According to modern scientists, our universe began with a gigantic explosion, forcing a “traumatic growth spurt before it was a billionth of a billionth of a second old.” Somewhere in there, a whole lot of matter and debris was scattered, forming our young universe, which is still, even now, rapidly expanding in an outward direction.
So, was there some kind of great big ball of dirt that contained all the elements within itself that now make up the whole of our universe, including those elements that support life on Earth? Were there already tiny microbes there that would one day evolve into the human race, microbes that were in some sort of stasis until some catalyst (the Big Bang) pushed things into a much more manageable, and therefore much less restricted, space to form planets in just the right place around newly formed stars, allowing them to be put into action to start growing and evolving? (Or did some primordial oozish chemicals combine to somehow become the first single-celled organisms?) I guess I wonder a little bit how scientists can form theories like these, when the statistical odds against such an event ever happening are enormous (to the point of being impossible). The other problem with this theory is that it still doesn’t explain where everything comes from (the origins question) because in order for matter to have somehow formed out of an explosion, it had to have already existed in the first place. Exploding gases sure don’t produce matter out of thin air (no pun intended).
Or maybe the goal isn’t to solve the problem of the origins of all matter in the universe. Maybe the goal is simply to solve the question of where Man, and his environment, came from. If that’s the case, then this is a whole different horse-and-pony show because then the questions, and the subsequent sought-after answers, are very different. Still, I can’t see a genuinely curious scientist not being curious about the question of where everything came from. Maybe Mr. Scientist doesn’t really have a hope of answering those questions because he knows science isn’t likely to produce solutions to problems that are billions of years old. Maybe he is simply trying to find out as much as he can before he dies. Maybe he is simply trying to find meaning for his life by figuring out what his infinite reference point is.
Meh, don’t mind me. Just a bit of philosophical rambling that was screaming for attention. (As always, feedback is greatly appreciated.)
Tags: evolution, logic, origins, philosophy, Science
New Scientist Breaking News – Methanol-powered artificial muscles start to flex
Notable quote:
“One day you could find yourself sitting in a bar next to a humanoid robot, who is taking a shot of vodka to give himself the energy to go to work,” jokes Ray Baughman, a nanotechnologist at the University of Texas at Dallas, US.
Oh, I think this might just serve as good fodder for a sci-fi milieu element. I like!
Tags: Science, science-fiction, Speculative Fiction, Technology
Saturn’s watery moon could harbour life
So, Saturn’s little moon Enceladus apparently has liquid water, which naturally has generated quite a lot of buzz in the scientific community, since the existence of liquid begets at least the possibility of life on that moon. This is yet another of those times when you wish you get an actual, live person on a ship out there to take a closer look. The question of the day right now seems to be what heat source is available to prevent the water from freezing.
The question I have, though, is this – does the existence of liquid water necessarily beget the existence of life? Probably not, though it does at least raise the possibility that it could be so. Perhaps only time will truly tell, and if life is discovered, I suspect it will be microscopic.
Related Articles:
Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Life, Not On Earth
Tags: news, Science
One of the coolest things I learned during my psychology master’s program was that your memories are probably stored not just in your brain but throughout your entire nervous system. It was funny to me to consider the idea that I was retrieving a high school memory from my big toe. The science behind this theory is that often we react to a potential danger before we can ever actually process the fact that we might get hurt. For instance, when you touch a burner on your kitchen range, sometimes you will react sharply by withdrawing your hand quickly as though you had been burned, even though the burner itself is cold. That is due to a memory stored in that part of your body of a time in the past when you had been burned, and your reflexes reacted before your brain had the chance the determine that there was no actual danger present.
Another thing that most people are probably aware of is that the senses can often store the most potent memories of all. Say you smell perfume and you are struck with a poignant memory of a former love and are brought to the brink of tears at the vividness of the thoughts and feelings associated with that memory, even though it’s been years since you last saw that individual. Or you hear an old song for the first time in forever and you remember an event you hadn’t thought about in a long, long time. Or you touch a rough board and you can remember as though it was yesterday that time as a child that you worked in the shop with your dad building a birdhouse.
The senses are amazing things, and it’s still amazing to me just what kinds of memories are stored with them and what can be accessed with just the right stimulus. Our bodies are an intricate and vastly complex work, and I think I never cease to be fascinated the things they can do.
Tags: graduate-school, physiology, psychology, Science
I’ve always had an active imagination (though this has not always been a good thing). As a kid I came up with all kinds of scenarios involving outer space, mythical creatures, superheroes, and far-off lands. And being the avid reader that I was, I only further fueled my imagination by reading just about any book I could get my hands on.
I grew up with TV shows like Thundercats, Voltron, Transformers, Go-Bots and SilverHawks. I loved the fantastic nature of these shows. I loved thinking about what it would be like to live in those universes, to be one of the characters, to have the abilities to do the sorts of things they did. I spent hours with my friends playing outside, pretending we were SilverHawks or that we could transform into jets and fly at top speed to rescue someone from danger.
If anything my imagination has only grown more active as I have gotten older. The discoveries of science have introduced new possibilities for what could be. I continue to devour science fiction and fantasy novels, where I can travel to other worlds, wield magic or laser weapons, enter a portal and step through time, or any of an endless variety of possibilities. Now, though, I want to add my part to the world of speculative fiction, and I plan to get back to my writing as soon as possible. I’m excited about having been able to submit my first short story to a SF&F magazine, though I fully expect it to get rejected. But it’s a first step at entering the world of speculative writing, and at the least I hope to gain some good experience and feedback. The list of ideas to write about has grown as long as my arm, and I can’t wait to see what stories fall from my head to my keyboard.
Perhaps one of the things I like best about speculative fiction, especially when it is well-done, is how these new and fantastic worlds, these characters who are so different yet so similar to us, can touch old ideas and issues and address them in new and fresh ways. Theology and philosophy are dressed in a new setting, but the issues are the same and must be handled in the same way. And being the theology/philosophy/technology geek that I am, it’s just the perfect blend of a few of the things I most enjoy.
Tags: cartoons, fantasy, go-bots, imagination, Science, science-fiction, silverhawks, Speculative Fiction, thundercats, transformers, tv, voltron, Writing
I continue to be befuddled by those who would claim that absolute truth does not and cannot exist. I am also somewhat bemused by this because I find such individuals cannot remain true to their own arguments and philosophies. Their arguments claim that it is impossible to know truth because every determination of what is true is tainted and colored by the interpretation of that truth and by one’s own experiences, thus leading to many different understandings of what that truth actually says and means. Naturally, the more complicated the concept, the greater the deviation in understanding that truth (though I would posit that a complex truth is really actually made up of many smaller, individual truths, which easily understood separately, may combine to create a concept whose relationship between the smaller truths may be more difficult to observe and determine, yet not negating the truth of either the smaller truths or that of the composite truth).
Now, I have also talked with non-absolutists (as I will refer to them here) who have said that such-and-such act is or was wrong or evil. My response then becomes, Well, how do you do know? By what standard do you compare such an act to determine its level of good or evil, or its degree of rightness or wrongness? For anything to be considered in terms of morality (and the need to conceive of the world in such terms is obvious and necessary and inherent in all men, as evidenced by the natural inclination to establish rules and laws in order to keep the peace), there must be an absolute standard by which that morality can be measured. In the world of weights and measures, for instance, there are standards for all units—an object measured out to be the standard for the gram, or the liter, or the centimeter, etc. All all larger units are based upon these smaller, more basic standards so that measurement around the world may be consistent and uniform. It is the same with truth and morality. The rub seems to come in because these are more abstract concepts, not observable through any of the five senses. Yet the world functions in terms of morality, as it must in order to prevent its descent into anarachy and chaos.
So, there must be some standard for truth that is knowable and attainable and that can be standardized across the entire population. Men have tried using rationality as a basis for determining truth, and ultimately they are able only to return to the self as a standard, since that is the very origin of the rational mind, themselves a shifting morass of thoughts, ideas, emotions, and opinions. It should be obvious that this is not an ideal reference point due to that very continuous shift. Therefore, the standard of truth must lie elsewhere.
Science itself is not an adequate standard of truth. It is an ever-changing source of knowledge as its observations become more acute and the knowledge gleaned from its studied more comprehensive. And science addresses only those things that are directly observable; there is no ability for it to address the truth of good and evil, moral and immoral, those concepts that are often most necessary for the daily exercise of living. Therefore, the standard of truth must lie elsewhere.
Creation is not equipped to answer the truth of good and evil, to establish standards of moral and immoral, much for the same reasons as science cannot. Creation is observable and supplies only those truths that we can see, even though we may not be able to understand them fully. It has no voice to speak to the abstract, to the intellectual knowledge that governs the behavior of men. Therefore, the standard of truth must lie elsewhere.
So, the standard for truth would most likely belong to a sentient being, one gifted with a mind to fully know the secrets, both of the universe and of the ways of mankind, with a vision of the whole so complete that it could speak the knowledge into the hearts and minds of men, teaching them how they should live so that they may act with wisdom and live at peace with each other. Such an individual cannot be found among men, creatures who by their very definition are confined to and limited by the world they inhabit. Only an individual who is outside of the known universe, yet lives within it so as to interact with it, would be able to hold the entirety of it within their mind and be able to know it so completely as to speak the truth into it that would give men a standard by which they could govern their lives. This being would have to be a personal being, for no other would be able to establish the relationship with mankind to communicate the truth by which men may live.
There is One who claims to be all this and more, and who may be determined, through the testing of His precepts, to be the absolute standard of all truth. He is wise and all-knowing, greater than all existence, personal and knowable. His words are the truth and the way of life. His name is Jehovah.
Tags: absolute-truth, creation, philosophy, rationality, relative-truth, right-and-wrong, righteousness, Science, truth
One of the things that I think I find most irritating is when people make the assumption that, just because you hold a different viewpoint than them, you 1) must be mis- or underinformed; 2) must be spouting the standard ‘party’ line; and 3) must be unable to think for yourself, able only to blindly accept and regurgitate the viewpoint you’ve been taught all your life, since anyone who can and does think for themself would just have to come to the same conclusion they hold. There is no room in these people’s minds that someone could look at the same evidence they have seen, experience the same events, or look at the same issues and still come to a different conclusion about all those things. The same people who tell you to use your head and think for a change are the same people who seem incapable of doing so themselves, because surely if they were to actually think about this topic long enough, they would realize that people who think do often come up with different conclusions.
I see this phenomenon all the time in the world of politics and in the world of religion. One party touts their viewpoint and accuses the other party of being blind and of not thinking, so sure are they that if the other party were to think, they would have no choice but to embrace their own viewpoint. (How’s that for a contradiction in terms, since so many of these people also do not believe in absolute truth?) Christians are continually accused of this by their antagonists. Part of this is because a lot of Christians don’t think, don’t exercise critical analysis, do blindly accept answers they have never personally investigated. But part of this is simply unbelievers being unable to entertain the idea that anyone intelligent could possibly ever disagree with them. The latter we can do nothing about, but the former is something that anyone and everyone can continually work on. This is part of why I, personally, write, since the feedback I receive continually exposes me to new ideas and new questions. I, for one, believe that both faith and critical thinking can co-exist, a notion at which many unbelievers scoff. Faith, by itself, can be just as blinding as rationality left to its own ends. I have seen people argue with incontrovertible scientific evidence, simply on the basis of their ‘faith’ (e.g. the Earth is flat, not round). Likewise, there are supernatural occurences that happen on a daily basis all around the world that science and rationality are wont to explain (e.g. keys that float through midair in someone’s home). This is why I believe that God asks us to first believe on Him, in faith, then provides us with further information, both about Himself and about this world around us and tells us that we should explore His creation.
Faith, without rationality, is dead; likewise, rationality, without faith, provides only half the answer. Only when the two meet and supplement one another can balance be found.
Tags: assumptions, christianity, critical-thinking, faith, politics, rationality, religion, Science, supernatural, viewpoint
hope, faith, choice, belief, truth, reality
Jackal has asked an interesting question going about which of the words above stand as most important and why. What is more perhaps more interesting than the question, however, is the discussion which follows it. Several people have pointed out that all the words are religious terms, but I propose that they are as much philosophical and scientific as they are religious. For this discussion I want to focus on how these terms are also scientific.
hope. The scientist has questions about the nature of the world and the universe, questions that he hopes to have answered through intensive research and experiments. He hopes that his answers will bring truth and enlightenment, that the mysteries of the ages will be opened up and revealed before him, that he will learn something new and fresh and desirable that will change the way people look at things forever.
faith. The scientist also has faith—that his science is reliable and valid, that it can, indeed, perform the rigorous tests of observation accurately and consistently each time, that the information the studies reveal is true and descriptive. He has faith that the answers to the great mysteries are knowable, that they have only to be discovered by he who is brilliant enough to find them. His science is, to some degree, his religion because he places great faith in it that it will provide him with the answers he seeks.
choice. There are a lot of choices in science—what questions to ask, what experiments to perform, what evidence to collect, what information to look at, etc. There are so many choices to make in science, choices that have a great degree of importance on the outcome of each and every study. Every step of the scientific process involves making choices with bad ones leading to misinformation and confusion and good ones leading to truth, answers, and enlightenment.
belief. Belief is also a scientific term because somewhere along the process, the information gathered must be believed or disbelieved, with the former leading to new processes and technologies and the latter leading to more studies and experiments.
truth. Science is, by its very nature, a search for truth. Every study conducted, every experiment run, every microscope and telescope focused, every meter and dial and knob turned is a pursuit for truth, specifically the truth of how the world and the universe functions. Sometimes, the truth is easily found, sometimes it requires years of fruitless labor before truth is discovered, if at all. Yet, it is inherent in the study of science to seek truth.
reality. How can one have science is one does not have reality? Science can only function in the presence of reality. This is, perhaps, a philosophical point, but nevertheless in order for something to be examined, it must first exist.
As always, I believe that science and religious faith go hand-in-hand, with philosophical musings servings as the supplemental goodness that fills out the formula. Science complements faith complements philsophy complements science, and so forth. I see no reason why the three cannot work together in perfect unity, providing us with a richness and depth of discovery that must surely be pleasing to God. After all, why would He have created all this for us if not for us to explore it to His glory and pleasure?
Tags: beliefs, faith, hope, philosophy, religion, Science
Cassandra and franky point out a couple of good questions, ones that have been asked by people for centuries. The questions, as I see them in this discussion, are:
- How do I know that God even exists?
- If God exists how do I know which religion(s) has it right?
Background
Pascal’s Wager. franky refers to Pascal’s Wager, in which Blaise Pascal posits that a rational analysis should lead one to, at the least, wager on the existence of God, supposing that it would be safer to gamble on His existence than on His non-existence. Several criticisms have been levelled at the Wager, and I will mention those that pertain directly to Cassandra and franky’s comments.
The whole of Pascal’s Wager is founded upon a simple matrix, the columns of which are God Exists and God Doesn’t Exist. One criticism of the Wager is that there should be more columns, specifically that the God Exists column should be subdivided into smaller columns, one for every other theistic hypothesis. Pascal’s Wager seems biased toward the Christian God, and critics of the Wager question how it accounts for other religious belief systems.
Another criticism of Pascal’s Wager that is particularly pertinent here is the atheist belief of the zero probability of God. Because atheists believe that God does not exist, it is just as advantageous to disbelieve in God as it is to believe in Him. This effectively renders the Wager moot for this belief system.
Note that Pascal’s Wager is not an argument for the existence of God so much as it is an argument for belief in God. Likewise, the flaws of the argument do not prove that God does not exist, merely that the argument itself has flaws.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Cassandra mentions the FSM, a satirical parody religion started in 2005 by OSU graduate and physicist Bobby Henderson to protest a decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to allow the teaching of alleged problems with evolution as well as the teaching of intelligent design in science classes. The FSM ‘doctrine’ uses much of the same type of verbiage found in Christian doctrine, pairing it with silliness in an attempt to show the ridiculous nature of teaching ID alongside evolution.
Discussion
Both Pascal’s Wager and the FSM ‘doctrine’ relate directly to question 1 above—How do I know that God even exists? Atheists believe that we cannot know that God exists because He doesn’t exist. By pointing to a noodly monster, as well as flaws in a mathematical proof, the idea is point out logical fallacies and inconsistencies that should debunk the idea of the existence of God, thus rendering religion impotent and unnecessary.
Personally, all the evidence I need for God’s existence surrounds me. I find it extremely hard to believe that all this could have come about by mere blind chance. I was reminded recently of the irreducible complexity argument, which states that certain systems in nature cannot be broken down any further without the system failing to function in its constituent parts, i.e. the systems must have been designed and assembled by intent, rather than by chance. What I find most interesting about this argument is that evolutionists seems to have no scientific counter-argument, only theory and conjecture, the very things that they accuse creationists of using to support their own theories.
The trouble in science, even with the best-designed experiments, is that it is impossible to competely remove personal bias from the design. The experimenter starts with a question from a certain point of view and approaches the question from a given direction that is, to at least some extent, predetermined by his view. Essentially, his presuppositions inform his agenda and influence it, whether he realizes it or not. This can be said for both evolutionists and creationists alike. Both can start with the same data and the same materials and arrive at very different conclusions, depending upon what presuppositions inform their test design and influence from what direction they approach the question (and even what questions get asked). Both then cite ‘irrefutable’ evidence for their conclusion.
I do believe that science is important. But I do believe that the place it runs into snags, for everyone, is in providing proof as to the origins of the universe and the origins of man. For the evolutionist, the universe has existed for billions of years and finding evidence from so long ago to support their hypotheses now is problematic. Similarly, for the creationist, the universe has existed for only 6,000 to 10,000 years, but providing evidence as to why a Creator would have created the universe with age is likewise problematic. It would seem, at least to me, that the best use for science is to find solutions to current problems. The origins problem will probably always be shrouded in theory and questions, rather than tangible evidence for any argument.
How we do know God exists? For me the answer is simple—I exist, the universe exists, and both are incredibly complex with systems that work so intricately together that they can’t be anything but designed. For the atheist, the answer also seems simple—it doesn’t make sense that there could be a Creator or Designer (though the actual philosophical reasoning for that decision eludes me at this point). There are other evidences that I can cite, as well, for my belief. The Christian faith is a beautiful blend of faith, knowledge, and experience. I have faith that God exists because I can see this world around me and I see a creative design in it. I have faith that God exists because His Word, in the Bible, tells me so, and that Word has been rigorously tested, both by myself and many others, and everything written therein has been shown to be true and accurate (or at least enough to assure me that it is a trustworthy source for truth). My knowledge comes from my interaction with the world, from studies done by Christian organizations who have been able to provide answers that both counter those of evolution and are consistent with the teachings of the Bible. And my experience comes from my relationship with God through His Son Jesus, through the peace in my heart and the hope and the joy I experience every day because I know I live for Someone and something beyond myself, through the compendium of events that come together on a regular basis that are the result of more than mere chance. These things together convince me daily beyond shadow of a doubt that God exists, and more than that—that He is a personal God Who interacts with me each and every day. It is a personal decision, and the things that I see as proof will not convince anyone not ready to believe or anyone who does not wish to be convinced. No one has ever been argued into Heaven, and I do not hope to do so now. But this is what I believe and just a little part of why I believe it.
How do I know that Christianity is the one, true faith, that Jehovah God is the only God, and that Jesus Christ is God-made-man and our intermediary? Part of this is experiential, as I mentioned above, but that alone is not enough, even for me, since people of all faiths can say the same. The biggest part of what convinces me is that the Christian God is so completely unique, compared against all the gods of all other religions. Only Jehovah has a perfect balance of love and righteous anger, of peace and justice, of sacrifice and giving. Only Jehovah God grants all the privileges of Heaven, of an inheritance equal to Jesus Christ, to those who accept it—as a free gift! Only Jehovah God gives us everything and expects nothing from us in return. Only Jehovah God sent a part of Himself in human form to do what no man could do so that all men could live with Him in peace. You won’t find that in any other religion in the world. It is unique to the Christian God, and it is so perfect and wonderful that I am compelled to believe and to strive every day to live in a way that is pleasing to a God that would and could be so bountiful and gracious in His love. And I find that even His judgment is fair and loving, when He seeks to discipline me and bring me back to a right relationship with Him.
Tags: atheism, christianity, flying-spaghetti-monster, general-revelation, music, pascals-wager, philosophy, religion, Science, theology
With the weather outside the way it is, one would think it was Christmas vacation this week, rather than Thanksgiving. It is beautiful out there, though, and it was a pleasure to walk in it this morning. Snow is definitely preferable at 28 degrees to rain at 36 degrees.
All this snow, however, reminded me of a little childhood wisdom—no two snowflakes are identical. Being now older, wiser, and a little more well-versed in the world of statistics, it has occurred to me to wonder a time or three over the past couple of years just how this can be. Mind you, I wouldn’t put it past an omnipotent God to actually cause every drop of moisture to crystallize into a historically and relationally unique shape once it drops below that all-important threshold of 32 degrees Farenheit (or 0 degrees Centigrade, for those of you using a different system). But by the same token, it occurred to me to wonder just how much proof was really out there on the topic.
So, I ran a Google search and this is what I came up with:
How do they know with any degree of certainty that no two snowflakes are alike? When I took statistics I was taught that to draw a valid conclusion one had to take a representative sample of the entire population. But considering the impossibly large number of flakes in a single snowfall, let alone that have ever fallen, how could snowologists have possibly taken a sample large enough to conclude that no two are alike?—Leslie B. Turner, San Pedro, California
They didn’t, of course. Chances are, in fact, that there are lots of duplicates. What the snowologists really mean is that your chance of finding duplicates is virtually zero. It’s been calculated that in a volume of snow two feet square by ten inches deep there are roughly one million flakes. Multiply that by the millions of square miles that are covered by snow each year (nearly one fourth of the earth’s land surface), and then multiply that by the billions of winters that have occurred since the dawn of time, and it’s obvious we’re talking unimaginable googols of flakes. Some of these are surely repeats.
On the other hand, a single snow crystal contains perhaps 100 million molecules, which can be arranged in a gigajillion different ways. By contrast, the number of flakes that have ever been photographed in the history of snow research amounts to a few tens of thousands. So it seems pretty safe to say nobody’s ever going to get documentary evidence of duplication. Still, it could happen, and what’s more, Leslie, it could happen to you. The way I figure, anybody who could dream up a question like this has got to have a lot of time on his hands. Get out and start looking.
There are a whole lot of other mathematical discussions on that page, but unless you’re something of a math geek like me, you’ll probably just find it mind-numbingly boring.
Tags: geek, google, math, Science, snow, Statistics, weather
