Magic Statistics

The Canadian Islamic Congress has issued a statement opposing the prosecution of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan man facing execution for converting from Islam to Christianity. The CIC maintains that such a prosecution goes against the Koran: “There shall be no compulsion in religion” (Sura 2:256).

"Afghanistan is not a free country," the CIC said. "Maintaining law and order is the responsibility of the occupation forces, who must not turn a blind eye to this kind of injustice. To allow this man to be tried and possibly executed for a non-criminal, non-blasphemous act, and then blame Islam and Muslims worldwide, is totally unacceptable."

"Non-blasphemous" is an interesting choice of word. That seems to imply the CIC would be in favour of the death penalty if the crime involved blasphemy.

Does the CIC think that all those clerics over in Afghanistan who want Mr Rahman dead don’t know the Koran or Islamic teaching? It has already been reported that the Koran contradicts itself on the consequences of apostasy. So, the questions are: Which teaching applies in this case, and why? The CIC blandly cites one verse and thinks that settles the dispute. Obviously not. And what about the Hadith, the collection of sayings and traditions supposedly derived from Mohammed? There the man himself is quoted, “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.” That is understood to mandate death for leaving Islam.

It’s doubtful that the struggle over Abdul Rahman’s life will be resolved by something as ambiguous as Islamic teaching.

via David Frum’s Diary.

John D. Barrow, Professor of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, has won the 2006 Templeton Prize for research or discoveries about spiritual realities. The prize award, worth £795,000, was announced on 15 March. Dr Barrow has combined insights from astronomy, mathematics, and physics in his work on the anthropic principle, which studies what have been called “cosmic coincidences”. The anthropic principle is concerned with investigating the accumulating scientific evidence that the universe appears to be fine-tuned so as to allow life to exist. If fundamental physical laws and relationships varied by tiny amounts, then life could not exist. This leads to the conclusion that conditions in the universe are just right for life.

An abridged version of Dr Barrow’s remarks at the news conference where the award was announced appeared in the London Telegraph earlier this week. He argued that astronomy has revealed the wonder of the universe in a way unimaginable in past centuries.

The ancient writers who celebrated the heavens' declaration of the glory of the Lord saw only through a glass darkly. Unbeknown to them and countless others who followed them, the Universe has revealed itself by the instruments that modern science has made possible to be far bigger, more spectacular, and more humbling than we ever imagined it to be.

Over the past 75 years, astronomers have illuminated the vault of the heavens in a completely unexpected way.
. . .
Astronomy has transformed the simple-minded, life-averse, meaningless Universe of the sceptical philosophers.

The concept of a lawful Universe with order that can be understood and relied upon emerged largely out of religious beliefs about the nature of God.

Thus, says Dr Barrow, do science and religion learn from each other.