Tag Archives: origin

Science Area Thesis at WindowView

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Starting Fall 2014, all Window Areas have updated Overview and Thesis pages. For the Science Area the following thesis now appears with a detailed explanation:

Thesis: Looking across all scientific disciplines—including, astronomy, biology, cell biology, chemistry, evolution, genetics, geology, information theory, paleontology, and physics—the scientific evidence provides support for an intelligent coordination of events in nature. This occurs throughout the history of the universe and on earth, making possible the rapid appearance of life forms, a vast diversity and abundance of species, all to prepare the planet for human life. Life is therefore special and not by chance.

Visit the Introduction, Overview, or Thesis page to experience the full WindowView!

Director, WindowView.org

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Question: What is the Ultimate Reality

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WindowView is in a sense another way of saying “world view” except that a line of reasoning and an appeal to ‘data’ or information that is before us is indeed part of the real objective to presenting the Window. It’s YOUR window, you look, you see, you assess and in the end only you can conclude what is real.  But lets visit the vital questions in life for a moment.  If Darwin’s theory on evolution is all there is to being, then we are the result of chance and randomness in the universe. But Darwin had his doubts about evolution and the data today support good reason to doubt his theory. So, then, what is reality? What are the consequences to getting the correct data to determine who you are?

Dr. Samples offers the following list of critical factors and questions in his book “World of Difference.”

“An accurate road map supplies valid directions that profoundly guide a person’s life decisions. Therefore, a well-thought-out course, or worldview, needs to answer twelve ultimate concerns that philosophers identify as “the big questions of life”:

1. Ultimate Reality: What kind of God, if any, actually exists?

2. External Reality: Is there anything beyond the cosmos?

3. Knowledge: What can be known and how can anyone know it?

4. Origin: Where did I come from?

5. Identity: Who am I?

6. Location: Where am I?

7. Morals: How should I live?

8. Values: What should I consider of great worth?

9. Predicament: What is humanity’s fundamental problem?

10. Resolution: How can humanity’s problem be solved?

11. Past/Present: What is the meaning and direction of history?

12. Destiny: Will I survive the death of my body and, if so, in what state?

When a worldview elucidates reasonable answers to these ultimate questions, life (and death) issues become much more comprehensible and easier to get through.”

The concept of WindowView hinges on the fact that evidence from science, Scripture, changes around the globe, and a timeline sequences that follows a known chronology going forward, all this presents a convergence of driving forces.  All this provides an affirmative answer to the first questions and all the data from there on becomes easier to see. But what about these ultimate questions.  You have asked them, we all have. But have you taken time to look through the Window?

Director, WindowView.org

 

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Billions of Earth-size planets … Yes, but ….

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On the news wire for November 5:

“Milky Way may host billions of Earth-size planets – LA Times
There’s no place like home, but scientists now say that Earth-size planets orbiting sun-like stars in a so-called habitable zone are so common that there could be as many as 11 billion in the Milky Way alone.”

We have NASA colleagues who strive hard to find evidence for water on Mars or to reach into space for habitable planets. And we may find many houses with rooms and spaces fit for life in the universe … but the real question is: Why do we make the leap to say if it’s fit for life, we will find life? Let us think one step further.

Starting on planet Earth and examining every aspect of life from sophisticated research efforts we now find the ultimate dilemma. Science indicates laws and conditions ( the application of physics, chemistry, and material sciences ) is likely equal across the universe. If life starts here it could by the same means start elsewhere. That is logic used by many persons.

Okay, now the wrench to throw into the works. Human explorations of planetary science (i.e. of Earth ) and every conceivable approach to how chemicals could or can come together to create first life … all come to dead ends. Human ingenuity suggests there must be an answer because … well … because here we are alive today.

Bottom line: Scientists cannot tell you how life arouse from chemicals. So why would any other planet elsewhere be any better than this known fit for life earth? You can think about that because we want to go to the bigger problem now known to the sciences.

Life is not simply metabolism, form, reproduction, or historical records of species. Life is an innovation. A first innovation for first appearance and we will not toss out the word evolution here, because some change in life forms appears over time (from existing life).

The problem is simply life is based on information. Information in DNA and also epigenetic information that is elsewhere in living beings and not in the DNA. The point raised here is simple. No one in science has explained how the initial information arouse. Most biological, genetic and evolutionary research shows change over time, but based on existing information in life forms. Explaining new innovation that gives us new forms based on new information is lacking.

There is more to this presentation than written here. The main point is that the universe can have trillions of habitable planets, but unless chemicals can make life and information is somehow introduced to direct life’s forms and being … you can count all the planets you want to no gain.

Is this a case of skepticism? Actually, not at all. This post is simply drawing attention to the status of what science also knows as fact. And that gives cause to not being so moved by planetary discoveries, because the real question for which we desire answers concerns the source and origin of life in the first place.

Director, WindowView.org

Related Window Links:
Chemical Origins — Yes or No — What Does the Evidence Show
Time Required for Macroevolution to Occur
Living On A Privileged Planet

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Life on Mars a Non-Starter?

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The list serve delivered the following clip today:

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Rover’s findings suggest Mars’ atmosphere was lost soon after formation
The inhospitable atmosphere of Mars has been around a long time — about 4 billion years or so, according to data collected by NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover, along with studies of Martian meteorites. Scientists think that the Red Planet lost its atmosphere fairly soon after its formation. “A lot of the atmosphere of Mars might have been lost pretty rapidly,” noted Paul Mahaffy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, lead author of one of two studies published in the journal Science. Space.com (7/18)
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On the one hand, the Earth’s atmosphere has long been protected by a magnetic field that is continually generated by the movement of an inner molten core. Were the core to cool and the inner motion cease, the Earth’s protective shield would drop and the atmosphere and water on the surface would begin to be stripped away.

So why is it so hard to understand that the non-molten core of the Red Planet goes hand-in-hand with the current lifeless conditions on Mars? And yet NASA spins on hopes of exciting life-supporting data from Mars, only to report the atmosphere has long been inhospitable. While the presence of water and signs of water’s activity on the planet surface are interesting data, the lack of a favorable atmosphere is sufficient to douse the fires of hope for life on Mars.

In a recent presentation on expoplanets, we observed the optimistic assessment of NASA scientists for more tantalizing data from distant solar systems. Yet Mars, so close by, reminds us that it takes a long list of factors to favor life, factors that Earth has in its column … sufficient for life here, but a list that many hopeful prospects will find a probabilistic stretch to acquire.

Are we saying no life nowhere else? Actually, no. But the priorities for finding life elsewhere might be tempered by the unsettling reality that conditions on Earth are undergoing dramatic change. We could focus more on space-based research to focus on Earth, because that IS where we know life certainly does exist!

The irony is in the scientists who want ever more to look outward and request more funds for doing so, when humanity ever more so needs to look back in on itself and what we are doing here. No atmosphere on Mars is an inhospitability worth waiting to explore later, while the atmosphere here is heating up … and we mean HEATING up in a big way!

Director, WindowView.org

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