God doesn't know Chemistry?

Question

If God made us from dust why aren't we Silicon based life? Silicon can bond as much as carbon but does not do so in practice because additional outershells do not form covalent bonds as strong as the smaller ones. If God wanted to make us Carbon based shouldn't the bible say we were made from oil or coal? If God could transmute the elements why didn't he just make us out of air? Your thoughts please!

This is prompted by a question by a mentally challenged creationist (isn't that like a night where the sun isn't shining) question found here: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071007052927AAFYocs&r=w#E7VrHUbACEnx9UUkfC_B

"You should be informing God of His deficiencies, none of us can do anything about it. I am sure He would appologize for His incompentencies." I don't think an apology is sufficient - Isn't no god better than a stupid god?

Ray? Clay is also mostly Silicon.

sweetheeb, yours is an opinion I can respect - if not agree with.

Answer 1

This is probably way beyond your garden variety creationist's scope, but...

The building blocks of biopolymers like proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, etc., are all chiral monomers. That is to say, they have a right-handed version and a left-handed version, and only one of those two versions is used in most organisms. You can make proteins out of d-amino acids, for example, but there aren't any organisms that I am aware of that would be able to use or digest them.

One hypothesis of abiogenesis posits that certain reactive clays functioned as surface catalysis to take achiral "primordial soup" molecules like ammonia, methane, water, carbon monoxide, and so on, and induce the synthesis of only one version of the aforementioned monomers. Unlike a catalysis that is dissolved in a reaction solution, a surface catalyst remains a solid and physically limits the ways in which a reaction can take place, thus resulting in only one stereoisomer.

If I were a creationist (which I'm not), and I wanted to make an intelligent argument (which I have yet to observe from that camp), this is the kind of argument I would make for us "coming from dust." Of course, using the dust (clay) to catalyze chemical reactions, eventually leading to biomolecules and on to unicellular organisms kind of defeats the purpose of the usual creationist position. I've always wondered why they insist on the hocus-pocus method of creation. If they argued instead that God set up the conditions favorable to biomolecule synthesis and guided the development of life through the evolutionary process, they'd have a much more defensible position.

Answer 2

Wow...I answered that question too...and man does that lady sadden me...I think my IQ level has went down actually...But to answer your question (with a semi-theistic spin to it, I won't say, "God is not real" just for the sake of argument) that God is an alchemist ((Like Full Metal Alchemist...love that show)) and he made silicon into carbon...he's God..he can do whatever he wants...back before the Flood...the ground was Carbon-based so PHHT!!! :P OR the dirt in Heaven is Carbon-based....You can't question God!!!! Now then...for the more atheistic answer....back then no one knew what Carbon or Silicon was...so when they made up the stories, they just said we were mad from clay, or mud, or dust...or whatever it says. And the ones who say that God made it easier for them...wow...ignorance is indeed bliss, eh?

Answer 3

Seems to me the idea being conveyed in the Bible is that the human body is made up of the materials found on the surface of the ground (the dust), and not from the core of the earth.

Oxygen, being the most abundant element on the earth’s crust or on the ground, makes up 65 percent of the human body, and carbon, also abundant on the top soil of the ground, is 18 percent, and hydrogen is 10 percent.

The 59 elements found in the human body are all found on
the earths crust and when a dead body decomposes these
elements return to the earth. (Dust to dust as the Bible puts it).

What the Bible says seems to perfectly match the scientific composition (and decomposition) of a human body so I don't know why anyone has a problem with that or feels that it is not what happens?

Answer 4

Good call. And with all that silicon, you know the women would be stacked. Kidding, not all that serious here.
You're right, we'd be a silicon based life-form if he made us from sand or clay.
But you would have to be daft to believe that we could have been made from coal or oil. See, here's where you don't understand chemistry.
Coal, and Oil come from dead organic life millions of years after they have died and decayed. How can God make something out of something that can't quite exist yet?

Answer 5

God didn't make us from dust. Just think from where did the dust come?We were made out of energy particles & how did these energy particles arise is another question.
Energy particles came from the compressive surrounding pressure force of space or sooniya, which exists always & its everywhere.
Sooniya or space is not a thing which hasn't anything.It's almighty or omnipotent, cos the whole universe is floating in it.
Energy particles are the fundamental particles and the building blocks of the universe, from which the 5 elements were fomed.So you can't say that God doesn't know chemistry.

Answer 6

Did you really expect creationists to know the difference between carbon and silicon?

Maybe God dropped a few protons and neutrons while making man.

Answer 7

If we just evolved why wasn't silicon used?
How could the Bible say we were made from coal or oil when they did not exist yet?
So the fact that we are carbon based points out that Divine intervention was required for life as we know it to exist. For as you point out silicon should have been the element used if this were but an accident.

Answer 8

Since that particular creation myth traces back to a pre-literate people, I'd take it with several grains of salt. Personally I think He went "ZAP" and there was matter and energy and the Big Bang and He set up the Laws of Physics and then let matter and energy, time and space each do its own thing, alone and in concert, and eventually He got us. Admittedly, not that big a bargain....unless you happen to be God and crazy mad in love with your creation. (See Revelation, last chapter)

Answer 9

Unfortunately, the rampant xtian blindness and hostility toward anything science based leads to sheer stupidity as well as the inability to see that science does not oppose Gd if Gd IS the scientist ie he who created using what we term science.

Answer 10

God does not know astronomy or much about alot of things, according to the Bible.