(Saturday 19th December)
Up at 8.10, didn’t go for the Indian meal after, cancelled – didn’t feel in the mood to eat and talk, but I did go into town later, 9.30pm I left the house and back by 11.30pm and had a few beers, Tai blond, is BEER I like best. Tired this morning, I did a lot of exercise yesterday, gym, swimming, and I walked 30,300 steps, around 12 miles. Will take it a little easier today, perhaps I’ll do a little cooking later.
Invented a great receipt, I’ll share my idea with you; I’ve called it:-
Scrumptious Tomkinson Casserole (I'm vain in case you were wondering)
Scrumptious Tomkinson Casserole (I'm vain in case you were wondering)
Ingredients:
1. one packet of sausage, remove casings, (good quality sausage, beer or pork)
2. ½ cup of chopped shallots
3. 3 garlic cloves, minced or shopped fine
4. ½ cut of chopped drained oil-packed sun dried tomatoes (any dried tomatoes will do)
5. Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
6. 5 to 6 eggs according to size
7. 3 egg yolks
8. 1 cup of milk, full fat milk
9. 1 cup of whipping cream
10. Two cups grated mozzarella cheese, cheddar is just as good (tried both)
11. ½ teaspoon of salt (don’t over salt, be careful more can be added later)
Method:
Preheat oven to 1800 C Butter a (about) 9 x 13 inch glass baking dish. Sauté the sausage in a medium non-stick pan over a medium heat until brown and cooked through (don’t rush this) breaking the sausage with a folk into small pieces.
Later, add the chopped shallots and sauté for 3 to 4 minutes. Add the sun-dried tomatoes and 2Tbsp. Parsley. Spread the mixture from the pan in the prepared dish and the first part is complete. I do this a day before I need it and keep in it in the refrigerator – don’t forget to cover the top.
Stage Two:
Whisk eggs, plus egg yolks, and half the whipping cream (1/2 a cup) with three quarters of the grated cheese, add the salt into the bowl and blend well (important, the lightness makes the disk so mixing well will pay dividends) and pour the mix over the sausage mixture which you prepared earlier.
Sprinkle remaining ½ cut of cheese and the remaining 2 tablespoons of parsley over the top. Bake, don’t cover the top, until top of casserole is golden brown (tip: insert a knife into the centre and if it comes out clean, the dish is cooked). Let it stand for 5 minutes before serving.
I make a great winter warmer dish, or can be a scrumptious breakfast disk with fresh wholemeal bread.
Try it; it’s easy to make.
2. ½ cup of chopped shallots
3. 3 garlic cloves, minced or shopped fine
4. ½ cut of chopped drained oil-packed sun dried tomatoes (any dried tomatoes will do)
5. Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
6. 5 to 6 eggs according to size
7. 3 egg yolks
8. 1 cup of milk, full fat milk
9. 1 cup of whipping cream
10. Two cups grated mozzarella cheese, cheddar is just as good (tried both)
11. ½ teaspoon of salt (don’t over salt, be careful more can be added later)
Method:
Preheat oven to 1800 C Butter a (about) 9 x 13 inch glass baking dish. Sauté the sausage in a medium non-stick pan over a medium heat until brown and cooked through (don’t rush this) breaking the sausage with a folk into small pieces.
Later, add the chopped shallots and sauté for 3 to 4 minutes. Add the sun-dried tomatoes and 2Tbsp. Parsley. Spread the mixture from the pan in the prepared dish and the first part is complete. I do this a day before I need it and keep in it in the refrigerator – don’t forget to cover the top.
Stage Two:
Whisk eggs, plus egg yolks, and half the whipping cream (1/2 a cup) with three quarters of the grated cheese, add the salt into the bowl and blend well (important, the lightness makes the disk so mixing well will pay dividends) and pour the mix over the sausage mixture which you prepared earlier.
Sprinkle remaining ½ cut of cheese and the remaining 2 tablespoons of parsley over the top. Bake, don’t cover the top, until top of casserole is golden brown (tip: insert a knife into the centre and if it comes out clean, the dish is cooked). Let it stand for 5 minutes before serving.
I make a great winter warmer dish, or can be a scrumptious breakfast disk with fresh wholemeal bread.
Try it; it’s easy to make.
(11am) off out now.
I got back from town at 1.30 had lunch and read a paper which I had bought, together with a few other food items mainly fresh fruit, but I did buy a few packets of lean mince. It really is quite inexpensive to live out here.
The weather is glorious outside, as I write I can hear the birds singing. I just melted some butter, a few cloves of crushed garlic and a little bit of fresh mint: the mint I planted in a pot outside just after I moved into the house and it is flourishing, as is the basil I planted at the same time. I’ll use it to make garlic bread tomorrow, I only have four for dinner tomorrow, two can’t make it, no worries.
I got back from town at 1.30 had lunch and read a paper which I had bought, together with a few other food items mainly fresh fruit, but I did buy a few packets of lean mince. It really is quite inexpensive to live out here.
The weather is glorious outside, as I write I can hear the birds singing. I just melted some butter, a few cloves of crushed garlic and a little bit of fresh mint: the mint I planted in a pot outside just after I moved into the house and it is flourishing, as is the basil I planted at the same time. I’ll use it to make garlic bread tomorrow, I only have four for dinner tomorrow, two can’t make it, no worries.
MY OBSERVATION
Walking around the area, taking notice of nature, seeing its beauty, listening to its sounds and rhythms, started me to wonder just how the picture is put together with such symmetry... Coming home last night the sky was full of stars, and it set me to wonder about its randomness, and how many people would have us believe it is just a set number of random acts without reason, logic, or coherence – nothing but an accident. Everything is thrown into the pot – “toil and trouble, bubble, bubble” - by the three witches from Macbeth, and out of which comes this wonder symmetrical universe.
A random act the atheist would have us believe, this is the modern world, science is now the new KING: “there is no God. Grow up, get real, it’s not cool anymore,” they shout, the modern world has no room for silly mentality, and superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Any yet, when I wrote my last manuscript I did a lot of research into Tran humanism and the structure of our universe, and our place in it.
STICK WITH ME; DON’T TURNED YOURSELF OFF JUST NOW.
If I get a little over technical please forgive me my immoderation. What I write next you may have to read a few time before the message actually sinks in; it took me months of research to find the answer. Keep an open mind, so here goes. This is what I found out.
My view used to be, enjoy your life, it’s the only one you’ll ever likely to have; there is probably no God, this short life is all we ever get. My stubborn mind, like most, demands absolute proof: if there is more, you must show me! For me: I demand incontrovertible unequivocal proof there is a hand at work within Creation.
But the rub is raw for me; there is an irreconcilability that gnaws inside of my mind, and won’t be stilled: how can I account for the physical universe, the biological world, the nature of humankind, without remedy to a Creator?
What is the likelihood of us being here merely by chance?
I’ll use Probability Theory and science to answer my own question. For the first time, in our enlightened age of science, I can quantify part of the answer in problematic mathematical terms.
The result of this logic on me, I find, is quite profound.
PLEASE, YOU MUST STAY WITH ME. DON’T JUMP SHIP JUST YET.
I’ll start with the physical universe; cosmology informs us that the universe is sophisticated and extremely finely balanced. Its density, back just before the first moment before the big bang was critically balanced to better that one part in one billion billion billion billion – in other words, an impossibility it could be BUT a random act. The whole of what we call the universe started as an atom of minute size and is still expanding over distances our minds are incapable of comprehending.
If it were just a fraction denser, the whole lot would have collapsed again back into nothing: a fraction less dense and the lot would have evaporated into nothing – no planets, no stars, no earth: nothing - a blank page.
Therefore, all the known forces of nature are finely balanced relative to each other, a little this, or that way, no protons, and, a little the other, no neutrons. Tweak another way and there are no particles. A little to either side and we are left with only hydrogen. What I’m saying: This balance is all but perfect.
Now the crux: if the universe were truly random, that fine balance would not happen – it is formed as a symphony is written in the mind of the composer, one bar at a time – there is no randomness, and the ear is exposed to a beautiful sound. The music would sound chaotic without a planned structure. No one would dare say that Beethoven’s Symphony was but a random sound! Any yet, some believe something infinitely more complex (more complex to the squared power of a million millions) in structure is but random.
The only way round this, for the sceptically minded, is for them to postulate that a vast number of other universes exist, and our earth randomly came into existence, somehow, just on a whim. It pulsated into existence out of chaos, and ours is the only one, which has the right value combination for molecules to sustain life and for humans to evolve. All the rest are structures of chaos and random actions, which is clearly not the case. Just looking at the stars will tell you that is not so. Everything has a finite life span, from us humans to the stars themselves, they are born, live out their lives, and die seemingly in chaos, but it is not so, for out of this seeming chaos the destruction itself stimulates new birth, nothing random there.
Ah, you say, Darwin, there the answer lies, but the more we find out the less that proves to be the case. The biological world is constructed around amazingly complex molecules like proteins, DNA, RNA etc.
Each structure reads as if a sentence from a novel, one leading neatly to the other, from sentence to paragraph, to page, chapter, book, volume, library, and the evolution can be traced back billions of years to its origin. So the sceptic says, case proven, the comparison is clear: wait long enough and the precursor to a protein would naturally self assemble, as if my magic! The magic dragon goes puff and there it is!
Let’s look at probability theory and go into mathematics to see if the theory can be substantiated.
It is said, give enough monkey enough typewriters and eventually you’ll have another Shakespeare. Yet, our euro lottery, with just seven numbers, has odds of around 100 million to one. So extrapolating these odds, by adding only one other number, the odds increase by a factor of ten.
Take the words “The Encyclopedia Britannica” 25 words with three capitals and two spaces. The odds of randomly typing these words correctly are incalcable. Not even if a billion monkeys typing on a billion typewriters for the life time of the universe’s existence would they come up the these three words in the above order. Yet, this problem is dwarfed by that of constructing, by random chance, a single protein like nitrogenise.
Nitrogenise is the catalyst that splits the bonds in a nitrogen gas molecule to make soluble nitrates. It is the only known route that the plant world has discovered to `fix’ nitrogen without which, they could not exist.
It comprises 25.000 atoms with around 2000 amino acid residues. These represent the letters, “The Encyclopedia Britannica” in the above example. The random probability for that protein to exist is - one part to 10: raised to the power of 2,600 – an impossibility, and we are talking here of just one variable. Even if every cubic millimetre of the entire universe were crammed with the essential components, one of these molecules could not self-assemble randomly over the life of the universe – not even in a vast number of universes, and that is just one protein.
Now the shocker: the human body uses about 100,000 proteins, (Do you get the picture? And I’m using tried and tested mathematical formulae to show the odds). Notwithstanding, the mechanism needed to make these proteins are themselves unbelievably complex. The human ribosomes, which does just a part of that process, consists of more than 80 different proteins.
The template for each protein is a gene structure encoded in DNA, a code that transforms and translates genes to protein. A vast number of codes are possible, but a computer simulation will show that this code (DNA) is apparently the least error prone code of them all, at the very least, the symmetry is better than one in 100 million. In other words, inversely, the perfected odds are those of winning the lottery every time you buy a ticket, hardly random, in fact, an impossibility.
PLEASE, ALMOST THERE - STICK WITH ME.
DNA itself uses machinery to replicate and is reliant on protein to do the job and to protect it from decomposition. The cell in turn is a marvel of complexity – a miniature city, (worlds within worlds come to mind) with information systems, power systems, transportation systems, refuse collection factories, ambulances, police and gatekeepers (get the picture!)
Each human cell has half a million ribosomes, and to pick just one of the 100,000 proteins: haemoglobin is produced by ribosomes in bone marrow at a rate of 100 million million-protein molecules every second, hope you caught that, `every second.’
The biological world is one improbability after another, like the physical universe, it is unbelievably finely balances and we have no idea how even the simplest elements came into existence, and by calculating probabilities, it can be shown, there is no randomness – so what is really out there?
THERE, I HOPE THAT WASN’T TOO PAINFUL FOR YOU – LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK! I’ve been battling for the answer for years.
Went out last night and had my Indian Meal just two of us – couldn’t really put it off any longer, no wine, I wasn’t in the mood in the restaurant, the meal was exceptional, and paid for. But I drank water, but I was back in the house by 10pm, didn’t wish to go out on the town, no offence to anyone, and I walked home admiring the stars.
Walking around the area, taking notice of nature, seeing its beauty, listening to its sounds and rhythms, started me to wonder just how the picture is put together with such symmetry... Coming home last night the sky was full of stars, and it set me to wonder about its randomness, and how many people would have us believe it is just a set number of random acts without reason, logic, or coherence – nothing but an accident. Everything is thrown into the pot – “toil and trouble, bubble, bubble” - by the three witches from Macbeth, and out of which comes this wonder symmetrical universe.
A random act the atheist would have us believe, this is the modern world, science is now the new KING: “there is no God. Grow up, get real, it’s not cool anymore,” they shout, the modern world has no room for silly mentality, and superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Any yet, when I wrote my last manuscript I did a lot of research into Tran humanism and the structure of our universe, and our place in it.
STICK WITH ME; DON’T TURNED YOURSELF OFF JUST NOW.
If I get a little over technical please forgive me my immoderation. What I write next you may have to read a few time before the message actually sinks in; it took me months of research to find the answer. Keep an open mind, so here goes. This is what I found out.
My view used to be, enjoy your life, it’s the only one you’ll ever likely to have; there is probably no God, this short life is all we ever get. My stubborn mind, like most, demands absolute proof: if there is more, you must show me! For me: I demand incontrovertible unequivocal proof there is a hand at work within Creation.
But the rub is raw for me; there is an irreconcilability that gnaws inside of my mind, and won’t be stilled: how can I account for the physical universe, the biological world, the nature of humankind, without remedy to a Creator?
What is the likelihood of us being here merely by chance?
I’ll use Probability Theory and science to answer my own question. For the first time, in our enlightened age of science, I can quantify part of the answer in problematic mathematical terms.
The result of this logic on me, I find, is quite profound.
PLEASE, YOU MUST STAY WITH ME. DON’T JUMP SHIP JUST YET.
I’ll start with the physical universe; cosmology informs us that the universe is sophisticated and extremely finely balanced. Its density, back just before the first moment before the big bang was critically balanced to better that one part in one billion billion billion billion – in other words, an impossibility it could be BUT a random act. The whole of what we call the universe started as an atom of minute size and is still expanding over distances our minds are incapable of comprehending.
If it were just a fraction denser, the whole lot would have collapsed again back into nothing: a fraction less dense and the lot would have evaporated into nothing – no planets, no stars, no earth: nothing - a blank page.
Therefore, all the known forces of nature are finely balanced relative to each other, a little this, or that way, no protons, and, a little the other, no neutrons. Tweak another way and there are no particles. A little to either side and we are left with only hydrogen. What I’m saying: This balance is all but perfect.
Now the crux: if the universe were truly random, that fine balance would not happen – it is formed as a symphony is written in the mind of the composer, one bar at a time – there is no randomness, and the ear is exposed to a beautiful sound. The music would sound chaotic without a planned structure. No one would dare say that Beethoven’s Symphony was but a random sound! Any yet, some believe something infinitely more complex (more complex to the squared power of a million millions) in structure is but random.
The only way round this, for the sceptically minded, is for them to postulate that a vast number of other universes exist, and our earth randomly came into existence, somehow, just on a whim. It pulsated into existence out of chaos, and ours is the only one, which has the right value combination for molecules to sustain life and for humans to evolve. All the rest are structures of chaos and random actions, which is clearly not the case. Just looking at the stars will tell you that is not so. Everything has a finite life span, from us humans to the stars themselves, they are born, live out their lives, and die seemingly in chaos, but it is not so, for out of this seeming chaos the destruction itself stimulates new birth, nothing random there.
Ah, you say, Darwin, there the answer lies, but the more we find out the less that proves to be the case. The biological world is constructed around amazingly complex molecules like proteins, DNA, RNA etc.
Each structure reads as if a sentence from a novel, one leading neatly to the other, from sentence to paragraph, to page, chapter, book, volume, library, and the evolution can be traced back billions of years to its origin. So the sceptic says, case proven, the comparison is clear: wait long enough and the precursor to a protein would naturally self assemble, as if my magic! The magic dragon goes puff and there it is!
Let’s look at probability theory and go into mathematics to see if the theory can be substantiated.
It is said, give enough monkey enough typewriters and eventually you’ll have another Shakespeare. Yet, our euro lottery, with just seven numbers, has odds of around 100 million to one. So extrapolating these odds, by adding only one other number, the odds increase by a factor of ten.
Take the words “The Encyclopedia Britannica” 25 words with three capitals and two spaces. The odds of randomly typing these words correctly are incalcable. Not even if a billion monkeys typing on a billion typewriters for the life time of the universe’s existence would they come up the these three words in the above order. Yet, this problem is dwarfed by that of constructing, by random chance, a single protein like nitrogenise.
Nitrogenise is the catalyst that splits the bonds in a nitrogen gas molecule to make soluble nitrates. It is the only known route that the plant world has discovered to `fix’ nitrogen without which, they could not exist.
It comprises 25.000 atoms with around 2000 amino acid residues. These represent the letters, “The Encyclopedia Britannica” in the above example. The random probability for that protein to exist is - one part to 10: raised to the power of 2,600 – an impossibility, and we are talking here of just one variable. Even if every cubic millimetre of the entire universe were crammed with the essential components, one of these molecules could not self-assemble randomly over the life of the universe – not even in a vast number of universes, and that is just one protein.
Now the shocker: the human body uses about 100,000 proteins, (Do you get the picture? And I’m using tried and tested mathematical formulae to show the odds). Notwithstanding, the mechanism needed to make these proteins are themselves unbelievably complex. The human ribosomes, which does just a part of that process, consists of more than 80 different proteins.
The template for each protein is a gene structure encoded in DNA, a code that transforms and translates genes to protein. A vast number of codes are possible, but a computer simulation will show that this code (DNA) is apparently the least error prone code of them all, at the very least, the symmetry is better than one in 100 million. In other words, inversely, the perfected odds are those of winning the lottery every time you buy a ticket, hardly random, in fact, an impossibility.
PLEASE, ALMOST THERE - STICK WITH ME.
DNA itself uses machinery to replicate and is reliant on protein to do the job and to protect it from decomposition. The cell in turn is a marvel of complexity – a miniature city, (worlds within worlds come to mind) with information systems, power systems, transportation systems, refuse collection factories, ambulances, police and gatekeepers (get the picture!)
Each human cell has half a million ribosomes, and to pick just one of the 100,000 proteins: haemoglobin is produced by ribosomes in bone marrow at a rate of 100 million million-protein molecules every second, hope you caught that, `every second.’
The biological world is one improbability after another, like the physical universe, it is unbelievably finely balances and we have no idea how even the simplest elements came into existence, and by calculating probabilities, it can be shown, there is no randomness – so what is really out there?
THERE, I HOPE THAT WASN’T TOO PAINFUL FOR YOU – LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK! I’ve been battling for the answer for years.
Went out last night and had my Indian Meal just two of us – couldn’t really put it off any longer, no wine, I wasn’t in the mood in the restaurant, the meal was exceptional, and paid for. But I drank water, but I was back in the house by 10pm, didn’t wish to go out on the town, no offence to anyone, and I walked home admiring the stars.
Read a little and watched a film (I don’t usually do that) on my laptop, “Journey to the Centre of the Earth,” with Brendon Frazer. I borrowed it from the library, and it was in 3D, glasses supplied, with a chilled glass of white wine: New Zealand Pinot Gris from the North Island, Hawkes Bay, Montana, a good wine, this wine, the Pinot Gris part, brings back good memories, 12.10am in bed.
ONE DAY LOG
Christmas day is really hot out here, have a good day everyone.
ReplyDeleteRoy
I haven't been following your blog that long,but I know about your writings, but I feel you are looking for something, something profound, the article above, what is out there in the stars and inside our own bodies, of course it is not an accident.
ReplyDeleteYou like myself, agree this to be the case, but you seem to be still looking for the answer whereas I have found it.
Belief does not always come with proof, your writing is exceptional, I have read your work, stop looking, running, and accept, you have something to give to the world that is good. Do not leave it too late my friend
Rev, John Williams formally from the Rhondda, now living and working in Canada.