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.

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 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.

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.

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.