Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Protests

Is it not inane to protest in a Democracy (Republic)?!?

Saturday, November 26, 2005

My last post on the Origin of us

Has anyone else noticed that "survival of the fittest" does not actually stand up to reality?!? Maybe in some sort of short-lived, isolated situation. And certainly it "makes sense"!! But it didn't really happen, it doesn't really happen. The only way to get it to work is to make it circular - the fittest are the ones who survived. But that's both obvious and worthless.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Short version of previos post

I like the “hard sciences” a lot (i.e. have a degree in one, read tech. journals for fun, etc.). I also have come to enjoy the “soft sciences” (in particular, philosophy and sometimes politics). And, therefore, I find myself quite unnerved by the current Creationism/Evolution issue before the Supreme Court.

I heard a hard-science guy state, “A theory only has to have one failing before it’s proven wrong.” Then he went on to state how Intelligent Design is flawed because it requires creation to be perfect and the human back is not as evidenced by the number of people with back problems (I’m assuming this is not his only problem-spot). But what if his view of Intelligent Design is flawed. And what about the idea that the Sun is shrinking at 6 feet an hour and, if we go back in time 5 billion years (growing the Sun 6 feet per hour), then the edge of the Sun is between Neptune’s and Pluto’s orbits. Doesn’t THAT one fact disprove a 5 billion year old Earth? And how silly is it, really, to state the Creation theory can be disproved?!? How can you say that an all-powerful God who does things we don’t understand could NOT have created the Universe? Is it not possible that this God made the Universe yesterday, and that everything you observe is created? And what if (I’m borrowing from Twilight Zone) this God created everything yesterday, and all our memories and all our books were created by this God YESTERDAY! Can you PROVE otherwise? No, duh.

Point is this: hard-science cannot tell us about the past because that is the topic of History. The origin of the Earth, the Universe, and Matter is 100% out of the hands of hard science. If the Supreme Court had any foresight, they would take this case and BAN the discussion of the origins of Earth, Universe, Matter in the Hard Science classrooms, but leave it in History, Philosophy, and history of Religions. Anything else is simply delaying another case because hard science is overstepping itself.

[Personal opinion at this time: post-modern philosophy plus the evolution of Relativity is causing most everything said by “hard science” to be treated as suspect if not rejected by default. Example, the Earth was and is no more, the center of the Universe. But this is wholly un-provable. While it seems silly to think that stars billions of light-years away are spinning around the Earth once every 24 hours or so, it is NOT provable one way or the other. Why? Because astro-physics is mainly theory. We cannot test much since we can barely get past the Moon - how are we going to create astro-sized experiments?!? So we are stuck with observation. But Observation + Relativity means we cannot say anything for sure. So when hard science calls Evolution a “scientific fact,” they are in fact saying that hard science is becoming soft science and/or a set of beliefs (a.k.a. religion). Evolution is happening, no question. That’s why the term “evolution” is used in so many sciences, both soft and hard (e.g. social evolution, political evolution, etc.). But it says, in itself, NOTHING about origins.
Further, who cares if man evolved from chimps. Our DNA is similar, whether we evolved or not. That does NOT change anything we do, it does not prevent any kind of “scientific progress.” It’s a worthless thought (that is, it adds nothing / it helps in no way).

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Evolution & Creation in the Classroom... again

This issue might be the epitome of "pendulum" to me. If I believe the news-media (which I don't, but it's hard to not believe when they seem like the only one's who "know"), the people are either die-hard evolutionists or die-hard creationists.

Here's an idea: individuals use their own brains, THEN they converse with other individuals who are also using their brains.

By converse I do NOT mean reading one article out of Time (an 'edited' media - not a primary-source!) and developing a battle-plan to blast the enemy!

"Scientists" (a term loosing value, which is why I believe this debate even exists) canNOT tell us what causes gravity, why light happens ('emitting photons by electron shift' only tells HOW it happens), etc. Why? Because these issues are NOT subject to "The Scientific Method" (pretend there is reverb as you read that): they are not repeatable with dependent and independent variables because WE CANNOT MAKE MATTER. Attempts are made to pull gravity apart and, like most subatomic theories, we end up at the exact same place only one step smaller (what is a proton made of? sub-atomic forces. Wait! we found a quark! What's the quark made of? sub-atomic forces. Wait we found ____).

Hey, "scientists," you cannot say squat about the origin of the universe. You cannot say anything about the origin of species. That's what philosophers and historians do! And we know what you think of those two! You weren't there to observe and you cannot repeat the beginning of the universe nor the earth. Stop pretending.

But the "Christians" . . . ugh. Isaiah did NOT think the earth was round no matter HOW you take that passage! The Bible had NO Intention of being helpful for Modern/Enlightenment science. Read Genesis 1 and tell me it's not poetic! Parallelism, incluzios, climax, repetition, vagueness. It's flat-out beautiful! And what does the rest of the Bible say about creation? It explains God (Ps. 19, Rom. 1, for ex.). What does it say about genetic drift, survival of the fittest/fastest, a galaxy that's so enormous that light takes BILLIONS of years to reach us - nada, zip, zilch. Why? It wasn't talking about that! It was talking about GOD!

And it talks about where everything came from. God. As John DelHousaye pointed out to me years ago (not that he would or would not agree with this post), either God has always existed or matter has always existed. One of those ideas is silly. Even if the "Big Bang" happened, it still doesn't explain what was before the bang. It just says there was stuff.

So what do Christians do when given a book by Darwin? ATTACK! Bring in more troops! Learn about God, His creation, His character, etc.? Naw. Kill, Kill, Kill! Take them out of context! Use poor science/logic! Whatever it takes. This is war!!


So chew on this, Supreme Court: It would take billions of years to evolve the current crop of creatures on this planet, no question. Part two: the sun is a big A-bomb. Bombs/stars use atomic fuel and burn/explode. The sun is both a bomb and it's own fuel. As such, it is using up it's fuel. This has as one of many results, shrinkage (the Sun's diameter is shrinking at about 6 feet an hour). So go back in time. On hour ago, it was 6 feet bigger. 10 hours, 60 feet. Go back 5 billion years and you get the outer edge of the Sun somewhere inbetween Neptune and Pluto's orbits. Okay, how does the earth "evolve" inside the Sun!

Does this prove Genesis-based 6-day creationism plus 6,000 year old universe. NO, NO, NO! It just means that the evolutionary proposal about Earth's age/origin is off. Genesis was not addressing the age of the Earth/Universe!

Even worse, isn't "origin" a topic for the history class?!? Or philosophy? It has no place in a "science" class! IT'S HISTORY! UnObserved, UnRepeatable History! If the Court had a clue, they'd pull origins out of Science altogether!

Stop wasting time! Does it matter if Humans evolved from Chimps? NO! If their genetic codes are close, the study them as close genomes. Don't worry about how they got that way!

Besides, nobody wants survival of the fittest anymore. Being abstract-capable beings who evolved would imply that we should start helping this concept along - genocide, euthanasia, kill all with any handicap, take over the world because that's what the strongest do. Societies stop evolution! They prevent our species from evolving. And if the belief in Evolution is allowed, then one should be allowed to murder the less-than! Who is the "less than" - anyone who is dead (if SURVIVAL of the fittest is used).

Puts the NRA in a whole new light...