Wherefore virusdoc.net?

I posted the text below to a fellow Blogger who is having difficulty with his faith:

Isn't it great how many people care? I think what they are most worried about is
that you are giving up. God wants you to grapple with and for the truth. Here
are three things to think about:

1. Faith can bring understanding. Remember how you first objected to irrational numbers, then negative numbers, then imaginary numbers? Once you accepted them though, you could understand them.

2. A supreme God can act in subtle ways. Think of how you used to struggle with little Noah. He’d knock something off the table, and you’d fall off your chair and knock the whole table over trying to catch it. I bet by now though you catch it, with you left hand, without hardly looking up. A supreme God could, and would, act decisively in the margins.

3. Try this challenge: Be a Christian for year. Immerse yourself, pray fervently every night, read the Bible every day, attend services every Sunday. Walk-the-walk for year. Then see how you feel.

And hang in there. We’re all praying for you. It doesn’t matter that you don’t believe that helps either!

Recent study forces scientists to rethink basic law of physics / 'Fine structure constant' is indeed a constant -- right?

I thought I'd give an example of a scientific controversy which has no religious or political overtones, although it could be profoundly upsetting to the entire scientific world. The idea is simple: fundamental physical constants change over time, meaning they are neither fundamental, nor constant. If true, wrap up all your physics, throw it away, and start over.

So this should be as controversial as it gets. But get this quote:

"These are very adventurous ideas -- and it's always healthy to challenge the things that 'everybody knows,' " says one of the nation's most distinguished astronomers, Robert Kirshner of Harvard.

Unless you are challenging the ideas about evolution (see the previous blog). Perhaps the real issue with evolution is that it is being challenged only with a replacement theory, not one that simply says it is wrong. Yet that is exactly what astrophysicist Michael Murphy of Cambridge University in England is proposing: that physics changes, but they don't know why or how.

See some web sites below for more on slowly changing physical "constants":

Pi and Alpha
Large Numbers

Teachers, Scientists Vow to Fight Challenge to Evolution

I think at least the arguments are getting clearer. Note that now they are vowing to "fight challenges to evolution". I personally don't think that creationism will ever qualify as science, but these "educators" are not fighting creationism, but the very challenge itself. And this isn't science, for every theory only grows through it's challenges.

"Scientists warn that introducing challenges to evolution in the public school curriculum would weaken education, harm the economy and, as one paleontologist put it, open Kansas to ridicule as "the hayseed state." "

Here again, people who don't buy the evolution explanation are ridiculed. Not a very scientific response. Here's another telling quote:

One goal is to show how few scientists around the world doubt evolutionary theory. The Discovery Institute, the strongest voice behind intelligent design, at one point gathered the names of 356 scientists who questioned evolution. In response, the National Center for Science Education located 543 scientists named
Steve -- including a few Stephanies -- who declared the evidence "overwhelmingly
in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry."

Ok, so now we'll settle scientific issues by voting. We'll have to forget the little bit of history that Quantum Mechanics and general relativity were both initially "voted down" by leading scientists (and one by the other too; Einstein never bought Quantum Theory, claiming that he refused to believe that "God played dice with the universe"). One final quote, at the end of the article:

"It is ridiculous to backtrack to the 1700s and subvert our education to superstition and religion."

Again the ridicule.