Stem Cells

Ok, stem cells is a topic i haven't talked about much here. But ABC's Catalyst programme had a recent story on it.


With some interesting new advancements it seems to add a twist to the issue.

Watches and Hands

On the weekend I sat through a sermon about ... well i'm not precisely sure. But it had a basic theme of 'God made everything so God is fantastic'. In it, there was a slight variation of the watchmaker analogy.

This version is a conversation. It finishes with one guy asking the other 'how can you look at your watch and deduce that it has a designer, and yet look at the complexity of the inner workings of your hand and believe it developed on it's own'. (Forgive any inaccuracy - i'm paraphrasing).

OK preachers, put your thinking caps on. I now present to you Occam's razor. It's a scientific concept (though Occam was a theologian) that recommends the simplest most-evident hypothesis over one that involves many assumptions (given that both hypotheses can explain the observed result).

For living things, the simplest and most evident hypothesis is gradual change over time. That is, i can do things now that i couldn't when i was aged five. However, my watch has not developed any new functions since i first received it - nor has it grown. Even if it could reproduce, or last forever, it would not improve. So the gradual improvement hypothesis is ruled out. In the case of the watch, we must proceed to the next most-evident explanation.

So, preachers of the world, please realise the inadequacy of this comparison. Apart from being a flimsy piece of reasoning - which repels scientific people and drives a wedge between faith and science - it sails awfully close to the wind in terms of denying evolution. That's probably a topic for another day, but to introduce additional (non-gospel) beliefs to Christianity does no-one any favours.

John Lennox

I've just been listening to an interview with John Lennox, professor of Mathematics at Oxford University. He has a few great lines (and thoughts) such as:

There are two world views that are diametrically conflicting here - it's not science and religion. I see the conflict as not between science and religion at all - it's between world views, atheism and theism - and there's scientists on both sides.

And on our very scientific ability as a pointer to God.

If the thoughts in my mind are simply the random motions of atoms in my brain, why should I believe any theories they develop - including the one that my mind's composed of atoms.

And on Genesis,

I tend to start by thinking about the very fact that scripture claims there was a beginning. That's a stunning thing, because it took science up til the 1960s to get that far.

It's a very thoughtful interview - worth a listen.

Two Dimensions of Why?

I've been listening to an interview with Dr John Polkinghorne, particle physicist and theologian, and co-director of the Psychology and Religion Research Group at Cambridge University. His conclusion is that "under the skin, science or religion are cousins in the search for truth". While science is useful for explaining events, there's another dimension to reality.

Ask a scientist, as a scientist, all that he or she can tell you about music and they'll say it's neural response; things firing off in our brains to the impact of soundwaves hitting the ear-drum. And of course that's true, and in its own way it's worth knowing. But there's much more to music. There is a deep mystery about music; that that succession of sounds in time can speak to us, and I think speak to us truly, of a timeless form of beauty.

He also gives the following metaphor of how science and religion work together to make sense of the world:

I mean we all know you can ask both the how question and the why question. The kettle's boiling because burning gas heats the water. The kettle's boiling, because I want to make a cup of tea and would you like to have one? I don't have to choose between those two answers, they're both true. And in fact if I'm going to understand the mysterious events of the boiling kettle, I need both answers. Similarly I need both science and religion. I need to be two-eyed when I look at the world.

Rethinking Repenting

So here's something i didn't realise. Apparently the word repent (used so frequently in the Christian vocabulary) is derived, grammatically speaking, from the same word as pensive - meaning thoughtful.

So, the word repent (whatever connotations it may have picked up over the years) actually means to re-think, or to think again. It struck me that this is what we do in science. When we obtain new evidence or data, we rethink our hypothesis - our view of the situation.

Biblically, there are several examples of people who re-thought their viewpoint - on the basis of Jesus. Matthew (the gospel writer) and St Paul are the first that come to mind - although Jesus's disciple Thomas could also qualify. While these men weren't officially scientists, their new conclusions were based on the evidence presented to them.

Science and Faith - Together Again

One of my primary motivations for putting together this blog was to dispell the myth of any non-compatibility between science and faith.

It seems that there are many people also of this view. So much so, that Evolution Weekend will be celebrated in many churches around the globe. This year, the weekend (Feb 13-15) marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. It is also described as

...an opportunity for serious discussion and reflection on the relationship between religion and science, and to demonstrate that religious people from many faiths and locations understand that evolution is sound science and poses no problems to their faith.

The website for the event also contains a clergy letter signed by 11,000 Christian clergy. The weekend also aims to make clear that those claiming people must choose between religion and science are creating a false dichotomy. Their aim is also to demonstrate that religion and science have much to offer each other.

Bravo!

4 Circle Diagram

One of the great things about science (and also engineering) is the diagram. So it's no surprise that when people ask MIT science graduate James Choung about God, he explains using a diagram...