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
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
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.
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