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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.