NEW COSMOS TV SHOW

I copied this today:
By: David Coppedge
Carl Sagan’s TV series Cosmos is coming back in version 2.0 with a new cast of atheists to spread the gospel of scientism.
Two generations have passed since Cosmos became a hit TV series in 1980 with the atheist popularizer of science, Carl Sagan.  Now, Neil deGrasse Tyson, the PhD astrophysicist and director of New York’s Hayden Planetarium, is reviving it with the help of PBS and Sagan’s widow, Ann Druyan.  Tyson, no less enthusiastic and articulate than his predecessor (if not more so), is also, like Sagan, an atheist, a staunch believer in cosmic evolution, and a passionate defender of science as the fountainhead of all certifiable knowledge.
The new 13-episode Cosmos series will begin airing in March on Fox and the National Geographic channel.  Space.com tells about the “rebooting” of the series and how, 34 years later, it is being recast for a new generation that expects cutting-edge video and audio.  A video clip promoting the new series begins with Sagan’s memorable opening manifesto of materialism from the old series, “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be” – an assertion beyond science that launched a thousand commentaries and criticisms, such as the book Cosmos: Carl Sagan’s Religion for the Scientific Mind by Christian apologist Norman Geisler…

Read more at http://creationrevolution.com/2014/01/comes-cosmos/#6PHg6E4dwYm6IsM2.99

A NEW YEAR 2014

I blew my resolution last year to post every week to this blog. I will renew my resolution and see if I can do better this year.
I am really offended by the entire idea of a Big Bang origin to the universe. As anyone who knows anything about basic physics an initial explosion releasing particles into the vacuum of space would have the particles expanding ad infinitum with no natural forces that would allow them to bump into each other to form more complex matter or to form into the galaxies, stars, planets, etc. And all studies of the universe show that only the earth contains life, especially intelligent persons.

I just ran into these stories in a Scientist magazine that were part of a list of things that don't make sense:

The big bang should have created matter and antimatter in equal amounts – so why didn't the universe disappear in a puff of self-annihilation.

OUR best theories of the early universe also tell us which atoms should have been forged in the first 5 minutes after the big bang. The existing amounts of hydrogen and helium match theory perfectly - so well, in fact, that cosmologists claim this is the best evidence we have for the big bang. Things aren't so good for the third element, lithium, however (New Scientist, 5 July 2008, p 28).

When we count up the lithium atoms held in stars, there is only one-third as much of the lithium-7 isotope as there should be. Another isotope, lithium-6, is overabundant: there may be as much as 1000 times too much of it.

So something in the big bang is not adding up. Is it a serious problem? Yes, says Gary Steigman of Ohio State University in Columbus, but it is not fatal. "There are too many successes for big-bang cosmology to be troubled by these lithium problems," he says.

Others disagree. "The lithium problem is one of the very few hints that there may be a problem with the big bang," says Jonathan Feng at the University of California, Irvine.

One thing that everyone does agree on is that things are getting worse. "The lithium-7 problem is more serious than ever," says Joseph Silk at the University of Oxford. Improved observations of stars suggest they contain even less lithium-7 than previously thought. "The gap between prediction and observation has widened," Steigman says.

BEAVER FOR THANKSGIVING

I know most of you had turkey and ham for Thanksgiving. I did also, but had an additional taste: beaver.  We were in Oklahoma at Nancy's son's home. He had trapped a beaver that was boring into the dam on his large pond. He BBQed some and cooked some on the stove. I had a bite and it did taste like beef. Sunday he took it to his church that is the oldest Choctaw Baptist church in OK. They loved it.

I am recovering from the TURP operation and feeling a lot better. Nancy takes good care of me.

TURP

Thursday I had a TURP TransUrethalRecession of the Prostate surgery in Granbury. I went in at 11:30. Nancy, Rev. Al Munger, Bobbe &Yvonne Hightower, and Nancy's son, John, saw me going into surgery for support. Nancy brought my prayer blanket from Cross Plains FUMC. One of the nurses explained to another nurse how the prayer blanket had a knot tied by each person who prayed for me.

I was anesthetized by 12:30 and woke up around 2:30. The surgery uses a laser to burn out the extra tissue that had grown back in the urethral track since 1997 when I had my first surgery. I went home with a catheter. The first night was rough due to the wearing off of the anesthesia. I was trying to drink a lot of water as ordered but it all came up as I was trying to go to sleep.

Each day has gotten a little bit better. Friday I had the catheter removed. I drink a lot of water and am beginning to clear up but still have some blood coming thru. Friday and Saturday I felt like I had been run over by a truck with every muscle complaining just getting in and out of bed. That has cleared up today and I feel better. I skipped church and ate breakfast at 11. Mark and Kathy brought me gifts that they bought at the CPFUMC Lord's Acre. Mark had to get back home to leave for Taiwan tomorrow. I walked to the gate twice today and hope to get more exercise tomorrow. Should be good to go by then.

EVOLUTION HUMOR

I copied this from Creation Revolution:

When evolution is seen as a storytelling game rather than a serious attempt at scientific explanation, it suddenly makes sense.

The goal in evolutionary theory is to fit any observation into a predetermined narrative – one of universal common ancestry by blind, unguided processes.  Since no human ever sees functioning, complex, specified information coming into being that way, evolutionary theory is guaranteed to generate implausible stories.  The stories only seem plausible when evolution is first assumed, and all other possible explanations are excluded.  If this seems backward to science’s ideal of letting the evidence speak for itself, it has one redeeming virtue: it’s funny.

Kissing may be evolution’s matchmaker:  Sex sells; it sells evolution.  Look at the picture on Live Science’s article.  Mesmerized, the reader allows Stephanie Pappas to turn a fairy tale into support for Darwin:

You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince, as the saying goes. New research suggests the cliché is true on an evolutionary level.

Kissing might have evolved as a way to assess the quality of potential mates, according to two new studies.…

The details of the studies are less important than the marks of storytelling: profuse use of “if,” “might,” and “may have” escape clauses that substitute for scientific evidence.  Since “Kissing exists in virtually every culture on Earth,” there is no control group against which to assess the fitness of kissers vs. non-kissers.  Even if there were, singling out that one behavior against all the other factors involved in successful mating would be near impossible.  Is the first kiss the crucial one?  Is a peck on the cheek as naturally selective as an alfalfa kiss?  Who could ever scientifically test that, without interfering in the data collection process?

The Oxford researcher wants to go beyond the evolution of kissing into the “murkier depths” of sex, Pappas says.  “I’m interested in doing more research on what love is in humans.  What is it that makes us so intimately attracted to one specific person?”  Must be a fun job.

Evolution of Catwoman:  Feminists, get on the case of Tia Ghose.  In Live Science, she claimed “Women evolved to be catty” – meaning, “rumor spreading, shunning and backstabbing” according to the “mean girls” stereotype, claiming that “the behavior is rooted in humans’ evolutionary past.”  How sexist!  Demand equal time for men evolving to be like wolves.

Ignorance is bliss:  Readers can evaluate the evolutionary value of ignorance in an article on Science Daily.   In a nutshell, it gives more evidence against Hamilton’s kin selection theory.  If “ignorance is bliss” is a law of evolution, it would explain a lot about current political debates.

A sauropod walks into a bar: ‘Why the long neck?’  That headline on Science Daily introduced an evolutionary tale of convergent and divergent evolution.  “While convergently evolving many features seen in large terrestrial mammals, such as upright, columnar limbs and barrel-shaped trunks, sauropods evolved some unique features, such as the extremely long necks and diminutive heads they are famous for.”  Trouble is, the joker asked the riddle but never gave the punch line.  The evolutionists haven’t figured one out yet.  Maybe that’s the joke:

The unique gigantism of sauropod dinosaurs has long been recognized as an important problem in the evolution of vertebrates, raising questions as to why no other land-based lineage has ever reached this size, how these dinosaurs functioned as living animals, and how they were able to maintain stable populations over distinct geological periods.

Snakes on the Brain:  Almost all the science media repeated a plot line introduced on PNAS, typified by this question on Science Daily: “Was the evolution of high-quality vision in our ancestors driven by the threat of snakes?”  The international authors of this plot took monkeys and showed them images of snakes, angry monkey faces, monkey hands, and geometric shapes, measuring the response time of particular neurons in their brains.  Naturally, the response was quicker to snakes.  They concluded:

Our findings are unique in providing neuroscientific evidence in support of the Snake Detection Theory, which posits that the threat of snakes strongly influenced the evolution of the primate brain. This finding may have great impact on our understanding of the evolution of primates.

It “may” have impact, but where is an unbiased judge, if everyone is an evolutionist?  A look at the paper shows poor scientific controls.

• The scientists did not compare the monkey results with response times of unrelated animals, like birds, mice, or squirrels.  (Why?  Because those animals are not in the evolutionary lineage of primates.)
• The test monkeys were shown pictures of a variety of snakes, but no tigers, spiders, or hunters with guns.
• The monkeys were not shown live snakes along with pictures.

The authors, further, did not connect the dots, to find whether a specific mutation for greater visual acuity and response time was connected to survival of snake encounters.  Worst of all, the authors merely assumed an evolutionary cause for highly complex effects (visual acuity and quick response), instead of considering whether the design of those traits is beyond the reach of blind, unguided processes. 

The media, though, lapped up the story uncritically.  PhysOrg called it “new evidence to support the notion that primates evolved keen vision skills so they could survive the threats snakes pose in the jungle.”  Science Magazine rewarded this as one of the biggest news stories of the week, saying the paper supports the “controversial hypothesis” that “primates as we know them would never have evolved without snakes.”  National Geographic said “it might be those slithery serpents that helped us evolve to see as well as we do.” In storybook land, anything “might be”.   Science Daily quoted the lead author saying, “I don’t see another way to explain the sensitivity of these neurons to snakes except through an evolutionary path.”  Naturally; she invented the “notion” in 2006, following it up in 2009 with a book ironically entitled,  The Fruit, the Tree, and the Serpent.

Is a legless lizard a snake?  Speaking of snakes, “legless lizards” provide an interesting case study in the philosophy of classification.  Lizards are not snakes, but there are lizards that look like snakes.  Mike Wall explains for Live Science how to tell them apart:

For example, snakes tend to have relatively longer bodies and shorter tails than their limbless reptilian cousins. Further, serpents don’t have eyelids or external ears, while most lizards do. And many “legless” lizards actually have tiny vestigial limbs, while snakes generally sport no external appendages at all.

Trouble is, there are exceptions to all these rules.  Pythons and boas are snakes, but have “rudimentary hind limbs.”  Dr. Wall mentions a legless lizard that looks like a snake (no eyelids) and eats like a snake.  Why shouldn’t it be classified as a snake?  What does the word “snake” mean if shared traits don’t apply?  Enter the evolutionary story:

The answer, of course, lies in ancestry. Legless lizards are not snakes. Rather, functional limblessness has evolved independently perhaps a dozen times in the squamate reptiles — lizards, snakes and amphisbaenids, or worm lizards — suggesting that the body plan offers many advantages.

If that were a law of evolution, we should see legless badgers, legless prairie dogs, and legless ants.

Which part of the Darwin Comedy Show did you like?  The sauropod walking into the bar?  Ignorance is bliss?  Catwoman?  Snakes on a brain?  This is what they love to do: spin yarns and tell jokes.  It’s so much fun.  It’s kind of like being stoned.

- See more at: http://crev.info/2013/11/evolutionary-stories/#sthash.rDIGNmAK.dpuf

Thomas Nagel on the existence of God

Thomas Nagel on the existence of God

"I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about human life, including everything about the human mind.... This is a somewhat ridiculous situation.... [I]t is just as irrational to be influenced in one's beliefs by the hope that God does not exist as by the hope that God does exist." 1


Nagel, Thomas, The Last Word, pp. 130-131, Oxford University Press, 1997. Dr Nagel (1937- ) is Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University.

Note: Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics.

HIGGS BOSON

This is the latest news report: "The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to two physicists, Francois Englert and Peter Higgs, who independently proposed the mechanism that gives subatomic particles their mass. Without this mechanism, physicists say, subatomic particles would ping around the universe at the speed of light without interacting and forming atoms and molecules, the building-blocks of matter."

Supposedly one experiment using the Hadron cyclotron observed the Higgs boson. Other researchers are skeptical of it. I think the whole idea is questionable.

This confirms my belief that the Big Bang theory is made-up story with no physics support. If you had a Big Bang that released atomic particles like electrons and protons, in my mind they would just expand into the vast expanses of space forever. There are no forces to cause the particles to come together and form larger molecules. I don't understand why intelligent physicists can't see the obvious. The Higgs boson is their answer. That is why it is called "the God particle". They need intelligence to make their theory work, but deny that God had anything to do with it.

The whole concept of immense times and evolution forming matter, stars, galaxies and eventually living plants and animals is so far-fetched as to be completely ridiculous.