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Sunday, March 23, 2008

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:34:17 GMT

Taking Science on Faith

By PAUL DAVIES

SCIENCE, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term “doubting Thomas” well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of motion — all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do?

When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance. The laws were treated as “given” — imprinted on the universe like a maker’s mark at the moment of cosmic birth — and fixed forevermore. Therefore, to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin. You’ve got to believe that these laws won’t fail, that we won’t wake up tomorrow to find heat flowing from cold to hot, or the speed of light changing by the hour.

Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from “that’s not a scientific question” to “nobody knows.” The favorite reply is, “There is no reason they are what they are — they just are.” The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational. After all, the very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality — the laws of physics — only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science.

Can the mighty edifice of physical order we perceive in the world about us ultimately be rooted in reasonless absurdity? If so, then nature is a fiendishly clever bit of trickery: meaninglessness and absurdity somehow masquerading as ingenious order and rationality.

Although scientists have long had an inclination to shrug aside such questions concerning the source of the laws of physics, the mood has now shifted considerably. Part of the reason is the growing acceptance that the emergence of life in the universe, and hence the existence of observers like ourselves, depends rather sensitively on the form of the laws. If the laws of physics were just any old ragbag of rules, life would almost certainly not exist.

A second reason that the laws of physics have now been brought within the scope of scientific inquiry is the realization that what we long regarded as absolute and universal laws might not be truly fundamental at all, but more like local bylaws. They could vary from place to place on a mega-cosmic scale. A God’s-eye view might reveal a vast patchwork quilt of universes, each with its own distinctive set of bylaws. In this “multiverse,” life will arise only in those patches with bio-friendly bylaws, so it is no surprise that we find ourselves in a Goldilocks universe — one that is just right for life. We have selected it by our very existence.

The multiverse theory is increasingly popular, but it doesn’t so much explain the laws of physics as dodge the whole issue. There has to be a physical mechanism to make all those universes and bestow bylaws on them. This process will require its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do they come from? The problem has simply been shifted up a level from the laws of the universe to the meta-laws of the multiverse.

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships.

And just as Christians claim that the world depends utterly on God for its existence, while the converse is not the case, so physicists declare a similar asymmetry: the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe.

It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence. The alternative is to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory scheme.

In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.

Paul Davies is theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and astrobiologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:42:59 GMT

Ben Stein to battle Darwin in major film
Actor-commentator stars in 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed'

2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Ben Stein, the lovable, monotone teacher from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "The Wonder Years" is back in the classroom in a major motion picture release slated for February 2008. But this time, the actor will be on the big screen asking one of life's biggest questions: "Were we designed, or are we simply the end result of an ancient mud puddle struck by lightning?"

That's right. Evolution – and the explosive debate over its virtual monopoly on America's public school classrooms – is the focus of the film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed."

In the movie, Stein, who is also a lawyer, economist, former presidential speechwriter, author and social commentator, is stunned by what he discovers – an elitist scientific establishment that has traded in its skepticism for dogma. Even worse, say publicists for the feature film, "along the way, Stein uncovers a long line of biologists, astronomers, chemists and philosophers who have had their reputations destroyed and their careers ruined by a scientific establishment that allows absolutely no dissent from Charles Darwin's theory of random mutation and natural selection."

"Big Science in this area of biology has lost its way," says Stein. "Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead, no matter what the implications are. Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it's anti-science. It's anti-the whole concept of learning."

As "Expelled's" official website asks: "What freedom-loving student wouldn't be outraged to discover that his high school science teacher is teaching a theory as indisputable fact, and that university professors unmercifully crush any fellow scientists who dare question the prevailing system of belief? This isn't the latest Hollywood comedy; it's a disturbing new documentary that will shock anyone who thinks all scientists are free to follow the evidence wherever it may lead."

"Expelled" documents how teachers and scientists alike are being ridiculed daily, denied tenure and even fired believing there is evidence of "design" in nature and challenging the current orthodoxy that life is entirely a result of random chance.

For example, Stein meets Richard Sternberg, a double Ph.D. biologist who allowed a peer-reviewed research paper describing the evidence for intelligence in the universe to be published in the scientific journal Proceedings. Shortly after publication, officials from the National Center for Science Education and the Smithsonian Institution, where Sternberg was a research fellow, began a coordinated smear-and-intimidation campaign to get the promising young scientist fired. The attack on scientific freedom was so egregious that it prompted a congressional investigation.

In the film, Stein meets other scientists like astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez, who was denied tenure at Iowa State University in spite of an extraordinary record of achievement. Gonzalez made the mistake of documenting the design he has observed in the universe. And there are others, like Caroline Crocker, a brilliant biology teacher at George Mason University who was forced out of the university for briefly discussing problems with Darwinian theory and for telling the students that some scientists believe there is evidence of design in the universe.

Unlike other popular documentary films, "Expelled" isn't one-sided – it confronts scientists like Oxford evolutionist Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion," influential biologist and atheist blogger P.Z. Myers, and Eugenie Scott, head of the National Center for Science Education. In fact, the creators of "Expelled" spent two years traveling the world and interviewing scores of scientists, doctors, philosophers and public leaders for the film.

According to the New York Times, Dawkins, Scott and other evolutionists are now claiming the film's producers deceived them into going on camera by hiding the "Intelligent Design" orientation of the film.

But Stein denies misleading anyone. "I don't remember a single person asking me what the movie was about," he told the Times.

In the end, say the film's publicists, the production delivers to viewers "a startling revelation that freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been expelled from publicly funded high schools, universities and research institutions."

"The incredible thing about 'Expelled' is that we don't resort to manipulating our interviews for the purpose of achieving the 'shock effect,' something that has become common in documentary film these days," said Walt Ruloff, co-founder of Premise Media and the film's co-executive producer. "People will be stunned to actually find out what elitist scientists proclaim, which is that a large majority of Americans are simpletons who believe in a fairy tale. Premise Media took on this difficult mission because we believe the greatest asset of humanity is our freedom to explore and discover truth."

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 01:03:45 GMT

The Dawkins Delusion

Does Richard Dawkins exist? Many people would say yes. But Dr. Terry Tommyrot thinks otherwise. Following on the heels of last year's bestseller The God Delusion, comes the stunning sequel that is taking the scientific community by storm: The Dawkins Delusion. In a revealing interview, English biologist Dr. Tommyrot explains how belief in Richard Dawkins is, in fact, a harmful delusion, and how it can be explained scientifically. More specifically, Tommyrot explains how the complex patterns of language found in Dawkins' books are best explained by natural evolutionary processes and that "claiming that Dawkins did it puts an end to an inquiry that promises to give us a satisfying explanation of how these books came to be, without the need for invoking a superstitous Dawkins-of-the-Gaps hypothesis." Furthemore, Tommyrot argues that invoking some mysterious Dawkins to explain the design found within these books gets us nowhere, because it only raises more questions: "If Dawkins designed the books, then who designed Dawkins?"

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 00:37:58 GMT

The Design Inference

Because a few people still seem to be struggling to understand the rather simplistic concepts of "intelligence" and "information", I thought I would post this video which I think does a pretty good job of further elucidating these concepts. It also does a good job of explaining how the information stored in the genetic code is analogous to information found in other systems such as human language systems and computer programs. The video is only ten minutes long so I would encourage anyone who is still struggling with these very basic concepts to watch it in its entirety. After watching if you still feel the need to debate semantics then feel free to do so, although I feel it is really a waste of time. The two main things I hope that each of us can take from this whole discussion is: 1) At present, there are no known natural processes that can explain the origin of genetic information or the origin of the first single-celled life form, and 2) Everyday experience has demonstrated that there is only one known source for producing information, and that's intelligence. Moreover, the principle of uniformity states that the natural processes operating in the past are the same as those that can be observed operating in the present. It is often summarized by the statement: "The present is the key to the past." Hence, if we observe from our everyday experience in the present that information is only produced by intelligence, then according to the principle of uniformity, it is logical to assume that information was only produced by intelligence in the past.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 00:48:57 GMT

DNA: The Design is in the Details

In part one I described how Miller’s attempts to produce the essential building blocks of life in the laboratory failed because, even though Miller did succeed in producing amino acids, the ones he produced were of the wrong variety. Miller’s experiment produced the right-handed variety (dextro) while the amino acids necessary to yield life are of the left-handed variety (levo). Moreover, Miller's experiment also produced several organic acids which would have destroyed the amino acids he created long before they formed a protein. To prevent this from happening, Miller had to use a “cold trap” to isolate the amino acids from the organic acids as soon as they were formed. In other words, the only reason the amino acids survived was due to the intelligent intervention of Miller. But let us assume for the moment that Miller had succeeded in creating the right kind of amino acids needed to yield life. And let us further assume that he was able to produce them without the organic acids that would have instantaneously destroyed them. Would it then have been possible for the amino acids to link up together and form the first functional protein necessary to sustain a living cell? The answer is a resounding NO. This is because the more difficult problem that abiogenesis faces has yet to even be discussed: information. What must be explained is not only how the organic building blocks of life can be created via natural processes, but the source of information that properly assembled those building blocks to form the first life form. Paul Davies summed up this obstacle for abiogenesis well by employing the metaphor of building a house:

"Making the building blocks of life is easy—amino acids have been found in meteorites and even in outer space. But just as bricks alone don’t make a house, so it takes more than a random collection of amino acids to make life. Like house bricks, the building blocks of life have to be assembled in a very specific and exceedingly elaborate way before they have the desired function"

Let us consider another example. A novel is composed of letters which combine to form sentences, which in turn, combine to form paragraphs. But if these letters were not ordered in the exact way that they are, they would appear nonsensical to us. Consider the following sequence of letters: MIET NDA DTIE ATIW RFO NO NMA. Doesn’t make much sense does it. That’s because while the sequence is complex, it is not specified. In other words, the letters do not conform to any independently-given pattern. But suppose we were to re-arrange the letters in the following way: TIME AND TIDE WAIT FOR NO MAN. Suddenly the same letters convey a message to our brains. The first sequence is complex but is not specified. The second sequence is both complex and specified. Systems that are characterized by both specificity and complexity have what we call "information content." That is, they have the ability to transmit information to intelligent agents. Scientists have found that the same is true of the coded information found in human DNA.

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule. By now most people are familiar with the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. It is like a long ladder, twisted into a spiral. Molecular biologists have discovered how DNA stores the information necessary to direct protein synthesis. It was Crick who first proposed the "sequence hypothesis". According to the sequence hypothesis, information on the DNA molecule is stored in the form of specifically arranged chemicals called nucleotide bases along the spine of DNA’s helical strands. Chemists represent these four nucleotides with the letters A, T, G, and C (for adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine). By 1961, a series of brilliant experiments confirmed DNA’s information-bearing properties. The amount of information in the DNA is so vast that it led Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins to claim that the amount of information in just a single strand of DNA would fill up 1,000 Enclyclopedia Brittanicas! The DNA molecule is exquisitely complex, but in addition to its complexity, it is also specified. Like the above sequence of letters, the 'letters' in DNA must be in a very precise sequence. If they are out of order then the information that the DNA transmits to the cell is garbled and will lead to a loss of cellular function. To summarize, the information found within DNA is both complex and specified. Hence, scientists have come to refer to it as “specified complexity”.

But how does all this lead one to the conclusion of design? Well, first of all no natural processes are known to produce structures with high information content like that found in DNA. Furthermore, if we consult everyday experience, we readily note that objects with a high information content such as books, computer programs, and musical scores are always the result of an intelligent source. For example, if you were to trace the information on your computer screen back to its original source you would invariably come to a mind--that of a software engineer or programmer. As Bill Gates has noted, "DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we've ever created." Moreover, it is important to note that this is not just a case of reasoning by analogy. It is more than an analogy. In fact, in terms of structure, the two are virtually identical. All this leads us to one inevitable conclusion. If the information content found in human language and computer language is always the result of an intelligent designer, then it is only logical to conclude that the information content found in DNA is also the result of an intelligent designer.

NOTE TO READER: This post can also be found on our group site: Alliance Against Methodological Naturalism.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 00:56:54 GMT

Chemical Evolution, Part II: What Are the Odds?

In my last post I delivered a brief overview of the theory of chemical evolution and the failure of scientists to explain the origins of the first life on earth. The difficulty stems from the fact that chemical evolution, like Big Bang theory, is a branch of origins science which deals with events that occurred only once (allegedly) and in the distant past. Although there is no way to directly observe the origins of the first life form on earth, it seems to me that there are only two options when dealing with the origins of life on earth. Either the first life form came from non-living material in a primeval soup (as Darwin speculated), the lucky result of random chance and natural processes, or the first life form was created by an intelligent being of some kind and hence, the product of purposeful mind. So it seems we must either subscribe to Intelligent Design theory or Abiogenesis. If there is a third option that I am overlooking please present it so that it may be given equal consideration.

In considering the two options, we should ask ourselves: Are both theories equally plausible or is one more likely than the other? To answer this question scientists utilize statistics and probability. In the 1950’s the French mathematician Dr. Emil Borel, one of the world’s foremost experts on mathematical probability, formulated what scientists and mathematicians today refer to as the basic “law of probability.” Borel’s law of probability states that the occurrence of any event, where the chances are beyond 10^50 (ten followed by 50 zeroes), is an event that we can state with certainty will never happen, no matter how much time is allotted and no matter how many opportunities could exist for the event to take place. In 1981, Cambridge astronomer and mathematician Fred Hoyle decided to apply Borel’s law of probability to the theory of chemical evolution. With the help of his fellow scientist Chandra Wickramisinghe, Hoyle determined that the probability of life arising from non-life in a primeval soup is at least 1 in 1 x 10^950, a number far greater than 10^50 which Dr. Borel presented as the limit for possibility. To illustrate the extreme unlikelihood of this ever occurring, Hoyle used an analogy. He compared the probability of life arising from non-life to lining up 1,050 blind people, giving each one a scrambled Rubik's Cube, and finding that they all solve the cube at the same moment! These incredible odds led Hoyle to state that the probability of abiogenesis "is about the same as the probability that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard could assemble a Boeing 747 from the contents therein."

Hoyle and Wickramisinghe’s calculations showed that it is quite impossible for the functional structure of proteins to come about by chance. For instance, an average-sized protein molecule composed of 288 amino acids, can be arranged in 10^300 different ways. (This is an astronomically huge number, consisting of 1 followed by 300 zeros.) Of all of these possible sequences, only one forms the protein molecule needed to yield life. The rest of them are amino-acid chains that are either totally useless, or else potentially harmful to living things. In other words, the probability of the formation of only one protein molecule is "1 in 10^300. The probability of this “one” actually occurring is practically nil because as Borel showed, probabilities smaller than 1 over 10^50 are considered to have zero probability of occurring. Even if we suppose that amino acids have combined and decomposed by a "trial and error" method, without losing any time since the formation of the earth, in order to form a single protein molecule, the time that would be required for something with a probability of 10^950 to happen would still hugely exceed the estimated age of the earth. The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that chemical evolution falls into a terrible abyss of improbability, even when it comes to the formation of a single protein. Even the most prominent evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins admit this. In his book, appropriately titled Climbing Mount Improbable, Dawkins admits:

"The sort of lucky event we are looking at could be so wildly improbable that the chances of its happening, somewhere in the universe, could be as low as one in a billion billion billion in any one year."

The extreme improbability, indeed, the impossibility of abiogenesis having occured led Hoyle’s colleague and professor of applied mathematics and astronomy, Chandra Wickramasinghe to the inevitable conclusion that:

"The likelihood of the spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it. It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other...and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence."

NOTE TO READER: This post can also be found on our group site: Alliance Against Methodological Naturalism.

Friday, December 29, 2006

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 23:06:27 GMT

Chemical Evolution, Part I: A Brief Overview

Chemical evolution, sometimes called abiogenesis, is the theory that the first life form on earth arose from a primordial soup of non-living chemicals. This first life form would have been simple, not nearly as complex as life as we know it today. Although some Darwinists claim that Darwin’s theory of evolution is distinct from the theory of chemical evolution, Darwin himself recognized the need to explain the origins of life on Earth. After all, before life can evolve in the Darwinian sense, it must first exist. In a letter to J.D. Hooker Darwin speculated that life may have sprung from non-living chemicals in a “warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present…”. This sounds silly to us, but up until the 19^th century it was commonly believed that life frequently arose from non-life under certain circumstances, a process that was known as spontaneous generation. This belief stemmed from the observation that maggots appeared to arise spontaneously when organic matter such as dead meat was left exposed. It was later discovered by Louis Pasteur that life only arises from life and cannot arise from non-life. This has come to be known as the law of biogenesis.

But despite Pasteur’s discovery, many scientists have since conducted prebiotic experiments hoping to demonstrate how the first life form on earth could have arisen from non-living chemicals, thus proving Darwin’s hypothesis. Perhaps the most famous of these experiments was the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment. Stanley Miller reported that he conducted an experiment which simulated the primeval conditions on Earth and had succeeded in producing the chemical compounds that were essential for life to begin. In his experiment, Miller used a gas mixture that he believed would have existed on the primordial earth, composed of ammonia, methane, hydrogen, and water vapor. Since these gases would not react with each other under natural conditions he added energy to the mixture to start a reaction among them. Hypothesizing that this energy could have come from lightning in the primordial atmosphere, he used an electric current to simulate lightning. However, thanks to scientific progress Miller’s experiment has been shown to be flawed in many ways. By the 1980’s scientists had come to realize that the atmosphere that Miller simulated in his experiment was very different from what the primeval earth’s atmosphere would have been like. While Miller used methane, hydrogen and ammonia in his experiment, it is now known that the early earth atmosphere was composed of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. And this was just one of the flaws in Miller’s experiment. For those interested in reading more about the flaws in the Miller-Urey experiment go here.

Since the Miller experiement, there have been a few other attempts to simulate the primeval earth atmosphere in order to demonstrate how the first life on earth could have arose from non-living chemicals and gases, but all have met with limited or no success. Still, many proponents of chemical evolution continue to assert that given enough time and the right circumstances, life could have originated from non-living matter. But how can we ever know for sure? After all, chemical evolution is a branch of origins science. Unlike operational science which observes how physical laws operate in the present, origins science deals with events that occurred in the distant past. Origins science deals with things like the Big Bang and the origin of life, events that only happened once (allegedly) and cannot be recreated in the laboratory. Since they occurred in the distant past, such events cannot be directly observed (unless one has a time machine and can travel back to the moment of the big bang or the moment when life first appeared in a primeval soup). So how can we determine the validity of a theory that cannot be directly observed or recreated in a laboratory? That is the question I will address in part two. Stay tuned...

NOTE TO READER: This post can also be found on our group site: Alliance Against Methodological Naturalism

Friday, September 15, 2006

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 16:07:18 GMT

Attention Readers

I have recently joined the blogring called Alliance Against Metaphysical Naturalism. We believe that metaphysical naturalism has become a roadblock to scientific investigation, and we are here to remove it from your path. What exactly does this mean? Continue reading to find out:

What is "metaphysical naturalism"?
Metaphysical naturalism is the belief that no reality exists outside of the physical world; it implies that nature is the ultimate producer of the world as we know it. Metaphysical naturalists exclude the possibility that intelligence played a role in the origin of life, instead asserting that life is the result of unintelligent and natural processes.

Who are they?
Metaphysical naturalism usually rears its head in the form of Darwinism (and other similar materialistic theories on the origin of life and biological diversity). This is because the chicken/egg question of mind/matter strikes at the very root of our existence: did mind create life or did matter? This is a fundamental and unanswered question, and that is why the battle between exclusive naturalism and its opponents takes place largely on this front.

So who are our opponents? They are usually evolutionists who believe that mind played no role in the origin of life on earth. Our group is not necessarily devoted to the controversy over the origin of life, but that is where most of the battles happen to be.

What is our position?
We believe that intelligence is a causative agent worth considering in origins of life research, and that to exclude intelligence from consideration is fallacious. Science should be conducted objectively, without the a priori assumption of naturalism. We believe that as seekers of the truth we must follow the evidence where it leads, not force the evidence to conform to a particular metaphysical assumption.

Who are we?
When finding yourself outnumbered or ill-equipped to deal with the onslaught of metaphysical naturalism and its proponents, it's easy to get discouraged from the debate. But we hope to restore your liberty to grow in strength against metanaturalism. We are your defense. We are your shield. And above all, we are your resource.

What do we do?
If your site is being plagued by some outspoken metanaturalists (evolutionists, more than likely), we'll pop in and fend them off for you. In other words, we will debate on your behalf when you feel that you are outnumbered and ill-equipped.
From time to time, we will also post articles on our blog that compete with our opponents' blog entries.

How can you take advantage of our group?
If you want us to pop in at your site, leave a comment at the AAMN blog (www.xanga.com/AAMN) or with any of our members at their blogs. Let us know how we can help!

How can you join AAMN?
You can either join the AAMN blogring or the more general AAMN network. The network is for those who are interested in taking advantage of the AAMN service or who want to keep track of AAMN activity. The blogring is for skilled debaters who are ready to take arms with AAMN against metanaturalism.

To join the AAMN blogring, you must apply for membership. Members of the blogring are the ones who run the show at AAMN, and we call them our allies. We review and discuss potential allies before approving them to ensure that we are providing a quality service. If you would like to be considered for membership, you can submit an application at AAMN's blogring site (Submit Application). At the site, you will see a description of the kind of members we are looking for. If you have not been invited by AAMN to join, we will leave you with a comment with further instructions once we have received your application.

To join the AAMN network, you can subscribe to our blog: SubscribeTo AAMN. As a network member, you can keep track of AAMN activity as we post frequent updates on our blog. Network membership is intended for interested participants and curious opponents alike.

How can network members or non-members participate?
There are a couple of ways:

(1) Recommend potential allies. Due to our high standard for membership, accumulating allies is a gradual process. With your help, we can build an increasingly strong community allied against metaphysical naturalism.
You can recommend members by leaving a comment at our blog (www.xanga.com/AAMN).
(2) Flag opponents. One of the things we do is keep a keen eye on our metanaturalist opponents. Together, our allies strategize and formulate responses. From time to time, we even write entries to compete with selected opponents. When you notify us of particularly active metanaturalists, it gives us something to write about (competing articles) and it enables us to prepare ahead of time for future encounters.
You can flag opponents by leaving a comment at our blog (www.xanga.com/AAMN).

We are really excited about AAMN, so please take advantage of our service! And remember: whether you are a member of the AAMN blogring, the AAMN network, or neither, you can help us in our efforts to build an increasingly strong alliance against metaphysical naturalism!

AAMN Blog: www.xanga.com/AAMN
AAMN Blogring: www.xanga.com/groups/group.aspx?id=2320944

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 22:59:39 GMT

Can God create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it?

Traditionally, Christians have described God as being:

1) All Powerful (Omnipotent)
2) All Knowing (Omniscient)
3) Perfectly Good (Omnibenevolent)
4) Infinite & Eternal (without beginning or end)

These are the primary characteristics of God. I say "primary" because if we were to take any of these away he would cease to be God. Atheists love to ask the question: Can God create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it? This is because they are convinced that the theist who tries to answer it puts themself in a lose/lose situation. If they answer yes then God is not omnipotent, for he cannot lift the rock. If they answer no then God is still not omnipotent because he cannot create the rock to begin with. And if God loses his omnipotence, he ceases to be God! At first glance, answering this question does appear to be a lose/lose situation for us as theists to answer.

But a closer examination of the question reveals that answering the question is not the problem at all. It is the question itself that is the problem. The question commits what logicians refer to as the "Fallacy of Contradictory Premises." According to the laws of logic, whenever two premises directly contradict each other, those terms cannot be applied to the same object or event. Other examples of these types of questions are:

Can God bake a cake so big he cannot eat it?
Can God create a star so bright he cannot look at it?
Can God draw a square circle?
Can God create a married bachelor?

Like the rock question, all of these questions essentially boil down to asking the same thing: Can God do what God cannot do? Take for example, the last question: Can God create a married bachelor? In this example you have two premises that contradict each other: "married" and "bachelor," because a bachelor, by definition is an unmarried male. Therefore these two words cannot logically be applied to the same individual. For if God were to create a bachelor that was married, he would no longer be a bachelor. Similarly, the question: Can God create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it, commits the same logical fallacy. It is a meaningless question...a logical absurdity. As theists we have no reason to be intimidated by what Mr. Spock would call an "illogical question".

Monday, June 26, 2006

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 00:59:23 GMT

ENGLAND AND IRELAND PHOTOBLOG!!!!

Kim and I standing in front of Shakespeare's Birthplace in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

One of the few surviving round towers built by 6th century monks in Ireland. You'll notice the door is way above ground level. If the abbey was attacked by Vikings (as they often were) the monks could take refuge in the tower using a wooden ladder which would then be pulled up into the tower to keep the barbarians out. Clever, eh?

Kim and I in front of a beautiful lock in the middle of the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland.

The ruined abbey at Glastonbury, site of the first Christian church in England and allegedly the resting place of the Holy Grail.

Kim and I standing on the banks of the Thames River in front of Tower Bridge. It was only built 150 years ago, despite its medieval appearance.

Me in front of the Tower of London. Alot of people lost their heads here.

Newgrange tomb in Boyne Valley, Ireland. Built by Neolithic farmers in 4,000 BC it predates both Stonehenge and the Pyramids in Egypt. Inside is a chamber where evidence of human burials was found.

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. It is an exact replica of the original Globe built in 1599 complete with thatched roof.

The now legendary Stonehenge on England's Salisbury Plain. Once thought to have been built by the Druids, it was later discovered to predate the druids by about two thousand years. Its origins are now shrouded in myth and mystery.

One of the best preserved High Crosses of Ireland depicting scenes from the Bible. The monks used the crosses to teach the Bible to the illiterate pagans who could not read it for themselves.

On the River Cam in front of Cambridge University. It was a nice day for a boat ride!

Westminster Abbey in London. Over 3,000 people buried in there...mostly monarchs.