Roughing Out Time

[minorwork]

I went inadvertently to a bible thumper lecture at a public library. His talk was "How science proves there is no evolution." I'l give him credit for one thing, he did not mention religion or the bible. He did not want to answer when I asked how old he thought the earth was. I asked because he made the rather odd, I thought, statement that time was supernatural in the context of evolution.

I came home and put this together.


Roughing Out Time

Time. Supernatural? Then, what is natural? The search for species intermediaries is like Zeno’s paradox. Forever a next step. A series of still photos of a baseball game taken at the rate of 1 a second will possibly never show the bat hitting the pitched ball and yet the ball seems to have changed direction. Pictures at 2 frames a second will show more. The more times we look per given unit of time gives a closer approximation to the reality. Reality does not operate exactly as our predictive models do. Predictive models enable us to approximate and thus manipulate reality.

The creationist will forever be stuck by the physical constraints of time. Insisting that his model is real, he will never be able to find the intermediate photo of the bat hitting the ball. And yet this is a natural position to take. The photos of the fossil record resolves at a much slower rate. What would we say of a daily photo of a baseball field? Once a decade? Once a century? Once a millennium? It is obvious that the photos miss the reality of the situation.

So, how fast does the human take "photos?" Irrelevant. The issue at hand is that our idea of reality is part of, but is not reality itself. When the photos are millennia apart. The creationist says " Ball game? What ball game?" Reduced to 1 photo that captures the ball on the way to the batter, says "A species has been discovered that has been in existence and can only now become extinct." Only when a sufficiently large resolution (1000 photos a second) observed stop frame will the creationist admit (hopefully) his model should be refined to that of intelligent design, proceeding to scientific explorations of mechanisms.

And so, evolution, because of the narrow bandwidth of the fossil record, is pronounced a "fairy tale" by the creationist. The proof of evolution will never be demonstrated. An infinite amount of resolution presented can not be resolved by a human whose lifespan is a century or so.

[nosuch]

Time is supernatural? How can anything be supernatural? Something supernatural would not be describable by physical laws, so even if it did exist, we would never even know. How could we? Without some way of being able to interact with it, there'd be no evidence as to its existence. Even if it contradicted the laws of physics, that would only prove that we need to alter our conception of the universe (and, thus, the laws we use to describe it). It would still be natural, and obviously subject to some laws on some level, because if it wasn't we'd have no way of describing it with logic, and thus, no way of recognizing it as an object at all. What could possibly be supernatural about it? Either I don't understand his criticism, or he is a fool. Or, possibly, both.

[minorwork]

He is a bible thumper. He maintained that to account for complexity by evolution that the evolutionists invoke time as their creator, thus since he invokes a supernatural God he can understand time in no other way.
He quoted an old analogy that enough monkeys typing would write a sonnet. Laughing, he pointed out that results of such would be monkey feces everywhere and a bunch of tore up typewriters.

I called him on attempting a straw man argument. I tried to nicely imply that he must have done so intentionally. I suggested he watch Dawkin's old video, The Blind Watchmaker, on youtube. Funny how he says he never gets to watch the suggested items I show him.

I finally admit that those of his type are being recognized earlier in my evaluations for what they present. I might as well reason with a brick.

[nosuch]

In that case, I propose that he didn't understand his case.

[minorwork]

For sure I'm not yet insane enough to admire his. I can understand the Stockholm syndrome and see him and others in such a light. A very fatalistic approach not leaving room for independence of thought. I attempt to see how I suffer and in what manner from the same. I can learn much about myself from others.

[nosuch]

And that you, me, and people like us at least try to do things like that, I think, is the critical difference.

[minorwork]

Yes I am that position. I try to keep the following quote in mind when I think others too hide bound.

Janus
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.--Bertrand Russell

I attempt a bridge of reason twixt theists and the rest. The bible thumper recognizes no language referents of reality other than biblical. But they are seeking happiness in the best way they know how as well as the drunk lying homeless in the gutter, and myself.

[nosuch]

Yeah. Interestingly, every theist I have ever pointed that out to is downright insistent that their search for happiness is somehow infallible, or at the very least, a "better" (more holy?) search than mine. What arrogance! If people understood that everyone is just doing what they think is best, if we were less willing to label even kiddy rapists and honor killers as monsters, if we were less willing to condemn people, we would all be better off. Things like this help me remember just how thankful I should be for having largely escaped such basic traps.

[minorwork]

I think these would make nice cards to hand the proselytizing thumpers that come to my door.

"O you proud Christians, wretched souls and small,
Who by the dim lights of your twisted minds
Believe you prosper even as you fall,
Can you not see that we are worms, each one
Born to become the angelic butterfly
That flies defenseless to the Judgement Throne?" (Dante, Canto 10, "Purgatorio

Who seeks for heaven alone to save his soul
May keep the path, but will not find the goal;
While he who walks in love may wander far
But God will bring him where the blesséd are."

I looked this last one up on the web a short time ago and it was written in 1895 by a minister named Henry Van Dyke as a preface to a sentimental tale called "The Fourth Wise Man." It tells the tale of another Magus who never gets to Bethlehem because he keeps stopping to help people, and in the process sells the gifts he brought in order to do good. I looked for it on Amazon and by golly Martin Sheen and Alan Arkin are in a video from 1985. Gonna' have to get it and check it out.