Maybe not...
(Your horizon is 'way too close...)
Posted on 04/14/2008 11:17:37 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Survival and reproduction occur within a range of potentials- different outcomes for different environments. Our Earth is as close to ideal as it gets, a perfect petri dish which supports many many life forms. Any form of evolution simply reflects the lawfulness of acting more efficiently- shortest distance between two points, isoperimetry, etc. Better efficiency means better chance at survival, particularly when the background environment has the quirky habit of changing radically due to catastrophic planet-wide events. Adaptability then becomes key- what species can best apply what they have to a changing situation.
The most profoundly powerful tool of adaptation is a mind that can model reality forward, conceive of a future time (Alfred Korzybski’s “time binding), extrapolate scenarios and insert levels of preparedness into them. In short, we have an inner display screen that operates just as well from self-generated input as it does from perceiving the external world. This is the playground of our dreams. The inner imagos is imagination and makes us god-like in very real and powerful terms.
I’ve wondered how advanced/intelligent humans would be if this planet didn’t have catastrophic events every 50 million yrs. or so and the untold number of smaller events in between. (wars, plagues, etc) .
I’m pretty sure he thinks that with sufficient federal funding he could do that.
I tend to believe to a more or lesser extent that, just like the ancient Egyptians The SUN has a God like function vis-a-vis intelligent life development on Earth.
The SUN is life giving on Earth and when he dies everything dies.
Nevertheless the Earth has it's merits as well preserving life.
According to what we know based solely upon those higher lifeforms and chemical interactions we have already encountered.
Read the book - it explains why we won’t discover other viable chemical combinations. It’s just the way chemistry works, there’s no anthrocentricity to it.
In one group the male sea squirts fertilize the females by breaking open her skin and sticking in their heads whereupon their brains are dissolved.
Something like that happens with people of course, but that is a case of the advance toward intelligence taking a step backwards.
Ha!
I am sooo there myself.
I don't know why we should limit ourselves to one tautology.
The fittest survive. Who are the fittest? Those that survive.
What is the directionality of evolution? The direction evolution has taken.
Where were the laws of physics before the universe began?
What is your point?,
What is your point?,
Maybe not...
(Your horizon is 'way too close...)
Much less have any idea what is really out there..
Read the tagline....
Its an awful big place just to have only one planet with life.
Either its a lot of wasted space and matter or there is something else going on somewhere else or we have one heck of a future ahead of us. But it seems an awful waste of time and energy to put it all there just so we see pretty lights up in the sky.
That no matter whether it’s a deity or physics, you have the question of what was there before there was anything.
Before there was anything, there was nothing by definition. Genesis states this as does physics, This means that everything came from "nothing". So either "a Deity evolved from nothing, or everything evolved from nothing. If a diety can evolve from nothing (deities are more "complex" than flatworms for instance), then the whole intelligent design theory breaks down. Otherwise you have to have an infinite chain of designers. The burden of proof then is on the ID'ers to provide evidence (like a hair sample or footprint) of one of these designers or shut up about it. They are just another group of UFOlogists or crypto-zoologists chasing imaginary skunk apes in the Everglades. Scientific theory requires evidence. ID is a weak hypothesis in search of a mustard seed of evidence yet to be found. It does not rise to the level of a theory.
So either "a Deity evolved from nothing, or everything evolved from nothing.
But, see, everything evolving from nothing.. something has nothing to evolve from. "Evolve" cannot be from nothing. So that's a non-starter too.
My question was not to argue for ID, but to combine the quandary between spheres. It has something in common with science and with religion.
To that end let's define God, or deity, as "the creative process/force of the cosmos." This will be scientific enough to discuss scientifically and agree with an attribute of God enough to discuss for religion.
Now, when we say "nothing" or ex nihilo, we are really talking about matter. No matter; some matter. This is different from saying there was no "creative process/force of the cosmos" or no laws of physics. Only that there was no matter on which to operate.
Let's take a practical example. Say you have a perfect vacuum. Then you introduce two reactive molecules into this vacuum (and/or a catalyst). They do their thing. However, you didn't add the physics required to do their thing, only the molecules.
Did the laws of physics exist prior to and independent of your introduction of matter? Can the "creative process/force of the cosmos" exist in nothingness before the creation of the universe ex nihilo?
“Nothing” is not only the absence of matter, but the absence of energy too. Matter is a form of energy. So you have nothing to act upon and nothing to act with.
I think the solution is that our universe isn’t everything that exists, but it is all we can experience because of the limits of the speed of light.
If we think of our universe as a bubble in a sea containing many other bubbles (universes), then you can allow for the pre-existance of the laws of physics and the source of energy that created the big bang.
The universe then isn’t born nor does it die. It is simply a signal on the carrier wave that is the omniverse. The signal will cease to exist due to interference or dissipation, but the carrier wave persists forever.
You can call a physical process god, but god would obey the laws of physics, not make them. What appears to us as intelligent design is the result of constructive interference (matter and energy are the same thing and they are waves) and is viewed through the anthropic principle.
Yeah, your “omniverse” theory was developed when it was determined that our universe did indeed have a finite beginning.
Seems that due to the logic of
“everything that has a beginning has a cause, our universe had a beginning, therefore an uncaused cause transcendent to space and time”
led uncomfortably to a Creator.
So, those who assume complete materialism (begging the question of their conclusion) had to come up with either “maybe things can have a beginning that is uncaused” or this unsupportable conjecture of the “multiverse”.
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