Shall We Colonize Mars or Planets in other Star Systems?

Colonizing Mars may sound like a good idea, but it would be a nightmare. Very little atmosphere, no protection from radiation, no natural food, no infrastructure, too little gravity, too cold, no grass, no plants, no lakes, no animal, no skinny-dipping, and almost no way to deal with big problems that will absolutely happen. And you’d have to live underground.

Our bodies are adapted to the Earth’s environment in thousands of ways. Colonizing Mars or anywhere else in our solar system would be disastrous.

What about the concern that some disaster could happen to the Earth that would destroy humanity?

I think that within 100 years or so, we’ll have the technology to avoid large asteroid collisions, devastating diseases, super-volcanoes, etc. So after a century or so, I think it’s highly unlikely that any disaster would destroy humanity. (Astrophysicists think the Sun will serve us well for at least a billion years).

World population is expected to top out at less than 10 billion people, and with proper recycling, there are plenty of resources for all. After all, our natural resources do not get used up. (The exceptions are the fossil fuels, but we won’t need them after this century). There is the same amount of iron, aluminum, chromium, and all the other elements, that there were millennia ago.

As far as extra-solar planets, keep dreaming. The planet, Proxima Centauri, is in the nearest star system to our own solar system. And it’s over 4 light years away. At the current speeds of our spacecraft, it would take tens of thousands of years to get there. It would be a miracle if, next century, we could get there in a thousand years.

It would be more of a miracle if we could get there with anyone alive.

What about small, robotic spacecraft? By next century, it's possible but not likely, that we’ll probably be able to send out a bunch of these to various star systems. Once one gets to a planet that it can land on, it could send a transmission back to Earth about what it has found. It can then duplicate itself, and send out more small spaceships. I’ve seen some estimates that we could have these essentially visit every part of our galaxy in 100,000 to 1,000,000 years. A million years seems like a long time, but hominids were around a million years ago. And the dinosaurs died off over 60 million years ago. So it really isn’t as long as it sounds. And we’d know for sure which planets, if any, have intelligent life.

But human colonization of extra-solar planets? We’d need a spaceship to house hundreds of mostly young couples, that can support them for many generations. If you think that’s going to work, you’ve been watching way too many Star Trek and Star Wars’ movies. I know I have.

 
Our only hope is that Elon Musk develops a huge Tesla spacecraft that can travel at ‘ludicrous speed’. Hopefully, we wouldn’t run into a bunch of Klingons.
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Tim Farage is a Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at The University of Texas at Dallas, and a former Professor of Mathematics. The views expressed herein are those of the author. Some of his main interests are in online education, and the reconciliation between science and spirituality. You are welcome to comment upon this blog entry and/or to contact him at tfarage@hotmail.com.

Is the Resurrection of Christ a historical fact?

This has always been an interesting question to me. And it is not a question I want to take on faith. After all, either the Resurrection was a historical fact or it wasn’t. If the Klingons had recording devices that recorded details of this event, and they showed that the Resurrection were faked, I wouldn’t believe it occurred.

A few days ago, someone asked me if I think Christ actually turned water into wine. I said that I didn’t know, because the Gospels weren’t necessarily written to be historically precise, but rather to make important points. But in any case I love that story. And he certainly could have turned water into wine, but there is not enough evidence for me to take it as near certainty.

The Gospels were written decades after Christ lived. And there are some fairly minor discrepancies between them, as would be expected.

That said, I’m almost certain that the Resurrection was a historical fact.

There are a number of good books that go into detail about this, including, “None Dare Call it a Conspiracy”.

I’m not going to give all the details here, so let me present four main points that indicate it did actually happen.

·      Many of the Apostles were afraid and went into hiding at the crucifixion. But within a few days, they seemed to be convinced he had Resurrected.

·      All of the Apostles and disciples went to their deaths, and some were tortured, and not one recanted the Resurrection. No conspiracy, no mass hypnotism, no wishful thinking could account for this.

·      In all four Gospels, it was women who first discovered the empty tomb, and were told by an Angel (or a man) that Christ had risen. At the time of the Gospels, Jewish women were held in very low regard. It is almost inconceivable that the writers of all the Gospels would have placed women at what could be the most important event in history, unless the event actually happened.

·      The post Resurrection accounts of Christ are rather unusual. At one time, he told one of the women to not touch him, because he had not completely risen. What? Frequently, he would show up somewhere, and the Apostles didn’t recognize him immediately. Why would the Gospel writers write such things if they were trying to convince others that Christ had risen? Also, he would show up in closed rooms - something he had never done before. These things seem to indicate that his Resurrected body was somehow different than his previous body. Again, this is not something the Gospel writers would make up if they wanted to convince readers that the Resurrection was real.

The bottom line is that of all the miraculous events that occurred in the Gospels, the Resurrection is the one that is almost certainly a historical fact.

And anyone who comes to that conclusion, would be well to read the Gospel of St. Matthew. You won’t be wasting your time.

And you might well decide to listen and apply what Christ exhorts us to do.

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Tim Farage is a Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at The University of Texas at Dallas, and a former Professor of Mathematics. The views expressed herein are those of the author. One of his main interests is the reconciliation between science and spirituality. You are welcome to comment upon this blog entry and/or to contact him at tfarage@hotmail.com.

Pope Francis: Christians should apologise to gay people. Me: those have harmed gays should apollogize to them.

Here’s a link to some comments made by Pope Francis about homosexuals:

Christians should apologise to gay people: Pope Francis

Well, the Pope got this part right:

The questions is: if a person who has that condition, who has good will, and who looks for God, who are we to judge?" the pope added, repeating his famous "Who am I to judge?" remark about homosexuality made early in his papacy.

This is an appropriate Christian remark. Even given that the Catholic Church and most religions consider homosexual sex to be a sin, it is not up to us to judge individuals.

Unfortunately, the Pope went on to say this:

We Christians have to apologize for so many things, not just for this (treatment of gay people), but we must ask for forgiveness. Not just apologize -- forgiveness.

Really? He wants all Christians to apologize for their treatment of gays? What about Christians who have not mistreated gays? Didn't any of his speech writers catch his ridiculous generalization?

The Pope can get away with this because it's safe to attack Christians. And it's safe to group us all together as if every Christian has the same beliefs as every other Christian.

So if you wish to follow the Pope's logic, say this to your Muslim friends, "You should apologize for the acts of Islamo-Terrorists, because you are Muslim and so are they". Let me know how that goes.

I'm sure the Pope has good intentions. But his comments have the terrible unintended consequence of teaching us to blame an entire group for the sins of a few.

Keep the blame exactly where it belongs: on the perpetrators, and those who encourage them.

Don’t make these broad generalization that try to get an entire group to feel responsible for the bad actions of those in the group. It just leads to divisiveness, and God knows we need less of that.

Each of us is responsible for our own actions, and no one else’s.

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Tim Farage is a Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at The University of Texas at Dallas. The views expressed herein are those of the author. You are welcome to comment upon this blog entry and/or to contact him at tfarage@hotmail.com. Twitter account: www.twitter.com/TimFarage.
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Should Christians accept homosexuals as ethical equals and not as sinners?

The question posed in the title of this post on Quora.com. I thought some of my blog followers would like to see my response.

Christ said that one of the greatest commandments was to love all others, even our enemies. And the only prayer that he is recorded as giving us to say is “The Lord’s Prayer”, which starts with the words, "Our Father". Thus, he taught that we are all children of God.

Furthermore, one of the most well-known stories in the New Testament is the story about a woman caught in adultery, a sin that Christ mentioned a number of times. A number of people were about to stone this woman because that was part of Jewish law. (And, of course Christ was Jewish). 

He famously told the people, “He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.”

They all walked away. Christ said to the woman, “Is anyone left to condemn you?”. She said, “No, my Lord.” He responded, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

In this beautiful story, we are told 1) we are all sinners, and 2) we are not to judge others, even if they have sinned.

If you read the Gospels, Christ railed against hypocrisy more than any other sin. So anyone who considers themselves a Christian and calls out homosexuals as sinners are hypocrites, because they, and we, have all sinned in many ways.

We have no record of Christ mentioning homosexual sex. He did define marriage as between one man and one woman when he said:

“Have you not read that He (God) who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."

Christ gave this spiritual definition of marriage, and so it’s understandable that some Christians believe a marriage can only exist between a man and a woman.

But instead of having laws against same-sex marriage, or polygamous marriage for that matter, it would be much better to remove any government involvement or licensing of any marriages. After all, it has only been since the 1800s or so that any governments licensed marriage. By doing this, people can make whatever private arrangements they wish, and that is their business. They can also file a will, or any other legal documents they wish. These legal documents are between individuals.

Even if a Christian were to consider homosexual sex to be a sin, it would be pretty low on the ladder. At the top would be murder, rape, child abuse, and then stealing, fraud and such. Hypocrisy is not far from the top.

Certainly adultery would be considered a ‘higher level’ sin than homosexual sex, because adultery is mentioned as a sin many times, while homosexual sex was not mentioned by Christ, and only mentioned a couple of times in the letters in the New Testament.

The bottom line is that Christians who rail against those who have homosexual sex are hypocrites, because it is certain that they sin every day, as do we all. We are all children of God and should treat each other as such.

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Tim Farage is a Senior Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at Dallas. One of his main interests is how to improve education using technology. He also writes and speaks about Intelligent Design, and how science and spirituality can be reconciled.

What can the President of the United States do about Global Warming?

Let's assume you're the President of the United States, and you ask your head science advisor what we could do about global warming. Here's what the conversation might be like:

Pres: My dear science advisor, what should we do about global warming?

Advisor: First, you should know, sir, that, contrary to popular belief, predicting how much the Earth will warm in say 100 years is very difficult.

Pres: But isn't it true that human's emissions of greenhouse gasses is causing the Earth to warm?

Advisor:  It certainly seems to be. There are many agencies who are collecting temperature data from all over the world. Fortunately, the data for the last 50 years or so seems to be pretty well agreed upon.

Pres: And what does the data say?

Advisor: Here's a graph from the United Nation's IPCC report:

Sir, it's hard to tell what's going on with global temperatures unless you look carefully at this graph. Let's look at the top part of the graph for the last 50 years, from 1962 to 2012, where the curve is the steepest. (And as far as we can tell, since 2012 the curve has risen at the same rate). In 1962, the temperature anomaly was about -0.3C. Fifty years later, in 2012, the temperature anomaly was almost 0.6C.

So in the last 50 years, the Earth's global temperature has increased by about 0.9C.

Pres: That's all? What do the other agencies show?

Advisor: NASA and Berkeley Earth show very similar data.

It's important to note what this graph shows temperatures are projected to be. Doubling 0.9C gives 1.8C. So if the temperature continues to rise at this rate, the Earth's temperature by the end of the century, in 2100, will be about 1.8C warmer than in was at the start of this century, in 2000.

Pres: So you're telling me that current projections based upon actual data show a warming of less than 2C by 2100? I've heard predictions of up to 10C by 2100. Where did that come from?

Advisor: Well, sir, there are hundreds of climate models that attempt to predict future temperatures. It's good that we are trying to model climate, but there are literally thousands, if not millions of variables that affect climate. We don't know if we'll ever be able to predict climate, but it's good to try. The various climate models make predictions that vary greatly. So it's best to project from actual data instead of relying on climate models, none of which have been verified.

Pres: What do you think is the most likely temperature increase by 2100?

Advisor: As I said, a 2C increase is the best projection. And there's good data that CO2 emitted by humanity is the main cause of global warming.

You might not know this, sir, but the United States and other developed countries have leveled off, and even lowered their CO2 emissions.

But China and India are building a bunch of coal plants, and they, along with other developing nations will be responsible for the vast majority of increased CO2 emissions. I'm not blaming them. Their economies are growing rapidly and they need lots of energy. Unfortunately, coal plants are their cheapest source of energy.

So to directly answer your question, the amount of global warming that occurs by 2100 is going to be largely determined by how much CO2 China and India produce.

If they start building more natural gas plants and nuclear power plants, that would help.

The bottom line is that if they don't stop building so many coal plants, temperatures might increase by 3C by 2100, or possibly 4C. Understand that these are guesses based on the best evidence we have.

Pres: How bad would such increases be for the world?

Advisor: An increase of 2 to 4C by 2100 would likely be disruptive for some developing countries. It rather depends on how much technology improves over the decades to come, as well as how much more prosperous these countries become. Prosperity allows a country to afford pollution controls, conservation measures, air conditioning, and investment in clean energy.

Actually, there's some evidence that a 2 to 3C increase will eventually be better for humanity. After all, sir, who's to say that the current temperature of the Earth is the best one?

Pres: So the bottom line is that there's nothing that the United States or other developed countries can do to prevent global warming?

Advisor: Not by passing laws that penalize us for our emissions, such as a carbon tax. This will have a negligible effect on global CO2 emissions, but will raise our energy prices, which will hurt the poor the most.

Nevertheless, there is a great deal we can do to help.

Pres: And what would that be?

Advisor: Invest heavily in reseaching 4th generation nuclear power plants. We should be able to get these plants to be inexpensive enough for developing countries to use. These new plants can't melt down, they give off no pollution, and give off no greenhouse gasses.

Even Bill Gates' Foundation is working with other countries to develop next generation nuclear power plants. He'd like to work more with the United States, but there is too much bureaucracy and too much resistance from the general public about using nuclear power. This, even though in over 60 years of commercial nuclear power, not one American has been killed or injured by the radiation from a commercial plant, or even from our nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines. 

If we can build a 1 Gigawatt plant for $3 billion dollars in 3 years, that would do it. And that's quite feasible.

And with the growth in solar and wind power, within 50 years all countries could be getting their energy from clean sources of power.

Pres: Great! Call Bill Gates right now. The United States is going to be at the forefront of this endeavor. What are you waiting for? Get Gates on the phone!

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Tim Farage is Senior Lecturer at The University of Texas at Dallas. He speaks about topics as varied as mathematics, computer science, cosmology, nuclear power, Intelligent Design, and Christianity. The opinions given in this post are his. He can be contacted at tfarage@hotmail.com