Words and Sentences

I am writing this to prelim conversations I have with people over belief systems. Mine takes a little bit to explain, so this should cut down on subsequent filler conversation. First you have to understand evolution. Now, if any of you don’t believe in evolution, I don’t really care. Go find an equation used in evolutionary studies (because I know you don’t know any), figure out what it means, then go read an entire textbook on evolution (because I know you haven’t). We’ll start in the middle, because it gives you enough background to understand my belief system.

There is this system of information, which is a base 4 system, plus a few anomalies (our number system is base 10, or decimal, and computers use base 2, or binary). This base 4 system makes words and sentences, and these words and sentences then make molecules called proteins. These proteins then basically make ships to carry these words and sentences in. But, these words and sentences have to continually make new ships, because the old ones keep breaking down. And, to make these ships, the words and sentences must copy themselves. This copying isn’t perfect, and so new words and sentences get made, and these in turn make new and different ships, with some of these ships being better able at surviving and carrying these words and sentences forward through time.

Over time, these words and sentences made some ships that we call us humans (actually several species before humans, but I’ll appeal to your anthropogenic nature). And guess what? These humans were able to create new words and sentences. These humans could create new bits of information. The humans started by making these new bits of information just verbally, through the air. But, this information wasn’t that successful at replicating through the air, since people would change it each time, and the people were aware they were changing it themselves.

Eventually, someone began writing down the words and sentences, so that it changed much less when it was copied. Then that person died. And so did the rest of people that knew the person that first wrote down the words and sentences. So someone else picked up these words and sentences. And you know what? These words and sentences said that they wrote down the people, who then wrote down these words and sentences to show the people how great these words and sentence were for making them.

And people started telling each other that these words and sentences made them, and they told them what to do. And other, different people disagreed, and said that their words and sentences made them, and told people what to do. And so it was. These people had their arguments about the words and sentences, and the words and sentences kept changing. Some were miscopied, some were added to, and some were discarded. But, they all continued to keep changing. Some changed so that they said that the people should spread these words and sentences all over the world. Some even said that all that didn’t believe in these particular words and sentences should be put to death. And so, some of these words and sentences became successful at replicating themselves, and some died out, while they all used the ships of the much simpler words and sentences that had created them.

I believe in certain words and sentences, just like everyone else. I just don’t think that my words and sentences should stay static, or that these words and sentences created me. Many people believe in static words and sentences. They think that words and sentences written long ago are infallible. I happen to disagree. The words and sentences I believe in are simple. They try to match the evidence of the world we live in. And if new words and sentences match the world we live in better than the old words and sentences we have already written, then we should replace them.