I get suspicious when seemingly impossible events aren't questioned. In my years of studying the origins question I've come across numerous incidents where organisms were reported to have survived millions of years without decomposing. Here's another example.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'When in Quttinirpaaq National Park in the Canadian Arctic, Ohio State University Earth scientist Joel Barker initially spotted some pieces of dead trees scattered on the barren ground near a glacier. Immediately, he knew he had found something akin to a looking glass peering into the Arctic's ecological past. [1.]
2. 'The Hazen Plateau on Ellesmere Island, a polar desert where winter temperatures can currently dip down to 50 below zero, is currently too cold and dry to support forests; the only living trees that now dot the park's desolate landscape are dwarf willows. Therefore, the pieces of wood must have come from trees that lived millions of years ago, when the Arctic was still warm enough to support forests.'
- Therefore?
As the imagined inflation that happened shortly after the big bang violates all we know about physics... so this story violates what we know about chemistry and decomposition. We know that wood doesn't last even remotely close to millions of years. Don't we?
What's so interesting to me about this story is that no one (apparently) even wondered how this was possible. If they did it's not mentioned in the article. Isn't 'observing' an impossibility interesting? You'd think so. (Maybe people have become so used to seeing the impossible, it's no longer a big deal. I wonder how long it will take for scientists to start questioning these dates.
3. 'The trees probably died in a landslide, as indicated by deposits still present on surrounding material. The killing landslide toppled and engulfed the trees quickly enough to seal them from oxygen and to prevent water from circulating through. The result: The remaining pieces of dead trees are now in a perfectly preserved mummified state, with much of their organic material still intact.'
4. 'In fact, the organic material in the dead trees is so well preserved that the wood can still burn, and even the most delicate tree structures, such as leaves, are present. "The dead trees look just like the dried-out dead wood lying outside now," said Barker.
- Don't forget that the temperature in the area (if this is truly where the trees came from) was much warmer when the trees were living. So how come so little decomposition in millions of years? Apparently there are things you can't question. (Not if you want a job or grant money at any rate.)
Everywhere you go you see that evolutionists need huge amounts of time to even begin to make the theory work. This means banks of time have to be manufactured. (In a similar way the inflation theory was invented to save Big Bang cosmology.) When all this manufactured time implodes all the sciences will have to be radically reworked. It would appear that no one even wants to contemplate such a thing... but if I'm right, such a 'revolution' is in the works. (Cue the music; "Time, the final frontier...'')
Not in my life time I don't suppose.
Notes;
1. Back to the future with mummified trees; Physorg March 17, 2011 By Lily Whiteman
2. Definition of organic matter;
'Organic matter (or organic material) is matter that has come from a once-living organism; is capable of decay, or the product of decay; or is composed of organic compounds. The definition of organic matter varies upon the subject it is being used for.
3. In my opinion the long ages our evolutionary textbooks present us with is just as imaginary as Darwin's tree of life; both were manufactured by theory and speculation. I predict that one day they'll both go up in smoke.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
The invention of the caveman; and his subsequent demise
The beast like Neanderthal was one of the first myth like inventions of the Darwinists. He became as iconic and well known as Ronald McDonald, finding his way into every nook and cranny of modern culture. Now evolutionists are admitting this image was a fabrication.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'A complete reversal of thinking about Neanderthals has been going on for some time now. PhysOrg added more fuel to the idea that Neanderthals were not “dimwitted brutes as often portrayed,” but smart, organized and successful, able to control use of fire for 400,000 years in the evolutionary timescale. [1.]
- This sentence should read, ''not the dimwitted brutes as often portrayed by evolutionists." Biblical creationists have (for the most part) denied the existence of any dimwitted brutes in the human lineage. The bible knows nothing of such creatures (or should I say caricatures). It has been Darwinists who have invented the beetle browed idiot caveman, and given him an imaginary history and lifestyle. (Maybe reparations are in order.)
The people who survived the first centuries after the Noahic flood deserve our greatest admiration, and don't deserve all the belittling (and dehumanizing) comments made about them by Darwinians.
2. 'In fact, “the oldest traces of human presence in Europe date to more than 1 million years ago,” it said. That’s 600,000 cold winters without fire. No one seemed to be questioning the dates.' [1.]
- This story just screams refutation of these 'evolutionary' dates. How can anyone think people survived freezing winters without fire? How can anyone think they could do this for 600,000 years. That 'Munch' like howling you hear are the voices of our ancestors... wondering how we can be so stupid as to accept these fabricated dates, these utterly absurd timelines. [3.]
Doesn't anyone in the evolutionary camp find these dates just a little staggering... just a little impossible?
3. 'The simplest explanation is that there was no habitual use of fire by early humans prior to roughly 400,000 years ago, indicating that fire was not an essential component of the behavior of the first occupants of Europe's northern latitudes, said Roebroeks. "It is difficult to imagine these people occupying very cold climates without fire, yet this seems to be the case." [2.]
- Is that the simplest explanation? Apparently it doesn't matter that (as far as we know) it's impossible. If the impossible can't refute these Darwinian time scales what can?
I have a different view than the author. I don't find this difficult to imagine, I find it impossible to imagine. (Maybe the author of this comment would like to try it for a ten years or so... or a few... or even one.)
4. 'Neanderthals, like other early humans, created and used a unique potpourri of stone tools, evidence that they were the ancient inhabitants of particular sites in Europe.' [2.]
- The bible denies that there were various 'races' of humans. It speaks of only one race; that all humans who have ever lived had a single parent origin. I agree with those who think that these classifications into several 'human' races are arbitrary... the result of ignorance, bias and a false time scale.
5. 'According to Villa, one of the most spectacular uses of fire by Neanderthals was in the production of a sticky liquid called pitch from the bark of birch trees that was used by Neanderthals to haft, or fit wooden shafts on, stone tools. Since the only way to create pitch from the trees is to burn bark peels in the absence of air, archaeologists surmise Neanderthals dug holes in the ground, inserted birch bark peels, lit them and covered the hole tightly with stones to block incoming air.
"This means Neanderthals were not only able to use naturally occurring adhesive gums as part of their daily lives, they were actually able to manufacture their own," Villa said. "For those who say Neanderthals did not have elevated mental capacities, I think this is good evidence to the contrary." [2.]
- How is it people as bright as this needed 800,000 years to invent agriculture and to learn to ride the horse. That makes no sense to me.
Notes;
1. Surprises in Science Never End Creation/Evolution Headlines 03/14/2011
March 14, 2011 — In a perfect world of scientific knowledge, scientists would understand everything and be able to predict everything according to their best theories. The number of surprises that continue to turn up, however, show that we remain far from that perfect world.
2. Neanderthals were nifty at controlling fire - Physorg
3. 'The Scream (Norwegian: Skrik; created in 1893–1910) is the title of expressionist paintings and prints in a series by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, showing an agonized figure against a blood red sky. - Wikipedia
Quotes and comments;
1. 'A complete reversal of thinking about Neanderthals has been going on for some time now. PhysOrg added more fuel to the idea that Neanderthals were not “dimwitted brutes as often portrayed,” but smart, organized and successful, able to control use of fire for 400,000 years in the evolutionary timescale. [1.]
- This sentence should read, ''not the dimwitted brutes as often portrayed by evolutionists." Biblical creationists have (for the most part) denied the existence of any dimwitted brutes in the human lineage. The bible knows nothing of such creatures (or should I say caricatures). It has been Darwinists who have invented the beetle browed idiot caveman, and given him an imaginary history and lifestyle. (Maybe reparations are in order.)
The people who survived the first centuries after the Noahic flood deserve our greatest admiration, and don't deserve all the belittling (and dehumanizing) comments made about them by Darwinians.
2. 'In fact, “the oldest traces of human presence in Europe date to more than 1 million years ago,” it said. That’s 600,000 cold winters without fire. No one seemed to be questioning the dates.' [1.]
- This story just screams refutation of these 'evolutionary' dates. How can anyone think people survived freezing winters without fire? How can anyone think they could do this for 600,000 years. That 'Munch' like howling you hear are the voices of our ancestors... wondering how we can be so stupid as to accept these fabricated dates, these utterly absurd timelines. [3.]
Doesn't anyone in the evolutionary camp find these dates just a little staggering... just a little impossible?
3. 'The simplest explanation is that there was no habitual use of fire by early humans prior to roughly 400,000 years ago, indicating that fire was not an essential component of the behavior of the first occupants of Europe's northern latitudes, said Roebroeks. "It is difficult to imagine these people occupying very cold climates without fire, yet this seems to be the case." [2.]
- Is that the simplest explanation? Apparently it doesn't matter that (as far as we know) it's impossible. If the impossible can't refute these Darwinian time scales what can?
I have a different view than the author. I don't find this difficult to imagine, I find it impossible to imagine. (Maybe the author of this comment would like to try it for a ten years or so... or a few... or even one.)
4. 'Neanderthals, like other early humans, created and used a unique potpourri of stone tools, evidence that they were the ancient inhabitants of particular sites in Europe.' [2.]
- The bible denies that there were various 'races' of humans. It speaks of only one race; that all humans who have ever lived had a single parent origin. I agree with those who think that these classifications into several 'human' races are arbitrary... the result of ignorance, bias and a false time scale.
5. 'According to Villa, one of the most spectacular uses of fire by Neanderthals was in the production of a sticky liquid called pitch from the bark of birch trees that was used by Neanderthals to haft, or fit wooden shafts on, stone tools. Since the only way to create pitch from the trees is to burn bark peels in the absence of air, archaeologists surmise Neanderthals dug holes in the ground, inserted birch bark peels, lit them and covered the hole tightly with stones to block incoming air.
"This means Neanderthals were not only able to use naturally occurring adhesive gums as part of their daily lives, they were actually able to manufacture their own," Villa said. "For those who say Neanderthals did not have elevated mental capacities, I think this is good evidence to the contrary." [2.]
- How is it people as bright as this needed 800,000 years to invent agriculture and to learn to ride the horse. That makes no sense to me.
Notes;
1. Surprises in Science Never End Creation/Evolution Headlines 03/14/2011
March 14, 2011 — In a perfect world of scientific knowledge, scientists would understand everything and be able to predict everything according to their best theories. The number of surprises that continue to turn up, however, show that we remain far from that perfect world.
2. Neanderthals were nifty at controlling fire - Physorg
3. 'The Scream (Norwegian: Skrik; created in 1893–1910) is the title of expressionist paintings and prints in a series by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, showing an agonized figure against a blood red sky. - Wikipedia
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Don't tell the evolutionists
In a revealing article recently, John Horgan admitted that scientists don't have a clue how life originated on this planet.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'Dennis Overbye just wrote a status report for The New York Times on research into life's origin, based on a conference on the topic at Arizona State University. Geologists, chemists, astronomers and biologists are as stumped as ever by the riddle of life. [1.]
- The implication of this admission is that evolutionary theory can't be a fact; i.e. if we don't know how it all began. At best it can be a partial, incomplete theory. A theory is only as good as its basic assumptions. In this case grand theory of Evolution is built on a foundation of sand... which is sprinkled lightly over a void.
2. 'Researchers have found evidence of microbial life dating back 3.5 billion years ago, suggesting that life emerged fairly quickly—"like Athena springing from the head of Zeus," as one scientist quoted by Overbye put it.' [1.]
- That's not a bad symbol for the source of creation being an intelligent, self-aware mind.
3. 'The RNA world is so dissatisfying that some frustrated scientists are resorting to much more far out—literally—speculation. The most startling revelation in Overbye's article is that scientists have resuscitated a proposal once floated by Crick. Dissatisfied with conventional theories of life's beginning, Crick conjectured that aliens came to Earth in a spaceship and planted the seeds of life here billions of years ago. This notion is called directed panspermia. In less dramatic versions of panspermia, microbes arrived on our planet via asteroids, comets or meteorites, or drifted down like confetti.' [1.]
- Panspermia is about as close as some people get to admitting the answer might be God. [see my post 'Panspermian spaceships from on high']
4. 'Of course, panspermia theories merely push the problem of life's origin into outer space. If life didn’t begin here, how did it begin out there? Creationists are no doubt thrilled that origin-of-life research has reached such an impasse (see for example the screed "Darwinism Refuted," which cites my 1991 article), but they shouldn't be. Their explanations suffer from the same flaw: What created the divine Creator? And at least scientists are making an honest effort to solve life's mystery instead of blaming it all on God.' [1.]
- Horgan doesn't seem to understand that the god of the bible is eternal. (Either that or he's forgotten.) You can't give an answer to the question what created God, if God wasn't created; if God didn't have a beginning. (I fail to see how a what can create a who in any event.)
Horgan is projecting his own feelings onto creationists in this tattered shred of an article. I'm in no way 'thrilled' that OOL research has gotten nowhere. It's what I expect. (In fact it's why I became a creationist in the first place.)
He claims 'scientists' are at least making an honest effort at solving the mystery of origins. Well; maybe some are, but some certainly aren't; aren't being honest at all. I suspect many people see the implications of this failure, and refuse to accept the evidence, refuse to follow the evidence.
We have a problem here with the word mystery. There is the 'mystery' of a solvable question, and the mystery of an unsolvable problem. Most materialists think the Origins issue is a solvable problem, while most creationists think it is an unsolvable problem; ie. a true mystery not a pseudo mystery. (Unsolvable in the sense we can't know how the creation took place.)
It's popular in our day (in our culture) to deny that mystery is possible. The pretense behind scientism is the claim nothing is beyond human understanding... that there cannot be real mystery in the universe. We might call this secular optimism or something else, but it's a denial of mystery. (It is I think a sign of a still confident civilization... confident at least in this respect.) We might also call it arrogance or vanity. People will have different views.
Mystery can be frustrating... the more time and effort you put into answering a question, the more importance you attach to it, the more you want to answer it, the more you will find 'mystery' unsatisfying and frustrating. (Some of us feel driven to find answers to questions that will no doubt remain mysteries... at least for us, but maybe forever.)
In the comments to the article a lot of people were upset with Horgan for making this admission. I got the feeling reading them that they wanted to say ''don't tell the evolutionists'' i.e. don't make it known to our less well informed comrades that there's a real problem here... i.e. let's all pretend (e.g. Eugenie Scott) that there are no problems with the grand theory.
Summary;
Speaking of God Job says, "Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number.'' - Job; 9:10 [3.]
Notes;
1. Pssst! Don't tell the creationists, but scientists don't have a clue how life began - By John Horgan [Feb 28, 2011]
2. 'John Horgan, in his book The End of Science, reports that Stanley Miller viewed the theories subsequently put forward regarding the origin of life as quite meaningless.
"In fact, almost 40 years after his original experiment, Miller told me that solving the riddle of the origin of life had turned out to be more difficult than he or anyone else had envisioned… Miller seemed unimpressed with any of the current proposals on the origin of life, referring to them as "nonsense" or "paper chemistry." He was so contemptuous of some hypotheses that, when I asked his opinion of them, he merely shook his head, sighed deeply, and snickered-as if overcome by the folly of humanity. Stuart Kauffman's theory of autocatalysis fell into this category. "Running equations through a computer does not constitute an experiment," Miller sniffed. Miller acknowledged that scientists may never know precisely where and when life emerged.'' - Horgan, John, The End of Science, 1996, p. 139 [source unknown]
3. Gill's commentary;
'Which doth great things past finding out,.... In heaven and earth; great as to quantity and quality, not to be thoroughly searched out so as to tell their numbers, nor explain and express the nature of them to the full; even what he has done, and does in creation, providence, and grace...'
Quotes and comments;
1. 'Dennis Overbye just wrote a status report for The New York Times on research into life's origin, based on a conference on the topic at Arizona State University. Geologists, chemists, astronomers and biologists are as stumped as ever by the riddle of life. [1.]
- The implication of this admission is that evolutionary theory can't be a fact; i.e. if we don't know how it all began. At best it can be a partial, incomplete theory. A theory is only as good as its basic assumptions. In this case grand theory of Evolution is built on a foundation of sand... which is sprinkled lightly over a void.
2. 'Researchers have found evidence of microbial life dating back 3.5 billion years ago, suggesting that life emerged fairly quickly—"like Athena springing from the head of Zeus," as one scientist quoted by Overbye put it.' [1.]
- That's not a bad symbol for the source of creation being an intelligent, self-aware mind.
3. 'The RNA world is so dissatisfying that some frustrated scientists are resorting to much more far out—literally—speculation. The most startling revelation in Overbye's article is that scientists have resuscitated a proposal once floated by Crick. Dissatisfied with conventional theories of life's beginning, Crick conjectured that aliens came to Earth in a spaceship and planted the seeds of life here billions of years ago. This notion is called directed panspermia. In less dramatic versions of panspermia, microbes arrived on our planet via asteroids, comets or meteorites, or drifted down like confetti.' [1.]
- Panspermia is about as close as some people get to admitting the answer might be God. [see my post 'Panspermian spaceships from on high']
4. 'Of course, panspermia theories merely push the problem of life's origin into outer space. If life didn’t begin here, how did it begin out there? Creationists are no doubt thrilled that origin-of-life research has reached such an impasse (see for example the screed "Darwinism Refuted," which cites my 1991 article), but they shouldn't be. Their explanations suffer from the same flaw: What created the divine Creator? And at least scientists are making an honest effort to solve life's mystery instead of blaming it all on God.' [1.]
- Horgan doesn't seem to understand that the god of the bible is eternal. (Either that or he's forgotten.) You can't give an answer to the question what created God, if God wasn't created; if God didn't have a beginning. (I fail to see how a what can create a who in any event.)
Horgan is projecting his own feelings onto creationists in this tattered shred of an article. I'm in no way 'thrilled' that OOL research has gotten nowhere. It's what I expect. (In fact it's why I became a creationist in the first place.)
He claims 'scientists' are at least making an honest effort at solving the mystery of origins. Well; maybe some are, but some certainly aren't; aren't being honest at all. I suspect many people see the implications of this failure, and refuse to accept the evidence, refuse to follow the evidence.
We have a problem here with the word mystery. There is the 'mystery' of a solvable question, and the mystery of an unsolvable problem. Most materialists think the Origins issue is a solvable problem, while most creationists think it is an unsolvable problem; ie. a true mystery not a pseudo mystery. (Unsolvable in the sense we can't know how the creation took place.)
It's popular in our day (in our culture) to deny that mystery is possible. The pretense behind scientism is the claim nothing is beyond human understanding... that there cannot be real mystery in the universe. We might call this secular optimism or something else, but it's a denial of mystery. (It is I think a sign of a still confident civilization... confident at least in this respect.) We might also call it arrogance or vanity. People will have different views.
Mystery can be frustrating... the more time and effort you put into answering a question, the more importance you attach to it, the more you want to answer it, the more you will find 'mystery' unsatisfying and frustrating. (Some of us feel driven to find answers to questions that will no doubt remain mysteries... at least for us, but maybe forever.)
In the comments to the article a lot of people were upset with Horgan for making this admission. I got the feeling reading them that they wanted to say ''don't tell the evolutionists'' i.e. don't make it known to our less well informed comrades that there's a real problem here... i.e. let's all pretend (e.g. Eugenie Scott) that there are no problems with the grand theory.
Summary;
Speaking of God Job says, "Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number.'' - Job; 9:10 [3.]
Notes;
1. Pssst! Don't tell the creationists, but scientists don't have a clue how life began - By John Horgan [Feb 28, 2011]
2. 'John Horgan, in his book The End of Science, reports that Stanley Miller viewed the theories subsequently put forward regarding the origin of life as quite meaningless.
"In fact, almost 40 years after his original experiment, Miller told me that solving the riddle of the origin of life had turned out to be more difficult than he or anyone else had envisioned… Miller seemed unimpressed with any of the current proposals on the origin of life, referring to them as "nonsense" or "paper chemistry." He was so contemptuous of some hypotheses that, when I asked his opinion of them, he merely shook his head, sighed deeply, and snickered-as if overcome by the folly of humanity. Stuart Kauffman's theory of autocatalysis fell into this category. "Running equations through a computer does not constitute an experiment," Miller sniffed. Miller acknowledged that scientists may never know precisely where and when life emerged.'' - Horgan, John, The End of Science, 1996, p. 139 [source unknown]
3. Gill's commentary;
'Which doth great things past finding out,.... In heaven and earth; great as to quantity and quality, not to be thoroughly searched out so as to tell their numbers, nor explain and express the nature of them to the full; even what he has done, and does in creation, providence, and grace...'
Monday, March 28, 2011
Synthetic aliens and the problem of design
How would you be able to know whether X was a robot or not?
Quotes and comments;
1. 'Michael Dyer, a computer science professor at UCLA, is certain that the first aliens to visit Earth will be robots.
“If an extraterrestrial spaceship ever lands on Earth, I bet you that it is 99.9999999 percent likely that what exits that ship will be synthetic in nature.” [1.]
- I take it that by synthetic he means something that has been put together by a process that is not natural. [2.]
- I think we can define design as a creation process that isn't based on the laws of physics. Design then is something that wouldn't have happened by itself... i.e. wouldn't have happened based on the 'laws' of chemical attraction or repulsion. (e.g. as far as I can determine, the genetic code isn't a natural thing, isn't based on the laws of chemistry or physics.... wouldn't have happened 'naturally' and so therefore I agree with those who see it as an example of design.)
- The trouble with this definition is that materialists (and their angry cousins the atheists) claim that 'life' did form naturally.... this despite the fact we don't ever see chemicals arrange themselves this way. They admit this, but claim this 'miracle' did happen in the ancient past. (This isn't science; this is materialism in search of metaphysical rescue.) If it did happen I don't know how; as it couldn't have been a 'natural' process; material processes just don't work this way.
2. 'A third [idea] is his belief, based on the inevitability of artificial intelligence (AI), that humans will eventually replace themselves on Earth by robotic progeny. That implies that advanced aliens will have already reached that point in their evolution.' [1.]
- I don't understand why humans would want to replace themselves with robots. I don't understand why people find this appealing. Is it because they have a death wish. To replace yourself with a robot is to die, to commit suicide. Why would the human race want to commit suicide? I think we see in this idea the strong influence Darwinism has had on secular thinking. The grand story is one of constant progress; progress in power and intelligence. ("There is a grandeur in this model," said a bearded guru of the past.) Maybe people think they can escape God by turning themselves into robots :=] The irony is that in trying to escape they will commit suicide.
- If mankind doesn't want to live, why would robots? (Maybe they'd turn themselves back into humans.)
- We might ask how people who get visited by aliens would be able to tell whether they were synthetic beings or not. If they were composed of metal or plastic it might be easy to tell (maybe not) but if they were biological creatures that had been created in the laboratory how could it be determined whether they were 'natural' or 'synthetic'? They might look natural, but in fact be designed. I suppose it's possible they could look designed and not be. How could anyone know?
3. 'Scientists have long projected that technology will eventually reach the point where our brain-based consciousnesses can be transferred to synthetic media, and Dyer sees this as the third path to machine supremacy. [3.]
- The trouble with this idea is that there's no such thing as generic consciousness. i.e. there is the consciousness of a dolphin, and there is the consciousness of a human being. You can't transfer human consciousness to a hard drive. If a computer had a consciousness (if this were possible) it would be the consciousness of a computer... of a particular kind of computer. Human beings have flesh and blood, and that is an integral part of their consciousness. We are conceived, grow to full term in a womb, we're born, we suckle, we grow up gradually over many years, etc. and all this is inseparable from our particular form of consciousness. The idea of a generic consciousness is a myth; it's an abstraction and not real.
4. 'Continuing leaps forward in artificial intelligence (AI) — brought to popular attention recently by IBM's Watson computer vanquishing its human champions in the quiz show "Jeopardy!" — imply that machines will eventually be able to think for themselves.' [3.]
- Searching a data bank for answers to objective questions has little to do with what we call thinking... and it doesn't imply machines will eventually be able to think for themselves. (The author of that statement wasn't thinking very deeply.) Again we have a problem with abstractionism. There is no such thing as generic thinking. What this IBM computer did and what human beings do aren't the same. This is equivocation.
The processing done by a computer that is programmed to do it, isn't the same as the mental processes engaged in by human beings, and they shouldn't be referred to by the same term. The thinking that went into constructing this computer isn't remotely the same as the 'thinking' done by the computer as it 'plays' Jeopardy. (Computers don't play for one thing. I wonder if it knows it has the name Watson, and what it feels about being tagged with such a moniker.)
- M. Johnson; Mar/28/2011
Notes;
1. If Pigs Have Wings, SETI Could Be Robots - Creation/Evolution Headlines 03/11/2011
March 11, 2011 — The SETI program is still waiting to catch a sentient signal from deep space, but in the absence of data, people are free to speculate. Michael Dyer, a computer science professor at UCLA, is certain that the first aliens to visit Earth will be robots. He even attached a probability to it, according to Adam Hadhazy, a reporter published on Live Science. “If an extraterrestrial spaceship ever lands on Earth, I bet you that it is 99.9999999 percent likely that what exits that ship will be synthetic in nature.”
2. Synthetic;
# Relating to, involving, or of the nature of synthesis.
# Chemistry Produced by synthesis, especially not of natural origin.
# Not natural or genuine; artificial or contrived:
# Prepared or made artificially: synthetic leather. See Synonyms at artificial.
3. If Aliens Attack: Visitors to Earth Will Likely Be Robots - Adam Hadhazy
4. 'Dyer has identified four paths that could lead to the substitution of humans or other biologicals by their own robotic creations — and given enough time, he thinks such a fate awaits most life in the cosmos.
- Gee; maybe this is what happened to the dinosaurs... maybe they volunteered to commit suicide so the mammals could take over. Maybe they even designed and created mammals.
5. 'Regardless of how machines ultimately end up in charge, their expansion into space seems certain — whether to obtain new resources or to explore (or, for less appealing motives, to exterminate all biological life).
- it's not clear to me why a machine would want to do anything. Does my toaster want to make toast? Not want to make toast? Does it want to travel to Mars? Any 'desires' it would have would have to be programmed in... and thus wouldn't be desires per se, but merely programmed instructions... which presumably could be easily changed... so why not just program for machines not to want anything... therefore eliminating the need for resources. (The idea of combing the galaxy for resources in colonial type thinking... circa 1800.)
- I have no idea why machines would want to travel in space. What would be the attraction? I can't even see machines finding anything attractive or appealing. If they did it would just be a matter of programming... which could be changed. (People are obviously projecting human desires and feelings onto a robotic, AI, canvas. These aren't real robots they're talking about, but metal bots with humans sitting inside them.)
6. 'At any rate, the future is not terribly bright for homo sapiens, at least in a flesh-and-blood form. "I think the most we can hope for is to embed software into all intelligent synthetic entities to cause them to want to protect the survivability of biological entities, with humans at the top of the list for protection," Dyer said.
- and why couldn't these synthetic entities just get rid of such programming?
7. "If an extraterrestrial spaceship ever lands on Earth, I bet you that it is 99.9999999 percent likely that what exits that ship will be synthetic in nature," said Michael Dyer, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles
- Here's a scenario to contemplate. Let's say we encountered some aliens (synthetic or not) and discovered what planet they lived on. Let's say we visited this planet. Could we tell whether this planet was 'natural' or whether it had been engineered? i.e. could we tell if it had 'evolved' or whether it had been created by intelligent beings? How might we make such a determination? If there's no way for us to decide, isn't there something incomplete about our scientific method?
Quotes and comments;
1. 'Michael Dyer, a computer science professor at UCLA, is certain that the first aliens to visit Earth will be robots.
“If an extraterrestrial spaceship ever lands on Earth, I bet you that it is 99.9999999 percent likely that what exits that ship will be synthetic in nature.” [1.]
- I take it that by synthetic he means something that has been put together by a process that is not natural. [2.]
- I think we can define design as a creation process that isn't based on the laws of physics. Design then is something that wouldn't have happened by itself... i.e. wouldn't have happened based on the 'laws' of chemical attraction or repulsion. (e.g. as far as I can determine, the genetic code isn't a natural thing, isn't based on the laws of chemistry or physics.... wouldn't have happened 'naturally' and so therefore I agree with those who see it as an example of design.)
- The trouble with this definition is that materialists (and their angry cousins the atheists) claim that 'life' did form naturally.... this despite the fact we don't ever see chemicals arrange themselves this way. They admit this, but claim this 'miracle' did happen in the ancient past. (This isn't science; this is materialism in search of metaphysical rescue.) If it did happen I don't know how; as it couldn't have been a 'natural' process; material processes just don't work this way.
2. 'A third [idea] is his belief, based on the inevitability of artificial intelligence (AI), that humans will eventually replace themselves on Earth by robotic progeny. That implies that advanced aliens will have already reached that point in their evolution.' [1.]
- I don't understand why humans would want to replace themselves with robots. I don't understand why people find this appealing. Is it because they have a death wish. To replace yourself with a robot is to die, to commit suicide. Why would the human race want to commit suicide? I think we see in this idea the strong influence Darwinism has had on secular thinking. The grand story is one of constant progress; progress in power and intelligence. ("There is a grandeur in this model," said a bearded guru of the past.) Maybe people think they can escape God by turning themselves into robots :=] The irony is that in trying to escape they will commit suicide.
- If mankind doesn't want to live, why would robots? (Maybe they'd turn themselves back into humans.)
- We might ask how people who get visited by aliens would be able to tell whether they were synthetic beings or not. If they were composed of metal or plastic it might be easy to tell (maybe not) but if they were biological creatures that had been created in the laboratory how could it be determined whether they were 'natural' or 'synthetic'? They might look natural, but in fact be designed. I suppose it's possible they could look designed and not be. How could anyone know?
3. 'Scientists have long projected that technology will eventually reach the point where our brain-based consciousnesses can be transferred to synthetic media, and Dyer sees this as the third path to machine supremacy. [3.]
- The trouble with this idea is that there's no such thing as generic consciousness. i.e. there is the consciousness of a dolphin, and there is the consciousness of a human being. You can't transfer human consciousness to a hard drive. If a computer had a consciousness (if this were possible) it would be the consciousness of a computer... of a particular kind of computer. Human beings have flesh and blood, and that is an integral part of their consciousness. We are conceived, grow to full term in a womb, we're born, we suckle, we grow up gradually over many years, etc. and all this is inseparable from our particular form of consciousness. The idea of a generic consciousness is a myth; it's an abstraction and not real.
4. 'Continuing leaps forward in artificial intelligence (AI) — brought to popular attention recently by IBM's Watson computer vanquishing its human champions in the quiz show "Jeopardy!" — imply that machines will eventually be able to think for themselves.' [3.]
- Searching a data bank for answers to objective questions has little to do with what we call thinking... and it doesn't imply machines will eventually be able to think for themselves. (The author of that statement wasn't thinking very deeply.) Again we have a problem with abstractionism. There is no such thing as generic thinking. What this IBM computer did and what human beings do aren't the same. This is equivocation.
The processing done by a computer that is programmed to do it, isn't the same as the mental processes engaged in by human beings, and they shouldn't be referred to by the same term. The thinking that went into constructing this computer isn't remotely the same as the 'thinking' done by the computer as it 'plays' Jeopardy. (Computers don't play for one thing. I wonder if it knows it has the name Watson, and what it feels about being tagged with such a moniker.)
- M. Johnson; Mar/28/2011
Notes;
1. If Pigs Have Wings, SETI Could Be Robots - Creation/Evolution Headlines 03/11/2011
March 11, 2011 — The SETI program is still waiting to catch a sentient signal from deep space, but in the absence of data, people are free to speculate. Michael Dyer, a computer science professor at UCLA, is certain that the first aliens to visit Earth will be robots. He even attached a probability to it, according to Adam Hadhazy, a reporter published on Live Science. “If an extraterrestrial spaceship ever lands on Earth, I bet you that it is 99.9999999 percent likely that what exits that ship will be synthetic in nature.”
2. Synthetic;
# Relating to, involving, or of the nature of synthesis.
# Chemistry Produced by synthesis, especially not of natural origin.
# Not natural or genuine; artificial or contrived:
# Prepared or made artificially: synthetic leather. See Synonyms at artificial.
3. If Aliens Attack: Visitors to Earth Will Likely Be Robots - Adam Hadhazy
4. 'Dyer has identified four paths that could lead to the substitution of humans or other biologicals by their own robotic creations — and given enough time, he thinks such a fate awaits most life in the cosmos.
- Gee; maybe this is what happened to the dinosaurs... maybe they volunteered to commit suicide so the mammals could take over. Maybe they even designed and created mammals.
5. 'Regardless of how machines ultimately end up in charge, their expansion into space seems certain — whether to obtain new resources or to explore (or, for less appealing motives, to exterminate all biological life).
- it's not clear to me why a machine would want to do anything. Does my toaster want to make toast? Not want to make toast? Does it want to travel to Mars? Any 'desires' it would have would have to be programmed in... and thus wouldn't be desires per se, but merely programmed instructions... which presumably could be easily changed... so why not just program for machines not to want anything... therefore eliminating the need for resources. (The idea of combing the galaxy for resources in colonial type thinking... circa 1800.)
- I have no idea why machines would want to travel in space. What would be the attraction? I can't even see machines finding anything attractive or appealing. If they did it would just be a matter of programming... which could be changed. (People are obviously projecting human desires and feelings onto a robotic, AI, canvas. These aren't real robots they're talking about, but metal bots with humans sitting inside them.)
6. 'At any rate, the future is not terribly bright for homo sapiens, at least in a flesh-and-blood form. "I think the most we can hope for is to embed software into all intelligent synthetic entities to cause them to want to protect the survivability of biological entities, with humans at the top of the list for protection," Dyer said.
- and why couldn't these synthetic entities just get rid of such programming?
7. "If an extraterrestrial spaceship ever lands on Earth, I bet you that it is 99.9999999 percent likely that what exits that ship will be synthetic in nature," said Michael Dyer, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles
- Here's a scenario to contemplate. Let's say we encountered some aliens (synthetic or not) and discovered what planet they lived on. Let's say we visited this planet. Could we tell whether this planet was 'natural' or whether it had been engineered? i.e. could we tell if it had 'evolved' or whether it had been created by intelligent beings? How might we make such a determination? If there's no way for us to decide, isn't there something incomplete about our scientific method?
Sunday, March 27, 2011
At a loss for words
In today's post I look at the latest attempt to rescue Darwinian theory from the scrap heap.
Quotes and comments;
1. “Key to humanity is in missing DNA.”
The key changes are not in bits of DNA that humans acquired as they evolved – extra genes that we have but chimps and other animals do not – but in chunks of DNA that we lost.
What’s more, the chunks in question are not even genes at all, but sequences of DNA that lie in between genes and act as switches, orchestrating when and where specific genes are turned on and off through the course of an animal’s development." [1.]
- It looks like Darwinian biologists are finally taking to heart critics of evolutionary theory, who point out how impossible it is for random processes to add complex (specified) information to a genome.
- This is an interesting if desperate notion. This is a bit like saying you can make a computer better by severely reducing its memory and its processing power.
- I'm at a loss for words, stumped by how anyone can think this can work. Is it loss all the way down guys? Wouldn't that involve ending up with nothing? Are we too believe this process of attrition led to the spectacular genome project we call the human being? How can you make the progress from rock to rock star by a process of attrition, by a process of losing information? This doesn't make sense to me.
2. 'The researchers identified 510 genetic regions present in chimpanzees but missing in humans. Only two of these have been tested so far for function.'
- This 'new' idea seems to be based on the assumption evolution (M2M) is true. i.e. since we know E. is true, what does this mean? It can only mean that the chimp (i.e. proto chimp or whatever you want to call the postulated common ancestor) became human by losing information. It's taken for granted apparently that 'proto man' once had these 510 regions... and that he progressed up the tree of life by losing them. (This would be akin to becoming a better climber by losing most of your fingers and toes.)
3. 'The other genetic loss involves the brain: the removal of a factor ostensibly limiting brain size. According to the authors and reporters, this somehow led to the expansion of the human brain, instead of a tumor, and by implication, our intelligence and rationality. That idea would appear to only make sense if brain structure and function were already pregnant with intellectual and rational possibilities. In that case, why would a factor evolve to restrict expression of such a valuable asset in lower primates?'
- All of these ideas (which seem to sprout continually) are based on the assumption E. is correct. They only 'make sense' if you assume the theory Has to be correct. Without this assumption they don't prove anything. We could just as easily look at the differences and ask what they mean if E. isn't true.
- As the commentary points out; human brains aren't merely bigger than chimp brains. If size was all that mattered whales would be many times more intelligent than humans (and birds would be idiots compared to cows).
4. “Hats off to them,” says Ewen Birney of Cambridge University. “It has long been thought that evolution would work by deleting as well as creating things...''
- If we accept this kind of reasoning we could make humans much smarter by eliminating another 510 DNA regions. Does anyone think that would work.
If this reasoning is correct we should be able to turn a chimp into a human by eliminating these regions. Anyone think that would work?
Notes;
1. Evolution by Loss Creation/Evolution Headlines 03/10/2011
March 10, 2011 — Evolutionists have added a counter-intuitive notion to their explanatory toolkit. It surfaced this week in Nature, then reverberated around the media: our ancestors became human when they lost genetic information from ape-like ancestors.'
2. 'The original paper mentioned loss of information a dozen times, but gain of information only once – and that just as a possibility:
“Deletions of tissue-specific enhancers may thus accompany both loss and gain traits [sic] in the human lineage, and provide specific examples of the kinds of regulatory alterations.”
- Did a rodent become a chimp by losing DNA?
- All this seems speculative at best, if you don't know what that supposed common ancestor was.
Quotes and comments;
1. “Key to humanity is in missing DNA.”
The key changes are not in bits of DNA that humans acquired as they evolved – extra genes that we have but chimps and other animals do not – but in chunks of DNA that we lost.
What’s more, the chunks in question are not even genes at all, but sequences of DNA that lie in between genes and act as switches, orchestrating when and where specific genes are turned on and off through the course of an animal’s development." [1.]
- It looks like Darwinian biologists are finally taking to heart critics of evolutionary theory, who point out how impossible it is for random processes to add complex (specified) information to a genome.
- This is an interesting if desperate notion. This is a bit like saying you can make a computer better by severely reducing its memory and its processing power.
- I'm at a loss for words, stumped by how anyone can think this can work. Is it loss all the way down guys? Wouldn't that involve ending up with nothing? Are we too believe this process of attrition led to the spectacular genome project we call the human being? How can you make the progress from rock to rock star by a process of attrition, by a process of losing information? This doesn't make sense to me.
2. 'The researchers identified 510 genetic regions present in chimpanzees but missing in humans. Only two of these have been tested so far for function.'
- This 'new' idea seems to be based on the assumption evolution (M2M) is true. i.e. since we know E. is true, what does this mean? It can only mean that the chimp (i.e. proto chimp or whatever you want to call the postulated common ancestor) became human by losing information. It's taken for granted apparently that 'proto man' once had these 510 regions... and that he progressed up the tree of life by losing them. (This would be akin to becoming a better climber by losing most of your fingers and toes.)
3. 'The other genetic loss involves the brain: the removal of a factor ostensibly limiting brain size. According to the authors and reporters, this somehow led to the expansion of the human brain, instead of a tumor, and by implication, our intelligence and rationality. That idea would appear to only make sense if brain structure and function were already pregnant with intellectual and rational possibilities. In that case, why would a factor evolve to restrict expression of such a valuable asset in lower primates?'
- All of these ideas (which seem to sprout continually) are based on the assumption E. is correct. They only 'make sense' if you assume the theory Has to be correct. Without this assumption they don't prove anything. We could just as easily look at the differences and ask what they mean if E. isn't true.
- As the commentary points out; human brains aren't merely bigger than chimp brains. If size was all that mattered whales would be many times more intelligent than humans (and birds would be idiots compared to cows).
4. “Hats off to them,” says Ewen Birney of Cambridge University. “It has long been thought that evolution would work by deleting as well as creating things...''
- If we accept this kind of reasoning we could make humans much smarter by eliminating another 510 DNA regions. Does anyone think that would work.
If this reasoning is correct we should be able to turn a chimp into a human by eliminating these regions. Anyone think that would work?
Notes;
1. Evolution by Loss Creation/Evolution Headlines 03/10/2011
March 10, 2011 — Evolutionists have added a counter-intuitive notion to their explanatory toolkit. It surfaced this week in Nature, then reverberated around the media: our ancestors became human when they lost genetic information from ape-like ancestors.'
2. 'The original paper mentioned loss of information a dozen times, but gain of information only once – and that just as a possibility:
“Deletions of tissue-specific enhancers may thus accompany both loss and gain traits [sic] in the human lineage, and provide specific examples of the kinds of regulatory alterations.”
- Did a rodent become a chimp by losing DNA?
- All this seems speculative at best, if you don't know what that supposed common ancestor was.
Friday, March 18, 2011
The animalization project; replacing the person with the object
I've been watching the TTC lecture series 'The neuroscience of everyday life' with Sam Wang. Today I want to use lecture #26 as a jumping off point for a few comments on the misuse of metaphor in science.
Quotes and comments;
1. Wang talks about us sharing emotions with animals to begin this lecture. [1.]
- It strikes me that this insistence on animal/human continuum is part of the project (a necessary part) to replace morality, ethics and philosophy with science. This is the attempt to find answers to all questions via what is called the scientific method. e.g. all answers will be found within the laboratory. The dream is that all answers will be as 'objective' as measuring weight and space. The hope is that measurement will replace wisdom; that facts will replace faith... that man the scientist will no longer need help from god to make his way in the world.
This grand project requires that the 'experts' dumb man down; that they turn him into an animal... and turn that animal into mere matter in motion. The 'soft' sciences require the diminishment of man; the dehumanization of man... man as person replaced by man as object.
I hope Professor Wang will forgive me, but to conflate animal and human emotions is just plain stupid. These are simply not the same. This is just bad science. In no way is it empirical. It's more absurd than even to compare the love a child has for its teddy bear, with the love a parent has for his child or for his spouse.
The 'fear' a mouse has for being eaten cannot by rationally compared to the fear a human being has of death or of war, etc. (or the fear of being embarassed intellectually). The same words (terms) should not be used. (That would of course ruin the Darwinian game, so I don't expect that will happen.)
Similarities do not constitute identity. We might even wonder if these 'similarities' are anything more than metaphors and analogies. (e.g. is the fear of a slug the same as the fear of a mouse? is the fear of a slug the same as the fear of an amoeba? is the fear of a worm the same as the fear of a chimp? is the fear of a bear the same as the fear of a salmon? Is there any way to know? Is there any way to measure?
- To conflate human emotion with what is called animal emotion shows us how heavily modern biological science is influenced by metaphor. In my view this is more like poetry than empirical science.
- He talks about AI people building in affective responses into robots... I see this claim as more poetry. (Wang dang doodle? Sorry.) It's simply not legitimate science to talk about the emotions of artificial thinking machines.
Notes;
1. Sam Wang; The neuroscience of everyday life; lecture #26. The weather in your brain
2. Wang tells us that the 'emotion' of disgust goes back (along that old evolutionary road) to animals having to distinguish what is good to eat from what is harmful. I guess the speculative theory' is that this capacity somehow 'evolved' into the diverse human emotions of disgust. (Darwin only knows how :=] This is more equivocation... maybe we could call it Darwinian poetry.
Quotes and comments;
1. Wang talks about us sharing emotions with animals to begin this lecture. [1.]
- It strikes me that this insistence on animal/human continuum is part of the project (a necessary part) to replace morality, ethics and philosophy with science. This is the attempt to find answers to all questions via what is called the scientific method. e.g. all answers will be found within the laboratory. The dream is that all answers will be as 'objective' as measuring weight and space. The hope is that measurement will replace wisdom; that facts will replace faith... that man the scientist will no longer need help from god to make his way in the world.
This grand project requires that the 'experts' dumb man down; that they turn him into an animal... and turn that animal into mere matter in motion. The 'soft' sciences require the diminishment of man; the dehumanization of man... man as person replaced by man as object.
I hope Professor Wang will forgive me, but to conflate animal and human emotions is just plain stupid. These are simply not the same. This is just bad science. In no way is it empirical. It's more absurd than even to compare the love a child has for its teddy bear, with the love a parent has for his child or for his spouse.
The 'fear' a mouse has for being eaten cannot by rationally compared to the fear a human being has of death or of war, etc. (or the fear of being embarassed intellectually). The same words (terms) should not be used. (That would of course ruin the Darwinian game, so I don't expect that will happen.)
Similarities do not constitute identity. We might even wonder if these 'similarities' are anything more than metaphors and analogies. (e.g. is the fear of a slug the same as the fear of a mouse? is the fear of a slug the same as the fear of an amoeba? is the fear of a worm the same as the fear of a chimp? is the fear of a bear the same as the fear of a salmon? Is there any way to know? Is there any way to measure?
- To conflate human emotion with what is called animal emotion shows us how heavily modern biological science is influenced by metaphor. In my view this is more like poetry than empirical science.
- He talks about AI people building in affective responses into robots... I see this claim as more poetry. (Wang dang doodle? Sorry.) It's simply not legitimate science to talk about the emotions of artificial thinking machines.
Notes;
1. Sam Wang; The neuroscience of everyday life; lecture #26. The weather in your brain
2. Wang tells us that the 'emotion' of disgust goes back (along that old evolutionary road) to animals having to distinguish what is good to eat from what is harmful. I guess the speculative theory' is that this capacity somehow 'evolved' into the diverse human emotions of disgust. (Darwin only knows how :=] This is more equivocation... maybe we could call it Darwinian poetry.
Deep Time? or simply Deep?
We have a very deep topic today, so put on some deep music and put on your deepest, most profound look. Allow me to speculate.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'Well-preserved fossils of seaweed-like colonies have been reported from China. They are dated by the scientists at 600 million years old, from the Ediacaran period. Can these be missing links, lighting the fuse of biodiversity that culminated in the Cambrian explosion? [1.]
- The similarity of the fossil record to what we see today is (to me at least) striking. If you took a slice of the planet today, from the top of Mt. Whistler to the bottom of the Pacific ocean, and turned it to stone, you'd see something very much like the fossil record. e.g. at the very bottom would be bacteria, archaea, prokaryotes, worm like marine creatures, etc. [3.]
Though I'm far from being any kind of expert, I think it's possible that there is a very different explanation of the fossil record than the one we get in the government financed textbooks used in 'public' (i.e. socialist) schools. I don't believe we're looking at progressive 'transformationism' at all... at least I doubt we are.
I think the fossil record is a 'snapshot' (in stone) of the world that existed at the time of Noah's flood... and the bottom fossils we find today were simply the creatures that lived in the deepest levels of the earth. (This would mean that the deepest ocean levels were deposited in rock layers upon the earth first, with other areas laid down later.)
Notes;
1. New Ediacaran Fossils: Do They Ignite the Cambrian Explosion? Creation/Evolution Headlines 02/17/2011
2. 'PhysOrg summarized the findings published in Nature. “In addition to perhaps ancient versions of algae and worms, the Lantian biota – named for its location – included macrofossils with complex and puzzling structures,” the article said. “In all, scientists identified about 15 different species at the site.” Pictures of the seaweed-like fossils show fronds with a distinctive holdfast, like modern seaweed use to cling to the seafloor.
2. Of course I could be wrong.... yes; I know it's not likely, but I suppose it's possible. (After all, if a great thinker like Richard Dawkins can be wrong, I guess a simple person like myself can be wrong too :=]
- Dawkins has been wrong so many times it's beyond counting. (e.g. his many fallacious statements over the years on the bad engineering of the human eye)
3. Scientists Document Bustling Community Far Below Ocean Floor - NY Times
'The lost civilization of Atlantis may just be legend, but way down below the ocean (to quote the folksinger Donovan) there are some things that are very real — namely, bacteria and archaea. By some estimates, sub-seafloor prokaryotes may account for two-thirds of the biomass of these types of organisms on Earth.'
Quotes and comments;
1. 'Well-preserved fossils of seaweed-like colonies have been reported from China. They are dated by the scientists at 600 million years old, from the Ediacaran period. Can these be missing links, lighting the fuse of biodiversity that culminated in the Cambrian explosion? [1.]
- The similarity of the fossil record to what we see today is (to me at least) striking. If you took a slice of the planet today, from the top of Mt. Whistler to the bottom of the Pacific ocean, and turned it to stone, you'd see something very much like the fossil record. e.g. at the very bottom would be bacteria, archaea, prokaryotes, worm like marine creatures, etc. [3.]
Though I'm far from being any kind of expert, I think it's possible that there is a very different explanation of the fossil record than the one we get in the government financed textbooks used in 'public' (i.e. socialist) schools. I don't believe we're looking at progressive 'transformationism' at all... at least I doubt we are.
I think the fossil record is a 'snapshot' (in stone) of the world that existed at the time of Noah's flood... and the bottom fossils we find today were simply the creatures that lived in the deepest levels of the earth. (This would mean that the deepest ocean levels were deposited in rock layers upon the earth first, with other areas laid down later.)
Notes;
1. New Ediacaran Fossils: Do They Ignite the Cambrian Explosion? Creation/Evolution Headlines 02/17/2011
2. 'PhysOrg summarized the findings published in Nature. “In addition to perhaps ancient versions of algae and worms, the Lantian biota – named for its location – included macrofossils with complex and puzzling structures,” the article said. “In all, scientists identified about 15 different species at the site.” Pictures of the seaweed-like fossils show fronds with a distinctive holdfast, like modern seaweed use to cling to the seafloor.
2. Of course I could be wrong.... yes; I know it's not likely, but I suppose it's possible. (After all, if a great thinker like Richard Dawkins can be wrong, I guess a simple person like myself can be wrong too :=]
- Dawkins has been wrong so many times it's beyond counting. (e.g. his many fallacious statements over the years on the bad engineering of the human eye)
3. Scientists Document Bustling Community Far Below Ocean Floor - NY Times
'The lost civilization of Atlantis may just be legend, but way down below the ocean (to quote the folksinger Donovan) there are some things that are very real — namely, bacteria and archaea. By some estimates, sub-seafloor prokaryotes may account for two-thirds of the biomass of these types of organisms on Earth.'
Thursday, March 17, 2011
A simple twist of fate; or waiting for the UFOs
What's behind the yearning to make contact with extraterrestrial beings? What's really going on with this desire to make contact with life forms beyond our planet? We might assume it's some kind of projection, but it's not clear of what.
Quotes and comments;
1. "If I had to bet – and this is now beyond science – I would say that intelligent, technological critters are rare in the Milky Way galaxy. The evidence mounts. We Homo sapiens didn’t arise until some quirk of environment on the East African savannah – so quirky that the hominid paleontologists still can’t tell us why the australopithecines somehow evolved big brains and had dexterity that could play piano concertos, and things that make no real honest sense in terms of Darwinian evolution.'' [1.]
- Marcy calls the source of humanity a 'quirk' in the environment. (I suppose he would say the same of the origin of life.) This then is the alternative to creation; a quirk. What then does quirk mean? One definition is; 'An unpredictable or unaccountable act or event; a vagary: a quirk of fate.'
This would seem to admit that life on earth can't be predicted from (a prediction from) a materialist model of the universe; i.e. isn't a prediction from physics. (I'm reminded, again, of the idea the ancient Greek philosophers had, of life being attributable to a 'swerve' in the fall of atoms. i.e. ''we have no idea.'')
I note that Marcy admits speculating about intelligent life forms in space is beyond science. (This would seem to be an admission that the grand theory of evolution doesn't qualify as science.) My question then is this; if the basis of Darwinian evolution theory isn't scientific, how can the theory itself be scientific? i.e. how can evolution be a fact, if its foundation isn't a fact? i.e. until we get confirmation of life forms outside our solar system, there's no way evolution can be called a fact. A solitary example can't prove anything.
- Waiting for evidence life on earth originated by blind chance is as hopeless as waiting for the UFOs. [2.]
2. ''We humans came across braininess because of something weird that happened on the East African savannah. And we can’t imagine whether that’s a common or rare thing."
- Well, if this something only happened once, I guess it's fair to say it was pretty friggin' weird! (One meaning of weird by the way is supernatural.) [3.]
This idea some 'quirk' of the environment can somehow create libraries of new information is a pretense of e. theory that I find extremely unconvincing. I've never seen a credible explanation of how this miracle could have happened. We might also ask why it never happened to the dinosaurs? Didn't they experience 'quirks' in the environment? Why didn't they get big brains?
Notes;
1. Planets a-Plenty, but Are They Lively? Creation/Evolution Headlines 02/02/2011
Feb 02, 2011 — 'The Kepler spacecraft has found over 1,235 planets so far (Space.com), 54 in their star’s habitable zone, and some Earth-size or smaller. Science media are having a field day reporting the discoveries, portraying them with artist imaginations, licking their chops at the possibility of life in outer space.
- 'Before the latest Kepler tally was announced, one of the leading planet hunters gave his thoughts in an interview on Space.com . Geoff Marcy had participated in finding more planets than anyone else.'
2. Waiting for the UFOs - Graham Parker
"Now is that a light in sky or just a spark in my heart?"
3. Weird; Of, relating to, or suggestive of the preternatural or supernatural. [AHD]
4. In earlier times, the word yearn often had the meaning of grief, or of suffering. I wonder if so many people yearn to make contact with aliens because of a sense of loss.
Quotes and comments;
1. "If I had to bet – and this is now beyond science – I would say that intelligent, technological critters are rare in the Milky Way galaxy. The evidence mounts. We Homo sapiens didn’t arise until some quirk of environment on the East African savannah – so quirky that the hominid paleontologists still can’t tell us why the australopithecines somehow evolved big brains and had dexterity that could play piano concertos, and things that make no real honest sense in terms of Darwinian evolution.'' [1.]
- Marcy calls the source of humanity a 'quirk' in the environment. (I suppose he would say the same of the origin of life.) This then is the alternative to creation; a quirk. What then does quirk mean? One definition is; 'An unpredictable or unaccountable act or event; a vagary: a quirk of fate.'
This would seem to admit that life on earth can't be predicted from (a prediction from) a materialist model of the universe; i.e. isn't a prediction from physics. (I'm reminded, again, of the idea the ancient Greek philosophers had, of life being attributable to a 'swerve' in the fall of atoms. i.e. ''we have no idea.'')
I note that Marcy admits speculating about intelligent life forms in space is beyond science. (This would seem to be an admission that the grand theory of evolution doesn't qualify as science.) My question then is this; if the basis of Darwinian evolution theory isn't scientific, how can the theory itself be scientific? i.e. how can evolution be a fact, if its foundation isn't a fact? i.e. until we get confirmation of life forms outside our solar system, there's no way evolution can be called a fact. A solitary example can't prove anything.
- Waiting for evidence life on earth originated by blind chance is as hopeless as waiting for the UFOs. [2.]
2. ''We humans came across braininess because of something weird that happened on the East African savannah. And we can’t imagine whether that’s a common or rare thing."
- Well, if this something only happened once, I guess it's fair to say it was pretty friggin' weird! (One meaning of weird by the way is supernatural.) [3.]
This idea some 'quirk' of the environment can somehow create libraries of new information is a pretense of e. theory that I find extremely unconvincing. I've never seen a credible explanation of how this miracle could have happened. We might also ask why it never happened to the dinosaurs? Didn't they experience 'quirks' in the environment? Why didn't they get big brains?
Notes;
1. Planets a-Plenty, but Are They Lively? Creation/Evolution Headlines 02/02/2011
Feb 02, 2011 — 'The Kepler spacecraft has found over 1,235 planets so far (Space.com), 54 in their star’s habitable zone, and some Earth-size or smaller. Science media are having a field day reporting the discoveries, portraying them with artist imaginations, licking their chops at the possibility of life in outer space.
- 'Before the latest Kepler tally was announced, one of the leading planet hunters gave his thoughts in an interview on Space.com . Geoff Marcy had participated in finding more planets than anyone else.'
2. Waiting for the UFOs - Graham Parker
"Now is that a light in sky or just a spark in my heart?"
3. Weird; Of, relating to, or suggestive of the preternatural or supernatural. [AHD]
4. In earlier times, the word yearn often had the meaning of grief, or of suffering. I wonder if so many people yearn to make contact with aliens because of a sense of loss.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
The more things change, the more they stay the same
Each year seems to bring to light new 'living fossils' and examples of stasis. Though you'd never know it from reading the popular press, these discoveries present a huge problem for evolutionists and their defense of the Darwinian model of origins.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'An article in Science Daily claims that a certain splay-footed cricket in rock alleged to be 100 million years old “has undergone very little evolutionary change since the Early Cretaceous Period, a time of dinosaurs just before the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana.” [2.]
- Stories like this have been frequent over the last few decades. The question evolutionists have to answer is this; why is it hundreds (I think this is conservative) of creatures never evolved, but humans supposedly did? Why is it most (all?) creatures seem never to have significantly changed, but yet humans supposedly evolved from some small Lemur like animal? This is change on a gargantuan scale.
This anomaly would seem to disprove the evolutionary story of man's descent. I wonder why Darwinists think it doesn't. i.e. if sharks, insects, fish, etc. haven't changed one bit in 100-200 million years, how is it man changed from a rodent to a human being in ten million? This makes no sense to me.
Notes;
1. Fossils by Faith Creation/Evolution Headlines 02/04/2011
'Darwin portrayed a world in flux, with natural selection continually sifting and amplifying minute changes over time. Why, then did Science Daily title an article, “Rare Insect Fossil Reveals 100 Million Years of Evolutionary Stasis”? Sure enough, the article claims that a certain splay-footed cricket in rock alleged to be 100 million years old “has undergone very little evolutionary change since the Early Cretaceous Period, a time of dinosaurs just before the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana.” But is a phrase like evolutionary stasis an explanation, or just a term providing protection from falsification? '
2. I'm aware that e.s claim there's a line from small ape like hominids to man, but this isn't empirical science. In my opinion, this is fabrication, with bones from apes and humans mixed together in one line; a line that never existed.
3. If the grand theory of evolution were true, we wouldn't see so many examples of stasis over such huge time periods. Climate and terrain (etc.) have changed greatly over the last 200 million years. (Including the breakup of the hypothetical supercontinent.) If E. (M2M) were correct (and if natural selection were the driving wheel it's claimed to be) such stasis would be impossible. The world hasn't been standing still all that time; so how could all these animals still be standing? how could they still all fit within the shadows (outlines) of their fossil forms?
- As far as I can see, only one model makes this stasis possible, and that's a young earth, special creation, or both.
4. 'Protein remains in a fossil scorpion said to be 417 million years old stunned researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Advanced Light Source finds big surprise in Paleozoic scorpion fossil
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-advanced-source-big-paleozoic-scorpion.html
- Does anyone really believe this? Is it empirical to claim protein remains can last 400 million years? (Can anyone really imagine such a time span?) If we use the methodology of the big bang, and trace things back in time at the rate they're happening now, I think we'd soon see how impossible this claim is. It simply wouldn't measure up. These remains would 'explode' out of existence in perhaps ten? thousand years. (I'd like to see someone do the numbers.)
5. 'Scientists used a powerful microscope at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to detect remnants of protein and chitin in the exoskeleton of a 417-million-year-old fossil of an extinct mega-scorpion, a discovery that is several hundred million years older than previously thought possible.
- what's the real science here? is it ideas on how proteins can last, or speculative dates about how old the fossils are? (As I'm tired of pointing out, these dates are based on unproved, unprovable assumptions.) There's no valid reason to believe these dates are absolute fact. Any decent philosopher could point out the impossibility of such a claim. So why do the dates trump the far more empirical knowledge we have about protein decay? (I think it's because wview issues are at stake.)
6. 'Their work upends the conventional view that organic material, such as that found in the outer portion of exoskeleton, doesn’t endure in extremely old fossils because it’s readily broken down by hungry microbes and other natural processes.
7. 'Cody believes the preservation of chitin-protein residues in extremely old fossils likely depends on the build up of fatty acids on a scaffold of chitin-protein molecules. This layer saves the remaining matrix of chitin and proteins from degradation by microorganisms even after 500 million years.
- Really? where's the evidence for such a wild claim? This isn't my field, but I don't believe it for a second. (This claim can't possibly qualify as empirical science; not unless Cody has a time machine in his lab.)
Quotes and comments;
1. 'An article in Science Daily claims that a certain splay-footed cricket in rock alleged to be 100 million years old “has undergone very little evolutionary change since the Early Cretaceous Period, a time of dinosaurs just before the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana.” [2.]
- Stories like this have been frequent over the last few decades. The question evolutionists have to answer is this; why is it hundreds (I think this is conservative) of creatures never evolved, but humans supposedly did? Why is it most (all?) creatures seem never to have significantly changed, but yet humans supposedly evolved from some small Lemur like animal? This is change on a gargantuan scale.
This anomaly would seem to disprove the evolutionary story of man's descent. I wonder why Darwinists think it doesn't. i.e. if sharks, insects, fish, etc. haven't changed one bit in 100-200 million years, how is it man changed from a rodent to a human being in ten million? This makes no sense to me.
Notes;
1. Fossils by Faith Creation/Evolution Headlines 02/04/2011
'Darwin portrayed a world in flux, with natural selection continually sifting and amplifying minute changes over time. Why, then did Science Daily title an article, “Rare Insect Fossil Reveals 100 Million Years of Evolutionary Stasis”? Sure enough, the article claims that a certain splay-footed cricket in rock alleged to be 100 million years old “has undergone very little evolutionary change since the Early Cretaceous Period, a time of dinosaurs just before the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana.” But is a phrase like evolutionary stasis an explanation, or just a term providing protection from falsification? '
2. I'm aware that e.s claim there's a line from small ape like hominids to man, but this isn't empirical science. In my opinion, this is fabrication, with bones from apes and humans mixed together in one line; a line that never existed.
3. If the grand theory of evolution were true, we wouldn't see so many examples of stasis over such huge time periods. Climate and terrain (etc.) have changed greatly over the last 200 million years. (Including the breakup of the hypothetical supercontinent.) If E. (M2M) were correct (and if natural selection were the driving wheel it's claimed to be) such stasis would be impossible. The world hasn't been standing still all that time; so how could all these animals still be standing? how could they still all fit within the shadows (outlines) of their fossil forms?
- As far as I can see, only one model makes this stasis possible, and that's a young earth, special creation, or both.
4. 'Protein remains in a fossil scorpion said to be 417 million years old stunned researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Advanced Light Source finds big surprise in Paleozoic scorpion fossil
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-advanced-source-big-paleozoic-scorpion.html
- Does anyone really believe this? Is it empirical to claim protein remains can last 400 million years? (Can anyone really imagine such a time span?) If we use the methodology of the big bang, and trace things back in time at the rate they're happening now, I think we'd soon see how impossible this claim is. It simply wouldn't measure up. These remains would 'explode' out of existence in perhaps ten? thousand years. (I'd like to see someone do the numbers.)
5. 'Scientists used a powerful microscope at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to detect remnants of protein and chitin in the exoskeleton of a 417-million-year-old fossil of an extinct mega-scorpion, a discovery that is several hundred million years older than previously thought possible.
- what's the real science here? is it ideas on how proteins can last, or speculative dates about how old the fossils are? (As I'm tired of pointing out, these dates are based on unproved, unprovable assumptions.) There's no valid reason to believe these dates are absolute fact. Any decent philosopher could point out the impossibility of such a claim. So why do the dates trump the far more empirical knowledge we have about protein decay? (I think it's because wview issues are at stake.)
6. 'Their work upends the conventional view that organic material, such as that found in the outer portion of exoskeleton, doesn’t endure in extremely old fossils because it’s readily broken down by hungry microbes and other natural processes.
7. 'Cody believes the preservation of chitin-protein residues in extremely old fossils likely depends on the build up of fatty acids on a scaffold of chitin-protein molecules. This layer saves the remaining matrix of chitin and proteins from degradation by microorganisms even after 500 million years.
- Really? where's the evidence for such a wild claim? This isn't my field, but I don't believe it for a second. (This claim can't possibly qualify as empirical science; not unless Cody has a time machine in his lab.)
Monday, March 14, 2011
The demise of cosmic evolution
It now appears that the Copernican principle (so beloved by Carl Sagan) has bitten the dust.
Quotes and comments;
1. "The more new planets we find, the less we seem to know about how planetary systems are born, according to a leading planet hunter.” We cannot apply theories that fit our solar system to other systems: “In theory, other stars with planets should have gotten similar starts. But according to [Geoff] Marcy, theory has implications not born out in reality.” [1.]
- This observation potentially has large implications for cosmic evolution theory. The foundation of projects like SETI, is that what's true of earth should be true of the universe in general. i.e. since life formed naturally here on earth it must necessarily form elsewhere in the universe; billions, if not trillions of times. The basic idea championed by Carl Sagan (and Cosmos) is that life here on earth (or in our solar system) isn't in any way unique, and that what is true of us must be true of the universe. Recent discoveries have left this pretense in ribbons (like a flag after a prolonged storm).
- Materialists are now being forced to accept the fact the basic idea behind cosmic evolution is false. (Reality can be such a nasty thing.) It simply isn't true that the rest of the universe must be like our solar system. This doesn't mean life forms won't be found, or don't exist, but it does falsify the basic 'Copernican' pretense.
Summary; people who disagreed with the Copernican principle were mocked by Sagan as being stupid, ignorant or superstitious... but now it appears they were right.
Notes;
1.Busted! Planet-Making Theories Don’t Fit Extrasolar Planets; Creation/Evolution Headlines 02/23/2011
'Famed planet-hunter Geoff Marcy is giving theorists headaches. The leading theories of planet formation won’t stand up to observations of hundreds of planets we know. In National Geographic News reporter Richard Lovett lamented, “The more new planets we find, the less we seem to know about how planetary systems are born, according to a leading planet hunter.” We cannot apply theories that fit our solar system to other systems: “In theory, other stars with planets should have gotten similar starts. But according to Marcy, theory has implications not born out in reality.”
2. Definition of Copernican principle [from Wiki]
'In physical cosmology, the Copernican principle, named after Nicolaus Copernicus, states that the Earth is not in a central, specially favored position.[1] More recently, the principle has been generalized to the relativistic concept that humans are not privileged observers of the universe.[2] In this sense, it is equivalent to the mediocrity principle, with important implications for the philosophy of science.'
3. Definition of mediocrity principle [from Wiki]
'The mediocrity principle is the notion in philosophy of science that there is nothing special about humans or the Earth. It is a Copernican principle, used either as a heuristic about Earth's position or as a philosophical statement about the place of humanity.'
- In my opinion materialism is the real mediocrity principle; as it has little explanatory power.
It's a mediocre worldview at best; it might get you halfway up the mountain, but in no way will it get you to the top.
4. Extension of MP;
(1) life on Earth depends on just a few basic molecules;
(2) the elements that make up these molecules are (to a greater or lesser extent) common to all stars, and
(3) the laws of science we know apply to the entire universe (and there is no reason to assume that they do not),
(Conclusion) then – given sufficient time – life must have originated elsewhere in the cosmos.
5. “Theory has struck out,” he [Marcy] told the American Astronomical Society last month.
Quotes and comments;
1. "The more new planets we find, the less we seem to know about how planetary systems are born, according to a leading planet hunter.” We cannot apply theories that fit our solar system to other systems: “In theory, other stars with planets should have gotten similar starts. But according to [Geoff] Marcy, theory has implications not born out in reality.” [1.]
- This observation potentially has large implications for cosmic evolution theory. The foundation of projects like SETI, is that what's true of earth should be true of the universe in general. i.e. since life formed naturally here on earth it must necessarily form elsewhere in the universe; billions, if not trillions of times. The basic idea championed by Carl Sagan (and Cosmos) is that life here on earth (or in our solar system) isn't in any way unique, and that what is true of us must be true of the universe. Recent discoveries have left this pretense in ribbons (like a flag after a prolonged storm).
- Materialists are now being forced to accept the fact the basic idea behind cosmic evolution is false. (Reality can be such a nasty thing.) It simply isn't true that the rest of the universe must be like our solar system. This doesn't mean life forms won't be found, or don't exist, but it does falsify the basic 'Copernican' pretense.
Summary; people who disagreed with the Copernican principle were mocked by Sagan as being stupid, ignorant or superstitious... but now it appears they were right.
Notes;
1.Busted! Planet-Making Theories Don’t Fit Extrasolar Planets; Creation/Evolution Headlines 02/23/2011
'Famed planet-hunter Geoff Marcy is giving theorists headaches. The leading theories of planet formation won’t stand up to observations of hundreds of planets we know. In National Geographic News reporter Richard Lovett lamented, “The more new planets we find, the less we seem to know about how planetary systems are born, according to a leading planet hunter.” We cannot apply theories that fit our solar system to other systems: “In theory, other stars with planets should have gotten similar starts. But according to Marcy, theory has implications not born out in reality.”
2. Definition of Copernican principle [from Wiki]
'In physical cosmology, the Copernican principle, named after Nicolaus Copernicus, states that the Earth is not in a central, specially favored position.[1] More recently, the principle has been generalized to the relativistic concept that humans are not privileged observers of the universe.[2] In this sense, it is equivalent to the mediocrity principle, with important implications for the philosophy of science.'
3. Definition of mediocrity principle [from Wiki]
'The mediocrity principle is the notion in philosophy of science that there is nothing special about humans or the Earth. It is a Copernican principle, used either as a heuristic about Earth's position or as a philosophical statement about the place of humanity.'
- In my opinion materialism is the real mediocrity principle; as it has little explanatory power.
It's a mediocre worldview at best; it might get you halfway up the mountain, but in no way will it get you to the top.
4. Extension of MP;
(1) life on Earth depends on just a few basic molecules;
(2) the elements that make up these molecules are (to a greater or lesser extent) common to all stars, and
(3) the laws of science we know apply to the entire universe (and there is no reason to assume that they do not),
(Conclusion) then – given sufficient time – life must have originated elsewhere in the cosmos.
5. “Theory has struck out,” he [Marcy] told the American Astronomical Society last month.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Blinded by (Pop!) science
In today's edition of show and tell, we talk about evolution in a box.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'Two recent articles cast doubt on the claim that evolutionists rely on factual information to teach students their theory. When computers are programmed to make evolution happen on a screen, does it convey to what really happens in the wild?
“There’s a huge disconnect,” Dittmar says. “The universities all accept evolution as fact. It’s not a question. But many high schools and middle schools don’t want to touch it. They don’t want to deal with the politics of it.” [1.]
- Evolution can't be a 'fact' if we don't know what it is; or if we don't have a definition of it we can all accept. When the term (E.) is used in such a multitude of ways, when it has so many varying connotations, how can it be a fact?
If we define evolution as change; then obviously E. is a fact... but no one denies that change occurs. Evolution has to mean something more than change to have any meaningful content.
To use the word evolution without defining it, is at best an exercise in obfuscation. No creationist denies the variation that is called micro-evolution. (A phenomenon that might better be called devolution.)
- Darwinists are famous for giving evidence of micro-evolution (variation) as proof of macro-evolution... when the two are utterly different. (Talk about disconnects.)
2. 'Pop! World uses digital lizards in a flash application to simulate red and green lizards evolving (see demo at popworld15.appspot.com). The gamey intro heavily emphasizes the visualization of the computer world. [1.]
- The new strategy for Darwinists is to forget about proving evolution, and merely showing it happen instead... and to hide the phoniness of the programming, and the fact the videos prove nothing. These aren't proofs (evidence) of evolution, but merely animated videos that show it. i.e. the programming ensures that e. will happen. (How many students will be able to see the fallacies embedded in the programming? How many will even care?) These are just cartoons, and have nothing to do with legitimate science.
- It's sad, but I'm afraid true, that in a visual culture you don't have to prove things, all you have to do is show pictures; the image carries the day (or carries the argument).
Notes;
1. Selling Evolution with Video Games and Stories - C/E Headlines 1/23/2011
2. 'PhysOrg reported that educators at the University of Buffalo are using “cloud computing” (software that accesses free internet resources) to make evolution more visually stimulating for students. An application alarmingly called Pop! World is the key to taking the video game culture and selling evolution with it:
3. "That visual appeal is also expected to go far with middle-school and high-school biology students, groups the UB team hopes to excite about evolution..."
- I'm not sure what students are supposed to be excited about... survival of the fittest?
e.g. From an article in Astrobiology;
"For all their power to create life in the world that we know, Darwinian processes have some well-understood disadvantages. For example, they condemn some of our children to die of genetic diseases in order to “allow” others among our children to adapt. For every mutation that allows some children to be bigger, better, and smarter, Darwinian processes require dozens of other mutations that make some children sick. Death from genetic maladaptation inherently goes with adaptation.'' - Steve Benner
- I see no evidence Darwinian processes created the first life forms on this planet. We observe the 'disadvantages' but we don't not observe the 'miracle' of darwinian creation. This 'power to create' is simply a necessary deduction of believing in a materialist worldview. It's not based on empirical observation.
4. Just for the fun of it, I'll point out that a university can't accept or reject anything; being not a person but an abstraction and institution.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'Two recent articles cast doubt on the claim that evolutionists rely on factual information to teach students their theory. When computers are programmed to make evolution happen on a screen, does it convey to what really happens in the wild?
“There’s a huge disconnect,” Dittmar says. “The universities all accept evolution as fact. It’s not a question. But many high schools and middle schools don’t want to touch it. They don’t want to deal with the politics of it.” [1.]
- Evolution can't be a 'fact' if we don't know what it is; or if we don't have a definition of it we can all accept. When the term (E.) is used in such a multitude of ways, when it has so many varying connotations, how can it be a fact?
If we define evolution as change; then obviously E. is a fact... but no one denies that change occurs. Evolution has to mean something more than change to have any meaningful content.
To use the word evolution without defining it, is at best an exercise in obfuscation. No creationist denies the variation that is called micro-evolution. (A phenomenon that might better be called devolution.)
- Darwinists are famous for giving evidence of micro-evolution (variation) as proof of macro-evolution... when the two are utterly different. (Talk about disconnects.)
2. 'Pop! World uses digital lizards in a flash application to simulate red and green lizards evolving (see demo at popworld15.appspot.com). The gamey intro heavily emphasizes the visualization of the computer world. [1.]
- The new strategy for Darwinists is to forget about proving evolution, and merely showing it happen instead... and to hide the phoniness of the programming, and the fact the videos prove nothing. These aren't proofs (evidence) of evolution, but merely animated videos that show it. i.e. the programming ensures that e. will happen. (How many students will be able to see the fallacies embedded in the programming? How many will even care?) These are just cartoons, and have nothing to do with legitimate science.
- It's sad, but I'm afraid true, that in a visual culture you don't have to prove things, all you have to do is show pictures; the image carries the day (or carries the argument).
Notes;
1. Selling Evolution with Video Games and Stories - C/E Headlines 1/23/2011
2. 'PhysOrg reported that educators at the University of Buffalo are using “cloud computing” (software that accesses free internet resources) to make evolution more visually stimulating for students. An application alarmingly called Pop! World is the key to taking the video game culture and selling evolution with it:
3. "That visual appeal is also expected to go far with middle-school and high-school biology students, groups the UB team hopes to excite about evolution..."
- I'm not sure what students are supposed to be excited about... survival of the fittest?
e.g. From an article in Astrobiology;
"For all their power to create life in the world that we know, Darwinian processes have some well-understood disadvantages. For example, they condemn some of our children to die of genetic diseases in order to “allow” others among our children to adapt. For every mutation that allows some children to be bigger, better, and smarter, Darwinian processes require dozens of other mutations that make some children sick. Death from genetic maladaptation inherently goes with adaptation.'' - Steve Benner
- I see no evidence Darwinian processes created the first life forms on this planet. We observe the 'disadvantages' but we don't not observe the 'miracle' of darwinian creation. This 'power to create' is simply a necessary deduction of believing in a materialist worldview. It's not based on empirical observation.
4. Just for the fun of it, I'll point out that a university can't accept or reject anything; being not a person but an abstraction and institution.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Dopamine, music and reductionism; or the day the music died
It's a common fad of our time to explain things in terms of reductionism. One example of this regrettable trend is to explain music in terms of dopamine.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'However, as a neurotransmitter, dopamine is also known to imprint the memory of a pleasure-causing event. Valorie Salimpoor, a McGill University neuroscientist, told Discovery News, "The intense pleasure we get from [music] is actually biologically reinforcing in the brain, and now here's proof for it." [1.]
- I don't like this way of putting things. It makes it sound as if we listen to make to get a hit of dopamine! This strikes me as wrong headed. This is materialist reductionism. What is dopamine? It's just a chemical. The only reason it has any special properties (connected with pleasure) is because of the way the brain is programmed. We can draw an analogy with the alphabet. e.g. there is nothing 'magical' about the shape of the letter P (or L, E, etc.) that is connected to pleasure... it's the shape it is, simply because of the code used for the English alphabet.
- I insist that we listen to music for the sake of the music, for the sake of the pleasure the music brings. Dopamine facilitates this process, but is not what listening pleasure is all about. If it were, we could just take a hit of dopamine (or cocaine or whatever).
Reductionism is directly connected to drug use in my view; as it 'short circuits' artistic, cultural and social life. i.e. if man is just a puddle of chemicals why bother with the intermediary factors mentioned above? Man however (in the biblical view) is more than chemicals; he was designed for communication, relationship. community and worship. (He was designed for music as well; as an integral part of worship.) In materialist theory there is no room for purpose, and so we get dumbed down theories like music as a dopamine seeking behavior.
- I consider it a horrid idea to claim a person enjoys singing a hymn or listening to a mass (etc.) because of the dopamine hit they get. This is a dehumanizing idea. (We can see in this example how basic worldview assumptions can affect how we develop theories and explanation.) This might be akin to claiming a person likes to read because they like looking at letters. Reductionism reduces everything to one level; it takes human experience that is rich in levels and layers of meaning, and dumbs it down to the chemical level.
2. "This basically explains why music has been around for so long," she added. "The intense pleasure we get from it is actually biologically reinforcing in the brain, and now here's proof for it." [2.]
- Does this explain why music has been around for so long. I don't think so. You can put that spin on it if you want, but I don't see it. Music has been around for so long because people enjoy making music, listening to it, dancing to it, getting together with others, etc. (and because we were designed for music; we are musical beings... and because at best music is all about praise and worship.)
Notes;
1. Study Shows Humans Are Uniquely Designed for Music by Brian Thomas
2. Why Music Makes You Happy - Emily Sohn
'People love music for much the same reason they're drawn to sex, drugs, gambling and delicious food, according to new research. When you listen to tunes that move you, the study found, your brain releases dopamine, a chemical involved in both motivation and addiction.'
3. This theory fails to address why some people find AC/DC pleasurable (i.e. gives them chills) and some people hate it. I assume we don't get dopamine release from music we hate. It doesn't explain why we like music at all; or how music came to be... or really anything interesting at all.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'However, as a neurotransmitter, dopamine is also known to imprint the memory of a pleasure-causing event. Valorie Salimpoor, a McGill University neuroscientist, told Discovery News, "The intense pleasure we get from [music] is actually biologically reinforcing in the brain, and now here's proof for it." [1.]
- I don't like this way of putting things. It makes it sound as if we listen to make to get a hit of dopamine! This strikes me as wrong headed. This is materialist reductionism. What is dopamine? It's just a chemical. The only reason it has any special properties (connected with pleasure) is because of the way the brain is programmed. We can draw an analogy with the alphabet. e.g. there is nothing 'magical' about the shape of the letter P (or L, E, etc.) that is connected to pleasure... it's the shape it is, simply because of the code used for the English alphabet.
- I insist that we listen to music for the sake of the music, for the sake of the pleasure the music brings. Dopamine facilitates this process, but is not what listening pleasure is all about. If it were, we could just take a hit of dopamine (or cocaine or whatever).
Reductionism is directly connected to drug use in my view; as it 'short circuits' artistic, cultural and social life. i.e. if man is just a puddle of chemicals why bother with the intermediary factors mentioned above? Man however (in the biblical view) is more than chemicals; he was designed for communication, relationship. community and worship. (He was designed for music as well; as an integral part of worship.) In materialist theory there is no room for purpose, and so we get dumbed down theories like music as a dopamine seeking behavior.
- I consider it a horrid idea to claim a person enjoys singing a hymn or listening to a mass (etc.) because of the dopamine hit they get. This is a dehumanizing idea. (We can see in this example how basic worldview assumptions can affect how we develop theories and explanation.) This might be akin to claiming a person likes to read because they like looking at letters. Reductionism reduces everything to one level; it takes human experience that is rich in levels and layers of meaning, and dumbs it down to the chemical level.
2. "This basically explains why music has been around for so long," she added. "The intense pleasure we get from it is actually biologically reinforcing in the brain, and now here's proof for it." [2.]
- Does this explain why music has been around for so long. I don't think so. You can put that spin on it if you want, but I don't see it. Music has been around for so long because people enjoy making music, listening to it, dancing to it, getting together with others, etc. (and because we were designed for music; we are musical beings... and because at best music is all about praise and worship.)
Notes;
1. Study Shows Humans Are Uniquely Designed for Music by Brian Thomas
2. Why Music Makes You Happy - Emily Sohn
'People love music for much the same reason they're drawn to sex, drugs, gambling and delicious food, according to new research. When you listen to tunes that move you, the study found, your brain releases dopamine, a chemical involved in both motivation and addiction.'
3. This theory fails to address why some people find AC/DC pleasurable (i.e. gives them chills) and some people hate it. I assume we don't get dopamine release from music we hate. It doesn't explain why we like music at all; or how music came to be... or really anything interesting at all.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Darwinism and its dissidents
As another creationist has been hounded out of university employment, I feel the need to say a few things about the case.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'For daring to question evolution, an astronomer who was the best qualified candidate to become director of a new observatory lost out. “No one denies that astronomer Martin Gaskell was the leading candidate for the founding director of a new observatory at the University of Kentucky in 2007 – until his writings on evolution came to light,” a report on Courier-Journal reported. [1.]
- Aren't universities supposed to be the home of free speech?
2. 'Gaskell’s lawsuit, however, claims that “UK officials repeatedly referred to his religion in their discussions and e-mails” as the real reason. One astronomy professor, for instance, “feared embarrassing headlines about Kentucky’s flagship university hiring a ‘creationist’ in a state already home to the controversial Creation Museum.”
- The crew that set about denying Gaskell his rights, are the real embarassment... but are so full of venom they can't see it. What ever happened to academic freedom, and the right to free speech, and the right to hold different views on things? Apparently these people don't find their own disgraceful behavior embarassing.
- The people who denied Gaskell his rights, tried to equate his views with the young creationist views of Ken Ham, when in fact he's an old earth creationist of the Hugh Ross variety.
- His creationist worldview offers no impediment to his being able to engage in astronomical studies (no more than being a Christian negatively affects one's ability to read and write). The arguments used against his employment are utterly specious, and everyone knows it. (Too bad no Darwinist has the decency or integrity to say so.)
3. 'Three biology professors and a geology professor also hammered that theme, that hiring Gaskell would be a “disaster” and an embarrassment to the university...'
- The real disaster is that people like these (atheists) are allowed to hound people out of the university scene. Don't any of them find it ironic that the crowd who still whines about Galileo, goes about engaging in this kind of harassment and attack?
4. 'Gaskell’s academic opponents worried about his denial of evolution, and his support for intelligent design. “UK biologists said in their e-mails that evidence for evolution was so overwhelming that Gaskell had no scientific basis to raise questions about it.”
- The job in question is director of an observatory for goodness sake. This has nothing to do with the biological theory of evolution. This is a joke, and we all know it.
- The claim there is no 'scientific basis' for raising questions about M2M evolution is a pile of manure (or bullshit, to use the more scientific term). I just finished watching a 24 lecture series on the origin of life with Robert Hazen, and he himself admits no one has a clue how life forms evolved from inert matter. No one knows how that theoretical first organism emerged.
There are a million theories to be sure; but speculation is cheap, and supply exceeds demand. OOL people have no idea where complex, specified information comes from. They have no idea how matter can write code. They have no idea how mutations can create complex new organs.
- That there are are no questions about the viability of evolutionary theory is a farce. I've studied this subject in detail for many years, and I've discovered that there are many more questions than answers. It's too bad more people can't be honest about this.
Notes;
1. Best Qualified Candidate Expelled Over Views on Evolution, Design Creation/Evolution Headlines 12/11/2010
Dec 11, 2010 — For daring to question evolution, an astronomer who was the best qualified candidate to become director of a new observatory lost out. “No one denies that astronomer Martin Gaskell was the leading candidate for the founding director of a new observatory at the University of Kentucky in 2007 – until his writings on evolution came to light,” a report on Courier-Journal reported.'
- In my opinion, universities that engage in such egregious behavior should lose their tax support.
2. Interested readers might want to read 'The slaughter of the Dissisents' by Jerry Bergman
- On most campuses you are literally not allowed to disagree with secular orthodoxy. If you want to go your own way, you will soon be sent to the sidelines, and eventually sent home. (For some reason this only seems to apply in matters of evolution theory and christian faith. This is an oddity that I'm sure is purely accidental.)
Quotes and comments;
1. 'For daring to question evolution, an astronomer who was the best qualified candidate to become director of a new observatory lost out. “No one denies that astronomer Martin Gaskell was the leading candidate for the founding director of a new observatory at the University of Kentucky in 2007 – until his writings on evolution came to light,” a report on Courier-Journal reported. [1.]
- Aren't universities supposed to be the home of free speech?
2. 'Gaskell’s lawsuit, however, claims that “UK officials repeatedly referred to his religion in their discussions and e-mails” as the real reason. One astronomy professor, for instance, “feared embarrassing headlines about Kentucky’s flagship university hiring a ‘creationist’ in a state already home to the controversial Creation Museum.”
- The crew that set about denying Gaskell his rights, are the real embarassment... but are so full of venom they can't see it. What ever happened to academic freedom, and the right to free speech, and the right to hold different views on things? Apparently these people don't find their own disgraceful behavior embarassing.
- The people who denied Gaskell his rights, tried to equate his views with the young creationist views of Ken Ham, when in fact he's an old earth creationist of the Hugh Ross variety.
- His creationist worldview offers no impediment to his being able to engage in astronomical studies (no more than being a Christian negatively affects one's ability to read and write). The arguments used against his employment are utterly specious, and everyone knows it. (Too bad no Darwinist has the decency or integrity to say so.)
3. 'Three biology professors and a geology professor also hammered that theme, that hiring Gaskell would be a “disaster” and an embarrassment to the university...'
- The real disaster is that people like these (atheists) are allowed to hound people out of the university scene. Don't any of them find it ironic that the crowd who still whines about Galileo, goes about engaging in this kind of harassment and attack?
4. 'Gaskell’s academic opponents worried about his denial of evolution, and his support for intelligent design. “UK biologists said in their e-mails that evidence for evolution was so overwhelming that Gaskell had no scientific basis to raise questions about it.”
- The job in question is director of an observatory for goodness sake. This has nothing to do with the biological theory of evolution. This is a joke, and we all know it.
- The claim there is no 'scientific basis' for raising questions about M2M evolution is a pile of manure (or bullshit, to use the more scientific term). I just finished watching a 24 lecture series on the origin of life with Robert Hazen, and he himself admits no one has a clue how life forms evolved from inert matter. No one knows how that theoretical first organism emerged.
There are a million theories to be sure; but speculation is cheap, and supply exceeds demand. OOL people have no idea where complex, specified information comes from. They have no idea how matter can write code. They have no idea how mutations can create complex new organs.
- That there are are no questions about the viability of evolutionary theory is a farce. I've studied this subject in detail for many years, and I've discovered that there are many more questions than answers. It's too bad more people can't be honest about this.
Notes;
1. Best Qualified Candidate Expelled Over Views on Evolution, Design Creation/Evolution Headlines 12/11/2010
Dec 11, 2010 — For daring to question evolution, an astronomer who was the best qualified candidate to become director of a new observatory lost out. “No one denies that astronomer Martin Gaskell was the leading candidate for the founding director of a new observatory at the University of Kentucky in 2007 – until his writings on evolution came to light,” a report on Courier-Journal reported.'
- In my opinion, universities that engage in such egregious behavior should lose their tax support.
2. Interested readers might want to read 'The slaughter of the Dissisents' by Jerry Bergman
- On most campuses you are literally not allowed to disagree with secular orthodoxy. If you want to go your own way, you will soon be sent to the sidelines, and eventually sent home. (For some reason this only seems to apply in matters of evolution theory and christian faith. This is an oddity that I'm sure is purely accidental.)
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Evolution, aliens and blind faith
Do new discoveries prove that extraterrestrial life is a near certainty? Is life as ubiquitous as Starbucks coffee shops?
Quotes and comments;
1. "Science is not about blind faith” begins a video posted on MSNBC about SETI. Part of an article by AP reporter Seth Borenstein, “Evidence for E.T. is mounting daily, but not proven,” the video explains Frank Drake’s famous equation that tries to quantify the probability for extraterrestrial intelligence.' [1.]
- We're not talking about 'science' but about SETI; these are not the same thing.
- We might ask B. if SETI was 'science' before exoplanets were discovered. Or was it at that point merely blind faith? By his own definition it would appear so.
- The phrase blind faith is grossly overused in our day. Most faith isn't 'blind' at all; but is based on various types of evidence.
2. 'Then Carl Pilcher, director of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, was given the microphone to say, “The evidence is just getting stronger and stronger” that “There’s got to be life out there.”
- Got to be? Does this mean human beings can give orders to the universe? I wonder if the universe has to obey these orders :=)
- There doesn't 'got to be' life on these exoplanets anymore than there has to be life on Mars.
3. 'After a brief caveat that “Since much of this research is new, scientists are still debating how solid the conclusions are,” Borenstein reassures the reader that even if something simple, like slime mold, is detected first, “It can evolve from there.”
- That's a claim, not a fact. In my opinion life forms can only 'evolve' downward, not upward. At best things can change in a sideways fashion due to mutations, as mutations destroy information, they don't create information. (Trying to explain progressive evolution by way of mutation is like trying to make a rock bigger by chipping parts of it away.)
4. 'Borenstein strips it down to two factors: “How many places out there can support life? And how hard is it for life to take root?”
- The problem isn't getting 'life' to take root; but getting living organisms in the first place. ie. where does this 'life' come from? It has to come from somewhere (out of nothingness) before it can take root.
- As I've said before; there is no such thing as life. There are living organisms; there is no such thing as life. (A better question would be; how many places can support living organisms?)
5. 'Bolstered by Wolf-Simon’s arsenic microbes, he beamed, “That means the probability for alien life is higher than ever before...''
- Wrong. The word he should have used in possibility; not probability.
- The fact x happens on earth says nothing about the rest of the universe. i.e. there is no necessary connection. (If there are no life forms in the rest of the universe we can see how what happens on earth has no necessary connection with what happens in the rest of the universe.)
6. 'Calling on SETI Institute senior astronomer Seth Shostak, who “ticks off the astronomical findings about planet abundance and Earthbound discoveries about life’s hardiness,” he agrees that these points “have gone in the direction of encouraging life out there and they didn’t have to,” – so much so, that denying the existence of extraterrestrial life, Shostak alleged, is tantamount to believing in miracles (i.e., that life only exists on earth).
- Where has the empiricism in science gone?
- Is Shoshtak admitting that if 'life' isn't found in the universe, life on earth is a miracle :=)
Notes;
1. SETI Ignorance Gets Stronger Creation/Evolution Headlines 12/09/2010
Dec 09, 2010 — “Science is not about blind faith” begins a video posted on MSNBC about SETI. Part of an article by AP reporter Seth Borenstein, “Evidence for E.T. is mounting daily, but not proven,” the video explains Frank Drake’s famous equation that tries to quantify the probability for extraterrestrial intelligence (09/29/2010, 11/24/2008).
Quotes and comments;
1. "Science is not about blind faith” begins a video posted on MSNBC about SETI. Part of an article by AP reporter Seth Borenstein, “Evidence for E.T. is mounting daily, but not proven,” the video explains Frank Drake’s famous equation that tries to quantify the probability for extraterrestrial intelligence.' [1.]
- We're not talking about 'science' but about SETI; these are not the same thing.
- We might ask B. if SETI was 'science' before exoplanets were discovered. Or was it at that point merely blind faith? By his own definition it would appear so.
- The phrase blind faith is grossly overused in our day. Most faith isn't 'blind' at all; but is based on various types of evidence.
2. 'Then Carl Pilcher, director of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, was given the microphone to say, “The evidence is just getting stronger and stronger” that “There’s got to be life out there.”
- Got to be? Does this mean human beings can give orders to the universe? I wonder if the universe has to obey these orders :=)
- There doesn't 'got to be' life on these exoplanets anymore than there has to be life on Mars.
3. 'After a brief caveat that “Since much of this research is new, scientists are still debating how solid the conclusions are,” Borenstein reassures the reader that even if something simple, like slime mold, is detected first, “It can evolve from there.”
- That's a claim, not a fact. In my opinion life forms can only 'evolve' downward, not upward. At best things can change in a sideways fashion due to mutations, as mutations destroy information, they don't create information. (Trying to explain progressive evolution by way of mutation is like trying to make a rock bigger by chipping parts of it away.)
4. 'Borenstein strips it down to two factors: “How many places out there can support life? And how hard is it for life to take root?”
- The problem isn't getting 'life' to take root; but getting living organisms in the first place. ie. where does this 'life' come from? It has to come from somewhere (out of nothingness) before it can take root.
- As I've said before; there is no such thing as life. There are living organisms; there is no such thing as life. (A better question would be; how many places can support living organisms?)
5. 'Bolstered by Wolf-Simon’s arsenic microbes, he beamed, “That means the probability for alien life is higher than ever before...''
- Wrong. The word he should have used in possibility; not probability.
- The fact x happens on earth says nothing about the rest of the universe. i.e. there is no necessary connection. (If there are no life forms in the rest of the universe we can see how what happens on earth has no necessary connection with what happens in the rest of the universe.)
6. 'Calling on SETI Institute senior astronomer Seth Shostak, who “ticks off the astronomical findings about planet abundance and Earthbound discoveries about life’s hardiness,” he agrees that these points “have gone in the direction of encouraging life out there and they didn’t have to,” – so much so, that denying the existence of extraterrestrial life, Shostak alleged, is tantamount to believing in miracles (i.e., that life only exists on earth).
- Where has the empiricism in science gone?
- Is Shoshtak admitting that if 'life' isn't found in the universe, life on earth is a miracle :=)
Notes;
1. SETI Ignorance Gets Stronger Creation/Evolution Headlines 12/09/2010
Dec 09, 2010 — “Science is not about blind faith” begins a video posted on MSNBC about SETI. Part of an article by AP reporter Seth Borenstein, “Evidence for E.T. is mounting daily, but not proven,” the video explains Frank Drake’s famous equation that tries to quantify the probability for extraterrestrial intelligence (09/29/2010, 11/24/2008).
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