I see smart people

Modern Man knows everything except himself...

The shame of our schools not teaching history through the eyes of the brilliant thinkers of antiquity is that students come to think John Stewart and Stephen Colbert are smartest people that ever lived. This is not to say Colbert and Stewart aren't wickedly smart people, but they are not thinkers. They are mockers. They make fun of the reasoned notions and the time worn conclusions of everything and everyone that came before them. Whatever value they may add to the culture is meager and fleeting. So be it, they're entertainers.

To single out Stewart and Colbert is unfair, there are multitudes of sharp minds in the modern culture. A sharp mind like Howard Stern's in my eyes has been completely wasted on self aggrandizement and pornography. You can say he's an entertainer and he's just doing his job, besides people like pornography. That doesn't mean it isn't a waste. So too with Chelsea Handler. Clearly this woman is sharp, but like Stern she wallows in put downs and lowest common denominator observations. She appeals to basest parts of our psyche, and because she is a woman it's interesting, but no less a waste. Again these two are just entertainers doing their part to lower discourse and encourage thoughtlessness. Besides, they are cool, and cool is all that matters. Being a Mr. Smartypants is so uncool.

This is as much an indictment of the greater culture, particularly parenting and the educational system as it is anything else. It's entertainers not parents and teachers who inform and literally shape the minds of the young with their flippant and cynical representations of everything good and decent. Eternal truth and beauty are replaced with degeneracy and mental pornography.

It wasn't always like this. There was a time when striving for knowledge, truth and beauty were cool. Before the advent of electronic mass media people like Edison, Tesla and Einstein were stars. The value to the world these people made is incalculable. Contrast and compare to the Kardashian's or JayZ and Beyonce of today. Even just narrowing on entertainment, consider that Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson to name a few were as revered for their contribution to the intellect of the young mind as much as for the entertainment value of their work. One would hope they are still teaching about these great minds in schools.

People today want to think that we are so intellectually superior to the generations that came before that it's pointless to even consider the value of  past genius. We are not superior, not by a long stretch. Our technology is but our thinkers are not.

In this age of enlightenment that began in the last half of the 18th century it was the separation of science from natural theology that has lead inexorably to this cultural phenomenon. How many know that the field of "science" was only professionalized within the last 150 years? Natural sciences had been the realm of theologians in the Western world since long before the dark ages. Theology was the most professionalized field in existence for centuries. Every scientific truth uncovered in antiquity that we still recognize today was brought forth by theists and theologians. These facts are no less valuable today. It was theists like Galileo, Copernicus and Issac Newton who set the foundations for astronomy that we still rely on today to send men into space.

There were countless great minds of the past like Blaise Pascal and John Locke and others, theologians and believers whose contribution to modern philosophy is immense. If they are taught in schools at all their Christianity is suppressed. Great thinkers like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas are shunned completely in public schools. Even the modern saint Rev. Martin Luther King (named after the great Christian reformer Martin Luther) has his pastor title stripped in all public discourse. More modern thinkers and Christians like CS Lewis, Walker Percy and Peter Kreeft are merely lost in the cosmos - so to speak - as far as younger generations are concerned.

The old phrase throwing the baby out with the bath water comes to mind. In the all out effort to secularize the culture all the societal and moral value of the Christian era is being systematically wiped out. As if no redeeming societal significance comes from Christianity itself or the great minds of it's believers, past or present. As if washing the hands of the crimes committed by the overarching Christendom that proceeded the historical figure of Jesus Christ is justified, it is the height of insanity to erase the greatest single influence of the Western world. The Jesus of the Gospels never condoned many of things done in his name.  

As such it's one thing to downplay or suppress "God" or "Jesus" in every aspect of modern life, it's quite another to be openly hostile to the point of making laws against it - which is where we are heading. There are school districts that are planning to ban Jesus Christ - the historical figure - from the curriculum. The Jesus of the Gospels is probably the greatest cultural teacher that ever lived. Whether one believes in the deity of Christ or not to pretend he or his legacy never existed is a crime perpetrated on children.

The question is why is this happening? Well... Do we really not know?

Anyway, as the natural sciences separated and emerged as a distinct profession outside of theology the false narrative emerged that Christianity was somehow always at odds with reason and rationalism. It is now a given that there is a warfare between "religion and science". It's not true now and it has never been true. Even the battle over Darwinism is a false narrative spoon fed by intransigent atheists on one side and equally intransigent Christians on the other. Most of Christianity sees no real conflict between evolutionary concepts and the providence of God - yes, and especially the Catholic Church.

Modern man thinks he knows so much, but he doesn't or won't know himself; an unexamined soul sees no sin and therefore rejects it. He lives in a culture based on moral relativism, where nothing is more true than anything else, it only matters where you are seeing it from, and more importantly how you feel about it. Therefore nothing can really be known, especially about the self. With his mind steeped in relativism he rejects sin and the existence of evil. He can't draw the line between what is good and righteous and what is vile and disgusting.

For all the smart people alive today do any of them bother to question why the culture is adrift in a sea of turmoil with nothing to guide it to safe shores? I thought not.


Ugh

A Drop of Water in the Ocean

The Big Picture
Pondering the nature of the universe is usually a futile exercise. To be honest it's one I find fascinating and tedious. We humans get so caught up in the day to day machinations of living we rarely take a minute to consider all the big questions philosophers and physicists have been struggling with for centuries. Obviously we know more now than we ever have, but in reality we are barely one toe off the starting line.

The sheer size of the universe we can see (with our eyes and our telescopes) is so mind boggling that the possibility that billions more exist is almost incomprehensible. Or is it?

According to this interesting article on newscientist.com website:

It may not matter how many universes exist - just how many a single observer can tell apart.

According to quantum physics, observers affect the systems they measure. If observers are an integral part of the cosmic formula, then it may not matter how many universes exist - just how many a single observer can tell apart. If the observer is a person, that depends on how many bits of information the brain can process.

This says to me - puny humans...

But what if... What if you and I were drops of water sitting next to each other on deck of a boat, and we were both universes. Would it not be feasible that you and I could see each other? Now what if the boat was rocked by a wave and we dribbled into the ocean? Do we continue to be a drops? Who knows, but we certainly would not see each other as drops among the billions of other drops. Given this, is it conceivable that the multiple universes that physicists say must exist are intertwined in our universe like so many drops in the ocean? To my mind it's the only answer since we - puny humans - can scarcely comprehend the size of the single observable universe we find ourselves in.

How then can multiple universes even exist interspersed with our own? Hell, I don't know, but it would seem to me that they would have to be settled into different wavelengths or different dimensions - which may of course be one in the same.

Time and Space
In this fine article on the newscientist.com website space/time dimensions are discussed:

What is a Dimension?

With such a basic question, you might think we'd have a simple answer. Sadly, we haven't. Defining just what a dimension is turns out to be a surprisingly slippery problem.

The most intuitive description is the oldest one: the number of dimensions a system possesses is the number of independent directions you or anything else can move in. Up and down count as only one dimension because up-ness and down-ness are two sides of the same coin: the further up you go, the less down you are. The same connection exists between left and right, and forwards and backwards, but not between up and right, down and backwards, and so on. Thus, the geometers of Ancient Greece recognized, we live in a three-dimensional world. So far, so simple, but then things start to unravel.

Unravel indeed. The first 4 dimensions are doable (with time being recognized as the 4th). Six, eight, ten??? Spend 10 minutes or ten hours trying wrap your mind around the "string theory" and you will unravel. I try to think of simple analogies like the concept of TDM -time division multiplexing where multiple signals are given a precise time slice interval in a shared time pool to communicate with another end point. This circuit - think telephone circuit - can carry many simultaneous conversations over the same wire by giving each conversation evenly spaced intervals of time to talk. Each conversation is real enough and happening at the exact time as the others yet they are all isolated, unable to "cross over" due to laws of TDM. Could these conversations be compared to multiple universes? Why not?

That's why time, being the most ambiguous of the recognizable dimensions, makes a perfect slurry for multiple dimensions. If what we think of as time passed at a different rate for each of the "universes" would we, could we be sharing the same physical space as the others?

What is time really? You can't see it, you can't feel it, it doesn't exist as a physical entity. Time is a concept as much as it is anything, but we have no disillusions that its real. Is it merely a byproduct of the necessary function of quantum mechancis? Is time really as steady and constant as we believe it is? We can measure time before it passes and count on it getting here just as predicted? But, ask any teenager waiting to grow up - time takes forever. Ask any middle-aged parent hustling and bustling all year only to find it's Christmastime again - time flies. The pace of time is all about perception, right?

Time is a great paradox that has perplexed humanity since, well, since the dawn of time. The philosopher Kant proposed that space and time do not exist at all but are merely intuitions, perceptions imposed by our own minds. Einstein believed that space and time are in fact interchangeable.

Indeed many theories abound in today's metaphysics community.

One is multiple universes, or "the multiverse". A theory that says what we have been calling the universe is an infinitesimal fragment of a far grander, more elaborate sprawling cosmos - and as vast as our universe is, it is actually a tiny bubble of space surrounded by countless number of other bubbles, or what they call pocket universes.

Its been suggested that a majority of these other universes would not have been fine-tuned as is ours; most are sterile and unremarkable. Only the "Goldilocks" universes where things are just right, will intelligent beings rise up to ponder how remarkably bio-friendly the universe is.

Continuing on that train of thought since the number of pocket universes is essentially unlimited, there are bound to be some that are not only inhabited, but populated by highly advanced civilizations - with technologies powerful enough to create artificial consciousness. And what if we are a product of that technology? Think - "The Matrix"

There is another variant called the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics. It says that every quantum event in the cosmos creates multiple new universes. A new universe is created for every possible outcome of the quantum event. Every right turn you have ever made was also a left turn in an endlessly spawning cascade of universes. It's almost too strange to even contemplate. Honestly wouldn't the whole thing become a damn circle?

Have Faith
There is one thing all multiverse theories share in common: there's no physical/empirical evidence available to prove them. And therein lies the tedium. There are no right answers. Science will probably never prove or disprove any of it. Am I jumping to conclusions? Should I have faith in science to answer these profound questions? Or should I just believe in God?

Half of one, six dozen of another...




CW

Quote Me!

note: The other night I was talking with my dear Mother on the subject of God and those among us who are, shall we say, skeptics, when this came out of my mouth. I thought it so profound I felt I needed to write it down...


"If God is love, and that's all God is - that's pretty good"








Quote me!
CW

Hardwired to God

It was something Tim Birdnow said in a comment thread on his blog that got me thinking. Are humans hardwired into God? Is it in our blood or is the God concept an evolutionary coping mechanism? There have been numerous articles published and biological studies conducted on this subject. But what Birdnow said that struck me was this simple question: Where are all the successful atheist cultures?

The two largest atheist societies are rather recent anomalies and both were forced. The Soviet Union enforced an oppressive secular society on populations that were (at the time) profoundly religious. China continues to violently suppress religious activity, particularly in Tibet and, of course, the new Christians. Neither society can be considered truly successful. China is making great strides economically, coincidently enough, just as Christianity is on the rise there.

But throughout recorded history and even deep into pre-history the evidence of God/spiritual worship is overwhelming. One could ask why these cultures of antiquity no longer exist and isn't that evidence that God centered cultures are also failures? Most, if not all, of these so-called extinct or failed cultures were supplanted by a more successful or more aggressive religiously based cultures. For instance, it is widely believed that Christianity helped deconstruct the mighty Roman Empire.

Humans cling to the God/spirit concept for a variety of reasons and comfort in a cold, hard, cruel world is not the least of it. Until about a hundred and fifty years ago daily life was so hard and uncertain that getting on ones knees and begging for mercy and grace helped make it bearable. Religious traditions helped develop the rhythm of societies throughout history. Fear of God, fear of being shamed and fear eternal damnation also helped civilize wild and violent men. It's easy to see that religion and belief in God was absolutely necessary to get us where we are today.

Many brilliant men have pondered the meaning of God over the centuries. Some of the greatest thinkers and writers have weighed in on the subject. C.S.Lewis and G.K. Chesterton instantly come to mind. Immanuel Kant engaged in many debates under the heading “philosophy of religion.” He authored numerous arguments for the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the problem of evil, and the relationship of moral principles to religious belief and practice.

On the other side of the coin were men like Marx and Nietzsche. Marx, of course, had a profound influence on the world, and not necessarily a positive one. He was clearly a brilliant man but produced a severely defective philosophy that when practiced was destructive and, of course, devoid of God. Friedrich Nietzsche's view that "God is dead" was the basis for much of the secular sentiment that developed throughout the 20th century. Nietzsche referred to himself as an immoralist and was critical of the prominent moral schemes in the 19th century: Judaism, Christianity, and Kantianism.

Contemporary philosophers and theologians with the far reaching impact of modern media suffer in the din of "StaticNoise" that will ultimately cause them to fail to have the impact of the earlier heavyweights mentioned above.

Simply put, as our modern world frees us from having to scratch out our existence from the hard ground, and as our "nanny state" governments care for us from cradle to grave, we find less and less need to turn to God. When the news on the television displays carnage and war day after day we become more convinced that no merciful God could possibly exist. Many people feel empty inside and don't know why. Eventually "things" won't make then happy anymore. Money doesn't make them happy. Sex doesn't make them happy. In their boredom they turn to comfort food or worse, drugs and alcohol.

Some people do just fine without a closeness to God. Somewhere inside them an inner strength buoys them (maybe the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit has taken root in them???) and carries them through life. Intellectually gifted people often have this strength. Fact and logic are the only guidance they need. They don't often wonder about "meaning" - they know what they know and the rest is unimportant. The rest of us can take clues from them on coping in this crazy, modern world. If their is a God He smiles down on these people too, they are some of his best work.

As reluctant as the intellectually gifted are to admit it they know that modern society needs God now more than ever. The evidence for the need of a broad religious underpinning for modern society is astounding. In a post-Christian Europe and Russia, in techno-savvy Japan the modern secular society has left entire populations so disappointed and depressed they have embarked on the path of self extinction. People without faith in a hereafter bathed in the presence of God don't care enough about the future to have children. Without children there is no future.

Facts and logic are hard things.

People who live only for the here and now, for their own self gratification leaving nothing for the future are dooming their societies to extinction.

Yes, indeed, where are all the successful atheist cultures?



CW

Good News Soars On Eagles Wings

When I was a youngster seeing the majestic Bald Eagle was a real treat that made you stop in your tracks. This was true because it was a rare event. Today, while I still feel a tinge of wonderment - seeing a Bald Eagle is not so miraculous.

Right here in town I can drive down a major highway on my way to work and see a nesting pair no more than 60 yards from the road. This is the third year they have successfully raised eaglets within shouting distance of a bumper to bumper traffic jam.

In the lower 48 Minnesota tops the list with 1,312 known nesting pairs, followed by Florida with 1,133 pairs and Wisconsin's 1,065 pairs. It comes as no surprise that since I live in Minnesota and am a mere 15 miles from Wisconsin that I chance to see eagles regularly.

The Eagle is a truly national bird and has nesting pairs in every state in the lower 48 - nearly 9,800 of them in total. In Alaska the Bald Eagle was never in danger and are as common as crows. It is estimated that there are 40,000+ breeding pairs in the 49th state!

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to remove the bald eagle from the list of threatened and endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. To ensure the eagle will be protected upon delisting, the Service is working to finalize the definition of "disturb" and the bald eagle management guidelines under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. The Service is to make a decision on delisting the bald eagle by June 29, 2007. Many land owners eagerly await this date because their property is useless under the current rules.

It was the Bald Eagle for the most part that created the whole environmental movement in this country. As it is with many, many things in life, with environmentalism bad came with the good. There's little doubt that a growing awareness of how polluted we were letting our air, water and land become by the 1960's was a good thing. Land conservation and some environmental regulations have gone a long way toward making America a cleaner, more beautiful place to live. High technology has played it's part as well, but who is to say that without awareness and horn blowers that our culture would have focused so well on cleaning up our filthy output.

The detrimental effects of this environmental "awakening" have come about not by people with pure intentions but those who use lies and shaky science to drive an agenda. The agenda is almost always an attack on capitalism when it is truly examined. Global Warming is the at the very pinnacle of this hucksterism. In the foothills it was a small book written by a biologist and writer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Rachel Carson, it is said, became aware of the dangers of chemical pesticides in the decline of eagle populations, including DDT, but was also aware of the controversy within the agricultural community which needed such pesticides to support crop production. Carson made the decision to produce her book "Silent Spring" after years of research.

It's hard to say if Carson was a pawn or not but the truth about DDT was never told. Banning DDT, which it turned out was the cheapest safest way of prevent millions of deaths due to malaria, should have been treated as a crime against humanity.

In 1971 during the EPA hearings on the banning of DDT Dr. J. Gordon Edwards asserted that DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man. DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man. The uses of DDT under the regulations involved did not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife. This flew right in the face of the most well-known allegation about DDT - that the insecticide supposedly caused declines in the populations of birds such as the Bald Eagle.

Edwards knew this was a lie. Bald Eagle populations had declined decades before DDT had ever been used. Actually, eagle populations were rebounding during the years of peak DDT use, according to bird counts.

Nonetheless DDT was banned by then EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus. Dr. Edwards investigated and uncovered disturbing statements and troubling connections between Ruckleshaus and anti-DDT environmental extremist groups. The fact that Ruckleshaus had made up his mind to ban DDT regardless of the facts is increased by his refusal of requests made under the Freedom of Information Act to turn over the documentation on which the ban was based.

Amazingly, just as critics of the "consensus" science on Global Warming are called deniers and are accused of being in the back pockets of the oil companies Dr. Edwards was also accused of being a "paid scientist". He was no such thing.

Before his death in 2004 he saw an about face by the New York Times and his nemesis, publisher Mr. Sulzberger, when they ran a pro-DDT editorial on Dec. 23, 2002 ("Fighting Malaria with DDT), a pro-DDT op-ed column on Aug. 7, 2003 (Is there a place for DDT?") and a pro-DDT New York Times Magazine article on April 11, 2004. ("What the World Needs Now is DDT").

Since then, there has been growing awareness for the need to rehabilitate DDT's image. Public health professionals and non-governmental organizations, notably Africa Fighting Malaria, stepped up efforts to increase the use of DDT. Alas, criminal charges will never be brought against busy-body do-gooders in the West who pushed to have DDT banned world-wide - they nearly succeeded and millions died.

Despite good old Ben Franklin's desire to relegate the Bald Eagle to scoundrel status (in favor of the truly awe inspiring Wild Turkey) I am glad this handsome bird is our national symbol. It was not the Bald Eagles fault it was used as a pawn - a role ill suited for this regal bird of prey.



CW

What We Don't Know

Why is the Sky Blue?








Here is a really nice compilation of many of the big questions science has not answered. Once again www.wired.com impresses! (Wired is second only to alfin2100.blogspot.com for cutting edge stuff!) Some of these questions will never be definitively answered and for some it's just a matter of time. I think the curious among us will really enjoy it, others may say what's the difference. I mean what does it really buy you to know why the sky is blue?


Curiously enough we actually know the answer to this one!



CW

My God, Your God, Good God, No God

Jesus, What Did You Say to Piss them off This Time?

I have written before that I think Christians (in the interest of full disclosure, I am one) can be our own worst enemy. Nothing makes me cringe more than a self-assured, self righteous bastard who thinks he knows all the answers.

I take that back...

Self-righteous atheist bastards actually make me cringe more. It's mostly because pure unadulterated hatred and hypocrisy coming from anyone makes me feel all empty inside. The worshipers of "random chance naturally selected chaos" are perhaps the most smug human beings on God's green Earth.

Take Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, there's is also good`ol Chris Hitchens, Mother Teresa hater extraordinarie, all sharp as a tack, all self assured and apparently scarred for life by some sort of parentally mandated religious training. While all these guys are surely Atheist All-Stars I think it's Chris Hedges, the author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America who takes the cake. Watching him on CSPAN last night I could literally feel the pain of that whack on the back of the hand Sister Rosa dished out. Perhaps Chris should have been reading scripture instead of drawing devil horns on a picture of the Pope.

All kidding aside, these fine men and millions more like them around the world came to a conclusion that God does not exist. That is their right - and they can set out to prove it in any way they see fit. No one has the monopoly on the truth - no one is all-knowing. And to speak of hypocrites without including the Church is unfair.

Mr. Hedges, I am relatively certain, would be the first to condemn those of us who see the coming world war pitting Islamic Jihad terrorists against, well, everyone else as being paranoid and delusional. What does it say of him to have actually written a book called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America? Rarely does one come across paranoia like that!

I challenge Hedges or anyone else for that matter to spend an hour on Sunday in my church and see the revolutionary preparations we are making to take over America. Why all that talk about love and forgiveness is enough to frighten the poor man to death. Ahh, but you need to read between the lines, mister. That's right, we are oh so clever, we would never come right out and say it like the Muslims do. We, born of the Jews, are all sneaky and clandestine. Its all in the way you interpret the parables...

They say that the Christian Right is destroying our democracy. They generally have scant evidence but like to site Stem Cell Research. In this "sound bite" world it is easy to lie by omission to leave a skewed impression on the public. The biggest lie is the fact that contrary to what they'd have you believe embryonic stem cells have yet to produce a single viable treatment. They lie by ignoring the tremendous strides adult stem cell therapies have made. They lie by intimating that the President has outlawed stem cell research when he did no such thing.

They now have a second example to site as proof that "the Christians are coming, the Christians are coming!" The Supreme Court recently upheld the federal law banning so-called Partial Birth abortions. It is a particularly gruesome procedure that even most level headed pro-choicers find appalling. It has been passed by several state houses and struck down by lower courts and now it was passed by the federal government and signed into law by the President. The fact of the matter is that a vast majority of Americans think the law is right. That's sort of like democracy isn't it.

Why have a constitution if we just need to listen to the people for all our answers?

Polls are OK when they support your position and they damn sure ought to be taken into account. After all a majority of the American people who voted in 2000 voted for Albert Gore but he did not become the President because the law said he didn't win enough electoral votes. That was a travesty in some people's eyes - the majority must prevail!

So, that being the case, when a majority of the people in this country want to declare that marriage is a union of one man and one woman should that not that be the case then? Or is it just another example of the Christian Right going after gays and lesbians, stripping them of their rights and rendering them second class citizens? Me, I personally don't care one way or the other, to each his own, live and let live and all that jazz, if that's what they want to do, good for them. But is this a democracy where the majority rules or not? No, it is not. This is the very reason America was constituted as a representative democratic republic. We are supposed to elect wise men and women to make decisions on matters such as this. And if I heard it once I've heard it a thousand times - we get the government we deserve.

If Hedges, Hitchens and Harris fear for this country and the march toward Christian fascism that they see around every corner then they also ought to look in the mirror to see why the Christians in America feel so threatened. The march of socialism and secular humanism is proceeding unhindered through our culture and our schools. Why do you think parochial and home schooling is on the rise and is producing some of the best student achievement.

This whole throw the baby out with the bath water mentality as if God believing people have contributed nothing good to this world is the thing we recoil against. My church is full of great and wonderful, peaceful people every Sunday. I don't know what churches these guys go to.



CW

In A Blink of An Eye: A Lonely World

The question of whether there is extraterrestrial intelligence equal to or greater than Earth's humanity has fascinated me for decades. I am not alone with wonder. There is a whole industry of science fiction books and movies that have captivated the curious since the days of H.G. Wells, not to mention active government and private efforts to find ETI. I must admit to being skeptical and hopeful at the same time. I love a great conspiracy as much as the next guy but when it comes to UFOs, aliens and X-Files I would need to see it with my own eyes before being thoroughly convinced. This may sound odd coming from someone who believes in God. The difference I think lies in the spirit that I KNOW exists in me - this is where my very real connection to God is.

While all this (and that) is ripe for argument I think it is misguided to declare unequivocally that God and or ET does not exist. Allowing that God exists outside/apart from our physical space/time continuum we move on to ET by assuming he shares our physical universe.

In 1961 astronomer Frank Drake developed what became known as the Drake Equation as a way to focus on the factors which determine how many intelligent, communicating civilizations there are in our galaxy. The Drake Equation is: N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL

fp is the probability that star system will have planets

ne is the number of habitable planets in a star system that has planets

fl is the probability that life evolves on a habitable planet

fi is the probability that intelligent self-aware life evolves on a habitable planet

fc is the probability that intelligent life will attempt interstellar communication within 5 billion years of evolving on a habitable planet.

fL is fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live

This formula is as good a place as any to begin. As time and our technology continues to progress the figures used to populate this equation will continue to change. In '61 we had no evidence that planets even existed around any star but our own. Today we have indirectly observed hundreds of planets. So at least that part of the equation can be substantiated as having some semblance of validity. The question of time is the wild card.

Question: For each civilization that does communicate, for what fraction of the planet's life does the civilization survive? How long will we survive?

If modern man (homo sapiens) is anywhere from 40,000 to 250,000 years old it constitutes a mere blink of an eye in Earth's geologic time. Next, consider how fast mankind became technological. Taking the advent of the steam engine as the first high tech wonder that changed everything we are looking at less than two hundred years from the dawn of the age of machines to this computer/Internet I am working on right now. In between we have put an man on the moon and have learned control the atom at the nuclear level - for better or worse. That's pretty remarkable, and pretty quick. The sum of human knowledge is increasing at an exponential rate. Machine knowledge or AI is just in its infancy. Imagine what the next 200 years will bring...

Since it is believed that the Earth is around 5 billion years old and the universe as far as we can perceive it is 13 to 14 billion years old then why would it be inconceivable that hundreds if not thousands of space faring races would have risen - and fallen. We are just one planet in a galaxy of billions of stars and the Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies, the numbers are mind boggling.

That being said it is hard to imagine that humanity will go on forever, especially if we never leave this planet and colonize others. If humanity ever does develop the technology to visit other star systems in this galaxy I would be surprised if "we" don't come across extinct technological civilizations in the same way we still come across primitive earthly civilizations. By the same token someday ET will come across ours.

The other thing to consider, leaving science fiction behind, is that perhaps traveling faster than the speed of light is impossible and that the great distances between stars and galaxies will forever make it impossible for planet bound intelligences from ever finding each other. Carl Sagan spoke to this very real possibility, and he may have been been right. Are we a lonely planet?


CW

Render Unto Caesar...

Why Christians Evoke Such Disdain in The Secular Society


Christians are their own worst enemy at times. No one is immune to hypocrisy, even the most righteous, moral, benevolent person you have ever met has been a hypocrite at one time or another. That being said it doesn't mean that a hypocrite is necessarily wrong - but sticking their nose where it doesn't belong while spouting moral certitudes will undoubtedly create a vicious backlash. In some cases the disdain is completely justified and others it is just a knee jerk reflex devoid of rationality.

Case in point: A news story regarding a new vaccination for a devastating disease and a "family group" (read: Christian Fundamentalists) pushing legislators to block it from being grouped in with the mandatory childhood vaccination schedule. I'm talking about the vaccine to prevent HPV in young ladies which is the leading cause of cervical cancer. HPV is generally spread through sexual contact. The family group says making it mandatory will send the "wrong message" to young girls that it will be all right to have casual sex. Even I as a Christian find that to be a ridiculous argument. Cervical cancer a horrible disease and the vaccine is proved and approved - not dispensing it on the grounds that it sends the wrong message is cruel and inhuman.

The only leg a legislator has to stand on in blocking this from becoming part of the mandatory vaccination list is the method by which it is spread. It is not spread through the air like TB, polio or measles. Still, to condemn any number of young women to suffer the devastation of cervical cancer including rendering them incapable of having children based on the moral certainty of these family groups is wrong.

Case in Point #2:
A Time Magazine cover story about those horrible Crisis Pregnancy Centers that are popping up all over the country where they try to help young ladies decide NOT to abort their babies. (sarcasm off). Time asks: When a young girl in crisis seeks counseling is it fair that she is shown what her "baby" looks like and what its heartbeat sounds like? Seriously, has anyone ever ran a cover story about the fairness of Planned Parenthood's and NARAL's tactics.

Simply because these centers are backed and funded by Christian churches and organizations do they instantly become suspects. What these centers do is remarkable and commendable. In many cases they provide all the medical care for free and help support the woman financially for up to year after the baby is born. They help with adoption if that option is chosen.

What they don't do is provide contraception. AHA! Now we begin to see why the distrust and disdain. They are PRO-LIFE! More precisely they are anti-choice! Well, since they don't take money from the government there is no way to hurt these centers economically within the political realm. So, we get articles like this in Time Magazine where they try to portray these angels as anything but. Even when these articles attempt balance the sneer of condescension is laced throughout. In the end the reader is supposed to view these good people as kind hearted Christian kooks.

If anything these Crisis Pregnancy Centers adhere to the concept of “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”. The so-called Family Groups do not. They deserve the disdain they get from the secular community because they intend to foist their moral value judgment on the general population via legislation. The Crisis Pregnancy Centers, while making no noise about morality laws face hostility simply because they displease the secular world. They dare to do their work where they can't be touched. They dare not bow down before the shrine of abortion-rights. They dare to console young people to practice abstinence before marriage (impractical or not) as the only sure fire way to prevent pregnancy and STD's.

They dare to call a fetus a BABY!

So, to follow the logic of the "keep your morals off my body" crowd it is NOT OK to risk a young womens life to HPV due to some moral judgment of certain Christians, but IT IS OK to condemn a private group trying protect and save an unborn child because the group is backed by those horrible Christians.

In the end all one can say is: none of us has a monopoly on truth or moral certainty.




CW