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It's the Astronomy Online non-Blog, or un-Blog.
Everyone has a blog now and since I am no follower of trends, I decided to merge the blog with the website. And I don't want to neglect the website in favor of posting on the blog.
These are the pages that were on the blog of old:
- Home
- Archive (Index of Pages)
- Me
- Current Trends
- Links
- Soho Live
Links:
Google Maps - Mars
Google Maps - Moon
HiRISE
HiRISE - MRO Imaging
Mac Singularity
Meade4M
Slackerpedia Galactica
Software for the Mac
Starry Night Online
Venus Maps
More Favorites:
Thank you for visiting!
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My thoughts on Intelligent Design:
There are countless discussions regarding the theory of Intelligent Design so I will not go into great detail here - but I do want to at least comment on this obvious deception by the religious right to subvert scientific data. The basis of this theory states that at its most fundamental level, life is too complicated to have evolved in such a short period of time (time to an Astronomer can be a big number indeed). Our Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and even that amount of time (if life evolved immediatly) is too short a time for evolution to do its work - according to this theory.
The fundamental flaw with this theory is the lack of evidence - so it really is a hypothesis based on interpretation of available data. Instead of providing data to support the claim, the ID (Intelligent Design) hypothesisers attack Darwin's Theory of Evolution - a theory which does have supporting data. The most simple and obvious proof of this is the ability for a virus to mutate.
While I am nowhere near qualified to prove or disprove the presence of a supreme being - which is the crux of the ID theory, I do find the thought of what happedned prior to the Big Bang very fascinating. I'll share those ideas in a later entry.
While most folks seem to get offended by the prospect of evolving from a lizard, ape or chimpanzee, I find that the act of evolution from a "lesser" life-form more of a miracle than the sudden appearence of man on Earth. I say that simply because the Earth itself is a very hazardous place - especially in its early age when impacting planetoids and meteorites were commonplace. The atmosphere had little oxygen (more CO2), volcanic ash filled the sky yet life still formed and evolved. In addition to the start of life, surving bacteria, virii and predators are also hazzards to overcome.
Regardless, life formed and evolved to point that humans now walk the Earth. That is the true miracle. I think it was Stephen Hawking who said this: "I do not want to prove or disprove the existence of God, I just want to know how He works." That is an important statement because the purpose of science is not to discuss anything of a spiritual nature, but to study our environment - to discover how things work.
To give up on the scientific method and to accept a theory of a supreme being is a violation of humanity. After all, if God made us in his image why give us the ability to ask questions about our environment or plant the desire to discover and learn - or even create?
There is nothing wrong with faith - or belief in a supreme being - so I want that made clear. But that cannot interfere with our desire to learn about the Universe - or to even discover intelligent life in the Universe. It should not interfere with our desire to learn our origins. To do so only halts the evolution of the human mind.
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