Yana Usdi

A couple of very cool sites I've been reading a bit today, I guessed someone else might be interested.

There's a group called Edge, their motto seems to be To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.

One of their recent conferences was fascinating. Titled LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT! An Edge Special Event at Eastover Farm. It's a meeting between Freeman Dyson, J. Craig Venter, George Church, Robert Shapiro, Dimitar Sasselov and Seth Lloyd. There are a series of videos on the page which are accompanied by short text descriptions but the real interesting part is the PDF download near the top of the page which contains a more detailed transcript. Interesting stuff on both the past and future of life as they see it.

Edge: LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT!

Second one that was interesting is a series of essays on complexity. It's a scientific education web page oriented toward India and South Asia but the science doesn't change with geography and it's an interesting set of articles. I'll link them all but want to point out essay 8 and 9 since they are worth noting and might be missed if you started at the top and got bored They are on chemical complexity and the development of complex molecules like Proteins and DNA.

COMPLEXITY EXPLAINED: 1. What is Complexity? | Nirmukta
COMPLEXITY EXPLAINED: 2. Swarm Intelligence | Nirmukta
COMPLEXITY EXPLAINED: 3. Thermodynamic Explanation for the Increasing Complexity of our Ecosphere | Nirmukta
COMPLEXITY EXPLAINED: 4. The Nature of Information | Nirmukta
COMPLEXITY EXPLAINED: 5. Defining Different Types of Complexity | Nirmukta
COMPLEXITY EXPLAINED: 6. Emergence of Complexity in Far-from-Equilibrium Systems | Nirmukta
COMPLEXITY EXPLAINED: 7. Cosmic Evolution of Complexity | Nirmukta
COMPLEXITY EXPLAINED: 8. Evolution of Chemical Complexity | Nirmukta
COMPLEXITY EXPLAINED: 9. How Did Complex Molecules Like Proteins and DNA Emerge Spontaneously? | Nirmukta

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OldTimeToker

After just reading that I am fascinated with the way all of this is being worded. It points out an important factor that people who look up to a god probably do this just because they cant accept in their minds that we came from nowhere, which may make sense in some way but its still cool how the information is put together.

Thanks for the post yani this is one of the more interesting posts ive seen on this forum

cj117

If only people could learn to see God through the eyes of science.
I think once people realize that the essence of religion and science, regardless of their actual application in modern times, is exactly the same. Both serve the same purpose:

Pursuit of truth.

The bible speaks EXTENSIVELY and EXHAUSTIVELY about "searching for the truth". Many universal concepts from major religions such as reincarnation, natural cycles, spiritism, duality, and drug use are present in the bible.

The very basis of science is FACT. What other definition do we have for fact other than TRUTH? Oh here let me go define it for you:

fact

  /fækt/[fakt] –noun
1. something that actually exists; reality; truth: Your fears have no basis in fact.

Once you get past the realization that these two branches of fundamental understanding are simply two halves to the same coin, it's easy to see how the concepts of God and Nature (remember that's what we're studying, with this... "science") seem to meld much easier.

At least, they do.. in my mind!

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Yana Usdi

Have you spent any time reading Ken Miller? You might enjoy him, he's a top biologist who actually testified against intelligent design at the Dover trial but he's a believer and you might find him interesting. A book he wrote some time back was called "Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution". I haven't read it yet but I have read other work of his and he's pretty good.

His web page has some excerpts from the book and some other info on his views on the subject, you can find that here. Ken Miller's Evolution Page. Google video search should find a bit from him as well.

Welcome I love this stuff, I'm just glad someone else does too. As long as someone will read them I'm happy to post them.

rsbattle

There are some very interesting ideas presented in his, and I'm only on page 38!

And i love they way, how they explain, how we could have evolved much faster in the past, because DNA, RNA, and metabolites are/were different things and are seperate... And how instead of just competing within a species, or population (like we are now), we were competing on a global scale, with anything and everything, and sharing our information, and them sharing theirs with us... And then how when we did evolve into our certain species, etc, we stopped the free sharing of information on a genetic level, and then it was on a species/population basis...


I also found it very interesting how we're mapping out all these different types of cells, proteins etc etc, and finding their uses and what they were used for in the past. (Even though we have been doing this for a long time)...

I'm done reading this for now, but i plan on reading the rest of it, hopefully later tonight... And hopefully ill edit this post with more stuff. (Stuff you might not find interesting, haha, but i did)

PS: thanks for posting this.

KingDub

Great find Yana. This is just the kind of read I've been looking for.