Google Art Project: A Great Tool for Art Lovers

I recently found out about the Google Art Project in the Washington Post and New York Times, and thought it was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. Google is now using their street view camera inside some of the world’s great art museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hermitage, and the Van Gogh Museum so that people can take virtual tours of the museums. Sadly, the Louver is not on the list, but hopefully it will be one day. The resolution of the museum view camera is not very high, but taking virtual tours from your laptop is still pretty amazing. My favorite feature of the Google Art Project is the collection of famous pieces from each museum that can be zoomed in on in ultra high resolution. You can zoom in so closely that you can literally see the brush strokes. It’s like the art work is right in front of your face. Naturally, Aristotle with a Bust of Homer by Rembrandt was one of my favorites.


Besides adding more museums it would be nice if Google could add piece descriptions to their zoomed in collection. Higher resolution views for the museum tour would also be nice. However, I think Google has a good start with their Art Project. It’s a great tool that brings art lovers and the object of their affection a little bit closer.

Quote of the Day, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol.”

The Parallel Between Infrared Light and the Spiritual World

Infrared (IR) is a portion of invisible spectrum: the portion of the invisible electromagnetic spectrum consisting of radiation with wavelengths in the range 750 nm () to 1 mm (), between light and radio waves (1). Infrared light was discovered in 1800 by Sir Frederick William Herschel (2). In the last several decades the use of IR cameras and goggles for military, police and civilian purposes has grown. Since our human senses are not capable of perceiving IR light we didn’t even know about it for centuries. Does this mean that IR light didn’t exist prior to 1800? Of course not! We just couldn’t see it. However, this is precisely what skeptics say about the spiritual world; that because we can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. What if the spiritual world like, IR light prior to 1800, exists but we just don’t the means to see it via our senses or current technology?


1. Encarta® World English Dictionary[North American Edition]

2. http://www.brynmawr.edu/Acads/Chem/mnerzsto/Marshall-Infrared.html

The Greatest Question

Adam Frank in his blog post entitled "Life Is More Meaningful Than Mere Facts Can Convey" quoted Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘"Even if God did exist, that would change nothing."’ Adam’s point is that knowing whether God exists or not is irrelevant because life is about being. I disagree because knowing whether or not God exists determines the meaning of our lives. If God doesn’t exist then there is no objective meaning to our lives.

The philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, “We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.” If God doesn’t exist then Schopenhauer is right, our lives are essentially meaningless. Since the material world is composed of parts it will eventually be torn apart via the second law of thermodynamics. Our bodies break down as we age making our lives ephemeral. Our own sun that makes life on earth possible is slowly dying. One day the sun will run out of fuel causing it to turn into a red giant. It will eventually expand and scorch the earth before contracting and going cold. The universe too is slowly dying. The universe is expanding at an increasingly fast rate so it is growing colder and darker. Eventually all the fuel in the universe will be used up and all the stars will die causing the universe to be extremely cold—all life would have been long extinguished. This means that all our memories and work in the physical world are doomed as well. Sadly, even the great works of Shakespeare, Plato, Tolstoy, Beethoven, Mozart, Da Vinci and Picasso will be destroyed. If there is no God then the world and humanity are like sandcastles built on the edge of the seashore and the great wave of time is poised to come crashing down.

Negating the Negations: My Objections to the Omniscience and Learning Argument

In his Omniscience and Learning argument Ryan Stringer attempts to prove that God doesn’t exist. The main thrust of the argument is that there is a contradiction in God’s omniscience since God wouldn’t be able to know what it is like learn since he has always known everything. My surface response to this argument is that, even in my atheist days I would have found this argument to be not very persuasive. It’s along the lines of can God create a rock so big that he can’t lift? These arguments just feel lame.

Are Prayers Answered?

In a recent post on his blog “Debunking Christianity” John Loftus shares a letter that he got from a concerned Christian friend. The letter and John’s response discus whether prayers are answered. John correctly responds that the Confirmation Bias is the main flaw in his friend’s argument that answered prayers are proof that God exists. The Confirmation Bias could mislead believers into thinking that their prayers have been answered. Given enough time and prayers they could be “answered” by chance. 

However, I think that John has a theological misunderstanding about prayer. God answers all payers with a yes, no or maybe later. John claims that his friend should be able to pray for and get anything if God exists and loves him. I think John is confused about who created whom. If man created an omnipotent God to do our bidding then we should expect that he would follow all of our orders, and that all of prayers would be answered with a yes. That’s not the case; God formed us so we could worship Him. Since God is omniscient, omnipotent and in control it is not reasonable to expect that John’s friend could pray that God make him the Supreme Dictator of the Universe and that everyone should bow down to him, and that his prayer would be answered with a yes. Just imagine the horrors of a genie like God! Osama Bin Laden could pray that the West be annihilated and the God/genie would snap his fingers and poof! The United States is gone. God knows what is best for us, that a new Lamborghini or that being the Supreme Dictator of the Universe is not good for us so he says no to these prayers, even though we may really want them to be answered.

The Evolution of Man’s Best Friend

I enjoyed NOVA’s presentation of “Dog’s Decoded” last night. It showed an interesting sexual selection experiment where scientists selected unaggressive foxes and bred them together. After the eighth generation the foxes went from snapping at humans to acting friendly like dogs. Astoundingly, the foxes started to have lighter coats and curving tails just like dogs! There was also an interesting nature vs. nurture study where a wolf cub was raised like a dog. The study showed that you can’t nurture a tame wolf, and that dogs have been genetically created to be our companions.