Geology

OK, so Mexico seems to be ground zero for the new and improved swine flu. And yesterday a couple of people were killed by an earthquake. Their air quality is atrocious. Poverty is endemic. And the drug cartels are busy killing each other and kidnapping anyone who has more than a few pesos in the bank.

I thought Mexico was a very religious country? Why does God punish them so?

Jim Downey

Via Neatorama, the story of one incredible hoax:

A Professor at the University of Wurzburg in Germany was fooled by his colleagues in the 18th century. They carved limestone into animal shapes and carved the name of God on them in various characters and hid them on a nearby mountain where Professor Beringer liked to hunt for fossils. Beringer became convinced that the carvings were actually created by God himself. Even when people pointed out that the limestone showed chisel marks, he held to his theory and even published a book on the stones.

Doing a little more digging lead to this site, where more information (and lots of images) was available. An excerpt:

Back in 2005, Stephen Darksyde published a fantastic article here at UTI called "Ancestral Magnitudes". It used the metaphor of the "generation", and colorfully described human evolution in terms of our ancestors.

[DarkSyde] If the idea of a flat-earth or the Sun-god is a part of that faith then you either ignore the science and live in willful ignorance-at least in regard to that conflict-and trust to faith, or you adjust your theology. Those really are your only two choices as far as I can see.

What your objection more than likely reveals is that you don't like the idea of being the product of 'random' physics and biochemistry, that you feel there is no room for a Creator in such a scenario. I cannot imagine greater natural evidence for the Brilliance of a Creator than complex process unfolding over billions of years through countless steps in exquisite order spanning the entire Cosmos. The technical skill and artistic vision of such is to be admired in awe, and in that context evolution should be worthy of your devotion, not your disdain.

I encourage you to read the whole thing if you haven't already. It'll blow your mind.

A few days ago, Xavier Onassis from the blog "Doubting Faith" published the same sort of mind-blowingly cool article about our universe, and it puts our place in that universe into stark, unflinching perspective.

[Xavier Onassis] Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that a universe this vast, and this spectacular could not be a random occurrence. Personally, I don't have a problem with it being one big coincidence. But, let's just say it's not.

Do you really think that a hypothetical all-powerful, all-knowing God, responsible for the creation of EVERYTHING in this incredibly vast universe would really give a flying fuck how you voted in the last election? Whether or not a couple of gay guys get married? Whether or not you keep Kosher or go on The Hajj?

Get over yourselves. You're not that fucking important. You need to look at the Big Picture and put things in perspective.

Just excellent. Highly recommended. Great job, Xavier.

I know very little about biology. Just enough to enjoy reading Pharyngula (though I had to go look up what it meant) for the overview PZ Myers provides. When he gets going into the details, I'm usually left behind.

And the math behind a lot of the science reporting done by Carl Zimmer is beyond me as well.

But I turned to both of these sources this morning when I first heard that the Nobel in Physiology/Medicine had been awarded to Fire & Mello, because I knew a little about what their work in RNAi (RNA interference) means from a very personal level. That's because my family has a hereditary disease something like Huntingtons, and RNAi is about the only hope out there for a cure.

No, I don't have the disease (Machado-Joseph Disease, or Spino-cerebullar ataxia type 3 - MJD/SCA-3 for short). But my sister does. And we've seen it kill a number of other family members, up close and personal. There's a small enough population with the disease that it doesn't get a lot of attention or research money. But the basic research that Fire & Mello have done has opened up some possible doors, and there is a chance that there will be some treatment available for suppressing the gene sequence responsible for the disease in time to do my sister some good.