An experiment in intelligent design
Last year I reported on physical changes that were taking place in my nose, which had turned a horrible purple color and was swollen and wrinkled up because of sun damage in the past. According to my theory of ‘intelligent design' all physical changes in organisms are the result of biological software, algorithms which produce physical changes in the body in response to feedback from the environment.Links to the pages on intelligent design
one two three four five six
Last week I saw a girl I had not seen for months, and she was transfixed staring at the changes that have taken place in my nose. I have one patch of really damaged, wrinkled skin on the right side of my nose which I have been trying to keep, because I am panic stricken that my beautiful half fixed nose will become repaired, and I don't want that. The way that ruthless oppression works is that I would fix the nose and then my oppressors would say, ‘show us the evidence that you fixed a nose.' I suppose that the people who have known me for years could testify, but they can also be oppressed. After all, I require ‘scientific proof' that I fixed a nose, my oppressors will say, for you see, my oppressors are rotten hypocrites, and I can't help but wonder if they are also short a few screws up in the attic.
I have been dragging my feet, and I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I want to finally at long last completely fix that nose, but at the same time I do not. Despite my best efforts to slow my own progress I have taken some more pictures of my nose and I have noticed that all the wrinkling on the bridge of my nose is gone, and the purple patch has continued to shrink on the right side of my nose. I don't want to do this, and yet I do want to do this, but just nor right now, because I don't want to do this for myself.
The Reverse Randi challenge
After giving the matter some thought I have come up with what I think is solution. You may have heard of the Randi challenge. There is this prize of one million dollars waiting for some psychic to demonstrate psychic powers of some sort. The idea here is that the prize will go unclaimed for years, which is the whole idea behind that challenge.It has occurred to me that this is a strategy that I could turn on its head and use myself. So therefore I am going to issue a challenge and then I am going to wait to see just how long my challenge goes unanswered. Prove me wrong.
Random mutations and the evolution of species
In the city I live in we have rabbits which live year round in the industrial area (they are seldom seen in residential areas). In the winter the coat of the rabbits turns white so that the rabbit can disguise themselves in the snow. In the spring the rabbits turn white and brown, so that they can appear to be patches of snow mixed with patches of dirt. In the summer the coat of the rabbits turns brown so that they can appear to be clumps of earth.There is no disputing the fact that the rabbit demonstrates an ‘intelligent design'. What is disputed is whether or not what we are seeing is an ‘intelligent design' or merely appears to be an intelligent design. The controversy over ‘intelligent design' comes down to a controversy over appearances. Are things what they appear to be or can appearances be deceptive.
That things are not what they appear to be is the prevailing wisdom of our sciences today. According to conventional scientific wisdom what seems to be an intelligent design is actually just an ‘emergent property'. When many random mutations occur and natural selection has finished its work the result only appears to be an intelligent design. Actually it is not, for what only appears to be an intelligent design is actually just a property that gradually emerged over time and is the result of innumerable random mutations. The illusion of an intelligent design is a misinterpretation of an emergent property that was the product of countless occurrences of mindless natural selection.
Therefore we must conclude that a random mutation resulted in a rabbit which was white in the winter, and another random mutation resulted in a rabbit which was white in the winter and then white and brown in the springtime, with another random mutation creating a rabbit which was then brown in the summer, completing the cycle. Now we do not see rabbits that are randomly mutated to be brown in the winter and white in the summer, so that we could see natural selection at work. We also don't see yellow rabbits or purple rabbits, so that once again we could see natural selection at work, weeding out the rabbits that were unfit to survive, and once again selecting the rabbits which we do see today. Rather what we see is that the rabbit population exhibits a remarkable amount of stability. It would appear that what is referred to as ‘natural selection' is only in operation when a rabbit is required to adapt to an environment, and once this adaptation is complete, we see no mutations but rather we see stability.
This stability is the consequence of the fact that mutations are generally undesirable and biological mechanics works to exclude the possibility of such random mutations in the general case. So then we see that a creature like the shark has not mutated for over a hundred million years, and alligators and crocodiles have not mutated for an equally long time. There is evidence for a remarkable stability in these species found in the fossil record. We don't see randomly mutated rabbits being selected against today and nor do we see any randomly mutated sharks or crocodiles over the course of hundreds of millions of years. The evidence that we do see suggests that creatures only mutate and thus adapt when they are required to adapt to an environment, and once adapted they no longer change because change is no longer required.
A bedbug is an insect that is a remarkable example of ‘intelligent design'. What we see here is an insect with very sophisticated specialized adaptations which are clearly the result of development in a symbiotic relationship which has existed between a parasite (the blood sucking bedbug) and its host (human beings). A bedbug has two syringes growing out of its snout. One is for extraction (blood sucking) and the other is for injection (the bedbug injects an anesthetic, so that its bite is completely painless, as well as an anti-coagulant which is a blood thinner). As I have noticed from personal experience with these insects, a bedbug has some type of specially padded feet so that its crawl is undetectable on human skin. Bedbugs are able to determine when a human being is in the deepest stages of REM sleep, and a typical time for a bedbug to show up is around five A.M. in the morning. However, for those of us with an irregular sleep pattern, bedbugs display an ability to adjust an internal chronometer and show up at the correct time, even if this turns out to be in the daylight hours (I discovered this when I set my alarm for a couple of hours earlier than my typical wake up time, arousing myself from what would have been REM sleep, only to catch some bedbugs running like hell to get away before they were caught in the act). Bedbugs are strongly adapted to remain invisible, and are never seen, living their entire life hiding away, coming out only once every week or week and half to feed for ten or fifteen minutes. They have a definite preference for all natural fibres. They will typically be found nesting and hiding away in close proximity to where a human host is sleeping, which minimizes the distance they must crawl at feeding time.
According to conventional scientific wisdom, the bedbug is a very ancient insect, which no doubt was found pestering ancient pre-human species in the very distant past. The reason why we would assume that the bedbug is ancient insect is that in order for random mutations to explain the extremely sophisticated adaptations found in this insect species we must assume that mutations were occurring randomly for millions of years.
When an insect is found to possess the sophisticated medical equipment we find in the bedbug we are left to wonder whether or not what we are seeing only appears to be an ‘intelligent design'. That the adaptations of this bug are a fine example of intelligent design cannot be disputed. One analogy that is often employed is the analogy of the mousetrap, which is then used to explain how sophisticated systems can emerge from simple parts, which then leads humans to be confused by what appears to be sophisticated design. A mouse trap consists of a spring, which could make a fine fishing hook, as just one example. The other parts of a mouse trap are also simple, and when these simple parts randomly self assemble we are left with a mousetrap, which then appears to be sophisticated and complex, but is not, since the sophistication is only apparent, and not real, since it is an emergent property which is the end result of the random combination of simple elements. The sophisticated end product of this random combination of elements would then be selected by nature and because it was selected this can lead to the illusion of ‘intelligent design' when actually this illusion was a deception, the product of an emergent property.
What we are then required to assume is that, employing this mouse trap analogy, a bedbug must have randomly mutated in such a way as to produce an anesthetic, an anti=coagulant, and an injecting syringe, and that each of these simpler elements came together randomly, much as the elements in the mouse trap analogy, to create the illusion of a sophisticated system where there was in reality only an emergent property which was the result of many countless random mutations.
Now there are probably millions of chemical compounds that exist, and we can therefore assume that bedbugs randomly mutated in such a way as to run the gamut, producing at one time, a deadly toxin that killed the host, perhaps a compound that left a host paralyzed, on another occasion perhaps a harmless vitamin K, and so on. These many millions of random bedbug mutations were then selected against by nature, because they served no useful purpose in helping a bedbug survive. There are many billions of bedbugs hatching from eggs and so we can assume that bedbugs continue to mutate, occasionally killing their hosts when they produce not an anesthetic or an anti-coagulant but some harmful toxin, the result of one of those useless mutations, just as we might expect to see the odd yellow or purple rabbit. We don't see this because the chemical compounds produced by bedbugs are stable, since bedbugs are not required to alter these compounds so that nature can randomly select the right combination of chemical compounds from the millions that might be available. The task is complete and therefore no mutations are found to occur.
When I try to imagine how a bedbug constructed such a sophisticated pharmacological mousetrap out of such simple elements, with nature selecting exactly the chemical compounds required by this insect out of the millions of possibilities, I find myself wondering which came first, the chicken or the egg, or in this case, which came first, the syringe or the chemical compounds. Perhaps over tens and even hundreds of thousands of years, bedbugs first formed a slight point on their snout, which then grew into a long point, and which then became hollow and which then became a syringe mechanism which could be employed for injections so that a bedbug could play nurse, and which then in another series of propitious random mutations then became a syringe loaded with exactly those chemical compounds that a bedbug would need if it was to bite people at five in the morning without waking them up with a lot of painful biting, resulting in the exposure and swatting of that pesky bug. This sort of thing is very hard to imagine but prevailing scientific wisdom insists that we do imagine that it did happen, for bedbugs have had millions of years to randomly mutate, and even if they are stable now, they were not stable in the past, since they were busy mutating in very strange and fortunate ways, finally becoming the sophisticated bugs we see today. This would be a fine example of an emergent property if we assume that such fortunate properties can simply emerge by dumb luck, given enough time to roll the dice repeatedly.
Creationism
It is typical to frame the debate over ‘intelligent design' as being a dispute over the veracity of ‘evolution' as opposed to ‘creationism'. This is a false dichotomy, since in this case at least, the theory is that the evolution of species is the product of biological algorithms which process input from the environment and then produce physical transformation in the body. All the intelligence is located in the algorithms, and would not be found in an insect such as the bedbug, and it is because the software of life is in the form of an artificial intelligence program that the software is then able to make sophisticated and intelligent design decisions, and thus we can see an insect with very limited intelligence, such as a bedbug carrying with it such sophisticated medical equipment.In an insect, it is obvious that the intelligence is found in the software of life, whereas in higher creatures such as rabbits or human beings, some of the intelligence can be located in the software while some of it can be found in the living being, and so we would see rabbits with intelligently designed adaptations to the seasons, since a rabbit has enough intelligence to know that it wants to hide and to know when it is or is not hidden, and we can also see evidence of human beings with the ability to do what would in the past be called ‘ a miracle' or an example of ‘faith healing', for human beings are intelligent enough to understand what a software program is and can therefore initiate a program to perform a specific task. (However we are much more likely to see rabbits changing their coats than we are to see human beings taking control over their own bodies, for it turns out that a rabbit is less intelligent than a human being, and thus does not kow that it cannot change its coat, and therefore it goes ahead and changes its coat when this is required, while human beings prove to be to ‘smart' for their own good, knowing as they do that they are helpless prisoners of their own bodies and that there isn't a damn thing they can do about it, and so they do nothing and nothing changes for them).
If we consider the traditional ‘creationist' argument, then it must have been the case that God created bedbugs, and this would then explain the intelligent design of such insects. This would have been on the fifth day, when, according to Genesis, God created everything that creeps and crawls on the earth, and then, we are told, after God created bedbugs, God saw that it was a good, since apparently sending a bedbug after Adam was a very good idea. This was the fifth day, and then evening came and morning came and it was the sixth day, and God created Adam, having already had the foresight to create Adam's bedbug the day before, equipped as we know with those specially padded feet, and the medical tools required to bite Adam for the very first time early in the morning on the very first Sabbath (for while God was taking the day off to observe the Sabbath, it seems unlikely that the bedbug would do the same, since we don't see bedbugs observing the Sabbath today, and so therefore we must assume that the bedbug set about biting Adam about five in the morning on Saturday). It also must have been true that Noah and his family had a raging case of bedbugs going on in that ark, or that Noah made the point of taking at least two bedbugs onto the ark, a male and a female, so that bedbugs could get down to business and start biting Noah and his family so that they could lay more eggs and make more bedbugs so that we could have bedbugs right up to this very day.
Now if we consider the ‘creationist' argument, we can see that while a bedbug is certainly a fine example of ‘intelligent design', and could therefore possibly be employed in an apologetic argument for the existence of an intelligent creator, while it is true that bedbugs are ‘intelligently design' it is also true that bedbugs are one hell of a bad idea. This is just the start of it, and one can list other really bad ideas, such as the malarial parasite, and a host of other creatures which could also be fine examples of intelligent design while at the same time being fine examples of a lack of intelligence thus leaving one to wonder how it could ever have been the case that God would have looked at a bedbug or that malarial parasite and then declare that it was all good, it was very, very good.
On the origins of bedbugs
It is obvious that the so called ‘creationist' argument is intellectually unsatisfying, and that the only reason anyone might gravitate towards such an argument would be because they somehow found it to be emotionally satisfying, and even then it could only be so if people have the ability to ignore quite a few inconvenient facts, or if they are willing to make up speculative histories (so then it could be said that, in an act of vengeance, God made bedbugs after Adam had sinned by eating an apple, thus explaining those bedbugs, which could not have been created on the fifth day for the simple reason that it would be less emotionally satisfying to think of bedbugs being good, very, very good).This is not to say that a bedbug can never be good, very, very good, and while it is true that human beings think that the bedbug is bad, very, very bad, being a bedbug seems like a very good idea if you happen to be a bedbug. Certainly the bedbugs seem to think so as they are constantly busy laying eggs and never stop trying to ensure that come hell or high water the world will always have another generation of those lovely bedbugs, since bedbugs think that is a wonderful plan.
Now as for the question ‘how were bedbugs created', the evidence would suggest that bedbugs were created by human beings. The bedbug was the clay and human beings were the potter. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that bedbugs are not ancient creatures at all, but rather that bedbugs have only existed for thousands of years, and not hundreds of thousands or millions of years.
Bedbugs were once flying insects. The atrophied remains of wings are still found on the backs of bedbugs today. At one time bedbugs were much like the mosquito, a bug which flew around biting animals, which also suggests that bedbugs were not as fixated upon biting human beings as they are found to be today. Bedbugs could not have abandoned flying in the ancient past, but rather must have done so in more recent times, for bedbugs still retain the atrophied remains of wings at the present time. What we are seeing is the tail end of a process of transition from a flying bug to the crawling bug of today.
Approximations of the two shapes of a bedbug body...
Left - tubular body of a flying bug often seen in juvenile bedbugs
Right - classic flattened oval shape of the bedbug
Not only do the bedbugs still possess the atrophied remains of their wings, you can still see the streamlined body shape of a flying insect in many juvenile bedbugs. The classic bedbug shape is a flattened oval, about as thick as a credit card, a shape which is not designed for flying but rather to allow a crawling bug to slip through even the most narrow cracks and crevices. Juvenile bedbugs are sometimes born with this oval shape, but they are also found to have an elongated tubular shape, and sometimes they are seen with a transitional triangular shape which is an intermediate form between the elongated tubular shape of the flying bug and the developing oval shape of what is now a crawling bug.
Bedbugs did not lose their wings a very long time ago, since the shriveled remains of their wings are still found on the backs of these bugs which no longer fly, but rather crawl, and the tubular body shape frequently seen in juvenile bedbugs is a throw back to the body shape of the flying bugs of the past. Therefore we can see that bedbugs are currently an insect which is in transition, and that the transition from a flying bug to the crawling bedbug of today is a process which is nearing completion, but is not yet fully complete, and therefore we can still see fascinating glimpses of the bug from which today's modern bedbug evolved.
The bite of the bedbug is also in transition. I have noticed on my body simple puncture wounds with no swelling, the only symptom being a delayed itching reaction that only occurs about five or six hours after awakening. At the same time some bedbug bites leave nasty welts. In the case of the bedbugs I have experienced, the more primitive bedbugs, whose bites swell like those of a mosquito are in the minority, in that about five percent of the bites I would experience would form welts and the rest would be simple puncture wounds with no associated swelling at all.
A reasonable hypothesis which would explain this transition we see taking place from a flying bug much like a mosquito, to the bedbug of today would be that bedbugs were created by human beings with the process being initiated around the same time that human beings began practicing agriculture and domesticating animals. When human populations increase there is a concurrent decrease in animal populations, and this would attract flying insects to human livestock and also to human beings. Now there are certain advantages to biting a human being which would then explain the fixation that bedbugs have when it comes to preferring to bite people. When an animal is bitten a lot of work is required to burrow through fur or feathers, while human beings are much easier to bite. There is a downside to biting a human being, for flying bugs will be getting swatted and squashed, this being even more likely if their bite creates a painful welt.
The safest time to bite a human being is while they are in a deep sleep. Since our ancestors lived in tents and lived nomadic lives following their herds of animals, being a flying bug was less advantageous, and it was more advantageous to be a bug which could squeeze through cracks and crevices so as to get into a tent at night. Fighting and struggling to get into a tent at night is a lot of work, and it makes more sense once in a tent to remain in a tent and to remain in hiding so as to avoid being swatted and squashed. Bedbugs have a strong affinity for all natural fibers, since these were the materials our ancestors carried with them. It makes sense for a bedbug to conceal itself within these fibers so that when our nomadic ancestors moved from spot to spot they took the bedbug with them. This was preferable to being a flying bug which would then have to search for the new location of our ancestors tents, and then go through the difficult task of finding someway to squeeze into a tent, all of which is a very energy intensive way to get a meal. Because so much energy would be burned getting a meal the flying bug would have to bite more often which would bring increased risk, while the crawling bug which then went into hiding was an energy conserving bug. Today's bedbugs only bite once every week or week and half, which minimizes their exposure and thus the risk they face and is only possible because being a crawling bug which hides within natural fibers is an energy conserving strategy.
Flying around inside a tent would be a good way to get swatted, and so we can see that flying would be behavior that is deprecated while crawling and hiding would be preferred, and while the tubular stream lined body shape is suitable for a flying bug the flattened body shape is preferable for a bug that crawls and then hides in cracks and crevices to avoid getting a good swat. Leaving welts after a bite is not a good idea for a bug which wishes to become invisible and a painful bite is not a good idea for a bug which wishes to bite at night without waking its host and running the risk of being exposed and then squashed.
All the adaptations of the bedbug can be seen to be products of a symbiotic relationship with human beings, with the bedbug being the creation of human beings (the insect becoming like clay for the hands of the human potter).
The evidence suggests that bedbugs are not extremely ancient insects, for what we see is an insect in transition, a living example of evolution, for we can still see the bug that existed before a symbiotic relationship developed between human beings and what were to become bedbugs. The body of the bedbug is nearing the end of a process of transition, with throw backs to the tubular body shape of the flying insect from which bedbugs emerged still visible in some juvenile bedbugs, along with the atrophied wings. The bite of the bedbug is also nearing the end of a process of transition from that of a flying insect which produced painful welts like a mosquito, and which was under no pressure not to do so because like a mosquito it possessed wings and thus could escape. The bite is now a painless bite and a nearly complete transition has resulted in a bite with no swelling. These adaptations are appropriate responses for a crawling insect which is strongly adapted to avoid detection so that it can specialize in biting human beings and survive.
Bedbugs and ‘intelligent design'
Even though our bedbugs are currently a species in transition (we are seeing the tail end of a fascinating process of transition from a flying bug to a flat, oval crawling bug strongly adapted to biting humans while they sleep) it is still often said that bedbugs are ancient insects which no doubt were biting primitive proto-humans millions of years ago. The reason for this assertion is obvious when we consider just how damned unlikely it is that a bedbug could randomly mutate a nostril syringe loaded with specialized chemical compounds (an anesthetic and an anti-coagulant). This would be impossible to imagine happening in just a matter of a few thousand or few tens of thousands of years, and it is also hard to imagine such a thing happening even given millions of years.How would such a thing happen ‘randomly', even if we assume that bedbugs were rolling the dice for millions of years. Which came first, the chicken or the egg (the nose syringe or the specialized chemical compounds contained within that syringe). Did a bedbug randomly mutate so as to have a slight protrusion on its snout. It would then have to be argued that this bump on the snout conferred some sort of benefit to the bedbug thus causing nature to select this adaptation. Gradually this growth on the snout of the bedbug would randomly mutate to become longer and longer and each step of the way for some reason nature would ‘select' only the bedbugs with a long growth on their snouts. Keep in mind that nature is completely stupid, and displays no intelligent foresight, so we cannot argue that nature favored this snout growth knowing in advance that the bedbug required a syringe growing out of its snout. Using the mouse trap analogy we can then argue that a bedbug mutated so as to randomly create some type of pumping mechanism to attach to that snout growth, which would then randomly mutate to become a hollow tube. Next a random mutation would take place wherein the pump would become full of chemicals ready to inject and no doubt bedbugs were mutating to inject people with vitamin K or perhaps arsenic before finally natural selection worked its charmed magic and selected only those bedbugs that mutated so as to manufacture anesthetics and anti-coagulants, two specialized chemical compounds out of the millions available.
Once a bedbug had randomly mutated a nose syringe and then randomly mutated the precise chemicals required to fill that nose syringe it is a simple matter to argue in favor of natural selection since such a well adapted bedbug would naturally become a selected bedbug. The problem here is in explaining just how a bedbug went about randomly mutating such a highly specific and specialized tool in the first place. We don't see rabbits mutating to form syringes on their nostrils. Locusts do not do this. Bedbugs do this which is handy and quite a stroke of good luck if you happen to be a bedbug and thus find oneself in need of such specialized medical equipment.
This argument concerning the building of highly specialized and complex systems through a dumb process of ‘random mutations' followed by ‘natural selection' is the state of the art as far as the thinking of our science today, and to put it frankly, such an idea is tortured and idiotic. It is obvious that there is an intelligence of some sort at work here. As far as it concerns bedbugs, we know that the intelligence is not found in this insect and therefore it must be found elsewhere. According to this theory of intelligent design the intelligence is found encoded in algorithms, in the software of life, and this provides the most satisfactory explanation of how complex systems can be seen to have rapidly evolved in even the most simple creature such as an insect. This explanation actually makes sense unlike that other business about ‘random mutations' and ‘natural selection' which to put it frankly is so idiotic and unlikely to ever happen simply by randomly rolling dice, even if the dice were to be rolled for a very long time.
Now it has been said that ‘intelligent design is not a science'. This is no longer true. If evolution is the product of the software of life, the product of algorithms, then what we have here is a scientific theory which is provable or disprovable, can be tested by experiment, and which can also be used to generate predictions. Since these are the criteria which a theory must meet in order to be considered a scientific theory it is obvious then that this theory of intelligent design is not an abstract statement of some philosophy, which is the criticism leveled at creationism in the past when it attempted to masquerade as a theory of ‘intelligent design'. The evidence of evolution is either the product of biological software or it is not. 97 percent of DNA does not code for proteins and has been referred to in the past as ‘junk DNA' (also referred to as ‘non-coding DNA'). We either find algorithms and the software of life encoded in this 97 percent of DNA or we do not. This is science, not philosophy.
Predictions of the ‘intelligent design' hypothesis
Now let us generate some predictions, since it is by generating predictions that we can test the validity of a scientific hypothesis.Bedbugs are currently collecting data from their environment which is being fed into a software program where it will be analyzed, with the results of the analysis expressed in changes to either the physical form or the encoded behavior patterns of bedbugs. Now as I have mentioned in my previous postings concerning bedbugs, when a pesticide resistant bedbug is sprayed with pesticides, when the bug is not killed by the pesticides it nevertheless does not escape unscathed. The pesticides cause a mutation and I refer to the product of that chemically induced mutation as being the Frankenstein bug. What was once a bedbug is no longer a bedbug but becomes an anywhere, anytime bug. Bedbugs are not aggressive. They are timid, retiring bugs, but they become very aggressive and courageous when they are chemically altered by human beings. They become formidable insects, with specialized adaptations which allow bedbugs to stealthily attack human beings anywhere at any time of the day. They become brave and aggressive insects, fearlessly reckless, and this makes the bedbug pestilential. People wind up carrying those things to work, to restaurants and shopping malls.
Aggression is a behavior pattern which has been missing in the bedbug for thousands of years. It is also a highly desirable trait for bedbugs - aggression combined with great stealth and fearless courage. It becomes evident just how desirable this behavior pattern is when we consider that it is the Frankenstein bugs produced when pesticide resistant bedbugs are exposed to pesticides that are the carriers of an extremely aggressive and pestilential bedbug plague. For this reason, the theory of intelligent design, by means of biological algorithms, would predict that bedbugs should mutate and begin to hatch eggs out of which will emerge a new and much better adapted insect than the overly cautious and timid bedbugs of the past. (As an example of what I mean, I had bedbugs for at least five or perhaps six months, without knowing that I had them, and then I had them for another two months while I tried to figure out some way to manage the problem without spraying a pesticide resistant bedbug with even more pesticides, and during that entire time they did not spread. I was the only person who had bedbugs until I starved them for two months and they did the inevitable and moved under the wall to the neighbor's bedroom next door, since all my best ideas for managing bedbugs came to late to make any difference, for the only advice ever given around this place concerns spraying, while spreading the myth that before the chemical industry was invented human beings were helpless tortured victims of those bugs. The timid reclusive nature of those insects is enough to refute that suggestion, for we can see hard coded in the behavior of those bugs that our ancestors gave them a very difficult time. Just the fact that they adapted to become bedbugs is evidence enough that our ancestors were not helpless victims waiting for the invention of toxic poisons to save them from those bugs).
Human beings are currently in the process of creating a massive extinction event on this planet. We know from examining the fossil record that whenever an extinction event takes place the result is an explosive growth of new life on the planet. There is a sharp boundary found in the fossil record which delineates the borderline between extinction event and an explosion of new life, with no transitional fossils which would indicate that random mutations and gradual evolution of new forms of life took place. According to this theory of intelligent design we should once again see new species emerge in response to an extinction event, for when we interpret the evidence of the fossil record as the product of a software program, we can deduce some of the characteristics of this software by examining the results it produces. Last year there was a report of the discovery of a totally new mammal, which was considered an exceptional and interesting occurrence. If this happens once, it is not to unusual (a mammal was missed and not documented in the past surveys), but when it happens again and again it is very exceptional and as it continues to occur it becomes evidence that the software of life is responding to extinction events today just as it did in the past, by suddenly and very rapidly filling the planet with newly created forms of life.
Currently somewhere around 3 percent of fatal illnesses go into spontaneous remission. As I have discovered to my own satisfaction by making note of certain physical changes that have taken place in my nose, it is possible to heal the body by using these algorithms. At the present time, people do not know who they are, nor do they understand what their capabilities are, but when they do discover these things for the first time, we can expect a statistically significant increase in this statistic. Even 6 or 7 percent would be a nice start. (You must have faith). It is important to point out here that this ‘faith healing' refers not to some supernatural miracle but rather it is an entirely natural process, and for this reason to maximize results it is important to follow a healthy diet and avoid the intake of unhealthy substances. Give your body the resources that it requires, and do not burden it with unhealthy substances, have faith and take control of your own body, and allow nature's software to do the rest.
Testing Divine Revelation
My preliminary experience with my nose indicate is that it is possible to heal a physical body. The technique could be called ‘faith healing', for in this case you simply believe that biological algorithms exist and that the purpose of such algorithms is to change the physical body, and then all that is required is for a human being to do what a bedbug does, or what a rabbit does, or what any other creature on the face of the planet does, and change the physical body by somehow issuing instructions to these algorithms. The mechanics of this sort of transformation are not understood, but that does not seem to matter. All a person needs to know is that the algorithms exist and that it is possible for a human being to initiate this process, whether they understand how it works or not, if they have ‘faith'.One of the problems with human beings, as I see it, is that people are just to damn smart for their own good. A rabbit does not know that it cannot become a white rabbit in winter, a white and brown rabbit in spring, and a brown rabbit in summer, and because it does not know and thus cannot doubt, a rabbit just goes ahead and becomes white or it becomes brown. Similarly, a bedbug is not intelligent enough to know that it cannot grow a syringe out of the end of its snout, nor does it know that it cannot shoot a person up with anesthetics or anti-coagulants, and so we see bedbugs doing just these things. We must assume in the case of the bedbug that all the intelligence is found in the software, since it is very unlikely that it is found in the bug, because bugs are not smart enough to get the ides into their heads to play nurse. Bugs can experience the fear and flight response, and attempt to run when they get caught red handed inflicting a painful bite and then just barely escape with their lives when a human tries to swat them to death. In just such ways it is possible for even a bug to give environmental feedback to these algorithms, where the intelligence is found, and thus it is possible for the algorithms to determine that what is required is a syringe growing out of that bugs snout loaded with anesthetics.
It is ridiculous for a person to think about fixing an aging and very badly damaged nose just by deciding to have faith in nature's algorithms. We just don't see that, and so therefore when we do see it, we might stare in astonishment. We don't see it, and therefore we have no faith, and for this reason we find people walking around for the rest of their lives with really ugly noses, or bald heads with no hair, for you see people do not have faith unless they see and they know.
This brings us to consider the Christian Church throughout history, which was a church with no faith. We know she had no faith, for she had been told long ago that if you only had faith, you could move mountains, and you could heal anything that might be wrong with your physical body. This doctrine of ‘faith healing' was the doctrine of that Jesus character, or so we are told in some of those stories, but it was not the doctrine of the church, for as we know, people walked around for thousands of years with ugly noses and bald heads, while at the same time they went to church, which turned out to not do anyone much good if they were ill or deformed, for the church itself had no faith, and it is impossible to transmit such faith when there is no such faith to transmit.
According to church doctrine there are two types of knowledge. One is based upon observation and experiment, and this is the province of science. There is supposedly another type of knowledge, referred to as ‘revelation', which is the province of the church. Revelation cannot be tested, it can only be blindly accepted by faith, and the chosen repository of such divinely inspired ‘knowledge' was said to be the church, created by God for just this purpose.
Now we know that the church had no revelation concerning ‘faith healing', for it turns out that she just did not believe that Jesus, for as everyone knows such doctrines are fairy tales and silly nonsense. Even the church believed that, which is why she does not preach these things. Apparently her divine revelations came concerning other matters and not that one, for it is self evident and beyond dispute that she had no revelation in that one area. Now since the church never had enough of a revelation to know enough to have faith in that Jesus character, and since it is becoming apparent that this Jesus was correct and the church was badly mistaken in her faithlessness, this brings into question all her other supposed revelations. Such ‘divine revelations' include such untestable propositions as the details concerning ‘ghost heaven', where ghosts go when they exist the body on death, unless they go straight to ghost hell, having not been baptized by some priest.
Such speculative revelations cannot be tested, and therefore they must be beyond the reach of science, and therefore the church preaches ‘special knowledge', since it is alleged that she received a divine dispensation from God to teach about such matters, which no one can test and no one can confirm or deny. However some of her ‘revelations' can be tested, or rather we can test her lack of revelation, since she had revelations only where her revelations could not be tested, but conveniently, as it turns out, she had no revelations concerning those areas where her understanding could be subject to testing, which is convenient, because it means that now we can test her wisdom and her understanding.
The god of the dead
The church was completely faithless, and thus she took no care for the body, since, being sensible and quite worldly, she knew better than to believe the fantastic nonsense being preached by that spinner of fairy stories known as Jesus. Rather, what the church taught was a more practical doctrine, something that she was led to by the Holy Ghost, as she progressively received more and more revelations over time. She learned that sickness and aging and death were suffering, and that suffering was good, for it was like spiritual calisthenics or spiritual jumping jacks for the ghost within us all. This ghost needed to suffer sickness, without complaint, knowing full well that it was building up spiritual strength for that longed for time when everyone would drop dead and then go to heaven, having shed their sinful body once and for all. A little sickness, lots of suffering would help everyone to let go.For this reason the church did not bother much with doctrines about ‘faith healing' of the body, and while this was a departure from the teachings of that Jesus, it was acceptable, since the body was sinful and deserved to suffer and did not merit healing. It wasn't that she could not heal, but rather that she chose not to do so, you see.
Now the god of the Christians was this god of the dead. As every Christian knew, it was very impractical, even ridiculous, to expect to see any convincing evidence of the existence of their god in the land of the living, but rather they must wait for that glorious day when they would die, a ghost would leave their body, and fly up to ghost heaven. There waiting for them would be aunt Marge and mom and dad, and of course that Christian god would be waiting with loving open arms to embrace them. They did their jumping jacks and ran the marathon of suffering, pain, and doubt, and they jumped that last hurdle and crossed the finish line. They successfully dropped dead and they made it to heaven. This novel idea, which I refer to as a sows ear, was turned into a silk purse by that church, and is now the penultimate doctrine of Christianity, the very doctrine of ‘salvation'..
I call that doctrine a sows ear which some braniac decided to turn into a silk purse, for when your god tells you to drop dead, that is a sows ear, and when you can find no salvation in this world, and when your god demands faith, because there is no god here, that is a sows ear. It is a bad thing, and not a good thing, but since Holy Mother Church cannot err in matters of the faith, a sows ear cannot be a sows ear, it must be a silk purse.
Atheists
This then brings us to the argument of the atheist, which is that there is no evidence that any god exists, and that the absence of this evidence is the evidence of its absence. This is the general argument of an atheist. For if a god existed then there should be some testable evidence that such a god exists for such a god must have an effect on the material world, and therefore there should be someway for science to experiment and to test.The god of the church, and the gods of all other religions, have this one thing in common. They are all gods of the dead. For this reason, the knowledge of such gods can only come by means of divine revelation, for such gods live in the ‘spiritual realm', a kind of supernatural dwelling place where such gods exist. They are remote, distant, pitiless creatures, these gods. All their mighty deeds were done long ago, and then never repeated again. All we have are fairy stories which, as we have seen, even churches or other religions do not believe, for you do not find them wasting their time on such fairy stories, since you do have to be practical in this world. It would not do to not be pragmatic, for apparently that would be embarrassing, and who wants to humiliate themselves in public by doing any more than referring back to a mythical golden age, when gods were quite busy, instead of being distant and callous, like they have always been since that glorious time so very long ago when they were not so.
Now the problem we have here is that the only one present to debate an atheist was some church, and since a church must be a congenital liar no church can debate an atheist. I say a church must be a congenital liar, for you see it is self evident that churches do not believe their own fairy stories, and when someone is such a hypocrite it is unlikely that they will be able to debate an atheist honestly, but rather the debate will be done the way a church does it, which is dishonestly. She will cheat. She will invent revelations, which cannot be tested, and then she will complain of persecution when her speculative doctrines are not given pride of place beside the knowledge uncovered by science. She will not confront science, nor will she adapt herself to the methods of science, because by definition, you cannot conduct experiments upon her speculations, because her god is the god of the dead, and since science has not discovered a way to experiment upon ghosts or spirit lands, and since the church has nothing in this world to offer anyone, which is obvious, she must forgo science so that she can keep her speculative doctrines. In this way at the very least she could keep something and not lose it all, for otherwise she would have nothing.
The problem here is that she is the church and she has no god, for if she had a god then her god would impact the physical world rather than impacting hearts or impacting ghosts up in heaven, and thus there would be something physical to test. Now it was said that her god was able to impact the physical world in some golden age long ago when gods did such things so that people could read bibles for thousands of years, which, we are told, is what gods wanted so they did it that way. In those days there was something to test, but alas we have bibles and no god, and so ever since that time there has been nothing to test, which then explains why we have revelations instead.
The argument of an atheist would be that we have no god and that this is the evidence that we have no god because we obviously don't have one. Unfortunately atheists can only debate religion in all its diverse forms, and since none of these religions have any god, they have no answer, and must resort to deception and deceitful practices lest they lose it all.
An atheist might ask why it is that we have religion but we have no gods, and to get a proper answer to that question it is required that someone else answer the questions of an atheist, since it is apparent that you can never get an honest answer out of a congenital liar which is what our religions are.
We know that atheists reject religion, but we also know that atheists also expect God to endorse religion. The argument of an atheists takes the following form. Religion has no god, therefore there is no god. We also know that religion is faithless, and a good enough example of that sort of thing is the church, for she was careful to avoid embarrassing herself by having faith in that Jesus of hers, and instead she took steps to ensure that she could never be caught by inventing ghost heavens and spiritual revelations, which cannot be refuted. In this way she managed to survive with no god for thousands of years.
This leads me to ask a question. Why do atheists condemn religion and then expect God to endorse religion? For the truth about this place is that these people have gods already. If it turns out that their gods were not gods, then we can say that religion had gods that were no gods at all. They were just idols, vain and useless. For God to endorse religion would therefore validate an idol. We have no God here because the earth is full of idols. When atheists endorse idols, then one could expect an atheist to demand that God endorse idols. However, atheists condemn idols, which is good, but then they make the ridiculous argument that God should endorse religion and thus endorse idols, for if God did not endorse the idols of the church or any other religion, then it must be true that there is no god for there was not god to be found in churches.
To summarize my point, atheists are hypocrites. That some church would spend centuries losing arguments to hypocrites is a sad commentary on churches, for churches could never win that argument for it turns out that churches are also hypocrites, and when two hypocrites are found arguing we don't expect much to come of it. The hypocrisy of churches is obvious. They have no god, but they insist that they have a god, and that this god is some god of the dead, and thus does nothing, other than something such a god supposedly did long ago. This god did things long ago so that people could read bibles, which is what gods want, since church gods knew that there would be no god for thousands of years for people would be going to church instead of having gods, and for this reason it would be required that they read about gods, since there wouldn't be any god around, thus requiring us to have bibles instead. Churches would spend centuries trying to argue from this ridiculous premise because it turns out that churches are hypocritical liars who have been rejected by God and yet insist that they have a god, although even they don't believe their own fantastic stories, as you can tell by their behavior over the ages.
On the existence of God - a few random mutations to consider
If God exists then it must be the case that God can impact the physical world in such a way that the effects can be recognized, measured, quantified by science. Only the church would insist that this simple principle is not true because the church is a hypocrite and prefers a god of the dead and speculative revelations that cannot be tested, for without these she would have nothing to peddle and would wind up with nothing at all.Now to begin this discussion I would like to review a few scraps of evidence that I have been able to present in the past. The proper interpretation of this evidence is either that what we are seeing here are a collection of ‘random mutations' or we are seeing evidence of God impacting the physical world. Take your pick.
When I was twelve I felt a presence enter the room where I was sitting, and then I heard a voice speaking into my left ear which said, ‘the telephone is going to ring...your grandfather is dead.' I froze on the spot and my hearing became super acute. I waited for a minute of so, and no phone rang, and then I laughed off the experience as being similar to that weird deja vu feeling that people sometimes experience. The phone then rang, and the ringing seemed super loud and seemed to go right through me. My mother answered, she dropped the phone, and rang up the stairs crying. About fifteen minutes later she came to tell me that my grandfather had died, and I just nodded my head. I already knew. Someone had told me. This was the time when it all began.
When I was fifteen I had an encounter with a luminous flying craft in Banff National Park. It was a stationary object which suddenly darted into a small cloud which then evaporated and there was nothing there (in this way it resembled a magic stunt). It reappeared a minute or two later surrounded by a shimmering rainbow (‘it was wrapped in a cloud, the rainbow was on its head'). I wrote a letter to UFO magazine in British Columbia describing the experience. There are scanned gifs of the letter found here. (one two three ) There is also a text transcript of the letter found here. (letter)
About seven months before this event I received my first learner's driver's licence and the number upon it was ‘0 9 0 6 6 6 0 6'.
I refer to this as the ‘random driver's licence mutation'. What we have here is an interesting example of what I would call a two headed coin. On one side of the coin is the notorious ‘mark of the beast'. On the other side of the coin is a reference to the tenth chapter of ‘Revelations' (it was wrapped in a cloud, the rainbow was on its head'). One side of the coin you can see (‘ 6 6 6') and the other side you cannot see, although I would suggest that the appearance of that number does suggest that I am telling the truth about the other side of that coin which you cannot see, you can only listen to me tell the story. What this means is that there are people out there, about which you know nothing, for you are in bitter exile, and cut off like a dead branch, rejected because of the offensive religions of your ancestors (this is the reason in case you were wondering). Some of those people are nice and some are not very nice at all. This is the meaning of the two symbols.
Just recently the Pope held his annual lenten retreat, and as the keynote speaker the Pope chose some crank preaching a crackpot doctrine concerning the anti-christ. According to this crank doctrine the anti-christ is a vegetarian animal rights activist and an environmentalist. The selection of such a crank as the keynote speaker of the lenten retreat caused some controversy since the selection of such a speaker is understood to be the sending of some kind of message by the Vatican.
Now let me say that I am an on again and off again vegetarian. Even when I am not a one hundred percent vegetarian I eat very little meat. I don't think that people should be spraying that bedbug with pesticides, because there are much better ways to respect the rights of all animals while at the same time dealing with the problems posed by that pesky irritating nuisance bug.
Now as for environmentalism, I will remind people of what I called the ‘Eden Wing', which was a great wing made out of clouds unfurled over the Sahara Desert on Earth Day, 2001 which was my own weird way of protesting during the Summit of the Americas by unfurling a banner of my own. You can read emails announcing the unfurling of that wing shaped banner which I sent out on Friday and the resulting wing shaped cloud then appeared on Sunday, which was Earth Day (April 22nd, 2001). I thought the stunt turned out rather well.
Now as for the message the Vatican was trying to send out by choosing such a notorious crack pot as the keynote speaker of the Lenten retreat, I would assume that the message is that the Vatican is suggesting that I am the anti-christ. They are not coming right out and saying so, at least not just yet, but they are signaling their future intentions.
NASA has a video of one of these luminous craft flying past the cameras of the space shuttle which was filmed on Tuesday, April 24th, 2001, two days after that wing event, at about five minutes to one in the afternoon, central standard time. I cannot show you a video of the event since NASA has hidden the video, and has also been offered a huge bribe by the Bush administration (a trip to Mars) which helps to ensure that they keep their mouths shut. The only evidence that this event ever actually happened is a small leak that took place in June 2001 about five weeks after the event. According to the story on the BBC site (UFO video goes to Hollywood) dated June 1st, 2001, "officials at NASA are said to have asked to examine the tape, because they believe it shows the same type of craft once spotted by the space agency's own cameras during a space shuttle mission. "
Of course there is also the intelligent design experiment and the physical changes I was able to cause to happen on my badly damaged nose using ‘biological algorithms' (the existence of such software implies a software writer, since it is very improbable that such sophisticated software with such an explicitly designed task - transforming physical forms - was the product of random mutations).
Two recent prophecies
I thought I would conclude this piece by discussing two recent prophecies I received in the past couple of weeks.In the first case I was sitting outside watching the starry sky, as is my custom, and I was thinking about how bedbugs could very well mutate to become very aggressive bugs, by laying eggs for a new type of aggressive bug, having been trained to do so by human beings. At that moment in the sky above one of these bright luminous craft appeared, and I was overwhelmed by a feeling of horror. Could this have been a prophecy that such a thing is indeed about to happen, or perhaps it has already happened. I am not sure what to make of the timing of that strange event, but it would be a horrible turn of events if it did happen. A bedbug I can deal with, but that mutant Frankenstein bug is impossible to deal with.
An even stranger and more puzzling event took place a couple of days ago. I was once again sitting outside watching the starry night, as is my custom, this time out in the industrial area, when a white rabbit went hopping by. I remember thinking to myself just how damned ridiculous it was to assume that a rabbit randomly mutated to be a white rabbit in the winter, a white and brown rabbit in the spring and then a brown rabbit in the summer. It was obvious that the rabbit was 'intelligently designed' and the only controversy here is whether or not things just are what they appear to be or whether appearances are deceiving, which is the argument of our science.
At that moment in the skies above a glowing red craft appeared and then a second glowing white craft appeared below it. The red craft began to move to the left while the white craft began to drop vertically downwards. It looked like a bomb being dropped from the bomb bay of the red craft. Now the red craft I recognized as being a symbol of wrath and the white craft was a bomb being dropped. A minute or two later a white craft appeared and I understood that the meaning was that I was to contemplate the meaning of the image I had just previously seen. Somehow there is wrath concerning 'intelligent design' which then resulted in the dropping of a bomb of some sort. Now that part I understood, but just what the meaning is of a bomb being dropped because of wrath stirred up by this intelligent design experiment, that part I do not understand. Apparently something is going to happen, something wrathful. Other than that, I don't know what to make of it and I remain perplexed by that strange sign.
