Energy in classic physics is reasonably simple.. Scientists had that measured and defined before the 20th Century rolled around. Energy in quantum physics is a little spookier to the lay mind (mine, for sure.) For instance a term like “energy level” refers to which orbit an electron inhabits(*) around the nucleus of an atom – so I doubt the transition from living to no longer living in any DNA-bearing tissue is likely to affect the energy levels of the electrons orbiting the nuclei of its constituent atoms.

Because quantum physics goes so far into the deep mysteries of the universe, it is tempting to think it also has a connection to the deep mysteries of spirit, soul, and life. While there may seem to be a connection, since both are mysterious, and even a correlation can seem highly unlikely, actual causation, e.g. some sort of life energy needing to go somewhere, isn’t something CERN will be studying.

(*) Electrons ‘inhabit’ orbits, for lack of a better term, because they exist as much as a probability function as they do a small ball-shaped mass. Particle physics moved one prominent scientist in the first half of the 20th Century to insist that “GOD doesn’t throw dice,” because things appear to happen in ways that DO NOT map to small balls called electrons that take predictable paths. If you had GOD’s eyes you still couldn’t “see” an electron – it isn’t built that way.

Spam limits require that I not make it easy to locate the book – google “John O Robertson Climate” if you’re curious.

There is no normal, merely periods of stasis and periods of change. Lots of alternating from iceball five or six hundred millions of years ago (rescued from that by titanic vulcanism in what is today Siberia) to warm at both poles. We may be headed back toward the warm end of things – and we may see a new era of ice age when lack of Arctic ice shuts down the Arctic-North Atlantic Conveyor – – – meaning that the Gulf Stream no longer warms Northern Europe. Ewwwwps.

Humans are the ultimate in flexibility, so by the time the sun’s perimeter expands all the way out to earth’s orbit several billion years from now, we may have found a way to terraform not just Mars but move Earth farther from the fire. Who can tell?

Today, all bets are off. The idea that every fertile woman has as much right to sex as any other, coupled with the unspoken assumption that protection was hers to guarantee since the risk was hers – not fully supported, but gaining ground among women who resent “being coddled”.

So far men who have “planted viable seed” appear to stand on the outer perimeter the debate. The core of that debate appears to center on uteri and the people who own them, full stop.

In short, the baby’s heartbeat nudges up against the real Constitutional provision involved in Roe v. Wade, the 4th Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

Today’s new laws require the abortion provider detect that heartbeat; this was the core issue in 197e, i.e. to balance the overt requirement of the 4th Amendment against the government’s implicit interest in protecting life.

Since then the “Constitutional Right” to abortion has evolved well past the original tradeoff, as a direct result of “history being written by the winners.” And to bolster it, the ‘pro’ side of the abortion debate attacks the very idea of ‘life’ even meriting protection.

Which means that both sides wage moral war over a definition.

Down Syndrome people have a third copy of Chromosome 22.

That’s a birth accident that happens when something goes wrong in generating an egg or sperm and both copies of number 22 wind up in one gamete and none in the other. This kind of copying problem is known to us because the Down Syndrome effect isn’t fatal. Other copying errors also occur, for instance a child is born with an unusual number of X and Y chromosomes – 1 or 3 are commonest.

You can see that chromosome abnormalities happen. Some are simple, some involve a chromosome fracturing at some point so that there are two new ones. That’s not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, but if it becomes dominant across a population, further evolution on either of the two new chromosomes will come to make cross-breeding with a specimen having the old number of chromosomes less and less successful.

Perfect example: horses and donkeys make mules, but mules have DNA that doesn’t work with a horse OR a donkey OR another mule, except in at least one documented case where a jack (male mule) mounted a hinny (female mule) and she gave birth to – – – a horse. Just the horse chromosomes made it into both the jack’s sperm cell and the hinny’s egg. The odds against this are way above a billion to one.

So, how many jacks have mounted how many hinnys? You tell me.

I hope this helps shed a tiny light on species drift. One thing that makes drifting into new species is dividing one successful species into two non-interacting populations, such as by earthquake, continental drift, and so on.

BLIND faith is clinging to a belief with some imagined good outcome, but no real connections between the world as it is and the outcome you imagine. So OK that can be said of Christian faith, too – but I’m thinking (and I’ve always voted Republican) of the blind faith of e.g. the Tea Party / Freedom Caucus / Neocons who are sure that waving their ideas at us from the fringe will move the center to agree with them.

That is NOT going to happen.

But Donald Trump hijacked a lot of formerly silent folks with chips on their shoulders against liberals — feeling that liberals put them there. Events demonstrated that liberals took what Trump said seriously but took him with a Yuuuuge grain of salt, while the folks in Red states who love him cared not a whit for his lies and so on, but to this day take his promises very very seriously. When he says “fake news” or “totally exonerated” it’s like Kool-Aid, and they drink it by the gallon.

Forgive the detour into politics, but it seems germane at a time when there are two filters to look at the world, A) your own and B) those other desperately dumb people’s – one filter red, one blue. If you can see that, and don’t use either one, thank GOD in heaven. Assume a position of prayer and ask for patience, since HE’s got this.

This kind of question comes from a place where “evolution from single celled proto-whatsises to dinosaurs to birds and later on fuzzy mammals up to humans” amounts to a contradiction in terms. A majority of the time it is faith that GOD inspired Scripture, trapped in a cocoon of “inspired every single word and they’re all literally true since GOD does not lie.”

Yet in fact Genesis begins with an “origin story” that sits on a level playing field with thousands of other origin stories. All primitive cultures have them, and Abraham’s was no different in being an accepted version of how an immense, imponderable world came to be. GOD did it. The third verse “And GOD said, ‘Let there be light,’” turns out to be a wink and a nudge from GOD, same as the magi found Jesus at age roughly six months, but – get ready for it – on or about 25 December. What a wink-and-a-nudge that is! (* proof provided on request. Real proof.)

Please try not to sweat the small stuff; the O T prophets left massive information to tell us that HE would come and what HE would wind up doing. Abraham’s origin story is blessed and serene (compared to some of the others) in that GOD loves, protects, shields, guides and forgives his stubborn, stiff-necked, sin-soaked children.

SO – we look into the heavens to see GOD’s glory and power – only to realize, once we got real science and telescopes that could show us the universe, that GOD has been at work for over 13 billion years – Job quibbled with GOD, do you want to do the same? HE has made, current best guess, so many stars it takes 24 digits to shape the number.

HE set the stars on motion such that astronomers in Baghdad (or thereabouts) knew the day that the angel announced Mary’s coming birth, and the day roughly 40 weeks later when a chorus of angels appeared to shepherds in the field watching their flocks by night.

SO – do we hesitate to embrace evolution, so evidently random, as stealing credit from GOD as our Creator? He numbers the hairs on our heads and knows every word we will ever speak. Can you imagine that HE wouldn’t also make sure that, when those signs in the sky appeared, there wouldn’t have been homo sapiens that HE had already prepared? Do we quibble technique with an infinite GOD, simply because HIS methods confuse us?

Small stuff – what we can conceptualize in our heads. Big stuff – Creation, Salvation, and a peace that passes understanding. It’s all utterly real.

The irony of this should be celebrated.

Lincoln pondered long and hard over whether to free all slaves; and finally did so halfway through the war. The South, in addition to its economic enslavement by the North, suspected that those Crazy Yankees also valued Black lives – to them a ghastly notion – and if the North gained sufficient power in the US Senate, by admitting ‘free’ states to the Union, their long-term prospects would be grim.

There had been a standing agreement (The 1836 Compromise) such that new states would be admitted in pairs, one slave and one free. Failure to sustain that was another factor which persuaded the South it should separate itself.

The South fired first, but had fewer soldier-age men and little industrial capability, and they lost. Their descendants recall it as “The War of Invasion From the North” and many are reluctant to speak Abraham Lincoln’s name – or so said my Uncle, born in Illinois around 1890. 🙂