Elon Musk's 50 Million Year Vision

I'll get to speaking directly of Elon Musk in a minute. First a little background...

A number of scientists believe that human life is the only intelligent life in the galaxy, and perhaps even the entire universe (see the Fermi Paradox for details). It is estimated that it would take "only" about 50 million years to colonize the entire galaxy. Since the galaxy has existed for billions of years longer than Earth has, if there were other intelligent life forms in the galaxy, they would have colonized the Milky Way long before Earth even formed. So where is everybody? Why do we find no evidence of intelligent life no matter which direction we look? A possible explanation lies in biology.

Pop Quiz

True or false: Evolution completely explains the development of life from non-life.

False.

I'm not arguing Biblical creationism here -- any evolutionary biologist would agree with the above statement (see abiogenesis for details). Evolution begins with the appearance of the first self-replicating organism -- likely a DNA or RNA molecule. But evolution can't explain how one of these molecules developed in the first place. It couldn't have been natural selection, because natural selection requires a pre-existing self-replicating organism. It would be more likely for a tornado to blow through a junkyard and assemble a working 747 than for random collisions of molecules to form a double helix DNA molecule.  That is the mystery of abiogenesis -- how did the first self-replicating organism get here?


The prevailing theory is chance -- given billions and billions of random collisions of molecules (occurring over billions of years in a primordial ocean, for example), abiogenesis might be inevitable somewhere, some-when. If you calculate the odds, it is still incredibly unlikely for it to have occurred anywhere on Earth, even with its 4.8 billion years of history. But it's much more likely to have occurred somewhere or other in the entire universe over its 13.7 billion-year history. That somewhere just happened to be Earth, the theory goes -- Earth is the winner of the Cosmic Abiogenesis Lottery. The point is that the unlikelihood of abiogenesis occurring in any particular place lends further support to the idea that we are the only intelligent life forms in the galaxy or perhaps even the entire universe (see here for a relevant discussion).

Given our lack of competition, and the fact that colonizing the galaxy shouldn't take longer than 50 million years, might we look forward 50 million years ahead and expect and find the galaxy brimming with incredibly advanced intelligent life? Might we look forward billions of years and find the whole universe (or significant parts of it) colonized? All of it owing its entire existence to the good ol' Human Race from Ancient Earth? Not necessarily.

Global warming and nuclear arms are about to give this glorious future a cosmic abortion. Many scientists believe that global warming is already past the point of no return -- that environmental catastrophe is inevitable no matter how many climate change summits we hold in the future. That catastrophe might leave us with an Earth gradually losing its ability to sustain human  life at all. This Great Cosmic Abortion would be like aborting a baby who otherwise would have grown up to be the father of an entire race of people ("Cosmic Lucy"?) If the extinction of human life on Earth is inevitable, the only question remaining is whether or not we begin colonizing other planets before the sunset of life on Earth arrives. If we want a future galaxy brimming with life, we need to start colonizing other planets right now, during this incredibly short window of opportunity. Perhaps half a century compared to the approximately 137,000,000 centuries that have elapsed since the Big Bang might just determine whether the universe lives or dies.

And that is where Elon Musk comes in. He founded Tesla Motors to buy humanity some time on this planet by slowing global warming with cars powered by renewable energy. Now he is leading SpaceX to establish the first human colony on Mars, a colony that will hopefully survive even after the Earth is dead. And from there our species can proceed to colonize the galaxy. If he succeeds, the future Milky Way will be full of intelligent life. If he fails, there may be no intelligent life in the galaxy, perhaps even in the entire universe.

If Einstein hadn't come up with Relativity, sooner or later someone else would have. If Darwin hadn't figured out evolution, sooner or later someone else would have. But if someone like Elon Musk hadn't done what he is doing, it might have meant the extinction of the human race with no future "somebody" to take his place.

We call a man a visionary when he is able to foresee a century or two into the future and acts on his vision. America's founding fathers, who wrote the U.S. Constitution, were visionaries. What do you call a man who sees 50 million years into the future and acts on it? The English language does not even contain a superlative worthy of describing such a phenomenon. Consequently, I'd like to coin a new English word, "musking", defined as acting in the present based on a vision of a future so remote that nobody even bothers preparing for it except you.

What say you, Elon? It seems you are almost as exceptional as our Dear Successor, the Illustrious Kim Jong-Un, who is so extraordinary he doesn't even defecate...

Sam Harris: Free Will is an Illusion? Or Do Decisions Define Us?: Guest Post by Todd Gnarly, Super-Fundie

Decisions define us. These three words express more wisdom more succinctly than any other three words I know of. Perhaps what they express is only an axiom；nevertheless the idea offers great clarity and explanatory power. I am not responsible for my family background, my gender, my body type, my IQ or even what century I was born in, because none of these circumstances were the product of my own decisions. If there is anything essential about ‘me’ (or anyone else), it lies in that zone of freedom that nature has endowed all of us with to one degree or another – the gap between stimulus and response.

 

The decision zone is a zone of total responsibility and no excuses. By definition, I am the only one who can make my own decisions, and I am therefore responsible for them. I may not be responsible for their unforeseen consequences, but I am responsible for the risks that I take and their foreseeable outcomes. Who I am today, to the extent that I am a free being, is nothing more than the sum total of every decision that I have ever made.

 

More than one type of decision is available to help us define ourselves. One class of decisions is moral decisions. I believe that these decisions are the most important of all, because our moral characters are the soil from which everything else about us grows – and nothing good can grow out of bad soil. There are also practical decisions. My decision to become a doctor instead of a lawyer, for example, or to marry Tom instead of Dick or Harry, might critically affect my life even if it lacks moral significance. The third type of decision is ‘trivial’ decisions, such as what to eat for dinner tonight.

 

As far as I know, a dog cannot decide not to bark. But as people, we do have a limited ability to decide what we do and don’t do. This window can be seen as either an opportunity or a burden. Freedom of choice might seem burdensome simply because there is no escape from it. After all, no decision is a decision too – the decision not to take action. Even a non-decision has consequences that we can rightly be held accountable for.

 

I believe that many people seek to escape their freedom. They may try to forfeit their freedom to other people – family, friends, boyfriends (as I have done in the past) or they try to distract themselves from the burden of responsibility by numbing themselves with food, alcohol or drugs. A better response to the unavoidable reality of freedom, I believe, is to simply learn how to make better decisions. After all, decision-makers living in a world filled with adversity allows Earth to produce something that Heaven never could – heroes. I hope that by the end of my life I will be able to rightly count myself among them.

How Would Scientists React if They Found God? Guest Post by Todd Gnarly, Super-Fundie

I think they'd take Him apart to see how He works. Then they'd reverse engineer Him, modify his program so He'd always say "Yes", hire a Chinese OEM manufacturer to mass-produce Him, and sell Him for $99.99.

The iGod...makin' all your dreams come true...

Why Scientific Materialism Begs the Question on Miracles: Guest Post by Todd Gnarly, Super-Fundie

The Einstein Pool, a Christian science fiction novel by Jake Danger


Metaphysical naturalism is the philosophy that only spacetime, matter, energy and the laws of physics are fundamental, and that all else is derivative. There are no gods or devils, no heaven and no hell. Even our own consciousness is an emergent property of (derived from) combinations of spacetime, matter and energy acting under the "laws" of physics. Astronomer Carl Sagan expressed the idea aptly: "I am a collection of carbon, hydrogen and atom molecules called Carl Sagan." Nothing can violate the laws of physics (with some derogations at the quantum level), so miracles are out of the question. Even if there was God, he would be standing in the cosmic unemployment line because, with no need to push the planets around their orbits, he wouldn't have anything to do.

Science is not equipped to detect miracles because, by assuming that the laws of physics cannot be broken and by demanding that a phenomenon be repeatable to be proven, it assumes the non-existence of miracles and therefore begs the question of whether they occur or not. Miracles, however, are by definition violations of the laws of physics and by definition non-repeatable. If the parting of the Red Sea was repeatable, scientists would just find a way to describe it mathematically and call it the Law of the Parting of the Red Sea -- conveniently, still no need for a God. Even if its mechanism were not fully understood (that is, mathematically describable), the response would simply be "Just because we don't fully understand a phenomenon is no reason to attribute a supernatural cause to it." If you objected to that pathetic excuse for an "explanation" you'd be faced with a chorus of atheists screaming "god of the gaps, god of the gaps. god of the..."


The Einstein Pool, a Christian science fiction novel by Jake Danger

Neuroscientist Sam Harris' Statement "Free Will is an Illusion" is Logically Self-Contradictory

See neuroscientist Sam Harris' Youtube videoon the subject of the "illusion of free will" here. Below is a response to Mr. Harris:

Dear Mr. Harris:

Is your belief that “free will is an illusion” based on logic, or brain chemistry? If it is based on logic, then congratulations! You alone, among all humans who have ever lived, actually possesses the free will to veto the dictates of your own brain chemistry. Can I have your autograph?

If, on the other hand, your belief is based on brain chemistry, then it is not based on logic and therefore there is no particular reason to suppose it’s true (adaptive, perhaps, but not reliably true, even if your brain chemistry compels you to believe it’s true). The assertion that “free will is an illusion”, then, is a self-refuting statement based on intellectual vanity. Even if there is no such thing as free will, there is no way we could ever know that. We could only “believe” it, and even then only for as long as our brain chemistry compels us to believe it.

The Zombie Objection: How an Abstract Philosophical Error Might Cause the Entire Human Race to Commit Mass Suicide by 2050 A.D.

The Einstein Pool: A Christian science fiction novel by Jake Danger
Trans-humanists predict that within a few decades we'll be able to have our brains scanned so thoroughly that our neural patterns can be reduced to a an algorithm that can be uploaded into a virtual environment. They claim that in this way, each individual human consciousness will migrate into a virtual environment, allowing us to live essentially forever, in a world just as perfect as the system administrator wants it to be. The scary part is that this reasoning better be right -- the brain scan that extracts the neurological information used to construct the algorithm is likely to be so intense that it kills your physical body.

The trans-humanist position described above assumes the truth of the functionalist school of the philosophy of mind -- the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of a particular complex arrangement of matter and energy, and is independent of the nature of its building blocks. In other words you could be just as conscious with a brain made of electrical ones and zeroes as you could be with a brain made from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen molecules. It also assumes that consciousness, defined as subjective awareness, is nothing more than an emergent property of time, space, matter and energy, so that you can be reduced to an algorithm that would automatically produce your consciousness.

The zombie objection to the functionalist school of the philosophy of mind asserts that subjective awareness cannot be reduced to ones and zeroes -- there is a "ghost in the machine", and recreating the machine in a virtual  environment does not necessarily mean the ghost will follow. So, according to the Zombie Objectors, if you tried to upload your mind into a virtual environment using a brain scan that killed your physical body, you would just simply wink out of consciousness, and your online avatar would perfectly mimic the continuation of your personality without having any inner awareness of its own. And nobody would be able to tell the difference.

According to the Zombie Objectors, then, any attempt by the human race to assure collective immortality through mind uploading would result, instead, in mass suicide. Funny, isn't it, how in a few decades, the answer to a formerly arcane philosophical question -- whether or not the zombie objection to the functionalist philosophy of mind is true or not -- might determine the fate of the human race.


The Einstein Pool: A Christian science fiction novel by Jake Danger $0.99

Theo-Physics: Of God, Bosons and Texan Butterflies -- Guest Post by Todd Gnarly, Super-Fundie

Can physics be used to inform theological inquiry? Is a new field of “theo-physics” right around the corner? Can concepts in physics be useful in answering questions of relevance to theologians?

 

Consider a common atheist objection to the existence of God: Science has demonstrated that the universe obeys impersonal laws of nature, none of which exhibit anything but indifference to the moral values that God is supposedly concerned with. Since there’s no need for Him to push the planets around their orbits, the thinking goes, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot for Him to do. And since there’s no leeway in the laws of nature – the law of conservation of energy, for example, is more than just a friendly suggestion from Mother Nature – there’s no room for God to intervene in human affairs by performing a “miracle” (defined as an occurrence that violates the laws of physics.) This leaves God, if He exists, standing in the cosmic unemployment line.

The standard response to this objection runs something like, “God made the rules and He can break them by performing miracles any time He likes.” Although this response is far from incoherent, I wonder if there might be another answer. Could God act in human history without even bothering with miracles – that is, without violating the laws of physics? Modern science provides a tantalizing glimpse of how God might be able to manipulate events at the subatomic level that could ultimately result in history-changing events, all without violating the laws of physics.

According to quantum theory, the movement of elementary particles (subatomic particles such as bosons) is inherently random, a feature known as quantum indeterminacy. It is important to note that inherent randomness differs radically from apparent randomness, the type of randomness we encounter in everyday life. To say that a process is apparently random would be to leave open the possibility that if we had the right technology, the right measuring instruments or the right theoretical knowledge, we could predict with certainty what would happen next. For example, I could predict with absolute certainty whether a flipped coin will land heads or tails if I had enough information about the muscle movements of the coin flipper, the coin’s exact shape and the local air currents. To say that the motion of subatomic particles is inherently random, by contrast, is to say that no information would be enough to make an accurate prediction. Indeed, the movement of an individual subatomic particle cannot be precisely predicted no matter what information is available, because this movement is not the result of any physical cause.

Since subatomic particles are the building blocks of matter, and since the motion of these building blocks is inherently random, does this introduce quantum uncertainty into everyday life? Need I be concerned, for example, that the next time I step on the brakes as I approach a busy intersection that quantum indeterminacy will cause the moving parts to behave randomly, thereby resulting in brake failure? The answer to that particular question is no, I needn’t be concerned. After all, how many subatomic particles are contained in a brake apparatus? Although we can’t predict what a particular subatomic particle will do, it is just as easy to predict the behavior of a large group of particles as it is to predict that if you flip a coin a million times you’ll end up with somewhere around 500,000 heads. Given the “billions and billions” of quantum “flips” occurring in a brake apparatus, even the most conservative actuary wouldn’t raise your auto insurance premiums based on “quantum indeterminacy risk.”

Strictly speaking, it is not mathematically impossible for quantum indeterminacy to cause my brakes to fail (or for a million coins to all land heads, for that matter) -- it is just vanishingly unlikely, that’s all. So unlikely, in fact, that a comparable event has probably never occurred anywhere in the universe at any time in its 13.7 billion year history. Quantum indeterminacy is microscopic, and microscopic effects cancel each other out by the time they reach the macroscopic, day-to-day world of coins, brake drums and traffic lights.

At what level along the continuum between the macroscopic and the microscopic worlds to quantum effects start to matter? OK, so a brake apparatus is not subject to quantum indeterminacy. What about blood platelets? Amoebas? Individual molecules? Atoms? As your frame of reference shrinks, quantum indeterminacy starts to matter at some point. Is there any way to build a chain of cause and effect that extends from this microscopic “quantum point” all the way up to the macroscopic realm of coin-sized (or people-sized) objects? Could a random quantum event, for example, trigger a chain of cause and effect that leads to a typhoon on the other side of the world?

A field of study in mathematics known as chaos theory demonstrates how part of this chain might be constructed. According to chaos theory, some systems such as the weather are so sensitive to the variables that drive them that a microscopic change in initial conditions can exert a wildly disproportionate influence on the entire system. The example most often quoted in popular science literature is that a butterfly flapping its wings in Texas can cause a typhoon in Japan a month later. Could quantum indeterminacy influence the firing of neurons in a Texan butterfly’s brain, causing it to flap its wings and thereby cause a typhoon in Japan?

 

The answer to this question should be obvious – yes, it’s at least possible. When a contingent quantum event occurs in a physics laboratory, it is observed by a scientist (or by a Geiger counter, for example, which Geiger counter is then observed by the scientist). This observation stimulates a thought in the mind of the scientist, which is reflected by the pattern of neuron firings in the scientist’s brain. Are insect brains so much more difficult to manipulate?

In this way we can construct at least one pathway for a causal link all the way from the microscopic quantum realm to the macroscopic realm of ordinary human events. And if there’s one pathway, there might be others, which suggests that God could manipulate apparently random quantum events in statistically unremarkable ways to, for example, cause a Texan butterfly to flaps its wings and…well, you know the rest of the story. See here for an account of a couple of astrophysicists who agree with this idea.

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: A Challenge to the Historicity of the Bible

If I walked into your workplace and told you that someone had just towed your car away, you'd probably believe me once you walked outside and saw that your car was gone. But if instead I told you that an alien spaceship had magnetically lifted your car into its own interior and then flown away with it, you'd probably want to see a video, and even then you might not believe me. Why not?  In each case the evidence was exactly the same -- my testimony and your missing car. Why believe one claim but not the other?

Because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

We all apply this principle regularly in our daily lives. It is relevant as well to religious claims such as the resurrection of Jesus. If you claim that a man named Jesus was crucified 2,000 years ago, ordinary historical evidence would probably be enough to convince most people. But if you claim that he rose from the dead, ordinary historical evidence won't be enough, any more than it would be enough to convince most people of a UFO kidnapping or a recent Elvis sighting.

The same applies to the prophecy claims made on behalf of the Bible. Not a single one of the original manuscripts of the Bible has survived. Do we have a copy of any Biblical book of prophecy, for which the copy itself  can be proven, even by ordinary historical evidence, to have been written before the fulfillment of its prophecies? I don't mean vague prophecies like "The King of the North shall invade the King of the South" (Iraq vs. Kuwait?) I mean, for example, do we have a copy of any book of the Gospels that was definitely written before the Roman destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 A.D. (since Jesus allegedly predicted it decades in advance)?   If not, then how can we prove that the Gospels were not changed later to make them fit the prophesy? After all, what's easier to believe - that some scribe committed fraud or that someone rose from the dead? That Elvis is still alive or that someone who looks like him was spotted in line at the Burger King in Tuscaloosa, Alabama?

I suspect that most Christians who argue for the historicity of the Bible don't actually believe in the Bible because of historical evidence anyway. They believe in it for reasons they can't prove to anyone else. Not being able to prove something to somebody else doesn't mean it's necessarily not true. I can't prove I love my girlfriend to anyone else (not even her! sniff..) even though it's true.

Let's just be honest, folks, and just admit that belief in the resurrection of Jesus isn't based on historical evidence. If we don't, we're just making Christians look bad.

The Time Loop -- an Uncaused Universe?

Suppose I traveled backwards in time (theoretically possible under certain solutions to Einstein's relativity equations). Suppose I had memorized the entire text of Hamlet, then visited William Shakespeare before he wrote Hamlet. Suppose I then spoke out the text while he took dictation. And the rest was history -- he took credit for Hamlet himself, eventually I was born, and I memorized it.

In that case, who wrote Hamlet? I didn't -- all I did was memorize it. Shakespeare didn't -- all he did was take dictation. You might even say that the play Hamlet was an uncaused consequence of a time loop.

Could the universe be the same way? What if, in the far future, our remote descendants travel backwards in time to ignite the Big Bang?

Intelligent Design Without God

Even Leonard Susskind, the atheist physicist who developed string theory, admits that given the fine-tuning of the physical constants, it's either the multiverse or intelligent design. If multiverse theory fails, though, God isn't the only answer. Check out this YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47Nu0Dmul1E&list=PLlHanBMNk-DIMvoMVjyG-Uf0UNEBENBIc

Some physicists propose that our universe is a computer simulation created by intelligent beings from outside our universe. If you've never watched the film The Matrix, which dealt with this question, check out this short video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnEYHQ9dscY

Cosmological Fine-Tuning, the Multiverse, the Weak Anthropic Principle and God

The Einstein Pool, a Christian science fiction novel by Jake Danger




Over the last few decades, physicists began noticing that a number of fundamental physical constants, such as the cosmological constant (and about two dozen others), all happened to fall within the very narrow range of values that allow for the development of intelligent life in the universe. For example, the ratio of the mass of the proton to the mass of the electron is 1,836.15267245 to 1, with a measurement error of about four parts per billion. If this ratio were only slightly less, protons would explode and atoms would be impossible. If it were slightly more, protons would implode and atoms would be impossible. The resulting atom-less universe would be unable to support the complexity necessary for intelligent life. There seems to be no particular reason for these 25 numbers to be "fine-tuned" to render the universe capable of supporting intelligent life, and the odds against it happening by chance are too immense for the human mind to imagine. Theists resolve this mystery by asserting the existence of a God who created the universe for the purpose of allowing intelligent life to arise.

Cosmologists, however, have a different idea. They assert the existence of a multiverse -- a great  ensemble of a vast multitude of separate universes, each with their own fundamental constants that vary randomly from universe to universe. If you have enough universes, the argument goes, the appearance of at least one universe like ours is statistically inevitable. 

A theist might object to the idea of a multiverse by asking why, of all possible universes, this particular universe is the one that got lucky? The answer, of course, is that since a universe such as ours is necessary to produce life that is intelligent enough to ask the question "Why here?", the answer could only be "Because if it hadn't happened here, we wouldn't be around to ask the question in the first place!" This reasoning is known as the Weak Anthropic Principle.

To explain by an analogy, if the odds against winning the California Lottery are 30 million to one, and John Doe buys the winning ticket, he might ask "Why did I win, instead of somebody else?" But from the point of view of the lottery administrator, the fact that John Doe won the California Lottery requires no explanation -- after all, somebody had to win, and if John Doe hadn't won, Mary Roe would have won and she'd by asking "Why me?" instead.

Critics of multiverse theory (including many cosmologists) assert that it is not even science at all. Since different universes would have to be causally disconnected, we could never observe them, and thus any multiverse theory, no matter how elegant, could never be more than a mathematical flight of fancy that qualifies as philosophy, not physics. What do you think, dear reader? 


The Einstein Pool, a Christian science fiction novel by Jake Danger  

What's Wrong with the Kalam Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God

The Kalam Cosmological Argument goes something like this:

(1) Everything that has a beginning must have a cause.
(2) The universe had a beginning.
(3) Therefore, the universe had a cause.
(4) That cause (i) must transcend space and time (because space and time began with the Big Bang), and (ii) could not have had a beginning itself (since unless you want to resort to infinite regress, the buck has to stop somewhere. See here for a refutation of the logical possibility of infinite regress). Starting to sound an awful lot like God?

Proponents note that several decades ago, the Big Bang Theory competed with the Steady State Theory of the origins of the universe. The Steady State Theory proposed that the universe is eternally old, and that matter and energy are continuously created and destroyed, thereby eliminating the need for a creator. Many atheists didn't like the Big Bang theory because it sounded a lot like creation ex nihilo -- creation out of nothing, which was exactly what theologians had been asserting for thousands of years. But the Big Bang won out on solid scientific evidence.

A close examination of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, however, calls into question premises (1) and (2).

Premise (1): Everything that has a beginning must have a cause.

Normally, when we say that x causes y, we mean that x happened first, and if x hadn't happened, y wouldn't have happened either. But if x is God and y is the universe, it doesn't make any sense to say that God happened first, because time itself began with the Big Bang. Asking what happened before the Big Bang is like asking "What is south of the South Pole?"

You might assert some sort of non-temporal causation, but since we have no previous examples of non-temporal causation, relying on non-temporal causation to support the proposition that God exists is using speculation to support speculation.

Premise (2) The universe had a beginning.

Saying that the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe is like saying the Earth begins at the South Pole (and that the existence of the South Pole implies that the Earth must have a creator). The Earth is spherical and there is no "beginning" location, and likewise the universe has no "beginning" time. Even the vaunted Singularity is merely a mathematical abstraction, not a physical reality of the history of the universe.

For a contra argument, check out this post by William Lane Craig:

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/in-defense-of-the-kalam-cosmological-argument

Theistic Delusionary Disorder: Our Nation's No. 1 Mental Health Problem