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The mathematician George Polya used to quip that if you can’t solve a problem, find an easier problem and solve it. Matt Young seems to have taken Polya’s advice to heart. Young has taken Shannon’s tried-and-true theory of information and shoehorned my notion of specified complexity into it. The shoe no longer fits, and so…
Many years ago, I read this advice to a young physicist desperate to get his or her work cited as frequently as possible: Publish a paper that makes a subtle misuse of the second law of thermodynamics. Then everyone will rush to correct you and in the process cite your paper. The mathematician William Dembski…
Metanexus:Views 2002.01.22 2193 words The following is a short synopsis of a conference titled Science, Theology,and Asian Religions: An Encounter of Three Stories that I was privileged toattend this past week (January 18-22, 2002) in Seoul, Korea. An introductory workshop for the CTNS Science and Religion Course Program,it boasted speakers and participants from around the…
Metanexus:Views 2002.01.18 2132 words Parallax can be fun. Like when you are sitting in the bathtub and makingyour fingers get longer or shorter depending on the angle at which you placethem in the water. Or when you observe the amazement of a child with a strawin a glass of water. The straw may go in…
It was an ordinary accident, ordinary except that it blocked the road and forced its ugly way into my life. Two boys, on their way to high school, sped over a hill and slammed their small pickup under a stopped truck. Their hundred-foot skid marks explained why it happened. Both boys were pinned in the…
“It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane…” — Richard Dawkins “We’re leaving the fortress and heading behind the lines to blow up the other side’s headquarters, its ammunition store.” — Philip E. Johnson In…
“Motion, motion, everywhere! Now here, now there, now to, now fro, Now up, now down, the world goeth so, And ever hath done and ever shall.” – John Gower The most ubiquitous aspect of perceived reality is movement. The tree branch is gently heaving at the soft touch of the breeze, the cat is running…
Evolutionists and clergymen are fallible; they perceive their data or their God as through a glass darkly; yet their pronouncements can change history. The Galapagos Islands have occupied a central position in history of evolutionary thought, but how were these uninhabited islands perceived by the first Christians to visit them? Devout adherents to natural theology,…
Metanexus: Views 2002.01.04 2428 words Technology may first be understood as ‘imitating nature’, doing thingswhich nature does as well. At some point, we move on to ‘improving nature’,doing some things better than they would be without us, claims Dutchtheologian Willem Drees. He then adds, ‘Better’ is, of course, anevaluation – and thus invites the question…
Metanexus: Views 2002.01.03 2679 words If we are the products of evolution, can we take positive initiatives, makethe right choices? Or are our choices fixed since days of old, and isfreedom nothing but an illusion? Libraries could be filled with books on’free will’. Here I want to indicate briefly why I hold that a meaningfulnotion…