So, the Large Hadron Collider was turned on, and unsurprisingly, the Earth has survived. At least, according to this helpful site, the world is still here:

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

Good to know!

I have to wonder though about some people’s comments regarding the tests that will be performed using the LHC. One commenter on the news.au.com article linked above stated “hopefully this thing will show that god does NOT exist!” It’s his/her right to hold that opinion of (s)he wants to, but I think the idea that God could be disproved by any experiment such as this is a bit misguided.

As far as I can see, the experiments that will be run can tell us a lot about the conditions at the earliest moments of the Big Bang. But they cannot tell us anything about what precipitated the Big Bang. How can we, as members of the universe created by said Big Bang, living within its confines & limitations of time and space and matter, discover what lies beyond time and space and matter?

The results of the studies will no doubt be very interesting, but I don’t think we should look to them for proof or disproof of God’s existence.

As a Canadian, this news saddens me deeply:

In response to a series of controversies over abortion debates on Canadian campuses, the student government of York University in Toronto has tabled an outright ban on student clubs that are opposed to abortion.

Gilary Massa, vice-president external of the York Federation of Students, said student clubs will be free to discuss abortion in student space, as long as they do it “within a pro-choice realm,” and that all clubs will be investigated to ensure compliance. [Source: National Post]

Apparently everyone has the right to free speech … as long as it’s not the “wrong” speech. (See the link above for the full story of how this happened and the school administration’s response; Hat tip to the STR blog for noting this article.)

I’ve posted on abortion before, though it’s important to note that my objections to abortion are not due to “religious” reasons. The case against abortion (although of course also mandated biblically) is based on logic, science, and shared “common ground”. Unfortunately, the arguments in favor of the pro-life view often get lost during emotionally-charged debates on the subject.

For anyone who is interested in pro-life issues, two great websites are:

• Life Training Institute
• Stand to Reason’s Bioethics section

And two highly recommended books on the subject are:

• Pro-Life 101 A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Case Persuasively by Scott Klusendorf
• Common Ground Without Compromise by Stephen Wagner

This is not a trivial topic: Over one million abortions occur each month. This is 15x the number which perish from all STDs combined including HIV/AIDS. Something to think about, anyways … though not at York University, and perhaps soon not anywhere else in Canada either? From the same article:

Meanwhile, similar controversies are unfolding across Canada, with anti-abortion groups at Capilano College, the University of British Columbia-Okanagan, Lakehead University and Carleton University stripped of official club status and funding, at least once by fiat of a single member of student council. Some clubs have regained status, while others appealed their cases to human rights commissions.

The other day I came across a well written essay by Dr. Henry F. Schaefer III entitled “Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence?” (aka Scientists and Their Gods) and so I thought I’d share the link with you. He is described by the US News & World Report as being “Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia.” He is a multiple Nobel Prize nominee and is a highly cited chemist. As a Christian and a scientist, he has some insightful comments on the relationship between science and religion and observations regarding Christian scientists (or scientists who also are Christians).

I’m not sure how accurate its numbers are, but this “World Clock” purports to give you statistics on a number of different worldwide metrics, updated dynamically, including:

• Population
• Births
• Deaths (sorted by method)
• Abortions
• Number of cars, bicycles, and computers produced
• Etc …

You can also click the Year, Month, Week, Day, and Now buttons at the top to limit the results to a specific period of time. For example, since I started writing this post, 200 abortions have occurred. In the last week, the number of abortions that occurred was approximately 258,000, compared to 17,000 from all STDs including HIV/AIDs. Now, all of these figures are sad and alarming, and I am in no way trying to belittle the AIDS epidemic. In fact I regularly support the blood:water mission in their efforts to provide clean drinking water and clean blood to help battle the HIV/ADS crisis in Africa.

However, although the shockingly large number of abortions does not itself prove anything about the ethics of abortion, it should lead us to think seriously about the morality of this issue: Year-to-date nearly 31 million abortions have occurred. If abortion does take the life of a human person, that is 31 million murders.

• For more on this subject, please see my previous post Abortion = Profits?.