One of the more pernicious outcomes of the recent kerfuffle over Stephen Hawking’s recent remarks has been the deliberate conflation of physics and atheism. It never occurs to those who engage in this sophistry that physics comes to its conclusions without any preconceived ideologies and uses only the scientific method. Now granted, in the case of the most abstract physics (quantum field theory, M-theory, supergravity, etc.) mathematics enters to play more of a role in testing assumptions through the use and development of models. However, the fact that papers are published in top of the line physics journals shows these investigations have gravitas.
They are not conducted out of some whim, or because the (brilliant) physicists – like Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne, Steven Weinberg – wish to act like “spoiled brats” and stamp their feet to deliberately try to “eliminate God”. This is absolute balmy blithering bollocks! If any theory doesn’t even meet its mathematical criteria for confirmation you may be sure it won’t last more than a New York minute, and any who proposed it will have egg over their faces and so much embarrassment they may not want to publish for years!
On this score then, the arrival of a theory by which the universe can arise from nothing is no mere lark, and no exercise in “foolishness” (seen that way by a simpleton’s mind) but a serious enterprise undertaken by the most brilliant physicists on the planet. That it shows an enormous gulf between those physicists and the remedial level hoi polloi is not the fault of the former, but a nation saddled with a decrepit, antiquated and nearly useless education system whose main function is to either: train drones for corporate America, or generate a new slew of lawyers, or manufacture more financial wizards and quants to create the next financial meltdown.
If, on the other hand, our citizens were more educated – especially in physics, math and critical thinking, they’d be less likely to indulge in sophomoric attacks on physics and physicists, labeling them ‘atheism’ and ‘atheists’ respectively because they dislike their conclusions!
The very fact such would-be attackers often preface their silly comments with drivel like “Given the marvelously ordered universe…..blah blah”….shows they are totally ignorant and educationally bankrupt. Indeed, the whole concept of “order” in the universe went out sometime after the first black hole was discovered in Cygnus X-1 around 1975. Even before then, it was under siege given how much ‘dark matter’ had been discovered because the behavior of galaxies in clusters didn’t conform to what one would expect, unless unseen matter also occurred in the same clusters – affecting the gravitational fields.
Once dark energy was discovered in the 1990s, via a multitude of investigations and data streams (i.e. the Type 1a supernova data to do with red shifts) “order” finally left the stage with a whimper as we’ve learned more than 73% of the universe is inaccessible dark energy which even works under a different aspect of gravity – repulsive instead of attractive. Yet those stuck in 19th century visions and even earlier (Greek conceptions dating to more than 2,000 years ago) still haven’t brought their minds and outlooks up to date. But we know that physics as a science is compelled to always update its conceptions based on new evidence. Hence the gap in understanding between a pathetically educated public and the physics community – deemed “atheists” because they arrive at theories the public doesn’t understand, and fears because they believe it will undermine their belief.
Of course, the same occurs in the fields of modern evolutionary biology and genetics. In fact in those fields the conflation with “atheists” has been going on even longer. Once the connection of humans to chimps was consolidated (e.g. with the research showing the 2p and 2q chromosomes in the chimp underwent telomeric fusion to the ‘2’ chromosome in humans) the cries and screeching of “Atheism!” resounded everywhere. Because the findings, based on sober scientific methodology, conflicted with the fairy tale supernaturalist and superstititous image in the brains of the unwashed, they concluded the science was atheism!
When that same science made further discoveries, such as that the cytochrome –c protein sequences in humans and chimps was exactly the same, the screeching broke the sound barrier. No way! It can’t be! There must be a mistake! But there was no mistake, other than these feeble minds gravitating to an unsupported world view from the outset.
The worst spectacle when these mindless boobs go on the attack, is the depth of the errors (in logic and science) made in the process. It is absolutely stunning to behold here the depth of American ignorance and…let me say it…outright stupidity.
For example, in attacking the Big Bang they will compare it to a fire set by construction workers then ask how that could create a house. Of course, this is idiocy since the Big Bang is already validated by the cosmic microwave background radiation. Thus, physicists didn’t just dream it all up. They tracked the current 2.7K isotropic background back more than ten billion years (using basic thermodynamics – see the appendix of Steven Weinberg’s ‘The First Three Minutes’) and ascertained the ambient temperatures increased as they tracked further and further back – ultimately reaching more than 10 trillion K. Hence, "the Big Bang".
Particles obviously couldn’t materialize from this superhot state, so we know only radiation prevailed, which was why the immediate aftermath was called the “radiation era”. So why isn’t this taught in schools? Well it is, but not until university – and only then if one takes calculus based physics - third semester!
Only after some 300,000 years following the Big Bang could the cooling permit the de-coupling of matter (in the form of elementary particles) from radiation. Then, gravitation could undertake the building of stars, galaxies, clusters. All of this is basic, yet precious little is know by the insipid, ‘wrong and strong’ critics. Why? Because: a) it’s not taught in schools and b) the critics would likely never have taken such courses even if they were offered. (I suspect most even pride themselves on their ignorance, and one often beheld this on the short segment called “Jaywalking” – part of Jay Leno’s show)
More distressing, is that these nincompoops don’t seem to process that the Nobel Prize in Physics – awarded to Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1978 for their discovery of the Big Bang background radiation – effectively confirms the Big Bang’s validity. The Nobel Prize Commission definitely doesn’t award its top prize just for speculation.
The worst insult is that these chowder heads suggest physicists and biologists (who have proposed in turn the theories referenced above) are “prepared to abandon logic in the interest of their theories”. This is an amazingly idiotic statement alone because those making it can’t pass a basic logic test themselves! (The one making it actually scored a 1 out of 10 in the basic logic test I put up some weeks ago)
Moreover, as author L. Mlodinow pointed out to Fr. Robert Spitzer (on the Larry King show featuring Stephen Hawking) – when Spitzer criticized him for making the error of the “particular to the general” in conjunction with spontaneous inception of the cosmos – the criticism is irrelevant. It was irrelevant because ultimately the conclusions of science follow the way the EVIDENCE points, not strictly logic. Hence, it is quite conceivable there will be discoveries which appear to conflict with ordinary logic.
If we were constrained strictly by the parameters and bounds of “logic” (Boolean) then many scientific finds would arguably never have been made – from the wave-particle duality of photons (disclosed in diffraction and the photo-electric effect), to de Broglie matter waves, to the nonlocality of quantum mechanics (disclosed in Alain Aspect’s split photon experiments) to curved space-time and black holes (not to mention singularities!)
NONE of these would have been accepted on a strictly logical basis, but then science operates on an empirical basis too – which is designed to test the presumptions of abstract logic and certainly “common sense”. (Well, we learned long ago not to give overly much credit to “common sense” – after a horde of nitwits said it was “common sense” that NO heavier then air craft could ever travel into space. Then came Sputnik and other satellites, rocket probes, the space shuttle etc.
So much for common sense!
They are not conducted out of some whim, or because the (brilliant) physicists – like Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne, Steven Weinberg – wish to act like “spoiled brats” and stamp their feet to deliberately try to “eliminate God”. This is absolute balmy blithering bollocks! If any theory doesn’t even meet its mathematical criteria for confirmation you may be sure it won’t last more than a New York minute, and any who proposed it will have egg over their faces and so much embarrassment they may not want to publish for years!
On this score then, the arrival of a theory by which the universe can arise from nothing is no mere lark, and no exercise in “foolishness” (seen that way by a simpleton’s mind) but a serious enterprise undertaken by the most brilliant physicists on the planet. That it shows an enormous gulf between those physicists and the remedial level hoi polloi is not the fault of the former, but a nation saddled with a decrepit, antiquated and nearly useless education system whose main function is to either: train drones for corporate America, or generate a new slew of lawyers, or manufacture more financial wizards and quants to create the next financial meltdown.
If, on the other hand, our citizens were more educated – especially in physics, math and critical thinking, they’d be less likely to indulge in sophomoric attacks on physics and physicists, labeling them ‘atheism’ and ‘atheists’ respectively because they dislike their conclusions!
The very fact such would-be attackers often preface their silly comments with drivel like “Given the marvelously ordered universe…..blah blah”….shows they are totally ignorant and educationally bankrupt. Indeed, the whole concept of “order” in the universe went out sometime after the first black hole was discovered in Cygnus X-1 around 1975. Even before then, it was under siege given how much ‘dark matter’ had been discovered because the behavior of galaxies in clusters didn’t conform to what one would expect, unless unseen matter also occurred in the same clusters – affecting the gravitational fields.
Once dark energy was discovered in the 1990s, via a multitude of investigations and data streams (i.e. the Type 1a supernova data to do with red shifts) “order” finally left the stage with a whimper as we’ve learned more than 73% of the universe is inaccessible dark energy which even works under a different aspect of gravity – repulsive instead of attractive. Yet those stuck in 19th century visions and even earlier (Greek conceptions dating to more than 2,000 years ago) still haven’t brought their minds and outlooks up to date. But we know that physics as a science is compelled to always update its conceptions based on new evidence. Hence the gap in understanding between a pathetically educated public and the physics community – deemed “atheists” because they arrive at theories the public doesn’t understand, and fears because they believe it will undermine their belief.
Of course, the same occurs in the fields of modern evolutionary biology and genetics. In fact in those fields the conflation with “atheists” has been going on even longer. Once the connection of humans to chimps was consolidated (e.g. with the research showing the 2p and 2q chromosomes in the chimp underwent telomeric fusion to the ‘2’ chromosome in humans) the cries and screeching of “Atheism!” resounded everywhere. Because the findings, based on sober scientific methodology, conflicted with the fairy tale supernaturalist and superstititous image in the brains of the unwashed, they concluded the science was atheism!
When that same science made further discoveries, such as that the cytochrome –c protein sequences in humans and chimps was exactly the same, the screeching broke the sound barrier. No way! It can’t be! There must be a mistake! But there was no mistake, other than these feeble minds gravitating to an unsupported world view from the outset.
The worst spectacle when these mindless boobs go on the attack, is the depth of the errors (in logic and science) made in the process. It is absolutely stunning to behold here the depth of American ignorance and…let me say it…outright stupidity.
For example, in attacking the Big Bang they will compare it to a fire set by construction workers then ask how that could create a house. Of course, this is idiocy since the Big Bang is already validated by the cosmic microwave background radiation. Thus, physicists didn’t just dream it all up. They tracked the current 2.7K isotropic background back more than ten billion years (using basic thermodynamics – see the appendix of Steven Weinberg’s ‘The First Three Minutes’) and ascertained the ambient temperatures increased as they tracked further and further back – ultimately reaching more than 10 trillion K. Hence, "the Big Bang".
Particles obviously couldn’t materialize from this superhot state, so we know only radiation prevailed, which was why the immediate aftermath was called the “radiation era”. So why isn’t this taught in schools? Well it is, but not until university – and only then if one takes calculus based physics - third semester!
Only after some 300,000 years following the Big Bang could the cooling permit the de-coupling of matter (in the form of elementary particles) from radiation. Then, gravitation could undertake the building of stars, galaxies, clusters. All of this is basic, yet precious little is know by the insipid, ‘wrong and strong’ critics. Why? Because: a) it’s not taught in schools and b) the critics would likely never have taken such courses even if they were offered. (I suspect most even pride themselves on their ignorance, and one often beheld this on the short segment called “Jaywalking” – part of Jay Leno’s show)
More distressing, is that these nincompoops don’t seem to process that the Nobel Prize in Physics – awarded to Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1978 for their discovery of the Big Bang background radiation – effectively confirms the Big Bang’s validity. The Nobel Prize Commission definitely doesn’t award its top prize just for speculation.
The worst insult is that these chowder heads suggest physicists and biologists (who have proposed in turn the theories referenced above) are “prepared to abandon logic in the interest of their theories”. This is an amazingly idiotic statement alone because those making it can’t pass a basic logic test themselves! (The one making it actually scored a 1 out of 10 in the basic logic test I put up some weeks ago)
Moreover, as author L. Mlodinow pointed out to Fr. Robert Spitzer (on the Larry King show featuring Stephen Hawking) – when Spitzer criticized him for making the error of the “particular to the general” in conjunction with spontaneous inception of the cosmos – the criticism is irrelevant. It was irrelevant because ultimately the conclusions of science follow the way the EVIDENCE points, not strictly logic. Hence, it is quite conceivable there will be discoveries which appear to conflict with ordinary logic.
If we were constrained strictly by the parameters and bounds of “logic” (Boolean) then many scientific finds would arguably never have been made – from the wave-particle duality of photons (disclosed in diffraction and the photo-electric effect), to de Broglie matter waves, to the nonlocality of quantum mechanics (disclosed in Alain Aspect’s split photon experiments) to curved space-time and black holes (not to mention singularities!)
NONE of these would have been accepted on a strictly logical basis, but then science operates on an empirical basis too – which is designed to test the presumptions of abstract logic and certainly “common sense”. (Well, we learned long ago not to give overly much credit to “common sense” – after a horde of nitwits said it was “common sense” that NO heavier then air craft could ever travel into space. Then came Sputnik and other satellites, rocket probes, the space shuttle etc.
So much for common sense!
1 comment:
"The worst insult is that these chowder heads suggest physicists and biologists (who have proposed in turn the theories referenced above) are “prepared to abandon logic in the interest of their theories”. This is an amazingly idiotic statement alone because those making it can’t pass a basic logic test themselves! (The one making it actually scored a 1 out of 10 in the basic logic test I put up some weeks ago)"
Hmmmmm....let me take a stab at who that might be: A certain pastor, who also lives in Florida, and isn't Terry Jones!
Well, he's already shown himself to be an idiot on so many occasions that to me he's worth no more attention than that fool Terry Jones.
A good blog, though, since way too many of our fellow citizens call physicists and biologists 'atheists' because they don't like their work or conclusions.
Sad that this country is too stupid to know any better.
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