God said go forth, multiply - but have fun, too!

It's awesome to see articles like this in the mainstream media!

This is me on a diet

But not this time! Day 6 of Lite n' Easy, and I'm doing pretty well! I feel a bit sorry for my husband and my mum, the ones who hear me whinge the most about how hungry I am!

I love electronic journals!

Currently revising chapter 2 of my thesis. I have a section on natural theology in the Bible, including some discussion of Romans 1:19-20. I'd commented that whatever Paul's intention in these verses, later theologians had interpreted these verses to favour the pursuit of natural theology. I'd left a note to myself asking "which theologians?" Google "natural theology" + Romans. First hit - an article titled "Natural Theology in Paul? Reading Romans 1:19-20" in the International Journal of Systematic Theology. Fortunately, the UNSW library has an electronic subscription. So I can get the article without even leaving my desk. Well, except for walking a few metres to the printer (I printed double sided, of course!)

SCORE!

In other news, I'm on day 3 of my Lite n' Easy diet. I've already eaten my breakfast and morning snack, and I'm HUNGRY!

Vicious cycle

Today, I was trying to finish the final draft of chapter 1. I was determined to stay at uni until it was ready to send off to my supervisors. It's not done. I'm going home. Oh well.

There are two sections that still need major work, and a few smaller points to deal with. I don't ever seem to finish a whole draft in one go. Whenever I send it to my supervisor for feedback, there are always notes to myself in the margin (love the "Comment" feature in Word!) on parts that still need more work or questions that I still need to answer. And then my supervisor adds more comments (he loves Track Changes!), some of which get dealt with as soon as I get the revised version back, but others have been waiting around for a year or more.

While I was working on one section today (criticisms of the "Jacob thesis" concerning the "Anglican origins of modern science," in case you're interested), I came across an old loan slip in one of the books I was using. It seems I borrowed the book on May 6, 2005, and most likely, that wasn't the first time. It reminded me of how long I have been working on this thesis - the number of times I've borrowed particular books and still not finished using them - the way I've gone over, and over, and over these chapter drafts, and they're still not done - the amount of time I've spent on this thesis (nearly 5 years), though it still feels like a last-minute job - and the fact that I'm supposed to submit the thesis on December 15, but there's still so much work to do!

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGG
GGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(In case you were wondering, as I'm sure you all were, the book in question was Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660-1750, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992.)

Ouch!

From a review of Margaret C. Jacob's The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1679-1720 (1976):

It would not be unfair to add that both vigour and tenacity are manifest in the continual reiteration of salient points: something for which undergraduates will be grateful, though more sophisticated readers may be frequently conscious of a numbing effect, not unlike that produced by close proximity to a pneumatic drill.

- Geoffrey Holmes, "Science, Reason, and Religion in the Age of Newton," BJHS 11 (1978), 167.

Visualising the Bible

This image received an honourable mention in the National Geographic's Best Science Images of 2008 competition.

A colorful rainbow brings to light the interconnected nature of one of the world's most familiar books.

The Bible's 1,189 chapters are plotted along the horizontal axis at the bottom of the image, with each bar's length determined by the number of verses.

The arcs above the graph show the 63,779 cross-references between each chapter.

"It almost looks like one monolithic volume," said Carnegie Mellon's Chris Harrison, who--along with Christoph Romhild of North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hamburg, Germany--won an honorable mention for illustrations in the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

—Image courtesy Chris Harrison, Carnegie Mellon University; Christoph Romhild, North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church/Science (and National Geographic).

And from here:

This diagram arose from a collaboration between a Carnegie-Mellon Ph.D student and a Lutheran pastor to create a grand map of Biblical cross-references: "We wanted something that honored and revealed the complexity of the data at every level –- as one leans in, smaller details should become visible. This ultimately led us to the multi-colored arc diagram... The bar graph that runs along the bottom represents all of the chapters in the Bible. Books alternate in color between white and light gray. The length of each bar denotes the number of verses in the chapter. Each of the 63,779 cross references found in the Bible is depicted by a single arc - the color corresponds to the distance between the two chapters, creating a rainbow-like effect."

I think it's pretty, and original, and I would have wondered if it might have won, if not for the religious theme, until I saw the one that did receive first place in the illustrations category:

"Zoom Into the Human Bloodstream"

Deft manipulation of perspective gives viewers a detailed look inside the human circulatory system.

The relationship between a tiny oxygen atom and the giant organ of the heart was accomplished with a common painting technique that fits many scales into a single picture, according to Jennifer Frazier of San Francisco's Exploratorium.

The unusual view won artist Linda Nye first place in the illustration category of the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

—Image courtesy Linda Nye and the Exploratorium Visualization Laboratory; The Exploratorium/Science (and National Geographic).

That's awesome!

Still, I think the first one is a nice mix of science and religion!

Colouring in for adults?

I've sometimes thought it a shame that colouring-in is considered a kids' activity. I can't draw, but I have a beautiful set of Derwent pencils. What am I to do with them?

Maybe I could use this:

peer is one big ol' collaboration of 25 of the most exciting working artists that I know of. each artist drew a self portrait for you to color, so you're actually finishing the piece!

Each print is 8 x 8" on an 8 1/2" x 8 1/2" page, with easy removal for framing. With the incredible artists involved, you might just want to keep it in book form on your coffee table.

There's even a Flickr group for people to post their finished products. Very cool indeed.

Anxiety and the Grace of God

When I first started reading the web comic Piled High and Deeper (PHD), I was amazed by how much it reflected my life as a PhD student. It was such a comfort to know that I wasn't alone!

This most recent comic particularly resonated with me. I have a tendency to be quite an anxious person. If I have a huge amount of work to do, I'm likely to stress about it to the point where I can't actually do any of it! I'll be absolutely exhausted, but I'll lie awake in bed stressing instead of sleeping. It's so incredibly frustrating. I know that the only way I'm going to get any of the work done at all is to get some sleep, but my mind just won't let me. It has to continue worrying! Very, very frustrating.

My struggles with anxiety are not as bad as they have been in the past, but as I'm coming to the end of my PhD, and the amount of work left seems too much for the amount of time left, I do stress out a bit. There are times when I just don't seem to have the energy to do any work at all, and that's very frustrating when I know (a) how much work I have to get done, and (b) how much I want to get this whole PhD thing over and done with! Sometimes it makes me wonder whether I am cut out for the academic life at all.

I've been reading through John Piper's excellent book Future Grace lately, and I've been greatly encouraged and challenged about my anxiety. (I was also challenged by a fantastic sermon at church last week, on Philippians 4, where the preacher said that we can't be constant pray-ers and constant worriers). Piper's book is about trusting the grace of God to come, not just living in the light of the grace that God has already shown us. Scattered through the book are chapters dealing with different "problems" that we all face, and showing how this idea of Future Grace helps us to deal with them. Fortunately for me, the first of these is anxiety!

Piper writes that the root cause of anxiety is unbelief in God's future grace. By this, he is not meaning to blame anxious people for their feelings, or make them feel even worse about what they are experiencing. Instead, he points out that knowing the fundamental cause of the anxiety can help us deal with it. One possible response he considers is the person who says "I have to deal with feelings of anxiety almost every day; and so I feel like my faith in God's grace must be totally inadequate. So I wonder if I can have any assurance of being saved at all." Piper responds with an awesome illustration:

Suppose you are in a car race and your enemy, who doesn't want you to finish the race, throws mud on your windshield. The fact that you temporarily lose sight of your goal and start to swerve, does not mean that you are going to quit the race. And it certainly doesn't mean that you are on the wrong race track. Otherwise the enemy wouldn't bother you at all. What it means is that you should turn on your windshield wipers and use your windshield washer.

When anxiety strikes and blurs our vision of God's glory and the greatness of the future that he plans for us, this does not mean that we are faithless, or that we will not make it to heaven. It means our faith is being attacked. At first blow, our belief in God's promises may sputter and swerve. But whether we stay on track and make it to the finish line depends on whether, by grace, we set in motion a process of resistance - whether we fight back against the unbelief of anxiety.

(John Piper, Future Grace, Multnomah, Oregon, 1995, pp. 55-56)

I know that John Piper is talking about assurance of salvation here, but I found this illustration encouraging with regard to my PhD. I've been working on my PhD for nearly 5 years, which is way too long, and my deadline of December 15 is looking dicey. However, the fact that I'm struggling with it doesn't necessarily mean that I shouldn't be doing it, or that I'm just not cut out for academic life. Maybe it does, but if that were the case, surely my supervisor would have picked up on that by now? After all, he's an intelligent man, and a widely-respected academic. If I was absolutely hopeless, he would not speak so highly of me, nor would he be so encouraging.

(This is connected with the so-called Impostor Syndrome, where you think that it's only a matter of time until people find out that you really have no idea what you're doing, and that you've just been fooling everyone into thinking that you're capable. Apparently this is very common among academics, but one of my supervisors once told me that it's the people who don't think that they are impostors who really are!)

So, where does all this leave me? I still struggle with anxiety and feelings of self-doubt, but I'm trying to put it all in God's hands and trust in his purposes. If finishing my PhD by December 15 is part of his plan for me, I believe that he will help me to accomplish this. If he has called me to serve him as an academic, he will help me get there in the end. That doesn't mean it will be easy, but "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength."

Skweekettes are gonna be happy!

I'm so excited! My very clever husband found a site where we can play Skweek online! Skweek is an arcade game that I had for our Amiga back in the day. I just have to discipline myself not to play it when I'm supposed to be working on the thesis...

God made wine to make us feel better

Psalm 104:14-15 - You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart.

See Lionel's post on The Sola Panel: What's wrong with drunkenness?

Photo from Mister Tim's Photostream on Flickr.

What does the Bible really say...

...about the end of the wicked? Try this Hell Quiz. And check out this post on Doug's blog.

Unmentionables

These are almost as good as Happy Bunny!

Conversations

I don't know how to say this
I don't know how to stand
I don't know where to put my feet
Or where to put my hands

I've got them in my pockets
My fingers are freezing cold
They're wrapped around a ticket stub
That's four weeks old
And I don't know how to say this

I think we've figured out
This world is bigger than you and I
We've exhausted our wealth of knowledge
And have no more answers for mankind

We've had every conversation in the world
About what is right and what has all gone bad
But have I mentioned to you that this is all I am
This is all that I have

I'm not trying to judge you
That's not my job
I am just a seeker too
In search of God

Somewhere somehow this subject became taboo
I have no other way to communicate to you
This is all that I am
This is all that I have

We've had every conversation in the world
About what is right and what has all gone bad
But have I mentioned to you that this is all I am
This is all that I have

I would like to share with you
What makes me complete.
I don't claim to have found the Truth
But I know it has found me

The only thing that isn't meaningless to me
Is Jesus Christ and and way he set me free
This is all that I have
This is all that I am

- Sara Groves

Faraday Institute now on YouTube

Click here.

In other news:

Those in the Birmingham UK area might be interested to know that on Saturday, 27th September, at 4.0 p.m. in the George Hotel, Lichfield, the Institute Director (Professor Denis Alexander) will be in debate with Prof. Steve Fuller (Prof. of Sociology at Warwick University) at the Lichfield Literary Festival on the subject of Intelligent Design. This is a somewhat counterintuitive debate in that Prof. Fuller, an agnostic, is an ID supporter whereas the Director, a theist, is a critic of ID. Hopefully the exchange of views will clarify rather than further obfuscate a topic perennially surrounded by a thick fog of confusion.

I wish I lived in England!

Anastasia Grace

On the weekend, Matt and I finally made it down to Canberra to catch up with Tim and Tegan and to meet our gorgeous new niece, Anastasia. I've only started to become clucky in the last few years, but for now, I'm definitely happy to just be an aunt! I enjoyed cuddling Anastasia and changing her clothes twice (I left the nappies to Tim and Tegan!), but it's good to give her back when she starts screaming! Well, I guess I can't really give her what she wants in that situation anyway...



She's such a sweet little baby - very snuggly. She takes her sleep very seriously, and it can be difficult to wake her up for a feed! Even though she's hungry and makes little sucking motions with her mouth, she just doesn't seem to want to wake up the whole way!






It's lovely to watch my big brother Tim with his little daughter. He and Tegan both seem to be adjusting very well to parenthood! It's amazing how well they're doing on so little sleep.


It was also lovely to see Matt with Anastasia. She's so tiny in comparison to him!




I can't wait to get down to Canberra again! It's such a shame that it's a 3 hour drive and petrol is so expensive. I want to watch my little niece grow!

My new niece

Anastasia - 12 hours old
Originally uploaded by Mister Tim

Isn't she beautiful? This is Anastasia Grace, born last night to my brother Tim and my lovely sister-in-law Tegan.

Matt and I are very excited to be an uncle and aunt for the first time, and we can't wait to meet this gorgeous new addition to our family.

Congratulations Tim and Tegan, and welcome to the world Anastasia!

Vital stats:

3.895kg (8.6 pounds), 51cm long, head circumference of 36cm.

More JAS Classics

From another meeting with my supervisor:

People are dumb... You're going to meet a lot of people who heave their heads up their bums, pardon the expression, about historiography.

There's more to natural philosophy than meets the actor's eye.

The idea is that it's not just the ideas.

There be Jesuits there! I shouldn't go there if I were you!

It's so "yesterday" to think about mathematical sciences. Like there would have been a modern world if there hadn't been any mathematical sciences and scientific revolution, if it had all been natural history. For Christ's sake. It's just they don't know anything. They don't want to.

Opinions and arguments

Update: My letter was published! Here's what my supervisor had to say about one of the correspondents:

I think that [he] may have been (maybe still is) an ultra green goon who used to be tied up with the STS (Science and Technology Studies) criminals and leftwing ratbags at Wollongong.

Hmm...

---

John Lennox, an Oxford mathematician and philosopher of science, is currently in Sydney making several appearances for the Centre for Public Christianity, EU and National Science Week. I've met him once at a conference, where he was supporting Intelligent Design in the midst of an unfriendly audience (in a fairly theoretical, speculative, "let's just think about this" kind of way), and he seems a nice and very interesting guy. I don't agree with everything he says (I'm not terribly sympathetic to Intelligent Design) but I thought his opinion piece in yesterday's SMH was spot on.

I was not so keen on the responses today from Vic Stenger and Paul Gittings, so I wrote a couple of letters to the editor. They probably won't get published, so I'll post them here instead, in the tradition of Andrew's Daily Vowel Movements.

The first is a response to Vic Stenger's opinion piece, "Science demands that seeing is believing."

Vic Stenger (“Science demands that seeing is believing”, August 19) claims that science can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that God doesn’t exist, and yet also states that science cannot be used to answer purely metaphysical questions. He argues that if God exists, evidence of his intervention in creation should be seen in our study of the natural world. However, a scientist and philosopher such as Stenger should be aware of the principle of underdetermination. For any evidence we collect about nature, we can develop multiple theories to explain it. Scientific data cannot necessarily decide between theories – these decisions are based on other criteria, such as simplicity, elegance and coherence. As John Lennox (“Why not every scientist worships at Darwin’s feet”, August 18) pointed out, scientific evidence alone cannot adjudicate between naturalism and theism. For a theist, science involves understanding the world and the processes by which God created. But the belief in God comes from outside science, and so does an assumption that there is no God.

The second is in response to Paul Gitting's letter about John Lennox.

Paul Gittings (Letters, August 19) writes that theism says “I don’t know, I don’t want to understand, I just want to be happy in my irrational beliefs.” Can he really believe this of an Oxford professor of mathematics and philosophy of science?

It really seemed to me that both Stenger and Gittings just weren't getting what Lennox was saying. Nowhere in the opinion piece did Lennox come out in support of Intelligent Design, nor did he promote any kind of "god of the gaps" theory. He wasn't arguing that positing God as creator solves any problems currently unresolved by science. Rather, he pointed out that, as an underlying assumption about the world, theism (assuming an intelligent creator) is no more faith-based than naturalism (assuming that everything in the universe came about by purely natural means).

Update: I received an email to say that my letter had been shortlisted for publication in tomorrow's Herald. Just don't know which one...

The War on Terror

Our lovely sister Lynley bought us the War on Terror board game as an engagement present earlier this year. I'm very happy to say that the last time we played, despite Matt turning terrorist and attempting to wipe out all that was good and democratic in the world, my pink empire prevailed and I won the game. I'm not usually all that competitive, but I'm still really stoked about winning - I'm not usually good at strategy games, and given that this game is like a cross between Risk and Settlers of Catan, I surprised myself!

Anyway, it's quite a fun game but apparently not as innocent as I had thought...

The wonderful boys in blue of the Kent constabulary decided to confiscate three copies of War on Terror from activists at this year's Climate Camp at Kingsnorth Power Station. Apparently the EVIL balaclava could be used to commit criminal acts... It's official, our board game is dangerous. Lots of journalist types decided to write about our game getting confiscated rather than the impending doom that is climate chaos and our government's inability to do shit all about it.

Read more here.



This is a photo of Matt in the "evil balaclava" taken the first time we played the game by my brother Tim, a very talented photographer.

A Mere Christian

I currently attend an Anglican church, but I would not call myself an Anglican. I used to attend a Baptist church, and I was baptised, by full immersion, as a believer, at age 12, but I would not call myself a Baptist.

I am a Christian, a Mere Christian, of no other Religion; and the Church that I am of is the Christian Church… But must you know what Sect or Party I am of? I am against all Sects and dividing Parties…

- Richard Baxter, Church History of the Government of Bishops, 1680