My part ownership

Watching Brian Cox's inspiring Wonders of the Universe episode "Stardust" I was once again struck by the thought that though this arrangement of parts that I call me is, in the grand scheme of things, ephemeral, the parts themselves — the atoms that make up the molecules that make up the chemicals of which I am temporarily composed — are as near immortal as anything is likely to get. Forged in the nuclear furnaces of dying stars, my fundamental particles have been around a lot longer than I have, and before I was here they were probably doing sterling service elsewhere. And after I'm gone, these particles will be recycled for other purposes — I will, in a sense, live again as reincarnated diaspora.

There is a hierarchy in this compositional framework that I call me: though at bottom I am the quarks, I am also the complex functioning organs that comprise my body — which are themselves composed of simpler parts right down to those atoms and the quarks that comprise them. Such a view gives me pause, to consider my ownership of the parts of which I currently comprise.

This clip from Lawrence Krauss's superb lecture at the 2009 AAI Convention makes a related point:

https://youtu.be/7ImvlS8PLIo

(Ironically this clip was linked by Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis!)

The Bible is not a science textbook

With Robert Kaita's "Creator and Sustainer — God's Essential Role in the Universe" we are into Section Two, The Question of Science, of Dembski and Licona's Evidence for God. And immediately we run into problems:

Einstein posed a question that scientists, as scientists, still cannot answer. He asked why the universe is comprehensible. We do not know, for example, why there are only a few laws of physics. The same law of gravity can be used to describe how we are held to the earth, but also how immense galaxies are attracted to each other to form clusters.

This misunderstands what scientific laws are, even though the above quote actually contains a germ of the truth. Scientific laws are not some underlying or intrinsic quality of how the universe works, they are merely a set of descriptions that approximate to our observations ("The same law of gravity can be used to describe...").

Kaita uses a line of dominoes as an analogy for deism, then says, "Somehow, we have a sense that such a picture is not very satisfying." But the way things actually are — the truth — is not contingent on whether it produces a satisfying picture. Nevertheless Kaita uses the further analogies of car maintenance and practical nuclear fusion (his own scientific field) to support his idea that God must take an active role in the universe to keep it running. That doesn't sound very god-like to me — whatever happened to omnipotence?

That's not Kaita's only evidence for his sustaining creator-god; he also quotes from the Bible:

As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.

(Genesis 8:22 New International Version, ©2011)

The Bible, however, is not a science textbook. Anyone who tries to support theism from a scientific viewpoint — especially in a section entitled The Question of Science — by quoting the Bible, has already lost the argument.

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4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbscience.aspx?pageid=8589952965

Burnee links for Thursday

Creation Science Movement - News
Stephen Hayes reviews Alister McGrath's Why God won't go away: engaging with the New Atheism — and gets in plenty of incidental invective against Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris, accusing them of rabble-rousing, and their output as "too vile to be quoted". McGrath apparently "exposes the the real nastiness in the underbelly of this movement". (And for good measure The God Delusion is a "revolting book of crude and bigoted propaganda".) I think I can tell where he's coming from, but even without this helpful review I shan't be reading McGrath's book. I've read some of his stuff online and I've heard him speak — or rather circumlocute, and I choose not to subject my brain to being savaged by a blancmange.

Jourdemayne: Mrs. God
The shocking revelation turns out to be a bit old hat.

Free schools will not teach creationism, says Department for Education | Science | The Guardian
Credit to the BCSE for getting a response, but I wonder how much Gove's assurances are worth.

John Ronson On...
Useful links to Jon Ronson's BBC Radio 4 documentaries.

Advertising that will catch your attention: 20 awesome billboards
Some of these are fun, some clever. All eye-catching.

Do You Have Free Will? Yes, It’s the Only Choice - NYTimes.com
Fascinating article. I tend towards the compatibilists.

Atheist throws in towel: 6-year lawsuit challenging Pledge of Allegiance in California | Spero News
This is curious. Not sure what's going on here.

Harvard University professor Michael Sandel said Tuesday that reasoned argument is missing in political discourse, but the solution is more debate, not less | Gainesville.com
Michael Sandel tells us what's missing in public debate. And I really must find time to watch his series Justice (which I have on my iPod).

Hell and linoleum | Andrew Brown | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Andrew Brown attempts to ponder the justice of Hell — and finds he can't.

I've no faith in this idea that religion is dying out | Wendy M Grossman | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Wendy Grossman isn't buying it.

The universe is so vast, let's all just kill ourselves

Over at Telegraph Blogs Brendan O'Neill has got himself into a tizzy about how important he may or may not be in the grand scheme of things. Not that he says such in so many words, but his misapprehension of one of TV's current popular science hits betrays his discomfiture with reality:

I think I have solved one of the great mysteries of the universe: the question of why mop-topped stargazer Professor Brian Cox is so popular. It isn’t because of his looks, or his soft Mancunian voice, or his pop past in Blair-boosting band D:Ream. No, it’s because his wide-eyed cosmology is based on a view of mankind as insignificant, as a mere speck of dust in the post-Big Bang scheme of things, and that chimes brilliantly with today’s rather downbeat view of humanity. The floppy-fringed professor massages the fashionable prejudice that humanity isn’t all that special; no, we’re just a cosmological accident, which will exist only fleetingly before being wiped out by the explosion of our Sun or some other cataclysmic event.

Sorry Brendan but that's just how it is. Get used to it.

The point is, Brendan, that we are special — just not in the way you think we are. The universe was not designed with us in mind (actually it wasn't designed at all, as far as we can tell — but that's probably another blogpost or two ... or a thousand). Nevertheless we are here, and that is one awesome fact.

And what have you got against Carl Sagan?

Like Sagan, Cox and his rationalistic acolytes in the media are attracted to the cosmos primarily because they believe its vastness reveals our smallness, that its 14 billion-year history puts our pathetic 250,000 years of inventing fire and skyscrapers and iPads into perspective. They see in the never-ending chasm of space, not worlds we should aspire to know and possibly conquer and colonise, but a big black challenge to the idea of human historic purpose.

There you go again: purpose. Imputing teleology is for those who can't cope with the way things actually are. As for conquering, that's a bit presumptuous isn't it? Maybe that's the human historic purpose you're talking about — humanity's cosmic crusade: to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no crusader has gone before, and subjugate the alien masses.

Copernicus’s challenge to the idea that the Earth was the centre of the universe was frequently cited by Sagan and his fans as a challenge to the idea that human beings are the centre of the universe – but it was no such thing. Rather, Copernicus wanted to increase human authority over the unknowns of the universe, not teach mankind a lesson about our “insignificance in the great loneliness of space”. In contrast, today’s cod-Copernicans in the Cox lobby are drawn to the cosmos because its weirdness and bigness feeds their drab, down-to-earth belief that there isn’t much point to life.

You've got it upside-down and backwards. As for "their drab, down-to-earth belief that there isn’t much point to life" — I'll let you into a little secret: life is what you make it. The point of life is life itself.

James Randi at TAM London 2010

TAM London's first day's talks concluded with the man himself, James the Amaz!ng Randi, who was interviewed on stage by Robin Ince. He talked about his skeptical origins and some of his encounters with so-called psychics, mediums and faith healers. It was clear that Randi's preoccupation with such people is not merely idle interest but an abiding passion. They may be deluded about their "powers" or they may be out-and-out charlatans; Randi has encountered both extremes and everything in between, and in all cases he is dedicated to exposing them for what they are, not least because they mislead innocent people who pay good money for something that isn't real.

It was inspiring to hear Randi speak live about his life in skepticism, but if I have one niggle it would be that he and Robin Ince should have swapped places — Randi was positioned on stage such that he gazed mostly off to the side, away from the camera producing the view that filled the big screen.



After his discussion with Robin Ince, Randi presented two awards. The TAM London 2010 award went to Ben Goldacre, who accepted it by pre-recorded video. Ben was unable to accept the award in person, but the video was an unexpected bonus — it initially freeze-framed, giving us a static second or two of typical zany Ben Goldacre expression. (And check out what must be the geekiest bookcase ever....)



The second award was for Grassroots Skepticism, and went to Rhys Morgan for his single-handed stance against quack-remedy "Miracle Mineral Solution", which despite being basically bleach, has been promoted as effective against ... pretty much anything except amputation. Rhys has Crohn's disease, one of the huge list of afflictions that MMS is claimed to cure, and it was this that led him to investigate it, and subsequently to campaign against it. Such activism is to be commended in anyone, and so the award is richly deserved — more so in this case as at the time Rhys was only 15 years old.

A case of explanatory impotence

In chapter 6 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God, David Wood gave us "three approaches theists can take when responding to the argument from evil." I found them unconvincing, and the fact that Wood added some other unrelated arguments for the existence of God made me wonder if despite the confident bravura of his assertions, he nevertheless harbours doubts as to their cogency.

The very next chapter tends to reinforce this suspicion, as it too is by David Wood and is once again about the argument from evil. The chapter's title, "God, Suffering and Santa Claus — An Examination of the Explanatory Power of Theism and Atheism" should ring alarm bells, as any time a theist talks about the "explanatory power" of theism you know you're unlikely to get any such thing.

Wood contends that it's illogical to dismiss theism solely on the basis of its difficulty with explaining the existence of suffering in the world, when theism is so good at explaining everything else. Yes, that's right: not only is he half admitting that suffering is a problem, he's claiming that it's pretty much the only one, and that theism explains the following:

• Why we have a world at all
• Why our world is finely tuned for life
• Accounts for the origin of life as well as the diversity and complexity of life we see around us
• The rise of consciousness
• Objective moral values
• Miracles

And the explanation of all these things is ... Goddidit. Unfortunately Goddidit is about as far from an explanation as it's possible to be. I'll offer an alternative explanation, that "explains" the six things listed above, and the explanation is ... magic pixies did it. I'll go further, paraphrasing David Wood:

"Thus, when atheists say that magic pixieism fails to account for suffering, we shouldn't forget that, even if they're right, magic pixieism accounts for just about everything else."

Honestly, I'd expected something more substantial than this — something with a measure of philosophically persuasive force, given that this is the final chapter in the book's first section, headed "The Question of Philosophy". The next (much larger) section is called "The Question of Science" and includes chapters by Phillip E. Johnson and William A. Dembski. Let's hope they make a better fist of things than the sorry collection so far.

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Surprise, surprise! — there's a version of this chapter at 4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbgod.aspx?pageid=8589952714

Burnee links for Sunday

Unanswered questions on Japan's suffering | Giles Fraser | Comment is free | The Guardian
Yet again Giles Fraser gets his theological knickers in a twist over natural disaster.

A case of never letting the source spoil a good story | Ben Goldacre | Comment is free | The Guardian
Ben Goldacre won't trust you if you don't link to primary sources.

Opinion: Twitter is more than just a fad, so don’t miss the boat | Opinion | The Lawyer
David Allen Green with a lawyers' guide to Twitter.

BBC News - Cory Doctorow: DRM is no friend of business
"Computers are not going to get worse at copying." Cory Doctorow delivers three soundbites for the benefit of new business start-ups.

Pi Day: Help yourself to a slice of infinite, transcendental pi | Matt Parker | Science | guardian.co.uk
The universe is stranger than we can imagine — not just on the grander scale of things but right in front of us when we look at something as ostensibly simple as a circle.

Ideas for modern living: you | Life and style | The Observer
Julian Baggini briefly introduces his new book. What I want to know is, does he deal with consciousness and free will?

Beck: "I'm Not Not Saying" God Is Causing Earthquakes | Media Matters for America
Does anyone (I mean anyone) take Glenn Beck seriously? Seriously?

Are Christians so thin-skinned? | Caspar Melville | Comment is free | The Guardian
While I think that the "banning" of the BHA Census Campaign ads has been a — dare I say it — godsend to the campaign's publicity, I was unaware of something revealed in one of the comments:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/9924114

The evidence for god: an exchange with Anthony Grayling « Why Evolution Is True
This is the Grayling/Coyne email exchange previously linked from Butterflies and Wheels. Me? I'm with Grayling (I think).