Dude, my hands are huuuuge... Or are they tiny?

In the great grand scheme of things, it can be difficult to wrap your head around concepts such as the incredibly massive objects  filling out the expanse of the universe, down to the infinitesimally tiny building blocks that make up those objects.

This is why I appreciate people like Cary and Micheal Huang, who produced a pretty cool interactive representation of the size of the components of the universe. Check it out, it's informative and a little bit fun.

Science!

In which I increase my Nerd Cred

I managed to run of to Kamloops on Saturday to catch PZ Myers in the final talk of the Imagine No Religion conference hosted by the Kamloops Centre For Rational Thought and Center For Inquiry Okanagan.

While there I managed to snag a few photos:


PZ was dressed up to enjoy the err... warm-ish late spring weather. He's much less tentacled and fiery in person than he appears on Pharyngula.


Jen McCreight of Blag Hag was showing her preparedness for the after-party.

I even managed to obtain proof that God exists! Mr. Deity (aka Brian Keith Dalton) was very pleasant, and not at all as temperamental an immortal as I was expecting.

I also met the president of the Center For Inquiry Okanagan, and was invited to check out their post-rapture party, and was informed that they'll soon be hosting a talk by a scientific ghost hunter. That could be interesting. (Spoiler alert: he hasn't found any evidence of spiritual activity yet!)

Even though I missed almost all of the conference, I got a chance to chat with a handful of participants for a short while, meeting skeptics from Edmonton, southern BC, and even Philadelphia. I'll definitely try to make the next organized meeting in the area.

I'll also bring a better camera than the crappy one built into my Blackberry.

Of all the stupid...

Damn it! Due to my inability to read dates on a website, I missed PZ Myers giving a talk over in Kamloops last night!

I wonder if I can sneak into his talk tonight at 7PM? Unfortunately, there isn't a phone number I can call to check, and I don't think I'm going to risk driving two hours to be turned away at the door.

Bah!

What would make me believe (in Jesus)?

George posted a link to a theist website that asks three questions of atheists. I assembled this post in my head before I read George's (and anybody else's) reply, so that it wouldn't colour my own response too much.

Question one: What would it take, or what would have to happen for you to abandon your position of atheism and come to a theistic view; not just an agnostic possibility of God, but an actual belief that a Deity does exist?

Good, reproducible evidence is pretty much the only thing I can request here.

I can't really consider unexplained phenomena as evidence for God, because history has shown us that events humans used to consider as only explainable by premising deities turned out to actually require no divine interference. Unfortunately, the more we seem to examine the universe in detail, it seems that any version of a god, other than the nebulous "prime mover" that originally sparked the creation of the universe, seems completely unnecessary and more and more unlikely.

For the same reasons, I consider miracles to be poor manifestation of a God's existence. Ignorance of the cause of a certain unlikely occasion is not evidence for anything other than... ignorance.

I'd like to say that personal revelation would be nice - maybe the clouds parting, and a booming voice announcing to me that it was the creator of the universe. But I'm too aware of the weaknesses of the human mind, and that such a thing would most likely be a result of a psychotic episode. Otherwise, how could I be sure that my experience was more realistic than that of Mohammed, Joseph Smith, or any run-of-the-mill schizophrenic?

Question two: What would it take for you to believe Christianity is true?

Which version of Christianity? There are over five thousand different sects of Christianity, which makes this question a little too simplistic to answer accurately.

For instance, whatever evidence that might convince me that Jesus was an actual historical figure that was able to come back from the dead after a couple of days of actual death and and decomposition would have to be coupled with a enough evidence to overthrow pretty much all of modern science to show that the universe is less than 10,000 years old and that the myth of Noah's ark actually happened for me to believe in any of the myriad of young earth, biblical literalist Christianities.

Question three: Why would your answers to the above be sufficient to convince you theism is true, and that Christianity was true?

Like gravity, wavelengths of radiation outside of our ability to detect them with our natural senses, and dark matter, it all comes down to the evidence.

As an atheist, I have a natural inclination to require more evidence for religious claims (not just Christian claims, mind you, but from all religions) than might be fair. Because of this, I figure the most reasonable I can be would be to require the same kind of evidence that I'd request before I believe that intelligent aliens are visiting Earth in technologically advanced spaceships.

If a UFO landed on our planet and the inhabitants of the vessel made contact with a large swath of humans, including media and scientists, and gave us a reproducible explanation of their origins, how they arrived on Earth, etc., I would have a difficult time denying the existence of intelligent aliens.

If God wants to visit us, making himself available to the media and scientists, giving us a scientifically valid and confirmable explanation for how the universe works, the origins of life, and human history, then it would also be difficult to deny his existence.

I appreciate what seems to be a non-judgmental request for information from atheists about their beliefs, but these three questions seem to me to be missing one very valuable point: the Christian God is all-powerful and all-knowing. Even if I don't know what would convince me that He exists, Yahweh does, and he supposedly has the power to make me aware of his existence. That He has refused to do so, even though I actively sought Him out for a number of years in my life, is among the best evidence that God doesn't exist. At the very least, He doesn't seem interested in spending eternity with me, and, in return, I couldn't care less about Him.

People braver than I

Over at Jason's place, he's currently taking on somewhat of a debate with a self-described professional astrologist named Jamie Funk, who, along with his girlfriend Marina, is doing a decidedly poor job of arguing his position against Jason, Stephanie Z, and a few other regular readers of Lousy Canuck.

It's a little confusing to follow, since Jason is attempting to cross-post between his site and the Funk site, since it seems Mr. Funk is doing some editing of Jason's posts, claiming that Jason is playing cut-and-paste on multiple threads on the Funk site.

Jason and his group have my support, since astrology is so obviously ridiculous that I don't think I'd have the patience to deal with the peddlers of such trash. The one thing that I'm realizing is that anti-science is the same, whether it be astrology, creationism, anti-vaccination, or anything else; it takes a lot of work and research to counter the claims of denialists, yet the supernaturalists get to make up any damned explanation they feel like out of thin air to defend their point of view. That said, it could be interesting to watch, should any true discussion evolve out of it.

I've asked the wife to make me popcorn while I dispense a couple of wheat ales from the kegerator. Fun!

EDIT: I've taken a(n admittedly quick) browse of the Funk website, and it seems to be the standard tripe that you'd expect from your run-of-the-mill astrologer/prophet: general and vague predictions of future events (seriously, I didn't see a single mention of a specific event - it's all vague "love could happen" or "violence could be possible" bullshit), coupled with a LOT of "in-depth" analysis of past events, and how the Funk version of astrology "correctly predicted" said events. It's disturbing that people can fall for such obvious fakery, and it almost makes me angry that a comfortable living can be made off of making shit up and dressing it up as reality.

That said, I entered the Funk contest for a free reading. I'd be fascinated to see what kind of predictions they'd make for me. I'll wager that if I was able to wrangle some concrete insights or predictions about my life from them (and I doubt they'd be foolish enough to do so - they do claim to be "professionals") that they wouldn't even be successful to 50%.

Edit 2: Edited to note that Marina is Jamie's girlfriend, not his wife.