China Bar in the Skeena River Valley

Skeena River Valley — China Bar .jpg

Originally uploaded by fishwithjd

I found this image via lazy tagging. China Bar is not in China. I have been aggregating to Google Reader from Flickr collections with the “China” tag.

It’s a BC view but quite handsome anyway.

Truth, atheism, quantum mechanics, the Bible and a personal God

Image via Wikipedia

These are some of the weighty subjects discussed in two articles by well known spokespersons for ID on one side, David Berlinsky of the Discovery Institute and on the other side for atheism, John Derbyshire a National Review regular. Posted along with a lot of comments on Pajamas Media today.

I liked the notions posted by this commenter:

New European:

I am an atheist. Yet I will be the first to defend believers against atheist “crusades” like the one from richard dawkins. I have no problem at all with praying in schools or the “under god”. And I think that believing in something greater than yourself is very important for your sanity.

But from reading this article I get the impression that the author thinks that evolution does not work and that the bible is closer to the truth than quantum mechanics.

Well, if that is the case, then please refrain from using technology based on quantum mechanics and evolution in the future. That includes every single drug that has been developed since 1980 or so, most modern agricultural products, and also the computer you are currently using. They are all based on the intimate knowledge of quantum mechanics and genetics.

I will in turn promise not to use any drugs or computers developed by “creationist scientists”.

Apr 28, 2008 – 2:29 am

Are Europeans better prepared than North Americans to understand these matters less dogmatically?

With a different perspective Prof. Francisco J Ayala, in his latest book “Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion” (Joseph Henry Press, 2007), writes that as a theology student in Spain he had been taught that evolution “provided the ‘missing link’ in the explanation of evil in the world” — a defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence, despite the existence of evil.

Here are some of my ill-formed notions on this.

For me Truth is as elusive a concept as a personal God. Elusive, metaphysical and entirely non-scientific.

It seems to me that science is a process of discovering the latest version of materialistic theory. It’s like a pursuit which is valuable to humans because we benefit from new technology developed from the latest theories that work.

But scientific understanding is not rock-like since a new theory begets new questions and new paradigms, which lead to the next step in the pursuit.

The Bible for some is rock-like truth but for me it is an attempt by believing human beings to explain and justify their beliefs in the unprovable. It is metaphysics rendered many centuries ago in an mythical story form. The concepts its authors declaim are unprovable but lift our thoughts to an ineffable notion much greater than most notions we have about ourselves.

I prefer the position of Science, but not scientism, because it seeks new contexts and frameworks of materialistic understanding. I believe in freedom of thought and action in the pursuit of better understanding of myself and the universe I am a part of.

Related articles by Zemanta

• At Peace With Agnosticism (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)

Discussion of Tibet’s right to self-determination

This is the first para of a post in China Digital Times blog today:

Is Tibet Entitled to Self-Determination?

Paul Harris, a human rights lawyer in Hong Kong, wrote the following piece which explores Tibet’s right to self-determination under international law. A shorter version of the article appeared in the South China Morning Post. According to Harris, after commissioning an expanded version of the SCMP article, the Board of the Hong Kong Law Society’s Hong Kong Lawyer magazine later pulled it, saying the topic was too political. Harris’ original full article follows:

This article includes, at its end, a link to a quite different Chinese view on this timely subject.

According to my “Blog Stats” yesterday

was the first day in months when views of my earliest post about Napoleon were lower than a recent post about “China’s views about Tibet”. Fascinating!

A strange fact about a great astronomer circa 17th century

I did not know this until today from On this Day in History,

On this day in 4977 B.C., the universe is created, according to German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered a founder of modern science. Kepler is best known for his theories explaining the motion of planets.

Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, in Weil der Stadt, Germany. As a university student, he studied the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’ theories of planetary ordering. Copernicus (1473-1543) believed that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system, a theory that contradicted the prevailing view of the era that the sun revolved around the earth.

I googled Kepler this morning and found this interesting link!

Apparently Sir Isaac Newton, who worked out the original Theory of Gravity, was influenced by the scientific work of Kepler. But Newton spent most of his time on alchemic experiments. Scientists have had some strange notions!

World class astronomers, cosmologists and physicists today accept the theory of  the Big Bang, which credits the beginning of the universe in a singular event about 13.7 billion years ago. The Large Hadron Collider, built by CERN at the cost of billions, is the latest scientific experiment meant to chase down details about the universe and its beginnings. For more about the LHC read my post below!

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider via Scobleizer

Robert Scoble does a lot of tech video. A great example of his work and instructive experience is in this link about the LHC at CERN.

And if you would like to find out much more about the LHC go here!

Wiser words about China, Tibet and public grandstanding

The LA Times published an opinion piece titled “China’s view of Tibet”.

With all the public grandstanding by fringe politicians, Hollywood denizens and public hysterics, I found it refreshing that a mainline US newspaper would publish an unconventional view about this international brouhaha.

The opinion ends this way:

The tragedy is that any victims of such moral posturing will be Tibetans, who will suffer the most if a virulent new Chinese nationalism is created in response.

So far, even though Beijing’s record of rule over Tibet is less than perfect, China’s leaders have tried to preserve autonomy for Tibet. Indeed, in theory there is no fundamental disagreement between the position of the exiled Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhists’ foremost spiritual leader, and that of the Chinese government. The Dalai Lama advocates autonomy, not independence; the official Chinese government policy paper on Tibet says that it “regards exercise of regional ethnic autonomy in areas where ethnic communities live in compact communities as a basic policy for solving the ethnic issue.”

Given this, the West should try to narrow, not widen, the gulf between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government. But that is the work of quiet diplomacy, not grandstanding.

Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, wrote “The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.”

yellow river (huang he) of china

yellow river of china

Originally uploaded by rosemanios

Another view chosen for many online photo awards!

It is interesting that the Yellow River isn’t yellow in its upper reaches. In its lowest reaches it gets into lots of other colors because of industrial pollution. So it tends to be green in its upper reaches, sort of yellowy brown in the middle and variable as it flows past farms and industrial plants.

Here is a link to a 2006 video report by Jim Yardley of NY Times that tells most of the grim story about the Huang He.

Upper reaches of the Yellow River, China

Yellow River, China

Originally uploaded by okwest

I have never seen any view of the upper reaches of the Huang Jiang (Yellow River).

This morning Xinhua offered the image below of the upper Yellow River:

The Toronto skyline winter eve

From “daily dose of imagery“. He has a summer view from the same viewpoint in his flickr collection!

But I like this contrast of colours.