It’s only natural for anyone who is struck by lightning and survives to question why it should [...]]]> As I was looking up some statistics for my post about the Mega Millions player who was struck by lightning, I was struck too–by the yawning gap in perspective between being a victim and being a statistic.

It’s only natural for anyone who is struck by lightning and survives to question why it should happen to them, and if they are at all religious, it’s likely that they would attribute some kind of supernatural significance to it. Someone struggling with addiction may decide that it was God’s warning to clean up their act. Someone else might believe that it’s a wake up call to pay more attention to their children, and so on.

People impacted by these events often ask questions like, “Why me?” “How did I survive?” “Why did I survive?” and are rarely they satisfied with answers like “Stuff happens” or “You just got lucky.” They typically want a more spiritual explanation for what happened to them, and they usually find it.

Yet, when you pull the perspective way back and examine the statistics for the number of people stuck by lightning in the United States every year, it’s really hard to find anything of great significance buried in the data.

Here are the numbers of lightning-related deaths in the USA between 2001 and 2010:

44, 51, 43, 32, 38, 48, 45, 27, 34, 29

Except for the possibility of a slight trend downwards in the last three years, it’s very difficult to discern any particular pattern in those numbers except that between thirty and fifty Americans are killed by lightning every year in America. How do you even begin to look for any religious or spiritual significance in the numbers? You can’t, and even if you claim you can if you knew who died and in what circumstances, that still begs the question–is God on a quota? What happens if one year God finds that he’s struck down his 50th sinner by the beginning of June, does he have to resort to another method to continue wreaking his vengeance?

Things become even more problematic when you look at the long term trend in lightning deaths. Let’s look at the decade between 1941 and 1950:

388, 372, 432, 419, 268, 231, 338, 256, 249, 219

The first reaction is “Wow, those numbers are high!” and it’s even more startling when you remember that the population of the USA in the 1940s was less than half that of today. When you factor that in, Americans were about sixteen times more likely to be killed by lightning in the 1940s than they are today.

Now if being struck by lightning has anything to do with God’s plan, what does that say about the “Greatest Generation?” Were they really sixteen times more deserving of divine retribution than Americans today, or has God simply grown tired of zotting sinners with lightning over the last fifty years?

Or could it be that a combination of better weather forecasting, storm warnings, education, technology, safety systems, communications and medical treatments is responsible for the almost 90% reduction in the lightning strike fatality rate over the last half-century? That would seem much more likely, right?

But if that’s true, are we guilty of thwarting God’s divine plan by making it harder for him to zot us? If you believe there is any supernatural component in someone being struck by lightning (whether or not they die), then that is the uncomfortable conclusion you must reach. It also doesn’t say much for the power of a supposedly omnipotent being that their plan can be foiled by the installation of a few more Doppler radar sites.

It’s no different for other forms of personal disaster or tragedy. Look at car accidents, drownings, cancer deaths, heart attacks, industrial accidents, and so on. Undoubtedly, each individual incident has a profound impact on the lives of those who are affected, whether they live or die, and there is no doubt that every Sunday thousands of personal testimonies on the power of God’s judgement and mercy are given based on those experiences.

However, once the data from all those incidents are gathered up, collated, filtered, analyzed, and shorn of all subjective claims, the only thing you are left with is the clear pattern of consistency as, year in year out, a very similar number of people suffer, and survive or die from these causes. Take another step back to look at the long term trends and you will find that they are almost always attributable to changes in public policy or advances in medicine, science and technology.

Thus, we find there is nothing to indicate that anything supernatural is going on. It can all be attributed to natural causes and any sense of a divine plan in anyone’s life simply drowns in the sea of statistics.

Below are Christian taunts to atheist Penn Jillette concerning a debate challenge. Penn Jillette has been contacted via Twitter, YouTube and email.

“He’s watching. trust me. Most Atheists are obsessed with the TRUTH, they just don’t [...]]]> Currently featured on the front page of Conservapaedia is the following short article:

Christian taunts to atheist Penn Jillette

Below are Christian taunts to atheist Penn Jillette concerning a debate challenge. Penn Jillette has been contacted via Twitter, YouTube and email.

“He’s watching. trust me. Most Atheists are obsessed with the TRUTH, they just don’t like it.”

“Come on Penn, you even WANT people to debate because our opinions on the existence of God are too important to keep private!”

Who could this bold, confident creationist challenger called “shockofgod” with over 18,000 YouTube subscribers be? Interest piqued, I clicked on over to watch his video challenge:

If you don’t want to waste your time viewing the video (and I wouldn’t blame you), his thesis is that the viewership of Brights website–where Penn Jillette is listed as being an “Enthusiastic Bright”–is in decline and it will take a miracle to turn it around. (In reality, after one good month last year, views of the the-brights.net has been flat, but that’s not the main purpose of this post.)

For some unknown reason, “shockofgod” selects Penn Jillette out of all the main supporters of the Brights website to challenge to a debate over evolution. He could have selected, you know, an actual evolutionist like Richard Dawkins to challenge, but whatever.

Looking through the comments, I saw that someone had pointed out the obvious–that there is no reason to assume that Penn Jillette even knows about the challenge. “Shockofgod” replies that he has sent Jillette an email and posted a comment on his YouTube channel, so that he must be aware of the challenge by now.

So I thought I would post my own comment on the video, pointing out that Jillette, as a public figure who undoubtedly gets hundreds of emails a day,  is highly unlikely to be personally monitoring his email or YouTube comments, so there is no reason to assume he knows of the challenge. I also pointed out that a decline in the viewing figures of a minor atheist website like “The Brights” (an effort that not all atheists agreed with in the first place, including myself), is hardly a good proxy for the fortunes of atheism in America. Certainly the current demographic trends would indicate that non-belief has a bright future here in America.

When I clicked the “Post” button, the message came back that the comment would be moderated. This is actually quite typical of creationist and religious web sites, who tend not to like being challenged, but I was willing to wait. An hour or so later, I got a couple of emails from YouTube saying that someone had posted a comment on my channel and on my one remaining video. It was “shockofgod”:

Why isn’t Penn Jillete debating me you guys scared? He knows about my challenge go ask him he is here on youtube. Why are atheists such cowards? Tell me why?

and

Proof atheism is madness Shockawenow . n e t

He spammed me! I clicked back to his video to find my comment, and surprise, surprise, it was nowhere to be seen. A further comment brought no response at all.

So this (anonymous) conservative Christian, who claims to be so boldly challenging a prominent atheist to a debate can’t even bring himself to allow a mildly critical comment on to his own YouTube video.

Par for the course, I guess. Just like Conservapaedia, who has trumpted information about his inconsequential challenge on at least three of its pages, he all bark and no bite.

In response to the posting of the news story about a group of physicts at CERN may have detected neutrinos traveling faster than the [...]]]> I was surfing the inanity-insanity that is the ultra-conservative Christian website, Conservapaedia, when I came across this brief conversation that sums up the site far better than any lengthy essay could.

In response to the posting of the news story about a group of physicts at CERN may have detected neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light, a contributor by the name of DavidZa initiated this exchange on the main Conservapaedia page’s talk page:

“We don’t allow faster than light neutrinos in here” said the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.(A rather good joke that’s going around) DavidZa 18:25, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

[T]hat’s a joke for a relativist. If relativity is false as long shown here by the Counterexamples to Relativity, then the joke isn’t funny.–Andy Schlafly 23:34, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

I think you’ll agree that it is a rather good joke, but apparently, the founder and main force behind Conservapaedia, Andy Schlafly, fails to see any humor in the quip.

You see, to Schlafly, the well-established scientific Theory of Relativity is synonymous with relativism, the philosophical belief that there are no absolute truths, and Einstein’s landmark discovery in the early part of the twentieth century is one of the major contributors to the rise of relativism in America today and the consequent decline in religious faith and values.

This, of course, is arrant nonsense, and Shlafly has been told this time and again by the less deluded denizens of the site. But it makes no difference. He still believes that one of the most tested and confirmed theories in physics has already been counterfeited and, naturally, Conservapaedia’s content is required to reflect his personal belief.

But even if by some bizarre coincidence Schlalfy is correct, and relativity is disproved (and faith in God is rescued?), the joke is still pretty funny, but of course, he can’t allow himself to admit even this.

I guess that’s the price we pay for our steady diet of scifi thrillers…

In a series for the Discovery Channel the renowned astrophysicist said it was “perfectly rational” to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere. But he warned that aliens might simply [...]]]> Stephen Hawking may be one of the greatest theoretical physicists in history, but I’m not terribly impressed by his recent warning about making contact with aliens:

In a series for the Discovery Channel the renowned astrophysicist said it was “perfectly rational” to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere. But he warned that aliens might simply raid Earth for resources, then move on.

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” he said.

I certainly agree that any extra-terrestrial aliens visiting Earth within the next thousand years or more would almost certainly be light-years ahead of us in terms of technology. And rather than being like Native Americans in relation to Columbus, we could be like ants to are in relation to human beings. Given that the Sun was born more than eight billion years after the Big Bang, there has been more than enough time for alien civilizations to be millions, or even billions of years ahead of us in technological prowess.

Thus Hawking’s concerns that aliens might want to raid Earth for its resources would appear to be misplaced. What does Earth have that isn’t available in abundance elsewhere? Not water, not minerals, not energy sources—they can be all found throughout the Solar System. So there’s really no need to trash our planet to get at stuff that’s freely available in places like the asteroid belt, Mars, or Jupiter and Saturn and their moons.

Now, there is one asset that Earth has that could be of great interest to a passing alien fleet—organic life. But, again, it’s highly unlikely that they are going need to rape the planet in order to get what they want. Why collect and transport whole specimens when millions of tiny samples of DNA from each species would give them everything they need in a much more convenient form? And while slavers are a popular staple of the science fiction genre, it would seem unlikely in the extreme that highly advance aliens would be at all interested in rounding up billions of reluctant and rebellious human beings as slave labor.

Aside from life itself, we do have one other asset that might be of immense value to our passing alien fleet—information. Not scientific data—though they might find a small amount of passing interest—but cultural and historical information. If the evolution of intelligent life is rare in the galaxy, it could be our own history and culture that they prize most highly, since it will likely be the most unique thing about us and our planet.

Even to an alien civilization that has spent millions of years exploring the nature of the Universe, our literature, media, and historical records will seem new and fresh, and the most efficient way to obtain it all is by a free exchange of ideas and information, not violence. Even if they only gave us a fraction of their accumulated knowledge, I’m sure we would be more than ready to part with just about all the cultural and historical information we have.

Prof Hawking thinks that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact. He explained: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

In the past probes have been sent into space with engravings of human on board and diagrams showing the location of our planet. Radio beams have been fired into space in the hope of reaching alien civilisations.

Hawking is wrong here too. First, there is nothing we can do that is likely to betray our presence more than the simple fact that we live on an planet with an oxygen-rich atmosphere in the middle of our system’s habitable zone.

For example, NASA Kepler mission is expected to detect extrasolar planets with the same size and orbit of Earth up to several thousand light years away, and we are barely 50 years into our Space Age. Just imagine what a million-year-old space faring alien civilization should be able to do.

Anyone looking our way from up to a thousand light years away (at least) will immediately suspect there is life on Earth, and they might eventually detect signs of industrial activity too by analyzing Earth’s atmosphere for pollutants. Therefore, the odd stray radio signal broadcast into interstellar space is hardly going to add our chances of being discovered.

As for using our own history as a guide, I don’t believe that’s of much use either. Looking back at the worst excesses of our conquering past, we see that they were almost all about gaining control over some type of limited resource—land, people, precious metals, slaves, energy sources, even religious assets.

And as I have already mentioned, there is no reason to expect that visiting aliens will be driven by the same acquisitive desires, or that they will find Earth a particularly juicy target. So, while it is certainly possible to dream up plenty of worst-case scenarios, there is every reason to believe that our first alien encounter, should it ever happen, will be peaceful and mutually rewarding.

Prof Hawking said: “To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

The programme envisages numerous alien species including two-legged herbivores and yellow, lizard-like predators. But Prof Hawking conceded most life elsewhere in the universe is likely to consist of simple microbes.

Sadly, I agree with Professor Hawking on this last point. If intelligent life was commonplace, then unless there is some kind of real-life Prime Directive in place barring all alien life from contacting Earth, we should probably have heard from someone else by now.

While the Milky Way is a massive place, even at sub-light speeds it should still take an advanced alien civilization less than a million years to expand across the entire galaxy. Perhaps they are watching us from a safe distance—waiting for the right time to come and say “Hello!”—but I suspect not, and it may well be that we are the only intelligent life in the Milky Way right now.

Either way, Stephen Hawking’s concerns are overblown. Even in the highly unlikely event that aliens are heading in our direction and are implacably hostile, there is very little we can do about it. Maintaining radio silence isn’t going to help us remain undetected, and once they get here, they aren’t going to be stopped simply by slipping a computer virus into their mainframe while they aren’t looking.

So really, there just isn’t any point in worrying at all. Were either doomed or we’re not, and there is very little we can do change that.

And not to be outdone by the heavenly chaos in the Carina Nebula above, Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano has been serving up a treat here below:

Clicking on the [...]]]> Hubble celebrates its 20th year in space this week, and to commemorate the occasion NASA has published one of the finest Hubble photographs yet:

And not to be outdone by the heavenly chaos in the Carina Nebula above, Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano has been serving up a treat here below:

Clicking on the photos will take you to the original sites and plenty more wonderful full-sized chaotic images to choose from.

I have lived at my present address here in Austin, Texas, for the last 13 years. On average, I take two or three trips a year which involve catching a flight out of Austin, making about 25 and 30 in total. In all [...]]]> Sometimes life throws up the oddest of coincidences. Here’s one, for example…

I have lived at my present address here in Austin, Texas, for the last 13 years. On average, I take two or three trips a year which involve catching a flight out of Austin, making about 25 and 30 in total. In all that time I have only ever answered the front door bell on two occasions to find Jehovah’s Witnesses on my doorstep. And guess what? Both times were on days I was due to fly out of Austin.

That did mean I had a convenient excuse for closing the door on them, but what are the odds? Out of over 4800 days they could have called, they called on two of just 30 days when I was preparing to fly out of town.

It’s no surprise that people think that something spooky is going on when these little coincidences happen, or that some kind of higher power is controlling events in their lives. Just think of all the thousands of little events that are continually going on in any one person’s life—who they park next to at work, who they bump into at the supermarket, what they see when they turn a particular corner of a particular street, and so on—so it should be no surprise to anyone that seemingly strange coincidences occur.

But our brains are wired to find connections, to want explanations for seemingly random and disconnected events. And when they do happen for no apparent reason, our brains rebel and do the biological equivalent of blowing a fuse, which gives us that sensation of spookiness that many attribute to ghosts, spirits, or the hand of God.

So, what are the odds that the next time I answer the front door to find Jehovah’s Witnesses standing on my porch will also be a day on which I am about to catch a ride to the airport? Very slim, of course, but it could happen, and if it does—even though I pride myself on my rationality—I doubt I will be able to avoid a moment or two of spookiness while the Jehovah’s Witnesses just stand there wondering what I am laughing about.

(I had a close call a couple of weeks ago when I was just driving off in my car as a team of Jehovah’s Witnesses were working their way up the street, but the streak is still intact, for now!)