Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on faith and atheism

In the Independent, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown talks about faith and atheism:

Radio 4’s John Humphrys has taken on the fanatic atheists in a new book about faith and the human urge to believe. Some aspects of our nature are not susceptible to scientific enquiry, cannot be dissected, categorised and validated in terms that would satisfy the “rational” disbelievers, whose intellect is colossal but imagination puny.

I disagree; all observable phenomena can, in principle, be studied and understood by the methods of science. Of course, there are plenty of things we still don’t understand, but the amount of scientific understanding is vastly greater than it was in the time of our grandparents, and is growing exponentially.

There are no experiments and tests to explain love, empathy, longing, the agony and ecstasy of the heart, the wild and wonderful creativity of the brain, that thing that happens to you when a full moon appears above the sea and is reflected in it. Sorry, but knowing the science of why the moon shines is irrelevant to the experience. Faith is the light of the moon above and that light in the sea, reality and spirituality, both making you tremblingly conscious of forces vast and beyond words. Impertinent scientists cannot know what they speak of.

Emotions such as love, empathy can be, and have been explained in terms of game theory and evolutionary psychology. AI research and cognitive science are beginning to understand what is going on in the brain — though we are still at the very earliest stages of understanding it. Faith might make one conscious of “forces vast”, but it is science that is mapping out the true size and age of the universe, and it is scientific knowledge that — at least for me — makes the experiences of seeing a sunset, or a flower, or watching a kitten exploring its world, so much more immense and enjoyable and moving.

(Link from Normblog)

Britain allows human-animal hybrids

This is good news:

Human-animal embryo study wins approval
Plans to allow British scientists to create human-animal embryos are expected to be approved tomorrow by the government’s fertility regulator. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority published its long-awaited public consultation on the controversial research yesterday, revealing that a majority of people were “at ease” with scientists creating the hybrid embryos.

The only thing I’d argue about here is the terminology. The term “human-animal hybrid” kinda implies that humans aren’t animals, which is of course not true. This is merely an animal-animal hybrid where one of the species involved happens to be H. sapiens.

Researchers want to create hybrid embryos by merging human cells with animal eggs, in the hope they will be able to extract valuable embryonic stem cells from them. The cells form the basic building blocks of the body and are expected to pave the way for revolutionary therapies for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and even spinal cord injuries.

Using animal eggs will allow researchers to push ahead unhindered by the shortage of human eggs. Under existing laws, the embryos must be destroyed after 14 days when they are no bigger than a pinhead, and cannot be implanted into the womb.

Opponents of the research and some religious groups say the work blurs the distinction between humans and animals

You can’t blur a distinction that doesn’t exist. Fundamentally, humans are just another species of animal. That’s why research involving other species (mice are commonly used, because they are cheap) has lead to enormous advances in treating human diseases. If religious people don’t want this research to carry on, and would rather people continue to suffer and die from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and countless other diseases, then they should be honest and say so directly.

Britain should be at the forefront of allowing such work to happen. We should have the laxest regulations possible on biological research, because this will help us to outcompete other lesser societies which are mired in irrationalist ideologies such as religion. I’m particularly thinking of societies where they teach creationism is schools — we should do our best to promote a brain drain from their societies to ours.

OpenSolaris to challenge Linux, maybe

Sun says that their open source version of Solaris, OpenSolaris, will challenge Linux:

OpenSolaris will challenge Linux says Sun

Sun Microsystems has ambitious plans for the commercial and open-source versions of its Solaris operating system, hoping to achieve for Solaris the kind of ubiquity already enjoyed by Java.

Sun intends to take the operating system into markets where it hasn’t traditionally been a force, such as desktop and embedded systems, according to Marc Hamilton, vice president of Solaris marketing at Sun. The vendor is also keen to position OpenSolaris as a real alternative to Linux. “There’s an enormous momentum building behind Solaris,” said Ian Murdock, chief operating platforms officer at Sun.

Saying it’s so doesn’t make it true. I’ve been using Linux for years, and keep up to date on news of open source / free software, and I’ve not noticed any particular hype or excitement regarding Solaris.

If Sun had open sourced Solaris 10 years ago, this may have made a difference. But now? I doubt if anyone cares particularly. And even if it does become popular, Solaris is just a kernel; if I was running it I’d be running the same user-space applications that I do now, such as Firefox, KDE, etc.

In summary: Solaris is unlikely to become particularly popular among people now using Linux. And even if it does, it’s no big deal (and the fact that it’s not big deal — I can do the same things with Linux that I could with Solaris — is partly why Solaris won’t challenge Linux).

(Link from Slashdot)