The Big Questions

The big questions are:
1. How did I get here?
2. How did we get here?
3. What is the purpose of being here?
4. What should I do while I am here?

At the age of 27 years, about 43 years ago, I had made a big mess of my life. So I turned my life over to Jesus.
I am happy about how life has turned out for me and the family that God has given me.

Prior to salvation, I was quite undecided about those big questions listed above. Now, after walking with the Lord for 41 years, I have managed to answer those questions to my satisfaction. There are, however, a few questions hovering somewhat unresolved in my mind.
For instance, as pertaining to the big question #2 above—how did we get here?—I do subscribe to the biblical explanation, although I do not understand it. I cannot comprehend all that is being described in chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis.



I do understand, and accept as true, that very first sentence of the biblical revelation:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The verses that follow confuse me every time I try to impose order in my mind about the sequence through which our Creator did his creative work. This confusion does not really bother me. But it does fascinate me to ponder that subject.
Cutting to the chase—that is to say—the end of the book or the end of my life, the big truth that has been shown to me is that I will live eternally after passing through this life’s death.
How do I know this?
As the old song sings. . . the Bible tells me so.
The Word tells me what I really need to know: there is one man in the history of the world who survived death itself, and lived to tell about it:

Jesus.

This is a matter of belief, and I do believe it, thank God. I have been given the faith to believe in my resurrection from death, because Jesus himself has already shone the way—has been there and done that— and has passed that privilege of overcoming death along to me and to anyone else who believes what he has said about it, and demonstrated by his Resurrection.
Now, getting to the point of why I write on this particular day, year of our Lord 2020, March 3. . . while I have been fortunate enough to answer those big questions, there are still a few curiosity points that bounce around in my mind and my soul as I live and breathe in this earthly life.

For Instance, what about that creation sequence that is is described in Genesis?
People have been wondering about it, talking about it for thousands of years. In the last two centuries, speculations about question #2 above—how did we get here?—have taken a wider swath of variation than ever before. As far as I can see, this widening of theories and enquiries is prompted by two main developments in our collective human database—
1.) the discovery of geologic time, which scientifically explains how our earth was continuously rearranged by huge tectonic and geologic forces over millions of years. 
2.) Darwin’s discovery of natural selection in the biological developments of life in nature.
As a believer in Jesus, I have no problem with either of these scientific discoveries. I believe these discoveries are merely a human way of classifying the universal and life principles that God set in motion millions of years ago.
For example: Genesis reports, in verse 1:24:

Then God said, ‘ Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind.’

This is just an old-fashioned way of saying: God designed into his creation a written code for ordering the development of life: DNA.


So I hope you’re tracking with me on this. I realize that some of my believing brethren do not subscribe to this interpretation. But that’s okay; we’re not going to agree on everything. By ’n by, we’ll still celebrate our eternal life together with Jesus because of what he endured in sacrificing his perfect life at Calvary.
But the reason I am writing this today is: an amazing thing happened this morning. I had a funny little revelation while reading in Genesis. 
In Genesis 2, we learn the truth that:

“. . . the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.,  The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there he placed the man whom He had formed.”

So we learn that Adam—and later Eve, were a special creation, placed in a special place, for a special, divinely determined destiny. But Adam and Eve screwed that arrangement up when they opted for knowledge instead of truth.
So our Creator had to suspend their special status. Consequently, he ejected them from the Garden; they had to  go out and make their way by the sweat of their brow like  all those other humans who had evolved out there in the wild wild world.
A little further down in the scripture we learn more about historical human developments. From Genesis 6:

“Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves . . .”

Who were those “sons of God”? They were the offspring of the Creator’s special creation in Paradise, the children of Adam and Eve.
We are told the names of the created couple's first three sons: Cain, Abel and Seth.
These boys were, categorically, the “sons of God,” because their parents did not carry the same genetic imprint as those other men and women who originated “east of Eden,” outside the gates of Paradise.

Now just because they were “sons of God” does not mean they necessarily acted like it. You may remember that Cain killed Abel, and that God had a serious discussion with him about what was to happen next. But then God had mercy on Cain, even though he had committed such a heinous deed by killing his own brother, who had not deserved such a fate.
 God gave Cain a second chance anyway, by releasing him out into mankind to get a new start.
In Genesis 4, the story continues:

  “Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain had relations with his wife, and she conceived, and gave birth to Enoch, and he built a city. . .”

For a very long time, I had wondered about . . .
 a.) these “sons of God”—who they were and where they came from? Answer: They came from Adam and Eve.
and b.) the land of Nod, and the people who populated that land? Answer: They were humans who evolved through God’s natural selection process.
Now I understand more about reconciling the revealed Truth of our Creator with what we ourselves have scientifically understood  about life on this amazing planet.



Glass half-Full

The Mysterious Door

The great physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, had a problem in 1867. It was a very old problem; many had tried to solve it before he came along. It wasn’t actually his problem to fix, but merely to figure it out; his objective was to try and determine who or what had already solved "the problem". Because, you see, the matter had already been taken care of long, long ago.

Otherwise none of us would be here; nothing would be here.

The actual problem-solver who had worked it out was not thought to be credible at the time of Maxwell's work. The problem-solver's presumptuous  representatives had made such a mess of things.

Consequently, in the 1800’s, the scientific community placed little or no credence in what the so-called Church had to say about anything—especially presumably scientific matters like the origin and unfolding of the Universe.

19th-century scientists and other serious researchers like Darwin, Marx and many others were all in a tizzy about throwing the God idea out with the bath water. It was a leap of faith instead of a rational inference. They did have some legitimate arguments about the Church’s faith-based input, because the so-called Church had made such a mess of things while they were running the show back in the middle ages. Two especially bad screwed-ups the Church had done happened when they had, earlier, rejected the findings of Copernicus and Galileo.

But you betcha the mystery still lay unsolved when the science boys took over, long about 1800 or so. They were working on the mystery intently. And so Mr. Maxwell, diligent Scot that he was, took hold of the mantle in 1867, as many others were doing at the time, and he gave it a shot—solving the riddle.

The question of how all this happened.

This existence, this world we live in—how did it get here?

There was, you see, a piece missing in this great puzzle of existence.

In the chain of events that ostensibly took place when the universe was made, there was a missing link that no one had been able to figure out. So, James Clerk Maxwell tackled the question, striving to solve the riddle of the missing link.

Therefore Dr. Maxwell came up with what he called the "Demon." My unschooled opinion says he could have chosen a better word. . . something like what Rene Descartes had termed it, the Prime Mover.

As Peter Hoffman gives an explanation of Maxwell's work, the Scot posed this profound question:

“How can molecular machines extract work from the uniform-temperature environment of cells without violating the second law of thermodynamics?”

In other words, how can atoms and molecules organize themselves to become something more than what they already are—just a bunch of damn molecules kicking around like unemployed vagrants?

Or to put it yet another way: How could life have come out of dead particles?

And so, as Dr. Maxwell pondered the problem of the missing link in 1867, he came up with the idea of (what was later called Maxwell’s. . .) Demon.

Peter M. Hoffman explains it, in his 2012 book, Life’s Ratchet,    https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B00A29OFHS/ref       this way:

“Maxwell’s demon . . . was a a tiny hypothetical creature who controlled a little door separating two gas-filled chambers, which initially have the same average temperature. The job of the demon was to separate gas molecules into fast and slow molecules. . . Starting from a uniform-temperature system, the demon had created a temperature gradient—making one side cold and the other side hot. . . This temperature gradient could now be used to do work if a little turbine could be placed in the demon’s door.”

The analogy of a demon is not, of course, to be taken literally. James Maxwell was a brilliant physicist whose work paralleled Einstein’s. His use of the hypothetical creature is merely a literary device to communicate the function of an unidentified catalyst that makes something constructive happen in an environment in which (theoretically) nothing can happen.

Obviously something did happen, back in the days of universe origin, or we wouldn’t be here. Nothing would be here, if the problem had not been solved. Someone, demon or otherwise, must have worked it out.

Rene Descartes, a mathematician who lived in the 1600’s, had stumbled upon the same dilemma. He had posited the idea of a Prime Mover, which seemed pretty logical at the time.

Still does, if you ask me.

An original cause (as in cause in effect), that caused everything else to happen, big bang blah blah etc. and so forth and so on.

But what diligent mathematicians and scientists neglected to mention was that the problem had long ago been solved by a mysterious entity who had been so erroneously represented by the so-called Church: God.

Not a demon, but God. The demons were the created beings who tried to pull rank on the Creator, YWHeh.

Therefore, in order to now— in the 21st-century— give credit where credit is due . . .

I say it was a notable accomplishment what YWHeh did, when he solved the problem of the missing link, way back in time. And he said so.

He said it was good— in the first chapter of his bestseller, Genesis.

It was good when He separated light from darkness. Genesis 1:4:

"God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness."

This "separation" function is no chance development. It needed to happen. It's no coincidence that Maxwell's demon and Creator YWHeh both are depicted as having "separated" something from something else. . .  The Separator's accomplishment was functionally something like Maxwell’s presumed demon's task of separating molecules into two different energy levels in order to create

“a temperature difference between the chambers without expending work, thus seemingly violating the second law.”

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is the law that YWHeh seems to have broken when he started the ball of the universe rolling. But it didn’t matter if he broke that “Law” because he set up the whole kitnkiboodle anyway, back in the Day. That 2nd Law of Thermodynamics was an idea that we came up to try and explain it all. It wasn't something that YWHeh declared when he declared Let there be light and so forth and so on.

On Day 1 (whatever that means to you) the Prime Mover separated light from darkness, and the rest is history.

Not bad for a day’s work, YHWeh. Keep up the good work.

 

Glass Chimera 

Re: Logos generating order out of chaos

If a human can hang around in this life long enough to reach maturity, he/she is probably lucky, or blessed, or both; and by the time that person reaches maturity he/she has probably pondered the question of where all this stuff in the world came from.

Perhaps it all evolved from the Big Bang; or maybe God created it all.

Generally I find that people who like to think a lot are likely to lean toward the Big Bang and/or Evolution as a path toward rationalizing the physical universe; and it seems to me that people who stay busy with the business of living, without being too analytical about it, will typically lean toward Religion or Faith as a way of dealing with life’s persistent questions.

What’s important is that we can all find a way to tolerate each other in the midst of these two world-view polarities. If we don’t find a way to live in peace and productivity then we might really screw this thing up and render the world uninhabitable.

No matter which of these two camps you may find yourself drawn to, you must admit that if this universe were not founded upon some organizing principle, we would have nothing except perhaps a bunch of cosmic dust floating around the universe.

How, for instance, how can you account for the fact that every atom has a nucleus of protons and neutrons, with electrons orbiting around it?

How did the first atom get organized?

That’s the microcosmic question. Now here’s the same conundrum on a macro level:  How can you account for the fact that the Sun has Planets orbiting around it?

Did it all just happen, or did something/someone organize it?

Perhaps it all evolved from the Big Bang; or maybe God created it all.

Now we in this postmodern period of human of human history have generally divided ourselves into two categories concerning these important questions.

At the risk of oversimplifying the issue, let me just propose that we could say some of us are in the Rational camp and others of us are in the Religious camp.

I myself try to be a sojourner in both of these universes, but that’s neither here nor there.

I use the word Rational to classify the folks who like to use data and their brains to figure out all this stuff, because Rational suggests that by their thinking they can actually figure most of it out enough to proceed with the business of living life intelligently.

I use the word Religious to classify the folks who prefer to depend on faith or theological revelation to account for this world, and then use their faith to inform and fortify their life decisions.

Now here’s the rub.

Whichever of these two camps you find yourself drawn to, you must admit that there are still some questions that your chosen system of thought/belief will not fully answer.

There are some things we just don’t know!

You Rationalist, can you prove how quantum mechanics or whatever made arrangements for a nuclear proton to serve as the center-point for that first atom?

You Religious person, can you prove that there’s a Just God who allows such evil as we see in this world to exist?

But these challenges are rhetorical.

We cannot prove the veracity of an answer to either of the above challenges. If a Rationalist could prove to me how the first atom was organized, I would probably not understand the proof. If a Religionist could explain how or why God allows evil, I would likely disagree with him/her on some point, based upon my cultural religious heritage.

There is an end-point (or a beginning point) to both world-view systems where another unknown prevents absolute conclusion of the matter.

There are some things we just don’t know.

At the end of any unanswerable question, however, we surely do discover that an assumption, or thesis, is required if we are going move beyond indecision.

Or we could say it like this: at the end of every Rational thought progression is necessarily found (reap ‘em and weep) a Leap.

A leap of faith, if you’ll forgive my trench, because you can’t know everything.

Maybe you’ve figured out that this world is going to hell in a carbon-basket.

What else is new?

We faith-based types understand that not everything can be figured out or calculated. So most of us concede to this perplexity by subscribing to divine revelation for our cosmological answers.

And there are enough of us religious types out here to assure you that all humanity will not be driven into agreement about what is to be done to save us. After all, we still yet fail to agree on whose god is the correct one and what would that supreme being requires of us.

We’re into day-to-day living; many of us are just getting by.

So do your data thing. Collect your Big Data. Have a good time with it. Drill your polar ice cores and try to arrive at conclusions that will convince us billions of blockheads out here in Peoria or flyover country or working class lala land.

Consider this. Going back to middle school science. . .

At the end of every Geological Age on Earth we find a change of climate. Looking forward, exactly how it will work out in the next shift we do not know because there are too many variables to predict or calculate.

Yes there are too many variables, too many individual decisions to be made, too many quantum mechanics, too many people—to come into agreement about how to solve the  problem. And any Final Solution would not be appropriate.

Even if there is one school of scientists who figure out all these warming consequences, can the vast mass of humanity be manipulated into getting with the program enough to make a difference?

No. We billions would have to be cajoled, intimidated, manipulated, deprived of our life, liberty and pursuits of happiness to go along with the program. You can’t teach an old dog’s-life new carbon tricks; we’ve been throwing soot into the air ever since we figured out how to make fire.

Try to convince us, if you must, of what’s to be done to arrest global warming. My personal opinion is you are probably correct. Our depraved pollutive ways have probably already sunk the ship.

So Good luck with that.

Educate the masses if you can, but don’t get too excited about it. Most of us are dim bulbs compared to the Enlightenment that would be required to activate such a tectonic shift in human behavior.

Changing the consumptive habits of entire human population is about as likely as getting us all rounded up to shag in a Pangaean prom.

So give us a break.  Try to convince us if you can, because we are, believe it or not, paying attention.

But don’t be taking away our civil liberties, and don’t be messing’ with our faith-based solutions to life’s persistent questions.

Forget not the words of our great prairie home companion: Do good work, and keep in touch.

And remember also these words that were, back in the day, crooned by the king of Rock’n’roll:

Don’t ya step on my blue suede shoes.

King of Soul

Who Taught the Oceans?

Maybe four or five thousand years ago, some pondering poet raised these two profound questions:

Who taught the sun where to stand in the morning?

And

Who taught the ocean: You can only go this far?

In the modern world we know just how ridiculous it is to suppose that any one person could teach the sun anything, or that any person could establish the boundaries of the oceans.

So I hope you can accept that the words above, translated from the biblical “Job” represent a figurative, or allegorical, statement about creation.

In our modern, post-Copernican, post Galileo way of viewing the world, we understand that our evolving knowledge requires a different approach to answering such large queries.

Who has successfully explained to us where the sun stands in its solar system?

And

Who changed the ocean in a way that would cause sea levels to rise?

Having posed these ancient questions in a modern context, we could, in our vastly expanding database of knowledge perhaps answer them this way:

History shows that Copernicus and Galileo  figured out the centered position of the sun, and  concluded furthermore that the planets, including our earth, revolve around it.

And, as for the question of where and by what means the oceans terminate  their relentless wave action on our shores, I notice this: the question is currently up for debate.

Could it be that we ourselves are rearranging, by our consumptive habits, the boundaries of the oceans?

There are many studies now being done to determime  where the oceans’ coastlines are now shifting as a consequence of our Homo sapiens-generated emissions. Data-collecting scientists are finding that our Carbon emissions have a deeper impact on nature’s processes than any other elements.

This makes sense; it fits into a larger pattern.  Carbon, number 6 on the Periodic Table Table of Elements, is  the most essential and ubiquitous building block of life itself.

Therefore, the real question becomes . . .

What’s a human to do? Those danged Carbon atoms that float around like phantoms wherever they damn well please, like they own the place—you can’t live with ‘em, and can’t live without ‘em!

One ostensibly scientific scenario in particular—that one generally referred to as “climate change”— is moving, or appears to be evolving, toward a “scientific” consensus of some kind about the accuracy of our grim projections about what will happen to us in the future.

In the wake of a consensual international agreement to address this problem, we may work together to contrive a world-governmental  plan to minimize carbon (and other) emissions. We would begin thereby to arrest the human-generated heating up of our atmosphere,  and possibly prevent our polar ice from melting, and oppose the destabilization of our rising sea levels.

We do not want to see more flooding of coastal  cities. Otherwise,  in the wake of our global consequences . . . there could be trouble ahead.

 

 

Now when potentially cataclysmic trouble arises in human civilization, there are generally, among the inhabitants of earth,  three different ways of addressing such a huge conundrum.

One way is the way of positivism, which says: We can fix this damn thing if we’ll put our minds to it!

Another way is the way of fatalism, which says: This place is going to hell in a handbasket. We’ll never get around this!

The third way is simple to deny that there is a problem.

Now this writer’s perspective is located somewhere between these three viewpoint poles (or polls).

I have, since my youth, thought we should find ways to quit polluting our earth. Furthermore, I am not yet convinced that carbon emissions is the biggest challenge. There are other substances which are far more destructive and poisonous. I would like to think we can fix this thing, but on the other hand, human behavior, with its boundless abuses and thoughtless excesses, is so absolutely an irreversibly huge force of constructive destruction momentum.

We might have a snowball’s chance in hell, or

We might get it together as a species and solve the problem. Good luck with that!

My problem with the positive approach is this: a true fix (reducing carbon emissions from a 2% rate of increase to a 0% rate of increase) would require an oppressively extreme rearrangement of our institutions and our collectively escalating consumption habits. For the sake of the holy grail of saving the planet, a control-freaking totalitarian government would surely overtake our best intentions and thus turn the required regulations into a tyranny of police-state restrictions. By this means we would sacrifice our freedom upon the altar of saving the planet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycj-bQXWRrQ

 Malicious manipulations of human ideology have already spoiled our postmodern aspirations at least once or twice in history. Stalinism and Maoism overtook Marxist Socialism and turned it into a systematic monster of human oppression.

With such dystopian historica precedent as  evidence, my hope of  establishing a human/governmental solution to neutralize our climate change problem tops off at next to nothing.

Furthermore, the revelation of the “faith” camp into which I was born, and then born again, acknowledges that we are all sinners on this bus (planet).

We need, both individually and collectively, someone to save us from our own destructive tendencies. But who might that person or entity be? I say it is the one who conquered death itself by rising from the tomb.

Consequently, my leaning toward the fatalistic position on climate change convinces me to turn to divine faith to solve my own problem of what to do with the life that was given to me. My conclusion is: Rationalism and its positivistic proposals will never save us from ourselves and our consequently rising oceans.

So count me in the irrational camp, more appropriately referred to as the faith camp, although I will, every day, in every way possible, assist in our our recycling and solarizing efforts in any way I effectively can. 

Now I conclude this little trail of assessment and analytical adventure with a video of Sister Nicole’s rendition of our condition.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj-pZQ_XjyU  

Glass half-Full

Dust of the ground, Elements of the earth

In his best-selling book, the Torah, which was later expanded to become the Bible, Moses wrote that God formed man from the dust of the ground.

In his best-selling book, the Origin of Species, which was later expanded to become a basis for evolutionary science, Darwin posited that man descended through natural selection from the elements of the earth.

What's the difference between these two traditions?

Mainly, the difference is that word "God."

Either way you look at it, mankind has a pretty muddy past, and probably a muddled future. However, if you accept the inclusion of "God" in your cosmology, your chances of getting cleaned up are probably better.

Glass half-Full

From hydrogen to iron is a long way

A man stands on the earth and looks up into the night sky. He sees the stars, the moon, the great expanse of space. He wonders at the immensity of it all, the brightness, the contrast, the arrangement of stars and heavenly bodies in the visible universe. He ponders it. He considers it all, from the perspective of one who knows a little something about how things seem to fit together here on earth. Could it have all just happened at random, or is there some grand design to it?

Yes.

I'm not the only person to have done this. Take, for instance, the famous progressive leader from antiquity, Moses. He started his best-selling book with this statement, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Let's compare this statement to Robert Hazen's statement in his brilliant best-selling book, The Story of Earth.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Story-Earth-Billion-Stardust/dp/0670023558

Mr. Hazen wrote, "In the beginning, all space and energy and matter came into existence from an unknowable void."

So compare: What Moses calls "heavens and earth," Robert calls "space, matter, and energy." They are both writing about the same thing, which is all that stuff out there that we're not sure about exactly what it is and cannot really prove how it got there.

Faith and Science are equally clueless.

The scientific method, assuming we cannot know everything but positing that we can know some things, then proceeds to prove, by successive experimentation what we can know, one hypothesis at a time. Makes sense to me.

Faith, on the other hand says, there's a lot out there I don't know, but I do understand this: It didn't all just happen. There is an order to it, and, Whoever designed it included in the program a personal conviction within me that I didn't just randomly pop out of the stardust.

Pretty naive, n'est ce pas? I believe it.

So faith is one thing, and science, or knowledge, is another. One thing I like about science is: it is so very useful. Take, for instance, Mr. Hazen's very instructive scientific book. His introduction and first chapter have communicated to me light years of knowledge about the universe that I had not understood before. His explanation, based on the elements, and the Periodic Table by which we successfully contextualize their intricate interactions in the physical world, starts with the simplest element, hydrogen. Mr. Hazen then guides us very simply and concisely through the mysterious process of nuclear fusion. Fusion combined small quantities of the original, simplest element--hydrogen--to produce helium. Then, by continuing fusion, other more complex elements such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen were created, and ultimately life itself.

That last phrase, "life itself" is where misunderstandings between us Faith-holders and some Scientists tend to arrive at different conclusions. No problem for me though. I believe that Moses could stand on a sandy beach, as I did yesterday, and know, yes know, that indeed "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. But hey, even though I'm a person of faith, I can still move on, and learn some stuff. I wish I could have seen this cumulative hydrogen/fusion stuff in sixth grade instead of starting our science class with the atom, which was like starting a great story on page 7 instead of page 1.

But back to the future, or excuse me, to what is happening just now. . .here is something I learned yesterday, after standing on a Hawaii beach and contemplating the universe, and then reading Mr. Hazen's fascinating book:

"Iron is as far as this nuclear fusion process can go. When hydrogen fuses to produce helium, when helium fuses to produce carbon, and during all the other fusion steps, abundant nuclear energy is released. But iron has the lowest energy of any atomic nucleus. As when a blazing fire transforms every bit of fuel to ash, all the energy has been used up. Iron is the ultimate nuclear ash…"

In other words, after all that high-heat nuclear goings-on after Big Bang but before earth, a big hunk of iron was left over when things cooled down a bit. And that chunk of mineral/rock was (and yes, I am vastly oversimplifying this) our earth!

Praise God! What a piece of work is earth.

Glass half-Full

Defunding H2 from H20

I learn a lot about what's on the cutting edge of scientific research by listening to Ira Flatow on ScienceFriday, NPR. The segment I heard today (8 April 2011) was downright inspiring as the program presented some good possibilities for generating energy from sunlight by experimental technology that could separate of hydrogen and oxygen from water.They call it artificial leaf; its something like synthesized photosynthesis. This ScienceFriday edition is worth a listen.

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201104081

Dr. Daniel Nocera of MIT talks with Ira about this very promising technology of using silicon to function in energy-gathering ways simulating what photosynthesis does in natural leaves, only better. Nocera's rap goes like this:


What does a leaf do? It turns photons into electrical current, stores the solar energy while splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. In this new tech, silicon replaces the leaf. Stored hydrogen produced thereby runs a fuel cell. This silicon system catches the sun as much as a hundred times more efficiently than a leaf.
The real breakthrough is that these researchers are using earth-abundant materials: silicon, cobalt, phosphate and cheap metal. Hence, some practical applications for energy generation are realized; they're building prototypes at MIT, with the experimental apparatus going for days with no drop in productivity. This water-breaking work has propelled progress well beyond the science; now its in the engineering phase.

Ira asks: whats next for commercial viability? Dr. Nocera says they're working toward the apparatus being the workable size of two doors and thus operating effectively. Passing water over silicon and producing energy, but without wires--that's the breakthrough-- making the necessary gases over surface of silicon. Next challenge is engineering a gas collection system, and now they're using regular water instead of something rarer, so that's the real promise of significant improvement.

Dr. Nocera also mentions in the closing comments that people in developing world are less dependent on old technologies than we are; that is something to be aware of. Folks in the developing world are more open to new techs, being less dependent on the old (fossil-fuel) ones.

This is cutting edge; you won't hear about it on fox or hln. That's why I appreciate ScienceFriday, and that's why I appreciate NPR.
Although I do not subscribe to the exclusively materialistic hypotheses through which Ira interprets our cosmological origins, I do appreciate the excellent coverage that he and his staff regularly provide on scientific frontiers.

And my appreciation extends beyond the ScienceFriday crew, to NPR generally, which is an informative aural venue through which we Americans can garner fuller understanding of our life on this finite planet as it exists today. National Public Radio is a place in broadcast space where we can hear, and participate in, real disscussions about relevant, timely issues. A little "liberal" perhaps, but its more productive, I think, than listening to some self-made mouthpiece who pontificates through a microphone and insults callers who disagree.

As a supporter of public radio, I hope to see ScienceFriday and all the other NPR programs continue. If the Repubs, of which I am one, succeed in cutting the funds for public broadcasting, I do not see that as an insurmountable obstacle for its continuance. I plan to continue my financial support. I truly believe that the excellence in journalism and educative programming supplied therein will find adequate means to prosper in the competitive world of commercial media--and without compromising their high journalistic and first-amendment standards.

If our Congress is inclined to consider cutting NPR out of the federal funding trough, I suggest that they defund Planned Parenthood instead, and then appropriate that money that would have otherwise aborted feti to promote growth--growth in public comprehension of the issues that define our existence in 21st-century America.

There's no sense in aborting feti when we will have dire need, in the future, for young working citizens to support our expanding Medicare demands and our waning energies.

Glass Chimera

Thanks for Frank's perspective

I've been racking my brain all weekend trying to get some more story-line for the new novel, Smoke, after writing only the beginnining of chapter 1 last week.

Then I got this attachment from my friend Frank:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=12ecf2c076bc3c1f&mt=application/vnd.ms-powerpoint&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui%3D2%26ik%3D205cde5d1d%26view%3Datt%26th%3D12ecf2c076bc3c1f%26attid%3D0.1%26disp%3Dsafe%26zw&sig=AHIEtbR6Asl7-55bXA582rCKPKbp28sY8w&pli=1

Frank sent this link to me because he is an astronomer. He's also an engineer who has, somewhere along his 95-year orbital path, built a telescope or two after grinding the 6-inch lenses. In addition to being a smart tinkerer, he has spent years of his long life being a great singer from New Jersey, a model-airplane constructor, a sailor, husband (for a while) and father, and inventor. Frank lives at the apartment complex where I work as the maintenance guy.

Sometimes I think if we had more enterprising folks like Frank we wouldn't be in such a dearth of employment opportunities. I wish the problem-solvers of this world could become as busy as Frank has been trying to make things work over his 95 years on our planet.

So don't let the long link address above intimidate you. If you haven't yet had a good view of what the Hubble telescope is scoping up there in earth orbit, check it out. It's definitely a perspective-adjustment.

It certainly diverted my mind from:


...which is the starting point of my novel-in-progress. So far, I've got two characters, neither one of them are in the coronation pic above (Times of London, May 20,1937). But my two characters, Philip Marlowe and Nathan Wachov, are just a mile or two away, and trying to get to Trafalgar Square for a view of the new King's return procession to Buckingham Palace.

Anyway, those Hubble shots from my friend Frank, linked above, changed my perspective on what appears to be the "Smoke" in our universe.

Smoke, the new novel-in-progress

From jellyhead to crowing glory

Knowledge is limitless as the universe, extensive as Hubble images of distant nebula, intense as the intricacies of DNA. It just goes on forever. A person could acquire knowledge all his life and only scratch the surface of all that is happening.

Human history is full of wise people who acquired copious knowledge: Moses, Socrates, Confucius, Newton, Einstein, and many more. But the world we live in requires limiting knowledge, because too much of the stuff overwhelms us. History is also full of smart people who were frustrated because the general tide of human activity is determined more by baser instincts than by smartness. Most people are more concerned about being fed and comfortable than they are yearning for knowledge.

In ancient times, the wisdom given to Moses compelled him to write a book about the origins of the human race. Many people today consider Genesis a collection of myths or Hebrew/Chaldean folk tales. I don't see it that way. I believe that the work of Moses was divinely inspired. If you can attempt viewing it, as I do, beyond the veil of time and evolving human knowledge, you will see that it is raw truth.

That's not to say that its revealed truth is necessarily congruous with our ongoing revelation of scientific discovery. When Moses did his research many millenia ago, he had no benefit of Hubble telescopes, the scientific method, libraries or Google. Because his treatise is not equipped with these contemporary intellectual supports, we jaded moderners tend to dismiss the Genesis account of creation as something quaint and anthropologically curious, and therefore of lesser value than scientifically established knowledge. I do not see it that way. Moses was, like, the Einstein of his time.

According to Moses, there were two trees in the the Creator's garden about which he had given humans specific instruction. Adam and Eve, first prototypes of civilized humans, were commanded by God to eat from the tree of Life, but not to eat from the tree of Knowledge of Good/Evil.This makes an awful lot of sense when you think about it, because knowledge is as limitless as the universe, whereas life itself--well, it must go on.

You see, Moses wasn't forbidding knowledge; he was putting it in its rightful place. Knowledge is quite stimulating, and at times very useful, but it does not sustain the spirit of God which inhabits the tree of life.

I'll tell you how all this rumination started. A couple of days ago, I heard on my nearby public radio station, WFDD, two very different perspectives that pertain to this conundrum, but they were right next to each other in time. The contrast between Dr. David Linden's mind-opening knowledge of neuroscience, and Ms. Gerry Patton's account of her lifelong struggle to find the right hairstyle, is quite stark. I've been thinking about the difference between their two perspectives for two days now. And yet both of these precious people, miles apart in their perspectives, represent together the great, fascinating spectrum of human experience. There is so much that could be written about this, you know, but instead of attempting to uncover all the nuances of truth from both sources I will simply supply two audio links and two quotes from these two amazing people whom I heard on a sunny Monday morning, talking about a little something they each have learned in this life.

Dr. David Linden, neuroscientist, talking about 600 million years years of evolution and how the life process had patched together, from disparate genetic parts, the human brain, said this:

"A miracle happens. You have enough neurons in this cortical circuit, massively interconnected, and somehow, what emerges from that are these amazing human traits - the ability for me to know what you are thinking based on social cues that you give me, other forms of observational learning and high-level cognition."

What I like about this statement from Dr. Linden is his use of the word "somehow," and that's what I've been contemplating for two days.
Meanwhile, in Winston-Salem, NC, an hour-and-a-drive from my home, Ms. Gerry Patton offered, after describing the lengthy quest for her optimum hair expression, this kernel of wisdom:

"After many years of searching and finally accepting that the good Lord knew what he was doing when he placed this hair on my head, I'm working with it and loving it...I'm growing locks...Now I'm happy and nappy...He gave me something extraordinary and beautiful, a head full of kinky hair and now I found a way of letting it be my natural crowning glory."

What I like about this testimony from Ms. Patton is her use of the phrase "the good Lord knew..."

And both of these extraordinary people I heard on public radio within ten minutes of each other. It takes all kinds to make a world, you know. Thank God for diversity.

Relativity's dire discovery

The extreme fringes of the physical universe ultimately produce black holes where matter destroys itself. Based on Einstein's calculations in the theory of relativity, Oppenheimer and Snyder presented theoretical proof of the existence of these imploded galaxies in 1939. In 1970, the first location of a black hole, Cygnus X-1, was determined to be 7000 light-years from earth.
Even before that, the intense scientific ciphering following Einstein's 1915 general relativity theory had wrought a cosmological epiphany in 1919. That's when scientists monitoring a solar eclipse were able to determine by observation and calculation that Einstein's theory of relativity is correct. The "red shift" of light waves emanating from objects in distant space indicated that the light waves had "'bent" around the sun as they had passed it in their traveling toward earth. This red shift was the evidence by which physicists could conclude that, indeed, gravitational force from large objects has the power to bend light waves.

One of the many surprising facts that mathematicians learn from relativity calculations is that space is curved, and guess what, so is time! This whole development initiated a revolution in the way scientists conceptualize the universe and the physics within it. But hey, it's all theoretical. It's not that relativity isn't actually having enormous effects out there in the cosmos in real space and time. What Einstein described with his theory of relativity is actually happening,

But it really doesn't have much to do with the way things happen on earth, or the way we do things here. (Don't confuse this relativity thing with Einstein's other famous theory, E=mc2, which definitely has intense consequences for real life on earth, such as what happened at Hiroshima, or what's now taking place at your local nuclear power plant, or within Iranian clandestinery and North Korean obstinance.)

When you get right down to it, the whole relativity revelation is irrelevant in the sense that it is meaningful only to scientists and mathematicians; they are the only people whose work is noticably affected by it. They are the only ones who truly understand it and converse about it. Relativity in the cosmos won't amount to a hill of beans in everyday life for most of us for a very long, long, long time. Newtonian physics still reigns supreme in all our familiar venues of terra firma.

So, this expansive thinking about the universe as a macro-entity is one thing. Here's another, and it is definitely something that we need to think about. It's at the other extreme of considering the cosmos: the micro-universe--the secret life of cells, molecules, atoms, electrons. protons, neutrons, even quarks and neutrinos. I'm not going to write much about that mysterious nano-world now, except to say that the ramifications of scientific exploration within it are HUGE; experiments are now being conducted, and will be conducted from now into perpetuity, under electron microscopes and other high-tech equipment. These micro-explorations and ventures will have a big impact on the way we live in the future.

Will you be able to follow all these changes in microbiology and nanotechnology in the days ahead? Probably not; you're too busy doing other things, just livin' life. Me too. Ditto for the getting the big picture on the universe and relativity.

So here is what I want to communicate to you:
The practice of science is becoming, and will become even more, inaccessible and incomprehensible to general humanity. Newtonian physics-- where moving object A strikes stationary object B and has a certain predictable effect--is not what science is about any more; we've already figured out all the basics, and we're teaching them in schools.

More and more, science is about stuff that you will never see, and perhaps never understand. I hate to say it, but as a consequence of this general incomprehensibility we could be entering, God forbid, another dark ages, in spite of all the light waving around in our universe.

Example: John Doe is accused of murdering his neighbor. But the verdict revolves not around fingerprints and eyewitnesses. It's not about John doing this that or the other to his neighbor and we know that to be true because the other neighbor saw it happen.
It's about John's DNA, and whether it matches a hair sample found at the scene of the crime. It's about what a lab technician sees, and how he/she interprets it when he/she analyzes microscopically-obtained genetic information. John Doe's fate hangs on the testimony of an expert witness.

There's nothing wrong with this refinement of criminal justice. It's just an example of the way our life is changing because of science. So many future determinations will be made, not according to what we see, hear, taste, or smell, but according to what the experts find in their investigations. To the uneducated it may even seem like hocus-pocus.

Remember the swine flu of 2009, that never really got a hold of us in large numbers? Was it because our spotty vaccinations worked preventively as they were intended to? Or because there was no significant risk to begin with? Who knows? We just have to trust the CDC and NIH on our decisions about such precautions.

The former Treasurer of the United States, Hank Paulson--did he and Bernanke and the bankers and Congress save us with their bank bailout from having another "great depression?" We'll never know for sure. Only the statisticians and economists can sort all those numbers out, and by the time they do, we've all gone on to the next crisis, or the next car payment or whatever.

Scientific truth and technical data is becoming less and less accessible to regular people all the time.
So...what does this have to do with relativity?

Looking back for a moment into the arcane, expanding realm of Einstein's relative universe, our following of his theory leads ultimately to, among many other phenomena, those black holes. Knowledge is as virtually infinite as the universe itself, and our pursuit of its extremes brings us to the discovery of these strange, vacuous phenomena--imploded galaxies--that draw everything in their vicinity into themselves with a kind of super-gravity. . These black holes are extremely dangerous. God help the first adventurers who volunteer to explore them. As it turns out, the universe sucks.

Moses had a flash of truth regarding this situation long ago, and wrote about it in his best seller, Genesis. He depicts therein the account of Eve, who ambled right by the Tree of Life one day, and lingered at the tree of knowledge, until someone handed her a sample from it. She bit into a black hole. Sometimes we know more than we want or need to.

The further we get along that deathly curved vector of space and time, the better appears to be the Tree of Life when compared to the Tree of Knowledge.

Rockin' the relativity spaceship

Copernican heliocentrism, corrective as it was, did not diminish the central role of Logos in creation of the universe. The cosmological effects of Copernicus' earthshattering research in solar system dynamics did not happen overnight; they took a long time to play out. It wasn't really until the next century that the Catholic establishment felt threatened by the Polish researcher's revolutionary discovery. Unfortunately, Galileo later suffered the brunt of the Church's political rage against inevitable Copernican correction.

The Catholic churc'h's attempts to defend God by attacking Copernican reorientation was useless--mere sound and fury signifying nothing. As it turns out, God needs no defending. Jesus established that principle when he demanded that Peter put away the sword.

And we see in subsequent history that Logos survived Copernicus' theoretical rearrangement of the cosmos, as well as the religious hierarchy's slow but sure reactionary persecution of it. Yes, God continues in spite of all human disputations to survive in the universe as well as in the souls of men and women.

Similarly, Darwin's biologically-enabled debunking of anthropocentrism 300 years later did not diminish the central role of Logos in creation of the universe. All the ensuing, well-documented paleological, geographical, and biological evidence does not dissuade humans of their belief in God. Why is that?

Science is not the language of mankind. Most folks don't really understand it, though many dutifully pay lip service to it. I, for instance, certainly don't understand it all, although I try to keep up with the changes. But no one can keep up with the accelerating speed of scientific revelation, not even the scientists. They've got their hands and minds full in just staying informed in their respective fields of research.

People do generally understand, however, the language of faith; it resonates in their soul, like Vivaldi string vibrations amplifying and emanating from the hollow body of a violin. Faith sustains spiritual life and health in ways that scientific truth cannot. And this resilience of faith in the human breast stands the test of time. If the accuracy, precision, and inaccessible complexity of science is used politically to oppress people--to extinguish what they believe to be true about the universe and its creator--they will resist it every time.

Scientific truth can trump old data and antiquated theories, but it has no power to overcome faith. The political, social and educational battles that roil around evolution, climate change and other processes of nature are tempests in a planetary teapot. Something much more potent than scientific fact brews in places unseen.

Between a rock and a hard (to understand) relativity

The men and women who conduct research in science have a system of procedures for establishing what is a fact and what is not; it's what we call the scientific method, and this is how it happens:
1.) The scientist observes phenomena in the physical world and poses a question. Example: Galileo sees an apple fall from an open window and hit the ground. He wonders: If that apple were a heavier object--say, a pumpkin-- would it fall faster and thus hit the ground sooner?
2.) The scientist forms a hypothesis. Example: Galileo hypothesizes that two objects of different weighty will fall at different speeds when dropped from the same height, and strike the ground at different times.
3.) The scientist tests the hypothesis by constructing a controlled experiment. Example: Galileo drops two balls of different weights, at the same time, from atop the leaning Tower of Pisa.
4.) The scientist observes and notes the effects (data) of his/her experiment. Example: Galileo notices that both balls hit the ground at the same time instead of at different times.
5.) The scientist forms a conclusion. Example: Galileo reasons that the speed of a falling object is not determined by the weight of the object.
6.) The scientist publishes an account of the experiment and its conclusion.
7.) Other scientists subsequently reconstruct or refine the experiment to prove or disprove the first scientist's conclusion.
8.) Other scientists develop new observations and new hypotheses for further inquiry. Example: Isaac Newton sees an apple fall from its tree and wonders: Why does the apple fall?

This method has evolved in the scientific community over the last 700 years or so. And before science was a recognized as a productive discipline, artisans used trial and error along with observation to ascertain useful practice in all human endeavors.

But what about the accumulation of human knowledge prior to the scientific method? Is all human tradition and wisdom from antiquity nullified or brought into question by an absence of scientific method that would have verified it?

No. There is, by cultural consensus, common experience and common sense, established truth in human experience and history that preceded science. I will be offering more on this topic later, especially as it relates to morality and ethics.
Have a nice day, and thanks for stopping by.

Life in the land of Nod

The origin of the human species is a curious subject for study. These days, there are two predominant methods for gathering information upon which to form conclusions about that origin. There is science, and there is faith. These two are quite different from each other, so different, in fact, that there is no argument between them.
Each one is a language established for communicating certain messages.
Faith was established in human experience thousands of years before science was. It's inception is clouded in human antiquities. Faith is established upon human testimonies of divinely-revealed truth; by definition, it requires no proof, except the shared conviction of those who wield it.
Science came along only a few thousand years ago, having been initiated by analytical thinkers in ancient Greece. But the pragmatic use of scientific method only reached its critical mass in our modern period beginning about 700 years ago in the work of such thinkers as Copernicus, Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Pasteur, Curie, Einstein, Watson and Crick, etc. The evolution of the scientific method has brought the practitioners of science to a regimented system of establishing fact through hypotheses that are confirmed by empirical proof and data.
Science, a systematic proof of hypothetical statements, is a language unto itself with strict rules for establishing that proof.
Faith, a cultural manifestation of shared belief, is a language unto itself having no rules, but having morals, which are its chief end.
In our era, the body of scientific work following the work of Charles Darwin and others is presented as evidence that the human species evolved through genetic mutations from other species. The evidence for this is quite convincing.
As a practitioner of faith, a Christian, I have no argument with this. And the reason is found not in the scientific evidence itself but in the Scripture, fourth chapter of Genesis, verse 13:
Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me."
So we see from divine revelation that there were, in Adam's time, other beings on earth who were capable of killing the son of Adam, Cain. Whoever these violent entities are, I know not, for scripture does not say. Whoever they were, they were not sons of Adam; for scripture is quite specific that Cain was the first son of Adam and Eve. The second son was Abel, whom Cain killed. The third son was Seth, who was born after God and Cain had their discussion about Cain's problems that resulted from his murder of Abel.
Furthermore, we see from Genesis that God granted mercy to Cain in spite of his murderous act and that (Gen. 4:15ff) ...Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was building a city and he named it after his son Enoch.
To identify these people who might have wanted to murder Cain is now impossible, and also unnecessary. If readers of the scripture would speculate upon their identity, some may suggest that these violent ones were some variant of Neanderthals, or more likely CroMagnons.
At any rate they were, it seems, a pretty violent lot, and God was quite upset when Cain's behavior revealed a tendency toward their brutality.
Therefore, if scientific enquiry produces evidence of pre-Adamic humanoids, I have, as a believer whose faith is founded in scripture, no problem with that.
My faith is formed by divine revelation. My knowledge of this earth is formed in science, among other things.
The history of the human species, as revealed in secular writings as well as in holy scripture, is evidence to me that man is a deficient creature. That is to say, we're not playing with a full deck, and we all have a few loose screws. Christian theologians use the term depraved. That assessment is correct. There is plenty of evidence in history of our rampant depravity.
What's essential to me as a person of faith is this: the existential dilemma presented as a consequence of our depravity requires God's own salvation, not our own, for we are incapable of it. When God breathed life into Adam, that intervention introduced a new work of His upon this earth. That divine work later found its fullest expression in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So Jesus becomes my role model. That's not to say that I attain the perfection that he did. But I'm following him.
If you want to trace your ancestry to the CroMagnons, or even to the blue people of Pandora, and identify with them, go right ahead. Knock yourself out.
Have a nice day.