Life Favors a Cold, Expanding Universe

If, on the other hand, we live in an open universe, infinite in space and time and continuing to expand into a future without end, then life has to face a prospect of slow freezing {111} rather than quick frying. The universe grows constantly colder as it expands, and the supply of free energy is constantly dwindling. To many people this future of endless ice has seemed even more dismal than the future of cataclysmic fire. But the laws of cosmic ecology put these futures into a very differe...

 The Need for Diversity and Empathy in Science and Religion

The diversity of science also finds a parallel in the diversity of religion. Once, when I was a child, walking with my mother through the English cathedral town of Winchester, I asked her: "Why are there so many different churches?" My mother gave me a wise answer: "Because God likes it that way. If he had wanted us all to worship him in one church, he would not have made so many different kinds of people." That was an answer invented on the spur of the moment to satisfy the curiosity of a fi...

 Experiment is the Ultimate Test

The ultimate test of a scientific hypothesis is experiment. Experiment specifically means that you don't just wait for nature to do something, and passively observe it and see what it correlates with. You go in there and do something. You manipulate. You change something, in a systematic way, and compare the result with a 'control' that lacks the change, or you compare it with a different change. [...] If your hypothesis is that the non-random survival of random genetic variation has import...