But even the basic idea is flawed.  It assumes that we are somehow special, that the universe was designed for life.  We only have to look around to see that it isn’t true.  If you were randomly transported into any location in the Universe, there is more than a 99.9999999999999% chance that you will die.  You’ll probably land in empty space and die.  But you could also land in or near a star and die.  Or on the surface of a planet that is too hot or too cold and die.  Or in or near a black hole and die.   The Universe is deeply inhospitable to life.  We only know of one place in the Universe that supports life, and it has been a difficult battle at times even here.

There are other arguments too.  How do we know the life the Universe was designed for was us?  Maybe the designer wanted dolphins?  Or maybe the universe was actually designed for beings in some other galaxy and we just happened to pop up like an annoying bit of mold in the corner of the shower?

But to me, the answer is clearly the anthropic principle.  The only universe in which we could be alive to observe that the parameters are compatible with life is one that necessarily must have parameters that are compatible with life!   If they weren’t, we would be here to notice. Nothing would. 

I recently came across an excellent article that takes this one step further.  If we just happened to evolve in this universe, we would expect to find that it has parameters compatible with life.  It is just impossible for things to be any other way.  But if an omnipotent deity created us and put us in this universe, there isn’t necessarily a need to have fine tuned it for us.  An omnipotent deity could presumably keep us alive even though the universe isn’t set up to support life.   If we observed that, it would be powerful evidence for some kind of entity supporting us.    Go read the article – he does a much better job explaining it than I do

• 4 egg whites
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/4 tsp stevia extract
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups of finely shredded coconut
• a block of dark chocolate (optional)

Instructions:

1. Separate the eggs from the egg whites.  If you get any yolk in the white, they won’t whip and you’ll have to start again, so do each one separately before combining.  Also make sure the bowl and beaters are clean and grease-free.
2. Whip the egg whites until foamy, then add the cream of tartar and continue whipping until stiff peaks form (on the beater, not in the bowl)
3. Beat in the honey, stevia and vanilla
4. Carefully fold in the coconut half at a time, although don’t worry too much if it deflates.  It should be fairly loose, but stiff enough to form kind of a soft hershey’s kiss shape if dropped on a tray.  If it is a puddle, add more coconut.
5. Drop spoonfuls on a a greased tray or on cooking/parchment paper (or alternatively, you can fill mini muffin tins).
6. Bake at 150 degrees until golden brown.  In my oven it’s about 15 minutes on fan bake.  They dry out if you leave them too long.
7. Scrape them off the tray/paper and let them cool on a wire rack
8. Once cool, melt some dark chocolate (I used Whittakers 62% cacao) and half dip them into the chocolate then set on cooking paper to cool.  If it is very hot and humid, you can quick-set the chocolate in the fridge, otherwise you’ll be waiting a long time.   In theory, you should store them in an airtight container – they keep for ages, but frankly, they usually get eaten too quickly to even make it into storage.  A good proportion of them don’t even make it to the end of the chocolate dipping stage!

For any characteristic you can name, there are thousands of other people who have either more or less of it than I do.  People who are smarter, more patient, taller, funnier,  stronger, better at making cocktails, worse at making websites, better at running, worse at swimming.  For any given aspect of my life, I could be exchanged with someone else without any problems.  I’m decidedly average.  We are all decidedly average.

And if you take a cosmic perspective, we become even more insignificant.  We are one of 7 billion people on a little blue planet orbiting one fairly typical star out of 300 billion in our galaxy, which is itself a rather ordinary galaxy out of some 200 billion galaxies in the universe.  And we will probably exist for 70, maybe 80 years, out of the 15 billion years our universe has existed to date.   Our existence is utterly utterly insignificant.

And yet, it doesn’t feel that way to us.  To us, our existence is, quite literally, everything.  And we don’t feel like we are just one of thousands of interchangeable people, we feel special.  We want to feel like we are unique, different, that we are valued for our distinctive characteristics.

I think this is why friends, family and partners are so important.  To the universe and the planet, we are unremarkable interchangeable units, but to them, we are irreplaceable – we are special.  I think this is one of the aspects that make relationships so good: to know that there is even one person to whom you are the most special, most important person in the world fulfils a deep human need.

This could actually be a good reason not to disclose much previous dating history to a new partner.  A new partner wants to feel special, not to just feel they are the latest in a long line of exes.  And it makes it worse that they will probably share many things in common with the ex-partners.  Would you rather hear “you are so much like my ex” or “I’ve never met anybody like you“?  The exes probably thought they were special too, but each of them has eventually been changed out for a different model.  How long before the current partner becomes just the next ex on the list?   I’ve always thought it best to be open about everything, but perhaps there some things it is better not to talk about.

There are of course many many other great things about relationships – companionship, having someone to rely on, to talk to, to share with, knowing that you don’t have to face the world alone, and of course, sex.   But I do think that the sensation of being special in someone’s eyes is one of the more compelling feelings that we can have.  You might even say that it’s special.

Because I only wanted to see how it worked, I never bothered filling in any of the details on the site or adding pictures or anything like that.  I got a few messages which were guys clearly playing the numbers game – if they send a generic message to every single female on the site, they figure they might get some hits.  Those were promptly ignored.  Late last year I gradually started filling in more and more sections until finally my profile was complete just before Christmas.  Since then, the messages I get have generally been much higher quality, from intelligent, articulate people with whom I have a lot in common.  

But there are exceptions!  I got one message a few weeks ago from a guy asking if I was interested in casual sex.  I politely declined and wished him luck and assumed that was the end of it.  Then, last night,  the following conversation ensued via OK Cupid’s live chat service. 

Apparently misogyny is alive and well.

The conference was held at the Grand Wailea on Maui, which is one of the biggest resorts in Hawaii (if not the biggest).   The conference was good and I had a bit of time before and after to relax around the pools and the beautiful grounds of the resort.

After the conference I had one day in Waikiki before my flight back in the evening.  I spent the day doing the Hole in the Wall tour by Hawaii Food Tours. We went to nearly a dozen different places (although half were in Chinatown) and tried all sorts of delicious food that is particular to Hawaii.  My favourite was probably the char siu manapua (basically a delicious baked cha siu bao with a lovely sweet bread) and some terribly divine deep fried doughnut type concoction called a malasada.  I also tried poke, basically flavoured raw tuna.  It isn’t a ceviche – the fish is still raw, but was quite yummy.  The tour guides, Greg and Jess were great.  They’re locals and they had recommendations for all kinds of places to eat for all budgets and tastes as well as lots of advice about places to go and things to see.  I can see why this it rated on TripAdvisor as one of the top things to do in Hawaii.

With a few hours to kill, I used the advice from Greg and Jess to do a little bit of a bar crawl along Waikiki Beach.  The highlight of that was a lovely creamy pina colada at the Moana Surfrider, the oldest hotel in Waikiki, followed by a heavenly Mai Tai from the Mai Tai Bar at the Royal Hawaiian (where the drink was invented).  

More pictures are on picasa.

One of the first interesting parts of this is 3:7, which says that some parts of the scripture are clear revelations and that others are allegorical.  Sadly, it also says that nobody knows what the allegorical parts mean except Allah.

Next there’s a bit more about how Allah is severe in punishment and that disbelievers (like Pharoah’s folk) will be sent to hell (3:11).  There’s also a bit of a carrot, in gardens with rivers flowing underneath where they will have pure companions (3:15).  This is followed by a bit more about the evil people who turn away or disbelieve Allah and will therefore enjoy a painful doom (3:21).  This is a theme that is repeated quite a lot.

The story of Imran turns out to be the story of Mary and Jesus.   Apparently, Allah prefers Adam, Noah, the Family of Abraham and the Family of Imran above all his creatures (3:33).  I don’t even know who Imran is, except that is says they were all descendents of each other.  Apparently Imran’s wife when she was pregnant offered her child as an offering for Allah (3:35).  The child was a female called Mary and Allah promised to keep her safe.  Zachariah is appointed as Mary’s guardian.  One day he found that she already had some food, which apparently came from Allah (3:37).  Zachariah prayed and some angels came and told him that he’d have a son .  He asked how that was possible when he was an old man and his wife was barren (3:40).  The angel told him not to worry, Allah will figure it out. They told him not to speak for 3 days.

The angels then told Mary that Allah has preferred her over all the other woman, and tell her to be obedient and prostrate herself.   The angels then told Mary (3:45) that she would have s son “whose name is the Messiah, Jesus”.  She asked how that was possible when she was a virgin and was told that Allah will figure it out (3:47).  The angels also mention that Allah will teach Jesus “the Scripture and wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel” (3:48), which is interesting considering the gospels didn’t exist at this point (before Jesus was even born.  It says that Allah will make Jesus a messenger to the children of Israel and that he will tell them that he can make a clay bird and breathe into it to bring it alive as a sign from the lord.  I don’t remember seeing this anywhere in the Bible?   It also says that Jesus will confirm some of the Torah and will relax some of the rules from the Torah.

Allah promises to chastise heavily those who don’t believe in Jesus (3:56).  Allah created Jesus the same way he created Adam (from dust, apparently).  There follows a bunch of exhortations of people to believe in the scripture (after all, Abraham believed, why don’t you?), and finally we get back again to the painful doom that awaits those who disbelieve.  “Their doom will not be lightened, neither will they be reprieved” (3:88).  Then there is a little bit more asking how people can possibly disbelieve in Allah when he is all knowing etc.

On the day of judgement apparently the faces of the believers will be whitened and the faces of the disbelievers will be blackened.  Those with white faces will dwell with Allah forever, while the black faces will taste Allah’s punishment (3:106-7).

There are a few passages about not being friends with non-muslims.  For instance, 3:118 which says they will try to ruin you and 3:28, which says that muslims should not prefer non-muslim friends.

I gather that at some point, Muhammad must have had an issue with people fleeing from battle.  There are a large number of verses that seem designed to strengthen and encourage soldiers:

• “When two parties of you almost fell away, and Allah was their protecting Friend” (3:122)
• “Allah had already given you the victory at Badr, when ye were contemptible. So observe your duty to Allah in order that ye may be thankful.” (3:123)
• Allah helped them out with three thousand angels (3:124), and then promises that if they persevere and get attacked, he’ll send five thousand (3:125)
• “Allah ordained this only as a message of good cheer for you, and that thereby your hearts might be at rest – Victory cometh only from Allah, the Mighty, the Wise” (3:126)
• “Faint not nor grieve, for ye will overcome them if ye are (indeed) believers” (3:139)
• “And with how many a prophet have there been a number of devoted men who fought (beside him). They quailed not for aught that befell them in the way of Allah, nor did they weaken, nor were they brought low. Allah loveth the steadfast” (3:146)
• In a battle, the tide went against the muslims and their courage failed them and they fled.  But that was Allah’s doing, he was just testing and then he forgave them (3:152)
• Some soldiers climbed the hill and ignored everyone while the messenger behind them was calling on them to fight.  They were thinking that it wasn’t their cause but Muhammad told them it was Allah’s cause.  They also were thinking that if their comrades hadn’t been part of the cause, they wouldn’t have been killed.  But Muhammad told them that even if they had been at home, they would have died anyway. (3:153-154,168)
• It was Satan who caused the the soldiers to flee, but Allah has now forgiven them (3:155)
• It’s not a big deal to die for Allah, since you’ll go to heaven (3:157-8,169, 195)
• You can’t lose if you believe in Allah: “If Allah is your helper none can overcome you” (3:160)
• Allah deliberately made them lose a battle so he could see who were the true believers from the hypocrites (the ones who refused to fight): “That which befell you, on the day when the two armies met, was by permission of Allah; that He might know the true believers.” (3:166-167)
• There is great reward for those who fight for Allah (3:172)
• Allah will burn those who don’t contribute money to his war effort (3:180-181)

There are a few other bits sprinkled throughout about the doom that awaits the disbelievers.  It will be an “awful doom” (3:176) and a “painful doom” (3:177) and a “shameful doom” (3:178).  Their “habitation will be hell, an ill abode” (3:197)

There is also a bit of criticism of those who were given the scripture before the muslims.  I assume this applies to Jews and Christians.  They did much wrong (3:186) and were supposed to take the Scriptures they were given and “expound it to mankind and not to hide it.  But they flung it behind their backs and bought thereby a little gain” (3:187)

At the end, we are again reminded that paradise is a place of “Gardens underneath which rivers flow, wherein they will be safe forever” (3:198) and then exhorted to “Endure, outdo all others in endurance, be ready and observe your duty to Allah, in order that ye may succeed” (3:200)

The Quran is divided into 114 surahs (chapters) which vary wildly in length, from just 3 ayat (verses) to 286.  They also don’t appear to be in any kind of order, except maybe longest to shortest(? – too soon to tell).  Some of them were apparently received by Muhammad while he was in Mecca (610-622) and others after his migration to Medina (622-632) but they are not in chronological order.

The first surah (Al-Fatihah – The Opening) is pretty short – just 7 ayat (verses) and is basically just a prayer to Allah.

The second surah (Al-Baqarah – The Cow) is one of the longest in the Quran and contains quite a diverse range of topics.

There are many verses praising Allah and testifying how powerful, how great, how merciful and forgiving he is.  And there are an equal (if not greater) number warning of the awful, terrible, fiery doom and eternal torment that awaits his disbelievers.

There is a little bit of a repeat of some of the Old Testament stories, such as:

• Adam naming all the animals
• Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden (which was Satan’s doing)
• Moses leading the escape from the Pharoah in Egypt
• Wandering in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights
• Worshipping a golden calf while Moses’s back was turned
• Moses striking a rock to create a spring (or in this case 12 springs) for his people to drink

There are also some new stories. The one for which this chapter is apparently named concerns Moses instructing his people to sacrifice a cow.  They thought he was joking at first, but when he insisted he wasn’t, they were very concerned to make sure they got the details right, asking for specifics about the age and colour of the cow.  They eventually got it right and sacrificed an acceptable yellow cow (“although they almost did not”).

This is where Allah explains that Muslims must pray towards the Kaaba in Mecca rather than Jerusalem as they did previously, saying that those who recognise the truth of the Quran will have no problem doing this.

Allah’s omniscient nature is frequently emphasised: “Allah is not unaware of what you do”.  And he is particularly concerned with whether people believe.  People who only believe part of the scripture are consigned to the same “most grievous doom” as the rest of us disbelievers.

There are of course a few good points.  Paying the poor-due is mentioned quite a few times.  Giving money to orphans is encouraged a couple of times.  There is something about setting slaves free.

And there are some practical matters:

• It’s fine to have sex with your wives in the evenings during Ramadan
• Fight unbelievers wherever you find them, but you should let them start it.  Fight them as they fight you, but if they stop persecuting you, you can stop fighting them
• Instructions are given on making a pilgrimage to Mecca
• Alcohol and gambling are discouraged, and Allah says you should only spend superfluous money on these things.
• Muslims can’t marry disbelievers: a Muslim slave is better than non believing free woman even if you love her
• Don’t have sex with women while they have their period, but other wise, feel free to have sex with them whenever you want (they are your tilth to cultivate)
• Divorced women have to wait three months to make sure they aren’t pregnant
• Women have similar rights to those of men in kindness, but men are a degree above them
• Mothers should breastfeed for 2 years, unless she doesn’t want to.  They can use a wet-nurse as long as they pay her properly
• If you die, your wife must wait for 4 months and 10 days and then it’s no sin on you if she marries someone else
• There is no compulsion in religion (although if you disbelieve in Allah you will be cast into the fire)
• If you borrow money, have a scribe write down the terms of the contact and have it witnessed.  The witnesses should be two men, but if two men aren’t available, you can use a man and two women, so that if one woman forgets the other might remember.

Chapter 8: The specially created elements of life

This chapter is really just more of the same kind of fine tuning arguments.  The two things Oktar is marvelling at are Carbon and Oxygen.  If carbon wasn’t capable for forming 4 covalent bonds, organic chemistry as we know it wouldn’t be possible.  If oxygen was either more or less reactive than it is, it wouldn’t participate in chemical reactions the same way it does now.   Again, those are not reasons to think that carbon and oxygen were designed for us. 

Conclusion

The first part of the conclusion is really just a restatement of the fine tuning argument that has pervaded the book.  Everything in the universe is such that the universe can support life, therefore it must have been created by Allah.  The Big Bang happened therefore Allah must have created the universe.   Neither of these conclusions follow from the premises.

The second part of the conclusion is actually about things that were not even addressed in the book!  He states that life is so overwhelmingly unlikely that it could not have happened by chance and quotes some calculation from someone called Shapiro who calculated the odds at almost zero.   

The rest of the chapter is just a few quotes from the Quran which say that Allah created everything: “Your Lord is Allah, who created the heavens and the earth in six days and then established himself firmly on the throne.”  Hardly compelling.

Chapter 7: The signs of creation in water

This chapter waxes lyrical about the amazing properties of water asserting that it was created specifically to be one of the building blocks of life.  He does this by arguing that not only is water unique, it is inconsistent with out liquids in its behaviour and therefore must have been divinely created.

Firstly, he covers thermal properties: ice floating on water, water having a high heat conductivity and high heat capacity but ice having a low heat capacity.

Oktar asks why water expands as it cools below 4 degrees and states that nobody has ever been able to answer this question, which is absolutely untrue.  Water freezing is a well understood phenomenon.  Water (H₂O) is a bent polar molecule, meaning that the two hydrogen atoms have a slight positive charge and the oxygen atom has a slight negative charge.  When water freezes, the hydrogen atoms don’t want to sit next to each other (like charges repel).  The shape of the molecule means the most stable structure is a tetrahedral lattice where the hydrogen atoms are next to oxygen atoms in the next molecule.  This creates a crystalline structure that is less dense than liquid water.   Oktar consistently confuses mass and density here, saying that the water gets heavier and lighter as it melts and freezes.  The mass doesn’t change, but the density does.  The rigid crystalline structure means more space between the molecules than when water is fluid, making it less dense.   Liquid water has molecules that are closer together and thus are denser.

This property is not unique to water.   Silicon expands when it freezes, as does Bismuth, Antimony and Gallium and pretty much any other polar molecule such as ammonia, hydrogen fluoride or sucrose.  And interestingly, this is actually not a very desirable property for life – if the water in our cells freezes, our cells burst and are destroyed.  If Allah had made it so that it didn’t expand like this, we would have been able to withstand much colder temperatures and live in polar regions or high mountains without so many problems.

Water does have pretty good heat capacity, and moderately good heat conductance, but an all powerful creator of everything in the universe would certainly have been able to come up with better systems for cooling the body than sweating water.  There are many other liquids and solids with better heat conductance.

Next, he makes a very big deal of water’s low viscosity: “Indeed, if we discount a few substances such as ether and liquid hydrogen, water appears to have a viscosity less than anything except gases.”   Why yes, if you ignore all the liquids with viscosity lower than water, you will find that water has the lowest viscosity of all.  The few substances also include liquid nitrogen, acetone, benzene, methanol and ethyl alcohol.  He next notes that if water suddenly became more viscous, our heart wouldn’t be able to pump it properly.  Obviously, since our circulatory system evolved to work with blood that was largely made of water.

He says several times that water was obviously perfectly designed for our bodies.  I do wonder how Oktar things this whole creation thing worked.  Allah apparently created us (out of either clay (15:26), a drop of fluid (16:4), dust (30:20) or a blood clot (96:1-2) depending which chapter you believe) with this circulatory system and then sat back and thought, hmm, I better design something to go inside all these arteries, veins and capillaries.  I better make it not too viscous, and since it will be oozing out the sweat glands, I better make sure it has high heat conductance.   Except that water already existed, because he apparently made all living things out of water (24:45), including us (25:54).

Chapter 6: The signs of creation in light

The basic premise of this chapter is that the sun was designed to emit just that part of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes are sensitive to and that supports life on earth.  Oktar’s argument goes like this: 

1. Our eyes are only sensitive to 1/10²⁵ of the electromagnetic spectrum. 
   (Aside: technically the electromagnetic spectrum is pretty much infinite, but that figure is close enough.  A logarithmic scale is almost always used for the spectrum though, and on that scale, we can see about 1.5% of it.)
2. The sun outputs only about 2/10²⁵ of the electromagnetic spectrum.
3. Amazingly, the sun outputs the same part of the spectrum that we can see.  The odds of this happening by chance are very small, so obviously the sun was designed for us.

Frankly, this argument is just stupid.  The sun radiates in most of the spectrum, but the vast majority is in visible light and near infrared.  We see visible light (obviously), which is around half of what the sun outputs.  But, our atmosphere actually blocks a lot of the rest of the suns radiation, including some of the infrared.  So the majority of the light that reaches us is visible light.  It is no surprise that our bodies evolved to see using just that part of the spectrum that reaches the surface of the earth.  That is exactly what we would expect of creatures that evolved on this planet.

Frankly, I would be significantly more convinced that Allah created us if it turned out we could see in x-ray.  If Allah created us, he could have made us to see in any part of the spectrum.  So why did Allah decide to randomly choose that tiny sliver of the spectrum for our eyes to be sensitive to? Surely he could have made us see the whole spectrum, or any part of it?   I don’t think religion can give an answer to that question.

To me this chapter very clearly demonstrates how exactly backwards Oktar and other creationists have everything.   Imagine an intelligent puddle of water.  Looking around, it marvels at how well the ground under it exactly fits the contours of the water – everywhere the puddle is deep, the ground recedes to make room, everywhere the puddle is shallow, the ground is higher to support it.  Indeed, there are no gaps anywhere between the puddle and the ground underneath it.  This can’t be a coincidence – surely the ground has to have been sculpted and shaped specifically to house the puddle.  The ground must have been designed for the puddle. 

We can clearly recognise the puddle’s mistake – we know that the shape of the puddle was determined by the shape of the ground and not vice-versa.  The puddle simply fills whatever niche is available.  The same happened with us.  We were shaped by the fact of evolving on this planet.  The reason why we see in the particular 1.5% of the spectrum that we do is that that is the part of the spectrum that our nearest star happens to emit and that our atmosphere lets through to the ground.   We are able to see using the majority of the electromagnetic spectrum that we experience – nothing unlikely about that.