Universal Skeptic

The meaning of existence

2010-11-04T17:54:00.000-07:00

I live each day where I find myself and carry my solace with me. I do not feel a need to control my environment nor have it control me. There is no prewritten script that we ignore to our detriment.

I also do not look at life as a quest dictated by arcane and ancient mythologies. There is no grand, mysterious prize hidden from view that we must find through much hand wringing and reading of the tealeaves. There is knowledge to be gained and progress to be made. However, the vast majority of real progress made by our species has occurred at the likes of Pasteur's workbench, Edison Labs, MIT, and Johns Hopkins. Clinging too tightly to the past, listening only to one's emotions, and living in the future tends to result in events such as the trial of Galileo, rejection of medical advances, and refusing to look at mountains of scientific research.

I find enjoying each day, contributing, and being engaged is where life really is. Once upon a time, I lived my life in some nebulous future state but found that I was not living at all. Invariably when the future finally arrived with each passing second, if I bothered to notice at all, it was often not the existence my imagination had conjured. At that point, in my life I assumed that this meant I was somehow unworthy or had not acted according to the rules of the game. If only I had spent two more minutes a day in silent mediation, or read one more verse the outcome would have been so much different. What a painfully legalistic existence that. What omniscient deity would be so petty and punitive?

Attempting to control in minute detail the course of one's own life and those around us is similar to trying to grasp a wave as it crashes on the sand. We can adjust our position as the waves continue to arrive but arrive they will and in the way the local environment directs. We can hope for a different shape to the waves and grasp at them with our tiny hands. However, we will find that the water merely slips through our fingers as the waves hurry on to their destination.

I choose to walk through the waves when it is fitting and enjoy the constant rhythm of life's ocean that it has followed for billions of years. There is no imperative to stand in the way of the ocean and attempt in vain to bend it to my will. The ocean and I are fellow travelers in a complex walk sculpted by our milieu. I will live today and share the gift of each fleeting moment with my sojourning companions.

Trivia overwhelms core religious beliefs

2010-11-04T17:39:00.000-07:00

James 1:27 "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the...widows in their affliction..."

What is often observed are religious goals that are focused on observance of trivia. Dogmatic rules dictating dress codes, forms of prayer, and ritualistic observance. What of the love and support of the downtrodden? Where is the true service to those in need?

Many religious cultures seem to become bogged down in bureaucratic and legalistic minutia when humankind and the religious organizations themselves would be better served by sticking to the basics. Everyone, including me, has his or her own pet beliefs and these beliefs affect the surrounding culture in either positive or negative ways.

Over-interpreting evidence

2010-11-03T18:36:00.000-07:00

Religious belief is often based on gross over-interpretations of the available information. One stark example is the more or less historically accurate section of the Old Testament after 600 BCE. The evidence quickly vanishes into oblivion and borrowed myth as the time recedes from there. The evidence is very thin and shaky yet believers are willing to make sweeping assumptions from shreds. There are so many other potential explanations for the writings in the Bible other than divine guidance yet thees other possibilities are often dismissed. Rather than accepting the incidental historical shreds as merely incidental they often do just the reverse. The anomaly is twisted in their minds to reject the large amounts of counter evidence.

The same is done with the fleeting feelings that are used to build faith. It is not uncommon for a believer to refer to a few instances and sometimes just one instance where they had a special feeling. All of the other times when they felt nothing are overshadowed as they over-interpret the few moments of emotion.

Dealing with Uncertainty

2010-11-01T21:29:00.000-07:00

What we as a society currently view as explanations for various aspects of our universe and all things therein are merely models and subject to change. Actively entertaining multiple possibilities at one time is an integral aspect of many more progressive worldviews. The lack of dogma and the interest in discovering "game changing" advances is refreshing. This is in stark contrast to deterministic and rigid views that there is one answer and a person must seek that answer from someone in authority over him or her.

Because our universe and our societies are complex dynamical systems most things are probabilistic and not deterministic. We will never be able to predict perfectly and there are no truly optimal decisions but merely many near optimal decisions from which to choose. Exiting a worldview containing an omniscient, omnipotent god who knew the beginning to the end and emerging into the bright light of uncertainty, probabilities, and largely or completely unpredictable emergent patterns was disconcerting to say the least. The numerous interactions in any complex system including our own lives means that there are a range of possible outcomes to any action. Some outcomes are more likely than others but nothing is a given. Over time I have come to accept, feel comfortable with, and even embrace this reality. In fact the world makes much more sense when viewed through the lens of complex systems.

It is not uncommon for those with a view that there are perfect answers to struggle with decisions and over analyze possibilities. They are often so concerned about selecting "the one right path". Rather random emotions and spurious correlations often make them feel as if they are approaching the path that will lead them to success. They are oblivious to the realities that many differing paths will lead to success and that virtually any path will likely contain challenges and unpleasant surprises. After all of their hand-wringing they embark on their "one correct, god-defined path" only to find that things do not always work smoothly. When troubles ensue they are quick to blame themselves for some perceived sin or for not being righteous enough to "hear" the correct guidance. It is all a maddening exercise in futility based on fundamentally flawed premises on how the world works. If they could only let go, relax, enjoy the journey, and be willing to learn from mistakes and the "imperfections" of life. There is no such thing as perfection in the sense that there is one ideal decision for any situation. Until they accept that reality they will spend a life of recurrent frustration and unwarranted self-recrimination.

Moving the Goalposts

2010-10-31T20:37:00.000-07:00

Moving the goalposts is a logical fallacy in which the arguer changes the original claim without acknowledging the changes have been made. The arguer also does not respond directly to the evidence presented against his or her original claim.

Similar efforts have been undertaken with the Bible. This varies from person to person but similarly it has generally moved from the inviolable word of god, to an accurate historical account, to a collection of myths mixed in with a bit of history. Attempts to hang onto the tattered remnants of false hopes and beliefs even though those beliefs have no resemblance to the original position of any given individual.

Even though the original premise utterly collapsed years ago people still hang onto the tattered remnants of belief. This is based on the goalpost that now only requires the Bible (or Koran if you prefer) to be a morality tale. So even though the apologists are trying to prove a very different hypothesis than they were years ago the quest is somehow still valid. I would argue that the game ended the first time the goalposts moved. What has actually happened over the last several decades is the equivalent of not only moving the goalposts down the field but planting it in a different country and using it for a different game.

Magical Thinking

2010-10-31T20:30:00.000-07:00

There are so many ways that we deceive ourselves. It would appear that humans are actually very bad at correctly viewing the world. From an evolutionary perspective many things really did not matter. The key factors were finding food and shelter in addition to successfully reproducing.

If a person's concept of the factors that influenced the course of his or her life was radically wrong it would not generally make any difference in their ability to survive. Questions such as "Is there a god?", "Does my god want me to pray to the east or in the evening" mean absolutely nothing in terms of survival. The answers that he or she would find would be heavily influenced by identifying patterns (that do not exist) in largely random data. As time progresses the answers would be pre-determined and taught by his or her culture from childhood. In more primitive societies belief would then have a survival advantage because of the need to have the support and protection of the society.

Given our complex, multi-faceted world I used to think that magical thinking was less likely to occur. It would appear from the behavior of billions of people (including me) that magical thinking is still the norm rather than the exception. Upon further reflection, this would seem to be the most logical state. In reality, as mentioned previously, magical thinking does not have much influence on survival in real terms. There is really no evolutionary pressure to not think magically. Even in today's world reproductive opportunities are not significantly reduced by magical thinking. In fact, if a particular magical belief is predominate; magical thinking may even increase a person's opportunities to find a sexual partner or partners. Furthermore, it is becoming less likely with improved standards of living and health care that any given person will not reach an age where reproduction is a viable option.

There are also the pressures imposed by various elements in any given society. We, on this board, have observed this numerous times. Challenging religious beliefs often results in someone or many someone's engaging in very strenuous efforts to defend the challenged beliefs. The defenses expose the underlying mechanisms used to justify continued belief in what has become unbelievable. Every argument can take many specific forms but a brief sampling:

1. Appeal to antiquity: "Our faith has been around for 150 years, or 1500 years, or 2000 years, ...; therefore my beliefs are correct."

2. Appeal to authority: "These experts (followed by a list of highly educated and successful people; physicists, biologists, financiers, etc) believe; therefore our religious claims are accurate."

3. Sunk costs: "Our ancestors gave so much for our religion thus sealing their beliefs in their sacrifice; therefore my religion is correct and denying that it is god's one true way would be disrespectful to my ancestors and their sacrifice."

4. False dilemma: "Either we continue to believe in my god and my religion must continue to exert pressure on society, or society will degenerate into immorality and lawlessness."

5. Negative proof: "You cannot prove that my god does not exist ; therefore there is a good chance that my god exists."

6. Package-deal: "Because my religion has always been an integral part of my family's culture; then my religion must always be part of my culture. If I separate my beliefs from my culture my culture will no longer be viable."

“...many human beings prefer certainty…

2010-10-31T06:55:00.000-07:00

...no matter how oppressive and primitive, to the risks and responsibilities of freedom." - Ralph Peters

Many religious texts are filled with an unbelievable number of rules. These rules range from the macro to the micro and can cover any aspect of life. For example if one were to follow all of the rules in the Bible, the follower's world would be devoid of decision-making and the associated risks for many things.

The result would seem to be people who are not accustomed to the responsibilities of being free and are severely weakened. Among those in the Abrahamic faiths, many believers do not take a literal view of their canonized scriptures. Thus they are not burdened with the micromanaged lives of the more fundamentalist among their ranks. Fundamentalist and literalistic lifestyles are similar to strapping a person to a board and not allowing them to exercise his or her muscles. The muscles are never allowed to develop and the person would end up being weak, uncoordinated, and physically unskilled.

The punitive god of these belief systems creates a following that views freedom and mistakes as a negative. The believers point at this danger of "sinning" or making errors as a reason to remain strapped to the board. They are afraid to stand up, learn to walk, and develop coordination. While learning to walk children stumble and fall. This is essential for growth and not something to avoid. Fundamentalists have been conditioned to believe that even some simple mistakes can be catastrophic and should be avoided at all cost.

The Emergence of Ethical Behavior

2010-10-31T06:44:00.000-07:00

Some within various belief systems seem to struggle with the concept of ethical behavior from atheists and agnostics. There seems to be a belief that people with gravitate toward selfish and destructive behavior without direction from a deity and that deity's spokespersons.

In the book "Emergence" Steven Johnson writes:

"We're naturally predisposed to think in terms of pacemakers, whether we're talking about fungi, political systems, or our own bodies. Our actions seem governed for the most part by the pacemaker cells in our brains, and for millennia we've built elaborate pacemaker cells into our social organizations, whether they come in the forms of kings, dictators, or city councilmen. Much of the world around us can be explained in terms of command systems and hierarchies..."It amazes me how difficult it is for people to think in terms of collective phenomenon..."

The same inability to understand seems to exist in the minds of many people living within hierarchical religions and societies. How, they wonder, can people not descend into debauchery, criminal actions, and anti-social behavior without the guidance of religion or a strict set of laws? It is anathema to them that people can actually cooperate and show compassion on a daily basis without someone standing over them to keep them in line.

The questioner fails to see the regression issue with this concept. If it takes an authority figure to keep a person living ethically then who keeps the leaders in check? If they point to a god or divine being, who keeps god or the divine being in check? If civil and productive behavior cannot arise from within then all societies would have descended into chaos long ago. Indeed, they never would have been able to organize into a meaningful, cooperative entity.

Even something as simple as slime mold is able to organize and work cooperatively without frequent readings from the Bible, Torah, or Koran. The slime mold also does not need to attend regular services at their local church, synagogue, or mosque in order to keep from going rogue. Perhaps there is something in the complexity of humans that renders us in need of constant guidance. However, where is the evidence of such a need?

Evolution and religious belief

2010-10-30T18:50:00.000-07:00

There is no reason why humans would evolve to think logically. Humans are definitely pattern matching animals which is a low effort method of making sense of the world. It is efficient and it often works well. This is particularly true for hunter gatherers when it is necessary for survival to figure out the patters in the seasons, vegetation yields, migration patterns of animals, etc.

Religious thinking and magical thinking may also have an evolutionary advantage. Because natural selection favors those who are able to adapt and cope with their environment then the ability to find some plausible explanation for hardships can be adaptive. Stated directly, the people who get depressed and give up are going to starve to death. However those that exhibit hope and perhaps faith may be more inclined to press forward and thus are more likely to survive.

Chimps do not have sufficient neural matter to think in the abstract ways required for religious belief. However chimps, dogs, cats, mice, etc can exhibit superstitious learning. This is a result of the pattern matching nature of all animals. When a stimulus and response are linked via some other mechanism or happen at a high enough frequency separately that they appear to be connected superstitious learning can take place.

A belief system does not necessarily need to be true or necessarily based in reality to be advantageous. Religion seems to fall into this category. Religion seems to fail all logical tests but it helped to cement communities together which had survival advantages and as mentioned above it provided hope in the face of daunting challenges. There are some negative side effects when the hope and faith placed in a deity leave the person in a dangerous situation that they should rightly escape. However our planet and our interactions with our environment are complex enough that a degree of erroneous decision making is not catastrophic or necessarily harmful in many instances.

So on question might be what role should religion play including what level of commitment, and what particular belief system or systems are adaptive? It really depends on the state of the world at any given point in time. I think it also depends on the belief system. Fundamentalist belief systems often lead to intolerance and destructive behavior. I am not convinced there is any perfect balance between believers and non-believers percentage wise at any given time either. Even in our modern world where religion is not so essential for dealing with troubles the more liberal faiths seem to provide benefits for many people. We have yet to fully address all of the challenges facing society (i.e. poverty, illness) thus there is often a role for the support and hope that can be provided by religion. Atheism and agnosticism are more logical but can be difficult positions to hold when faced with a serious illness or the death of a close friend or family member. Some people have the emotional resources to cope sans religion and others not.

There is also the issue of societies regressing as well as progressing. During the stable and advanced states of ancient civilizations such as Rome, Greece, Egypt, and Persia the religious tenor seemed to be more liberal and somewhat on a par with liberal mainstream Protestants, liberal Judaism, etc in terms of acceptance of others and general lack of dogmatism. Definitely differences but overall rather liberal in comparison to some of the surrounding societies. When each of these societies slipped back into a more primitive state it seems that religion regained a state of importance and level of interpretation fitting to the society.

A more fundamentalist approach likely created survival advantages in situations where there were not enough resources to feed and shelter two separate populations for instance. The moral issue is important but from a pure issue of survival defense of the in group at the expense of the out group resulted in the survival advantage. I am not convinced that we have seen such a situation in the last several centuries although we as a species continue to act in many instances like that is the case.

So a short answer would be it really depends on each individual's current internal and external state in addition to the general state of the society. It also depends on the belief system in question and the level of adherence to the given belief system.

Creating a dangerous world

2010-10-30T18:40:00.000-07:00

Reminding believers that they are in a dangerous world increases stress and emotional arousal.

"...stress and emotional arousal narrow attention, making people 'more susceptible to poorly supported arguments, social pressure, and the temptation to derogate nongroup members'" this in turn leads to the loss of "access to counterarguments....Because the cult frowns on or punishes disagreements, the apparent consensus helps eliminate lingering doubts." (Meyers, 2004).

It is an ever tightening spiral into reinforcement of illogical and indefensible arguments. This is common in many belief systems and also in politics.

Answers to prayers and intelligent/successful believers

2010-10-30T18:32:00.000-07:00

Here is a potential reason that many believers are intelligent. An intelligent person is more likely to "receive answers to their prayers." Not because there is a supreme being answering those prayers but because they are able to make things happen in their lives. They may also have better metacognitive skills and perhaps subconsciously chose to pray for things that they implicitly know are within their capabilities.

People who prayed and ended up homeless, chronically unemployed, institutionalized, or generally failures by society's standards generally do not have a voice in society. So we hear the small fraction of one percent of the population that have been "blessed"/lucky/won the genetic lottery and the other 99.99% of the population does not have a voice.

A similar situation likely occurs in those who become religious in a war zone. People return from a war zone or other calamity and recite how they prayed and their lives were spared. We do not hear about those who were "righteous" and prayed during these calamities and died because they are...well...dead.

Magic? Blessings? Nope...just luck and having a chance to talk about said luck.

Religion and Evolution

2010-10-30T18:04:00.001-07:00

There are many crosscutting issues in this topic. Some of the preposterously untrue items within religion can be likened to junk DNA. There are segments of DNA that do not accomplish anything. They do not cause problems for the organism so there is no selection pressure to eliminate the junk DNA. The preposterous things in most religions are often similar to junk DNA in that they are little more than curiosities in terms of actual behaviors in a person's day-to-day existence. They do not cause any harm but they also do not do any good. People tend to lump most things from a belief system together and do not have access to the correct type of information or the analytical and scientific tools to successfully parse the various components of their religion.

Religion provides hope and help people overcome very difficult times in their lives when they may just give up and perish because of external factors or at his or her own hands. Religion often provides a tight-knit community including emotional and material support in times of want.

As humans we are not very good at determining true causal relationships. The beneficial aspects of religion are very difficult for even a very fastidious observer to parse from the erroneous. The scientific method is so new and little more than a century has passed since the advent of robust social science studies. Even with this scientific toolkit and the research findings that have amassed over the preceding decades, it is difficult for people to separate fact, fiction, logic, and their own emotions.

Religion did and does have some survival advantages. The challenge is for the believer and nonbeliever alike to determine what factors help, those that harm, and which are benign but relatively useless.

Discrediting “apostates”

2010-01-09T07:09:00.000-08:00

If TSCC can discredit someone then the arguments against Mormonism become less effective. The idea is to destroy the credibility of the speaker or writer. Overt acts and open attacking an "apostate" makes the organization look very guilty. Destruction of credibility leads to the person telling truth looking foolish. Tactics have been perfected for such things and are used by organizations on a regular basis.

1. Whispering campaigns

2. Careful selection and editing of a person's words. It is very obvious this is going on when what the TBM is saying to your face bears absolutely no resemblance to what they are saying to everyone else. The problem with gossip is it often does get back to the person being talked about. This can be disconcerting to the "apostate", making them overly cautious in terms of what he or she says, and limiting his or her interactions. When the gossip consists of blatant lies this can cause the "apostate" to wonder what else is being said behind his or her back.

3. Death by a thousand cuts. A little slander here, a small lie there, a bit of gossip over there.

4. Strategically planned "slips" or comments that "just crop up" in a personal conversation with someone's boss or colleague. These comments do not need to be true and often are not.

5. Isolating the "apostate" socially. "Do not associate with apostates." This can lead to job loss, inability to obtain a comparable position, a necessity to move long distances, and isolation from former support networks.

6. Quietly encouraging a spouse to divorce the unbeliever. This does not need to come directly from the bishop or stake president. There is enough material floating around from years past that TBM friends, visiting teachers, etc will be unwitting accomplices in these efforts.

7. The above tactics have the added benefit of leading to what are referred to as "nth order effects". If you begin applying this type of stress to a person it can often lead to bankruptcy, additional stress that can increase health problems and the cost of medical care, bad decisions on the part of the "apostate", correct and incorrect accusations from the "apostate", among many other things.

All of this is much more effective than blatant attacks. It makes TSCC look like the victim and the "apostate" look like a putz. Quite a racket actually. The true perpetrator of the problem, TSCC, becomes the perceived victim. This type of turning the tables is very, very common. It is not necessary to touch a person to effectively destroy them.

The probabilistic nature of life

2009-09-27T22:13:00.000-07:00

Life is probabilistic not deterministic. That is one of the toughest things for the human mind to grasp in my opinion. Growing up our numerous experiences that can be explained by Newtonian physics and our tendency to engage in pattern matching creates a mental model of the universe that does not reflect reality. What happens in any given instance, with any particular species, and in any biological or physical system will fall within some range of behaviors but predicting the exact behavior is impossible.

There is also the issue of never being able to prove something beyond a shadow of a doubt. This also is difficult to incorporate into an understanding of the universe when trained in a deterministic manner. However, the way that science works is to accept the model or theory that best fits the data until a better theory comes along. The problem with creationism and intelligent design is that it refutes the theory of evolution based on the fact that not all of the pieces are explained at this point. Resorting to god as a hypothesis is a non-explanation because none of the workings of the system are addressed. It is analogous to trying to reverse engineer a car. During the process all of the pieces are catalogued, the engineering drawings are made, and the manufacturers of all of the parts are identified. At a certain point in the process it is still an unknown where the screws that hold the taillights on are made. Therefore the team throws their hands in the air, trashes all of the parts lists and engineering drawings, and declares that there is no way Ford could have manufactured the vehicle but god must have magically created the car.

Similarly evolution explains the preponderance of the evidence now available. The knowledge base will continue to grow and expand and the theory will be tweaked. However, the theory of evolution is not likely to be thrown out and adjustments to the theory do not negate the overarching concept or most of the pieces.

In summary it is necessary in my opinion to become comfortable with uncertainty, probability, and chaos theory at various levels to be able to incorporate evolution into a world view. We will never know for sure but the statistical probability of being correct increases as the theories are argued, studied, and tested.

A few answers to common questions about and critiques of evolution

2009-09-27T22:08:00.000-07:00

Criticism: The truth is that, just as there is evidence for evolution there is also evidence against it. Evolution teaches that things evolve from simple to complex. And this is supposed to be true for all living things. But there is stacks of evidence against that hypothesis. A few examples from an interesting book called "The Crumbling Theory of Evolution," by J. W. G. Johnson.: "Among the dead bones of the past, we find no fossil links, no evolution.

Response: There are many intermediate species found within the fossil record. The fossil record is particularly telling because a VERY tiny percentage of organisms have been fossilized. Additionally the geological strata provide a nice smooth progression from single celled organisms roughly 3.5 billion years ago through the complex organisms today. There are no instances of any organisms grossly more complex than their predecessors merely appearing ex nihilo.

The fossil record is corroborated in terms of dating via numerous forms of radiometric dating. A wide range of dates can be tested with various forms of radioactive decay including Uranium 238-Lead 206 (4.5 billion year half life), Uranium 235-Lead 207 (704 million), Thorium 232-Lead 208 (14 billion), Rubidium 87-Strontium 87 (48.8 billion), and Potassium 40-Argon 40 (1.3 billion). All of these tests are very robust and have very tight error bars.

Then, if we look at the living world of the present, again we find no inter-mediates between living kinds.

Every species in existence is an intermediate. All species will follow what came before and will be replaced by what precedes them. That is a very elementary concept. Good examples are the many breeds of dogs that have been produced through selective pressures provided by humans. Can these breeds still reproduce? Sure, for the time being anyway. If you keep breeds separated for a long enough time genetic drift will generally make them unable to interbreed.

Living creatures prove that kinds do not change no matter how long the time span. For example, using the evolutionist's supposed ages (later I will talk a bit on this particular issue as well), there is a dragon-fly species still with us after sixty-million years. The Australian lung-fish should have evolution in its blood, but it has not changed in 220 million years. Spiders remain unchanged after 300 million years. Cockroaches and silverfish unchanged in 350 million years. "Turtles have been turtles for 250 million years of evolutionary time.

All that means is these few species the author cherry picked have not mutated significantly in the amount of time chosen. There is nothing in the workings of evolution that would indicate change MUST occur. It does tend to occur as seen from the fact that the dragonfly, lung-fish, spiders, and turtles evolved from prokaryotic cyanobacteria over the course of three billion years. Additional many other species were mutating into forms that were more appropriate for the changing ecological niches that ebb and flow with climatic changes and with the ever changing balance with other species. However with any system it should not be surprising if a few components/species remain viable and near optimal for their particular niche or their niche has not been subjected to pressures for a relatively lengthy period of time.

Turtles have an incredible skeleton. They live inside boxes; and their girdles are inside the rib cage. That should mean a lot of evolving. We should find millions of quarter-turtles, then half-turtles, and so on. But we don't. The very first turtles were perfect turtles. There is no fossil of something pre-turtle, nearly-turtle. "The hard fact is that every kind of creature living today which appears in the fossil record, appears there in form similar to its present form.

He is cherry picking the data again. The entire fossil record is a collection of simpler forms followed by small mutations over vast time spans. The first fish sans fins were followed by fish with first very subtle fins followed by more complex fins, then by fins that doubled as legs, then true legs, etc. This is evidenced by the mutations evidenced by Eusthenopteron, Panderichthys, Ticktaalik, Ichthyostega, and Acanthostega over the roughly 25 million year time span from 380-365mya.

This was dramatically confirmed by the Coelacanth fish. This fish, through one of its relatives, was credited as being the ancestor of amphibians, a vigorous evolutor. It was regarded as extinct for seventy million years. But in 1939, a fisherman hauled up a Coelacanth very much alive. To an evolutionist, this was just as upsetting as if a dinosaur had walked up the street. Since then, several more living Coelacanths have been caught, all of them exactly as they were when the last Coelacanth fossil was laid down seventy million mythical years ago."

This was not upsetting at all to evolutionists. In fact quite the opposite was the case. This was a very exciting finding for evolutionists. Again there is nothing within the workings of evolution and natural selection that precludes well adapted species from continuing for millions of years. Furthermore because this living fossil in the form of Coelacanth is so readily available morphological, bio-behavioral, and genetic studies can and have greatly enhanced our understanding of evolution.

Then there is another interesting law of science called The Second Law of Thermodynamics. ... "It would hardly be possible to conceive of two more opposite principles than this principle of entropy (mass-energy loss) and the principle of evolution. Each is precisely the converse of the other. (Henry M. Morris, The Twilight of Evolution., p.35).

This is a VERY old and worn out argument against evolution. The earth is not a closed system. Entropy works when you have a finite amount of energy in a system that is sealed off from all outside inputs. The earth has had a constant supply of external energy for the last 4.6 billion years in the form of the sun. It is very analogous to the continued creation of complexity in a car factory. If you close and lock the doors on the factory then yes things will begin to decay and nothing will ever come out the doors in the way of products. However, if you continually provide electricity, raw materials, and food for the workers then complex systems will be generated. It is quite possible that entropy will eventually lead to the darkening and dissipating of the matter in the universe over many trillions of years. However the big bang infused all of the matter in the universe including what is included in the stars with massive amounts of energy. Complexity can increase in the local subsystems around stars because there is a massive energy imbalance between the star and the surrounding matter.

Evolutionists will say that different layers of rock formations will show different periods of the evolutionary process, in other words, the simple becoming more complex as you get closer to the surface of the rock formations. This sounds very good and fine except that fossil remains don't always appear in that order. In fact, fossils are found in all kinds of order contrary to the evolutionary ladder. Many caves and canyons that appear to be millions of years old can indeed have been formed over a very short period of time. A simple example. Some years ago a volcanic mountain blew up and left a huge deep gorge that looked like a prehistoric canyon. Of course it wasn't as it had just been formed. So things are not always as they appear.

Small differences in a local area are taken into account by paleogeologists and paleontologists. Taking a very small difference in a localized area does not negate the findings that are rigorously compared across the planet. Also see my comments on radiometric dating above. The various forms of radiometric, stratigraphic, and paleomagnetic data fit very tightly together and provide an incredibly robust picture of the ages of the many and varied fossil finds.

There's no question that genes determine what a foetus is and what it will grow into. Here also manipulation plays a big part. We know that we can develop better breeds of cows, flowers, etc. But still a cow is always a cow; a flower is always a flower, etc. We may be able to change the colour and the size of something but the specie itself always remains true to its own kind. So here once again evolution falls flat.

That is over a VERY short period of time. Selective breeding has only been around for thousands of years whereas evolution works over hundreds of millions of years. The difference is so many orders of magnitude apart that the author's comparison falls flat. As I mentioned above, if you keep the breeds completely separated for a long enough period of time the differences will generally continue to build until interbreeding cannot occur.

So the improvements of the spontaneous type (just going back to the Second Law of Thermodynamics for one minute) hypothesised by the devotees of the current theory of evolution who suggests that cosmic radiation caused genetic changes which resulted in a higher order of off-spring survivability than the parent possessed, and also a change in the genetic makeup have not been found to support that theory.

This is only one very small cause of genetic change. There is massive amount of evidence that shows genetic changes are incredibly common and most of these changes happen because of transcription errors that randomly/accidently occur when genes are replicated within each organism. The fact that this has been happening for hundreds of millions of years is evidenced by the "junk" DNA found in every organism. Most changes that occur randomly are neither beneficial nor nefarious. Thus there are no selection pressures that would eliminate organisms that carry these random mutations.

In simple words, scientists may be able to work with genetic engineering and indeed have made wondrous advances, but that's not creating life, it's simply meddling with life that already exists. Even cloning is not creating life but is simply taking from already existing life.

This argument is what is called ignoratio elenchi or a red herring. While it is true that current genetic engineering is only altering current life forms this has nothing to do with the mechanisms that drive evolutionary change necessarily.

Because of all the millions of creatures that exist on the earth, only humans think in terms of logic, good and evil, can invent incredible devices and machinery, understands and is in a constant learning process and development, etc.

Another red herring and he is also begging the question. He is assuming that there must be an intelligent designer without providing a rationale for why that is so. Self organization and increases in complexity driven solely by the laws of physics are observed in the lab and throughout the universe on a regular basis. One example is the creation of new stellar and associated planetary systems from the remnants of previous systems.

The evolutionists say that we are related to the apes. Yet we are separated by a gulf so wide that it seems to defy all logic.

The genetic differences between Homo sapiens and the various other hominids are actually very small with our genetic code being comfortably over 95% identical. We actually share a tremendous amount of DNA with all other living organisms including things like pine trees and fruit flies.

The evidence for evolution is immense and volumes of data are added each year that provide additional support. There is no theory that fits the massive amounts of evidence better than evolution while the theory of evolution becomes more robust with every passing discovery.

Steps toward the formation of RNA

2009-09-27T22:05:00.000-07:00

A recent article in Nature reports another possibility in the steps toward the formation of RNA. In short science is slowly closing in on the pathways that could have led to the first replicating polymers and then to the first cells. All of the answers are not available and we will probably never know exactly how the first life formed but some of the plausible pathways are being discovered.

Nature 459, 239-242 (14 May 2009)
Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions

Matthew W. Powner, Béatrice Gerland & John D. Sutherland

Abstract

At some stage in the origin of life, an informational polymer must have arisen by purely chemical means. According to one version of the 'RNA world' hypothesis this polymer was RNA, but attempts to provide experimental support for this have failed. In particular, although there has been some success demonstrating that 'activated' ribonucleotides can polymerize to form RNA, it is far from obvious how such ribonucleotides could have formed from their constituent parts (ribose and nucleobases). Ribose is difficult to form selectively, and the addition of nucleobases to ribose is inefficient in the case of purines and does not occur at all in the case of the canonical pyrimidines. Here we show that activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides can be formed in a short sequence that bypasses free ribose and the nucleobases, and instead proceeds through arabinose amino-oxazoline and anhydronucleoside intermediates. The starting materials for the synthesis—cyanamide, cyanoacetylene, glycolaldehyde, glyceraldehyde and inorganic phosphate—are plausible prebiotic feedstock molecules, and the conditions of the synthesis are consistent with potential early-Earth geochemical models. Although inorganic phosphate is only incorporated into the nucleotides at a late stage of the sequence, its presence from the start is essential as it controls three reactions in the earlier stages by acting as a general acid/base catalyst, a nucleophilic catalyst, a pH buffer and a chemical buffer. For prebiotic reaction sequences, our results highlight the importance of working with mixed chemical systems in which reactants for a particular reaction step can also control other steps.