Wednesday 27 June 2018

Paypal's acceptable use policy

Paypal have updated their "acceptable use policy".

As always, it seems like it's nothing to worry about... except for the vague terminology that could easily land someone in trouble. Regarding hate, violence, racial intolerance and the financial exploitation of a crime, they change to:

"You may not use the Paypal service for activities that ... relate to transactions involving ... the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory or the financial exploitation of a crime ..."

Sounds pretty harmless? Sounds like "common sense"?
But who's to say what counts as "a form of intolerance"?

Are Paypal users allowed to have their own moral code?
Or is this another excuse for a company to force a left-wing ("far-left") ideology on the common people?

Beware.

Monday 25 June 2018

Problems with Dawkins' atheism

In his book, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins attempts to prove that not only the Christian God, but any god, is a "delusion". He says of the "unpleasant character" of the Christian/Jewish Scriptures that it would be "unfair to attack such an easy target." His "God Hypothesis" is:

"there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us." (Chapter 2)

There are a few brief points to make.

Firstly, despite being a scientist, The God Delusion is filled with very unscientific language and argumentation: it is filled with derogatory and insulting language for anyone who might possible hold a different view. As such, the book is not objective, and therefore not particularly scientific.

Secondly, Dawkins views God as something physical and therefore subject to scientific experimentation and explanation. Yet, the Christian Scriptures say that whilst God may have had some sort of physical presence on earth at times (such as the Ark of the Covenant or Jesus), God is, by nature, spiritual. As science can only test physical things, all science has "proved" is that God (if he exists) is not physical, which is what the Bible says anyway: "God is spirit" (John 4:24).

Thirdly, Dawkins assumes that to say some things are created must imply that all things are created, even God. Essentially a form of Aristotle's "unmoved mover", Dawkins always asks of Christians, "Well, who created God?" And yet, by the very same argument, it could be asked of Dawkins, "Well, what caused the Big Bang?" By denying the existence of a being which is outside of time, Dawkins and his followers now have no explanation of how the universe came into existence. Science, by nature, examines "cause" and "effect": what is the "first cause"?

To rational thinking, intelligent readers, The God Delusion will only reveal an author who is ignorant of religious ideas and is not effective at applying the scientific method, relying instead on childish insults.

(Note: Dawkins apparently is a good scientist - biologist - but this is not apparent in the pages of this book.)

One of the major problems with the idea of evolution and science is that science assumes consistency. An experiment performed last year will yield the same results as today and next year. Yet evolution is about gradual change. Essentially, if evolution is correct, this means that current science is not effective for observing the past or future, only the present (and a small amount of time either side).