Synthetic Life

In the news this week the J. Craig Venter institute  announced the creation of the first synthetic DNA cell.  If your worried we're going down a perilous path your not alone.  

Full length video here.

Remembering the Future

Remembering what? The future you say? Are you daft man? ....Yes, remembering the future is the thesis of my recent studies.  In an uncanny way, my interest has been focused on randomness, the Arrow of Time, particle physics, casting lots, prophecy, cellular biology, brain function, astrophysics, the lottery, a little parapsychology and last but not least, Christian theology.  It has been a dizzy ride spanning decades, punctuated by life's crossroads, but always returning to the next question.  It seems everyday something new comes to my attention that is relevant to... I haven't quite grasped that yet to be honest.  But here is partly what I have so far.

We are designed not only to perceive memories but also the future.  Recent brain research has discovered the same brain functions used in our memories is also used in imagining the future.  The "hard" sciences try to grasp, as well as it can, the future through probabilities.  They can get you in the right neighborhood and even have computer models for weather that are accurate out to 12 days or so.   But, they can't literally "see" the future like the prophecy that is found in scriptures, but rather give you a number.  You can make pretty impressive charts from these numbers, but that isn't literally the future your looking at, it's just a guess.   A guess based upon the past, or those law-like things we can find in the past.  If the future holds something new and seemingly disconnected to any law we can identify today, then you are outside the help of science.  The future is real though as we all find out every moment of the days of our lives.  Time, in the end, is a perception more than a "thing".   Although it is treated as a dimension in physics, it's true nature is still a mystery.

I believe that the future has already happened.  With Relativity, we know time is fluid and the point of reference depends on your location within a gravity field or your speed relative to something else.  The faster you go, the more everything else speeds past you into the future. The very fact that time can be slowed to a crawl in an intense gravity field or traveling near the speed of light shows that the future is no different than the present or past in nature.

Prophecy, interestingly, is often written in the past tense in scripture.  We know the past is fixed, although knowledge entropies over time and becomes much like the mystery of the future given enough... time.  Therefore, the future must be fixed also.  If your one that doesn't believe in scripture or prophecy, that doesn't matter.  Truth is true whether you believe it or not.  We add or take away nothing by our knowledge or ignorance of it. Why then the fuzzy, random nature of the future?  Or is it just a perception that it is random and "fuzzy"?

Consider Ecclesiastes 1:9-11  "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. "

I can hear you protest, "but that isn't what Solomon meant, that time is fixed and repeats itself..."  That is exactly what he meant.  Time, history, future or however you conceive it, is already finished. Interesting isn't it that our brains are wired to treat the past and the future the same?  Solomon wasn't a brain scientist, but he knew this already.  More on this hopefully later.

Update: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/timelike-entanglement/

Update: Time is an illusion?

"Don't rock the boat"

I can't recall anyone telling me "don't rock the boat" in those very words, but I certainly have been "encouraged" not to be quite so passionate about my beliefs and convictions over the years.  It's a lonely life indeed being a non-conformist, even if you are pretty considerate about it.  Age does temper one's methods in non-conformity but it's still unsettling to the status quo and you once again find yourself peering through the fence at the game. Try to be a conformist for comforts sake and you'll find yourself a miserable man.  You could find yourself in the belly of the fish of depression.  You were made to be different, that's the lot you have been given, that's it, no more quibbling about it......  Age also brings humility after countless lessons of failure.  You know, those times when you were fulfilling your "calling" as a non-conformist and you find yourself on the wrong side of the truth, ugh, hate that when it happens.  After years of scouring by the streams of life you find yourself just another smooth stone amongst all the other.  To God however, you're now a perfect weapon for the take-down.

Chance and Reason

Among some benchmark works valuable in assessing the new science of Intelligent Design is David Bartholomew's God Chance and Purpose. Mr Bartholomew was Emeritus Professor of Statistics at the London School of Economics and Political Science along with a long and impressive list of accomplishments.  He is also a Methodist preacher.  In his latest book, Mr Bartholomew convincingly lays out the argument for chance being part of God's creation.  From the laws of statistics used everyday in science and industry, he demonstrates that any model for Intelligent Design has to grapple with the "reality" of randomness or chance found in nature.  Addressing Dr. William Dembski's contributions to Intelligent Design, namely the theorem of Specified Complexity (see my article) David finds some concerns in what he describes as circularity in Dembski's method.  Dr Dembski answers those concerns here.  I agree with Dembski that any theology that is in discord of the plain teaching of scripture is suspect.  Dembski's accuses Bartholomew of being an advocate of what is known as Open Theology which is more liberal than traditional Arminianism.  Although I'm not interested in getting in any arguments about Predestination and Arminianism,  I agree with the predestination camp that believes God knows everything, even the future.  If God isn't aware of the future, then it would negate all prophecy.  At the same time however, I believe chance and randomness are also "true" in our sense and experiences.  It's demonstrable characteristics show us that it is real.  But if the arrow of time, the nature of time to be one-way or irreversible in our experience, shows us that the past is fixed, then why not the future also?  Why would the future be any different than the past?  Chance would then be merely an illusion,  a veil that only prophets are given a peek through occasionally.   We know, through real prophecy found in the scriptures, that information can flow from the future to the past and then to us in the present.  One of the interesting studies I am pursuing is the ancient practice of casting lots.  It is mentioned not only in the Old and New Testaments but also in extant writings of the surrounding cultures.  More on all this in the next post.