Showing posts with label APOD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label APOD. Show all posts

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Godless Evolution in a Nutshell

beliefnet
As the universe evolved heavy elements were created in hot massive stars that exploded seeding the universe with heavier elements that could react as elements do because of energy considerations to form compounds.   Some of the lighter elements, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, commonly reacted with hydrogen to form methane, ammonia and carboxylic acid, which in turn reacted to form amino acids the building blocks of life.  As stars and planets formed out of dust clouds in space those amino acids were distilled onto planets that were suitable in distance and energy flux to contain liquid water. Eventually life formed on such planets.  Hardly something from nothing.  But no creator necessary, simply physics, chemistry and energy.
 
As life evolved it became necessary for survival to sense and react to the environment in which life existed, as finding nutrients and avoiding being one, was necessary for survival and reproduction.  Those organisms that were good at sensing and reacting to the environment reproduced and thrived until something that sensed and reacted better came along and became locally dominant.  Repeat, repeat, repeat, until part of the package needed for survival was in addition to experiencing and doing, thinking, planning, and feeling were added to the mix.  In particular feeling good about the opposite sex to form pair bonds to facilitate getting infants to be reproducing adults.  Thinking and planning are added relatively early in evolution as all mammals and birds appear to do so.  

Those animals that have evolved to assist humans in guarding, herding, rodent control and other needed functions around settlements have learned to sense human feelings of happiness, joy, wonder, and do things that create them in order to survive in the presence of humans.  See Facebook threads of cute animals doing things to please humans.  

Friday, February 26, 2010

Cold and Dark?

Life after death: a thought experiment - Beliefnet

And that 10,000 Million Year-old Light continues to propagate and effect even AFTER its Original Generator has gone Dark and Cold ...
teilhard


"As will some of the things I generate continue to propagate and effect even after I have gone cold and dark. Some will be mine. Some will be those of people long since gone cold and dark.

Right now I am thinking of my great grandmother whose children's songs that I have made my own and pass on in my turn have delighted countless people. One of them probably has delighted you, not through my efforts, but by a child in her preschool who took one of her songs to the Yale Whiffenpoofs. They changed the bridge, but the poor little lambs that stray were probably hers."

I have no interest in even thinking about what will happen to my soul when I am cold and dark. I doubt that anything will happen to it, but in the 1 in 10 billion chance that the light will hit some photoreceptor after it has gone out, it will be evaluated by what I did with that soul while I was alive. I intend to insure that my soul shines as brightly as I can drive it in this life. Some of us may make it to supernova, but even the random blip in the APOD deep field is important at least to the texture of the overall scene. It works for me

Friday, August 21, 2009

Designed Universe?

The supernatural??? - Science & Religion:
Show your evidence, not your belief.
F1fan

"There are many things that might indicate a creator. Just the asymmetry of the matter anti-matter in the universe, for example is explained just as well by God sorting it out as by the scientific theories of the beginning of matter. There are many constants that have been defined that keep the universe working the way it does. It can certainly be argued that the universe is as it is because it conforms to those constants. But it cannot be disproven that God designed those constants because Hesh likes to watch the gravitational dancing of the galaxies. I know I do. I waste much of my time on my APOD bookmarks of colliding galaxies. Frankly I cannot conceive of anything or even any God that could do such things, so I favor natural explanations myself. But ask me to prove that God didn't put those APOD photos up for my enjoyment, other than a weak 'I am not that important,' I couldn't prove God didn't do it. With very little effort I could prove that a specific God e.g. any of the primitive Mesopotamian Gods didn't do it. It is easy to prove they couldn't be that smart. But some Deist Creator? I wouldn't even try."

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Anselm's Ontological Argument

Anselm's Ontological Argument :

"My problem with Anselm's argument is that it starts with a belief.
... we believe that thou art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.
If the fool is a believer, then Anselm works. Within the belief space God must exist. Where I am different from the fool is that I don't believe.

I don't believe in God.

I don't believe in great beings that have not earned that designation by the accolades of contemporary or near contemporary historians and story tellers and who clearly existed as a real, living, human being. I don't even believe all the stories about great beings. It is not unusual for admirers of great beings to pad the resume, so to speak. These unbelievable stories do not impugn the credibility of the existence of the great being in fact they add to it. If starry eyed groupies didn't lie about their hero maybe hesh wasn't so great after all.

I don't believe in anything 'than which nothing greater can be conceived.' A random Hubble deep field image shows things greater than anything that can be conceived."

Monday, September 8, 2008

The Sun Will Eventually Engulf Earth--Maybe: Scientific American

The Sun Will Eventually Engulf Earth--Maybe: Scientific American: "The sun is slowly expanding and brightening, and over the next few billion years it will eventually desiccate Earth, leaving it hot, brown and uninhabitable." And by that time we, that would be human descendants living at the time, would have moved the earth to a more favorable location. The delta V would not be impossible and they would probably use the radiation from the sun as the energy for something like a solar sail on the moon to drag the system out.