Edenweiss

Universe is deterministic. Life determines it entirely.

There is a simple proof, but one needs a computer.

Suppose a language that is able to read (input) and write (output) any information of its kind. A computer program, for instance, is made of 0's and 1's, it reads 01's, and writes 01's. A higher-level programming language, such as C, would use text.

A question is raised as the following: can you write a program whose only purpose is to write its own source? At first sight, it looks impossible because the necessary code for writing the source must be in the source, thus involving an infinitely growing (or empty!) program.

In fact, there exist finite self-replicating programs, but they need absolute precision, and show very clever tricks to avoid infinite expansion. In order words, they cannot be randomly generated, and must require intelligence to come into existence. Examples are:

main(a){printf(a="main(a){printf(a=%c%s%c,34,a,34);}",34,a,34);}

or

main(a,b){a="main(a,b){a=%c%s%c;b='%c';printf(a,b,a,b,b);}";b='"';printf(a,b,a,b,b);}

You cannot change any character whatsoever, otherwise the copy will fail. If such a program could talk, it would say "Trust me, I know exactly what I am doing. Look at me, I am clever enough to duplicate myself!".

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Now what do we observe? We can perform DNA-based computing, and WE can do it (life exists).

Therefore the proof is already complete because the evidence is overwhelming: the existence of self-reproducing organisms infers a fantastic underlying intelligence that goes beyond anything the human mind can conceive. Besides, human beings are such organisms.

So one man is like the C program. He is very clever, but can not (or only!) talk about himself. He can only be what he is.

Unless God tells him, "No, you are different because you are the program, the clever programmer, AND the compiler. You are both alive and life. But you will feel life only when you know that you can NOT be only a physical life. To make sure you fully get it, build a computer first, then you will realize how smart the universe must be for YOU to exist. You should conclude that ANY life form in nature is as intelligent as you... and I."

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All this leads to the origin, the Garden of Eden. Most people are confused as far as the symbolism is concerned. But it is simple, very simple. The Serpent and the Apple stand for the male and female reproductive organs. The male symbol is obvious, and for the female, take a look at this image. Calling it the "Forbidden Fruit" is misleading. Is it forbidden to be born?

God said: "You want to live? Then deal with the perfectly intelligent reproductive mechanism that will generate you and will be part of you. To be born, you must be able to reproduce, or you would be imperfect. Don't be ashamed of any so-called sin, and accept your nature."

Sexual craving seems a weakness only because it comes from the strongest force of the universe which is meant solely for bringing life into being.

But people wrongly used to call it a vice... a vice from Eden.

An Eden vice?

Or an EviDENce (as to man's place in nature)?

It is the first time I use my ambient occlusion feature. Instead of computing the visibility from all objects to all objects, a per-object preprocessing (animals, plants, all coming from public domain) is performed free from any context but a ground plane. The ambient occlusion is computed for each mesh vertex, and stored as a color modifier. There are three approximations (AO instead of radiosity + single object + vertex only), but the result can run in real time.

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Clipka's note:

When compiling the output of a self-replicating program and running it, then repeating the process over and over again, after N generations it may be forgotten how it all started. And looking at the program, one might come to the conclusion that it has been replicating itself forever. All our experience will say that programs of this type are the output of programs of this type, and we may infer that *all* programs of this type have been created by programs of this type, back from all eternity. Like all our experience says because hens are hatched from eggs and eggs are laid by hens, all hens must have been hatched from eggs laid by hens.

Yet, in this case, there has been a programmer who wrote the first of this kind.

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Final note:

Suppose you have a C compiler which is written in C. Since a C compiler can compile any C program, the compiler itself (as a C program) can compile its source, yielding a duplicate of its binary form. You can execute it again with the source of itself as an input.

Such a self-replicating loop can run forever provided that the compiler is bug-free. Any slight error in the code would lead to a major failure sooner or later, because the next-generation compilers would get more and more errors until the fatal crash of a program which is no longer a compiler.

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Can the dog and the wolf actually go together?