Evolution and intelligent design

[austintorn@aol.com]

(Some of this is only supposed,
such as Galileo's thoughts, antimatter,
the Illuminati, and perhaps some of Milton.)


THE ILLUMINATION OF SCIENCE

The Illuminati of today
Are not those of the past,
For they have mutated,
Some even picking up on notions
That others falsely ascribed to them.

Back then they were scientists.

The Church and its scripture
Is basically immutable,
Still according to the myths of old;
That is, the idea of Jehovah told
Wiped out the numerous Gods of old
And became the new—
The one and only.

Religion may not
Be burning scientists
At the stake anymore,
But if one thinks
They’ve released their reign over science,
One must ask why half the schools in the U.S.
Are not allowed to teach evolution,
Why the U.S. Christian Coalition
Is the most influential lobby
Against scientific progress in the world…

As for the Illuminati of old,
The obliteration of Catholicism
Was their central covenant.

The brotherhood held that
The superstitious dogma
Spewed forth by the church
Was mankind’s greatest enemy.

They feared that if religion continued
To promote pious myth as absolute fact,
Scientific progress would halt,
And mankind would be doomed
To an ignorant future
Of senseless holy wars.

And, I might add to the above,
Much like we see today.

So, Bush killed stem cell research
And went to war against Iraq
After consulting with a ‘Higher Father’,
Holy wars now being everywhere, since
How could the other religions be so wrong!

Those trying to hold a monopoly on truth
Cannot help but to label the contrary as evil
And thus act accordingly.

So, we do have to worry, still,
When the Church wants to be
The sole interpreter of the ‘truth’.

Flawed and arbitrary concepts of good and truth
Only cause the contrary to be labeled as evil.

Ah, thought Galileo,
As he wandered past the deserted
And flower-grown ruins of Rome, one night,
This looks to be the same now as it will and was
A thousand years before and after me.

Would that there could be a day
When science was free.
What once great Roman glory
Would pale beside that brightest light of day!

Galileo looked about and around and behind.
No one was following him to his ultra secret lair,
Where other scientists would join him again
On this starry night, safe therein to congregate
And discuss the topics forbidden by the Vatican.

(To this day no one has found Galileo’s lair,
Called The Church of Illumination.
I am obtaining all this information about Galileo
From his little known ‘lost’ diary.

I even have an unpublished book of the Holy Bible
And a few of Leonardo’s ‘missing’ diaries,
But those are other stories.)

…go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,
Oh, not of him, but of our joy: ‘tis nought
That ages, empires and religions there
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;
For such as he can lend,--they borrow not
Glory from those who made the world their prey;
And he is gathered to the kings of thought
Who waged contention with their time’s decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.
(Shelley)

Galileo noted the ancient sculptures
Still standing against mouldering time,
Knowing that the new scientists arriving,
If they were worthily smart enough,
Would have to use the clues provided
As the way to the secret meeting place,
For there was no map made and never would be.

As the word of this scientific brotherhood
Began to spread,
Scientists would travel thousands of miles
But upon the slim hope of chancing a glance
Through Galileo’s telescope
And discussing the master’s many ideas.

Go thou to Rome,--at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,
And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
The bones of Desolation’s nakedness
Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access
Where, like an infant’s smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;
(Shelley)

As Galileo wandered among the ruins
Made one with Nature in their decay,
Or gazed on the Praxitelean shapes
That thronged the Capitol,
And the palaces of Rome,
His minding soul imbibed all the forms,
This loveliness becoming a portion of himself,
As well as its science,
Even right here,
Within the realm of the Pope’s Holiness
That shadowed him
Much as the darkness of night
Condemned the day.

And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
This refuge for his memory, doth stand
Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched in Heaven’s smile their camp of death,
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.
(Shelley)

Many had been burned before, thought Galileo,
So ‘tis a difficult path to follow,
Yet the truth calls me forward…
And so he had published the ‘Starry Messenger’.

Later on, Galileo had argued
That the Bible had to be interpreted
In the light of what science had shown to be true.

Galileo had several opponents
And they made sure that a copy of
The ‘Letter to Castelli’
Was sent to the Inquisition in Rome.
In 1616 Galileo wrote
The ‘Letter to the Grand Duchess’
Which vigorously attacked
The followers of Aristotle.

In this work, which he addressed
To the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine,
He argued strongly for a non-literal interpretation
Of Holy Scripture when the literal interpretation
Would contradict facts about the physical world
Proved by mathematical science.

… Galileo walked on slowly,
For his health had become poor,
And noted the setting moon—
The sky would be wonderfully dark.

He would soon be found guilty and condemned,
But he knew none of that this night.

The eventual ‘Father of Science’
Again sat with the scientific Illuminati of his time,
The discussions as free and glorious as ever…

He was later put under house arrest
In his home in Florence,
Having by then nearly gone blind,
But the starry memories of the Milky Way,
The moons of Jupiter and more
Remained in a mind still free—
That which could never be taken away by ‘Dogma’.

His body was concealed
And only placed in a fine tomb
In the church in 1737 by the civil authorities,
Against the wishes of many in the Church.

On 31 October 1992,
350 years after Galileo’s death,
Pope John Paul II gave an address
On behalf of the Catholic Church
In which he admitted that errors had been made
By the theological advisors in the case of Galileo.

He declared the Galileo case closed,
But he did not admit that the Church was wrong
To convict Galileo on a charge of heresy
Because of his belief that the Earth
Rotates round the sun. (Wiki)


The Torch Passes Its Light

His eyes were so weak
“that he could no longer see the sky.”

A young Illuminatus embarked on a long pilgrimage,
“A sojourn to Galileo’s delightful villa at Arcetri,
Just beyond the walls of Florence.

“There it was that I found and visited
The famous Galileo grown old,
A prisoner to the Inquisition,
For thinking in Astronomy otherwise
Than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers.

“I was his last disciple, as you say
I went to him, at seventeen years of age,
And offered him my hands and eyes to use.”

Galileo recalls the momentous occasion
(‘‘that day of days’’):

When, quietly as a messenger from heaven,
Moving unseen, through his own purer realm,
Among the shadows of our mortal world,
A young man, with a strange light on his face
Knocked at the door of my house.

His name was John Milton.

Milton at the gate: Friend! let me pass.
Dominican: Whither? To whom?
Milton: Into the prison; to Galileo Galilei.
To this, the Dominican guard protests that,
Where Galileo is being held, there are no prisons,
Only confinements of sorts
For those guilty of “heretical pravity”
And “other less atrocious crimes”.

Not to be taken in by such rhetoric,
Milton stands his ground and demands
(on divine authority)
That the gates that confine the great astronomer
Be opened at once.

Responding to the demand,
The Dominican guard
Can only admire the young man who confronts him.

To himself the guard exclaims:
“What sweetness! what authority!
What a form! what an attitude! what a voice!”
After which he acknowledges
That his “sight staggers; the walls shake;
He must be—do angels ever come hither?”

…Plots had been perhaps laid against Milton
As one who had ‘seen’ and ‘heard’
Matters that were best left untold.

In Galileo, ‘frail and old,’ Milton had ‘seen’
One of those near blind illustrious
Of whom he had so often dreamt,
And of whom he was to be himself another.

O, dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark

Some thought that
Milton’s Lucifer (Latin for ‘light bringer’),
Came off much better in ‘Paradise Lost’
Than did God Himself.

Lieber in der Hölle regieren als im Himmel dienen.
[Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.]

Gravity fell, from its fundamental throne,
Being a blend of matter and motion.
As with time, if we take away what’s known,
Its attraction fades into oblivion.

‘Twas here, his final resting place,
In a church…
At last enshrined as the Father of Science.

Embellished, as the Master in stone,
He’s ever looking up
Whence forth came the light
From the starry skies.

[austintorn@aol.com]

The Fanciful View From Today and a Review

Back when religion persecuted science,
The Illuminati became a secret organization
Taking refuge from the scourge of the Church.


The Path of Illumination

In 1600 Rome, the Baroque theatre
Of political intrigues and inquisition trials,
One of the most influential secret societies
In history was born: The Illuminati.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Galileo Galilei,
The twin heads of the society,
Scattered throughout the Eternal City
Clues and enigmas which, once solved,
Would lead Illuminati adepts to a hidden lair.

It was thought that the rumored ambigram
For ‘Illuminati’ could never be found,
It reading the same upside down.

Four Altars of Science,
Representing the four elements
Of earth, air, fire and water,
And a mysterious text from John Milton
Are the key clues that, once decoded,
Will lead on the Path of Illumination.


Doom?

“Behold this droplet of anti-world,
My anti-matter that LHC created,
Enough material to see.”

“My God, a visible amount!”

“See, here it is, suspended
In a vacuum in this tube,
For even the air would ignite it.”

“Quick, send it away,
Get rid of it.”

“No, for I have discovered Creation.”


SEGNO (SIGN) # 0

“There is the ‘vacuum’”, replied the other,
“A base state, one pervading all of space,
There being no signposts within it,
Or anywhere, since it is of no direction.

“We must regard it the stuff of which things are made;
For just as all living creatures inhale the air,
So do all the real natures inhale the vacuum.”

“This intimation is the mark of manifestation,
A demonstration that’s the token of the evidence;
The aetheric and heavenly sign of things to become,
Both the portent and the omen of so much possibility.

“It is both the warning and the present notice,
Presaging both the promise and the threat.
Aft this sign, that the vacuum ‘indirects’,
Then the real gestures ever beckon;
They of an the unsignal faint,
The wave and gesticulation of you.

“We read the noise of the quantum theater—no marquee;
All is daubed without symbols to mark no cipher, bare,
No letters, characters, figures, or hieroglyphs there,
No ideogram of the rune of order,
No emblem of the Divine.”

[Meem]

Evolution lost. For the blip of geo-logical time that we have occupied, the dinosaurs were around for millions of years. However, they never made the small step for lizards, or giant leap for lizardkind. They lived for millions of years with to much time on their hands, paws, jaws, and the meek ones which they hunted inherited the earth. This doesn't make any sense to me, nor does it have to.

[austintorn@aol.com]

True, Meem, that nature doesn't make a lot of sense, not does it give a hoot about it. Were it not for us digging up bones, the idea of dinosaurs would have seemed to come right out of a fantasy book. That these Kings of Forever eventually died off is astounding, too.

They wouldn't have fit into Noah's Ark, so that would have been another end to them if they had been around that long.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Selecting for Fitness (in addition to the unfit)

Natural selection can and does select, as well, for mutations that increase overall fitness, that is, these mutations increase the frequency of that allele in the next generations. For example, a mutation may elongate the beak of a bird and make it thinner. This would enable the possessors of this allele to eat insects living in crevices in the rocks.

Or, a mutation may improve the digestibility of proteins and thus increase the food supply. A fungus may acquire an enzyme that digests cellulose, which few species can do. A whole mountain of food is now available.

There may be other mechanisms in addition to strict natural selection. A possibility is the case of mutations that accidentally carry both a selected property and another quite different unselected property. This gene may now hang around a long time, and may by chance find itself in a new environment where the second property becomes of selectable value. Jack Beans contain an enzyme called urease, which very potently hydrolyses urea. To the best of my knowledge urea does not occur in plants! A second example is a boring enzyme of metabolism which moonlights as a DNA binding protein of very high specificity.

With respect to selecting for fitness, one of the great all time experiments was done by Richard Lenski which examined a species of bacteria in an environment that contained a specific type of fuel and some other substance, perhaps citrate. The bacteria were stained a certain way so that researchers could determine species. When a mutation occurred, these mutant bacteria were then placed into their own isolated environment with the same fuel and solution, and some of the previous species were "fossilized" via freezing for comparison later.

As you can imagine, bacteria that could specialize by living in glucose (the fuel) proliferated better, just as NS would suggest. Fitness increased quickly up until about 20,000 generations, whereby these mutated bacteria had grown about 70% more quickly than the initial ancestor strain, and then growth tapered off in an asymptotic way.

A few interesting developments to note - some strains developed a mutation that negatively affected their ability to repair DNA, which increased the rate of mutations in those strains. By way of numbers, some 100's of millions of mutations are believed to have occurred in the first 20,000 generations, but only 10-20 beneficial mutations gained fixation in the main population. The most important mutation led to the ability of a strain to use citrate as a fuel, and so those mutant populations experienced an additional surge, breaking through the previous asymptotic growth. This mutation depended on another mutation that had up to this point been neutral (non-adaptive at the time), but coupled with this additional mutation became potent in the citrate/glucose environment. Point being mutations can increase overall fitness, and can be quasi-cumulative in the scenario where one mutation is neutral by itself but incredibly potent along with another mutation.

There are other factors in evolution besides ‘regular’ Natural Selection, such as cataclysmic events like asteroid impacts, natural disasters, and other broad extinction events. Perhaps had there been no asteroid impact 65MM years ago mammals would never have had the chance to dominate to this point.

Gould and Lewontin were big believers in punctuated equilibrium, but that is still ultimately explained by Natural Selection.

There are occasions when true random behaviour is evident, such as in mutations. But equally, the response to mutations is not so random at all. An organism will find that any specific, randomly chosen mutation will fall into only one of three categories; 1) it has no selective advantage under current conditions—it is neutral, 2) the mutation is positively advantageous for that species in the current conditions, or 3) the mutation is clearly disadvantageous for that species in current conditions. The vast majority of natural mutations fall into the third category. The second category is the least frequent. The frequencies of these processes are amenable to simple mathematics, and so they are quantifiable.

And we know, contemporary biological evolutionary studies have a large mathematical component. So, I would say that there are at least general rules which describe the process of biological evolution.

The idea is that mutations create novelty, most of which is maladaptive, but that natural selection prefers some to others by not killing the adaptive ones as rapidly as the maladadptive and neutral ones.

In terms of art, a sculptor CREATES a statue by carving away clay that isn't appropriate to what he is creating.

Dawkins invoked the idea of a blind watchmaker. We might consider a blind sculptor. The block of marble is chipped away and there is a form generated, while at the same time detritus has to be swept from the floor. I think natural selection might be considered a creative force in the same way a river carves out a canyon, tectonic activity bends and shapes rock, or wind and water may sculpt formations of rock. These are blind forces as well.

[Graybeard]

Evolution lost. For the blip of geo-logical time that we have occupied, the dinosaurs were around for millions of years. However, they never made the small step for lizards, or giant leap for lizardkind. They lived for millions of years with to much time on their hands, paws, jaws, and the meek ones which they hunted inherited the earth. This doesn't make any sense to me, nor does it have to.

Actually dinosaurs had made the 'giant step for dinosaurs'.

They were already walking on two legs, which is a prerequisite for a large brain. (mammals were not)

They had freed their arms, which freed their chest muscles, (which would lead to sophisticated language in mammals when they achieved this)

Some species had forward facing eyes which lead to depth perception

One species that had all of the above also had a very large brain .... A proposition could be put that possessing these aptitudes result in a select retrieval of resources that increases brain capacity.

Tho it will be forever unprovable, it can be imagined that if the events that wiped out the dinosaurs, and every living animal over 10kgs had not occurred then the 'Troodon' may have stood in our place ..... he was 60-70 million years ahead of us ... and we only took 2 million years to develop intelligence. We would most likely have remained a small species of furry creature ... lol

In 1982 paleontologist Dale Russell, curator of vertebrate fossils at the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa, conjectured a possible evolutionary path that might have been taken by Troodon had it not perished in the K/T extinction event 65 million years ago, suggesting that it could have evolved into intelligent beings similar in body plan to humans. Over geologic time, Russell noted that there had been a steady increase in the encephalization quotient or EQ (the relative brain weight when compared to other species with the same body weight) among the dinosaurs. Russell had discovered the first Troodontid skull, and noted that, while its EQ was low compared to humans, it was six times higher than that of other dinosaurs. If the trend in Troodon evolution had continued to the present, its brain case could by now measure 1,100 cm3; comparable to that of a human. Troodontids had semi-manipulative fingers, able to grasp and hold objects to a certain degree, and binocular vision.

Russell proposed that this Dinosauroid, like most dinosaurs of the troodontid family, would have had large eyes and three fingers on each hand, one of which would have been partially opposed. As with most modern reptiles (and birds), he conceived of its genitalia as internal. Russell speculated that it would have required a navel, as a placenta aids the development of a large brain case. However, it would not have possessed mammary glands, and would have fed its young, as birds do, on regurgitated food. He speculated that its language would have sounded somewhat like bird song.

Russell's thought experiment has been met with criticism from other paleontologists since the 1980s, many of whom point out that Russell's Dinosauroid is overly anthropomorphic. Gregory S. Paul (1987 and Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., consider it "suspiciously human" and argue that a large-brained, highly intelligent troodontid would retain a more standard theropod body plan, with a horizontal posture and long tail, and would probably manipulate objects with the snout and feet in the manner of a bird, rather than with human-like "hands".

Troodon brain capacity (cc) 1,100
Apes brain capacity (cc) 600
Homo Sapiens (cc) 1400
Dolphins (cc) 1500
Neanderthal (cc) 1600

But these figures should really be taken in conjunction with the encephalization quotient or EQ ...

EQ CLICK

TROODON CLICK

cool bananas ... greg

(like your research for your post Austin, excellent)

[austintorn@aol.com]

Good stuff, GB.

All

‘Shortly’ after the birth from light
Particles congealed,
But they left an imprint on the light.

The wrinkles of early space blew up
To form clusterss, galaxies,
Stars, planets, and us.

We’re used to it.

When the moon throws
Its cold shadow on us
From an eclipse,
It shatters the place
That we’ve gotten so used to.

By a rare coincidence
The tiny moon snuffs out our star
When the sun ‘sets; at high noon.

The history of science
Is a deep lesson in humility.
We have no privelged spot;
We are of the ordinary.

Even the universe is nothing special,
Probably just one of many.

Our ancestry can be traced all the way
Back to bacteria, of all things.
And we still depend on them.

We till share 50%
Of our genes with fungi.

Our emotions boil down
To dances of molecules.

Profound thoughts
Are neurotransmitters blinking.

We don’t amount to a hill of beans.

Everything flows from atoms.
Chemistry drives all.

Nature doesn’t give a hoot about
What humans think is common sense.
Man is hardly the measure of all things.

One may ignore the truth
To further their aims,
But Pandora’s box of info has opened.

Let us then have some shred of humility
Rather than forming schemes
To make us seem so special and deserving—
We that have flowered but for a moment
As the famous Graybeard would say.

[dipayankar]

The more you delve deep into science and philosophy, the more you discover that 'Creator' is an option... not a requirement

I'm not sure what I have asserted or attempted to prove here. That's the way irony works. On the same hand however, the majority of science circles cringe at the idea that science should be allowed to freely investigate the possibility that there is a creator or creation. Most seem to agree that evolution has already disproved that.

I would say he who that asserts evolution must prove that there is no creation or creator, must prove what it cannot.
regardless of being a two-street.

statement- I believe in God.
reply-Then it is your burden to prove god.

statement- I believe evolution disproves god.
reply- Then it is your burden to prove it.
statement- No, it is your burden to prove evolution is wrong.
reply- I wasn't aware evolution said there is/was no creation nor creator.
statement- That is what it implies.
reply- I thought that is what you implied it implies.
statement- You don't understand.
reply- You're right about that.

statement- could we start from the begining.
reply- what do you mean?
statement- how did evolution start?
reply- when amino acids combined somehow to form the first forms of life.
statement- You don't understand, evolution takes time, so the begining of evolution was not the moment in which amino acids combined but when time began.
reply- Well, we need to define what time is in order to explore your thought.
statement- Then let us say, time is ... space-time or as most would say, the universe is spacetime. So, if evolution is a step by step process, where is the first step?
reply- I don't know we are looking.
statement- funny, that's what you don't seem to understand when you say where is your god, and I say I don't know, but I'm looking.
reply- I suppose that's irony.

[pspierd]

Is it Iteligent design to create man to breathe eat and drink from the same mouth lol
We can literally drown ourself by drinking water or choke ourself by eating seems like a all knowing God could have gotten this right.
If I were a Creator I would of created a being a little less fragile as we are
If God is Creator of all things why are so many infants born with missing organs sounds like to me the infants are evolution gone wrong mutations if you will

[dipayankar]

I agree. A creator will never like their creations to be destroyed. Never

Is it Iteligent design to create man to breathe eat and drink from the same mouth lol
We can literally drown ourself by drinking water or choke ourself by eating seems like a all knowing God could have gotten this right.
If I were a Creator I would of created a being a little less fragile as we are
If God is Creator of all things why are so many infants born with missing organs sounds like to me the infants are evolution gone wrong mutations if you will