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Math/Science

Octonion/Physics

Genome/Math

Math/Biology

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An intricate web connects us to myriad people, places and things. Erase all those connections: how much of you is left? Individuals can be very misguided. So can societies. Individuals can go mad. So can societies. Think free. Think. If the population of the earth were to double every 100 years, in roughly 4000 years all the mass of the earth would be people. It is physically impossible for this to happen. Things will occur to prevent it. That is certain. In the USA there are presently three dominant political parties: Democratic, Republican, Fascitic. The latter is a political party in every nation on earth, and has been throughout history. It hovers like disease in the background, awaiting a weakened immune system. It is generally fatal. Under the heading of things we should not be surprised at: Any group in an organization that produces something praiseworthy will find near the end of their efforts that non-participants of whom they may never have heard have positioned themselves to receive the praise at the expense of those whose efforts generated the praise. I'm pretty sure certainty is a mental illness. Dogmatic faith, whether religious, cultural, or intellectual, is open to but one appeal: become one with the body. The collective is a complex system, a living memetic entity whose power increases with its numbers, so maintaining and augmenting those numbers becomes of great importance. In being a spiritual person you do not find common ground with the committed Catholic, Evangelical or Muslim. In being an intellectual and/or physicist you do not find common ground with the string theorist - unless, of course, you join. Be absorbed, assimilated, integrated, digested. Poop. There's your common ground. However benign its beginnings, the ultimate goal of any authority lacking oversight will be maintaining its existence and influence at the expense of those subject to its power, and who may even have approved of its birth. Let's suppose a god or gods created the world and all that's in it a few thousand years ago, and that chimpanzee DNA is as close to human DNA as it is because the gods were simply being efficient with the tools at hand. We now know enough about sociology, biology, chemistry, atomic and quantum physics, and mathematics, to be quite certain that from this point onward mutations are inevitable from generation to generation. No one alive today, save perhaps identical twins, has the same genome as anyone else alive, or who has ever lived. The odds are just too small. Consequently the human population now is different genetically than it was at the time of its purported inception, and mutations will ensure that as time goes on the overall difference will increase. This genetic drift away from where we were is evolution. It's not as dramatic as it can be, but over aeons the odds are it will be dramatic indeed. Our science, which is used to run nuclear power plants, make iPhones, allows us to develop mutated bacteria that can release disease fighting chemicals, and helps us understand the origin of genetic diseases, implies with a probability of essentially 1 (100% certainty) that from this day onward the human genome, and the genomes of all species, will evolve. For myself, the evidence is overwhelming that today is not the first day evolving will occur, and that it started billions of years ago with the beginnings of life. But it doesn't matter. Even if humans were created by god(s) a few thousand years ago, evolution as a process is still a fact. We can make it happen in the laboratory. [Note added] The science of life's origins contains many unanswered questions. For those opposed to the idea that life arose without the aid of a deity, every unanswered question is evidence for their viewpoint. The problem with this is that science does not stand still. Throughout history science has been solving the riddles of phenomena whose source had at one time been ascribed to a deity or deities. But none of this matters. Even if all questions are eventually answered, and we come to understand the series of events that needed to occur to give rise to cellular life, it is still possible to ascribe this to a deity. For whatever reason, be it the existence of an actual deity, or that tendency to faith in deities gives individuals/societies survival benefits, we will never ever be without those carrying such faith, and they will always be in the majority. Still, it should be possible to develop an educational curriculum that explains the divergence of the finches of the Galapagos from a biochemical point of view that allows for religious addenda (taught in a separate venue) to posit such scientific explanations as evidence for the subtlety of a deity or deities. While I myself believe that science is sufficient, I of course can not prove it - which reminds me of a Steve Martin routine ... "What if you died, and you woke up, and you were in heaven? Just like they always told you? Everybody had wings on, and pearly gates...wouldn't you feel stupid? 'Oh nooo! You mean that this is what...Awww. In college they said this was all bullshit.' " The intent of much of humor is to make the participants feel more comfortable with the baser sides of their natures. Protect your democracy: lie to pollsters.