Alternative Universe

Here's an interesting April Fool joke from Wired. The discovery of an alternative universe that celebrates April Fools day on the 3rd (which is of course the date of the posting).

The alternative universe has lots of other characteristics which address issues such as "global warming" (taking it seriously) and "science vs religion" (focus on social justice instead) which presumably is the Wired world view. This takes the edge off the joke a little for me but caused me to wonder what an alternative universe based on the Bible's "Kingdom of God" would be.

Then I remembered the C.S Lewis novel Out of the Silent Planet.

The central character (Ransom) finds himself on a planet (Malacandra) that has not fallen and amongst creatures that are living as God intends them to. This allows Mr Lewis to explore the nature of the Kingdom of God via some very interesting debates between Ransom and some of the creatures about the clear differences between life on Malacandra and the Silent Planet (Earth of course). Must read it again.

The Believer

"The book was "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis. And within the first three pages, I realized that my arguments against faith were those of a schoolboy."

Francis Collins -- head of the Human Genome Project -- discusses his conversion to evangelical Christianity, why scientists do not need to be atheists, and what C.S. Lewis has to do with it.

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/08/07/collins/index.html

Jesus as a great moral teacher?

A quote from one of the greatest thinkers of the last century..

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." | C.S.Lewis (Mere Christianity [New York: Touchstone, 1996] 56).

Religious belief amongst scientists

"A recent survey of religious belief amongst scientists in the United States (published in..Nature) showed that forty percent of scientists asserted a personal belief in a personal God-almost exactly the same percentage as when a similar survey was published in 1916." | Kirsten Birkett, Unnatural Enemies - An Introduction to science and christianity. ISBN 1 876326 01 8