Over at “GodBlog.com”:http://www.godblog.com/ there’s a post on the “Plausibility in scientific explanations“:http://www.godblog.com/archives/2005/05/11/plausibility_in_scientifi.php for the origin of life. I like how it’s put, so short and sweet (well, short and sweet for what it is…or maybe my monitor’s just so wide it makes it look short :-) but definitely well thought out! I wish I could’ve said it that well myself!
Thu, 2005-05-12 (May 12)
Thu, 2005-04-28 (Apr 28)
Adults and Debates
There was a really good quotation from someone in “this post at WorldMagBlog”:http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/014355.html that I like a lot (the post was made by someone with my first name, but it wasn’t me! The comment was made at 9:29am yesterday.):
The quotation is from Dorothy Sayers’ “The Lost Tools of Learning”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&creative=9325&camp=1789&link_code=ur2&path=tg/detail/-/B0007FRAVK/qid=1114706741/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1?v=glance%26s=books (which unfortunately appears to be out of print):
Have you ever, in listening to a debate among adult and presumably responsible people, been fretted by the extraordinary inability of the average debater to speak to the question, or to meet and refute the arguments of speakers on the other side? Or have you ever pondered upon the extremely high incidence of irrelevant matter which crops up at committee meetings, and upon the very great rarity of persons capable of acting as chairmen of committees? And when you think of this, and think that most of our public affairs are settled by debates and committees, have you ever felt a certain sinking of the heart?
I see this in politics at all levels all the time, it’s one of the reasons I got annoyed with politics and stopped paying much attention. I get annoyed with immaturity at this level. On the other hand, it makes good speakers all that much more easy to appreciate!
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Fri, 2005-04-01 (Apr 01)
And to think there’s worse…
A “blog entry here”:http://coffeetalking.blogspot.com/2005/03/little-bit-of-everything.html links to quite a story: “False Imprisonment”:http://www.dmregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050331/SPORTS13/503310395/1003&lead=1
It’s worth reading all the way through. The sad part? I can tell you from personal (not my individual, but I was one of three people second-most affected) experience that what happened in this case is NOTHING compared to the true injustice in the, um, “justice” system in this country right now (try taking that story, drag it out to about seven years, and make it two separate false charges and two false or forced convictions…and that’s just for starters). Even sadder? That we have the “best” system of it’s sort on the planet. And some people are optimistic! And by that I mean utopian…they thing everything’s going to get better as we “evolve.” I don’t mean to say that you shouldn’t be optimistic about some things, such as God’s plan for your life and such, but don’t be optimistic about the world as-is getting better any time soon. It’s pretty much headed down the toilet, for the time being at least. Either Jesus is coming back first, or it will get worse until the next turn in the cycle mentioned by the book “The Fourth Turning”:http://www.fourthturning.com/ (which notes that it’s gotten bad like this (well, not exactly like this, but worse than we might usually imagine, also “see the book on Amazon”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/055306682X/davidsworldva-20/002-2086300-3510456?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=1789&link%5Fcode=xm2 and also note that I haven’t read the entire book, nor is it written from a Christian perspective)) in the past, but that history always seems to repeat itself, particularly in a four-part cycle identified in said book). Original sin brings us all this, and crushes utpianism, at least until God returns, and at that point “utopia” is just one of the two!
But I digress slightly :-)
Also, this is worth considering: “Iniquity Abounds”:http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Basics/iniquity_abounds.htm
Time for some sleep, even though there’s no work tomorrow (yay!). I wish well those of you who may perhaps have to go to either work or school and stayed up a bit late ;-)
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Thu, 2005-02-24 (Feb 24)
A Post In 133 Words or Less
Short made it they, so shall I: ” The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less”:http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3fs8i/hist/hist.html
Keep in mind: I haven’t actually read the whole darn thing so I can’t vouch for accuracy. One mention of “Religion” I saw. Looks like it fit in 2,000 years ago, hard to tell. Of course I can’t vouch for the earlier: “Photosynthetic unicellular organisms. Oxidation. Mutation. Natural selection and evolution. Respiration. Cell differentiation. Sexual reproduction. Fossilization. Land exploration. Dinosaur extinction. Mammal expansion. Glaciation. Homo sapiens manifestation.”
But hey, anything that short’s bound to have some errors creep in there, I mean it takes so long to go back and check your work… :-)
Supposedly based on the book “A Briefer History of Time“:http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3fs8i/bhtes/ which, of course, I put on hold at the library! Looks humorous.
Sun, 2005-01-16 (Jan 16)
I’m baaack…and funnier than ever!
Not that I’ve really gone anywhere. Or become funnier than ever (I just find and link to funny stuff, in case you hadn’t noticed). I’ve just been busy. And every time I get some time I could be posting, I pick up one of the five or so books I’m reading instead. Come on, it’s only been eight days. Plus work takes a lot of time. If anyone wants to donate a salary equal to that which I’m making now (preferrably more, and no, I won’t tell you what it is :-) I could switch to blogging full time. Any takers?
Didn’t think so. Just in case, the lines of communication are always open…
Anyway, I’ve been reading a lot of good books, which I need to at least link to soon, if not review. And of course there’s the usual day-to-day life happenings, but I tend to forget those after 24 hours anyway, so you may not get a combined update of time I spend not posting here. If you really want to know some personal details, all the other cousins on my Dad’s side of the family came from Illinois to our house today (there’s three of ’em besides my brother and me). The goal? Get a photo taken of the five of us together to give to our grandma (we call her Busha since she’s Polish and that’s how you say grandma in Polish…or at least that’s what I’ve been told my whole live, I don’t exactly speak Polish so I can’t vouch for authenticity) for her birthday this year. Goal accomplished, and my family got a new family photo while we were at it (the last one was from the early ’90s, so it did need a bit of updating!). Plus it was good to spend the day with them, we haven’t seen them in a long time. The five of us have ages that are, youngest-to-oldest, 15, 20, 21, 25, and 32. My brother and I are the youngest. Next are two girls that are the daughters of one of my Dad’s sisters, then the son of my Dad’s other sister. Not like you care terribly much, so I’ll stop the info there. And get on with the humor.
“ForeverGeek”:http://www.forevergeek.com/ (an excellent blog itself) has a great link to an article entitled, “Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?“:http://forevergeek.com/entertainment/is_your_son_a_computer_hacker.php that you must check out. They provide a quick quote from the article so I won’t give you preview…the full article they link to is “over here”:http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html and in case you can’t tell, it’s satire. Very, very funny satire, made more so by the pages of comments you can find at the bottom made by many, many people who actually think the article is serious and publish rebuttals, or just call the article stupid! But the reasons for that are explained in another “Adequacy.org”:http://www.adequacy.org article, “Writing Satire For A Technical Audience“:http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2002.1.28.213530.133.html. Heck, that one might actually be a lot funnier than the first one! Depends on who you are, I guess. If you enjoy those — and still have time left, as they aren’t short — try this one: “Internet Licenses: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?“:http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.28.55410.553.html
ovingMay onway otay otherway tuffsay, oogleGay ashay away ranslationtay “intoway igpay atinlay”:http://www.google.com/intl/xx-piglatin/! ockRay onway, oogleGay! Iway riedtray otay earchsay orfay ymay itesay onway itway, andway itway idn’tway indfay anythingway henway Iway usedway igpay atinlay otay erformpay ethay earchsay: “Ouryay earchsay – “existway ifferentlyday“:http://www.google.com/search?hl=xx-piglatin&q=existway+ifferentlyday&btnG=Google+Earchsay – idday otnay atchmay anyway ocumentsday.”
Anywayway (oops, enough of that — but I was getting fluent at the typing while issuing forth the above paragraph from my fingers (not quite as fluent as I am at speaking it, however)), on to some comics: here are “two”:http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990211 “UserFriendly“:http://userfriendly.org/ “comics”:http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990815 that are rather funny, if you know what they mean. I supposed you’ll have to read them to find out if you do. If you don’t understand them, follow the directions in the first ;-)
If you’re ready to be done with the humor for a minute, here’s a link to two of the books I’m in middle of right now. They’re both by “Hugh Hewitt”:http://www.hughhewitt.com/pages/about_hugh.htm. One is “In, But Not Of : A Guide to Christian Ambition“:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0785263950/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2 and the other is “The Embarrassed Believer“:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0849914191/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2, both are excellent so far and after doing a quick Amazon search, I think I may try and grab his newest book, “Blog : Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World“:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/078521187X/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2, from the library. Maybe
I’m reading a few other books as well, but I don’t feel like taking the time to find them and put their info in right now, so you’ll have to wait. Go away now. Or read my other entries, if you haven’t. Or re-read them, I won’t stop you. Or get organized with the info over at the cool website called “43 Folders“:http://www.43folders.com/ (trust me, it’s cool).
Sat, 2004-12-18 (Dec 18)
“Artificial Life” claim (in quotes) makes headline
The BBC News Science/Nature division has an arriticle out there called “‘Artificial life’ comes step closer”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4104483.stm, with of course the giveaway quotes around “artificial life” meaning as usual, “no, not really, but let’s sensationalize so it can be a big headline”.
What they’re congradulating themselves for is basically taking parts of living things and putting them together. Then they add some more parts of living things, and when it does something, they think they’re the next step towards proving intelligent design over secular humanism’s creatorless evolution since they will have had to use intelligence to “create” (note the quotes) something “living”. Well, they don’t agree with me on that last part. Of course they don’t, otherwise would they be in BBC News?
They first describe what they did in layman terms, then stick a pharagraph in there that says:
Albert Libchaber, who heads the project, stresses that these bioreactors are not alive – they’re performing simple chemical reactions that can also happen in cell-free biological fluids.
So they admit they haven’t really created life, they’re just doing chemical reactions experiments. Those quotes from the headline are beginning to take on more significance.
Picking another interesting paragaph,
Two years ago, another team showed that polio viruses could assemble themselves from off-the-shelf chemical components mixed in a test-tube.
reveals that they apparently think they can ignore the “team showed” part and focus on the fact that the viruses could “assemble themselves.” If the viruses could do so much on their own, what was the team needed for? Maybe to carefully setup the experiement and observe their careful creation‘s chemical reactions take place? Granted this is more of a nitpick than strong evidence for the weakness of their thory. But it does go to show the bias of the assumptions of the position that they’re coming from.
More meaningful are the pharagraphs near the end of the article:
As these constructs become more lifelike, the rest of us will have to start rethinking the nature of life.
“This is rather philosophical,” says Dr Libchaber.
“For me, life is just like a machine – a machine with a computer program. There’s no more to it than that. But not everyone shares this point of view,” he told the BBC.
And there we have it. Apparently, as they come closer to designing things that are lifelike (they resemble, not duplicate, life), the reporter (those so-called impartial people) stipulates that this will require us all to rethink the “nature of life.” Why? Well I’m not exactly sure, but it probably has something to do with the fact that the reporter and scientist wish everyone else had their worldview and that this will somehow convince everyone else to “join the club”.
Which the statement in the next two paragraphs of the above quote by Dr Libchaber shows, of course.
Debunking this stuff is not hard but does require a lot of time and space to lay everything out. You have to lay the foundation of a correct worldview before you can successfully make arguments to those with other worldviews. I agree with Dr Libchaber that “this is rather philosophical,” and I now defer to probably the most excellent work I’ve read on this topic, a book entitled “I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be an Atheist”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1581345615/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2 by “Norman L. Geisler”:http://www.normgeisler.com/ and Frank Turek.
So far everything philisophically implied by the article I mention has been soundly debunked with reason and logic (using general, not special, revelation (not one Bible verse relied upon)) within the first two hundred pages. And I’m not even done with the book! It presents a “12-step guide”:http://www.impactapologetics.com/12points.asp leading from “is there absolute truth” through to the conclusion that the Bible is the Word of God. I may review this book in more depth here soon, but for now there are two really great quotes from a review of this book over at Amazon, both from reviewer Mike:
Having read quite a few Christian apologetics books, I feel I can say that this one is by far the best in scope, logic, and wit. The authors convincingly build up their case in layers, starting with well-reasoned arguments why God exists, and building in stages as to why Jesus is the way to go, once everything else is accepted.
He goes on to say that the book covers the variety of areas required in a complete defense of a worldview, specifically, “cosmology, life origins, evolution, morality, and a defense of the Bible.” His conclusion?
No honest atheist can read this book without being impressed by the quality of the theistic arguments as presented by the authors. The objections of skeptics are confronted with confidence. Did it change my mind? It may have planted a seed.
So he gave a glowing, five-star review of this book, probably stated my points better than I would have, and he doesn’t even believe it’s conclusion yet! I’d say that speaks volumes of the books readability, and the soundness of its arguments.
I think the “life” article talks about an interesting experiement. But it also promotes a worldview that I can’t possibly believe in, because, as my new favorite book says, I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist!
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Sun, 2004-11-21 (Nov 21)
Porn Worse than Crack?
Wired magazine put up an article Friday called “Internet Porn: Worse than Crack?”:http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65772,00.html that talks about the addictiveness of pornography. Since it “…causes release of the naturally occurring opioids. It does what heroin can’t do, in effect.”, and because unlike a drug it doesn’t go away over time (“Pornography addicts have a more difficult time recovering from their addiction than cocaine addicts, since coke users can get the drug out of their system, but pornographic images stay in the brain forever”).
The article also talks about the dangers of the newfound purvasiveness of this era of internet accessability (note that this is in no way an argument by me for less Internet…the Internet is awesome and just like I won’t stop reading “World Magazine”:http://www.worldmag.com/ because Playboy is also a magazine, I won’t stop visiting the good websites even though bad ones exist). Here’s that part of the article:
Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Cognitive Therapy, called porn the “most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today.”
“The internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused and have role models for these behaviors,” Layden said. “To have drug pumped into your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups know how to use it — it’s a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their mind.”
Of course they go on to quote from a morally relativistic person who complains that porn isn’t always bad, it just has bad effects sometimes. I shouldn’t really have to answer this, if you’re a Christian and you don’t know why porn is bad for the whole culture (not to mention sinful), you might want to start “researching”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=tg%2Fdetail%2F-%2F1581344589%2Fqid%3D1100916383%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fref%3Dsr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14%3Fv%3Dglance%26s%3Dbooks%26n%3D507846 your “worldview”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=ASIN%2F0842318089%2Fqid%3D1100919008%2Fsr%3D2-1%2Fref%3Dpd_ka_b_2_1 a bit more, because arguments are rather useless if they come from a worldview other than your own.
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Fri, 2004-11-19 (Nov 19)
Good Book is Also Popular
A good book was mentioned over in “The Salt and Light Column”:http://www.mrdawntreader.com/the_dawn_treader/2004/11/salt_and_light_.html at The Dawn Treader. The book is called “Total Truth”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=tg%2Fdetail%2F-%2F1581344589%2Fqid%3D1100916383%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fref%3Dsr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14%3Fv%3Dglance%26s%3Dbooks%26n%3D507846 by Nancy Pearcy, the person who co-wrote “How Now Shall We Live”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=ASIN%2F0842318089%2Fqid%3D1100919008%2Fsr%3D2-1%2Fref%3Dpd_ka_b_2_1 with Chuck Colson (also an excellent book near the top of my recommendation list). But my local library only has three public copies (and one at the local Christian school library), and all of them are checked out. And there are two holds ahead of me. Guess I’ll have to wait a while to read it, since I don’t feel like shelling the $14 out at Amazon.com right now. (And by, “don’t feel like” I mean, “don’t have the money for”.)
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Dawn Treader Moved
Glad to hear that “Dawn Treader”:http://www.mrdawntreader.com/ is back up and running at his new address. I was starting to miss his posts when he dissappeared. I’m posting this from my Treo 600 so I may have to wait ’till later to fix the rest of my links.
Also, this post got messed up by my Treo and I had to fix it later…I’ll have to see what I can do about that, since this blog works great on my Treo except for the actual posting.
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