I haven’t yet had any feedback on the idea regarding God in this essay. To be fair, I’ve presented this idea in different threads across the board rather than as a stand alone thread here. Anyway, no one has shot me down. That’s essentially what I’m asking for (hypothesis breaking.) I’m not foolish enough to think that because it hasn’t met any criticism it must be correct. I’m not arrogantly yelling, “Try and prove me wrong!” This is a sincere request for feedback. That is all. At most, what I’ve gotten is: “I’ll read it later when I have time.” At less than 1800 words, it’s a 4 min read for an average reader and I’m pretty sure you sharp guys and gals are above average. I wouldn’t dare accuse you guys of pulling your punches, but just incase you’re feeling merciful, forget it. I can take a scathing review, no worries. (Keep in mind, this isn’t intended as “proof of God” but provides a starting point for discussion on said topic.) Here’s a link to a picture album. For anyone familiar with Big Bang and Evolution, this is familiar territory. This picture album begins to convey the concept in the essay. https://facebook/king.krylor.1/media_set?set=a.445491628893297.1073741826.100002973900112&type=3 Now onto the essay: Continued Refinement (p1) Continued Refinement is a simple, elegant way to make sense of everything. It started when Reality started. It’s wound all the way through time, through all of Reality, up to now and will carry on (as its name implies.) While I’ve found plenty of reference to it in other texts, I’ve never encountered it as fully-formed as it is here. It is not Evolution. Evolution is specific to life. Continued Refinement is bigger, encompassing even Evolution. In identifying the pattern, we get a lot of useful baggage, sensible reflections, (I’d even go so far as to say) down-to-earth applications such as: ethics, a framework for understanding life-after-death, a model for effective government, a bunch of words for a philosophy book, etc. While I mention Evolution here, I hope you can see the organization before Evolution comes into the picture (and more importantly) see how Continued Refinement applies later. That has been and still is one of our most costly mistakes – not putting the Theory of Evolution in context. Why does Evolution do what it does? Science remains quiet on the issue only observing that it is. From this we have the empty deterministic/ Evolutionary views that would have us look at our parts but not the gestalt. (Whole is more than the sum of its parts.) When we carry Continued Refinement forward some interesting things (somewhat counter intuitive things) emerge. Enough talking *about it. Let’s define it. Reality is a set of hierarchies; complex things are built upon the simpler ones before them. That is the simplest way to exemplify Refinement. The limited view of Continued Refinement, however, suggests there isn’t a God because if everything is reducible to the lesser things before it (underneath it), why would we need a God to explain anything? It more or less suggests that randomness and variation (alone) conspire to create order. Which, as you may have guessed, isn’t my position. Take fifty black dots and fifty white ones, stick em in a box with a hundred evenly spaced groves on the bottom and then give that box a shake. Once you settle the dots on the bottom, lift the lid. Most of the time, you’ll find a completely random placement, but every once in a while, a clear pattern will pop out. It might be an equals sign, a smiley face or a character from the English alphabet. (By analogy) what Reality does is take those very simple patterns and build on them. For some examples of the hierarchies in Reality we’ll go back to the beginning. (My apologies in advance for this very summarized story.) Even before we had basic atoms, there are fundamental particles. They could not coalesce at first... Moving up the scale (in terms of orderliness and complexity) we see the most fundamental of elements, hydrogen. This, most simple atomic arrangement, is the foundation for greater complexity. Hydrogen is a gas. Gravity clumps things together (ah, the oversimplification is torture… I shall persist.) Clumped hydrogen gets compressed when gravity adds still more. Compressed gas gets hot. Kaboom! That’s a star. It’s a balancing act between forces of explosion and compression (from gravity.) In the heart of a star this trend of creating still more order/complexity persists. We’re adding to the hierarchies, in other words. As gravity pushes the star together, the nucleus in those hydrogen atoms gets fused to other nuclei. This is nuclear fusion and it gives off a tremendous amount of energy (heat and light.) Incidentally, it creates heavier atoms. (A level of order we didn’t have before.) This is of consequence. As stars burn up their fuel source in this way, the balance of explosion/implosion is eventually thrown off. What we observe is a very violent implosion followed by an explosion (supernova.) The guts of the star get seeded around the supernova. This eventually becomes the stuff of planets orbiting around a second generation star. Our sun and solar system are one such example. We’ve gone from sub-atomic particles, to basic atoms, to stars and then, stars with planets. All along, for billions of years, this process of creation is at play. Through randomness and variation building on ever increasing layers of complexity, we’ve got a universe chalk-full of stars and planets. We can observe this. We can measure it. We can make predictions about it and test those predictions to see if they hold up to scrutiny. (So far, they do.)
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 23:31:45 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015