Three Easy Pieces for Creationists

H Gee, R Howlett and P Campbell describe 15 examples of evolution. Here William Reville, associate professor of biochemistry and public awareness of science officer at UCC, describes three of them—from the Irish Times Online).

1. The Origin of Feathers

The fossil record is one of the main pillars of evidence on which the theory of evolution stands. But critics claim the fossil record is fatally flawed because of the lack of “transitional forms” that illustrate intermediates in the transition of one major group of animals to another. The critics are wrong.

Modern birds are descended from dinosaurs. A famous fossil that provides evidence for this was discovered in Bavaria in 1861. The fossil is called Archaeopteryx. The creature displays reptilian features, such as teeth and a long, bony tail, but it also has wings and flight feathers like a bird. It is commonly interpreted as a fossil of the earliest known bird. But has the fossil record thrown up any dinosaurs with feathers—unambiguous transitional forms?

Yes. Fossils found in China in the 1980s showed a variety of dinosaurs with feathers and feathery plumage. Many of these feathered dinosaurs could not have flown, which means that feathers evolved for reasons other than flight—heat insulation, perhaps. Flight was an extra opportunity that was exploited by creatures already carrying feathers.

2. Land Living Ancestors of Whales

Indohyus, ancestor of the whales

Whales are mammals, like ourselves, but they have lived in the water for millions of years. The fossil record now provides good evidence that mammals originated on land, which means that the ancestors of whales forsook the land for the water.

There is no shortage of fossils from the first 10 million years of whale evolution of creatures showing whale features, anatomy of the ear, for example, and limbs like those of land living animals from which they descended. But until 2007, there was no report of a good fossil of the land living creature from which whales eventually evolved. Work by Hans Thewissen and others described now-extinct creatures called raoellids that looked like small dogs but were more closely related to even toed ungulates, a group that includes cows, sheep, deer, pigs and hippos. Molecular evidence had already hinted at a deep evolutionary connection between whales and even toed ungulates.

Thewissen’s work shows that one raeollid, Indohyus, is similar to whales but unlike other even toed ungulates in various ways, such as ear and teeth structure, that indicate the creature spent much of its time in the water. The raeollid diet is unlike the whale diet, suggesting that the impetus to take to the water might have been dietary change. Indohyus is a transitional form.

3. The Molecular Basis for Darwin’s Finches

Darwin described several species of finches in the Galapagos Islands that all looked similar except for their beaks. Ground finches had broad, deep beaks, warbler finches had slender, pointed beaks, and so on. Beak size and shape reflected differences in diet. Darwin speculated that all the finches had a common ancestor that originally migrated to the islands, and that natural selection had then evolved a variety of forms from this common ancestor suited to different ecological niches on the island.

Biologists are advancing from documenting the evolution of whole animals to identifying the underlying molecular mechanisms that underpin all living processes and behaviors. Evolution works through molecular mechanisms, and they are being elucidated by elegant research. Arhat Abzhanov and others have studied the genes that are switched on and off in the developing beaks of finch chicks. They found that differences in beak shape coincided with variations in the expression of the gene for calmodulin, a molecule that regulates the signalling effected by calcium on metabolism and development. For example, calmodulin is expressed stronger in species with long pointed beaks than in species with more robust beaks.

The Mental Schism of Michael Ruse

Michael Ruse, who repeatedly calls himself a professional philosopher, wants to answer, in the UK Guardian, the question, “Is there an atheist schism?”. He seems to mean a schism about what it is to be an atheist, and the schism he refers to is that between himself and most other atheists. Put that way, the answer is easy. Yes, there is a schism between Ruse and most other atheists because Ruse seems to be an atheist who has open yearnings for a god. Is that possible? Most other atheists think not, and that is the schism, and he says he is “rather proud” of it.

He says that, as a professional philosopher, his first question is naturally “What or who is an atheist?”. He gives a choice of two answers:

1. someone who absolutely and utterly does not believe there is any God or meaning
2. someone who agrees that logically there could be a god, but who doesn’t think that the logical possibility is terribly likely, or at least not something that should keep us awake at night

He infers there are “not many” in the first group, but there are “a lot of us” in the second. The literal meaning of atheist, its definition, is clear enough. From the Greek (a theos, “without God”) it means someone who does not believe in a God or gods. So both of Ruse’s categories are atheists. If someone does not believe in any god, whatever the reason for the disbelief, or whatever the strength of the conviction, that person is an atheist. So, there can be no schism over that. So what is the schism, if there is one?

There are several reasons why we atheists are squabbling—I will speak only for myself but I doubt I am atypical.

Here is a confession of the reality. Ruse will only speak for himself but thinks he is typical because he is in a category by himself. In short, the schism is between him and the more critical atheists he calls the “new” atheists, people like Dawkins, Coyne, Myers, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, and so on. The difference is not over whether God exists or not, but whether religions are evil or not. The so called new atheists think religions have a preponderantly bad influence, while Ruse says it is not true that “all religion is necessarily evil and corrupting”. He implies that is the view of his second, larger category of atheists. So the schism is not about atheism but about religion.

For a professional philosopher, Ruse is fond of being imprecise when it suits him, and excessively precise when that suits him too. Note, for example that, in his first definition of an atheist, he does not restrict the definition to disbelief in gods but also disbelief in “meaning”! That is a curiously careless mistake for a professional philosopher to make, but allows a hole for his respect for theologians and their scams—religions.

Then he slips in the little word “all” when denying that religion is necessarily evil and corrupting, which allows him a get out if even one person claims allegiance to a religion which has done no evil or corruption. As far as I am aware, the Adelphiasophist religion has done no such wickedness, so Ruse’s little trick ensures he is sure to be right. That, though, is not the point.

Religions generally lead to terrible deeds being done in their name, and the perpetrators are always convinced that whatever they are doing is not wicked because they have God on their side. That is the wickedness that men do in the name of religion, and that is the wickedness that the atheists, new or geriatric, argue and have often argued. Ruse seems unable to comprehend it. He says to argue that religions generally have terrible consequences, is like the Mormons claiming to find “golden plates in upstate New York”. He must mean it is a grotesque lie.

Besides that he observes that Quakers and the Evangelicals opposed slavery for religious reasons, and that was a good thing. Of course, it was a good thing that anyone opposed slavery, but he chose to name Quakers and Evangelists, because the traditional mainstream Christian churches had an abysmal record in that respect which lasted for 1800 years from the time of Christ, and abolition of slavery was opposed by most Christian bishops sitting in the House of Lords of the British Parliament. Moreover, many of the men who got rich on the back of shackled and ill treated slaves were themselves observant Christians able to cite chapter and verse from the bible in their defense. Their religion might have driven some Christians in minor sects to oppose slavery while others exploited slaves while receiving honors, but right from the time of Paul, the greatest apostle for most Christian sects, slaves were told by Christians to suffer their burdens and to pray for their oppressors.

Evil Never Religion’s Fault

Ruse thinks that even when religions are obviously acting evilly, they are not to blame—socio economic issues, alienation, despair, poverty, inequality all played their part, Ruse thinks, often a dominant part. It leaves you thinking, though, why these terribly good religions did not stop or seek to stop the terrible cause outlined, but instead, apparently got caught up, through no fault of their own, in provoking and perpetuating the fierce hatred that erupted. Whatever the socio economic issues, the Irish fought over a sectarian divide, and the divide was, and still is, perpetuated by faith schooling in a largely segregated system. The professional philosopher is not immune to blindness over such matters, but it is puzzling nevertheless. He seems to be apologizing for religions, even though, as he claims to be an atheist, he can hardly think that anyone following any of them is thinking at all clearly.

Yet, he boasts that he is unlike his new atheistic critics in taking scholarship seriously. For example, Dawkins’ The God Delusion made him ashamed to be an atheist, he said. It seems, then that Dawkins is not a scholar, despite his distinguished career as a professor of biology, the public understanding of science, and as an author of popular science books, as well as scholarly papers, all from the deserved place he held in a most distinguished university. Could it be that even a professional philosopher cannot honestly draw the proper conclusions from empirical investigations? Once something is established, is it proper to continue humoring those who simply refuse to accept it, while believing incredible things merely because their parents, priests, and best friends believed it.

Ruse thinks he is a more serious scholar because he makes the effort to understand what these obtuse people understand by their beliefs, an endeavor that ought not to require a great deal of effort. Why do people throw salt over their shoulder when they spill it, say “bless you” when you sneeze, and touch wood for good luck? Understand those and you understand belief in God, and religion. It is superstition, an old and outmoded belief still held. Why should anyone want to perpetuate false and outmoded beliefs? Who else, but those who gain by it.

Surely these reasons are not too difficult to comprehend for a professional philosopher, especially one who still claims to be an atheist, yet Ruse is surprised that less compromised atheists are contemptuous of religious beliefs, and those who try to give them an undeserved credence, men like Ruse.

It is apparently wrong to ask any believer, “What caused God?”, but it is all right for a philosopher, Mary Midgley, to criticize the metaphor of a “selfish gene” on the obvious grounds that genes cannot have emotions. It must be that God is a metaphor, but what then is God a metaphor of? And are the priests and prelates telling their flocks that God is a metaphor and not some all powerful being with a human personality dutifully looking after everyone who prays, except those whom are overlooked and die or get maimed? If Ruse is an atheistic scholar, as he claims, and has discovered that somehow the clever theologians he admires have found a truth we have all missed, then why not share it with us. Maybe it would be too embarrassing for him.

He says it wouldn’t be, because he doesn’t have faith, he really doesn’t, yet he is not condescending to believers even though he thinks they are wrong:

I think they are wrong. They think I am wrong. But they are not stupid or bad or whatever. If I needed advice about everyday matters, I would turn without hesitation to these men.

He will! He will! Perhaps he is correct about the ones he specifies, people like Rowan Williams, but men can be misguided when young and led into a bad life in spite of themselves. Williams might be the nicest and most sincere Archbishop of Canterbury you could wish to meet, but the argument is not about how nice or sincere these men are.

They have reached high positions in their religions, Williams the highest there is, but who pays them? They are living off the sweat of others—much poorer people. Their privileged position is from exploitation no different in principle from the robbery effected by the bankers recently. And they are doing it while supposedly espousing the principles of a man who emphasized the virtues of poverty to such an extent, that it is impossible to be a Christian and be richer than their neighbor. It proves their insincerity or their unintelligence.

Theology cannot argue them out of it because the man whose principles they ignore in practice while holding to them in theory was actually God, according to their own belief. They are bold enough to say God was wrong, and every greedy Christian breathes a sigh of relief while the poor ones continue in their blessed state of poverty. It sounds very much like hypocrisy, and their God, Christ, speaking from his own divine lips also told them not to be hypocrites.

“You May Be Mistaken”

Ruse thinks he can explain faith in terms of psychology. Can’t we all, but that explains it, it does not excuse it. Psychology cannot excuse hypocrisy, especially if the hypocrites are intelligent. They know they are hypocrites and the psychology is incidental. The same is true of robbers. Indeed, using psychology to help to keep a large proportion of humanity poor and shackled by erroneous belief is disgusting in itself, and that is what these Christian shepherds have always done.

Ruse says he hears Cromwell writing in his letter to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland:

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.

But the analogy is a poor one. Squabbles between two varieties of unfounded Christian belief surely cannot be compared with the reasoned arguments of science with the perpetuated unreason of the believers. Ruse is evidently impressed by what he calls the “integrity of so many believers” which makes him modest in his unbelief. It is more evidence that Ruse is actually moving towards the believers. There can be no integrity in believing contrary to the evidence, and to continue spreading the false notion of faith, which it amounts to, cannot be commendable. Science has to be disdained to do it, and that is what Ruse tries to do by making disparaging remarks about men who are far superior in most respects than he is, and certainly more honest. Ruse seems to be like Paul of Tarsus, he is kicking against the pricks, but will succumb to his passion for Christ!

He wants evolution taught in the schools, but sees criticism of religion as stopping it, in the US southern state where he lives. He must think science has to be attenuated in some way so that it becomes acceptable to believers. That is quite impossible. It is yielding firm ground to false belief, and it is the utter opposite of science. Ruse says “we cannot make unsubstantiated arguments that science refutes religion”. But we can, it seems, make unsubstantiated arguments that religion refutes science. Unquestioning faith is diametrically opposed to the central principle of scientific inquiry—skepticism.

It is certainly possible for some Christians, like F S Collins, to be good scientists, but it is by being mentally double jointed. What is shown to be true by observation and experiment cannot in the next minute be compromised by saying something like, “but you needn’t believe it”, or “it might not be so”. If you are going to teach evolution in schools, the believers are the ones who have to suspend their beliefs. But that is what Ruse calls political stupidity. He finally shows his own complete confusion, professional philosopher or not:

If, as the new atheists think, Darwinian evolutionary biology is incompatible with Christianity, then will they give me a good argument as to why the science should be taught in schools if it implies the falsity of religion? The first amendment to the constitution of the United States of America separates church and state. Why are their beliefs exempt?

Is he saying that science is a religion itself? That is all it can mean surely. Science, which has no concern at all per se in religion, yields up information incompatible with the unfounded religious belief that God exists. So science suddenly becomes a religion, as far as the US Constitution is concerned. Sadly, he seems to be going bananas. Does he want a constitutional ban on counting too, because:

1 + 1 + 1 = 3

but Christians think:

1 + 1 + 1 = 1 ?

His parting shot is to compare The God Delusion with Christian fundamentalist ideas spread in the 1960s that forthcoming nuclear annihilation was the equivalent of Noah’s Flood, a dispensationalist message. Never mind that God promised, in his diaries, not to do anything like that again, it is God’s plan, and needless to say, the fundamentalists promise themselves a grandstand seat in heaven to view the fireworks. Such comparisons seem to suggest a fading mind, comical but sad.

Ruse has written well on atheism and on evolution in the past, but now is cozying up to IDers while finding reasons to think religion and belief in God are at least partially respectable. The schism seems to be in his own thinking or mentality.

J Horgan, R Dawkins and the Anthropic Principle

John Horgan is a reliable and competent science writer, albeit not a scientist himself, who directs the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ. His books include The End of Science and Rational Mysticism. He wrote a review in The Philadephia Inquirer (8 November, 2009) of The Greatest Show on Earth, by Richard Dawkins, refreshingly free of the creationist speculation and propaganda that any articles in US popular news inevitably invites these days. In it, Dawkins explains the basic evidence for evolution and natural selection, arrange such that it answers various categories of creationist criticisms.

Thus all those yawning gaps in the fossil record creationists cite from Darwin, have been considerably filled in since 1859. Creationists argue as if every living creature that ever appeared on earth ought to have a fossil, but fossilization is unlikely to happen to any dead animal, and it is more unlikely for some animals than others. Yet apparently there should be a fossil for every species that is an intermediate between two others that we do have fossils for. Whatever intermediate is found, they want one between that and next. All that would satisfy them, it seems, is a continuous record of evolution, and even given that, they would find some other excuse.

We have some good intermediate forms between ourselves and the common ancestor we had with the apes, Homo sapiens Neanderthalenis, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Australopithecus, several examples in some cases, and most recently “Ardi”, Ardipithecus ramidus, an ape able to walk upright, albeit lurchingly, 4.4 million years ago. As the common ancestor is thought to have lived less than 8 million years ago, we have specimens half way to the common ancestor, and all have intermediate features and characteristics between us and apes. Indeed this specimen having a skeleton that shows it could walk upright so far back in time, and having no sharp canine teeth has made anthropologists think the common ancestor itself might have been more humanlike than chimplike, and that chimpanzees have therefore evolved away from the common ancestral form more than we have.

But creationists think we were a very special creation by God, and they will not change their views until they change their views about God, whence their hatred of practical science which challenges almost everything said in Genesis. Most absurd of all, of course, is the supposed creation of the whole of existence in six days. Not one of the bible worshipping believers are willing to recognize that Genesis records the seven days of an annual festival, popular in the ancient near east, in which each day celebrated an aspect of the creation, and the Genesis poem is describing the festival day by day, not God’s actual creation. It proves that none of these believers are too bright in not realizing this centuries ago.

Just as obviously, all mammals have the same skeletal structure. Bones are directly comparable in their situation in respect of other bones (homology), though they might have changed their shape and function. The nail on your middle finger is the hoof of a horse’s foreleg. If God made every species fresh, He showed a singular lack of imagination. He could have used different designs for every one of them, but, if we all evolved from a common stock, then what is observed is perfectly sensible. Indeed, not just mammals but most reptiles and amphibians also have the same structure of their limbs, and even some, like snakes, that seem not to, are shown by careful study to be the same too.

There ought to be nothing in these least surprising that in billions of years a single cell could evolve into a human being, because every time a human ovum is fertilized and grows into an adult, a single cell has grown into the most technologically sophisticated animal on earth in only nine months! And all by rules that come from the DNA encoded in the fertilized egg, and the pattern of chemical signals that accompany and drive local development and cell specialization.

Creationists demand to be shown life being created, even though evolution is about how life diversifies once it has been created. Molecules that reproduce have indeed been made but the reproduction is only local and does not constitute life. And one of the molecules of life, RNA, has been shown to evolve when allowed to reproduce in test tubes. Simple cells have been shown to evolve when grown for many generations in test tubes or on gels. And a virus, TMV, which is alive given the right conditions but can be isolated in a crystalline form has been broken up into its constituent molecules, killing it, but then it has been reconstituted from its constituents and returned to life. Scientists have resurrected the TM virus!

Religious dogmatists say evolutionary theory is not a proper scientific theory because it makes no predictions. Suddenly the creationists are telling the biologists and molecular chemists how science should be run! These hypocrites have not noticed that Darwin himself predicted, in 1862, that a Madagascar orchid that secretes nectar at the bottom of a foot long tube could only be pollinated by an insect with a foot long proboscis—some sort of moth. It was discovered in 1903.

Horgan only gets critical at the end of his review, suggesting that Dawkins falls short of perfection in asking:

How is it that we find ourselves not merely existing but surrounded by such complexity, such elegance, such endless forms most beautiful and wonderful?

And answering:

It could not have been otherwise, given that we are capable of noticing our existence at all, and of asking questions about it.

It seems Horgan was dismayed by this because it suggests the “notorious concept” called the “anthropic principle”:

The principle states that that universe must be as we observe it to be, because, if it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to observe it. If this sounds like a tautology, a circular and hence vacuous pseudo-explanation, that’s because it is. The anthropic principle is less a theory than an admission of defeat.

Here Horgan seems to falter, not Dawkins. First, it is hardly correct for a science writer to call the anthropic principle a theory, except in the vague but popular sense that the creationists use it in—a gash explanation. It is not gash, and it is not a tautology. The anthropic principle is more of an observation than a theory. We are here, and so the Universe’s age and physical constants are those that allow us to exist, and not all those others that would make our existence impossible, because the physical constants would be to big or small for the universe to exist itself, or to exist long enough for us to have evolved. We are not trying to prove that we do exist, but that unless the conditions had been as they are, we could not have done.

We do exist, and the universe is as it should be for us to exist. We would need no convincing there is a God if we miraculously existed in a universe which we could see was unsuitable for our existence! Moreover, just as observations can suggest explanations, so too can this one explain the fact that we are here to observe the universe. It is no different from observing that a fish is a certain shape, and so too are dophins, whales, seals and so on, the reason being that they all live in a rather dense medium called water. Would it be tautological for a dolphin, an intelligent mammal, to figure out that it existed because the planet is largely covered in water, without which it could not exist?

The War Between Science and Religion

It is a shame how some apparently learned men will show themselves to be little more than idiots savants for the sake of God. One such man is Nigel Cutland, now professor of mathematics at the university of York. Cutland is a Christian but teaches abstruse mathematics at about the standard Newton and Liebnitz reached 300 years ago, but made trendy with a smidgeon of added philosophy. As a Christian, he feels obliged to defend God. Though God is a far better mathematician than Cutland, he feels the need to defend Him against some non-mathematical critics, presumably because he is not sure God can stand up for Himself.

He says that Richard Dawkins “buys into the mistake that science and religion are at war”, and he does not want God to believe any such thing. As proof, he tells us “there are many scientists, some very eminent, on both sides of the theist-atheist divide”. Well, indeed there are, and there are some scientists who smoke cigarettes and have sex with other people’s wives, but being eminent scientists does not justify their bad habits. And, in any case, it remains true that an overwhelming proportion of the topmost scientists have always rejected God. As the degree of eminence declines, the proportion of believers increases, but never gets to the levels of the general population. Scientists are always less religious than the masses. The exceptions of certain journeymen just prove the rule.

So, Cutland has convinced himself that there is no war between science and religion, even though science demands evidence, and religion demands faith—belief without evidence. Nothing could be more opposite, though Cutland has not noticed it, despite his professorship. As further evidence, he cites John Lennox (God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?), a book he greatly admires, no doubt because Lennox is a fellow Christian mathematician, a pastor of Green College, Oxford, and doubtless his chum. Lennox does not think science can decide between two alternative “world views”. One is naturalism-atheism—there is nothing but nature and the material world. The other is supernaturalism-theism—there is a God. Even so, Lennox has decided that God is necessary because there are plenty of gaps remaining for Him to exclusively fill. God is the Intelligent Designer!

It is a view many scientists are happy to accept, mainly because they are unwilling to debate with unreason, and consider that the winning entry will eventually be clear without them having to intervene. It is a naïve view, but like other normal people, most scientists are naïve outside of their own skills. Scientists rightly think that they have a method for showing what is true and what is not by painstaking testing. Whatever fails the tests is ruthlessly abandoned, like the notion of space being filled with a fluid called ether. Progressively science is proving religion wrong. Germs not demons cause disease, and Jesus could only have been acting the magician to drive out demons when none were there, or needed to be. Science has shown it can explain the world, and find answers to problems without the need for a God. God has left no traces in the world, and shows no sign of interfering in it. The evidence is the same as that He does not exist. The hypothesis of God should be abandoned. God is superfluous.

Though, science has being replacing the rickety ladder of religion with a solid staircase to greater knowledge, religion in extremis will destroy everything to stop itself from being destroyed. It has happened before. Look at the Cathar genocide, the Inquisition, the witch hunts, the countless religious wars of unbridled malignity. Fundamentalism has been attacking science for a hundred years, and judging by history, it is never safe to think that religion will go quietly. Look at the ferocity of Moslem fundamentalists. They feel under double attack, by science and by the western lifestyle. Then listen to Christian fundamentalists. Religious fanatics would rather destroy the world than admit they are insane.

In his researches, Cutland has discovered that “scientists on both sides believe that science supports their own faith”. He declares atheism to be a faith because it is impossible to disprove God. It is just as hard to disprove the Wizard of Oz, Santa Claus, the Loch Ness Monster or ET. As they are all imaginary, there is nothing about them to prove. You do not need to prove Santa Claus to a child—they accept him as the source of their Christmas presents. But once the seed of doubt is planted, you have nothing to counter it because Santa is as imaginary as Tinker Bell and Tom’s Midnight Garden. Just how does God differ in practice from these other entities? If I am grown up enough to realize that Santa Claus is imaginary, do I have some peculiar faith? The Mighty Calculus thinks so, but it is patently absurd, and simply demonstrates how Christianity destroys reason.

Cutland thinks his hero, Lennox, has shown that science is consistent with theism because it explains “the rational intelligibility of the universe, without which science cannot begin”. You have then to believe that either God thinks much as we do, and admittedly that is what Christians do think, or, as a vastly superior being, he thinks in a vastly superior way, in which case there is no reason why we should find anything He thinks as intelligible, and a more likely case for a God! One cannot expect an idiot savant to think subtly outside of his intellectual cocoon.

Cutland admits that “the unthinking blind faith and fanaticism” of some believers is deplorable, but adding that “it is unscientific to generalize from some to all”. I hadn’t noticed that Christians were so discerning in their long history. The Christian leaders of the US and UK not long ago felt no need to distinguish innocent Moslems from terrorists. Far from it, all were treated as if they were terrorists, and many are still not getting access to justice. Generalizing about Christians seems a proportionate thing to do in view of their own chosen behaviour, well reported as it is in history for those who want to read it. No one is obliged to be a Christian, any more than anyone is obliged to be a Nazi. Those who choose to be Christian do it with the full knowledge of its appalling record as an institution, a record that individual duty can hardly scratch. It is safer for non-Christians to assume that any Christian would willingly kill them to save their soul, since that is what they have willingly done in the past.

Einstein and His God

Einstein was not religious in the conventional sense, but it will come as a surprise to some, aware of his statements such as that God does not play dice, to learn that Einstein clearly identified himself as an atheist and as an agnostic.

Thus I came—despite the fact I was the son of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents—to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived… Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude… which has never left me.

Albert Einstein

Boston’s Cardinal O’Connel attacked Einstein and the General Theory of Relativity and warned the youth that the theory “cloaked the ghastly apparition of atheism” and “befogged speculation, producing universal doubt about God and His creation.” On April 24, 1929, Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of New York cabled Einstein to ask:

Do you believe in God?

Einstein’s return message is the famous statement:

I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.

From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist… I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being.

The Life and Times, by the professional biographer Ronald W Clark (1971), contains one of the best summaries on Einstein’s God:

However, Einstein’s God was not the God of most men. When he wrote of religion, as he often did in middle and later life, he tended to… clothe with different names what to many ordinary mortals—and to most Jews—looked like a variant of simple agnosticism… This was belief enough. It grew early and rooted deep. Only later was it dignified by the title of cosmic religion, a phrase which gave plausible respectability to the views of a man who did not believe in a life after death and who felt that if virtue paid off in the earthly one, then this was the result of cause and effect rather than celestial reward. Einstein’s God thus stood for an orderly system obeying rules which could be discovered by those who had the courage, the imagination, and the persistence to go on searching for them.

The Principle of Falsification

The Rev Dr Paul Sheppy of Reading objects to the claim that, while science determines truth from falsehood by experiment and maths by self consistency, there is no basis for determining theology’s assertions. In a letter to the press, he said it is “the sort of knock-down argument that the average first year student of philosophy of religion should be able to demolish in fairly short order”. His reason is that the “verification” or “falsification” principle is itself incapable of verification or falsification and is in it own terms, therefore, meaningless. He continues to say that Wittgenstein showed many universes of discourse exist, each with its own grammar, syntax and logic, and rules cannot sensibly be moved from one such universe to another. So:

the application of the rules of the natural sciences is unlikely to work with disciplines that make extensive use of metaphor. “Bill’s a brick” is not a scientific statement. As science, it is either untrue or meaningless. But Bill is a brick, and very fine member of my congregation. Moreover, I see the truth of what he believes by my experience and observation of him!

The reverend doctor needs to go back to school and study a little more, preferably in a universe that demonstrably makes sense. The principles of scientific method—including the falsification principle—have indeed been verified because they are subject to constant falsification, and have not yet been thus falsified. The criterion is simple, and, indeed, biblical (Dt 18:22). God explained how a false prophet could be discriminated from a true one. The prophecies of the false prophet were not true. They were not verified in practice. It is the same as the principle he attempts to lambast, and, incidentally, on this God given criterion, the Christian god, Christ, is a false prophet.

Science validates itself by selecting hypotheses that can be demonstrated not to be false—they work in practice. It is a criterion that was good enough for God but is not good enough for his theologians whose true vocation is obfuscation and mysticism to keep themselves employed by gullibles who cannot discriminate fact from fiction.

As for “Bill is a brick” not being scientific, we must concur, but there is no reason at all why it should not be. Science is a part of human thought, and each of us builds it up from infancy as a succession of increasingly complex metaphors based on our experience. Science consists of these metaphors, concepts like magnitude as height, understanding as grasping, time as a journey or a landscape, and so on. There is no fundamental reason why “Bill is a brick” should not be meaningful scientifically providing that the metaphors are defined and Bill’s brickness is falsifiable.

What is the basis, then, for the theological claim that we live on when we have ostensibly died?

More on Judaism and Christianity at http://www.askwhy.co.uk

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Gluten, the hidden poison

Gluten is increasingly added to food for no obvious reason, yet it is a dangerous poison to many people, and in added quantities probably to many who otherwise would be tolerant. You will find it added to many foods to improve its texture with no regard to its harmful effects.

clipped from www.elivinghealth.com Gluten intolerance is now being linked to some major brain development and immune system disorders, and the pathway is not exclusively through the gut.� Depression, migraines, ADHD, autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, balance problems, epilepsy, inability to concentrate, autoimmune thyroid disease, and dermatitis, are amongst the many non-digestive disorders that have now been linked to gluten intolerance.� �Dr. Lewey suggests that gluten intolerance affects as much as 10% to 30% of the population.� When you consider the number of people on medications for the above mentioned brain and immune system disorders, it’s possible that the numbers are even higher than Dr. Lewey suggests.� �

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Zero Time. Did it ever happen?

 

Sorting the terms gives this simple equation:

( tv )² – ( to )² = ( tc )²

Using the difference of two squares, it reduces to the same form as the original hypothesised equation. When we trace back our observed time to zero at the Big Bang, universal time has the value tc, the time that corresponds with T in our original surmise, the time we took to be Planck’s time, a fundamental unit of time. For universal time to reach zero, our observed time has to become imaginary. It suggests that there never was a Big Bang. On the miniscule scale, time is eternal. Perhaps that will actually please Christians.

Source: askwhy.co.uk

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Tags: ZERO | UNIVERSE | Time | observed | God | Culture | BIG | BANG

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