Pointless Rambling

It's probably poor etiquette to post two blogs in the same day, indeed the same session at my local Starbucks, but I suppose it will make up for my lengthy absence. I honestly don't have a particular topic in mind to talk about, but I do enjoy letting my mind meander from time to time on different things. Maybe I'll post what I write, maybe I won't, that was largely the point of this blog to begin with. In any event, I happened to see Stephen Hawking's hour long presentation on the subject: "Did God Create the Universe". Given that I am currently staying under the roof of my heavily creationist Grandparents, and given that my granddad decided to watch it with me, I feel I could perhaps be forgiven for being more than a little apprehensive about what would follow in the next 60 minutes. I found myself pleasantly surprised however, Hawking did a fine job, without being too controversial, or so it seemed to me. The first half of the show was spent talking about the history of the conflict between science and religion. Needless to say, Galileo was mentioned as he always is (with good reason, mind you). Once the second half got started however, Hawking's proverbial gloves were off, and he got down to some fairly difficult to grasp physics, for the layman certainly, he didn't go into quite as much detail as I would have liked, but more than I was expecting certainly. It is Hawking's view that God could not have created the Universe, for the simple reason that time came into existence at the time of the big bang, a fairly uncontroversial viewpoint, (unless you are a creationist, of courser) and thus, there was no time available for any deity to do any creating of any kind. His reasoning is hard to fault, but I wouldn't say it's the most satisfying answer I'll ever hear, particular with "creationist cop-out argument #34": God is outside of time, and is not bound by it (or some such nonsense). Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable watch, it was very well shot, and hawking does a good job of making some of the more incomprehensible aspects of physics slightly easier to digest, through the use of some reasonably clever metaphors. I'm unsure as to whether or not the idea that quantum mechanics can account for the initial singularity at the beginning of the universe is an idea that was first postulated by Hawking, but I know there are others who subscribe to it. One such man is the brilliant theoretical physicist, and one of my personal intellectual heroes, Lawrence Krauss, one of the fathers of the concept of dark matter and energy. Krauss has a new book coming out in the new year called "A Universe from Nothing", which I will definitely be picking up as soon as I can, and would heartily recommend it to anyone remotely interested in the subject; they don't call Krauss "the Woody Allen of physics" for nothing. The book also features a foreword by Christopher Hitchens and an afterword by Richard Dawkins, and personally, I couldn't pick a better dream team. Sadly, my time is short, so I'd better wrap this up. Next blog will probably be my Top 10 TV Shows, so watch out for that, should be up at some point this week.

"Blood is Thicker Than Water"?

I've heard it said often that you should value your family higher than you value your friends. The reasoning for this, or so it seems to me, is that you can pick who your friends are, but not who your family are. Under scrutiny however, this seems to be a case against that conclusion, rather than supporting it. I mean, if the family that I am born into is nothing more than chance (actually if you want to get technical about it then it isn't really chance, but lets not get into that) whereas who you are friends with is something you and another person consent to, verbally or otherwise, then it seems logical, to me at least, that that is the relationship that I should value more highly and treat with greater care. Don't get me wrong for a moment, I love my family. Of course there are some branches of my family tree for which I couldn't claim to be unhappy should they be, how should I put it, pruned, but for the most part I am happy with the family that I was born into. I just feel that if I want to be friends with someone, and that someone wants to be friends with me, then that is someone who I feel should come a little higher on my priority list than someone for whom a relationship with was something that I had no control over.

Lets take the example of marriage. Marriage is like friendship in a lot of ways, except it is essentially pronouncing your friendship on a public stage. Now if you are married to someone (let's not get into family inbreeding) then most people would think it is perfectly acceptable to treat that person with more devotion and care than anyone else. I can't see why it would be incorrect for me to apply the same logic for everyone that I have chosen to have a relationship with, and they with me.

Before Our Very Eyes

Tonight, I had a discussion with my deeply religious friend, who shall remain anonymous. It was fairly straightforward, and I think that's why I found it so significant. Most creationists, when I ask them for some empirical support of their position, respond with "But the evidence is all around us, before our very eyes". I hope that you don't need me to tell you how intellectually vacuous and lazy that defense is. Let us forget for the moment that it is fundamentally incorrect, since we have an explanation for the things that are all around us, but even if we didn't, every single religion in the world claims the exact same thing. Have none of them realized this by now? If I was a lawyer, and the judge asked me "What evidence is there that the defendant is guilty", and I responded with "Your honour, the evidence is all around us". Do you know how he would respond if that was all I had to go on? I can tell you that my hypothetical career in law would be shorter than a redneck's temper, and no more distinguished. I know there are people out there who do try and defend their faith with evidence and rationality, I obviously disagree with them, but at least they try, and their efforts are let down by those who are more than content to hold their head high, with their mind closed, and feel no obligation whatsoever to support their extraordinary claim that "God did it"