Faith: The Gathering

Keith Sader sent me a fascinating article about a reporter who found and lost his faith. It's a really profound and cool article, and will no doubt generate nothing but a mountain of hate mail for his efforts.

What struck me was his conclusion where the author said "Either you have the gift of faith, or you don't".

Part of me finds that statement distasteful. It's like saying either you have the gift of being blind, or you don't.

And yet, there is some truth to the statement. I've met many people in this world who have an amazing ability to "fix" and idea or a point of view in their mind. With little thought or effort, they can etch a belief into their brain that is absolutely permanent for the rest of their life, no matter what they see, hear, do, or learn. It must be comforting to have that kind of certainty, and maybe that's why they are able to maintain it.

Sometimes it's harmless. Countless people (usually men) will adopt a favorite sports team as a child, and then remain loyal to that team their whole life no matter how many times they move to other cities. They don't seem to grasp the fact that their choice of favorite team is arbitrary thing, based solely on where they happened to be living when they developed an interest in sports.

I knew a co-worker named "Dave" who was determined to be a rabid loyal fan of the Philadelphia Eagles for his entire life...despite the fact that he only actually lived in Philadelphia for 8 months as a child. It just happened to be the "right" 8 months when he saw his first live football game and developed his interest in the sport. He doesn't consider it the least bit odd that he's still a rabid Eagles fan, despite having lived in San Diego (a city with a pro football team of their own) for the past 20 years.

And if people are able to form a bond of unwavering loyalty to an arbitrary sports team, then just imagine how strongly they can bond with something even more significant...like religion. Most believers don't grasp the fact that their religion is almost certainly determined by the religion of their parents. If they had been adopted by Muslims as a child, they would be Muslim now, with every bit as much certainty that their beliefs were right and everyone ELSE was going to hell.

This "gift of faith" is a strange gift indeed. I can't imagine what it is like to be absolutely certain of anything, and then on top of it be absolutely certain about something that is absolutely arbitrary! Jeez, that's messed up!

As much as I wish I had that level of confidence and conviction, I would still consider it a curse...not a gift...to have a brain that worked like a "write-once" CD-ROM.

Conspiracy or Faith?

An anonymous reader left a comment about my article on Simulating Evolution. I thought his comment was interesting enough to deserve a full response.

To the anonymous poster:

Thank you for your reply and the explanation of your stance. :)

I couldn't help but notice that the tone of your comment suggests disgust and ridicule, and I'm sorry you feel that way. You find it infuriating that people would be dumb enough to accept evolution as accurate. And yet, I assure you, the people who accept evolution as fact feel the exact same way about your point of view.

So, I feel I cannot respond directly to your points, because reasoned debate cannot be had when each side thinks so precious little of the other.

You have to step back and be willing to accept that there are many reasonable, intelligent, honest, and upstanding people who believe evolution is true. Likewise, I am willing to accept that there are many reasonable, intelligent, honest, and upstanding people who DON'T believe evolution is true.

So, how can this be? You really should think about this question. We ALL should think about this question. It's humbling to be reminded that our grasp of the truth is so tenuous and so subjective.

We could debate the actual facts and evidence for evolution until our faces turn blue, but it would do no good since we've already established that reason alone doesn't seem to bring about revelation in this matter. Rather there is something beyond reason that is interfering with this debate. People are subconsciously (or even consciously) warping reason by choosing to selectively pick the facts that support the side they've already chosen to support in the first place.

People are really good at this kind of selective filtering, especially when they are emotionally motivated. And evolution is a subject that has surely sparked emotional responses. Either the evolutionists, or the creationists, or both, are being motivated by something more than just honest truth-seeking.

If evolution isn't true, why do so many scientists study it and continually reaffirm it? Why do a staggering majority of scientists of all branches of science accept it as fact? Why has evolution stood ever stronger for 140+ years?

One option is that there is some kind of global conspiracy among the scientific community to convince the public of a lie. I don't know what their motive would be other than to erode our belief in God. Maybe it's also some kind of power-play to give intellectuals more control. Young scientists graduating from college are also somehow indoctrinated into this global conspiracy. Maybe learning science opens some kind of gateway that lets the devil control your mind. Scientists who claim to believe in God must be lying.

Another option is that there is no conspiracy among the scientific community and no mind-controlling devil. What is happening instead is people who have faith in the Bible see evolution as a challenge to one aspect of that faith. The Bible, if taken entirely literally, suggests that we were directly created by God. And the idea of being directly created by a God is very compelling, for many reasons. It gives people of faith a strong emotional bias against evolution. Since they have already made up their mind (by faith) that the Bible is completely literally true, they must faithfully fight against anything that disagrees with any part of the Bible.

We all need to ask ourselves, which one of these scenarios is more likely? Is it more likely there is a global conspiracy of science that has lead to (or is a result of) a global brainwashing? Or is it more likely that what we are seeing is human resistance to change, couched in arguments from faith?

Which one of these patterns of behavior have we seen before in human history? I don't remember there ever being a global conspiracy on the scale of evolution. However, I do remember there being many historical events where religion took a strong, emotional, and even violent stance in support of something that was accepted on faith alone. There are even many well documented cases of a religious institution attacking a scientific theory, not with facts, but with the sword, the branding iron, and the rack...and other instruments of torture far worse.

Given that both sides of this debate are populated with reasonable, normal human beings, I ask you, seriously, which side is more likely to be caught up in a well-meaning but misguided response to this issue? Which side has more to lose? The evolutionary scientist might worry about losing his job, but the creationist is worried about losing salvation. Which side is likely to have a more emotional response? And finally, which side is going to be mostly likely to hold their ground against any amount of reasoned debate?

There is no use for me to debate you on the facts. I don't mean to say that in a demeaning way. I have respect for your opinions, and I'm sure you are a reasonable person, just as I am a reasonable person, just as the vast majority of us are reasonable people.

But you have something at stake here that I just can't compete with, no matter what I say.

Perhaps we should just talk about sports? NFL summer training camps start pretty soon.....isn't that something to look forward to? Do you think they have football in heaven?

Fusion: There is no substitute

If news reports are any indication, the general public seems to be overly optimistic about science's ability to deliver truly effective alternative energy sources in the near future. Those who don't have a strong background in chemistry and physics seem to think inventing a new energy source is just an engineering problem like making a faster CPU.

Even recently, I saw a news article touting an "amazing new invention" that can burn saltwater as a fuel by using radio waves. (Look it up in Google. Stories of this invention are all over the internet.)

The very first question that anyone should have asked, before even reporting this story, is "How much energy does it take to generate those radio waves, and is it more energy than you get in return from the hydrogen?" But that question was never asked.

The basic problem is this: When you burn hydrogen (with oxygen), it turns into water. The amount of energy you get out of this reaction is the same amount of energy it takes to separate hydrogen from oxygen in the first place. At best, this invention is a super efficient way of producing hydrogen so that you get back almost 100% of the energy you put in to cause this reaction. That is really neat, and could make generating hydrogen cheaper, but it is no source of "new" energy. It will still take electricity to make hydrogen, and that electricity must come from either nuclear reactors or fossil fuel (for the most part).

It really pains me to be a cynic in this matter. Normally, I would be the last to claim that something was "impossible". Given enough time and ingenuity, mankind seems capable of doing almost anything. However, we must be guarded against the wide-eye view that science can do anything, and do it quickly.

By every model of matter and energy we have come up with to date, including quantum mechanics and string theory, there are only two fundamental sources of energy in the universe: Fission and Fusion.

All sources of energy we use on Earth come from either fusion or fission. Oil is just a form of stored fusion. Fusion powers the sun, which allows plants to bond molecules for storing energy. Plants are eaten by animals who digest these molecules for energy. Large masses of plant and animal material decay and compress over millions of years underground, and that forms oil. Oil has energy because it retains the original complex molecules.

Solar energy, wind energy, and hydro energy are also all forms of fusion power. Every renewable source of energy that we can possibly use must come from the Sun in one way or another.

The only exception to this rule is fission power. Fission power draws energy from the decay of radioactive elements. We can purify and control radioactive materials in ways that can produce great amounts of power.

However, radioactive materials are, themselves, a result of fusion power. Radioactive elements are produced in the cores of massive stars.

Every source of power imaginable comes from fusion power. And strictly speaking, even fusion is not a "source" of energy, but rather a local temporary increase energy that comes at the expense of generating greater entropy in the Universe as a whole.

Unless science comes up with some radical new way to manipulate the very fabric of reality (not gonna happen for a long time), we need to focus on fusion and fission as our only plausible sources of energy. We need to work on technologies that can collect energy from the sun, such as solar panels, wind farms, hydro-electric damns, ethanol, bio-diesel, etc.

We also can build more nuclear reactors to take advantage of the radioactive materials we have. But keep in mind that radioactive materials are not a renewable resource. And it also takes a lot of expensive safeguards to use nuclear power safely.

One possible breakthrough in energy generation would be if we could create our own fusion reactor. Right now, fusion technology seems a very far way away. Recreating the center of a sun is no trivial task - it takes fantastic amounts of energy, and it is very difficult to sustain. The sun has the advantage of tremendous amounts of gravity to sustain its fusion reaction.

If it turns out that immense gravity is the only way to sustain a fusion reaction, then the only way to make a fusion reactor is to make another star.

For the the lifetimes of anyone reading this article, we are going to have to maximize solar energy technologies, because our sun's fusion is our best and only long-term solution. All the other things you see making news (ethanol, bio-diesel, hydrogen fuel cells) only move the problem.

The other shoe that no politician dares to drop is the population problem. Having cheap oil might allow the population to grow to a level that might not be sustainable. There is not enough productive land in the world to grow enough corn and wheat to feed AND fuel the entire Earth. The slight increase in ethanol activity has already caused corn prices to rise.

I'm not trying to be a pessimist, but I do think it is going to be more difficult (an inconvenient) that most people realize to provide energy and food for 7 billion people using only fusion-derived technologies.

But fusion-derived technologies is all we have.

Simulating Evolution

I recently read an interesting article on simulating Evolution that was posted by ordinarygirl.

This IS a very interesting article! Way cool!

I've seen experiments in simulated evolution before, but this one is one of the most surprising yet.

However, I want to share my own opinion that many of these simulations of Evolution operate under an incomplete view of Evolution. They see Evolution as just natural selection through some kind of "survival of the fittest" mechanism.

That is definitely one aspect of Evolution, and it is an effective mechanism to keep a species adapted to a gradually changing environment.

However, natural selection is not the only driver in Evolution. The other is natural potential.

If you have a pair of mice, and give them easy access to unlimited food and resources and territory, you will have an exponential population explosion of trillions of mice that will cover the entire surface of the Earth with a solid layer of mice in under 5 years.

The fact that our planet isn't covered in mice, even after millions of years, is a reflection of their limited access to resources, and the "virtual" death toll of trillions of unborn potential mice. This outweighs the death toll caused by maladaptive traits, and so is potentially a larger driver of Evolution than merely "survival of the fittest".

If a small number of species can find a way to exploit an untapped resource, or develop a unique adaptation to a given environment, then that variety will temporarily experience that explosive growth potential that leads to the biggest leaps in Evolution.

While this new variety rapidly grows and flourishes, the old variety continues to maintain itself in the manner it always has before. As natural selection continues to put pressure on both varieties to maximize their adaptation to their own environments, this causes the two varieties to pull apart until they become distinct species.

Dog breeding, for example, produces a WIDE variety of dogs. But it doesn't produce a new species. This is because the only mechanism at work is selective breeding (semi-natural selection). There is nothing fundamentally changing in the dogs environment. A dog is still a dog and does doggy things and eats doggy food provided to it by doggy people. :)

But if a group of dogs were able to adapt to a different environment with a different manner of survival...one in which they had different interactions with species around them, and yet had little competition and thus could survive while they adapted to their new life...then you would start to a true split into a new species, and a wildly successful one at that.

To use an analogy: Imagine a large and established corporation. Such an organization is generally only capable of gradual changes as needed to meet changes in it's environment. A large corporation that gets caught up in rapid change usually goes extinct. (Just like well established animals cannot survive rapid changes in their environment.)

But now imagine some of the employees from this large corporation go off and start a new business of their own, taking advantage of some untapped or newly developed market. They might struggle at first, but if they have no immediate competition, and if they are successful, they will grow like crazy with a completely different "corporate DNA" than the parent company. Since this company started small, it had the ability to make rapid fundamental changes as it grows. Established corporations can't do that.

Rapid progress in any industry comes from small companies blooming, not from from killing off (Naturally Selecting) failed companies.

Likewise, having a small population of animals allows favorable genetic changes to spread more quickly and not be drowned out by the masses.

So, a true simulation of Evolution would include simulating a vast and changing multi-variable environment, with an incalculably large number of possible interactions and dependencies. This kind of environment with such vast numbers of possibilities is needed to give all species a chance to stumble into something that is new and yet survivable. And this is what is needed for a new species to arise.

Most of what I've said here is in Darwin's original Origin of Species book. Darwin quite rightly figured out that the Evolution of animals was a far more complicated phenomenon that simply "survival of the fittest". Darwin did not use that phrase in his book. It was coined by someone else later.

So, the whole point of my whole posting is this: It is very tempting to want to simulate evolution with a computer, and see what kind of virtual species you can create. But understand that such a program, if it is to be accurate, would have to be far more complex than any software written to date. Simply trying to create new species by selective breeding is not going to mirror reality. You indeed might create new and surprising species, but it won't be in exactly the way nature would have done it. Such programs tend to succeed by having far more "open-ended" possibilities for viable mutations than what nature actually provides.

If anyone is interested in Evolution, I highly recommend reading Darwin's original book cover to cover. It is a far more complete and insightful coverage of the theory of Evolution than I have found in any other book. (And surely more than I have found in any science class.)

Modern books on Evolution try too hard for the dumbed down approach to explain Evolution in simple and obvious terms. But you miss out on something important if you don't follow all of Darwin's research and reasoning from beginning to end.

Oh, and if you are going to read Origin of Species, you need to find a reproduction of the FIRST edition. There were six editions total, and unfortunately, in each edition, Darwin kept adding crap or tinkering with part of the book to better address questions that were raised in those days. The first edition is best at standing on it's own.