Living With Theistic Evolution as a Paradigm

Special Creation: wonderful, but it is a quick and easy way out. There are seldom easy ways out in life. The ramifications of special creation are very complicated themselves. Cf: the book of Romans in the New Testament. Lovely realities described in Paul's epistle to the Romans but very heavy going and not as simple as you would think. Paul, the author of the epistle had what would amount to a Ph.D. in philosophy today.

Non-theistic Evolution: mostly for agnostics, atheists and theists who like a good intellectual challenge or are dissatisfied with the other two approaches. Some, though not all, adherents suffer from a delusion of intellectual superiority, smugness, or self-righteous condescension to anyone not buying into the belief that only evolution is necessary. "Let's not waste any more time and lets proceed with other issues or intellectual challenges" is the practical approach they prefer when considering the Evolution vs. Special Creation debate.

Intelligent Design: very tempting, at least to those who see the complexity and the aesthetic excellence of flora and fauna which seems a tall order to leave to chance alone. Simple organisms and mostly ugly ones being the result of non-theistic evolution makes a lot of sense, but physiological complexity, sentience, intelligence and symmetry that is capable of visiting other worlds and potentially continue intelligent life on yet-to-be-colonized worlds beyond our Earth, almost demands that, if not God, then some other Intelligent Designer is responsible for the marvels we encounter daily on planet Earth.

Theistic Evolution: the main difficulty is that there was sin in the world before Adam and Eve were created if you prefer this paradigm. If sin already existed before Adam and Eve also succumbed as well*, then why would Christ Jesus have to die to appease God's wrath against sin or to vindicate God's Law and its permanence. It also presents a problem for observing the seventh-day Sabbath since living organisms are no longer created in seven days, but rather, during millions of years. Presents quite a problem for orthodox Jews, as well.

Fourth Paradigm: awaits discovery. Any valid approaches need to be included as they become available or discovered.

Practical Paradigm:

Don't hurt anyone or anything. After all, you yourself don't want to be hurt either.

Improve the chances of the survival of the human race whether on this Earth of ours and eventually on other worlds.

Enjoy your life to the fullest and assist others in the enjoyment of theirs. Your well-being is intricately connected to the well-being of others.

If you haven't become aware of this interconnectedness of humanity there is still time to catch on.

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* If sin existed on another world, as well, then it becomes less of a problem if there was already sin in the world before Adam and Eve existed. Of course, the Bible says that everything that God created was good so there's no accounting for how there were fossils already buried in the Earth of another cycle of life that had experienced death already. After all, the Bible says that the wages of sin is death.

Some solve this problem by referring to the rebellion against God by Lucifer and cohorts in heaven itself as being responsible for the death and sin that would then have existed on Earth prior to Adam and Eve's Special Creation in the isolated perfection of the Garden of Eden were another pair of perfect beings (morally and physiologically perfect) were given another chance. Sadly, they also did not pass the test.

This footnote has the potential of never ending as another angle quickly suggests itself.

[Needs stylistic refinements, grammatical processing, etc.]

Our Migration to Other Worlds Begins at Last

Just in time humanity is finally starting the migration to other worlds. If life on Earth becomes greatly diminished our descendants will take our species beyond this one world. It is only one among millions of worlds in our galaxy. Godspeed to our space colonists.

Space Migration Takes Off

How Jules Verne and H.G. Wells Influenced Future Science

Literary visionaries don't predict the future. Their role may be thought of more as influencing the future rather than actually foreseeing it. However, many have tried unsuccessfully in the past to do just that, but did not succeed as history has proven. Significant examples will be briefly presented from each visionary. Regardless of what past or present thinkers have thought of Verne and Wells, they will only be presented here, not as Science Fiction writers, but as serious visionaries. I intend to show, both writers have not only influenced the future, but the future's science. There are those who might go further and propose that they not only influenced the future, but actually played a small part in creating the future, simply by detailing the future with such realism. This school of thought will not be considered here although its roots can probably be traced to the New Thought school that  was just coming into existence during their lifetimes.

Jules Verne's writings regarding the first lunar landing have astounding similarities with what actually came to pass decades after his life. Both Verne and history present the moon landing to have taken  place in the late 1960s (historical) or in the early 1970s (Verne.) Both depictions or accounts include the location of the origin of the flight to the moon in either northern Florida, USA (historical) or southern Florida (Verne.) Both accounts have a similar number of astronauts or navigators making the trip. Those familiar with the Verne's From the Earth to the Moon (1865) will find other similarities with both the work and the actual historical event.

We now will present an equally uncanny vision of future events although in this case it is more along the lines of a scientific theory that is posited based on both recent and older scientific theories and discoveries that Wells had no way of knowing about. Respected cosmologists or scientists such as Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku and Brian Greene, in addition to others of a similar caliber, have written books or have convincingly expressed their views in articles in a variety of news media, regarding the real possibility of time travel.

Both require technological resources that do not as of yet exist, but given time scientists may be able to create wormholes in the laboratory and enlarge them sufficiently so that they may create the basic point in time of the time corridor when traveling back in time from the future. As has been explained eloquently by other scientists and scientific writers, no one will be able to travel to a time earlier than the creation of the wormhole.

Traveling forward in time has already taken place albeit in a very minimal degree. Such micro-time travel has been attested to by the experiments performed on astronauts and cosmonauts who were found not to have aged by a barely detectable degree after their travel to the moon.

Based on the historical event just mentioned, that of traveling to the moon and back to Earth, it is theorized that if two twins on Earth are separated by one of the twins traveling toward the nearest star at a speed as close to the speed of light as possible, time will slow down significantly for the interstellar traveler. So much so that when he or she returns to Earth the twin left behind will have aged significantly, years or perhaps even decades, than the space traveling twin. Events on Earth will have transpired that the "time traveling" twin would ordinarily have experienced as a much older person. Given enough interstellar travel on the trip just outlined, the interstellar twin could naturally experience a decade or decades that his older Earth-based twin will miss due to his natural chronological old age on Earth.

The younger, space traveller could very well  benefit from scientific discoveries related to life extension that will in themselves extend his life longer than it would have been extended had he lived and died along with his identical twin. The space travelling twin will also experience significant historical events that his Earth-based twin would not be alive to see, e.g., undreamed of scientific or sociological changes whether they be of a beneficial or deleterious nature.

H.G. Wells in his classic novel The Time Machine (1895) outlined the consequences and experiences of travelling millennia into Earth's future. The ease of traveling forward and backwards in time that Wells' time traveler experienced will, no doubt, never become a reality, Wells' work, nevertheless, contained the kernel of the idea that a human being could travel forward and backward in time.

This concept has remained in the realm of science fiction for decades. Based on the attention that it is receiving from serious and important scientists and cosmologists like the ones mentioned earlier Weills' time machine already exists in its prototypical form, i.e., the rockets and space shuttles that have left and returned from space for decades. Of course, these space-faring vehicles do not possess the capacity to travel at speeds close to the speed of  light. They, nevertheless, currently are capable of facilitating travel at the fastest speeds known to humanity. Some day their successors, or more accurately stated, the scientists that invent their futuristic counterparts, will in fact, travel at incredible speeds and make travel to the future possible.

The twins used in the time travelling experiment mentioned above will be separated by years or decades during both of their lives. Given equally futuristic technological advances that will also facilitate harnessing the power of a laboratory-created worm hole, the interstellar astronaut twin could possibly return to the earlier historical juncture when he or she and their respective twin were the same age, if that is their wish. However, once having ventured into space, the interstellar and therefore time traveling twin will still be younger than the twin that he or she is returning to. However, both siblings will be able to share as many uninterrupted experiences as the older earth-based twin will be able to experience, if that is any consolidation. The younger interstellar "time traveler" will, however, experience a future that his chronologically-older twin will not be around to see.

In summation, neither the moon landing in 1969 and the serious attention given to time travelling theories of the last few years would have ever happened if both visionaries had not written their two accounts of space exploration or of time travel. Both men's ideas were ridiculed by serious scientists and educated people for decades before they actually were borne out by the historical event or the development of the science-based theory.

In a way, one could almost suggest that Verne and Wells not only influenced these future events, but actually helped to create them by envisioning them a century before they actually occurred.

Future Reminders that Humanity Thrived in This Solar System

We didn't even have to await the 26,000 year asteroid that wiped out the long-lived dinosaur species. Humankind is rendering itself extinct. Tragic that humanity's centuries-old culture, science and astounding progress comes to this. At least we've left vestiges of our culture on the moon, in orbit around our fading world, in our robots on Mars and in the exploratory craft that may still be drifting perhaps endlessly.

The transmission signals of radio, television and perhaps data encoded in binary form that may also have been sent on its way, are another even more palpable vestige of what little advancement humankind made since its appearance millennia ago.

It is hoped that unknown to us private organizations with fabulous wealth planned for this and implemented, decades ago, the project sketched out in various posts in this blog and in the Northern Lord vs. Southern Lord blog under the labels space colonization, macrolife and Adventist Futurism. (Please search for these labels once you've accessed the NL vs. SL link.)

We can continue have a healthy optimism about our fate as survivors on this Earth, or hopefully, beyond this Earth, but had the dinosaurs been more developed and intelligent, no amount of optimism would have saved their species from whatever catastrophe wiped them out with such severity that it almost seemed intentional.

For an indication that speaking of the demise of our existence on the planet is no dystopian vision, see Oceans on brink of catastrophe.

Distant Future Civilization Revealed

Cities of Earth's Distant Future (Click link for video)

We are living in Earth's distant future. Philosopher's of Earth's classic civilizations whether of India, China, Egypt and Greece would have thought it foolishness for us to believe that our far-flung world to be simply the precursor to a more advanced reality. Yes, we need to continue improving what needs refinement. Nevertheless, it is important that we realize that this is humanity's quintessential civilization. There is always room for improvement, but take note that since the late 1950s, only refinements in technology that were in existence then, and not some revolutionary transformation, have appeared. The prototypes of the computer, the Internet and space exploration were in existence in 1957, the year the Soviets launched Sputnik.

Cherish this distant future civilization that we live in while it's still here in its present state. Dystopia and utopia are fused into one.

Theoretical far-distant civilizations of the future, should they ever exist, will envision still more futuristic ones in a world they imagine will one day exist. Out of necessity, that civilization will, in fact, be the most advanced terrestrial civilization that is to be. It may or may not be the most futuristic one that can conceivably exist on planet Earth. How tragic for that civilization to cease to be completely or to degenerate slowly into barbarism, or worse, still hoping for another that might never exist.

Our present civilization could very well be that civilization that looks forward to a more advanced and ideal one to grow out of our own. Let's enjoy it while there is yet time.

The History of the Theory of Time Travel

Like evolution, time travel is not a supposition, for it has a scientific basis. Disbelief in time travel is akin to those who, for religious reasons, believe in Creationism in spite of there being no hard science to back it up.

Before delving into the science behind time travel let us briefly mention some classic works dealing with time travel.

The first such title is historian H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" (1895). Predating the publication of Albert Einstein's Relativity theories it, of course, can't be said to have suggested Einstein's suggestion that time travel might not be completely baseless given the proper technological advances. Nevertheless, Well's the "Time Machine" has contributed its share of importance to the concept of time travel.

The television series "The Time Tunnel" is also another work dealing with the subject of time travel. The impact of the this series is negligible. It did, however, focus on the subject of the causality paradox in episodes where the time traveler found himself aboard the Titanic hours before it sank. He endeavored unsuccessfully to change the course of history. There is an unwritten rule in time travel literature that suggests that changing history via time travel is somehow impossible even when attempted.

The movie "Return to the Future" also presents the problem of causal paradoxes which we will later present and study the views of Cosmologists Stephen Hawking [1] and Misio Kaku [2]. The causality paradox can best be summarized in the question if a time traveler goes back and prevents his mother from marrying his father, wouldn't he then never have been born? If he  had never been born due to history having been changed how could he then have been able to travel back in time to prevent his parents from marrying?

There are several adjustments to this conundrum. One solution is that there are different time lines. While the time traveler may have altered the particular time line which no longer includes his conception by his parents, in a separate, but equally valid, timeline his parents did marry and his mother did, in fact, give birth to him.

This paradox has been offered by some cosmologists, as well as detractors of the theory of time travel, as making time travel into the past, at least, unfeasible and causally problematic.

Briefly, let us outline the simplest type of time travel into the future but not the only one. It has been proven by experiments in space that when people travel faster than people on the ground the astronaut's passage through time actually slowed down the aging process but at a minuscule amount. Therefore, this theory which was foreseen by Albert Einstein, has now been experimentally verified.

In order to take this concept and make it true time travel imagine, if you will, a space ship travelling at incredible speeds towards the nearest star. On board is a space traveler whose other twin remains on Earth. Once the star traveler has returned to Earth he will have found, if his twin has not died of old age, that he or she has aged only a few years while the twin (s)he left behind has aged considerably. The other amazing outcome of this experiment is that the time-star traveler will be seeing decades as a younger person and all the technological advancements and historical outcomes than if (s)he had stayed on Earth with his or her twin.

Though some would find this cheating at time travel since it uses laws of science to slow down the aging process and thereby propel the star traveler into a future that s(he) would otherwise never have seen, it is, nevertheless, as bona fide time travel as may be possible in the foreseeable future.

To contrast future travel in time with backward travel in time, we have a thornier problem. It is believed that you can attempt traveling back in time by building a wormwhole whether by harnessing an actual black hole singularity or by creating a "baby wormwhole" in the laboratory and using that to create a closed loop from the time of creating the wormhole to some future time. Backward travel in time would only be as far back as the time that the wormhole was created and no further.

The ease with which the famous time traveler of H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" flitted back and forth, whether venturing millennia into the distant future or travelling back to his own time, remain speculative fiction. The literary construct of his novel has other significant points which we will not go into here.

Finally when all the evidence, theories and concepts have been presented, some will still choose, as they do in the evolution vs. creationism issue, that it depends on what you choose to believe and not what scientific proofs, concepts or theories suggest what may or may not be possible.

In the mean time, enjoy your slow travel through time in your own life. It may very well be the only type of time traveling that most, if not all of us, will ever experience.

References:

1. Hawking: Time Travel Will Happen
2. Borrowed Time: Interview with Michio Kaku

[This post needs more footnotes.]

Supernatural Selection and Theistic Evolution

There is nothing completely natural about natural selection. The natural state of a truly wild and undisciplined environment or system is to develop into ordered chaos, if you will. It is marvelous to speak about how natural selection selected this trait or that trait to bring about the fittest specimen who then would have the greatest chance of surviving. Sometimes a sentience and incorporeal intellgence is attributed to natural selection as it chooses this trait or this species to survive and procreate. Too much perfection and unbiased godlike power is attributed to natural selection. There is actually a supernatural selection going on that is guiding evolution along. God is the agent of supernatural selection.

[Transtion needed]

A child is naturally sinful. Ethical behavior has to be learned. Ultimately God is the source of all ethical behavior.

It is arrogant for man to think he or she can save himself or herself from the condition of death and sin.

The proverbial Fall of Man comes to each person upon realization of his or her capability for evil as well as good.

Christ is our example of what we can become through his transforming power and loving kindness.

God conferred super intelligence and a knowledge of his existence on the primitive homo sapient couple who lved in a veritable garden of Eden.

Where it not for super intelligence the Bible could never have been written as well as all the intellectual achievements of man throughout history.


God will one day allow man to join him in his sphere when he feels humanknd is ready.

How to Escape the Death of the Universe

Cosmologists speak of M-theory which speaks of three visible dimensions of space, length, height and width. Additionally, it crunches seven super-tiny and virtually invisible dimensions into the mix. M-theory also includes one dimension of time, as well. *

What if there were a second dimension of time, as well. We'll call it Static time to keep it separate from the Dynamic Time we experience every day. Dynamic Time includes past, present and future. Static time, however, only has one state. That state is best described as an Endless Now. This is not necessarily nonsense.

Consider, if you will, a very advanced civilization with knowledge and resources to visit or, should it ever become essential, to escape into, a timeless parallel reality that is outside of our known universe. This would come in handy in escaping the eventual death of our universe when individual stars have spent all their fuel and our universe becomes both a ghost universe and a virtual non-universe.

Having escaped our dying universe our far-future friends who wait in Static Time would be virtually immortal. There could, of course, be accidents. After all, they are not gods with invulnerability but rather, advanced humans, cyborgs or possibly androids who are "out-of-time," as it were, and so do not experience time as we know it. In Static Time organisms don't age as they do in our Dynamic Time reality. Hopefully though, it is possible to think and move while in Static Time. If not our futuristic travelers would be forever trapped in their Static Time reality. They become, in effect, prisoners of their own devising.

If they were intelligent enough they could find another universe where a Big Bang singularity had jump started a new universe or they might try enlarging a small black hole and create a baby universe and set up residence there once conditions had stabilized sufficiently to permit humans to live naturally on one of the new worlds of the baby universe.

Some of the scenarios I've just described are, in fact, based on various theories by different cosmologists. Others are wishful thinking and may not have all the science once would wish to back them up.

Finally, there is at least one historical figure who does experience this theoretical Endless Now and to whom Static Time is very much a given and not just a theory. I'm speaking of someone who lives outside of our Dynamic Time universe and can at times access our Dynamic Time universe. Needless to say I'm referring to God who inhabits a realm we can only refer to as Infinity.

No one can say for sure what Infinity is like. Even the Bible doesn't give us much clue as to its nature or location. It, no doubt, makes no sense to speak of Infinity as having a location. Infinity might be a reality possessing a location which we could never imagine or understand even given the proper mathematics to try to comprehend it conceptually.

One clue the Bible does give about the nature of Infinity might be the descriptions of God given in both the Old and the New Testament. In the Old Testament God is described as the ONE WHO WAS, the ONE WHO IS and the ONE WHO WILL BE. In the New Testament it is said of the Lord God that He is the Alpha and the Omega or the Beginning and the End.

Infinity, by association, can then be described as being a reality which was, which is and which will be and all three descriptions refer to the same Endless Now of Static Time. Infinity might be a perpetual steady state reality with past, present and future all indistinguishable one from another. Perhaps that is why the Bible also states that for God a thousand years is like a day and a day is like a thousand years. The same might be said of Infinity where length of time has no meaning since time is static and not dynamic as it is in our universe with its birth, development and death.

Yes, it is a bit shocking to speak of our universe as dying for all that lives is born to die. Even stars die and galaxies crash into other more gravitationally powerful ones so that new stars and new galaxies might be born. This should not be a cause for concern though since the God who created our universe out of nothing can also create other universes out of nothing as well.

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* Hawking, Stephen. The Grand Design.