I'm very pleased to see a flurry of recent posts from Dr C.
A doctor's life, especially in the US and especially for a paediatrician (if Julie Heyward is reading this, please note that I have taken a "middle way" in spelling that word!), is a crowded one: I am grateful for every post for which this doctor manages to squeeze time.
I certainly can't manage to reply to all of them as I would wish.
Two of them ("First time as Opera, second time as Soap Opera..." and "The House of Cards") interest me very much, but fall inside the area of US politics on which I have, until the new year, decided to withhold comment. That conveniently halves the choice.
In the excellent long running "Crab blogging" strand, the child patients who supply the material do it all, and comment from me is superfluous. All I need say is go and enjoy the latest one if you haven't already done so.
Which leaves me with one : "Notes on Landscape and Prospect-Refuge Theory". This, again conveniently, is in an area where I had intended (but failed) to continue conversation with JSBlog’s: landscapes in mind.
All these words, however, are not leading up to a response ... they are just a flag and place marker to ensure that, this time, I really do write one.
Even if those strange people mounting court cases against the Large Hadron Collider turn out, by some quirk of the unknown, to be right, I should have a few days in which to tap away (in odd lunch, bus and train moments) and return with something worth posting before we all ascend into "God particle" heaven...
7 comments:
"(if Julie Heyward is reading this, please not that I have taken a "middle way" in spelling that word!)"
DO NOT correct that typo. I love it. It's so good I almost think you did it on purpose.
I love Dr. C's crabs. Been stuck humming Beautiful Dreamer all morning, thanks to him (from beautiful swimmer).
Place-markers are a good sign that bifurcation has occurred. First you pupate, then you're in two places at once.
Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?
Julie Heward: Sadly, I already corrected the typo to which you refer, before finding your comment...
...sorry 'bout that...
As a believer myself (you seem not to be) I am puzzled by why any believer should think that God needs a human court, or indeed humans, to act against the collider. If an omnipotent God he wanted the collider stopped, he would presumably be more than capable of stopping it himself.
It's theologically a very interesting situation. Assuming 1) a Judaeo-Christian God of trad characteristics exists, and 2) the LHC is capable of destroying the world, as you say, He could choose to stop it doing so, well within the usual constraints of not acting overtly (i.e. without openly showing His existence, which would destroy the basis for faith).
OTOH, he could let it destroy the world, which would imply either 1) He wants it to, or 2) His giving humans free will over-rides all other considerations - even when exercised to the point of misadventure leading to the destruction of a creation that, according to scripture, He is supposed to love and to have uniquely invested in.
I suppose that these people come under the free will argument. God is indifferent to their court case, but has given them the free will to conduct it they wish to do so.
I had not thought of that.
I suspect that some of them believe that they act for God, but I do not know this.
It's a long-standing theological issue - see The Free Will Dilemma (PDF) - more or less equivalent to the problem of evil (where again one answer is that God has to allow some bad things to happen to give room for free will).
Thank you, Poor Pothecary. I am afraid that after reading some of The Free Will Dilemma I found (like Felix Grant at the end of his later "Collision" section) that "my brain hurts"! Despite that, I have learned a lot and am grateful to you.
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