A Creation Fairytale

Is Everything We Know About The Universe Wrong? (click image to be taken to iPlayer)

You don’t like the existing descriptions of how the universe came to be. It’s time to write a new one.

It looks like the universe is expanding, so clearly there’s no other possible explanation than that it used to all be compressed into a very small space, before it exploded.

Cool, so the universe started with a big bang, that explains everything.

…

Hang on, all normal explosions lead to random lumpy debris that’s really hot in some places, but cooler in others. How do we explain why our universe is really smooth and all the same temperature? I guess we could say it started off expanding slowly, so it got smoothed out while it was still small, then it suddenly inflated really quickly for some reason to get to the sort of size it is now. No idea how or why that would’ve happened, but it means we can stick to the big bang story, so we’ll go with it.

…

Those galaxies don’t look right. The stars at the edge should be moving slower than the ones in the middle, like the planets in our solar system, but they’re going the same speed. How can we fix that? I’ve got an idea. How about if there was a load of extra mass that we can’t see? If there was enough of the stuff, the physics would work. How much do we need? 5 times as much of this dark stuff as the matter we can see?! That seems like we’re relying pretty heavily on something we invented without being able to detect it, but it’s the simplest explanation I can think of, it’ll have to do.

…

Um, guys… why is the expansion of the universe accelerating?

Could there be a load of energy we can’t see, too? Yeah, call it dark energy and we won’t have to prove it exists by detecting it or anything silly like that; people will just have to accept it ‘cos we’re the clever people and we can’t come up with anything better.

…

Dark flow? Mate, is it just me, or is the whole idea that the present can tell us everything we need to know about the past becoming less and less convincing?

And, fun as it might be to have a go at those religious nuts who use a scientifically unobservable God to explain where we came from; taking an honest look at what us scientists are putting our faith in, it’s not really any more sensible. And if we judge a theory’s success by how well it resists people trying to rip it apart, those guys have a bit of a head start.

Like that whole Jesus rising from the dead thing, it’s actually surprisingly well supported by historical evidence. Is there really a scientific reason we can say for certain that miracles like that could never happen? I mean the whole point of a miracle is that it’s not a normal event, so we probably shouldn’t expect to be able to apply the normal rules of science. And if he actually rose from the dead, he probably deserves to be listened to…

…

So God wants everyone to be perfect like him, I guess that’s fair enough, but no one lives up to that, do they? What are we supposed to do?

Nothing? Just trust that God took the punishment I deserve on himself? That’s too easy, I want to earn my forgiveness…

…

Ok yeah, that’s not gonna work…

So it’s really all been done for me? That’s actually unbelievably awesome.

History of the Bible?

I was looking forward to this series on Channel 4, but it makes a shockingly bad start.

Apparently to have ever begun believing in only one God, the Jews must have stopped believing in more than one, never to return.

This is despite the Bible being full of accounts of the Jews turning away from faith in the one true God, to worship the idols of other nations over and over again. Archaeological evidence of idol worship since the time of Moses doesn’t even come close to proving that the monotheistic creation account wasn’t written until much later.

I agree to some extent with John Polkinghorne, and the conclusion that the Bible is not a science text book; Genesis 1 alone isn’t what convinces me that the theory of evolution is wrong, but I’m with Greg Haslam in that my faith in God is rooted in real events.

A Blast From The Past

Conversation: Plans for New Year’s -> Cardiff -> Pontypridd -> Fireman Sam (Pontypandy) -> Kid’s TV ->

Can You Feel It?

You Idiots!

This:

is better than this:

Fact.

 

I’m aware these songs aren’t what the public voted on. It doesn’t matter. I used to think Simon Cowell had some sense. It turns out I was wrong.

I haven’t been watching X-Factor this year, but kept hearing how bad Jedward are, and Lucie was one of the couple of initial auditions that I did see, so thought I’d see what all the fuss was about.

Are people deliberately trying to get John & Edward to win just to embarrass Cowell? Whoever is voting for them is spoiling the show for those who think (and I agree) that people who can sing like Leona Lewis deserve a chance at success.

Jesus Camp & The Baby Bible Bashers

I’ve expanded my TV watching from just iPlayer to include 4oD.

Jesus Camp

This sort of thing doesn’t help with the idea that Christianity is just a method of social control by brainwashing people.

As we heard at my church last Sunday, you can (and should) try to bring up your children to live Godly lives and teach them the Bible, but you can’t make them Christians.

But when an interviewer suggested to Becky Fischer that there’s a difference between learning and indoctrination, she said she thinks churches should be indoctrinating their kids more.

Fischer talks about Muslims putting weapons in the hands of 5 year olds and claims we’re at war. Now, the Bible does use language that suggests a battle, but I think she’s got the wrong idea about who we’re fighting and the way to go about it.

It’s kind of scary, I think these people would agree with my definition of Christianity, but they act it out really very differently. Whipping people’s emotions into hysteria isn’t what Christianity is about.

There’s a kid preacher here too, he was apparently saved when he was 5. He wanted more out of life, this life just wasn’t fun. At 5. Do you know any 5 year olds who already find life boring?

Some adult tells him that God has his life planned out (true), then tells him that God has written that he’s going to grow into a preacher that will shake America, “What do you think of that?” (Personally, I’m fairly certain he’s talking out of his backside).

When someone asks the kid what his favourite subject is to preach on, he replies “faith”. What? I think most preachers worth listening to would choose a favourite Bible passage to speak on, rather than say “faith”. In the clips of him preaching that were shown, he was holding a Bible, but talking about what he felt God was telling him, that “this generation is a key generation”. Definitely sounds like he’s just regurgitating what the people running the camp are saying, not much to do with the Bible.

Baby Bible Bashers

(At time of writing this is still available to watch)

This was interesting because I was less suspicious of the way these kids became Christians, but there were other issues.

Despite Samuel claiming to be saved at 3, it somehow seemed more like he’d decided for himself than some of the kids at Jesus Camp. He hasn’t experienced any other ideas though, so I think he’ll face some serious challenges as he grows up.

I don’t think ordering people on the street to repent or go to hell is the most effective way to tell people the gospel. I’m all for open air preaching, but not in the way they were doing it, with a board listing all the people who are going to hell. That doesn’t seem like a good way of getting people to listen.

Terry Durham hears voices that “sometimes sound like me, but I say no, it’s the Lord”. hmm. I can’t find or remember the exact quote, but a friend suggested something along the lines of how amazing it is how often “what God wants” matches the desires of the person who claims to know.

I reckon if it’s not from the Bible, question it. If it is from the Bible, still check it, it’s not too difficult to take things out of context and say pretty much anything you want.

His dad was made to look very much like he’s using his son for financial gain. Good preachers don’t aim for celebrity status. They wouldn’t want to be welcomed onto the stage with a round of applause. But I guess my definition of ‘good’ is different to theirs.

Ana Carolina’s dad is her choreographer. I think that’s enough said really.

Do We Have Free Will To Think About Jennifer Aniston?

In The Secret You (available on iPlayer until 27/11/09), Professor Marcus du Sautoy (a mathematician) goes in search of answers to one of science’s greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are?

It’s basically about the search for a natural explanation for our consciousness. Are our thoughts just neurons firing? or is there something more going on?

In one experiment, where Marcus decided whether to press the button in his left or right hand, the scan of his brain apparently indicated which side he was going to choose 6 seconds before he even knew himself.

Obviously scientists like things to have a natural cause, and this seems to indicate that our thoughts are predictable, and hence that our concept of free will is a bit messed up. I began to wonder if a criminal could argue that he wasn’t in control of his actions based on this, but the guy did insist that our subconscious is obedient to our conscious wishes.

In other experiments, people were shown a load of pictures, and the response of a certain neuron detected. With one patient, out of 100 pictures, it only responded to the 6 pictures of Jennifer Aniston, and only when she was photographed on her own, it didn’t respond to a picture of her with Brad Pitt.

There was other stuff in there like sticking spots to babies’ faces and giving Marcus an “out of body experience”, and I found it very interesting, but in conclusion, there’s still plenty we don’t understand.

Well, you say that

I wrote previously about parts 1 & 2 of Adam Rutherford’s The Cell. I just watched part 3 (the final part) and the confusion continues.

The main point of this episode was to tell us how life first started on Earth through spontaneous generation. As I noted before, this seemed rather odd since the first episode told how Louis Pasteur showed the idea to be ridiculous. Basically, scientists have changed the rules since Pasteur’s time (note: I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to do this, if there’s good reason).

Louis showed that organisms did not form spontaneously in his mixture of useful chemicals.

These days, scientists just have to show that certain chemicals that are important parts of living organisms can form in the right conditions. Rutherford kept talking about what early Earth was like, but as far as I can see, the only reason people believe Earth was ever like that is because it needed to be for life to have the slightest chance of starting spontaneously. He gave a few examples of experiments producing important chemicals, but never tried to explain how they could have come together in exactly the right way to form the first living cell. If I remember rightly, there were 161 different structures, all immensely complicated, necessary for life.

It was admitted that this sort of science is actually just intelligent guesswork. “We can’t go back there so we have to come up with reasonable sounding ideas.” This really puts it into perspective. Even if life could have started like they suggest, that doesn’t mean it did.

A few statements made in the show:

All cells come from other cells. Over the three episodes the Doc repeatedly emphasised this as a basic bedrock fact of science. I don’t have any problem accepting this. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for spotaneous generation though.

All organisms on Earth came from one cell at the beginning. Hang on, assuming for a second that spontaneous generation could have happened, why did it only happen once? If the right conditions were present, why didn’t it happen repeatedly?

DNA makes RNA makes proteins. A scientific “dogma”. Interesting. People who have tried to explain spontaneous generation to me before have suggested that DNA evolved from RNA, from proteins, from amino acids.

Parts of this animation were used in the show:

I know it’s only a computer animation, but presumably it is based on reality, and I think it’s awesome. Personally, it puts me in awe of the designer of this incredible machine. I’m all in favour of studying it more and more deeply, but don’t try and explain how it evolved from nothing all by itself, you just sound bonkers.

Astro-biology. Seriously? Us theists are always told we’re just pushing the question of why there’s something rather than nothing further back, by suggesting God created matter. To be fair, Rutherford didn’t just suggest that “life came to Earth from space”, he spoke to someone who found some important molecule on a meteorite.

Thankfully the whole hour wasn’t spent speculating on how life might have started on Earth, he also looked a bit at where genetic engineering could go in the future. I found this bit really interesting, and some of the possibiblities are really exciting, but there are some questions about where lines should be drawn. I think I’m less against playing around with this stuff than some Christians, but there are points where playing God could go too far. Producing a synthetic organism to kill cancer would obviously have great benefits, but I can see some scientist in the future trying to mess with the human genes themselves, probably not to make a glow-in-the-dark person, but there could be all sorts of problems. The concept of designer babies isn’t exactly brand new, but if it means selecting an embryo with the right properties and destroying the others then (like abortion) it’s definitely wrong.

Atheism Gets Pasteurised (+Science Outdoes Hollywood)

I just watched The Hidden Kingdom and The Chemistry of Life, parts 1 & 2 of 3 part series The Cell.

It looks like these are only available to watch til the 2nd September.

There was a lot of good stuff in them.

Louis Pasteur is a legend, he showed that life does not generate spontaneously from non-living matter, whether we’re talking making mice by mixing wheat and sweat, or simple bacteria forming in an environment that would suit them, it just doesn’t happen. The presenter made it sound properly ridiculous and mocked the scientists who held onto the medieval belief for so long.

Yet atheists today still hold onto this medieval belief to explain how the first living cells arose from non-living matter.

But funny things start to happen in part 2, the fact that injecting a mouse’s eye DNA into fruit fly embryos produces extra eyes shows that, despite the eyes themselves having very different structures, the two creatures are made up of very similar genes. He claimed this was evidence of evolution from a common ancestor, but surely that’s going too far? I would think it’s evidence of a designer using basically the same materials to make all living beings.

I will have to wait ’til Wednesday to see part 3, but it looks like he’s going to explain how the first life could have spontaneously generated. This seems odd to me after he so emphatically mocked the idea in episode 1, so I await with interest.

9021-D’oh!

Apparently if you want a lot of page views for your blog, the thing to do is write about TV shows.

3 of my top 5 posts are TV related.

Save Chuck rocketed to the top position within a day, pretty much doubling my peak viewing figures in the process, while my Week In TV (where I commented on 24, Lost, and Heroes) and Shamone, Shaheen (Britain’s Got Talent) are also up there.

It seems you don’t even have to say anything that interesting about the shows either.

Did anyone else think that this week’s Simpsons and Family Guy episodes were quite similar?

There was Waverly Hills 9021-D’oh which was about Miley Cyrus, and We Love You Conrad, about Lauren Conrad.

We’ve also recently had Lisa on happy pills and Stewie on steroids.

I’ve never watched 90210 or The Hills, and I had never heard of Lauren Conrad before, but I liked the way they didn’t just completely rip it out of her. Yes a lot of famous people are annoying, especially the ones who haven’t really done anything to get famous, but they’re still people.