Re: A Question for the Board

jwblsu@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Reading through many of the posts here, it is clear that many of you
are very intelligent and well-schooled in varying areas of scientific
discipline. I have something to say, and something to ask, and each
will no doubt cause a certain amount of disagreement. What I propose
is for everyone to limit their responses, and rebuttals, to one
paragraph of a few lines or less. ... snip..

It does help when others from time to time tidy up with reasonable
snipping of blocks of text. Your suggested limit is a bit rude,
however.
How the hell are we to get PoTM's if you won't let us try?

So here it is:

We are not that intelligent. As human beings we are just not smart
enough to answer many of life's toughest questions. Imagine that you
decided to create a universe right now. Where would you even start?
It boggles the mind. It's a non-starter.

It seems that we have done fairly well. Physics, philosophy,
literature,
music, mathematics and even the manifestation of religion. Consider
the contents of a good local library - probably as much knowledge as
you will ever be able to handle personally, but within the academic
realm that is just the beginning. You may find you are "boggled", but
many others are not. Visit a good university library (or two), plus
some
good departmental libraries and browse the stacks to really get a
feeling for how boggled your mind should be. (I remember well the
first time I went into a medical library. Rather than any variety to
what
was in the shelves, they were filled with identically bound volumes of
various journals from top to bottom.)

Now, your key suggestion above is that we are not able to answer
"life's toughest questions", but which ones are those? We seem to
have good ideas about the answers for many things, and if you
accept such things as evolution as I do (that it is a "fact"), then
there are huge amounts of things which we are in fact discovering
but that in no way limits us from understanding the "tough" question.

I'd say we do understand many of them.

When did you last read the 1953 Nature paper on DNA by Crick and
Watson? Read that and consider the then knowledge base of the
world and what various researchers were trying to get their minds
around. Try to have that frame of mind when you read the paper, and
see if you can capture how another researcher at the time would have
experienced reading that paper. There are lots of other steps in the
history of science to do this for as well - such as Einstein's work -
but
the Watson and Crick paper is simple and direct enough to grasp,
even for the easily boggled.

http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/watsoncrick.pdf


This tells me that we are ridiculously tiny both in terms of physical
size and intelligence relative to the rest of the universe. This also
tells me that IF there were a being which created the universe, it is
so much more sophisticated in terms of intelligence than we are, that
we can't even begin to imagine the difference.

I agree. A being who created the universe is bigger than us, and
we would have some trouble in understanding the scale of difference.

Now if there is no such being, where does you whole argument go?

If the universe exists without your "big being" doing it somehow, then
we are quite well on the path to understanding the steps in how the
stars were formed, how the elements kept increasing in size through
their passages through the lives of forgotten stars, how this system
of planets formed, and how life on this planet has evolved. We know
this through a number of fields of science, and in all of them there
are things we don't know but I would never say those are impossible
for us to know. We are, on the scale of things, able to understand
things both much smaller than ourselves and also things that are
on a very much larger scale. While we may not be able to imagine
the scope of the future with any certainty, we are able to make some
prediction and estimation, and we do have the ability to imagine. The
past is both easier to grasp in that we know it as "fact", having
already
happened, but also harder in that defining some of the detail of what
has happened when we have no record is conjectural.


1. Science is a set of methods designed to enhance man's knowledge

Science is a more than a "set of methods", dude. By your definition
here, "speed reading" would qualify. I'll let others explain the method
to you, but remember that it concerns the general truths or laws in
nature and how to study them.

2. Man is limited

Perhaps as individuals, we are limited to what an individual can be.
As a species, we have done pretty well. Walking on the moon was
a pretty good trick for a fish, don't you think?


3. Science is limited

See above. I think _your argument_ is limited.

If science tells us the world as we know it has evolved to this point,
perhaps it has. Perhaps we are evolutionary descendents of apes.

We are apes.

Perhaps the Big Bang Theory is also true, and that the entire contents
of the universe was once as small as an acorn. What is the origin of
that "acorn"? You see we really haven't discovered the origin of
anything.

Apart from not being able to prove there was a "big banger" behind
it all, we have proved quite a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if that
acorn
has it's genome there for those who study comparative genomics to
comment on. It will no doubt have a specific story, but if it boggles
you maybe others will explain it to you in simple terms. (It evolved.)



Perhaps we have discovered that the universe's contents used
to be much more dense from a physical standpoint than they are now, but
that doesn't tell us where the contents themselves originated.

Are you talking about "us" here? - we evolved, too.

In a sense, we evolved from the same place as that acorn.


Or take it one step further. Why was there the potential for the
origins of our "acorn" to come into be? Why was there a possiblity for
there to BE a "reality" and a "universe"? Why was there a
three-dimensional space for our acorn to exist?

First, you do need to consider "time" as a dimension, especially
when trying to boggle your mind with evolution. "Deep time" is
very much mind-boggling but unless you understand that it is
a very large part of the universe as a dimension, then it is you
who are boggling yourself. I gather that several dimensions are
available for consideration apart from the three you mention and
the dimension of evolutionary time.


We are limited indeed my friends. I, for one, am not too proud to
admit that, though I'll keep searching and reading and clawing my way
for more knowledge in this life, there are certain things that only a
creator could know.

Since you put it like that, don't waste your time on science.

(signed) marc


"Siding with evolution does not really pose a serious problem
for many deeply religious people, because one can easily
accept evolution without doubting the existence of a non-material
being. On the other hand, the truly radical and still maturing view
in the neuroscience community that the mind is entirely the product
of the brain presents the ultimate challenge to nearly all religions."

Kenneth S. Kosik in Nature (vol 439, p138; 12 Jan 2006)
Neuroscience gears up for duel on the issue of brain versus deity

..

.

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