I am curious - which scientists?  Can you provide references or links?

Science gives us the most truthful explanations of reality so far, but it can't explain everything. There will always be gaps that have to be filled with conjecture.

Moreover, science gives us no meanings. Science-based philosophy does that, and it is speculative. But it is, nevertheless, science-based and, as I said above, closer to truth that any other cosmological system we've had before.

If God is the creative power or force of the universe, then God reveals itself most truthfully in nature. The natural sciences examine nature, as well as the forces that created it, most objectively and truthfully. Scientific cosmology has replaced religious mythology as THE valid cosmology. Religion, if it wants to be or remain relevant, would do well to consider that.

Happy Genius might be yabbering aboot the study that applied Moore's Law to life?

Global Attitudes Project 2003; I`ve d/l the full report and it is CHOCK FULL of fun :3

I would like to know what evidence the scientists referred to by Happy Genius used to make their bizarrre claim, especially when, as far as I know, scientists have not calculated the age of the earth to the nearest million years yet.

I was listening to a physicist on Quirks and Quarks today offering the possibility that the laws of nature may change over time.  It was surprising to hear this thought from a physicist, even though I wondered about the prevailing assumptions about the durability of those laws for several years now.  Most of the calculations of time based on radioactive decay are loaded with usually unstated assumptions.

I Wonder===A good question...I remember clearly reading the article on line under Science on Huffington post...Two well known scientists...but I was not smart enough to write down their names...

ARM ==

was it this one, Happy Genius?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/18/life-before-earth-moores-law-ge...

Moore's law is a observation that applies to the rate of growth of computer technology and it is a big stretch to apply it to biology and evolution. 

The two scientists (Richard Gordon and Alexei Sharov) who speculated about its possible application to the origin of life and to evolution are quite clear that it is merely a "thought experiment" and not a theory that they are proposing.
 

Their twin assumptions (that Moore's Law applies, and that the doubling time is 375 million years, rather than the 2 years of Moore's Law) are both a huge stretch in the face of much other evidence to the contrary.  
 

Also Happy Genius' suggestion that life started 1 million years before the Earth formed seems to he pulled out of thin air.

Sorry, I posted my reply to Happy Genius and InnanaWhimsey before I read the subsequent posts by Happy Genius, Jim Kenney and InannaWhimsey (which help explain HG's original thesis)..  

My reply still stands of course.

Moor's Law is somewhat spatial, abstract and beyond mortal (limited) expression; exponential? Such things are difficult to explain to the self contained ... one has to accept the splatter theory of spores to mind ... toadies? Some compare this to the indeterminate mind ... out there and in Eire at the same time ... co existing essences ... like emotions and thoughts ... some are singular ... usefull for teaching balanced science (once known as vision, sometimes as knowledge) that is incomplete without Levity ... some call such things Leviathon or the hated Levite ... cast of Jew eLs ... Hebrew gemstones of refraction as a bent?

If you prefer not to know one must stay in the dark ... something of bosemie ... or boson-like (bo'sem-ite) in words that are delightful to mess with. Such is the redaction of time an obtuse dimension that is just there ... mortal often can't see it, or know it's source or destination ... might be just Black Hole antithesis! Groovy as encoundered in alien inertia ... once goan always Ko-Anne ... doubly reflective as sante? That's a well healed sol' ... something to surf with ...

Is that enough to whet the bottom end, a stumbling block to many without ... some immersion required can be deadly to life as it arrived here as levite ... a wandering power; Joules or ergs? The power of myth ... just drives some people ... to no ends!

Ontology ...

"Science gives us the most truthful explanations of reality so far, but it can't explain everything. There will always be gaps that have to be filled with conjecture."

I might change that to "doesn't explain everything" at least if we narrow our definition of reality to the natural world. I'm not sure there are gaps that couldn't be explained - although I know some suggest that science only answers 'how' questions rather than 'why'. Not an opinion I share.

Yes, turtlechurch, I agree. Science explains some "why" questions, but not all of them. And of the "why" questions it does answer, the answers sometimes have gaps that we fill in.

just to clarify

science doesn't explain or do anything -- it is people who explore, examine, etc and do the explaining :3

just like it isn't some external entity called g_d or religion that gives morality but rather us acting in the world

/pedantry

Pedantry?

Bottom of the foot?

That's soul mon ... like integral singularity! Something one has to gather ...

Why is the sky blue? Why is the Earth round? Why do things fall toward its centre?

Scientists explain these "why" questions well, using scientfic principles. The moral whys and wherefores, however, are up to every one of us.

More brain food!

Ever wonder why some scientists go 'urk!' when they hear aboot things like ghosts, telepathy, ufos as alien craft?

Also, a good explanatory talk of some very complex concepts...

New theory on cancer; Physicist Paul Davies holds forth

Here he is again, sussing out Ultimate Explanations

Species are a problem (social game?  indeterminate?  legality?)

Talking aboot klein bottles

No, and I apologize for my carelessness. I should have written down their names when I read the article.

It'sanailien affair ... quite unknown of mysteruius to mortal ... something to forget I'm told ...

I am curious why, using Moore's Law and this thought process, that one would say, "there goes Genesis"? If I read, I see before humans there was... Uh huh... and it does not say on Earth in Genesis anyways, does it?  I'm just sayin'....

What has been missing was the proof for the presence of a transcendental force in the universe—until the Higgs Boson was discovered as the carrier of that force. Now we have IT: transcendental energy is all there is!

This is a rather prosaic explanation for the nature of God, until we realize that transcendental energy has the capacity to transform itself into a limitless variety of states and forms while remaining a singularity of trancendental energy.

The cosmic content—transcendental energy—is given. But the cosmic context is open to limitless creativity! When we say "God is a mystery," then the mystery is the context, not the content. The content is deceptively simple.

But then maybe I am an oversimplifying simpleton.

As transcendental th' aught expressed as "O" ... it's nothing ... something you can make something of ... and it was but isn't no longer as I said earlier ... it is not what is that gets you but what isn't ... and people would never accept that ... they dispise unknowns ...

So how would they learn other than to get beyond themselves?

All that the finding of Higgs' with the right energies shows is that the Standard Model explanation for mass works. Nothing magical or transcendental, just that physicists are on the right track. That said, the Standard Model does not account for dark matter and dark energy as of yet (hard to say since we don't really know what they are) and physicists concede that the LHC and similar experiments could still turn up holes in the Standard Model that will require it to me modified. IOW, Higgs' on its own isn't a revolution in science. In fact, as I understand it, it merely confirms the status quo in physics. Higgs + dark matter/energy could = a revolution since the former confirms the model but the latter does not seem to fit it. If I was looking for a hidden "God" (used loosely, not in the classical sense of a transcendant creator) in physics, dark matter/energy is where I'd be looking, not Higgs.

Mendalla

I agree Mendalla, and then science will have to come up with a new name for dark energy and dark matter as it will likely become a study a "light" and not darkness. It's going to change everything about how we view reality and life.

Hi Mendalla and Neo:

Ever since the discovery of the Principles of Complementarity and Uncertainty, the science community was looking for the presence of a transcendental force that transcends the boundaries between opposites. I think they found it in the Higgs Boson. But the Higgs Boson, of course, explains neither dark matter/energy nor is it necessarily indicative of a transcendental power that transforms dark energy from an unquantified to a quantified state.

It my speculations, the Higgs Boson is a remote indicator for the presence of a transcendental force in the universe. But I am confident that scientists will, in due course, find experimental proof for the real transcendental force that transcends the boundaries between opposites and transforms dark energy from an unquantified to quantified state.

That "dark" energy is "unquantified" energy is, of course, another speculation of mine. But what else could it be? And what else could transform it from unquantified to quantified energy if not a transcendental power or force?

Arm, do you have citations for any of this, or are you just telling us what you really *hope* scientists are thinking, despite a complete lack of reasons for you to say so?

Except that isn't the hypothesis being tested, just as the search for the Higgs was never about finding a "remote indicator for the presence of a transcendental force". It was about testing the Standard Model by verifying one of the predictions made by that hypothesis. And the hypothesis passed the test in this case. How dark matter and dark energy will fit in to (or, perhaps, change) the Standard Model is a new hypothesis that will be formulated and tested down the road. I doubt it will go unmodified, but I also doubt that transcendence is what they will look for or find.

Science isn't about finding transcendance, it's about creating and testing hypotheses and the Standard Model has stood up very well to all tests as have quantum mechanics and relativity. If we find transcendance in science, that's spirituality and is quite subjective.

I do find a kind of transcendence in my readings of science, by the way, but I don't pretend that the science is about that transcendence. That is entirely how I choose to incorporate that knowledge into my own spiritual outlook. I find that cosmology and the Standard Model show me that we are part of a greater whole and that that greater whole is an intimate part of us. The particles that make us up originated in the Big Bang and were bashed together into atoms in long lost stars, giving each of us, and each other bit of living and non-living matter, a connection to every other bit of living/non-living matter. That's my transcendence: the revelation that we are part of a greater whole. I don't expect science to find any special "transcendental forces" because, to me, science already show that the whole of existence, including the forces we already know of, transcends us as individuals and as a species. In religious terms, I do not believe in a transcendant Deity but I do believe that we are part of something big and beautiful and worthy of celebration and that recognizing that on a deep level can be transformative.

Mendalla

Edit: Hot damn. After years of trying to come up with a statement of faith for myself, I think I just did it. The part that's in boldface in particular.

This statement of faith works for me as well.

And thank you for your explanations.

Well, chansen, it is all speculation and wishful thinking.

Then if white mass works ... does dark mass only think? The Shadow knows ...

Consider that dark mass absorbs light better than flaming passions ... the passions have to cool before thinking this through ...

Don't shoot again until you see the pupils ... those searching clear thought should be shot ... it's almost biblical ... if only they had firearms they wouldn't a toasted christians ... driving them underground ...