The Fact of Evolution

I had just woken up from my early mid-evening beauty sleep and since I didn't have anything better to do but to watch the 5 episodes of Dexter I had downloaded all throughout last week, I thought I would engage dad (the only unsuspecting victim in the nearby proximity) in a little father-son debate. The subject being Evolution, I asked him what he thought it is. Just turning 50, Dad never studied the kind of science kids today are subjected to and I was pleasantly surprised to hear him reply "some kind of change brought about by nature?".

I explained to him that Evolution is the process by which organisms (every living thing) changes, for the better or worse, in an attempt to cope with its changing Environment. I took him to the Savannahs of Africa, where a lioness (This species have a strange social hierarchy. The more agile females does most of the hunting while the alpha male defends the pride's territories. A task coupled with his brute strength, for which he demands the Lion's Share) uses her fur color of orange to blend in with the surrounding grass (camouflage). I asked him what would happen if the lions' environment changed to a different color and he promptly replied that the lion's much more agile prey, the gazelle or the antelope would take off before she got close enough to pounce or pursue it. As a result, the lions would go hungry and eventually fade away from the face of the Earth (Extinction). But this doesn't happen, not always. Something triggers a series of changes in the species which allows them to cope with their surrounding changes, to adapt. In a fictional ecology, the lion's coat simply changes color, once again affording the mighty beast of its stealth, on which it is entirely dependant on for the very sake of survival. Dad contemplated all this for a while, and agreed that its a very likely possibility. I further explained to him that the adaptive measures the species took were built-in by nature and that they didn't necessarily have to be good or progressive. Then I explained the reason why I personally supported the theory. Morphological evidence (fossil records of creatures detailing descent from the Cambrian period more than 500-million years ago) and molecular evidence (DNA comparisons of organic life showing similarity). I also explained that most eukaryotic organisms take hundreds of thousands of years to develop a single feature, while simpler creatures such as viruses evolve rapidly, as shown by HIVs resistance to medication. (The reason why we haven't found a cure).

Evolution explains that all life on earth descended from a common ancestral being (common descent) and this is where the theory's non-conformity with religious ideologies begin. They are chiefly two sources of controversy. Some people think that Evolution limit the actions of an omnipotent God on His creation. Professor Frink when asked about his professional views on the matter, responds:

"Of course not [agreeing that God exists]. It just says that God is an impotent nothing from nowhere with less power than the Under Secretary of Agriculture, who has very little power in our system".

Dad was quick to point this out too. I told him that I did not believe that the lack of a divine intervention on each and everything that He created suggests that either He is non-existent or having power less than the under secretary Frink mentioned. Why does people find it so hard to believe God is unable, even with his omnipotence, to create a cosmos that is self-sustaining? Create life that can change with its surrounding environment? I told dad that is one of the most important reasons why I believe in His existence. The second reason why creationists dispel evolution is where it places us humans, as animals, sharing common ancestry with all other animals. Dad contested this for a while, but I told him that he was just speaking out of his human pride instilled by religion. Just because we walk upright and build weapons of mass destruction does not mean we are God's gift to the cosmos, and nor does it mean our creation is anything special. We have evolved too, probably from a less intelligent creature, and we have vestigial remains to prove it; the vermiform appendix and wisdom teeth to name some. To put it in the words of Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould:

"Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."

Still undefeated dad quoted the Koran (sorry, I like this anglicization better than the apostrophe-ridden conventional spelling) attesting God's creation of Adam from dust. I simply suggested that scholars may have misinterpreted the verse (Quite possible the way I see it, after all the book was written by the Almighty Himself. We can't expect it to be anything shallow). All life on earth has been characterised as carbon-lifeforms, which suggests that not just humans, but all life on earth was created using Carbon (a major constituent of soil, which makes up dust). Well, needless to say, dad swallowed this up and now believes Evolution is valid, that is until something else comes along and disproves it.

Note: I just read that evolution does not necessarily have to be progressive. Natural selection may favour less complex features if this adaptation increases the chance of survival; devolution.

Holy Human Misery

For as long as I remember, I have harboured an inexplicably deep resentment towards organized religion. My dislike was not as strong as it is now, not in the beginning. I use to pray five times a day and read from the good book at least once every week (I don't do neither of that now, not because I think they are meaningless occupation of one's valuable time, but because I am just too lazy to worry about the hellfire which is to greet me in the afterlife, as I am told by the likes of my grandmother). I suppose back then, I just found too restrictive, dictating the simple joys of life such as indulgence in music (a brother of a friend, who is a bearded mullah, denounces all form of art, including film and music. The freak won't even allow his infant to be photographed or play with soft toys or kids or even go to preschool! My friend reports that he also ripped some Britney Spears' posters off his wall - for which I am secretly thankful).

Anyway, a few months ago a friend of mine, whom I've previously described as a slimy bastard, gave me a documentary called "The Root of All Evil?", a Channel 4 (England) documentary by Richard Dawkins. I found the two part episode simply enlightening. Not because it strongly vilified organized religion, but because it illustrated, in great detail, the flaws that religion has picked up over the millennia of human history.

Now I don't support abolishing religion like some of you would, I am sure. But I want it to function the way it was originally intended by the Creator. Ever heard this lyrics?
"You gave me life
Now show me how to live" - Audioslave
That's the original intention. As a divine guidance, probably because we humans are too damn stupid to function as proper beings alone, and eventually fall into despair because our thoughts are always somehow mingled with our inevitable mortality. (According to anthropologists, this is how primitive pagan religions surfaced - out of our collective paranoia). Needless to say, religion, like their accompanying holy scriptures, has fallen into the intended dirty hands of Man, who has crafted it to benefit his own needs over time. Dominance, through any means possible; politics, wealth and even warfare. No price is too great to extend our own dominion, to inflict our faith even on those who reject it. Welcome to Organized religion.

The following animation from MapsofWar.com depicts the rise and expansion of all modern faiths. After viewing it, I realized that the ancient world remained in relative tranquility, even with a handful of different faiths. (Most are obviously not shown here). Only in the last two millennia did religious conflicts arise, which I imagine must have lead to a lot of human suffering. Human Suffering. Just two words to most of us. Its hard to grasp a full understanding of this concept unless you are starving for three days because of some religious war or just had both your parents beheaded right in front of you by a heartless crusader. If you do understand it, you would share my contempt too. All in the name of God, right?

Divine Rump

Its human nature to venerate a divine entity (a divinity) one way or another. This has probably been true for every civilization that graced the Earth. I come from a predominantly Moslem country and I've noticed that most of us venerate God (the One God) to impossible limits. Questions about His nature, will or even existence are generally frowned upon and if you are not careful, you might even wind up being either persecuted or labelled an apostate/heretic (the penalty for the latter is death according to the scripture, I am told). I am sure a lot of people suppress questions pertaining to Him, as blind faith seems to be our answer to every religious affair we ever bothered to deal with.

By writing about such matters I don't beg to differ, but I don't believe that certain questions (sensitive and controversial they may be) should be conveniently swept under the rug. I am told we cannot contemplate certain things that I've discussed or questioned about, but this is a ridiculous notion. Brian Greene (in his PBS TV Show The Elegant Universe) demonstrates the futility of explaining Theoretical Physics to a dog. The dog didn't understand a single character he was writing on the chalkboard, simply because its primitive brain didn't know what the character resembled, which is probably because it was incapable of understanding the related symbology. We are different, not only do we understand quantum and theoretical physics, but we CAN also understand a lot about God. Things we cannot understand, shouldn't, as I believe, even cross our minds just like that dog doesn't wonder about the existence of the Lambda or the Delta. In case the dog does in deed wonder about those things, err... I'll stop asking questions as soon as anyone proves it.

Well, now that we have that behind us, I can finally get to the real reason behind posting today. We were taught in some ancient grade school (religion) class that God, in His infinite impeccability, does not have any embodiment (or character) that reminisces with anything in creation. We were also told that defining him with such mortal characteristics is a grave sin. Now I haven't asked a scholar on the validity of such claims but I am pretty sure that this is the universal islamic belief, since we aren't allowed to graphically depicts Him (squiggly lines of His name is OK though - see Arabic Calligraphy). Now I don't believe religious stuff that contradicts the other stuff (unlike poor Ned) so I am out to prove that God indeed does have a body, one that is akin to a quadruped (not limiting it to just humans) and my assumptions are based on religious dogmas (not subjecting their veracity) that I have been taught over the years.

On the day of Judgment, humanity in its entirey would be assembled on the judgment grounds and while they are awaiting their verdict (eternal bliss or damnation) they are subjected to the immense heat of a sun which is placed strategically over their heads, barely making contact. (Note that the surface temperature of our sun, Sol, is around 6,000 °C, and it isn't even a gass giant, so God would have to modify our skin to resist melting away -- in hindsight, kinda meaningless huh?). Those who were pious throughout their lives would be assembled closer to the divine throne, which would shade them from the blistering sun just a few inches away from the exposed heads(?). Now the contradictions inherent to this prediction of ultimate human fate aside, we are told that God has a throne. If He has to have a throne, its natural that we assume He sits on it. By doing that, we also have to assume He has a posterior. To further add more detail to this, the prophet Muhammad accounts sitting right next to God during his ascension into Heaven while he was still alive. So there it is, God does in deed have features similar to that of creation, only in its most immaculate form. (I can dig that). That is unless we take the Omnipotent Paradox into account; that He can do things which limits his own omnipotence (the ability to do anything).

Now let me make it perfectly clear... I don't have anything against the Almighty, and my most fundemental belief is that He exists, and he retains ultimate power (omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience) over existence and beyond. I just have a lot of qualms with religion (though I believe its the only one that is anywhere near the real deal) and these silly arguments arise from my deepest desire to resolve them. :)

(Graphic depiction is that of the Christian God. They are all different from one another right? Right?!)

Surreal Mortality

Some of my most horrific experiences were from my childhood nightmares. Just last night I dreamt that I was in my very own sitting room around 11:30 (the time when I usually go to sleep during weekdays). I sensed something wrong and promptly got up to lock the door and to go upstairs (in this case, my safe haven). I had just turned after locking it when I felt a breeze and was horrified to know that the door had mysteriously flung itself back open. Unlike what a rational person would do in such situations, I went back to get the door when I suddenly felt what I call "virtual death". Its kind of hard to explain but my best attempt would be "an implosion of all thought and consciousness" followed by a blackout which makes me feel like I am fading away into oblivion. (Think real death would be a bit like that huh?) Then I woke up. Obviously, this is not the first time I felt such a thing. Lately, dreaming has taken a weird turn for me. When I was younger, it was quite bleak and monotonous with nothing interesting and the occasional nightmares involving my little brother's head turning into a pumpkin, subsequently exploding in my face (I actually dreamt that once).

A few months ago, I had even felt what the experts call "lucid dreaming". Its a kind of dream in which you are aware that you are sleeping and I experienced it several times. I contemplated the absurdity of what was happening and just realized that I must be dreaming, waking up to find myself doing just that. Death has become a prominent occurrence as well. One night I dreamt that huge waves were travelling ominously towards an unknown destinations, then suddenly waking up. The next thing I knew was a huge wave crashing onto me from nowhere followed by err... the surreal death I've been talking about earlier. Then I wake up again to find myself abed, this time in the real world, where I am furiously typing away to craft this blog. For this reason, sometimes when I wake up (into the real world) in a state of denial, wondering if what I was feeling is real for a little while. Of course, I come to my senses soon after, since real life has a heck of a lot more detail than slumberland and you can manipulate your thoughts in anyway you deem fit. (Try telling that to yourself immediately after you wake up though, the grogginess just won't let you think rationally for a few seconds at the least). And the worst part of having these particularly dreadful episodes is, me being the wimp that I am, feeling hesitant to get out of bed for a while, even after regaining full consciousness. Hehe. Lame huh? Yeah, I keep telling myself that.

I have always been fascinated about the origins of dreaming. I read somewhere (quite a while ago) that dreams are the product of the subconscious accessing our endless archives of audio, visual and haptic data (in a recent article I read, this data is not fact, merely experiences stored as electrical impulses) subsequently pushing some of them into our conscious mind, which is resting during this stage. The poor conscious mind tries to compile this influx of data into something sensible and voila, dreams are formed and experienced. I am not sure where I read this from, and I may be right (Freud, anyone?) but it certainly seems plausible to my own sensibility. Err... just for the record, I don't believe dreams have any significant spiritual value, so interpreting them is just a stupid waste of time.

Speaking of sleep, I am sure you've all heard about alien abduction. On some TV show, the scientists simply ruled the instances described as cases of sleep paralysis, as a hallucination of waking up abruptly in a particular stage of sleep. One night I dreamt that I had woken up, quite suddenly, to find myself completely paralyzed. I wasn't in the state for long but every detail of my room was recreated perfectly including the level of illumination and the weather condition outside my window (light drizzle). Needless to say, I was terrified (paranoia setting in, I suppose). Moments later I "woke up", with all my motor functions fully restored. I initially thought this was a dream but later realized that it was just simple ol' sleep paralysis, probably induced by my supine sleeping position.

I guess I have a lot of trouble with dreaming, but nothing compared to the subject matter of this movie (artfully portrayed in the poster above). Sigh, I just long for undisturbed sleep, or if it is absolutely necessary, to include a harem full of beautiful ladies who are willing to do all my bidding, including (but not limited to) an on-demand appendectomy.

Yet another glorious weekend is upon us. I am going to watch... FUCK THIS. Maintaining a blog like this is pretty lame... I am outta here.

Sunday Blues

Its yet another boring Sunday morning. I had to practically drag my lazy ass out of bed to get into the shower. Like most red-blooded creatures, I too hate Sundays (equivalent to Mondays in the West of us). Weekends, oh sweet weekends, why can't you be eternal, like the concept of God?!?

At least I have a bit of good news to cheer myself up. CBNSat has gone live, after a long court battle to re-commence transmission. I have been following up on the issue for a long time and was quite surprised to know how dull and corrupt foreign governments are... not very different from us. Anyway, like I was saying its a good thing. Now maybe our digital Cable operator (B-Net) will no longer have any excuses to add more channels. The head marketing idiot there promised me HBO almost 3 months ago and as you can guess, he hasn't delivered squat. Yeah, I know we already get HBO on some other cable platforms, but this guy promised me a different feed... the long sought after Southeast Asian one, namely HBO Singapore. Why this particular feed, you may be inquisitive enough to ask? 'Cos the current HBO India we recieve is ridden with toothpaste and sanitary napkin commercials which really does not go with the 'premium channel' branding distributors are claiming it to be. They have no idea what premium is sadly. Or they are making a total dumb ass out of local consumers.

Outsmarting a slimy bastard

Since I originally intended this blog to be private, I asked a certain "friend" to take it off his site, but he conditioned its removal to something totally unacceptable. So I decided to stop blogging, but then I realized that these blogs have a feed or something which ideally disabled if desired. I just did turn off the feed from the blog settings but am not sure if it would work, so I have my fingers crossed. Err... don't know how I am gonna be able to push the publish button with that, but here goes nothing.

A New Outlook on Creation Itself

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine told me he had this amazing 13-episode Television series from the 70s called Cosmos by a guy called Carl Sagan, and that he couldn't get over the stuff that he had learned from it. Me, being an amateur astronomer wannabe, was instantly hooked and I immediately asked him for it. When I did get it, my hard disk was busted because the delivery boy had unwillingly given it a good rattle as he made it ride the carry basket on his bicycle. My hard disk 2005 November - 2006 October. It was a few weeks later when I finally persuaded my friend to make some time out of his 'busy' schedule and re-copy the stuff into another hard disk, but even then fate wasn't ready to allow me to watch it. The first two episodes had mysteriously gone corrupt and wasn't working. I was pretty pissed off but nowhere close to giving up. Alas, it was just a week ago I got all the episodes and was ready to start watching it. My friend warned me... that the series was going to change the way that I look at things, and by gosh, he was fucking right.

First, my perspective on the Milky Way, our home galaxy as Sagan puts it. I don't know exactly what, maybe it was my sixth grade education but I had always limited our galaxy to the sun (sol), the nine planets (now its 8 planets with 3 dwarf planets, the IAU, the reguratory body for astronomical nomenclature has recently classified Pluto, Ceris and Eris as Dwarf planets, as they are too small to be defined planets), and the galactic stuff including asteroid belts etc, as the confines of the galaxy. I tried to ask a few friends (ex-classmates) and was surprised to find out that they shared a similar notion on it. Boy, were we wrong. What I had mistakenly thought was the galaxy turns out to be nothing more than what astronomers call "solar system" which is at the end of one of the spiral arms of our galaxy which is fucking enormous. Get this... light takes 30,000 years to traverse it. How many stars does the Milky Way contain? Well, try 400-billion! And there are 100-million galaxies out there. Astronomical right?

After getting a real sense of how large the universe is, I began to really contemplate the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, or life for that matter. Up until now I have always been a bit skeptical but now I am not so sure. Especially when I take the Drake equation into consideration. According to the equation, there should be atleast a billion planets out there which can sustain, that is until the equation deals with the last variable. The ability of a civilization to sustain its life despite its technological advances. After discussing this with a friend, Horny, he was quick to point out that we deduced this idea based on our own inherently violent human nature to expand our domain and conquer everyting. He is right, alien civilizations may well be beyond that, and may acquire universal respect for all life, especially their own. Anyhow, the Drake equation reduces the number of possible civilizations to just 6 in our galaxy, and if that is placed randomly across the universe, we would have a living planet about 200 light years away from Earth. Then lets consider the Fermi paradox for a while, just to look at both sides of a possibility. The Fermi paradox argues that if the universe is so large (which it is) and if there should be so many galaxies with a handfull of viable planets, how come we've never come to contact with them or vice versa? Its a good question, but skeptics of this paradox counter argues a few possibilies. The 6 theoretical planets supporting life were allocated randomly across our galaxy. This doesn't mean they are actually dispersed this way, the nearest planet (or a cluster of planets) may well be over the other end of the galaxy, which puts a distance of 30,000 light years between us. Alien civilizations may still not be advanced enough to reach us, or perhaps we are the first advanced civilizations, points out Sagan, or maybe they aren't just interested. All possibilities, right?

For as long as I remember, I have always wanted to be an interstellar explorer but when I started learning about science I began to realize how impossibly difficult that really is for humanity as a whole. The closest star is Alpha Centauri, which is 85 light years away from Earth. Thats an enormous distance that we can never traverse with our current speeds unless we have ships large enough to carry an entire civilization and even then it would take hundreds, if not millions of years. So the only option turns out to be travel at near light speeds. Why near light speeds? Einstein's theory of special (or general) relativity which limits any speed that we may ever come up with to just 99.99% of the light of speed (around 300,000 km per second). I was surprised to learn from the show that when an object nears the speed of light, both time and space tends to bend around the object. Of course, I knew this from various science classes in high school but I never thought the implication of that could be so literal. That time and space does indeed bend literally (not figuratively) around an object when it reaches light speed. Sagan demonstrated the space-bending effect with a bicycle ride sequence but the update at the end of the episode was much clearer with the warping 3D grid effect. And the other, much more significant surprise was how time bends... or more like slows down when you reach those speeds. Not only mechanical, but physical too meaning that if you were travelling at or near the speed of light, not only would your watch be ticking slower but you would be aging slower too! Sagan speculated that we would be able to reach near light speeds in about a thousand years when we perfect nuclear fusion reactors and build ships large (kilometers in width) enough to have these gigantic funnel like apparatuses to harvest interstellar hydrogen as fuel while its travelling. Even more amazing is his guesswork stating that we would be able to travel to the end of the known universe in less than 50 years on such a futuristic space ship. That is 50 years inside a ship travelling near the speed of light. In real time, this would amount to about 10 billion years and the only problem arises. What the heck would these future astronauts return to? The sun is going to go out in 5 billion years from today and it would surely wipe out all life on Earth if not swallow the innermost 4 planets. Seems like all those fascinating tales of interstellar travel to the confines of the universe would die out with those brave space travellers. That is unless we find a wormhole or something, which are considered (theorized) to link distant corners of the universe somehow. I haven't read up on it yet, but intend to do so shortly, but I can understand that if this possible, we might also be able to travel back and forth in time. Another fascinating idea...

All in all, the show was a real eye-opener. My perspective on all of creation has been altered, drastically I might add but I am grateful for that. I thank Dr. Sagan for making such a colossal show and all his efforts in popularizing science in the late seventies and early eighties. If not for people like him, we would remain to be ignorants of how wonderful the universe truly is.

An Ideally Elusive Blog

Not a lot of people know about this blog, and even the ones who know, would've probably forgotten all about it by now. And you know what? I am perfectly comfortable with that... that my blog, my very first blog has fallen into the vast unknowns of oblivion. To be perfectly honest about it, I myself had forgotten that this existed for a very long time, until a few nights ago when I thought that it would be a cool idea to note down my 'personal' ideas, thoughts, notions, criticisms on stuff that I deem important. This is gonna help me to remind myself of those things I was obsessed with, albeit momentarily, in my bleak and seemingly endless life. Now I must think about what to write ... for now. I have lived in this miserable heck-hole of a planet called Earth for more than 20 years now and I've never had a single moment that I would like to cherish for more than 20 seconds... and since I am not the exact outgoing type, I don't have a lot to write about with regard to adventure either. So its just going to have to be stuff that I see and read, about this miserable world that I share with six billion other idiots.

Wait... I think I discounted the remote possibility that someone else (with bloodshot eyes) migh've stumbled upon this idiocy. Well, in defense of my sanity, all I can say is that "you are fucking stupid for reading shit shit, you stupid fucking moron. I hope you fucking choke on your own dick and die". Yeah, thats right. This blog is not intended for minors or anybody who does not like the F word, or the S word or the fucking A-word. Hehe.

Nah, I am just kidding. I don't swear much. And when I do, that is only with close friends and in quarrels with God. Yeah, yeah... I know, He doesn't argues back, partly because He never answers questions or prayers. But you know... my screw is a bit lose so what?

A lot of rant for my 'first' entry but like you already guessed, nothing remotely substantial. Damn, this blogger-shit doesn't automatically check for spelling. In a way its a good thing to be able to find spelling mistakes and typical typos in one's writings. It gives a human character to it. After all, humans are born flawed. Some of us are just more flawed than the rest of us.

Well, its really time to end my little verbal diarrhea streak, girls and boys (the imaginary type). So goodbye and good luck and try not to fuck up your lives. Peace Out!

[Note: Take a look at Laeticia Casta, my favorite French model/chick. She is really hot on the body department but when she smiles... err ... she kinda looks like the Sea Hag. Anyway, I am just posting her because I've never posted a picture before.]