Responses to We are stardust...and so much more:

I enjoyed the thought provoking article "We are Stardust". It is based on the Big Bang Theory of the beginning. Not being a student of the science that developed this theory, I don't know its validity. Does the author have more information on that? - M. L.

The real irreducible complexity is existence itself. - R. B.

This may very well be To The Source best article ever! - J. N.

As a minister and a person very interested in cultural and societal trends, I find your articles very helpful to me. Thanks for choosing a strong yet responsible tone in what you share with your readers -- very refreshing! You do indeed "connect well with the world without giving up on who you are." - E. M.

To the Source, The paradox of Dr. Schroeder's dogmatic appeal to the metaphysical evolution of life may confuse those who aren't familiar with a familiar expression amongst us Jews: "Two Jews, three opinions." He can on one hand make dogmatic statements such as: "Our cosmic genesis began billions of years ago, first as beams of energy, then as parts of stars and the star dust of supernovae, then as the rocks and water and a few simple molecules on the surface of the earth, which in a geological blink of the eye became alive. We were not just observers to this fantastic flow toward life‹we were part of it! ... Life was invented in a snap." and "The error of ID is that it limits the way a metaphysical reality, call it God, might interact with the physical. All our thoughts are couched within the box of the physical aspects of time space matter. There is no way we can think outside that box. The greatest of poets, philosophers, scientists all face this same limitation. How the metaphysical might or might not interact with the physical universe is not limited to the mechanisms we can conceive from within the box of our existence. Let's not confine God's power to what we can imagine." In a sidebar, he wrote: "The first form of life (form in the singular since there was only one form of life at the start) had purpose within its make-up." and "Even the so called simpler forms of life are extraordinarily complex and the mechanisms of cellular function (DNA structure, systems for reading the DNA information and translating that information into proteins, energy extraction from glucose, ATP, ADP, mitosis) are so similar across all forms of life, be it animal, plant, bacterial or fungal that there must have been a single common origin." On the other hand, Dr. Schroeder chastised ID for boxing in the Unseen Reality -- God. Ironically, it is Dr. Schroeder who is boxing Him in, casting aside what He said he did in making the world and trying to rewrite the story of creation based on what His testimony "should have been." As the Deist founders of the United States realized, the Unseen Reality is comforting when He is the Blind Watchmaker but scary when we look past our ignorant knowledge and realize He is a real Person Who told us what He did and how. Perhaps, Dr. Schroeder's quest for metaphysics will lead him to consider the Testimony of the Unseen Reality, rather than trying to gain a glimpse of Him via the admittedly dim flashlight of science. After all, eyewitness accounts are often helpful. - J. Q.

Suggest you contact Dr. Walt Brown regarding the Evolution vs. Intelligent Design (ID) debate. Dr. Brown has written a well documented book “In the Beginning” – available at: http://www.creationscience.com/. Dr. Brown has offered to debate the issue with any/all evolutionist/s based upon scientific evidence only. Dr. Brown is an outspoken proponent for teaching ID in public schools. I would like to see you publish an article by Dr. Walt Brown and/or some of the evidence for ID from his book. - J. L.

I often wonder if "Creation Science" and "Intelligent Design" proponents are really doing the work of the devil. Their arguments show a complete lack of understanding as to what "science" is all about. This is why courts consistently rule against these faith issues as science. Scientists do not know "the answer" before the experiment is run. And even after the experiment has given the answer to some degree of probability, the answer may be refined by further observation and experimentation. Science is a "process" that leads to discoveries about our physical world. Science has nothing to say about "faith" or God, because so far, no one has been able to do an experiment (too many uncontrolled variables) that would show that God exists. The idea that God exists can only be attained by faith. Scientists can ask questions and gather data to support or refute the the Theory of Evolution, but no experiment can be run to show that a God is responsible for the speciation of living organisms on earth. To say that Evolution is just a theory, shows a complete misunderstanding of what "theory" means in science. Those who say this need to review the words "scientific hypothesis" and "scientific Law" as well as "scientific theory." Whereas "scientific hypothesis" is probably closest to the statement "I have a theory about that," even it goes further, suggesting an experiment that might be carried out to get an answer. True scientists know that we rarely "prove" anything in science to 100% certainty, because further data gathering may refine our conclusion. The best we can do in attaining "truth" in science is to use our scientific conclusions and if they continue to predict correctly other related ideas, then we say that our conclusions are probably correct (our data "supports" our conclusion). The "Theory of Evolution" explains correctly so many biological observat ions, that we use those findings to create medical "miracles" and predict answers to questions which always lead to further experimentation. That scientists have not found all of the "missing links" to show without doubt how species are related and created should not be a mystery. To me, it is a marvel that so many links have been found, when the probability of fossil formation seems quite low. DNA analysis is supporting so well other means of relating when and how species relate. So I tend to suspect that creation scientists and intelligent designers are really doing the work of the devil when they attack the findings of science, ignoring the preponderance of data supporting scientific findings. If they can be so uninformed about science, can we trust their faith statements about a God? Is their faith so feeble that it can be strengthened by attacking information about God's world, attained by scientific investigation which uses the talents God has given us. By the way, scientists do not say that man descended from apes, but that both descended from a common ancestor at some point in time. Dr. Gerald Schroeder is either wrong or has been quoted out of context when he says that "we are made of light beams." That the matter of which we are composed at one point in the far distant past came from energy would be a more correct statement. Scientists do say that the stars, such as our sun, create the 92 naturally occurring (o n earth) elements. I don't know if he was implying that scientists think that the elements were created in the "Big Bang." Scientific observations and experimentation indicate otherwise. - D. T.

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