Smell Crisped Hair?

Wow.

I just read an amazing evaluation of the amicus briefs filed by the Discovery Institute, the presumptuously self-titled "Foundation for Thought and Ethics", and a group of self-described "Biologists and Other Scientists in Support of Defendants" on behalf of the defendants in the Dover Design Trial (henceforth, DDT...snicker). The Plaintiff's Response contains the full-text, but the real zingers were:

In short, the amicus briefs add nothing new to the argument for intelligent design as science. What could have been helpful to the Court, and was uniquely in control of the amicus organizations, is some explanation why the Discovery Institute’s and FTE’s own descriptions of their mission and activities as Christian apologetics are not dispositive of the religious nature of intelligent design.5

As one obvious example, the Discovery Institute does not explain — literally does not say a word about - the organization’s Wedge Document (P140), which sets forth the goals and objectives of the intelligent-design movement. The Governing Goals of the Discovery Institute are “[t]o defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies” and “[t]o replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.” P140. The Wedge Document is no anomaly, but rather reflective of the positions of the Discovery Institute and the intelligent-design movement’s leaders, such as Phillip Johnson (originator of the “Wedge” strategy described in the Wedge Document), 10: 16-17 (Forrest), William Dembski (avowed Christian apologist who advocates intelligent design as the theology of John the Apostle translated into the technical language of information theory), P357; 11: 18,48-50, 55 (Forrest), and Stephen Meyer (director of the Discovery Institute, and advocate of intelligent design as “the God hypothesis.”).6 P332; 552 (Pennock); 11: 31 (Forrest)

Similarly, the FTE declines to address facts that it is best situated to explain. Numerous documents in evidence reveal FTE to be a religious organization with religious objectives, not a scientific one pursuing scientific aims. P12; P28; P168A; P566; P633; 10:90-92, 96-101 (Forrest). The FTE ignores all this evidence in its amicus brief.

In a pre-trial hearing in this case, FTE president Jon Buell attributed religious descriptions of his organization, in legally required public filings he had signed, to mistakes by lawyers and accountants. The Court can decide whether Mr. Buell and the FTE were filing false documents with the federal government and the State of Texas, or whether they were instead misrepresenting themselves to this Court, by disowning the religious agenda stated in those documents. The overwhelming evidence from Mr. Buell’s own writings regarding his and FTE’s Christian, creationist objectives gives the Court ample basis to make that judgment. P12; P28; P168A; P566; P633; 10:90-92,96-101 (Forrest). Either way, the FTE’s submission is entitled to no credence or respect from this Court.

This is particularly true of the FTE’s rationalization for the substitution of the phrase “intelligent design” for “creation” in versions of Pandas prepared after Edwards. FTE makes the impossibly silly argument that by discarding the words “creation” and “creationism” found in early drafts, the FTE expressly rejected creationism. FTE Brief at 17. The only way the drafting history of Pandas could be interpreted as rejecting creationism is if the authors had discarded not just the word, but the explanation of what the word means — “various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features already intact — fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc.” The retention of the central creationist concepts using a different term, “intelligent design,” dictates only one inference: intelligent design equals creationism.

If this were not true, surely the FTE would have provided an explanation in its brief for why Pandas was written by two admittedly creationist authors, one of whom was an advocate for creation science in the federal courts, and for why Buell thought that the Edwards ruling on creation science would matter so much to the financial success of Pandas. P350; 10: 102-104, 126-128 (Forrest). But there is no discussion of these facts.

In summary, the amicus originations [sic] have a lot of explaining to do. But they studiously avoid their own words and history, which reveal the religious content of intelligent design.

What all three amici are clearly devoted to is getting the Court to blame any Establishment Clause violation on the defendant board members — without addressing the facts that show that the Board was right in understanding intelligent design to be a religious, God-friendly alternative to the theory of evolution. FTE has stated in a fundraising letter that if the Court “rule[s] narrowly, focusing only on the school board’s action and not ruling on the status of Pandas … that would be great news.”7 (emphasis in original). The Discovery Institute and the FTE, having provided the Dover Board with the idea and the materials to advance its religious agenda, are content to throw the Board under the legal bus, so long as it does not involve the exposure of intelligent design as an inherently religious proposition.

The reason for this approach is obvious: it allows the FTE and Discovery Institute to fight on in the culture wars — perhaps in school boards in Kansas or Ohio — where they may be able to exert greater control over the message broadcast by government officials, avoid the type of rigorous cross-examination applied in this case to expose intelligent design’s alleged scientific underpinning to be an empty vessel, and suppress the kind of revealing acknowledgments of the religious reasons for promoting intelligent design made by Dover school board members.8 As FTE and Discovery Institute attorney Wenger recently explained to a church audience, the Dover Board could have improved its case for intelligent design by being “clever as serpents.”9

If there is anything I can possibly say that has not already been said about this trial, it is this: The DI had really been ousted for exactly what they are by this case. From their betrayal of the defendants' counsel, their duplicity in supporting and opposing the teaching of ID, Behe's absolute meltdown on the stand in admitting he would like a science which included astrology in order to incorporate ID, their empty "lists" of scientists...

...people, wake up! How long does it take, knowing this group started out with a title which clearly stated its objective--"The Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture", to figure out that this is a politico-religious movement and has nothing to do with science?

Go read some facts, note the changing name and banners* of the DI, note that all of "Intelligent Design" is contained within the DI and their fellows...and freakin' think!

*the picture in the later versions of the banner is fortuitously known as the "eye of God"...hmmm...
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Technorati tags:
Discovery Institute, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

Abby and Her Five Senses

Recently I've had abiogenesis on my mind. After reading a PT post on the topic, I started thinking about how abiogenesis is so much like cosmology. I wrote recently about my attitude towards the unknown--that I view rational skepticism as the best approach to both (ab and cos). Some people give up with "goddidit" while others believe the answers are already in hand.

Why is it that so many fundies see methodological naturalism as "faith"? They say things like, "i have faith god made everything, you have faith things made themselves," (which is of course a straw man, considering the 1st Law and cosmology and etc.)...without realizing [one of] the huge difference[s]--that while evidence has shown time and again that observable phenomena are the result of natural law, no evidence has ever shown observable phenomena to be the result of "supernatural" activity. In fact, it is just this line of reasoning that leads me to conclude that life on earth is the result of chemistry and physics. Obviously, god can still fit in the picture as the maker/guider of chemistry and physics, but that doesn't appeal to most theists. And usually they conclude that naturalistic philosophy leads one to dismiss "evidence" that purportedly supports a supernatural cause, yet they acknowledge that rational naturalistic scenarios always fit the bill, and that Occam's razor slices god right out of the picture.

I recently compiled some really good articles on my website in list fashion regarding abiogenesis. I specifically focused on publications reviewing homochirality and other frequently-touted “problems” for abiogenesis (mostly Bonner pubs). For those of you without the access or time to look them up, this could prove a valuable resource. Also, in one of the listed pubs, Lindahl, from TA&M, put together a very good review (2004) that takes us from organic chemistry to extant metabolism via “Quasi-steady state systems”…worth your read. Keep in mind that copyright laws apply to these full-text PDFs.
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Technorati tags: abiogenesis, Faith, God, Religion, Philosophy

Shawshank Sunday IV: Jake's Anthro

Brooks Hatlen was an important part of the redemption story of Andy Dufresne. Brooks was, in many ways, Andy's antithesis. Brooks provided for us the contrast of what is was like to lose hope. It has been said that Brooks' crow, Jake, was meant to provide symbolism and possibly even link Hatlen to "the Birdman of Alcatraz." If one only watched the movie, and did not read the book, a deeper sort of symbolism would largely be lost on them.

When Brooks receives his parole, and tries to find a way to stay at Shawshank by threatening to kill Heywood, readers of Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption will have noted the departure from the King novella. A further departure from the source is found in the part that Jake plays in this movie.

While in the novella, Brooks finds the baby crow, nurses it back to health, releases it, and we find out what happened to Jake...this does not happen in the movie.

In both movie and novella, Jake could serve as an obvious symbol of freedom after captivity. But the consequence of captivity upon Jake can only be inferred from the book form of the story. In the book, Jake is found within the prison yard after his release...dead.

This is a realistic depiction of what would likely happen to a bird which was hand-fed and raised with no knowledge of predators or how to find food. It is also a realistic depiction of what happens to men who are institutionalized to the point that they do not know how to handle freedom. Prison can take away the ability to make a decision, to independently choose action without supervision or assistance.

The role that Brooks plays, as Andy's antithesis, is to show a man who lost his hope. Brooks does not believe that it can get better for him, and is "tired of being afraid".

Where Andy is the hero and Brooks his antithesis, Red's part falls between these two characters. Red will choose whether or not to hope, whether or not to go on after his institutionalization. But his choice is inextricably linked to our hero and to Brooks. The impact of both men is apparent in Red. Those familiar with the story know that Red chooses to hope largely due to a promise made to Andy--to go find the rock that he promised Andy he would find.

Red is almost the personification of Jake, but he "belongs to" Andy while Jake belonged to Brooks. While Brooks failed to instill the values Jake needed to survive before releasing him, Andy infused his own strength, character, and hope into Red. Just as what we nurture becomes dependent on us, Red came to a place where he realized the truth of Andy's words, and he needed to see his friend:

Red: I don't think you ought to be doing this to yourself, Andy. This is just shitty pipedreams. I mean, Mexico is way the hell down there and you're in here, and that's the way it is.

Andy: Yeah, right. That's the way it is. It's down there and I'm in here. I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'...Promise me, Red. If you ever get out, find that spot. In the base of that wall, you'll find a rock that has no earthly business in a Maine hayfield. A piece of black, volcanic glass. There's something buried under it I want you to have.

Red: [after Andy's escape and his own parole] All I do anymore is think of ways to break my parole so maybe they'd send me back. Terrible thing to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won't have to be afraid all the time. Only one thing stops me. A promise I made to Andy...
Get busy livin', or get busy dyin'. That's god-damn right.

Red was able to choose to live because Andy gave him something that allowed it--hope.

Jake died because Brooks, codependent, made Jake just like himself--without the ability to make it on his own.

In that way, Red is like Andy's Jake. And when Andy released Red, he flew away free and lived.
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Technorati tags:
Hope, Faith, Shawshank

Shawshank Sunday III: Psychogeolothermodynamics

Andy is depicted as an isotherm. I am usually an adiabat. Let me explain...

Long before Andy received his rock pick to shape the rocks that he was collecting from the ground of the Shawshank yard, he was an isotherm. Red commented on how Andy appeared to the others as he collected his rocks:

He had a quiet way about him, a walk and a talk that just wasn't normal around here. He strolled. like a man in a park without a care or worry. Like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place.

Red narrated, after the escape:

In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison. All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock hammer, damn near worn down to the nub. I used to think it would take six-hundred years to tunnel under the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty. Oh, Andy loved Geology, I guess it appealed to his meticulous nature. An ice age here, million years of mountain building there. Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes really, pressure, and time. That, and a big god-damned poster.

Prison is like a pressure cooker. And from the ideal gas law, pV = nRT, we know that when pressure is increased, if the volume of the container does not change, and if the amount of substance inside the container does not change (n), the temperature must increase.

Under pressure, I suppose we can all learn to expand our minds a bit, or give our souls room to grow. That takes some of the pressure off. Some containers expand more easily than others. But inside a prison for a crime you didn't commit, being raped by grown men, abused by officials...those things cause the mind and soul to atrophy.

So how did poor Andy not just break, like the other men? How is it he didn't meltdown? How is it he retained hope? Well, it is evident from his "invisible coat," and his insistence upon retaining hope (see Shawshank Sunday I or II), and identifying with his previous life through chess and teaching others...that Andy did not melt down. Further, the "invisible coat" he had on long before he knew he planned to escape the pressure cooker. He wanted the rock hammer to make chess pieces with, and it was fortuitous for him that the walls of his prison were old and cheap, and fortuitous for him that he was on an end unit of a cell block, and that he was a "pet prisoner" who avoided surprise inspections, and got to keep his poster up to cover his escape. He wanted the rock hammer just to keep his mind sane, in other words, but he got a lot more, and a lot of luck.

Take an airtight container with some fixed moles of gas at a given pressure, volume, and temperature. Put this container in a hydraulic press. Push the button to begin increasing pressure. Put your hand on the side of the container. It is warmer than it was before. If the container is an adiabat, it will exchange no heat with the surroundings. If the container is an isotherm, it will exchange the maximum heat with the surroundings, and reachieve the pre-work temperature.

Andy is depicted as an isotherm. I am usually an adiabat. Put us both under pressure, and we both feel the heat immediately. It is whether or not the heat dissipates that determines whether we have isotherms or adiabats.

Andy is like a scuba tank, placed into the water beside the boat, to be refilled with gas. If you don't put scuba tanks in the water to refill them, they will not exchange as much heat with the air as they would with the water. If you don't allow a container to exchange heat with the surroundings, it will be limited by the pressure it can withstand, (like a scuba tank, which has a given psi rating and gauge) and will not be able to hold as much substance as a container under the same pressure which is losing heat to the surroundings. So, tanks filled while immersed in water end up giving divers more air, and more time to dive.

Andy was put under great stress at Shawshank. He never lost hope. He never lost his identity. They never broke him.

Andy is just as susceptible to the pressure as all the other men. He is supposed to be human, as they are. The human container is of a universal material, and its contents may change in quality, but not in quantity.

Andy was able to release the heat generated from the pressure of prison. Red surmised, later on, that if things had continued as they started for Andy, working in the laundry and fighting off "The Sisters" all the time, that Andy would have eventually broken. But the warden learned of Andy's prior occupation, and put him in the library to put his gifts to use. Andy then had some lucky things going for him. But if his state of mind was not one which was open, and willing to hope, and bold, he would never have escaped. It is not enough that the luck happened. He was already an isotherm.

We are all adiabats at times, and isotherms at others. A container which is covered in Styrofoam is naturally adiabatic. A thin-walled container (or a container with a low heat capacity) immersed in a fluid is isothermal. Andy is fictional. We are not. In reality, no isothermal system can be thought of that is both well-insulated and able to exchange maximum heat. At times we need our insulation to protect us from the influences of our environment. Containers put under pressure, and with a simultaneously-raised surroundings temperature, do not last very long at all. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics tells us that heat exchange always proceeds downhill--if the container is not warmer than its environment, it needs to be insulated when put under pressure, or it will likely explode.

An interesting property of adiabats and isotherms can be seen in the density state plot versus temperature (see here)--it is the actualization of what Nernst said about the 3rd Law in 1906:

The entropy change of a system during a reversible isothermal process tends towards zero when the thermodynamic temperature of the system tends towards zero [Nernst 'principle'].

The ability to perform an adiabatic, gas compression-type process approaches zero as temperature approaches absolute zero. All processes become isothermal near 0K. Why? The 2nd Law. Heat will flow from the system outward to the surroundings when the surroundings are near 0K. It is impossible to do work upon a cylinder of gas (compress it) without raising the surroundings temperature near 0K.

Sometimes we need to prevent the surroundings from cracking us. Times of solitude and quiet, meditation and rest. Sometimes we need to get away from the high temperature of the surroundings, and insulation is the only way to protect ourselves.

Sometimes we need to remove this insulation, remove the thick walls that separate us from one another, immerse ourselves in others, and allow energy to freely exchange. If the surroundings are so damn cold, without energy, and we have some to spare...let Nernst's principle rule.
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Technorati tags:
Hope, Faith, Shawshank, Philosophy

Angels and Flakes (On My Shoulder)

Inspiration sometimes comes from the most unlikely of places. Those people we all know who seem to bounce from one religious persuasion to another, seemingly week to week, happened to serve as today’s inspiration. That’s right, religious flakes…they inspired me today.

The thought that hit me was this: those people are genuinely seeking something. Sure, my ultra-conservative friends might claim that what those people are seeking is really just a religion that suits them, that they are in some way running from the “absolute truth”, but when all is said and done, it cannot be denied that these people are seeking some way to worship and/or understand God. So why is this worth mentioning? Well, the premise that a God exists who genuinely wants to be found requires a bit of inspection in the face of the fact of these people’s existence.

Reading the Bible, there were a whole lot of people that really weren’t in the process of “seeking” God who were nonetheless apprehended by Him. I think of Moses, of Saul of Tarsus, of Peter fishing and Matthew collecting taxes. I think of so many people portrayed in the Bible as just going about their daily business, people interrupted by God. I won’t delve into how the God’s presence and revelation in the lives of people who didn’t seem to be inviting it seems to contradict the tenets of free will. What I want to focus on, though, is that this same appearance doesn’t seem to occur for so many “God chasers”.

My dad kept Tommy Tenney’s famous, “The God Chasers” in a little basket in the WC for convenient reading times. In it, the author’s major premise is that there are certain people who love to chase after God Himself, who turns around and allows Himself to be “caught” at times just as a dad playing with his child would. The picture Pastor Tenney paints is one of a loving God who loves to interact with His children.

This whole picture bothers me, as I think of the flakes in the world. I see so many of them praying with passion to their crystal, or through hands clasped on some icon/relic, and I see in them an authentic desperation to hear back from the One to whom they pray. They aren’t asking for a new Lexus, or for a miracle healing…they just want some validation that they are finally using the right method to talk to Him. But by the very fact that they bounce from place to place, and from the fact that such people exist at all, we can ascertain that God is not easily “caught”.

Ask for a little interaction from the Big Guy, and you’ll be told you are “tempting” (testing) God. Forget that God let Himself be tested by Gideon and Elijah and a bunch of other folks…those were the days “before the Holy Spirit”. Quite odd, isn’t it, that the HS doesn’t seem to suffice like a nice clear sign from the heavens for most folks?

Why is it that God freely offered Himself to people who were going along their daily lives without Him, but supposedly people who are asking God just to talk to them don’t get an answer because they are “tempting the Lord [thy] God”…? Does that make sense to anyone else?

Sooo…that is the angel speaking from my shoulder today, a little flake with a lot to say.

[Originally posted 10-13-2005 on my website.]
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Technorati tags: Faith, God

Of Claws and Clauses: I

This was originally published 10/21/2005 on my old UF plaza website.

Of Claws and Clauses: I

All of us readers of Jurassic Park know a thing or two about nonlinear dynamics. The character Ian, played by Jeff Goldblum, describes Chaos theory, using the eloquent example of the “butterfly effect” to articulate its application: initial conditions that slightly change in nonlinear dynamical systems lead to an incredibly unpredictable, yet still nonrandom, outcome. Specifically, ‘a butterfly flaps its wings in Peking, and you get rain instead of sunshine in Central Park.

The Big Bang is one such nonlinear system. Even knowing ALL the initial conditions would not allow one to accurately predict the outcome of the system, even though there are no “floating parameters” in the model, per se. I was recently reading on the ramifications of the Big Bang for theology in a various number of sources, and was unsurprised at the “spin” that each side applies: the theists use the unknown as proof of the unknowable (epitome of “God of the gaps”-type logic)−God’s intervention/creation, while the atheists use the unknown as an example of scientific horizon−yet undiscovered, but soon to be discovered (i.e. man is able to know everything, eventually).

At t = 0, spacetime itself does not yet exist, and all the matter and energy of the universe converge into a point of infinite density and temperature. This “unknown” is dubbed a singularity. This is a mathematical term, often used for nonlinear dynamical systems. Simply put, we conclude that the laws of physics as we know them today evolved out of this singularity, and so it is quite illogical to attempt to apply those same laws to the singularity itself. Even cause and effect is a Newtonian principle which quantum uncertainty and quantum fluctuations do not appear to obey now. Considering this, is it logical to apply causation to the Big Bang itself?

Some of the old-school cosmologists were so bothered by the presence of the singularity they attempted to present evidence for a “steady state” universe, one in which there was no t = 0, but rather an actual infinity. They failed. Some of the new-school cosmologists (Hawking, Turok, et al) have used other hypotheses (supergravity and string theory, respectively) to circumvent, or to at least explain in some logical way, the singularity itself.

I find myself falling somewhere in between those who attach a label of “hopeless” to such efforts and those who have full faith in human progress to the extreme that they feel everything will one day be known. I think of myself like Alan from Jurassic Park, who held on to a dinosaur claw until he felt it became irrelevant and ridiculous. I want to hold on to my skepticism that mankind will ever know with any degree of certainty the physical mechanisms that brought our current universe into being…and only cast it aside when I am sitting in the presence of this knowledge. Just as the velociraptor claw served as both a relic and evidence of a past we used to be 100% ignorant of, I am sure that my skepticism is a relic of the “Schoolmaster”/modernist clash, and the necessity to hold on to a reminder will not last forever.

I don’t think we will forever need to remind ourselves to reject pure faith (without reason), but for the time being, my nihilistic tendencies keep me clinging to a philosophy best described as original (authentic) Sophism, something that may now be best described in Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, as I am highly skeptical, cynical and in some ways postmodern (mostly towards logical positivists, and towards general idealists) regarding the potential of human knowledge and discovery.

In physics, if you walk into a room and find a ball laying on an impressionable floor, you may be able to reconstruct where the ball was thrown from, and with what initial force (F = ma). However, if the ball is one of those blasted “Super Bouncy Balls”, and if the floor is concrete…good luck.

I am skeptical enough to still consider it rational to believe that our universe may indeed be a super bouncy ball that hit concrete (imperfect surface, of course, to maintain nonlinear dynamics) an unknowable amount of times before coming to rest.

For us to come along and find the ball and proclaim that our current laws of physics applied to the singularity is ridiculous (yet this is what “Kalam” arguments do−insisiting on “cause and effect” instead of giving way to quantum indeterminacy), and yet to proclaim that the quantum cosmologies hold a satisfying solution is…well…to me…aptly labeled “sophistry” in the colloquial sense of the word.

I like to think of myself as one of those guys who approaches the “elastic clause” of the Constitution with the same caution that I approach the “elastic laws” of the singularity, holding onto something tangiable for the time being, until evidence arises to convince me that my stance is outmoded, superceded, and unreasonable. Sort of writing a clause into my own scientific constitution, allowing myself the pleasure of maintaining skepticism and full rationality, with no hint of dichotomy.

[part 2]
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Technorati tags: God, Big Bang, Cosmology