Creation: God vs. Science: Part One

Probably among the most familiar of familiar phrases in the English language is one that starts out “In the beginning God created…” However, there are alternative non-theological variations on that phrase that fall more in the realm of natural philosophy (or as we call it today, science). What’s at stake is the credibility of God’s alleged word vs. the credibility of the word of science. Christians might believe the Bible, but they put their real faith in science when they turn on their TV set or board an aircraft. So too should they put their money on the scientific scenarios of the creations.

In the beginning God said a whole bunch of stuff central to His creation of life, the Universe and everything.*

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Genesis 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. [God creates photons and electromagnetic energy.]

Genesis 1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. [This makes little sense, but it’s a division of heavenly ‘waters’ from the earthly ‘waters’. There’s earthly ‘waters’, and then there’s everything else above the earthly ‘waters’ – the firmament.]

Genesis 1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. [The distinction between land and sea is noted as the earthly ‘waters’ undergo a partial phase change.]

Genesis 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. [Botany makes an appearance.]

Genesis 1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. [The creation of the Sun, the Moon and the stars is noted.]

Genesis 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. [God creates fish (including whales) and birds.]

Genesis 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. [Add to that the invertebrates, mammals, reptiles and amphibians.]

Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

These are statements, but not explanations, far less adequate explanations. It’s akin to sleight of hand, the snap of the fingers, the waving of a magic wand. Its parlour tricks that dazzle but you’re left none the wiser. You’re awed by magicians’ tricks because you can’t figure out how they do them; and they’re not telling!

We note by the way that microbes, bacteria, viruses, unicellular critters, etc. don’t get a mention in Genesis. There’s no “And God said, let there be microbes”. That’s one major omission. Of course humans didn’t have microscopes back then and I guess God forgot to tell His scribes about the reality of the greater part of Earth’s biomass so that’s why they didn’t get a mention. All of God’s creations would fall apart at the atomic seams if it wasn’t for the strong nuclear force, so why didn’t God take credit for that? Okay, so the human author(s) of Genesis presumably didn’t know much about atomic physics, but they did know about gravity (the force that really dominates the Universe, including much of reality back on Terra Firma, including much of their reality. So why no “And God said, let there be gravity”? 

Those significant omissions aside, and they are significant, religion, as in the Bible, gives you various creation statements as we’ve seen. If the Bible gives you creation explanations of any kind, they are downright weird, if not supernatural, and certainly not verifiable explanations. Science tries to give you logical explanations for creation events and to the best of its ability, verifiable explanations.

So, God created the “heaven and the earth”. Heaven apparently is as in all things not earth – the rest of the cosmos. Out of what did God create heaven and earth? Out of nothing? Out of some pre-existing primordial matter that presumably God didn’t create but had available to Him as a raw resource? Or, alternatively, if He did create this primordial stuff, then He then took some time out to figure out what to do with it. Decisions, decisions! I mean if God is immortal; and the heaven (cosmos) and earth aren’t, then a lot of water passed under the bridge between God, and God’s creation of heaven and earth. In any event, where are the details? If I told you I had created a jumbo jet in my heavenly garden shed, you’d ask questions. You’d require the nitty-gritty details, as in made out of what, and what size – life-size or toy model – and can it fly. Was it carved or assembled from pre-existing parts or were the parts all created from scratch, and if so where did I get the raw materials from? 

Now even I have to admit, when it comes down to the creation of “heaven” (the Universe or cosmos presumably), scientists (cosmologists) come out with some pretty far-out-star-scout statements too. And some pretty far-out-star-scout details, but at least there are details. The nitty-gritty is that 13.7 billions years ago (science – vs. 4004 BCE God), there was a Big Bang which somehow created the Universe (matter, energy, time and space) from nothing, and to top off the silliness, that all happened in a space way, way, way smaller than a pinhead. Pull the other one fellows! However, at least they do have some observational evidence – runs on the board – to support at least the 13.7 billion year ago event (though little else), evidence which the 4004 BCE Biblical version lacks. For example, there’s the measured redshifts of the galaxies which suggest the cosmos is expanding. Reinforcing that there’s the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) – the temperature of the cosmos – which keeps getting cooler as the cosmos expands. CMBR measurement meets CMBR theory. Also an area when observation matches prediction is the cosmic ratio of hydrogen to helium. So, the Big Bang has runs (as in details and evidence) on the board. Genesis 1:1 doesn’t.

The “earth” part on the other hand has science on a far, far firmer ground. Astronomers have certainly witnessed the overall process by which extra-solar planetary systems are currently forming, and extrapolation then gives the process that created our Sun and planets, including the Earth, isn’t difficult. In brief, it goes something like this. Interstellar dust clouds rotate and contract due to gravity. Contraction down into a much relatively smaller volume makes for extreme heat and pressure. That heat and pressure eventually triggers nuclear fusion – a star is born. The surrounding debris under gravity contracts to much smaller bodies where the heat and pressure isn’t quite enough to trigger fusion. Those smaller bodies become the orbiting planets – like Earth. As I said, observations are made, explanations are given and details are, well, detailed. So when it comes to accounting for the creation of the Earth, it’s science on top by a mile, or two or ten.

As to the creation, or separation, of land and sea, well you certainly don’t need supernatural processes to account for that. Take a lump of mud or sand; add water; stir until everything is a uniform mixture or slurry. Let stand. What happens? The mud/sand sinks or settles to the bottom (gravity again) and you have separation of church and state – sorry, land and water. Science trumps God again. The Bible should have mentioned gravity and density, but it failed to do so. The Bible should have also mentioned the atmosphere when noting the separation of the land from the waters. Somehow God forgot to mention His role in separating out the atmosphere from the lithosphere and from the hydrosphere. That’s another major oversight IMHO. 

To be continued…

*Kindly note that all Biblical references have been taken from the Book of Genesis that appear in the King James Version of the Bible.

God's Intelligent Design? Part One

One alleged proof of an Almighty deity is that life, the Universe and everything (LUE) is apparently designed in an intelligent, not in a random way. Part of that life is of course human beings, like you. Are you intelligently designed? If you answer “Yes”, I’ll say “Bull”! Is the rest of LUE intelligently designed to optimise your love and respect of your alleged Almighty Creator? If you answer “Yes” yet again, I’ll say “Bull yet again”!

Human beings are apparently the apex of all of that which God created. As such, all of that which God created should benefit or be beneficial to us. Life, the Universe and everything (LUE) has been designed by God with us in mind since LUE was created before us, in preparation for us. It (LUE) therefore must be an intelligently designed, since God is, presumably, intelligent (though creating the human species sort of makes you wonder). That intelligent design includes the design of God’s apex creation itself – the human being. Now, the question is, does the rhetoric meet the reality? Let’s start with the alleged intelligent design or construction of the human being.

Do you need a hearing aid? Do you need glasses? Did you require your tonsils or appendix or wisdom teeth to be removed? Do you suffer from haemorrhoids or back problems?  Have your hips, knees, and ankles let you down? Can your bones break? Do you suffer from baldness, tooth decay, arthritis, acne, colds, the flu, even cancer? Do you have issues with your sexuality or the functioning of your private parts? Do you suffer from mental illness? Who created the human species and therefore by definition created you? God, that’s who, created you! Who created your physiology and anatomy? Did I hear you say “God”? So who created all of your psychological, physiological and anatomical problems? Did I hear you say “God” again? Is this what you would consider Intelligent Design? I don’t think so! Did God fail Anatomy 101? I think so.

As an example of so-called ‘intelligent design’ our nakedness relative to our furry primate and hominid ancestors and current primate ‘relatives’ is another clue that God failed Anatomy 101 – there are multi-dozens upon dozens of primates; only one ‘naked ape’ (humans). Why did God create us without fur? I mean when the temperature drops much below the comfort threshold, we require in no uncertain terms clothing. When it hits freezing point, we can’t survive without clothing, yet our furry animal cousins seem to manage A-OK. There’s many an image of a furry mammal surviving, even thriving in the snow. Quite apart from the fact that fur is a better regulator of temperature than just sweating (our primary temperature regulation mechanism), loss of fur resulted in two other highly negative evolutionary rock and hard place restrictions.

We’ve been given (by God) a temperature regulation mechanism via sweating. Humans of all the mammals are the species that sweat the most. The retrograde step of temperature control via sweating instead of fur imposed two additional restrictions on us. 1) We were forced to stay close to reliable sources of fresh water. 2) It also makes us way more dependent on supplies of salt since salt is excreted from the body via sweat. Salt supplies in the natural environment are rare – so rare that once upon a time salt was extremely valuable and you got paid in salt. It’s where we get our word, salary from. If only the Almighty had given us our fur.

Another screw-up by our Supreme Being has to do with our bipedal gait relative to the rest of the mammals. Can you name me one other mammal that routinely walks on two legs?  No? That’s probably because there are many negatives to a bipedal gait, like loss of stability. Humans are more prone to losing their balance and falling over than say a cow or a cat. If you’re alone and quadrupedal (or an insect or even better a spider) and lose the use of a leg, you’re hurting but not critically. If you’re alone and bipedal and lose the use of a leg, you’re up fertilizer creek. God should have given us six limbs – four legs and two arms! Now that would have been intelligent design.  

Further, as a benefit to God’s apex human species, it would have been really intelligent to cap off the aging process at say the 30 year mark. No wrinkles, no balding, no grey hairs, no liver spots, no need for a walking stick/cane, etc. Now we still have to eventually kick-the-bucket, but why have to suffer through the afflictions of old age? Be a 70-year-old in a 30-year-old body then have a sudden death heart attack that ends things on a still relatively youthful high note (as it were). I mean God created the animals that way – when’s the last time you saw an elderly grey-haired, wrinkled cat? How about a bald-headed dog? Animals don’t tend to show the aging process as obviously as us humans. Thanks God!

Quite apart from human beings, did God design an intelligently constructed universe? If God created humans, the be-all-and-end-all of His creations, then surely He would, as any parent would, design an environment that would protect us from harms way and certainly not put us in danger. Well, considering that many bits and pieces of God’s cosmic construction that could wipe out us human beings, I’d have to answer in the negative. God’s a bad parent. I mean there are gamma-ray bursts, supernovae explosions, black holes that can eat us as just a minor snack, solar flares and of course the now and again loose asteroid impact cannon that could just about make our day our last day. Who needs the Book of Revelation with all this potential cosmic end of days that’s so part and parcel of God’s Universe? 

Then you have oddballs like planets having days longer than their years and planets that rotate on their sides instead of having a rotation axis up-down. Maybe the Almighty has a warped sense of humour or likes variety!

But back to the dangers to human life and limb, how many of God’s so beloved subjects are wiped out by terrestrial, never mind extraterrestrial, “Acts of God” every year? How can I wipe ye out – let me count the ways. Floods are a given, even after Noah’s time; landslides and avalanches of course; drought and famine; wicked winds via hurricanes (cyclones or typhoons) and of course tornadoes; wildfires; tsunamis; earthquakes; volcanoes; and God’s favourite, bolts of lightning from the sky*, and a host of other natural ways and means of translating the you that is you into the late you that was you. Why does God enact “Acts of God” when God created you and loves you, and is merciful and compassionate? Something’s screwy somewhere!

Speaking of screwy, I tend to find it pretty incredible that people who survive an “Act of God” (i.e. – a natural disaster) attribute their good fortune to a miracle (as in “it’s a miracle we survived”), as in a supernatural intervention when it was just the luck of the draw. And then to top it off, they will “Thank God” for having survived. Do you “Thank God” for an “Act of God”? I think not. How about giving God the Big Finger for sending the “Act of God” your way in the first damn place! 

If God created everything, God created the laws of physics. That includes the laws that govern nuclear fission and fusion. Nuclear fusion and fission can create items that go ‘Ka-Boom’. An atomic or nuclear explosion in your neck of the woods can also ruin your day! Even a peaceful nuclear power plant meltdown can be detrimental to your health. So much for God’s design of intelligent physics! Now of course our Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, but an intelligent all-powerful God I’m sure could have created an alternative form of solar energy.

But here again maybe God’s sense of funny-bone humour comes into play. If God created physics then He created quantum physics and no doubt God is rolling on Heaven’s floor laughing his posterior off at the inability of His subjects to come to terms with the associated absurdities that He mandated regarding all things quantum. Einstein said that God does not throw dice. Einstein shouldn’t tell God what to do. God not only throws dice, He throws them where you can’t even see them.

If God created everything, God also created the laws of chemistry. That includes various mixtures which, albeit on a lesser scale, can also go ‘Ka-Boom’, like gunpowder. How many of God’s human subjects, get to join God in Heaven somewhat prematurely as a result of the use and misuse of gunpowder or dynamite or nitro-glycerine? An intelligent God might have bypassed the design and need of chemical explosives.

As an analogy, does a rational parent give their ten-year-old child a loaded gun to ‘play’ with? 

To be continued…

*Oops – sorry, I meant Zeus. I have lots of trouble telling the two apart since they both look so much alike!

The All-God: All This, All That, All the Next Thing

God is certainly considered by the faithful to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and of course omni-warm and omni-fuzzy.

Can a Supreme Being Be All-Present?Since the Almighty is a physical being, after all He utters sounds and causes things to happen, and as such, cannot be in all places at all times. That’s just total nonsense. Scratch omnipresent.

Can a Supreme Being Be All-Knowing? Hardly! If such a being is omniscient, what's the point in the whole creation business? There's no fun or satisfaction to a creation if you know to the tiniest detail, exactly what will happen at each and every moment to everything, everyone, and everywhere. Would your life be worth living if at say age 10, you had absolute knowledge of the future and knew exactly what each and every future second would be like for you in advance? So a Supreme Being created Adam and Eve, but since that Supreme Being is alleged to be an all-knowing deity, then He knew even then what would happen in the Garden of Eden, so why bother instructing Adam and Eve not to eat forbidden fruit? What would be the point? That's why people don't usually want to be told the resolution to a film they haven't yet seen. If you're told before-the-fact whodunit, why see the film or read the novel?

That applies equally to that final Biblical New Testament Book of Revelation. The Bible is the Almighty's Holy Word. Revelation is therefore the Almighty's Holy Word. Everything that is to come is spelt out in detail. The ending is not in doubt. How the ending is achieved is not in doubt. The Almighty knows all of this in advance. Satan, being a literate sort of entity, knows all of this as well. Therefore, what's the point in enacting out the scenario? If everyone has to go through the fixed Revelation scenario, then that confirms everything is predestined and that there is no such thing as Free Will despite the Almighty's utterances to the contrary. Just like in a novel or a film, the plot plays out the exact same each and every time. The characters have no choice but to follow the plot line - they have no Free Will. Scratch omniscient.

Can a Supreme Deity Be All-Powerful? Hardly! If such a Deity can not prevent evil, then that Deity is not omnipotent. If that Deity can prevent evil, but chooses not to, then that Deity is hardly benevolent. If that Deity allows evil to exist in humans, and that Deity created humans, then that Deity must share some responsibility for that evil. It's akin to parents having to shoulder responsibility if their child or children runs amuck.

The Almighty is not omnipotent since not even He can get around the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics, which states that it is impossible to know simultaneously any particle's precise position and trajectory.

Presumably, the Almighty, like gravity waves, and anything comprised of mass and/or energy can't operate at faster than light speed. If our Supreme Being wants to smite you down, and He is ten light-years away, then you're safe for a decade before His bolt of lightning hits you.

If the Almighty exists in a physical location within the Universe, then He can't know about an event until the light (or other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum; or gravity) from that event reaches Him. Since light has a finite speed, the Almighty is in the 'dark' as it were until the light and information it contains reaches Him. For example, if the Almighty is residing on Planet Earth, and for some reason our Sun goes supernova, the Almighty (as well as the rest of humanity) won't know about it for other eight-plus minutes - the time it takes light to reach Earth from the Sun.

Not even a Supreme Being can change the past. I mean, there are any number of instances where to correct some mistake; it would have been easier to backtrack in time and undo something, like going back in time and posting a "No Trespassing: Keep Out: Serpents Will Be Shot On Sight: This Means You" sign at the entrance to the Garden of Eden.

Nor can a Supreme Being accomplish something that is self-contradictory, like creating a spherical cube or a cubical sphere! Can a deity, any deity draw more than one straight line between two points on a flat piece of paper. I think not.

If the Almighty is so omnipotent, why did He need to rest on the Seventh Day? Scratch omnipotent.

Is the Almighty an All-Loving, Merciful, Compassionate, and Forgiving Deity? Yes you say? You have got to be joking! Have those spouting off such nonsense actually read the Old Testament? From the universal flood, to Sodom and Gomorrah, to the tenth plague, to the invasion of the Land of Canaan, to countless other large-scale right down to individual (i.e. - Abraham and Job) atrocities committed, the Almighty is the driving force. Hitler in his wildest dreams couldn't conceive of such death and destruction as Mr. Supreme Deity inflicted on not only His enemies, but also on His own Chosen People. If 'military intelligence' is a contradiction in terms, even more so is the phrase 'the loving Almighty'. I'd sooner take my chances with 'a loving person-eating shark'! Scratch God being all omni-warm and omni-fuzzy.

The Almighty does in fact have one 'All' quality. He's an all-nothing. The Almighty, the supernatural deity, doesn't exist.

Six Impossible Godly Concepts: Part Two

We all like lists: The ten best this, the top dozen that; the five worst ranking next thing. That’s why the popularity of the Guinness Book of Records. In “Alice through the Looking Glass”, the White Queen believed in six impossible things before breakfast. Exactly what those impossible things were is not stated; perhaps they fell in the lap, not of the gods, but of God.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Impossibility Three: Is God All–Knowing?  Hardly! If God is all knowing, what’s the point in the whole creation business? There’s no fun or satisfaction to a creation if you know to the tiniest detail, exactly what will happen at each and every moment to everything, everyone, and everywhere. Would your life be worth living if at say age 10, you had absolute knowledge of the future and knew exactly what each and every future second would be like for you in advance? So God created Adam and Eve, but since God is alleged to be an all-knowing God, then He knew even then what would happen in the Garden of Eden, so why bother instructing Adam and Eve not to eat forbidden fruit? What would be the point? That’s why people don’t usually want to be told the resolution to a film they haven’t yet seen. If you’re told before-the-fact whodunit, why see the film or read the novel?

That applies equally to that final Biblical Book of Revelation. The Bible is God’s Holy Word. Revelation is therefore God’s Holy Word. Everything that is to come is spelt out in detail. The ending is not in doubt. How the ending is achieved is not in doubt. God knows all of this in advance. Satan, being a literate sort of entity, knows all of this as well. Therefore, what’s the point in enacting out the scenario? If everyone has to go through the fixed Revelation scenario, then that confirms everything is predestined and that there is no such thing as Free Will despite God’s utterances to the contrary. Just like in a novel or a film, the plot plays out the exact same each and every time. The characters have no choice but to follow the plot line – they have no Free Will.

Impossibility Four: Is God All-Powerful? Hardly! If God can not prevent evil, then God is not all powerful. If God can prevent evil, but chooses not to, then God is hardly benevolent (see Impossibility Two above). If God allows evil to exist in humans, and God created humans, then God must share some responsibility for that evil. It’s akin to parents having to shoulder responsibility if their child or children runs amuck.

God is not all-powerful since not even God can get around the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics, which states that it is impossible to know simultaneously any particle’s precise position and trajectory.

Presumably, God, like gravity, and anything comprised of mass and/or energy can’t operate at faster than light speed. If God wants to smite you down, and God is ten light-years away, then you’re safe for a decade before His bolt of lightning hits you.

If God exists in a physical location within the Universe, then God can’t know about an event until the light (or other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum; or gravity) from that event reaches God. Since light has a finite speed, God is in the ‘dark’ as it were until the light and information it contains reaches God. For example, if God is residing on Planet Earth, and for some reason our Sun goes supernova, God (as well as the rest of humanity) won’t know about it for other eight-plus minutes – the time it takes light to reach Earth from the Sun.

Not even God can change the past. I mean, there are any number of instances where to correct some mistake; it would have been easier to backtrack in time and undo something, like going back in time and posting a “No Trespassing: Keep Out: Serpents Will Be Shot On Sight: This Means You” sign at the entrance to the Garden of Eden.

Not even God can accomplish something that is self-contradictory, like creating a spherical cube or a cubical sphere! Not even God can draw more than one straight line between two points on a flat piece of paper.

If God is all-powerful, why did God need to rest on the 7^th day?

Impossibility Five: Is God A God for All People? If you believe the Bible, God has His Chosen People – the Hebrews. God has His Promised Land for His Chosen People. That Promised Land isn’t America (far less California) or Australia/New Zealand or Europe (with or without Great Britain) or Antarctica or Asia or Africa or Russia, etc. Those Chosen Peoples aren’t the Italians, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Aboriginals, the Amerindians, the Polynesians or the Turks, and especially not the Egyptians! The Promised Land is the Land of Canaan, now called Israel; The Chosen People are, obviously, the Israelites. In fact the Bible (King James Version) makes crystal clear, not once, but 201 times that God is the “God of Israel”. So, if you ain’t associated with God’s Chosen People and God’s Promised Land, it’s impossible to believe that you are one of those in God’s holy grace! In short, it’s safe to give God your Big Middle Finger, even both of them! 

Impossibility Six: God versus Intelligent Design? Do you need a hearing aid? Do you need glasses? Did you require your tonsils or appendix or wisdom teeth to be removed? Do you suffer from haemorrhoids or back problems?  Have your hips, knees, and ankles let you down? Do you suffer from baldness, tooth decay, arthritis, acne, colds, the flu, even cancer? Do you have issues with your sexuality or the functioning of your private parts? Do you suffer from mental illness? Who created the human species and therefore by definition created you? God, that’s who, created you! Who created your physiology and anatomy? Did I hear you say “God”? So who created all of your psychological, physiological and anatomical problems? Did I hear you say “God” again? Is this what you would consider Intelligent Design? I don’t think so! Did God fail Anatomy 101? I think so.

God does in fact have one ‘All’ quality. He’s an all-nothing. God, the supernatural deity, doesn’t exist. One line of evidence in support of that is that God hasn’t struck me down dead by lightning by writing and posting this! So you see, blasphemy is a victimless ‘crime’. And no, I don’t hate God. You can’t hate something that doesn’t exist.

If God Isn’t God, Then Who or What Is God? Part One

In my opinion, all this Biblical nonsense boils down to a collection of myths and fairy tales for grownups. For those who really have the faith, I’m easy. But I think the concept of the Biblical God (and associated baggage) is the greatest con job ever fostered on the great unwashed. Unless, assuming that God or the gods (i.e. – Zeus, etc.) weren’t totally fabricated out of whole cloth, then maybe, just maybe, the gods, including God, are extraterrestrials.

I have argued that the concept of a supernatural, creator, all-knowing, all-powerful, God is philosophically flawed. But, there remains the question, if God isn’t really God, who is God? Well, IMHO, God isn’t God, since God is a flesh-and-blood extraterrestrial (ET)!

There are two variations to that possibility.

Here’s one of those variations. What if God were in reality a very ‘flesh-and-blood’ extraterrestrial computer programmer, a computer programmer who has written a software package called, say “Planet Earth”? Maybe it’s a computer or interactive video game – maybe a homework assignment for a smart extraterrestrial student.

Anyway, computer software easily explains all the Biblical miracles (virgin births; the resurrection, etc.); or anomalies (like where did all the rain come from vis-à-vis the Biblical Flood, and where did all that water eventually go; how did Jonah survive inside a large fish, etc.) or inconsistencies (like Cain’s wife; the discrepancies between Biblical time and geological time). Regarding the Biblical flood, no humans actually died; no animals suffered and drowned, and so on, because the humans and animals were never real to start with, just as you and I aren’t real, just part of – for want of a better analogy – a computer game simulation.

The logic goes something like this. Within the observable universe, the probability is high that other extraterrestrial civilizations, with a technology equal to or greater than our own exist. By parallel with our civilization, we can assume that other intelligent technological beings would have invented something akin to our computers, laptops, PCs, etc. The number of possible computer software programs is no doubt vastly greater than the number of actual technological civilizations in the observational universe. I mean Earthlings have one such civilization, yet we have tens of thousands of interactive computer software programs, much of it entertainment or educationally driven.  That’s a lot of virtual reality, with a lot more technological advances probably to come – think of those holodeck programs featured in Star Trek.  In any event, the ratio of actual realities to virtual realities is lopsided in the extreme and in favour of the virtual. So, the odds are equally as great that you, me, the entirety of our so-called reality, Planet Earth (and neighbourhood), is of the virtual kind. Thus, we have a creator (our extraterrestrial computer programmer), and I guess the word ‘God’ is as good as any for ‘our extraterrestrial father who art our simulator’. Perhaps our concept of ‘God’ is nothing more than a mythological version of some advanced, but hardly supernatural, extraterrestrial computer programmer! Now as long as ET doesn’t hit the delete key!

Again, to drive the point home, let’s suppose, for argument’s sake that in the real physical Universe, there exists some tens of thousands of extraterrestrial civilizations which have evolved technology our equal or better (even more advanced).  The odds are high that most would have invented computers – hardware and software.  Any one civilization, such as our own, have (to date) produced multi-thousands of computer programs, many of which simulate life forms – think of the hundreds, indeed thousands of computer/video games. No doubt these programs will grow, over time, ever more complex and lifelike.

If one advanced civilization produces multi-thousands of individual computer programs that simulate an actual, or imagined, reality, what are the odds that we aren’t one of those thousands vis-à-vis being that advanced civilization that actually exists? How could you know if you were real, or imaginary? I maintain there’s probably no obvious way of you knowing.

Even if there’s only a relatively few actual extraterrestrial civilizations, but untold number of created false realities – what odds we are one of the real ones and not one of the imaginary/simulated many?

Is the idea really so way out in left field that there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that it could be right? We have to look to advances in our own terrestrial computing power to determine that. Computer generated simulations are already realistic enough that they are used to train astronauts, pilots and MDs and other humans in professional activities where mistakes in training, if done in real situations, could be disastrous.  Our cinema industry has already produced computer generated virtual reality films, bypassing real actors and real scenery. It’s entirely possible (legal issues aside) to bring back in a sense dead actors to star again in new productions. We’ve all been awed by computer generated special effects in films that are so realistic that if you didn’t actually know better, you’d swear were real.

Walk into any DVD store and you’ll find thousands of video (computer) games and/or simulations that you can run on your PC.  Most have ‘humans’ in various role-playing guises that are software generated and which you interact with. The reality factor is increasing by leaps and bounds. At what point will the software become complex enough that these simulated ‘beings’ are advanced enough to have self awareness? What happens when the software programming these virtual ‘humans’ becomes equal to the software (brains) that program us? What happens when the computer software complexity exceeds that of the human brain? Is this far-fetched? Methinks not. Now just replace our virtual ‘humans’ with ourselves, and maybe, just maybe, we’re the virtual reality in somebody (something) else’s actual reality.

If we, Planet Earth, and our observable universe are nothing but a simulation, that can explain (or at least rationally account for) any and all anomalies (miracles?) that you care to bring up. Software (be it of the wet-ware [brains] or of the computer variety) can create any sort of simulated reality – it doesn’t even have to be logical or explainable. Here are just a few examples off the top of my head.

Astronomy One: When considering things cosmological, it’s become apparent that astronomers only observe about 4% of the matter that should be present. That is, about 96% of the matter that should be present and detectable to account for the observed behaviour of our observable universe is missing! Now 1% might be understandable givens measurement uncertainty (error bars), but hardly 96%! So, cosmologists have postulated concepts which they have termed ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ to make up the deficit. However, nobody has the foggiest idea what exactly ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ actually is. Neither has actually been detected – obviously. Of course in an artificial simulated universe, one needs no correlation between cause (amount of matter) and effect (behaviour of the observable universe). In fact, it makes the programming that much simpler. By human analogy, I’m sure a detailed study of our video/computer games would show gross violations of the laws of physics. 

Astronomy Two: No astronomer can explain how galaxies form and stay formed, at least without incorporating ‘dark matter’. Yet we see them in lots of shapes and sizes. Maybe it’s as if our hypothetical simulator thought that these were sort of pretty and thus threw several billions of them into the background as decorative wallpaper.

Astronomy Three: Since the Big Bang was first documented by measuring the velocity of far away galaxies, there’s been reoccurring problems with the discovery that parts of the Universe have appeared to be older than the Universe itself (as implied by the Big Bang as documented by the velocities of galaxies) – which is a nonsense. Recalibrations have always rectified this situation, but there are still current unresolved issues here. Further, some distant objects appear to have a physical connection, yet separately each is moving at drastically different velocities. 

Physics One: Then we have the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics – both are accurate to a high degree of experimental precision, but they aren’t compatible with each other. Apparently, one (or both) of these theories must be wrong, or at best incomplete. That’s why the unification of the two (a theory of quantum gravity) is physics’ Holy Grail. However, that Holy Grail is proving as difficult to find as the Grail itself! But for the moment, it’s like the universe has two independent sets of laws, or software – one governing the very large; one the very small. This makes no natural or scientific sense. It’s beyond me how that can be if our reality is really reality, but easily explained if our reality is just someone’s simulation.

Physics Two: Within quantum physics there’s something called the wave-particle duality. That is, something can exhibit the properties of both a wave and a particle at the same time. There really is no entirely rational explanation for this, it just is.

Physics Three: Within General Relativity Theory, if there is anything unintuitive it is the fact that in the entire Universe, it is the speed of light that is absolute or fixed, not something like space or time. It’s unintuitive that all other bits and pieces in motion can be added or subtracted. So, if you are in a train that is moving at say 100 km/hour and you throw a ball at 10 km/hour in the direction at which the train is moving, to an observer outside the train, your ball is travelling at 110 km/hour. If you throw the ball towards the rear of the train, an outside observer will measure the ball as moving at 90 km/hour. If on the other hand, you shine a flashlight in the train, an outside observer will see the velocity of the resulting light beam moving at the speed of light – not the speed of plight PLUS the velocity of the train, or the speed of light MINUS the velocity of the train if you shine the flashlight towards the rear, but at the speed of light! That’s nuts, but it’s scientifically nuts and been proven again and again in any experiment you care to devise. I suggest here that a really natural universe wouldn’t have that property, and that this weird absolute in physics has been imposed on us by someone (something) else. 

Physics Four: In our Universe, there should be equal amounts of matter and antimatter, but there’s not. Our antimatter has gone walkabout. While there is one viable physics explanation for this, when considering a simulated universe, it would be easy to program out the antimatter quota which makes for a less complex universe; less complex software that one needs for the simulation. Or, perhaps our simulator hadn’t realized the simulation of physical laws would have predicted antimatter hence never bothered to program it in from the get-go. 

To be continued…

Prophecy: From Science to Superstition and Beyond

Prophecy tends to be the art or science of predicting events in advance, hence knowing in advance what the future will be or is likely to be. However, the art and the science of prophecy can be drastically in opposition to each other in terms of credibility and success.

Prophecy isn’t all balderdash. I make this prophecy that the Sun will rise tomorrow morning in New York City! I also make this prophecy that New York City will experience at least one thunderstorm between May and September 2011. Further, I’ll make another prophecy that there will be at least one murder in New York City in the month of June, 2011. But, if I make a prediction that aliens will invade New York City in 2011; some New Yorkers will experience the Biblical Rapture in 2011; or that planetary alignments suggest that 90% of couples living in Manhattan will divorce in 2011, well you’d call that balderdash. So, what’s the dividing line between making balderdash prophecy and making sensible predictions?

Scientifically Near Certain: Nothing is absolutely certain except death and taxes, thus the use of the word ‘near’. However, in this case, scientifically ‘near’ certain means 99.99999% certain. Examples of this sort of prophecy are the times of the rising and setting of the Sun, the Moon, the planets and stars; the rise and fall of the tides (time of high and low tides); lunar and solar eclipses decades in advance; and other predictable events of this nature in an ordered and clockwork Universe. There is no kudos or pats on the back given for soothsaying in this category. 

Scientifically Predictable (Statistically Probable): Not everything is predictable with near absolute certainty, even in science. Some patterns are a bit too chaotic to yield to absolutes. The classic case is the weather. I’ve known predictions of a 100% chance of rain when not a drop fell! However, that’s very rare. Still, it tends to be a chance of thunderstorms, or this or that. That applies to earthquake predictions and similar events. Science can predict with 100% certainty that you’re going to kick-the-bucket. However, the exact moment in nearly all cases is uncertain.  There is no kudos or pats on the back given for soothsaying in this category either. 

Educated Guesswork (But Still Statistically Probable): The shift here tends to be from the physical sciences to the social sciences. I mean predicting the stock market and commodity futures is not an exact science but still something that more often than not you’d better get right if you want to keep your job as a financial advisor! That applies in general to forecasting trends be it forecasting trends for governments, the public sector, or the private sector. There is no kudos or pats on the back given for soothsaying in this category either if you get it right, but expect a kick in the behind if you don’t. The general term here that applies is ‘futurology’. 

Prophecy in General: Let’s just say that if you throw enough darts at a dartboard, even blindfolded, sooner or later you’ll hit the bullseye. Now just publicise that, and pat yourself on the back for your skill, but conveniently don’t tell anyone about, and forget about, all the misses! That dartboard scenario, or analogy, just about sums up the bona fides of the soothsaying profession, IMHO.

Now don’t quote me Nostradamus as (an example) of a spot-on soothsayer. His verses are quite vague. Not once does he state explicitly that on such-and-such a date, at such-and-such a place, such-and-such an unexpected event will take place. Many historical events have been, sort of, linked to one or more of his various verses, but always after-the-fact, as in gee-whiz, this event might just about fit if you stretch the meaning of this bit and ignore that bit. Translated, nobody before-the-fact saw a clear cut prophecy of his of the rise of Nazi Germany and Hitler; the assassination of JFK; the Moon landings; the events of 9/11. Of course it all became crystal clear that he indeed foretold those events – it’s obvious to blind Freddy exactly what certain verses meant, but only as interpreted after the events happened. That’s a cheat! It’s a cheat given his after-the-fact track record according to his followers’ is100%; his before-the-fact track record from a more sceptical point of view is 0%.

Personal Prophecy: When it comes down to the nitty-gritty of prophecy, we’re not usually that concerned about predictions of a solar eclipse three decades off; or even the odds that a tornado will hit us next month, or will our portfolio double or half its value over the next week. Acts of God are acts of God and we’re pretty helpless in the face of Mother Nature; portfolios, if you take the long term view, usually deliver the goods. However, we are greatly concerned with the more immediate if mundane things in our day-to-day lives: today’s success, today’s money, today’s health, today’s power, today’s love, today’s whatever, etc.  That’s why you get daily horoscopes (though you can get weekly, monthly and yearly ones too, all equally as vague in that they seem to apply to nearly anyone, anytime).

And so in order to assist our expectations of obtaining the good things in our immediate ‘now’, well wouldn’t it be nice for some powers-that-be to tell us in advance what’s coming on down the track that’s liable to have a bearing on those personal good vs. bad facets? That is, if we knew in advance of the fact, some knowledge that we could use to our advantage to maximise the good and minimise the bad, well who wouldn’t? And so, there’s a flourishing industry in astrology/horoscopes; the reading of tea leaves & chicken entrails; caressing crystal balls; using ouija boards, and any other means to get the inside tract on making today a better day. And with such expectations, like with the dartboard, you’ll tend to remember the rare spot-on bullseye hits, precisely because they are so few and far between. All the misses you easily forget because they’re so common and so prevalent. 

Of course all this sort of personal prophecy is pure nonsense. It’s harmless fun unless you actually base your day-to-day life, behaviour, decision-making, etc. around them. I’m pretty sure that 99% of people, who consult the astrology column in their daily paper, know full well that what they read there is just vague and general so as to have no real practical and specific application to their personal calling-of-the-shots today. It’s a daily 10 second diversion that’s a bit of fun. Still, it’s a rather sad reflection on how nonsensical superstition, even in the enlightened 21^st Century, can still be viable enough for people who know better (but don’t care) to actual earn a living by pulling the wool over the eyes of the great unwashed. But that’s nothing compared to the wool pulling by religion.

End of the World Prophecy: However, there’s a dark side to the forces behind prophecy. The central focus, as always, is me, myself, and I. If you’re reading the astrology horoscope, what it predicts for your next door neighbour is probably of no consequence to you. However, if someone predicts that the world is about to go down the gurgler; that the end is neigh, well, you’re part of the world, so you’re heading down the gurgler too! Now that may, or may not, upset you. For religious reasons, many look forward to the world going down the gurgler, because that means that they, while going down the gurgler too, get deposited at the other end of the tube into an eternal paradise. Or so they believe. 

There’s one really main problem with end-of-the-world prophecy, and it doesn’t matter a hoot what you’re ultimate source is that you base, or believe, the prophecy on – to date, 100% of all end-of-the-world predictions have failed (that’s bloody obvious isn’t it? I mean we’re still here; we’re still standing)! If I’d received a fiver for each failed doomsday prediction, I, my bank manager and the tax man would all be happy little campers. A 100% failure record - that’s a pretty piss-poor track record, 100% opposite to science predicting a solar eclipse three decades down the track. Now if there have been just a handful of these the-end-is-neigh predictions, and I mean down to the exact day of the year, well that could easily be dismissed. However, when the absolute number of them, over the millennia, have been such that if you’d collected a fiver for every one, and that collection of fivers would make you one of the wealthiest persons on the planet, well you’ve have to conclude that there’s an awful lot of deluded people. A 100% track record of failure inspires bugger-all confidence that the next quack or gaggle of quacks that comes along with an ‘end-is-neigh’ sign can be taken seriously, such as the 21^st of May 2011 or the 21^st of December 2012 (see below).

Unfortunately people who are suckered into believing that on such-and-such a date they, along with everybody else, are going to meet their maker, well that can have serious consequences. There are more than a handful of case studies which have shown that ordinary people, caught up in the end-of-the-world hype, lacking the qualities of logical and critical thinking, have sold off all their worldly goods, left their homes and families, to await the end – which never came. Some have banded together to form end-of-the-world doomsday cults which have required suicidal philosophies as the alleged end drew near. Human delusion can have tragic consequences.

Most end-of-the-world prophecies tend to have religious overtones, as in Armageddon and the Biblical Book of Revelation. I’ve noted on the Internet one 54 year old Californian religious loony who is absolutely convinced he will be part of The Rapture on the 21^st of May, 2011. That’s it – that’s the Judgement Day, the Second Coming of Christ, the end-of-the-world as we know it. I predict that he will be very disappointed when he wakes up in his California abode on the 22^nd of May 2011 in a totally un-Raptured state. I really shouldn’t single him out, it wasn’t he who came up with that date, yet still he got sucked into the frenzy. Over the millennium he’s but one of millions of loonies who got sucked into the-end-of-the-world frenzy!

It’s a pity that so many peoples’ lives are so miserable that they literally look forward to someone else (i.e. – God or J.C.) ending their mundane existence of everyday mortality and transporting them into another one of peaceful eternity, although who really knows, maybe it’s a case of going from the frying pan into the fire! 

But say now, what if you absolutely and firmly believed that within three days the entire world was history. What sort of constraints, the kind normal society places on you, would now have an impact? Probably none. I mean if the end was neigh, what constraints would stop you from stealing, rioting, or murder? Well, let’s face facts, there wouldn’t be any. Now, what if a significant percentage of the population believed that? What might happen? Mob rule? Total anarchy? Rioting in the streets? The total breakdown of society and society’s rule of law and order? All that and more? What if you had an absolute dictatorial ruler who believed that? Why wouldn’t that leader, who say hated this other nation for whatever religious or ideological reason(s) decide that’s there’s nothing to lose now by pressing the nuclear button.

Let me repeat – there have been thousands of end-of-the-word prophecies from the religious Armageddon as given in the Biblical book of Revelation to predictions of alien invasions to nuclear suicide as per the “On the Beach” scenario or maybe some ‘the-sky-is-falling’ alarmist who’s convinced there’s an undetected and undetectable asteroid that’s heading our way – ground zero; target Earth.  It ain’t happened – the asteroid anyway – to us, but T-Rex would tell a different tale methinks. T-Rex aside, anyone who places any sort of faith that the next prophetic quack has got it right is in serious delusion. The odds favour the exact opposite. Mother Earth will go on her merry way for a long time yet. If you’re anxiously awaiting The Rapture – well, be prepared to wait a lot longer.

The 21^st of May 2011 aside, the next predicted doomsday biggie is the 21^st of December 2012 for a whole potful of various reasons that’s relatively easy to find out about given hundreds of books, articles, Internet sites and blogs, DVDs, etc. all devoted to the subject. Well, I’ll go on the record now as prophesizing that it’s going to be quite safe for you to plan your 2012 Christmas and post-Christmas activities and holidays and welcome in 2013 with the usual New Year antics we’ve all come to love and participate in.  

Now, to end on a downbeat note, let’s return to scientific prophecy. Our world will end! That’s 100% certain! At the very least it will end when the lifespan of our parent star, the Sun, ends. Just like your car has a limited supply of fuel in its gas tank, so too our Sun has a limited supply of fuel that keeps it burning forever. When the Sun exhausts its fuel, well you can kiss life on Planet Earth goodbye. However, least I scare you into losing a good night’s sleep, that’s still some roughly five billion years in the future, or so modern astronomical prophecy dictates. Even if that’s off by 10%, well that still gives you plenty of time to enjoy the good life, including a good night’s sleep. 

Further reading:

Guyatt, Nicholas; Have A Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans Are Looking Forward to the End of the World; Ebury Press, UK; 2007:

Kirsch, Jonathan; A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization; Harper-Collins, New York; 2006:

Price, Robert M.; The Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church Was Left Behind; Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York; 2007:

Willis, Barbara & Willis, Jim; Armageddon Now: The End of the World A to Z; Visible Ink Press, Detroit, Michigan; 2006:

And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Battle of Jericho

One of the more popular Biblical bedtime stories is Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, a sort of Biblical version of the big bad wolf who huffed and puffed and blew the house down, only in this case the huffing and puffing went into playing musical instruments and the resulting noise brought the house down. Is this just another example of a story in the Bible’s collection of stories that only the gullible could accept? In this case, I’d have to say the answer is a very loud and unmusical “yes”.  

Despite extensive archaeological excavations at Jericho, there is no actual hardcore evidence that emerges that supports the Biblical (“Joshua 6”) account of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. Jericho was in ruins many hundreds of years before Joshua (if there ever was a Joshua) existed and stumbled across the site.  So if the walls came a-tumbling down, they tumbled way before the Biblical account.  Joshua and the Israelites hadn’t yet been dreamt up in anyone’s mythology, and those ruined walls were probably done in because of numerous earthquakes that naturally occur in the region.

However, let’s play the ‘what if’ game. Can Joshua’s priestly jazz band comprised of seven ram’s horns bring down massive stone walls? Can pigs fly?

Here’s the basic story as outlined in the Biblical “Book of Joshua: Chapter Six” (King James Version).

Now God wanted Joshua to take the ‘city’ of Jericho, but in a rather strange way at least for a typical military strategist. That strange bit is why God’s war strategy (which surely must be perfect coming from an all-knowing deity) isn’t taught in the war colleges of the armed forces of the world – I surely don’t recall it having been used in any other military campaign, ancient or recent. Anyway, God’s strategy, the key to the success of the siege of, or the Battle of Jericho as led by Joshua, was to apparently circle the city for six days with his men of war and seven priests carrying ram’s horns. Maybe the inhabitants were meant to laugh themselves to death at such antics.

Anyway, on the seventh day, those priests, renowned musicians all, were to play those trumpets shaped in the form of ram’s horns, play them fortissimo, and then some. Oh, and everybody was to shout long and loud, but not before the actual time required – dawn or shortly thereafter on that fateful seventh day (which you’d think would have been a day of rest from all that previous six days of marching ‘round Jericho). Timing was everything! So you have a lot of noise – seven ram’s horns making really loud trumpet sounds, and lots of shouting. Then, and only then, would the walls of Jericho come a-tumbling down and Joshua and his army could lay siege to the city and among other things grab all the city’s gold, silver, brass and iron to add to the Lord’s collection of treasures for His treasury. Why God needs silver and gold and brass and iron is quite beyond me since presumably He could create as much of the stuff as He wanted! Anyway, The Ark of the Covenant was also present, but what actual role it played, if any, isn’t made very clear. Probably none as it was just a storage device – a portable library containing all those Biblical “thou shall nots”. 

Okay, so at dawn or thereabouts on the seventh day the priests played (blasted out) their number one song on the Biblical hit parade; everybody shouted (exactly what they shouted isn’t made clear), and the walls of Jericho came a-tumbling down. Then Joshua’s henchmen stormed the city, and except for one family, took no prisoners, putting all and sundry (even oxen and sheep) to the sword – no doubt this is where General Santa Anna got his ‘show them no mercy’ inspiration from at the siege of the Alamo. Anyway, then for good measure they burned what was left of Jericho’s rubble (except for the gold and silver and brass and iron which went into God’s coffers). Because of Joshua’s actions, God saw to it that he achieved everlasting fame (though I’m not sure it’s the sort of something I’d like to be remembered for in the history books). That’s the Battle of Jericho in summary. So, what do we make of sound as a military weapon?

In terms of application to warfare, it is known that very low frequency sounds can create the sensation that your bowels and contents have turned to jelly. Translated, it’s very difficult to be a 100% efficient soldier if you are in desperate need to go to the bathroom!

Very high frequency sound on the other hand can disorient one. A disoriented soldier is not an effective soldier.

However, we don’t see anything along those lines from the front lines in any current military conflict that I’m aware of. To the best of my knowledge, sound hasn’t been used to any great extent, if ever, on the battlefield, maybe because of limited range; maybe because sound doesn’t discriminate between the opposing sides.

So, sound as a military weapon against a biological enemy must not be all that viable.

Still, the biological viability aside, that sort of military application has no effect on the nonliving, which I assume the Walls of Jericho were – nonliving that is.

Sound (vibrating air) is a force. It’s a pressure wave in the atmosphere. Just like a water wave can push things around, and destroy solid objects (as we’ve all seen in recent films of tsunamis), so too can sound waves, but of course because or since air is way less dense a medium than water, the effects are equally reduced. Sound can of course travel through solids as well and is also a pressure wave that compresses the ‘solid’ (which is actually mostly empty space) as it passes through, just like sound travels through liquids – think of whale songs or sonar.

If you’re looking at just pure air pressure, or the pressure exerted by the air in the form of the winds, I doubt whether even a massive hurricane (or typhoon/cyclone) could have caused even minor destruction to the walls of Jericho, not that that region of the world is normally subjected to such extreme weather events. 

A series of F-5 tornadoes might have done the trick, but then the Bible should have given credit where credit was due – to an act of God (no need for a middle man or men or musicians). It would have been a miracle actually since F-5 tornadoes aren’t standard weather issued events in the Jericho region either. When’s the last time you saw tornado footage and destruction from that part of the world?

That leaves the wind or blast of a nuclear weapon, but then Joshua and his priestly jazz band would have become toast too, being within a trumpet-shout of ground zero. There would have been no survivors inside left to slaughter, and those treasures of gold, silver, brass and iron wouldn’t have been worth a damn thing – just radioactive slag. Besides, there’s no archaeological evidence of intense heat (vitrified or fused sand) at that site or of anything blowing up of any nature for that matter. 

But that’s not quite the end of the story. If it were, Jericho’s walls would still be standing (assuming no earthquakes of course). There’s a physics phenomenon termed resonance. Most physical objects have some sort of natural property which causes them to not only act in phase with external vibrations of a just-so nature, but those very vibrations keep on building up to ever greater and greater amplitudes. The solid object in question oscillates back and forth to ever greater extremes. If those extreme violent swaying motions become so strong that they become greater than the physical forces holding the object together, the object shatters in a resonance disaster – in other words, it suffers a catastrophic failure.  

We’ve all heard of or seen (even if just in the movies), that parlour ‘trick’ where an opera singer shatters a wine glass through just the sound of her voice alone. The vibrations from her voice are in sync with the natural resonance frequency of the glass. But then again, if the opera singer sings softly, softly, the glass is out of harms way. Of course a thin wine glass is one thing; a massive stone walled fortress is quite something else yet again.

I’d suggest that not even a modern metal heavy rock band, with all the high tech available to it, even circling Jericho with boom-boxes galore, wouldn’t have come close to bringing the walls down. The residents might flee in terror from the so-called ‘music’ but the walls would remain intact.

That’s true even for other modern loud noises like a sonic boom or say the launch of a Saturn V rocket or the Space Shuttle. There’s a heck of a lot of loud rumbling, but all those infrastructures in the vicinity still stand after-the-fact. The vibrations of the one either don’t match the natural resonance of the other, and/or just aren’t energetic enough.  

It’s going to have to take something more powerful than existed back then (like shouting and ram’s horn trumpets) or even something we have today like heavy metal bands and rockets. If the Battle of Jericho is true, if sound really did bring down massive stone walls, then alien technology must have been employed – terrestrial technology of that era (and ours as well) just wasn’t and isn’t up to the task. However, given a choice of believing extraterrestrials (‘God’ and company) had some sort of grudge against the residents of Jericho and employed some of us humans to resolve that grudge (buck-passing), or that the Battle of Jericho was nonsense from opening notes to final coda, well you would have to bet on the side of pure nonsense. I mean is there anyone reading this who seriously believes they could, as a parallel event, fly a seven or even a seventy piece band to say the Great Wall of China and knock even a tiny section of it down just by playing a bit of Wagner, Gershwin, or even rock & roll?  I didn’t think so.

Speaking of Biblical sites and destroyed cities that have no archaeological evidence to establish their historicity whatever, there’s the very tall Biblical bedtime tale of Sodom and Gomorrah. Those twin cities were destroyed in a rain or fire and brimstone (no earthquake or trumpets here), but there’s been no active volcanic activity in that region of the Dead Sea for multi-thousands and thousands of years. Of course it might have been a nuclear weapon as some speculate that there was an advanced human civilization that existed tens of thousands of years ago that had attained such advanced high-tech (highly doubtful), or perhaps a meteor strike. Such speculation however is of no use unless an actual site can be identified, explored and evacuated by archaeologists, and that’s proved ever elusive, as elusive as the ancient Lost Continent of Atlantis, the one that’s allegedly beyond those Pillars of Hercules.  

Free Will: Your Reality or Your Illusion? Part Two

Introduction: “You have to believe in free will. You have no choice”. Seriously, if our Universe is a clockwork Universe, where causality rules absolutely (as both Newton and Einstein believed), then you do not have free will, only the illusion of having free will.

I will argue that if causality means anything, then everything is predetermined and therefore there is no free will. Causality rules – a cause causes an effect which in turn becomes the cause for a later effect which is hence the cause for an even later effect, and so on down the line. It’s an unbroken causality chain starting from an initial set of fixed conditions. The past determines the present which determines the future. If you knew the past to an absolute infinite amount of detail, then you know the future to that same degree of infinite detail, and free will doesn’t enter into things.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Now let’s take the case of human conception, through to blastula, embryo and foetus. I think one can agree that a human doesn’t need to make any decisions for the first nine months, while still in the womb. Ditto the nine months following birth, and probably another nine months after that. But sooner or later, that baby or infant will make its first decision that’s not based on fundamental body needs like ‘deciding’ to go to sleep or wet it’s diapers.

The question is what is fundamentally different about the nature of the infant before it can make its first free will choice or decision and just after? The brain, the brain chemistry, the neural nets and pathways, would be seemingly identical. The only thing I can think of is that the infant and infant’s brain/mind is receiving an ever steady input of sensory data, ultimately enough to allow the infant to make decisions – the baby wants scrambled eggs, not soft-boiled eggs. 

The ever increasing absorption of external stimuli may provide the ultimate need or desire to make choices, but it doesn’t provide the mechanism. Ultimately I don’t think there is a free will mechanism as everything is predetermined, like the computer simulation of “Life”. But does it really matter whether or not you have actual free will or the illusion of free will? It doesn’t alter how you live your life and the expectations of those unknown choices you’ll make between now and when Mother Nature makes that final choice on your behalf!

So far I’ve been muttering on as if you came to a metaphorical fork in the road and had some sort of free will to pick one path, or the other path; maybe neither path - or maybe not, if causality rules the universal roost.

There’s no free will solace in the Many Worlds Interpretation of reality; in coming to that fork in the road, because all paths, all possible choices, are enacted as the universe splits to cater for each and every one. You may think you picked one path – the high road, the low road, or the path least travelled, it makes no difference – and thus could pat yourself on the back for having free will and acted upon it, but in actual fact it was, ditto, an illusion. All paths were taken, in one world you took the high road, in another the low road, in a third world the road in-between, so no cigar, you do not pass ‘go’, you do not collect $200 free will dollars as there was no free will exhibited. 

I do have some unanswered questions. Say you have to decide between wearing that green dress or that red dress to – whatever. You set those thought chemical/physical wheels in motion. I’m not quite sure how the chemical/physical processes stay focused on the issue at hand. I mean, what if you hence decide to make scrambled eggs – nothing to do with the original green dress/red dress decision! Perhaps that’s a part of the ‘disease’ we collectively call mental illness.  

Then there’s the old hairy chestnut of if there is no free will, can people, should people, be held accountable for their behaviour? The fact that people are, obviously suggests that society as a whole has voted for the concept of free will. Whether that has ultimately a religious base (God gave us free will) I know not, but I’d bet - probably. 

Quite apart from that deterministic clockwork Universe scenario – what was set in motion at the Big Bang event 13.7 billion years ago, those initial fixed conditions, the set of particles and the laws and relationships that governed their interactions and evolution past to present to future – there are other slightly less plausible scenarios that also limit your free will if they reflect true reality.

For example, if you appear in your dreams as a character, or as a character in someone else’s dreams, your (or someone else’s) dream world representation of you, if questioned (not that that’s possible of course) about your free will, well you would reply that within the dream you were a part of (not that you would know you were a participant in a dream) that you were exhibiting free will. But of course it’s actually the dreamer’s mind that’s pulling the strings, and thus the characters (such as you) in a dream just dance to whatever tune is played out for them. No free will.

Dreams (wetware) aren’t the only form of virtual reality. There’s software, and computer generated simulations, like, say video games. The characters within, as per the dreams scenario, would tell you if they could that their actions exhibit their own free will. But of course that’s not true; the programmer and ultimately the player dictate the action and tell the character what to do. Again, there’s no free will actually exhibited by the characters.

Now, ask yourself what if our reality is actually the product of a higher reality wetware or software? That is, we’re dreamed or simulated but ultimately generated beings akin to the beings we dream about or we create via our software. We’re actually characters in someone else’s dream (let’s hope they don’t have an alarm clock set) or the product of someone (something) else’s software (let’s hope they don’t hit the delete key). If that’s so, then, we got no free will. We waltz to their wetware or software tune.

Lastly, although according to legend God gave us free will, let’s say for argument’s sake that there’s an afterlife and that we go to Heaven. Do you have free will in Heaven? That is, could you, of your own free will, commit a sin in Heaven?  

Conclusion – Regardless of what society believes, I believe free will is an illusion. Everything is preordained, much like that next scene in the movie you’ve already seen a half-dozen times before. You know what’s coming next and the characters you’re observing have no choice in the matter – no free will. Well, maybe that’s what life, the Universe, and everything is – something already recorded and set in stone. Or, like that example I gave above, “Life”, perhaps we’re a computer program or simulation with relationships and rules all set in motion, perhaps for the edification or amusement of that extraterrestrial computer programmer in the sky!

*Because of etiquette or protocol, Tycho Brahe, while in the company of royals so the story goes, apparently couldn’t, or wouldn’t excuse himself to go to the bathroom. As a result he suffered a ruptured bladder and snuffed it, getting a Darwin Award in the process. That was a hell of a way to die for king and country!

Free Will: Your Reality or Your Illusion? Part One

Introduction: “You have to believe in free will. You have no choice”. Seriously, if our Universe is a clockwork Universe, where causality rules absolutely (as both Newton and Einstein believed), then you do not have free will, only the illusion of having free will.

I will argue that if causality means anything, then everything is predetermined and therefore there is no free will. Causality rules – a cause causes an effect which in turn becomes the cause for a later effect which is hence the cause for an even later effect, and so on down the line. It’s an unbroken causality chain starting from an initial set of fixed conditions. The past determines the present which determines the future. If you knew the past to an absolute infinite amount of detail, then you know the future to that same degree of infinite detail, and free will doesn’t enter into things.

Our Universe could be a reflection, albeit on a far grander scale, of those computer-generated simulations, like “Life”. Start with a simple set of initial conditions and relationships, add several rules to the mix, press ‘enter’ or ‘go’ and see what happens. Such simulations can evolve into immense complexity, but the outcome – as far up the track as you wish to extrapolate – is 100% predetermined.

You can download and run “Life” on your home computer – in fact I understand some come automatically equipped with the software. In a similar way, cosmologists run simulations where they vary the various parameters thought to have existed close on the heels of the Big Bang event or era, along with the laws and constants of physics and see if the simulation evolves into something approaching the large scale structure of our actual, observed, Universe. Their fundamental assumption is of course that causality is absolute. If you start with ABC, you end up with XYZ – the first time, the last time, and all the in-between times.

If causality however is a sometime thing (like a woman is – sorry, I didn’t write the song, Gershwin did, so complain to him when you get to the afterlife part of your existence), then there must be (or probably is) such a thing as free will.

Now quantum physics as we currently understand it, is in-deterministic – it’s all based around probabilities, not certainties. Einstein never accepted that, believing to his dying day that there was some undiscovered deterministic or certainty principle or hidden factors that would restore or reaffirm causality in the realm of the quantum. If Einstein were alive today, he’s still be waiting. However, the indeterminacy and lack of causality in the realm of the quantum has nothing to do with free will.

Free will, if it exists, is a function of the mind; it’s all in the mind – the ways and means of consciousness to achieve a conscious choice.  Free will, if it exists, is ultimately then a function of brain biochemistry or neurochemistry. Chemistry is deterministic and causality driven. Chemistry is an atomic process, but chemistry is still macro compared with the micro of the quantum realm. If you combine sodium and chlorine in equal parts and only probably get table salt and thus every now and again you get quartz or stainless steel instead, well that’s just not the way the Universe works. That’s not the way chemistry, any chemistry including brain biochemistry or neurochemistry works.

Let’s explore the issue further.

Firstly, free will means making decisions that have no predetermined outcome. Free will is coming to that metaphorical fork in the road and having the ways and means or ability to choose one path or the other. Even choosing neither, doing nothing, is in itself a decision.

Decisions require conscious thought – well, maybe not. There’s something more fundamental at work here – physics and chemistry.

Let’s start with simple life forms, say microbes and plants.

Plants and microbes make decisions but clearly they do not have free will. They respond to external influences. Plant roots ‘decide’ to grow downwards with gravity; the plant ‘decides’ to grow upwards, against gravity. Phytoplankton ‘decide’ to move up and down in the ocean with respect to light intensity, and plants can ‘follow’ the Sun as it moves across the sky. Unicellular organisms ‘decide’ to reproduce when the environmental conditions are right. 

Even more complex organisms that we don’t normal associate with free will make decisions. A snail will decide to tuck into its shell with threatened. We may call it instinct, but its still decision making, albeit somewhat involuntary.

At what point does instinct or blind response to environmental stimuli morph into the appearance (real or illusionary) of free will?

And so we have, slightly higher up the evolutionary chain, a threatened organism will decide to fight or flee or hide or go into its shell. The response is not 100% instinctive; not apparently 100% predetermined. The organism chooses, and if it is not instinctive, then the decision required thought.

Decision making, instinctive or otherwise, has an awful lot to do with chemistry, and ultimately physics, because organisms are chemical structures, and chemistry is ultimately based on physics.

So, thought processes are ultimately chemical processes, ultimately routed in physics – we’re back to that micro world again!

Faced with a non-instinctive decision – fight or flee; red dress or green dress; scrambled eggs or boiled eggs – you have to think about it. That thought process sets into motion a chain of chemical and physical processes. It’s like you’ve pulled the handle on a slot machine - when everything stops and the numbers (or symbols) come up, that’s it bingo – decision made. But you had no actual control between setting the wheels in motion and the result. Your decision making was only an illusion of free will.

I repeat - once those chemical and physical processes are set into motion, you have no control over them – no say-so. You have no say-so in the reactions that happen, in the energies required to see those processes through to completion, what pathways electrons travel over your neural circuits.

Should that be surprising? Setting your brain aside for a moment, the rest of your body does not answer to what you want. In the exact same way you have no control over the natural chemical reactions that take place in your stomach when you dump a load of food into it, or for that matter any of the biochemistry that makes you tick. You don’t dictate to your body what pathways electrical impulses take when they blink your eyelids or control your heartbeat or make you twitch or even when you put one foot in front of the other.

Every molecule, atom and fundamental particle in your body does not answer to what you want, free will or no free will. You do not decide what they do! If you really had free will – willpower or mind-over-matter – you should be able to decide to control your aging process, or control your hair growth or colour. You can’t. You don’t really have free will.

You can only hold your breath for so long, or deprive yourself of sleep. While a relatively few can have the willpower to starve themselves to death when food is readily available, few could willingly die of thirst, and astronomer Tycho Brahe* notwithstanding, you can only put off going to the bathroom just so long and no longer. On a less gruesome note, how long can you prevent your eyelids from blinking?

If you have no control over the operations of your own body – its systems, organs, tissues, cells and biochemistry, why is the brain – including the mind, or that inner ‘You’ within you any different?

To be continued…