I'm not sure that we can actually claim that anyone is actually at fault for two submarines colliding in the middle of the Atlantic. It seems like this was just a freak coincidence and what do you expect when they are both designed to be as undetectable as possible? We should simply say it was an accident and be thankful that no one was injured and no nasties escaped. Unless of course they were on exercise together. The big question is, why have we found out about it?
Right - sit up straight! A lot of reading but interesting and maddening at the same time. All right - it's about creationists - I point and laugh at creationists. The denial of obvious truths, the introduction of random suppositions in order to make the observed evidence fit (The speed of light used to be 300 times faster than it is now apparently), the general fingers-in-ears-nyah-nyah-not-listening attitude, it all seems so silly. Why would God go to all the trouble to create the circa 10^80 particles that float around us in the wonderful configuration we see and then not advertise the fact? It's all supposed to be faith isn't it? Is it not perverse to go burying fossils that indicate their age physically and scientifically simply as a test of faith? Isn't "the way, the truth and the light" supposed to be part of it all? Why lie to your own creations about your existence simply to make them stronger? What makes me stronger is working to an indicator of what causes misery and trying to avoid doing that - my moral compass is quite a simple piece of apparatus. And if God is able to create everything and control the way it acts then why does He make some people act badly just so he can damn them? That sounds like a cat playing with a mouse to me. Anyway, I have lost sight of the fact that there are plenty of religious people who do actually believe in 99% of the scientific truth. Those who believe in Bishop Ussher's (extremely arbitrary) calculation of the date of creation as just before supper on the 22nd October 4004 BC are just plain deluded. Is there a chance that he might have been trying to prove otherwise much in the way Canute was proving his inability to control the waves? Maybe not in which case even then he was pushing it a bit wasn't he?
Right - sit up straight! A lot of reading but interesting and maddening at the same time. All right - it's about creationists - I point and laugh at creationists. The denial of obvious truths, the introduction of random suppositions in order to make the observed evidence fit (The speed of light used to be 300 times faster than it is now apparently), the general fingers-in-ears-nyah-nyah-not-listening attitude, it all seems so silly. Why would God go to all the trouble to create the circa 10^80 particles that float around us in the wonderful configuration we see and then not advertise the fact? It's all supposed to be faith isn't it? Is it not perverse to go burying fossils that indicate their age physically and scientifically simply as a test of faith? Isn't "the way, the truth and the light" supposed to be part of it all? Why lie to your own creations about your existence simply to make them stronger? What makes me stronger is working to an indicator of what causes misery and trying to avoid doing that - my moral compass is quite a simple piece of apparatus. And if God is able to create everything and control the way it acts then why does He make some people act badly just so he can damn them? That sounds like a cat playing with a mouse to me. Anyway, I have lost sight of the fact that there are plenty of religious people who do actually believe in 99% of the scientific truth. Those who believe in Bishop Ussher's (extremely arbitrary) calculation of the date of creation as just before supper on the 22nd October 4004 BC are just plain deluded. Is there a chance that he might have been trying to prove otherwise much in the way Canute was proving his inability to control the waves? Maybe not in which case even then he was pushing it a bit wasn't he?
Anyway maybe I should not be so bothered by such obviously-ludicrous ideas. Argue with a position of this nature and the people who hold that view see the debate as somehow justifying the point - they argue with me therefore there must be something worth arguing about. I can't help thinking it's fun though. Dawkins as usual has done his animagus act and turned into the Rottweiler again. He was skimming through some lavishly produced Creationist dismissal of evolution which seems to consist of thousands of glossy photos comparing fossils with modern living organisms - as if that proves that things do not change over time. The comparison of a fossil eel with a modern sea-snake was bad enough - wrong class anybody ? However the modern picture for comparison with a fossil caddis fly was a fishing lure complete with hook which suggests that the pictures were trawled off the Internet by an interior designer without a clue about taxonomy. Oh look - there's another one!
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