.....How would you, personally, design an experiment to falsify (or otherwise) evolution?....
Has anybody EVER done ONE experiment to synthethize a biomolecule such as hemoglobin, chlorophyll, insulin or any of the other millions of incredibly complex molecules found in living things? The only way that this can be been done, if at all, is by starting out with compounds derived from things that were once part of a living creature. Nobody has EVER assembled even ONE such molecule from a pile of non-living atomic elements. Yet evolutionsists will have us believe that what has eluded the best efforts of our most brilliant and skilled scientists has happened by itself through random, statistical, totally unknown processes over vast spans of time. To me that takes MORE faith than to believe that someone of supreme skill and understanding of atomic forces carefully DESIGNED and assembled these incredibly complex molecular structures that form the basis of all living things.
....Macro-evolution is, as you point out, a theory, but it is a testable and falsifiable theory...
Macro or micro evolution isn't really the only issue. A bigger problem for evolution is how non-living atomic matter formed itself into the incredibly complex molecular structures, such as hemoglobin or chlorophyll, for example. What came first, the complex protein skeletons that make up the DNA code carriers or the code that makes the proteins which is stored in the DNA chains. The evolutionist answer to this is always the same. Time. More time than you can grasp - timespans so vast that anything is possible, even chance combinations of random chemicals to form the stunning complexities of reproducing life.
When measuring time, a clock is used. Radioactive decay of elements is commonly used as a clock to date the rocks that make up the crust of the Earth among other things. Radio carbon dating is often used for things that were once alive. These dating methods make the ASSUMPTION (faith) that the rate of these decays have remained constant. The decay of a pile of unstable atoms, such as radium or uranium is among other things governed by certain "constants", such as Planck's constant commonly appearing in equations as h. The time it takes for half of a pile of any particular element to decay is termed its half-life. By extrapolating the present decay rate it is possible to determine the "age" of the item that contains a particular combination of elements. But this only works if the decay rate is known over the entire time period in question.
New evidence and analysis of older data indicates that these rates have been vastly higher in ages past, as much as 10 billion times higher after the "big bang" and the beginning of time. Nobody knows yet for sure the mechanism behind these fundamental changes of certain "constants". Present theories posit that it has something to do with the basic nature of space-time itself, associated with the expansion of the Universe since the "big bang".
These new data indicate that the time available to form these incredibly complex molecules by any method we can imagine was very much shorter. Instead of billions or millions of years, the age of the Earth and its rocks so dated collapses into thousands.
There is nothing as constant in the Universe as change and there is no reason that anyone has come up with that mandates that some of these "constants" that govern atomic behaviors, such as radioactive decay rates should NOT change over periods of time that are long in comparison to a human lifetime.
......If I go buy some boxed software, I automatically agree to the EULA....
Not so! That's what they would like you to believe. The "A" in EULA stands for agreement. In order to have a legally binding agreement, certain conditions apply. One of these is the unambiguous identification of the parties agreeing to something. Another is that the parties are legally qualified to make such a binding agreement.
If your kid opens that box and clicks away on the mouse, that does NOT make him/her qualified to enter a legal agreement because he/she is a minor. If YOU click the agreement there is no way to prove it really was YOU that REALLY clicked it. It could have been anybody that may have had access to your computer at any time, with or without your knowledge. That is why people whose computer was zombiefied are not held legally responsible. There is NO way to prove WHO clicked, unless there are witnesses to attest to that.
That is why in any legal agreement there is at least a signature required of BOTH parties making such an agreement. For important agreements there are especially qualified witnesses called Notaries who attest to the identity and the fact that it was those who signed the agreement.
As far as getting sued, in todays legal climate, anybody can sue you for almost anything. In the end it is what will stand up in a court of law that matters and even more whether you have lots of money that the one suing you (and their lawyers) hopes to extort out of you using our corrupt legal system .
.....What if tomorrow the whole world becomes atheist, what would God do then.....
Last time it got to that point God protected the only remaining righteous man and his family and drowned the rest in a flood. God gave the people of that time 120 years to turn from their wickedness, while Noah suffered 120 years of scoffing and ridicule from them. God promised that the next time that evil rises to such a level, the agent of destruction will be fire.
We can take the software in a computer, make a backup. The computer becomes old, obsolete or simply blows out. It "dies". Later we build a new, better computer and reload all that software back in, maybe doing some upgrades here and there at the same time. The new computer contains all the basic "personality" of the old one minus the bugs and glitches and the new hardware runs that software much better.
Your God is too small! Why should it not be possible for an omnipotent God to do a daily backup of you, an image of the sum total of your being that includes your mind/soul as well as all the DNA codes for your body? Why should He then be incapable of reconstructing all of that at some other time and place and make improvements, such as eliminate the mortality bug? Why then should He not be able to confront the newly "resurrected" you and ask you some pointed questions about how you conducted your affairs while you were still executing in that old mortal hardware, your earthly body?
The Bible speaks of this in terms of "books" being opened for judgment and other images that people of the time that was written could understand. Jesus said that every person will have to give and account of every word spoken. We are told of new immortal bodies, the new hardware if you will, that our persons will be in, having access to other space and time dimensions. Some scientists scribble abstract mathematical equations about 10 dimensional strings today, but we really cannot imagine that sort of thing. Because we cannot UNDERSTAND such things right now, we are asked to BELIEVE what God has said. We are told that someday we WILL understand. Those who don't want to believe scoff and ridicule all this of course.
Everything and more that we can do with computers, God can do with humans.
.....I see how you should pay yearly for continual virus definitions and things like that....
Why? Should MS not make a decently secure OS so that users don't need to spend additional money for a system reasonably secure at least against attacks that don't involve user stupidity? The Mac OSX does much better in that regard. Windows systems can be messed up by the simple act of connecting them to the Internet without a good firewall. A Mac, as it comes out of the box is not likely to be messed up if it is connected to the internet even without a firewall, even though a firewall is a good idea just on principle. No Mac user needs to spend extra money for security. Still no computer, Mac included can be made secure against user stupidity, especially if said user has administrator rights.
I generally agree with you, but turbo tax is a bad example. It is not their fault that your friends in Congress continually fiddle with the tax code. The same goes for anti-virus updates. If the criminals that write and release viruses would cease doing this, then such updates would no longer be needed. On the other hand, programs like MS Office can be much longer lived because for most people, office procedures and requirements change very little. A 1995 version of Excel can still do most things that todays businesses might do.
I agree that not only computer stuff was better built in the past. Several modern microwave ovens with modern electronic bells and whistles of ours and friends have died, but the big old Sears one with a simple mechanical dial and two buttons that we've had since 1977 still works just fine. Stuff can be made to last, but if nothing ever breaks or becomes obsolete, many would be unemployed.
......This is great news for OpenOffice and other open source applications.....
It is also good news for Apple because they sell much of their hardware because they include very good software with it. Unlike MS and other software makers, they make their money on hardware and therefore do not have a big incentive to make subscription rental software. So if MS and others goes to a rental only model, anybody who'd rather own their software may go with Apple.
If you buy a software CD box in a store, you OWN that software and can use it as long as you can find some hardware that will run it. What is printed on the box or inside somewhere is totally irrelevant. I can still run MS Word 5.1 on my ancient as well as my most modern Mac, whether Mr. Gates likes that or not. Of course I did buy a copy of Office for OSX, but sometimes still use my old Mac for simple tasks because it is now in my workshop instead of the home office.
I suppose I could have said that everybody has a world view or life philosphy. One of the definitions that Webster gives for religion is: "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith". Atheism is a religion, since it is built upon the BELIEF that there is no God. Animals do not exhibit evidence of faith. I also did say that selfishness beyond the survival instinct is a form of worship.
.....Grab him by the short and curlies and put him in front of me.....
Suppose that He did appear for you. Would like that or would you prefer that things stay the way they are right now? If He did show up, what do you think He might say to you?
.....had to make conscious beings in physical form because there was simply no other way to make a self aware entity without storing the information physically.....
You are making the assumption here that physical forms have to be limited to the ones we are familiar with and be confined to our time-space universe. We humans tend to want to put God into a box, but we cannot construct a box big enough. As three dimensional beings, limited to a one dimensional, unidirectional arrow of time it is very difficult to think outside of the box we are in. We can have a bit easier time imagining a two dimensional world and try to think how a three dimesional entity like us might appear to flatlanders limited to a single plane. Our three dimensional capabilites would appear supernatural to them. As a three dimensional being, for example, you could materialize almost instantaneously in any part of their two dimensional existence.
To a higher dimensional entity, information can be stored physically also, but in a physicality we cannot even imagine. To us time and information are sequential, but in higher dimensions of time that limitation may not exist. The Bible tells us that God inhabits eternity. What does that mean? We don't really know because even imagining eternity is difficult for us. I think that scientists of all people ought to be the most humble of the human race because they are dealing at the edge of the unknown and every discovery or answer raises so many more questions to which we as yet have no answer.
....We know that information is stored in certain parts of the brain. You destroy certain lobes, and you may destroy one's memories of certain events, etc.....
We really don't know whether it is the information that is located in certain areas of if that area just is the execution unit for that type of data. The memory of a computer may be perfectly OK, but some part of the CPU could be defective. The builder of the computer or someone very familiar with it could likely tell where the problem lies. Since we did not build the brain and don't have direct access to the One who did, we are at a great disadvantage here.
NDE are of course contoversial and not considered "scientific" by many, but it is interesting how these accounts are so similar for people of many different backgrounds and cultures.
(....unless, maybe you're a mac person!....) HA! I do LIKE Macs, but I love my wife and there is a big difference. Philosphers have argued for ages about the nature of love and have never gotten anywhere and I suspect neither will we here. That said, I prefer to think that humans do have free choices and get to enjoy or suffer the consequences of those. I don't think we are pre-programmed the way computers are. I could get into religious arguments here about justice and judgment, but this is not the place for that.
.....has had no impact at all on the theory of God.....
The problem is that no one has done an experiment to verifiy or refute the existence of God. Plenty of measurements have been done on the speed of light and the quantized redshift. Question to ask youself: What would you like better, if science irrefutebly proved the existence of God or if science without a shadow of doubt DISproved His existence?
I never said that software was apart from physics, but that some of the laws of physics don't apply to software or information. Software is has no mass. Weighing a disk with or without information stored thereon will not make a difference one way or another. Because it has no mass it can travel at the rate of its carrying medium which can be at the speed of light. Software in and of itself is not subject to entropy, only the physical storage systems subject to entropy can corrupt the software. Information systems engineer take great care to ensure that such entropy errors and noise do NOT corrupt the data and also make careful backups. The same software can be in many places simultaneously. It is not possible to make PERFECT IDENTICAL copies of any physical thing, but a perfect copies of software can and are being made by the millions every day, such that nobody can tell one copy from another. All these things make software different than physical matter and energy.
There is NO way you tell the binary state of a gate unless you have some sort of measuring device. This measuring device or a huge number of them then becomes the i/o system. The computer has to be 1)loaded with the software and it has to have 2) power and 3) the hardware has to be in working conditon. Probing the brain can tell you things about how the human software works also, but using the i/o devices built into the human body makes that much easier. You can examine the software only as long as it is executing. If you don't have the source code to software, it becomes very difficult although not impossible to determine accurately what it does. We don't have the source code to the human OS and so it is very hard to figure out how it works.
.....but it doesn't explain how people's personality is so easily manipulated.....
The running of software in a computer is also affected by damage or stimulation to the hardware. In computers even minor damage, such as a defective memory location can cause the whole computer to crash. Because the brain has a much more redundant architecture, the damage to a small part of the brain can often be compensated for. So, yes, messing with the hardware affects the excution of the software in both computers and humans.
....I have never been moved to worship, prayer, or religion, does that mean I am not human, or pehaps that I simply lack a soul?.....
Whatever you consider supremely important, above all else, is the object of worship. For many today that is self. Selfishness, above and beyond mere survival instinct is an activity and mindset equivalent to religion and becomes self-worship. Everybody considers some things supremely important and that then becomes an object of worship. Worship is not confined to falling down before an idol or "god". To many in our society money, wealth and power over others is the measure of success and can be an object of worship. Everybody "worships" something, even if that worship doesn't fit what is considered to be traditional worship.
....What reason do we have to doubt that our "software" is not equally as deterministic?....
That is not something we know for sure at this point and theologians have debated this for centuries. However, the fact that we have the ability to love or not cannot be a deterministic act, because if it were, it wouldn't be love. If your wife/husband or significant other tells you that she/he loves you, it has an entirely different effect on you than if your computer displayed a message of "love" for you.
(....but I see no reason to believe that it is not a part of the body, that it will go on after death....)
Software as such isn't really part of a computer either. I can have two identical computer boxes, one with Windows and the other with Linux. It is ONLY the software that makes them different. If one of the boxes "dies" say due to a blown power supply, I can get another, perhaps even better and/or faster box and re-load all the backed up software and have a computer that works better than the one that burned. While I am reloading the software, I might upgrade some of that also, to take advantage of the capabilities of the better hardware.
In humans, not only is the software (mind or personality) different in each person, but the hardware, the body is also determined by software codes stored in the DNA molecules. So in a sense, even our hardware is determined by software. Where the dividing line lies between the mind/soul and the body is still pretty much a mystery. There are indications that it MAY be somewhere in the brain, but nobody really knows yet for sure. Accounts of NDE's (near death experiences) indicate that mind or consciousness can function outside of and apart of the body.
If we have the abilty to store and transmit software for computers, why would it be so unreasonable to believe that our Creator can have a complete backup of our "software" and at some future time re-load that into some better, immortal hardware that has also been recreated using atomic structures re-assembled by the stored DNA instruction codes? Why is the idea of a resurrection considered such an impossiblity for someone who has all the needed information to carry it out? If we, the creators of computers can resurrect a "dead' computer in a sense, why should our Creator not be able to do the same with us?
I did indeed take portions of that article and cut out certain portions of it because of its length. I have known about this and have read the original reports a long time ago, but the Worldnet article was one of the best summaries, albeit stiil quite long of these interesting discoveries.
The bottom line of all this is that there are no known laws or theories of physics that require the speed of light or related parameters to be "constants". As to why the speed of light should change, there are various theories. The one that fits the best is that, as the Universe expanded, the intrinsic properties of space-time change also and that affects atomic behavior. The electromagnetic properties of free space affect the propagation of electromagnetic energy. Space is thought to have a a certain "tension" which has been relaxing since the "Big Bang". This relaxation rate was very high at first and has decreased to what to us shortlived creatures now appears constant. Indeed over short periods of time the light speed and the atomic clocks are very constant. That's why it is possible to build useful things such as the GPS. Measuring the speed of light with atom based clocks will always yield a constant speed, because the equal clock variation. What must be done is to figure out a way to measure time based on a gravitational clock very accurately. At this time, over short intervals, we can measure time much more accurately using the atomic forces.
There IS evidence gathered and anlyzed by other scientists, who are in no way religious. Especially the quantized redshift data that is continuing to pile up and cannot be explained away by the traditional scientific dogma. It took the weight of 50 years of evidence to finally crush the "accepted" infinite speed light theory and it will likely take some time to destroy the theory of evolution also. It took a while for "reputable scientists" to accept the unreal reality of quantum physics. Fundamental upheavals in the religion of science are just as wrenching as any other fundamental shift in societal thinking.
....In other words, I don't see how what you've said is incompatible with the idea of an old universe......
It is not that the dramatic drop of the speed of light is incompatible with the age of the Universe per se, but it is incompatible with the basis upon which the assertion of the billions of years are based. To measure time, a clock of constant tick rate is needed. Any clock based on the atom has NOT had a constant tick rate and therefore cannot be used to measure time over long periods. Radioactivity is based on atomic behavior. Atomic equations contain time related dimensions, (such as Plancks "constant") whereas gravity equations do not. Therefore a clock based on gravity will not be affected by the changing speed of light and the associated atomic parameters.
....If there is a soul in there, it would have to interact with the physical body on the level of quarks or something....
There is a big assumption (faith) in that statement. It limits the existence of the soul to this time-space dimensions and the laws of physics. The physical body is analagous in certain ways to the hardware of a computer and the soul is the software. Software is not subject to some of the known laws of physics. Unlike physical things, it has no mass and can travel at the speed of light. Only the carrier is subject to the laws of entropy, but not the software itself. The same software can exist in and operate in may places at the same time. Software, not hardware determines the functions of a computer. Virtual PC and other emulators clearly demonstrate this. Minutely examining the hardware of a computer tells you nothing about its software.
In the same way, the soul, the immaterial part, loaded and resident in a physical body determines the personality, the mind if you will of a human. Exactly how and where the interaction of the soul/mind occurs in our physical bodies is still largely shrouded in mystery, although there are some tantalizing clues. Denying the existence of the soul is akin to denying the existence of the software in a computer.
.....In practice humans are really only very subtley different from other animals.....
All of the things you mentioned in your post are true. In all these things, man only differs from animals in degree. There is ONE trait of humans though, and only ONE, that distinguishes humans not in degree, but in kind. No religious activity equivalent to prayer, sacrifice or worship has ever been observed in any other species. Evolution cannot explain the incurable religiosity of humans. The energy and resources required for religious activity mitigate AGAINST survival and religions should have died out by now.
However, if it is true that we are made in the image and likeness of God, as recorded in Genesis, then it stands to reason that this part of every human is at the root of the persistent and enduring urge of humans to worship someone or something beyond ourselves. Faith spurs people to action far more than knowledge.
Up until relatively recently, most people revered science and hoped that it would solve humanity's most vexing problems. The disillusionment that this has not happened and the religion of science has not met the deep needs of people may be a reason why science has lost its luster for many. Instead, science has brought us weapon technologies that threaten the very survival of the human species.
At some point, every thinking person tries to come up with answers to deep questions of purpose and meaning. Theories that we all are statistical accidents that crawled out of the primordial goo millions of years ago are not very satisfying to an increasing number of individuals. A theory or belief in a trancendant God, such as given in the Bible gives hope and meaning to many lives. One reason that suicide rates, especially among young people is so high is the lack of hope. The belief in a mechanistic, impersonal evolutionary theory destroys hope, both for this life and beyond. If there is no hope, why go on living? If you are really only a highly evolved animal, why not behave like one?
A belief in a purposeful and loving God who is in control, in a world that that seems so out of control at times, and who ultimately has our good in mind, gives hope, both for this life and beyond. A belief in a righteous and just God, to whom we must give an account someday MAY also give an incentive to not treat others in ways we would not like to be treated ourselves.
The behavior of most people is governed largely by what they believe, not by what they know. The human creature, throughout all history and still today, all over the Earth, is incurably religious. Religion takes time and energy away from and goes against the idea of "the survival of the fittest". Those who don't "waste" effort on "religious" activities ought to have survived and religion should have died out long ago. Why do young healthy, Muslim believers blow themselves and others to smithereens BEFORE they reproduce, as the theory of evolution would suggest? The fact that religion is still such a strong, if not the strongest driver of human motivations casts serious doubt on the theory of evolution as presently taught in our schools.
.....but it is a theory, and more, it is a scientific theory...
Exactly what determines whether a theory is scientific or not?
The theory of evolution requires unfathomable lengths of time - eons... billions and billions of years.
Even with all that time, it's still hard to imagine how complex biochemicals such as hemoglobin or chlorophyll self assembled in the primordial goo. But to those of who question the process, the answer is always the same. Time. More time than you can grasp - timespans so vast that anything is possible, even chance combinations of random chemicals to form the stunning complexities of reproducing life.
Modern physics is now considering a theory that could throw into confusion virtually all of the accepted temporal paradigms of 20th-century science, including the age of the universe and the billions of years necessary for evolution. The theory is deceptively simple: The speed of light is not constant, as we've been taught since the early 1930s, but has been steadily slowing since the first instance of time. If true, virtually all aspects of traditional physics are affected, including the presumed steady state of radioactive decay used to measure geologic time.
It's an intriguing story - and like many revolutions in science, it begins with observations that just don't fit currently accepted scientific dogma.
Early in 1979, an Australian undergraduate student named Barry Setterfield, thought it would be interesting to chart all of the measurements of the speed of light since a Dutch astronomer named Olaf Roemer first measured light speed in the late 17th century. Setterfield acquired data on over 163 measurements using 16 different methods over 300 years.
The early measurements typically tracked the eclipses of the moons of Jupiter when the planet was near the Earth and compared it with observations when then planet was farther away. These observations were standard, simple and repeatable, and have been measured by astronomers since the invention of the telescope. These are demonstrated to astronomy students even today. The early astronomers kept meticulous notes and sketches, many of which are still available.
Setterfield expected to see the recorded speeds grouped around the accepted value for light speed, roughly 299,792 kilometers/second. In simple terms, half of the historic measurements should have been higher and half should be lower.
What he found defied belief: The derived light speeds from the early measurements were significantly faster than today. Even more intriguing, the older the observation, the faster the speed of light. It would be easy to dismiss two relatively unknown researchers if theirs were the only voices in this wilderness and the historic data was the only anomaly. They are not. Forefront researchers from Russia, Australia, Great Britain and the United States have published papers in prestigious journals questioning the constancy of the speed of light.
Within the last 24 months, Dr. Joao Magueijo, a physicist at Imperial College in London, Dr. John Barrow of Cambridge, Dr. Andy Albrecht of the University of California at Davis and Dr. John Moffat of the University of Toronto have all published work advocating their belief that light speed was much higher - as much as 10 to the 10th power faster - in the early stages of the "Big Bang" than it is today. Dr. Magueijo recently stated that the debate should not be why and how could the speed of light could vary, but what combination of irrefutable theories demands that it be constant at all.
There are at least four other major observed anomalies consistent with a slowing speed of light:
1. quantized red-shift observations from other galaxies, 2. measured changes in atomic masses over time, 3. measured changes in Planck's Constant over time, 4. and differences between time as measured by the atomic clock, and time as measured by the orbits of the planets in our solar system.
....so I wrote a script that did the job for me....
Would your mother or uncle have been able to write *any* kind of script to get their computer to do something that was not already programmed into it? On a Mac or Windows they could buy a program to do the job and not have to learn a scripting language, write a script and debug and test it. Linux is an ideal OS for the/. crowd, but not for mom and pop users.
......for the freedom to modify and fix problems......
That is true for geeks who KNOW how to fix problems. Ordinary non-geek users get an obtuse error message and don't have any central place to turn for help. Until ALL, not just some or many, Linux programs can be installed with a single drag or click of the mouse, it will be a very powerful, but for geek only OS. Until a user can buy as piece of hardware and get proper software to run it without first having to do an exaustive Google search for one that will work with Linux, ordinary users will stick with Windows or Macs. For those systems Uncle Joe can go to Circuit City or similar outlet and get ANY camera, printer, scanner or what have you, look at the box and if the word Windows or Mac is on there somewhere, take it home and get it working. Until all versions Linux become binary compatible and those boxes include the name Linux along with the names Windows and Mac, Linux will NEVER, EVER become mainstream for plain ordinary users. It will remain for the type of users that are part of the/. community only.
Slashdot Mirror
.....We took provable assertions.....
How do you prove the assertions that the radio active decay rate has always been constant? That is the assertion all radioactivity dating is based on.
.....How would you, personally, design an experiment to falsify (or otherwise) evolution?....
Has anybody EVER done ONE experiment to synthethize a biomolecule such as hemoglobin, chlorophyll, insulin or any of the other millions of incredibly complex molecules found in living things? The only way that this can be been done, if at all, is by starting out with compounds derived from things that were once part of a living creature. Nobody has EVER assembled even ONE such molecule from a pile of non-living atomic elements. Yet evolutionsists will have us believe that what has eluded the best efforts of our most brilliant and skilled scientists has happened by itself through random, statistical, totally unknown processes over vast spans of time. To me that takes MORE faith than to believe that someone of supreme skill and understanding of atomic forces carefully DESIGNED and assembled these incredibly complex molecular structures that form the basis of all living things.
....Macro-evolution is, as you point out, a theory, but it is a testable and falsifiable theory...
Macro or micro evolution isn't really the only issue. A bigger problem for evolution is how non-living atomic matter formed itself into the incredibly complex molecular structures, such as hemoglobin or chlorophyll, for example. What came first, the complex protein skeletons that make up the DNA code carriers or the code that makes the proteins which is stored in the DNA chains. The evolutionist answer to this is always the same. Time. More time than you can grasp - timespans so vast that anything is possible, even chance combinations of random chemicals to form the stunning complexities of reproducing life.
When measuring time, a clock is used. Radioactive decay of elements is commonly used as a clock to date the rocks that make up the crust of the Earth among other things. Radio carbon dating is often used for things that were once alive. These dating methods make the ASSUMPTION (faith) that the rate of these decays have remained constant. The decay of a pile of unstable atoms, such as radium or uranium is among other things governed by certain "constants", such as Planck's constant commonly appearing in equations as h. The time it takes for half of a pile of any particular element to decay is termed its half-life. By extrapolating the present decay rate it is possible to determine the "age" of the item that contains a particular combination of elements. But this only works if the decay rate is known over the entire time period in question.
New evidence and analysis of older data indicates that these rates have been vastly higher in ages past, as much as 10 billion times higher after the "big bang" and the beginning of time. Nobody knows yet for sure the mechanism behind these fundamental changes of certain "constants". Present theories posit that it has something to do with the basic nature of space-time itself, associated with the expansion of the Universe since the "big bang".
These new data indicate that the time available to form these incredibly complex molecules by any method we can imagine was very much shorter. Instead of billions or millions of years, the age of the Earth and its rocks so dated collapses into thousands.
There is nothing as constant in the Universe as change and there is no reason that anyone has come up with that mandates that some of these "constants" that govern atomic behaviors, such as radioactive decay rates should NOT change over periods of time that are long in comparison to a human lifetime.
......If I go buy some boxed software, I automatically agree to the EULA....
Not so! That's what they would like you to believe. The "A" in EULA stands for agreement. In order to have a legally binding agreement, certain conditions apply. One of these is the unambiguous identification of the parties agreeing to something. Another is that the parties are legally qualified to make such a binding agreement.
If your kid opens that box and clicks away on the mouse, that does NOT make him/her qualified to enter a legal agreement because he/she is a minor. If YOU click the agreement there is no way to prove it really was YOU that REALLY clicked it. It could have been anybody that may have had access to your computer at any time, with or without your knowledge. That is why people whose computer was zombiefied are not held legally responsible. There is NO way to prove WHO clicked, unless there are witnesses to attest to that.
That is why in any legal agreement there is at least a signature required of BOTH parties making such an agreement. For important agreements there are especially qualified witnesses called Notaries who attest to the identity and the fact that it was those who signed the agreement.
As far as getting sued, in todays legal climate, anybody can sue you for almost anything. In the end it is what will stand up in a court of law that matters and even more whether you have lots of money that the one suing you (and their lawyers) hopes to extort out of you using our corrupt legal system .
.....What if tomorrow the whole world becomes atheist, what would God do then.....
Last time it got to that point God protected the only remaining righteous man and his family and drowned the rest in a flood. God gave the people of that time 120 years to turn from their wickedness, while Noah suffered 120 years of scoffing and ridicule from them. God promised that the next time that evil rises to such a level, the agent of destruction will be fire.
We can take the software in a computer, make a backup. The computer becomes old, obsolete or simply blows out. It "dies". Later we build a new, better computer and reload all that software back in, maybe doing some upgrades here and there at the same time. The new computer contains all the basic "personality" of the old one minus the bugs and glitches and the new hardware runs that software much better.
Your God is too small! Why should it not be possible for an omnipotent God to do a daily backup of you, an image of the sum total of your being that includes your mind/soul as well as all the DNA codes for your body? Why should He then be incapable of reconstructing all of that at some other time and place and make improvements, such as eliminate the mortality bug? Why then should He not be able to confront the newly "resurrected" you and ask you some pointed questions about how you conducted your affairs while you were still executing in that old mortal hardware, your earthly body?
The Bible speaks of this in terms of "books" being opened for judgment and other images that people of the time that was written could understand. Jesus said that every person will have to give and account of every word spoken. We are told of new immortal bodies, the new hardware if you will, that our persons will be in, having access to other space and time dimensions. Some scientists scribble abstract mathematical equations about 10 dimensional strings today, but we really cannot imagine that sort of thing. Because we cannot UNDERSTAND such things right now, we are asked to BELIEVE what God has said. We are told that someday we WILL understand. Those who don't want to believe scoff and ridicule all this of course.
Everything and more that we can do with computers, God can do with humans.
.....I see how you should pay yearly for continual virus definitions and things like that....
Why? Should MS not make a decently secure OS so that users don't need to spend additional money for a system reasonably secure at least against attacks that don't involve user stupidity? The Mac OSX does much better in that regard. Windows systems can be messed up by the simple act of connecting them to the Internet without a good firewall. A Mac, as it comes out of the box is not likely to be messed up if it is connected to the internet even without a firewall, even though a firewall is a good idea just on principle. No Mac user needs to spend extra money for security. Still no computer, Mac included can be made secure against user stupidity, especially if said user has administrator rights.
....(turbo tax anyone?)...
I generally agree with you, but turbo tax is a bad example. It is not their fault that your friends in Congress continually fiddle with the tax code. The same goes for anti-virus updates. If the criminals that write and release viruses would cease doing this, then such updates would no longer be needed. On the other hand, programs like MS Office can be much longer lived because for most people, office procedures and requirements change very little. A 1995 version of Excel can still do most things that todays businesses might do.
I agree that not only computer stuff was better built in the past. Several modern microwave ovens with modern electronic bells and whistles of ours and friends have died, but the big old Sears one with a simple mechanical dial and two buttons that we've had since 1977 still works just fine. Stuff can be made to last, but if nothing ever breaks or becomes obsolete, many would be unemployed.
......This is great news for OpenOffice and other open source applications.....
It is also good news for Apple because they sell much of their hardware because they include very good software with it. Unlike MS and other software makers, they make their money on hardware and therefore do not have a big incentive to make subscription rental software. So if MS and others goes to a rental only model, anybody who'd rather own their software may go with Apple.
If you buy a software CD box in a store, you OWN that software and can use it as long as you can find some hardware that will run it. What is printed on the box or inside somewhere is totally irrelevant. I can still run MS Word 5.1 on my ancient as well as my most modern Mac, whether Mr. Gates likes that or not. Of course I did buy a copy of Office for OSX, but sometimes still use my old Mac for simple tasks because it is now in my workshop instead of the home office.
....who do not engage in religious worship....
I suppose I could have said that everybody has a world view or life philosphy. One of the definitions that Webster gives for religion is: "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith". Atheism is a religion, since it is built upon the BELIEF that there is no God. Animals do not exhibit evidence of faith. I also did say that selfishness beyond the survival instinct is a form of worship.
.....Grab him by the short and curlies and put him in front of me.....
Suppose that He did appear for you. Would like that or would you prefer that things stay the way they are right now? If He did show up, what do you think He might say to you?
.....had to make conscious beings in physical form because there was simply no other way to make a self aware entity without storing the information physically.....
You are making the assumption here that physical forms have to be limited to the ones we are familiar with and be confined to our time-space universe. We humans tend to want to put God into a box, but we cannot construct a box big enough. As three dimensional beings, limited to a one dimensional, unidirectional arrow of time it is very difficult to think outside of the box we are in. We can have a bit easier time imagining a two dimensional world and try to think how a three dimesional entity like us might appear to flatlanders limited to a single plane. Our three dimensional capabilites would appear supernatural to them. As a three dimensional being, for example, you could materialize almost instantaneously in any part of their two dimensional existence.
To a higher dimensional entity, information can be stored physically also, but in a physicality we cannot even imagine. To us time and information are sequential, but in higher dimensions of time that limitation may not exist. The Bible tells us that God inhabits eternity. What does that mean? We don't really know because even imagining eternity is difficult for us. I think that scientists of all people ought to be the most humble of the human race because they are dealing at the edge of the unknown and every discovery or answer raises so many more questions to which we as yet have no answer.
....We know that information is stored in certain parts of the brain. You destroy certain lobes, and you may destroy one's memories of certain events, etc.....
We really don't know whether it is the information that is located in certain areas of if that area just is the execution unit for that type of data. The memory of a computer may be perfectly OK, but some part of the CPU could be defective. The builder of the computer or someone very familiar with it could likely tell where the problem lies. Since we did not build the brain and don't have direct access to the One who did, we are at a great disadvantage here.
NDE are of course contoversial and not considered "scientific" by many, but it is interesting how these accounts are so similar for people of many different backgrounds and cultures.
(....unless, maybe you're a mac person!....) HA! I do LIKE Macs, but I love my wife and there is a big difference. Philosphers have argued for ages about the nature of love and have never gotten anywhere and I suspect neither will we here. That said, I prefer to think that humans do have free choices and get to enjoy or suffer the consequences of those. I don't think we are pre-programmed the way computers are. I could get into religious arguments here about justice and judgment, but this is not the place for that.
.....has had no impact at all on the theory of God.....
The problem is that no one has done an experiment to verifiy or refute the existence of God. Plenty of measurements have been done on the speed of light and the quantized redshift. Question to ask youself: What would you like better, if science irrefutebly proved the existence of God or if science without a shadow of doubt DISproved His existence?
.....If software is really apart from physics....
I never said that software was apart from physics, but that some of the laws of physics don't apply to software or information. Software is has no mass. Weighing a disk with or without information stored thereon will not make a difference one way or another. Because it has no mass it can travel at the rate of its carrying medium which can be at the speed of light. Software in and of itself is not subject to entropy, only the physical storage systems subject to entropy can corrupt the software. Information systems engineer take great care to ensure that such entropy errors and noise do NOT corrupt the data and also make careful backups. The same software can be in many places simultaneously. It is not possible to make PERFECT IDENTICAL copies of any physical thing, but a perfect copies of software can and are being made by the millions every day, such that nobody can tell one copy from another. All these things make software different than physical matter and energy.
There is NO way you tell the binary state of a gate unless you have some sort of measuring device. This measuring device or a huge number of them then becomes the i/o system. The computer has to be 1)loaded with the software and it has to have 2) power and 3) the hardware has to be in working conditon. Probing the brain can tell you things about how the human software works also, but using the i/o devices built into the human body makes that much easier. You can examine the software only as long as it is executing. If you don't have the source code to software, it becomes very difficult although not impossible to determine accurately what it does. We don't have the source code to the human OS and so it is very hard to figure out how it works.
.....but it doesn't explain how people's personality is so easily manipulated.....
The running of software in a computer is also affected by damage or stimulation to the hardware. In computers even minor damage, such as a defective memory location can cause the whole computer to crash. Because the brain has a much more redundant architecture, the damage to a small part of the brain can often be compensated for. So, yes, messing with the hardware affects the excution of the software in both computers and humans.
....I have never been moved to worship, prayer, or religion, does that mean I am not human, or pehaps that I simply lack a soul?.....
Whatever you consider supremely important, above all else, is the object of worship. For many today that is self. Selfishness, above and beyond mere survival instinct is an activity and mindset equivalent to religion and becomes self-worship. Everybody considers some things supremely important and that then becomes an object of worship. Worship is not confined to falling down before an idol or "god". To many in our society money, wealth and power over others is the measure of success and can be an object of worship. Everybody "worships" something, even if that worship doesn't fit what is considered to be traditional worship.
....What reason do we have to doubt that our "software" is not equally as deterministic?....
That is not something we know for sure at this point and theologians have debated this for centuries. However, the fact that we have the ability to love or not cannot be a deterministic act, because if it were, it wouldn't be love. If your wife/husband or significant other tells you that she/he loves you, it has an entirely different effect on you than if your computer displayed a message of "love" for you.
(....but I see no reason to believe that it is not a part of the body, that it will go on after death....)
Software as such isn't really part of a computer either. I can have two identical computer boxes, one with Windows and the other with Linux. It is ONLY the software that makes them different. If one of the boxes "dies" say due to a blown power supply, I can get another, perhaps even better and/or faster box and re-load all the backed up software and have a computer that works better than the one that burned. While I am reloading the software, I might upgrade some of that also, to take advantage of the capabilities of the better hardware.
In humans, not only is the software (mind or personality) different in each person, but the hardware, the body is also determined by software codes stored in the DNA molecules. So in a sense, even our hardware is determined by software. Where the dividing line lies between the mind/soul and the body is still pretty much a mystery. There are indications that it MAY be somewhere in the brain, but nobody really knows yet for sure. Accounts of NDE's (near death experiences) indicate that mind or consciousness can function outside of and apart of the body.
If we have the abilty to store and transmit software for computers, why would it be so unreasonable to believe that our Creator can have a complete backup of our "software" and at some future time re-load that into some better, immortal hardware that has also been recreated using atomic structures re-assembled by the stored DNA instruction codes? Why is the idea of a resurrection considered such an impossiblity for someone who has all the needed information to carry it out? If we, the creators of computers can resurrect a "dead' computer in a sense, why should our Creator not be able to do the same with us?
.....way to plagiarize....
I did indeed take portions of that article and cut out certain portions of it because of its length. I have known about this and have read the original reports a long time ago, but the Worldnet article was one of the best summaries, albeit stiil quite long of these interesting discoveries.
The bottom line of all this is that there are no known laws or theories of physics that require the speed of light or related parameters to be "constants". As to why the speed of light should change, there are various theories. The one that fits the best is that, as the Universe expanded, the intrinsic properties of space-time change also and that affects atomic behavior. The electromagnetic properties of free space affect the propagation of electromagnetic energy. Space is thought to have a a certain "tension" which has been relaxing since the "Big Bang". This relaxation rate was very high at first and has decreased to what to us shortlived creatures now appears constant. Indeed over short periods of time the light speed and the atomic clocks are very constant. That's why it is possible to build useful things such as the GPS. Measuring the speed of light with atom based clocks will always yield a constant speed, because the equal clock variation. What must be done is to figure out a way to measure time based on a gravitational clock very accurately. At this time, over short intervals, we can measure time much more accurately using the atomic forces.
There IS evidence gathered and anlyzed by other scientists, who are in no way religious. Especially the quantized redshift data that is continuing to pile up and cannot be explained away by the traditional scientific dogma. It took the weight of 50 years of evidence to finally crush the "accepted" infinite speed light theory and it will likely take some time to destroy the theory of evolution also. It took a while for "reputable scientists" to accept the unreal reality of quantum physics. Fundamental upheavals in the religion of science are just as wrenching as any other fundamental shift in societal thinking.
....In other words, I don't see how what you've said is incompatible with the idea of an old universe......
It is not that the dramatic drop of the speed of light is incompatible with the age of the Universe per se, but it is incompatible with the basis upon which the assertion of the billions of years are based. To measure time, a clock of constant tick rate is needed. Any clock based on the atom has NOT had a constant tick rate and therefore cannot be used to measure time over long periods. Radioactivity is based on atomic behavior. Atomic equations contain time related dimensions, (such as Plancks "constant") whereas gravity equations do not. Therefore a clock based on gravity will not be affected by the changing speed of light and the associated atomic parameters.
....If there is a soul in there, it would have to interact with the physical body on the level of quarks or something....
There is a big assumption (faith) in that statement. It limits the existence of the soul to this time-space dimensions and the laws of physics. The physical body is analagous in certain ways to the hardware of a computer and the soul is the software. Software is not subject to some of the known laws of physics. Unlike physical things, it has no mass and can travel at the speed of light. Only the carrier is subject to the laws of entropy, but not the software itself. The same software can exist in and operate in may places at the same time. Software, not hardware determines the functions of a computer. Virtual PC and other emulators clearly demonstrate this. Minutely examining the hardware of a computer tells you nothing about its software.
In the same way, the soul, the immaterial part, loaded and resident in a physical body determines the personality, the mind if you will of a human. Exactly how and where the interaction of the soul/mind occurs in our physical bodies is still largely shrouded in mystery, although there are some tantalizing clues. Denying the existence of the soul is akin to denying the existence of the software in a computer.
.....In practice humans are really only very subtley different from other animals.....
All of the things you mentioned in your post are true. In all these things, man only differs from animals in degree. There is ONE trait of humans though, and only ONE, that distinguishes humans not in degree, but in kind. No religious activity equivalent to prayer, sacrifice or worship has ever been observed in any other species. Evolution cannot explain the incurable religiosity of humans. The energy and resources required for religious activity mitigate AGAINST survival and religions should have died out by now.
However, if it is true that we are made in the image and likeness of God, as recorded in Genesis, then it stands to reason that this part of every human is at the root of the persistent and enduring urge of humans to worship someone or something beyond ourselves. Faith spurs people to action far more than knowledge.
.....People become scared of science....
Up until relatively recently, most people revered science and hoped that it would solve humanity's most vexing problems. The disillusionment that this has not happened and the religion of science has not met the deep needs of people may be a reason why science has lost its luster for many. Instead, science has brought us weapon technologies that threaten the very survival of the human species.
At some point, every thinking person tries to come up with answers to deep questions of purpose and meaning. Theories that we all are statistical accidents that crawled out of the primordial goo millions of years ago are not very satisfying to an increasing number of individuals. A theory or belief in a trancendant God, such as given in the Bible gives hope and meaning to many lives. One reason that suicide rates, especially among young people is so high is the lack of hope. The belief in a mechanistic, impersonal evolutionary theory destroys hope, both for this life and beyond. If there is no hope, why go on living? If you are really only a highly evolved animal, why not behave like one?
A belief in a purposeful and loving God who is in control, in a world that that seems so out of control at times, and who ultimately has our good in mind, gives hope, both for this life and beyond. A belief in a righteous and just God, to whom we must give an account someday MAY also give an incentive to not treat others in ways we would not like to be treated ourselves.
The behavior of most people is governed largely by what they believe, not by what they know. The human creature, throughout all history and still today, all over the Earth, is incurably religious. Religion takes time and energy away from and goes against the idea of "the survival of the fittest". Those who don't "waste" effort on "religious" activities ought to have survived and religion should have died out long ago. Why do young healthy, Muslim believers blow themselves and others to smithereens BEFORE they reproduce, as the theory of evolution would suggest?
The fact that religion is still such a strong, if not the strongest driver of human motivations casts serious doubt on the theory of evolution as presently taught in our schools.
.....but it is a theory, and more, it is a scientific theory...
... billions and billions of years.
/second. In simple terms, half of the historic measurements should have been higher and half should be lower.
Exactly what determines whether a theory is scientific or not?
The theory of evolution requires unfathomable lengths of time - eons
Even with all that time, it's still hard to imagine how complex biochemicals such as hemoglobin or chlorophyll self assembled in the primordial goo. But to those of who question the process, the answer is always the same. Time. More time than you can grasp - timespans so vast that anything is possible, even chance combinations of random chemicals to form the stunning complexities of reproducing life.
Modern physics is now considering a theory that could throw into confusion virtually all of the accepted temporal paradigms of 20th-century science, including the age of the universe and the billions of years necessary for evolution. The theory is deceptively simple: The speed of light is not constant, as we've been taught since the early 1930s, but has been steadily slowing since the first instance of time. If true, virtually all aspects of traditional physics are affected, including the presumed steady state of radioactive decay used to measure geologic time.
It's an intriguing story - and like many revolutions in science, it begins with observations that just don't fit currently accepted scientific dogma.
Early in 1979, an Australian undergraduate student named Barry Setterfield, thought it would be interesting to chart all of the measurements of the speed of light since a Dutch astronomer named Olaf Roemer first measured light speed in the late 17th century. Setterfield acquired data on over 163 measurements using 16 different methods over 300 years.
The early measurements typically tracked the eclipses of the moons of Jupiter when the planet was near the Earth and compared it with observations when then planet was farther away. These observations were standard, simple and repeatable, and have been measured by astronomers since the invention of the telescope. These are demonstrated to astronomy students even today. The early astronomers kept meticulous notes and sketches, many of which are still available.
Setterfield expected to see the recorded speeds grouped around the accepted value for light speed, roughly 299,792 kilometers
What he found defied belief: The derived light speeds from the early measurements were significantly faster than today. Even more intriguing, the older the observation, the faster the speed of light. It would be easy to dismiss two relatively unknown researchers if theirs were the only voices in this wilderness and the historic data was the only anomaly. They are not. Forefront researchers from Russia, Australia, Great Britain and the United States have published papers in prestigious journals questioning the constancy of the speed of light.
Within the last 24 months, Dr. Joao Magueijo, a physicist at Imperial College in London, Dr. John Barrow of Cambridge, Dr. Andy Albrecht of the University of California at Davis and Dr. John Moffat of the University of Toronto have all published work advocating their belief that light speed was much higher - as much as 10 to the 10th power faster - in the early stages of the "Big Bang" than it is today. Dr. Magueijo recently stated that the debate should not be why and how could the speed of light could vary, but what combination of irrefutable theories demands that it be constant at all.
There are at least four other major observed anomalies consistent with a slowing speed of light:
1. quantized red-shift observations from other galaxies,
2. measured changes in atomic masses over time,
3. measured changes in Planck's Constant over time,
4. and differences between time as measured by the atomic clock, and time as measured by the orbits of the planets in our solar system.
Pe
....so I wrote a script that did the job for me....
/. crowd, but not for mom and pop users.
Would your mother or uncle have been able to write *any* kind of script to get their computer to do something that was not already programmed into it? On a Mac or Windows they could buy a program to do the job and not have to learn a scripting language, write a script and debug and test it. Linux is an ideal OS for the
......for the freedom to modify and fix problems......
/. community only.
That is true for geeks who KNOW how to fix problems. Ordinary non-geek users get an obtuse error message and don't have any central place to turn for help. Until ALL, not just some or many, Linux programs can be installed with a single drag or click of the mouse, it will be a very powerful, but for geek only OS. Until a user can buy as piece of hardware and get proper software to run it without first having to do an exaustive Google search for one that will work with Linux, ordinary users will stick with Windows or Macs. For those systems Uncle Joe can go to Circuit City or similar outlet and get ANY camera, printer, scanner or what have you, look at the box and if the word Windows or Mac is on there somewhere, take it home and get it working. Until all versions Linux become binary compatible and those boxes include the name Linux along with the names Windows and Mac, Linux will NEVER, EVER become mainstream for plain ordinary users. It will remain for the type of users that are part of the