What about evolution?

     Probably the most provocative idea to come along in the past couple of centuries is the idea that some sort of natural (that is, random) process is at work in the world which accounts for the living things that we are surrounded with. 
     The frustrating aspect of this is the elusive nature of the process.  In spite of many years of study, no clear definition of this process exists.  Like religions everywhere, there are a large number of proponents of various views about this, but none seems to have any real credibility.
     Some of the troublesome facts that persist to confound proponents of the various theories are:

     No matter how far back one goes in the geologic record, no one has discovered any "primitive" or simpler forms of genetic material.  DNA  seems to have popped up intact at the dawn of life on earth, and, except for the codes on the DNA which produce the diversity of life we see now and historically, it is still the double helix with its staggeringly complex structure and absolutely astounding data storage capacity.

     Chlorophyl, another compound necessary for the processing of of sunlight and carbon dioxide into food and oxygen in green plants,  has also not "evolved" as far as we can tell.

     No one denies the complexity and diversity of life forms that are here now.  Also, no one can deny that this diversity did not always exist.  The farther back one goes in the geologic record, the fewer and simpler are the organisms.  The true "smoking gun" of the evolutionary theorist who intends to show that life arose through some sort of random, that is not outside-directed process, would be the mechanism by which the DNA code morphed over the past millions of years to produce all of the species that we have now.  The "mutation" theory put forward falls short of explaining this phenomenon because the number of mutated instruction sets required to produce a new species is not one or two but billions.  Much is made of the observation that man shares 95% of his genes with the higher primates.  The instruction set contained in the genetic material of man differs by billions of characters, not just a few as is claimed.  It is too much of a stretch to think that a single mutation (or even many of them) could have taken place that got all of these data correct at one time.

   The true missing link in the evolutionary theory that intends to show that some random process produced all of the creatures we now see is the primary driving force of purpose behind natural selection.  Creatures which are "struggling to survive" must first know that they are supposed to survive.  By definition, this purpose would have had  to precede  the process.  Since purpose seems to be ethereal, it does not seem to be accounted for in this version of evolutionary theory.

     We have all seen the highly touted pictures in biology textbooks showing life proceeding from the primordial slime millions of years ago culminating in the Wall Street trader.  The problem with this vastly simplified religious statement about man is that modern man did not go through any such process;  man seems to have popped up around 10,000 years ago with his vast intellectual powers intact.  In fact, a case could be made that man has lost some of his intellectual prowess since ancient man accomplished many things that we cannot duplicate today (like moving 40 ton rocks around with relative ease.)

     My question is:  What happened here?

    

What about global warming?

     I have  watched the dialogue about global warming with a great deal of skepticism.  My skepticism arises from the solutions that people have put forward to correct it.
     The "science" of global warming (and the assignment of human activity as its cause) seems to rely upon a vote by a number of atmospheric "scientists" who also have strong connections to one of the "solutions" to the problem, to wit: institute a punishing tax upon Americans.
     This short-circuiting of the investigative process to determine if there even is any global warming and that it is connected to human activity is just too easy.
      Just suppose that it is eventually proven that the world is heating up and it is definitely our fault.  It seems that the correct approach would be a concerted  effort to define the mechanism of the process and then find ways to change our methods of power generation, transportation, home heating, etc. to reduce the offending chemicals. 
      Carbon is said to be the culprit in global warming.  Taxing Americans is too provincial to be effective.  The most flagrant offenders of carbon emmissions from electric power generation are China, India, and Russia.  Any comprehensive solution to this problem should include every country and should not be via taxation but through technology.  American coal-fired power plants are squeaky clean when compared to comparable plants in these other countries. 
      It seems that we could offer to sell our heat capturing and chemical scrubber technology to these other countries so that they could clean up their emissions. 
      Much still needs to be done to develop the underlying scientific knowledge about this.  So far, what passes for "knowledge" is filtered through a suffocating ideology and has very little or no credibility.

Clear-Eyed Seeker of Wisdom and Truth

Those of us who earnestly desire to find out the truth of things are assaulted with all sorts of "facts" about everything from religion, to politics, to science and a host of other things that many times do not pass the muster of thoughtful inquiry.
   There are many questions that arise in all of these areas that beg for answers.
   I would like to see thoughtful answers that  anyone might have to some of these questions:
   The faith question:
           It seems apparent that the human problem with knowledge requires that first we must make a number of faith-based statements about our own existence.  For example, the statement that  "there is a god" and the statement that "there is no god" are exactly the same from a rational standpoint.  That is to say, no evidence can be brought to bear that proves either position.  Yet both of these camps zealously guard thir own positions to whatever extent they can.  If either group has political power, it could actually cost you you life to hold the other position.
          As a clear-eyed seeker of widom and truth, the circumstantial evidence seems to be heavily on the side of life being a very sophisticated technology which we cannot understand.  Where did it come from? 
          Consider the case of the spider which was hatched inside a box.  This spider never saw another spider and never attended seminars on web spinning.  He is further disadvantaged in having a brain the size of the point of a pin.  Furthermore, as far as we can tell, he doesn't even "know" that he is supposed to survive.  Yet he sets about to spin a web to catch a fly he has never seen.  In addition, he has two orfices in his small body, one secretes a thick non-sticky web and the other secretes a very fine very sticky web.  He spins the non sticky web and attaches it to the floor of the box with the sticky web.  He then climbs up the side of the box, hauling the non-sticky web with him, and attaches the other end to side of the box with some of the sticky web.  After repeating this process a number of times, he then proceeds to loop the sticky web across the non-sticky strands in close intervals to create the trap for fly he has never seen.
          The level of highly critical technical choices this little fellow must make to achieve this is staggering.  Humans, with all of our brain power, couldn't even replicate the web, let alone create the body that made it.
          So I ask:   What happened here?   It seems that this knowledge must exist somewhere outside the spider and is somehow downloaded when he needs it - including the "knowledge" that he must survive.