Karl Popper distinguishes the scientific from the unscientific by making falsifiability the demarcation criterion, such that what is unfalsifiable is unscientific, and the practice of declaring an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true is pseudoscience.
Philosophy is about asking the right question. Science is about asking the question right. The canonical question here is phrased "are you a glass half-full or glass half-empty person?" Draw what implications you wish, the scientific answer stands.

You miss the point. The glass can be refilled.

It does not; and precisely because you answered the question by answering the wrong question. Whether you did so purposely for humors sake or unintentionally only you know. It is not a scientific question but a philosophical one. Of course the scientific answer is that it is half full of water and half full of air and thus completely full with two substances, any logical and educated person would come to that conclusion...if the question was posed in a scientific context. The question was clearly not posed in a scientific context but a philosophical one, indicated quite clearly by the use of the word "person" at the end; which changes the nature of the question completely and gives us context as to the inquirer's philosophical intent, no investigation of implication necessary, the intent is quite explicit. The inquirer is not simply inquiring as to whether the glass is, in scientific fact, full, half full, or empty and of what substance.

The philosophical question is the more deep and interesting question, and the one which you either missed or purposely overlooked to make a funny.

Science is also about precision and accuracy and the ability to answer the question properly. The latter requires an understanding of the questions context.

*Edited to correct my misreading of your statement of falsifiability.

Proof theology, philosophical inquiry, the scientific method, and big business can happily coexist, in three words. ...








Notre Dame Football.

This is what I believe.

Science is fun and all, but God created everything and controls science. There are many things that science simply cannot explain, and probably never will.

I respect the opinions of those that don't believe. I fell in that category most of my life. But I am a Christian and believer in God above science. But they aren't mutually exclusive.

This thread is more interesting than I had hoped...

Any comments on consciousness/observation collapsing a wave into particles or atoms having two simultaneous yet different positions (superposition) until observed?

D-Wave Systems already has quantum computers able to utilize superposition (see Quantum Enigma excerpt) for calculations well beyond the speed of conventional systems. The CIA, Bezos, and Nasa have all backed D-Wave (from their website info). $10,000,000 per system so faster porn is not an efficient use. CIA no doubt uses them to see how many of you have guns.

Excerpt from "Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness" by Dr. Bruce Rosenblum And Dr. Fred Kuttner:

"The Quantum Theory Description : Now that we have established the experimental basis of the enigma, we offer quantum theory’s explanation. Since we can choose to observe an atom to be in either of two contradictory situations, how does quantum theory describe the state of the atom before we observe it? The theory describes the world in mathematical terms. In those terms, when an atom can be observed in either of two contradictory situations, or “states,” the wavefunction of the total physical situation is written as the sum of the wavefunctions of those two states separately. Expressing this mathematics in words, the wavefunction of one of the states is “the-atom-is-wholly-in-the-top-box.” The wavefunction of the other state is “the-atom-is-wholly-in-the-bottom-box.” The wavefunction of the unobserved atom is “the-atom-is-wholly-in-the-top-box” plus “the-atom-is-wholly-in-the-bottom-box.” The atom is said to be in a “superposition” of these two states. It is simultaneously in both states. On looking in a box, this sum, or superposition, collapses randomly to one or the other term of the superposition. But before we look, the atom is simultaneously in both boxes. The atom is in two places at once."

http://www.dwavesys.com

"Rather than store information as 0s or 1s as conventional computers do, a quantum computer uses qubits – which can be a 1 or a 0 or both at the same time. This “quantum superposition”, along with the quantum effects of entanglement and quantum tunnelling, enable quantum computers to consider and manipulate all combinations of bits simultaneously, making quantum computation powerful and fast."

Quantum entaglement:

"In short, quantum entanglement means that multiple particles are linked together in a way such that the measurement of one particle's quantum state determines the possible quantum states of the other particles. This connection isn't depending on the location of the particles in space." (physics.about.com)

Entanglement spans any distance and is an instantaneous transfer of information so is believed to be outside time. Information transfer is faster than the speed of light. That is one reason Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance".

MY ever present feeling when dealing with topics that some people get touchy about- there is no offense intended by my words.
Some people have a reaction of anger or defensiveness when presented with an opinion that differs from their own.



I've been puzzling over this since high school.
I see two possibilities-
1. The existence of consciousness has altered the nature of the universe
2. There are several rules of nature that are simply beyond our mammalian brain. The speed of light all by itself is another, then add in any of the 4 forces, the most basic nature of matter and energy, special and general relativity- these are things that we can model, describe, quantify and play with... Without truly understanding them.

The most likely possibility is #3
3. Neither of the 2 listed above.

I lean towards #2 though... The human mind has glaring weaknesses even when dealing with things that are within our normal frame of reference. As soon as we go outside of the normal environment and into molecular, atomic, sub-atomic, quantum- all we can do is approximate, model and guess. Our models may be off because of our experiences at our normal every day scales, and our need to impose those "common sense" rules that we live by onto a system that is stranger than our flesh and blood minds are able to understand.
Going up in scale- it's been demonstrated in numerous experiments that the human mind can't think past 3 or 4 objects... Anything higher than this requires the tools of mathematics, however crudely used. ("Most studies suggest that we can subitize up to about 3 or 4 items (e.g. Starkey & Cooper, 1995). Enumeration of a small number of objects (i.e. subitizing) yields consistent response times regardless of the quantity of objects. Enumeration of larger quantities (i.e. counting) yields response times that increase linearly with the number of objects. This is taken as evidence that the two processes are computationally distinct.") When the human mind tries to understand the very small or very large we simply can't do it accurately. When we see a mountain, our minds only vaguely deal with it's vastness... The size of Earth? Preposterous... Now expand it up to the inner solar system (sun and 8 planets)... outer solar system (out past the Oort Cloud)... It is imaginable, but not accurately imaginable. We model based on our everyday experience, and that is clearly not appropriate for the very small and the very large.

Schrodinger's Cat was a thought experiment (by Erwin Schrodinger) designed to discredit one of the popular interpretations of Quantum Mechanics... and it became useful in physics because it properly models how matter can be in two different and contradictory conditions simultaneously... Only "choosing" one of the two states when an observation is made.

Is it magic? Arthur C Clarke wrote 3 "laws" and the third is applicable here if we tweak it a little bit... He said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I believe that sufficiently advanced physics follows the same pattern.
We don't understand it, therefore it is magic, supernatural, and credited to a supernatural being.



Entanglement's primary meaning to me is that we do not understand the very nature of space. We are accustomed to our 3 dimensional space with an added 4th of time. There is absolutely no reason to assume that what we experience as 3d space is what two entangled particles "experience"...

We know that time is flexible. Space is flexible. Why is there a "speed limit"? Why is it that the speed limit only applies to observation? (The speed limit does not apply to two or more separate frames of reference.)Why does time slow down for objects as their speed increases? As they approach the bottom of a gravity well?

When these questions are asked and there is an assumption of a supernatural being, the answer often comes as "because God."
In every step of scientific progress, religion has had to yield to new discoveries... the list is long.
What we are left with is a "God of the Gaps"... The gaps being the gaps in human knowledge. It seems to me that it would be an uncomfortable position to be in. Ascribing a phenomenon as being an indication of God has lead to an ever decreasing island of unknowns to argue from.

I am intrigued by Mr Morris' affable willingness to discuss the intersection of science and religion... Much impressed by your good nature sir!

This conversation started several weeks ago as a result of a political discussion. There was some back and forth about Mr Pence's disbelief in evolution. I look forward to a friendly discussion without any expectation of "winning or losing" an argument. Being able to chat about any topic without turning it into an argument is a sign of a good nature.

Mike, thanks for the detailed description of your take on this. I know you have a better understanding of physics since my expertise is in human biology. It is nice to get a more educated view than my own on that aspect. I tend to agree with you that the problem we have is limitations of our brain and cognitive ability. It is ‘t hard to look at what people do and realize we are not all that intelligent.

I work on the micro scale, working 8 years now in molecular biology after 20 years in toxicology. The large expanse of the universe is much harder for me to grasp than the molecular or sub-atomic realms, however I assume we could go just as far into the micro level as the macro. Since we only experience a small percentage of our universe, it is quite clear that we don’t have a good grasp on reality.

You brought up God and religion yielding to new discoveries. I look at it differently. I do not believe a “God” has to be outside of scientific explanations. If we assume a different wording instead of God being consciousness, intelligence, designing energy, motive force, or maybe just an organizing force, it may be more palatable and leave off the religiosity or what “God” denotes to any specific belief system.

We know things in our universe tend to disorder due to entropy. Since we see order in the universe at every level, it brings up the issue of why the universe has so much order. What is holding the forces in such a small range that atoms do not fly apart or do not implode? Why is DNA, the most complex molecule known, so ordered and why does it act as a chemical code for life? A single cell is more complex than any machine humans have created. The chemical reactions in just one organelle are astounding because chemical reactions must be ordered so they do not interfere with one another. How do the reactants even come into contact at the correct ratios and temperatures throughout a cell, let alone a body. If we put the compounds in a system devised by an intelligent human, we would never expect the chemicals to randomly start reacting correctly, even if they were to somehow find their way through the other chemicals in order to react with their constituents.

Seeing a complex order in living, as well as non-living systems, it makes reasoning that there is something intelligent or ordering behind our 3D reality not too far fetched. I am assuming time not as a spacial dimension but a cognitive dimension. I have made an analogy before of a car. Would anyone seriously argue that if all of the atoms, or even molecules, needed to build a car were present, that a car would form randomly without a designer or builder? Even over millions or billions of years? There is no evidence we could use to back up that claim and reason would state it does not happen. We don’t see cars anywhere in the universe except where intelligent designers have designed them and builders assembled them. Physics has a myriad of mathematical constants that shows a high degree of order (laws) and biology is so complex that it is well beyond anything humans have designed and built.

My main point at the start of the other discussion in the political thread was to respond because someone kept claiming that science and God (or a lack of belief in Darwin’s Evolutionary model) were incompatible. I argued for science proving Darwin incorrect using Pasteur and other scientists experiments which proved spontaneous generation was wrong. Since Darwinian Evolution stands on the premise of SG, that theory was proven to be based on a false premise. I was told that old scientists are a poor argument, although science is based on building from prior discoveries. This time, I limited my quotes to current scientists who believe as I do that science can actually give a reasonable case for an organizing consciousness.

Quantum theory has also indicated that consciousness creates matter from waves that have probabilities of collapsing to discrete particles. Since we do not understand but a small fraction of our universe, when someone states boldly that science negates a belief in a creator, I would have to take the opposing view. I find it much harder to believe that the universe was created from nothing since that would violate Newtonian physics. If the universe was created from something, there must be a cause before it. This cause would have to be eternal or we would be faced with the same something out of nothing dilemma at some point, even if we assumed many dimensions or infinite universal creation.

I'm going to respond in smaller bites... Because it's quicker and I am swamped today.

You flatter me sir. I'm an old man who reads and thinks... I have no doubt of my ignorance.



I've understood our position in the scale of things to be somewhere in the middle between the Planck size and Cosmological size... Which as much as I try I can't quite accept. I think it is because of the cognitive limitations that you mentioned. I think we are closer to the Planck length than the size of the universe although I have seen the math to back up the view of us being in the middle.
I'm only a couple of feet away from Planck size... I'm at least 14 billion light years away from the "edge" of the universe. (Facetious to show how poorly my mind grips the scales.)


I really appreciate a well thought out position on this. I grew up in a religious household. I asked many questions at home and at church and with religious friends... and was repeatedly told not to ask so many questions... To question what I was taught was a sin! To question God's actions was a sin.
"But... I am trying to understand."
The response- "You'll understand when you meet God" never quite hit my satisfaction spot.
"Why did God give us a brain and curiosity if not to use it?"
"You were given these to tempt you into sin"... I really heard this many times. So I repeat my appreciation sir, and I hope to see things in a new way by talking with you. If I come off as contrary by pointing out how my views differ from yours, I hope that you will see it as a discussion between people who have long held viewpoints, not as an "I'm right and you're wrong" manner of speech.



This only applies in a closed system and to the TOTAL entropy in that system. The universe is the closed system, and is not only "winding down" based on all the information that we have, but it's actually accelerating in it's rush towards the ultimate disorder.



We can try to make a mental model of the solar system and run it like a clock in our heads... I am going to spare the run up to the formation of the solar system... The discoveries and the math and the models fit -very- well with the Hydrogen/Helium ratios, age of stars, galaxies, speed of recession, etc. The biggest mystery of all - (What caused the Big Bang?) is completely open to all comers and there are plenty of interesting ideas. I get annoyed by the people who say that they KNOW the answers. I've heard it all. Usually from the most ignorant and uninterested. When someone says that they KNOW the answer but don't seem to have even asked the questions I just smile and nod.

Back to closed system (only a model!) Solar System... Place an impenetrable barrier around the Solar System out to about a light year (so we can have a few comets crashing through our party now and then.) Our model is now a closed system... The energy source is the Sun. It converts 600 million tons of hydrogen into 596 million tons of helium every second... and it has been doing this at approximately the same rate for 4,700,000,000 years.
(Right off the bat we can see that there is a problem here- the problem is in trying to imagine something so preposterously huge with our very limited minds.)

Inside our closed system model there are billions of activities happening that seem to be operating in defiance of the accepted thermodynamic law "Entropy Increases" which is the same as "disorder increases". (There are thousands of good sources for descriptions of the Three Laws. I'm assuming that the reader has read and thought about them for a minute or two.)
But... The Sun is the center of our closed system... It is supplying almost all of the raw energy of the system based on the conversion of the 600 million tons of hydrogen every second. (There is also energy supplied by nuclear disintegration and kinetic energy left over from the collapse of the original molecular cloud. These are vanishingly small amounts compared to the huge consumption and output of the Sun.)
This is the point- the Sun is taking it's low-entropy ingredients and turning them into higher-entropy ingredients, and this allows smaller open systems inside the model to make use of that heat-energy to become more ordered.
Entropy is a very interesting discussion all by itself. Most folks (and even many definitions) think of entropy leading to a temperature of absolute zero... But this is not the case in the time frames that we think of. In our scale, we should think of a closed system - and the laws of thermodynamics leads to an EVEN temperature across the model. It doesn't matter how high or low the temperature goes, just that there is no longer a differential.
So as long as the Sun is supplying our model with a high temperature source of energy, all sorts of possibilities are presented for smaller portions of that model to make use of that energy/temperature difference to become more ordered on a small scale.
By supplying that energy the sun becomes more disordered and the overall closed system becomes disordered (entropy increases.)


I will show my bent all through life on this one... I have avoided the life sciences all through life because I dearly want there to be mystery and magic left.
DNA is incredible. Life is crazy complicated... Here is what I have attributed it to : 4,700,000,000 years. (That's not a fair number... Life probably didn't get a foothold until around 1,000,000,000 to 2,000,000,000 years ago.) Think of what that number MEANS... Don't look at 4,700,000,000 years as simply a big number. The meaning is quite beyond our comprehension. Each placeholder from the right side represents a factor of ten to the placeholder to the right.
More on time scales later.
The question "why" doesn't really mean much to me, unless it is presented in a way that is answerable.

"Why is DNA the most organized molecule known?" - Because 4,700,000,000 years, I think.
"Why does DNA act as a chemical code for life?" - That's kind of a tautological question, no? It's a VERY impressive molecule. You won't find a shred of dismissal from me.



I agree sir! The complexity is astounding. The "magic" of life and its genesis is beyond our ability to explain at this time. Here's why I think life may have started autonomously: The size of the laboratory and the time frame that the laboratory was operating.
Size : all the oceans and lakes and wet spots in the world. (Picture this!)
Time : 4,700,000,000 years. (Imagine this! Try!)
When we describe how man has tried to duplicate life in the laboratory and has failed- it shows a bit of hubris in man's limited thinking. SCALE, man, scale! haha
How can we believe that a FEW men, in the last few decades, operating within the limits of time, scope, and budget could hope to duplicate that which the chemical systems of the WHOLE EARTH worked for a few BILLION YEARS to produce? Not a higher animal... Not even an amoeba (still a complicated critter) but the smallest self-replicating molecule.
There are many examples of self-replicating molecules by the way... crystals being the one of the most common examples to come to mind. Atomic and molecular actions, reactions - we could list every known combination and still have empty volumes to fill for eons to come. (Maybe not... there has been a lot of advances in fabricating molecules both mechanically and theoretically that we could hit the reasonable end sometime too. Not my forte.)



I'd like to hear more about your thoughts on this... I agree that time is not a spatial dimension. I "use" it as a 4th spatial dimension when I think of space-time as a loaf... Some of the greatest mysteries of the universe are in the "slicing the 4-dimensional loaf" to get a "now" for different parts of the 3d universe. Puts the question of pre-determinacy fore and front.



Sir, I hope that you will take my disagreement as "fair"... In my opinion, this is a completely irrelevant analogy.
Starting from the need for ore to be refined and smelted, the forming and machining processes, and then the dedicated and lengthy process of putting each piece where it belongs from a relatively disordered state) is far, far different from starting out with a self-replicating molecule and adding 4.7 Billion years to develop. (Don't forget that each placeholder in that long list of placeholders multiplies that first year by a factor of ten.) 4,700,000,000.
This is majestic. Time is being referred to on the human scale.
That bears almost no similarity to what Time really is. We simply cannot fully appreciate how long the chemicals and chemical processes on the vast Earth had to work.

Here is why my opinion of the "car parts to complete car" analogy is that it is completely wrong - We're not talking about scooping the constituents of life into a paper bag and shaking them up and seeing a rabbit drop out when we open it.
To use that analogy is leading our limited human minds into a dead end of thinking. They simply have NO relation, other than to shunt us off the path of thinking about it. It's the kind of analogy that would have been tossed at me when I was a young child to "blow my mind" rather than to encourage learning about the actual chemical processes that take place.



Chemistry... It's called "The Central Science" I think. It is very complicated. Agreed sir. Physics is maybe not so complicated as chemistry... That's just my opinion, and off the cuff.
Robert Laughlin (Nobel prize in Physics in 1998) wrote a book called "A Different Universe" subtitled "Reinventing Physics From the Bottom Down" in which he argued against physics' headlong rush towards a reductionist view of nature... But at least since Einstein's mind-blowing "discovery" of the nature of space-time (which wasn't even as mind-blowing as his less famous explanation of the Compton Effect the same year) we've had to move towards simpler explanations albeit with costlier and more complicated math to get there.
Physics may be simpler than the stuff taught and practiced in universities.



"Proving" that SG is a false premise is as impossible as proving that there is no Flying Spaghetti Monster. We weren't there. We don't know what happened to start the first living organism. Anyone claiming to KNOW the answer and explanation is deluded. (Faith is a different platform- happy to discuss that in another post.)
The word Darwinism is often used in place of Evolution, and it is rebutted on semantic levels I think. Darwin wasn't even close to the first human to speculate on the origin and development of species. Not even close. Not even the first in his family. He happened to present it in such a way and at such a time that it "caught fire" so to speak and with the help of printing presses and relatively high reading levels and a prosperous society enough people were able to consider it and talk about it for the first time.
That's mostly it.
Now we get to the crux of the conversation that was trashed several weeks ago due to large amount of feces being flung from one cage to the other in our little WaGuns laboratory.

The other fellow who didn't enjoy Mr Pence's views on Evolution stated something to the effect that he wouldn't vote for a man who could end up making policy decisions based on faith, which disregarded science if the two conflicted. (I hope that he will jump in here and correct me if I have mischaracterized what he said or meant.) The idea was that anyone who does not believe in Evolution isn't fit to make decisions about scientific topics because Evolution is no more a theory than "theories" about Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The popular definition of theory is equivalent to "guess" or "opinion."

These are simply not what a scientific theory can be compared to. To think of Evolution, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, etc as theories requires an understanding of just what that word means.

I am eager to chat about evolution... To argue against its reality is to start out on the wrong foot though... It's not a guess. It happens, sometimes so rapidly that we can see the effects within a few generations within an isolated population.
If I recall right, Mr Morris stated that evolution does exist within species, but not across species. (Or there is no evidence of "cross species" evolution, or from one species to another.)
Fair recollection sir?


I disagree, but it may be semantics- simply based on the words "creates matter"... The two-slit experiment and its results and implications are insane to our limited flesh and blood minds that are accustomed to our 3d/time middle of the cosmos viewpoint.
If that seems like a cop-out, I can only respond that no human being has ever been able to visualize what goes on at the quantum level. It's just math so far. (Well, math and all the many huge benefits that have been realized by the technologies spawned from it.)
The two-slit experiments and their implications have exploded minds for almost a century. The speed of light and its implications exploded minds for decades before it was generally accepted and only moderately understood. It is still exploding minds for that matter.



In the previous thread that turned into a feces throwing competition, I responded but I'm guessing that you didn't get to see my reply before the thread was flushed...
I don't recall that the post being discussed stated that science negates a creator. I wouldn't agree with that either.
I think that we can generalize a little bit... Religion has generally been opposed to science more often than it has been in league with it. That may seem strange if you think about the religious based universities... but I am trying to take the 40,000 foot view. Bruno, Galileo, Copernicus, etc... At almost all points in which a scientific theory was presented, if it conflicted with an established religious viewpoint (dogma usually) the scientist(s) was placed in a very uncomfortable position (sometimes that position was tied to a stake with burning bundles of brush stacked around him with a bag of gunpowder tied around his neck if the executioner was merciful.)
When Bruno was led through the streets to his execution he continued to try to convince the people that the shiny points of light in the night sky really could be other suns surrounded by other planets, possibly with other creatures on them... The guard leading him to the place where he would be burned to death held him down and grabbed his tongue, pulled it as far out of his mouth as he could and hammered a crude iron nail through his tongue and into the thick part of his jawbone so he couldn't talk for the last bit of his life. (Bruno was a bit of a nutter to use one of Mr Kf7's fav monikers. haha)

I didn't mean to be so long-winded... These are very complicated things, and there are a LOT of simplistic explanations that do not work well in small bites. Even with that being said, I realize that I gave simple and too-short explanations of my viewpoint.

My boilerplate statement : I do not claim to KNOW the answers. I have spent my life looking for answers and thinking about what I see, read and hear.
Absolutely nothing in my posts is intended as offensive to another person's faith-based viewpoint. This is simply a discussion that we've tried to limit to something more than "because this or that book says it" ... Some people will argue that that is what I am doing when I rely on science.
Science is different than faith. They are not mutually exclusive.
Much science is faith-based... *gasp*
"How can you say that?!" I hear many fellow science advocates shriek.
I haven't performed the two-slit experiment.
I haven't floated a polished balanced granite slab in a pool of mercury to perform the Michelson-Morley experiment.
I haven't watched the occultation of the moons of Jupiter over several years and calculated the obvious and required distances and concommitant speed of light.

I trust the Scientific Method and the path that science takes, despite the instances that the temporary results have been misinterpreted or lied about to support a goal or agenda; Or that have shown the human weakness of trying to prove a preconceived belief by consciously or unconsciously cherry picking the data. We're humans. We make mistakes.

Thanks again Mike. I take no offense at anything you say and agree with a lot. You obviously think clearly about these things and it is good to have a rational discussion.

I came from a scientific and totally non-religious background. I disliked organized religion and attacked them often based on my belief they were a crock from my schooling and the way the religious people acted. I always liked history and also had studied different religions for historical basis so I had no preconceived notions. I first studied Buddhism, then Hinduism, and later spent three years studying Islam and the Quran. I learned some Arabic so I could try to read the source material in the original language. Only after years of study did I find enough evidence for myself to change my mind. I never believed in blind faith (trust) in anything. If I could not find some reasonable evidence, I moved on. All beliefs are personal based on what we think is factual and sometimes we forget that. I never cared much what people thought (or what they thought of me) but I also have tried to explain my beliefs if anyone cared. That doesn't mean I would tell anyone they are wrong if they don't agree. Socrates said (to paraphrase) that being wise is knowing that you do not know. We have already talked about our limited understanding.

My thoughts on entropy and an ordered universe were meant to show that we have a well ordere universe, not just in local systems but in the universe we can observe or detect. Throughout the universe we see the "golden ratio" or Phi (1.618), which is found in shells, galaxies, and other spiral forms in nature. Having an exact ratio in spirals of nature shows a high degree of order. I contend that such an order is not random because in my reasoning, randomness should not lead to exact ratios.

I won't hit on the double slit experiment now due to time constraints but there are a multitude of wave/particle experiments showing collapse of waves into discrete entities/particles. Maybe my wording was not accurate but I can dig up the experiments when I have access to my books. Ones that come to mind are double box experiments with light, etc.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... claim.html

Edit: quote from article above on the Fibonacci ratio and Phi:

"For those who haven't read the populist thriller, it is the number 1.618 which has been plucked from the famous Fibonacci sequence.

In this sequence each number is the sum of the previous two, so it beings 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34. If you take two successive numbers their ratio is very close to 1.618.

This isn't that impressive on its own. Until you realise that this ratio is the key to everything from encrypting computer data, to the numbers of spirals on a sunflower head, our own limbs and why the Mona Lisa is so pleasing to the eye.

Some have argued that because the sequence seems to grow in an 'organic' way, the golden ratio may play a part in nature.

The ratio of 1.618 has already been found externally all over the human body. It usually marks the proportion of your hand to your forearm as well as the distance between your three knuckles on each finger.

The spiral numbers in a sunflower will always total a Fibonacci number, while dividing those pointing right and left will give you two consecutive Fibonacci numbers linked by the ratio 1.68. These spiral patterns are also found in pineapples, cauliflowers and pine cones.

The golden ratio, represented by the Greek letter 'phi', is said to be is a mathematical connection between two aspects of an object.

It can be artificially used – for example, some 20th century artists used it for the rectangular shape of their portraits from the long side to the short side.

They believed that the ratio created an aesthetically pleasing appearance.

But the ratio is not just artificially created – it is apparently found through nature in the stems of plants, skeletons of animals and so on.

And the shape of spirals also seem to follow the golden ratio. This suggests that geometric shapes in the universe ultimately succumb to this mathematical property.

‘A convincing case for assuming a cosmic character of the golden ratio can be made based on the ubiquity of logarithmic spirals,’ the researchers write.

‘Spectacular examples include the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), ammonites, the shape of Nautilus shells, Hurricane Katrina and the distribution of planets, moons, asteroids and rings in the solar system.’

The researchers suggest that the reason that this ratio is so ubiquitous is that it is actually a property of space-time.

‘The argument that this amazing consilience (self-similarity) arises from a common environmental constraint, which can only be an intrinsic feature of curved space-time, is compelling,’ they write."

End edit.....

But you said you were interested in the Darwinian Evolution aspect. What has been shown in many experiments is that life has not been shown to come from non-life. Perhaps someday an experiment can show life coming from non-living matter but spontaneous generation has never been proven and experiments have shown the opposite. Darwin based his theory on an unproven premise. Evolution has not been shown across species. I don't have my copy of Origin of Species at work but even Darwin stated the problem of no intermediate species being found in the fossil record was an issue. We can show mutations in the genome that cause changes but at this point, most of the mutations cause disease and problems, not an enhancement of function. DNA mutations are natural as DNA replicates over an organisms lifespan but jumping across species with mutations has not been shown and I have never seen a theory on a mechanism to allow such mutations to propogate to a new species.

How can we account for changes in chromosome numbers that would allow replication? How do we account for needing male and female to propogate most species? Did the male and female mutate at the same time? Having a million years to mutate does not negate the fact that we would have to see both sexes mutate in the same lifespan in order to propogate. Then we would have to show a massive number of mutations that could also popogate over those millions of years to have the abundance of different life forms we see today. Darwin had a good theory but it is still just a theory. My problem is not with the theory itself but that people use it as an argument to say science has proven Darwinian Evolution when that is false. I think I posted what Dr. Ben Carson said on this topic in the other thread but I will list it here because he is more intelligent and more articulate than I am. He was a peds Neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins and he has more education than I have.

Break is over so I'll have to stop here for now. Since all of my research has been in the life sciences, I may have a tendency to lean towards the complexity of life aspect and how propagation of species would happen on an evolutionary model. I am actually interested in hearing how this might have occurred because I have been unable to come up with a model and have never seen one to back io the theory.

http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-c ... ng-another

Dr. Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, and the author of six best-selling books, criticized Darwin’s theory of evolution by noting that “no one has ever demonstrated one species changing to another species.”

He added that if the theory were true, we should be able “to find intermediate species at any given point in time” and follow the “fossil trail and see how everything evolved,” from single-cell organisms to man, but that trail is not there.

“I submit that changes can occur within a species,” said Dr. Carson in a 2011 speech at the Celebration of Creation conference, as reported by the Adventist News Network. “But is that a sign of evolution, or is it a sign of an intelligent creator who gave his creatures the ability to adapt to their environment so he wouldn’t have to start over every 50 years? You know, that sounds much more intelligent than anything else.”

“And no one has ever demonstrated one species changing to another species,” said Dr. Carson. “This should be, if it’s true, a continual evolving. So we should be able to find intermediate species at any given point in time. We should be able to find how they line up.”

He continued, “Darwin said his whole theory depended on the fossil remains. He said we should be able to line up from a single-cell organism to man, several miles long and just walk right down the fossil trail and see how everything evolved.”

“He [Darwin] said the only reason they didn’t have the fossils was because they were not geologically sophisticated enough, but that we would be in 50 to 100 years,” said Dr. Carson. Well, that was 150 years ago. We still haven’t found them. Where are they? Where are the fossil remains?”

Carson continued, “When you ask the evolutionists about that, they say, ‘Uh, I don’t know where they are, they’re somewhere, they are, we just haven’t found them yet.’ That’s a pretty lame excuse, to be honest with you.”

Absolutely nothing that I type here is meant to indicate that a supernatural being does not exist or could not exist. I am only showing a viewpoint that has progressed from early childhood religion-based explanations of all things to a more nature-based.
Nature may be God... Occam's Razor and all that. I do not ascribe things that I do not understand or know the answers to as being magic. I use the word magic to describe things that are wonderful.
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Mr Morris, you concentrated on life matters and I have preferred the simplicity of math and physics...
But there is enough real mystery in both of them to make sure that no one can claim to know all the answers. Anyone who gives either subject more than a passing thought can come up with a few questions that cannot be answered at this time, and maybe with a bit more thought some questions that can never be answered due to physical limitations (like Planck related or things beyond our light cone.)



I understand. My previous response was to show that with the addition of energy, disordered systems can and do readily become more ordered, less disordered. The energy source(s) in any closed systems winds down like a clock and the closed systems always become more disorganized over sufficient lengths of time.
The Arrow of Time... Arthur Eddington coined the phrase because of Time's unique directionality in the physical processes. All other ingredients in processes seem to be reversible except time.
There are uncountable good articles and many full books that expound on the Arrow of Time and why it exists.



I've been impressed by this number also. It seems to be a natural ratio that many systems in nature follow. We talked about the laws of physics before. There are many completely different types of systems and order... Not all of them follow this ratio.
If the Golden Ratio is something designed by intelligence, then why irregular galaxies? Why the Sombrero Galaxy? Why do galaxies evolve? The spiral pattern seems to be a stage that certain sized galaxies pass through on their almost inevitable path towards irregularity, depending only on collisions with other galaxies. Why are there petaled flowers that do not follow the Golden Ratio?
Because I look for natural explanations and not the supernatural, I am inclined to ask "but why?"... This is most definitely not disrespect or lack of wonder... I am in utter awe at the grandness of the universe.
So many people have tried to explain why this number or that number show up in nature or mathematics.
We agree that there are "rules and laws" that nature follows. We are a product of these physical rules and laws... Isn't it natural that we would find them and be pleased by them? I grossly simplify my view when I say that this type of wonder and pleasure that we get from 1.618 may be a kind of anthropomorphism...

Our minds get pleasure from a circle, globe, orb, square, rectangle, or triangle. They are all wonderful shapes... almost magical shapes. They all show up in nature too, some more often than others. I am hesitant to ascribe magical powers or origins to things that I see in nature or mathematics. (Who am I kidding... I love the magical portions... But my life's path has led me to pinning the magical qualities on my own lack of understanding, not of a divine but mysterious superbeing. I've been around the world many times looking for answers.)

Let's toss some strangeness into our chat about shapes. How many degrees do the acute angles in a triangle add up to? Anyone who made it through 6th grade can tell us that those angles EXACTLY equal 180 degrees. Every single time, no matter how many different ways we squeeze that triangle around.
Why? Why is that exactly half of the number of degrees in a circle? Isn't that amazing? I mean it, I really find that amazing.

But then here's the rub. They don't add up to exactly 180 degrees... At least not in the universe that we live in. Especially not near the surface of the earth, or in any tight gravity well. They -always- equal something more or less than 180 degrees due to the curvature of space. We approximate for triangles and all other shapes just like we approximate for time.
Illustration : Take a map and draw a triangle on it. Make each leg exactly equal to the others. Triple check yourself. Do the angles equal 180 degrees? Yes, we think. Now picture drawing these lines on the earth itself. Space curves just like the surface of a globe, only we're not used to thinking of it this way.



Bummer... I think that we both share an awe and wonder for the implications of the double slit experiment. Absolutely mind numbing. If anyone else reading this has read about and appreciates the mysteries of the double slit experiment, please jump in and share your thoughts on it.



Yes sir, I've thought about the double slit experiments more than any other single set of experiments in the history of science. My trouble was with the word "creates" rather than "seems to cause the collapse of probability waves"... Semantics my friend, that is all.



Agreed sir. I would like to draw a comparison to scales again though. Please imagine the entire group of every scientist in the history of the world who has tried to create the proper conditions for SG (although SG would hardly be the right term in the laboratory, hah)... I would expect that every single serious effort would comprise a group that would fit into a single large building. From all over the world and since the beginning of serious science... All would fit into one large building. (It would be an exercise to list each team... But it could be done.)
Now lets picture all of them in that one large building... with their whole teams... each team has their own area and all their tools... Now picture how long each team worked on this. Look down on that building from 40,000 feet. It is a tiny, no it is a minuscule thing.
All teams of scientists and assistants are set up with all of their tools and ready to go... The starting pistol is fired and the clock starts running.
Watch the building the entire time. When the last team finishes their experiment we can stop our timer and compare it to the mind blowing immensity of the earth and the time that the oceans and chemistry of the planet had to run the course.
If you just read the words on your screen, not much is happening.
-But try to Picture it.- Think about the hubris to be able to compare those two sets of chemical tests and say that because the fallible mammals in that minuscule building failed to see SG during those few years (tops) of setting up small glass globes and mixing up the chemicals that we think might work and zapping it with laboratory lightning for so many days weeks or months ===>>> (therefore) SG no existe. SG is false. (!?)

The Earth had Billions of years... I don't think that very many people try to imagine time on this scale. I don't think very many people try to imagine the size and complexity of the oceans, let alone the Earth. (Just try to imagine floating inside a cubic mile of the oceans, then thinking about that size compared to the number of floating chemical molecules around you.) No one, and I mean no one knows all of the possible chemical combinations.
Did the experimenters consider putting a dash of Boron in their flasks? When they zapped the flask with electricity for 24 hours, did they make sure to zap it with the correct voltage? Was the best source of energy actually near thermal vents instead of near the surface?
Was the flask sufficiently large to allow the electrical pulse to pass through all of the voltage range from a million volts to zero (ground) and smoothly pop a few electrons to a higher orbit, thereby allowing an unknown molecule to form a slowly self-replicating organic combination? (Organic simply means carbon-based. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/care ... istry.html )

I could go on for YEARS coming up with ways to show that the experiments did not cover all the possible circumstances that the Earth provided for billions of years... An experiment (or 10,000 experiments) never reveal a failure. They only show that "For this set of circumstances for this length of time these are the results."



Agreed, it has not been duplicated yet and may never be due to time frames, budgets, scales, or simply chance. We don't know why yet. But I think that using the word "failed" is a failure. (You didn't use that word, but it is common to see this word used about scientific experiments when results don't match predictions.)



Let's agree that Darwin wasn't perfect, nor was his theory. I say that because I am not arguing for or against Darwin. I never have, nor do I expect to in the future. I do acknowledge that he was the author of one of the first widely read possible alternatives to a monopoly that had been held by religions since the beginning of written history... That monopoly of creation... of a supernatural being creating the world as we see it.
Please keep in mind that there are still many people who believe in Ussher's Young Earth, and the timeline of creation was actually printed in bibles (I think it still is... just not as widely accepted as it was before the scientific revolution.) (Random James Ussher link to give an idea of the "debate" between Young Earth and Old Earth Creationists : http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/f ... ssher.html )

So please understand that Darwin is not being held up as a Saint... He was a man, living in his times, with his upbringing, seeing the things that he saw on his voyage on The Beagle, with his flaws and limitations.
One of the most amazing arguments against Darwin is that of saying that because Darwin himself said 'My theory is false if X and Y, and true if Z' - How, if he is so fallible, do we place such great truth and importance on those words and accept his own dismissal of the theory? Maybe he was wrong about that.



I'm going to step out on a limb here and say that indeed it has. What has not been shown is every step of the path from simple life form to complex life form because this is an impossible task.
And here's why : Life forms are made up of the chemical constituents of life. Tautological yes, but the importance of that shouldn't be dismissed because of the simplicity.
Life uses these elements and chemicals wherever it finds them, and one of the very best sources of the elements and chemicals necessary for growing living life is in the decomposing parts of previously living organisms. We are made up of mostly soft stuff... squishy bags of stuff that other life craves to make use of! And when we die, surely those many other critters will make use of the most excellent supplies that we currently have locked up in our squishy selves to make themselves more squishy.
I'm going to add another post at the end of this one with a most intriguing video that I believe demolishes the argument against evolution from species to species.

Here is why I think that we humans generally dismiss the idea of species to species transition... 4,700,000,000 years. Four Billion, Seven Hundred Million Years. We simply cannot realistically imagine, envision the majesty of time on any scale far past a single human lifetime, in the same way that we cannot get a mental "grip" on something as tiny as an atom or electron or quark (let alone something 10 to the minus 20th smaller than a proton) or as large as a mountain... or an ocean... or a planet, or the concept of "empty" space, or the size of the sun, inner solar system, the whole solar system, the local neighborhood of stars, the Orion Spur in the Milky Way, The Local Group of Galaxies, The Great Attractor, or The Great Wall in the tapestry of the entire visible universe that spans out almost 14 billion light years in every direction.

In reality, "species" is a very limited word. It is defined thus : a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. The species is the principal natural taxonomic unit, ranking below a genus and denoted by a Latin binomial, e.g., Homo sapiens.
It refers to a population that is able to produce viable offspring. Nothing in that definition says that the species as a whole can't migrate to a different area with different sets of growth factors and acclimate or adapt to those new factors. Right? We see that all the time even in the very short amount of time that we have been paying attention to nature from a scientific viewpoint. It is a little bit crazy to assume that the squishy bags that animate a species will leave a nicely preserved sample of each small adaptation for our squishy bag species to find and place in a row from single-celled self-replicator to the most complex structure known, a brain. 'Cuz you know, squishy animated things like to eat other squishy things that used to be animated.
Please don't for a second think that I am less reverential to life than you are.. I am in awe of it.



Einstein insisted on including a "Cosmological Constant" in several versions of his theories.
http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoverie ... redict.php
Shall we point out this error and dismiss all of his obviously flawed ideas? (Not mocking sir... Just pointing out the logical fallacy in throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We all know that the water needs to be tossed out... Let's just be careful not to dump things too early or too harshly.)



Time scales sir. It all comes back to time scales. Here is the extremely simplified theory. Single cell organisms "reproduced" in two ways... Both somewhat haphazardly; splitting in half and combining with other small bits and pieces (eating.) We still see this today, but it is not as stark as that early bit of haphazardly mixing because life is here, established, powerful... Present a bit of organic material and the right conditions and a very well adapted group of organisms break out the knives and forks and neatly divide up the available organic stuff. Some of those knives and forks get turned on each other.
"We" are established. We can't see two molecular sized organisms exchanging/joining/splitting genetic information because of scales of time and size. Mostly time me thinks.
Some fun reading : Parthenogenesis... http://www.ansci.wisc.edu/jjp1/ansci_re ... s/what.htm
Any link that I give is just an example or place to start. I am not endorsing the view of any, just showing an example.
It should be relatively easy to imagine parthenogenesis on much smaller scales.



Can be provided in truckloads sir. The only thing missing is every single squishy body of every single adaptation over the hundreds of thousands of millions of years since the first self-replicating molecule that relied on chemical energy to replicate was placed in the right combination of environmental conditions....



Here's a good time to expound a little bit on my criticisms of Darwin.
Intelligence does not mean that someone is right or wrong.
Education does not mean intelligence, nor a determination of right or wrong, being correct or being incorrect.
The number of adherents of a theory, religion, viewpoint has absolutely nothing to do with correctness.

If you had asked every single reasonably intelligent person who was familiar with the idea behind the two slit experiment (wave/particle) what the results of the pattern on the back wall would be before the advent of Quantum Theory, every single sane person would have been wrong.
Every single one.
Before Einstein was able to mathematically demonstrate the various forms of Relativity, every single human in the history of the human race had been completely wrong about the nature of space, time and reality.
That includes Isaac Newton, who I believe was the most intelligent man in the history of the human race (at least who was in a position to make a mark on history... I bet there were a bunch of sharp mofos in the slave pits of Rome who never had the chance to spend enough time thinking about why things fall before they were being fed upon by large and small squishy bags of life in the Coliseum with him.)



I hope that you will pardon my vast volumes of blank ignorance on the topic of biology sir.
I am flawed in this way (as in many others) that a long held viewpoint is not easy to change. I am thinking about what you and others say - I percolate on a time scale larger than a pot of coffee.

I am going to post the video that I referred to earlier right after this post... The video had a large impact on me.
I dearly wish that it had been less controversially addressed, and also wish that it had been by someone other than Richard Dawkins. Mr Dawkins is a brilliant and fearless man who has a bit of a reputation because he is fearless and brilliant... Do not let prejudice sway the gentle reader from listening and reading and learning something new!



http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Evolution+giraffe+fish+



Squishy bags. Thousands of millions of years. Once life has a tiny foothold, it's past and present assures an easier place for some life in the future due to chemical aggregation and, for extreme example, terraforming.



Darwin was optimistic apparently.



Being utilized by billions and billions of squishy bags of life all around us... The tiny minuscule number of fossils that were fortunate enough to have died in the right circumstances so that we can find their fossilized skeletons represents such an inconceivably small percentage of the number of organisms that have ever existed as to start approaching a Planck's number. haha



This is a strawman argument... Stated in such a way as to make those who disagree with the Young Earth Creationist view seem to be foolish.
It's very easy to throw zingers at the other side... Some stick well, some do not. Neither side knows the answers... Each side seems to be more comfortable with quite opposing thought processes.
Even the most brilliant proponent of evolution will clearly make errors in speech, but I doubt if a halting response similar to that which Mr Carson attributed to his theoretical debate opponent would be included in a written book, which allows the author of the statement time to think about, refine, even correct.

But his quote is not even real. He made it up spur of the moment as an easily ridiculed viewpoint.

I have no desire to hurl zingers at the religion viewpoint... But they may be useful to demonstrate how a strawman argument is not a logically winning position.
Zingers may be used to show the difficulty in building an unassailable viewpoint... LOL
There absolutely ARE debates about the color of the clear blue sky. Valid or not, there are debates.

Couple of things... The use of the "Let me google that for you" is for humor... Only that. No offense!

https://www.google.com/search?q=Evoluti ... C3IQsAQIKA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1a1Ek-HD0 Watch this! Smokes, my friends!

Try to avoid letting a dislike for a person or idea or a manner of speech lead you down the path of disregarding that idea.
It's tough, but worthwhile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi7rUyaPT-c

Wow, what a great discussion between you two, Morris and Mike! I've been reading through it as I eat my breakfast/brunch. Very well articulated thoughts and mutual respect. Although I will admit my head hurts a little :)

I plan on writing you both in for President PMB/Morris 2016!

Thanks Bud! That'd qualify as worthy of pissing off most our fellow WaGunners, tossing your vote like that.

I wonder what kinds of videos would surface of me right before the election...

If you haven't had the pleasure of having your two-slit virginity taken yet (sounds kinkier than I meant it to sound) you need to go there.
I'll look around and see if I can find a good resource. When you figure out that the results are real and verifiable tell me how your head feels.

Thanks and call me Murray (my first name). Mike and I have PM'd about this and I have great respect for him from what we have discussed before. He is intelligent and I am sure smarter than I am. I just am lucky to have some education in human biology and it is about my only true aptitude.

I am going to take more time with my next post to do Mike's comments justice. I am researching a paper to write up for my wife on prophecy (she is an agnostic) but I will put that aside while I look into Mike's ideas.

The best part about these discussions is working your brain not only makes the head hurt but it helps with neuroplasticity. That is a good thing to keep from getting Alzheimers!

I do know of Dawkins well (his work) and I also know that when he was confronted by Ben Stein on the issue of intelligent design, Dawkins defaulted to aliens jump starting life on Earth. I had some respect for him until I heard that. To me, that is an unscientific leap of faith. Let us first prove intelligent beings have come to our planet and verify who they are first. I can't take much he says anymore with anything but a large grain of salt.

This short 6 minute clip is from Ben Stein's interview in "Expelled" (the entire movie can be seen on Youtube). The quotes are transcribed by me from hand written notes. See 3:10 for his comments on self replicating molecules and just after that are the comments on higher intelligent beings seeding life on our planet.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GlZtEjtlirc

He states that the "first self replicating molecule started" yet "nobody knows how". How is that for a scientific explanation?

Later he says:

"A civilization evolved and designed a form of life that they seeded onto, perhaps, this planet...and that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe. But that higher intelligence itself would have to have come about by some explicable...process. It couldn't have just jumped into existence spontaneously."

Why could it not have jumped into existence spontaneously? We have Darwin basing his theory on just such a spontaneous generation, and then somehow changing over time into forms of life that either do not procreate or do procreate. Of those who do procreate, they somehow mutated to lose or gain chromosomes. DNA and RNA do use the same base molecules between forms of life but having the same molecules does not mean they all came from a single progenitor. We have similar atoms in molecules but we know all molecules did not come from one progenitor molecule. We can easily create a molecule with a chemical reaction from atoms because those atoms are ubiquitous. Having life using similar structures just means our planet contains atoms that have physical laws of bonding which structure how they can form into molecules and what 3D strictures will be formed. DNA (and it's template for replication, coding/decoding and protein syntehesis, RNA) are an extremely efficient way to build life. They can create more structures than we can comprehend using only 4 bases, this gives a simple (Occams Razor) way of coding for a multitude of life forms. Binary computer code uses two and also can code for a large variety of software but nucleic acids go well beyond that ability.

Is the reason Dawkins discounts this spontaneous aspect because scientifically, spontaneous formation is hard to logically believe? Dawkins is stating outright my problem with spontaneous generation. It is scientifically untennable. Especially when he also states that they have no idea how even a single self replicating molecule could randomly arise.

When he discusses the first self replicating molecule he at least correctly states that nobody knows how it could have started. Theories are great but this goes to my point of needing a reasonable mechanism for how life started if you want a theory to be scientifically used as Darwinian Evolution is in our school system. So far we have it based on spontaneous generation, which has not been proven for any carbon based life form or nucleic acids. Evolutionists like to discuss these self replicating molecules but have no idea how they formed. They can discuss evolution from a single celled organism but we have no mechanism that is reasonable for even how this complex cell formed. A cell is not simple. I took cell physiology in college and that is when I realized just hiw complex a single cell is. A cell is a complex array of organelles, membranes, reproductive areas, protein synthesis, regulatory structures, transport systems both inside and outside the cell membrane, as well as thousands of receptor proteins just on the surface of the cell.

Parthenogenesis (described below) would not account for creation of a non-parthenogenic line of organisms. At some point, if an animal is reproducing from male/female reproduction, you must have two sexes that copulate.

A great expanse of time does not prove a thing would occur. We are just speculating that it is possible but then we could speculate on many things being possible over billions or trillions of years. We still need a reasonable scientific mechanism for the occurence. We need a valid mechanism for how a cell can be formed randomly. We need a mechanism for how a cell can become a full organism and how that organism can change into another organism that becomes dependent on male/female interaction for survival of the species. We need a mechanism for the limited time (one life span) for that male/female to both be alive at the same time inmorder to propogate. If these organisms could use parthenogenesis or are hermaphroditic, why then would they need to change to copulation to reproduce and why did they lose that ability? It is much simpler for an organism to just split for survival than to find an opposing sex and copulate. We also would need an ability to gain and lose chromosomes while still being viable to procreate, which is hard to imagine. When we see chromosomal number differences in a species, it is always a detriment and causes major health problems leading to premature death.

Homo Sapiens are believed to be around 200,000 years old or less. That is a miniscule amount of time to jump from another form of life when we have no known intermediary. This is why Dawkins jumps to the intelligent alien theory. Scientists know the time frame for humans is a stumbling block due to their extremely slow Darwinian Evolution hypothesis.

Even before these questions, we need to understand how DNA and RNA could spontaneously arise. Also, how can these coding molecules be protected from destruction if they are not formed inside a cell or protein capsid? The elements would destroy them if they did not at least have a capsid (protein) to protect it, as in a virus. How would the protein be formed if the RNA or DNA was not already present to code for the protein? If by some unknown mechanism RNA or DNA did form, is a long time period a valid argument for all of the constituent molecules needed to create the proteins themselves after synthesis of the coding molecule?

I believe my arguments of randomness vs order are reasonable, whether we use energy as an organizing force for the structures we see or not. Why is energy organizing? We know it takes energy (or work) to create something but that doesn't negate the question of why or how energy has this function.

http://www.ansci.wisc.edu/jjp1/ansci_re ... s/what.htm

"Parthenogenesis is most simply defined as reproduction without fertilization. More specifically, it occurs when a female gamete develops a new individual without being fertilized by a male gamete. It is often called a form of "asexual reproduction," but it is more accuratley defined as an incomplete form of sexual reproduction. This is because it involves the production, activation, and development of a female egg which is a specialized reproductive cell (Kaufman, 1983). Parthenogenesis is not to be confused with hermaphroditic species which can also reproduce by themselves. Hermaphroditic species reproduce by themselves because an organism can produce both the male and female gamete. Parthenogenesis soley involves the production and stimulation of a female egg."