IDoNotGetIt

This article Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light, According to One Experiment suggests that neutrinos travel faster than light. If this turned out to be true, it would redefine physics as we know it. Einsteins Theory of Relativity would be disproved with this one new fact, for instance. To say that this would be an amazing discovery is an understatement.

This quote is a wonderful demonstration of the difference between religous dogmatism and science.

“I suspect that the bulk of the scientific community will not take this as a definitive result unless it can be reproduced by at least one and preferably several experiments,” says V. Alan Kostelecky, a theorist at Indiana University, Bloomington. He adds, however, “I’d be delighted if it were true.“

Suppose someone said “Hey we found proof that Jesus was just a man and actually not the son of God.” How many Christians would say “Oh wow, that’s amazing, I hope it’s true?”

Science is not dogmatic. It is constantly being updated as we discover new facts. Although it is unlikely that this will turn out to be true, the fact that it excites scientists rather than instil abject fear is a testament to its lack of dogmatism.

These questions are so simple that anyone with half a brain should be able to answer them. I’ve seen much better lists before that were technical enough to require expert knowledge of biology to answer. These are just lame.

1. How Did Nothing Turn Into Something?
   Answer: It didn’t
2. How Did Life Come From Non-Life?
   Answer: The building blocks of life all the way down to atoms are not alive. Life is hard to define even today. The first forms of life would have been simple self-replicating amino acids. Once that existed, evolution took over and after billions of years we have the rich diversity of life that we see every day. Experiments have shown that in the proper environment the proteins will automatically self-assemble. I think it’s also important to note that the study of the origin of life is not part of the Theory of Evolution.
   
3. How Did Millions of Life Forms Evolve With Absolutely No Evidence of Major Change?
   Answer: There is overwhelming evidence of major change. You’d have to be willfully ignorant to not know this. Creationist love to lie and claim that there are no transitional fossils but there are tons and tons of them.
4. How Can A Watch Come Into Existence Without A Watchmaker?
   Answer: A watch, being a man made machine, cannot come into existence without a watchmaker. Furthermore, this has nothing to do with evolution.
5. How Did Thought Come From Non-Thought?
   Answer: This question makes no sense. Thoughts are a result of chemical and electric processes in our brain. Thoughts come from the brain.

The first lie I intend to expose is definitely a favorite.  Theist who try to live by rules and information from a book that is millennia old are, inevitably, going to run into conflicts as our understanding grows beyond what the men who wrote said book knew.  However, many religious folks have taken the approach of “if you can’t beat them, join them” or more accurately, make them join you.  They have decided that since they can’t beat science, they should just try to make science look like it is just any old ideology, no better than the one that they are trying to propagate.

This lie takes on many forms but goes something like this: “Science is just a religion” or “Science requires just as much (or more) faith as my religion”.

This is just another way in which people dilute the meaning of words so that they become meaningless.  I’ve talked to people who tried to use this argument on me before and my question to them is always “can you define faith”.  My definition of faith is pretty simple, accepting a claim as true without evidence or in the face of contradictory evidence.  This is also the definition of faith that EVERY Christian I have ever had the displeasure of talking to uses by the end of their argument when they have lost on every other front.  The dreaded “Well, you’ve just got to have faith”, i.e. “I don’t have a good reason, I just want to believe it”.  Yes, I’m ashamed to say that I’ve used it myself many times when I was a Christian.  But every time I’ve had this particular argument with a Christian, they define faith differently.  They have to in order to make science fit the definition of faith because in reality, science is the antithesis of faith.

Lets compare and contrast science and religion a little bit.

Some religious person makes a claim about God. A religious leader is consulted (i.e. the Pope or some other church leader).  The church leader declares the claim as true or false and everyone is expected to accept unquestioningly this ruling.

Vs.

Some scientist makes a claim about some aspect of the observable universe.  This claim is expected, by the scientific community, to be laid out with evidence and the procedures used to evaluate the evidence.  Other scientist review and replicate the experiment and results.  If the experiments are replicable and a through review by the scientific community confirms the findings, the claim becomes accepted science.  But that is not the end.  Later, new information may require revisiting the original claim to make modifications.  It never becomes unquestionable.

Science is not a faith and science is not a religion.  Science is the method that we use to understand the reality that we exist in.  Even religious people use it in every other aspect of their life.  It isn’t simply faith that lets you know that you still have to stop when the light is red or that the sun will rise in the morning.  That is science.  Religious people don’t use faith to decide whether or not to loan money to a stranger.  They use credit reports.  That is science.  In every other aspect of life, even religious people will differ to science over faith.  That alone should be enough to tell you that there must be something to this science stuff, maybe it has more to offer me than faith.  But that is only true if you prefer reality to fantasy.

Lately, I’ve been getting aggravated a lot at the constant lying coming from religious observers. I know some would object to using the term “lying” to describe the untruths they are telling because many may not know that they are untrue but I’ve decided that at some point they must be held accountable.  Kooks like Ray Comfort have been told time and time again that the things they say are not true but they just ignore this and continue to spread their lies.

I believe that they, often know that they are lying but sincerely believe that it is ok to lie to protect their ideology.

Tomorrow, I will begin a series of post pointing out a few of these lies.  These are just a few of the lies that you will commonly hear from religious adherents whose ideology conflicts with reality and so they say reality must be wrong.  I’m just going to cover the big ones, not the ones that deal with details.  Things like carbon dating being inaccurate or that a flash flood could have carved the grand canyon, etc.  There are too many of those.

It’s not unusual for Christians (or any brand of theist) to mention "truth" when they are talking about their faith. And, I’ve dealt with more than one person getting irate at me for suggesting that truth is the domain of science, not religion.

Yesterday, I was listening to a song by Thousand Foot Krutch called "Absolute". The following verse got me thinking about this again and I decided it would make a good blog post.

We want, the truth
Give us the absolute
We need, your help
Cause we’ve got nothing

Now in my opinion, this verse does not describe anything you get from science or religion. Religion gives "absolute answers". Science gives "truth". However, the truth that we get from science is rarely absolute. All scientific theories have an unwritten disclaimer stating “subject to change with future understanding of the universe”.  Religion, on the other hand, doesn’t deal with truth; it only deals with answers.  And those answers are often presented as absolute and unchanging.  This appeals to some people but I’m more interested in truth than answers.  I’m not interested in your answer if it isn’t true.

I wish religious people would stop confusing absolute answers with true answers.  Religions aren’t interested in truth.  Science is the only reliable method to get to the truth and it’s interesting how the scientific method has been around for a thousand years and still has nothing to say on the subject of religion.

Truth is sought for its own sake. And those who are engaged upon the quest for anything for its own sake are not interested in other things. Finding the truth is difficult, and the road to it is rough – Ibn al-Haytham

Fox News isn’t even trying to look like a responsible news reporting agency any more. I caught this article today.

Apparently, they found three physicist who believe that the micro black holes that could, theoretically, be produced by the LHC could, theoretically, last longer than the microseconds first predicted, perhaps even longer than 1 second.  However, they also concluded that “the growth of black holes to catastrophic size does not seem possible”.  Well here is FoxNews’ response to that:

FoxNews.com can think of a few other things that didn’t seem possible once — the theory of continental drift, the fact that rocks fall from the sky, the notion that the Earth revolves around the sun, the idea that scientists could be horribly wrong.

If the worst comes to pass, and there’s now a slightly greater chance that it might, at least it might explain why we’ve never heard from extraterrestrial civilizations: Maybe they built Large Hadron Colliders of their own.

I don’t know where they got that rocks falling from the sky thing from, at what point in history did anyone argue that rocks don’t fall from the sky?  Regardless, these are still false analogies.  These particle bombardments happen all the time in nature.  The LHC is just recreating this in an environment that allows us to collect information that will allow us to understand the nature of reality.  These constant, weak arguments against the LHC are getting tiresome.

Honestly, though, the article title was the best, “Scientists Not So Sure ‘Doomsday Machine’ Won’t Destroy World”.  So the scientist have built a doomsday machine that they didn’t think would work but now they’re not so sure that it’s a dud after all; they should be happy right?

This crap makes me sick, but the real question is why is FoxNews disguising its opinion articles as news articles?

I didn’t watch Star Trek Voyager when it was on TV, however, I’ve been watching it on DVD thanks to NetFlix.  Or perhaps, I shouldn’t be thanking them.  So far I have not seen a good episode and I’m up to Season 3.  I vaguely remember DS9 having a lot of religious overtones to it but I don’t recall any overt anti-science episodes.  Voyager seems to be rife with them.

I was watching Sacred Ground (Episode 49, Season 3).  This is the most anti-science hogwash, I’ve seen in a long time.  In the show, Kes is injured and is dying due to some energy discharge from a shrine on some planet.  The locals tell Janeway that there is nothing she can do, Kes will die.  However, Janeway finds out about a story where someone went though a ritual to save their son who was afflicted with the same condition so she ask if she can do it.  They give her permission and she goes through the ritual that the local monks go through which is supposed to protect her from the energy discharge.

The ritual is long and pointless, even the other monks say so.  But the captain thinks she has the knowledge that she needs to heal Kes, however when they try, Kes gets worse so Janeway goes back down to see the monks again.  She talks to these three old monks sitting in a room and here are some of the mind-numbingly asinine comments that they make during their exchange.

Prophet 2: If you can explain everything, what’s left to believe in?

Well, lets see, if I can explain everything, I can believe in… EVERYTHING!

Prophet 1: “But of course you will, you’ll find all the answers eventually.  With enough time and study and the right sort of tools.  That’s what you believe, isn’t it, as a scientist?”

Prophet 3: “Be honest.”

Janeway: “Yes, that’s what I’ve always believed.”

Prophet 2: “Even when her science fails right before her eyes, she still has full confidence in it.  Now there’s a leap of faith.”

Prophet 1: “Unconditional trust, that’s promising.”

First of all, that “Be honest.” comment from Prophet 3 pissed me off to no end.  Why wouldn’t she be honest?  Is that question supposed to reveal something deep and difficult to answer.  It’s a simple question with a simple answer, Yes.

They were claiming that she was making a “leap of faith” because she believed that she could find an answer using science and they are encouraging her to use faith instead.  WHAT?  I want to smack these people.  They go on to tell Janeway that in order to cure Kes, she must kill her by exposing her to the “biogenic field” that originally caused the problem.  Janeway ask them, presuming that they know what the fuck they are talking about, “It would do what exactly?”  To which they reply “There you go again, always looking for a rational explanation.  Well there isn’t one.”  So, because the prophets are too ignorant to know why this will work, means that there is no reason.  I don’t think Janeway is the one making a leap of faith here.  This is the arrogance of religious believers.  In their minds, ignorance is an answer to their questions.

Janeway does as they ask, against the advice of everyone on Voyager and it cures Kes.  Then the doctor theorizes why, Janeway was able to enter the biogenic field safely and why the second exposure cures Kes, thus proving the prophets wrong by giving the non-existent rational explanation.  But Janeway still looks shaken by the experience, like she is doubting her “faith” in science.

I’m normally annoyed by skeptics in fiction because in the fictional story, magic, etc. are real.  But the skeptic applies “real world” methodologies and invariably end up wrong because they aren’t in the real world.  But Star Trek usually tries to stay within the realm of reason.  Even beings with magic like powers are explained as just being more advanced.  The Q for instance, aren’t magic they just seem that way to us because we don’t know everything yet.  But this episode has the skeptic in her element and still beginning to doubt her beliefs.  Why?

This wasn’t the first Voyager episode that annoyed me with anti-science messages but it was the last straw.  I knew I was going to have to blog about it as soon as I saw her conversation with those three Prophets.

Religious people love to pretend that religion and science are compatible world views that should be given equal time.  In theory this might be true.  It isn’t necessary that religions conflict with science.  But the plain and simple fact is that they do.  And when they do, science should, and does win.  And it wins every time for one simple reason.  Science is the study of reality.

Reality is the constant that we all have with one another.  We might all have different interpretations of some event but science can show us the true nature of that event.  The observations that science reveals are objective and true for everyone, not any particular subset of people.

I’ve said many times before that science can’t be used to validate or invalidate religion but I realize now that that isn’t exactly true.  And many of the ridiculous “proofs” that I’ve responded to over the past 50 days have reinforced that to me spectacularly.  Science can, in fact, disprove or at the very least, cast serious doubt on certain claims that many religions make.  These claims being the ones that step into the realm of reality and out of the realm of philosophy.

Christians, for instance, think they are untouchable because their views are religious in nature.  But they aren’t.  Some of their beliefs are wrong.  Religious claims that step out of the philosophical realm should be able to stand up to scientific scrutiny.  So there is no conflict between religion and science as long as they are kept separate but as soon as you try to combine them, you are going to run in to problems.

In #45 (Day 42), a quote by Stephen Hawkins is used.

Science may solve the problem of how the universe began, but it cannot answer the question: why does the universe bother to exist?”

This is a good example of science and philosophy being separate.  Science can’t answer the question: “why does the universe bother to exist?” because it isn’t a scientific question.  It is a philosophical one.  If religion stuck to these kinds of things, there would be nothing to fight about with science.  No one would ever step on the others toes.

But they don’t.  Instead, you get religions like Christianity trying to step into the realm of science.  And coming out looking spectacularly stupid in the process.  Evolution denial must be the most ignorant, brainless, vacuous… really, there aren’t words strong enough to express how foolish evolution denial is.  Yet they deny it.  They have let their dogma push them into an area that religion is not qualified.  And they constantly make themselves look like fools to everyone who knows better.

This is a fight that ought not exist.  Evolution is true and that truth does not eliminate all theistic beliefs.  Christians, a long time ago, made a mistake.  They thought they were doing the right thing by telling this silly story about how everything was created and how life came about but they didn’t realize that they were stepping out of their area of expertise.  And, maybe it wasn’t even their fault, after all, science wasn’t exactly a well developed field of study at that time.  They were doing the best they could with the knowledge they had available to them.  But now we know better.  It’s time to get over it.  The book is wrong.  It is obviously wrong to anyone with half a brain who looks at it with an open mind.

Evolution denial makes you look like a fool.  And worst of all, it makes your religion look foolish.  Stick to the philosophy.  Come up with answers to the questions like “why does the universe bother to exist?”  There is still a market for that sort of thing and there probably always will be.

I’m out of “proofs” or “reasons”, what ever you want to call them, early because a few of them just couldn’t be answered separately in good conscience.  However, that doesn’t mean I’m out of stupidity.

These “proofs” are all, each and every one, based on common, well documented, misunderstandings and lies.  Some are wrong on many levels.  For instance, number 39 (Day 36) is wrong because it is a fallacy but on top of that, it isn’t even based on facts.  Even if it were proven that women discovered the empty tomb of Jesus, this still wouldn’t make this a good argument for the existence of god.  But the fact that it isn’t based on real facts makes it wrong on top of wrong.

This isn’t unusual for these kinds of arguments.  Believers have already “fooled” themselves.  They already believe so they can’t see the illogical reasoning they put into these “proofs”.  They don’t understand that this is the kind of crap you get when you try to prove something you already believe rather than believe something you have proven.  That is an extremely important distinction.

I am frequently asked, “do you believe anything?” or “what DO you believe?”  My answer is: “I do believe.  My beliefs are based on facts and the logical conclusions you can draw from those facts.  You give me the facts, if they check out, I’m a believer.”

50. Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.

Really?  Those are the only two options you can think of?  This is another false dichotomy argument.  There are an infinite number of other possibilities.  I tend to believe that he was probably just a mentally ill person who got followers and then after he was executed, his nutty followers started making up wild stories that evolved over the millennia.  That’s just my opinion but it is much more believable than “he was god”.

What the hell is up with that crap anyway?  What was his big sacrifice?  He already knew that he was some kind of deity.  He knew that he couldn’t die (for real).  Hell, what decent human being wouldn’t sacrifice themselves to save everyone who ever lived if the reward was being a god?  That’s not a sacrifice.  A sacrifice is when you do it and don’t get any reward, you just die.