Pell vs Dawkins

by braciator

I was watching Dawkins vs Pell the other day on ABC’s Questions & Answers, how they discussed Secularism vs Religion. I admit I wasn’t watching the full program, nor following it closely, only watching it time to time while surfing the internet. Morals and evolution was touched upon.

In my time I had my fair share of several debates about religions vs secularism. I remember my debate with a few religious people about evolution, some of them are just source of laughter, and I did sound ridiculous at times. One of them was Australian devoted Christian (young) who truly believe that Earth is only 30,000 years old, and was using science to counter the arguments. Somehow it was twisted as she was arguing about the power of water eroding rivers that the gorge (I think it was Grand Canyon) couldn’t be millions years old on one of the guide tour, and the fact she was accusing the tour guide as a liar. That was pretty much incredible, but anyway the point was she was using Noah’s Flood as reason why gorges were made, and that mountains are only few thousand years old and they do not grow upwards.

I took pains to explain much to my annoyance that tectonic plates crushing into each other created the Himalayas, and still are growing upwards, which is a fact! Something she disputes (alas, should have taken geography  along with Religious studies!), so I took her point and argue, okay lets assume she is right that the Noah’s Flood carved out all mountains and gorges, and the tallest mountain is Mt Everest which is 8,800 metres, so according to her ‘science’ the Noah Flood eroded from top of that mountain, which umm the sea level was at 8,800 metres above the current sea level… really? Where did all the water go! Of course she drew up the God’s card. Never mind the fact that rains can erode, she didn’t know that as she could have countered me!

Pell mentioned that Neanderthals being our cousins and where are they now? Dawkins’ response was simple “Extinct!”. “Exactly!” was the response. Ahem, once you give religious people time and space, their comments will continue to contradict themselves however they will not acknowledge or realise it. This is my favourite part of the show;

Pell: “For some extraordinary reason God chose the Jews. They weren’t intellectually the equal of either the Egyptians or-”

“Intellectually?” Jones interceded. “How can you know, intellectually?”

“Because you see the fruits of their civilisation. Egypt was the great power for thousands of years before Christianity. Persia was a great power. Caldia. The little Jewish people were originally shepherds. They were stuck, they’re still stuck.”

“That’s not a reflection of your intellectual capacity is it?” asked Jones. “Whether or not you’re a shepherd.”

“No it’s not but it’s a reflection of your intellectual development,” said Pell. “Many, many people are very, very clever and not highly intellectual.”

“Can I just interrupt, are you including Jesus in that, who obviously was Jewish? And was of that community?” Jones inquired.

“Exactly,” answered Pell.

“So…. intellectually not up to it?”

“That’s a nice try, Tony,” Pell replied. “The people in terms of sophistication, the Psalms are remarkable, in terms of their buildings and that sort of thing, they don’t compare with the great powers. But Jesus came not as an officer to the elite. he came to the poor and the battlers. And for some reason he chose a very difficult, and actually they are now intellectually elite because over the centuries they’ve been pushed out of every other form of work.”

That was poor use of the word “intellectually”. I am not sure why intelligence has to be involved in the debate, but when you think about it, with his knowledge on evolution, it is rather ironic that he isn’t up to understanding evolution intellectually. Pell and other religious people, are pretty much set in their own belief, that they will continue to misunderstand the common misconception of evolution, such as we come from Apes. (Another pet peeve of Dawkins and mine, the proper answer is that Apes and Homo Sapiens share same ancestor.)

I am not sure why Pell thought the Jews are now intellectually elite because they have received God’s word. Has he forgotten that the Bible forbids lending? The Torah doesn’t forbid lending, so over centuries Jews were able to practice lending and some forms of banking at the expense of Christians. (That would explain simply why they are targeted.) I know that is a simple answer and there are a lot more factors involved, but since Pell answered it simply, I thought I would counter it simple.

Can I interject just a bit that Jesus came to the poor and the battler. There have been a recent research among beer historians that Jesus gave Beer, not wine to the poor. That would make a lot of sense cos Jesus all need to turn water into beer, by adding barley. (Hops weren’t added for another thousand years.) Yeast wasn’t discovered until 18th Century and the fermentation was assumed God’s miracle prior to the discovery. So it is fair to deduct that Jesus did make beer and give out bread. The Catholic Church changed the practice and wording to wine in the Middle Ages because wine were exclusive and reserved for the elite, and probably some clever archbishop scholar knew that turning water into beer isn’t a miracle, but turning water into wine would.

Anyway it was pointless, and frivolous and damn annoying to argue with a devoted Christian with flimsy knowledge of science! No matter how much science you use, they will continue to find a way to use God’s card.

One of my favourite questions often asked what is before the Big Bang? Nothing is often the answer. I don’t have a problem with nothing because I have always assumed ‘Nothing’ as we don’t know and I am very comfortable with the fact that we don’t know yet. I often raised the logical argument; all the laws of Physics we have today, law of constant, theory of gravity, theory of relativity, so on all works in our current Universe. The key word is ‘in’, we don’t know whether they would be same before the Big Bang, the laws may apply differently. There is no way to find out because we are inside the Universe, even experiment in vacuum would be affected by our laws because we are inside the Universe. Einstein said in his Theory of Relativity “The laws of physics are the same for observers in inertial frame of reference.” As physics are observing phenomena in an expanding universe which started shortly after the Big Bang, therefore physics cannot explain at zero of time. One of the fundamental physic laws and my favourite; “Energy cannot be created nor destroyed.” Law of conservation of energy. I will address this quote more in details in latter post. That would indicate that nothing is destroyed nor created, merely transferred into another form, since the Big Bang. and as I said before that physics laws doesn’t apply to the point of the Big Bang, then energy can be created or destroyed only at that point. But as I said before, I am comfortable that we don’t know yet, and am in no hurry.