Posted on 06/23/2008 3:05:46 PM PDT by betty boop
What is Life/Non-life in Nature?
by Jean F. Drew
Everywhere we see the “behavior” of life/non-life (death) in nature; but that doesn’t tell us what life/non-life IS.
Darwin’s theory of evolution doesn’t help with this question. It presupposes the existence of life axiomatically, and then proceeds to speak of the origin and evolution of species. Its fundamental assumption is that biological evolution is a wholly naturalistic, material process governed by the laws of physics and chemistry, with random variation and natural selection as the principal drivers of the system. Central to the Darwinist view is that life forms — species — evolve into completely other, more complex species; and this is so because all living beings are members of a Tree of Life that is rooted in a single common ancestor (the theory is silent on where the common ancestor came from).
But Darwinist theory doesn’t tell us what life is, or where it came from, just how it evolves (or speciates) under purely materialistic and naturalistic constraints. It is not a theory of life, and I think Darwin would agree with that.
This does not prevent theorists from speculating that, given the preferred scientific cosmology of a material universe of infinite size and unlimited duration — no beginning, no end — anything that can happen, will happen in time. Therefore, it is plausible to suppose that life itself may have originated from random chemical reactions that somehow “lucked out” and “stuck,” giving us the origin of life and its ubiquity and persistence henceforth.
The important point is that Darwinism rests on a certain cosmology, or world view. That worldview is increasingly being falsified by modern physics. (See below.)
It seems doubtful that an investigation carried out at the level of physical chemistry can demonstrate the emergence of life from non-living matter. This is called abiogenesis, which describes the situation where non-life (inorganic matter) spontaneously bootstraps itself into a living organism.
Miller and Urey attempted to demonstrate abiogenesis under laboratory conditions, using simulated lightning strikes on a suitable “pre-biotic soup.” They got a bunch of amino acids. But amino acids are the building blocks of living systems, not living systems themselves.
Wimmer got a better result in his attempt to create a polio virus, a living organism. He actually succeeded! But his “recipe” involved far more than the material “cell-free juice” he used as his culture: He introduced information into the mix: Wimmer began with the information sequence of RNA which he synthesized to DNA (because RNA cannot be synthesized) and then synthesized the message from DNA to RNA. When he added the message to a cell free juice, it began transmitting and duplicating. And he got himself a polio virus — a living being….
But the important thing to bear in mind is that, although Wimmer was successful in creating a living being, he was not the author of the information that led to this result. It was already “there” — and no scientist claims to know its source. Indeed, physics so far has been unable to locate any source for this type of life-generating information within the physical world. In other words, scientists recognize the indispensable requirement of information to living systems, they see that it is indeed “there”; but they cannot say how it got there, or from whence it came.
Consider also that the universe itself seems to be “informed,” in the sense of displaying evidence of some remarkable “fine-tuning” that guides its evolution. Physical chemistry itself rests on, is informed by, deeper principles: the physical laws, which in turn depend on certain ubiquitous universal constants — the speed of light; the value of pi; Plank’s constant; Plank time; the resonance precision required for the existence of carbon (a necessary element for life); the explosive power of the Big Bang precisely matched to the power of gravity (its density precisely matched with the critical density of the universe); the delicate balance in the strong nuclear force; the precise balancing of gravitational force and electromagnetic force; the meticulous balance between the number of electrons and protons; the precision in electromagnetic force and the ratio of proton mass to electron mass and neutron mass to proton mass; the Big Bang’s defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and gravity’s cumulative effect; etc., for examples.
If the universe were at bottom “random” in its evolution, these instances of evident fine-tuning would be inexplicable. The fact is we cannot say whether a system is random or not without knowing its symmetrical properties.
The “fans of random” speak and act as if they think the problem of symmetry is irrelevant to their concerns. Yet to the extent that they recognize the universe conforms to physical laws (and usually they do), the symmetry problem cannot be obviated. For laws demonstrate the property of what mathematicians call symmetry. A symmetry of some mathematical object — and the physical laws are inherently mathematical structures — is any transformation that preserves the object’s structure.
A practical application of the principle of symmetry can be found in Einstein’s observation (in his 1905 paper on Special Relativity, the same that gave us his magnificent unification of mass and energy, e = mc2) that the laws of nature are the same for all observers, regardless of their particular space-time positions.
It is evident that there are symmetries in nature, and also that mathematics has been amazingly successful in teasing them out. A favorite story is Reimann’s geometry of curved spaces. He “created” this geometry at a time when no one believed that geometry could be other than flat (Euclidean). So Reimann put his geometry on the shelf where it sat for about 50 years, gathering dust. Then a friend of Einstein pointed him to Reimann’s geometry (and Ricci’s tensor) as possible keys to the elucidation of the problems of special relativity. And they exactly did the trick.
Indeed, mathematicians have been so good at doing this sort of thing — creating mathematical systems with an eye to symmetry, and finally beauty — that Eugene Wigner marveled about “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in its ability to model and describe nature.
At this point, it seems useful to widen our purview and revisit cosmology, for now we are speaking of the universe as a whole, and cosmology is the branch of knowledge that deals with the universe as an integrated and (some would say) even living system (in some fashion).
Cosmology is conventionally defined as: (1) a branch of philosophy dealing with the origin, processes, and structure of the universe; and (2), the astrophysical study of the structure and constituent dynamics of the universe, with a particular eye on the construction and modeling of a comprehensive theory that describes such structure and dynamics. The latter is the scientific approach. Note that (2) does not explicitly address the question of origin.
Indeed, questions of origin, both of the universe and of life, seem to be troubling to many scientists. Historically, their preferred cosmology has been the eternal universe model, wherein the universe, thought to be infinite in size, just always was, having no beginning or end; it just goes along in periods of expansions and contractions in a sort of self-conserving “boom and bust” cycle forever (no second law of thermodynamics to bother it).
Now in an infinite, eternal universe, anything can happen. And so this “classical perspective” of biology anticipates that the origin of life involves “random chemicals reacting for eons and finally lucking out, resulting in a living cell coming together,” as Harold Morowitz explains it.
But then satellite observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation starting in the 1960s provided striking evidence that the universe actually had a beginning. That is, it is not eternal, and it is not infinite. The CMBR — which is universal in extent — is thought to be the “echo” of the original “big bang,” which constituted the creation event of the universe in which we live, and which powers the cosmic space-time expansion. Thus the universe truly can be thought to have “initial conditions.”
The troubling thing about the big bang/inflationary universe theory is the suggestion that the universe was either created out of nothing, or if it was created out of something, then there’s no way we can detect or prove that cause. Using a “time-reversal symmetry transformation” here — running evolutionary time “backwards” like a videotape played in reverse — the laws of physics break down at the Planck Era — 10–43 of the first second following the big bang. “Prior” to that, there is no space, no time, no physical laws of nature, no matter; it’s pure nihil: Nothing.
The nothingness “before” the creation of the universe is the most complete void that we can imagine — no space, time or matter existed. It is a world without place, without duration or eternity, without number — it is what the mathematicians call “the empty set.” Yet this unthinkable void converts itself into the plenum of existence — a necessary consequence of physical laws. Where are these laws written into that void? What “tells” the void that it is pregnant with a possible universe? It would seem that even the void is subject to a law, a logic that exists prior to space and time. — Heinz Pagels
Which of course is precisely what Genesis says: The Creation is “ex nihilo,” initiated by and proceeding according to the Word, the Logos of God, Who Is the Law of the Void as well as of the Creation, the “logic that exists prior to space and time.”
Evidently this is not a scientific statement, though I believe it is a truthful one. Still it is true that some physicists (and biologists) find the idea of a beginning of space and time out of nothing deeply disturbing for whatever reason. Taking into effect the evidence that leads to this conclusion, some have sought a “non-theistic” explanation for the phenomenon of the Big Bang. This cosmology grudgingly acknowledges that the universe did have a beginning, postulating its origin as a random fluctuation in a universal quantum vacuum field. But of course, this line of reasoning is silent about where the universal vacuum field itself came from in which a random fluctuation can occur, or how time and space got started so that events can occur in it.
This view (non-theistic cosmogenesis) is fallacious, however, because sudden quantum appearances don’t really take place out of “nothing.” A larger quantum field is first required before this can happen, but a quantum field can hardly be described as being “nothing.” Rather, it is a thing of unsearchable order and complexity, whose origin we can’t even begin to explain. Thus, trying to account for the appearance of the universe in a sudden quantum fluctuation doesn’t do away with the need for a Creator at all; it simply moves the whole problem backward one step to the unknown origin of the quantum field itself. — M. A. Corey
Whether your cosmology is philosophical or scientific, ultimately it rests on an unknown that is directly unknowable, a mystery. Scientists just as much as anybody else ponder the origin question, despite the fact that their formal methods cannot help them much there.
Cosmologically speaking, scientists get much better traction with the problem of constructing and modeling a comprehensive theory that describes, not the origin, but the structure and dynamics of the universe. But even here, they run into “mysteries.” Such as evidence for the almost eerie fine-tuning of the universe necessary for the inception, evolution, and support of Life. As Freeman Dyson put it, “The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.”
Take just one example from among many, the just mentioned universal vacuum. Because the vacuum is not “nothing,” it has energy, specifically “vacuum energy” — the energy content of empty space. Ian Stewart notes:
As it happens, the observed value [of vacuum energy] is very, very small, around 10–120, but it is not zero.
According to the conventional “fine-tuning” story, this particular value is exactly right for life to exist. Anything larger than 10–118 makes local space-time explode; anything smaller than 10–120 and space-time contracts in a cosmic crunch and disappears. So the “window of opportunity” for life is very small. By a miracle, our universe sits neatly within it.
But Stewart is a tough-minded mathematical scientist, and so evidently feels constrained to add:
The “weak anthropic principle” points out that if our universe were not constituted the way it is, we wouldn’t be here to notice, but that leaves open the question why there is a “here” for us to occupy. The “strong anthropic principle” says that we’re here because the universe was designed specially for life to exist — which is mystical nonsense. No one actually knows what the possibilities would be if the vacuum energy were markedly different from what it is. We know a few things that would go wrong — but we have no idea what might go right instead. Most of the fine-tuning arguments are bogus.”
What a relief that Professor Stewart thinks that only “most” of the fine-tuning arguments are bogus, and not all of them! One of the things likely to “go wrong” under his scenario would be the end of life as we know it on this planet, and with it intelligence. But other than that, his is a respectable argument, even though it would probably be entirely moot under different values for the vacuum energy, since intelligent beings probably would not then be around to entertain it.
There is an abundance of evidence from the precision of the fundamental values of the universe that contradicts the theory that a universe compossible with life can arise (or indeed actually rose) from an “accident.” Just as “nothing comes from nothing,” the laws of nature cannot have been established via a random process. There is nothing implicit in the meaning of “random” that contains any motive spring for it to generate order, organization, higher complexity. It is simply “random”; i.e., it reflects no law in its behavior. The people who say that the universal evolution is nothing more than the effect of a process of matter in its motions and “pure, blind chance” — as Nobel laureate Jacques Monod claims — rely on the same reasoning that says, if life can be spontaneously generated from non-life, then similarly order can come from disorder.
Which is the same sort of problem, it seems to me, involved in all the multiverse and parallel universe and “panspermia” cosmologies one finds littering the landscape these days. The latter — panspermia theory — seems to be a particular favorite of atheists such as Francis Crick and Sir Fred Hoyle.
Panspermia theory holds that life on Earth was seeded here by space aliens. I gather anything that avoids the conclusion that the universe, and Life, is a divine creation, and thus has a spiritual dimension (which would include such things as intelligence, law, information, etc., all the “non-phenomenal” aspects that “tell” phenomena “what to do”) is what is being sought in such fanciful imaginings. Such theories seem ultimately designed to forbid anything that is immaterial from having causal impact in the universe. But if you say that, then where does physical law fit in, where mathematics, or logic, or intelligence, or information? Not to mention the evident universal constants? None of these are material entities.
But the fact regarding these exotic cosmologies is, not a one of them can be falsified, or subjected to replicable experiments. All these cosmologies are works of pure philosophical imagination dressed up in the language of scientific jargon.
However, that doesn’t mean the adherents of such imaginative speculations are bad scientists. Here’s Sir Fred Hoyle, a “non-Darwinian evolutionist,” contented atheist, and honest thinker:
No matter how large the environment one considers, life cannot have had a random beginning… there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (1020)2000 = 1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.… the enormous information content of even the simplest living systems… cannot in our view be generated by what are often called “natural” processes,… For life to have originated on the Earth it would be necessary that quite explicit instruction should have been provided for its assembly… There is no way in which we can expect to avoid the need for information, no way in which we can simply get by with a bigger and better organic soup, as we ourselves hoped might be possible a year or two ago.
Information is the key to life, just as it is the key to the fundamental structure and evolution of the universe, from the beginning. One conjectures the universe has the structure and dynamics it has because these were “programmed” in at the beginning. And this structure evidently was primed for life.
Again, this is what Genesis tells us: The Universe has an intelligent cause that is outside of space-time. Physics and biology acknowledge the necessity of information for the rise and maintenance of life, but assign no cause for this information within spatiotemporal reality. But if it cannot be found “there,” then where can it be found?
See Genesis. And consider this observation, from Albert Einstein:
“The natural law reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
Scientists recognize so well that the universe has fundamental structure that they are encouraged to propound “grand unified theories,” GUTs, or “Theories of Everything.” The standard model of physics today recognizes four fundamental forces in nature: the nuclear strong, the nuclear weak, electromagnetism, and gravity. So far, all have been conveniently “reconciled together,” or unified — except for gravity, which continues to resist being fitted into any kind of “grand unified” model thus far.
Regarding the four fundamental forces, here are some more interesting thoughts from Ian Stewart:
Other types of forces could in principle give rise to other types of universe, and our ignorance of such possibilities is almost total. It is often claimed that without the particular forces we have, life would be impossible, proving that our universe is amazingly fine-tuned to make life possible. This argument is bogus, a wild exaggeration based on too limited a view of what constitutes life. Life like ours would be impossible — but it is the height of arrogance to assume that our kind of life is the only kind of organized complexity that could exist. The fallacy here is to confuse sufficient conditions for life (those aspects of our universe on which our kind of life depends) with necessary ones.
It is interesting that here Stewart reduces life to the definition, “organized complexity.” The description appears to be general enough to encompass everything (everything material at least), yet at the same time, is useless to provide insight into the living nature of actual, particular living beings.
Be that as it may, it seems Stewart is working to a doctrine, to a particular world view, in giving his analysis. And he seems to recognize this in what follows:
The view that a Theory of Everything must exist brings to mind monotheist religion — in which, over the millennia, disparate collections of gods and goddesses with their own special domains have been replaced by one god whose domain is everything. This process is widely viewed as an advance, but it resembles a standard philosophical error known as “the equation of unknowns” in which the same cause is assigned to all mysterious phenomena…. “Explanations” like this give a false sense of progress — we used to have three mysteries to explain; now we have just one. But the one new mystery conflates three separate ones, which might well have entirely different explanations. By conflating them, we blind ourselves to this possibility.
When you explain the Sun by a sun-god and rain by a rain-god, you can endow each god with its own special features. But if you insist that both Sun and rain are controlled by the same god, then you may end up trying to force two different things into the same straightjacket. So in some ways fundamental physics is more like fundamentalist physics. Equations [brief enough to fit] on a T-shirt replace an immanent deity, and the unfolding of the consequences of those equations replaces divine intervention in daily life.
Despite these reservations, my heart is with the physical fundamentalists. I would like to see a Theory of Everything, and I would be delighted if it were mathematical, beautiful, and true. I think religious people might also approve, because they could interpret it as proof of the exquisite taste and intelligence of their deity.
Exactly so — that would be my takeaway!
To sum up, it appears that a model of the universe that stipulates that all that exists — life and non-life — is simply the product of random transformations of “matter in its motions” has been falsified by modern physics. To the extent that information — which presupposes intelligence — plays a role, we have to acknowledge that other, immaterial factors are at work. Which of course we do, to the extent we realize and acknowledge the universal existence of physical laws, of finely-tuned cosmic values, and of the symmetries in nature. To do so, we have to put a check on randomness as a possible explanation for the nature or structure of things.
But we cannot eliminate randomness altogether. In the final analysis, it seems to me the universe lives in the dynamic tension that obtains between that which is changeless (the symmetry), and that which is changeable (a symmetry-breaking event). Or as Leibniz put it, at the level of fundamental universal principles the universe must consist of something that does not ever change, and something that is capable of changing.
For example, consider the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The first is a conservation law — matter cannot be either created or destroyed — that is, matter is unchangeable; i.e., it is “symmetrical” under all known conditions. The second law “breaks the symmetry” of the first; and if it couldn’t do that, then probably nothing would ever happen in our universe.
The most amazing thing to me is that evidently, as a consequence of such a fundamental tension, we live in a “guided” universe, but not a wholly deterministic one.
And the Guide does not seem to reside in the system — at least, as far as science can tell.
Thus it seems to me if the Guide could construct a universe finely-tuned and primed for life on the most global scale — i.e., that of the whole universe — then it should be child’s play for this Source to prime and guide any living (or non-living) sub-unit of the universe — preeminently biological creatures; and of these, Man above all.
Given that the universe evidently has been left deliberately incompletely determined, or underdetermined (Planck’s constant reminds us of this), then not only the “free development” of nature has been left intact (subject only to the natural symmetries), but so also has human free will been left wholly intact.
Given the splendors of natural reality, and the uncanny facility that man has for exploring and understanding them, really all I can say is: I am on my knees in gratitude, thanks, and praise, and all glory be to God — in Whom we live and move and have our Being.
Physis didn't start out that way; but I concur that this view of physis — Nature — is the currently-prevailing opinion. Yet it seems obvious to me that creatures and hurricanes are two different orders of being entirely; maybe we shouldn't bother to look for a common rule that explains them both. If we were to take Professor Stewart's advice (quoted in the article at the top of this thread as advising us to avoid the "standard philosophical error known as 'the equation of unknowns'"), we wouldn't do that.
On the other hand, maybe we should! What is the wider meaning of physis that can reconcile, integrate, "unify," such disparate phenomena as living creatures and hurricanes?
Where you and I may depart on this question is that I don't believe that physis — Nature — necessarily excludes the nonphenomenal or "supernatural." Following "certain" classical Greeks, I see (physical) Nature as the realization of psyche-in-soma at all scales of the Cosmos, from the universal to the particular.
Definitely, this is not the modern view! :^) Jeepers, it's even pre-Christian!
Thank you so much for your highly interesting and thought-provocative essay-post, dear RightWhale!
Me too.. which is the essence of my quandary..
no, not quandry but resonance.. Something resonates in me (lately) about crystals.. deeply..
I suspect crystals have Gods signature in them..
Indeed even if the obvious is not observable..
What seems to be true may not be.. for:
Fiction MUST be or seem to be logical, reality need not be..
Reality might seem to be fiction, when it isn't..
Interesting question, and observation dear YHAOS! So let's elicit some commentary, and open up the dreaded "side-bar"! [Maybe.]
I never could understand the mind of the "will-to-power" types out there. Their entire program is utterly irrational: At the same time they wish to "reduce" man to a pure abstraction (by virtue of effectively "abstracting him from nature"), thus to reduce him to a manipulable quantity in the schematics of social engineers desiring to construct a more perfect world — at the very same time these geniuses do this, they always manage to exempt themselves from the ensuing ruin. Somehow, they are not subject to the same "laws" that they impose on the rest of us.
The will-to-power types ever seem to be working some kind of agenda against the settled interests, customs, mores, and traditions of the rest of us. Such an agenda is inevitably doctrinal in form — "doctrine" in the sense of the setting forth of a set of propositions that may not be questioned. So already you know that this sort of thing establishes total closure to reason.
Secular humanism as currently operative in America is such a doctrine. It absolutely forbids certain lines of questioning, those which the doctrine maintains it has already finally solved, "so just trust us."
But my point would be: A thinking person alive today can't trust anyone whose voice we hear primarily from the Kultursmog (i.e., the MSM, Academe, interested public bureaucracies, unions, NGOs, etc.) without checking our facts, first!!!
Anyhoot, I strongly suggest that, at the root of secular humanism, is atheism pure and simple. JMHOFWIW.
For to "reduce" Man involves first "reducing" God: For God is the "prototype" of which we humans are the "types": We humans are made in the divine Image, fully possessing from our status as sons of God certain inalienable rights (such as life, liberty, and property/pursuit of happiness), and the divine attributes of reason and free will.
The federal Constitution is premised on this understanding.
Will-to-power types find rights, reason, and free will to be highly counterproductive to the realization of thier dreams.... So if you want to kill off such inherent properties in mankind, you have to "kill God" first. Hence, atheism is born.
And thanks to such eminent lovelies as Richard Dawkins, Richard Lewontin, Noam Chomsky, Stephen Pinker, Jacques Monod, Peter Singer, et al., we can get a preview of the brave new world that will arrive the day God is dead.
In conclusion I'd only want to add that God, acknowledged Creator in the Declaration of Independence, is the giver of unalienable rights to man, which our federal Constitution in turn secures as preeminent to any governmental action, and unmodifiable by the will of any one man or public assembly.
How "safe" is the Constitution of the United States of America, if it's lopped off from its very ROOT?
The atheists know the answer to this, I daresay.
Thank you so much for your very kind note, in addition to the fascinating observation! It's always such a pleasure to hear from you, YHAOS!
As do you I daresay, my dearest brother in Christ!
Meanwhile, we'll keep "reflecting" on crystals!
But if you could, you'd be seeing (as quantum theory predicts), the electron captured as a single selection from a vague cloud of virtually inexhaustible "possibility," at one, single, particular moment. What about all the "other" moments of the vague cloud (i.e., the electron's waveform) that were not similarly "captured" at the same time? What definite thing would you see, and how would you evaluate it?
This problem really bothered Einstein, from what I hear.
So . . . which twin has the Toni? { 8^D
”I never could understand the mind of the "will-to-power" types out there. Their entire program is utterly irrational:”
It is irrational because its intent runs counter to Natural Law. That’s it in a nutshell, albeit needing some elaboration, of course. It is the mentality of the tyrannical. The tyrant always believes himself exempt from his own laws; and from the consequences of his “will-to-power” (he who marches people into the basements of government buildings and puts a bullet in their heads, never imagines such a thing occurring to him, or, for the few, like Saddam, who do, suffers incessant nightmares over the possibility).
”The will-to-power types ever seem to be working some kind of agenda against the settled interests, customs, mores, and traditions of the rest of us.”
Of course. It is the motivation for, and the explanation of Regicide.
Interesting that you should mention the very institutions we all distrust. We have good reason, it appears.
” So if you want to kill off such inherent properties in mankind, you have to "kill God" first. Hence, atheism is born.”
To ”kill off the inherent properties in mankind.” Regicide. To “kill God.” Regicide. It is the reason why the Bolsheviks murdered every single member of the Romanoffs. They dared not let any live.
”How "safe" is the Constitution of the United States of America”
The Constitution is now nothing more than a historical document. Long live the Constitution.
Absolutely.. The morphing from Unalienable rights to privledges granted by government is the gambit employed.. also morphing from the unique american Republic into a Democracy is the process.. Both felonys produce the same result.. socialism.. All done under the holy word of democracy.. The word democracy is uttered as sacrosanct.. untouchable and obviously beneficial..
The truth being democracy is MOB Rule.. Tribal Law by a consortium of mobs.. by mobsters or political shamans.. holding zero unalienable rights but privledges.. granting privledges on a whim.. i.e. Europe, Canada, Russia, China, India, IRAQ..
The U.S. Constitution has three words not mentioned anywhere in it.. 1) democracy, 2) democractic, 3)democrat.. ON PURPOSE... The word democracy is a nasty thing.. Mob Rule.. Any that use it should have their mouths washed out with soap..
Went over my head... Zoom..
Before there were electrons and protons, the spacetime existing just after the big bang acted as the confinement energy 'sink'. Guessing at what the spacetime characteristics of that earliest sink and the subsequent sinks which have 'evolved' from that earliest, and the emerging realms of spacetime could be a most productive 'rethink' of what IS. We know that our 'now' is an emergent characteristic since our existence would be impossible in the more violent state of the universe prior to our galaxy forming. Doesn't the Bible hint strongly at an emergent state which will be future reality to our now reality?
Do you suppose there are clues in the Bible as to the state that will 'emerge'? I think there are! In fact, the clues lead to the conclusion that such an emergent state already exists, though the dominance of that emerged state has yet to become our reality. What would the component 'things' of that 'other emergent state be? Why space and time and energy, perhaps life, and most definitely spirit! So, can we guess at what spacetime has evolved into for our current reality by looking at what spacetime will emerge 'as' in that 'other' emergent state to come? ... Now you know why I devised my 'other' way of thinking about reality and dimensions. It is leading toward a more 'inclusive' paradigm, where dimensions space, time, life, and spirit have meaning across an expanse of reality which started with a big bang and is progressing through various emergent states of these dimensions as they mix.
One big hint in Genesis is that dimension Spirit didn't partake/get confined in the state of the universe of our current reality until God started the mix with Adam. But dimension Spirit already 'existed' prior to being mixed in with the other expressing dimensions we sense and measure.
Time for me to get back up on the porch and let the 'big dogs' run.
LOL! Sorry Hose; my fault surely.
Ultimately, must we not choose reality, even over logic (for I would insist the logic is there, it's just that we lack the ability to see it.)?
Bait a hook and catch some fish at random, for example. It looks random to you if you're not much of a fisherman. But there is obviously nothing random about it if you're the fish. The bait attracts certain fish more than another, the place you dropped the hook belongs to one school more than another, and the fish who takes the bait is just a little hungrier and quicker than his buddy.
Its not as random as it looks to me, although an experienced fisherman already begins to recognize and use some of factors that modify the randomness.
like saying that casino's cannot make money with a random game because they would lose money as often as they made money.
Actually, if it were truly random, they would make and lose money in about equal quantities. But they've learned the rules that govern the outcomes enough to know which outcomes are more likely, and in pretty precise terms. The exact outcome of this roll of the dice may look pretty random, but they can predict with scientific precision that certain combinations will happen with what frequency. So they make money, and you normally don't. They kick out the card counters precisely because they've figured out that it isn't really all that random.
The combination of DNA that produces you or I isn't quite as random as it seems. There are almost unlimited combinations of the available choices, as you point out, but the available choices have already been limited by the fact that it is code limited to what is brought to the party by these two individuals. Leaving aside the behavioral choices that each made prior, the available choices mean that "random" is random only within limits. The game is rigged, in other words.
How do we know? The kid, when its born, is going to look pretty much like mom, or dad, or both (ok, or maybe like Uncle Harry, but we'll all pretend not to notice).
"Random" is usually not that random. Its random within certain limits. Grab a prize at random from the grab-bag and you'll find that your prize is limited to what someone wrapped and put in the bag before the party.
For the rest, thanks for the fascinating discussion, I'll follow from the sidelines...
Each of our unique genetic sequence was created by a random shuffle of your grandparents chromosomes.
Our immune cells randomly shuffle the variable region of antibodies in order to make an assortment able to ‘grab onto’ about every possible 3-D structure.
Randomness is all over in life, just like in the casino, but that hardly means that both life and the casino haven't rigged the game to their own advantage.
I'm still not gettin it.. probably.. For in a second reality "the logic" is "hemetically sealed".. Sealed from what? ans: reality..
Brings up the old argument of 1st and 2nd realities.. also implys John ch 10 with the Sheep pens.. Reality does not have to be logical.. Unless we are talking the same thing.. somehow..
Thanks for the ping. I’ll have to catch up. Just opened up FR because of Tony Snow’s passing. I think he was one of our finest potential U.S. Presidents. A better assignment now.
Another interesting concept.. the spiritual dimension and the ugh!.. UNspiritual dimension(s).. AND the mix between them provides much drama.. What a saga.. of epic proportions..
Wow some very stimulating dialog going on there from you guys.
betty boop I think we are on somewhat the same page with your analogies “you have to “kill God” first. Hence, atheism is born”
Of course G-d is beyond all creations, all universes, all eterinties, all life/death..., so G-d cannot be killed.
Since that cannot happen these agents attempt to remove G-d from the consciousness of Man, and that is how I interpret your statement.
Energy is also used as a substitute term for relativistic mass which is the observed or apparent mass as an object approaches the speed of light and thereby increases mass. To an observer, the relativistic mass increases as the velocity of the object increases whereas the invariant mass is the rest mass of the object itself. And inertial mass is the resistance of the object to changing its state of motion when force is applied to it.
For massless particles (e.g. photons or light) the energy of the particle is its momentum times the speed of light. Massless particles do not have a rest frame, they are always moving at the speed of light regardless of the frame of reference.
Matter constitutes the observed universe (space/time) and matter density (mass relative to volume) in the universe is called the critical density.
Antimatter is matter composed of the antiparticles of the particles that compose matter. The antiquark is the antiparticle of the quark, the positron is the antiparticle of the electron, etc.
When matter and antimatter collide, they are mutually annihilated, and energy is released in a burst of radiation. Matter is also created by energy in pairs as in the case where two or more photons interact to create a new fermion/antifermion pair.
Even so, that 5 percent of the critical density called “ordinary matter” has not yet been created or observed (Higgs field/boson) despite many attempts. The new equipment at CERN may yet observe the Higgs but so far, no cigar.
However, physicists love a good mystery and already have other theories for what we call mass:
It is possible that the particles we see are all actually massless, their apparent masses corresponding to extra-dimensional momentum components we can't as yet detect.
Five Dimensional Relativity and Two Times
It is possible that null paths in 5D appear as the timelike paths of massive particles in 4D, where there is an oscillation in the fifth dimension around the hypersurface we call spacetime. A particle in 5D may be regarded as multiply imaged in 4D, and the 4D weak equivalence principle may be regarded as a symmetry of the 5D metric.
All quite fascinating, really…
This doesn't change my point that atoms are very real and not some abstract concept unrelated to the atomic model.
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