Just WHO are the real "pinheads"?

The problem of origins, cosmic and human, is a trenchant one and generally calls for highly motivated and rigorous debate. Alas, there are too few prepared to deliver it. What one finds instead is a cheap, shallow substitute - maybe akin to that cheap jam spread you buy at the supermarket, that promises big taste, but ends up in the garbage.

The reason for the lack of standards in debates about origins isn't surprising. It is because most of those who try to pontificate don't know anything about actual science, but attempt to go exclusively by "common sense". However, as author Victor Stenger has pointed out ('You Can't Trust Common Sense', in Not By Design: The Origin of the Universe, Prometheus Books, 1988) this is a dangerous and deluded strategy.

In fact, the march of 20th century modern physics shows the degree to which "common sense" so called, is perhaps the worst criterion to use to judge the merits of an argument, or the nature of evidence. Take the Michelson-Morley experiment (which Stenger explores nicely) as but one example.

In our normal experience of motions, say if one is in a vehicle traveling at 40 mph down a highway, and another car moves ahead at 50 mph, then one agrees that the faster car is going 10 mph faster or +10 mph relative to your own car's moving frame of reference.

Now, consider a rocket in space which sends out a flash of light as it is travelling at half the speed of light. Given the light beam is supposed to travel at the velocity of light: c =186,000 miles per second, can we affirm that if it's dispatched by a rocket traveling ALREADY at 0.5c, it will then have to be going at c + 0.5c = 1.5c? No, we cannot! The light beam, irrespective of the medium from which its sent - a car headlight moving at 40 mph down a highway, or a rocket moving at half the speed of light, still travels at only the speed of light, c.


What about TWO rocket ships approaching each other at the speed of say 08.c? Surely then they will approach at a relative velocity exceeding the speed of light (e.g. 0.8c + 0.8c = 1.6c just as two cars traveling toward each other at 60 mph are approaching each other at a relative speed of 60 mph + 60 mph = 120 mph)?

Well, that's what common sense and ordinary laws of motion tell us, but it's wrong. The actual relative velocity for bodies approaching at relativistic speeds is obtained from:

V(R) = [v1 + v2]/ [1 + (v1)(v2)/c^2]

where v1 = v2 = 0.8c

But working it out: V(R) = [0.8c + 0.8 c] /{ 1 + (0.8c)(0.8c)/ c^2 } =

[1.6 c]/ 1 + (0.64c^2)/ c^2 = 1.6c/(1 + 0.64) = 1.6c/ 1.64 = 0.9756c

or stll less than c!

Even more mind boggling and at odds with common sense are the findings from special relativity, proven over and over again.

For example, the "clock" associated with a moving particle runs SLOWER the faster the particle travels. (Based on the well known muon experiments.) This example of what we call "time dilation" has no counterpart in our everyday world (where velocities are generally far below the speed of light) so we never encounter slower clocks. Even the old Concord jets, as fast as they were, couldn't move fast enough to disclose a pronounced time slowdown. Yet the equations of Einstein show it in no uncertain terms, and the muon experiments prove it!

Also in defiance of common sense is that the length of a rod shrinks in the direction of its motion as it travels approaching the speed, c. At that speed, the rod vanishes since its length is now zero.

What would the length (L) of a rod be for a ground observer, if the rod is moving at 0.9c? Before it moves, measurement shows it is 1 meter long, so L' = 1 m.

Then, by the relativistic contraction equation of special relativity: L = L' {[1 - v^2/c^2]^1/2}

So, to the ground observer the length L is:

L = 1m ([1 - (0.9c)^2/ c^2)]^1/2] = 1m{[1 - 0.81c^2/c^2)^1/2} = 1m (0.19)

or L = 0.436 m

Or, in terms of feet- given the original length was about 3.3 ' (since 3.3' = 1 m) then

L = 1.43'

In other words, the moving rod shrunk from just over 39 inches to barely 17 inches!

Other modern physics findings also fly in the face of common sense, such as:

1- The observed diffraction of electrons wherein on electron can pass through two slits at the same time,

2- The phenomenon of quantum tunneling whereby a low energy particle can pass through a high energy barrier via wave action.

3- Dark energy in the universe which allows for repulsion to occur between masses, and is responsible for the universe accelerating.

So, given these examples, why is it so hard for some fundies to admit that they fail the physics crtieria to be able to cease relying on their common sense, when it comes to how the cosmos arose? In fact, they assert over and over that we (atheists) say the cosmos sprang from nothing, but that word is only figurative. The actual term is a sub-quantum vacuum within a brane space of at least five dimensions. Details were given in a number of previous blogs last year, but the basic idea is that the pre-cosmic bubble "exploded" in conformal spacetime yielding the event we have described as the Big Bang in normative space-time. (A sketch is shown, in which the vacuum bubble is shown as unstable just before spontaneous release. Also shown is a contous of the conformal bubble (cross section) with units given in terms of the Planck Length, ~ 10^-44 cm)

Despite this, we have unadulterated nonsense such as this, fulminated by a certain pastor:

"Contrary to what the pinhead atheists spew out of their filthy sewers , being CANNOT come from NON-being ! there is no potential for this . Even skeptic David Hume called this "absurd" - a scientific (real) impossibility . "

Of course, what the fundie fails to mention is that Hume was a product of an age (230- odd years ago) when science was still seeking to find its legs. Michael Faraday hadn't yet done his magnet experiments. James Maxwell hadn't even shown the existence of the invisible fields we call "electromagnetic" nor had he developed his powerful Maxwell equations based on them. Quantum theory's first tentative steps were still over 160 years away. The Hubble telescope and its findings, along with modern astronomy's opening vistas into the other regions of the spectrum, over 200 years. So, what's the point of citing this ancient? Well, mainly to distract!

And while asserting that "being can't come from non-being" he 's clearly unaware of the phenomenon of pair production. This is made possible by an uncertainty in the amount of energy(E) available, which is associated with the uncertainty in the time (t) and the Planck constant such that: dE ~ h/dt. (Where h = 6.62 x 10^-34 J-s)

Thus, if the time uncertainty is small enough, than an amount of energy dE can become available to allow production of electron-positron pairs from the vacuum. To find out what this time uncertainy needs to be, one merely has to obtain the total rest mass of the materialized (e-, e+) in terms of energy, then calculate dt, viz. dt = h/ dE

In the same way, using the same analogy, the original cosmic "burp" from the M-brane conformal back ground would be facilitated by an uncertainty in the conformal variable for t (likely posed as (-t) to be associated with the repulsion of dark energy resident in the vacuum). In his superb paper, ‘Universe Before Planck Time – A Quantum Gravity Model', in Physical Review D, Vol. 28, No. 4, p. 756.) T. Padmanabhan shows the instantaneous formation of the universe by a possible quantum fluctuation arises when the conformal part of space-time is treated as a quantum variable. The conformal factor uses the key variable:

alpha = S ^6 (t) w ^2 (t)


where S is the action, thereby fixing the state of the universe to be compatible with a harmonic oscillator of frequency w. It is also this basis that provides the model for the instantaneous formation of the universe by a possible quantum fluctuation that arises when a particular threshold is crossed near alpha = 0 (from quantum to classical domains) As Padmanbhan shows in his paper, such a cosmos can emanate from “nothing” (Actually, an M-brane "bubble"- the bubble residing inside the light cone of a point in de Sitter space. The point itself, and its light cone, are the big bang of the Friedmann model, where the scale factor goes to zero). Thus, his model is perfectly justified and follows from the basis of the equations, the light cone, scale factor restrictions and so on.

Another choice canard offered by the Pastor:

"Through the centuries , many believed that the universe didn't need a cause ; it was self-existent . They thought a beginningless / uncaused universe wasn't illogical or impossible . But now that contemporary cosmology points to the universe's beginning and an external cause , skeptics insist everything needs a cause after all ! "

A key deficiency here is that the pastor isn't aware of the nuances that underpin causality. (One reason that most specialists now demand necessary and sufficient conditions as opposed to causes. Mainly because too few people can distinguish between efficient and non-efficient causes, or proximate causes, and a disjunctive plurality of causes). Now, a key question is whether the Padmanabhan theory of the inception of the cosmos from a sub-quantal bubble meets the most primary causality criterion. According to philosopher Mario Bunge (('Causality and Modern Science', Dover):

"Giving reasons is no longer regarded as assigning causes. In science it means to combine particular propositions about facts with hypotheses, laws, axioms and definitions. In general, there is no correspondence between sufficient reason and causation".

In other words, the standard is met, since Padmanabhan's paper combines particular propositions (e.g. that the conformal part of space-time can be treated as a quantum variable) with facts about hypotheses and laws ( e.g. the conformal variable allows contiguity of the pre-- and pst Big Bang states, by virtue of the resulting universe being compatible with a harmonic oscillator form of solution, which we know has solutions in terms of Hermite polynomials H_ n (q))

Finally, in his last sentence the pastor evinces total confusion in terms of his criticism. He avers:

"now that contemporary cosmology points to the universe's beginning and an external cause , skeptics insist everything needs a cause after all ! "

But misses the point as to why the external cause needn't be his "god". Again, from John Allan Paulos ('Irreligion'):

"If someone asserts that God is the uncaused first cause and then preens as if he's actually explained something, we should inquire: 'Why can't the physical universe itself be taken to be the uncaused first cause? After all, Occam's Razor advises us to shave off unnecessary assumptions, so taking the universe itself as the uncaused first cause has the great virtue of not having to introduce the (unnecessary) hypothesis of God"

The issue with us skeptics then, isn't we are now 'changing our minds' and just asserting "everything has a cause", but rather saying that you have to constrain your causal options until you fully define and explicate the nature of the entity you claim is unique and causeless. To use Paulos' words again: "Either EVERYTHING has a cause OR there's something that doesn't." BUT- if there's something that doesn't, that doesn't ipso facto make it "God" (since you haven't provided the n-s conditions for it to exist yet!)

Failing that proviso, coughing up those pesky n-s conditions, then the theist is left with one fact alone: If everything has a cause then GOD must too! THAT is why it is logical to introduce that another agent had to create him. OTOH, if something exists that IS uncaused, it could as well be the cosmos emerging from a sub-quantual bubble vacuum, which proposal has at least been published in a peer-reviewed scientific paper.

So much for the pinheads, who seem to be those who exercise more "common sense" than scientific sense in arriving at the mandate their god must exist. Well, it does, in their temporal lobes!