Martin Robbin, of the Guardian, has a good piece, Arsenic about face, which is a decent perspective on the whole NASA arsenic-based lifeform announcement and subsequent development.
Great Perspective Article on NASA’s “Arscenicgate”
Reply
Tag Archives: science
Defining Science
When people talk about science, they infer and imply many things. They may be referring to scientists, the scientific method, the popularly accepted ideas of the day, or any number of perceptions about what constitutes “science” these days. Many times, I talk about science in the context of the act of scientific inquiry, that is, the act of applying our five natural senses, taste, touch, smell, sight and sound, or technological extensions of those senses, in order to inquire about world around us. These are the only tools acceptable to science and there are inherent limits in their application which prohibit them from tackling some very important questions.
The tools, our senses, were granted us and operate according to the laws of the environment in which they exist. That is, your eyes see the visible light of energy. You can touch matter. You can smell the product of chemical reactions. Tying all these things together is the environment in which they exist. For God to have created our reality, he must have existed outside of it. Or, you might think of it as one bubble, the universe, existing inside another, bigger bubble, God’s universe. Either way, it still holds that the tools of science can not be assumed to apply to observing or experimenting on that which is outside of our bubble.
This is what I often allude to in discussions about origins. This is, also, what should cause you to reconsider what you are told by popular science. There is no empirical way to prove the non-existence of God, though, it seems, people like Hawking and Dawkins try hard to do so.
The next step in this argument is to debate whether it is more or less illogical to believe in an omni-present God or an omni-present material reality (universe; multi-verse; big bang repeating cycle; etc). I say “illogical” because, according to the laws of this existence, all effects have a cause, and an ever-existing God and an ever-existing reality have no initial cause hence they appear illogical.
Notice, also, that you are now no longer debating in the realm of logic but in the realm of the illogical: Whose premise is less illogical than whose? This should prompt you to pause and think a little bit. What you will discover is that the former must cease to reason according to the laws of his reality and begin to reason under a new set of conditions. The latter, however, still reasons according to the laws of his reality.
There comes a point in all of this when one needs to reconsider starting assumptions. The one who finds the limit of his own tools and reaches beyond discovers new insights while the one who refuses to acknowledge these limits spins around and around in his own concentric series of smaller and smaller circles of reasoning.
Isaac Newton: Crazy man!
I’ve just finished reading Stephen Hawking‘s A Brief History of Time. It’s a great read and has really firmed up some ideas on physics I’ve had for a long time. But I thought I’d paste this excerpt here as it’s a really crazy summary of Isaac Newton’s life. It’s a short biography at the back of A Brief History of Time. I’m always surprised seeing people act so childishly. I hope Newton was happy acting like an idiot.
Isaac Newton was not a pleasant man. His relations with other academics were notorious, with most of his later life spent embroiled in heated disputes. Following publication of Principia Mathematica – surely the most influential book ever written in Physics – Newton had risen rapidly into public prominence. He was appointed president of the Royal Society and became the first scientist ever to be knighted.
Newton soon clashed with the Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, who had earlier provided Newton with much needed data for Principia, but was now withholding information that Newton wanted. Newton would not take no for an answer; he had himself appointed to the governing body of the Royal Observatory and then tried to force immediate publication of the data. Eventually he arranged for Flamsteed’s work to be seized and prepared for publication by Flamsteed’s mortal enemy, Edmond Halley. But Flamsteed took the case to court and, in the nick of time, won a court order preventing distribution of the stolen work. Newton was incensed and sought his revenge by systematically deleting all references to Flamsteed in later editions of Principia.
A more serious dispute arose with the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Both Leibniz and Newton had independently developed a branch of mathematics called Calculus, which underlies most of modern physics. Although we now know that Newton discovered Calculus years before Leibniz, he published his work much later. A major row ensued over who had been first, with scientists vigorously defending both contenders. It is remarkable, however, that most of the articles appearing in defense of Newton were originally written by his own hand – and only published in the name of friends! As the row grew, Leibniz made the mistake of appealing to the Royal Society to resolve the dispute. Newton, as president, appointed an “impartial” committee to investigate, coincidentally consisting entirely of Newton’s friends! But that was not all: Newton then wrote the committee’s report himself and had the Royal Society publish it, officially accusing Leibniz of plagiarism. Still unsatisfied, he then wrote an anonymous review of the report in the Royal Society’s own periodical. Following the death of Leibniz, Newton is reported to have declared that he had taken great satisfaction in “breaking Leibniz’ heart”.
During the period of these two disputes, Newton had already left Cambridge and academe. He had been active in anti-Catholic politics at Cambridge, and later in Parliament, and was rewarded eventually with the lucrative post of Warden of the Royal Mint. Here he used his talents for deviousness and vitriol in a more socially acceptable way, successfully conducting a major campaign against counterfeiting, even sending several men to their death on the gallows.
− Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time
The foundations of the Building are only as strong as the foundations of the Builders
My mother past away last month and since then we’ve had a number of occasions to reflect on her passion for creation – the literal intepretation of the Book of Genesis as it relates to the six-day creation of the heavens and the earth.
All her stuff in the basement which she’d gather together to put on exhibits at churches or in classes. At her funeral where we setup these things so that visitors could know about her passion. And a creation seminar weekend at Cannington Baptist Church where gifted speaker Calvin Smith taught us many fascinating truths of science regarding the history of the earth. The weekend was lovingly dedicated to Donna in light of her passion for creation. We wholeheartedly thank them for their thoughtfulness and kindness towards us.
Because of all this exposure, though, I’ve really been hit a number of times just how serious it is for believers to doubt the creation account in Genesis. Doubt and skepticism are healthy but only when they lead to uncovering the truth.
Each creation organization that I’m aware of has the same reason for doing what they do: They believe that to contradict Genesis, being the inspired Word of God, is to erode the very foundation of the totality of the faith. Creation Ministries International, for example, entitle their writing on this issue “Genesis—the seedbed of all Christian doctrine.”
According to stats, most Christian youth who go to secular post-secondary institutions will lose their faith because of the onslaught of ideas contradictory to their faith. If their faith can’t stand against apparent flaws, then what good is the faith? Who can blame them for leaving their faith behind. At best, who can blame them for compartmentalizing or halfheartedly living out their faith.
But there are answers. Answers In Genesis is another organization dedicated to teaching the truths of the creation account. Their article regarding the need for teaching creation is entitled “Creation: Why it matters.”
Creation absolutely matters. God has Genesis right. He really did create the heavens and the earth in six days. If he said so and he really didn’t, then what else is really true in the bible? Your entire faith’s foundation begins at Genesis 1:1:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Wooly mammoth may have gone extinct more recently than thought
Wooly Mammoth DNA Yields Surprising Secret
This is a relatively minor change in understanding of wooly mammoth’s extinction from 12,500 years ago to around 7500 years ago.
This is just another one of those discoveries that catch my eye in the media because ever more and more we’re discovering the long time frames of evolution are being reconsidered. Wooly mammoths nearly within recorded history, you say? I’m confident we’ll soon discover man did indeed walk with dinosaurs.
Mediterranean Might Have Filled In Months
Slashdot is carrying the story. As it turns out, large-scale flood theories are not uncommon. The Black Sea deluge theory is well supported. Discussion, on the slashdot story, have some suggesting that these large-scale floods are most likely the source of the many flood myths around the world.
The problem with theories that try to avoid the global flood idea is that most flood myths explain that it was a global flood and the survivors had to repopulate the earth. One would expect large-scale yet localized floods to produce myths of mass migrations.
No large-scale flood theory appears to propose a situation where the flow of water would exceed the inhabitants ability to escape. These are not flash-floods which are very difficult to escape. They are theorized large-scale, sea-flooding events, which just don’t happen that quickly.
Whenever I see a headline like this in the news, about a new discovery or theory that is purely and naturally sound, I think back to the bible and wonder how it could apply to the tremendous events in the bible. How does Noah’s Flood relate to this theory that the Mediterranean could have filled in months?
The way I see it, these discoveries lend credence, ever more and more, to the biblical account of human history. Things we said in the past were absolutely impossible and out of the question we slowly begin to see they weren’t so far fetched. Still supernatural, yes, but impossible.
The reason it’s important is because it solidifies the bible’s foundation (in our minds) and requires more thought before one can dismiss the bible as simply anti-science. One must begin to consider the bible a little more deeply before dismissing it. And that is critical for those considering the faith, or those young in the faith, to have a solid foundation to believe in.
This is not Religion versus Science
My recent and, likely, typical posts on this blog have obviously been with a bias toward Christianity. As to this blatant bias I hold no shame. The requirement I hold up for myself is truth. Bias may sway to one end or another, but bias is altogether a wholly different thing than truth, and the man who holds a bias and yet holds truth, that man is to be envied. I may not be that man but that is my goal.
As to the bent of writing, the astute mind will immediately recognize that these things we speak on are not about sides. There is no us and them. There is no religion/faith/belief on one side and science/reason/logic on another. The intelligent individual will realize that the Christian is not anti-science, as I have been labeled in the past and will certainly be labeled in the future. Christianity is not anti-science. Nothing could be further from the truth.
That truth is this: The Christian has learned that, as Chesterton put it, God is a truth teller and we have learned to give him the benefit of the doubt. As we grow in the faith we see that God tells us the truth of things. Not because he says so and that’s that, but because he says so and, behold, we find it out to have been true. This benefit of the doubt is key. We give God the benefit of the doubt. We see His Word say one thing and creation tell us another. Yet time and again, given time, we see that He was right all along and it just took some time for modern research to see it.
I will take one example. In the story of Jonah and his preaching to Ninevah, the Bible makes the city sound great. In the past hundred years scholars have said it couldn’t possibly have been very big at all. Yet archaeologists come along and find the foundations of that city and see that it was easily as big as written about. This is just one example and there are more, some larger and some smaller.
This, though, is the crux of the resistance of Christianity to modern thought that contradicts what we know the bible to say. We know the track record of the bible is to come out right in the end. Therefore we resist. We do not resist beyond all reason, though. Prove something, such as the earth orbiting around the sun, and it will be considered and we will understand our own misunderstanding of the bible and we will correct ourselves.
Christianity has, time and again, resisted and then accepted new ideas but there are some ideas which, no matter how much time passes, can not be proven and can not be accepted. I write on a number of these, including creation and evolution, origins, and more. It is critical to understand than when an idea is resisted and then later accepted it is not because it still contradicts the bible yet we accept it because it is the “truth.” In actuality, we realize our own misunderstanding of what the bible was saying and come to see the truth in light of another truth. This has not occurred with evolution, however. We do not yet see that evolution is proven nor that there is any possibility of the scriptures writing it and we simply lacked the understanding before. We also do not foresee this changing. Evolution is not proven and, as much as we look, the scriptures do not speak to it. In fact, the scriptures speak to the opposite of it. That is why it is resisted.
I hope it is clear to all that religion and science are not adverse. Science has its tools of proof. So too does religion. Each requires that a thing pass the test before it is accepted as truth. We must all hold up rationality instead of dogmas. We must all bridge divides instead of creating them. Any given side can be accused of these things.
The Unreasonable Doubt of Rational Deduction
Science employs the five natural senses, sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, or technological extensions or assistances of these, in order to understand the existence in which we reside. Because science relies only on what we know to reliably reveal the truth, we call this objective inquiry or rational thought. But this is only rational if you’re blissfully innocent of all senses to the contrary of the result. In actuality, science, as the penultimate source of truth, is the abandonment of reason.
By objectifying the senses, taking them out of the subjective, the man, we lose the qualities of the mind, which not only processes the data from the five senses, but also applies another sense to the compilation of all those data streams. It applies rational deduction.
Rational deduction is not simply an analysis of the five senses and a summary report, or we would find it difficult to call it the sense we instinctively know it to be. A sense it is, we gather, and it often tells us things contrary to what our individual senses would have us to believe.
We find we have an additional sense which can not be separated from the man. In separating the senses which can be separated from the man and ignoring what can not, science, well-meaning and profitable in cases it may be, has seen fit to conclude on a matter missing the most integral sense of them all. Science has seen it reasonable to objectify the senses that it can objectify while leaving out what it can not. This it has not deemed unreasonable though the mind enables the most critical sense of them all, the rational sense.
In other words, the only thing that gives a man reason is his mind. Science has taken the mind out of the picture and has thus become unreasonable.
It should be clear that a complete, coherent perception of the existence which you inhabit requires not a simple, black and white analysis of the natural, but a complex arsenal of rational tools. Science has naively over-simplified its toolset and become irrational.
Well stated by one of the most prominent men of science, Einstein, “everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
The Paradox In Which all Men Believe
There is a paradox to the Christian faith which concerns the origins of our existence. The paradox consists of realizing that everything has a cause, hence our existence was created by God. But everything has a cause; Then God must have had a cause; So, really, that cause is God; And that intermediate “God” wasn’t really God.
We don’t talk like that. We say that God created our existence and that God simply is. He had no beginning and has no cause. He is self-existent.
Science, however, theorizes any number of ideas in which a natural existence can be the cause of itself. Hence, the infinite collapse and explosion of our universe in the big bang, or the multiverse theories. In either case, existence, in which the universe collapses and explodes or in which the universe of the multiverse is created, can either be considered to have been already or “existence” and “universe” are considered one and so the existence simply is. Regardless, you can abstract, extrapolate, interpolate and extend what is further and further out and back but you must satisfy the law that all that is was caused. And that is the paradox. All things have a cause except the origins of what is.
One can see that this irrationality is actually the rationality claimed by modern thought.
I use here Christianity as the symbol for all religions, for the defining principle of all religion is faith, and Science as the symbol for rationality, at least the rationality modern thought has coined of it. It matters not that Christianity is different than Buddhism , but that modern thought differentiates itself from the religion because it perceives irrationality. It matters not that Science is not the only system of rational thought, but that we generally differentiate what is science and what is religion by considering one rational and one not. They represent the two halves of the great chasm separating man’s mind from himself.
Once you’ve gotten past the issue, of knowing the paradox of whatever you think you know or believe in, you must rationally come to the conclusion that, because there is no reason for existence to be at all, there must be a cause of our existence. This cause, no matter how far back or how many iterations out you push this, must be final. This final cause has chosen to reveal itself not through natural test (our five senses; modern scientific inquiry), but rather through rational deduction. You must believe in a paradox to be reasonable. You must become irrational to become rational.
It is something significant to ponder that this ultimate thing should choose such an avenue of revelation.
Ignorance
We throw around the word “ignorance” quite a bit. It can mean lack of knowledge, it can be an insult, there can be willful ignorance, there can be innocent ignorance. Rarely does the word get used without surrounding connotations and implications.
I was just listening to Richard Dawkins, well known scientist, author, orator, and proponent of evolution, talking on CBC Radio 1. I’m not sure what the cental topic of the interview was but it seemed to be about his career and where the world stands on evolution right now.
Dawkins commented on an American politician making reference to young-earth age. He uttered something along the lines of “staggering ignorance.” Fine. Whatever. He continued onto other subjects apparently meaning to back-up an old-age earth. So, he mentioned crystal isotopes and decay rates and transformations, etc. He also mentioned that a significant percentage of the British (50%+ as I recall) believed that humans lived with dinosaurs at one point.
The crystal example got me thinking about his comment earlier about ignorance. What level of ignorance was Dawkins operating from when he made the claim that the politician lacked critical information? That’s a rhetorical question. Maybe it’s a trick question. During the lifetime of that crystal, was Dawkins there to watch it? Indeed, what transformations did it go through? What was the nature of the original formation, the nature of the original environment? Could an alternate X, Y and Z have produced a similar result? There are probably good, scientific answers to all of these that would dispel all doubts. But the truth is we have to admit we operate in sheer ignorance about the fundamentals of this existence we inhabit. We were not there. We don’t know if some fairy jumped out, stole the crystal and replaced it with an old unwanted one.
“But we have our five senses!” Bobby cries. Susie exclaims, “But science can show without variation that there are laws which do not break under vast repetition in this reality!”
The tools of science are found in this existence. The fundamentals of science – are given to it. If we can call this existence “nature”, than science, as far as we know, has been given all that it needs to test what is natural. What is unnatural, if there is such a thing, is another existence and thus another science.
If you ask science to prove the existence of the unnatural, it will not be able to. It hasn’t been given the tools to undeniably prove or disprove the existence of the unnatural. If you can not answer this question then the depth and breadth of the ignorance you operate under is without limit.
This is why science can come to be a belief system. If you subscribe to the idea that science is the final answer on all questions then you make an unfalsifiable claim – an unscientific claim. If you hold, nonetheless, to science as absolute, it has become a belief. A reasonable man, however, will see that this inability of science to answer all questions opens the door for a mutual arrangement of mental faculty and physical science. Neither can answer the questions which lie in the other’s realm and so the pair multiply understanding.
Note here that I have not mentioned religion or faith. You might presume that religion X, offering answers where science can not and yet verifying everything that science observes, would be the ideal combination. So, science is entirely correct and you’ve got answers to which science can not attest. You might think everything is quite rosy and peachy. The truth, however, is that your faith must make sense for the reality in which you exist. To accomplish this, you must bring together and meld your heart, your mind, your faith and your science under an umbrella of sound reason. If your faith does not make sense according to what you see of the world, the people in it, its history, and of your own convictions, you have created an unreasonable belief.
In each of the heart, mind, faith and science, one is tempted to place more weight on one than the other. As such, a faith which seems to contradict science, the man of science may discard and keep searching for another faith. On the other hand, the man of faith may discard that portion of science and keep searching for another portion of science that satisifies.
Lest the knowledge of our ignorance become a fatalistic thing, remind yourself that your heart, your mind and your faith speak to things outside of this existence and so ignorance may come to knowledge and understanding via those avenues.