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Dawkins Delusion
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Saturday, 04 September 2010 12:41 |
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 The Times is overblowing the debate provoked by Stephen Hawking’s most recent claims.
In his new book The Grand Design, Hawking argues that contemporary physics has done away with the need for God. I’ll have to read the book, but I think his central argument is that something can indeed come from nothing, and that Big Bangs don’t need some mysterious being to light the blue touch paper. Apparently Hawking has not just seen off the deity, but also alas “philosophy is dead”. The Times is anxious to milk this (after all, it gets William Hague and Andy Coulson off the front page) speculating that science teachers could face a tricky time in faith schools.
Away from the bunkum, there’s a great rebuttal by Paul Davies in today’s Guardian, he writes:
Our universe is just one infinitesimal component amid this vast – probably infinite – multiverse, that itself had no origin in time. So according to this new cosmological theory, there was something before the big bang after all – a region of the multiverse pregnant with universe-sprouting potential.
Some of my other favourite quotes so far:
“Physical laws … are about the regular relations between actual realities. I cannot see how they explain the bare fact that there is any reality at all” – the wonderful Rowan Williams (as close to omniscient as any mortal gets)
“Aside from what physics tells us, there are all sorts of logical fallacies with religious belief. A God that that could be everywhere all the time could eat itself for breakfast” A.C. Grayling – nonsense dressed up in sophisticated language
Cosmology
Genesis
Science
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Freakonomics
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Wednesday, 20 January 2010 00:00 |
 What Makes The Perfect Parent
Things that do and do not matter (pp 154-162)
Matters: The child has highly educated parents
Doesn’t: The child’s family is intact
Matters: The child’s parents have high socioeconomic status
Doesn’t: The child’s parents recently moved into a better neighbourhood
Matters: The child’s mother was thirty or older at the time of her first child’s birth
Doesn’t: The child’s mother didn’t work between birth and kindergarten
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Climate Change
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Tuesday, 23 March 2010 22:32 |
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Dear XXXX,
Thanks for your most recent correspondence.
The most recent thing I had to investigate was the work of Baliunas and Soon which is much chronicled and lauded by Christopher Booker. On the surface, this seemed to present interesting evidence that recent rising was caused by sun spots, and had little to do with atmospheric change. However, it is difficult to believe how much can be based on this paper.
In the paper Baliunas and Soon brought together the work of many other scientists to make their point. However, many of these other scientists have since complained about the work of Baliunas and Soon - note the review here and also the paper they published here.
Aside from the putative links between Baliunas and Soon and the oil industry; what also seems to be a problem is that they fail to distinguish between local temperature variation and global variation.
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Conferences
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Sunday, 28 February 2010 22:59 |
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Just in from Holy City which was about the Jairus story. I loved the big that Jane Bentley did on Jesus did not just come to speak but to touch, to take on flesh (she did it much more poetically than that). I also had a conversation with two women being "the woman" and me being Jairus. I spoke, with a preacher's perspective, on the pain of thinking your faith and your whole vocation is on the line if this thing does not work; and the irritation that Jairus feels when he is delayed because of "the woman"; what if she is healed and his daughter is not, how does he cope with that scenario. The women who were being "the woman" screamed at me that I needed to get Jesus to my house, there was enough of Jesus go around. The only people who know what Jesus can do here, as he approaches Jairus' house, are Jesus and the woman. Only she has the faith to know what he can for this girl.
Healing
Mark 5
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News
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Friday, 06 August 2010 07:09 |
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 Something has to be written about the last episode of Rev.
There was something joyous in watching the last ten minutes. Not some sadistic shardenfreude thing at Adam Smallbone's disastrous attempt to seduce the local headmistress; win an argument with his wife through barked swearing; dance badly or cling to and then let go of his vocation. The joy was in recognition. Of seeing myself there. Not the details (although apparently all of these do have their origins in real events), but the deeper motivations - the self-pity, the questionning of whether all this is worth it and we haven't just succumbed to religious hoax ("'Dan Barker was right' whispers the demonic voice in our head), and the redemption through the least expected: the policeman who we think has come to arrest the drunken Reverend; the local gang who refuse to offer Smallbone a fight despite his insults; and the dying woman who grants the Reverend the honour of needing him.
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