Scientists and Logic

It's to be expected that your average person should make logical mistakes in his arguments. It's even to be expected that those with training in the arts, humanities, philosophy, theology and other non-scientific disciplines should make mistakes in logic. But I'm disappointed to see people with scientific training make mistakes in logic. And they do. Much more often than I would like to see. It's like seeing a man parking badly - they're letting the side down.

Still, it seems they are just like everybody else; if something is in line with what they believe, they demand little or no evidence before accepting it. But if it is in any way contrary to what they believe nothing but absolute mathematically certain evidence will do. And in most cases not even that.

Stephen Hawking said: "on the face of it, life does seem to be too unlikely to be just a coincidence." Then he goes on, trying to find ways to show that what he just said is not true, after all. He invokes parallel universes to get past the astronomical odds against 'just by chance.' There is absolutely no evidence supporting parallel universes. The astronomical odds are a certainty. Stephen Hawking should know one cannot invoke speculation as evidence to change a factual reality. One can also not invoke what amounts to magic - here we are, so it must have happened. Is Stephen Hawking so committed to atheism that he abandons logic to defend it? What a disappointment.

I'm reading a book called Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout by Patrick Moore. Patrick Moore has a PhD in environmental science. While attending a conference in Nairobi, he had a Damascus Road experience. He saw that Greenpeace was a movement more in line with ideals and convictions than reality. In fact, he went over to the other side to such an extent that he even doubts that man-made green-house gases are in any way responsible for the documented increase in global temperatures. He does not doubt the increase in green-house gases and the global heating up, just the connection between the two. He uses the analogy of the correlation between increased ice-cream consumption and an increase in shark attacks on humans. He does mention that there is no known direct connection between ice-cream consumption and shark attacks, which is of course true. There is no evidence that either humans having eaten ice-cream or ice-cream itself attracts sharks. However, Patrick Moore should know this is not an apt analogy to use to illustrate the connection between an increase of hot house gases and an increased global temperature - it is well known that hot house gases prevent heat from being lost. Therefore, it can be said with certainty that the increase in hot house gases is at least to some extent responsible for the increased global temperature. There may be other candidates also responsible for this, like sun spots. But in the absence of other candidates as clearly related to a temperature increase as hot house gases, it is justified to declare hot house gases the number one contender for the lion's share of the responsibility for the increased global temperature. This is not rocket science. I cannot see why Patrick Moore and others can't see this.

Patrick Moore is also heavily into atheism and evolution. Nevertheless, he says he bases his realities on science. In his own words: "The real strength of science is that it is based on two things: observable facts that can be repeated and logic." Then he goes on to say, not on the same page, of course, that whales come from hippopotamus-like animals that swam down rivers, ended up in the oceans and became whales. In the light of the total absence of any evidence for this, this qualifies as complete nonsense. Where are the "observable facts that can be repeated" that is his requirement for anything to be established as a fact? Or is such nonsense acceptable to him because it supports evolution? One should be consistent.

As for evolution, the starting point of evolution is the development of life purely by chance. If this cannot happen, evolution does not even get out of the starting blocks. The Internet is full of discussions about this. Everybody agrees that the chance of life coming about by random chance is less than one out of a figure bigger than the number of all the atoms in the Universe. Evolutionists have a few ways they try to get past that, among those life seeded from outer space (but how did life get there?) or the claim that the process wasn't really random. Exactly what it was, they don't say. The only way one can defeat such overwhelming odds is a brute force attack - try all combinations. But a brute force attack is not a random process. One should try one combination only once. Even if that is possible through random means, the numbers still are too large. And it isn't. So, purely mathematically speaking, the probability of life coming to be by random means runs up against insurmountable odds. So, mathematically speaking it is impossible that life can come about by itself by random means. This is a fact. There are no "observable facts that can be repeated" to show how life can come about by itself. To be consistent, anyone who claims to go only by science and logic should admit that evolution is a mathematical impossibility. As life developing by itself by random processes is a mathematical impossibility, it is a mathematical necessity that there should be something or someone behind the development of life. Again, this is not rocket science.

It is disappointing that people with scientific training make easily avoidable, logical mistakes. What is even more disappointing is that they so often talk absolute nonsense. This, unfortunately, is not as rare as it should be. Let me stress that no amount of speculation can prevent anything from being nonsense.

Barack Obama Speaks out Against Democracy

Yesterday, on PBS Newshour broadcast here in Australia, Barack Obama had much to say against Crimea going with Russia. My point is that as a liberal Barack Obama is strongly in favour of democracy - it put him in a cushy job and all liberals have to be in favour of democracy. Barack Obama knows that the Crimeans voted overwhelmingly in favour of going with Russia and he never disputed that. Even before the voting took place it was widely expected that this was the way the vote was going to go. So, from a democratic viewpoint, the Crimea going with Russia is the wish of the people.

Nearly 60% of Crimeans are Russian. Only 25% are Ukranian. 77% of Crimeans say Russian is their native language and only 10% say Ukranian is their native language. The Crimea was part of Russia until 1954 when it was added to the Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic, also with strong ties to Russia. The Ukraine went independent only in 1991. So, both the Crimean people and the recent history of the Crimea show strong ties to Russia. Nobody should have been surprised when the Crimea changed hands again. As this happened with the overwhelming support of its people, the liberals should have applauded. But no, this champion of democracy, Barack Obama, spits fire and threatens and looks generally unhappy about it. How is this possible? After all, this is an expression of democracy and Barack is such a big supporter of democracy. Well, the thing is, like all liberals, Barack Obama is a hypocrite.

It works like this, all liberals are supporters of 'freedom of opinion.' You can have any viewpoint or opinion as long as your viewpoint or opinion does not fly in the face of the manifests of the GCPC (Global Council for Political Correctness), the MFM (Militant Feminist Movement), or GALRO (Gay and Lesbian Rights Organisation.) You can have any opinion on legalised gay marriage, as long as it's for, you can have any opinion on capital punishment, as long as it's against. Most likely you are starting to see things clearly now.

Let's further explore the hypocrisy of the liberals. They were as a man for self rule of African countries. Now that Africa is a total mess with many millions dead as a result of African self government, these same liberals are deadly quiet. Once in a while one of them will quietly condemn an African despot (Mugabe was popular for this a while back) which they had helped to bring to power.

This is what I'm on about, the utter hypocrisy of liberals. And nobody says a thing about that. I'm neutral about this Crimean thing, it will work itself out. In reality it will most likely be better for Crimeans in the short run to go with Russia rather than a bankrupt Ukraine. Russia will be generous for a while to show them they voted the right way. I hope Russia will accuse all these hypocrites of being hypocrites. There's really nothing they can say about it in this instance. They people have voted and these liberals have expressed their opinions against the will of the people. And them such staunch democrats.

Packt Publishing's 2,000th Title

Packt Publishing publishes technical books. What makes things great is that one can buy pdf copies and download them immediately. As there is no shipping or paper involved one would expect to make a decent saving on these ebooks. That's just what you get. My first book from them was GNUCash 2.4 small business accounting. GNUCash is a freely downloadable accounting package which comes standard with most Linux installations. Since then both my wife and I have been using GNUCash to do our tax returns. It's just so much easier. This is a link to the Packt Publishing Special Offers as a 2,000th title celebration. Give it a go. There's just so much to choose from.

The case against the trinity

Proponents of any theory tend to accept even weak evidence as vindication for their theory and dismiss even the strongest of evidence against their theory.

People in general also are more impressed by evidence confirming a theory (positive evidence) as opposed to evidence against a theory. This is a very well known phenomenon.

Nearly all people accept things which are part of their environment, customs and heritage uncritically. People are also caught up in trends and fashions and tend to mindlessly follow the herd, even though the herd may be palpably wrong. There are a great many examples of this. Communism lead to widespread poverty and living in fear of the authorities, yet the majority of its victims were adherents of communism.

When someone is dressed in the garments of an expert, his word is accepted as the gospel truth by the majority of people. From about 2001 to 2007 England was in the grip of an MRSA scare which was a 100% scam. Undercover journalists took swabs from window sills, stairwells and many other places in public hospitals. They got positive results for MRSA from just one "laboratory" - the garden shed, unaccredited laboratory of Dr Chris Malyszewicz PhD, and they ran with it. The word spread that this was the place to go for positive results and soon all specimens were submitted to this "laboratory." The newshounds got what they wanted - positive results. Thousands of reports on this MRSA scam were published in the UK in those years. The PhD held by Chris Malyszewicz was from a non-accredited correspondence course in the USA. He had no qualifications whatsoever in microbiology. He had never published anything in a peer reviewed scientific journal. Some people noticed this early on, but not the newspapers. He was soon Britain's foremost MRSA expert in the newspapers, as is shown by this article in The Guardian. When his specimens were examined by other real laboratories they found MRSA only in single specimens, and MRSA shown by DNA typing to not occur in the UK, but only in Australia from where Chris Malyszewicz also got work - yes, he was world famous by then. The vast majority of the specimens showed no sign of MRSA at all. Some showed bacilli which could even with a 100x magnification of a cheap, child's microscope be distinguished from a staphylococcus. When the newspapers could eventually not hide this anymore - they did ignore all reports of it for as long as they could - they cried foul and held themselves out as the innocent victims of this fiend. The evidence was there from before the first article was published. The trinitarian dogma relies on many such experts and many such gullible spreaders of the word.

As the trinitarian dogma is under the spotlight here, one has to ask, what exactly does this dogma claim? Let's look at just a few of this dogma's claims.

• The Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all three fully god
• These three are equal
• Despite the fact that there are three of them and each is fully god, they add up to only one god

This is not all that the trinitarian dogma claims, but these three claims are essential to it. If only one of them can be shown to be false, the whole thing falls.

A unique theory

The trinitarian dogma is unique, as far as I know, in that only in stating its claims, before one has even started to examine the evidence for and against it, it contains a serious irrationality. It claims that 1 god + 1 god + 1 god = 1 god and that 1/3 = 1. Note that they don't claim that Jesus god + Father God + Holy Spirit god = family god, like father Smith + mother Smith + Johnny Smith = family Smith. Or something else like 4 + 4 + 4 = 1 dozen. No, they claim that the entity type right throughout the equation remains the same - god. One doesn't even have to go beyond primary school arithmetic to know that this is nonsense.

Right from the start of this dogma this has been a problem for trintirians. As there is no rational way of getting past this, they invoke magic. They quote Isaiah 55:8,9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says Jehovah. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. That does not say that God endorses pure nonsense. To claim that 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 and 1/3 = 1 is pure nonsense. Ask yourself, what cannot be made acceptable by invoking magic to get past its absurdities? If one has to invoke magic, one is dealing with hocus-pocus. That's what 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 and 1/3 = 1 are.

The above is enough to do away with the trinitarian dogma as a position that makes any sense. Anything more is just burying it deeper.

The evidence

What makes evidence weak or strong? Let's look at strong evidence.

• It is unambiguous, clear and straight to the point
• It is clearly relevant to the position it supports or contradicts

There is not one piece of evidence used in support of the trinity that passes those two tests. You are welcome to send on any you think passes those tests. We'll look at a few of the most commonly used passages and show how they fail the test.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. This is how it is in most English Bibles. Point one, as it's translated it doesn't make any sense unless "the Word" and "God" are one and the same entity. Look at this: in the beginning was A and A was with B and A was B. The only way that is possible is if A and B are two names for one and the same entity. That is one way some see it; Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit just three expressions of one being. That's called modalism and very few trinitarians subscribe to that. But that's the only way it can make sense. And what's more, it doesn't even come straight out and say "Jesus is god."

Point two, as it's translated is not the way it appears in the Greek of John 1:1. Here's a transliteration: In a beginning was the word and the word was with the god and a god was the word. Greek has the definite article, "the," but not the indefinite article "a." To get past it the "a" is assumed whenever "the" is not used. In the translated versions God is a proper noun - a name. In the Greek the word is "theos" and it is a common noun, like the words fish, human, apple and more. Theos can also mean a human of high position, an idol or even the one True God. Having so many meanings it's not a very useful word to determine exact meaning. Preceding theos with the "the" makes it one specific god, the Father. To get away from the fact that the Greek seemed to ascribe godlike qualities to Jesus - in fact, that's how some translations render it - the Colwell rule was invented. Not even all trinitarians say it can consistently be applied. John didn't use it as it didn't exist in his time. There is disagreement over how John 1:1 should be translated.

Taken together, the fact that John 1:1 doesn't make sense as translated, that the Greek seems to say something different, that there is disagreement over how it should be translated and that it doesn't come straight out and say Jesus is god makes it impossible to see John 1:1 as strong evidence in support of the trinity.

[ACV] John 10:30 I and the Father are one. Come on, that's an idiomatic expression. It does not even start to say that Jesus is god, unless you're a modalist. It's not even evidence supporting the trinitarian dogma.

John 8:58 Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I am. There is so much wrong with this verse as strong evidence, I'd better put it in a list.

• It does not come straight out and say that Jesus is god
• It's supposed to map to Exodus 3:14
  • Exodus 3:14 was written in Hebrew
  • John was written in Greek
  • Jesus spoke in Aramaic
  • To say that the translations could only have been to those words to make the mapping 100% sure, is ridiculous
  • The translation of Exodus 3:14 is by no means clear
• The exact Greek word translated here as "I am" is used many times elsewhere in John and the New Testament as well, but only here translated as I am. "I have been" would make more sense. Nowhere else is it seen as a claim to deity.

Acts 5:4 ...Thou have not lied to men, but to God. Lie to my emissary, and you lie to me. That's a valid understanding of the text. It makes sense. It does not unambiguously say the Holy Spirit is God, as it can be legitimately understood in other ways without adding or subtracting anything or changing it in any way. That's not strong evidence. In any case, if the Holy Spirit were God one would have expected something as important as that to have been mentioned more than once and very clearly, at that.

Please note that one can show up the weaknesses of the so-called pro-trinity evidence without changing them in any way. One does not have to add unspoken conditions or leave out or add anything.

The evidence against

Speaking to the Father, Jesus says: John 17:3 And this is eternal life, that they should know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou sent. Now that's clear. If there's only one "true God" and that "true God" is the Father, there can't be any others. Jesus didn't qualify this statement. Trinitarians try to. They say it was just when Jesus was here on Earth that the Father was the "only true God." But what about the Holy Spirit, then? That's not what Jesus said. This is very strong evidence against the trinity.

1 Corinthians 8:6 yet to us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him. The difference between the quality of this evidence against the trinity and that usually cited as evidence for the trinity, is vast. This is strong evidence.

John 14:28 Ye heard that I said to you, I go, and I come to you. If ye loved me, ye would have rejoiced because I said I go to the Father, because my Father is greater than I. This speaks directly to the much vaunted equality of the members of the trinity. Where's this equality now? Yes, I know, blah, blah, blah. Jesus didn't introduce any conditions for this statement, but the trinitarians do.

Note that this is by far not all evidence in the Bible making rubbish out of the trinitarian dogma. To examine all evidence held as pro-trinity evidence, and that against it, will take a book, not a blog post.

Prophecy

Here I'm going to be a prophet and prophesy that this post won't change the mind of one staunch trinitarian. Isn't it amazing? They believe in the trinity despite the overwhelming strength of the evidence against it. That doesn't say much for the intelligence, or is it intellectual honesty?, of Christians.

Making money out of suckers

They were always there, those of low intelligence. And I'm not talking only of those labelled as metally retarded; no, I'm talking of the majority of people - the workers, the salt of the Earth. In the middle ages they were serfs and were nearly slaves of the property owner on whose property they eked out an existence. In many countries, like Russia, this extended well past the middle ages. In this disempowered state they were fair game to anyone in the right position. They were shamelessly exploited for their labour and given just enough to stay alive to work again tomorrow.

But things change. In some cases it took revolutions, led by con men and idealists, and in other cases the masters slowly developed a conscience and things changed. Then came democracy and each of these children of serfs had a vote. Unfortunately intelligence didn't come with the vote. As Robert Heinlein said, "when the monkeys find out they can vote themselves bananas, they'll never climb another tree." And find out, they did. They were stupid, not mentally retarded.

With democracy came a new kind of con man: the democratically elected politician. All they had to do was convince enough people to vote for them. Abraham Lincoln said, "there are some people who can be fooled all of the time." That's all a politician asks for. The "all people can be fooled some of the time" is a bonus.

Given the fact that these people of low intelligence make up the majority, it's no wonder laws changed to favour them - the politicians want to stay on the gravy train. These people, the ones who don't know the difference between "their" and "there" and "your" and "you're" and "its" and "it's" and use apostrophes to pluralise words, are now the politically correct elite. There is no way one can herd them together and put them to work for a pittance. But that doesn't mean some people don't want to take advantage of them and make money out of them. After all, they're still stupid. One just has to come up with the right formula.

Being stupid, these people can be suckered into wanting what is really of no good use and harmful to them. This can be sold to them at a huge profit. So, how does one trick a sucker? Why, every con man and politician knows: appearances. Dress it up, talk it up and tell them it's desirable. Why are politicians' speeches so flowery and full of fine sounding, empty rhetoric? They know their audience.

So these prospective con men employed statisticians to sort the milking cattle into groups to which different strategies will appeal. And, boy, did they come up with the right answers. Things harmful to these suckers, their families and society are so popular with them they will revolt if it's taken away. Think of drugs, smoking, booze, prostitution, and all the forms of gambling. Many of these are dressed up as the essence of having a good time, and it works. Some cigarettes were sold as the brand of the man's man - the Gunston man knows where he's going. Yeah, straight to the cancer ward. Some menthol falvoured brands were for "ladies." Some with expensive, imported tobacco were for people of refined taste. The same happens with booze. The ultimate con trick with booze is the wine connoisseur. Go online and search for double and triple blind wine tasting. You will see that all this sniff, sniff, taste, twirl, the far away look in the eyes like a dog busy evacuating its bowels, and then the wise pronunciation about the origin of this wine, its character, its merits, are all such a crock of... This masterpiece of deception fooled even many people who don't belong to this stupid group.

So, now you have these people clamouring for what's bad for them and the other group who proclaims itself as benefactors of these morons, selling it to them at a huge profit and the politicians pocketing the cash from these "entepreneurs" and washing their hands and asking "am I my brother's keeper?"

Now I ask you, seeing these morons are asking for it, shouldn't one get on the band wagon and milk these suckers for all one is worth while the going is good?

Local fuel prices

The other day I filled up with fuel. It wasn't cheap. As I drove away I wondered if there were a site where I could look up local fuel prices. When I got home, I did a search. There wasn't much. Not one of those I found could give me fuel prices at local filling stations. As you know, a few hundred meters between filling stations can mean a few cents per liter difference in price.

So I did a bit of research and came up with a concept. Basically it boils down to this: a site where filling stations can sign up for free and enter fuel prices and promotions. Users can search by postcode or postcode and suburb. Then I put some icing on the cake.

To show results, the page doesn't reload. Ajax does its magic. That means fast, really fast. Drop down select boxes populate from the database using Ajax as well. Clicking on the address of a filling station returned with the results will bring up a Google map showing the location of the filling station.

I knew from the start that getting filling stations to sign up would be difficult. I emailed all the fuel companies, handed business cards I had printed to some filling stations - nothing. It takes a while for anything online to take off, if it does. So, I'm still hopeful.

Go and have a look at Petrol Price Site and enter any Australian residential postcode - there are more than 16,000 in the database. Try 2100, 2300, 2320 or something like that.

The question is, how do I get filling stations to sign up?

The booze baron is your friend

When you took your first drink, who was it who saw to it that you grew up in a society where alcohol was part of everyday life and readily available? Why, the booze barons of course. And of course their booze baron fathers and booze baron grand fathers and... It took a lot of work over many centuries to see to it that the booze was there when you took your first drink. And society, then, as now, regarded booze as a grown up thing. And the booze barons made sure everybody knew it was a grown up thing - something for kids to aspire to. As you know, all kids want to be grown up. Why, you ask yourself now. But that's another story. Be that as it may, the booze was there when you took your first drink. You didn't like it at all, but hey, that was what grown ups and the cool crowd did. Remember the booze ads?

Then, when you were a young buck who drank with his friends after work and over weekends, who saw to it that the liquor stores were open seven days a week, from early morning to late at night? That didn't happen by itself, you know. The business hours of many other business concerns were not as liberal, even though some of them would have liked it to be. Those people didn't campaign with such diligence and persistence for their customers as the booze barons did. And their pockets were not as deep. There are always politicians for sale if the price is right. And the booze barons didn't skimp in their efforts to remove all barriers between their customers and their product. Remember how much of a man you felt when you managed to out-drink your friends? Those booze ads depicting a heavy drinker as a real man had something to do with that. Alcohol was the stuff showing one was a man and the essence of having a good time. The world was your oyster and your tankard was always full.

Every time one of your friends was fined for driving under the influence his notch went up in your estimation and your circle of friends drank to that. When one of your friends went to jail for causing an accident which led to severe injuries while drunk, you drank to that. Booze was never in short supply and society had nothing bad to say about the inebriate. On the TV, in the newspapers and magazines, the booze barons told everyone booze was what made the world go round. And, like everyone else, you swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.

When an acquaintance, as drunk as a judge, took on a truck on his motorcycle and lost, it didn't phase you one bit. Your circle discussed it over many beers and decided it had most likely been the truckie's fault. There was more than enought booze to smooth over these few rough patches in life. You all drank a toast to the recently departed acquaintance and forgot about him. This type of thing was never mentioned by the booze barons in their ads, so it must have been a fluke. No need to give it too much thought.

Remember when you got your first tattoo? You went to the bar and proudly showed it off. Yvonne, who was always at the bar, was very impressed by it. She had several tattoos and body piercings. Everyone had many drinks to your tattoo. As if they needed a reason. There was booze aplenty and life was good. That night Yvonne gave you Herpes - like a booze baron, Herpes is a friend for life.

Then you were fired from a job for the first time because of booze. What a bummer. You went to the pub and had a drink to it with your friends. There were several among them who had the same experience. One can always get a new job, they assured you. And you drank and forgot about being fired from your job. Thank you booze barons for the nectar of the gods which can make a man feel good when bad things happen.

An uncle on your mother's side died of alcoholic liver cirrhosis. You knew him well as a kid. He always used to be friendly with you. Well, a man had to die of something. That night you had a few to his memory. It was so good that there was always booze to give life a golden haze. With life as it was, one surely needed it. Running out of booze was not on the cards - the booze barons saw to that. Oh well, one thing less to worry about. Thank heavens for the booze barons.

Things at home slowly got worse and worse. Your wife couldn't understand why you kept losing jobs because of booze. In the end you went on an unemployment benefit and your wife left you, taking the kids with her. There was only one thing to look forward to - your next drink.

Years went by and there was just one thing you could depend on - there will always be booze to take the sting out of life. Thank you booze barons, you said, without you my life would have been lost.

It came on quite suddenly, your slide into near permanent sickness was fast. One week your liver still coped, with the occasional hiccup, then the whites of your eyes started turning yellow. Your GP felt your abdomen and said you had a four cm liver. He sent off some tests, which showed your liver was no longer coping. Your GP said you had alcoholic liver cirrhosis. Just like your uncle, you thought. But there were liver transplants, you thought. Not unless you had been completely off the booze for two years, they told you. Who could do that? You became sicker and sicker. You felt worse than a 1000 hangovers can make a man feel. Well, the booze was still there. And your unemployment payments which now increased because you were chronically ill saw to it that there was always more than enough booze in your house. Your family heard you were, what they called terminal, and your kids, now grown up, started to visit you. You had so much catching up to do. And then you were more in hospital than out of it.

Now, as you are drifting in and out of consciousness, you have the solace of knowing that the booze barons will be there, too, for your youngest son who dropped out of school and is showing all the signs of following in your footsteps. He is in good hands. You can close your eyes on a life well spent knowing your kids will be taken care of. Thank you, booze barons.