Napoleon: You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe.
Laplace: Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.
Pierre-Simon Laplace
It has been long argued that life, at the molecular level, is too complex to have simply evolved. Therefore invoking the idea that an even more complex entity is responsible for creating such life, whilst avoiding the reasoning how such an entity came too be.
This is not a healthy attitude to hold. It merely states that “I” do not understand this, but also nobody will “ever” understand this. Therefore that is “no point” in studying this since it can never be understood. This attitude would mean the end of scientific progress.
Modern Science has rolled back what previous generations believed was God’s work, with reasoning. Now life itself can be created by a computer program – at least the DNA sequencing, if not yet the donor cell used to restart life. So if God is/was only used to explain the world around us, he is diminished with every step science advances.
“…what we are, what each of us is — what you are, what I am —is approximately 100 trillion little cellular robots.That’s what we’re made of.No other ingredients at all. We’re just made of cells, about 100 trillion of them.Not a single one of those cells is conscious;not a single one of those cells knows who you are, or cares.Somehow, we have to explainhow when you put together teams, armies, battalionsof hundreds of millions of little robotic unconscious cells —not so different really from a bacterium, each one of them —the result is this. I mean, just look at it.The content — there’s color, there’s ideas, there’s memories,there’s history. And somehow all that content of consciousnessis accomplished by the busy activity of those hoards of neurons.How is that possible? Many people just think it isn’t possible at all.They think, “No, there can’t be anysort of naturalistic explanation of consciousness.”
Dan Dennett, American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist
Susan Sarandon on Gender Roles and a Person’s True Essence, following acting role in Lana and Andy Wachowski’s film Cloud Atlas.
As society evolves, Susan Sarandon says, she has noticed that strictly defined gender roles and designations have begun to dissolve. In this video, she explains why she feels this change is a good thing, and shares how certain socialization concepts can be troubling for men in particular.
I was recently watching a fascinating talk on youtube by Michio Kaku about future technology and at one point he tells the audience what he thinks is the mother of all time travel stories
“The year is 1945. A stranger emerges from the darkness carrying a baby girl that he leaves at an orphanage. Well, the nuns find this baby girl, they don’t know where this baby girl came from, so the nuns call her… Jane. So Jane grows up at the orphanage wondering, “Who is my mother? Who is my father?”
When Jane is seventeen years old, she’s a beautiful young woman and finally has her first boyfriend. A drifter comes drifting into her life, but it just wasn’t meant to be. They quarrel. She argues with her boyfriend. It’s a very sad story. First, she finds out that she’s pregnant. Her boyfriend has left her. She’s abandoned and pregnant. She’s rushed to the hospital 9 months later and she delivers a beautiful baby girl. But somehow, somebody breaks into the hospital that night, kidnaps Jane’s baby girl, and vanishes into the darkness.
Wait, it gets worse. Jane is bleeding very rapidly and death becomes a real possibility. The doctors must perform an experimental emergency operation. They have to change Jane into Jim.
Well, Jim wakes up the next day with a huge headache and he’s told the bad news. First, the boyfriend left her pregnant, somebody stole her baby, and now she’s not even Jane anymore! She’s… Jim??
So Jim grows up to become a bar room drunk. Every time someone asks, “Who are you, Jim? Where’d you come from? Who’s your mother or father?” He just didn’t know.
Finally Jim one day is once again stone drunk at the floor of the bar right after a bar fight. The bartender comes up to him and says, “Jim! Jim! Wake up! Hey, guess what? You see, I’m not really a bartender. I’m actually a time traveler. Let’s step into my machine and see who is this Jim/Jane.”
So they go back into the past. Poor Jim, he doesn’t know where he is in the past. However, he meets this beautiful seventeen year old girl and it’s love at first sight. But it just wasn’t meant to be. They quarrel. Then Jim finds out that his girlfriend is pregnant. Jim says to himself, “Holy crap. History is repeating itself! This happened to be me! Well I’m going to make sure that my baby gets the best education possible.”
That night, nine months later, Jim goes to the hospital, breaks open the window, and kidnaps his own precious baby girl. Then Jim, holding his baby girl, goes back into the time machine back, waay back into the past until it’s 1945. It’s a dark and stormy night. Jim comes in from the darkness carrying his precious baby daughter and drops her off at an orphanage.
Well, the nuns don’t know what to do with this baby girl the next day so they just decide to call her Jane. And Jane grows up wondering, “Who is my mother? Who is my father?”
Anyways, Jim finally gets it together. Well, I don’t want to be a drunk for the rest of my life. So Jim decides to join the TTC, or Time Travelers’ Corps. So Jim has many wondrous exploits in the annals of time.
Now Jim is an old man. He thinks to himself, “I’ve had a good long life. But I want to give myself one final mission. For my last mission, I’m going to go back in time, put on a wig, and impersonate a bartender. To meet a certain bar room drunk who just got into a fistfight because someone said, “Who are you Jim? Who’s your mother? Who’s your father?”
Neil deGrasse Tyson, an American astrophysicist and Director of the Hayden Planetarium, discusses how Islamic scholars contributed to the Islamic Golden Age and how over time independent reasoning lost out to modern institutionalised imitation present in the wider islamic society today.
Neil degrasse Tyson, American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator
alloflondonismyplayground# 