Jack Lewis Wrote: "But the Earth is not a closed system!" I just said that. " Evolutionists get round this fact by declaring that the required energy comes from the Sun. Can you explain just how this undirected energy is responsible for increase in order? Your example of a tomato is circular reasoning." Oh please. Are you now arguing that God himself intervenes to create every single tomato plant, bacterium, and virus, every time? Irrespective of the need for sunlight and nutrients in the ground? Try putting a tomato seed in a dark room in a dry bed of sand and asking God to make a plant out of it. If you really want to be spoon-fed the answer, sunlight works on chlorophyll to give the plant energy. The plant draws moisture and nutrients from the ground via transpiration. The DNA in the plant cell nuclei uses this energy and raw material to make new plant material. If God's around, he has nothing he need do but watch. Jack Lewis Wrote: "Are you seriously suggesting that the 'order' shown in the above collection [Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and > lightning] is the same 'order' that is exhibited by life? This level of order is extremely complex and full of information. Hardly the same as lightning and snowflakes!" No I am not. Where did I suggest that? Life is obviously more complex than those things. But my POINT is that those things are themselves more ordered, locally, than the background they arise from. They themselves do not contradict the 2nd law of thermodynamics as they draw their energy and raw material from the wider system in which they are embedded. Jack Lewis Wrote: > Argument from Personal Incredulity is a risky one to make, Well isn't this your position vis-a-vis an intelligent creator? You mentioned experiments that demonstrated matter can be created from energy. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't it take a great deal of intelligence, materials, and a whopping great big machine to achieve this? Unless you can witness this transformation happening naturally (rather than assuming it happened), it requires a great deal of intelligence." What an absurd argument. The point of doing the experiments is to recreate the conditions which occurred naturally out there in the Universe at the beginning, but cannot occur naturally on Earth in front of our cameras and notebooks. By your own argument there, God must make the Sun shine, because alhough we can create nuclear fusion ourselves in a laboratory, it requires a lot of effort, cost, intelligence and a whopping big machine called JET or TFTR. Naturally, it requires gravity, space, time, and a billion trillion tons of hydrogen gas. By your own argument, all lab experiments that show how any thing could arise naturally, in fact prove a creator. Rubbish. This e-mail and any attachment is for authorised use by the intended recipient(s) only. It may contain proprietary material, confidential information and/or be subject to legal privilege. It should not be copied, disclosed to, retained or used by, any other party. If you are not an intended recipient then please promptly delete this e-mail and any attachment and all copies and inform the sender. Thank you.