YEC pseudoscience nonsense

This post was inspired by a comment made by Mark Lefers in an earlier post. He commented on the pseudoscience nonsense that was being thrown around as fact by the Christians in a rather long discussion between YEC and OEC.

Ignoring for the moment that the discussion in question was between two groups arguing whose pseudoscience nonsense was better.
(“Look my shit smells better than your shit - so there”)

Nor will I go into any detail about the YEC claims about the world or any deep science. (Don’t get me started on the crap they spoke in that discussion about General Relativity – they seem to have forgotten about Quantum mechanics for some reason – why? Because they need certainty in their lives I guess)

I will just comment here on my feelings on when a YEC starts to criticise science (as they do in that discussion) and start off their argument against science by saying “But science is making an assumption that God and the bible are wrong…”

You know it is just bullshit.

Science makes no such assumptions so the argument is a false.

Science does assume the universe can be understood through repeated observations and that the universe is ‘governed’ by ‘laws’ that can be understood through these observations and understood using logic and reason.

That’s about it – oh, apart from the ‘add on’ that all things being equal, the simplest solution, one that makes the least improbable assumptions i.e. with the least unknowns, is more likely to be correct. Science takes this bit of philosophy as a useful guide (the principle of parsimony).

Best of all for the last 350+ years science and its method has worked rather well.


Science be praised!

The scientist doesn’t posit any god (or holy book) in their equations simply because the equations explain perfectly well what they were intended to explain without gods.

Adding the ‘little bit extra’ that is god would be going against the principle of parsimony.

It would have to be shown that a god is required in the equation first, and since that would require perfect and full knowledge on how the universe works AND proof of god – I’m not sure how any scientist can humbly submit that. (Of course, the theist asserts such humble knowledge all the time)

So science’s theories (and their models) are the closest humans have got to understand these ‘laws’ of the universe.

The fact the equations don’t include any gods isn’t science's problem – science works, get over it.

Oh, and can I say that I hate the English Language (and/or my knowledge of it) since I know when I use phrases like ‘law’ that some theist will think they are being clever by saying “Well, who is the lawmaker?” It’s nothing more than playing with words if they did. Should a theist wish to make such an argument/comment here, I will first ask politely that they tell me the colour of their voice before I can hear them. It makes as much sense.

So what of gods and understanding the universe?

Just saying “God did it” does not help to understand the universe or these ‘laws’ at all. It actually stops investigation. Why investigate further when you know the answer?

It is also rather an insulting answer I would have thought, especially if you believe God really did create the universe.

I mean, think how pissed off God would be.

There He is, worked His fingers to the bone to create a universe as vast as it is, billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars and planets… then someone like Ken Ham comes along and says “Well, after some silly man and woman ate a piece of fruit 6,000 years ago – you cannot trust what you see so lets just accept God did it, and ask no more questions.”

I mean, shouldn’t the YEC be just a little bit curious at the creation of their God?

“No, No, No – this book written 2,000 years ago is all I need to know about the universe. If it isn’t in here, I don’t need to know it. Erm yes doctor, I would like some antibiotics please to help me with this infection. My throat is killing me”

I might not be God, but if I spent 6 days working non-stop on a scale model of the solar system for a gift to the wife (Sun, planets, moons, asteroides etc - everything to scale with the right pretty colours)

Then the wife just said “Well, it’s all right – but I rather just take a photograph of it and put the printout on the wall. I’m not interested in all the minor details of scale comparisons or what you used to construct the planets. I’m just happy that you made it somehow”

I would be rightly pissed off I think.

But this is what Ken Ham and Co and doing.

I suppose it isn’t my problem – there is no good reason to think there is a god anyway, but if you do believe in God surely you should give Her a little more respect than what Ken Ham does.

Rant against the YEC over.

Thank you for your time.

Lee
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Fat Tony is Great!

Let me tell you a story – a story about Fat Tony.

He is a great guy, honestly - you would like him if you met him.

Of course, Fat Tony doesn’t just meet anyone – no you have to really want to meet him, sincerely want to meet him, only then can you see Fat Tony and truly understand what a great guy Fat Tony is.

Never heard of Fat Tony?

That’s OK, being so great Fat Tony knows all about you - even if you don’t know about him - he is just so great, he knows everyone.

He’s great :-)

The thing about Fat Tony we have to understand though is that although he is really great (did I mention that before?) – Fat Tony is a really busy man. As would be expected of any great man.

So sometimes you will not get to met Fat Tony directly, normally you just get to meet his close friends - but they know Fat Tony personally, they have his telephone number and everything - so we can trust them. Fat Tony wouldn’t have untrustworthy friends now would he? That wouldn’t be great.

Also, we can meet Fat Tony’s friends whenever we want – in fact Fat Tony insists we meet every Sunday morning in a local cafe where plenty of bacon sandwiches will be eaten for breakfast with hot cups of tea to wash it all down. There we are reminded how great Fat Tony is, and that he knows everything about us.

All that Fat Tony friends ask for is a small contribution; you know, to cover costs – nothing much you understand - nothing that we cannot afford.

So have I seen Fat Tony?

Well, not directly – I’ve seen a picture, a bit blurry but you can clearly see it is Fat Tony. Black suit, black tie, white shirt – wears sunglasses.

Anyway, Fat Tony is too busy and great to see me personally but I know someone who told me that they have seen him once – they said Fat Tony is great, which I always knew of course.

Now Fat Tony, being such a great guy and knowing how very busy he is, has written a book about all about himself so we don’t really need to meet Fat Tony to really know him – well, when I say Fat Tony wrote it, the book is really a biography, written by someone who really knew him well, “Trustworthy John”.

And before you say it, we know what is written in the book is true and accurate for two very good reasons.

One, Fat Tony would not allow lies to be written about himself now would he – that would not be so great.

And two is that “Trustworthy John” wrote it, and he would not lie to us either. How else did John get his first name of “Trustworthy” anyway?

Have I met “Trustworthy John”?

No, John died a long time ago – that is why I said John knew him well but that isn’t any reason not to trust what was written now is it? Lot’s of authors have died; it doesn’t make their work less trustworthy does it?

Now in the Biography we can learn about all the great things Fat Tony has done. And since we can learn directly through this book how great Fat Tony really is, it would be wrong of us to demand to meet Fat Tony directly since we have his thoughts, ideas and words written down in his Biography. It tells us everything we need to know and we have no reason to doubt the words as I have proven.

So what are some of these great stories?

Well, one account tells of a group of people who didn’t believe that Fat Tony was great – so Fat Tony had some of his close friends machine gun them down in the streets.

Which was great… of course.

I have heard some haters of Fat Tony say this actually was a bad thing, but they cannot be right – they just don’t understand that Fat Tony is great.

Besides, being haters of Fat Tony they just don’t understand and actually want to spread lies about Fat Tony – those haters are just evil and will get what they deserve one day.

In fact, isn’t it written in the Biography that there will be haters of Fat Tony spreading lies and deceit - I think it does, which again shows how great Fat Tony is for knowing this in advance. That’s called a prophecy you know, and proves how great Fat Tony is.

Besides, there is a very good reason why the haters are wrong anyway.

Being great, Fat Tony cannot do any wrong – since that would make him not great, and we know he is great, so there would have been a very good reason for this action and being great Fat Tony would know this.

I just don’t know it because I’m not great like Fat Tony. That’s my fault and not Fat Tony’s. I’m sure when I finally meet Fat Tony he will explain it all to me so I truly understand how great an act it was to machine gun down of these haters in the street – it had to have been for a great and wonderful reason after all.

I wish I could have seen it. Those saintly bystanders who also knew how great Fat Tony is and who were also shot dead in this act were just so lucky to be blessed by the bullets of Fat Tony.

So Fat Tony is great. I have proven that beyond any doubt now as you have read.

You should now think he is great too – if not, Fat Tony might think you are a hater, and you would not want that now would you.

Remember, Fat Tony knows you – knows where you live… you will have to answer to Fat Tony one day, if not tomorrow, very soon.

… and now, while we are on the subject - would you like to make a voluntary contribution to the greatness of Fat Tony and his great causes…

No more than you can afford of course.

Oh, and in the next election – you will be voting for a good friend of Fat Tony won’t you :-)

You know it makes sense.
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When Christians collide

I’ve just finished listening to a rather long discussion/debate between two different sets of Christens –Young Earth creationist (YEC) and Old Earth creationists (OEC)

Hugh Ross and Ken Ham were a couple of the Christians names I can remember, there were a few more but I forgotten their names.

First off - I got the mp3 from apologist 315, which is fast becoming my media source of Christian knowledge. Don’t know if that is a good or bad thing as yet.

Now, what did I learn from this 3 hour discussion?

Warning... long rant coming up

Firstly, that my train journey to work is rather long and maybe, just maybe I should consider sticking needles in my eyes as Newton use to do instead of listening to this stuff – at least Newton learnt this was a silly thing to do (and you get to see pretty colours I believe as a bonus).

However, listen I did and it was all rather funny in a very sad sort of way.

What made the discussion ‘interesting’ was that it was between Christians so ‘arguments’ like
“Well, you don’t accept the bible and God – so you don’t understand”…
“Naturalism just fails because I cannot understand it”…
“God did it so there”…

These and other such ‘great’ arguments could not be used since both sides believe 100% in the Christian God and the inspired biblical text – they just cannot decide want that actually means in reality.

It was the funny thing that the more they debated and discussed minor points in the bible (I think an over an hour was spent on just the meaning of the word ‘day’ (or Yum or something) in Genesis 1) the more they were proving one of my points against the Bible.

The bible is not clear and/or precise so pretty rubbish if it is suppose to be the word of God.
(Surely no one listening to this discussion could argue against the first part - the discussion went on for 3 hours, and after 2,000 years the bible is still being debated by believers.)

For me this raises a real question – why, if the bible is the inspired word of God, would the bible not want to be clear and precise?

Well, not so fast says Ken Ham (the 6 day literalist Young Earther from Australia it seems) argues the bible is clear and precise - and made a good point I thought.

(Please, put the gun down – don’t shoot me just yet)

The simple reading of the Genesis 1 account - if done without reading more into the words using outside sources i.e. science - leads clearly to the understanding that the bible meant a literal 24 hours when it spoke about days of creation – what else could it mean?

As Ken Ham points out, it was only when science came along with proof and evidence from nature did people start to question this simple reading.

It made sense to me
(AARRRGGhhhh - Am I turning into a YEC?)

OK, Ken has a few problems from within the bible when taking the bible literal on his point - like the rather frustrating fact the bible states the Sun, Moon and stars were created on the 4 day – but Ken can talk around that of course. That is – ignore it. God can do anything right?

Also, it always made me wonder, if God is so great and can do anything – why did God need as many as 6 days (24 hours or not)? It is just silly and rather limits the power of God to suggest it has to be this way – an all-powerful God could just click His fingers and BANG – Life, the universe and everything… He could have also done this last Thursday and provided us all a memory of an old universe - prove me wrong :-) No wait, God would not want to deceive us right? Erm…not so sure

Anyway, it seems clear that from this discussion (and from other YEC’s I have heard/read) that many YEC believe that the bible is clear and precise. It is a cornerstone of their belief it seems.

The only very minor problem the YEC’s have is that the literal bible reading doesn’t match reality.
(Damn that reality – always getting in the way of a good story)

Ken and Co have a choice – twist the bible to match reality, or twist reality.

I think Ken is at least honest in his beliefs.

He honestly seems to believe that if the bible is the word of God and as such cannot contain any mistakes (when read with the right interpretation of course) and the bible cannot be misleading in anyway – so you cannot twist the bible, so to Ken it is reality that is wrong.

Plain and simple. Reality is wrong!

How does Ken and Co answer the obvious question that then comes to mind? That is, “Why would God’s creation mislead us into thinking the bible is wrong using the science and reason He provided? All of which points to a very old universe and Earth. If God’s creation can be misleading, why should we believe a 2,000 year old book which is only claimed to be written by God?”

Answer?

The Fall.

The bible is still perfect of course, just that after the Fall everything we observe outside of the bible (and Ken seems to believe the whole universe in this – that’s Cosmic background radiation, red shifted galaxies, nuclear synthesis, radioactive decay, refraction of light, DNA, tree rings, snow fall rate in Greenland, geology, fossils to name but a few – basically EVERYTHING that can be observed – changed at the Fall.

That is why reality cannot be trusted.

Reality is faulty (or so Ken claims)

Which begs the question for me to how with a faulty reality he knows the bible to be 100% true?

Surely nothing could be known if it is assumed reality is faulty? If God can change anything and everything whenever He feels like it – we really shouldn’t trust anything, certainly not a book written by the hand of Fallen men.

Another question unanswered is why God would only provide one source of evidence for Hs greatness, His whole existence? Why could God not provide His own creation as evidence for His existence? The universe is just a little bit bigger than the bible and harder for man to corrupt - so one might think is more important. It would be the logical choice – and God is suppose to be clever :-)

So Ken and Co assert the Fall changes everything – but that doesn’t make sense, even if you assume God is true – it all would seem a little weak and silly on God’s part.

Two simple people eat a piece of fruit and so God HAS to change ALL the laws of physics, logic and reason? Isn’t that going a little far? Isn’t that a little silly?

Also, doesn’t the account in the Bible imply that when Jesus died on the cross and came back from the dead (so it claims) that everything was made right? Original Sin gone – the universe should now be fixed - right? If the universe isn’t now fixed – what actually did Jesus achieve?

It’s just too much for a simple mind like mine to believe.
(And as I think a certain American gentlemen known as ER, who has been known to comment here once or twice, would say that these YEC are placing the bible above the whole of creation and making an idol out of a book which goes against what the bible actual states – which of course, would not make sense)

So, I must now conclude that the Old Earthers are right by default since I have shown how weak the YEC are?

Erm… NO.

Not until they first answer which bits of the bible I can ignore and/or take as ‘metaphor’ and which bit I have to take as ‘truth’ and how they came to their conclusion.

Then there is a small matter of the whole story having to make sense of the universe we see around us. The Old Earthers in this debate seem to be accepting of an old universe, but still seem to want to make a special case for Earth and man. That is, the whole universe can follow these physical laws but the Earth must be formed in an order that was described in the bible – and of course, man is special and didn’t have to worry about all that evolution nonsense.
(That old hurdle of the bible just keeps creeping in…)

Oh, and lastly – positive evidence to back up the claims of the Old Earthers would be nice.

So after 3 hours – I’m still feel I am right to hold a position of doubt about these Christian claims.

Well, that was worth while wasn’t it?

Sorry again for the long rant... Ken Ham made me do it :-)

Lee
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Science is all wrong... therefore it’s God

The wife sent me this link of a 'news' story about dark matter, gravity and black holes

Read it - it’s interesting...

I think she sent it to show me that the scientific ‘priests’ at my university have indoctrinated me into a false belief and I should now change my view - which I could do if I wasn’t so closed minded and was more open to the evidence.

The story is based on some real observations, done by some real scientists, who work in real universities, and seem to conclude that what I thought I knew about gravity is wrong... and they have the evidence to prove it.

The theory of gravity is wrong!!!

Now firstly, you don’t get any Nobel prizes for saying that a theory is wrong – it is well known that the current theory of gravity is wrong (it doesn’t answer all the observations.)

What I find interesting is you don’t see any church leaders demanding that we ‘teach the controversy’ and that it is ‘only a theory’, and physics text books should be re-written to take into account the 6 day creationist myth... actually, this last bit is probably true. There is always one - but how do we chose one myth over another?

Now just imagine, if you can... if similar article was written but instead of gravity, it was talking about, oh I don’t know... the theory of evolution?

Seems strange how a little theory causes some people such problems.

Not my problem.

Now, what do I think of the article I hear you cry?

It’s bollocks... badly written and I suspect is twisting what the scientists really said.

Not that the theory of gravity cannot be shown wrong (it already has since it isn’t compatible with Quantum mechanics), it is that even IF these observations are correct (which they could be, how would I know) but the simple modifications of the theory of gravity that the article is pushing does not answer observations seen in the bullet cluster – and here is a post where I wrote why it is such good evidence FOR dark matter.

Science – don’t you just love it?

Lee
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‘Hand of God’

Space is so amazingly....




I saw this picture last week and thought "WOW...neutron stars are just so freaking cool."

A larger version can be found here

The photo was taken by the Chandra X-ray observatory and has the really catchy name of PSR B1509-58

Or ‘THE HAND OF GOD!!!!!’ by the folk in the press room (I wonder why?)

But what I really want to know is who cut off God’s arm?

More science stuff on this can be found here

Lee Read More......

2012 Prophecy

Here is my prophecy for 2012….

Idiots will be going on stupid TV chat shows trying to sell their silly books telling us all that the world is going to end on the 21st Dec 2012 and worst still, people will be buying the books with smiles on their faces.

Not much of a prophecy I know - people have been doing this for years.

Throughout history there have been people predicting the world is going to end (some even write their ideas down in books)… their track record still isn’t very good :-)

Now I first heard of this ‘end of the world in 2012’ nonsense-talk last year from my step-mother when she asked me if I knew what was behind the story – it is old news, but hey, always like to keep my finger on the pulse just in case the corpse moves.

That and I wanted to stop talking about religion for a second or two and get ahead of the 2012 crap that is to come.

So what’s the deal with 2012?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Answer – no idea.

That’s not entirely true – I do know that an ancient calendar system once used by the ancient Maya civilization will be ‘turning a new page’ (so to speak), but that’s about it as far as I can tell about the date.

So, this post will be about that calendar

This ‘Mesoamerican long count calendar’ is rather interesting reading in a sad sort of way.

It uses (mostly) a base-20 number system instead of our ‘usual’ base-10.

I say mostly because the Mayan realised they needed a ‘bit of a fiddle’ to match their calendar against the Earth’s year which has (as we know) 365 (and a bit) days per cycle

Now I will try and explain the Mayan system a little…

First think back to your primary school days and in maths class how you would write ‘Units’, ‘Tens’, ‘Hundreds’, ‘Thousands’ etc at the top your page before starting any maths problem.

‘Units’ went from 0-9, then you ‘clocked over’ onto the ‘Tens’ column by marking a ‘1’ in the ‘Tens’ column.

Then you went back to counting in the Units column again going from 0-9 again in ‘Units’, then clocked over the ‘Tens’ column by another 1 and marked it as 2

And so on…
(Explaining counting and maths is not easy – how do primary school teachers do it?)

Anyway – you all know this, so why am I bothering?

Well, it is to try and give you an idea how simple the Mayan system really is – just instead of counting from 0 to 9, they count from 0 to 19 in each column.

That’s it.

OK… Instead of ‘Units’, their first column is called “K’in” (I am told by Wiki) and in this column they go from 0 to 19.

So, in the first column of “K’in” – 1 translates to 1 in our system, 19 to 19… easy…

Until you try and move to 20…

This introduces a new column called ‘Winal’

The Mayan might write 20 as 10 (Makes sense? Our system has 2 ‘Tens’ and 0 ‘units’, the Mayan just have 1 Winal and 0 K’in… how simple is that?)

Isn’t Counting is fun :-)

All works well with the base-20 system calendar until the Mayan got to 17 Winal and 19 K’in (or how I will chose to write it from now on 17-19. That’s (17 * 20) + 19 = 359 days in our modern money)

Now, the Mayan could have just clock over another Winal to 18 and follow the base-20 standard - but (and here is the fiddle) they realised that their calendar would get a little silly comparing year-on-year to that of the Earth-year.

So what they did was to say “No, when we get to 17-19 we clock over to a new ‘Tun’ where 1 Tun is 360 days… close as damn it to what we call a ‘year’.

The Calendar would then read 1-0-0 (or 360 days)

If they continued with base-20 idea, 1 Tun would have been 400 days and so would not link nicely to the Earth-year… obviously

What clever people the Mayan were.

So in summary

1 day = 1 K’in or 0-0-0-0-1
20 days = 20 K’in or 1 Winal or 0-0-0-1-0
360 days = 18 Winal or 1 Tun or 0-0-1-0-0
7,200 days = 20 Tun or 1 K’atun or 0-1-0-0-0
144,000 days = 20 K’atun or 1 B’ak’tun or 1-0-0-0-0

(Again, according to Wiki… the bible for the lazy)

OK – now you are all be bored and thinking “what the hell has this got to do with the end of the world and 2012”

I getting there – honestly.

Well, for some reason the Mayan decided that ‘zero year’ (0-0-0-0-0) in their calendar would start at a point in the past we know and love as August 11, 3114 BC

Why? – I don’t know, maybe someone got nailed to a tree or something – these things happen I read in history.

I suppose you have to start somewhere and I bet they have a really good story for it with lots of blood and stuff (maybe even earthquakes), either that or some ‘virgin’ (yeah right) gave birth to boy in the middle of nowhere – but that would just be silly wouldn’t it - starting your calendar on just a birth of a boy to some woman who cannot remember if she has slept with someone or not?

Anyway, now that we have a starting point for the calendar, modern scholar-type folk then started to notice something ‘interesting’ about the date 20th December 2012.

In the Mayan calendar this would be…

...Big drum roll...

12-19-19-17-19

So what happens on the 21st December 2012?

Well, according to the conspiracy-end-of-the-world-nutjobs ‘something’ that destroys all of mankind and life as we know it (though they are not consistent/clear on how this will be done for some reason – which is rather key to their claims I would have thought – or indeed why the universe is out to get us based on this defunct calendar)

Now call me stupid, but when we get to 31st December of any year – does the world end with a comet collision, volcanoes eruptions, molten lead falling from the sky, or do we just increment the year in our calendar as we always done in the past?

So, shouldn’t Mayan calendar on the 21st December 2012 just read 13-0-0-0-0?

Pretty dull really – it’s all bean counting in the end.

It would never sell books and/or get TV time.

I really don’t understand where the 2012 end-of-the-world-idiots draw their conclusions from?

Hey-ho, so long as no one gets hurt - as they did with the Hale-Bopp comet


So when people ask you ‘What’s the harm’ believing in this nonsense – point to the bodycount (and I am tipping there will be one for this 2012 nonsense as a result, so this is another prophecy by me… let’s see how I do in 2013, I could be ‘bigger than Jesus’)

See ya

Lee
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Great Game, Great Ad?

Well, I think it is a great ad.

Aussie rules is great - not sure why the Paddy music though

Hardest, fastest game in the world? Don't know - but the guys at the AFL think so and made this ad for the world.



2009 Official AFL Ad Read More......

Why fish?

I don’t get it – what is it with fish on Good Friday?

I was going round to my sisters today and she asked me to bring round some fish fingers for the kids. I didn’t think anything of it at first, but than she told me that when she opened her freezer today it was full of meat…. And? It’s Good Friday of course I’m told – but I don’t get it – Why fish?

On a different (but similar note) – Easter Eggs.

This morning we had an Easter Egg hunt in our house with my 3 year old – he loved it. We set it all up last night and so when he awoke we told him the Easter Bunny has left chocolate eggs for him, but he will have to find them.

What a great half an hour that was.

When I told my sister what I had done she says “Aren’t you suppose to give the eggs on Easter Sunday?”

??? Why?

Isn’t it written in the bible “And on the 3rd day they all stuffed their faces with chocolate eggs left by the Easter Bunny”- well, no actually.

My logic is that today is called Good Friday, and a day filled with chocolate for a young child has to be good.

So Easter is even stranger than Christmas when you get down into it. How do Christians explain all this to their children?

Hot cross buns, Chocolate eggs and fish… it’s all a little weird.

Oh, to finish off – we had fish and chips for dinner (in for a penny and all that)

My son, for the first time, asked for gravy on his chips… it brought a tear to this northerner’s eye.

Have a good Easter all – and no nailing anyone to crosses. It just isn’t nice.

Lee Read More......

Does God Exist debate

This morning a certain William Lane Craig and Christopher Hitchens had a little debate about God.

I look forward to downloading the debate at some point if I can find it, but at the moment I have to make do with a blog that was created just for this debate found here

Whilst the debate was going on some kind fellows blogged for comment from others. I only got as far as the “argument of resurrection of Jesus” before I had to break off and enjoy the rainy day - but I am back now :-)

It looks like it could be interesting reading for those who like a good argument/discussion and are fans of WLC and/or Hitchens.

Enjoy

Lee

Update:
What rubbish... at first the above blog was without moderation. Then it went to moderation, now you cannot comment unless you are a member of the blog.

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Unbelievable?: David Robertson

Another podcast was suggested to me yesterday by Brian (Apologetics 315) called “Unbelievable?” produced by something called the “Premier Christian Radio”.

It is a weekly UK show and I’ve just listened to my first episode so can report that we should not be ‘put off’ by the Christian name of the station, the show does try to provide both sides of the debate (it seems from this one example).

On the latest show (14th March 2009) we have a Christian presenter with his own bias, a Christian guest trying to sell a book, and an atheist philosopher telling both guest and presenter why they should not be so certain about their conclusions and how their argument does not lead to their Christian God even IF the premises are accepted.

It is once again the ‘fine tuning argument’ that is being discussed… never a new argument is there?

The show on the whole is all rather nice and friendly (though the presenter did start off his show reading letters from listeners and most of the Christian letters used the strawman fallacy – a bad start to a show, but hey-ho)

Now, what has this to do with David Robertson I hear you cry (author of the Dawkins letters in case no one knew. An mp3 of a talk by David can be found here as well)?

Well next week (21st March 2009)David is to be a guest on the show talking about strawmen arguments atheists use i.e his book I assume.

There will be an atheist blogger on the show to try and provide some balance.

Might be fun?

I wonder if the radio show accepts questions in advance to ask their theist guest… now there is a thought. (e-mail:- unbelievable@premier.org.uk)

Feel free anyone to share this information with any RD.netters who may be interested :-)

Lee Read More......

Music: Living End - Raise The Alarm

Just come back from the shops and heard this song on the radio.

I’m a bit of a fan of Living End (and they are from Melbourne I believe) but I’ve not heard this one until tonight

Enjoy, I hope…



The lyrics can be found here

Lee Read More......

Is this the worse quiz ever?

I just found this link via Apologetics 315

"the probability of god"

I cannot even start to answer the questions - they are not even wrong.

Lee Read More......

Kepler telescope launched

Fingers crossed all goes well… I think we have to wait another 3 months before the first results come out but hopefully they will know (and report) before then that all is working fine

How cool it could be to find Earth-like planets… science predicts that they will be found. But I know, I have too much faith in science :-)

This telescope is looking at over 100,000 'sun like stars'... so the odds are good.

'Telescope hunt for other 'Earths'

Lee Read More......