"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell

Monday, August 1, 2011

Complexity: The Human Eye and the Ice Cube

The human eye is a rather marvellous object. Somehow, billions of atoms know how to come together, to attach to each other, folding up into proteins, those proteins somehow know how to form cellular structures, and those cellular structures somehow know how to form this complicated optical apparatus that we call an eye. Now, I am certainly not a creationist, though I understand a little bit about where they are coming from. How is it that something which is so mind numbingly complicated can arise from entirely natural processes? How do the atoms know how to form into proteins and other complicated organic molecules which, in turn, know how to form all of the myriad parts of things like eyes or noses or even hair? It seems almost as if there must have been some kind of supernatural power -- a God if you will -- that intelligently designed it.

On Fox Fans' Vitriolic Hate-Speech

One of the things that makes this country great is that we are free to engage in whatever public discourse that we wish, openly holding even the most unpopular of opinions. That we do so without threat of death is one of the founding virtues of this country.