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

The Placebo Effect

Placebo

Latin - I shall please

For many years I have wondered about the mysterious phenomenon called

the Placebo Effect.  The term coined by Henry K. Beecher in 1955, describes an ability for the mind to initiate the process of healing without aid of pharmacological or surgical procedures.  Often viewed as a nuisance in modern medicine due to its masking of the true effectiveness of a drug or procedure, it is now gaining a new scrutiny in science.  Among the recent discoveries is a new subset of placebo effect called conditioning.  This new effect was observed in rats given a immune suppressive drug and saccharin sweetened water to condition the brain to associate the drug to the taste of the sweetened water.  When only the sweetened water was given later, the reaction was identical.[1]  In other words, the rat doesn't have the ability to consciously believe in the treatment but nonetheless receives the desired effect from just a placebo.  This shows that the placebo effect is biological rather than psychological, unless there is a rat psychologist out there to argue the point.  But even given this new discovery, it's still mind boggling to think the brain can assemble the resources the body needs to alleviate pain and even shrink tumors from... what?  Mimicking the effects of a drug even weeks after it was administered  is hard to explain simply in physical or biological terms given our limited knowledge of the processes in the brain we call 'belief'.  And just what are we 'conditioning' in the brain?  And, where are the lines crossed between biological and psychological?   Even if we do reduce the entire process down to a complex sequence of chemical and molecular interactions, we are still left with the awesome question of why does our body have this innate ability to heal itself?  Could it be a remnant of something from our distant past?
You know this implies those little molecules have some 'intelligence' built into them with an 'awareness' of their environment and the ability to carry out their little part in the big task of healing in coordination with other little molecules.  What do they make to mimic a compound that doesn't naturally occur in the body?  I suppose that will be discovered someday but it still will be incredible.  To the molecule, it wont be anything new in it's repertoire.  It goes about doing it's 'thing' all the time.  For, what is healing other than building or rebuilding or tearing apart and disposing?  The computer at it's most elemental level is just a whole bunch of switches turning on and off.  And yet look at what it can do even at a order of complexity far less than that of our own biology.  What initiated or commanded all those molecules to work on this project?  We can watch it all happening but it still doesn't explain why.  In other words, there has to be something outside the physical directing and coordinating these processes.  Whether we say that the system intelligence is innate or resides invisibly outside, it still has to be there. 
So it seems the more we learn of this uncanny phenomenon, the more questions arise.  At the same time however, it does give credence to the faith community which drives atheists crazy.  Which brings us to a story found in the Bible.  In the Pentateuch, Numbers 21:4-9, the children of Israel are in the wilderness after the miraculous deliverance from Pharaoh. 

And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way. And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread. And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. Numbers 21:4-9

Could it be the placebo effect is an echo of this miracle?  I find it ironic that the symbols of medicine such as that above,  the Caduceus, recall the event we just read in the Bible when medical science is about as far from it's roots in faith as it has ever been, but still uses the symbol of the serpent on the pole.  And the thorn in the proverbial side of medical science is the placebo effect.  Does God have a sense of humor or what?

Notes:

1.  Scientific American - February/March 2009 - Cure in the Mind

Available sources not noted or used in this article:
Placebo Effects: Understanding the mechanisms in health and disease
The Placebo Effect: An Interdisciplinary Exploration
The Placebo Response and the Power of Unconscious Healing
The Placebo Effect and Health: Combining Science and Compassionate Care
Extreme Healing - a National Geographic presentation

Repentance

  He gives snow like wool; He scatters the hoarfrost like ashes. He casts forth His ice like crumbs; who can stand before His cold? Psalm 147:16-17

Not too long ago, my son Andy shared a link on Facebook to an essay about the cold.   Jason Peters eloquently lays out the love we northerners (those born into it) have for cooler weather and even enjoy the months of winter for it's beauty and clean look.   I can't count the times, while crossing a windswept parking lot near the midnight hour, cold wind and sometime sleet or snow stinging my face, I've thought of Psalm 147:17.  I remember the first time I had read this scripture and how it struck me that I hadn't thought of the cold as His cold.  He can make it so cold, even I, the toughened old northerner wouldn't be able to "stand" for long.  Now, instead of grumbling about the cold, I can see it as a message, a lesson.  What are those lessons?  If you've felt utterly undressed in the cold wearing your finest winter gear, you would know.  In this season of Lent, I think it's important to be thankful to God's cold that brings us to repentance.  We are "naked" before Him.  There is nothing we can hide.  It is better to feel His cold and know this.  And acknowledge our sins before Him.  And He will cloth and warm us with His Grace.

"As for me, God willing, I shall walk through the cold on such northern days as this—that I might be its earnest and deserving pupil."  Jason Peters

 Books written by Jason Peters: Wendell Berry: Life and Work (Culture of the Land)

A Serious Man

This long weekend, I 'stumbled' across a movie that will probably be misunderstood by our non-Jewish culture but may be insightful for Christians.  A Serious Man by Joel and Ethan Coen is a slice of Americana most of us have been oblivious of, weaved into the dark humor of the newest Coen brothers film.  Understood to be loosely a modern parallel to the Biblical book of Job, the world falls apart around the protagonist, a presumably righteous man, and is pushed at times to the edge of his sanity while three Rabbis (friends) are of no help.

The spiritual key to understanding the film in my opinion is the desire of those that love God (Hashem) to know His leading in their lives.  We follow Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) through his humorously bad string of circumstances in a quest to find out what it all means for him and we're left with the epitaph "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you."(Rashi) 

Larry fumbles his way through long enough it seems to have passed the test of a Serious Man (mensch) and then lets his guard down and takes the monetary bribe from one of his students to pay an expensive retainer fee from his attorney.  Immediately he receives a call from his doctor with bad news about a recent x-ray and the film ends at his son's school where an approaching tornado is bearing down on them while the schoolmaster fumbles with the keys to the basement door. This is not good. 

The film is rated R for language and some brief nudity but I fast forwarded and still enjoyed most of it without too much offensive content.

Link to trailer here.

A really well written and comprehensive review here.

Life in HD

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.  1Co 13:12

The scene opens on a dusty street in an old western town with the sun low in the afternoon heat.  The camera pans to a closeup of a unshaven ruddy face of a man with a stub of a cigar hanging from his mouth, unlit, eyes squinting in the light and dust swirling.  The background music sets the mood to a lonely place lost in time, perhaps never.  A mystery is about to be laid out on the screen we've thought about before, somewhere, sometime.

But we know none of this is real, but a facade, a creation of mind, an assembling of a story as the author saw it.  This is just... make believe.  Do we really understand this as just pure fiction?  Does our mind really have that clear separation of the real versus virtual?  Or, do our memories blur the facts of the past events at times at a subliminal level?  The famous actors will tell you of the countless times people have approached them and believe they are actually the characters they portrayed.  Seeing them out of character confuses them for a moment.  A brief feeling of disillusionment ensues when they realize "he really isn't that tough and reliable man in the movies, he's just an ordinary man like myself".  But the persona lives on in their minds, they fell in love with it, identified with it, even modeled their lives after it. 

Such is the state of mind of our playwright culture.  Unable to discern truth from error, fiction from fact, dreams from personal history.  Even science is under its spell because the scientists themselves have been raised in the same environment.  They tend to follow their faiths, rather than the facts alone.  A perfect example of this is the recent scandalization of the climate data governments have so long been touting as irrefutable evidence of man-made global warming.  There is some disillusionment going on right now in the earth sciences.  Good.  Hopefully careers will be ruined for those who smugly rejected any challenge to their theories.  A lot of damage has already been done by these self-proclaimed prophets of doom.  Many have drunk their kool-aid unfortunately and are still mindlessly following the mantra. Hopefully we're on the other side of this now though with the public becoming more cynical of the message of impending disaster if they don't tow the line and live "green".  Or, pay their government for the 'privilege' of barbecuing steaks on their open grills or opening a can of pop (soda) or any of a long ridiculous list of everyday living 'infractions'.  One would get the impression these folks just don't want anyone else around (except for themselves of course).  One of the Super Bowl ads, the Green Police, was a little too close to possible reality for some.

 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 2Ti 3:7

But all this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Below the waterline is the rot of culture that will someday culminate in total collapse.  "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;" Rom 1:28  It certainly doesn't sound like the Utopian world some believe is in our future.  According to scripture, things are going to get a lot worse before the end, not better.

 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2Ti 3:1

You can put a face to this scripture these days.  If you're at all connected with current events,  the following  will stun you;  For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; 2Tim3:2-4

Is there any hope left for mankind then?  Yes.  Even in the midst of these perilous times, there is a message that will endure to the end.  It's a way out of the inevitable, a key to the door of a bright future.

Wings and Things

Just read in our local paper chicken wing prices are soaring.  Up to $2.11 per pound over the $1.50 from last year.  From what I've seen, it looks like the trend will continue until the cardiologists go on Oprah and let us know they aren't so good for us.  So here's my prediction.  Wings will become a commodity and traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.  Imagine, those delectable little pieces of gold being traded right along side of all those traditional farm products such as wheat, soy and pork bellies.  Pork bellies?  eeewww!  Anyways, to give you a peek into the future of the Wing market, I've assembled some graphs, charts and photos you'll be seeing in your Sunday papers sometime in the near future.  You'll note that they will begin to sell wings by the barrel instead of by the case, that's how valuable these babies will become.  Who would have ever imagined those once rejected appendages would become the most prized part of the bird.  I'm partial to right wings myself.