On Birds and Turbines

A few days ago I reported that Ed Stelmach arbitrarily stated “wind turbines kill 30,000 birds per year,” however there is a reference for this: (Emma Marris & Daemon Fairless “Wind farms’ deadly reputation hard to shift” Nature vol. 447 no. 7141 p. 126.).  I said that his numbers were a lie, however that was wrong, the point I was making however, remains.

It state’s that it takes “30 wind turbines to kill a bird per year” (the correction notes that this figure is only for raptors, the total birds/turbine total per year is 4.27).

It’s conclusion is however:

In the final analysis, though, whichever way you slice it, or them, America’s birds seem to die in turbine blades at a rate no higher than 40,000 a year. Deaths due to domestic cats, on the other  and, are put at “hundreds of millions”. It is possible, the panel noted, that the turbines are rather worse for bats; recent studies have turned up more of their carcasses than expected.  But the numbers are still small.

And this little gem comes at the end of the article:

But Rick Koebbe, president of PowerWorks, a California firm that owns turbines in Altamont, argues that this should be put into context. “I heard that over 1,000 birds a year run into the Washington Monument. Should we tear that down? We’re out here trying to do a job to save the Earth. We even save birds, since they are twice as vulnerable to pollution as humans.”

The point is, Mr. Stelmach, that measures are being taken to prevent unnessary bird deaths (sonar, etc.), and these will prevent future tradgedies in tar ponds and turbine towers.  However, in the Syncrude example, they failed to meet the regulations, and many birds died.  The deaths themselves exemplify the horrendous safety record and atrocious environmental damage that the tar sands are taken on our environment, and that is why it is media worthy.

If she sound’s high it’s because she’s horny

Apparently (I can’t make this up) women’s voices raise during ovulation, signalling their most fertile times.

Martie Haselton and Greg Bryant at the University of California, Los Angeles, say that vocal pitch plays an important role in judging fertility. “We have found that voices are higher in pitch on high-fertility days of the cycle,” says Haselton.

Don Page, Physics, and Theology

My last post was on Don Page’s article/talk Does God so Love the Multiverse, which (as far as I can tell) is an attempt to allow modern Christians to incorporate modern cosmological ideas into their theology.  I don’t think the point of the paper was to win anyone to Christianity.

However, in this post I will analyze his Valentine’s Day 2008 Paper “Scientific and Philosophical Challenges to Theism.”  This 25-page paper seemed more like a random musing of a quantum cosmologist who is attempting to reconcile contradictory ideas in his head.  This summary is supported by the last paragraph of the introduction:

Generally I see science and religion as supporting each other, but there are certainly areas in both that puzzle me. Let me discuss some that to me have seemed to be the biggest challenges to theism, and give some thoughts I have had on them. These thoughts are certainly tentative, so I would certainly appreciate any help others can provide on these mysteries. [emphasis added]

2. The Afterlife Awareness Problem

Section 1 was the introduction, which doesn’t (and shouldn’t) add any arguments.

His first discussion starts off in a very theoretical place however.  He begins by discussing the Doomsday Argument which states (in my limited understanding) that given the number of human beings that have existed one can predict the lifetime of the human race.  It essentially assumes that we are more likely to be at least half-way to doomsday and therefore our species has a finite existence.  This is a statistics argument, that I barely get, and still it seems very arbitrary.

Dr. Page’s issue occurs when he extends this idea to an afterlife and experiences after death.  The issue would be that our present observations would be highly unusual (i.e. statistically unlikely) if there were a very long afterlife of experiences to accumulate.  Another way to think of this (perhaps simpler) is that if the afterlife is infinite (or at much much longer than the length of our pre-death lives) than our experiences pre-death would have little overall weight in the total scheme of our experiences.

How he wraps his head around this contradiction is to (unlike normal people - and I say that with the utmost respect for Dr. Page’s intelligence) draw an analogy to theoretical physics (specifically Boltzmann brains), which lets him visualize a solution.  He also brings up various quantum mechanical ways to think about it, and possibly considering the afterlife as a singe experience.

I think a simpler solution (not that I’m trying to solve issues for theism, but I appreciate solutions) is to not underestimate consciousness.  When we’re young and have few experiences every experience seems to take a long time.  However, as we age, time seems to go by faster and faster.  We also have finite brain capacity (while alive), so many memories are forgotten to make room for more in the future.  I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suspect that an infinite number of experiences could happen - we would just only remember a finite number of them (unfortunately), or else if there is an afterlife we may have access to superior functions.

Given that I had previously had faith in an infinite afterlife, though not quite 100% faith, this conclusion certainly seemed contrary to how I had interpreted the afterlife. It has bothered me ever since I first thought of it.

Overall: problem not so bad, potentially solved

3. Human Free Will

A simple statement of the problem:

the question of human free will … Is there any room for human free will in a universe with definite laws of nature and a definite quantum state? I.e., if the initial conditions and the dynamical laws of evolution are determined, how could humans act otherwise than what would be predicted by these initial conditions and dynamical laws?

He again launches immediately into solutions tied tightly to theoretical physics.  First in that humans “could help choose the laws and quantum state of the universe,” however he identifies the obvious problem that causality is a one-way street and we haven’t been around since the universe’s day 1.  He rebuts though identifying to theoretical reason why causality can’t go in reverese, so this could be the fact of the matter, however he says:

I do personally find it rather implausible that human free will choices can help determine the quantum state of the universe from the very beginning.

His bigger issue is that if God created everything for all time, including actions, causes, and entities, then it is logically impossible for free will to exist.  However:

Now I will admit that if we had some independent existence and were not entirely created or caused by God, then logically we could have free will. God might adopt us, or at least our independent free will choices, within a universe that He otherwise creates.

He seems to want to reject the adoption idea (which seems similar to the ideas behind His Dark Materials trilogy.

Overall: Problem remains for traditional monotheistic religion

4. Divine Free Will and Information Content

This section goes between quantum cosmology and the ontological argument.  He begins with an anecdote which essentially boils to the point: if this is a bounded deterministic universe, then God may have just wanted it that way (and is His Will).

The first issue he discusses relates to Anslem’s ontological argument.  He deduces that if God is a necessary entity and His creation of the universe is also necessary then there is no way He can have free will.  However, he is able to reject the argument since the ontological argument only requires the greatest necessary being (which isn’t necessarily worthy of the title “God”).  He finishes arguing that if God were necessary He would have no information content.  He fails to define information content, and I’m not fully clear on the implications of this argument.

Overall: If God is necessary he’s not worthy of being a god.

5. The Complexity and Probability of God

Here he quotes Richard Dawkins and The God Delusion.  He considers the arguments of chapter 4 which “are not very tightly stated” so he enlisted William Lane Craig to help and figured the argument was:

1. A more complex world is less probable than a simpler world.
2. A world with God is more complex than a world without God.
3. Therefore a world with God is less probable than a world without God.

To which he asked Dr. Dawkins if this was appropriate and he quotes the response:

After circulating this form, I did get the obviously hurried reply from Dawkins: “Your three steps seem to me to be valid. Richard Dawlkins [sic]” (1 February 2007).

His response first questions the probability of complexity - namely whether premise #1 is accurate.  One quote he names says God could make complexity over simplicity by simple choice, however, such a suggestion had the effect of  “shaking {Dr. Page’s] fundamentalist physicist faith in the simplicity of the laws of nature.”  He is therefore willing to grant the first premise as a scientist (who typically look for the simplest theories).  He then moves to question whether God is complex, or adds any complexity.

He then contradicts his earlier statements of section 4 by saying if God is necessary He would be simple and therefore would add no complexity.  The contradiction is that if God is necessary then He has no free will.  This rebuttal to Dawkin’s argument makes the issue of section 4 stand and then God has no free will.

Overall: Don Page vs. Richard Dawkins - either Dawkins is right or God has no free will

6. The Problem of Evil and Elegance

If God is the best possible being and created everything, why does evil exist?

The traditional response he identifies quickly: because we have free will, however he realizes that natural evils (disease, disasters etc.) are not solved.

therefore I do not regard the problem of evil as sufficient for me to give up my simple hypothesis that God created and determined everything contingent other than Himself.

Once again Dr. Page turns to theoretical physics and assumes a solution coming from multiverse theory this time.  He assumes that perhaps “God created all universes that are better to exist than not to exist.”  Basically any universe with net Good vs. Evil is in existence.  His analogy is that he has done some evil but it’s (subjectively) better for him to exist than to not (although some of his Phys 244/281 students may disagree).

The issue he finds is that he would expect slightly more elegance than ugliness in physics but not enormously more.  His issue “is that the laws of physics are enormously more elegant than ugly,” and therefore it is questionable why such elegance exists.  He basically claims that he has reformulated the problem of evil into the “problem of elegance.”  However, anyone in experimental physics (not theoretical) will realize that the models put forth in theoretical physics do not hold as elegantly as we might like to believe.  We are able to model a lot with simple equations, however, there is a lot that is much more difficult to model, and what I would be reluctant to call “elegant.”  A simple situation (even in theoretical physics) is given by the difference between the Atwood’s Machine (a simple pulley system), and a swinging Atwood Machine (one of the masses on the pulley swings), the first can be easily solved, research only began on the second in 1982 and can only be analytically solved in a few situations.

Overall: The problem of evil remains, as well as the potential “problem of elegance”

7. Conclusions

Let me close with an aphorism that I coined to summarize my thoughts as a scientist and as a Christian:

Science reveals the intelligence of the universe;
the Bible reveals the Intelligence behind the universe.

The statement I most agree with from this paper is here: “Whether God is seen as probable or improbable
depends on one’s assumptions.”

Overall Don Page presents several issues to his theism that he has considered, and tries to reconcile them using his theoretical physics background.  Several issues remain, but he clearly remains committed to his faith.

Does God So Love the Multiverse?

Professor Don Page, of the University of Alberta, is quite the interesting character. He’s a theoretical quantum cosmologist, or in other words he studies the relationships between quantum mechanics (things really small that are indefinitely defined) and cosmology (the study of the universe). He’s also an evangelical Christian. In recent years he’s taken to giving a lecture entitled “Does God So Love the Multiverse?” in which he attempts to reconcile multiverse theories of the universe with Christian theism. He has also recently published it as a 26-page paper.

Update: You can also download an MP3 and Powerpoint of this presentation when he gave it for the Urban Bridge Chruch’s Thinking God series.

For my quick summary: Page presents here a brief summary of some multiverse ideas, shows their attraction and claims that these are compatible with Christianity. He presents no new arguments for theism, and merely tries to reconcile irrational belief with modern ideas.

Going more in depth (section by section):

1. God’s Love for All Humans

Here he begins by quoting John 3:16

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believed in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

And continuing to describe how God’s love (of everyone) is described through both the Old and New Testaments. He cites the efforts God put forth for the Israelites (I agree the OT God loved them), but also uses several other tales to demonstrate God’s love extending beyond His people. However, we could easily find many other tales of how His love didn’t extend beyond the Israelites. In short from the Exodus stories, we can see that God down right antagonized the Egyptians.

He ends section one with this bit:

The question arises as to how unique does that make us. The Bible certainly emphasizes that the image of God extends to all humans. But are we created entirely
separately from the rest of creation?

Some have taken the image of God for humans to imply that God created us
individually and separately from other living beings. However, Darwin’s theory
of evolution suggests that we are related to the rest of life. It also suggests that
we humans were not separately created by an individual act, independent of the creation of the remainder of the earth’s biosphere. [emphasis added]

This directly contradicts the Genesis story, but Dr. Page has no issue here.

2. Parallels Between Evolution and Multiverse Ideas

Here he explains how many Christians, including the original Fundamentalists, are able to accept both Christianity and evolution. He then claims that the ideas of multiverse theory parallel evolution in expanding our understanding and pushing back gods of the gaps. He claims that multiverse theory explains many of the fine-tuning arguments of the universe (which it does), however that does not mean God doesn’t exist (logically he’s right).

3. Fine Tuning in Our Universe

Here he basically describes the fine tuning that is apparent in the universe. There’s nothing really new or exciting here and he surprisingly makes no claims that this fine tuning requires a designer.

4. Explanations for Fine Tuning

He lists three possible explanations for fine tuning here:

Some suggest that the fine tuning was done by a separate act of God to allow life.
Others say that it is presumably an accidental fluke. And yet others propose that it
arises from a huge multiverse of very many different possible constants of physics.

He also notes these arguments are not mutually exclusive, so it is possible for there to be some mix between the three.

He continues to describe various multiverse theories (here is where the average reader will start to run into difficulty). He dismisses some as too general and others as not explanatory enough (or too explanatory - “the theory that explains everything explains nothing”). He moves from there into a discussion of the Bayesian probabilities of different theories involving the likelihood, a priori and a posteriori probabilities. I don’t have much experience here but much of it seemed subjective and arbitrary. It reminds me of the Drake Equation.

5. Applying Bayes’ Theorem

This continues his talk about theories and probabilities. The only interesting part is his conclusion:

Given our present knowledge, to me it currently seems simpler to hypothesize that God created a multiverse, and I would argue that that is a theologically acceptable option for Christians and other theists to consider.

Please note he has not “argued” for his option, but made a claim based on a subjective assignment of probabilities using his Bayesian algorithm.

6. Toy Multiverse Model from Arithmetic

For those of you who are mathematically inclined…

If you are not a math major or very inclined feel free to skim or skip this section entirely. I didn’t gain anything from it.

7. The Growth of Our Knowledge of the Universe

There’s a bit of philosophical/epistemological musing at the start of this section pertaining to knowledge and observations. He then postulates the existence of conscious extraterrestrials that could be theoretically impossible to make contact with (due to enormous distances or existence in alternate universes). The entire point of this section seems to be that the multiverse theory is logically allowed. Beyond that is seems somewhat incoherent.

8. Objections to Multiverse Ideas

Here he brings up philosophical objections to multiverse ideas.

First he addresses the issue of whether or not alternate universes are observable, and if not why accept them? This is a standard empiricist response, and valid, he claims that there may be some testable consequences, but aren’t any yet (which means the objection stands despite his claim to “highly plausible rebuttals to the objections”).

The second objection is that multiverse theories are not necessarily required from existing theories. His rebuttal is that string/M theory is “beginning to appear” to have multiverse as a consequence. Again, this is not a strong rebuttal, and the objection stands.

The third objection is that “it is extravagant to assume unfathomable numbers of unobservable universes,” or essentially that it is counter-intuitive to postulate the existence of more than one universe. His rebuttal is that “the whole can be simpler than its parts” and his example is his mathematical example from section 6. I have to agree that this isn’t a very good objection, as many “gut reactions” are not necessarily true. He continues his rebuttal invoking God with the excuse: if god is omnipotent (in that he can do anything logically possible - i.e. no burritos so hot He can’t eat them) he could do whatever he wanted, including creating a multiverse.

The final argument he mentions is that multiverses can be used to explain anything, and thus explain nothing (the same argument we could use against theism). He agrees several multiverse theories are subject to this failing, however there are more specific and better theories in existence.

He then continues into theistic arguments against multiverse theories.

The first is that it undercuts the fine-tuning argument. He agrees that it does this, however he maintains that God could still exist. It is critical to note that many theologians use this argument as key evidence. As argument after argument in favour of god’s existence fails, all that is left as a reason to believe is blind faith.

He then continues and declares:

I personally think it might be a theological mistake to look for fine tuning as
a sign of the existence of God.

He cites Matthew 12:38-41 and declares that the only evidence/argument for God’s existence there is is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, ‘Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.’ But He answered and said to them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.’

The issue here is there is NO evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ outside the Bible, and several suggestions he is a figure of fiction based on pagan origins. Therefore, the only evidence for Christian theism is the Bible, this is circular reasoning.

Another theistic objection he raises is that the multiverse theory leaves nothing for God to design. His response is that God would still have had the multiverse to design.

The final (Christian) theistic objection is that the multiverse idea would leave room for other intelligent races that sinned and therefore needed Christ to go and do another redemption trick to save them. The response is priceless:

But the Bible was written for us humans here on earth, so it seems unreasonable to require it to describe what God may or may not do with other creatures He may have created elsewhere. We could just interpret the Bible to mean that Christ’s death here on earth is unique for our human civilization.

This is the classic apologetic trick of “we don’t know God’s mind” or “He has a plan/reason to give us certain knowledge.” I think this God belittles humanity by failing to disclose such information. However a further response to his might be if another civilization is discovered that is entirely atheistic, but shows signs of “sin” in the Christian sense. This presents a second qualifying test of Christianity (after the historicity of Jesus) - if intelligent life exists, are they Christian? If not how can we posit that He exists?

9. Conclusions

The overall thesis here is how he sums it up:

I would argue that theists have no more reason to oppose them then they had to oppose Darwinian evolution when it was first proposed.

God might indeed so love the multiverse.

My overall take is this is a weak attempt for a Christian to continue to reconcile irrational faith with modern science. I do however appreciate an Evangelical Christian trashing the design argument.

Superstition runs rampant

Taking a quick break from my studies I saw on CTS, while flipping channels, a news segment on the Archdiocese of Ottawa appointing two new exorcists!  Apparently Ottawa had been without exorcists for the past five years, so I’m not sure how people survived (apparently they get a couple calls per year).  Apparently exorcisms are back “in”:

In the past two decades, Italy alone has increased the ranks of its exorcists from 20 to 350. Just before Christmas, Rome’s chief exorcist, Gabriel Amorth, indicated the Pope wanted an exorcist in every diocese in the world.

Something to note is that despite media “glorification” of exorcisms, often times exorcisms are performed on misdiagnosed victims of mental illness, and even worse the exorcism can lead to death:

Exorcisms in film and fiction can be entertaining, while exorcisms in real life can be fatal. The tragic irony is that in many cases the evil is committed not by the Devil, but by those who believe in him.

Terahertz?

I’ve now received some criticism for not talking about “terahertz” on this blog.  I did discuss a bit about terahertz radiation when I first started, but have since moved beyond the physics-science only realm.

So why don’t I stick to writing physics and science?

1. It’s my freakin’ blog.  I’m allowed to call it whatever I want.  I chose the name “terahertz” because I find the subject interesting, but following the lead of others, I choose not to write solely on one topic.  Atheism interests me, so I write about that, the same goes for local politics, my life in general, and random other things (the tag cloud on the right should show where my biases are).  If you don’t want to read about that stuff, go else where (that’s the beauty of blogging).  As of now I have 16,312 hits (6420 without my oddly popular post), and regardless, if it was still <100 I’d still write the exact same things.
2. I’m not doing a lot of physics or fundamental science right now.  I am still in Engineering Physics and learning about physics, however not being in a lab leaves me with lab reports, club events and assignments, all of which take my mind off of physics.
3. There’s only so much I can write about terahertz radiation.  There’s the odd news story now and then, and papers released in every couple of journals, but regardless, it’s still not that big.  It gets boring to focus solely on one topic in anything, and so I write beyond that.

That’s my bit, if you do have a blog that speaks primarily about terahertz I’ll link to it and try not to distract people from the subject.

On why today isn’t a day for pi

Many around the world spent today celebrating the widest known mathematical constant, that share’s it’s name with a tasty treat:

π

The celebrate today because as March 14, or 3.14, it is a representation of π.

However this is wrong.

π in decimal (base-10) is 3.14159…, however, the calendar is not based on a base-10 system. So when is the real “pi day?”

We could consider a year to be like a circle, in that at the end (December) it connects right back to the start (January). In this representation we could represent the total number of days in a year (365.25) equal to the total angle of a circle (360 degrees, or 2π radians). This system would make “pi-day” to be approximately June 1st (or 2nd on a leap year, which also helps deal with rounding errors). This would also give us a 2π day on New Year’s Eve.

Or perhaps we should use the year’s total number of days as a base of counting, in which case π would have to be converted to that base and that would be the date. (Check my math perhaps) I think this date works out to April 24th or 25th (depending on leap years again).

However, explaining to people why you’re calling April 25th, or June 1st pi day and eating pie (which I did indulge in today), might take longer than the brief amusement provided by the idea.

Vaccines != Autism

There’s some stupid myth going around that vaccines can cause autism.  Get this straight people there is no scientific evidence for this whatsoever, vaccines save lives, not getting them means we have mumps out breaks that cause an entire University population to have to get them again.

Of Pandas and Birdmen

PZ Myers has the pen for wit and sharp criticisms of the Discovery Institute.  In this installment we see him drawing an analogy with those non-”Wrightists” who know that people can not fly.

Gambling on Global Warming

A video to explain the cost-benefit analysis of the controversy, sit through the entirety to get the point.