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.  

Specified Complexity

Those two words will be in the public eye in the coming months as the debate continues between Darwinist evolution and the new emerging science of Intelligent Design.  ID, far from being a religion, is the new kid on the block in biology.  While Darwinists tinker and play with their new found toy DNA molecule, thinking it's just another accident of a blind meaningless world, the Intelligent Design scientists are hard at work formulating a rock solid argument for the design hypothesis through a testable model called Specified Complexity.  In The Design Revolution , author William A. Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher and just one of the leading advocates for Intelligent Design, meticulously covers the thesis of this cutting-edge science.  Mr Dembski has been churning out multiple books on the subject before and since the Design Revolution.  As science begins to formulate that innate ability for intelligent minds to recognize the work of other intelligent minds, we find ourselves on yet another crossroads in society.  While materialism has dominated the mindset of the western world for the last 150 years much to the credit of Darwinism, Intelligent Design, instead of the materialistic Darwinism, has finally grasped the significance of the recently discovered and unexplainable "code of life" found in the DNA molecule.  I became breathless by the revelation that we are looking at something most holy and precious scribed on every cell within our bodies.  Like the loving handiwork of a much loved grandpa in his workshop, that handmade object from the past connecting us to the unknown inner lives of our ancestors, the "work" inscribed on a molecule is from the very Person who waits for us at the door of eternity.  Science is finally returning to it's "first love", " thinking God's thoughts after Him."

I will praise You; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are marvelous and my soul knows it very well.  My bones were not hidden from You when I was made in secret and skillfully formed in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my embryo; and in Your book all my members were written, the days they were formed, and not one was among them.  How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!

Psalm 139:14-17

TED

We all have our favorite hangouts on the web like Facebook or Hulu.  I found another place I like to visit frequently for video content - TED.  TED.com has new "talks" every week limited to an easy 18 minutes in length.  Although largely left leaning politically and ideologically, there are lots of fascinating subjects covered that are more up-to-date than anything else on the net.  You'll hear from the scientists and other pioneers as they open their worlds to us.  There is even a special section for those like myself who want to discuss religion.  If your a life long student and want to keep up with the latest in a wide variety of research, I highly recommend visiting TED.

Intelligent Design

I like following the ongoing debate between the ID'ers and staunch Neo-Darwinists.  On the one hand, are the Mr Obviouses with the pictures and video clips and on the other are the Evolution-is-a-fact-and-dont-bother-me-with-the-evidence establishment that owns our government, museums, public education, media, the Catholic church, your local grocery store and any hope you may have of dignity as a human.  It's a fascinating study in human nature, especially on the side of the evolutionists who have become very sensitive to say the least of any scrutiny of their bully pulpit.  It's a win at any cost of intellectual capital war for the Neo-Ds it seems.  To see all those little molecules lining up like little soldiers to do their jobs in the animated clip of cellular processes the "other side" has come up with makes it so obvious that there is something more than blind natural selection/random mutation going on here.  It has to be embarrassing trying to defend the argument that the molecular electric motor found in the flagellum of bacteria is just a product of chance.  There is a mountain of evidence on the ID side of purposeful design found in all life and the only snobbish argument the Neos can come up with is a "faulty" design feature they occasionally find in animal life.  They seem to take great pleasure poking fun at the straw-man god they imagine 98% of us believe in.  I am always amazed at the ignorant statements coming from these followers of the Bearded-Man-who-thought-cells-were-blobs-of-protoplasm, like "man will surpass the design found in nature someday".  We have barely scratched the surface of the micro and macro creation we live in and they make these incredibly stupid remarks.  Here is a prediction.  Not too far in the future it will be discovered that rather than random mutation being the mechanism whereby positive change is invoked in biological systems, smart molecules have been programmed to monitor the environment and make changes accordingly.  There will be found an anticipatory nature in molecular biology that cannot be explained away by the throwing of Darwinian dice.  Now that's what we all know as Intelligence.

Resources:

Signature in the Cell Discussion (audio)
The Inner Life of a Cell animation 
CS Lewis Society

The Irrationality of Truth

'Truth is stranger than fiction' an old saying attributed to Lord Byron in his epic poem Don Juan (1819-1824), turns out to be more than just a passing observation of some of the ironies of life but a foundational scientific principle discovered in the way the human brain processes reality.  The diagram to the top right is illustrative of the way the sight perceives relative sizes.  Compare the sizes of the center circles.  Which of the two are smaller and larger?  Now measure each one and you'll see , as you probably expected, they are both the same size.  Our perception will still see them as different sizes even after we gained this 'truth' because of a trait in our brains called relativity.  This isn't the Einstein relativity but that of social science such as found in Behavioral Economics.[1]  Are Christians immune to these misperceptions?  Not at all.  We're all 'wired' the same whether we believe and trust in God or not.  The difference lies in how we judge what the truth is.  Whether we trust our eyes (mind) or an external standard.  The same is true in understanding our Christian walk.  Is scripture our standard, the rule of our life experiences and opinions or do we have more faith in our own understanding.  The knowledge that our perception is fallible as demonstrated here should bring us to the conclusion that we can't always trust our eyes let alone our understanding.

"For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise." 2 Corinthians 10:12

 Paul knew the limitations of human perception as well as anyone else and saw how it could divide the church.  It's a powerful force in our lives today as it was in Israel in New Testament times. Put a 'Dr' in front of your name or have a British accent and you become an authority.  But God rarely uses these types as we see in this letter to the Corinthian church;

"Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence." 

1 Corinthians 1:25-29

 There is a temptation within the church to overlook the ignoble,the common.  It's only natural for us to esteem those smarter, richer and better looking, we're 'wired' that way.  But the deep wisdom, that other-worldly knowledge turns everything upside down.  It seems irrational, but in fact is Truth.  God uses the weak things to show us not to depend on the ordinary but to see the world the way He does.

Additional resources:

Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions? 

Keith Barry

Notes:

1. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions