John Lennox at Waterloo

John Lennox strikes again! This time at the University of Waterloo. I'm reblogging comments of Jeff Shallit who, having had the patience to attend his lectures, only found out that they are void of content. And I found out that Lennox keeps saying the same thing, month after month, year after year, supporting irrational beliefs and preaching to those who are impressed by the fact that he has a PhD and that he is a mathematician. (Wow!)

It's Pascal Lecture Time Again -- John Lennox at Waterloo 

John Lennox - Talk #1: "Do Science and God Mix?" 

John Lennox Hoist by His Own Petard

John Lennox Talk #2: Miracles 

A God's Undertaker, by John Lennox: a very brief review

I bought this book a few years ago, after the debate between John Lennox and Christopher Hitchens on the subject with the (rather silly) title "can atheism save Europe?", organized as part of the 2008 Edinburgh festival. I bought it because I found Lennox's arguments profoundly stupid, especially for someone who is professor of mathematics.

The most fundamental problem with the book is that Lennox cannot avoid "using" mathematics to "prove" that (his particular version of) god exists. Indeed, for most mathematicians, it will be clear, after scanning the book, that Lennox proves nothing. Rather, he takes the standpoint of a learned academic who tells the layman: "look, I'm a mathematician and know how to multiply numbers; therefore, when I tell you that the probability that the Universe appeared without design is 10^-40 then I know what I mean because I'm a professor of mathematics!"

This is the kind of arguments that Lennox uses. Although they can be dismissed immediately, they appear to be sophisticated to the layman, This is the only reason that Lennox appears eloquent. He disguises the same old tiresome arguments (e.g., god-of-the gaps) in "mathematics" and "science".

I pointed this out to Lennox twice, in person, but, of course, he can't reply. One of my questions was: "How come you chose to defend, support, and propagate the particular religion you speak about, i.e. your Northern Irish version of Christianity, and can't see that this is an event which is highly correlated with the fact that you grew up in Northern Ireland and that your parents had the same religion?" His reply was: "My parents were so liberal that gave me all sorts of books to read when I was little. They even gave me the Communist Manifesto. And I chose Christianity after studying lots of references."

Problem with this reply: Yes, you, say, were so enlightened and lucky, but can you say the same for everyone who adopts a religion? Can't you see the correlation between one's upbringing and one's religion? (Hint: examine the probabilities...)

William Lane Craig and “Intellectual” Apologists

Recently, I was disgusted, once again, by the pretentiousness and silliness of the sophisticated-wannabe apologist, John Lennox. First, because he pretends to be totally independent of creationist jerks (he claims that the creationistic beliefs are nonsense), but nevertheless he accepts an award from Phillip Johnson, one of the most despicable creationists. Second, because he, like so many other religious bloggers, has disabled comments on his website and he does not respond to messages. Below is an excellent posting about Lennox-type apologists, namely those who (mis)use science in order to "prove" their point. It is taken verbatim from aNadder.

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Different apologists have different styles. One style is to be an academic apologist who is often associated with rigour and intellectualism in the eye of their audience. They often have academic posts and might have a reasonable and decent collection of published work, usually in philosophy. The best examples are probably William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga and possibly (as highlighted by a recent post) John Lennox.
I find this type of intellectual style of argument a lot more annoying in the end because I see it as nothing more than marketing/branding. The vast majority of arguments I’ve seen from such apologists are just as bad as any other apologist’s argument. But because of the marketing involved in stating your argument formally, or citing academic references, people often fall for it. This includes atheists, for instance Luke of CommonSenseAtheism often fawned over just how rigorous William Lane Craig is compared to his unprepared and scrappy atheist debate opponents*.
The best antidote to this is Chris Hallquist’s several extended takedowns of William Lane Craig. In 2007, Chris wrote a chapter-by-chapter review of Craig’s book Reasonable Faith. It’s long but I can’t recommend it enough since it goes through loads of techniques common to these apologists. In the last month, Hallquist has also been busy with short blog posts on specific aspects of William Lane Craig’s arguments, which I also recommend (it covers things extensively):

1. Next up: Everything I have to say about William Lane Craig
2. A note on my sources for Craig’s arguments
3. The Leibnizian cosmological argument
4. Kalam I: Why the Big Bang isn’t evidence for God
5. Kalam II: Philosophical arguments for the beginning of the universe
6. Kalam III: The very brief part that actually argues for God
7. Two more revealingly bad cosmological arguments from Craig’s debates
8. The fine-tuning argument
9. The moral argument
10. Craig’s case for the resurrection of Jesus
11. Jesus’ resurrection: was Paul hallucinating?
12. Why is Craig so dishonest?
13. On Dawkins’ refusal to debate Craig

The bottom line is that the intellectual arguments are being given disingenuously and these apologists admit it. As Hallquist documents extensively, William Lane Craig’s actual Christian belief stems from the testimony of the Holy Spirit. He considers unbelief to be a wilful denial of the Holy Spirit and explicitly states that his use of reason is ministerial only (ie. that reason is subservient to the gospels and should only be used as a tool to draw people to Christianity). Similarly, Alvin Plantinga’s hallmark argument is that belief in a Christian God should be considered “properly basic”, meaning at the same level as our other beliefs that we don’t need to justify (eg. that we and the external world both exist).
In the end, the intellectual theatrics of these apologists are a mere tool. They’re meant to convince people of beliefs the apologists themselves admit don’t stem from reason. A good litmus test for this is evolution: Lennox, Craig and Plantinga all have seriously misguided views on evolution that border on creationism. I think they tend to play this down as this would undermine their intellectual branding. This might be a good litmus test for one of those apologists: probe their views on something like evolution a bit more. They may continue to spout the same refuted canards, just using prettier language.
The bottom line is that these are all very smart people. There’s also no denying that they have had legitimate academic careers and have contributed to secular philosophy in various fields. But when they’re arguing for Jesus, they’re not being intellectual at the base level. Which means there’s no reason to give their views more respect than the “obviously ridiculous” apologists like Ray Comfort (aka bananaman).

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*I agree that Craig has usually been better prepared and better structured than his opponents. He’s also better at debating tricks and misdirection. But these two things do NOT mean that he has the better argument even in a single instance.

John Lennox, his aunt Matilda (and her pies), and Creationism

There are religious folk, like George Pell, who was my previous post's subject, who are decent enough to suggest (or appear to be doing so) that one cannot approach religion through science, that it is beyond it, something else, etc., although they fail to suggest what this something else is. Bill Hick, of Revelation TV is such a decent chap. He has all kinds of crazy beliefs, but he doesn't say that they are the result of a scientific process.

There are others, however, like John Lennox, Oxford Professor in Mathematics (Algebra), who are trying hard to justify religion through Science. In doing so, they use their scientific hat to appear that their arguments come straight from the centres of their prestigious scientific academic establishments. It is easy: most laymen have no idea what's going on in the Oxford Mathematics Department, neither do they know whether Lennox knows Quantum Mechanics or General Relativity. All that Lennox has to do is to pretend that his religious argument comes straight from his "academic works". People will buy that, even if he will never explicitly say so.

I have been in two talks by Lennox (one was a monologue, and the other a debate with Christopher Hitchens), both in Edinburgh. On both occasions he used the following argument, a version of the Pie Argument, as anadder calls it:

My aunt Matilda bakes a wonderful pie. I have two friends, a physicist and a chemist. I ask the chemist to analyse the pie and he tells me, very precisely, of the chemical composition of every part of it. I ask the physicist, who reveals to me all kinds of scientific facts about the pie. But then I ask both of them: "why did aunt Matilda bake the pie?" None of the two can answer the question. No matter how hard they try to analyse the pie, scientifically, they will never be able to answer the question.

(Ergo, god exists; but Lennox, being smart enough, leaves this conclusion to the audience.)

Bravo Lennox! What a wonderful argument. Even a child can come up with a better one.

Again, however, what Lennox's fallacy is, is that he is trying to attach a purpose to the baking of the pie, a purpose which is contained within the pie itself! For better analysis of this stupidity, read anadder.

Let me add that Lennox has declared himself not a creationist, not an intelligent designer. He does not, he appears to be saying, sympathize with these fundamentalists. And yet, this year, Lennox accepted the Phillip Johnson award. Philip Johnson is one of the most despicable creationists. His achievements include: he rejects evolution; he thinks that god can be explained scientifically; he is an AIDS denialist; he fires people who don't agree with him; he suffers from islamophobia; he is, in fact, one of the founders of the intelligent design movement--a creationist spin-off; he is advisor and co-founder of the discovery institute (also known as dishonesty institute); he supports teaching of creationism in public schools. More on Phillip Johnson, here.

Now, how can one reconcile (i) accepting an award that bears the name of one of the most vicious creationists and (ii) claim that you do not support creationism? I'd be really ashamed.

On Lennox, again

This is a reposting of an older post. Sometime ago, I visited John Lennox's site and made, among other things a comment on the irrationality of choosing religion A vs B and pointed out that Lennox's religion is probably the result of his upbringing. One responded replied thus:

Christianity, of course, provides the best explanation and best evidence over any other religion.

Of course, statement proved, case closed, QED. Don't you love this kind of "rationality"? What is worse is that the respondent is not even aware of the ilogicalness of his claim. I wanted to respond, but Lennox has disabled responses.

Those silly pseudo-scientists, II

I just checked Lennox's site, and saw a posting of mine there, a response to other postings, going like this:

The reason that it is ridiculous to bring god/religion into society is precisely because I care a lot about the well-being of all human beings and all life on Earth. Infanticide had been practiced in the name of gods in the past.
The second reason that it is irrational to talk about gods and religions is that there are many gods and many religions. Which one should I choose? By convention, typically, one chooses the gods/religion he/she is brought up with (like Lennox). But why is this a right choice?
The third reason it makes no sense to have religion in our society it is because it makes people lazy: for instance, you think it is a cosmic accident that we are here. You need to spend lots of years and effort in order to understand scientific facts which are not possible to grasp by trivial observations. If someone says “the Bible says so”, most likely this person is lazy.
Finally, let me correct you and others in three of your inferences:
1) Someone mentions the word “random” in their message. I very much doubt that they know what it means.
2) You say I am a leftist. I am not. You also think that being leftist is related to being atheist.
3) Perhaps you are implying that I am atheist. I am not. I am neither atheist nor theist nor deist.
4) Lennox is an ex-mathematician, just as Collins is an ex-atheist. The thing they have both in common is that they use their credentials in order to impress people who don’t have them.
5) Somebody else talks about god (i) as if there is one god and (ii) as if god is male (he uses the male pronoun). Hindus claim there are many gods. Why should I accept one and not two or five and a half gods?

One person replied to me and, among other things, he said this:

One must first investigate the claims of religions, and which one produces the best explanation. Christianity, of course, provides the best explanation and best evidence over any other religion. Saying “there are many religions” does not entail “all religions are false,” which seems to be the kind of logic you are implying here.

Can you see what  kind of mistakes he makes? (Hint: they are underlined.)

Those silly pseudo-scientists

Listen to this guy, John Lennox, explaining why science cannot explain everything. His argument is this:

Someone makes a cake (it is his aunt, Matilda). The chemists can tell what elements the cake consists of. The physicists can tell the particles comprising the atoms in the cake. The mathematicians can describe the equations of motion of these particles. But can we assert that the cake was completely explained? Suppose we ask the experts why the cake was made. They can't tell! But, aunt Matilda can! Of course she can, because she made the cake herself.

I've heard this fellow use this idiotic argument several times in the past. Live. With this argument, he wants to "prove" that science has its limits. And, therefore, he implies that (his) god exists.  Go figure.... The sad thing is not that John Lennox is (was) a mathematician (he is now a priest) at Oxford. It is that he has followers...

There is no limit to human idiocy: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." (Einstein)

Crossing boundaries

I was inspired to write this entry, mainly as a reminder to myself for future reference, when I learned, yesterday, that a plant geneticist, Dr John C Sanford, wrote a book titled Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome in which he probably abuses the concept of entropy in order to draw conclusions about his own field: "This book strongly refutes the Darwinian concept that man is just the result of a random and pointless natural process." The sentence, appearing in the book's description is wrong: the Darwinian process is not just random and cannot be described, merely, as a random process. (I also say "probably abuses" because I have not read the book yet.) I'd be interested to see if Jeff Shallit has spotted this, as he often likes to comment on the abuse of Information Theory by Creationists/Intelligent designers.

People transgress boundaries all the time, especially in Academia, and, often, for good reasons. In fact, I am a big supporter of cross-disciplinary research. However, it is not enough to merely have a haphazard knowledge of a secondary field: experience and knowledge are necessary. Otherwise, funny things can happen. Just as the Sanford example I mentioned above. Let me mention a few more:

The domain of biologically-inspired computing: Although I don't condemn the field, there are many silly papers written all the time. Here is one, published in the IEEE Transactions of Evolutionary Computation. This paper says the following, literally: If you have 1 million grains of sand numbered 1, 2, up to 1 million, one of which is red, but you don't know which is red, then there is no algorithm that will perform better than blind search; that is, choose a grain at random, look at the colour, and keep doing it until you find the red one. This theorem, now known as the No Free-Lunch Theorem (NFLT) is proved in a convoluted (and silly) manner in the paper. Many papers of this sort are produced (daily?) by Computer Scientists, Mathematicians and Engineers who decided to use Biological language in their research (without, perhaps, understanding this discipline).

The mathematically-inspired research on religion: Religion, per se, is, of course, not an academic discipline (or should not be), just as Astrology is not. (The study of the religious phenomenon, as a social phenomenon, on the contrary, is an academic discipline, just as the study of mental diseases is.) However, there are many researchers and "researchers" in Academia who have decided to use Mathematics to prove that their religion is correct. I'm saying it bluntly, but it is so even if they pretend to be arguing only about the existence of a deity or about design in the universe. Ultimately, they are only arguing from their own religious viewpoint. Two examples here: William Dembski, Professor of Theology and Science at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, ex-mathematician, is constantly abusing his prior field, Mathematics, in order to promote the so-called Intelligent Design (ID) ideas, which are versions of the so-called Creationism. In his Jesus Tomb Math paper is not the worst example. But his papers where he "uses" Information Theory for ID purposes are a good laugh. Second example is John Lennox, Professor of Algebra at the more reputable University of Oxford. He is a mathematician and a priest and uses mathematics to "prove" that god exists. I've written about him before.

The physico- mathematically-inspired research on post-modern philosophy is another case, beautifully exposed by Alan Sokal. In his paper, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", he exposes the idiocies of post-modernism, by writing a paper on this field, a paper which he managed to publish! Irene Irigaray is one of the post-modern philosophers who, among other things, argues that equations in Physics are predominantly male.

Examples of this sort abound. I can think of some more. I would be interested in discovering the ones I am not aware of.

Poe's Law

Yesterday, I saw a comment following a posting about Stoning in Islam that read as follows (copied and pasted verbatim):

Dear ,Brother
the emobreoilded allegation by some ignorants to Islam Quran that ; the stoning the adoltery (Rajum Alzani wa l Zaniyah)in fact these brutial canons do only apply in the jewish and christians manuscripts the Turah & the Gospel ,Providentialy We Muslims simply dont have these canon or what so ever Quranic verses revelation stating to stoning the adoltery, even there is no any Quranic verse stating that our beloved compassionat pious Prophet Moahmed has ever ordered to stone someone to death, we all are aware this is a canon must emerged from the Quranic law, according the Quran , the only canonical verses the issues of the adoltery is (Q, 24.1-4) the woman and man guilty of adultery falog each of them a hundered stripes without any compassion in their case matter prescriped by Allah faith, if you truly believe in Allah and the last day and let some of the believers to witness their punishment . plus according to the Sunnah canon its very strict and almost impossible to prove that, two people are commited adultery by a third part(Q.24-4) so the case dissmiss, dont tell me about the Hadith bring me a prove from the Quran I am sure thats so-called hadith of the jewish Woman been stone to death its completly false Hadith, come on Muslims wake up how come on earth our beloved pious Prophet have his own Canon proceed in a deferent Jewish canons, we all know that the final definitive pious prophet Mohamed peace be upon him, canonical oreders abrogated all the pious prophets that been send before him.

peace & love regards to all
Abdulla Mahir .

I wrote a followup comment:

The last comment provides, quite eloquently, a rational and logical explanation of stoning. I’m afraid that none of us know the scriptures well, neither can we ever know them, for they are, as witnessed from the above, written in arabic. I’m afraid we may have missed several important points, precisely those that have been outlined above for our benefit. In view of this, you may wish to consider rewriting your post.

My fellow blogger Michael of http://anadder.com did not immediately catch the sarcasm of it and explained:

Then again Poe’s Law can make it very hard to pass of mockery of religion as sarcasm (at least on the net)…:)

So I wondered what Poe's Law is because I had not encountered the terminology before. And here is what the Urban Dictionary says:

Poe's Law
Similar to Murphy's Law, Poe's Law concerns internet debates, particularly regarding religion or politics.

"Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing."

In other words, No matter how bizzare, outrageous, or just plain idiotic a parody of a Fundamentalist may seem, there will always be someone who cannot tell that it is a parody, having seen similar REAL ideas from real religious/political Fundamentalists.

The following is an actual Internet post to Biblically defend a flat Earth:

"All I was saying was that either the earth is flat, and the bible is correct, or the earth is round, and the bible is incorect, i'm going to study the issue more and deside for myself which route I want to take. Either Atheist evolutionist, who agrees with all of mainstream sciences, or flat earth litteral bible believer.
I'm leaning toward being an atheist, because if I can't believe the bible to be completly litteraly true, then I can't believe Jesus when he speaks about heaven, etc..
That would make the moon landing a fake, and pretty much all of modern science false..."

Very nice. Indeed, indeed! It is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing! Very true. Sometimes, it is hard not to reply by sarcasm and cynicism to religious fundamentalist claims, to creationist/intelligent design idiocies such as those of Dembski or Lennox and many others. You cannot help it when you want to cry out loud: Stop those childish claims! Enough with your sense of moral superiority! But no! No matter what you say, there is always someone who will take it literally. I once wrote about how beautiful Lennox's argument involving his aunt Matilda was. Read it here if you care to waste 2 minutes. Briefly, Lennox has an aunt, Matilda, who makes nice cakes. His scientist friends can tell him what the cake contains but can never answer to the question why Matilda baked it. I wrote that, obviously, Matilda bakes it because she's a good and caring person and does so because she is a good Christian; and that this sophisticated argument of Lennox is evidence for existence of God. You can't believe how many thanks I received for my comment and how many people thought that it was great of me to extend Lennox's argument in such a nice way.

This is Poe's Law at work, right Michael?

Today, Jeffrey Shallit posted on why he thinks that religion makes smart people stupid. Well, even though I cannot prove that this is a universal law, it seems that Lennox is a prime example of it: he used to be a mathematician but he turned into religion. Instead of trying to work on his subject (Group Theory), he became a priest and an advocate of religion. I've been to two of his talks and, indeed, all I could say is that his arguments are naive. Famous scientists in the past have tried hard to come up with arguments about the existence of god. But Lennox does not belong to this class. He says nothing that has not been said before and does so by abusing science.

Teachings from the Old Testament

DEUTERONOMY: WHEN TO STONE YOUR SON
21:18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
21:19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
21:20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
21:21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

This is what the Torah teaches. Now, both Jews and Christians (and, I think, Muslims, too) accept the Torah (or whatever they call it) as one of their religious texts. Stoning in Judaism has been abandoned. But stoning in Islam is still practiced, but only for adultery. The question that arises, if one thinks rationally, is:

Why do religious texts remain unaltered if their teachings are considered dangerous (stoning, hanging) or obsolete (eating certain foods)? Every Jew and Christian, despite the fact they do not (hopefully) still practice stoning, will tell you that the Torah (almost identical to the so-called Old Testament) shall remain unaltered. Why? How can they explain the numerous stupidities, brutalities, nonsense written in it?

Many will maintain that religion and science can be reconciled (and even certain scientists--see, e.g., John Lennox--will tell you that religion is compatible with science) . Wrong! In science, everything is put to test. A theory is tested with experiment, an experiment gives rise to a new theory and hypothesis. Logic is applied. Science never considers anything settled. It constantly rejuvenates itself. This is not the case with religion, as the example above shows: irrelevant, dangerous and obsolete texts will be held as authoritative forever. No questions asked.

Not for creationists

It has just being discovered that the earliest accepted date for animal life on Earth is tens of millions of years than what was thought to be. Traces of ancient sponges were found in Oman dating some 635 million years ago.

Not very good news for (young Earth) creationists. who believe that the Earth was created within the last ten thousand years, literally as described in an ancient book called Genesis. Creationists are typically not very intelligent people who feel the need (due to their religious belief) to attack science, distort reality and propagate myths. More recently, some creationists, in response to not being intelligent, relabelled themselves as intelligent designers. Assuming this label, they decided to embrace science and use it in order to prove that what creationists believe is true. Unfortunately, every single attempt of intelligent designers to use scientific methods has been discredited. One of their most major proponents of the intelligent design version of creationism is a mathematician called William Dembski. Having failed to produce anything significant in mathematics, he started a career as creationist.

There are many versions of creationism, some more hilarious than others, such as those who think the Earth is flat, the young-Earthe creationists-those who think that the answers are in Genesis, and those who think that...

EARWAX SHOWS GOD'S INTELLIGENT DESIGN!

I read this in the blog of Jason Rosenberg and had a good laugh!

For more fun of the earwax kind, please visit the homepage of the Institute for Creation Research, in Dallas, Texas, specializing in young Earth creationism, rejecting the science of evolutionary biology, abusing the word "research" and "science" and constantly trying to get approval to teach their idiocies in schools.

Closer to home, the Edinburgh creation group, seems to be active in propagating lies such as that Darwin was wrong, that intelligent designers are producing science, and that the (christian) Bible is to be seen as a scientific document! Fortunately, in the UK not many give a damn about such liars, but people like John Lennox are trying to propagate religion through science from a more "sophisticated" point of view, in subtler ways.

Lennox vs Hitchens

Some time ago (August 2008), someone came up with the idea to have a debate between Christopher Hitchens and John Lennox on the (silly) question whether Europe should prefer the new atheism (whatever the latter means and whatever the verb "to prefer" means), as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. Well, the debate took place, Hitchens "lost", and Lennox pulled from his usual bag of naive arguments (based on pseud-science) to defend his faith. I was there, I asked some questions to Lennox, I received silly answers, I was interviewed by the BBC, and made some "friends" who tried to proselytize me by sending me several emails afterwards. I wrote about it on the blog wet lenses and so here's the link for the record of it.

As for Lennox, I've written about him before, for example, here and here.

International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID)

I just came across a site with an interesting name: International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID. They describe themselves as follows:

The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) is a cross-disciplinary professional society that investigates complex systems apart from external programmatic constraints like materialism, naturalism, or reductionism. The society provides a forum for formulating, testing, and disseminating research on complex systems through critique, peer review, and publication. Its aim is to pursue the theoretical development, empirical application, and philosophical implications of information- and design-theoretic concepts for complex systems.

All that sounds good. However, a few clicks on the site reveals that it is authored by a number of religious fellows whose aim is to promote absurd claims through science. Their aim is to show that "complex systems" such as human beings and the universe have been created by a deity. They wish to (mis)use science and mathematics in order to disprove physical laws or rational arguments. These endeavours are now known as "creationism" or "intelligent design", the latter being a pseudo-scientific version of the former. Alas, the list of fellows ISCID contains names which cannot be taken too seriously: E.g., William Dembski is a failed mathematician who decided to devote his career for the promotion of Intelligent Design. John Lennox is a priest who has done work in Algebra (finite groups) at Oxford and writes books in which he uses silly arguments to prove that his version of god (not just any god, but the particular one he revers--he is a north-irish protestant) is responsible for the creation of life and the universe. None of these fellows have ever written anything serious on the concepts they try to deal with (information theory, complex systems, probability theory, algorithms), yet ISCID claims they are experts!

Conclusion: ISCID is a joke and cannot be taken seriously.

Leave science alone

Here is a 21st century phenomenon: religious morons (ab)using science to prove that god exists, and, more specifically, the particular version of the god they believe in. I shall come back to this important new technique of religious bigots, but, for now, here is an example. The book of some R. D. Duncan discusses "[t]he periodic table of elements presented as never before! The tiniest elements that make up the world are more than just scientific odds and ends. Each and every one is an opportunity to celebrate the power, wisdom, order, and ingenuity of our Creator!". I searched to find out about the qualifications of this Duncan, but I had no luck. Surely, knowledge of Chemistry if not important for such books. But a dose of idiocy and blind faith certainly is. What a bunch of balloney!

But, hang on a minute. If you think this is to hard to digest, then how about the easier version, God’s Design for Chemistry, designed for grades 3–7, or the even easier one, God’s Design for Life, for grades 1-6 (both published by Answers in Genesis–US)?

If this is not mind-fucking, then what is?

Fine, one could argue, let those religious bigots, like Duncan, publish their books and circulate it amongst their circles. These authors have no scientific credentials, so they won't be taken seriously. But a more major problem is posed by those who do have scientific credentials and do try to promote (their version of) god and (their version of) religion by (ab)using their scientific titles in order to deceive laymen? An example of people in this category is Dr John Lennox of Oxford, who, by claiming his authority as a mathematician (an algebraist in fact working on finite groups), produces naive and childish arguments and books to prove that science implies that (his version of) god exists and that (his version of) religion is true. More on this soon...