Tag: science

Islamic creation science

It may fascinate you to learn this… it certainly fascinated me… but holding as they do to essentially the same creation account and belief about the origins of human society (up until Isaac v Ishmael) as the Judeo Christian world – Islam has its own “Answers in Genesis” type organisation.

Slate writes a profile piece on the most prominent Islamic young earther here.

Here’s a quote (complete with links).

It may be tempting to dismiss Yahya as a crackpot, but he runs a sophisticated media operation, with perhaps several hundred members, that distributes books, articles, videos, and Web sites around the Muslim world. Two years ago he mailed, unsolicited, a visually stunning 13-pound, 800-page Atlas of Creation to at least 10,000 scientists, doctors, museums, and research centers in Europe and the United States. The cost of this publicity stunt, if that’s what it was, had to be staggering.

This must present an interesting dilemma. I mentioned a few weeks back my reservations about siding with fellow “theists” in debates about God – simply because Jesus is the key to my belief in God.

Do those who wish to fight passionately for the scientific veracity of Genesis side with the Muslims? Or do we keep our distance.

How far does ecumenical spirit extend on other issues where we share common ground – like issues of sanctity of life, and certain areas of morality?

It’s a tricky minefield to navigate where we emphasise similarities without those becoming defining issues and allowing us all to be lumped in the same category.

November 24, 2009

Six areas atheists and Christians should agree

I had the chance this week to head along to JCU’s Society of Atheist Philosophy (SOAP) meeting where Dave Walker was invited to speak on the reasons he’s not an atheist.

The meeting itself had all the trappings of a Christian meeting. It had a nice positive tone.

Dave did a great job. I’m hoping he’ll turn his three reasons into guest posts.

But here are six areas I think Christians and atheists should agree.

  1. The separation of church and state is a good thing
    One of the big branding problems facing Christianity, and one of the major problems atheists have with Christians, is that we’re inconsistent in our approach to politics.

    We can’t want to impose Christian morality on people through the legal system unless we’re happy for an atheist government, or Islamic government to do the same to us. If we all believe we’re right and everybody else is wrong we need to make accommodations for this in the way we deal with each other.

  2. Freedom of speech
    I’m a bit shocked at how Christians respond when atheists want to advertise or gather. This week two atheist websites were hacked – probably by crazy Christians. Complaints flood in every time an atheist association puts up a billboard or advertises on a bus.

    If we want to be free to discuss and promote our beliefs we need to uphold the rights of others to do the same. Even if we don’t like what they’re saying.

  3. Most religious beliefs are crazy
    I think it was Peter Jensen who said that atheists are the closest group philosophically to Christians because we’ve both made a deliberate decision regarding the existence of God. We believe there is one, they believe there is none, the rest of society is either undecided, pluralistic, or quasi-spiritual.In most cases we’ve applied logic and reason to the rejection of other Gods. We shouldn’t be overly upset when atheists do that to us. Even if we think they’ve discounted one God too many.

    There are also a lot of subsets of Christianity that fit the crazy bill. Anyone who bases a distinctive on one verse in a part of a gospel that is not even in all the original manuscripts (like the snake holders and poison drinkers do) should be considered crazy.

    Most people who read Revelation as though it’s a literal description of what’s going to happen (even though it is introduced as a vision) can also rightly be labeled crazy.

  4. Pluralistic relativism is a dumb idea
    If there’s one idea that truly unites atheists and Christians it’s the idea that we can’t all be right. Both groups make absolute claims. All religions make contradictory claims. Even the monotheistic Abrahamic religions that are theoretically following the same God make claims that can not be reconciled. Islam teaches Jesus didn’t die. Judaism teaches Jesus isn’t the Messiah, and that he didn’t rise. We can’t all be right. We can’t pretend that we are.
  5. Morality is not dependent on belief in God
    Atheists are capable of doing good things. The group contributing the most money to developing small businesses in developing countries on Kiva is an atheist society.

    Christian statements about morality are slightly confused, which in turn confuses atheists. There are two definitions of good at play in the Bible. One describes actions. It’s “good” to feed the hungry. The other describes our nature. Where nobody can be “good enough” for God.

    It’s true that Christians believe that all goodness, and good actions of people come from God. Whether you’re a Christian or an atheist. And that good atheist actions come because they too are made in the image of God.

    But you don’t have to believe in God to be good.

    To throw further confusion into the mix – not even Christians are “good” in the complete sense. And nobody is good (or righteous) except Jesus.

  6. Science is a great tool for understanding the world
    Christianity’s stance on science (particularly in America) is confused and confusing. Science has no scope to prove or disprove God, unless you think the Bible (written before the scientific method was developed) somehow seeks to be a scientific textbook.

    Science teaches us about the way God does things. It reveals more about the world we live in. Christians should love science. Not fear it. The reason some Christians fear it is the same reason someone attacked by a vicious dog fears all dogs. Science handled badly is dangerous.

    What Christians shouldn’t like (and one of Dave’s points) is the idea of naturalism – that only what we can sense and test is real. This is a philosophy that embraces science as a sword. It’s not science.

For more fun with Google autofill check out my new blog…

October 24, 2009

A question of gravity

In the spirit of pointless science here’s an exploration of the gravity of Super Mario’s world in each Mario release.

First, you must find the time it took Mario to fall from the edge of the ledge to the ground in each game. To do this, we opened each clip in Quicktime movie player, and using the frame by frame option, found the total number of frames it took Mario to fall. We then used the formula:

Time = (Number of Frames) / (Frame Rate)

To find the time of each of Mario’s falls. Once we knew the time, we needed to figure out the distance Mario fell in each game. We used a screen shot of Mario next to the ledge he fell from in each game, and found the height of Mario and the ledge in pixels. According to Wikipedia, Mario is “a little over five feet tall.”, so we used 5 feet, or 1.524 meters, as Mario’s height.

Turns out they’re getting closer and closer to real world conditions – which is a shame – because Mario’s success depends on his ability to leap tall pipes in a single bound. Read the rest of the study here.

“We determined that, generally speaking, the gravity in each Mario game, as game hardware has increased, is getting closer to the true value of gravity on earth of 9.8 m/s2. However, gravity, even on the newest consoles, is still extreme. According to Wikipedia, a typical person can withstand 5 g before losing consciousness, and all but the very latest of Mario games have gravity greater than this. Also, with gravity that great, it is a wonder Mario can perform such feats as leaping almost 5 times his own body height!”

October 7, 2009

On science

I’m not sure where to go from here. I’m approaching 200 comments from atheists who are pretty angry at my list from the other day. I’ve got to say that if I knew I was going to get this sort of attention I would have at least proof read my list and fixed up a couple of grammatical errors. I probably would have made my position on science a little clearer too…

So let me do that here.

I think science is terrific. I think the scientific method is the best way to understand the way the world works. I think science is fascinating – much more than I did when I was studying physics and chemistry in high school. I am not, as many of my lovely commenters pointed out, a scientist.

I appreciate the benefits of science – like medicine and technology.

I love that we can understand the way the world works, and visit the moon.

I think it’s great that we have a picture of the amazing world that we live in thanks to science.

My point about science was not that it’s a bad thing – nor was it a comment on problems with the scientific method.

I was simply suggesting that the scientific method is open to abuse. By people with agendas. The same accusations atheists throw at “creation scientists” can be turned around and thrown at atheists who try to use science to attack religious belief.

Science is grand. Christians (and other theists) like science because it helps us to understand the world God has made.

Just because we understand things like gravity does not mean that there is no God causing gravity to occur. Some Christians distrust science. That’s not the point I was making – although I think the agenda behind science is worth looking at. Which was my point. When a rabid atheist conducts “science” they’re just as likely to come up with findings that support their position as a scientist working for big tobacco.

It’s interesting how many of the atheists hanging out at possibly the world’s most vindictive atheist blog have some background in church – and deep anger at Christianity – I can’t for a second believe that this anger isn’t motivating their scientific approach.

One commenter, either here or at the post on pharyngula, made the comment that the earth is a 1 in 1000000000 possibility, and made this comment as though that is proof that there is no God. Most theists would see the probability dramatically improving with God in the picture.

The theory that an infinite amount of time and space will eventually and inevitably produce life as we know it is odd, and unconvincing. Surely the same amount of time and space would also eventually create the specific God mentioned in the Bible – an omnipotent, omnipresent creator God.

I don’t want to go down the path of discussing the anthropic principle (the idea that conditions in the universe are just right for life which lends itself to the notion of a creator) – but I do wonder how atheists (and I’m hoping a few of you are still floating around) explain our existence in a way that doesn’t involve a sidestep (ie why are we asking “why” it’s the wrong question).

Also, I have said plenty of other stuff about atheism in the past that you newbies might like to read.

September 30, 2009

Shirt of the Day: How are people made?

This shirt will help you answer that awkward question that everybody faces at least once in their lives… It’s pretty awesome.
INGREDIENTS tee by roper. Available from MySoti.com.

August 23, 2009

Biblical suspicion

Why is it that as a Christian I am suspicious of anybody who forms their entire worldview – scientific, political and eschatological – on the basis of Genesis, Daniel, and Revelation?

They seem perfectly natural places to go for such issues…

July 31, 2009

Mind map

Apparently in the past you could visualise the relationship between different streams of science by tracking the references and citations in scientific journals.

You got something like this:

Now, because most scientific journals are posted online research has been conducted into deeper, broader connections between journals. Using the method described here:

“Over the course of 2007 and 2008, we collected nearly 1 billion user interactions recorded by the scholarly web portals of some of the most significant publishers, aggregators and institutional consortia. The resulting reference data set covers a significant part of world-wide use of scholarly web portals in 2006, and provides a balanced coverage of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.”

It’s only really interesting because it produces a picture like this…

Kevin Kelly simplifies the research methodology into easier to understand terminology.

“Instead of mapping links, this new method maps clicks. The program reads the logs of the servers offering online journals (the most popular way to get articles today) and records the clickstream of a researcher as they hop from one article to the next.”

March 17, 2009

Philosophical Death Match: Science v Religion

“Nonsense. There are so many phenomena that would raise the specter of God or other supernatural forces: faith healers could restore lost vision, the cancers of only good people could go into remission, the dead could return to life, we could find meaningful DNA sequences that could have been placed in our genome only by an intelligent agent, angels could appear in the sky. The fact that no such things have ever been scientifically documented gives us added confidence that we are right to stick with natural explanations for nature.”

From this article arguing that religion and science are essentially mutually exclusive. It makes some interesting points.

But I wonder why the observations of objective witnesses to the life of Jesus who independently confirm four of his five “miracles” don’t count as “scientific documentation”.

“Many religious beliefs can be scientifically tested, at least in principle. Faith-based healing is particularly suited to these tests. Yet time after time it has failed them. After seeing the objects cast off by visitors to Lourdes, Anatole France is said to have remarked, “All those canes, braces and crutches, and not a single glass eye, wooden leg, or toupee!” If God can cure cancer, why is He impotent before missing eyes and limbs? Recent scientific studies of intercessory prayer–when the sick do not know whether they are being prayed for–have not shown the slightest evidence that it works”

The other thing that often annoys me about atheists is this idea that we can somehow fabricate a miracle to test God. That’s not logical. God would, by the very nature of being God, be the one who sets the rules and the tests. Not the other way around.

It’s analogous to the scenario in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where there’s the final revelation that mice are conducting experiments on humans. That idea is preposterous. That’s why it’s funny. We are in no position to demand that a God – a being by nature superior to us – comply to our testing parameters. I can understand how the lack of regular miracles would be frustrating to those wishing to observe God. But I don’t see how it’s a reason to rule out the idea of God.

The other problem with this guy is that he’s trying to accommodate pluralism and religion and religion and science at the same time. He almost rules out the possibility of religion on the basis that more than one religious idea exists. He should perhaps first pull the log out of his own eye before going for that one.

Scientific consensus is less likely than religious – and scientific positions are much more likely to be influenced by an external factor (like funding).

Science allows you to set whatever hypothesis and testing methodology you choose. It has great freedom. This is the problem with science though – you can’t set methodology when you don’t have the authority to do so.

The idea of testing God also falls over because “science” (or its advocates) insist on operating in a closed system – ruling out God and anything supernatural. So you get a statement like this:

“That alleged synthesis requires that with one part of your brain you accept only those things that are tested and supported by agreed-upon evidence, logic, and reason, while with the other part of your brain you accept things that are unsupportable or even falsified. In other words, the price of philosophical harmony is cognitive dissonance. Accepting both science and conventional faith leaves you with a double standard: rational on the origin of blood clotting, irrational on the Resurrection; rational on dinosaurs, irrational on virgin births. Without good cause.”

And this:

“Secular reason includes science, but also embraces moral and political philosophy, mathematics, logic, history, journalism, and social science–every area that requires us to have good reasons for what we believe. Now I am not claiming that all faith is incompatible with science and secular reason–only those faiths whose claims about the nature of the universe flatly contradict scientific observations. Pantheism and some forms of Buddhism seem to pass the test. But the vast majority of the faithful–those 90 percent of Americans who believe in a personal God, most Muslims, Jews, and Hindus, and adherents to hundreds of other faiths–fall into the “incompatible” category.”

March 4, 2009

Magical Mystery Cure

Another shared item from Dan. This story from the SMH.

AUSTRALIA urgently needs a national screening policy for Down syndrome, experts say, after international research showed it could halve the number of babies born with the incurable genetic condition.

So how does testing produce such amazing results?

Access to the four tests that help detect if a foetus has Down syndrome varies widely between states, urban and rural areas, and public and private patients, leading to stark differences in birth and termination rates.

Amazing. The miracles of modern technology.

December 8, 2008

It’s the end of the world as we know it…

So the large Hadron Collider has been turned on. While I may have spent yesterday running around yelling “Panic Panic!!!” and singing Muse’s Supermassive Black Hole… they’re not actually colliding any serious particles until later this year.  

The idea, for the unconcerned among you, is to recreate the conditions of the big bang by colliding particles travelling at close to the speed of light. The intention is to find the Higgs Boson or the “God Particle” – how Mr Peter Higgs name became synonymous with God is beyond me.

When you perform a task of this magnitude a lot of nut cases come out of the wood works – there’s a group convinced the experiment will create black holes which will destroy the world. They made a youtube video – which I haven’t seen so won’t link to. There are crazy Christians who seem a little concerned this will somehow “disprove God” or help atheists in their thinking. And then there are the stupid, ignorant atheists – perhaps my favourite group in this situation who provide comments like this on the news.com.au forum:

“I love how 99% of the negative comments about the LHC are all from Christians. I’ll Believe Physics, thats been proven, over christianity, which hasnt been proven, anyday…Christians: Look at it from a ignorant christian perspective. They are spending 11billion to prove that God created the earth. Meanwhile i dont see Christians spending money to prove that Science didnt create the earth..” – Alex from Adelaide.

Thanks Alex for your valuable insight.

Christians do not argue that science didn’t create the earth because to do so would elevate science from a study of observable phenomena to a sentient being able to perform the act of “creation”.

My other favourite was this one:

“The church must be soiling itself waiting for the day that scientists proove there is no god and that we were created from the big bang and they have the hard and fast proof. The biggest business in the world “the church” will be bankrupted. Unless of course religion can actually proove god exists. Science will have the hard and fast proof very soon. Posted by: Andrew of Australia“

Andrew is obviously pretty angry at the church – angry enough to make a claim about science’s ability to prove or disprove the metaphysical.

Atheists, in the main, are a fairly ignorant lot, often influenced by militant atheists to “believe in science” as some form of religion. Here’s the thing Alex, and other atheists out there, us Christians also believe in science. Some Christians even engage science as a weapon (think Creation Science Ministries or whatever those guys call themselves). Scientific outcomes are driven by starting hypotheses – and these are driven by the organisations funding the research. Science is not an objective entity. Science is a broad church. The reality is that science is now driven by ideology and commercial imperatives more than any church I know. Throw money into the mix and see what sort of “scientific findings” we can come up with. Most churches are driven by a goal to spread the gospel – for free. Most churches I know are “not for profits” and their “wealth” is tied up in physical assets used for the cause. Would you have churches meet in our “public” school buildings Andrew?

Not if the Sydney Morning Herald has its way. I’m no Hillsong apologist – in fact I have massive problems with their “prosperity” theology and their music, and and endless list of other gripes that I won’t go into. But this article on public schools as secular institutions being no place for any form of religion is dangerous and stupid. It’s also the worst piece of ideologically driven journalism I’ve seen for a long time, and it belongs in the opinion pages – not the news.

Quotes from the article below:

“A teacher at one public school said students had returned to class after an Exo day concert complaining about attempts to convert them, while the Federation of Parents and Citizens’ Associations says it is an attempt to sneak evangelism into schools and reveals the need for new laws.”

“The NSW Education Act says that “instruction” at public schools must be non-sectarian and secular except in designated religious education classes.”

“A spokeswoman for the Federation of Parents and Citizens’ Association said religious recruitment in schools was inappropriate. “We need to ensure that children when they go to school aren’t exposed to discreet evangelism,” she said.”

I would think that an opt in program clearly run by a church group openly trying to promote the bible is hardly “discreet evangelism” or “instruction” or an attempt to “sneak” evangelize.

September 11, 2008