Chance v. Design (Evolution)

by Matt S. , Thursday, June 04, 2009, 03:28 (5450 days ago) @ dhw

dhw, - Just so you know I don't view naivete as a bad thing. We are all naive about something. And I meant what I said... I feel I've found a good home here. - Have you studied epistemology at all? It gave me more firm a footing on the 'mystery' of science, and a study on "how we know what we know" was one of the most productive activities of my college career. When you take formal skepticism and then study the deep philosophical underpinnings of the method... you'll understand why when it comes to physical questions, it is unmatched. - Atheism is a more complex beast which is why I want you (and everyone else) to be careful. I studied Zen Buddhism for well over six years, and I will tell you that Buddhists are atheists. They create no myth involving creation, as to them the cosmos always was, and we are simply manifestations of it. - There is anecdotal science supporting this claim. The world that we know and see had a beginning, but something existed before the singularity. There's a really good podcast at radiolab.org that talks about 'how to create your own universe' done in a very conversational style that will keep this idea at a good level. - To me, I can't call myself a 'bona-fide' atheist because we can only view such a small portion of our universe, and our scientific tools are far too young to allow us to rule out the existence of something that might simply be extra-dimensional to ourselves. I won't pretend to be a physicist, but I've studied hypercubes, which are a basic template for how another dimension would look in your hand. You wouldn't be able to detect the outer dimension from inside without extremely careful indirect measurements... and alot of information about the universe that we don't have. Come on LHC!!!! Astronomers are considering getting rid of the cosmological principle! (THE central assumption of astronomy.) - As for the rest of your answers to my questions, there other, simple chemical systems that are self-assembling, such as crystals (I think it was Shapiro who suggests some extraterrestrial life might be crystalline, spawned an awesome Star Trek TNG episode.) And even fire meets most definitions of life. - Chaos theory (that I consistently refer back to) is mistakenly invoked as 'the study of chaos.' More appropriately it is a study of how chaotic systems appear chaotic when in fact they were the result of very simple starting conditions. Chaos theory can explain the shapes of mountains, trees, and how a drop of blood disperses in water. This is why I'm certain that the origin of life has simple starting conditions. It's presently an untestable hypothesis, but when you realize that this simplicity is in all of nature. All of life--all of it--relies on only four elements. It doesn't get much simpler.