Thinkin'

I've got an excess of downtime. Since coming back from my visa run and getting set up at my new place, the main appointments I have had have been going away parties, meetings with co-workers and such. I've had to set up the new computer so that I can download materials for future jobs, (not to mention movies for watching right now), and I've had to go a few places to get items for my room, meet people, tie up loose ends at Wall Street, etc. Don't underestimate the complications that can arise every time a person has to go somewhere in Jakarta. I went to pick up my final paycheck the other day. It took two hours to get to Wall Street by cab and two hours to get home. Missed a student's birthday party because of it. Not to mention I was paid by check. I can't cash a check without a bank account. I can't get a bank account without a proper work visa, (KITAS), I can't get a KITAS from Wall Street. So luckily Tegu, the money man at WSE Pondok Indah, cashed my check for me.

But I have had more than the usual amount of time to myself so I have started catching up on movies I missed. Downloaded the Wolf of Wall Street, Dallas Buyers Club, American Hustle and a few episodes of a few TV shows. It's nice to have a small computer so I can just watch while I'm in my bed.

Also, as planned, I have been able to study the language here in my downtime. My goal is to use this time MOSTly for that. But it hasn't materialized yet, though I have done some studying. If I had classes I think I'd be better off. Same thing with exercise. I planned to work out more and that hasn't happened yet either. Both require money and since it would not be wise to count my chickens here I am reluctant to spend money on those things. I looked into the gym nearby and it's 75 bucks a month. That I don't think I'd pay even in Canada unless it was a really good gym where I could just work out and GET out. It's tough to find a no nonsense gym here. All I seem to find are the "Hey everybody, look at me work out!" type of gym where you can bring your laptop and show everyone how important you are by multitasking and skyping with a client while you drink your protein shake listen to Spinal Tap volume gag-reflex testing dance tunes and carbo load with a power bar pre-training. All in the brightly coloured, predominantly glass fishbowls that allow passers-by to admire your physicl dedication. PPpppppbbbbtttthhhhhbbbbtttt! Give me a sweaty, honest, stinky gym to work out in total anonymity and I'll pay the 75 bucks. As for the Indonesian classes, I haven't even found a good book let alone a good class. I've been using my dictionary believe it or not. That and trying to pick up words from TV I watch. But I've been watching no TV lately so there ya go.

What I HAVE been doing is thinking. And because of some friends' blog and facebook posts I've been thinking a lot about one of my favourite topics: where everything came from. Some people like to think about women. I prefer the cosmos and all things in existence because I think there is a better shot of someday figuring it out. Though I seriously doubt man will ever attain the knowledge to decipher either it is really interesting to me to look into new ideas and arguments. I like to debate and discuss objectively with friends to exchange reading lists and maybe pool resources and facts to gain greater understanding, but, unfortunately, this is a topic about which I have found very few people able to have objective discourse. Everyone seems to have strong opinions even though there can be no absolute certainty in any view or opinion. So undoubtedly if I type on about some new genetic information that brings us closer to an understanding of intelligent creation, I will have detractors. And if I get into a long blog post about how I have found some new information that clarifies the theory of macro-evolution, I will also have detractors. So why do it at all? Because I have the time. Blame the Indonesian government.

Have you ever noticed that when you look at the estimated ages of various things it seems that, almost without exception, the more complex things are the younger things. For example, the Earth is believed to have originated about 5 billion years ago. Bacteria and algae - 3 billion years ago. Filamentous algae, (whatever that is) - 2 billion years ago. Marine invertebrates - 600 million years ago. Fish and land plants - 400 million. Amphibians - 300 million. Dinosaurs - 200 million. Mammals - 150 million. Primates - 20 million. I got this list from an MIT webpost so I'm hoping it is as reputable as the college. At least.

This fits the explanation of macro-evolution that has everything, presumably from the massively non-complex amoeba on up to the most complex creature, developing in order of increasing complexity. That is, the more highly complex life forms would tend to be the younger. And to throw in a complete non-sequitur this is why Eve came after Adam. Woman is to man as watch is to pebble as our friend William Paley would have said. He's the guy who, in the 1700's, gave us the watchmaker analogy in which he posited that something highly complex suggests an intelligent creator. The key part of his theory, to me, was when he said that even the simplest of natural living things are unimaginably far beyong a watch in complexity. Remember this was years before Dalton's atomic theory and QUITE a while before SUBatomic theory. As science progressed, Paley's statement just got righter and righter. Things are highly complex! And it would seem that the theory of macro-evolution, that is the idea that everything came into being by evolving through variations or "mutations," makes sense since it is theorized to have happened in order of increasing complexity.

However, the mutation, the very engine of evolution, is itself a process of DE-complexity. There have been some studies that have shown what appeared to be new genetic information being created through mutations but what was actually happening could be more accurately explained as unscrambling pre-existing information, decompressing packed information, turning on and off certain genes, or even destroying genes such as prohibitor genes so that some pre-existing material, not new material, is no longer prohibited. The vast majority, (if not all), of genetic mutations lead to a loss of genetic material, and all those that would appear to have lead to the creation of new genetic material, whether they did or did not, are not consistent with evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theorists admit this.

This could lead the reasonable thinking person to beieve that if the theory of evolution is true, and if genetic mutation is its core scientific causation, there must have been a pattern of decreasing complexity. The original being, or anti-amoeba, must have been extremely complex and through billions of years, or maybe more, of genetic mutational simplification, or loss of genetic material, we arrived at the youngest, less complex species known today. But that is the exact opposite of what the theory of evolution suggests.

At the very least it seems almost inevitable that more complex structures exist in the genome of species than the ones proposed by Darwin. https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/p320x320/10300799_866302033390809_5444026252074926043_n.jpg?oh=c26afe611a863432517a41874db1be38&oe=541EEE44&__gda__=1410825588_d8d15ae7d6c99168c3cdf4ce36384c0aThis necessitates the idea of more and more purposeful, and less and less random genetic mutations that helped evolution along. And we're back to one of the main problems I've always had with evolutionary theory. Call it purposeful, or natural selection but when you tell me that nature is an unintelligent, non-sentient, force my mind rebels at the idea of nature making selections or having purposes or goals. Mutation rates just don't correspond to evolution rates. The scientific records show that there were bursts of evolutionary mutations the rates of which defy what we have learned through scientific research of both ideas. Giving more credence to the concept that genes perform their duties with a will, not "as if they had a will," as Richard Dawkins suggested. How selfish can that gene be observed to behave before ACTUAL selfishness is attributed to it?

It is a personal theory of mine that as science progresses and we see, (or at least see the palpable plausibility of), sub-sub-sub, (and so on), atomic particles, all the while discovering, (or at least discovering evidence that would lead to a very strong belief in the theory of), ever expansive universes, one day, most likely when I am dead, science and spirituality will end their rivalry and come to the theory, (not the certainty but the theory), that infinity both directions and higher and higher complexity doesn't just suggest but it indicates and all but proves the presence of intelligence in the coming into being of all that exists. At the very least it removes all distinctions between believers in God and believers in God particles. The more science I am exposed to, the easier it becomes to think this way.

But perhaps I'm easily convinced. Perhaps it's easier for me to see that the belief in a scientific theory and a spiritual theory are, in essence, the same. Hearing old Leon Ledderman talk about aliens and soccer balls in his analogy of the theoretical sciences sounds to me remarkably similar to a poet like Sapho seeing the handiwork of God in the beauty of nature.

Now listen, I think it's wrong to believe either way without doing some research. In fact I think a person should do research in both areas. It is also wrong, in my opinion, to believe in something based on the weaknesses in the arguments for the opposition. Investigate both sides thoroughly before forming an opinion. That's what I always thought was the best way to do things. And it is how I have formed this opinion. Only it seems this opinion is getting less and less popular while I think it should be trending in the opposite direction. That to me is weird enough to blog about.

Leastaways, that's what I reckon.