Picking up a few things...

The colours!

Cuties for the Week

Instructions:
Use the mouse.

Go thou and read!

Wistful

And don't you forget it!

Stephen Hawking: God was not needed to create the Universe

The Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe, Stephen Hawking has concluded.

…

In his latest book, The Grand Design, an extract of which is published in Eureka magazine in The Times, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”

He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”

The link to this article was provided by a commenter at this blog post of Vox’s, who then went on to ask the (very good) question: “just exactly what makes these “laws of physics” inevitable?” It’s a fair enough question — inevitability implies design, and design is necessarily external…unless Hawking is attempting to assert that gravity is, in essence, “pre-loaded” (for lack of a better term) with the rudiments of all the other physical laws, which then grew out of it.

Which is kind of a stretch to believe.

And of course, the usual metaphysical blind spot — common to many scientists — is present and conspicuous in this particular instance: a physical explanation does not preclude a divine cause, because we would in general expect that a divine action which impacted or set in motion a physical system would necessarily appear and be realized as a series of physical events, which physical sciences could then detect. (Divine actions themselves, at work behind and/or beyond the physical events, would not be detectable by physical sciences.)

Now, if Hawking wants to argue that creation was all just blind and unguided — matter and energy, interacting forces, etc. — I’d have no particular issue with his statements. The “blind forces” argument is a common argument that many people have put forth. It’s wrong and defies causality, but it’s something that’s been argued before. But Hawking isn’t doing that; he’s trying to wrap that sort of Materialism in the language of intention and, yes, design…and it just doesn’t work.

Update: It also bugged me that Hawking appeared to be claiming that gravity pre-existed the Big Bang, which I thought was rather problematic. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why, but that’s okay, because it would appear that others have done the heavy lifting for me already.

From the same comments thread as above: “Vilenkin (not exactly a friend to theism) himself pointed out that to claim that the laws of the universe existed before the universe itself did – the move that Hawking seems to be making – is deeply problematic. The “laws” are supposed to be descriptive, mere abstracts, not causal ‘things’. Vilenkin admits this, and toys with the idea that A) Well, maybe the laws of the universe are abstracts that have the ‘power’ to cause things even in the absence of the physical universe itself, and briefly mentions B) The idea that the laws of the universe pre-existed in a mind.

B pretty explicitly gets one closer to, even right at, theism. And I’d argue that A gets one closer to it, on the grounds that when one is saying “The laws of nature explain everything, we don’t need God!” and at the same time “But admittedly, we’d need to radically redefine what we mean by “laws of nature” for this to work”, it does seem to open up the door that we’re just talking about God after all. Similar to arguing that we have no need to posit this “God” to explain everything – we can get by simply by positing the existence of “pure actuality”.”

Of course, what is “pure actuality”? That sounds rather perilously close to the concept of causal simplicity, and we know from Aquinas and others that God is causally simple.

It's been a while since I posted a bikini babe...

Actually, Roissy/Chateau could probably have a good deal of fun with this, given the scenario. You’ve got the lawyer husband pressuring his black client to have sex with his…er…very feminist-looking (that is honestly about the nicest descriptor of her looks I can give, and I’m sure most of you know what I mean) wife. In Game terms, the husband sounds like a hopeless gamma (who else but such men entertain cuckold fantasies?), and the wife a cold, sneering witch/harpy.

But then again, maybe they’re nice people…who just happen to try and persuade the occasional client to give the wife a good rogering. Happens all the time, right?

His issue? Apparently, Discovery Channel wasn’t doing enough to (and I quote) “stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.”

You can read the whole list of crazy here, in his manifesto/protest website. The man was obviously unstable, but his ranting basically goes as evidence in support of the usual maxim: scratch an environmentalist, find a misanthropist. That he was also a declared atheist is something Vox might be able to pick up and run with; I mention it here only because I can, and because it’s likely to get a rise out of some atheist, somewhere, who earnestly believes that Christians are the worst and most prolific murderers in the world.

But I digress.

Ace notes that the media is trying to sidestep the “radical environmentalist/Al Gore fan” part of Lee’s grievances, in favour of playing up his anti-immigrant sentiments. I suppose that was to be expected; the narrative is set against Arizona/SB 1070/the Tea Party, and is very must set in favour of the open borders/amnesty crowd, and every story must somehow be spun to fit that message. Still, this is a hard square peg to hammer into that round hole; the immigration stuff is a minor part of Lee’s manifesto and mostly focuses on the whole “anchor babies” issue, which flows out of his larger hatred of all babies and births, which is of course a result of his radical environmentalist views.

Anyhow, it appears that police shot him dead at some point during the evening. It might not be nice to say “good riddance,” but I admit to having nothing else to say in this case. I really can’t think of too many not-not-nice things to say about a baby-hating atheist environmentalist who is willing to take hostages and (possibly) discharge weapons, especially in any sort of proximity to a day care.

Update: Stories like this always get weird.

Emma Roberts

Foremost among the three arrested in Canada is a gangly 30-year-old Iranian Canadian, Hiva Alizadeh, who is accused of having direct ties to terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (His brother – an alleged co-conspirator – denied all allegations in an interview with the Globe and Mail from Iran.)

Mr. Alizadeh moved to Canada when he was about 20 years old. He worked in a halal grocery store in Winnipeg before taking electronics courses at Red River College. He recently moved to Ottawa, where he went on welfare. He was arrested in the seventh-floor apartment that he shares with his family.

He is accused of raising funds for foreign terrorists and plotting bombings. Police say they’ve amassed considerable evidence against him – principally 59 homemade circuit boards that could have been used to set off bombs from a remote location.

The circuit boards were swapped with duds some time ago, evidently, as part of the investigation. (Let’s hope that some sympathetic judge doesn’t consider that entrapment.)

Another Globe story I noticed (though this one in the print version sitting on my parents’ kitchen table) talked about how the four men arrested in this sting “don’t fit” the “typical image” of a terrorist. (The one guy who was an engineering technician nonwithstanding, I suppose.) All four, the article argued, were educated men, some with artistic sides, who had established careers and (in many cases) young families.

They're just some regular guys...never got rich, never did try, they're just some regular guys. (With apologies to Steve Earle.)

We could argue about whether these soothing assurances of the utter, almost overwhelming normalcy of the four suspects are true or not, but that would be beside the point. Let’s take the point and grant it: these men were just regular guys, normal as can be, and exactly not the sort of people you’d expect to see plotting terrorist attacks. So what’s left?

It’s Mark Steyn all over again: it’s the jihad, stupid.

All four men in custody are Muslim. They might have had different careers, different family lives, and different backgrounds and countries of origin, but they shared a common Religion between them, and plotted to act in accordance with its teachings. As x-ray technicians or actors, they might not have fit the typical profile of a person who’d “go terrorist”, but as Muslims they evidently did just that. They “went jihad”, or are alleged to have done so.

I’ve been lambasted as a bigot for looking askance at the halal meat shop I pass by every day on my commute — one particularly irritated Muslim likened my attitudes to the attitudes that a distant, previous generation of Canadians would have had in regard to my own Slavic ancestors. The difference, of course, is that my Slavic ancestors came here, got to work, worked the land, shops, and factories of Alberta, and gave more to their new country than they took out of it. They helped shape the fabric of the province, helped make it greater than it had been…they contributed to it in an additive, positive way. And they became Canadians…they kept many aspects of their homeland’s culture, yes, but they also fit it into, and fit in with, the emerging Canadian and Albertan culture all around them.

Can the same be said of the guy behind the counter at the halal meat shop? I would argue that it cannot, at least not easily. Does he contribute anything new and great to Canada, to Alberta? Not really…we already have plenty of butcher shops, after all; one more is not a new thing. Does he fit in with Canada’s culture, with Alberta’s? No, not at all — the whole point of a halal shop is that it exists to foster the separation of Islamic foodstuffs from infidel foodstuffs; it exists not to fit in with the culture about it, but to forcefully inject itself into that culture. Does it better Canada, better Alberta? I, for one, don’t really see how.

And anyway, the issue isn’t the existence of the shop itself, but the philosophy behind it. The problem isn’t that it’s a meat shop, but that it’s a halal shop. More specifically, the problem isn’t that it’s a shop…the problem is halal — Islam — itself.

Sure, the four men arrested in Ottawa last week were just as normal as could be, at least in terms of career, education, family life, and what have you. They were also Muslim. That reason alone is why they were plotting Terrorism, plotting jihad, and for that reason they do in fact fit the profile, the image, of a particular kind of terrorist…the most prevalent kind of terrorist in the world today, in fact.

It’s. The. Jihad. Stupid.

Update: Margaret Wente discusses this same subject in better detail in her latest column, going so far as to note that:

Dr. Sher (who is, of course, innocent until proved guilty) is one of three men arrested last week and charged with conspiracy to facilitate an act of terrorism. He doesn’t fit our mental picture of a would-be terrorist. He’s not a disaffected kid who fell in with the wrong crowd. He’s not a hate-filled product of poverty and disadvantage. He’s not even a second-class citizen, such as France’s French-born Muslims who speak with perfect Parisian accents but will never break into the elites. Instead, Dr. Sher’s the product of Canada’s uniquely successful multicultural meritocracy – a homegrown, ball-hockey-playing, fun-loving fellow who zipped through one of the toughest med schools in the country and made fun of religious Muslims on Canadian Idol.

From poking fun at religious Muslims to planning bomb attacks in the name of the Muslim Religion. It really is the jihad, stupid.

Presumably, major cities rest at the intersection of the longer lines...

I’m not surprised by the generally bell-curvish shape of the latitudinal population distribution. The longitudinal one, however, is a bit more interesting…the distribution has several concentrations to it which I wouldn’t have expected to see. I suppose this is due to a combination of geographical limitations and the location of large cities (especially in Asia).

(via)

Double trouble!

Double trouble!

Kate Bosworth

Cuties for the Week:

Update: Welcome, R.S. McCain readers and fans of the eclectic (thanks, Smitty)!

It's getting colder!