trent eady

I found this site using [url=http://google.com]goo...

2009-11-13T11:35:18.040-05:00

I found this site using [url=http://google.com]google.com[/url] And i want to thank you for your work. You have done really very good site. Great work, great site! Thank you!

Sorry for offtopic

According to Jonathan Chenoweth writing for New Scientist, the problem is water management, not water scarcity. If you have a subscription (or know someone who does), it's a great read.

Hi Britt! Thanks for your thoughts!

I have ...

2008-09-01T12:39:00.000-04:00

Hi Britt! Thanks for your thoughts!

I have thought of the idea of God being created through some sort of Darwinian process (although it would be tricky to think of a process that ultimately produces only one god), but there are two big problems with that idea. Firstly, it admits defeat for the Design Hypothesis. If God came about through Darwinism, that means God's existence was preceded an orderly universe. It also means that Darwinism, not design, is the ultimate source of organized complexity in the universe and therefore the ultimate explanation for life on Earth. This version of the Design Hypothesis also has pathetically limited explanatory power.

The second problem is that we have no reason to believe that a designer had a hand in designing life. The organisms we see are unfathomably intricate systems made of unfathomably intricate parts which in turn are made of unfathomably intricate parts, but, even so, organisms are designed in such a way that makes sense in light of evolution by natural selection, but is baffling if we think of them as being the product of an intelligent designer. Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about "stupid design" at the 2006 Beyond Belief conference: features that are inevitable given the evolutionary process that one would expect not to see if life were designed by a generally benevolent hyperintelligence with the desire and capacity for competent, complex design.

Having read this blog entry, and pondered the exis...

2008-09-01T01:19:00.000-04:00

Having read this blog entry, and pondered the existence of the universe and its surroundings myself, I couldn't help avoiding an idea.

At the start of the entry you address the rarer idea that extra-terrestrials are the designers of human life as we know it, a possible explanation for our existence, and that the problem with this idea is that in order for there to be designing beings, they must be more complex than their designs, humans, which brings up the same inquiries about the origins of these designers as it originally did about us terrestrials. Then you explained how this exact same problem remains to apply to the hypothesis, even when we identify the designer as God instead of extra-terrestrials.

This provoked my mind prematurely to wonder if such a designer came to be through Darwinian processes, just as evidence shows terrestrial existence to have undertook. This I found you had also addressed in the entry as I read further.

I continued reading your entry to the end so that I wouldn't post a comment that turns out to be a lot of what you said later in your entry that I just didn't read, but I still couldn't get past the idea of a designer having been developped by Darwinian processes.
This raises a lot of questions: Is such a being constructed of any biological material or strictly of spirit?; If God is a biological being, does it mean that humans could eventually evolve to levels of Godliness?; Did such a designer evolve to be what they are now over the course of one being's existence?; If not, then what are the other such beings like?; Do these other beings design, as well, or is there only one designer who is the sole designer because he/she/it has evolved beyond the others to a point where it can design the complexities of terrestrial existence?; How may such a designer be similar and different in comparison to its designs, humans, in relativity to anatomy, emotion, intelligence, etc.?; If there are other beings along with our designer, how do the two parties (our designer as one party and its fellows as another) interact?; What purpose does the design's existence serve to the designer?; etc.

Of course it will be impossible to give a true answer to the question of initial creation because even with this idea as an explanation of God's creation, it still does not answer where its first intitial "cell" would have come from in order to evolve through Darwinian processes to reach the complexity it has now. The idea of a designer's evolution also leaves us with more pondering about God's history, current state, and what it will become, as well the past, present, and future of humanity in the chance of our existence and evolution being so relative to that of God's.

The biologists Matthew Cobb and Jerry Coyne have p...

2008-08-28T23:07:00.000-04:00

The biologists Matthew Cobb and Jerry Coyne have published a letter in the science journal Nature about the Templeton Foundation and more generally the relationship between science and religion. They managed to express what I was trying to get across in my post much more clearly and eloquently and in far fewer words.

"We were perplexed by your Editorial on the work of the Templeton Foundation ('Templeton's legacy' Nature 454, 253-254; 2008). Surely science is about finding material explanations of the world -- explanations that can inspire those spooky feelings of awe, wonder and reverence in the hyper-evolved human brain.

Religion, on the other hand, is about humans thinking that awe, wonder and reverence are the clue to understanding a God-built Universe. (The same is true of religion's poor cousin, 'spirituality', which you slip into your Editorial rather as a creationist uses 'intelligent design'.) There is a fundamental conflict here, one that can never be reconciled until all religions cease making claims about the nature of reality.

The scientific study of religion is indeed full of big questions that need to be addressed, such as why belief in religion is negatively correlated with an acceptance of evolution. One could consider psychological studies of why humans are superstitious and believe impossible things, and comparative sociological studies of religion using materialist explanations of the rise and fall of the world's belief systems.

Perhaps the Templeton Foundation is thinking of funding such research. The outcome of such work, we predict, will not bring science and religion (or 'spirituality') any closer to one another. You suggest that science may bring about "advances in theological thinking". In reality, the only contribution that science can make to the ideas of religion is atheism."

One more thought to append: I asked "At the most f...

2008-08-22T11:34:00.000-04:00

One more thought to append: I asked "At the most fundamental, abstract, mechanistic level, where does complexity come from?" I think the phrase I was looking for was "at the level of information" or perhaps "at the algorithmic level". My poorly articulated meaning might become clearer to you if you read Daniel Dennett's insightful essay on the topic. Paley said that we are faced with explaining the complexity of living things just as much as we are faced a pocket watch. I'd like to put a perverse spin on that: in a way I think we've done a better job explaining life than the pocket watch! Human artifacts call out to be explained scientifically just as much as birds' wings. We can superficially answer that these artifacts are products of human creativity, but what is that? How does it work? Experience, albeit indispensable for answering this investigation, will not provide us with a full answer. It will not help us when we ask how creativity works on the level of the brain or when we wonder whether the analogy between human artifacts and natural life forms suggest a parallel between human creativity and natural selection.

If someone knows of any interesting research or speculation on this topic, please let me know.

I have stumbled upon a quote George H. Smith's boo...

2008-08-22T11:16:00.000-04:00

I have stumbled upon a quote George H. Smith's book Atheism: Rhe Case Against God (which I have not read). Smith attacks a radical version of the argument of design that asserts everything in the universe from electrons to elephants must have been carefully, consciously designed:

"Consider the idea that nature itself is the product of design. How could this be demonstrated? Nature, as we have seen, provides the basis of comparison by which we distinguish between designed objects and natural objects. We are able to infer the presence of design only to the extent that the characteristics of an object differ from natural characteristics. Therefore, to claim that nature as a whole was designed is to destroy the basis by which we differentiate between artifacts and natural objects. Evidences of design are those characteristics not found in nature, so it is impossible to produce evidence of design within the context of nature itself. Only if we first step beyond nature, and establish the existence of a supernatural designer, can we conclude that nature is the result of conscious planning." (pg. 268)

I also want to post a quote from Judge John E. Jones III that I linked to in the post because I want to emphasize it. It's from page 82 of Judge Jones' Memorandum Opinion from the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial:

"For human artifacts, we know the designer’s identity, human, and the mechanism of design, as we have experience based upon empirical evidence that humans can make such things, as well as many other attributes including the designer’s abilities, needs, and desires. ... With ID, proponents assert that they refuse to propose hypotheses on the designer’s identity, do not propose a mechanism, and the designer, he/she/it/they, has never been seen. In that vein, defense expert Professor Minnich agreed that in the case of human artifacts and objects, we know the identity and capacities of the human designer, but we do not know any of those attributes for the designer of biological life. ... In addition, Professor Behe agreed that for the design of human artifacts, we know the designer and its attributes and we have a baseline for human design that does not exist for design of biological systems. ... Professor Behe’s only response to these seemingly insurmountable points of disanalogy was that the inference still works in science fiction movies.

...

It is readily apparent to the Court that the only attribute of design that biological systems appear to share with human artifacts is their complex appearance, i.e. if it looks complex or designed, it must have been designed."

New Scientist has since published a much mo...

2008-08-22T11:01:00.000-04:00

New Scientist has since published a much more optimistic article on human extinction written by Michael Brooks. It appears in the 23 July 2008 issue and is entitled 'The end of the world is not nigh'. Here is an excerpt:

"You could be forgiven for thinking that our existence on Earth becomes more precarious by the decade. So breathe a sigh of relief - we may never have been safer.

Last weekend, experts gathered at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford to discuss the risk of global "mega-catastrophes". The idea was to leave aside slow-burn disasters such as climate change and global famine and focus on events that could wipe out hundreds of millions of people, threaten humanity's continued existence on Earth, or at least produce a total collapse of civilisation. The meeting drew contributions from physicists, sociologists, microbiologists and philosophers. Their conclusion: leaving aside scenarios that have yet to be imagined, we are at least handling the major concerns well."

Whoah! Ghandi, Foster and Dawkins all referenced ...

2008-08-17T00:29:00.000-04:00

Whoah! Ghandi, Foster and Dawkins all referenced in one blog posting.

I liked The Brave One well enough as, well, as well. But last night I watched Michael Clayton, which also deals with justice and revenge, after a fashion. In some manner perhaps, it plays more to the nature of your final statement in this posting:

"Along with our innate proclivities towards hatred, tribalism, greed, and blood lust, we should throw revenge into the trashcan of our primitive past – and that’s a death we can all take pleasure from."

And Trent, can I quote you on that?

And by the bye, I am about to now go back to Free Your Mind (http://runurl.com/xx.php?m6p) and send a friendship request your way.

Yours in good faith,
Iago at Chaos Chasm

According to MIT's Daniel Nocera, enough energy from the sun hits the Earth every hour, not every minute as I claimed, to satisfy our global energy needs for a year. Either way, it's much more than we need. The minute/year statistic came from Ottawa Citizen columnist Dan Gardner. The day/10 000 civilizations statistic came from futurist Ray Kurzweil.

That's a fascinating post, Mr. Simon! How embarras...

2008-07-20T21:49:00.000-04:00

That's a fascinating post, Mr. Simon! How embarrassing for ITER if they're outdone by a garage-based fusion plant...

You might find this of interest:

Fusion Report 13 June 008

I was going to say, the book was a gift from CFI b...

2008-06-27T09:58:00.000-04:00

I was going to say, the book was a gift from CFI because I had to sit out the conference watching a video presentation of the proceedings. Stenger's book was a consolation for the fact that I registered too late to get a seat in the main auditorium. Let that be a lesson. If you go to a national conference, register early.

I was fortunate to meet Victor in New York last No...

2008-06-27T09:53:00.000-04:00

I was fortunate to meet Victor in New York last November at the CFI conference. He autographed his book for me, but of course he was mobbed by admirers all the time during the breaks and I couldn't get near enough to hear him answering, what I hope were probing questions.

Hi Trent
nice blog
it would look better if ...

2008-06-16T10:07:00.000-04:00

Hi Trent
nice blog
it would look better if the font was Times New Roman

lol