Meddling Kids

As a kid I remember being slightly disappointed that Scooby Doo always ended the same: every mystery would have a rational explanation.

I guess I was lucky enough as a child to have seen a couple of good shows in the midst of all the rubbish on TV, like Scooby Doo and Bill Nye the Science Guy.

I was reading Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World the other day(yes, it takes me this long to read it!) where he talked about how useful television could be in instilling a passion for science in children, but how it often fails miserably to do so.

Of course the most outlandish and wild explanations are the most interesting. This is a big problem that science has in appealing to people, especially kids.

I think it can sometimes go against our instincts to accept rational explanations. The fantastic ones are so much more appealing and easy. It's something I hope to instill in my kids if I have them one day, a passion for learning and a healthy skepticism.

...And More Death Threats

Scientists about to conduct one of the world's biggest physics experiments have received death threats amidst fears they could destroy the world.

Despite the expected scientific benefits, some fear the experiment could create black holes that will eventually swallow the Earth. German chemist Professor Otto Rossler even led a last-ditch legal attempt to stop the experiment.

While recent studies have disproved the doomsday scenario, CERN scientists have reportedly received death threats and pleas to stop the experiment.

But Prof Cox, ex-keyboardist for 1980's pop group D:REAM, dismissed the hysteria in rock-star style.

"Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a t---," he said.

The LHC experiment will be several times more powerful than anything else of its kind.

Scientists expect to find the theoretical Higgs-Boson Particle, or the God Particle, and gain a better understanding of things like antimatter, parallel universes and dark matter.

Read the full article here.

I think I need something more lighthearted to start my day...

Communion on the Moon

Here is a short article titled Communion between God and science by Rev J Williams.

Immediately after Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon in 1969 and his ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind’ speech, his colleague Buzz Aldrin celebrated Holy Communion in the landing craft.

Buzz, after whom the toy Buzz Lightyear is named, asked Mission Control for silence.

Then, to mark this historic moment, he took Holy Communion which had been prepared for him in advance by his church.

The first bread consumed on the moon and the first wine drunk there were the elements of Holy Communion.

This symbolic act was deliberate.

The astronaut was sending the world the message that Christian belief and science are in harmony.

He was at the cutting edge of science and yet, at the same time, a believer in God and a church-goer.

Science merely tells us how God makes things work. The Bible on the other hand, tells us why we are here.

Many people imagine that science and religious belief are incompatible, but in reality, across the world, millions of scientists believe in God.

These people see scientific discoveries as proof the universe has been designed by a Supreme Intelligence.

Science shows that the nucleus of every cell in the human body contains as much data as that found in a 30-volume encyclopedia. Such complexity cannot have happened by chance and is clear evidence of the existence of a Creator God.

Sadly, whenever reference is made to science and religious belief in the British media, it is done so assuming that there is conflict between the two.

In reality, many scientists believe in God precisely because of their scientific studies and see true science as the friend of religious belief.

With this fact rarely mentioned, it is no wonder that the UK is one of the few places in the world where church attendance is declining.

Well, I had never heard the story about Buzz Aldrin before, so that was...interesting.

And I am thrilled whenever I hear a religious person speaking favorably about science. Too often I see the articles or hear the stories of those that do not value it. I hope I am looking in the wrong places.

I am not sure, however, if the author is right. Are science and religon compatible?

Clearly a literal interpretation of their holy books is not compatible with a scientific worldview. In order to maintain religious belief and accept the findings of science, one must either "compartmentalize" or accept that many of the stories in their holy books are simply that: stories.

Since science led me to doubt the existence of God, I sometimes feel that is where it must inevitably lead everyone with an open mind.

But maybe I am wrong. I recognize that one can still hold belief in a greater power and call it "God".

Will Christianity and Islam, specifically, continue to modernize and adopt a more rational and tolerant worldview?

I hope that is the case: that they continue to take steps forward instead of trying to drag us all back with them.

Religion is Default?

Infants are hard-wired to believe in God, and atheism has to be learned, according to an Oxford University psychologist.

Pyschologists have debated whether belief in God or atheism was the natural human state. According to Dr Petrovich, expert in experimental psychology and psychology of religion, belief in God is neither caught nor taught, but develops naturally. It is a result of other psychological development connected with understanding causation.

Dr Petrovich says her mainstream hypothesis on this is that it's an aspect of human development of causal understanding. Children actively seek causal understanding. We can't biologically survive without knowing how cause works in the environment. The concept of God naturally emerges as an aspect of human causal reasoning.

First off, I have issues with the author's capitalization of "God". It implies that this belief is in his particular god, when in fact, people believe in many different gods.

But before all the religious people get excited about these findings, this does not imply that a god exists, it just implies that humans are born with the tendency to attribute things to a higher power.

I tend to agree with this. Humans seem to desire explanations for everything. And as a child, your knowledge is limited. You see your parents as having infinite power and wisdom, and you do not have explanations for many of the things that occur around you.

We all know that children are quite gullible. They are eager to believe in mystical creatures such as fairies, bogey men, or Santa Clause.

This seems to be a human's natural tendency, to accept these things as true. So for a human to become an atheist, they must reject this internal desire to believe in these things in favor of rationality.

I also don't agree with the statement that "all of us are born atheists". We do not know which god we will worship yet when we come out of the womb, and we probably don't develop ideas of a higher power until we are slightly older. But does anybody seriously think that Muslim babies come out of the womb believing in Allah, and Christian babies come out of the womb beliving in Yahweh? No, atleast not the rational among us.

But it seems to me that being an atheist is a statement of disbelief, not just a lack of knowledge about gods. This is why I don't agree that all of us are born atheists. We must actively reject the idea of a god, in my opinion, to fit the term.