After spending the first couple of days in Hyderabad, Gopal and I left for the west coast.  The trip is 700km long and over the roads we had to travel, he expected it to be about a 12 hour drive.   Rather than drive by day, we decided to drive overnight.   Gopal says it is a bit safer, because the roads are less crowded with motorbikes, bullock carts and autos at night.

We left our accommodation 6pm and after stopping to buy a car charger for my phone and to refuel, it was dark before we had really even left Hyderabad.  Now, the first thing I want to say is that Gopal is an excellent driver.  Pretty much everyone in India is a ‘better’ driver in some sense than everyone in New Zealand – just avoiding crashing requires a level of focus and attention far higher than is ever required in NZ.  But Gopal is really very good and very experienced with this kind of long-distance, night-time driving.   So the stories I’m about to tell aren’t about him, but just about how people drive in India.

The first thing is that you have to be on the lookout for animals.  Wandering cows of course, lots of stray dogs, but also cats, goats and pigs might all wander onto the road and have to be avoided.  There are no streetlights to help you see these things – your headlights are all you have.

The second issue is that as in the cities, the lane makers are largely decorative.  Which means in a two-lane dual carriageway, drivers can and frequently do cross the centreline.   It wasn’t at all uncommon for me to suddenly find myself facing a pair of headlights in our lane as an oncoming car or truck overtook.  There’s really nothing you can do except flash your lights at them and trust that they will either complete their manoeuvre in time or will fall back in behind the vehicle they were trying to overtake just in time.  Gopal really has balls of steel.  Only a couple of times did he even slow down when it was clear the overtaking driver had been a little over-ambitious.  Whereas I tried not to flinch every time it happened.  Well, at least for the first few hours.  It happens so frequently that even I got used to it and wasn’t bothered except when a driver cut things particularly close.

And the flip side of this is that Gopal also had to overtake things in the face of oncoming traffic.  There are all kinds of things on Indian roads at night that need to be overtaken.  Bullock carts are particularly slow, as are tractors, and both of these are often unlit.   Many of the large trucks carrying bundles of sticks are particularly slow, as are the regular trucks and buses.  And when I say slow, I mean some of these are travelling at 5, 10, 20 km/hr.   If you didn’t overtake, it would take weeks to reach your destination.  And if you waited until there was no oncoming traffic to overtake, it would take days.  So you just do it whenever you can.  You pull out, flash your lights so the vehicle you are overtaking knows, and so the oncoming traffic knows what you are doing and you go for it.  If the oncoming vehicle is small, you can just overtake anyway, so that for a while there are essentially 3 lanes.  If large, you might need to wait a little until you have a little bit of clear road to overtake.  For someone brought up with NZ’s strict rules about overtaking, it’s hard to adjust to, but after a few hours, I wasn’t even particularly bothered by it anymore.

Indian roads are not very well signposted.  Most major turn offs had a sign somewhere nearby, but by no means all.  I was using google maps on my phone to figure out routes, and we supplemented that with Gopal stopping every now and then at truck stops to ask about the road conditions.  We stopped for a midnight roadside snack, and then Gopal let me get a little bit of sleep for half an hour or so before we traversed a big city.  Google maps navigation was very handy for these situations.

We managed to stay on course all night except once.   We never saw the fork, but after a while I noticed that our GPS location was off our intended course.  I got Google to re-route us and it gave us a small road to follow to get back to the main highway.  But we couldn’t find it.  It just didn’t seem to exist, so we took an even smaller road that seems to run mainly parallel to it.  Pretty soon the road condition deteriorated until we were on a very bumpy dirt road.  Gopal showed that he’d missed his true calling as a rally driver by constantly finding the best route with the least bumps.

I was getting a bit worried about where Google was leading us, but we eventually emerged onto a slightly more decent road.  A minute or two later, we drove through a village that had some kind of festival or celebration going on.  There were dozens of people gathered under an awning decorated with coloured lights, and a couple of people on stage with a microphone giving a speech.  One woman in a sari was prostrating herself on the road as we approached.   This was around 3:30am.  Since it seemed to be open, stopped and had a quick drink just next door before continuing on.  We eventually got back to the road that Google maps had originally planned for us (it looked like the first segment was closed for repairs) and assumed we would shortly be back on main roads.   But not quite so fast.  We had a few more segments of badly repaired and dirt roads before eventually hitting another village where we were supposed to cross a bridge to get back to the main roads.  We followed Google’s directions diligently, and ended up on the bridge approach only to find it closed and occupied by a sleeping man.  We backtracked and drove around a bit trying to figure out how to get across the river.  Sometimes we would see a truck and then try to turn around and follow it, reasoning that it must have come from somewhere.  Eventually we stopped next to the bridge, but couldn’t figure out how to get onto it.  After a few minutes, we saw a light coming across the bridge, and by watching where the motorcycle appeared, we finally found the bridge approach.  It was right next to us but had just looked like a nondescript opening into a small lot.  Finally we were on our way again.

Around 5am we ended up on roads where Gopal got to employ his rally driving skills.   Eventually, after about 12 hours, it was almost daylight and I really needed to pee.  We stopped at the next village, and found this place, where I got to use a squat toilet for the first time.

We got a little bit more fuel and then were on our way.  By then the sun was up, so we got a beautiful view as we descended a gorgeous bit of winding road down the mountains.

Our next priority was getting some food.  We stopped for a delicious breakfast here:

I’ll post about food a bit later.  We eventually reached our destination about 10am, after a 16 hour drive, and after about 24 hours without sleep.

I arrived in India a day and a half ago.   I’d barely slept for the past 36 hours when I crawled off the plane in Hyderabad.  Rajiv Gandhi International Airport is new and modern and I was through customs and immigration pretty quickly.  Gopal was waiting right outside and we were quickly heading through Hyderabad to our apartment.

First impressions as we were driving was this is a very different sort of place from anywhere I’d been before.  Everything just seemed rough and ready, unpolished, almost unfinished.  It has the feel of small blink-and-you-miss-it towns I’d travelled through as a kid in New Zealand, but on an unimaginable scale.  Still, traffic in the small hours is pretty light and there wasn’t too much to see.  It wasn’t until the next day that I really got a taste of India.

At night, with few cars, the roads look pretty much like roads everywhere else.  They have lane markers and cats-eyes and signs.   But all those things are purely decorative.  Indian roads don’t have rules like everywhere else I’ve been.  There really aren’t any lanes.  People just drive anywhere.  The road is packed with cars, buses, auto rickshaws and lots and lots of two-wheelers.  Everyone is constantly swerving and weaving in and out, sounding their horns frequently.   Some intersections have lights and a traffic cop ensuring that people actually stop for the lights, but others are just a free for all.  You basically just have to barge in and push your way through.

It looks like it requires balls of steel and yet, I see everyone driving like this.  One man was wearing shorts, a t-shirt and sandals riding a scooter (no helmet).  His wife in a sari was perched side-saddle behind him, carrying two bags full of shopping.  And wedged between them was their son, who looked about 3 years old.  It requires FAR more concentration and driving ability to drive like this than I could ever muster.  I consider myself a good driver in NZ, but I would be totally unable to drive with the fearlessness and focus required to survive on these roads.  And despite the apparent chaos, it seems to work.  We got everywhere we needed to go, I never saw a single accident and I gather that the accidents that do happen are generally minor since the speeds are pretty low.

Tonight I’ll get a taste of long distance driving rather than city driving as we head west to Malvan.

When I was writing about the Muslim apologetics, pretty much all the arguments kept coming back to the fine tuning argument.  Basically, this argument says that if some fundamental parameters of the universe were different, the world wouldn’t look the way it does and we would not exist in our current forms.  Creationists extrapolate from that to the idea that therefore the parameters must have been specifically set that way by some intelligent, conscious entity in order to generate a universe that can house us.   Then they generally then make a wild leap to assuming that this hypothesised intelligent, conscious entity still watches us, meddles in the world, wants a relationship with us and cares deeply about how and when we have sex.

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

Ingredients:

• 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!

There are seven billion people on this planet.  It’s not even possible to comprehend such a enormous number – there are more people than our minds are capable of imagining.  Each of us is just one of those 7 billion.    Although humans are quite variable in many degrees of freedom, it is pretty certain that there are millions of people who share any given trait with us.  And there are probably hundreds of people who share the majority of our traits.  We are not unique.

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.

Believe it or not, I signed up to online dating site OK Cupid just because I heard that they had very interesting and unique algorithms for matching people.  Matches are calculated based on questions you answer, but there’s more to it than that.  For any given question (e.g. Which is more important to you, true love or sex?), you choose a single answer, but you can also say which options you want a prospective partner to choose and how important that question is to you.  So, for instance, I can specify that it is very important that they answer No to the question ‘Is God the most important thing in your life?’  This all works pretty well.  Most of the guys suggested for me were actually pretty good matches.  

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.

This year I was lucky enough to go to HICSS again.  My paper was on the use of the iPad in Education, based on some work by one of my BCom(hons) students.

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.

This is also quite a long one.  The first verse is “Alim. Lam. Mim”, which are basically 3 arabic letters.  This seems to be quite a common pattern for the first verse, however, nobody actually knows what they mean.

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)

I’ve started listening to the Quran.  Quran means recitation and was originally transmitted orally until it was written down after the death of Muhammad, so it is apparently better to hear it than to read it.  Muslims believe that the Quran was dictated to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel and was then memorized and recited to others.    Of course, Muslims believe it can only be properly appreciated in Arabic, so listening to it in English is not really the same, but hopefully I can understand the general meaning.

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.

This is part of a series about the book “The Creation of the Universe” by Adnan Oktar. View Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

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.