Birds just wanna have fun

Image via Wikipedia

Because I’m with it, hip and trendy I’m comfortable admitting that I watch Autumnwatch Live. Don’t even pretend that you’re not jealous.

Anyway, something happened in last week’s episode that intrigued me. A viewer wrote in about badgers; apparently they copulate for around 15 minutes, but sometimes it takes far less time – two badgers will have a bit of a roll around for only a minute or two before going back to their duties. The viewer’s question was basically asking why – are they just doing it out of enjoyment? Or is there something else going on?

Chris Packham’s answer was something along the lines of:

Animals never do anything ‘just for fun’, there’s always a reason behind every action.

Now, I don’t want to overanalyse everything in the world, but this struck me as interesting. I definitely do things just for fun – I have no ulterior motive for watching a game of football or Hell’s Kitchen, it’s just entertaining.

Bearing in mind the fact that Chris Packham is a completely sold-out believer in evolution, how does he explain that? I can’t see a single benefit in a ‘having fun’ mutation…just a thought.

Any answers?

Stunningly beautiful

This video has been making the rounds recently but it’s certainly worth mentioning here. Stick some sigur rós on and be taken to sensory paradise for a few minutes…

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Wow, Richard Dawkins just has no idea

Do you want to experience a nice big, belly chuckle? Ok, you talked me into it. Have a watch of this video, in which Richard Dawkins actually suggests that the reason why scientific evidence points towards intelligent design is that a superior being created all life…but that of course that superior, higher power must have evolved. Right…

 

The God Delusion Debate: atheism undermines science

Here’s a good website to click on. Professor Richard Dawkins debating Dr. John Lennox and (to my mind) having his atheistic worldview shredded before his very eyes. I’ve probably watched about half of it, but here’s a little taster.

Richard Dawkins has explained (of course) that science is the only logical option because it relies solely on evidence and therefore is provable, whereas faith is required to be blind. Here’s where John Lennox steps in. He explains that atheism undermines science. Science assumes the rational intelligibility of the universe, or else you could draw no conclusions. However, there is no evidence for the rational intelligibility of the universe and therefore science requires faith before you’ve even started moving. As with every single argument against Christianity, the assumptions on which you’re building your argument are disproved by the very argument itself.

Here’s another good bit. Dawkins says that you should never really have any level of faith, because it’s always blind. John Lennox’s response: ‘I presume you have faith in your wife. Is there any evidence for that?’ Richard Dawkins: ‘Yes, plenty-’ he then hesitates, receiving a raised eyebrow from Lennox. Dawkins’ ‘evidence’ for his wife’s faithfulness is her tone of voice, a look in her eyes…sounds terribly subjective to me!

You can watch the whole debate for free right here.

How to Stay Christian in College by J. Budziszewski

This book is a manual written for current and future university students, designed to give them good preparation for coping with the spiritual battleground that is the uni campus.

I was excited about this book. It seemed to directly address a real problem, talking about real issues and not backing down. It was also really practical, so even though the opening chapters were talking about theology, the application was wonderfully clear.

But that said, I think the book let itself down when it tried to become too practical. In particular some imaginary conversations were recorded to show how certain logic can overcome incorrect worldviews, but it just didn’t seem realistic enough for me.

The two chapters on sex and politics stood out as particularly unhelpful. While I fully agreed with almost everything the author said, the analogies were flawed and talked about things which don’t seem that much of a concern any more. Maybe it’s because I’m from the UK but politics didn’t massively interest anyone I knew when I was at uni!

Overall I think this book’s heart is in the right place. It will certainly encourage Christian teenagers to enter university prepared to discuss their opinions in an informed manner. That said, I don’t think this would do much more than provide ammunition for a teenager who was ready to rebel at 18.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from NavPress Publishers as part of their Blogger Review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Animals: morally good?

I bit the inside of my cheek on Saturday. That really hurts, doesn’t it? It happened, and I caught myself thinking: why the heck haven’t we evolved enough not to bite our own body by mistake?

That led to the thought: I’ve never seen a monkey, or any other animal for that matter, biting the inside of its own cheek by mistake. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any animal do anything ‘by mistake’.

Here’s where I ended up: I have never seen any animal doing anything which is morally wrong. I think that animals actually have no ability to do something ‘bad’, but every single human does something ‘bad’ in their life if given the chance.

So, Monday morning thought: humans are somewhat different to animals. Discuss.

Evangelicals and atheists together

Pyromaniacs have commented on some responses to Al Mohler, here’s the conclusion:

Until BioLogos responds to it, I’ll stand by what I have said all along: They cannot be serious when they claim they are interested in bringing science and faith together. Indeed, they are steering people into the same spiritual blind alley that ultimately caused Darwin to abandon theism altogether. And the skeptical blogosphere is full of spiritual casualties who are living (and dying) illustrations of what happens when half-hearted faith hits that dead end.

And here’s the original post.

Evil proves that you believe in God

We’ve talked on this blog before about how atheists suppose that the existence of evil disproves God. I’m going to say again that it’s a completely illogical statement.

There is evil in the world, and there is also good. If there is good and evil then there must be a moral law, which must have originated from somewhere. That somewhere, for Christians, is God.

Atheists may say that God is undermining his own laws to allow evil but all that means is that the atheist is choosing which bits of the Bible to believe…which is inconsistent and illogical.

Prominent atheists agree with me on this – Kai Nielson said:

Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.

J. L. Mackie agreed, saying:

[The ideas of good and evil] are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events, without an all powerful God to create them.

The only plausible atheistic argument is that good and evil are non-existent, which is what Richard Dawkins says:

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.

But atheists don’t actually believe this. Dawkins has a daughter (I think), and if she were raped I sincerely doubt that he could possibly say that the rapist should not be held accountable for his actions because he was just dancing to his DNA.

But even without this (subjective) argument there’s still a problem – is the belief in God just a DNA dance? Dawkins says yes, that it’s a virus that we need to eradicate. And morality is called in again here – what makes faith ‘bad’ and naturalism ‘good’?

Dawkins is not really an atheist, he simply believes that he is god himself. He genuinely believes that he has the power to determine good and evil for himself and others.

Please, if you’re an atheist, stop kidding yourself. Think through your logic logically.

Let’s talk probability

I’m sure many readers of this blog have heard about the argument against evolution referred to as ‘fine tuning’. The fact is that the universe exists in its current habitable state due to a high number of constants which are set. If even one of these shifted even the smallest amount, the universe could not exist in its present state.

For example, Paul Davies tells us in God and the New Physics tells us that if the ratio of the nuclear strong force to the electromagnetic force had been different by one part in 10 to the power 16, no stars could have been formed at all.

Now, 10 to the power 16 means one with 16 zeroes behind it: 10,000,000,000,000,000 – that is a bigger number than you or I can possibly comprehend so the probability that stars even exist is astronomically tiny.

Add this into the mix: to shift the ratio by even 1 in 10 to the power 40(!!) and we’d have either all small, or all large stars – and we need both to create the elements (in large stars) and support life (small stars). This is just silly – I can’t really imagine 1 million, or 1 million million, or 1 million million million, and 10 to the power 40 is many, many times larger than that!

But let’s cut to the chase. The level of entropy in the universe, supported by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is only possible if it started off accurate to one part in 10 to the power 10 to the power 123. That’s not a typo.

So that’s one in a number starting with 1, with as many zeroes after it as would add up to the number which starts with 1 and has 123 zeroes – this number is impossible to write out in decimal because even if you wrote a zero on every particle in the entire universe there aren’t enough.

Chance that nothing became everything by random mutation: small to none.

Humanism – more silly logic

A commenter posted a link to the Humanist homepage, assumedly to explain why atheist evangelists aren’t illogical…allow me to quote from their website:

All children should be free to grow up in a world where they are allowed to question, doubt, think freely and reach their own conclusions about what they believe.

That’s taken from the banner at the top of their page, and this is taken from the test you can take to find out if you’re a humanist:

1 Does God exist?

A) I am sure there is a God ruling over the universe.
B) It depends what you mean by God, but I think so.
C) I don’t know.
D) There is no evidence that any god exists, so I’ll assume that there isn’t one.

Ok, so we should be free to reach our own conclusions…providing our overriding assumption is that there isn’t a god.

Note the options available:

A) – I am sure – something must have made a person who would answer this way (like me) think that they’re sure, so humanists must say that people answering with (A) are liars.

B) This answer would show that someone just generally thinks something in one direction – a bit of a silly outlook but fair enough.

C) A good answer, but not one the humanists approve of – according to the answer page this answer would make you:

perhaps a bit dependent on authority or other people or pure emotion

Is it just me, or does that seem a little unfair?!

D) Completely illogical in every sense of the word. Stating as a fact that there is no evidence for a god doesn’t make it a fact, you have to say really ‘I haven’tseen any evidence for the existence of a god’, and using that as a reason for reaching an unfounded assumption seems a bit extreme – doesn’t it?

Even before I was a Christian I would have been able to tell you that the only answers that make any sense at all would be A and C, so thanks for the original comment and the opportunity to discover more layers of ridiculousness in the atheist faith.