Among the crop of new interconnected web2.0-ey sites, here are a few that I find very useful

BackType tracks your comments across numerous blogs. It’s on sidebar #2 (Commentosphere) and I really like it. (cocomment & commentful are good ways to report the whole discussion, but I want to just show MY comments)

Delicious stores and indexes links that you choose, and allows a few sentences. It can post a daily digest to your blog (but that function seems to be going haywire at the moment!)

Friendfeed is probably the most well-known of the new ‘lifestreaming’ services; feed it your ‘favourites’ from various sites (youtube, delicious, RSS) and it will collate them into a stream of your online activity (see ‘Cool Stuff’ in the far sidebar)

Yahoo Pipes are a collection of online apps that do very specific things — like unix, when used in conjuction (piped) they be quite powerful. I use a yahoo pipe for feeding my amazon wishlist into friendfeed.

Speights and Barth on real men « P e r ∙ C r u c e m ∙ a d ∙ L u c e m
One of the most alluring features of Speights is their ad campaign, exploiting all the time-honoured associations between beer, horses, open spaces and ‘real’ men. Not only are there the amazing photos, (the ones of the river crossing and of the stag are two of my favourites) but one can also complete the Southern Man ID Chart, and sing the Southern Man Song which promotes:

Now I might not be rich
But I like things down here
We got the best looking girls
And the best damn beer
So you can keep your Queen City [Auckland]
With your cocktails and cool
Give me a beer in a seven
With the boys shooting pool

All part of what it means to be a ‘real’ man, right?

And then there’s Barth’s account in CD III/2 of what being a ‘real’ man looks like:
Read the rest of this entry »

slacktivist: Defying gravity
The problem with gravity on the quantum mechanical scale is that it doesn't quantize properly. Everything else can be broken up into these little packets of energy, even space itself, but apparently it doesn't bend right when you do that – I think they can't get mass to "couple" to space, the way charge "couples" to photons. The closest I think they've come is something called string theory, which involves a lot of arm-waving and postulating that everything is a vibrating string zipping around in something like 11 dimensions. Crazy talk. So far totally untestable, too. But it seems to be the best the scientific community has been able to come up with so far.

On the cosmic end of things, there are basically two problems:
1) Galaxies don't turn the way we'd expect them to, based on counting the stars that we can actually see…
2) Everything is moving apart, so (I think) either the speed of light hasn't always been the same, or a "dark energy" is exerting a cosmic anti-gravity force!

Peggy Noonan | WSJ.com | There Is No Time, There Will Be TimeWe live in such unprecedented comfort! But can it last?
Tuesday, September 18, 2001 12:01 A.M. EDT
(Editor's note: In the summer of 1998 Ms. Noonan wrote this essay for the magazine Forbes ASAP. It was published in the Nov. 30, 1998 issue, devoted to the subject of time–how we experience time, how modern men and women relate to it in ways that might be different from our predecessors. Ms. Noonan has received many requests for reprints since the events in New York the past week. She loves Forbes ASAP too but thought most of her readers were more likely to find it here.)
(tags: freaky, evil, prosperity, society)

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen | 2009 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows
Scott's annual list. Highlights are: Paint.NET, Fiddler, PowerShell, EverNote, 7-Zip, Sysinternals, HippoEdit (cool name), STORM (ws test tool), NirSoft Utils, FireBug/YSlow/JSLint, FileHelpers, MemProfiler, LogParser, SketchPath, RegEx Toolbox etc etc etc…

Missing in Action: Cygwin, PuTTYcyg / PuttyTray, gVim, DQSD.net, Firefox addins (adblock+, noscript, nosquint, resurrect pages, selenium, betterprivacy), IEPro, GIMP, WinRAR, WinSCP, SoapUI, XML Tidy, Eclipse Galileo (extensions SQL Explorer, SVN Explorer), VLC Player
(tags: geek)

The Antichrist Revealed! John Key has been Prophesised in the Word of God!! | The Dunedin School
[SATIRE SATIRE SATIRE] The Word of God, the Bible, provides many descriptions of the Antichrist. The Bible tells us that, in the End Times, the Antichrist will ascend to dominion over the coming New World Order. He will then begin his reign of terror, in which he will persecute the Church of the Saints.
It has become clear to some of us in recent months that this person has now revealed himself. So he must now be named and, although we believe he will do all in his power to suppress or discredit this information, we must bear a stong witness.
The Antichrist is John Key, Prime Minister of New Zealand. The Scriptures are clear. He who has ears, let him hear!
The Bible’s description of the Antichrist are in agreement with the facts of John Key’s life – on every point! This cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence!!
(tags: bible satire)

The Jeebus Project | The Dim-Post
Tapu Misa has a column in the Herald about the Conservapedia project to rewrite the Bible:
[Conservapedia] has launched the Conservative Bible Project to produce a “fully conservative” translation of the Bible, expunged of what it calls “liberal wordiness” (because liberals apparently use a “high word-to-substance ratio”), “gender inclusive” language, and “socialistic words” like “comrade” and “labourer”. “Government”, it has decided, is a liberal word, whereas “volunteer” is a conservative one.
The Conservative Bible would exclude what it calls the “later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic”, like the adulteress story, in which Jesus saves an adulteress from an angry mob, with the words, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”.
(tags: bible)

Does God exist? Is there evidence for the existence of God?How do we know God exists? As Christians, we know God exists because we speak to Him every day. We do not audibly hear Him speaking to us, but we sense His presence, we feel His leading, we know His love, we desire His grace. Things have occurred in our lives that have no possible explanation other than God. God has so miraculously saved us and changed our lives that we cannot help but acknowledge and praise His existence. None of these arguments can persuade anyone who refuses to acknowledge what is already obvious. In the end, God’s existence must be accepted by faith (Hebrews 11:6). Faith in God is not a blind leap into the dark; it is step of faith into the light.
(tags: faith spirit)

My family are not believers, but I was somehow graced with the gospel and converted at age 17 (only a few years ago ). I naively digested a lot of literalist material, much to my families chagrin (they are an educated bunch). I then spent 7 years at university studying science and engineering. Eventually the discontinuity between YEC and the standard models of science stretched my credulity too far. However my experiences of God have been far too rich to dismiss the Bible and the Church outright, so I reserved judgment. In recent years I have recovered the inclination to look into these matters again, but from a somewhat more relaxed perspective. I for one think that ID or theistic evolution neatly resolves my dilemma.

Existence ex nihilo. Order from chaos. Life from non-life. Mind from matter. A chain of millions of coincidences, culminating in mankind. Creation is striving upwards — as Paul Davies said, the Universe appears to be specifically designed for humans to arise.

The existence of God is a logical conclusion from numerous lines of independent evidence, not just personal revelations, but also undeniable miracles before my eyes, prophecies, and most of all the power of God’s love that changes people’s lives.

The life of Jesus Christ is the most powerful evidence Christianity offers. The eternal God embraced humanity and mortality in order to gather all people to Himself.

Jesus said of himself:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
Matt 11:28-29

I have found Christianity to be a “revealed” religion, as the Catholic phrase goes. I had given up on God but he never gave up on me, and did not demand anything of me. He simply encouraged me to show up at church, and although my response was half-hearted at best God has helped me out a LOT.

We cannot reach God by human effort, including by debating on a blog. We need Grace.

Does prayer work?
Jacalyn Duffin: The Doctor Was Surprised; or, How to Diagnose a Miracle
A survey of more than six hundred miracle records in the canonization files of the Vatican Secret Archives from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century reveals that more than 95 percent are healings from illness. The history of the canonization process is summarized to explain the sources. The diagnoses amenable to miracle cure change through time to reflect current medical preoccupations and methods. Physician testimony has always been crucial to the investigation of miracles for declaring the hopeless prognosis and the surprise at recovery. From this analysis, medicine and religion emerge as parallel semiotic endeavors, using their canons of wisdom and careful observation to derive meaning in suffering.

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/prayer.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1844076.stm
Professor Leslie Francis of the University of Bangor has studied 31 experiments (conducted to the “highest professional standards”) into the effectiveness of prayer.

“The findings are quite staggering,” he says. “Studies show that patients in hospital who are being prayed for (even when they do not know they are being prayed for) are more likely to recover.”

Not forgetting the miracle of Dunkirk, the miraculous growth of the Church, the history of Israel, and the transformation of nations by the Gospel of peace.

I enjoy these discussions, but according to Karl Barth:
“Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it.”

“the most active workers and thinkers and fighters in the divine service in this world have at the same time, and manifestly, been the most active in prayer”

Recommended reading:
Isaiah chs. 5, 40, 61
Psalms 23, 103, 126
Hosea 10:12
Micah 6:8
Hebrews 1
1 Corinthians 13
John 16

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Unlike the atheist who brashly asserts that there is no God (confident in his mind’s ability to comprehend the universe), the wise believer in Christ holds a humble opinion of his abilities, and for the unscholarly there are brief catechisms, or the simple command of Christ to “Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbour as yourself. This sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

http://onecosmos.blogspot.com/2007/11/lunacy-and-solvation-in-cosmic-funhouse.html
Chesterton discusses the irrational folly of trying to comprehend the world with reason alone. Polanyi recognized the same thing, but spelled it out in a more systematic way, showing how every act of perception is an imaginative leap of irreducible creativity. As Chesterton writes, “poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea,” but “reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so to make it finite…. The poet asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”

And why is it so difficult to have a rational discussion with these hyper-rational people? For the simple reason that their minds are not impeded by the distraction of reality.

This foreshadows Gödel’s theorems, which proved that a formal system can be complete or consistent, but not both. Thus, the end result of atheistic scientism is “a combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction”

A human being is situated halfway between the stars above and the dust below — or between freedom and determinacy, matter and spirit, security and adventure, animal and God, part and whole, time and eternity. So,

Look up — look up
And seek your maker
Before Mr. Gabriel blows his horn
–Francis Albert

If the world were as simple as the atheist insists it is, not only would it not be worth understanding, but it would be too simple to have ever given rise to understanders.

Yes Christianity makes testable truth claims, but

“the Gospel is not a systematic exposition of the Christian teaching, precisely because it is not concerned with teaching. Jesus did not leave behind Him a new philosophical system, nor did He institute a mere religion. He left His body and sent His Spirit. And the Gospel consists of fundamental elements from the life of Jesus and the experience of the new community in Christ. St John the Evangelist speaks clearly of the restricted character of the Gospel: “And there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25) However, those things which the world could not contain if they were written in detail are found, made known and lived in the Church, where Jesus Himself lives. Those who think they know Christ outside the Church know very few things about Him; those who belong to the Church live “in Him”. Thus we can say that the Gospel is essentially a “private” book. The Gospel and dogma are expressions of the same Spirit of the Church. The Church is not producing literature when it writes the Gospel nor engaging in philosophy when it formulates dogma, but in both cases it is expressing the fulness of the new life hidden within it. For this reason, the Gospel cannot be understood outside the Church nor dogma outside worship.”

I should also mention that atheism requires large dollops of faith. Usually unstated, the assumptions are:
* A belief that the universe and the manner in which it functions can be comprehended by a species of limited intelligence through empirical methods (a necessary assumption).

* A belief that actual causal patterns, that explain the origin and subsequent development of both the universe and life on earth, can be traced to basic forces of nature from which are generated more complexly organized phenomenon.

* A belief that consciousness arose from chemical properties of matter contained by the organism having consciousness.

* A belief that chemical reactions of non-living matter led to a living cell.

* A belief that science is able to explain the origin of the universe and life on earth without recourse to any telic or intelligent causal components.

* A belief that no empirical data can be produced to support theories of intelligent design.

However, I would argue that assumptions 2-6 are more rooted in philosophical materialism or naturalism than they are empirical science. Indeed, I would argue that these kinds of assumptions are not necessary at all to the advancement of science. My view of natural science is that it needs to be minimally metaphysical opposed to anti-metaphysical.

Empirical science does not deal well with large discontinuities. Indeed, to study natural causation requires some degree of continuity or a causal chain or nexus; where an unbroken chain of causation doesn’t exist the history of science shows that human inference is a very powerful tool in bridging the gaps. However there are limits to this gap bridging. Problems like the origin of the universe, the origin of life and the origin of consciousness and mind (what I call the “big three”) presently have too much discontinuity. The so called scientific explanations put forward by materialists are little more than “just-so stories”. These kinds of explanations usually require not only several leaps of logic but a very generous leap of faith as well. (HT: <a href="telicthoughts.com)

I offer the challenge of Edward Tingley:

Maybe what the nay-sayers ought to do is to stop pronouncing in the absence of evidence and start looking for new instruments by which to get some. That is science. Modern science, especially, advances by the discovery of new means by which to acquire what is, to be sure, also concrete, measurable evidence. But it is not always “material evidence,” “the evidence of the eye.”

This sentiment is echoed by Francis Collins:

To simply rule ‘out of order’ any questions that go beyond the natural world is a circular argument. This leaves out profoundly important spiritual questions, such as why we are here, if there is a God, and what happens after we die. Those are questions that science is not really designed to answer. You have to look in another place, using another kind of approach. And for me that’s faith.

God is the author of all truth. You can find him in the laboratory as well as in the cathedral. He’s the God of the Bible; he’s the God of the genome. He did it all.

WWF – New species discovered in the Greater Mekong at risk of extinction due to climate change
Greater Mekong – A bird eating fanged frog, a gecko that looks like it’s from another planet and a bird which would rather walk than fly, are among the 163 new species discovered in the Greater Mekong region last year that are now at risk of extinction due to climate change, says a new report launched by WWF ahead of UN climate talks in Bangkok.

During 2008 alone, scientists identified these rare and unique species within the jungles and rivers of the Greater Mekong, including a bird eating fanged frog that lies in streams waiting for prey, one of only four new species of musk shrew to be described in recent times, and a leopard gecko whose “other world” appearance – orange eyes, spindly limbs and technicolour skin – inspired the report’s title Close Encounters.

Such is the immense biodiversity of this region that some discoveries such as the tiger-striped pitviper were made by accident.(tags: environment)

Religion In An Age Of Science | FaithInterface
Religious belief, just like scientific belief, is motivated understanding of the ways things are. Of course, a religious stance involves faith, just as a scientific investigating starts by commitment to the interrogation of the physical world from a chosen point of view.

Like science, a humble faith is … open to the possibility of correction, as God’s ways and will become more clearly known. In the setting of an Age of Science, attesting to Christian belief has to be motivated belief, based on evidence that I can point to. The centre of my faith lies in my encounter with the figure of Jesus Christ, as I meet him in the gospels, in the witness of the church and in the sacraments. Here is the heart of my Christian faith and hope. Yet, at a subsidiary but supportive level, there are also hints of God’s presence which arise from our scientific knowledge: science asks the question ‘How?’, but cannot answer ‘Why?', so that science by itself is found not to provide complete answers.
(tags: faith science philosophy)

Through a Glass Darkly » Man vs. God? The Wall Street Journal on Faith vs. Science
The Wall Street Journal recently featured essays by Richard Dawkins and comparative religion scholar Karen Armstrong titled “Man vs. God: Two Prominent Thinkers Debate Evolution, Science and the Role of Religion.” Dawkins’ contribution was his usual blend of scientism and utter misapprehension of theology. Armstrong’s supposed defense of theism was even worse. According to Armstrong, religion is [only] valuable because it makes us feel nice.

What a shame that the Journal didn’t find space for the many contemporary — and ancient — thinkers who have endeavored to take both science and faith seriously. It seems that neither Dawkins nor Armstrong realize that the problem of evil was not invented by contemporary science. Great Jewish and Christian minds have wrestled with it for millennia. Contemporary theologians continue this tradition and extend it to our amazing knowledge of natural history.
(tags: atheism error science evolution)