https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/this-particle-accelerator-makes-a-substance-th...

"By using one of the most complicated and powerful machines on the planet, scientists have found a way to glimpse back to the very beginning of time itself. This time machine is a particle accelerator, and it gives us a peek at the soup of our newborn universe. Just moments after the Big Bang, our universe was a very different place.

"It started out so small, dense and hot that the building blocks of our reality atoms couldn't even form. Yet the ingredients of atoms, protons and neutrons were broken down into their most fundamental building blocks. Quarks. These quarks floated around in a perfect fluid, along with the particles that carry the force that holds them together inside of their proton and neutron homes.

"Those particles are called gluons. Scientists name this universe creating fluid quark-gluon plasma. It hasn't been found in nature since the beginning of time as we know it. But scientist states can recreate it inside particle accelerators. It was officially observed first at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, where researchers used the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider or RHIC for short to smash atoms together.

***

"Here at Brookhaven, there are two collision points where detectors can watch the action: sPHENIX and STAR. sPHENIX is brand new. And STAR just got upgrades to make it more sensitive than ever. Each detector is like an onion with layer upon layer of nested detectors, wires, cooling tubes and electronics, pulling massive amounts of data tracking and detecting particles, energies and motions at the core of each device is a powerful superconducting magnet that can bend charged particles and identify particles of different masses.

"These measurements can reveal secrets about the quark-gluon plasma, giving us a deeper understanding than ever before of how the tiniest bits of matter behave. By studying this quark soup, scientists are learning about our primordial cosmic origins and the matter all around us."

comment: amazing that we are poking into God inventive tricks.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#trash/FMfcgzGrcjRLktnZNCGjDMKTkbkWrWpg

"When the universe's first stars emerged from the cosmic dark ages, they ballooned to 10,000 times the mass of Earth's sun, new research suggests.

"The first stars in the cosmos may have topped out at over 10,000 times the mass of the sun, roughly 1,000 times bigger than the biggest stars alive today, a new study has found.

"Nowadays, the biggest stars are 100 solar masses. But the early universe was a far more exotic place, filled with mega-giant stars that lived fast and died very, very young, the researchers found.

"And once these doomed giants died out, conditions were never right for them to form again.

"More than 13 billion years ago, not long after the Big Bang, the universe had no stars. There was nothing more than a warm soup of neutral gas, almost entirely made up of hydrogen and helium. Over hundreds of millions of years, however, that neutral gas began to pile up into increasingly dense balls of matter. This period is known as the cosmic Dark Ages.***

***

"The researchers found that a complex web of interactions preceded the first star formation. Neutral gas began to collect and clump together. Hydrogen and helium released a little bit of heat, which allowed clumps of the neutral gas to slowly reach higher densities.

"But high-density clumps became very warm, producing radiation that broke apart the neutral gas and prevented it from fragmenting into many smaller clumps. That means stars made from these clumps can become incredibly large.

***

"Those first stars weren’t just any normal fusion factories. They were gigantic clumps of neutral gas igniting their fusion cores all at once, skipping the stage where they fragment into small pieces. The resulting stellar mass was huge.

"Those first stars would have been incredibly bright and would have lived extremely short lives, less than a million years. (Stars in the modern universe can live billions of years). After that, they would have died in furious bursts of supernova explosions.

"Those explosions would have carried the products of the internal fusion reactions – elements heavier than hydrogen and helium – that then seeded the next round of star formation. But now contaminated by heavier elements, the process couldn’t repeat itself, and those monsters would never again appear on the cosmic scene."

Comment: first the Big Bang and then an evolutionary process to produce the current universe. This is the first instance of evidence God prefers to create by evolutionary processes. The primordial Earth evolved from a dust disc around the Sun. First life helped evolve the Earth into its present form. And finally, life evolved. Strong evidence God prefers to evolve His creations.

dhw: So apparently your God designed all the billions of heavenly bodies extant and extinct because every one of them was and is necessary to create and support life on Planet Earth. I don’t buy it.

The universe is even stranger:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220520181234.htm

"Mysterious fast radio bursts release as much energy in one second as the Sun pours out in a year and are among the most puzzling phenomena in the universe.

***

"Producing the extraordinary bursts in space are celestial bodies such as neutron, or collapsed, stars called magnetars (magnet + star) enclosed in extreme magnetic fields. These fields are so strong that they turn the vacuum in space into an exotic plasma composed of matter and anti-matter in the form of pairs of negatively charged electrons and positively charged positrons, according to quantum electrodynamic (QED) theory. Emissions from these pairs are believed to be responsible for the powerful fast radio bursts.

"The matter-antimatter plasma, called "pair plasma," stands in contrast to the usual plasma that fuels fusion reactions and makes up 99% of the visible universe. This plasma consists of matter only in the form of electrons and vastly higher-mass atomic nuclei, or ions. The electron-positron plasmas are composed of equal mass but oppositely charged particles that are subject to annihilation and creation. Such plasmas can exhibit quite different collective behavior.

***

"The overall goal of this research is understanding how bodies like magnetars create pair plasma and what new physics associated with fast radio bursts are brought about, Qu said. "These are the central questions we are interested in.'"

Comment: just more confusion for dhw. We live in a very strange universe that I believe God gave us. I don't question it. We live in a very safe spot in our Milky Way. The other stuff that is so dangerous doesn't bother us. We are trying to understand it as we should, but why question why it must exist as dhw does? We have been provided for. We are living peacefully here when from a natural occurrence standpoint there is no reason we should be here. Just ask Adler.

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-axions-fossil-universe.html

"How far back into the Universe's past can we look today? In the electromagnetic spectrum, observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background—commonly referred to as the CMB—allow us to see back almost 14 billion years to when the Universe cooled sufficiently for protons and electrons to combine and form neutral hydrogen. The CMB has taught us an inordinate amount about the evolution of the cosmos, but photons in the CMB were released 400,000 years after the Big Bang making it extremely challenging to learn about the history of the universe prior to this epoch.

***

"In their paper, they suggest the possibility of searching for an axion analogue of the CMB, a so-called Cosmic axion Background or CaB.

"While hypothetical, there are many reasons to suspect that the axion could exist in our Universe.

"For one, axions are a generic prediction of string theory, one of today's best hopes for a theory of quantum gravity. The existence of an axion could further help resolve the long standing puzzle of why we have yet to measure an electric dipole moment for the neutron, an issue more formally known as the "Strong CP Problem." More recently, the axion has become a promising candidate for dark matter, and as a consequence researchers are rapidly searching for axion dark-matter.

"In their paper, the researchers point out that as experimentalists develop more sensitive instruments to search for dark matter, they may stumble upon another sign of axions in the form of the CaB. But because the CaB shares similar properties with dark-matter axions, there is a risk the experiments would throw the CaB signal out as noise.

"Finding the CaB at one of these instruments would be a double discovery. Not only would it confirm the existence of the axion, but researchers worldwide would immediately have a new fossil from the early Universe. Depending on how the CaB was produced, researchers could learn about various different aspects of the Universe's evolution never possible before (Figure).

"'What we have proposed is that, by changing the way current experiments analyze data, we may be able to search for left-over axions from the early universe. Then, we might be able to learn about the origin of dark matter, phase transition or inflation at the beginning of the Universe. There are already experimental groups who have shown interest in our proposal, and I hope we can find out something new about the early Universe that wasn't known before," says Murayama.

"'The evolution of the universe can produce axions with a characteristic energy distribution. By detecting the energy density of the universe currently made up of axions, experiments such as MADMAX, HAYSTAC, ADMX, and DMRadio could give us answers to some of the most important puzzles in cosmology, such as, "How hot did our universe get? What is nature of dark matter? Did our universe undergo a period of rapid expansion known as inflation? Was there ever a cosmic phase transition?" says Dror."

Comment: The universe had to evolve just as life did when the universe reached a point of fine-tuning to allow life. dhw with his human brain attempts to question God's reasons for a universe that looks like ours does. It allows him to question God's existence. We may never find all of God's reasons. That doesn't cause Him to disappear, does it?

DAVID: The mass of materials did not exist before the Big Bang. So how is there bottom up?

dhw: Even if the BB theory is true, how can you possibly know it was not caused by a mass of materials? It is absurd to assume that nothing preceded and caused the BB. You assume that it was preceded and caused by an immaterial, eternal, all-knowing mind. The alternative is that eternal materials caused the BB.

DAVID: What created the material initially?

dhw: What created your God initially? I give you the same answer: the materials were the “first cause”!

DAVID: We both agree something has to be eternal. I'll stick with God as quantum energy.

I don’t have a problem with your faith. I just can’t share it.

I know.

dhw: Even if the BB theory is true, how can you possibly know it was not caused by a mass of materials? It is absurd to assume that nothing preceded and caused the BB. You assume that it was preceded and caused by an immaterial, eternal, all-knowing mind. The alternative is that eternal materials caused the BB.

DAVID: What created the material initially?

dhw: What created your God initially? I give you the same answer: the materials were the “first cause”!

DAVID: We both agree something has to be eternal. I'll stick with God as quantum energy.

I don’t have a problem with your faith. I just can’t share it.

The rest of this post is covered under “Natural Wonders and Evolution”.

DAVID: The mass of materials did not exist before the Big Bang. So how is there bottom up?

dhw: Even if the BB theory is true, how can you possibly know it was not caused by a mass of materials? It is absurd to assume that nothing preceded and caused the BB. You assume that it was preceded and caused by an immaterial, eternal, all-knowing mind. The alternative is that eternal materials caused the BB.

DAVID: What created the material initially?

dhw: What created your God initially? I give you the same answer: the materials were the “first cause”!

We both agree something has to be eternal. I'll stick with God as quantum energy.

DAVID: Remember, I don't question God's decisions. History tells us what He created, not why He did it that way. It is your concept of a humanized God that raises questions.

dhw: You don’t question your INTERPRETATION of his decisions, which is that everything he created was geared to the single purpose of designing H. sapiens. I offer several different interpretations, all of which you agree fit in perfectly with the history. Your only objection is that although they are comprehensible in terms of human logic, your interpretation is right, and so God cannot possibly think in what we humans regard as a logical way. How do you know that?

DAVID: No one can know what God thinks. We can only look at what He produced and make guesses as to His purposes and reasoning.

dhw: So why do you think that your theoretical guess, which requires God’s logic to be incomprehensible to humans, is more likely to be true than other guesses which make perfect sense even to you? (See Natural Wonders and Evolution".)

My guess does not require that God's logic be incomprehensible to humans as you twist the argument. My point is all approaches to God are only guesses. I have mine and you have yours, and I have faith in mine.

dhw: Even if the BB theory is true, how can you possibly know it was not caused by a mass of materials? It is absurd to assume that nothing preceded and caused the BB. You assume that it was preceded and caused by an immaterial, eternal, all-knowing mind. The alternative is that eternal materials caused the BB.

DAVID: What created the material initially?

What created your God initially? I give you the same answer: the materials were the “first cause”!

DAVID: Remember, I don't question God's decisions. History tells us what He created, not why He did it that way. It is your concept of a humanized God that raises questions.

dhw: You don’t question your INTERPRETATION of his decisions, which is that everything he created was geared to the single purpose of designing H. sapiens. I offer several different interpretations, all of which you agree fit in perfectly with the history. Your only objection is that although they are comprehensible in terms of human logic, your interpretation is right, and so God cannot possibly think in what we humans regard as a logical way. How do you know that?

DAVID: No one can know what God thinks. We can only look at what He produced and make guesses as to His purposes and reasoning.

So why do you think that your theoretical guess, which requires God’s logic to be incomprehensible to humans, is more likely to be true than other guesses which make perfect sense even to you? (See Natural Wonders and Evolution".)

DAVID: The mass of materials did not exist before the Big Bang. So how is there bottom up?

dhw: Even if the BB theory is true, how can you possibly know it was not caused by a mass of materials? It is absurd to assume that nothing preceded and caused the BB. You assume that it was preceded and caused by an immaterial, eternal, all-knowing mind. The alternative is that eternal materials caused the BB.

What created the material initially?

DAVID: Same old mantra. Remember, I don't question God's decisions. History tells us what He created, not why He did it that way. It is your concept of a humanized God that raises questions.

dhw: You don’t question your INTERPRETATION of his decisions, which is that everything he created was geared to the single purpose of designing H. sapiens. I offer several different interpretations, all of which you agree fit in perfectly with the history. Your only objection is that although they are comprehensible in terms of human logic, your interpretation is right, and so God cannot possibly think in what we humans regard as a logical way. How do you know that?

No one can know what God thinks. We can only look at what He produced and make guesses as to His purposes and reasoning.

dhw: How can an inventively conscious mind, with the power to create a universe and all its laws, simply have existed for ever? If this astonishing, all-knowing and inexplicable mind can be your first cause, then so can the astonishing, ever changing and inexplicable mass of materials. The first offers top down evolution, and the second offers bottom up.

DAVID: The mass of materials did not exist before the Big Bang. So how is there bottom up?

Even if the BB theory is true, how can you possibly know it was not caused by a mass of materials? It is absurd to assume that nothing preceded and caused the BB. You assume that it was preceded and caused by an immaterial, eternal, all-knowing mind. The alternative is that eternal materials caused the BB.

dhw: So apparently your God designed all the billions of heavenly bodies extant and extinct because every one of them was and is necessary to create and support life on Planet Earth. I don’t buy it.

DAVID: The elements necessary for life were born in the stars ( your countryman Fred Hoyle did buy it). I still believe God creates by evolving what He wants: universe, Earth, life. All are known patterns of logical development by God, the Creator.

dhw: Of course the elements were born in the stars, and that would be true of bottom up evolution through an eternally changing mass of materials. If your God exists, though, and if one believes in evolution, as we do, then he clearly chose evolution as his method! But you persist in leaving out the theory which is not logical: namely, that he specially designed every single non-Earth-related star and every single non-human related life form, lifestyle and natural wonder for the sole purpose of specially designing H. sapiens, and you have no idea why.

DAVID: Same old mantra. Remember, I don't question God's decisions. History tells us what He created, not why He did it that way. It is your concept of a humanized God that raises questions.

You don’t question your INTERPRETATION of his decisions, which is that everything he created was geared to the single purpose of designing H. sapiens. I offer several different interpretations, all of which you agree fit in perfectly with the history. Your only objection is that although they are comprehensible in terms of human logic, your interpretation is right, and so God cannot possibly think in what we humans regard as a logical way. How do you know that?

DAVID: My logical point is something or someone has to be eternal for were to be anything now.

dhw: Precisely, so what is the point in your saying that according to the BB theory the universe is not eternal? My logical point is that either there is an eternal God (your someone) or there is an eternal mass of materials (something).

DAVID: I agree that something or someone pre-existed this universe, but how did a 'mass of materials' create the complex rules of the universe by itself?

dhw: How can an inventively conscious mind, with the power to create a universe and all its laws, simply have existed for ever? If this astonishing, all-knowing and inexplicable mind can be your first cause, then so can the astonishing, ever changing and inexplicable mass of materials. The first offers top down evolution, and the second offers bottom up.

The mass of materials did not exist before the Big Bang. So how is there bottom up?

dhw: So apparently your God designed all the billions of heavenly bodies extant and extinct because every one of them was and is necessary to create and support life on Planet Earth. I don’t buy it.

DAVID: The elements necessary for life were born in the stars ( your countryman Fred Hoyle did buy it). I still believe God creates by evolving what He wants: universe, Earth, life. All are known patterns of logical development by God, the Creator.

dhw: Of course the elements were born in the stars, and that would be true of bottom up evolution through an eternally changing mass of materials. If your God exists, though, and if one believes in evolution, as we do, then he clearly chose evolution as his method! But you persist in leaving out the theory which is not logical: namely, that he specially designed every single non-Earth-related star and every single non-human related life form, lifestyle and natural wonder for the sole purpose of specially designing H. sapiens, and you have no idea why.

Same old mantra. Remember, I don't question God's decisions. History tells us what He created, not why He did it that way. It is your concept of a humanized God that raises questions.

DAVID: I do have a scientific reason; see above. And you want to make Him human in thought. You have a very narrow view of how a humanized God might have acted.

dhw: There is nothing scientific about the above anthropocentric theory, and it is absurd to call my view narrow since I have offered you several logical views of how your divine God “might have acted”, whereas you have only one, and you have no idea why he would have acted that way.

I don't question his decisions. Only you do.

dhw: Precisely, so what is the point in your saying that according to the BB theory the universe is not eternal? My logical point is that either there is an eternal God (your someone) or there is an eternal mass of materials (something).

DAVID: I agree that something or someone pre-existed this universe, but how did a 'mass of materials' create the complex rules of the universe by itself?

How can an inventively conscious mind, with the power to create a universe and all its laws, simply have existed for ever? If this astonishing, all-knowing and inexplicable mind can be your first cause, then so can the astonishing, ever changing and inexplicable mass of materials. The first offers top down evolution, and the second offers bottom up.

dhw: So apparently your God designed all the billions of heavenly bodies extant and extinct because every one of them was and is necessary to create and support life on Planet Earth. I don’t buy it.

DAVID: The elements necessary for life were born in the stars ( your countryman Fred Hoyle did buy it). I still believe God creates by evolving what He wants: universe, Earth, life. All are known patterns of logical development by God, the Creator.

Of course the elements were born in the stars, and that would be true of bottom up evolution through an eternally changing mass of materials. If your God exists, though, and if one believes in evolution, as we do, then he clearly chose evolution as his method! But you persist in leaving out the theory which is not logical: namely, that he specially designed every single non-Earth-related star and every single non-human related life form, lifestyle and natural wonder for the sole purpose of specially designing H. sapiens, and you have no idea why.

DAVID: I do have a scientific reason; see above. And you want to make Him human in thought. You have a very narrow view of how a humanized God might have acted.

There is nothing scientific about the above anthropocentric theory, and it is absurd to call my view narrow since I have offered you several logical views of how your divine God “might have acted”, whereas you have only one, and you have no idea why he would have acted that way.

DAVID: My logical point is something or someone has to be eternal for were to be anything now.

dhw: Precisely, so what is the point in your saying that according to the BB theory the universe is not eternal? My logical point is that either there is an eternal God (your someone) or there is an eternal mass of materials (something).

I agree that something or someone pre-existed this universe, but how did a 'mass of materials' create the complex rules of the universe by itself?

DAVID: Second, we find the Earth is most unusual among planets, and we know it supports life. Further [..] you are still touting the idea of why did God bother to do so much a forehand, still asking for direct creation, not supported by history.

dhw: What is not supported by history is your theory that your always-in-control God’s one and only purpose was to create H. sapiens! […] Now you tell us that his way of specially designing the planet that would support life to fulfil his one and only purpose was to specially design billions of heavenly bodies extant and extinct, including the “cold and molecular shells”, that have no known relevance whatsoever to the support of life.

DAVID: Those cold shells are the same as the way stars explode and fill the universe with the element molecules necessary for life.

dhw: So apparently your God designed all the billions of heavenly bodies extant and extinct because every one of them was and is necessary to create and support life on Planet Earth. I don’t buy it.

The elements necessary for life were born in the stars ( your countryman Fred Hoyle did buy it). I still believe God creates by evolving what He wants: universe, Earth, life. All are known patterns of logical development by God, the Creator

dhw: Your claim that he “preferred” to do it that way does not provide even a smidgen of explanation. So maybe he had a different purpose, or maybe he isn’t always in control, or chooses not to be always in control. […]

DAVID: I view your theism as constantly colored with a humanistic God. As the creator what we see in our reality is what He did. He had to prefer it. Your theistic hat is quite askew.

dhw: You have no idea why your God would have chosen to create billions of non-Earths and billions of non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders when all he wanted to design was Planet Earth and H. sapiens. But you defend this totally illogical theory by telling us that any logical explanation of our reality can’t be right, because God is not human!

I do have a scientific reason; see above. And you want to make Him human in thought. You have a very narrow view of how a humanized God might have acted.

DAVID: First, according to Big Bang theory the universe is not eternal.

dhw: But according to you, your God is, and even if the BB theory is true, we have no idea what preceded the BB, so the theory of an eternally and infinitely changing mass of materials is no more and no less feasible or provable than your theory of an eternal God.

DAVID: My logical point is something or someone has to be eternal for were to be anything now.

Precisely, so what is the point in your saying that according to the BB theory the universe is not eternal? My logical point is that either there is an eternal God (your someone) or there is an eternal mass of materials (something).

DAVID: Second, we find the Earth is most unusual among planets, and we know it supports life. Further [..] you are still touting the idea of why did God bother to do so much a forehand, still asking for direct creation, not supported by history.

dhw: What is not supported by history is your theory that your always-in-control God’s one and only purpose was to create H. sapiens! […] Now you tell us that his way of specially designing the planet that would support life to fulfil his one and only purpose was to specially design billions of heavenly bodies extant and extinct, including the “cold and molecular shells”, that have no known relevance whatsoever to the support of life.

DAVID: Those cold shells are the same as the way stars explode and fill the universe with the element molecules necessary for life.

So apparently your God designed all the billions of heavenly bodies extant and extinct because every one of them was and is necessary to create and support life on Planet Earth. I don’t buy it.

dhw: Your claim that he “preferred” to do it that way does not provide even a smidgen of explanation. So maybe he had a different purpose, or maybe he isn’t always in control, or chooses not to be always in control. […]

DAVID: I view your theism as constantly colored with a humanistic God. As the creator what we see in our reality is what He did. He had to prefer it. Your theistic hat is quite askew.

You have no idea why your God would have chosen to create billions of non-Earths and billions of non-human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders when all he wanted to design was Planet Earth and H. sapiens. But you defend this totally illogical theory by telling us that any logical explanation of our reality can’t be right, because God is not human!

DAVID: I view this as God at work evolving the universe for life to exist.

dhw: But then the question arises as to why your always-in-control God has created all the “cold and molecular” shells, and why there are so many planets that appear to be unoccupied – indeed as far as we know, ours is the only planet that IS occupied. If we think of the universe as an eternally and infinitely changing mass of materials, it is not that difficult to conceive of the “coincidence” eventually happening. (David’s bold)

DAVID: First, according to Big Bang theory the universe is not eternal.

dhw: But according to you, your God is, and even if the BB theory is true, we have no idea what preceded the BB, so the theory of an eternally and infinitely changing mass of materials is no more and no less feasible or provable than your theory of an eternal God.

My logical point is something or someone has to be eternal for were to be anything now.

DAVID: Second, we find the Earth is most unusual among planets, and we know it supports life. Since I view God as preferring to evolve his creations, the idea of the article makes lots of sense. Further, note the bold, you are still touting the idea of why did God bother to do so much a forehand, still asking for direct creation, not supported by history.

dhw: What is not supported by history is your theory that your always-in-control God’s one and only purpose was to create H. sapiens! On other threads you admit that you have no idea why he chose not to fulfil that purpose for 3.X billion years and therefore had to specially design all the non-human forms. Now you tell us that his way of specially designing the planet that would support life to fulfil his one and only purpose was to specially design billions of heavenly bodies extant and extinct, including the “cold and molecular shells”, that have no known relevance whatsoever to the support of life.

Those cold shells are the same as the way stars explode and fill the universe with the element molecules necessary for life

dhw: Your claim that he “preferred” to do it that way does not provide even a smidgen of explanation. So maybe he had a different purpose, or maybe he isn’t always in control, or chooses not to be always in control. Or of course, maybe he was never even there – but for the purposes of our discussion, I am wearing my theist hat and simply pointing out the illogicality of your theistic theory and offering theistic counter-proposals which at least provide a more logical explanation than yours for the history.

I view your theism as constantly colored with a humanistic God. As the creator what we see in our reality is what He did. He had to prefer it. Your theistic hat is quite askew.

dhw: How many of our planets does he think are occupied?

"'The shells are not uniform. Most are likely to be cold and molecular. They disintegrate into protruding fingers and so lose their integrity. In contrast, warm atomic shells remain intact. This provides vital clues about how carbon and other materials are transferred and reused within our universe bbbOur civilization happens to exist when the generation of recycled material is at its highest. That is probably no coincidence.'" (DAVID’s bold)

DAVID: I view this as God at work evolving the universe for life to exist.

dhw: But then the question arises as to why your always-in-control God has created all the “cold and molecular” shells, and why there are so many planets that appear to be unoccupied – indeed as far as we know, ours is the only planet that IS occupied. If we think of the universe as an eternally and infinitely changing mass of materials, it is not that difficult to conceive of the “coincidence” eventually happening. (David’s bold)

DAVID: First, according to Big Bang theory the universe is not eternal.

But according to you, your God is, and even if the BB theory is true, we have no idea what preceded the BB, so the theory of an eternally and infinitely changing mass of materials is no more and no less feasible or provable than your theory of an eternal God.

DAVID: Second, we find the Earth is most unusual among planets, and we know it supports life. Since I view God as preferring to evolve his creations, the idea of the article makes lots of sense. Further, note the bold, you are still touting the idea of why did God bother to do so much a forehand, still asking for direct creation, not supported by history.

What is not supported by history is your theory that your always-in-control God’s one and only purpose was to create H. sapiens! On other threads you admit that you have no idea why he chose not to fulfil that purpose for 3.X billion years and therefore had to specially design all the non-human forms. Now you tell us that his way of specially designing the planet that would support life to fulfil his one and only purpose was to specially design billions of heavenly bodies extant and extinct, including the “cold and molecular shells”, that have no known relevance whatsoever to the support of life. Your claim that he “preferred” to do it that way does not provide even a smidgen of explanation. So maybe he had a different purpose, or maybe he isn’t always in control, or chooses not to be always in control. Or of course, maybe he was never even there – but for the purposes of our discussion, I am wearing my theist hat and simply pointing out the illogicality of your theistic theory and offering theistic counter-proposals which at least provide a more logical explanation than yours for the history.

QUOTES: The study revealed how the gas and energy expelled by stars are returned to the universe, and in what forms. It found that the elements produced by dying stars are transferred through a process of fragmentation and recycled into new stars and planets.

"Professor Smith said: "Initially, we were perplexed by the results of our simulations. We needed to understand what happens to the expelled shells from dying red giants. We proposed that the shells must be temporary, as if they stayed intact life could not exist in our universe and our planets would be unoccupied. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: How many of our planets does he think are occupied?

"'The shells are not uniform. Most are likely to be cold and molecular. They disintegrate into protruding fingers and so lose their integrity. In contrast, warm atomic shells remain intact. This provides vital clues about how carbon and other materials are transferred and reused within our universe Our civilization happens to exist when the generation of recycled material is at its highest. That is probably no coincidence.'" (DAVID’s bold)

DAVID: I view this as God at work evolving the universe for life to exist.

dhw: But then the question arises as to why your always-in-control God has created all the “cold and molecular” shells, and why there are so many planets that appear to be unoccupied – indeed as far as we know, ours is the only planet that IS occupied. If we think of the universe as an eternally and infinitely changing mass of materials, it is not that difficult to conceive of the “coincidence” eventually happening.

First, according to Big Bang theory the universe is not eternal. Second, we find the Earth is most unusual among planets, and we know it supports life. Since I view God as preferring to evolve his creations, the idea of the article makes lots of sense. Further, note the bold, you are still touting the idea of why did God bother to do so much a forehand, still asking for direct creation, not supported by history.

"Professor Smith said: "Initially, we were perplexed by the results of our simulations. We needed to understand what happens to the expelled shells from dying red giants. We proposed that the shells must be temporary, as if they stayed intact life could not exist in our universe and our planets would be unoccupied. (dhw’s bold)

How many of our planets does he think are occupied?

"'The shells are not uniform. Most are likely to be cold and molecular. They disintegrate into protruding fingers and so lose their integrity. In contrast, warm atomic shells remain intact. This provides vital clues about how carbon and other materials are transferred and reused within our universe Our civilization happens to exist when the generation of recycled material is at its highest. That is probably no coincidence.'" (DAVID’s bold)

DAVID: I view this as God at work evolving the universe for life to exist.

But then the question arises as to why your always-in-control God has created all the “cold and molecular” shells, and why there are so many planets that appear to be unoccupied – indeed as far as we know, ours is the only planet that IS occupied. If we think of the universe as an eternally and infinitely changing mass of materials, it is not that difficult to conceive of the “coincidence” eventually happening.

https://phys.org/news/2019-09-reveals-vital-clues-recycling-evolution.html

"New research by Kent astrophysicists reveals vital clues about the role recycling plays in the formation of life in our universe.

***

:Scientists have long known that the materials that make up human life were not present during the beginnings of the universe. Elements such as carbon and oxygen form deep inside stars and are released when the stars explode. What has not been clear is what happens to these materials in the vast majority of stars which do not explode and how they are then extracted to contribute to the development of new planets and biospheres.

***

"For the first time, the physicists simulated the detailed formation of Protoplanetary nebula. These are astronomical objects that develop during a star's late evolution. They modeled the formation of the shell of materials that is released as the star ages. These shells form planetary nebulae, or ring-shaped clouds of gas and dust, which are visible in the night sky.
The study revealed how the gas and energy expelled by stars are returned to the universe, and in what forms. It found that the elements produced by dying stars are transferred through a process of fragmentation and recycled into new stars and planets.

"Professor Smith said: "Initially, we were perplexed by the results of our simulations. We needed to understand what happens to the expelled shells from dying red giants. We proposed that the shells must be temporary, as if they stayed intact life could not exist in our universe and our planets would be unoccupied.

"'The shells are not uniform. Most are likely to be cold and molecular. They disintegrate into protruding fingers and so lose their integrity. In contrast, warm atomic shells remain intact. This provides vital clues about how carbon and other materials are transferred and reused within our universe. Our civilization happens to exist when the generation of recycled material is at its highest. That is probably no coincidence.'" (my bold)

Comment: I view this as God at work evolving the universe for life to exist.

TONY: The theory isn't simply dismissed because they try to preclude a designer. The theory is dismissed because there are some very significant scientific gaps in it and some very unscientific reasoning.

By twisting I don't mean genuine scientific problems but the blanket approach outlined above.

DHW: I don’t know why you think epigenetics runs counter to the theory of common descent, since it only explains how existing organs can make changes to themselves. As regards genes, I’m surprised that similar (or the same) genes preclude relationship. Why? I’d have thought it was the similarity or the sameness that supported common descent.

TONY: Epigenetics does NOT add new information to DNA, meaning it can not explain an increase in complexity of information.

Nothing explains the innovations that lead to new “root types”. That does not mean that epigenetics runs counter to common descent.

David: Epigenetics can change the expression of a gene, which means methylation brings out other existing information which the gene contains. This is where I see God's pre-planning.

TONY: Precisely. The epigenetic messages act as inputs to the genetic function, thus changing the genes expression(output). Of course, this output is a spatially/chemically precise response, much like the response from a function in a computer program. This response is then forward on to the next generation… etc.

Thank you for this clear account of how epigenetics works. But none of it runs counter to common descent.

TONY: As regards the genes, the very things that Darwin claims would lead to innovation, i.e. genetic isolation, means that genetic descent should ONLY happen PRIOR to genetic isolation.

Why? The theory is that life began with single cells which eventually assembled (various theories as to how) into multicellular organisms, and all known forms of life arose from this basis. Life forms spread. Different environments demand or allow for different variations. Over hundreds of millions of years, of course different types became specific to their particular environments - especially with land masses splitting up - and as these environments changed, more and more variants appeared. By then, “genetic isolation” was inevitable, but the original basis did not disappear, as evidenced by the similarity of the genes that did not change. David calls this basis his God’s blueprint.

DHW: So did he control the environment or not? It’s true that organisms can change an environment, but so can other factors like catastrophes (e.g. Chixculub), movements in the earth’s crust, floods, desertification...Some of these may also have been due to organismal activity, but what about those that were not?

TONY: Some, like a meteor strike, wouldn't have wiped out life on earth, and the microbes that processed the environment would have continued to do so, albeit after suffering a setback.

Environmental change doesn’t have to be global. Local events may trigger changes, and the new organisms may then spread further afield.

TONY: "Time and unforseen circumstances..." For the things that happened that were part of the Earth's natural cycles (Ice Ages/flooding/desertification/etc) it is perfectly reasonable to assume that those were understood potentials and had contingencies planned for...

Interesting. You seem to be saying that there were circumstances unforeseen by your God. That’s fine with me: your God setting up a mechanism to produce the unforeseen is precisely the theistic hypothesis I have suggested for evolution (though allowing for dabbles). See below for planning.

TONY: ...and then repeated this process at each new stage, driving the development of the environment using the organisms natural biological processes….

DHW: Does this mean he programmed organisms to create new environments, then created and programmed new root types to change environments again, then created and programmed new root types to change environments again, and so on? Just checking.

TONY: Yes. Earths environments were processed through flora, fauna, bacterial life, and natural processes over and over, that is the only logical way to ensure homeostasis[…}

I take it “yes” means God did programme all the new environments, global and local. I find it as hard to imagine a programme that sets them all up for billions of years as to imagine a programme that supplies each root type with every variant and every solution to every problem except the last (i.e. the one leading to extinction). But in fairness to you and David, I find all our hypotheses hard to believe. Hence my agnosticism!

dhw: I’d be interested to know if Tony thinks his God controls the environment, and if he specially created root types in advance of or in response to environmental change.

TONY: It would most likely need to be at cusps.

Fair enough: if he programmed the changes and created new root types to suit them, he would certainly have chosen the best moment (cusp) to do it.