Local Science Club Celebrates Darwin's Birthday

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 23 - A local science club in Kuala Lumpur organised an event to celebrate the birthday of notable naturalist Charles Darwin. Darwin who was born on 12 February 1809 became world famous after he proposed his scientific theory called "natural selection". His book On The Origin Of Species, published in 1859, presented a body of evidence that life evolved through a process of natural selection; the strong continue to propagate while the weak eventually die out.

Specially made birthday cake for Charles Darwin | Souce: Ho Kian Kheong

This free event was open to all and organised by APOSL, a science club whose acronym stands for "Advocates of the Propagation of Science Literacy". It held at Loyarburok's Pusat Rakyat LB in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur. The club's aim is to help promote science and sceptical thinking.

"I think" | Source: Wikipedia.org

When the guests came in, each one was given a banana and a large cookie decorated with a fish with legs. The banana and legged fish were later explained by Nathalie Kee, an 18 year old student. She explained, "The banana we enjoy today is actually a man made 'natural selection'. Bananas in the wild are small and filled with seeds. Over the years, we have selected and only planted the types of bananas that give us the desired shape, quality and taste. The fish with legs symbolises evolution. There is an extincted fish called Ichthyostega which had limbs like legs." She was also quick to emphasise that the cookie is not to snub the Christian symbol "ichthys".

Pusat Rakyat LB was decorated with posters about Darwin's life and his work. Guests were encouraged to read the bytes of information to learn more about him. An interesting fact I found while reading the poster was that the Church Of England issued an official apology for criticising Darwin, in 2008.

Hari Darwin gave the opportunity for many of the guests to meet. Most of them have only met each other online at APOSL's Facebook page and were happy to meet one another in real life.

Ho Kian Kheong, a genetics and molecular biologist, presented a short biography of Charles Darwin. It seems Darwin procastinated 20 years before presenting his theory until another scientist named Alfred Wallace wrote to him and presented him with the same idea Darwin was working on. Being a gentleman, Darwin presented both ideas to the Linnean Society of London.

There were also sing-along songs about Darwin sung to the tune of The Beatles' Revolution and the opening theme to The Big Bang Theory, a comedy television series.

The club baked a special cake depicting the evolution of human beings and sang a rowdy "happy birthday" for Darwin.

The most interesting part of the day's programme was left to the end: a screening of a 3D documentary. The audience was handed reb-blue 3D spectacles for viewing the documentary about modern scientists who returned to the Galapagos Islands to continue the study Darwin started almost 200 years ago.

Audience enjoying a 3D documentary at Hari Darwin | Source: Pepper Lim 

Darwin's birthday is celebrated all over the world on or around 12 February. Schools, universities and science enthusiasts ahve been celebrating his birthday since 1882.

APOSL T-Shirts and Our Future Plans

Hello! APOSL is up and running for 2013 and we have a ton of new events throughout the first half of 2013 that should keep you and us busy for some time. I'll get to that but first off, APOSL is selling our T-shirts as below:

Get them RM35 if you order online, RM40 if you get them at our events. Please contact We still have the old designs available, so if you prefer please email swag@aposl.org for more information. Meantime we do have a slew of new events coming up soon, starting off with our Darwin Day celebrations on 23th February 2013 at Pusat Rakyat LoyarBurok. This is a (hopefully!) annual event celebrating the life and impact of Charles Darwin and his successors in the scientific worlds his theory touched.

We will also be hosting an Intelligent Design and Evolution Debate on 16th March 2013 also at Pusat  Rakyat Loyarburok, where a group of Young Apologist Christians has graciously decided to debate our speakers about the finer points of evolution. Then we'll have pie, because Pi day is on March 14th. Or maybe half a pie.

Coming in May or later we will continue to have talks once a month as best we can, as well as a workshop for the younger folks. Stay tuned for more information, and remember to like our Facebook group for more up-to-date information and lively debates!

Meanwhile here's some pictures from our last event with Petroleum Engineer Juli Jamaluddin, From Dinosaurs to Dollars.

What The Inside Of A Cup Of Milk Looks Like, by Pepper

Original Link here. Reposted with permission from Pepper Lim.


On 22.10.12, I posted a question to the members of APOSL: If you filled a pail with milk and lowered a camera 3 inches into it and took a photo, what will the photo look like? White? Black? Purple? What? Explain your reasoning.

What if you lowered the camera 6 inches; would the photo be different?

This morning, I tried it out myself.

• Milk: made with milk powder, following the directions on the packet.
• Metal cup - so light cannot enter through the sides
• Camera phone wrapped in plastic bag (matte plastic. I didn’t have the clear type in my kitchen)

My tall cup with 4 cups of milk. Spectacles is there for size comparison. Very bright and hot morning. Plenty of light for taking photos.

Added a ruler. It is about 5 inches tall.

1st photo. 3 inches inside the cup. Phone camera wrapped in plastic (slightly matte). Was surprised that the colour was yellow!

2nd photo. Again, yellow! This confirms it, doesn’t it? The inside of a cup of milk is “yellow”. But wait….

3rd photo. There seems to be something I’ve done wrong while taking this photo. Rats! The camera flash! It was firing while inside the cup of milk!

4th photo. Turned off flash. And this is what the camera took.

5th photo. Looks like the inside of a cup of milk is dark.

6th photo. Yep, it looks dark. I guess no light can penetrate milk 3 inches from its surface.

So turns out milk is very effective at absorbing light. But you can test it out yourself! What happens if you took a picture a 2 inches? 1 inch? What if you tried coke? Orange juice?

And the video for the "Existence of God" Debate is up!

As mentioned earlier APOSL members attended a debate on 25 August. The video is now up for those unable to attend the debate. Its in 10 parts.

The Debaters:
Samuel Nesan is a youth pastor at Cavalry OAG.
Willie Poh is a lecturer at Multimedia University.

Part 1: Samuel's Opening Speech

 Part 2: Willie's Opening Speech

Part 3: Samuel's Rebuttal

Part 4: Willie's Rebuttal

Part 5: Cross Examination

Part 6: Samuel's Response

Part 7: Willie's Response

Part 8: Samuel's Closing speech

Part 9: Willie's Closing Speech

Part 10: Q&A Session

Editor's Note: I'd like to thank everyone in the atheist community, as well as the Christians involved, for making this possible. I'd especially like to thank Willie for representing the atheists (and wearing out APOSL shirt), Samuel for defending his belief, and Kok Sen Wai for his hard work in helping to organize this. Also I'd like to thank Mike Wong and Jason for filming and editing. Dialogue is very important between beliefs and non-beliefs, and we invite anyone who's willing to participate in such a debate to approach us.

Debating God’s Existence 25.8.12

Recently APOSL attended a debate about the existence of God, and already the reviews are in. The following post is reproduced with permission from Pepper Lim, from here. Video should be available soon.

A few months ago, something extraordinary happened. A Christian decided he would debate a non-believer (what Christians call people who do not believe in Jesus as their saviour) on whether or not god exists.

Actually, this debate had been going on for sometime on the Malaysian Atheists, Freethinkers and Agnostics and Their Friends (MAFA)Facebook page. Arguments and points were discussed online by both sides. I guess someone was bound to suggest a face-to-face debate about the matter sooner or later.

Thus, a debate entitled ‘Atheism vs. Christian Theism’ was born. The affirmative was represented by Samuel Nesan, a young minister who is currently pursuing his Masters in Theology. For the negative, Dr. Kok Sen Wai had to almost beg for someone to represent the atheists! In the end, he managed to convince Willie Poh, a lecturer from a local university.

As both debaters prepared their arguments, the anticipation began to heat up on the Facebook event page. Seating was limited and people were warned that some would be turned away. I decided to make my chances of being chosen for a seat better by using the old ‘make-yourself-useful’ ploy — I volunteered to video the event.

On the day of the debate, expectations were high. Guests who arrived early chatted among themselves as to what the two debaters would present. Some Christians came all the way from Klang. Some members of my church also turned up, much to my delight. Atheists also turned up from far corners of the Klang Valley. Everyone was excited because this is the first time such a debate has been held in our country, as far as I know.

The moderator, Yoshua, opened the debate with the rules and a rundown of the programme. He looked like a no nonsense guy which was a good thing after watching the fiasco of the debates between Lim Guan Eng and Chua Soi Lek.

Samuel started off by offering four points to support his belief in God. Willie countered by telling the story of how he came out of Christianity to become an atheist. I won’t say too much so you can judge the debate for yourself. A video of the debate will be out soon. The debate ended with Samuel and Willie asking each other direct questions about theism and atheism.

After the debate, I congratulated Samuel because I thought he defended his position well. Willie also did well, getting his points across to the audience. Hopefully, this debate will lead to a series of talks and open discussions about theism and atheism.

There are a few things worth mentioning about this debate. It was heartening to see some Christians willing to engage atheists in public. Despite being turned down by a few churches for a venue, one small church opened its doors to the debate. The debate drew many atheists out to meet one another in, of all places, a church! Christians and atheists cordially mingled with each other instead of trying to cram their philosophies down each others’ throats. And, JAIS did not raid the church.

You can buy an APOSL T-shirt to show your geekiness as Willie did during the debate.

Wear your heart on your sleeve... Or your chest

APOSL tee shirts are available now through our Blog and Facebook group. 3 different sizes for different folks.

Size Chart:

Interested? Comment below or send a request at our Facebook or through any of our admins.

APOSL Event #2: Extrasolar Planets

"“We go to the moon. Space enthusiasts say, ‘Oh, we’re on the moon in ’69, we’ll be on Mars in another ten years.’ They completely did not understand why we got to the moon in the first place: we were at war. Once we saw that Russia was not ready to land on the moon, we stopped going to the moon. That should not surprise anybody looking back on it. Meanwhile, however, that entire era [of space exploration] galvanized the nation — forget the war as a driver, it galvanized us all to dream about tomorrow.” - Neil Degrasse Tyson.

On Saturday, 30 June 2012, APOSL successfully held a discussion with Afiq Hamid, also known as Science Epic. Mr. Afiq talked about the very recent phenomenon of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets; namely the ever-expanding catalogue of them and what they mean to us.

It's an exciting time.

The first extrasolar planet was only confirmed in 1992, 20 years ago (coincidentially the same age as our speaker!), but since then a whopping 777 have been discovered, mostly gas giants, the occasional weird rocky planet, scorching hellholes to icy wastes. And as Mr. Afiq is keen to point out, we are only able to detect a silver of the planets out there, not to mention we're only able to study a tiny fraction of the stars out there for planets. Of the billions of stars out there as numerous as the grains of sand on a beach, we're only picking individual particles up. No Earth-like planet is found yet, but we're still looking.

(C) xkcd

So where is the economic value of looking for other planets? This was briefly touched on by Mr. Afiq but expanded during our post-talk discussion. At APOSL, we're willing to promote science just because its awesome. But the world doesn't work that way, and Professor Stephen Hawking gives us a pretty good reason why we need to continue, nay, speed up our search for other worlds.

"It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load."  -Stephen Hawking

But we also live in a time where corporations are beginning to see economic value outside Earth's gravitational pull. The fact that a proposal to mine asteroids, that classic science fiction trope, is being proposed by Google's founders suggest maybe the era of true space travel isn't that far away. This, of course, veered our conversation into science fiction territory, justifying (or pooh-poohing) each other's ideas with stories from Warhammer or Dune.

This only proves though that space travel is moving out of the pages of science fiction into science fact, and that space exploration is beginning to pick up again. The human race this time has already achieved wonders scientists in the 1960s never dreamed of. And the scientists today are those that grew up dreaming of the stars. Who knows what this wave of space exploration may inspire in the next generation?

Join us for our next round of talks coming soon. If you'd like to find out more about our speaker, please visit his Youtube channel. Our Facebook group is here. Check us for more updates.