Hell's Creek and Other Problems with Evolution

At http://gordonfeil.blogspot.ca/2017/04/charles-vs-charles.html I discussed one of the issues I have with the theory of evolution: the complexity of life. How could the symbioses of today have gradually and incrementally happened?  When Darwin formulated his theory, knowledge of how the mechanisms and components of life work was scant compared to today’s understanding. Evolution might have made sense to me if I lived back then.

My specialty is business administration, not biology or chemistry, but I do have a brain and I do read, and I notice problems. Here is one example of what I mean.  As I understand DNA, it is a very long sequence of “letters” that contain information that is used in the development of the cells and body of which it is a part, and this information becomes instrumental in determining the development and functioning of those cells and body.  This lengthy sequence is fairly one dimensional on the face of it.  That is, if that’s all that happens. But apparently a letter in one part can affect the operation of a non-adjacent letter located somewhere else in the strand, so that the interaction of the two has consequences beyond those of each individual letter. This is just the beginning. There is a third dimension also: DNA doesn’t lie as a long straight strand. It bunches into what we might call a ball, and wherever a portion of the strand is close enough to another portion, these portions modify the effects of each other, with new effects that wouldn’t exist without those proximities.  Then comes the fourth dimension. Sometimes, this ball will shift and portions will twist and open up and then come together again so that letters are now affecting other letters, and this action happens when a problem has arisen and the body needs a solution to it that can be guided by DNA.  After the problem has resolved, the ball repositions into something like it was beforehand.  Frankly, this all speaks to me of design…..of INTENTION. Anything else stretches my credibility.

Another problem I have with evolution is that is takes time that I don’t see manifested in geological strata. How often I have seen canyons in which layers of sediment deposits lie one on the other. If they were laid down over the hundreds of millions of years geologists claim, I would expect to see two things that I do not see. First, I would expect to see signs of erosion of each layer since it would have been exposed to the elements before the new layer was deposited. I don’t see that.  Further, I notice that there are waves in the strata (they are not totally flat) and that the angle of the “surface” of each wave relative to the horizontal is consistent with the angles of sand waves under water (< 25 degrees) rather than sand waves on land (> 35 degrees). It appears to me that the huge layers of sediment that we call the geological column were laid down very quickly by hydraulic action. Not in millions of years, but maybe in minutes. 

Further, we get anomalies like soft tissue of dinosaurs being found, such as the non-unique instance of the Triceratops tissue found at Hell Creek in Montana. I’m talking about tissue that can be stretched and bent, not fossilized material. There is no means by which such tissue could survive 65 million years.

Unquestionably, evolution happens in the sense of a species developing characteristics and abilities. Micro-evolution. We see it demonstrated in many species. To me this attests to a design that envisioned various problems that could arise and included potential solutions that them.

I am just scratching the surface of the problems with evolution. I think people need to think more. Question more. Knowledge is subject to fads.

Familial Famine

Family is a great thing. I mean having one and being part of it. With the birth rate as low as it is in many Western democracies, millions of people don't have siblings. It is estimated, for example, that in Italy by 2050 two-thirds of the people will have no brothers and no sisters, and since neither of their parents will have had brothers or sisters, they will have no cousins nor uncles nor aunts either. That changes the dynamic of social interaction. It encourages a new context for people's dealings with each other. I don't know all the ramifications of this situation but I am under the impression that a lot of them are not healthy. 

It appears to me that prior to the twentieth century, conversation was a highly developed art, serving as it did as entertainment. Intellects and wit were sharp, and repartee was a pastime. The twentieth century brought a wide variety of entertainments, but they were often shared with family. Social media has now transported people into virtual worlds through which these people can be distracted from the vacuum of ordinary life and immersed in a reality of their own liking. A substitution for family interaction.

By its nature, such a new world can be shut down and turned off like a light switch when a person wants free of it.  Not so easily done with a family. Within a family a person needs to face problems and solve them rather than running away from them. This builds character and broadens personality. 

Some Practical Consequences of Living Forever

The Moody Blues, on their superb To Our Children’s Children’s Children album, have a 40 second track called I Never Thought I’d Live to Be a Million. Perhaps musically it is the least significant track on the album, but the title raises issues.  Now that our race is seriously discussing the transfer of human consciousness into computers or into artificial bodies, it seems to me that these issues are worthwhile pondering.

How much of human personality arises from our bodies and the bio-chemical processes within them? A lot, methinks; otherwise, drugs would have little effect on our moods and motivations. One of the issues surely has to be psychological. Would we even feel and behave like humans if we resided within a practically immortal coil?  What would we feel towards humans who did not elect that path? Would we see them as our brothers?  Or, would they seem as another species to us.  Perhaps they would be pets? Or perhaps we would view them as predators? 

If you are going to live inside a computer, who will control the switch? What steps would you take to secure power intake and preservation of your memory files in the event of a reboot or power outage? Would you feel fear over the risks, or would you even have the capacity to feel fear?

Would you become a procrastinator?  I probably would.  Well, I already am (been meaning to write this post for several days now), but if I was immortal, I think I would be a BIG procrastinator. Why bother doing now what can be done a million years from now?

How would I treat the environment if I was in an indestructible body or a computer?  Would I care about pollution? What would it matter to me if the air was a destructive of lungs and if the water could digest stomach acids? If I really loved nature, I could inhabit a virtual world of gardens and wilderness. What would abandoning being grounded with the earth do to me in that circumstance?

I suspect that an immortality that is currently envisioned by those predicting the Singularity would be the creation of new persons and the destruction of those who think they are gaining that immortality. In short, we would no longer be us.

Ouch!

We can easily lose sight of the benefits of modern civilization. In the mid-1930s there was developed a product about which we don’t think twice ---- splinter-free toilet paper.  No wonder the Sears catalogue and various magazines served the purpose for so very long.