Conclusions from the Big Picture

Taking a look at the universe itself, there are some things that I could say about the being that created it. Obviously it took a great deal of power to create something the size and with the amount of energy in the universe. I don't know if you could conclude that this being is all powerful. He/She/It certainly could be but I don't see any strong evidence either way. I would also say that this being has a penchant for order as the rules of gravity, space/time, energy are constant and stable. The creator probably has some kind of needs or motivation. Why else create something if not to satisfy some kind of longing/desire. He/She/It must also be very creative as the variety of heavenly bodies indicates. He/She/It probably has some kind of planning personality. The elements and the precise requirements in the first few instances after the big bang indicate that this creation was thought out beforehand.

What We've Got

It seems to me that the most probable explanation for universe is the existence of a creator. Now I'm wondering what this creator might be like and what, if anything, he/she/it wants from us. There are some things that I should be able to conclude about the creator by what he/she/it created so let's start with what we've got.
So, what do we have. According to various experts in the field, this is the situation. There are 1 to the power of 80 particles in the universe. It is about 30 to 40 billion light years in diameter and expanding. Matter is centered in galaxies that contain on average about 200 billion stars each. There are a number of rules that matter seems to follow (gravity, energy, momentum, etc.). The universe seems to be understandable. The matter that we can detect seems to be a small part of the matter in the universe. There are basic elements which seem to have be made from the most basic element, hydrogen. There are many different kinds of heavenly bodies (stars, nebula, planets, comets, etc.). As far as we know there is life on only one planet in the universe. This life is incredibly diverse with a wide variety of functions and complexity. Some life is self aware. All life seems to be built around the same genetic code system. All life except for humans create a balanced system with each other which is very stable. The complexity of the organism is more or less related to the size of their genome. The body systems of organisms are very stable. There are events that happen in the body systems that cause them to break down. There seems to be a spiritual and a self part of humans that does not seem to be a part of the physical but yet is closely related to it. Upper animals feel emotions. Emotions are complex and seem to be able to be controlled. Human nature seems to have some rules although they are complex. There are things that humans characterize as desirable and those which they characterize as undesirable. Humans tend to want to gravitate toward the desirable.

Taking Stock Part II

Points Against the Existence of a Creator

1. How did a creator begin? Is it possible for something to have existed forever? If He/She/It didn't exist forever, what created the creator?
2. There isn't hard evidence that He/She/It participates in the universe. Why create a universe and then sit back and watch?
3. Why would a creator allow the cruel and evil things in the world?
4. There is no scientific proof.
5. Why would a being powerful enough to create the universe create a world that has so many imperfections?
6. Why leave the world in confusion as to your existence? There are many religions that profess to be the "true way." What would be the purpose of creating the universe and leaving little evidence of your creation?

Taking Stock

Here's the points for and against that I have in my mind right now. I'm still on the search for others.

Points for the existence of a creator
1. The universe couldn't have existed always otherwise all heat and energy would be spread evenly throughout the universe (second law of thermodynamics) and so it was created. That implies that something created it.
2. The conditions needed for life are very specific. It seems extremely improbable that they came about by chance. You can only call on the anthropic principle (it must have happened that way or we wouldn't be here to talk about it) so many times before you say the improbabilities are just too great. Setting up the conditions seem to indicate that something was setting them up.
a) Immediately after the big bang all matter in the universe expanded faster than the speed of light.
b) Then matter expanded at exactly the right speed to form stars and planets. Stephen Hawkins says that if they expanded one part in a thousand million millions slower, matter would have collapsed back on itself. Any faster and stars wouldn't have formed.
c) The stars and planets.
d) After the earth cooled, there was no water. We needed water for life. 326 000 000 000 000 000 000 gallons appeared on earth with no good explanations for the amount.
e) There are right handed and left handed amino acids. If both existed on earth then life could not have happened. Somehow all the right handed amino acids were eliminated.
f) The development of the atmosphere for life and a stable world with small temperature changes (no other planets discovered so far could support our kind of life).
3. There is no plausible model for the first cell. There is no good explanation for where all the molecules came from and no good explanation for how they came together in close proximity.
4. Even if all the ingredients for a cell are brought together in plentiful supply in a test tube, life does not occur. Something needs to "breathe" life into it.
5. Very specific proteins with very specific tasks (eg. DNA polymerase) are needed for life. The probability of about 1 000 amino acids arranging themselves in the right order is infinitesimally small. There are many more specific enzymes that are needed for life to occur.
6. Life needed a DNA or RNA strand of about 30 000 base pairs to begin. The probability of about 30 000 nucleic acids arranging themselves in the right order is almost too small to be worth considering possible.
7. The second law of thermodynamics states that in any system, open or closed, all things tend toward entropy. For chance evolution to occur, the opposite would have had to happen millions of times over.
8. The fossil record shows sudden jumps in complexity. The first animal was the comb jelly which has connective tissue and a nervous system. During the Cambrian Explosion, plants and animals suddenly (in the geological sense) went from very simple to very complex. It is easier to believe that something was involved in the process rather than evolution took jumps.
9. Natural selection selects out or for certain traits. It does not increase the complexity of the organism.
10. There have been no beneficial mutations documented that increase the complexity of the organism.
11. In every culture there is a belief in spiritual beings.
12. Complex organs like the eye could not have evolved since there are many steps that give no benefit to the organism and there is no reason to continue along a path to build them.
13. There are DNA segments that exists in different species that did not exist in their common ancestor.
14. In cases of people who have been resuscitated, they experience very similar things including meeting some "being of light."
15. Any time we see complexity, we immediately assume that an intelligent being organized it. Why would we assume different for the universe?
16. Nobody has observed evolution occuring. Even those there are more humanoid beings living right now than for the last six million years and far more mutanogens. Lots of evolutionary steps happened then. Why are not more happening now? We see the extinction of many species but no new species appearing. Evidence shows fewer species developing.

Well, I ran out of time. I'll cover the points against in my next post.

the Religion of Niwrad

The atheistic evolutionary doctrines resemble a religion in many ways. They have their priests who preach the doctrine, their great prophet Darwin, and their minor prophets, dating back many years before Darwin. Their tenets are laid out and need to be accepted by faith. If you don't believe in them, you may be ridiculed, shunned, or even put out of the church. If you ask the priests too many questions regarding the foundational tenets of their faith, they can become defensive and may tell you to "have patience my son/daughter for the answers will some day be revealed to you." They claim that theirs is the one true religion and will not consider the validity of others.

The Thin Veneer of Civilization

I've been reading things off and on about the "There probably is no God so don't worry and start living" campaign.
For many years the country of Haiti was tightly ruled by a dictator name Papa Doc Duvalier. After he died, his son took over but was eventually deposed. We moved to the country shortly after his overthrown and experienced five revolutions in the three years we were there. It was a country adrift. There was virtually no functioning government and the rule was might is right. The revolutions were caused by bands of former army or police officers getting a hold of some guns and trying to milk the already financially anemic country out of more money. These gangs would rape, steal, murder, basically do what they wanted until another group got together enough weapons or power to replace them. What happens to the human mind in times of extreme unrest is scary. With no anchor of proper behaviour and manners to hold on to, people can be extremely base, stripped down to survival instincts.
This isn't a scientific point for or against any party in the origins debate but a prediction. If there is no creator then there is no real justification for ethics. If there is no purpose in life, then why should I be concerned about others. My goal would be to propagate my own genetic code by whatever means I can and be the one who survives in the "survival of the fittest" race. What reason would I have to work for the common good? There would be no ethical reason to stop me from doing whatever I can to be the top dog.

Why do people go to church

These are in the order that they come into my mind, not of importance.

1. Duty
2. Fear - I think this may be a big one. I think there are a lot of people who are afraid of hell.
3. Societal expectations
4. Searching
5. They believe and are looking for teaching
6. Friendship
7. Parental/Family pressure
8. Hedging their bets - If there is no God, then no harm done, but if there is a God, they've circumvented hell
9. Routine
10. Comfort in the traditions
11. It makes them look respectable
12. Guilt
13. An anchor in a cruel and unstable world
14. A moment of peace
15. Networking - maybe some go to make business or social contacts
16. To feel needed
17. To reinforce our belief system
18. For ego boosting - Churches tend to be forgiving and full of praise for efforts and talents that might not be as appreciated elsewhere
19. It makes them happy
20. Because they believe God wants them to

A Case of Mistaken Identity

I think I've had the wrong perception all along. When I first started my "search for truth" I thought that the controversy was between evolution and creation. Looking at the blogs, comments, and rants it seems that the majority of the rants are from the atheists aimed toward the Christians, fundamentalist Christians in particular and from the Christians toward the atheists. Many creationists, particularly those in the ID camp support evolution. I have a sneaking suspicion that evolution is just the atheist's way of promoting their ideology and creation is the fundamentalist Christian's way of promoting theirs. Maybe that's why the so called evolutionists are opposed to the ID movement even though they support the process of evolution. It takes the wind out of their sails.

Singular or Plural

A comment on a previous blog got me thinking about the number of creators. It seems probable to me that something or someone was involved in the building of the universe and life but was it just one being or many. Many early religions believed in a number of gods. While this may have been because they didn't have the information available to us today to make their decisions, there must have been some evidence for it for so many people to believe it. Even in the Bible there are references to the God of Israel being, "mightier than the other gods" inferring that they believed there was more than one god.
I can't think of strong support for either option. I don't know why there couldn't be many creators if there was one. There does seem to be differences in the "powers" needed for certain events which may indicate different creators involved at different points. For example, creating all of the matter and energy in the universe would be a more difficult task than manipulating the genetic code to create a new species. On the other hand, one creator could have used different amounts of power. I wonder why the number of gods in people's beliefs decreased over time? Was it just inconvenient to have to appease many?

Human Evolution Continued

I was looking at the human population growth over the years and the growth curve is downright scary. There are now about 6.76 billion people living on this planet. 70 000 years ago there were less than 10 000 if the forecasts are correct. It took 60 000 years to get to a million. At 1 A.D., there were 200 million. We reached one billion only 200 years ago and three billion only 50 years ago. According to the human evolutionary tree, we evolved from homo heidelbergensis who existed from 600 000 to 400 000 years. There was a very small group of these human precursors but yet they went through many evolutionary steps in those 200 000 years to get to homo sapiens, us. Why are we not seeing evolution now? Why have we not evolved in complexity in those 400 000 years? There have been more people on earth in the last 200 years than there has been for the entire 400 000 years before this. The more people, the more possibilities for random beneficial mutations and the greater the probability of evolving. Not only that but we have greatly increased the mutation rates. With the production of pollutants, nuclear waste, and hazardous chemicals, our mutation rate should be much higher. Human evolution should be happening at an exponentially accelerated rate in this exponentially growing population.

Recognizing a Creation

What constitutes a creation? When do we decide that something is not a haphazard result of chance? We would recognize a computer, a picture of a computer, a row of trees, or a house as something that a human thought about and made. What does SETI look for as a sign of intelligence from other solar systems? In the movie Contact the script writers decided on a set of prime numbers as something that aliens might send in order to let others know that they existed. This would differentiate an intelligent signal for the random, haphazard background radiation in the cosmos.
I think it comes down to probabilities, organization, and patterns. A chair is something we recognize as being a creation. I saw a story of a person who makes shapes out of living trees. He twists, binds, and moves the trees as they are growing to create weird and interesting things. If he made a chair out of living trees in the middle of the forest and someone was to come across it, they would still probably conclude that a person created it although their curiosity would certainly be aroused. Probably no matter how "wild" the weird tree shape guy would make the chair look, people would still conclude that a person made it because the probability of trees growing into that shape by themselves is extremely small. Trees in a row would also result in the same conclusion. You could move every third tree off a random distance or even have a short row of ten trees and we would still conclude intelligent creation. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it takes very little organization, complexity, and pattern before we recognize something as intelligently made. I can't imagine the human body as a result of chance. The probability would be infinitesimally small.

War and Peace

In a war there are usually two sides, two enemies that are fighting each other. They fire missiles, shoot, or snipe at each other hoping that eventually their side will gain enough ground to defeat the other side or at least weaken them enough so that they are no longer a threat. War is basically destructive. Both sides are trying to destroy the other. Sometimes this debate between creationists and evolutionists seems like a war. Neither seems inclined to begin any peace talks or look for common ground to form a compromise. War also creates sides. It needs the "them" versus "us" mentality to keep the war effort going. In the great debate, the efforts to bring people into your "camp" and have them on your side is also ongoing. It is going on in politics and the courts. War is about being closed minded. You need to block out the truth that the other side are human beings and probably a lot more like you than you'd care to admit so that you can justify shooting at them. Perhaps we need some peace talks. Perhaps we need a group of people to initiate some mediation between the two sides because war is destructive and costly for all who participate. Our efforts and money would be better spent on looking for answers.

Spiritually Oriented

I have been thinking more about the strong move toward religion in the former Soviet Union after 70 years of communist regime and their strict following of scientific atheism (see yesterday's blog). Is the belief in God or gods universal among cultures? I haven't been able to find verification and I am not an expert in the field but I think that every single culture that exists in the world has a belief in a God or gods. From the deepest jungle to the most isolated group in the Arctic, each society follows some sort of religion. Why would this be? Why didn't some groups come up with other possibilities. Why didn't some decide that something like evolution or aliens were responsible for the existence of life? The tenants of these two possible explanations do not seem any more far fetched than the existence of a Supreme Being. Wouldn't it seem logical that some group take one of the other possible explanations? The explanation that comes to mind is that within humans is a spiritual part that looks for God. There are many questions I have about the "God" explanation but the ubiquitous belief system seems to be a point in its favour.

Russian Religious Revolution

We had supper on Sunday with a couple who moved from Russia a number of years ago. They had a friend over who had just moved from Russia last Sept. We got talking about religion in the former Soviet Union. They talked about the new religious freedom in that country and the increase in church goers. I looked up a couple of surveys on religion in Russia and they both listed people who don't believe in God as less than 20 % of the population. I spend a month in the Soviet Union in 1986 when Gorbachev was just beginning to thaw the cold war and it was a very different situation, at least on the surface. The church buildings we saw in public places had either been turned into museums, been boarded up, or had been turned into warehouses and factories. The ethnic group to which I belong lived in the Ukraine and they told stories of the Stalin purges where anyone with a leadership role in a church was hauled off to Siberia, never to be seen again. Those who professed religion were denied promotions, ridiculed, and sometimes imprisoned. Religion was the opiate of the masses and the communist government did what they could to see that it was eradicated. Schools taught scientific atheism and evolution as fact with no other alternative. For 70 years the communists were in power which equates to about three generations of school children being indoctrinated with its teachings. Why are the vast majority now turning to religion?
One possibility is that it is a backlash against authority. People tend to push the other way when someone is forcing them down a certain path. It would seem odd that a back lash would last this long since it's been about 15 years since the collapse of the communist regime. Another possibility is that people search for meaning in their life and when they did not find it in scientific atheism, they turned elsewhere. A third possibility is that people tend to go with what makes sense. Looking at the universe with its trillions of solar systems and complex life forms and saying that it just happened is a hard sell. They often turn to other explanations that better fit with their view of logic.

Eye Sight

The eye is a highly complex organ. There is no benefit for a creature to have a partially created eye that is not functional. The energy it takes to maintain a non-functioning eye would actually be a disadvantage in the fitness of the creature and so should not have been selected in the first place and should not continue. Yet, to create an eye there must have been thousands of intermediary steps, all of which were of no use to the organism and consumed energy to get to a fully functioning eye. One site I visited claimed that the eye started as a light sensitive spot on the skin and then evolved to become more complex. I can see where a spot that recognizes where light is coming from would be an advantage and even possible but any working eye is made up of highly complex inter dependant parts. I can't see how these parts could evolved beyond the light sensitive stage. Besides this, the fossil model has the eye evolving within a few million years, a relatively short period of time in the grand scheme of things. It requires more faith for me to believe that this happened by chance than to believe that some kind of creator was involved.

Virtually Real

I saw a discussion on one of the sites about the possibility that this universe isn't actually real but a hologram. Thinking about the advancements made in technology during the last hundred years, I think it could be a possibility but it creates some mind boggling questions. 100 years ago there was only 300 km of paved road in North America, indoor plumbing was a luxury available to a small minority of the population, cars and planes were in the prototype stage, 95 % of doctors had no college education and the population of Los Vegas was 30. If technology has advanced this far in 100 years, what will it be like in another 100 or 1000 or 10 000 years. There are places in our universe which are much older than we are and so the existence of technology that could give us the perception of reality may be possible.
If this is a hologram, then something created it and is running it. The questions that pop into my possibly holographic mind are; Am I the only one and the rest of the universe just part of my hologram? If this is a hologram, what actually am I and what actually is the universe like? What would be the purpose of creating a hologram that consumes time and energy? Why would an entity create a virtual world. I guess it could be for entertainment, much like we create a complex, multi-level computer game. Perhaps it could be a competition or an exercise to increase skill in the entity's world. If this indeed the case, why and how are why self-aware? While I recognize the possibility of the universe being a virtual reality, I think that it is improbable because we are self-aware. Of course, an entity that has a technology advanced enough to create this world of sensations, emotions, and immense variety may have motives beyond my ability to fathom also.

The Gay Gene

This might not be directly on the topic of the big questions but I read about it and it started my mind thinking so......
After Dean Hamer published his article on the gene that seems to be responsible for homosexuality, there was a flurry of media coverage on the subject. It seems to me that it is an evolutionary improbability. Individuals who have the gene should be selected out since they have a lesser tendency to mate with the other gender and produce offspring that would propagate the gene. I cannot think of a reason why the gene would evolve in the first place. What advantage would there be in a gene that would decrease the chances of producing offspring?

The Evolution of Science

Many years ago the predominant thought about how we find the answers to the big questions of life was that there were some things that were unexplained and unexplainable. The way of things was determined by fate or by the gods and there was nothing you could do about it so you had to accept things the way they were. Then came a new train of thought that said that we could figure things out by thinking them through with logic and reason. The answers to questions lay in the intellect. Still later, the precepts of modern science were developed and are now accepted as the way to find the answers. Scientists consider a question, propose a theory, test the theory according to a specific set of rules and either support or disprove it. Looking at history, humanity has developed more accurate ways to answer questions as time went on. I wonder if it's time for the next step.
I don't think the debate between evolution and intelligent design will be solved by the current scientific process. The existence of a creator is hard to reproduce or create an experiment for. Many steps in the evolutionary process are hard to reproduce or create an experiment for. We can't recreate the big bang. The creation of the first cell from non-living matter has already been dis proven by Louis Pasteur in his swan neck flask experiment. Maybe this debate needs some kind of combination of science, logic, and reason. Maybe the next step in our search for answers will be a philosophical science. I could see a set of rules developing around the current precepts of science with moves into logic where the science process doesn't result in a conclusive result.

The Aristotle Syndrome

I have often wondered why many scientists are so resistant to the idea of a creator as part of the evolutionary process. Scientists, after all, are supposed to keep an open mind and investigate all possibilities with as little bias as possible. On considering it, I think there are two main reasons why many in the science field have not given the possibility of a creator fair consideration.
1. They don't want to curtail their freedom. If there is a creator, then we have to deal with the thought of what that creator wants with us. We just may not be able to do what we want. There may be some moral constraints on our actions. It is a whole lot easier and makes us a lot more independent if we don't have to worry about obligations, duties, or actions that someone else requires of us.
2. The Aristotle Syndrome. This isn't an actual term, just something I made up. Aristotle believed that we were the center of the universe. He believed that the sun, planets, and the rest of the universe revolved around us. Galileo and others came up with evidence that this wasn't the case but the majority of the world including the science minded community of the time ignored the evidence and continued to believe in Aristotle's conclusions for many years afterwards. Finally the surmounting evidence swayed public opinion to the Galileo view. I think this egocentric view still influences many minds. It is more self fulfilling to believe that we got here by ourselves, that we are at the top of the food chain because we deserve to be, that we pulled ourselves out of the primal ooze and became the marvel of complexity because we were the fitness. We don't want to release any of the credit to a creator for that would be lessening our achievements.

Living By Faith

When it comes down to it, both sides rely on faith to make their decisions. The creationists have faith in a God who they can't see or audibly hear. The evolutionists have faith in events that they haven't seen or can reproduce. Virtually everyone relies on faith when gathering information for their beliefs. Each time you read an article, book, or visit a site, you have to have faith that the person who wrote it is who they say they are and that they were accurate in their experiments and that they were diligent and intelligent enough to do the research and/or experiment correctly. The Internet is especially dangerous because of its anonymity. I have visited sites from the Flat Earth Society, Creationists, and Evolutionists and all of these sites were professionally put together, intelligently written, and make convincing arguments. The question comes down to who do you put your faith in. Who has the most reliable information? Wikipedia is an interesting example. Here we have a site where information can be posted by anyone and is supposed to be reliable. But is it? I have put information on Wikipedia and no one has challenged it or changed it because it was in an obscure area that very few readers would have any information on.
I guess it comes down to probability and logic. Information that is general and a lot of people have experimented on it has a higher probability of being accurate because more people can endorse or refute its findings. Information that is obscure has a lesser probability of being accurate because if someone makes an erroneous claim, the number of individuals that would be able to refute it are fewer. Logic, I think, is just as important as calculating the probabilities. I have never sailed around the world or seen earth from space but I believe that the world is round rather than flat. Logic would support it. Why else would daylight slowly appear on the horizon or ships appear slowly when coming towards shore.
Another thing to consider is the motivation of the writer of the information. Individuals write things for money, power, self-expression, popularity, sharing, attention, and a host of other reasons. I would think that those who write for the less baser reasons would have a tendency to be more reliable.

Animal Instincts

There are many behaviors in humans that are similar to behaviors in other animals. Looking at mating rituals and posturing, I can see similarities between humans and many other species. There are also many behaviors that are similar in aggression (although humans seem to be alone in war). This would seem to support the evolutionary theory. I ruminated about this in my blog about similarities in anatomy between species. A being that is creative enough to make the incredible variety of the universe would be creative enough to make different behavioral patterns in different species. I'm starting to think that the creation of life on earth follows a similar path to manufacturing. A product is made. The R and D people look at it, adjust it, improve on it, try it out, create a prototype, and release it to the public if it is successful. The new model often has many of the same systems and features of the old. It is rare to have a completely new product introduced. If this is the creative process of life, it would be contrary to the one, all powerful God doctrine. It would seem to point more to an experimenting being. A group of powerful and creative beings would even fit this model. I know this is a bit radical and a step back toward ancient religions but I'm just trying to keep an open mind and consider all possibilities without being swayed by popular opinion. A multi-creator model could explain the different levels of creativity and power between events like the creation of the universe and the adjustments in the organization of a particular species. What are the arguments against a multi-creator universe?

Cambrian Explosion

More holes in the road. For about 4 billion years there were only very simple organisms on the earth according to the fossil record. Then about 542 million years ago there was a phase called the Cambrian explosion. During this period of between five and ten million years complex plants and animals appeared in the fossil evidence. This does not coincide with the theory of evolution which calls for an incremental advance of organization through beneficial mutations. I don't understand how evolution could account for this sudden (in the geological time line) appearance of complexity. My money is still on some form of evolution being guided by some form of a creator. I'm still vague about the details though.

You Are What You Eat

While doing this "dig" into the great debate, I have noticed some interesting and somewhat disquieting things about myself. I find myself being swayed toward the side I read the most. If I read a lot of articles from the evolution side, I find myself tending toward that side and if I read a lot of articles from the ID side, I start to head that way. The tendency is not overwhelming but it is definitely a pull. What I conclude from this is that a) you tend to believe what you read as opposed to seeing on TV or someone telling you about and b) the more you immerse yourself in one opinion, the more likely you'll end up believing that side. This is disquieting because I was hoping to come to an objective, unbiased opinion (as much as that is humanly possible). What I have been trying to do now is to make a conscious effort to take small "bites" of each side. I try to switch back and forth in my reading and try only to read a little bit at a time. Also, I try to think about things in between readings. This seems to have helped.
The other thing that I have noticed is that I am resistant to anything that is not my current belief. Any time I come across something that contradicts what I think is true, my immediate reaction is to think of excuses or try to rationalize it away. This is not something that is not a good thing when you are trying to keep an open mind. I would conclude that changing your opinion is a difficult thing to do. I'm hoping that being aware of these tendencies will allow me to take them into consideration and be more rational in my conclusions. I read a quotation somewhere that said that we create our own reality. It's a wonder that any two people can come to the same conclusion since we all have our individual baggage that colours our perspective.

First Animal

In the journal "Nature" there is an interesting study done by a team at Brown University in Rhode Island. The team was shocked to find by studying genetic data that the comb jelly was the first animal in the evolutionary tree, not the simpler sponge. The comb jelly has connective tissue and a nervous system which are absent in the sponge. If evolution is actually the way that things happened, this would mean that the complexity of living things took a large leap to get to the complex comb jelly first and that the comb jelly then devolved to create the simpler sponges and then went back to evolving into more complex again. This seems unlikely to me.
I am thinking that pure evolution is extremely unlikely. If there is evolution, it seems probable that it had some creator tweaking it every now and then to keep it on the right track. It has too holes in it otherwise.

Life after Life

Raymond Moody M.D. published a book called "Life After Life." In it he studies individuals who have had near death experiences. In the introduction he says that he is not religious (although he hinted that the research has changed him) and that he is not trying to prove that there is life after death but simply to study the cases. In his study he found that, while there are no two cases that are identical, there are many common elements in the different cases and no element that happened to only one person. The things that people experience when they have "died" and then been resuscitated are: an uncomfortable noise close to the moment of death, travelling through a dark tunnel, being able to see and hear what is happening in the room from somewhere out of their body, meeting other beings, meeting a being of light, having your life reviewed before you, coming to a border or limit when they somehow know that if they cross it, they would not be able to return, coming back to their own bodies, often after communication with the being of light.
While this is a case study and not a scientific experiment, it is food for thought. If the reporting is accurate (Moody says that his findings were nearly duplicated independently and without his knowledge in a similar study by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross M.D.), how is it possible for over a hundred individuals in scattered parts of the country who had no contact with each other to have such similar experiences? It would suggest that there is more to the universe than just the physical.

DNA exchange

It seems that I keep running into evolution problems. Maybe I already knew the majority of the problems with the creationist theory and so haven't come across any new ones. This new problem is with DNA. According to Darwin's theory, living things started with a common ancestor and then branched out as they evolved into different paths. A problem with this is that there is identical DNA sections found in different "branches" that did not exist in the precursor. This occurs in bacteria, plants, and animals. One of the theories on how this happened is called horizontal gene transfer. The idea is that genes were transferred from one species to another species using a variety of mechanisms. I'm not an expert in this field but, while I have heard of gene transfer in single cell organisms, I have not heard of it happening naturally in plants and animals. This may be a bit off the main track but aliens as creators seems to be the most logical solution in my mind right now. It solves the issues with evolution and God. I wonder why this theory is not more prevalent?

The Belief Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

There are a multitude of different religions across the world. Why is it that each religion is focused in a certain region? Generally, Christians are children of Christians, Muslims are children of Muslims, Hindus are children of Hindus, etc. There may be some movement when a particular religion goes into an area and evangelizes but staying with the belief of your parents is a very strong trend. Does it not make sense that if the people in an area are really searching for the truth they would end up with a variety of answers? Shouldn't there be a wide variety of beliefs in every area? Even looking at the denomination situation in North America, the denomination that you go to tends to be the denomination that you grew up in. There are some exceptions but this is the case with the majority of church goers. My conclusion from this is that human beings are not as open to new ideas as we'd like to think we are. We are very reluctant to change our core beliefs. I guess that would explain the heated debate on the origin of the universe. There must be something deep inside of us that resists changing ideas. I have noticed it in my own thoughts. Every time I come across an idea that is contrary to what I currently belief, my initial reaction is to resist it and to try and think of something that would explain it away. Even when I try to look at it logically and impassionately, I usually feel that I am biased to my old way of thinking. I think that it may have a lot to do with fear. Creationists may fear hell, the condemnation of their friends, and looking like hypocrites. Evolutionists may fear the idea of dealing with a creator, the condemnation of their friends, and ridicule. I guess this is getting kind of philosophical but maybe we don't even really realize what we believe. It seems unlikely that someone who is really searching would end up with the same beliefs that they have been indoctrinated with. I'm guessing that people who can openly and honestly look for answers are few and far between.

Left is left. Chapter two

I looked into the reason for the predominance of left-handed amino acids on earth some more. There are some theories on how it happened but none of them seem to hold water. One is that meteors seeded left handed amino acids on earth. Some types of polarized light destroys one or the other of the amino acids and it is possible that, on passing neutron stars, the meteor was left with mostly left handed amino acids which then plunged to earth. Another possibility is that amino acids formed on earth and then the earth was bombarded with polarized light from a neutron star to select out one of the orientations. There is another thought that beta decay could result in more left handed amino acids. It may have been a polymer that acted as a template or a transfer RNA that bound only left handed amino acids. There are a few other ideas but none of the theories have had enough substantial evidence to become more than just ideas. The problem remains.

Free Will

The universe was set up with rules. Each material has its own characteristics. Each chemical, atom, and element has its own characteristics. If you combine sodium with chloride in the proper conditions, one atom of each will join together to make sodium chloride. There is no choice. If you did the same thing 1000 times under the same conditions, you would get exactly the same result. If evolution is true then humans have no free will, no choice in what they do. If evolution is true, then we are a very complex set of chemical reactions. If you were to duplicate the same level of chemicals, hormones, etc. in the same conditions, we would make the same decisions and act the same way every time. If evolution is true, then there should be no remorse or guilt when we do something unethical because we had no choice in the matter.

All That's Left is left

I came across yet another evolution problem. There are two orientations of amino acids; left and right. They are mirror images of each other. It would be very difficult for life to exist if there was a mixture of these because the two types would be incorporated randomly into a protein resulting in a protein with different properties that would not be able to do its job. With a few exceptions, all the amino acids on earth are left-handed. The question is why? Each has an equal probability of occurring. What got rid of virtually all of the right-handed amino acids so that life could occur? A very real possibility is the existence of a creator. Are there other explanations that I don't know about?

E.T. hasn't called

The existence of beings other than those on earth are possible for both sides of the universe debate. Evolutionists say that if life happened by chance here, it could have happened by chance elsewhere. I've seen one site that actually estimated the probability of life occurring elsewhere in our galaxy and concluded that among the approximately 200 billion solar systems in our galaxy, the odds are that there are 15 planets that have produced life. Creationists say that if God created beings on earth, He could just as easily have created them elsewhere. Many years ago I talked with someone who said that the Bible made reference to life forms from other worlds. If there are other beings out there, why haven't they contacted us?
I am astounded by the advances we have made in the last 100 years. One hundred years ago, there were a few rudimentary cars and planes, about 300 km of paved road in all of North America, few phones, very little indoor plumbing and the life expectancy was 47. Now we have computers, the International Space Station, nuclear bombs, heart and lung transplants, iphones, 800 metre high buildings and Mars rovers. It stands to reason that technology will continue to advance and some day we will be able to travel to other stars. If there are extra terrestrials, some of them should be thousands, millions or billions of years older than us. If there are, they should have developed the technology for space travel and should have detected our planet. So, why haven't we seen them? There are a few options. 1)We could be alone in the universe. 2)Aliens could have actually visited us and the tabloids are not as far off as we believe. 3)There could be some kind of galactic organization that puts our world off limits for some reason. 4)The alien life could be so different than ours that it has been here and we don't recognize it.

Timeline

The more or less accepted timeline of living things on earth goes as follows: Single cell organisms appeared on earth about three and a half billion years ago. About 500 million years ago, simple plants and animals appeared followed by more complex plants and animals. While there is some argument about the order and when things appeared, it seems that the fossil record supports the idea that different species appeared at different times and the progression went from simple to more complex. If the universe was created, why would the creator do this? Why not just create the complete ecosystem as it stands today? What would be the point in waiting all those years? It also seems curious that a creator would create from simple to complex. There are those that believe that there is a creator that used evolution to advance life on earth. This would answer a number of the problems in both theories but still, why would the creator go from simple to more complex life at different times? It almost seems like the creator needed the practice but why would a being powerful and creative enough to make the universe need practice? As usual, I have more questions than answers.

Welcome to Thunder Bay

We learn the laws of the universe by experience and observation. The laws become so ingrained in us that we may not even realize we are reacting to them. It's like the disease of leprosy. Leprosy can cause damage to the peripheral nerves resulting in the person who has the disease to have a decreased ability to register pain. Because of this, lepers can cause permanent damage to their fingers and toes because they damage them in an accident without realizing it and then do not protect them. When a healthy person hurts him/herself, (s)he favours and protects the injury so that it has a chance to heal. We do this often without even realizing it. We have the laws of the universe ingrained into us in much the same way.
If I was driving along the road and came upon a hill that had white rocks that spelled out "Welcome to Thunder Bay," what would I think about the rocks' existence. My first thought would not be, "Oh, isn't that interesting that a number of white rocks rolled down that hill and stopped in the exact place to spell out those words. What a weird coincidence." No, my first thought would be, "Someone came out here and put those rocks into place to spell out those words." Wherever we see organization and structure, we invariably assume that a being of intelligence was responsible for it. We wonder about crop circles and Stonehenge for the same reason. They are still being talked about and studied because we don't accept that it happened by chance. It seems to me that the creation of the universe should be no different. There is organization and structure. It is not logical to begin with the assumption that it happened by chance.

Human Embryo Questions

After conception the human being begins as an embryo. It starts as a fertilized egg and then the cell divides and divides and divides again. Eventually the cells in the embryo begin to differentiate. They become liver cells and skin cells, etc. until a fetus that looks vaguely human takes shape. At one point in its development, gills slits are evident. Between four and six weeks, a tail is evident. It eventually shortens until it is hardly evident. I have some major problems with the evolutionary theory but the development of the embryo is a strong point in its favour. Why would the human embryo show gill slits and a tail? The most probable reason for them being there is that they were left over from an earlier evolutionary step. I have heard the argument that God put them there to test the believers' faith. That doesn't make sense to me either. There are enough other things to test the faith of believers that another one doesn't seem necessary to me. Others have argued that it is just a fluke in God's creating process. This would fly in the face of an all-powerful, all-knowing God. There are difficulties with all theories. Is there another that I don't know about?

Big Bang Beginning

The most accepted theory about the origin of the universe is that it began with a big bang. There was a huge explosion from which all the matter in the universe came into existence. There are some weird things about the big bang. One of them is the inflation period. Immediately after the big bang, the universe expanded extremely quickly, faster actually than the speed of light. Then the expansion slowed down to more or less the rate it is expanding today. How is this possible? Matter that does not obey the rules of the universe suggests that someone or some thing manipulated the early moments.
Then there is the precise rate of expansion. The universe expanded at EXACTLY the right speed for it to create the conditions of life. According to Stephen Hawking in his book, A Brief History of Time, "If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size." If the expansion had been a tiny bit faster, matter would have separated and the galaxies and stars would not have formed. Without the formation of stars and the elements they create, there could be no life as we know it. It seems highly improbable that this exact rate could have happened by chance. The big bang beginning seems to support the idea of some kind of creator.

Natural Selection Naturally

In my mind there is little doubt that species change. If you take a look at birds, there are birds that are highly similar but have different beaks or claws. It is probable that these birds came from the same common ancestor. Darwin proposed that the cause of this is natural selection. Within a single species is a incredible variation in physical attributes. Just look at human beings. If the environment that a species is living in gives an advantage to a particular attribute, the beings that have that attribute would have a higher chance of survival and therefore should increase in numbers compared to the beings that do not. Take for example the industrial revolution in the United Kingdom. Many factories spewed a great deal of soot into the air which coated neighbouring trees and made them darker. Moths that were darker in colour had an advantage over moths that were lighter in colour because they were less visible to their prey on the darkened trees. Therefore, there was an increase in the number of dark moths compared to their lighter cousins. Competition for food can also result in natural selection. If weather patterns create a more aquatic environment where fish are deeper in the water, those birds with longer beaks will have an advantage over those with shorter beaks and, over the long term, should become more numerous all other factors being equal. This makes sense to me. What I do not understand is what it has to do with evolution. In my mind they are two different subjects. Natural selection is nature picking out certain traits. It is like nature's dog breeding program. It is like taking 100 000 dice that are in 50 different colours and rolling them, then having five seconds to pick out all the ones you see that are pewter grey. If you do this a few times, you will have less of the pewter grey. This is not an increase in complexity. In my mind, this does nothing to create a more complex organism. I don't understand why natural selection and evolution are often tied together. To me they seem like two separate ideas.

Evolution by Mutation

One of the tenets in the theory of evolution is that organisms evolved by mutation. The theory is that something caused a mutation in the genetic material of an organism. This change in the genetic material resulted in a change in the physical characteristics of the organism. If the change was a positive one, then the new organism would be more complex than the original and would have a survival advantage and therefore would be more likely to thrive and propogate. This would result in new family of more highly evolved organism that would continue to multiply until one of them would have another positive mutation and repeat the process. Thus, over a long period of time, life would move towards more highly evolved organisms.
I have seen a lot of evidence for mutations. They can be either harmful, neutral or beneficial. The majority of them are harmful, some are neutral, and a few are beneficial. Mutations can be caused by chemicals, radiation, or sometimes there is a mistake in the replication of the DNA molecule. The problem that I have with the concept of mutations resulting in a more complex organism is that I have never come across such a case. There have been mutations that have changed the characteristics of an organism so that it is better equipped to survive in its environment (beneficial mutations) but this is not evolution, it is adaptation. In an adaptively beneficial mutation, part of the genetic code has been deleted or suppressed or changed to create new characteristics that by chance give the new organism an advantage over the old. There would be a tendency for the new organism to survive longer and thus have a higher probability of propagating its genetic code but again, it is not more highly evolved. It is simply a remixing of the original genetic code. I have never heard of a mutation that resulted in a more complex genetic code. An organism that becomes resistant to an antibiotic, more camouflaged in its surroundings, or has developed a stronger beak for breaking food has not evolved. It has adapted. A different characteristic has become more prominent. There is no increase in complexity. This does not seem like a reasonable way for evolution to occur.

Taking the Offensive

Sometimes I wonder whether there will be those who take offense to some of the things that are in this blog. Logically though, there shouldn't be.
For those who approach this subject from a science background, investigating new ideas should be met with enthusiasm. Where would we be if scientists took the approach that current scientific theory was set and new ideas should not be considered? There would be a lot more leaches around in doctors' offices. It bloggles (my attempt at a pun) my mind to read the insults and derogatory comments that come, mostly from the evolutionary bench, in the comment section on different blogs and discussion sites. I have to conclude that there are yahoos in every persuasion and hope that these are a vocal minority.
Creationists should welcome the search for truth also. If God is the creator of the universe, then someone who is trying to figure out what really is real should end up with that conclusion. There should be no fear in questioning because sincere questioning should eventually lead to truth. Many major religions, in theory anyway, condone seeking and searching. In my experience though, there are creationists who fear questioning and become defensive when presented with opposing ideas. Again, I hope that these are in the minority.

Comparative anatomy

Mainstream creationist theory is that there is a supreme being who created the universe and all it contains. There are at least three different beliefs on how this happened. The first is that God created every living thing in the universe. The second is that God set up the rules in the universe, created the first living cell on earth and then left life to evolve on its own. Another theory is that God created the different species so that there was no evolution between species but natural selection created a lot of adaptions resulting in the wide variety of organisms we have today.
There are a lot of similarities between species. Mammals, for example, include bats, dogs, and humans. The bones in the arms, hands, and fingers of humans are similar in structure to the bones in the wings of bats and the front legs of dogs. If God created all living things, why would He create so much similarity between species? If He is creative enough to create the incredible variety of substances, molecules, living things, planets, etc. in the universe, why would He make the anatomy of so many living things similar? It doesn't seem logical to me. The first theory seems the least likely to me. The second theory seems more probable but I see so many holes in the idea of evolution from one species to another, that it doesn't sit right with me either. The third, again, seems more probable but we come back to the question of why an incredibly creative God used similar structures in many different organisms and put them together in a way that is inefficient in many instances. This leaves me with no theories that satisfy me and a whole bunch of questions.

Looking for all the Links

This is an idea I haven't seen explored on any of the sites I've been to, not the evolutionists, not the creationists, not the intelligent design. I can conclude from this that either I am a creative free-thinker who is thinking outside the box, I haven't been thorough enough in my research, or the answer to this is obvious and I just didn't see it. If the latter is true, you have my permission to be condescending and smug in your comments.
Where are all the links? According to mainstream evolutionary theory different species evolved through mutation. An organism underwent a mutation, possibly caused by the sun's radiation, and became slightly more advanced that the origin. Because it was better adapted, more complex, and more highly evolved, it had a survival advantage over the original. This mutant, after a long period of time underwent another mutation. The second mutation was again more complex and had a greater chance of propagating and surviving since it was more highly evolved. This continued over many, many steps and over a very long period of time until the original had changed into a much different species. So, where are all the links?
For example, it is theorized that human beings evolved from chimpanzees. If a chimpanzee mutated and formed a slightly more advanced organism, why did the more evolved organism die out and the chimpanzee remain. Two steps more advanced from the chimpanzee should have had an even better chance of surviving but there are no signs of it, not to mention the third more advanced step and the fourth, fifth, sixth, hundredth, thousandth, etc. If evolution is the way that we came into being, shouldn't all the steps leading up to us be living in the world today. Why would they all die out when organisms that were thousands of steps behind in evolutionary complexity and organization did not?

Water everywhere

Lately I've been reading about water. How did all our water get to earth. There is a lot of it here. It makes up 0.4% of the earth by volume, about 326 000 000 000 000 000 000 gallons. That's a lot of water. For most evolutionary theories to work, water had to be present in large quantities early on in the earth's development. The problem is that the early earth was hot and dry, molten lava cooling slowly. Also, the early earth had no atmosphere and the solar winds were strong so any formation of water vapour would have been whisked away into space. Hydrogen and oxygen should have been present so the capability to make water was there. The problem that I see is that water needed to have formed fairly quickly in the geological clock, in around 150 million years according to most theories. If it took significantly longer, there would not have been time for the long, slow evolutionary process to occur. To get 326 000 000 000 000 000 000 gallons of water the earth would have had to receive 16 500 tons of water every minute for 150 million years. And that is not considering the water we lose to space by the disassociation of oxygen and hydrogen that is taking place on a tiny but constant basis. There are two main theories on how our water got here. It may have been formed from volitiles in the earth's crust being expelled by volcanoes outgassing or the water may have been imported here by falling comets. Neither of these seem reasonable to me. I can understand the physics of this happening but I can't imagine how either of these could have supplied anywhere close to the amount of water that we are talking about. The articles I have read don't supply any reassurance. There doesn't seem to be a logical physical explanation for it.

6000 year old earth

One of the theories in Christian circles is that the earth is approximately 6000 years old. This was determined by Archbishop James Ussher and others by using the genealogies in the Bible. In places in the Bible there are lists of sons and fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers, etc. By searching through the Bible to find out how long each person on the genealogy list lived, it is possible to count backward to set the date of the first person at about 4000 B.C.
Evolutionists, of course, disagree with this count. They say that, using dating methods, scientists have determined the age of the earth to be about four and a half billion years old. Many of these methods use decay rates. For example, Carbon-14 is a substance found in living things. It begins to dissipate when an organism dies. By measuring how much Carbon-14 a dead organism has left, scientists can estimate how many years it has been releasing the substance, i.e. how many years it has been dead. There are a number of other dating methods. There are those who have argued that these methods are unreliable and that they are based on assumptions that may not be true such as the assumption that all these substances are released at a steady rate and that the amount absorbed while living was constant.
I would side with the evolutionists on this one. Most of the dating methods seem to correlate well. It seems unlikely that several different methods would falsely come up with the same ballpark age for the same thing. I have not seen any solid evidence that shows that oil, fossils, and sedimentary rock formations can take place quickly. Many of those who measure the age of things are doing so as part of their research. It does not make sense that they would all conspire together to misrepresent the age of the earth. Why would they? It seems probable that their information is reasonably accurate. The earth is most probably at least hundreds of thousands of years old.

The Minimum Requirements for Life

One assignment I received during a graduate course in microbiology was to find a candidate for the first living cell. The first cell would have needed to metabolize and replicate. We (the other graduate students and I) began by looking for the simplest possible living cell. We narrowed it down to the archaeon and viruses. Simple viruses only need about 10 000 base pairs but we disqualified them because they absolutely must have another cell to be able to reproduce. Some archaeon need only 30 000 base pairs in their DNA molecule and so the archaeon became our candidate for the simplest life form and possibly a relative of the first living cell on earth. The largest human DNA molecule by contrast has 220 million base pairs. Then we gathered a list of everything the cell needed to be able to be considered a living thing. Now, I'm going from memory here so forgive me if I omit something or get numbers wrong. Here is what the simplest living things needs to be a living thing;

- a minimum of 30 000 base pairs in the correct order with phosphate and sugars to provide the backbone

- a minimum of 12 proteins with the amino acids in the correct order

- a number of molecules of ATP

- a number of molecules of NADPH

- a semi-permeable cell wall that completely engulfs these substances

There were other things on the list but I forget them. If any one of these components was missing or a tiny percentage of the nucleotides or amino acids are out of order, the cell would not be able to function and there would be no life. It was astounding to me how complex the simplest living cell was. I cannot imagine this set of circumstances happening by chance. First of all, where did all these components come from? The experiment of Miller and Urey in 1953 has been more or less discarded as a viable example of the early earth's environment. Even if there were amino acids, what is the probability of them lining up in the correct order for not one but 12 different proteins. It's been a while since I've taken statistics but the probability of the amino acids of just one protein lining up in the correct order is so infinitesimally small, it is hardly worth considering, let alone a DNA molecule of 30 000 base pairs. It is not logical for the first cell to have happened by chance. There must be another explanation. I have read of a theory that postulates that the components for the first cell were "seeded" on earth by meteorites. I find this unlikely also. What is the probability of all these components being in close enough proximity to each other and then engulfed by a semi-permeable cell wall? What kind of environment could have formed these components somewhere out in space? How could these components have remained viable in the harsh environment of space and the traumatic trip to earth? I have yet to see a reasonable model for the first living cell. This aspect of the origin of life debate pulls me toward the intelligent design side.

Start at the Beginning

There are a lot of aspects of the creation of the universe that I feel I can make sense of but the beginning of the universe is not one of them. To me it defies logic.
There are two possibilities; the universe always existed or the universe was created. Neither of them seems logical. There are a set of rules in place in the universe. For example, anything that has mass is attracted to anything else that has mass. Thus we have gravity. Some of the rules apply to energy. The first law of thermodynamics is that energy is never created or destroyed, it just changes in form. In a solar panel, energy from the sun is converted to electrical energy. If we lift something, our muscular energy is converted to the potential energy in the new height of the object. So, how is it possible for all the energy in the universe to be created. Think of all the energy in the trillions of stars. What kind of power would be needed to create and organize that amount of energy. Most scientists believe that the universe began in a single instant, a big bang from which all the matter and energy of the universe was created. How is this possible? Some scientists claim that the universe goes through a constant cycle, that it expands from the big bang until it runs out of inertia and then collapses back on itself to create another big bang from which another universe is created and so on. If this is the case, how did the system begin?
The idea that the universe always existed also defies logic. How can something with a set or rules containing a finite amount of energy always have been there. Creationists will say that God created it. In science, all theories are possibilities and I am not discounting any options. Neither do I want to offend sensibilities on either side. The purpose of this blog is to wonder about the big questions and hopefully get logical feedback to help me fill in the gaps. The existence of God defies logic also. I am not saying that an all powerful being is not possible, it is just not logical. Where did God come from in the first place. If God always existed, we are back to the problem of how can something have existed for ever.
I'm stumped on this one. Anyone out there have any input?

Determining Truth

I once had the opportunity of observing a trial. The trial was between two individuals who had gotten into a fight. According to the witnesses, there had been drinking involved, threats, and fists thrown. I had a chance to talk to the judge afterwards and what he said amazed me. He said that the human mind is unreliable. In his experience, witnesses to crimes frequently do not tell the truth. He came to this conclusion because witnesses to the same incident will often contradict each other. He also said that these errors are generally not made on purpose. The witnesses truly believe what they are telling the judge is the truth but perspective, emotion, faulty memory, and human frailty cause their view on reality to be skewed. It was his job to sift through the testimony and try and determine what the actual truth was.
We human beings decide on what is truth by receiving input from our senses and using our brains to come to logical conclusions. Let's suppose that a adult was knocked on the head and lost all her/his memory so that (s)he had to start determining truth all over again. (S)He picks up a stone and lets go of it and notices that it falls down to the ground. His/Her mind creates a theory that things fall toward the ground. (S)He tries it again and the same thing happens. The theory becomes more solid in her/his mind. After numerous tries, (s)he decides that the truth of the matter is that when something is dropped, it falls toward the ground.
Science decides on truth in much the same way except that there are no facts in science. To be an absolute fact, there has to be zero chance for the theory to be broken. The only way to know for absolute certain that the stone will fall toward the ground every time would be to perform this experiment every time possible. Since we cannot perform experiments infinity times, we cannot say with absolute certainty that it is truth. We call things "facts" when there is an extremely high likelihood of it being true. The only certainty is a reasonable probability in the scientific world. Thus it all comes down to percentages. Determining truth is like a big poker game. If there are extremely high odds for a theory to be true, it is considered truth. It is our job then to calculate the probabilities, taking into account that our senses are fallible and the truth may have to be adjusted if we receive new input.

Rhetoric Overload

Parts of the web are platforms for rhetoric.

The existence of the universe is a puzzle to me and my brain is continually looking for pieces to help me to understand it. There are two major camps when it comes to promoting theories about how we got here, the creationists and the evolutionists. Both sides are evident on the Internet and both sides use much the same tactics and tone. They adamantly submit their ideas and often deride those who belong to the other camp. I get the feeling that these two camps have decided in their minds what they believe and do not easily consider other ideas.

I consider myself a scientist. I am not working in a science field, don't have a PhD., and do not perform experiments. I consider myself a scientist because my mind loves logic. I try to make sense of things and feel vaguely uncomfortable when things don't make sense. I have tried searching for sense in the Big Question on the web but often find discrepancies and illogical statements. In future blogs I will post musings that make sense to me and would greatly welcome logical input. Please, leave the rhetoric at the door when you check in.