Science Geek

Renewable Energy and Electricity

2005-11-11T08:12:00.000-05:00

Very interesting briefing paper put out February 2005 by the Uranium Information Center Ltd. of Australia.

It talks about various types of renewable energy sources, their costs and their drawbacks. Solar & wind are often discussed as alternatives to replace coal-fired, gas, oil and nuclear power plants but the drawback is that because they're not reliable for most countries, that is, we can't predict the wind output accurately and solar isn't always available, these sources need to be backed up by other conventional power sources (the ones we're trying to get rid of). Because of this, they mention that...

In a March 2004 report Eurelectric and the Federation of Industrial Energy Consumers in Europe pointed out that "Introducing renewable energy unavoidably leads to higher electricity prices. Not only are production costs substantially higher than for conventional energy, but in the case of intermittent energy sources like wind energy, grid extensions and additional balancing and back-up capacity to ensure security of supply imply costs which add considerably to the end price for the final consumer." "Reducing CO2 by promoting renewable energy can thus become extremely expensive for consumers," though both organisations fully support renewables in principle.

That's not to say that we should give up on renewables but we have to be realistic in how much of the grid can actually be replaced by them and be prepared for the additional cost until (or if) renewables become efficient enough or new ones emerge to drop the cost significantly.

Hard times for the humble sperm

2005-11-09T00:53:00.000-05:00

Ashok Agarwal, at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, US, and colleagues incubated semen from 13 men in a synthetic analogue of vaginal fluid mixed with a 10% concentration of a lubricant for 30 minutes, simulating a typical single use, he says.
Only one lubricant involved in the study, called Pre-Seed, did not impair sperm movement, or motility, compared with a medium of human fluid alone, Agarwal says. Pre-Seed (with which the researchers have no affiliation) left 64% of sperm able to swim. Astroglide, on the other hand, a product often recommended to infertility patients, spared only 2% of sperm.

Coming up next, a new spermicide made from Astroglide!

Bird flu: kick-start vaccination or face the consequences

2005-11-06T00:40:00.000-05:00

A test vaccine has been produced already for the avian flu but can we make enough of it in time for a global pandemic?

"This virus has done a number on us," says Robert Webster of St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. In August, human trials of the hybrid vaccine showed that each person would require two 90-ìg doses. That equates to enough vaccine worldwide for 75 million people, or around one quarter the US population.

There's a way to boost the number of people who could be vaccinated but the US trials didn't use the method:

The way round this, say vaccine experts, is to boost the power of the shots by combining them with a simple immunity-stimulating chemical called an adjuvant. Norbert Hehme at vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKline in Dresden, Germany, has made a vaccine that can induce full immunity against relatives of the H5 family of bird flu viruses with two doses of just 1.9 ìg each.

Given existing production capacity for H5N1, this would allow 3.5 billion people to be protected. That is as many as could practically be immunised, given other limitations, says David Fedson, founder of the vaccine industry's pandemic task force. But the US trials did not use adjuvant, despite warnings that without it only large doses would work (New Scientist, 26 March, p 10).

Genome project links illness and ethnicity

2005-10-28T21:36:00.000-04:00

Interesting article in the Globe about a 3-year project that Canadians had a part in:

Using the DNA of 269 people from China, Japan, Nigeria and the U.S., the project has essentially compiled a new map of the human genome.

This one organizes the book of life encoded in human DNA into paragraphs -- known as haplotypes -- that make it exponentially easier to spot genetic mutations.

It also sheds new light on how humans evolved in different parts of the world.

For example, the Hap Map has discovered nearly four million mutations and of those, roughly 100 appear in extreme frequency in one group more than another, such as with the lactase gene type of Europeans that allows the lifetime digestion of dairy products, and the mutation that protects sub-Saharan Africans from malaria.

How far should fingerprints be trusted?

2005-10-09T02:35:00.000-04:00

No one disputes that fingerprinting is a valuable and generally reliable police tool, but despite more than a century of use, fingerprinting has never been scientifically validated. This is significant because of the criteria governing the admission of scientific evidence in the US courts.

It's quite an interesting read at from New Scientist News. Lest you doubt that fingerprints can wrongly convict someone of a crime check this out:

The most high-profile mistake involved Brandon Mayfield, a Portland lawyer, who was incorrectly identified from crime scene prints taken at one of the Madrid terrorist bombings on 11 March 2004. Despite three FBI examiners plus an external expert agreeing on the identification, Spanish authorities eventually matched the prints to an Algerian.

Luckily, they caught that one in time. Terrorism carries a death penalty in many countries.

Seeing Creation and Evolution in Grand Canyon

2005-10-06T21:39:00.000-04:00

In this NY Times article (free registration required) a couple of stats were mentioned showing the gap between the American public and scientists:

Though it did not ask specifically about the global flood or six-day creation, a November 2004 Gallup survey found that a third of the public believes the Bible is the actual word of God that should be taken literally and that 45 percent think God created human beings "pretty much in their present form" within the last 10,000 years.

Gallup found in another poll that 5 percent of scientists, and fewer than 1 percent of earth and life scientists, adopted the "Young Earth" view.

Forty-five percent?! I can at least understand a belief in God, but denying how old the Earth is?

The article is interesting in that is shows two groups visiting the Grand Canyon, one with the belief in the unscientific Young Earth theory looking for evidence of a world-wide flood, the other a group of scientist both amateur and professional studying the rock formations and discussing how to defend science in an age of growing mysticism. Creations sometimes argue that evolution is as much a faith as is religion but,

Dr. Scott and others cringe at creationists' charge that Darwin's theories have become dogmatic faith, that creationism and evolution are just two parallel belief systems, equally plausible and unprovable. "We have faith in science, but it's not a religion," said Herb Masters, a retired firefighter. "It's a faith in a body of knowledge."

Stellarium Astronomy Software

2005-10-01T09:06:00.000-04:00

Stellarium is free GPL software which renders realistic skies in real time with openGL. It is available for Linux/Unix, Windows and MacOSX.
With Stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope.
Stellarium is also used in planetariums.

Discovered this Open Source program. It's available for Linux, Windows and MacOS X. Check out the other screenshots at the website to see what I mean.

Gender-bending chemicals

2005-09-07T23:48:00.000-04:00

Don't you get sick of hearing of yet something else that causes cancer? I know I do. This story is a refreshing variation on the theme:

Now nearly twice as many girls as boys are being born in the Aamjiwnaang community, who live next door to the Sarnia-Lambton Chemical Valley complex in Ontario, Canada. And though no chemical has yet been shown to be to blame, high levels of hexachlorobenzene (HCB), which also has hormone-disrupting properties, have been found in the local soil, and phthalates are being emitted from part of the complex.

What an unusual finding! I wonder if the parents of all those boys might someday sue for pain and misery. ;-)

Homeopathy no better than sugar pill: metastudy

2005-08-27T06:41:00.000-04:00

Homeopathic remedies may help people feel better, but their impact appears to be no greater than a placebo effect, a comparison of more than 200 studies of the alternative medicine and conventional treatments concludes.

A surprisingly large percentage of the people are very interested in so-called natural medicine. So I ended up hearing about homeopathy and did some research on it. As the article states...

Homeopathy, which aims to stimulate a patient's own healing processes with minute dilutions of specific remedies, is based on the theory of treating “like with like.” The patient describes symptoms in detail and the practitioner prescribes tiny, non-toxic doses of a selected substance that, at higher doses, would produce those symptoms in a healthy person.

The reaction of the US National Center for Homeopathy was predictable. They claim the study is flawed. What the Globe's article doesn't touch on is that the very basis of Homeopathy is flawed and doesn't need a study to prove so.
Homeopathy not only says that like needs to be treated with like. Homeopathy suggests that the smaller the amount of the substance the more powerful it is, the theory being that the body is triggered to heal itself. Let me say that again, the less medicine given the greater the effect.

This belief is diametrically opposed to the basis of pharmaceuticals. Both theories cannot exist in concert. One or the other is right. And whatever you might think of pharmaceutical drugs, they are effective in very many ways. When you get an infection, you don't take herbs, you take an antibiotic. If you have depression, you take antidepressants. The more you take of it, the more powerful its effects. In many cases taking more won't be any more effective but taking less would not make its ability greater. That's foolishness. Quackwatch even calls Homeopathy "the ultimate fake":

The basis for inclusion in the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia is not modern scientific testing, but homeopathic "provings" conducted during the 1800s and early 1900s. The current (ninth) edition describes how more than a thousand substances are prepared for homeopathic use. It does not identify the symptoms or diseases for which homeopathic products should be used; that is decided by the practitioner (or manufacturer). The fact that substances listed in the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia are legally recognized as "drugs" does not mean that either the law or the FDA recognizes them as effective.

Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive

2005-08-21T23:20:00.000-04:00

One tv show I enjoy watching is Boston Legal. What's this got to do with science, you say? Well, tonight's rerun episode had to do with a teacher suing a principal after she lost her job for refusing to teach Intelligent Design alongside Evolution. It makes for interesting drama but the scary part is that its premise isn't so far from reality as you can see by reading the linked NY Times article:

Pushing a "teach the controversy" approach to evolution, the institute has in many ways transformed the debate into an issue of academic freedom rather than a confrontation between biology and religion.
Mainstream scientists reject the notion that any controversy over evolution even exists. But Mr. Bush embraced the institute's talking points by suggesting that alternative theories and criticism should be included in biology curriculums "so people can understand what the debate is about."

So ideologically-driven individuals want to frame teaching non-science as an academic freedom issue. But science is just that - science.

Humanities like history, philosophy and art can and should teach different ways of looking at things because there are lot of areas that are open to intepretation. But math, science, chemistry and physics, at least at the elementary levels, don't give such latitude. Nor should they. Evolution has stood the test of the time, Intelligent Design hasn't.

Arguing, as Intelligent Design does, that evolution doesn't explain everything is hardly proof of Intelligent Design. Lack of information doesn't disprove a scientific theory. Information to the contrary does.

Besides, Evolution was not theorized to get rid of God. It was a theory to figure out how different species developed and changed over time. It just happens to fit the data. Evolution is absolutely silent on whether there is a creator because his existence cannot be proved or disproved. Whether or not God exists is a question best left to the philosophers not science. And theists should recognize that science is best left to scientists.

I leave a question to theists. If life is so complicated that it cannnot come into being or develop on its own, then its creator must be even more complicated. Who created him? He couldn't have come into being on his own since you've already argued that something less than him can't.

10th Planet Discovered

2005-08-15T22:06:00.000-04:00

There have been other 10th planets (both real and imagined) before, but none were big enough to be considered as planets. But this one...

Its sheer size in relation to the nine known planets means that it can only be classified as a planet itself, Brown says.

Now maybe the debate on whether Pluto is a planet can end since invalidating Pluto would invalidate this one, too. NASA will also have to update this page: Is there a Planet X or 10th planet?

Pluto's moon eclipses faint star

2005-07-26T19:35:00.000-04:00

Charon blocked the light of the relatively faint star C313.2, casting a shadow that was roughly the same size as the moon itself -- around 630 miles wide. A previous occultation by Charon of a different background star was observed in 1980, but only one telescope -- with limited precision -- managed to observe that event.

What I find amazing is that the a body 40 billion km away casts a shadow on Earth. Granted it's not one that the human eye can see but still amazing that instruments can pick it up.

Shuttle resumes launch countdown

2005-07-23T15:35:00.000-04:00

As of noon today, launch of the space shuttle is again underway. The countdown is at at the Return to Flight page at NASA's website. However, don't get your hopes up:

Due to concerns about the early development of showers and cumulus clouds, the chance of Kennedy weather prohibiting launch is 40 percent, according to Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters. There are also concerns about crosswinds at all three Trans-Atlantic Landing sites, located in Spain and France.

The previous launch attempt was scrubbed due to fuel tank sensors giving inaccurate readings. This was due to issues with grounding wires. It's amusing what sounds like a trivial problem becomes more complicated sounding by calling it an "issue".

Though it's a graphically-intensive site, Space.com has more information in their article:

“Discovery is in excellent shape,” said NASA test director Pete Nickolenko during a pre-launch status briefing here at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). “We are all very confident that all of the engine cut-off sensors will work as they’re designed to in this next launch attempt.”

Global Warming

2005-07-23T12:50:00.000-04:00

Though it's not new, I found a great gem from Business Week Online. Though you'd think that science has nothing to do with business, BW Online seems to carry a lot of articles that touch on aspects of computers, even Linux, for instance. It's a long article but is well worth the read:

The idea that the human species could alter something as huge and complex as the earth's climate was once the subject of an esoteric scientific debate. But now even attorneys general more used to battling corporate malfeasance are taking up the cause. On July 21, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and lawyers from seven other states sued the nation's largest utility companies, demanding that they reduce emissions of the gases thought to be warming the earth. Warns Spitzer: "Global warming threatens our health, our economy, our natural resources, and our children's future. It is clear we must act."

The maneuvers of eight mostly Democratic AGs could be seen as a political attack. But their suit is only one tiny trumpet note in a growing bipartisan call to arms. "The facts are there," says Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.). "We have to educate our fellow citizens about climate change and the danger it poses to the world." In January, the European Union will impose mandatory caps on carbon dioxide and other gases that act like a greenhouse over the earth, and will begin a market-based system for buying and selling the right to emit carbon. By the end of the year, Russia may ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which makes CO2 reductions mandatory among the 124 countries that have already accepted the accord. Some countries are leaping even further ahead. Britain has vowed to slash emissions by 60% by 2050. Climate change is a greater threat to the world than terrorism, argues Sir David King, chief science adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair: "Delaying action for a decade, or even just years, is not a serious option."

Indeed, since the article was posted, the EU and Russia have officially signed on to Kyoto as has Canada and Japan. The US, as usual, is the holdout.

Ontario is also considering whether to join in the lawsuit against the power utilities.

What's interesting is despite the Bush administration's refusal to sign onto Kyoto or even acknowledging human-caused global warming, states are individually moving forward:

Warning of flooded coasts and crippled industries, Massachusetts unveiled a plan in May to cut emissions by 10% by 2020. In June, California proposed 30% cuts in car emissions by 2015. Many other states are weighing similar actions.

And power companies are also accepting in some cases even taking forward-looking measures to develop technologies that contribute less to global warming. And surprise, surprise, they're discovering that in doing so they're saving money!

The article also discusses carbon-trading which works like this:

The basic idea: mandatory reductions or taxes on carbon emissions, combined with a worldwide emissions-trading program. Here's how it could work: Imagine that each company in a particular sector is required to cut emissions by 20%. The company could meet the target on its own by becoming more energy efficient or by switching from fossil fuels to alternatives. But it could also simply buy the needed reductions on the open market from others who have already cut emissions more than required, and who thus have excess emissions to sell. Under a sophisticated worldwide carbon-trading system, governments and companies could also get sellable credits for planting trees to soak up carbon or for investing in, say, energy efficient and low-carbon technologies in the developing world. As a result, there is a powerful incentive for everyone to find the lowest-cost and most effective cuts -- and to move to lower-carbon technologies.

Those companies that still pollute more can do so but not without a cost, buying carbon credits. Thus, the environment is helped by the best system of regulation that works in a business environment, capitalism.

For those that are worried about the fight against global warming damaging the economy, I found this quite enlightening:

A British government panel, for instance, concluded that the cost of its share of the task of limiting the level of CO2 to 550 ppm would be about 1% of Britain's gross domestic product.

Compare that, says Sir David King, with the cost of a single flood breaking through the barrier in the Thames River -- some 30 billion pounds, or 2% of current GDP. "Common sense says that it's time to purchase some low-cost insurance now," says economist Paul R. Portney, president of Resources for the Future.

Sunspot exploding

2005-07-15T02:51:00.000-04:00

Received this email from Spaceweather:

Solar activity has suddenly increased with a series of strong explosions from sunspot 786, including an X-category flare this morning. Because the sunspot is near the sun's western limb, none of the blasts was squarely Earth-directed. Nevertheless, coronal mass ejections hurled into space by these explosions could deliver glancing blows to Earth's magnetic field as early as tonight (July 14-15) and continuing through the weekend, possibly sparking geomagnetic storms and auroras. Check spaceweather.com for movies of the explosions, more information and updates.

You can subscribe for email alerts on their website.

What don't we know?

2005-07-15T02:19:00.000-04:00

Science magazine put together a list of the 125 top questions in science to which we don't have answers. The top 25 are listed on their website (click on the heading). Some of the questions include "What is the universe made of?", "What is the biological basis of conciousness?" and "How hot will the Greenhouse World be?".

Which questions would you most like answered?

On this shuttle, safety is an obsession

2005-07-11T22:30:00.000-04:00

A good writeup on the extra safety measures being taken for Wednesday's launch date from Christian Science Monitor. Here's a sample:

This is something new - even for the agency that landed astronauts on the moon. There will be more than 100 cameras on the ground, in the air, and on the shuttle itself - all ready to image any errant ice chip, and promising so much data that it might take a week to sift through them. There is the new laser-tipped boom to inspect the shuttle's brittle undercarriage, the new white-knuckle maneuvers to let the space station crew inspect the vehicle - and the new emergency plans in case they find something.

For more details about the specific measures on the shuttle itself, the CTV site has more details.

Deep Impact to collide with Comet Tempel 1 on July 4

2005-07-03T00:31:00.000-04:00

For the last five billion years of our planet's violent history, Earth has been walloped by comets. These small bodies and their asteroid cousins whacked Earth often in its early years, knocking the stuffing out of our young world. As the solar system matured, impacts happened less often—but they have never ceased. Earth bears its scars in the form of weathered craters and extinct species.

This 4th of July is payback time. For the first time in history, Earth gets to strike back.

I don't have a telescope but it doesn't matter as the collision won't be seen from Central Canada anyway. If you have one and are in Hawaii, Southwestern US or Mexico, observation tips can be found at The Amateur Observers Program and Sky & Telescope magazine.

New light on birth of a solar system

2005-07-02T13:21:00.000-04:00

SPECTACULAR images showing the birth of a new solar system have given scientists an insight into how our own solar system would have looked billions of years ago.

A glowing ring of dust, captured by Nasa's Hubble space telescope, is shown orbiting around the bright star, Fomalhaut, 25 light years from the sun.

The star is only 200 million years old, practically a newborn! It's like looking into the early history of our own solar system. It's a shame that NASA has plans to scuttle the Hubble space telescope that is still discovering such fascinating systems.

How do you lose a solar sail?

2005-06-24T08:07:00.000-04:00

And I thought finding a pair of clean socks was hard.

Earth microbes may survive on Mars

2005-06-13T02:48:00.000-04:00

Terrestrial microbes that hitch a ride to Mars on spacecraft may be able to survive under special circumstances, according to a new laboratory study.

Article at New Scientist

I've read before that microbes from Earth could survive in space. It's a good thing that NASA is taking care not to contaminate Mars with Earth organisms. After all, we're not absolutely sure that life doesn't exist somewhere on Mars.

The pseudo-science of Chiropractic

2005-06-09T01:18:00.000-04:00

It amazes me how common chiropractic is in Western society. Yet few people seem to actually know on what basis it is built. A building is only as good as its foundation and chiropractic is built upon a flimsy one indeed.

The practice of Chiropractic originated with Daniel D. Palmer in the late 19th century, a self-taught healer who was seeking a treatment that didn't use drugs.

In his research, D.D. Palmer made the profoundly significant discovery that individual vertebrae could become subluxated, producing improper nerve function, irritation and dysfunction in the body. Palmer’s development of the method for the adjustment of specific vertebrae in a systematic fashion is what distinguishes scientific chiropractic from the gross manipulations of earlier days, and chiropractic as advocated by the founder, even though narrow in focus, has broad body effects because of the relief of interference in the nervous system.
(From Become Healthy Now - What is Chiropractic?)

It certainly sounds scientific, doesn't it? What this site doesn't mention is that Palmer also believed 95% of diseases were as a result of these subluxationsin the spine. The other 5% were as a result of problems in other joints. This should be obviously ludicrous today. What about bacteria, viruses, genetics? Palmer believed that improper nerve function essentially cut off the "soul, spirit or spark of life" from healing the body. These very terms suggest chiropractic developed from religion, not science.

Though most chiropractics wouldn't use these terms anymore, one is often still used - subluxations, though sometimes even this is referred to as "bones out of place" or "pinched nerves". Only a rare few chiropractics renounce Palmer's beliefs entirely. Regardless of what you call them, they don't exist.

Even if these subluxations could be found, the vertabrae can't pinch nerves in any position and if they were totally out of place, the unfortunate victim would probably be paralyzed from that point up since the spinal cord would suffer damage.

That brings up another point. If having nerves pinched, obviously having spinal cord damage should lead to a great host of diseases according to Palmer's theories. But that's not what happens at all. True, paraplegics can have other health issues but these usually have to do with limited mobility.

It seems that when talking about back pain, everyone thinks of a chiropractic. But chiropractic is not part of mainstream medicine. It's part of what is usually referred to as "natural" or "alternative" health. Quite simply, it has little basis in medical fact. Note I said "little". Some chiropractics confine their practices to only the back and can help relieve joint pain. Above all, do not send children to chiropractics. Children have a much higher chance of being injured and "good" chiropractics know this and won't treat children.

There are alternatives to going to a chiropractic. Talk to your family doctor about these.

The Neanderthal Parallax

2005-06-05T01:01:00.000-04:00

Neanderthal Man existed before us but most scientists believe that our two species (or sub-species) co-existed for a few thousands years. Eventually, Neanderthal Man became extinct, one theory being that we destroyed them entirely, another being that we interbred. In any case, we became the dominate lifeform. What would our world be like if Neanderthal Man had dominated instead?

Robert Sawyer, a Canadian science fiction writer, looks at the concept of a Neanderthal-dominated Earth in his trilogy, The Neanderthal Parallax. In the book, a gateway opens between two parallel Earths and members of both races experience the others way of life in startling ways. I'm on the second book now and it's fascinating. Sawyer is a fantastic writer, the only one I've seen since Carl Sagan to write books that entertain and educate. Bravo!

Myth - more exciting than reality?

2005-05-31T02:06:00.000-04:00

I've always been a fan of the late Carl Sagan. He wrote a book called The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, in which he lamented the general lack of understanding of science amongst the public.

In it, he wrote about his encounter with a cab driver, who upon hearing that Sagan was a scientist, wondered if it would be alright if he were to ask him some questions concerning science. The driver then decided to ask him about psychic phenomena, ghosts, UFOs and astrology. It seems that popular media and a lack of science education has created a populace in which pseudoscience is treated as real science. Granted, many of these issues have an excitement that is attractive to almost anyone. But real science is just as exciting and much more so.

For example, the human species (homo sapiens sapiens) is believed to have first originated approximately 195,000 years ago. The intellectual capacity of that early brain is equal to what it is now. However, for most of that time our race seemed to make no apparent advances until about 35,000 years ago. It's referred to sometimes as the Great Leap Forward but no scientist is quite sure why it happened then instead of, say, 100,000 years before. Now how could talk of ghosts be more exciting than that?

Another fascinating fact that Carl Sagan liked to mention was that we are made from elements that were created through intense pressure and high temperatures inside stars. In effect, we are "star stuff"!

I can't remember it exactly but a quote I once read goes something like this:

The Universe is not only more amazing than we imagine. It is more amazing than we can imagine.

New Lens 1/5th as Thick as Paper

2005-05-24T01:23:00.000-04:00

And I thought electronic paper was amazing. Now Quebec (Canada) researchers have created an incredible new lens:

New lens may revolutionize photography

I though this quote later in the article was particularly interesting:

The lens could eventually be adapted for super-lightweight eyeglasses that could be adjusted for focal length, eliminating the need for bi-focals, Dr. Galstian said.

This should eventually be helpful for anybody wearing eyeclasses and maybe even contact lenses eventually.

Useless trivia: I thought that lens was the American spelling but evidently it's the British spelling and hence the correct form for Canada.

Where'd Christianity Really Come From?

2005-05-23T04:22:00.000-04:00

I'm reading The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur. This is quite an informative read for those interested in a fascinating new controversy about the origins of the Christian religion.

I'm an atheist and I find it quite the page flipper. His theory, of which he provides an amazing amount of compelling evidence, is that Christianitys ideas and stories really came from religions centuries and perhaps millennia before the time that Jesus Christ was supposedly born. In particular, Egyptian theology bears startling resemblances to many parts of the gospels - things he said and things he did and the entire crucifixion and ressurection story. In fact, Jesus Christ did not likely exist and was a deliberate fabrication by the early Church in order to "dumb" down theology.

Unfortunately, Harpur, a former Anglican priest, cannot take these conclusions to their most obvious conclusion - that God himself has never existed.