....Their computers are overpriced and they need competition....
They have plenty of competition in the hardware as such, but are the only ones that write their own operating system. Anybody that wishes can also write their own operating system. There are no laws to stop that are there? Why should Apple not do everything they possibly can to NOT supply their operating system to other hardware makers? They are not like Microsoft, selling their software on the open market to all comers are they? If they did sell their software to all comers, then they would also have to support everybody or at least the hardware manufacturers would have to support OSX with decent drivers for their hardware.
What right does anyone have too complained about not being able to buy a certain product from its manufacturer? Can Apple be compelled to sell their OS to some other manufacturer who wants a copy to use in their own product?
.....Macs are also a far cry from the Just Works category....
It seems as if you are equating "just works" with "perfect". No, Macs are not perfect, but according to Consumer Reports, are the most reliable computer on the market. Apple also gets the highest marks for customer service. So then, they are doing something other than making a big fat profit for the so called outrageous prices they are always accused of charging.
....If Apple starts trying to support every combination of 3rd party hardware out there, OSX will start having reliability problems just like Windows does.....
To forestall that disaster, Apple could stop selling OSX on the open market. Anyone who wanted to upgrade their version of OSX, would have to prove that they are already a Mac owner. Since most of Apple's products are already registered by serial number, that should not be too much of a problem to verify.
If they put such a system in place, then anybody who wants to install OSX on our bastard non-Apple machine, would have to steal the operating system. Since most people are honest, only a relatively small minority of lawbreakers would do this. Apple could probably safely ignore them. There would also be no support from Apple for such miscreants.
Anybody who commits this theft on a commercial basis would not even have one legal leg to stand on.
This Mac ownership verification process would only happen once when the Mac user purchases an upgrade. It would not be intrusive like Microsoft's system and the computer would never have to call home nor would the computer's owner have to phone anyone.
If anyone really big, rather than this little stupid pipsqueak upstart, were to do such a blatantly illegal thing, Apple might get more concerned and institute such a system.
Actually, that number is absolutely tiny compared to the probability of these relationships becoming what they are in any known or unknown probabilistic process. If you would do the math, you would get into EXPONENTS at least 100 times larger than the exponents necessary to describe the estimated number of subatomic particles in the entire universe. Even the longest estimated age of the universe is far too short for the number of times that particular combination lock would have to be twirled before the vault would open.
....but I'm certain that there are other paths for life...
So am I, but such life is not based on the laws of physics and chemistry we have yet discovered. To us, these laws appear pretty uniform in this aquarium we call the universe. I don't think there is any other life in this aquarium, but I believe strongly that this isn't the only aquarium there is.
About 2000 years ago a person named Jesus visited us here. He claimed to be God, from another realm commonly labeled "heaven". Now anybody can make such claims of course. What would be some compelling evidence such a claim might be true?
First, anyone worthy to be called "God" and worshiped would have to be perfect. Jesus challenged his friends and enemies to find even a single flaw in His life. None of them could make a truthful accusation of His wrongdoing. Do you know of anybody who can truthfully claim perfection? I can and do hold some other human beings in high esteem. However I could not bring myself to worship anyone who is in the slightest way flawed.
Second, anyone claiming deity would have demonstrate complete control over the forces of nature, including the conquering of death itself. The eyewitness records we have tell us that Jesus alone, of all religious founders met this test also. The others are all quite dead.
Third anyone claiming to be God would have to demonstrate powers and abilities that transcend and control the laws and rules by which our universe operates. His walking on water, multiplying matter, commanding the storm with just a word certainly qualify.
What other tests or evidence can you think of that should be furnished by someone who claims to be deity?
To many and to me also, the cited evidence is quite compelling that the things Jesus related about life in other places, as well as the other things He said and did, are highly likely to be true. So yes, there is life beyond our comprehension, far beyond this aquarium of our present mortal space-time existence. We are quarantined here because we cannot live in peace with each other and are so imperfect. Maybe, some of us at least, will hopefully be educated and perfected, in order to someday qualify to also be allowed to exist in other aquariums.
...We don't know if life could develop around other elements than carbon chains, but there certainly are several possibilities...
In order for life to exist, you'd first have to define what life is. If you define life to be based on dependent on the laws of chemistry, then there are no other elements which can form the incredibly complex molecules and processes we observe in life as we have here.
Think about a lego set. If the lego pieces take too much effort to make then stay in place, it would be difficult to construct any meaningful models. If the lego pieces came apart too easily, it would be difficult to keep any useful lego assembly together. The designers of the lego blocks ensured that the "binding" energy is such to enable the reasonable construction of lego projects.
The same sort of thing applies to the main lego pieces of life, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Their "stickiness" has to be such as to allow easy assembly and disassembly. Just as a lego set has other odd shaped pieces, so too, the chemistry of life involves a number of other elements needed to build the complex molecules found in all life.
The energy of the photons of a star have to be similarly matched to this "stickiness" of the atoms to be assembled as they interact with the atoms of life.
It's not that non-carbon based life is impractical, but that it is IMPOSSIBLE, unless the laws of physics and the properties of matter-energy are also adjusted. We do observe however, that the known laws of physics and the properties of matter apply everywhere we have looked so far in our universe.
... The life forms with the photosynthesis mechanism that is best adapted to the light of their star will be the most successful, given enough time...
There is no way evolving life can change the basic binding energies of the elements. These HAVE to match the energies of the photons from the star. The photons in visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum just so "happen" to have the right energy to "knit" the main elements in green life forms together. More energetic light, such as x-rays tear these bonds apart. Lower energy light, such as from infra-red on down is insufficiently powerful to "tie" the elements together into compounds needed for life.
Just as a radio receiver needs to be tuned to the frequency of the transmitting station, so also light waves of the star have to be tuned to the energy bands that must be knitted together. There is no evolutionary mechanism that could do this fine tuning. It has to be built into the very core foundation of the laws of physics and the properties of matter.
This is one of many examples, why I believe that a great mind, God if you will, carefully tuned the most foundational parameters of our universe so we and all life could be here.
...on a planet with different illumination a chlorophyll substitute with a different absorbtion band wouldn't evolve.....
For that to work, the basic electron binding energies would have to change to match the energy of the photons. That would change all the rules of chemistry. We know from spectrum studies of distant starlight, that the elemental properties are the same as here at home. It just so "happens" that the binding energies of carbon-hydrogen-oxygen are remarkably well matched to the photon energies of the light spectrum of the sun. It's as if someone tuned these for each other.
That rather hard to decide sometimes. It depends on what our criteria are used to decide whether an idea has merit or not. Does an idea not have merit if it cannot be observed or happen very often? What about if we observe something but don't understand it? Can we really always use our intellect to decide whether an idea is true or false? I would say no, and that is why religion is so persistent in the human race. If our intellect were perfect and we possessed all knowledge, then and only then could our intellect serve as a criterium to decide whether an idea has merit or not.
It is precisely because we elevate our intellect to the end all and be all of deciding whether an idea has merit, that the ideas of a Creator is summarily dismissed.
....But established scientific ideas are SUPPOSED to be dogma....
Wow! All these years I thought that science is about experimentation and observation! I have always associated dogma with religion and to a lesser extent philosophy, but definitely NOT science.
If you would study the history of science, you would quickly learn that most scientific progress was not by consensus or committee, but by individuals or sometimes small groups. Let me give you just one example:
After Galileo invented the telescope, astronomers could see the moons of Jupiter. At that time, the accepted scientific consensus was that light travelled in zero time. Experiments with lanterns with shutters on separated mountain tops "proved" this.
A lone Danish astronomer named Olaf Roemer noticed that the jovian moon Io emerged measurably later than orbit calculations warranted. Roemer postulated that this was because of a finite, not infinite speed of light. It took over 50 years for the scientific establishment to finally come around to accepting this fact.
There are many such instances in the halls of science where the establishment was wrong and a lone voice crying in the wilderness was correct. Nothing becomes obsolete faster than a textbook of science.
....A gas giant may be good for life too, but maybe not the life we know here.....
If you mean physical life based on chemistry, then there can be no other life other than what we know right here. On the molecular level, life's binding energies are such that bonds can be easily made, changed and broken. If this were not so, the complexity of life's processes could not exist. These bonds can only form and dissolve in the rather narrow temperature range where liquid water is available.
This means that by temperature specification alone, half of all known stars are disqualified from having an earth-like temperature environment because they are spaced too close to each other. Relatively straight forward gravity and orbit calculations show that similar sized stars closer than about 3.8 light years to one another cannot host a planet with a stable enough temperature. A planet that would support complex, larger non-microscopic life-forms must freely rotate so it doesn't get too hot during the day or too cold at night. If it rotates too quickly, the atmospheric winds become too high.
Besides temperature, the main elemental components of life must exist, as well as the absence of components hostile to life. The spectrum of the parent star must well matched to the energies involved in photosynthesis. Light too blue or red will not allow efficient use of such light energy.
There are a number of other characteristics that a planetary "laboratory" has to have, in order for life to flourish. All of these taken together make the likelihood of another planet hospitable enough to have life, exceedingly remote. It appears that we may be quite alone in this big universe.
.... it is fair to say the second CPU is actually performing twice as many actions as the first CPU...
That may be true, but the first CPU could still produce superior results because it is running better software. It is quite well known, that earlier computers with very limited capacity still did remarkably well because of more efficient software. Of course this analogy may not apply to human brains, but then there is no real reason why it should not. A smaller brain with better software may get better results than a larger one with less efficient software.
If we developed better software for our brains or computers, both could do the same or even more useful work with less energy. So energy used or available is not the only factor here.
...Humans have the highest brain mass to body mass ratio of any animal on the planet....
True! Indeed we are still wondering exactly WHY we have such a powerful CPU and yet at the same time still behave in such nonsensical ways. For example, why is it that after all this time we still cannot peaceably get along with one another? It seems we should have realized by now that co-operation is generally far more advantageous to survival than competition.
If all individuals, families, tribes and nations co-operated rather than continually fought one another, would that not be a huge evolutionary advantage for the human race as a whole? It seems that despite our oversized brains we have not yet figured that out.
No we have not. Some THEORIZE that they oscillate, but we have NOT found them with even the newer far more sensitive and sophisticated underground detectors that came online in recent years. I get all of the CERN physics journals and they openly admit that there is no real, actually detected evidence for anywhere near the number of solar neutrinos needed if the fusion theory were correct.
Furthermore, we do know of the existence of intense magnetic fields on the sun and elsewhere in space. We also know from experiments here on earth, that there is NO KNOWN way to make a magnetic field by any means OTHER than the movement of charge. If there is a magnetic field, there HAS to be motion of charges, usually, but not exclusively electrons
Heating by external currents could explain the magnetic fields and temperature inversions on the sun, earth and the giant gas planets of the solar system. The new solar flyby probe now on its way may shed more light on this mystery.
Right now, thermonuclear fusion as the source of solar and stellar energy has some serious shortcomings. Man has always pondered what makes the sun shine. Our present guess is on just as shaky ground as the speculations of our forbears. Maybe, with new evidence from space probes and modern telescopes we'll eventually come up with a theory that fits the evidence better than the present fusion model.
Saying that some other theories are so wrong as to explode your poor head, is not an approach an open minded scientist should take. You could rather say that there is some evidence against the currently "accepted" theory that needs to be seriously looked at. How many times have widely accepted and believed theories of science been overturned?
Yes, but only to a limited extent. What is REALLY going on in either a brain, or even a computer can only be discerned by its input/output. No matter how minutely we are able to examine the electrochemical nature of the brain, we cannot pin down from that where and how thoughts and emotions come into being. If the brain hardware stops working, there is no way to tell what happened to the software and what it's nature was. The same is true of a computer. If the computer is switched off, there is no way to tell what the software was and what it might have done while the computer was turned on.
In the case of the computer, because we built it, of course we know where the software is resident. We can take that software and load it into another functioning hardware and then determine said software's function and nature. In the case of the brain, we do not know what happens to the software. We ASSUME (believe) it is destroyed with the destruction of the hardware, but we really don't KNOW that for sure. The human software (soul, mind, spirit etc.) could conceivably be transmitted somewhere else before the destruction of any particular instance of brain hardware.
We can certainly conceive of such a scenario in the computer case. A sophisticated enough computer connected to a super-fast network could be made in such a way as to sense a disabling malfunction (death) and quickly transmit its entire software to some other network location for storage. From there, at a later time, the sum-total contents of the now destroyed computer could be re-loaded into other identical or even superior hardware and the "consciousness" if you will, of the dead computer will all be back in operation as good as or even better than the original. We could even upgrade the software and fix bugs, before re-loading it into new hardware.
Somehow, mankind has always and still suspects that there is a continued existence of consciousness after the present physical body ceases to function. The pyramids and other elaborate tombs are stark testimony to this ancient and yet persistently continuing religious belief. We have never seen this sort of behavior in any animals. It is unique to the human creature.
...of evidence such as it's shape and the ability to terraform gas giants...
Shape alone, as such by itself, is insufficient to infer intelligence from. There also needs to be an independently given, known pattern that has only a small probability of existence.
The obelisk in 2001 fits both criteria and therefore there is a high probability it is indeed of intelligent origin.
There are many, very complex rock formation and shapes all of which are quite natural. However in North Dakota there is a mountainside with the known faces of American Presidents. This is very improbable and matches an independently given pattern. The pattern corresponds to information we know, independently from what we discover on that particular mountain. From this we can infer that some intelligent sculptor, not the action of wind and rain is behind those particular mountain sides. Of course we also still know the name of the person who carved these faces.
When you walk on the seashore, you will come across many intricate patterns laid down by wind an waves. You will not attribute any of these to intelligence. If however you come across a heart shaped scrawl with the inscription "John loves Mary", you correctly infer from your independent knowledge of the shapes and letters of language, that this particular pattern has the hallmarks of intelligence.
In sum then, if there is a small probability and independent specificity, it is safe to infer intelligence behind it.
What we observe of the sun is quite natural, but it is likely that we REALLY don't know much more than what the ancients knew about the energy source.
....Religion is simply the attempt to explain the world around us when our knowledge is so far below what is needed to understand it properly....
For most major religions that is not a main concern. Interest in the hereafter, that is after death and the dream of immortality are generally greater issues in many religions. Religious behavior is keyed much more to pleasing or displeasing a supernatural entity of one kind or another.
No concerns along these lines has ever been observed in an animal. No animal ever thinks about what might happen to them after they die. Animals also show no signs of being concerned about ancestry or their origins. Animals also do not ponder the purpose of their existence or their ultimate destiny. All of these are aspects of human religion and philosophy.
Purely materialistic and evolutionary theories, do not provide a very satisfying nor logical answer to WHY humans are so persistently, seemingly illogically and universally religious.
Could it be that the account we read in the first book of the Bible really is true? Did the God who is eternal love really breathe His Spirit into the first human, thus making man also an eternal spirit being, different from all other animals? Is there an eternal destiny that awaits very human, either in God's close presence or very far away from Him? Maybe there exists a Creator God who created us in His image, and placed within us a very deep seated desire to know and interact with Him? Is that scenario really so impossible?
I cannot reasonably reply to your post, until you tell me exactly what you mean by "pure" communication. What exactly do you consider "impure" about a method of communication by example?
Mammals, such as chimpanzees certainly have demonstrated reasoning and guilt. I don't know, whether you consider those "abstract". To me, the whole idea of "learning" can be a rather abstract process. Animals certainly do learn. Their level of learning and reasoning may be many orders of magnitude lower than ours, but they do both. It is a difference only in degree, not in kind.
No animal has ever shown the slightest indication of a religious activity such as prayer or shown any sign of concern what might happen to it after death. That sort of thing is found ONLY in humans.
In fact this sort of activity is found across the entire spectrum of humanity in every culture and ethnic group. It goes entirely against the principle of positive natural selection. Few if any other issues have caused more death and destruction of humans than wars with religion as a big, if not main cause. Wars and strife are certainly not conducive for anybody, fit or not so fit to survive. In fact, wars usually kill the most fit people, usually males in the warring groups. As such, if there is a selection, war tends to select for the unfit, because the fit are often killed before they have had a chance to propagate their genes.
If the size of brains were a measure of intelligence or how much of a given brain is used, elephants should be incredibly smart. Just as there is more to the capability of a computer than its raw hardware, so too, is there more to intelligence than the size of a brain. Just as a computer is a careful combination of software and hardware, so it is also with human intelligence. There is the physical hardware of the brain, but there is also the nonphysical software, the mind. Just as in a computer the hardware and software interact to form the total experience, or if you will, its intelligence, so too it is with people.
Just as the basic software that runs a computer is not utilizing its total hardware all the time, so too, the software of the human mind does not always fully utilize the capability of the hardware of the brain.
The whole purpose of this thing we call education is nothing more than a downloading of (mostly anyway) useful information and programming into what was originally a largely empty information processing hardware we call brain. We still know very little about exactly how much information and programming this cranial hardware can accommodate and exactly how it operates.
How do you, or anybody KNOW for sure that fusion on the SUN is natural? There is some good evidence that the sun is NOT a big campfire fueled by wood, coal or even any known process of thermonuclear fusion.
The laws of thermodynamics decree that heat always flows from the hotter locations to the cooler ones. Why is it that the sun's surface is so much cooler than the outer atmosphere we call the corona? If the interior of the sun (according to fusion theory) is in the millions of degrees and then the surface only in the thousands, that data could fit the fusion theory. But WHY is the corona, much further from the presumed source of fusion heat again in the millions of degrees? Either our understanding of the sun is faulty or our experimental knowledge of thermodynamics has some very basic pieces missing. I tend to think that it is our understanding of the Sun, rather than the fundamentals of thermodynamics.
From actual experiments we know pretty much how fusion progresses and what particles are generated by this process. One the particles generated is a very penetrating one we have called the neutrino. The number of these that should be generated by the fusion process is well established by theory backed up by experiments. From the energy put out by the sun, a certain number of these neutrinos should be detectable on earth in any given time period. The problem is, that the number of neutrinos from the sun that we detect is much, very much smaller than what known thermonuclear fusion generates. Either, the energy of the sun is not produced by fusion, or there is something fundamental about the fusion process which we do not understand. We do know from fusion experiments on earth that the theory fusion and experimental observations line up very well. This also is a powerful indication that the energy of the sun may not generated by fusion, but by some as yet unknown method. Nobody has yet come of with a plausible explanation of where the missing neutrinos went.
Fusion may NOT be a natural process, even in the sun or other stars.
....If another species is competitive with yours....
In nature there are a number of examples where species COOPERATE rather than compete. Each of them, together are doing better that they could alone. Competition is NOT the only means to insure survival. This often true of human communities. In humans at least, trust, more than intelligence can improve survival chances.
Indeed, in ALL of the fundamental characteristics mentioned by you, humans differ from animals only by degree. Sometimes the difference is orders of magnitude, but still not foundational.
There is only ONE really fundamental activity that humans engage in that has never been observed in animals. That is the consciousness of the existence of a higher dimension as expressed by the incurable and universal religiosity of the human creature. One manifestation of this is the weird human preoccupation with a possible life after death. This is never seen in the animal world. This is but one expression of many of the idea that man is a being above and apart of other animals. Yes, man is an animal, but there is something additional besides an orders of magnitude smarter animal in all humans.
I believe that the explanation lies in the book of beginnings, the biblical account found in Genesis 2:7 "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
Modern, materialistically oriented western man, especially those here on/. will be quick to deny the existence of that other part of each human, called the "soul", breathed specially into the first human. Yet could it be this eternal, special component in the makeup of us all explains why the human is the only creature on this planet, that seeks persistently and actually quite illogically, to worship something or someone beyond the natural, physical world? Man is the ONLY animal with an otherwise unexplainable urge to worship.
There surely is, many animals, such as bees clearly communicate..There is no animal art..
A spider's web is a work of art. Try to draw one blindfolded...There is no animal science..
What technology or science does the Golden Plover use to navigate 6000 miles of Pacific in order to reach the tiny islands of Hawaii. How does photosynthesis upon we all depend REALLY work? Nobody has even yet duplicated this highly complex scientific process which takes place in every green plant...There is no animal law..
All animals and animal societies have distinct laws by which they operate. In any barnyard, there is a distinct set of laws that determines who is the top rooster, cat, dog etc...There is no animal culture..
To answer this, I'd have to know exactly what you mean by culture. Many social animals observe established patterns and behavior that could be termed culture...There is no animal literature..
Literature implies writing, which is nothing more than a form of communication. Many animals certainly communicate. Elephants can and do communicate over many miles by sounds too low in frequency for us humans to hear. Dolphins have a quite sophisticated language of clicks and whistles by which they signal each other...There is no animal economics...
Again, many animals know about lean times and times of abundance. Squirrels make storehouses of food (ie a savings bank) for the winter. Bears know about coming winter and store fat for the coming time of leanness, winter.
ALL of these characteristics are NOT absent from animals, but humans merely express them in a much higher degree.
There is one ONE really fundamental activity that humans engage in that has never been observed in animals. That is the consciousness of the existence of a higher dimension as expressed by the incurable and universal religiosity of the human creature. The weird human preoccupation with a possible life after death is not seen in the animal world. This is but one expression of many of the idea that man is a spirit being above and apart of other animals. Yes, man is an animal, but there is something additional besides a fancier, smarter animal in all humans.
Why should that be a distinctive for humanity? Writing is only specific method of communication. The skill of writing only differentiates humans from animals in degree, but not fundamentally.
Animals clearly communicate, however nobody has ever observed any animal engaging in what might be called religion. No animals, for example engages in the strange practice we call prayer.
I agree that mankind is clearly incurably religious and is the only species we know of that is. Assuming that evolution is a fact, what evolutionary advantage is there conferred by praying or other religious practices? I could cite some severe DISADVANTAGES most religious practices might have on natural selections.
What other fundamental difference, in kind, not degree, is there between man and all animals?
...channel 30% of their energy into their brains....
How does anyone know whether energy and brainpower are positively related? In computers, power hungry CPU doesn't necessarily work better or faster. The older computers used WAY more power than a modern one, but the modern ones are certainly "smarter"! Most of us use only a small fraction of the capabilities of our brains/minds.
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....Their computers are overpriced and they need competition....
They have plenty of competition in the hardware as such, but are the only ones that write their own operating system. Anybody that wishes can also write their own operating system. There are no laws to stop that are there? Why should Apple not do everything they possibly can to NOT supply their operating system to other hardware makers? They are not like Microsoft, selling their software on the open market to all comers are they? If they did sell their software to all comers, then they would also have to support everybody or at least the hardware manufacturers would have to support OSX with decent drivers for their hardware.
What right does anyone have too complained about not being able to buy a certain product from its manufacturer? Can Apple be compelled to sell their OS to some other manufacturer who wants a copy to use in their own product?
.....Macs are also a far cry from the Just Works category....
It seems as if you are equating "just works" with "perfect". No, Macs are not perfect, but according to Consumer Reports, are the most reliable computer on the market. Apple also gets the highest marks for customer service. So then, they are doing something other than making a big fat profit for the so called outrageous prices they are always accused of charging.
....If Apple starts trying to support every combination of 3rd party hardware out there, OSX will start having reliability problems just like Windows does.....
To forestall that disaster, Apple could stop selling OSX on the open market. Anyone who wanted to upgrade their version of OSX, would have to prove that they are already a Mac owner. Since most of Apple's products are already registered by serial number, that should not be too much of a problem to verify.
If they put such a system in place, then anybody who wants to install OSX on our bastard non-Apple machine, would have to steal the operating system. Since most people are honest, only a relatively small minority of lawbreakers would do this. Apple could probably safely ignore them. There would also be no support from Apple for such miscreants.
Anybody who commits this theft on a commercial basis would not even have one legal leg to stand on.
This Mac ownership verification process would only happen once when the Mac user purchases an upgrade. It would not be intrusive like Microsoft's system and the computer would never have to call home nor would the computer's owner have to phone anyone.
If anyone really big, rather than this little stupid pipsqueak upstart, were to do such a blatantly illegal thing, Apple might get more concerned and institute such a system.
...Out of a quadrillion possibilities...
Actually, that number is absolutely tiny compared to the probability of these relationships becoming what they are in any known or unknown probabilistic process. If you would do the math, you would get into EXPONENTS at least 100 times larger than the exponents necessary to describe the estimated number of subatomic particles in the entire universe. Even the longest estimated age of the universe is far too short for the number of times that particular combination lock would have to be twirled before the vault would open.
....but I'm certain that there are other paths for life ...
So am I, but such life is not based on the laws of physics and chemistry we have yet discovered. To us, these laws appear pretty uniform in this aquarium we call the universe. I don't think there is any other life in this aquarium, but I believe strongly that this isn't the only aquarium there is.
About 2000 years ago a person named Jesus visited us here. He claimed to be God, from another realm commonly labeled "heaven". Now anybody can make such claims of course. What would be some compelling evidence such a claim might be true?
First, anyone worthy to be called "God" and worshiped would have to be perfect. Jesus challenged his friends and enemies to find even a single flaw in His life. None of them could make a truthful accusation of His wrongdoing. Do you know of anybody who can truthfully claim perfection? I can and do hold some other human beings in high esteem. However I could not bring myself to worship anyone who is in the slightest way flawed.
Second, anyone claiming deity would have demonstrate complete control over the forces of nature, including the conquering of death itself. The eyewitness records we have tell us that Jesus alone, of all religious founders met this test also. The others are all quite dead.
Third anyone claiming to be God would have to demonstrate powers and abilities that transcend and control the laws and rules by which our universe operates. His walking on water, multiplying matter, commanding the storm with just a word certainly qualify.
What other tests or evidence can you think of that should be furnished by someone who claims to be deity?
To many and to me also, the cited evidence is quite compelling that the things Jesus related about life in other places, as well as the other things He said and did, are highly likely to be true. So yes, there is life beyond our comprehension, far beyond this aquarium of our present mortal space-time existence. We are quarantined here because we cannot live in peace with each other and are so imperfect. Maybe, some of us at least, will hopefully be educated and perfected, in order to someday qualify to also be allowed to exist in other aquariums.
...We don't know if life could develop around other elements than carbon chains, but there certainly are several possibilities...
In order for life to exist, you'd first have to define what life is. If you define life to be based on dependent on the laws of chemistry, then there are no other elements which can form the incredibly complex molecules and processes we observe in life as we have here.
Think about a lego set. If the lego pieces take too much effort to make then stay in place, it would be difficult to construct any meaningful models. If the lego pieces came apart too easily, it would be difficult to keep any useful lego assembly together. The designers of the lego blocks ensured that the "binding" energy is such to enable the reasonable construction of lego projects.
The same sort of thing applies to the main lego pieces of life, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Their "stickiness" has to be such as to allow easy assembly and disassembly. Just as a lego set has other odd shaped pieces, so too, the chemistry of life involves a number of other elements needed to build the complex molecules found in all life.
The energy of the photons of a star have to be similarly matched to this "stickiness" of the atoms to be assembled as they interact with the atoms of life.
It's not that non-carbon based life is impractical, but that it is IMPOSSIBLE, unless the laws of physics and the properties of matter-energy are also adjusted. We do observe however, that the known laws of physics and the properties of matter apply everywhere we have looked so far in our universe.
... The life forms with the photosynthesis mechanism that is best adapted to the light of their star will be the most successful, given enough time...
There is no way evolving life can change the basic binding energies of the elements. These HAVE to match the energies of the photons from the star. The photons in visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum just so "happen" to have the right energy to "knit" the main elements in green life forms together. More energetic light, such as x-rays tear these bonds apart. Lower energy light, such as from infra-red on down is insufficiently powerful to "tie" the elements together into compounds needed for life.
Just as a radio receiver needs to be tuned to the frequency of the transmitting station, so also light waves of the star have to be tuned to the energy bands that must be knitted together. There is no evolutionary mechanism that could do this fine tuning. It has to be built into the very core foundation of the laws of physics and the properties of matter.
This is one of many examples, why I believe that a great mind, God if you will, carefully tuned the most foundational parameters of our universe so we and all life could be here.
...on a planet with different illumination a chlorophyll substitute with a different absorbtion band wouldn't evolve.....
For that to work, the basic electron binding energies would have to change to match the energy of the photons. That would change all the rules of chemistry. We know from spectrum studies of distant starlight, that the elemental properties are the same as here at home. It just so "happens" that the binding energies of carbon-hydrogen-oxygen are remarkably well matched to the photon energies of the light spectrum of the sun. It's as if someone tuned these for each other.
...because not all ideas have equal merit...
That rather hard to decide sometimes. It depends on what our criteria are used to decide whether an idea has merit or not. Does an idea not have merit if it cannot be observed or happen very often? What about if we observe something but don't understand it? Can we really always use our intellect to decide whether an idea is true or false? I would say no, and that is why religion is so persistent in the human race. If our intellect were perfect and we possessed all knowledge, then and only then could our intellect serve as a criterium to decide whether an idea has merit or not.
It is precisely because we elevate our intellect to the end all and be all of deciding whether an idea has merit, that the ideas of a Creator is summarily dismissed.
....But established scientific ideas are SUPPOSED to be dogma....
Wow! All these years I thought that science is about experimentation and observation! I have always associated dogma with religion and to a lesser extent philosophy, but definitely NOT science.
If you would study the history of science, you would quickly learn that most scientific progress was not by consensus or committee, but by individuals or sometimes small groups. Let me give you just one example:
After Galileo invented the telescope, astronomers could see the moons of Jupiter. At that time, the accepted scientific consensus was that light travelled in zero time. Experiments with lanterns with shutters on separated mountain tops "proved" this.
A lone Danish astronomer named Olaf Roemer noticed that the jovian moon Io emerged measurably later than orbit calculations warranted. Roemer postulated that this was because of a finite, not infinite speed of light. It took over 50 years for the scientific establishment to finally come around to accepting this fact.
There are many such instances in the halls of science where the establishment was wrong and a lone voice crying in the wilderness was correct. Nothing becomes obsolete faster than a textbook of science.
....A gas giant may be good for life too, but maybe not the life we know here.....
If you mean physical life based on chemistry, then there can be no other life other than what we know right here. On the molecular level, life's binding energies are such that bonds can be easily made, changed and broken. If this were not so, the complexity of life's processes could not exist. These bonds can only form and dissolve in the rather narrow temperature range where liquid water is available.
This means that by temperature specification alone, half of all known stars are disqualified from having an earth-like temperature environment because they are spaced too close to each other. Relatively straight forward gravity and orbit calculations show that similar sized stars closer than about 3.8 light years to one another cannot host a planet with a stable enough temperature. A planet that would support complex, larger non-microscopic life-forms must freely rotate so it doesn't get too hot during the day or too cold at night. If it rotates too quickly, the atmospheric winds become too high.
Besides temperature, the main elemental components of life must exist, as well as the absence of components hostile to life. The spectrum of the parent star must well matched to the energies involved in photosynthesis. Light too blue or red will not allow efficient use of such light energy.
There are a number of other characteristics that a planetary "laboratory" has to have, in order for life to flourish. All of these taken together make the likelihood of another planet hospitable enough to have life, exceedingly remote. It appears that we may be quite alone in this big universe.
.... it is fair to say the second CPU is actually performing twice as many actions as the first CPU...
That may be true, but the first CPU could still produce superior results because it is running better software. It is quite well known, that earlier computers with very limited capacity still did remarkably well because of more efficient software. Of course this analogy may not apply to human brains, but then there is no real reason why it should not. A smaller brain with better software may get better results than a larger one with less efficient software.
If we developed better software for our brains or computers, both could do the same or even more useful work with less energy. So energy used or available is not the only factor here.
...Humans have the highest brain mass to body mass ratio of any animal on the planet....
True! Indeed we are still wondering exactly WHY we have such a powerful CPU and yet at the same time still behave in such nonsensical ways. For example, why is it that after all this time we still cannot peaceably get along with one another? It seems we should have realized by now that co-operation is generally far more advantageous to survival than competition.
If all individuals, families, tribes and nations co-operated rather than continually fought one another, would that not be a huge evolutionary advantage for the human race as a whole? It seems that despite our oversized brains we have not yet figured that out.
...And we found the "missing" neutrinos ....
No we have not. Some THEORIZE that they oscillate, but we have NOT found them with even the newer far more sensitive and sophisticated underground detectors that came online in recent years. I get all of the CERN physics journals and they openly admit that there is no real, actually detected evidence for anywhere near the number of solar neutrinos needed if the fusion theory were correct.
Furthermore, we do know of the existence of intense magnetic fields on the sun and elsewhere in space. We also know from experiments here on earth, that there is NO KNOWN way to make a magnetic field by any means OTHER than the movement of charge. If there is a magnetic field, there HAS to be motion of charges, usually, but not exclusively electrons
Heating by external currents could explain the magnetic fields and temperature inversions on the sun, earth and the giant gas planets of the solar system. The new solar flyby probe now on its way may shed more light on this mystery.
Right now, thermonuclear fusion as the source of solar and stellar energy has some serious shortcomings. Man has always pondered what makes the sun shine. Our present guess is on just as shaky ground as the speculations of our forbears. Maybe, with new evidence from space probes and modern telescopes we'll eventually come up with a theory that fits the evidence better than the present fusion model.
Saying that some other theories are so wrong as to explode your poor head, is not an approach an open minded scientist should take. You could rather say that there is some evidence against the currently "accepted" theory that needs to be seriously looked at. How many times have widely accepted and believed theories of science been overturned?
....Neuroscience offers a path to discovering....
Yes, but only to a limited extent. What is REALLY going on in either a brain, or even a computer can only be discerned by its input/output. No matter how minutely we are able to examine the electrochemical nature of the brain, we cannot pin down from that where and how thoughts and emotions come into being. If the brain hardware stops working, there is no way to tell what happened to the software and what it's nature was. The same is true of a computer. If the computer is switched off, there is no way to tell what the software was and what it might have done while the computer was turned on.
In the case of the computer, because we built it, of course we know where the software is resident. We can take that software and load it into another functioning hardware and then determine said software's function and nature. In the case of the brain, we do not know what happens to the software. We ASSUME (believe) it is destroyed with the destruction of the hardware, but we really don't KNOW that for sure. The human software (soul, mind, spirit etc.) could conceivably be transmitted somewhere else before the destruction of any particular instance of brain hardware.
We can certainly conceive of such a scenario in the computer case. A sophisticated enough computer connected to a super-fast network could be made in such a way as to sense a disabling malfunction (death) and quickly transmit its entire software to some other network location for storage. From there, at a later time, the sum-total contents of the now destroyed computer could be re-loaded into other identical or even superior hardware and the "consciousness" if you will, of the dead computer will all be back in operation as good as or even better than the original. We could even upgrade the software and fix bugs, before re-loading it into new hardware.
Somehow, mankind has always and still suspects that there is a continued existence of consciousness after the present physical body ceases to function. The pyramids and other elaborate tombs are stark testimony to this ancient and yet persistently continuing religious belief. We have never seen this sort of behavior in any animals. It is unique to the human creature.
...of evidence such as it's shape and the ability to terraform gas giants...
Shape alone, as such by itself, is insufficient to infer intelligence from. There also needs to be an independently given, known pattern that has only a small probability of existence.
The obelisk in 2001 fits both criteria and therefore there is a high probability it is indeed of intelligent origin.
There are many, very complex rock formation and shapes all of which are quite natural. However in North Dakota there is a mountainside with the known faces of American Presidents. This is very improbable and matches an independently given pattern. The pattern corresponds to information we know, independently from what we discover on that particular mountain. From this we can infer that some intelligent sculptor, not the action of wind and rain is behind those particular mountain sides. Of course we also still know the name of the person who carved these faces.
When you walk on the seashore, you will come across many intricate patterns laid down by wind an waves. You will not attribute any of these to intelligence. If however you come across a heart shaped scrawl with the inscription "John loves Mary", you correctly infer from your independent knowledge of the shapes and letters of language, that this particular pattern has the hallmarks of intelligence.
In sum then, if there is a small probability and independent specificity, it is safe to infer intelligence behind it.
What we observe of the sun is quite natural, but it is likely that we REALLY don't know much more than what the ancients knew about the energy source.
....Religion is simply the attempt to explain the world around us when our knowledge is so far below what is needed to understand it properly....
For most major religions that is not a main concern. Interest in the hereafter, that is after death and the dream of immortality are generally greater issues in many religions. Religious behavior is keyed much more to pleasing or displeasing a supernatural entity of one kind or another.
No concerns along these lines has ever been observed in an animal. No animal ever thinks about what might happen to them after they die. Animals also show no signs of being concerned about ancestry or their origins. Animals also do not ponder the purpose of their existence or their ultimate destiny. All of these are aspects of human religion and philosophy.
Purely materialistic and evolutionary theories, do not provide a very satisfying nor logical answer to WHY humans are so persistently, seemingly illogically and universally religious.
Could it be that the account we read in the first book of the Bible really is true? Did the God who is eternal love really breathe His Spirit into the first human, thus making man also an eternal spirit being, different from all other animals? Is there an eternal destiny that awaits very human, either in God's close presence or very far away from Him? Maybe there exists a Creator God who created us in His image, and placed within us a very deep seated desire to know and interact with Him? Is that scenario really so impossible?
...not by pure communication...
I cannot reasonably reply to your post, until you tell me exactly what you mean by "pure" communication. What exactly do you consider "impure" about a method of communication by example?
Mammals, such as chimpanzees certainly have demonstrated reasoning and guilt. I don't know, whether you consider those "abstract". To me, the whole idea of "learning" can be a rather abstract process. Animals certainly do learn. Their level of learning and reasoning may be many orders of magnitude lower than ours, but they do both. It is a difference only in degree, not in kind.
No animal has ever shown the slightest indication of a religious activity such as prayer or shown any sign of concern what might happen to it after death. That sort of thing is found ONLY in humans.
In fact this sort of activity is found across the entire spectrum of humanity in every culture and ethnic group. It goes entirely against the principle of positive natural selection. Few if any other issues have caused more death and destruction of humans than wars with religion as a big, if not main cause. Wars and strife are certainly not conducive for anybody, fit or not so fit to survive. In fact, wars usually kill the most fit people, usually males in the warring groups. As such, if there is a selection, war tends to select for the unfit, because the fit are often killed before they have had a chance to propagate their genes.
....we would never would have such big brains ...
If the size of brains were a measure of intelligence or how much of a given brain is used, elephants should be incredibly smart. Just as there is more to the capability of a computer than its raw hardware, so too, is there more to intelligence than the size of a brain. Just as a computer is a careful combination of software and hardware, so it is also with human intelligence. There is the physical hardware of the brain, but there is also the nonphysical software, the mind. Just as in a computer the hardware and software interact to form the total experience, or if you will, its intelligence, so too it is with people.
Just as the basic software that runs a computer is not utilizing its total hardware all the time, so too, the software of the human mind does not always fully utilize the capability of the hardware of the brain.
The whole purpose of this thing we call education is nothing more than a downloading of (mostly anyway) useful information and programming into what was originally a largely empty information processing hardware we call brain. We still know very little about exactly how much information and programming this cranial hardware can accommodate and exactly how it operates.
....fusion in Jupiter....
How do you, or anybody KNOW for sure that fusion on the SUN is natural? There is some good evidence that the sun is NOT a big campfire fueled by wood, coal or even any known process of thermonuclear fusion.
The laws of thermodynamics decree that heat always flows from the hotter locations to the cooler ones. Why is it that the sun's surface is so much cooler than the outer atmosphere we call the corona? If the interior of the sun (according to fusion theory) is in the millions of degrees and then the surface only in the thousands, that data could fit the fusion theory. But WHY is the corona, much further from the presumed source of fusion heat again in the millions of degrees? Either our understanding of the sun is faulty or our experimental knowledge of thermodynamics has some very basic pieces missing. I tend to think that it is our understanding of the Sun, rather than the fundamentals of thermodynamics.
From actual experiments we know pretty much how fusion progresses and what particles are generated by this process. One the particles generated is a very penetrating one we have called the neutrino. The number of these that should be generated by the fusion process is well established by theory backed up by experiments. From the energy put out by the sun, a certain number of these neutrinos should be detectable on earth in any given time period. The problem is, that the number of neutrinos from the sun that we detect is much, very much smaller than what known thermonuclear fusion generates. Either, the energy of the sun is not produced by fusion, or there is something fundamental about the fusion process which we do not understand. We do know from fusion experiments on earth that the theory fusion and experimental observations line up very well. This also is a powerful indication that the energy of the sun may not generated by fusion, but by some as yet unknown method. Nobody has yet come of with a plausible explanation of where the missing neutrinos went.
Fusion may NOT be a natural process, even in the sun or other stars.
....If another species is competitive with yours....
In nature there are a number of examples where species COOPERATE rather than compete. Each of them, together are doing better that they could alone. Competition is NOT the only means to insure survival. This often true of human communities. In humans at least, trust, more than intelligence can improve survival chances.
....It's a matter of degree...
Indeed, in ALL of the fundamental characteristics mentioned by you, humans differ from animals only by degree. Sometimes the difference is orders of magnitude, but still not foundational.
There is only ONE really fundamental activity that humans engage in that has never been observed in animals. That is the consciousness of the existence of a higher dimension as expressed by the incurable and universal religiosity of the human creature. One manifestation of this is the weird human preoccupation with a possible life after death. This is never seen in the animal world. This is but one expression of many of the idea that man is a being above and apart of other animals. Yes, man is an animal, but there is something additional besides an orders of magnitude smarter animal in all humans.
I believe that the explanation lies in the book of beginnings, the biblical account found in Genesis 2:7 "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
Modern, materialistically oriented western man, especially those here on /. will be quick to deny the existence of that other part of each human, called the "soul", breathed specially into the first human. Yet could it be this eternal, special component in the makeup of us all explains why the human is the only creature on this planet, that seeks persistently and actually quite illogically, to worship something or someone beyond the natural, physical world? Man is the ONLY animal with an otherwise unexplainable urge to worship.
..There is no animal language..
There surely is, many animals, such as bees clearly communicate ..There is no animal art..
A spider's web is a work of art. Try to draw one blindfolded. ..There is no animal science..
What technology or science does the Golden Plover use to navigate 6000 miles of Pacific in order to reach the tiny islands of Hawaii. How does photosynthesis upon we all depend REALLY work? Nobody has even yet duplicated this highly complex scientific process which takes place in every green plant. ..There is no animal law..
All animals and animal societies have distinct laws by which they operate. In any barnyard, there is a distinct set of laws that determines who is the top rooster, cat, dog etc. ..There is no animal culture..
To answer this, I'd have to know exactly what you mean by culture. Many social animals observe established patterns and behavior that could be termed culture. ..There is no animal literature..
Literature implies writing, which is nothing more than a form of communication. Many animals certainly communicate. Elephants can and do communicate over many miles by sounds too low in frequency for us humans to hear. Dolphins have a quite sophisticated language of clicks and whistles by which they signal each other. ..There is no animal economics...
Again, many animals know about lean times and times of abundance. Squirrels make storehouses of food (ie a savings bank) for the winter. Bears know about coming winter and store fat for the coming time of leanness, winter.
ALL of these characteristics are NOT absent from animals, but humans merely express them in a much higher degree.
There is one ONE really fundamental activity that humans engage in that has never been observed in animals. That is the consciousness of the existence of a higher dimension as expressed by the incurable and universal religiosity of the human creature. The weird human preoccupation with a possible life after death is not seen in the animal world. This is but one expression of many of the idea that man is a spirit being above and apart of other animals. Yes, man is an animal, but there is something additional besides a fancier, smarter animal in all humans.
....It's called written language....
Why should that be a distinctive for humanity? Writing is only specific method of communication. The skill of writing only differentiates humans from animals in degree, but not fundamentally.
Animals clearly communicate, however nobody has ever observed any animal engaging in what might be called religion. No animals, for example engages in the strange practice we call prayer.
I agree that mankind is clearly incurably religious and is the only species we know of that is. Assuming that evolution is a fact, what evolutionary advantage is there conferred by praying or other religious practices? I could cite some severe DISADVANTAGES most religious practices might have on natural selections.
What other fundamental difference, in kind, not degree, is there between man and all animals?
...channel 30% of their energy into their brains....
How does anyone know whether energy and brainpower are positively related? In computers, power hungry CPU doesn't necessarily work better or faster. The older computers used WAY more power than a modern one, but the modern ones are certainly "smarter"! Most of us use only a small fraction of the capabilities of our brains/minds.