This was a comment for Jerry Coyne, who just published the book, Why Evolution is True. His post was on accommodationism, which, like Christian apologetics, claims that there are no logical contradictions between science and religion. BTW: The “Templeton Prize” is one million pounds sterling ($1.6 million dollars) that “honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works.” The upshot is that the prize goes to anyone who can produce the best mix and match between religion and science. The last one was given to “Bernard d’Espagnat, a French physicist and philosopher of science whose explorations of the philosophical implications of quantum physics have opened new vistas on the definition of reality and the potential limits of knowable science” (http://www.templetonprize.org/currentwinner.html). That alone, should warn us of the veracity of quantum physics.
Jerry:
Great post! You are 100% correct. The Templeton stunt should never be pulled by those who call themselves scientists. That's why it was particularly galling several years ago when the leadership of the American Association for the Advancement of Science resorted to that tactic at Wichita during the heat of the battle for teaching evolution (see http://www.scientificphilosophy.com/letters.html). Science and theism use opposing assumptions. One either assumes CONSERVATION (Matter and the motion of matter neither can be created nor destroyed) or its opposite, creation. Religious folks love creation partly because of its glorious promises for an imagined afterlife. Scientists, having to deal with the real world, need CONSERVATION and the theory of evolution in order to understand it, to predict it, and to manipulate it.
The evolutionary purpose of religion is to instill and enforce loyalty, making belief in creation the modern test of allegiance. That purpose is directly threatened by education of any sort, as you and many others have pointed out. The struggle continues indefinitely because neither science nor religion can prove its assumptions beyond all doubt. As scientists and determinists, we assume that there are causes for all effects. Because we can never discover the causes for every effect, we never can have complete proof of that assumption, just as we can never prove evolutionary theory beyond all doubt. But what your approach does so well is to buttress this belief by tying evolution to atheism. It makes all evolutionists stronger, giving us the strength to carry on in the face of loyalty tests we surely must fail. You may not convince more than a few religionists to give up the faith, but you have convinced the rest of us that the cause of truth is worth the sacrifice. Thanks so much for all your work in writing the book.
This is a blog that takes the name of my magnum opus on scientific philosophy called "The Scientific Worldview." Reviewers have called it “revolutionary,” “exhilarating,” “magnificent,” “fascinating,” and even “a breathtaking synthesis of all understanding.” There is very little math in it, no religion, no politics, no psycho-babble, and no BS. It provides the first outline of the philosophical perspective that will develop during the last half of the Industrial-Social Revolution.
20090616
The Big Bang Never Happened
Randall Meyer's excellent documentary "Universe: The Cosmology Quest" is now available on YouTube:
https://go.glennborchardt.com/Quest-part-1
https://go.glennborchardt.com/Quest-Part-2
It presents many arguments against the BBT by cosmologists who refuse to believe such nonsence. Among those featured are:
Sir Fred Hoyle - Cosmologist
Dr. Halton C. Arp – Cosmologist
Dr. Geoffrey Burbidge – Cosmologist
Dr. Margaret Burbidge – Astronomer
Kary Mullis – Nobel laureate
Dr. Jayant Narlikar – Cosmologist
Martin Lopez-Corredoira – Astronomer
John Dobson – Telescope designer / philosopher
Jack Sulentic – Astronomer
Among the most telling and revealing is the fact that the BBT predicted that the Microwave Background Radiation would be 50 degrees K, while many non-believers much earlier had predicted that it would be 2-5 degrees K. The actual measurements showed it to be 2.7 degrees K.
My comments: Einstein's "empty space," would have been 0 degrees K. Temperature is a measurement of the motion of matter, so any temperature at all is an indication that matter exists in intergalactic space. This is essentially proof that the ether exists. The BBT folks, however, used it for their own ends, proclaiming that it was a confirmation of the BBT in spite of their getting the temperature wrong by a factor of 19.
In the video, Halton Arp relates how his finding of evidence for non-Doppler produced red shifts opposing the BBT resulted in his loss of viewing time at Palomar and his position at Carnegie. As documented throughout the presentation, this type of persecution is commonplace when a particular paradigm achieves great power. This video will be paramount in documenting the rise and fall of the BBT.
https://go.glennborchardt.com/Quest-part-1
https://go.glennborchardt.com/Quest-Part-2
It presents many arguments against the BBT by cosmologists who refuse to believe such nonsence. Among those featured are:
Sir Fred Hoyle - Cosmologist
Dr. Halton C. Arp – Cosmologist
Dr. Geoffrey Burbidge – Cosmologist
Dr. Margaret Burbidge – Astronomer
Kary Mullis – Nobel laureate
Dr. Jayant Narlikar – Cosmologist
Martin Lopez-Corredoira – Astronomer
John Dobson – Telescope designer / philosopher
Jack Sulentic – Astronomer
Among the most telling and revealing is the fact that the BBT predicted that the Microwave Background Radiation would be 50 degrees K, while many non-believers much earlier had predicted that it would be 2-5 degrees K. The actual measurements showed it to be 2.7 degrees K.
My comments: Einstein's "empty space," would have been 0 degrees K. Temperature is a measurement of the motion of matter, so any temperature at all is an indication that matter exists in intergalactic space. This is essentially proof that the ether exists. The BBT folks, however, used it for their own ends, proclaiming that it was a confirmation of the BBT in spite of their getting the temperature wrong by a factor of 19.
In the video, Halton Arp relates how his finding of evidence for non-Doppler produced red shifts opposing the BBT resulted in his loss of viewing time at Palomar and his position at Carnegie. As documented throughout the presentation, this type of persecution is commonplace when a particular paradigm achieves great power. This video will be paramount in documenting the rise and fall of the BBT.
20090608
Solipsism and Energy
The solipsism surrounding the energy concept was there at the beginning, before Einstein, of course. To escape the solipsism underlying relativity we must remember that energy does not exist, nor does it occur. Only matter exists and only the motion of matter occurs. Energy is a description, not a thing or a motion. One particularly evident problem is the lack of rigor in its usage. Because it is a matter-motion term, it sometimes is used as matter and sometimes as motion. Potential energy is one of the better examples of the confusion. Here we speak of the potential for motion, not motion itself. PE relates to the relationship between things and then gets the matter connotation. I am definitely not against the energy concept, just the way it is used. We need to guard against the trap that Einstein and his followers fell into: the solipsistic belief that the math is more real than the matter in motion it attempts to describe. I try to use matter and motion instead of energy when those words will do instead (see my assumption of CONSERVATION). It can’t hurt (except maybe for getting published) and it will help us get out of the muck that is Relativity. Even Feynman realized that the Conservation of Energy was really just the conservation of a principal, not of anything or of any motion:
"There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law; it is exact, so far we know. The law is called conservation of energy; it states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy, that does not change in manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity, which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number, and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same."
—The Feynman Lectures on Physics (Feynman, Richard (1964). The Feynman Lectures on Physics; Volume 1. U.S.A: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-02115-3. )
"There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law; it is exact, so far we know. The law is called conservation of energy; it states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy, that does not change in manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity, which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number, and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same."
—The Feynman Lectures on Physics (Feynman, Richard (1964). The Feynman Lectures on Physics; Volume 1. U.S.A: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-02115-3. )