Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

Researchers at Harvard University have confirmed what many Chirstians, and a few other folks, have known for a long time. Charitible giving increases happiness (as long as you're not in poverty). The research also confirmed the  lesson in the story of the widow's mite: the effects of giving are related to the proportion of your wealth that you give away.  The rich must give more than those of lesser means to achieve the same result.

The LDS Church holds, as a matter of doctrine, that members should give 10% of their "increase" or "interest" to the church. "Increase" and "interest " are loosely defined, and there is some controversy over whether the terms include gross or net income, or a change in balance sheet over a year. It is however, one of the preconditions of entering the temple that a member be a full tithe payer.

This bit of doctrine has caused some consternation among other Christian sects, who charge that it represents a doctrine of "salvation by works."  I have no intention here of arguing the grace v. works case, but I will note that the findings of the Harvard study weren't based on Mormon's (or members of any other denomination) giving to their church, but on charitable spending in general across three different studies.

Several years ago, I was associated with some folks who paid a tithe to a non-religious non-profit organization. (One of them had a net worth of more than $100,000,000.) They saw and felt the postitive emotional and spiritual effects of their giving. Clearly, the experience of many people, from many different religious view points, as well as the findings of the three studies, has confirmed the Law of Charity, and to the extent that it represents a proportional philanthropy, the Law of Tithing.

Where I get cross-threaded is the church demanding that my philanthropy go to the church. This point of doctrine seems a bit self-serving to me, and I suspect that the positive effects of the giving are lessend because the giving, despite all arguments to the contrary, is coerced.

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

Yesterday, Amy, the kids and I attended Spencer 2nd Ward for the three hour block. This will be our new ward after the move is completed. Last night we attended a dedication ceremony for the new meeting house that will house Spencer 2nd and Lake Ridge 10th Wards. Having attended several different wards lately, I find it interesting to compare the spirit of the different congregations.

For the non-Mormon's among you, Latter-day Saints attend three meetings each Sunday and we normally attend a particular "ward" based on where we live. Everyone attends a Sacrament meeting. This meeting includes partaking of what we refer to as "the Sacrament,"  a symbolic re-enactment of the Last Supper, very similar to Communion as celebrated in many other churches. During this meeting we also listen to speakers either chosen from the membership of the ward or assigned from the Stake. The middle meeting is Sunday School; members are attend classes based on their ages. The third meeting is "Priesthood" for men and teenaged boys (this is further segregated into quorums), "Young Women's" for teen girls and  "Relief Society" for adult women. Children under 12 attend "Primary"

It was a bit odd, but when we visited Lake Ridge 3rd Ward Sacrament meeting by accident (while we were looking at the Gettysburg house), we didn't feel right. Both Amy and I felt out of place in a way we've never experienced before. We've visited other wards before for Missionary farewells and homecomings, and other special events, but we'd never felt this out of place before. It just felt wrong -- then we discovered that we were in the wrong ward. We had set out to attend a meeting in the Lake Ridge 4th Ward. Once we figured that out, and moved to the right meetings, it felt right. We thought at the time that it was because we were attending the wrong ward, but now that we are not moving to the LR 4th ward, I'm less than certain.

For the last few months, the Colony Ward (the one we're moving out of) has felt spiritually flat to me. The speakers and lessons haven't connected with me at all. I've not felt personally inspired in my own teaching in Elders' Quorum, and I have been so bored with Sunday School that I've taken to sitting in the Foyer rather than sit through the class. I just haven't felt that Colony Ward offered anything to me.

Lake Ridge 4th Ward felt like a better  fit than Colony, but it still wasn't offering me any inspiration. We know a lot of people in LR 4th, and we were welcomed into the congregation; Amy even sang in the choir the second time we went there. But when we learned Jose wouldn't sell to us, we just played hooky rather than attend either Colony of LR4th.

Spencer 2nd Ward however, feels like home. It seems to be brighter, the people seem closer and more approachable. I found myself wanting to go to Elders' when I had to sit with Meyrick in the new Primary class (only to learn later that the teacher is the Elders' Quorum President's wife. There's some more of that syncronisity and irony.)  I not only took Ephraim to Gospel Doctrine (my Sunday School Class) but I enjoyed the lesson immensely.

The conclusion I draw from this is that there is a specific congregation that the Lord wants me to be in. And that it is Spencer 2nd Ward right now.

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

Some ramblings and observations from our Fourth of July celebration

As anyone following this blog could have predicted, we spent the 4th in Magna. We joined the Walgamotts and the Nelsons and a bunch of other Empress folks for the parade. We had roped off a section of the sidewalk along Main Street in front of the Empress parking lot. (I think of it as the Empress parking lot, but it is really a county owned lot where the old fire station number 2 used to be.) We had the advantage of shade from a tree on the south end of the lot.

Needless to say, we had an entry in the parade. Adam brought his 1958 Porche. He and Leslie drove Chaz, in full costume as Conrad Birdie. Other cast  members walked the parade route in costume and passed out fliers to the crowd. Amy, Suzanne, and Linda were all in their costumes, but were hanging around by the theatre. Both Amy and Suzanne were too "shy" to go pass out fliers by themselves, so I went with them; first with Amy then with Suzanne. Once they got started, they had a ball. I used our 12 passenger van as a shuttle from the theatre to the start of the parade. It was a good thing too, as other cars couldn't get within 2 blocks of the starting point.

A biker had decided that he needed to park his motorcycle behind a pickup truck (illegally) so that it was directly in my path as I tried to back out to take the cast to the parade start. I could barely see it; if the bike hadn't had a faring, I would have hit it. The owner of the bike watched me back out and just sat there glaring with an " if you hit it, I'll kill you" look on his face. Would he get off his butt to come move the bike so I could manuver the battleship? Of course not. Almost made me want to hit him just to make the point.

The parade seemed longer than normal, so I asked Shelly's daughter, Nicole, if if was longer. She confirmed that it was a longer parade. Mom wouldn't have been impressed though. There was only one marching band. Interestingly, it was the local postal carriers that had formed the band. Maybe we need to organize a homeschool marching band for next year. I wonder if we could get OHPAA to sponsor something like that. Nolan could do the music, and I could teach them how to march.

While we waited for the parade, I met a chiropractor who wants to put his office in the Panama building and the owners of a "wellness center" that will be going into the Brownstone building. The building that had been dressed as a diner for part of a movie set has been cleaned up and an art gallery will be opening there soon. It's beginning to look like there's going to be some life on those two blocks of Main Street. We just need to get Grandpa Shirley's up and running now. More on this later.

The carnival in Copper Park was also much larger than it's been in the past. They had some pretty neat looking rides. We gave each of the kids $10 for lunch and rides, and told them we'd go home when they ran out of money. Each of the kids got to ride about 3 rides and buy a corndog. But they had fun

Amy and I bought a Polish Sausage from the canival vendor. Five dollars. At first we thought it was a bit steep, but then we realized that we'll be on the other end of that next year when we're doing our hot dog cart on Main Street for the parade, and will probably pull it down to near the park afterward. Now I'm thinking that we could use one of the NY style push carts for "dirty water" hotdogs. we'd push it along the parade route and sell to the whole crowd. Or maybe we just get some of the stadium vendor gear and sell that way.

We considered opening the concession at the Empress and trying to capture a little of the parade crowd market during the parade, but we didn't have a cash box available and Joline didn't want to deal with it. Missed opportunity we won't miss next year.

There were a couple of not-so-good things. I was a bit offended by a horseman in the parade who thought it would be cool to use the stars and stripes as a saddle  blanket. I wanted to pull him off of his horse. The band playing in the WVC portable stage was able to reach mediocre when they really put their minds to it, but they were generally just making noise that imitated classic rock and roll. Just before the fireworks, their lead guitarist made an attempt to play "The Star Spangled Banner" ala Jimmy Hendrix. At first I couldn't decide what offended me more, his inept playing or the crowd not standing. Then I realized that he was mangling the music so badly that no one recognized his attempt to play the national anthem.

The fireworks were great. Longest show I've ever seen in Magna. It seemed better than the Davis County and Sugarhouse Park shows we've seen in recent years. Ephraim didn't like them though. He sat on Amy's lap and pulled a blanket over his head for the entire show.

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

From this mornings Deseret News:

The controversial Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas said in a press release Tuesday that it will picket at the funeral today of recently fallen Marine Cpl. Adam Galvez.

The fundamentalist church, based in Topeka, was sued recently in Maryland for interrupting the private funeral for a soldier there.
      A handful of church members have been known to turn up at military funerals, holding up signs that attribute military deaths in Iraq to God's punishment on America for its tolerance of homosexuals.
      In its news release, the church says, "Thank God for IEDs (improvised explosive devices)," and says that Adam Galvez "died in shame." The church further says that God has become America's terrorist and has "irreversibly" cursed America.
      Adam Galvez was killed Aug. 20 in Iraq when a roadside bomb exploded under a vehicle in which he was riding, killing him and two others.

This kind of idoicy is one of the reasons that theocratic dominionism is a very bad thing. Even if you assume that there is a God, and that homosexuality is against His will, there is nothing that I've found anywhere in Christian scripture, doctrine or dogma that justifies this. Some of these self-defining "Christian" sects feed on brewing hatred and conflict rather than following the teachings of Jesus to "love your neighbor as yourself." Shades of Cotton Mather and the Salem Witch Trials or Joe McCarthy and the "Red Scare" of the '50's.

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

Here are my answers to JJ's The Scale of Doubt Quiz

1. Do you believe that a particular religious tradition holds accurate knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality and the purpose of human life?

I believe it is possible, but I don’t know if it actually exists or how to determine which belief is the correct one. I am attracted to the LDS Church because it seems more rational to me than other religions, and it does not require me to be blindly obedient, but encourages exploration of various doctrines as well as personal revelation. I think all religions hold some truth, and perhaps that the LDS church holds a bigger share than others.

2. Do you believe that some thinking being consciously made the universe?

Jury is out on this one. The numbers don’t work for me either way, and I struggle with the pre-existence/spontaneous existence paradoxes. I consider the “real” answer to this question to be irrelevant to both my eternal salvation and to my daily mortal existence. I therefore look at the question as an academic exercise rather than something I need to resolve one way or the other.

3. Is there an identifiable force coursing thought the universe, holding it together, or uniting all life-forms?

This is actually two questions for me. Gravity is certainly “an identifiable force coursing though out the universe, holding it together.” But I don’t think that’s really the question. Do I think there is some sort of force in the manner of Star Wars that connects all living things? Yes, I do. My experience of this force, however, comes from non-religious as well as religious settings and cannot be ascribed to any particular religious group, view or doctrine. I believe this force is a part of nature, and is subject to discovery and examination by science.

4. Could prayer be in any way effective? That is, do you believe that such a being or force (as posited above) could ever be responsive to your thoughts or words?

Again this is two questions: Is prayer effective? Yes, I know this as a certainty, but I believe this effectiveness is not necessarily dependent on the existence of deity or anything else supernatural. Do I believe there is a deity? In certain meditative states, I have experienced a “being” that I can talk to, and that responds to me, but I can’t determine if this being is a product of my imagination, an internal representation of something outside of me that I have anthropomorphized as a mechanism to utilize the information I receive from these conversations/meditations, or if it is something else. I tend to favor the latter view, but I don’t need to resolve the question.  

5. Do you believe this being or force can think or speak?

My experience and perception of a “force” linking all life together is different from my perception of a “being” that hears and answers prayers. This being is definitely able to communicate with me.

6. Do you believe this being has a memory or can make plans?

Yes

7. Does this force sometimes take a human form?

Again I need to distinguish the “force” from the “being.” In my meditations, the being always does. In the physical realm, I don’t know, but believe it possible.

8. Do you believe that the thinking part or animated force of a human being continues to exist after the body has died?

Yes.

9. Do you believe that any part of a human being survives death, elsewhere or here on Earth?

Yes

10. Do you believe that feelings about things should be admitted as evidence in establishing reality?

Are we talking about emotions or some sort of intuitive impression that could be considered “revelation” by some? Assuming the second, I admit these “inspirations” all the time when making personal decisions about reality, but I would not expect – or want – them to be admitted in many external forums.

11. Do you believe that love and inner feelings of morality suggest that there is a world beyond that of biology, social patterns and accident — i.e., a realm of higher meaning?

Yes and no. I think there is a reductionistic explanation for theses phenomena, but I don’t believe this explanation necessarily eliminates the higher meaning, or completely accounts for the phenomena.

12. Do you believe that the world is not completely knowable by science?

Yes. I believe that science, by its very nature, cannot answer all of our questions. I also believe that when the limits are pushed to extremes the science will always find that prediction and measured actuality diverge.

13. If someone were to say, “The universe is nothing but an accidental pile of stuff, jostling around with no rhyme or reason, and all of life on earth is but a tiny, utterly inconsequential speck of nothing, in the corner of space, existing in the blink of an eye never to be judged, noticed or remembered,” would you say, “Now that’s going a bit far, that’s a bit wrongheaded”?

No. The statement is one of many valid conclusions that can be drawn, but it is not the only conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence. That said, I don’t agree with the conclusion; I do not believe that the universe is an accident.

Using JJ’s grading scale, and counting qualified yeses as yeses then I qualify as a believer. Exactly what I believe in, however, is still an open question, so I think a more accurate description would be to say that I am open to a number of possibilities.

I found the exercise interesting in that I found myself not "doubting" as the name of the quiz implies, but checking to see if I was open to the concepts the questions asked about. There were no absolute yes or no answers.

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

I just picked up a copy of  Philosophy and the American School by Van Cleve Morris (1961) for fifty cents at a thrift store. As I've read through the first three chapters, I came to understand that what we have been discussing has been colored by differences between us in what the philosophers call Ontology. The dictionary defines ontology as, "the branch of metaphysics that studies the nature of existence or being as such." But Morris simplifies this to the question of "what is real?"

I am now going to over simplify his already over-simplified descriptions of the ontologies of five different philosophies:

• Idealism: (From Plato's Republic) The idea as reality; a philosophy of the mind.What we see and perceive with our senses is but a shadow representing reality, Reality is the perfect, idealized "idea" that is out of our reach.
• As modified by Hegel, Reality is a process where two competing ideas, 'thesis' and 'anti-thesis,' are combined into a 'synthesis' in a continuing process of creating new ideas.
• Realism: (From Aristotle) Reality is made up of 'matter' and 'form;' matter without form is noting in itself, and the ultimate expression of reality is pure essence or form. The Realist is of the view that the physical world we live in is the basic reality, and that its component elements all move and behave according to fixed natural laws.
• Scientific Realism describes the world as "matter in motion" and attempts to discover and identify these fixed natural laws. The scientific realist likens the cosmos to a big machine, and sets about to determine how the machie works.
• Thomism & Neo-Thomism: (St. Thomas Aquinas, updated to moden modalities.) Takes the Realist's notion of essence (potentiality) and combines it with Existence (actuality) to bring about "being." Under this line of reasoning, some essenses possess more existence than others, distributed in a heirachal fashion, with the lower ranks not responsible for their own being, and the ultimate Pure Being (God) being in which essense and existence reaches absolute expression, for its is the essense of this being to exist. Thomism holds that there is Absolute Truth.
• Neo Thomism has split into two schools: the ecclesiastical and the lay schools. The ecclesiastical school still holds God to be the Pure Being and relies on both reason and revelation, while the Lay school believes that ultimate Truth (capital T) can be discovered through reason alone.
• Experiementalism: Holds that we cannot reach an understanding of reality directly, but only through our experience can we approximate a description of what is real and what is not real; experience is all we have to go on.
• Naive Realism: A form of experimentalism that describes reality without elaboration or attempts at sophistication. Employs no preconceptions, and so experiences life without bias.
• Existentialism: "The ultimate and final Reality resides within the self of the individual human person. At the very core of the human person there operates the power of choice. And it is this power of choice, operatin gwithin the necessart meduinm of responsibility, which sets us off as men, which decides not only what is true, but what criteria shall be used to determine truth..."

(Like I said, it is an oversimplification)

As I look at the comments made throughout the disccussions, I think we could probably say that Nance uses an ontology somewhere between Scientific Realism and Naive Realism. Allison, on the other hand, is likely an ecclesiastic Thomist who sees Ultimate Truth writen into the Bible. And JJ probably leans toward Existentialism. Sandie hasn't posted many comments here, so I don't have a good basis to draw a conclusion, but I suspect she could be an Idealist based on some of the things she's posted on her blog, but there has also been some evidence for Experimentalist .

But this is just my read based on your comments. It would be interesting to see how each of you decide what is real, what could be real, and what is not real.

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

The question has been put to me:

I have often wondered why religious believers need a model based on other-than-facts to get them through. I would love to hear your explanation!

This is a loaded question that presupposes that the religious believer’s model is not based on “fact.” Between the lines we can also see that there is an unspoken assertion that the non-believer – in this case, a believer in ‘science’ – is using a model that is based on “fact.” I’m not sure we actually have an agreement as to what constitutes fact, and what is still in the realm of theory and conjecture.

So, what then are the “facts.” Lets start with a quick overview of the history of various theories of cosmology. Starting with Ptolemy, the “fact” was that the Earth was at the center of the universe, the sun, moon and planets orbited the Earth (with the planets doing little loop-ti-loops every once in a while.) (Note: the Pathagoreans figured out that the Earth and planets orbited the sun, but Ptolemy didn’t accept their idea of fact.) In the 15^th Century, Copernicus comes along and develops a mathematical “model” that predicts the position of the planets based on Earth and planets orbiting the sun. This is viewed as a cool math trick, but nobody believes that the Earth isn’t at the center of the universe. Along comes Galileo with his telescope, and now we have a helio-centric theory of cosmology; The sun is at the center of the universe is the central “fact” of cosmology.

Fast forward about 300 years. Man has built bigger and better telescopes, Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation have been accepted. We’ve discarded the idea that the sun is the center of the universe and now see a large universe with several galaxies hanging stable in a Vast space. The “fact” of the day is that the universe has been the same size since it was created, and it is neither expanding nor contracting. Under that theory someone predicts that the spectrum of light from another star will tell us what elements the star is composed of. They point a spectrograph imager at a star, and the bars and spacing are right, but everything is shifted to the red end of the spectrum. The Universe is expanding! Okay, but it is slowing down right? (Newton’s gravity laws would suggest that velocities would change parabolicly.) No, by gum, its accelerating! The matter in the farthest reaches of the universe is moving faster (more red shift) than the stuff closer in.

At this point we have some data that indicates the universe is expanding, and the expansion is accelerating. Based on the observations of the astronomers, we can make a reasonable guess as to how big it is. Those are the observable “facts” that existed (past tense) when the Big Bang theory was first proposed. The astrophysicists have a very narrow slice of data over about 50 years from which they derive a set of equations that describe the expansion, a mathematical model that explains what they can observe. The big bang theory comes when then apply these equations to times when there wasn’t anyone to observe; the times before the discovery of the red shift, based on the assumption that these equations have governed the universe since it started.

Now this theory needs to be tested. The astrophysicists come up ways to test it by predicting that certain phenomena will be observable, and they set about looking for them. One prediction is that the stars in the various galactic arms should move according to Newton’s laws of motion, as modified by special and general relativity, etc. They make the measurements, and… The stars aren’t cooperating.

So, physics comes up with the theory of “dark matter” to explain several observable “facts” that are inconsistent with the big bang theory as originally proposed. Dark matter is an interesting concept, it doesn’t emit any electromagnetic radiation (light, x-rays, etc.) so it can’t be detected directly, and is “non-interacting except for its gravitational effects,” but its presence is inferred from those effects. (There are a couple of other theories to account for these gravitational effects. Modified Newtonian Dynamics assumes that we need to modify Newton’s gravitational acceleration constant, and there are other Quantum Mechanical theories as well.)

How is the inferred existence of dark matter any different than the inferred loop-ti-loops of the planets orbiting the Earth from Ptolemy’s original geocentric theory? How is inferring that 96% of the universe is made up of stuff we can’t see and can’t interact with (even with our scientific instruments) any different than inferring the existence of God as an explanation of unexplained phenomena? Is the assumption that the equations supposed to govern the motion of the heavenly bodies (that haven’t been working anyway) sufficient to say that the inference of the Big Bang theory is a “fact?”

Take all of this confusion and try to make some sense of how it all applies to our everyday life. Most folks won’t be able to even figure out what the facts are, let alone derive some personal meaning from them.

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

After all that work I did filling in the holes in Nance's nmemonic for remembering the plants, they've decided that Ceres, Charon, Xena  are not planets after all, and Pluto has been demoted. Now what will My Very Excellent Mother Just Serve Us Nine of? Or maybe she'll just serve us noodles instead. Hey, carbos are carbos, right?

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

Before I rest from my labors, I’ve promised to draw some conclusions from this exercise. So lets recap what we’ve discussed:

First, I have managed to find a synthesis between the creation story in Genesis and modern scientific theories of the origin of the universe and evolution of life. In summary:

Day 1 is the big bang

Day  2 is the coalescing of matter from the plasma and proto matter of the big bang into water, atmosphere, and all of the other heavy elements. (Yes, I know, I didn’t quite explain it that way.) This is the beginnings of planets, just not Earth specifically.

Day 3 is the origin of photosynthetic life somewhere other than Earth and the concept of panspermia

Day 4 is the formation of the sun and the solar system

Day 5 is the beginnings of animate life in the seas and included the dinosaurs

Day 6 is the continued evolution of the higher life forms, culminating in man.

In order to reach this synthesis, I have had to do two things: First, I’ve had to discard many traditional interpretations of Genesis and re-read the account from a modern reference frame. Second, I’ve had to assume that the author of Genesis had access to knowledge available to us today but which we generally assume was not available at the time Genesis was written. Clearly, if the Bible were written by the hand of God, then the second premise would be reasonable, but we’ve also seen that, with this interpretation, the description is flawed and indicates that the author(s) had an incomplete understanding of some things described. That leads to a conclusion, under this set of presumptions, that the Book of Genesis was not written directly by God. (Our hypothesis was that perhaps a prophet saw these things in a vision and did his best to describe them, but there are other possibilities, not all of which are super-natural.)

Have I proven that this is the correct interpretation of Genesis? Absolutely not! This is but one of many possible interpretations. Even if we all agreed that this was the correct interpretation, we still would not have proof. I would need a lot more evidence to support the second assumption before we’d have the proof of that conclusion.

Have I proven that the literal six-day interpretation is not correct? Again the answer is absolutely not. Unless I can prove the second assumption, which I cannot do, there is no evidence that would impeach that interpretation or any other interpretation of Genesis or the interpretation of any other creation story.

Have I proven the big bang or evolution? No again. Even if I proved the first assumption, I could not use this interpretation to “prove” these scientific theories.

Have I proved, or even adduced any evidence, that God does or does not exist? Nope. Not even close.

All I’ve done is put a typically square peg into a typically round hole by changing the shape of both just a bit. And I’ve asked a question, that no one has yet tried to answer: What would it mean if this is the correct interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis? Assume that the second premise is correct, that the author of Genesis somehow knew about the big bang and about evolution, and wrote about it 4000 years ago. What would we think about it? What conclusions could we draw?

The only logically valid conclusion we could draw and prove is that … the author of Genesis knew about the big bang and about evolution and wrote about it 4000 years ago. Period. That’s all there is. It would become one of those ancient mysteries like the Inca roads that we just don’t know how came about. Any conclusion beyond this is pure speculation.

If we started with an assumed belief in deity, we could speculate that the author received the information by revelation, then use that speculation as evidence to support our preconception. If we started with an assumed belief that there is nothing super-natural, nothing that cannot be reduced to natural processes, then we would reject the assertion of revelation and would hypothesize that the ancient Hebrews (or whomever they stole the ideas from) had a science more advanced than we have previously believed. (You may have noticed that, logically, the only way to prove the second assumption is to prove the more advanced science or some other source of the information – extraterrestrials maybe(?), but this is an intellectual exercise to see where the line of question goes. Extra points to anyone that caught it though.)

Recall that I started this whole series from a post of Nance’s on Scott Somerville’s blog:

Trying to comfort the religious that science isn't any more valid than their ideas based on faith by saying being convinced by scientific evidence is the same as taking things on faith. . . well, that's all very well if you want to be dismissive of science and not hurt anyone's feelings about being religious.

But just telling me I am religious doesn't make it so.

One of the things I wanted to bring out through this is that we all have beliefs based on “faith.” When we board an airplane, we have faith that the pilot knows what he is doing, that the plane is mechanically able to fly, and that the plane will get us to our destination. If we didn’t have this faith, we’d never get on the airplane. Those of us who work for a living have faith that our employers will pay our wages on payday, or we’d go find other jobs. Choosing between an MD, a Chiropractor, a Naturopath, or a Witch Doctor is a matter of faith. The money we carry in our wallets is based on our faith in the government’s ability to back the currency with value. Putting money in the bank is an act of faith in the bank.

A belief that evolution explains the origin of life or that the big bang explains the origin of the universe requires faith in science’s ability to measure reality accurately and completely, and then to work backwards to a point where it all began.  In the case of evolution, it requires believing that a lot of random events with extremely long odds happened. To believe in the big  bang requires believing that all of the matter and energy in the universe was condensed together in a quantum singularity that occupied no space. These assumptions seem, or can seem, just as hard to accept as the assumption that our Genesis author received revelation or had advanced science or was visited by aliens. If we take nothing as authoritative – not science, not the Bible – then all of these ideas are preposterous.

Neither the Genesis story nor the theories of cosmo-genesis and evolution are reality. They are abstract models used to describe our perceptions of reality. They are all useful for solving certain problems. We take our models “on faith” because we believe the model will help us solve a problem we want to solve. Evolution works better for curing disease and breeding animals, and so on, but its pretty useless solving problems of eternal salvation. A six-dau creation model is pretty useless in preventing birth defects, but might have value in saving a soul. But when we take any model so seriously that we refuse to even consider an alternative model, we close our minds to solutions we can’t find with our cherished model.

Whether one believes in God or not, one should always be willing to ask the question “what if it’s the other way ‘round?” and be willing to explore the implications.

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

I suspect some readers may think my plan here is to complete my synthesis of Genesis and evolution and then argue that this interpretation is proof that God caused evolution. I hope no one will be disappointed when that doesn’t occur. It simply isn’t a logical conclusion to be drawn from this exercise. It wouldn’t even be valid to conclude that some ancient prophet knew and understood about the big bang and evolution.

Even if that were my intention, the tack I’ve taken is heresy to both the evangelicals and the hard-core atheists. The atheist determined to remain atheist would never accept my hypothesis; the same is true for the evangelical Christian. They’ve already made up their minds, and like Cardinal Belarmine, will refuse to look through the telescope.

So what the heck am I trying to do here? What am I trying to prove?

Part of this is my desire to see if there really is a possible synthesis. Can Genesis be interpreted in such a way that it agrees with modern science? Can I fit this square peg into the round hole?

To that end, today’s installment is fairly anti-climatic. I’ve managed to work the big bang, panspermia, and dinosaurs into the mix. Day six, by comparison holds few surprises of that magnitude. So lets get to it shall we:

24And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

 25And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

 26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

 27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

 28And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

 29And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

 30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

 31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Science: Continued changes in the Earth’s environment and perhaps a few large scale catastrophes caused speciation events in which one species became reproductively isolated from its source, mutated and adapted along different lines. Some event or change caused the dinosaurs to go extinct. Eventually Phylum Chordata of the Animal Kingdom split off Class Mammalia, which in turn split into Orders, one of which was the Order Primates, which further divided into Family Hominidae. (Not to mention all of the other members of the Kingdom Animalia and its various taxonomic branches.)

The vast majority of these animals developed the good trick of sexual reproduction, which has an immediate benefit of providing the offspring with an automatic defense against parasites carried by the parent organisms. A secondary benefit was the intermixing of genetic material which results in longer term adaptational viability by ensuring a continuous flow of small genetic variations within a relatively stable genome.

About 6 million years ago, the genus Hominidae split off a new genus from the other primates. (The Gorilla and Chimpanzee appear to have split off from this line about 4-8 Million years ago, but there is no fossil record to confirm this. There is however a fairly complete fossil record of the descent of the Hominines.) The Homogenus appears about 2 million years ago. Homo Sapiens is the only extant species of this genus, all other species of this genus having gone extinct. It appear that there were several species of the Homo genus in antiquity, but the direct line of human ancestry is unclear. (There is an ongoing debate over whether the Neanderthal was a progenitor or a cousin of modern man. There appears to be little gene flow between the two species.) Homo Sapiens appeared about 200,000 years ago (The oldest known fossil is H. Sapiens Idaltu, considered to be about 160,000 years old.)

Human DNA is more “alike” from one individual to the next, or genetically homogenous, than usual for most species. This is a result of our recent evolution. Modern man has a brain about three times the size of the early hominids of 2-3 million years ago, with the increase in brain size appearing to be the result of H. Erectus or H. Habilis beginning to use tools about 2.6 million years ago. With each stage of evolution, a step change in the use of tools occurred, but further development beyond that step was very slow until about 50,000 years ago. “At this time human culture apparently started to change at a much greater speed. ‘Modern’ humans started burying their dead carefully, made clothing out of hides, developed sophisticated hunting techniques, and made cave paintings. This speed-up of cultural change seems connected with the arrival of modern humans, homo sapiens sapiens. Additionally, human culture began to become more advanced, in that, different populations of humans begin to create novelty in existing technologies. Artifacts such as fish hooks, buttons and bone needles begin to show signs of variation among different population of humans, something that has not been seen in human cultures prior to 50,000 BP.” (Wikipedia)

Theoretically, modern human behaviour is taken to include four ingredient capabilities: abstract thinking (concepts free from specific examples), planning (taking steps to achieve a farther goal), innovation (finding new solutions), and symbolic behaviour (such as images, or rituals). Among concrete examples of modern human behaviour, anthropologists include specialization of tools, use of jewelry and images (such as cave drawings), organization of living space, rituals (for example, burials with grave gifts), specialized hunting techniques, exploration of less hospitable geographical areas, and barter trade networks. Debate continues whether there was indeed a "Revolution" leading to modern man ("the big bang of human consciousness"), or a more gradual evolution. (Wikipedia)

The mitochondria of human cells are passed from the mother in sexual reproduction. Research now indicates that all humans descended from a common female ancestor, dubbed “Mitochondrial Eve” who lived about 150,000 years ago. This ancestor is the most recent common “matrilineal” ancestor of all current humans. A counter-part “Y-Chromosonal Adam”  is the most recent “patrilineal” ancestor. He lived 60-90,000 years ago, with some estimates at about 35,000 years. The Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) of humans alive today necessarily lived more recently than either. Rohde, DLT , On the common ancestors of all living humans. (Submitted to American Journal of Physical Anthropology. (2005)) places the MRCA of humans today in the 2^nd to the 6^th Millenium BC.
Commentary:  I guess there were some surprises after all. Especially the Rohde paper! Wow. Recent archealogical evidence may place the Exodus at about 1500 B.C. The flood, if it occurred, a few hundred years before that. A common ancestor for all humans living today about, ummm, 4000 years ago. Draw your own conclusions for that data.

Whether we look at the MRCA at 4-8,000 years ago or we look at the explosion of human culture and intelligence about 50,000 years ago, humans are different from other members of Kingdom Animalia, and even from other primates in a number of ways. As noted in the Wikipedia quote we are capable of abstract thinking, planning, innovation, and symbolic behavior (language). We are exclusively bipedal, our offspring have extremely long infancy and are not even able to run away from predators for the first several years of their lives. The skin covering our bodies doesn’t protect us well from cold or from the sun (at least not as well as the adaptations of other animals), such that we need to clothes ourselves. We are not fast runners, nor do we have the great strength, agility, sharp teeth and claws of other animals. We birth our young one at a time, not in litters, and we take up to 13-18 years to grow to maturity. It seems to me that evolution took a number of survival enhancing traits away from us.  What caused the speciation event that produced intelligence in man? Why didn’t other intelligent species with other survival enhancing traits also evolve?

In 1950, the man who created computer science, Alan Turing, predicted that by about 1990, computer engineering would reach the point that would enable a computer to pass the so-called “Turing Test” and fool a human into believing it was another human being. Computers have advanced well beyond the point Turing predicted in terms of memory and storage capacity. They are orders of magnitude faster than in Turings day. Yet we find that we are only beginning to solve the problems of speech recognition and speech generation. The “big blue” project at IBM has developed a very powerful chess playing program and has done other remarkable work, but we still have not fully cracked the artificial intelligence puzzle. We can model the behavior of most animals, but we haven’t yet been able to write a computer program that can think in the abstract, plan, innovate, and use symbolic behavior.

As far a the creatures on this Earth are concerned, Man seems to have been singled out for special treatment. Whether the result will enhance our chances of survival as a species or will result in our complete extinction remains to be seen.

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

Alison has challenged my assertion from day 2 that the firmament in Genesis 1:7 is impossible to take as literal truth. She asks if I am aware of the idea that the “firmament” broke up, causing the great flood. I can’t say that I was prior to her comment. My initial inclination is to discount the idea, but lest I be “hoist by my own petard”, I’d better examine the question. It is conceivably possible. Allison, can you point to any evidence other than Genesis 1:7 that would support it?

Allison and I have also agreed to disagree over my interpretation of how long a ‘day’ in Genesis I is. I’ve postulated that it was the length of the vision our hypothetical prophet had. Allison holds to the 24 hour Earth day. As we discuss Day 4, I will explain why I think differently.

Nance and I are getting closer together in our thinking, I think. This isn’t about figuring out how the universe was created and life began, its about separating what we “know” from what we think we know. It’s about examining biases and thinking “outside the box.” I make absolutely no claim that my interpretation of Genesis is right. It is, as Nance says, a “creation story.” It (my interpretation) may be no more valid as a description of reality than the “Infinite Improbability Drive” from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.   

So on to day 4:

14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

 15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

 16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

 17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

 18And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

 19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Science: The universe is about 13.7 billion years old, by science’s best estimate. The sun and Earth are about 4.55 billion years old, so about 9 billion years had passed from t₀ to the time that the sun and the Earth came into being. At least one sun had to nova in to create the heavier elements which became the Earth, and which permit life to exist.

Commentary: Two things that strike me about these verses. Number one is the idea that the sun, moon and stars didn’t appear until now in the narrative. I think this is significant for several reasons. First, it begs the question, what light came into being in the first day? Second, if the sun—the rising and setting of which defines morning and evening and the whole concept of a day—didn’t exist until the fourth day, what was our writer talking about in the three preceding days? How could “the evening and the morning” of the first through the third days be if there was no sun to rise or set? Finally, how did our hypothetical prophet know to put the creation of the sun so significantly after the beginning of the universe?

Number two is the reference, once again, to “the firmament of heaven;” this time our narrator has the sun, moon, and stars set in this “firmament” This would tend to argue against Allison’s idea of the firmament breaking to cause the flood. It also tends to portray a geocentric view of the cosmos, e.g. that the sun and stars revolve around the Earth. This indicates only a partial understanding, which would lead to the conclusion that Genesis was written by a man. A man who may understand more than we expect, but who’s understanding is incomplete.

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

Nance left a rather lengthy comment on the Day 1 entry about "Creation Myths" or "Sacred Narratives." She seems to miss the point(s) I'm trying to make. It’s probably too early for anyone to notice that I tend to push the envelope with a lot of my posts. I find that looking at extremes helps me to decide where my real positions are.

The creation story told in Genesis is (or was 4,000 years ago) a theory. Perhaps not a "scientific" theory, but it was a theory. Or it could be looked at as one. It was a descriptive model of how the life, the universe, and everything began. One point I'm trying to make is that before we accept or reject this theory, it would be a good idea to know what the theory really is.

What would it mean if whoever wrote Genesis I was actually describing the Big Bang and Evolution? Could we write it off as a lucky guess? Would it stand as evidence of the existence of God? Or would it simply throw a curve to the archeologiststs?

If one is as intractable in their belief in evolution as some Creationists are about the 144 hour creation schedule, does that make evolution a "Sacred Narrative?"

This is an intellectual exercise, not a theological debate. I'm not trying to prove one view right or wrong; I just want to see what happens if we try to find the points where the two views agree. Where is the common ground?

With that said, lets look at the third day:

 9And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

 10And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

 11And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

 12And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

 13And the evening and the morning were the third day.

Science: In evolution, the first building blocks of life, Amino Acids were theoretically formed in shallow pools with banks/bottoms made of a clay material. Amino Acids joined together and formed larger molecules that had the chemical capability of self replication. These molecules were similar to what we now call viruses. They were not quite capable of sustaining them selves, but depended on their environment for the energy to replicate. After further mutation, we get to the first procaryotic cells (blue-green algae, some forms of bacteria) which were self contained and self replicating. As these life forms developed, random copying errors in the DNA caused mutations. Some mutations were advantageous, most were not. Somewhere along the line, a series of mutations caused the one celled life forms to clump together and specialize into multi-cellular life forms.

As things stabilize in this epoch, Earth’s atmosphere is largely Carbon Dioxide (CO₂), so it follows that a life form that metabolizes CO₂ would be selected for survival. Any such life form will be somewhere where it can get sunlight and can draw other nutrients necessary to sustain the system and to replicate itself. In such an environment, photosynthesis would have a heyday. The first visible forms of life on Earth then are likely to have been plants.

Commentary: At first glance day three seems to be out of order. How can plant life develop before the sun is created in day 4? Looks like a deal breaker, except… Evolution has a similar problem. It seems when the physicists and geologists worked their mathematical magic to determine how old the Earth and solar system are, they came up with about 4.55 billion years, and Earth became friendly for life about 3.5 billion years ago, but when the theoretical biologists and evolutionists regressed the origin of life, they figured it would have taken about 5-6 billion years to reach the point where we are now looking back at it. This looked like a deal breaker, or a least a serious challenge, for evolution, but then somebody came up with the theory of “panspermia”  

Fossilized stromatolites or bacterial aggregates, the oldest of which are dated at 3.5 billion years old, suggest that photosynthesis might be exogenic. The bacteria that form stromatolites, cyanobacteria, are photosynthetic. Most models of the origin of life have the earliest organisms obtaining energy from reduced chemicals, with the more complex mechanisms of photosynthesis evolving later. (Wikipedia) 

Note that the first person history records proposing panspermia was the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras in 5BCE. It isn’t a really new idea at all. Could our ‘prophet’ have been aware that photosynthetic life probably originated somewhere other than on Earth before the sun and Earth were created, then simply described the process to its Earthly conclusion in Day 3?

Posted in Life, the Universe, and Everything

Nance is taking me to task for a comment I made over at Scott's:

Trying to comfort the religious that science isn't any more valid than their ideas based on faith by saying being

convinced by scientific evidence is the same as taking things on faith. . . well, that's all very well if you want to be dismissive

of science and not hurt anyone's feelings about being religious.

But just telling me I am religious doesn't make it so.

I don't think I said either of these things... What I said was: Science and religion are two entirely different realms of inquiry;

science can't anwser religious questions and religion can't answer scientific
questions. Its like standing in an intersection. If I

am looking west, and you are looking south, we may be in the same place, but we aren't going to see the same things. My point, using

this analogy, is that it is foolish for either side to insist that his or her description of where they are is right and the

other person's is wrong without a willingness to expand one's view. I'm not comforting anyone; rather I am chiding both sides

for narrowness of viewpoint.

If you've been paying attention to my posts elsewhere, then you know that I do not believe the Bible to be the inerrent word of God

nor do I "take on faith" every teaching of any book or religious leader. I have, however, had several experiences that I

cannot logically discount that lead me to the conclusion that there is a power or intelligence greater than man, yet I am well aware

of the history of Gallileo and his two cosmological treatises. The Earth is not at the center of the universe.

On the other hand, I know enough about science to realize that the answers science provides are merely models of reality --

descriptions useful for predicting how 'things' will behave under certain conditions -- and not reality itself. And I've performed

enough experiements to realize that when parameters are pushed to extremes, the numbers almost never work the way the threory says

they will. They might be close, but they are always off by just a little bit. ( F = ma right? Not at astronomical distances

across a galaxy it doesn't -- unless we postulate dark matter. Or does the equasion change to
F= m a²/a_m>?)