FAITH = CREDULITY? (Part 1)

I won't be obnoxious, I promise.

On either side of the argument (there IS a God, or there IS NO God), it seems to me that there is a tendency to stick to one’s guns as it were, dismissing the other side’s view without even trying to gauge it. It transpires in comments like “I don’t have to prove anything. I have FAITH, you don’t” or on the other side “you believe in NONSENSE, it’s been proven”.

If you are willing to read further, I will share with you my take on this.

First, blind faith is not true faith. The bible’s definition of faith is this: "Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld" (Hebrews 11:1, New World Translation)

 Or, as the Common English Bible Translation puts it: "Faith is the reality of what we hoped for, the proof of what we don't see"

The bible doesn't encourage believing without sound foundation, believing just anything we are told (credulity). Instead, it tells us

“Put all things to the test.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21, Today’s English Version)

I did this and this is the first part of my thinking process. I will blog the second part and my conclusion next week.

OUR PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

Celestial bodies follow mathematical laws so their movement is predictable, which is why we are able to send probes into space and make sure they hit the right planet/moon etc…Every celestial body (except black holes I believe) moves around in ellipses. We are part of a gigantic ballet. I say "ballet" because it seems quite graceful, well executed and beautiful. We don’t see many collisions on our blue planet. One would have thought that with so much debris in space, we would have been on a deadly collision course with something much more often (apparently, we have Jupiter to thank for that).

The second law of thermodynamics stipulates that anything left to its own devices will fall into disarray. So why is the universe still so orderly after almost 13.8 billions years?  Should it not be ostensibly more disorderly? Also, the universe is expanding but the pre-existing order doesn't seem to be affected.

The famous equation (E=MC2) suggests that energy is transferred into matter and vice versa. The abundance of matter around must therefore have originated from tremendous energy. Where did this energy come from is still a mystery for Science. The fact that the universe is also expanding at increasing speed puts this energy problem in sharper focus. 

Since Louis Pasteur, we have proof that spontaneous generation does not exist on Earth. Life only comes from pre existing life. There has been no experiment proving that life can come from the inanimate, only inconclusive attempts so far. 

WHAT MAKES US HUMAN: FEELINGS 

If  there is no God and that survival of the fittest is what drives us, what is the reason for our sense of justice, fairness, love? What is the problem with killing or robbing someone weaker? Were feelings an accident of evolution?

Physician Dean Ornish said “love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well”

If feelings were an accident and therefore not belonging in our evolution path, should we have survived that long with them? What's the use of laughter too? Beauty? Music? Do they make us fitter for survival?

We don't just live, we enjoy life or at least aim to do. We are definitely driven by something else than pure survival of the fittest. Well, at least  I am. Are you?

THE MISSING LINKS

The fossil records is still being scoured for “missing links”. I remember the last big fuss that was made after a scientist thought he found the missing link, round about August 2009. It was quickly abated when counter evidence showed that the specimen found could not be proved to be one of our “ancestors”. The media hype is unfortunately all that is left in people’s mind. I had to research the truth afterwards to realise that the media, in an effort to make sensational news, had blown the truth out of proportions.

In fact, there is no real convincing evidence that we have slowly evolved. Darwin’s theory of evolution was produced at a time where many discoveries were yet to be made. No idea about microscopic life at the time, spontaneous generation (the fact that life can just appear out of nothingness) was viewed as a fact of life.

But now we know that life is much more complex and organized. Since Louis Pasteur, we know that there is microscopic life and that life only comes from life (For instance, corpses don’t generate worms as previously thought. Flies lay their invisible eggs which hatch and release the devouring little beasts).

A little digression here. With the advent of the microscope, the more we looked, the more complexity we found. That would have surprised Darwin. People thought that the building blocks of life would be very simple. What was later called “cells” were little more than greasy blobs in their eyes. How far from the truth they were.

Cells are where lies a complex library of genetic code.

I haven’t found any solid evidence that species evolved into another. All things seem to have a master plan in their cells: the DNA. This also prevents a species to perpetuate a hybrid race with another species. Changes, mutations occur, but are very limited and only in movies do they result in super species.

For instance, donkey + horse=Mule. Mules are infertile. Tiger + lion = Liger. Bigger than lions or tigers but their lifespan is shorter and they are very prone to birth defects.

Another thing. If we evolved, then our ethics should have too. But have they?

EVOLUTION OF ETHICS?

Some time ago, I heard on the radio that Ofsted reported children aged 4 to 6 were exhibiting what was deemed “sexual behaviour” for which some were expelled from their school. (A couple of months later, I saw it myself. A little boy in my neighbourhood, probably aged 8, was showing his penis to all people driving by, cheered on by his mates, including a girl)

I found quite surprising how one official (I think a doctor) appeared to belittle this behaviour by saying those children were probably bored or looking for attention and not being sure about what is socially acceptable, being unaware of the boundary between things you do in private and things you do in public. More to the point though, another official said that those children were fed this behaviour, probably through TV and the Internet; the official added she was amazed at the crudeness of some material that children can be exposed to. 

The bible says that morals would decline (2 Timothy 3:1-5, 13). Most people that I have spoken to (who have lived much longer than me) confirm that they have.

The next post on this theme (Part 2) expands on one of my favourite subjects (languages) and the one after (Part 3) deals with prophecies.

Knowledge : the never ending story

I don't know how people could ever think that we now know all there is to know...
I mean our understanding of stuff is constantly refined.
Take for example Newton's law of Gravity. He thought gravity was a force pulling things towards the center of the Earth. We now describe Gravity differently: Each large celestial body has its own gravitational pull because its mass bends the space around it, a bit like a basketball on the roof of a gazebo...
We used to think atoms were the smallest things on Earth but then we discovered electrons.
We used to think we could do all we wanted to the Earth and it would self-repair. Then we discovered global warming and the decline in biodiversity. We thought the US were filthy rich. We then discovered that they're trillions in debt.
Anyway, all i'm saying is it's easy to have an uninformed opinion, a gut feeling, but then when you actually inform yourself, you realise that the more you know, the more there is to know...
What prompted this long winded reflection?
Well, you see, I'm still researching about the backdrop of my book. There is so much to research to make things reasonably credible. I hope i won't give away my foreignness too much in the pictures I'll paint!
Init.

Why we shouldn't lap up the idea we come from monkeys

I tell you what, Science has Tourette's.
Good character in general, coming out with really fascinating, logical and useful stuff, but peppered with uncontrollable tics. Let me explain.

My Biology teacher always stressed that the scientific method is to observe a phenomenon, formulate assumptions, test the assumption's validity and then go with what the results tell you.

If vaccines were not properly tested before use on a massive scale, what disaster may have ensued? What happened when Asbestos entered the commercial world without thorough testing? Thousands of deaths. People were obsessed by what they could get out of it, never mind the consequences to themselves or others.

I feel Science kills people too. It has enabled tremendous technological, medical advancements but in the same breath, it had snuffed out people's belief in a higher purpose, turned them into meaningless beings who really just ought to be concerned with their own individual survival...and guess what, that's not even scientific. All that has been discovered since Darwin doesn't validate the theory of Evolution. And yet the majority of the scientific community still promote it as an established fact.


There is a burden of scientific proof against evolution out there though. Here is just a part of it.

Mathematics
An occurrence is considered to be impossible if it has a probability of one chance in 10 to the power of 50 (1 followed by 50 zeros) to happen. Bear this in mind... Let's call it "The impossibility figure".

The probability of a simple protein appearing by accident (that’s just ONE important part of the living cell, found in DNA for instance) is 10 to the power of 113 (1 followed by 113 zeros), even less possible than the impossible!

The probability of ONE other simple yet crucial part of the DNA, the histone, appearing by chance is calculated to 20 to the power of 200... 2 followed by 200 zeros!!! Now what was the impossibility figure again?

Biology
Spontaneous generation has been proved to be false since Louis Pasteur. Life cannot spring from non living matter.

Physics
E=MC2. Energy transforms into mass and vice-versa. The tremendous energy needed to kick start the universe must have come from a source, perhaps a mass, perhaps something or someone. It can’t come from nothing.

Geology
There is no documented evidence in the fossil records that species slowly evolved. It actually shows that different species appeared fully- formed and distinct to each other, rather suddenly in the pre-Cambrian layer

TBC….

Well really, this is worse than Tourette's. Tourette's syndrome is not deliberate and the person suffering from it is only too aware that it is a disease.

Init.

Lighter stuff about languages

A wise man remarked that if you bring together animals of the same species but normally living from different parts of the globe, they still understand each other. They have exactly the same language. A dog from China won’t need an interpreter to understand a dog from Blighty. Humans are the only species with different languages. Odd, init?
Although, I know this one animal who learnt to speak dog and that saved her life and that of her family… Mind you, that was a mouse and she learnt dog to frighten a cat….and I forgot to mention she was fictitious for the most part…Which part? Well…erhm…pretty much the whole part…part…
Oh, and that wise man I mentioned at the outset, well his name is Iron man (nah, not the real one, he looked more like a pirate of the Caribbean to me) …

Oh, and while I’m at it, I must confess my name is not Rudiano Bambino…My name is even weirder looking, weirder sounding….and it does not rhyme…. My profile picture on the right isn't my real picture either. This is a recent picture of me (above). Kind of explains my experience in the dog world init.

What a disappointment of a blog eh?

Oh well, the truth had to come out one way or another!

Peace.

Rude-Doggy-what-doggy-who-Doggy-Dawg


:P

Heavy stuff about languages

Languages fascinate me on many levels. One thing I find quite interesting (even puzzling if you cross reference it with the ideas in vogue nowadays) is the complexity of ancient languages.

You would have thought that the further back in time you go, the simpler the recorded languages get because apparently, we all started in grunts …. Hunh? Hungawa! (And all that jazz)

Take Sumerian for instance, the oldest written language (oldest records of it date about 4000 BCE I believe). It’s more complex than most modern languages with its infixes, suffixes, prefixes….
Take another one, Hebrew (one of the languages the bible was written into). It causes challenges to translate into our modern languages. Words that existed back then do not exist anymore. Consequently, in order to translate the idea, more words are needed or a close one is used with a long explanatory footnote!
Compare this with what we put in r txt msgs …Str8 2 da point, no literature, all bout speed init… Spelling has less and less importance. Have you also noticed it’s creeping into emails (“Knd Rgrds”)?
It looks to me like languages are getting simpler rather than the opposite.

I get the feeling it’s not just in languages. I’m not sure we are immensely cleverer than our ancestors. Remember the tower of Babel story?
Babel was ruled by Nimrod, the first power hungry man in history that made it big. He proclaimed himself emperor and had a tower built that would touch the heavens. Sounds like the first skyscraper doesn’t it? Pretty amazing since this guy had this built millennia before Christ!
Some would say, it’s just an old story. Does it really sound so far-fetched? Well consider the artefacts we have left from Babylonian Advanced Mathematics and architecture. No motorized crane or other powerful machinery available, no 3-D computer designs. Still there were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon built in the 7th century BCE. Critics say that it would have been a masterpiece of engineering, even by today’s standards. It was one of the 7 wonders of the Ancient world for crying out loud. They were great mathematicians, great designers. Look it up!
The colours on some of the ziggurats (Babylonian building) discovered by archaeologists reveal something interesting too: To obtain the glazing blue colour seen on the ziggurats palisades, a precise quantity of specific materials have to be heated at a constant temperature for a precise period of time. How did they manage that without a high tech modern oven? How did they know how to do that in the first place? Perhaps ancient civilisations knew more than we want to credit them for.

The ultimate puzzle is this: The bible account says that God confused languages in Babel. Old story again, people object. How else do you explain that language families are so different? To name but a few differences, some languages are written from right to left (Arabic for example) instead of left to right, some use an alphabet whereas others use pictograms instead (Chinese for example). Is the transition documented? No. As far as I know, linguists are still divided; they haven’t found the missing links. Incidentally, the missing links in the evolutionary chain have not been found either, contrary to all the hype that was whipped up about it last year. But that’s another story.

Okay, enough. I’ll try tackling something less heavy next time, promise!
:P

The Equation of Everything

Whether or not the Equation of everything exists, it is interesting to think there might be a unifying principle that explains the mathematical order in the mind bogglingly big things of the universe down to the minuscule things on Earth…

I mean the whole thing seems to be a ballet of order, intricacy, beauty and movement

The universe is generally precise like clockwork. Orbits follow mathematical laws. Scientists can predict and calculate many things in the universe thanks to this mathematical order. We know in advance when the new moon, full moon, etc will be, theorists make sense out of the movement of celestial bodies because they obey rules. Why this order? Why doesn’t the whole system crash every now and then like Windows and other man-made programmes? Well, that’s another question.

However, if many cannot compute the concept of a Great Designer, at least we all agree on the mathematical precision mentioned above.

Other manifestations of this precision are rife on our blue planet...Take the composition of the atmosphere for instance–exactly what is needed to support and sustain life (78% Nitrogen, 21 % Oxygen, 1% other gases, if the balance was different, life would be impossible): the water cycle, the conveyor belt (warm and cold current making sure oxygen is distributed in the oceans all over the globe), the oxygen cycle (carbon dioxide to oxygen and vice –versa) the land cycle (from magma to crust and back to magma) Everything is interconnected and pefectly balanced - before we mess it all up. Wouldn’t it be great if we knew a mathematical equation that explains why this had to be this way?

But most importantly, if this equation was abused, because it fell into self-serving hands, what could happen to mankind?
Well yeah, there has to be a baddie, right? Otherwise there’s no crisis, no tension, no resolution, no hero, no good story init!