Thursday, January 10, 2008
Even if the chance that all the events coming together perfectly to create life on Earth is virtually an impossible probability with staggering odds (which it is), we are told by evolutionists that it should not matter. As the physicist Stenger says, "Why not? Given all possibilities, why shouldn't it have happened? And why not all other possibilities as well? Our universe was formed in one of the infinite number of ways it could have formed. The particular structure of our universe came about by chance, freezing into form just like the six points of a snowflake." (ref 59:51) So the evolutionist loads the dice with infinite universes and infinite time and that makes the impossibility of life coming to be by chance not a long shot, but a virtual surety.
Before we permit ourselves to get too excited about this "anything is possible" argument, let's set the ground rules. If anything is possible—apples jumping off the ground and reattaching to trees, humans hatching out of chicken eggs, the desert sand turning into ocean, life emerging from lifeless matter—then there can be no certainty about anything. All science would end and we would fear putting one foot in front of the other because of the possibility of the floor turning to quicksand or disappearing entirely.
Yet that is not how things are, for you, me or the most devout of materialistic evolutionists. The philosopher Descartes, wrestling with a similar quandary concluded, "cogito ergo sum", I think, therefore I am. That is a good starting point for us as well. We are real and our thinking process is real. The way we sort real from unreal, resolve important human issues and go about day-to-day life (thinking and being "I am") is by ignoring the virtually impossible and banking on the probable, the reasonable and certain.
By what process does a scientist partition his mind such that he can one day busy himself about in the laboratory clanging together test tubes looking for high probabilities and certainty, go to sleep, wake up in the morning and then announce to a classroom or in an article that high improbabilities make certainty, i.e., life emerged by chance? By so doing he accepts unquestionably, as a philosophical premise, that which he would never excuse in others, namely that unlikely events are the ones we should bank on.
Remember, this same materialist rejects extrasensory perception, remote viewing, miracles, creation, foreknowledge, life after death and the like not because they are impossible, but because they appear improbable.
Double standard? Most certainly.
The illogic emerges from distorting the meaning of the math of probabilities. For example, if the chance of a simple protein coming into existence by chance is 1 in 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (it's actually a much larger denominator than that but those are enough zeros for my point here), the "1" in the numerator is viewed as a very real possibility. It is not. That's what all the zeros mean.
This is not a probability that argues what could happen but rather a probability that insists upon what will not happen. If the odds of something happening is 1 in 10, then the odds it won't is 9 in 10. Odds for, of 1 in 10000000000, means odds against are 9999999999 in 10000000000. Extrapolate that to the larger number in the previous paragraph to see the virtual surety that the protein will not emerge by chance.
From a strictly probabilistic standpoint, the chance emergence and evolution of life is, by any reasonable definition of the word, impossible. Yet this impossibility becomes surety to the materialist because other possibilities (such as intelligent design), no matter how probable they may be, are just too unpalatable.
But all this play on numbers and odds assumes that the hypothetical phenomena of life emerging and evolving are a matter of chance. They are not. Scientific laws make things happen in a particular way, not chance. Things with mass fall to Earth, north poles attract south poles, negative charges attract positive charges and mass and energy are never destroyed, they just change places. An apple "could" jump to Pluto rather than fall to the ground and one could calculate the odds for that. But it won't happen because there is a law of gravity and several others that declare it won't. It's not really a matter of odds; it's a matter of law.
Now then, law governs every event that could lead to the emergence of life and to its evolution as well, not chance. The laws of chemistry, physics and biology declare and demand that order cannot emerge from chaos, life cannot emerge from non-life (law of biogenesis), and once order is present it cannot compound and improve upon itself (gain complexity and information) from chaos. Since life is highly ordered it could not therefore have emerged from a chaotic primordial soup. Neither could existent life have increased complexity (evolved) and transmutated from random events such as mutations.
The most obvious, well tested and sure of all laws in science and experience demands that order come from order, information from information and mind from mind. Spontaneous generation and evolution fly directly in the face of these laws. Probabilities do not change that.
For further reading, or for more information about, Dr Wysong and the Wysong Corporation please visit www.wysong.net or write to wysong@wysong.net. For resources on healthier foods for people including snacks, and breakfast cereals please visit www.cerealwysong.com.
I Hate Fractions
Fractions are the pits. You know you can't just add or subtract them even though multiplying and dividing them is not too bad. But since addition is the most popular arithmetic operation, that's where the darn problem is. I mean those pesky denominators always get in the way. Yet fractions appear everywhere you look: look at the price of gas, which is hovering about $3.00 per gallon and you see something like "Unleaded Regular - $2.79 9/10"; or take a look at the unit prices in supermarkets and you might see something like 33 ˝ cents per pound, or 16 1/3 cents per ounce. Let's face it, you're not escaping these little monsters so you better just get used to them.
So how do you deal with these nasty little creatures? Well, if you've followed some of my writings on this topic (see my ebook "Fractions for the Faint of Heart"), then you know that it really is not that hard to work with fractions. You just need some simple tools which I lay out in my books and articles on this subject. These tools will help you or your child deal a death blow to the seemingly unending array of problems that fractions can cause.
An important point to make here is that fractions are an integral part of any child's mathematical education, and, if not learned properly, can severely hinder progress in this subject: all of mathematics either directly or indirectly ties to numbers, and yes, fractions make up a large portion of the real number system which is used extensively in algebra, geometry, and even the Calculus. As pointed out above, children become frustrated with fractions because you can't add or subtract them like one does with ordinary numbers. With fractions, you need a common denominator before the addition or subtraction operation is negotiated..
Reaching the common ground with fractions—common ground being the common denominator—is not difficult once a little trick is learned. For example, to add 3/10 and 2/15 all you need do is ask, "What is common to 10 and 15?" That is what is the largest number that divides both 10 and 15? The largest number to do this feat is 5, and this is known as the greatest common factor of 10 and 15. Thus multiply 10 and 15 together to get 150, then divide this result by 5 to get 30. This last number is the least common denominator of both 10 and 15. Now to finish off our problem of adding 3/10 and 2/15 we find out how many times each of the denominators goes into the number 30. In this case we have 30/10 is 3 and 30/15 is 2. We multiply each of these quotients 3 and 2 by the respective numerators 3 and 2 to get 3x3 is 9 and 2x2 is 4. We add these last two results, 9 and 4, to get 13. We put this number over the common denominator 30 to get our final answer of 13/30. That's it folks. Nothing too hard to learn. And this method works all the time.
So get on board with fractions and don't let their seemingly bullying attitudes get to you or your children. For you can beat these numbers at their game every time and turn that expression of "I hate fractions!" into one of "I love fractions!" Just watch your kids' grades soar in mathematics once they master fractions.
The Magic of
As a follow up to my article "The Magic of One Numbers Part I" I now continue with Part II in this fascinating series. For those who have not read the first article, please do so now so that you can better understand this one. Here I will show you a method to perform the multiplication of any two "one" numbers regardless of size. The result of such multiplication—once this method is studied and learned—can be obtained effortlessly and usually within seconds. So let's get started.
In the first of this series, I showed how to square any number which consisted of a series of 1's. Thus after learning this method, one could square 11 or 111. In this article, you will learn how to multiply two arbitrary "one" numbers together, such as 11 x 111. To do these multiplications, you need only learn a simple rule and the rest—well the rest—will be simply matter of fact. After thoroughly mastering these two techniques, you will be able to mesmerize people with your new-found math skill; and for those parents out there teaching these techniques to their kids, don't be surprised if you get some phone calls from your kid's math teachers, after your kid has demonstrated to them these powerful and novel methods.
This method is a little more involved than the squaring technique; however, with a little thought and practice, you will come to see that it really is no more difficult to master. Let us look at the example of multiplying 11 x 111. The result is 1221. The way we arrive at this result is by making some observations and then following a simple procedure. First we observe that the smaller "one" number, 11, has two 1's. Both numbers have a total of five 1's. The final answer will have a number of digits equal to 1 less than the total of 1's in both numbers, or in this case 4 digits. The answer, 1221, is obtained by noticing that if we count from 1 consecutively up to the number of 1's in the smaller "one" number and then down from that number without repeating it, we have 1 2 1, or only three digits. We need four in the answer so we insert another 2 between the 2 and 1 to get 1221. This is always the case and the number we use to "pad" the answer, so to speak, is the number which represents the number of 1's in the smaller "one" number.
A few more examples should make this perfectly clear. Let's look at 11 x 1,111. The total number of 1's in both numbers is 6. So the answer will have 5 digits. Since 2 is the number of 1's in the smaller "one" number, and if we count 1 2 1, we have only 3 digits; however, we need 2 more, so we pad the number with two more 2's in the middle to get 1 2 2 2 1 or 12,221 as our final answer.
Take 111 x 1,111. A total of 7 1's so our final answer will have 6 digits. Number of 1's in the smaller number: 3. So count 1 2 3 2 1 and observe that this consumes 5 digits. We need 6 so we pad 1 more 3 in the middle to get 1 2 3 3 2 1 or 123,321. To wrap up, I'll show one more example and then you can go off amazing your friends and family. Take 1,111 x 111,111 or one thousand one hundred eleven times one hundred eleven thousand one hundred eleven. How many total 1's: 10. So the answer will have 9 digits. Number of 1's in the smaller number: 4. So we count up to 4 and back from 4 to get 1 2 3 4 3 2 1 and observe that this uses 7 digits. We need 2 more so we pad with 2 more 4's to get 1 2 3 4 4 4 3 2 1 or 123,444,321 or one hundred twenty-three million four hundred forty-four thousand three hundred twenty-one as our final answer.
What do you think now? Do you think that armed with these techniques your kids could get better math grades? I think that's a rhetorical question. Good calculating.
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