Dr David, Editor / Publisher

I am a heretic. Show me an orthodoxy and I will rebel.

"It is worth recalling the wisdom of Robert G Ingersoll, the 19th-century American political orator, Civil War veteran and, in his words, ‘American infidel’. He argued that progress is impossible without heresy, without the freedom to blaspheme against religion and to question political power and moral orthodoxy. 'Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual New World, the unknown sea, toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress. Heresy extends the hospitalities of the brain to a new thought. Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy, a coffin.'" - Brendan O'Neill, sp!ked

The favorite orthodoxies of today's intelligentsia are scientific materialism (the denial of God) and the hard left politics that has taken over the Democratic Party and is alienating centrists.

Darwinism

It didn't start out that way, but Darwinian Evolution has been used to support a spiritless universe; just a bunch of mindless billiard balls bumping into each other.

You wouldn't know it from the popular press, but Darwinian Evolution has a lot of problems, major problems. These are openly discussed in scientific journals, but withheld from the public. Darwinism is taught in schools as if everything were settled. Disavowing belief in Darwinism is presented as a type of apostasy or imbecility.

One of these problems has to do with engineering. In contrast to Darwin's time, today we appreciate the centrality of information in biology, the importance of information when it comes to building animals. The DNA is code, code that functions very similarly to the code of the computer upon which you are reading this.

Imagine making a random change to the code of your computer's operating system; going in and willy-nilly changing a bit of the software. Would your computer work better or worse?

Darwinian Evolution is based on certain random genetic mutations conferring a benefit on individuals in a species. But engineers doubt the creative efficacy of random mutation as a way of advancing DNA code. Random change cannot generate whole new stretches of functional computer or genetic code. It does the opposite. It degrade the system. Random change causes your computer to crash and, during the developmental phase, is fatal to biological organisms.

Biological systems are vastly more complex than Darwin ever suspected. David Berlinksi, in his Deniable Darwin brings up the argument of 18th century theologian William Paley, who said "If you see a watch, you know there was a watchmaker." David Berlinski writes, "It is worth remarking, it is simply a fact, that this old-fashioned argument is entirely compelling. We never attribute the existence of a complex artifact to chance."

Commenting further in an interview:

"There is a level of skepticism that I think becomes self-defeating. If someone says, looking at a watch, 'I don't know, [maybe] sand mixed with water [and the] action of the waves [created it]?', we all understand right away without the need for argument, that's not plausible.

"I think any discussion of Darwin and biology has to begin with the acknowledgment that you have very powerful intuitions, which have not in any way been overturned by biological research, that the plain facts right in front of us suggest a level of complexity.... that we find very difficult to attribute to the kind of processes that we see explained in Darwin.

"Even Richard Dawkins says the same thing, and every biologist following Richard Dawkins says the same thing: living creatures give the appearance of design. Francis Crick says the same thing; 'Oh, yeah that's true, but we have to remember, they are not really designed.' Why do we have to remember that? Maybe that's the truth. That truth, that possibility is not acknowledged."

"If you see a turtle on a fence post you know it didn't get there by itself."
- Bill Clinton

The Big Bang

When the Big Bang happened it was not uniform. It did not throw out equal amounts of matter in all directions. It did not eject that matter with equal force.

If the Big Bang had been uniform, equally dispersing matter into the universe, then you would not be reading this. There would be no you, no this, no galaxies, no stars, no anything, just atoms of helium. the simplest element. The Big Bang was not simple, it was a very, very, very complex affair.

In order for galaxies to begin, matter had to clump together after the Big Bang. It had to be in the same neighborhood so that it could condense into stars and grand aggregations of stars, galaxies. (Stars are the nuclear furnaces that fuse helium, creating from it all the other elements.)

In order for matter to wind up clumped together after the Big Bang, conditions had to be just right before the Big Bang. All the matter and all the energy had to be perfectly positioned, exquisitely fine-tuned, before it all exploded out.

A little more energy or matter here, a little less there and you don't get a slightly different universe, you get nothing, nothing that will organize, a universe of only helium.

Imagine a billiard table with balls arranged on it so that the cue ball will contact and cause contacts between the balls so that all of the balls will drop in the pockets, all on one stroke. Now imagine that table the size of the universe with a near infinity of balls.

How perfectly positioned does it all have to have been? How precise? How fined-tuned was the Big Bang? It would need to be precise to the 10 to the tenth power to the 123rd decimal place.

What is 10 to the 10 to the 123rd?

10 to 10 to the 2nd = 10 to the (10 to the 2nd or 1 with 100 zeros) power
10 to 10 to the 3rd = 10 to the (10 to the 3rd or 1 with 1000 zeros) power
10 to 10 to the 4th = 10 to the (10 to the 4th or 1 with 10000 zeros) power
10 to 10 to the 123rd = 1 with enough zeros to fill the universe after it

Certain probabilities, while not entirely zero, are mathematical impossible. It is impossible that such exquisite fine-tuning happened randomly. It had to have been designed.*

The Golden Rule

People who believe in God have happier lives and give more to others, including more charitable contributions. Believeing that there is a moral order makes for a better world, your own personal world and the world at large. Accosted by a mocker, who asked to be taught the whole Torah while the rabbi stood on one foot, Rabbi Hillel replied, "What is hateful unto you, do not do onto others. The rest is commentary. Go learn."

I am not surprised that Donald Trump is rude and boorish. I am surprised when, as at the last Fabrica Art Walk, I hear well-dressed, well-educated, well-cultured people vilifying Donald Trump in vulgar language, wishing him dead. I have never wished anyone dead, certainly not publicly.

President Obama, in his kowtowing to Iran, failed to enforce a no-fly zone in Syria that, I believe, would have saved the lives of 10s of thousands and prevented the displacement of 100s of thousands of Syrians. I don't think Trump has done anything that bad. Believing that Trump is the problem, is the problem.

There is an interesting UFO documentary on Netflix. Dozens of high-ranking government officials from various countries all go on record, stating that UFOs are real. The conspiracy theorists believe that we are being denied extraterrestrial technologies that would make the world a much better place. I don't know. But I do believe that teaching people that there is no God is making the world a worse place and that nothing is lost from being nicer to each other.

I know there are counter-arguments to my political and spiritual inclinations. I just think that all dogmas in politics and spirituality are secondary to the way we treat those with whom we disagree. We arrive at the best politics and the truest spirituality by following the Golden Rule.

*The Multiverse, the idea that there are a near infinity of other, entirely separate universes where there is nothing but helium and that we just happen to be in the lucky universe, was invented to deal with these impossible odds. The thing is, in order for one failed universe (or a near infinity of failed universes) to increase the probability of the success of our universe, all universes must have originated from a common universe generating function. The problem with that is that that common universe generating function could itself not have occurred randomly. Once you posit a common universe generating function, you are back to 10 to the tenth power to the 123rd degree of precision needed to generate it.

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