, discount carbon dating, and explain away much of modern science from biology to astrophysics. ---"

Well, touching on humans who saw dinosaurs in their lifetime, this web site has some interesting things to say about that:

http://www.genesispark.org/genpark/ancient/ancient.htm

[IslamoLlama]

"-- It never ceases to amaze me how much time IslamoMonkey (I'll call him that since he seems to be content with insulting himself by believing he is descended from monkeys) has to waste here at RWV. --"

Pot. Kettle. Black. Got it.

"-- However, we will need to take advantage of our own resources in our back yard, if we want to be less dependent upon Arab oil, as well as help transition to greener energy development AND advanced nuclear technology. Why did we let the Froggies and the Russkies get ahead of us in the nuke powerplant race? Because of mass-hyped fears surrounding Chernobyl and Three Mile Island? The technology and fail-safes have come quite a long way since then. --"

These fears are quite legitimate. Given our propensity for oil spills, combined with the GOP's zealous desire for deregulation of all safety standards, we've got a long history of making environmental messes in our search for energy. No one likes nuclear power plants or the waste they produce. And that's before the rather hefty price tag involved in building one.

Furthermore, we can take advantage of our natural resources without strip mining away the nation. Simply tearing up the Dakotas in search of coal or laying waste to the Gulf Coast to get at oil will do more harm to our fishing industry, our tourist industry, and our farming industry than it saves us in gas at the pump. Breaking our addiction to "Arab" oil is meaningless. Oil is traded on the world market no matter where it comes from. If we got 100% of our oil from our own country, the price would only fluctuate with global demand. That demand will continue to outpace supply no matter how many wells we drill.

"-- What does the UK do that the USA does not? If you said "The UK drills and sources a significant percentage (not all, not even most, but a significant amount) of its oil from its North Atlantic backyard", you are correct! --"

And yet their oil still hovers within a quarter of US prices. World markets are a bitch like that. Simply tapping their own supply doesn't save the UK more than a few cents a gallon. And when the UK wells dry up - as they inevitably will - the English will be right back where they started unless they invest in alternative energy. Which they have. Wind farms have cropped up in Wales

"-- As a total replacement solution, wind is completely unreliable. As an ancillary source of energy, it could be lovely. As in a smaller scale thing meant to power a farm or small community in addition to something else. --"

I mean, what can I say except that you're wrong. Incorrect. Factually off base. Not speaking the truth. Wind energy as a total replacement solution is viable and totally reliable. Wind farms, built up over a large enough area and phased in to replace traditional energy sources, can in fact provide the necessary energy capacity to fuel the nation. The math is done. The link is there. Read it at your leisure. I don't know what else to say. Your notion that wind power is unreliable is flatly contradicted by the reality at hand.

"-- REALLY? You observed, or know someone who has observed, one species evolving into another? That is truly remarkable! --"

Isn't it? Read the article. Go through the evidence. Scientists have been tracking individual species through tens of thousands of generations and witnessed speciation take place.

"-- Birds and hippos have no more commonality than a brick and a baseball; nor are they sired by sea squirts or jellyfish or phytobacteria. --"

Funny you should make that reference, because bricks and baseball do in fact share common components. You might refer to them as atoms. Likewise, birds and hippos have DNA. And if you compare the DNA between a bird and a hippo you will be shocked at the number of commonalities. Their DNA gives them both calcium-based bones and iron-based blood. It gives them both vertibrae - the central spinal column that sets them within their own Phyillum. They certainly are not closely related, but they are - in fact - related. And if you trace their lineages back far enough, you'll discover how the birds and the hippos both have relatives that go back to the precursors of the lizard family which in turn can be traced to amphibians, which in turn can be traced back to the ancient species of fish, which can be traced back to the protozoa, and finally the bacteria - eucariots that descended from procariots - until you begin to grasp the fundamental building blocks of life. All these creatures share common protean strains and building blocks. All are constructed from adenine (abbreviated A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). And they link man to manatee and bird to hippo in much the same way that atoms link bricks to baseballs.

"-- Specifically concerning DNA, I should clarify that these animals didn't "lose DNA" as in losing cellular material or entire chromosomes or mitochondrial information; rather, it is a factor of the accumulation of thousands of generations of mutations within each kind and within each population re-sorted the DNA about in such a fashion so as to never fully recover what their parents had. (This is also part of the reason behind our vastly decremented lifespans from nearly a millennium to scarcely a century). --"

And, again, you are wrong. Human evolution from the Apes actually signified a certain "loss" of DNA. The major evolutionary break involved moving from 24 matched chromosomes to 23 matched chromosomes. And - in a long and complicated process I won't even begin to go into here - scientists have not only shown how this transition takes place, but reproduced it within a lab setting, thus proving it is not only theoretical but actually possible to change the number of chromosomes in a living being.

Its just a matter of going through the evidence.

"-- Indeed. the conditions that prevailed on the Earth prior to Flood cannot be measured or assessed to determine its effects on human longevity. However, we can conclude that it is possible... --"

And again, you are wrong. Conditions that prevailed on Earth prior to the period of time that you refer to as "the Flood" can be measured, assessed, and their effects on human longevity determined. These conditions are captured in the same fossil record that holds the buried bones of our ancestors. Records exist within the polar ice caps with atmospheric conditions trapped by the various layers of ice. Records exist within the layers of earth that have caked up upon each other. Records exist within the bones of the animals that were recovered after millions of years of burial.

"-- The post-Eden curse is very confirmable, even now. You will, barring your conversion to Christ and the occurence of the Rapture first, will grow old and die. You will gain some weight, your middle and hind end will spread, your joints will ache, your stomach will sour more easily, your hair will go gray; your womb, if you have one, will shrivel up, and your skin will wrinkle and get liver spots as you start to resemble something more like the distinguished Senator from Arizona, rather than the supple young flaxen-haired Llama-Monkey critter you are today. And eventually, you will die, and stand judged before a Holy and Righteous Creator, to give an account of yourself and why you hardened your heart against Him in disbelief. --"

And this will differ from life 5800 years ago how exactly? That's the game. You can point to how much life sucks now, but you cannot produce any evidence that aging and hunger and hair loss and weight gain are unique to this Period of history. You can only dream of a world in which it doesn't exist, and since it doesn't exist now, you can only hypothesize of a magical Eden where your troubles don't exist. But you've got nothing except a bunch of old stories. And the stories themselves betray you because they were written in paints and inks.

And those paints can be dated back to pre-historic cultures some 32,000 years before today. And that is where your entire little fantasy really takes a nose-dive. The same paints used to pen the tales of the mythical origins of man can be found to predate the claimed origins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting

Of course, you're happy to throw up your hands and call it all lies and satanic tricks, but then you're a bit trapped in the "faith" game, because the same scientific techniques used to validate your own view of the world are subject to this blanket skepticism. You need to invent a reliable, verifiable technique to confirm your 6000-year-old Earth since you've written off everything from sediment records to carbon dating as devilry and witchcraft. And so you're back to "I believe what I believe". Of course, you can always demand that sediment records and carbon dating require "faith", but then you've abused the definition so seriously that it really does apply to just about anything.

[seekeronos]

Such an abundance of time does our dear advanced monkey have on its hands!

But now you've went to the rather obvious claim that bricks and baseballs (and no doubt brickbats, too) are made of atoms.

Well, here then is our lowest common denominator: God formed Man (Adam) from the dust of the earth. Dust, as in the smallest observable form to Man for the better part of his ~6000 journey on the earth. For those of us wiser "monkeys" called "homo Sapiens sapiens" (what an arrogant appellation for our species indeed, a singularly inept species that can hardly be expected, as Moe says, to successfully mine fossil fuels without a wholesale wreckage of the environment: or perhaps it is only an American failing? We are left wondering what he was trying to imply)... we refer to that dust as atoms which build upon each other into molecules and then into amino acids and lipids and the other goo to become DNA, the basic building block of life!

How insipid of me to suggest that God would not use at the most basic level, a common set of basic building blocks, yet immeasurably complex as He masterfully wove them together in diverse ways to make each baramin or -kind of creature.

Well then, spot on you are. This does not change the fact that these -kinds are largely unique, and created apart from one another. And unless you are willing to change definitions and move goal posts with childish caprice, then one might be conned into believing that science has produced novel life, or much less, created whole new kinds of life from existing species within a single (short) human lifetime. Or even within the past 150 years: for all "species" of a -kind were already present in the DNA of its parent -kind.

Now as for bending over backwards to make the evidence fit the theory, we have a handful of monkey and ape skeletons which many believe to be our ancestors: and if humanity represents a genetic loss of information from apes, how dare we consider ourselves greater than they, and how dare we call ourselves lords and masters of this earth! The galling, rarefied pride of this must have our simian forebears rolling in their graves... except that they were already dug up and put on display as trophies to "science falsely called".

Something is very amiss with this logic, for where are our betters, our progenitors who as Moe admitted in some degree of agreement with my argument, had the sum of our DNA contained in them? Why did they not survive?

24 matched chromosomes pairs to 23 matched pairs might satisfy the loss of information, but such a move clearly (or so we are told) took several million years. And Bonzo and his cohort are still gallivanting about the jungle with our lost chromosomes! Or are they? If I thought for an instant that Bonzo had my missing DNA, I'd be right moved to great anger at that silly chimp who purloined my precious molecules!

What Moe didn't tell us about was the "theory" that two ape chromosomes "may have" fused at their telomeric junctions to form the number two Human chromosome. Such sophistry to make a point, such heated thinking... when it is all the more plausible that God made Adam in His own image, from the dust of the earth: atom by atom, molecule by molecule, the very pinnacle of His creation, using the working patterns of matter and organic chemistry He defined when speaking the Universe into existence some five days previously.

But even if we bow to Hanuman the monkey god and say that we sprang from his loins sans a particular chromosome (or half-chromosome and a telomere, depending upon your perspective)... it is still an extraordinary event once again.

And if evolution is supposed to be a progression from worse to better, and from a thing of low complexity to greater complexity, that flies in the face of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

It still fails to answer for how ALL life (plant, animal, protist, moneran, etc) evolved from ONE cell with ALL the necessary DNA... UNFAILINGLY delivering the DNA payload down to every living thing.

How many extraordinary events and cosmic accidents does it take for man to evolve from a puddle of zapped amino acids and lipids? Quite a few, it looks like, and a dreadful, evil process involving much data destruction and death.

How many days of loving creation did it take the Creator to form the Earth and make us in His image? Six.

And not a single accident on His part.

As for us "enlightened monkeys", well... the good word does say this:

"-----
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
-----"
(Romans 1`:22-23, KJV)

I'll take a read over the windmill miracle article later, with a large grain of salt.

[SacTownMan]

"--- Truthfully, I find a guy that writes "but to believe in macro-evolution requires a certain daft suspension of logic" while arguing that the Earth is ~6000 years old hilarious. ---"

The focus is on the "requires a certain daft suspension of logic"

Is this inspired by the famous Hillary "Willing suspension of disbelief" line to the General?

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=5474

It is quite informative to watch this clip of the Shillary in her Move On/Soro's suck-up moment. She rambles on for several minutes without ever asking a question and uses ABC and other polls to claim the Surge didn't work, there was more violence blah, blah, blah.

Given the success of the Surge it just shows the "cut and run" crowd for what they really are... pussies!

Does anybody even remember who this chick is. She has disappeared faster than Rev. Wright did. Most likely having some quality time with the loving husband sipping Mai Tai's. They are such a happy couple aren't they? Not anything like those other bitter, clingy, bible thumper, gun toting white folks!

[templar knight]

Moe, I know this is hard for you to comprehend, because liberals have very little experience at actually getting things done.

But let me explain this to you one more time. Nobody believes in wind energy more than I do. I have actually invested money in a company that has a wind farm in Sweetwater, Tx., and I have an interest in a wind generator near Abilene, Tx. Both of these places are pretty close to where I live in Snyder. I'm a believer.

But, there is a small problem. The infrastruture does not exist to allow wind energy to be anything more than helpful in solving our energy problems for the next few years. There will have to be many, many more power plants built at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, it not trillions. Transmission lines, towers, substations, wire and every other part of an electrical grid will have to be manufactured and placed, at the cost of trillions of dollars and several years of work. If you are proposing a government program on the scale of the Manhatten Project to solve our problems, I will be the second on board, and even that will take several years. Other than that, it will be even more years before we can replace fossil fuels as our mainstay.

Now, you may think that buying oil on the world market is the same as us producing it ourselves, but you are quite wrong. Even if the prices were the same, it would be to our great economic benefit to be able to keep our trillions of dollars at home rather than sending them to people overseas. It has something to do with the value of the dollar and our balance of payments. A few trillion dollars might just come in handy, and frankly I would rather enrich Americans than foreigners. But that's just me. I prefer to give money to people I know, where it will be used in our own communites here in the US.

Now, I have never advocated that safety rules be relaxed on oil and gas drilling. If you can find where I have advocated for less safety, I'll beg forgiveness. I have advocated for more drilling in places like ANWR, with strict regulations in place to prevent any oil spills. I assume natural gas would not pose a problem for you, as it does not pollute in the way oil does. In any event, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 billion barrels of oil exist in northern Alaska, both in ANWR and elsewhere. That's over $1 trillion in oil. On top of that, something like 32 trillion cubic feet of gas exists in Alaska as well, and we need it. The value of that gas is in the trillions as well. This oil and gas can be obtained with a fairly small expense compared to the value of the products. A pipeline needs to be built to connect ANWR to the Alaskan Pipeline, and a gas pipeline needs to be built as well. Both are doable with little if any expenditure needed from the public, and a rather small investment from the private sector.

We will need to use all our energy resources in order to get out of the mess we are in right now, and there is no reason not to. We can get our own energy, use our own people to work when getting it, and rid ourselves of this dependence we now have on foreign oil. And that is good for all Americans. I wish to hell we had some politicians, both Democrat and Republican, who would realize this.

[Worst President Ever]

Seek, I think you missed your time. The Dark Ages would have been a much better fit.

[IslamoLlama]

"-- What Moe didn't tell us about was the "theory" that two ape chromosomes "may have" fused at their telomeric junctions to form the number two Human chromosome. Such sophistry to make a point, such heated thinking... when it is all the more plausible that God made Adam in His own image, from the dust of the earth: atom by atom, molecule by molecule, the very pinnacle of His creation, using the working patterns of matter and organic chemistry He defined when speaking the Universe into existence some five days previously. --"

Listen, I don't know what to say to that. You're basically conceding the point and digging in your heels on the conclusion. Stating that evolution is not possible, then blowing off proof to the contrary as "sophistry"... I just can't compete with that level of willful ignorance.

Your argument that "it is all the more plausible that God made Adam in His own image" is just so much hot air or "sophistry" as you prefer. There's no backing, no reasoning, no science or even theology to back up your dogma. You've just fiated God's plausibility and walked away from the table. Kinda like how you fiated wind power being impractical and demanded more oil drilling.

We've got proof to the contrary. We've got demonstrations to illustrate that you are wrong. We've got papers, models, doctoral theses - all sophistry I suppose - and its so much wind in your ear.

"-- But even if we bow to Hanuman the monkey god and say that we sprang from his loins sans a particular chromosome (or half-chromosome and a telomere, depending upon your perspective)... it is still an extraordinary event once again. --"

Hey, no argument there. Although, if you want to get technical we trace it back further than that, charting from whose womb Hanuman arose, and from the womb of Hanuman's mother and her grandmother and so on back through the Ages. Ultimately, science recognizes the idea of a chain chemical reaction that was the precursor of all life. And while we acknowledge it and appreciate it, we don't feel the need to build alters or graven images in homage. Knowing that the sky is blue does not necessitate building an alter to blue skies. Knowing how to split the atom doesn't require one to worship particle physics.

"-- And if evolution is supposed to be a progression from worse to better, and from a thing of low complexity to greater complexity, that flies in the face of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. --"

Physics fail. A system can self-perpetuate so long as it has fuel to sustain itself. See: the Sun. Life on earth no more violates the 2nd Law than a fire pit that is constantly feed fuel. The only difference is that life forms can feed themselves. The net result is still entropy, even if a given open system appears to accrue order over time.

Try sticking a plant under your bed for a few weeks. See how long it lasts. Deny it sunlight and the system collapses. Try not eating for a few days. I guarantee the 2nd Law will catch up with you. The planet isn't a closed system, and to pretend that life exists in a vacuum belies your ignorance of science.

"-- It still fails to answer for how ALL life (plant, animal, protist, moneran, etc) evolved from ONE cell with ALL the necessary DNA... UNFAILINGLY delivering the DNA payload down to every living thing. --"

DNA fails all the time. Go have sex with your wife. If she doesn't conceive, your DNA done fucked up. Grab a vat full of protean and drop in a few bacterium. You'll have a petri dish overflowing with life very shortly. Give it a few billion years and you'll have more in your plate than bacteria, assuming you keep it properly feed.

Can scientists reproduce all variants of life on earth from a handful of dust and some sunshine? Not yet. But then one hundred years ago they couldn't peer into the out limits of space, cure polio, or fly. You ask a great many questions, and that's good. But you don't seem particularly interested in finding the answers, and that's bad.

I can't hold your hand through it all, Seek. If you want to understand how life evolved or how wind can be harnessed in an efficient manner or any other mystery of the world, you're going to have to stop saying "It's not possible" and start asking how it could be possible.

[seekeronos]

"--- I can't hold your hand through it all, Seek. If you want to understand how life evolved or how wind can be harnessed in an efficient manner or any other mystery of the world, you're going to have to stop saying "It's not possible" and start asking how it could be possible. ---"

I already have a thoroughly good idea of what sort of poppycock humans are willing to convince themselves of, having once been a staunch evolutionist myself. Yet over the years, where I have contrived to wash my notions of an ancient universe or the origin of man and other creatures with God's Word, the more I kept coming back to Genesis Ch. 1 - Ch. 6... the simple, unvarnished truth of God's Words.

Day-Age theory, Age-Gap theory, Intelligent Design, Darwinist Materialistic Evolution, Theistic Evolution, it all blows up when set next to God's Word, of how He created the Heavens and the Earth and the fullness thereof in six days and rested on the seventh.

No matter how clever we think ourselves to be, God is All-Wise:

"-----
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
-----"
(Isaiah 55:8-9, KJV)

And you may be on to something with the continual feeding of the system via the sun, it too is a limited, closed system. Yet, even the Sun cannot grant that there is continually new and beneficial changes to the genetic information base which outweigh the random potential for the accumulation of bad mutations as a result of all those gamma rays and beta particles and other radiation or mutagenic inputs which tend to break more things than create.

Set a bull loose in a china shop, and I can reasonably guarantee that when he decides to exit that shop, there will be many more broken pieces of china than pieces of china "accidentally" arranged by that bull in any meaningful pattern.

But apart from the Creator who made that flaming ball of hydrogen we call the Sun on the fourth day of Creation (interestingly enough, after He made the plants and the sea life), that sun would eventually flame out. And not necessarily in 5 Bn. years, but possibly as little as a thousand years ... or an hundred years... or an hundred million years.

Or if left to its own devices, based upon our observable knowledge of that system, it will burn itself out in a few billion years. Either way, the 2nd Law still works.

It is really up to Him when: for at the last judgment of this earth, He will judge the earth AND the Heavens with fire that destroys all the elements of that old heavens and earth.

"-----
16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
-----"
(Colossians 1:16-17, KJV)

It is God Who uphold all things by His power; through our sin, He removed a certain measure of His upholding of the universe from the system, hence the corruption, the ongoing loss of energy and loss of genetic data out of the system.

I oppose the lies of Darwinistic, materialistic macro-evolution mainly because by them, people would seek to discredit God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Author and Creator, and reduce us down to nothing but cosmic accidents - freaks of chance; whereas the Living and True God created us for Himself, in His own image.

That horrible sack of lies is responsible for much of the carnage of the last century, the wholesale destruction of social values and love for life and the smashing of America's moral compass at the helm of moral relativism... "because we are all just a bunch of wild animals with no control or responsibility for what we do".

Evolutionary scientists and their leaders of the ilk of Mr. Hitchens and Mr. Dawkins are the modern day prophets of Baal who lead people off to the Devil's slaughter.

[seekeronos]

"--- But, there is a small problem. The infrastruture does not exist to allow wind energy to be anything more than helpful in solving our energy problems for the next few years. There will have to be many, many more power plants built at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, it not trillions. Transmission lines, towers, substations, wire and every other part of an electrical grid will have to be manufactured and placed, at the cost of trillions of dollars and several years of work. If you are proposing a government program on the scale of the Manhatten Project to solve our problems, I will be the second on board, and even that will take several years. Other than that, it will be even more years before we can replace fossil fuels as our mainstay.

Now, you may think that buying oil on the world market is the same as us producing it ourselves, but you are quite wrong. Even if the prices were the same, it would be to our great economic benefit to be able to keep our trillions of dollars at home rather than sending them to people overseas. It has something to do with the value of the dollar and our balance of payments. A few trillion dollars might just come in handy, and frankly I would rather enrich Americans than foreigners. But that's just me. I prefer to give money to people I know, where it will be used in our own communites here in the US. ---"

Amen, and keep preaching exactly that, TK.

I'll gladly be third on board, even if it means (gasp) higher gas taxes for the duration. And it would help reduce our energy footprints as well (which to me is of far greater and of more immediate concern than a carbon footprint).

As I said earlier in this thread, we really need a full-spectrum, multi-tined approach to solving our energy crisis that takes everything into the big picture from CONSERVATION (yes, Jimmah WPE Cartuh had one thing right out of a baker's dozen of bad things with unplugging the blender when its not in use) to wind to domestic and offshore oil to gas to switchgrass to algae lipid production to a whole other bevy of good ideas that will make jobs AND revive our economy.

We can, and WILL be world leaders in green and near-green energy production, because our survival in the 21st century as a nation depends upon it.

But while we need time to get the green energy ideas off the drawing board and into your plug receptacles, we will need to source our local oil and gas solutions to help feed newer system.

Hey, there's that 2nd Law of Thermodynamics again.

[IslamoLlama]

"-- Hey, there's that 2nd Law of Thermodynamics again. --"

You are aware of the difference between closed and open systems, right Seek? Simply announcing the phrase "2nd Law of Thermodynamics" over and over again doesn't actually buffer your point unless you can show that the system you are working in can't get any energy from outside sources.

Learn just a tad more about physics and get back with me.

[seekeronos]

"--- Simply announcing the phrase "2nd Law of Thermodynamics" over and over again doesn't actually buffer your point unless you can show that the system you are working in can't get any energy from outside sources. ---"

But there really is no such thing as a totally closed system, aside from small scale laboratory conditions which can be completely controlled - and even then, it is more a matter of a degree of closure, excluding uncontrollable factors like gravity or cosmic rays and the like. At present, there is no such man-made closed system which can outlast the ravages of time - at least sufficient time (and energy) to induce abiogenesis.

The closest there is to a truly closed system is universe itself; and practically speaking, at the scale of the solar system with its sun as a finite source of energy. Our earth is a subsystem of that greater closed system, receiving energy inputs from the sun, and to a lesser degree, from its own deep core which contains energy left over from when God created it by massing together the earth into an heap when He separated it from the waters on Day 2.

Once the sun runs out of the hydrogen (for simplicity's sake, we'll bypass the fusion chain from H to He and so on down to C, Ne, Mg, or even Fe) it needs to produce heat and light in the same manner it has from the day God created it, it is pretty much game over. Any energy filtering in from universal background radiation or younger (but distant) stars would not support unaided human existence as we enjoy it.

The sun itself is subject to that same breakdown and loss of mass/energy, as it emits heat and light into space, losing/consuming about 10e-14 of its mass daily. With the sun weighing an approximate 1.98x10e30 kg, that's a loss of about 19,800,000,000,000,000 kg, or almost twice the mass of the Martian moon Phobos each day.

Eventually it will run out of fuel that it can sustainably fuse, and our solar system will experience a localized heat death. This will not likely happen though, as God's plans for this universe as revealed in His word tell us that He will replace the current heavens and the earth (the universe) with a new one.

I believe that God exerts His will to uphold the created universe (the heavens and the earth) as well. Once He chooses to cease from actively upholding this universe, it shall cease to be held together: it will come to an end, being consumed by the release of the nuclear bonds that hold matter together.

Essentially, this loss of energy and information and the general tendency for complex objects, organisms and systems to decay, breakdown, and eventually die/cease to exist is a part of nature, and is caused by death - as a direct result of sin which brought death into the perfectly created and perfectly ordered universe which God built for us to have communion with Him in. It is the post-Edenic curse.

Creation is a miracle of a direct act by a thoughtful, loving Creator.

[IslamoLlama]

"-- But there really is no such thing as a totally closed system, aside from small scale laboratory conditions which can be completely controlled - and even then, it is more a matter of a degree of closure, excluding uncontrollable factors like gravity or cosmic rays and the like. At present, there is no such man-made closed system which can outlast the ravages of time - at least sufficient time (and energy) to induce abiogenesis. --"

This is all technically true. You could - theoretically - boundary off an area of empty space with a strong enough insulator, such that no random cosmic junk got in. Then you could fill that container with whatever you choose and you've got yourself a closed system.

The point of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is that you cannot create energy from no energy. You cannot, for instance, create a system that will produce more energy at the end of time than you began with. It throws up an obstacle in the face of ideas like Perpetual Motion Machine.

"-- Essentially, this loss of energy and information and the general tendency for complex objects, organisms and systems to decay, breakdown, and eventually die/cease to exist is a part of nature, and is caused by death - as a direct result of sin which brought death into the perfectly created and perfectly ordered universe which God built for us to have communion with Him in. It is the post-Edenic curse. --"

But here you are violating another universal law, one set out by Einstein some 60 years back. And this law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can merely change state.

Thus we have a system that is in flux and one that is not necessarily drifting off to inevitable destruction. What we ultimately have is a high pressure system expanding to fill the space it has been allowed. If you consider the quantum singularity that was the precursor to the universe "perfectly created and perfectly ordered" then that is certainly an opinion. But the vision of dead family and friends trapseying about a cloudy Garden of Edan where no one ever grows old or feels sad or feels pain just isn't in the cards for you. That world never existed. And you've got no proof that it did.

Using "entropy" as evidence of Edan would be like me using a river as proof of a giant leaky cup hanging from the clouds.

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is merely one side of the two-sided coin that is the General Relativity. It doesn't prove anything about the presence or absence of a higher power, and you're making a massive cognitive jump to assume otherwise.

[seekeronos]

"--- But here you are violating another universal law, one set out by Einstein some 60 years back. And this law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can merely change state. ---"

And so it does: Each day, the sun consumes the equivalent of nearly twice the mass of Phobos and expels it from its photosphere as energy and highly energized particles and photons out into the universe as a result of its ongoing hydrogen fusion. If left to its own devices, someday, it will run out of hydrogen and start fusing helium into lithium or beryllium and so on until it cannot sustain the fusion cycle, and at that point, things get dark.

Some fraction of that light/EM energy that comes from the sun (and a certain amount from the workings of geomechanics deeper under the earth's crust) enter into the ecosphere and get bounced around various living systems before being eventually remitted back out to space, whatever part that isn't reflected back out from high albedo surfaces.

If left to its own devices, the universe will eventually suffer a heat death, a final equilibrium, just as you say here:

"--- What we ultimately have is a high pressure system expanding to fill the space it has been allowed. If you consider the quantum singularity that was the precursor to the universe "perfectly created and perfectly ordered" then that is certainly an opinion. ---"

Death - from the death of every little bug that gets smashed up on your windscreen to the billions of diatoms that die only to sink to the ocean floors each day to the millions of people who die each day (from all sorts of causes) it is a result from the death brought into the world by the sin of Adam and Eve.

God made the universe, He stretched out the heavens (He is responsible for the spreading of the universe's volume) and He fixed every star in its proper place and every planet into its orbit; it is by His power that the universe is held together. Prior to Adam's fall, He upheld the universe perfectly - there was no net loss of energy, there was no decay, no breaking down of systems, it all worked because God said that it was "very good".

It was after sin entered the world that God had to withdraw Himself from perfectly upholding the earth in the pre-flood era, and withdrew it even further during and after the Flood, and will withdraw it even more in the terrible days of tribulation yet to come, until finally, He does a complete reboot and (while preserving His beloved followers) will annihilate the existing universe whilst replacing it with a new heavens and a new earth.

"--- But the vision of dead family and friends trapseying about a cloudy Garden of Edan where no one ever grows old or feels sad or feels pain just isn't in the cards for you. That world never existed. And you've got no proof that it did. ---"

God's word said that it did. And that is good enough for me.

"--- Using "entropy" as evidence of Edan would be like me using a river as proof of a giant leaky cup hanging from the clouds. ---"

Eden was a particular place on the pre-Flood earth. The Bible doesn't really tell us what conditions outside Eden were like prior to Adam's fall.

The Bible have hints that it was likely much less bountiful than Eden (a garden which God planted and had intended for Adam and humans to maintain) and probably much more difficult for Adam and his family to make a living from the ground, though much easier than today's world given the pre-Flood ecology the world enjoyed.

"--- The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is merely one side of the two-sided coin that is the General Relativity. It doesn't prove anything about the presence or absence of a higher power, and you're making a massive cognitive jump to assume otherwise. ---"

It neither explicitly proves nor denies the existence of God. But it certainly is in line with what God's word says about how the universe works.