Monday, April 29, 2024

Can humans live as long as God?

Come what may, God is with you.

Even as the Universe evolves (see About genes, science, the Universe, evolution, God and all that stuffno one - no caliph, bishop, mystic, naturalist and, let’s be clear, no scientist - is able to say for sure how the process started or why. Chances are none ever will.

If the Big Bang started it, next up is what started the Big Bang? If the Big Bang started itself, how did it have the necessary explosive? If it wasn’t an ‘explosion’ in that sense, just quantum fluctuation and an instant expansion of space*, where did the quanta come from and why the fluctuation?

Any way you think about it, you're into an infinite regression. In one Creation story the world stands on the back of a giant turtle, the reply to any query about that being it's turtles all the way down. There’s no way out of infinity. Only the possibility that there is no infinity and no mystery “out there” at all. 

Our brain did not evolve to deal with the infinite; it evolved dealing with our bounded “environment” here on Earth. When elementary single-celled life emerged in some boiling pool somewhere eons ago, its entire concern was surviving in the pool, not on planet Earth or Mars. It's at it there to this day. We humans tackle surviving on planets.

To go a little deeper into that, we're also able to grasp with no sense of a fathomless mystery the long past and formation of Earth and Mars, and before that, can conceive of a distant time when neither of them was around.

And it doesn't stop there. We know Earth in not going to last forever yet can imagine an infinite future for the Universe with humans a living part of it. Only a Beginning, try as we might, is beyond reach.

But what if there was no Beginning, if there is no answer, no question, no mystery, never will be - only ever God? What on earth would explain that?

Us.


*Most scientists seem to agree the Universe is expanding, but not on how fast.



 

 

 

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

About genes, science, the Universe, evolution, God and everything


We've all heard about our genes. Genetics is the science of genes, their structure, function and the not quite perfect way they transmit copies of themselves - without which there would be no variety and people would not show it in profusion among us, as they do.

As if that weren’t enough, environments also change, and the life varieties that survive over time are those naturally adapted to sustain their existence - their 'life' - in changed conditions. Charles Darwin, who of course introduced this mechanism to us all, called it ‘natural selection’ to distinguish it from the artificial selection that people had already been doing for ages. From tigers, pussy cats.

There is no known or apparent reason why the process of natural selection is not at work in the Universe itself, or across the Multiverse if that’s what the situation is. 

Our Universe has certainly evolved or we wouldn’t be here. And we’ve all heard as well of a primordial ‘soup’ that was around very early on. If our Universe, in all its stunning complexity - galaxies, stars, planets, tigers, cats and us - did not emerge out of that soup, we must explain what it did emerge from, and how.

On that, more recent scientific theorising (itself constantly ‘evolving’) considers that the Universe is not necessarily running down like some gigantic machine, as is generally supposed to be the case. That scenario, faintly depressing however far off, is the result of entropy,* which means everything runs from order to disorder and finally arrives at a featureless state of equilibrium. Like the coffee in our picture, or the hot water left to become tepid then cold in your bath.

The alternative proposal is that, provided a system is not ‘closed’ - that is, it continues to receive inputs of energy - the increase in disorder spontaneously gives rise to new forms. And those that succeed are the most stable, the forms naturally adapted to the environment. 

Now the Universe that began with the Big Bang clearly did not start out like it is today. In which case, entropy may not be death but re-birth, midwife not undertaker, and this may be the way things are eternally.

That’s where, if S/He ever left, God comes back in.

Even as the Universe evolves no one - no caliph, bishop, mystic, naturalist and let’s be clear, no scientist - is able to say for sure how the process started or why. Chances are none ever will.

If the Big Bang started it, next up is what started the Big Bang? If the Big Bang started itself, how did it have the necessary explosive? If it wasn’t an ‘explosion’ in that sense, just quantum fluctuation and an instant expansion of space,** where did the quanta come from and why the fluctuation?

Any way you think about it, you're into an infinite regression. In one Creation story the world stands on the back of a giant turtle, the reply to any query about that being it's turtles all the way down. There’s no way out of infinity. Only the possibility that there is no infinity and no mystery “out there” at all. 

Our brain did not evolve to deal with the infinite; it evolved dealing with our bounded environment here on Earth. Likewise, when single-celled brainless life emerged in some boiling pool somewhere eons ago, its entire concern was surviving in the pool, not on planet Earth or Mars. It's at it there to this day. We humans tackle surviving on planets.

To go a little deeper into that, we're also able to grasp with no sense of a fathomless mystery the long past and formation of Earth and Mars, and before that, can conceive of a distant time when neither of them was around.

And it doesn't stop there. We know Earth in not going to last forever yet can imagine an infinite future for the Universe with humans a living part of it. Only a Beginning, try as we might, is beyond reach.

But what if there was no Beginning, if there is no answer, no question, no mystery, never will be - only ever God? What on earth would explain that?

Us.

*Entropy is promulgated by the intimidating Second Law of Thermodynamics. Could it have been repealed?

**Most scientists seem to agree the Universe is expanding, but not on how fast.

 

 

 

 

 








Monday, April 15, 2024

Can a journalist ever get a politician to tell the truth?




Journalists, even when partisan in the name of freedom of speech, still like to say they are after the truth.

That may well be honest in terms of how they see truth and in the eyes of their prime listeners and readers. But is it how their work comes across to an audience requiring unbiased information on current events? If it isn’t, is it a job done honestly? - assuming some superior ‘objective approach’ is open to them.

Interview after interview shows most politicians, legally and professionally counselled beforehand, are able to evade journalists' questions and stifle useful discussion by robotically repeating the party line. Digress and deny, concede nothing.

In the same way, mixed panels on popular political ‘shows’, got up to present a ‘balance’ of opinion, all too often end in a futile shouting match between panelists whose one shared aim is to prevent opposition views being heard.

We appreciate this is election year in key western democracies and that no one said democracy, or life, is fair. If we want democracy, we must accept all its ways and means, not just the ones we agree with.

But if there is such a thing as 'the truth', can politicians somehow be held to it? Let us speculate.

What if journalists were always to interview politicians constructively, giving them time to put their position while pointing as now to any gaps and contradictions along the way. Then suppose they ask the same simple question politely every time - it could even become this method's catch-phrase:

“Do you really believe what you’re saying?”

Even politicians could not talk round that question. And wouldn’t their answer 'tell' all listeners, those agreeing and not agreeing with what they just heard, everything they want or need to know about the truth: namely, whether the speaker is telling it?

Alas, we live in the real world. The truth, like politicians, is elusive and the media is doing what they can in the circumstances. Indeed, they would no doubt quickly run out of willing interviewees if they did anything more. 

We have the pageant politician-journalist jousting we have and had better think for ourselves.