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| Romero Pools Cliff Jumping |
If you zoom in on my face, you'll notice I look like an excited little boy.
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| Arizona Horny Toad |
Sharon spotted this little devil. I'm not quite up on my wildlife terminology, is it a horny toad?
Chinglishly In Love
Sunday, May 31, 2009
romero pools
Last weekend Sharon and I hiked to Romero Pools up in Catalina State Park. While admittedly similar to the post on Chase and Caitlin's blog back in February (Hikes and SuchThey), there are a couple of key differences. First, we don't have such a crazy title for our post. Second, the female in this article is not pregnant. Third, I love the girl in this post and not the one featured in Chase and Caitlin's post. The differences go on, but for now you can just enjoy a few pictures.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Endowment
Just a little update that Sharon went to the temple on Tuesday! Yea! It was great. Just two more weeks and we'll be sealed on Saturday, June 6th at 6:00. Umm, I think 6:00. I should probably check on that. But you should all assume it's at 6 until further notice.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
My Newest Song
With finals over I had some time to record this song. Not perfect, but I think it's better than a lot of my other songs.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Sing-- it's a food fight
I recently fell in love with this song, and this video is one of the funniest food fights ever.
Monday, May 11, 2009
cut it
OK, so I went with the majority on this one and cut my hair. But, if my calculations are correct, I will succesfully be back in near-mullet zone after 38 days. It is, however, a far cry from appeasing the demands of the mullet, but I should be OK.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Evolution and the Gospel
After a semester spent in an Evolutionary Biology class taught by intelligent professors at a leading research university, the devoutly Christian soul you all know has come to a few theories of how evolution ties in to the gospel. They are, of course, in no way considered doctrine or supported by the church (and hopefully not considered heretical), but for all those interested it might shed some light on how evolution ties into our religion. If any of you know someone who has trouble with faith because of science issues, please forward this to them as I think it will do much to help them open doors to belief.
One of the major disagreements between Christians at large and scientists is about the creation story—specifically about how long it took. Scientists say the world began as a hot molten lump about 4.5 billion years ago. The bible doesn’t disagree.
Genesis tells us the world was created in 6 days. It shouldn’t be hard for anyone to imagine that this day might not mean a period of 24 hours. Do we not often use the word day to mean an incredibly long period of time, such as in the phrase the day of the dinosaurs? Knowing that the English definition of the word day accounts for possibility of meaning an incredibly long period of time, it should be even easier to imagine that the languages the Bible was translated from—Greek and Hebrew—might also have this possibility.
Thus, it is incredibly possible that the Lord might have used incredibly long periods of time to form the earth and its life, totaling up to 4.5 billion years that he divided up into 6 periods of creation, or days.
The next point of disagreement between scientists and the Christian world is the origin of man. Scientists say man evolved from monkeys; does this contradict our faith? Don’t Christians claim that God made man in his own image? The Bible does say this, but in all reality it is rather void of descriptions of how the Lord created the earth and how he created man and all of its diversity. It only says that he did it by the power of his word and gives a rough time frame for it. This makes sense when one considers that the account in Genesis was a vision given to Moses over 4,000 years ago. The things Moses wrote down from what he saw were meant for the edification and knowledge of a people without any scientific background—don’t you think he had to be a bit vague? Even if God did show unto Moses all the biology behind his creations, describing the genetic engineering it would take to create our bodies—a system far more complicated than any sort of machine man has ever made or conceived of—could he have written it down on a scroll? In our church we accept the fact that you can’t create something out of nothing; that’s why we say that God organized the earth, not created it. We accept that logic has its place in the spiritual realm inhabited by deity. Christians, then, shouldn’t have a problem considering the idea that in order to create us, God had to start a long time ago with the bare building blocks of life.
The current scientific record shows from fossil records and radiometric dating that life began about 3.7 billion years ago. How did it start? How did life come about from nothing? In science labs, a combination of water, methane, hydrogen, nitrogen and electricity have undergone reactions to produce organic materials that make up life as we know it. In other words, scientists have taken inorganic things and put them through natural processes to transform them into the puzzle pieces that make up all organisms today. Essentially basic chemistry, these reactions in a lab that mimic natural conditions have produced the building blocks of RNA such as sugars and lipids; amino acids were even formed. Other labs have taken these materials and put them on clay. Of all kinds of dirt, clay is unique because of how it layers upon itself. It rolls layer upon layer on itself in a very systematic, organized fashion. Every layer of clay is almost exactly the same as the layer beneath it. Thus, when the building blocks of RNA were put on clay and electricity was added, strands of RNA about 50 base pairs long were formed as the clay layered. Not only this, but the RNA formed was a ribozyme—a special kind of RNA that self-replicates. With a self-replicating piece of RNA being formed, it is definitely conceivable that, over time, one or two of those RNA pieces would have some sort of membrane form around it from coagulating lipids. Thus, the formation of a cell! With gradual change and random mutation in the RNA structure, the cell could start splitting off into different species which, over billions of years, could form the life we see today.
Of course, this is just a theory of something that happened billions of years ago.
Is it hard to imagine, though, that God, the being who knows everything in perfection, could do this kind of chemistry? Is it hard to imagine that through the power of his word he went to work and started making life in this fashion? For scientists, this should make more sense than evolution happening by mere chance alone, and for Christians it should make sense that God works by natural processes. While scientists have devised and proved the possibilities of evolutionary theories, they all admit the incredibly, incredibly low probability of this all happening by chance. Why couldn’t this kind of process be guided by a supreme being? Who is to say that God is not a scientist? If he knows everything, he certainly is a scientist, for science is merely the pursuit of knowledge (albeit the knowledge of God so far surpasses ours it might seem, at times, that he works by magic).
A question still begs to be asked, however: what is life?
Is the piece of RNA described in the above paragraph that was synthesized out of a few molecules alive? If your definition of life is something that self-replicates, than yes. But I don’t think that counts. Otherwise, we could build a robot that was programmed to build other robots, and we could call it alive. In this light, tiny cells and other simple organisms are more like machines or robots, the most advanced and complicated robots known to exist.
What would God use billions of little robot machines for? Here’s an example.
One of the most ancient forms of “life” (or machines), is cyanobacteria. A certain type of this kind of machine was basically a chloroplast (it still exists today as a kind of algae). About 2 billion years ago a whole bunch of these things changed the atmosphere from containing 1 % oxygen to 20 % oxygen. This oxygen is essential for the existence of almost all life today. Could this not be a part of what is described as God organizing the firmament in the second day of creation? The Lord told us he did it, and who is to say that evolving little microbial robots is not the way he did it?
Thus, what scientists call ancient life could also be described as nothing more than machines God used to make the earth how he wanted it. Through the mechanisms of mutation and evolution by natural selection and adaptation, more and more machines were built until the beautiful, diverse world we see today exists.
Is it unreasonable for God to use a system like this? Every step in the account described in Genesis agrees with the evolutionary timescale described by scientists. The Bible talks about the first day being where God lumped the earth together and gave light to it. Scientists say that the earth and the sun were formed at exactly the same time period, both about 4.5 billion years ago! The second day involved forming an atmosphere, as discussed above. The third day involved the formation of basic plants—scientists would agree this was next in the evolutionary process. The fourth day was all about the moon—scientists agree that even though the earth and sun were formed 4.5 billion years ago, the moon was formed later. Last, in the fifth and sixth day, came the development of all whales, birds, animals, etc. In the end came mankind. Apparently Moses was a scientist.
After God, the expert chemist, created man by using a series of chemical reactions that self-replicated, all the while making minor corrections until, at last, a body that looked like his own body had been formed, he could put a soul into it. Isn’t this what the account in the Bible sounds like when it says after God created man he “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen 2:7). God created the body, then put the soul inside, and only then was it alive! This, then, is the definition of life: a body and a spirit together. Our scripture speaks of the animals and the earth itself as having a spirit and being created spiritually before they were created temporally; over billions of years of evolution, God was laboriously creating a physical body that matched up with the spirits he had previously made. This is why machines will never be alive; they have no spirit. Otherwise, aren’t we just machines?
Adam was thus the first living person, the father and patriarch of our entire human race. He was the choice spirit chosen to be the first one on Earth. While there might have been similar machines in the past that looked similar to Adam’s body, they were simply older models that weren’t good enough to be the final product. God wanted us to have the best. All previous models of our bodies were then destroyed. Neanderthals and other outdated homo species were eliminated
Interestingly, science agrees.
One of the most prevalent theories about how mankind came to be is called the African Replacement Theory. It says that mankind primarily evolved in Africa. Outside of this group that we all descend from were many other human-like species. Yet, for some unexplained reason, every other human-like species suddenly disappeared and all that was left was us.
A paper published in 2004 in Nature magazine from a research team at MIT called "Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans" showed that all humans descended from a very recent ancestor. They used two statistical population models and came up with results that both showed a recent common ancestor for all humans today within the last 5,000 years. One study put the date of our common ancestor at about 2,158 BC, and the other one put it at about 3,000 BC. (an abstract of this article can be found here)
What does this mean? The idea of having an "Adam and Eve" about 5000 years ago is supported scientifically.
Other studies also support this idea of humans having a recent common ancestry. It is well accepted in the scientific community that all humans descend from one "mitochondrial eve". What this refers to is the DNA inside the mitochondria of every human's cells are similar enough to prove a fairly recent common ancestry. In other words, it has been proven that we all have an "ancestral eve". Why Eve and not Adam? Simply put, this DNA, which is totally separate and distinct from the DNA in the 23 pairs of chromosomes that we usually associate with making us who we are, is passed on in females only. These studies put the dating of “Eve” at about 80,000 years ago. This, however, is debated, and the scientists that came up with the model describing our common ancestor at living 5,000 years ago argue that the dating methods which give a number like 80,000 years is flawed.
In short, scientists argue and change their minds, but they seem to be on a track that coincides more and more with our faith. While the things discussed above may not be true, they should at least open your eyes to the possibility that a) God exists, and b) He might have used a mechanism like evolution.
One of the major disagreements between Christians at large and scientists is about the creation story—specifically about how long it took. Scientists say the world began as a hot molten lump about 4.5 billion years ago. The bible doesn’t disagree.
Genesis tells us the world was created in 6 days. It shouldn’t be hard for anyone to imagine that this day might not mean a period of 24 hours. Do we not often use the word day to mean an incredibly long period of time, such as in the phrase the day of the dinosaurs? Knowing that the English definition of the word day accounts for possibility of meaning an incredibly long period of time, it should be even easier to imagine that the languages the Bible was translated from—Greek and Hebrew—might also have this possibility.
Thus, it is incredibly possible that the Lord might have used incredibly long periods of time to form the earth and its life, totaling up to 4.5 billion years that he divided up into 6 periods of creation, or days.
The next point of disagreement between scientists and the Christian world is the origin of man. Scientists say man evolved from monkeys; does this contradict our faith? Don’t Christians claim that God made man in his own image? The Bible does say this, but in all reality it is rather void of descriptions of how the Lord created the earth and how he created man and all of its diversity. It only says that he did it by the power of his word and gives a rough time frame for it. This makes sense when one considers that the account in Genesis was a vision given to Moses over 4,000 years ago. The things Moses wrote down from what he saw were meant for the edification and knowledge of a people without any scientific background—don’t you think he had to be a bit vague? Even if God did show unto Moses all the biology behind his creations, describing the genetic engineering it would take to create our bodies—a system far more complicated than any sort of machine man has ever made or conceived of—could he have written it down on a scroll? In our church we accept the fact that you can’t create something out of nothing; that’s why we say that God organized the earth, not created it. We accept that logic has its place in the spiritual realm inhabited by deity. Christians, then, shouldn’t have a problem considering the idea that in order to create us, God had to start a long time ago with the bare building blocks of life.
The current scientific record shows from fossil records and radiometric dating that life began about 3.7 billion years ago. How did it start? How did life come about from nothing? In science labs, a combination of water, methane, hydrogen, nitrogen and electricity have undergone reactions to produce organic materials that make up life as we know it. In other words, scientists have taken inorganic things and put them through natural processes to transform them into the puzzle pieces that make up all organisms today. Essentially basic chemistry, these reactions in a lab that mimic natural conditions have produced the building blocks of RNA such as sugars and lipids; amino acids were even formed. Other labs have taken these materials and put them on clay. Of all kinds of dirt, clay is unique because of how it layers upon itself. It rolls layer upon layer on itself in a very systematic, organized fashion. Every layer of clay is almost exactly the same as the layer beneath it. Thus, when the building blocks of RNA were put on clay and electricity was added, strands of RNA about 50 base pairs long were formed as the clay layered. Not only this, but the RNA formed was a ribozyme—a special kind of RNA that self-replicates. With a self-replicating piece of RNA being formed, it is definitely conceivable that, over time, one or two of those RNA pieces would have some sort of membrane form around it from coagulating lipids. Thus, the formation of a cell! With gradual change and random mutation in the RNA structure, the cell could start splitting off into different species which, over billions of years, could form the life we see today.
Of course, this is just a theory of something that happened billions of years ago.
Is it hard to imagine, though, that God, the being who knows everything in perfection, could do this kind of chemistry? Is it hard to imagine that through the power of his word he went to work and started making life in this fashion? For scientists, this should make more sense than evolution happening by mere chance alone, and for Christians it should make sense that God works by natural processes. While scientists have devised and proved the possibilities of evolutionary theories, they all admit the incredibly, incredibly low probability of this all happening by chance. Why couldn’t this kind of process be guided by a supreme being? Who is to say that God is not a scientist? If he knows everything, he certainly is a scientist, for science is merely the pursuit of knowledge (albeit the knowledge of God so far surpasses ours it might seem, at times, that he works by magic).
A question still begs to be asked, however: what is life?
Is the piece of RNA described in the above paragraph that was synthesized out of a few molecules alive? If your definition of life is something that self-replicates, than yes. But I don’t think that counts. Otherwise, we could build a robot that was programmed to build other robots, and we could call it alive. In this light, tiny cells and other simple organisms are more like machines or robots, the most advanced and complicated robots known to exist.
What would God use billions of little robot machines for? Here’s an example.
One of the most ancient forms of “life” (or machines), is cyanobacteria. A certain type of this kind of machine was basically a chloroplast (it still exists today as a kind of algae). About 2 billion years ago a whole bunch of these things changed the atmosphere from containing 1 % oxygen to 20 % oxygen. This oxygen is essential for the existence of almost all life today. Could this not be a part of what is described as God organizing the firmament in the second day of creation? The Lord told us he did it, and who is to say that evolving little microbial robots is not the way he did it?
Thus, what scientists call ancient life could also be described as nothing more than machines God used to make the earth how he wanted it. Through the mechanisms of mutation and evolution by natural selection and adaptation, more and more machines were built until the beautiful, diverse world we see today exists.
Is it unreasonable for God to use a system like this? Every step in the account described in Genesis agrees with the evolutionary timescale described by scientists. The Bible talks about the first day being where God lumped the earth together and gave light to it. Scientists say that the earth and the sun were formed at exactly the same time period, both about 4.5 billion years ago! The second day involved forming an atmosphere, as discussed above. The third day involved the formation of basic plants—scientists would agree this was next in the evolutionary process. The fourth day was all about the moon—scientists agree that even though the earth and sun were formed 4.5 billion years ago, the moon was formed later. Last, in the fifth and sixth day, came the development of all whales, birds, animals, etc. In the end came mankind. Apparently Moses was a scientist.
After God, the expert chemist, created man by using a series of chemical reactions that self-replicated, all the while making minor corrections until, at last, a body that looked like his own body had been formed, he could put a soul into it. Isn’t this what the account in the Bible sounds like when it says after God created man he “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen 2:7). God created the body, then put the soul inside, and only then was it alive! This, then, is the definition of life: a body and a spirit together. Our scripture speaks of the animals and the earth itself as having a spirit and being created spiritually before they were created temporally; over billions of years of evolution, God was laboriously creating a physical body that matched up with the spirits he had previously made. This is why machines will never be alive; they have no spirit. Otherwise, aren’t we just machines?
Adam was thus the first living person, the father and patriarch of our entire human race. He was the choice spirit chosen to be the first one on Earth. While there might have been similar machines in the past that looked similar to Adam’s body, they were simply older models that weren’t good enough to be the final product. God wanted us to have the best. All previous models of our bodies were then destroyed. Neanderthals and other outdated homo species were eliminated
Interestingly, science agrees.
One of the most prevalent theories about how mankind came to be is called the African Replacement Theory. It says that mankind primarily evolved in Africa. Outside of this group that we all descend from were many other human-like species. Yet, for some unexplained reason, every other human-like species suddenly disappeared and all that was left was us.
A paper published in 2004 in Nature magazine from a research team at MIT called "Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans" showed that all humans descended from a very recent ancestor. They used two statistical population models and came up with results that both showed a recent common ancestor for all humans today within the last 5,000 years. One study put the date of our common ancestor at about 2,158 BC, and the other one put it at about 3,000 BC. (an abstract of this article can be found here)
What does this mean? The idea of having an "Adam and Eve" about 5000 years ago is supported scientifically.
Other studies also support this idea of humans having a recent common ancestry. It is well accepted in the scientific community that all humans descend from one "mitochondrial eve". What this refers to is the DNA inside the mitochondria of every human's cells are similar enough to prove a fairly recent common ancestry. In other words, it has been proven that we all have an "ancestral eve". Why Eve and not Adam? Simply put, this DNA, which is totally separate and distinct from the DNA in the 23 pairs of chromosomes that we usually associate with making us who we are, is passed on in females only. These studies put the dating of “Eve” at about 80,000 years ago. This, however, is debated, and the scientists that came up with the model describing our common ancestor at living 5,000 years ago argue that the dating methods which give a number like 80,000 years is flawed.
In short, scientists argue and change their minds, but they seem to be on a track that coincides more and more with our faith. While the things discussed above may not be true, they should at least open your eyes to the possibility that a) God exists, and b) He might have used a mechanism like evolution.
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