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<\/a><\/p>\nIt hasn\u2019t been a great week. Starting with the ache from the wisdom tooth and the residual pain after its removal, which is bad enough that I suspect there\u2019s more wrong in there than I thought. I\u2019ll find that out next Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The result is that I haven\u2019t got much done. I\u2019ve read a couple of books, and Peter has been turning my office suite into a place I can actually have visitors, and I got most of my errands done although some resulted in only temporary removal of a problem. We did get some good discussion of the health care dilemma and I made a start at summarizing what we actually know about climate, so it wasn\u2019t all a waste. I\u2019ll try to do better.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow, Sunday 23 November, I\u2019ll be on TWIT (This Week in Technology) at 1500 i.e. 3 PM Pacific Standard Time. I don\u2019t know who is on with me, other than Leo of course., but you can find us at TWIT.TV tomorrow at 1500.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t agree with Fred on everything, but he raises a number of really interesting questions, he\u2019s right a lot of the time, and he doesn\u2019t swallow fads.<\/p>\n His latest essay on evolution reads like something I might have written a few years ago, or yesterday for that matter if I had as much energy as he has. The latest essay is The Bugs In Darwin, (http:\/\/fredoneverything.net\/BotFly.shtml<\/a>) and he does a great job of summing them up. Doubting the sufficiency of Evolution as an explanation of everything will get you in more trouble than being a Climate Change Denier, but there are a number of \u201cbugs in Darwin\u201d \u2013 things that it is very difficult to see any possible explanation for in Darwinian evolution. We know that there is \u201cevolution\u201d; we can see it, and we can breed animals to our specifications; but the problem is that cellular biology is far more complicated than Darwin dreamed of, and indeed that anyone thought until fairly recently.<\/p>\n About thirty years ago I wrote an essay on evolution and origins using the analogy of a watch: you can take all the components of a watch, but them in a bag, and shake them forever and the probability that they will fall into place still remains vanishingly small with relation to the age of the universe. You can make the probability a bit larger by adding multiple copies of some of the components, but a bit larger still leaves you a vanishing probability. You can shape the parts such that there\u2019s only one way they will fit together, and the probability they they\u2019ll become a watch rises again, but it\u2019s still small; and now of course you have to explain how the parts got made. If you find a watch in the woods, that\u2019s pretty overwhelming evidence for the existence of a watchmaker. Now what do you look for if you find a watchmaker?<\/p>\n Fred looks at a number of highly complex processes and asks how they might have \u2018evolved\u201d; and his conclusion is the same as mine has been since I was in high school: We don\u2019t know, but it sure isn\u2019t Darwinian survival of the fittest, and it looks a lot more like design than chance. I came to that conclusion before I knew just how complex the universe it, and I have never been shown any reason to change it.<\/p>\n Now by design I don\u2019t mean that there are no elements of chance in the evolution: it\u2019s more complicated than that. I can think of a number of random steps that if made in the correct order will take you from a light sensitive cluster of cells to an eye as that exists in nature; but not all of those steps have any obvious utility or advantage to the organism. Something that isn\u2019t on that path could and more probably would have happened. By design I mean that somewhere in there is a glimmer of what you\u2019re after. It was something of this sort that Augustine had in mind when he postulated that creation was in causes, not in completion. When I was in high school I wasn\u2019t converted to the Church by any refutation of Evolution, because I learned Evolution from Brother Fidelis despite the fact that it was still illegal to teach Evolution in the state of Tennessee in 1949. Indeed I didn\u2019t start to question the standard theory until I learned just how complex cellular biology appears to be.<\/p>\n Interestingly enough another friend named Fred, Sir Fred Hoyle, came to much the same conclusion. It is presented in his Evolution From Space http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Evolution-Space-Sir-Fred-Hoyle\/dp\/0671492632<\/a> and it is a lot more plausible than Darwin. Fred presents the case for design, although I caution you that his notion of both design and a designer will horrify priests, mullahs, imams, ministers, mambas, but possibly not witch doctors.<\/p>\n I have to get a haircut for tomorrow\u2019s appearance on TWIT \u2013 since I\u2019ll be on a couple of panels at LASCON next Friday it was time anyway \u2013 so it\u2019s lunch time. I\u2019ll try to come up with something else later, but if you read Fred\u2019s essay you\u2019ll have plenty to think about. Fred asks a lot of the right questions. I wish there were more writers, particularly in the scientific community, who dared ask them.<\/p>\n And of course if you haven\u2019t read it yet, you can read http:\/\/www.usni.org\/magazines\/proceedings\/2013-05\/rise-missile-carriers<\/a>, by Commander Phillip Pournelle. You will also like http:\/\/www.informationdissemination.net\/2013\/11\/we-need-balanced-fleet-for-naval.html<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free. <\/p>\n View 799 Saturday, November 23, 2013 If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. Period. Barrack Obama, famously. Cogito ergo sum. Descartes Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum. Cogito. Ambrose Bierce It hasn\u2019t been a great week. Starting with the ache from the wisdom tooth \u2026 Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"