Painting Fakes

University tests prove conclusively that scientists are sometimes wrong. Does this mean we should disbelieve everything scientists say?  Should we toss out of the window widely-attested scientific findings about such important things as the age of the earth, the health effects of tobacco or the processes of climate change? Funnily enough, no.  We should believe them when they are right and disbelieve them when they are wrong .  The more difficult question is: how can you tell? The answer to this is in two parts.  The first is, you need to ask other scientists.  Scientists themselves have two terms for this - peer review, and replication.  Peer review is where you get other scientists to look at a work of science and check that the methodology is sound, the evidence has been properly gathered and supports the conclusion, and so on.  Replication is what you do when results are tentative, or based on small samples - you run the experiment or test...

About 18 months ago I had a good laugh at the expense of then Queensland Opposition Leader Campbell Newman's plan to "move on" colonies of flying foxes which have taken up residence in urban areas.  As I pointed out, the idea sounds good in a soundbite but is rather absurd in practice since flying foxes are not easy to herd. Of course we all know that since then Newman has become Queensland Premier with such a thumping majority that he thinks everyone now has to do his bidding, even wild animals.  Every silly thing he said as opposition leader has now become law - including move-on powers against giant fruit bats.  He is annoyed that some local governments are not falling into line, and is threatening to override them, arrange for the bat move-on himself (at least get one of his slaves to do it - or several!) then send the local council the bill. Sometimes I think I might be one of the few sane people left in Queensland but the Brisbane Times reassures me I'...

Benjamin Disraeli is supposed to have said, "Prediction is extraordinarily difficult, particularly when it concerns the future."  He lived in simpler times.  Now Australian political commentators are all at sea trying to even work out what happened in the past.  After a week of even greater than usual instability in the federal Labor Party, our Prime Minister Julia Gillard retained the leadership by default when Kevin Rudd declined to put his name forward.  No doubt Rudd's supporters are now wondering why they bothered.  Australian electors are also wondering.  Is he a man of principle who kept his word, refusing to challenge despite the pressure from his colleagues?  Or is he a cynical bastard who hung his supporters out to dry when it was clear he would lose?  Either way, Gillard achieves, even if by default, the miracle of surviving yet again.  Whether she can perform the same feat in September against an opponent who will m...

Well blow me down with a feather duster.  After not hearing Lewis' Trilemma (the "lunatic, liar or Lord" argument) for years, I hear it twice in a fortnight. I couple of weeks ago I told you how I heard it from the pulpit in my own church.  Fair enough, our rector is a busy working pastor and doesn't have time to think through the fine points of every sermon.  Then last Thursday a good friend graduated from the Queensland Theological College and I went along to clap as he got his hard-earned piece of paper.  There it was again, popping up its three ugly heads at the close of Douglas O'Donnell's guest speech.  I hope the theological graduates were shaking their heads at the faux pas . It slightly spoiled what was otherwise an intriguing address.  O'Donnell's subject was the Sermon on the Mount, and his point was that the central theme of the sermon is Jesus' authority.  In support of this idea he cited four pieces of evidence. The first ...

Reading Tom Frame  has got me thinking again about the idea of atheism.  When someone says they are an atheist, what are they saying about themselves?  What do the words "I am an atheist" tell you about a person's world view? If you were to ask me my worldview, I would say I am a Christian.  I might qualify that - I am a progressive Christian who has been strongly influenced by liberation theology. From this, you would be able to deduce a lot about my worldview.  You would know that I believe there is a god, although I don't claim full knowledge by any means.  You would know I place a high value on the teachings of Jesus and try to follow them, that I am particularly driven by concern for social justice and for the elimination of poverty.  You would know that I value compassion and empathy, that I have a more or less traditional Chrisitan view about what is right or wrong. The same would be true of someone who said they were a Buddhist, or...

It's interesting how you can live in a society, and yet know so little about it.  You have an intimate circle of friends and relations and you have a reasonable idea what they think and how they react, but you have no way of knowing, without detailed research, if what you and your friends think and experience is typical. Tom Frame is a former Anglican Bishop to the Defence Forces and current Director of St Mark's National Theological Centre in Canberra.  His book  Losing My Religion is an attempt to lift the veil on one aspect of our society - the level and nature of religious belief and unbelief in Australia.  Has unbelief increased in Australia?  If so what are the causes of this growing unbelief, and what are its consequences?  Sadly, his attempt to answer these questions is at best only partly successful.  There are two reasons for this.  One is that the available evidence is insufficient to answer such a complex question. ...

I was surprised in church last Sunday to hear our preacher propound the "lunatic, liar or Lord" argument.  I thought he might have known better. This argument did not originate with CS Lewis, but he popularised it in his 1952 book Mere Christianity, and it has been widely used by Evangelical apologists ever since.  The argument runs something like this: Jesus made a number of quite startling claims about himself, like "the Father and I are one", or "no-one comes to the Father but through me".  In the light of these claims, it is not reasonable to suggest that Jesus was merely a good man or an inspired teacher.  If he made these claims believing them to be true, but they were not, he was a lunatic with delusions of gradeur.  If he made them knowing they were  not  true, he was simply a charlatan.  If he was neither of these things, then we are forced to acknowledge his lordship and submit to him. Apologetics serves two purposes.  It...