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From RomeReports.com

Stephen Hawking's God gaffe

by Simon Rowney

With a series of conceptual confusions, many inherited from his predecessors but some completely original, Stephen Hawking has revealed his stunning lack of philosophical subtlety.  His latest contribution is to challenge the validity of proofs for the existence of God but the bizarre argumentation and obvious misunderstandings severely damage his credibility as a cosmologist.
Continue reading at CathBlog - Stephen Hawking's God gaffe

Orang-utans are not remotely like humans

19th August 2010 – Helene Guldberg, Spiked.

Experts should know better than to claim that great apes can communicate in a similar way to human beings.

Time and again, we are told that humans are not that special after all: abilities previously thought to be uniquely human are now purportedly evident amongst the great apes. The most recent claim, published in the current issue of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, is that orang-utans use mime to make themselves understood.

Continue reading Orang-utans are not remotely like humans at Spiked.

Utilitarian ideology hampers fight against African AIDS

29th February 2008 – Mercator Net.

I recently visited Ethiopia to help conduct an HIV and AIDS prevention training program as part of a grant by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The participants were expecting yet another biological crash course in how to minimise the risk of infection. Instead, it centred around themes like true love versus false love, respect and communication. These are all aspects of mutual faithfulness as a strategy to avoiding HIV infection, the "B" of the Ugandan-inspired "ABC" strategy in which A=Abstinence, B=Be Faithful and C=Condoms.

For the men and women attending the training, the "Be Faithful" approach was a revelation and a relief. One woman, a wife and a mother, expressed a sentiment shared by many by saying she was pleased with this approach and the horizons it opened in people’s hearts and minds. But she was also puzzled as to why such basic human themes are not more routinely promoted in the context of HIV prevention, adding: "Why hasn’t anyone explained it like this before?" By the end of the week, another married couple decided to reunite instead of continuing to hold different jobs in different cities.

Continue reading Utilitarian ideology hampers fight against African AIDS

You have dogmas, but I don’t

11th August – Mercator Net.

The world’s most dangerous idea would have to bear upon its biggest problems; these are not political or economic in nature, but ultimately cultural in origin – which is to say that they are in some way related to religion.  It would be difficult not to include among them the breakdown of the family – the scale and speed of which is hard to imagine without the birth control pill.  Though it promises “control” – an illusion – it has instead delivered discord, demographic disaster, and ultimately deflationary pressures in the economy. A similar frame of mind – “if it works, it is ok” – also justified the unscrupulous financial practices which contributed mightily to our present economic woes.

More precisely, then, our biggest problems can be traced back to moral and intellectual shortcomings which, in our present cultural climate, are no longer recognized as such.  To point them out is to risk giving offense; contemporary life is thus governed by deceptive if fashionable convention rather than by truth.  

Continue reading at MercatorNet: You have dogmas, but I don’t

Being human is no big deal???

11th August 2010 – Mercator Net.

A few years ago, a New York Times reporter celebrated the extension of human rights to nonhuman animals, after the environmental committee of the Spanish Parliament voted to grant great apes the right to life and freedom. In an odd but recurrent pattern of increasing animal rights at the expense of human dignity, the reporter exclaimed that we were kidding ourselves with our belief in unalienable “human” (his quote) rights.

Continue reading at MercatorNet: Being human is no big deal

Does Being a Genius in Mathematics Make Hawking Wise?

 From the Catholic League:

HAWKING POSITS FALSE CONFLICT
June 8, 2010

In an interview last night with ABC-News reporter Diane Sawyer, scientist Stephen Hawking opined that human life is "insignificant in the universe," and then went on to say that "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason." He concluded by saying, "Science will win because it works."

Catholic League president Bill Donohue took exception to Hawking's views today:

How any rational person could belittle the pivotal role that human life plays in the universe is a wonder, but it is just as silly to say that all religions are marked by the absence of reason. While there are some religions which are devoid of reason, there are others, such as Roman Catholicism, which have long assigned it a special place.

It was the Catholic Church that created the first universities, and it was the Catholic Church that played a central role in the Scientific Revolution; these two historical contributions made possible Mr. Hawking's career.

Reason, in pursuit of truth, has been reiterated by the Church fathers for nearly two millennia. That is why Hawking posits a false conflict: in the annals of the Catholic Church, there is no inherent conflict between science and religion. Quite the contrary: science and religion, in Catholic thought, are complementary properties. Ergo, nothing is gained by alleging a "victory" of science over religion.

Religion without reason, Pope Benedict XVI instructed us in his Regensburg address in 2006, leads to fanaticism. That much Hawking seems to understand. What he doesn't get is its contra: science without faith also leads to disaster—the genocidal regimes in Germany, the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia being Exhibits A, B, C and D.

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It’s not uncommon for Hawking to make some fairly bizarre comments:

On taking a weightless flight with Zero Gravity Corporation Hawking said:

“Many people have asked me why I am taking this flight. I am doing it for many reasons. First of all, I believe that life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space.”

For a man who has relied so much on the help of other people to deal with his disability he certainly has an very low opinion of humanity. And if humanity is so rotten that they will destroy the Earth, won’t this same humanity just repeat that destruction in space? And which alien planet does Hawking want us to colonise? And how does one transport large numbers of people to this “New Earth”? Remembering how much fuel is required to lift just three men to the Moon.

Apollo 11 using quite a lot of fuel to transport just 3 men to the moon.

Like Cosmologist Carl Sagan, Hawking seems to sometimes let his fantasies get in the way of facts.

Image of Steven Hawking courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Image of Apollo 11 courtesy of NASA.

Finding God through Faith and Reason - Episode 1 of 13 Episodes