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07/31/2014

My Thoughts

Question 4: How do we know anything?

We've been thinking hard about some topics, but now it's time to ask, how do we think? Why do we have thoughts and what makes some thoughts logical and others not? Descartes is famous for his quote 'I think therefore I am.' He actually stated 'I doubt, therefore I am.' It was his doubting that distanced him from all other essence and gave him an understanding that he was not that which didn't doubt. Like a cow or fawn, a dove or tiger, they just are and exist without doubt and thought.

Man certainly has thoughts unlike any other animal. Excessive thoughts, that can lead to depression or hatred. I've never seen a depressed sparrow, maybe a sad dog when it's owner is not there but they're not writing sad country songs, expressing thoughts, about it. How are those thoughts possible. Think of a camera, unless there is a memory card or film in it, it doesn't hold any of the images that go through it's lens. Well our senses are our lenses that allow things into us and it's our memory card that lets us hold onto those images and ideas and work them and mold them and build with them or doubt them.

Why is that? What is the human memory card?

Thoughts are certainly more than the physical in that thoughts can accumulate while the body hasn't added any new food or enzymes or fluids. Those thoughts or memories can accumulate for years, well beyond the seven years the medical specialists tell us it takes for all our cells to be replaced (imagine loosing all your memories every seven years). This statement is a bit in jest as biologists believe brain cells are never replaced, which is why disease like Alzheimer's is irreversible.

Our capacity to know something isn't even equivalent person to person. Some people have a very small capacity to think while others seem to be able to dive very deep into thought. Humorously, the majority of American's believe they are smarter than all the people around them.

But what is thought and how did it start?

Secular evolutionists believe it's just an advancement in the progression of evolution through natural selection. Thinkers are more apt to live than non thinkers so thinkers have ended up with a greater and greater capacity to think as they are the survivors of the fittest. But matter doesn't explain what thought is outside of a chemical process in the brain. But without the capacity to think we wouldn't be able to build societies and cultures where people can live together in harmony or as we see live together in strife.

I must inject that our thoughts are different that a birds ability to build a nest. I have been interested in birds since I was little. I've watched a lot of birds, I've even raised hundreds of parrots as companion birds. I love birds. BUT I'll tell you never once did I see a mom or dad bird teach the babies in the clutch how to build a nest. Their knowledge seems to be part of their hardware, like specialized motherboard with a bios that boots into existence, known all they need to know. When man boots up, he's like a computer that has an operating system but there is a lot of 'room' for other activities. He has access to RAM, to hold things in memory, He has access to a large hard drive where memories can be stored long term, he has a CPU that can put things together and work simultaneously on lots of activities: like breathing, chewing gum, working on a PowerPoint project, or painting nails while driving or I saw a guy shaving while driving the other day as well as think about a problem with a relationship of a brother or sister or mother or spouse. These interconnected activities and thoughts are not hardwired like an animal.

Creationists believe thought has been put into man from God. It's part of the image of God that stands out from the rest of the animal world. It is the one thing that allows us to have a relationship with God himself, as well as other people. But our purpose is to have that relationship with God and express our love to him. God is the all knowing knower of all things. He has the standard of knowledge, love, justice and it is only because there is such a grand capacity we can be sometimes knowers of some things. The bedrock of knowledge is not in observations of the random like a blind squirrel digging for gems in the yard of happenstance, it is the fact that the source of Knowledge wants it to be found in a capacity that reveals how big he is, making it almost inconceivable, yet within grasp to allow us to say I can know some things.

Old world creationists believe there was a time that God 'breathed into' the form of man, which had evolved to his current physical form, ant that put into him the distinction of knowledge, creativity, emotion, relationships, etc. Think of that as the time God inserted Man's memory card. Young world creationists believe it was in that week of creation.


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I've been directed to a video of Ken Miller talking about evolution. Now, I don't want to disprove evolution but I would like to point out a couple of flaws in his perspective. (I will say my expertise is in worldview perspectives and as a mathematician. So my ground of doubts and fears always lies in the probability of occurrences and whether I, or any human, can really claim the claims, claimed.--sorry that sounds like a Weird Al song.)

I will comment on two things from the video. These are in depth and I'm not going to properly set them up here so I'm jumping right to my comments on the issue, please watch the video (I'll link to it in the near future).

Ken points out that there appears to be the fusion of two chromosomes in the human chromosome map compared to that of the chromosome map of the large apes. Gorilla's, Orangatanges and Chimpanzees all have 48 chromosomes, while humans have 46 chromosomes. With our current tools of observation there is evidence that humans have markers to show 2 of the chromosomes have been merged together, therefore instead of the 48 chromosomes of the apes, we now have evolved to only have 46. Ken states that he believes that God would not have created our chromosome map, in a way as to deceive us, meaning God wouldn't have gone to the trouble of creating the markers to make us think evolution occurred and these chromosomes only appear to have merged.

My current concern with Ken's the argument is:

1. The same arguments were used against Galileo. Galileo tried to prove to the world that our solar system was based on a heliocentric system and not a geocentric or a Tychonic system. The majority of human perspective at the time, in observing the solar system, was their naked eye. Galileo though had specialized tools to take the next step of observation that the authorities didn't really understand. In the same manner Ken is establishing his argument that from his observation, (which he believes has to be the pinnacle of understanding {by the way all scientists believe they are the pinnacle of understanding}) he can absolutely say, 'from My observation point at this time of history and skill, God would not deceive me in my understanding of things'. Similarly the oppontents of Galileo stated arguments just like Ken's current argument. Statements like: 'it is quite clear from our observation that the sun moves around the earth and not the other way around. God would not have created a system that would deceive us and our plain observation of his creation.' (I think it's funny that now the scientist is on the on side of the 'authorities' that are blind to their blindness.)

Really Ken, If you could accept the fact that your observation may not be the pinnacle of understanding and you're limited tools of observation, which are not much greater really than the naked eye to the people of Galileo's day, you might not be so willing to send the thinker to jail just because they might not believe 'God wouldn't appear to lie'. (Just you wait and see what technological advancements will produce in biological engineering in 200 years. It will be like going from the naked eye to the Hubble telescope.) I believe it's only because of our weak observational tools that we might misinterpret what we see, just as readily as the authorities did in Galileo's day and I believe Ken may be doing today.

2. It's pretty clear that there appears to be a merging of chromosomes in the human body. The markers of the ends and the items in the middle do appear like something has merged and the end markers are in the middle with middle markers surrounding them? Hmmm, I will admit I have no logical explanation, but neither will I stand fast and say my observation of the thing is the pinnacle of understanding. I will say from Man's current observation of microbiology I don't know why it looks deceiving. I can also say, it really does look like the sun moves across the sky. (By the way the Biblical passages that use this human perspective of the sun moving across the sky don't nullify the Bible, the writers are writing from Earth's perspective because they wrote it on earth. I'm sure you and I have used the term sunset or sunrise and yet that doesn't mean we are geocentrists and everything we know about our solar system is wrong. No, it means we are talking as people from our perspective as inhabitants of earth.)

The point I really want to make though is that we can observer chromosome merges and yes, this does happen, but what is the result. The result of our observable chromosome merges are disease, decay and problems. This is exactly how certain diseases are identified. Real life isn't Hollywood and the people with merged chromosomes don't have super powers, unfortunately they have disabilities, like Down syndrome. 'Researchers have identified more than 4,000 diseases that are caused by mutations. But having a genetic mutation that may cause a disease or condition doesn't always mean that a person will actually develop that disease or condition.'

Summary, our observation of what looks 'natural', might not be the best perspective to really describe what's going on when things look apparently to behave a way, we can understand. Therefore, based on what we do know, that chromosome merges cause diseases, maybe were not looking at this chromosome merging thing in the right perspective when considering apes and humans.

Think about it.

Love,
Dad