Evolution: What Led to This Moment?
There’s something about the proliferation of plant and animal life in summertime that inspires one to ponder how we all got here. Is it acceptable for a Catholic to think about evolutionary theory? Of course it is, but the concept needs to be properly situated. The theory is only a matter of physical or biological science insofar as there are hypotheses to be tested based on observable data. The overarching idea that evolution, through genetic mutation and natural selection, produced the astounding, even unimaginable, diversity of all lifeforms is a metaphysical concept, a large storyline for the mind’s eye. Is it true? Well, the hard data to prove it got recycled long ago so we can never really be sure.
What the Church teaches about the beginning of mankind is like so many other aspects of Church teaching – at once a simple truth, and yet an eternally profound mystery. Because it is revealed in Holy Scripture, it is an article of faith that the first man was created by God and that man consists of two essential parts, a material body and a spiritual soul. “And the Lord God formed man out of the slime of the earth, and breathed in his face the breath of life and man became a living soul.” Genesis 2:7
Evolutionary theory can only address the hypothesis that the material body evolved from inorganic material (slime of the earth), and this is not in conflict with scripture. What science cannot comment on, nor can a Catholic deny, is that the soul of the first man was created immediately by God out of nothing.
Interestingly, the Church Fathers also saw that Eve’s creation from the body of Adam symbolises the essential assimilation of the woman to the man, and thus the Divine institution of marriage. There was disagreement whether Eve’s creation from the body of Adam was a literal or allegorical statement, and so it remains a mystery. However, this revelation also shows us that the entire human race is united.
How joyful it is to watch children run in the grass, splash in the water, and examine insect after leaf after flower with genuine curiosity and joy. Do you ever think of all that happened to lead up that instant in time? Do you cherish those moments? Sometimes I wonder if God is trying to tell us to focus less on materialistic evolution of the body, in many ways a futile endeavor, and more on the future of the human soul.
*Images courtesy of God, taken from camp Trasancos where Mom has left the indoor photography equipment packed away and stored in the attic.
**Dogma articulated from Dr. Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, pages 95-98.
Category: Catholic Free Press, Evolution, Featured, Science
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Angels? I knew you had trees and a lake and beautiful vignettes of God’s creation all around you, Stacy. But ANGELS TOO! I wish you could step outside of yourself for a moment and see these days from a distance. You must be the luckiest woman in the world. You know when I see such things, I don’t want to spoil them with words. Makes me wanna just look over at God with a wink and a smile, punch Him on the arm and say, “Nice one!”
Scientists do not know for sure that common descent is true. The definitive evidence is not available.
Do you think common descent is true?
If common descent means the materialist theory that everything, including the soul of man, evolved from a mechanical evolution of matter, then no I don’t because that is contrary to Revelation.
Is that what you are asking?
Thanks Val! I do feel like the luckiest woman in the world. I sure do.
Common descent is the theory that all living organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor.
Ignore humanity for now. Consider every other organism only.
Do you think common descent is true?
Ace,
I think both monophyletic and polyphyletic development are conceivable. I’m not sure which I think is more likely to be true because there seems to be a difficulty in defining species.
Do you have any opinion on common descent at all?
If you do have an opinion on common descent, what is that opinion?
Frankly, not really. I don’t understand why people fight about it. Whatever is true is true and I don’t understand why it even matters today whether there was one material common ancestor of all living things or several.
For man, it matters. A monogenetic origin means we are united, consistent with scripture. Physical characteristics may vary by race, but that is an external characteristic only. Mental endowment is common to humanity, humans have (like I pointed out already) two essential parts, a material body and a spiritual soul. I think I’m more interested in the future for the latter than I am concerned about how the former developed in the past.
So when you ask about common descent, I do honestly kind of shrug. Could be. Could not be. We’re here now.
Probably sounds like a cop out, but I think of it as avoiding a pointless debate.
Why don’t you tell me what you think? Should I have an opinion about common descent? I’ll listen and consider what you have to say.
I am on the side of the truth, whatever the truth might be. I typically accept whatever has the best evidence at the time. So long as the idea makes sense, the evidence is clear, and the evidence really supports the idea, I accept it for now.
I accept common descent, because there is good evidence, and the evidence makes sense to me as a non-biologist.
All species have a common code in their DNA. The similarity between codes for different species seems to correlate strongly with where the species are found in the geological record. The rate of change of the code over time, multiplied by the time available for the code to change (~4 billion years), seems to span the most significant differences in DNA, between humans and yeast.
This is why I accept common descent. No one should accept any idea in science unless it makes sense to them, and unless the evidence is convincing to them. If the evidence for common descent is not convincing to you, you should not accept it. This evidence is convincing to me.
I found Richard Dawkins’s “The Greatest Show on Earth” to give a good argument for common descent. Maybe you would profit from reading it.
I have two problems with that.
First, the only way to convince me of something is to first earn my trust. It doesn’t make any sense to try to consider the arguments of an untrustworthy person. I don’t trust anyone who calls for ridicule of Catholics and Catholic beliefs. That’s like asking me to trust someone to tell me the truth after they ridicule my mother. Also, I have read some of his writing, and he lacks an understanding of what science actually is and is not.
Second, I’ve been called an “age-nostic” because I don’t know what I believe about the age of the earth. The evolutionists (at least a group of them) lost my trust on that issue when they refused to test the age of soft tissue found in dinosaur bones. I thought surely there was a good reason. No. There was only a false dogma that since the bones were millions of years old the tissue must be too.
Apparently we have different criteria for being convinced of things.
You are welcome to read or not read what you like. Time is a very precious resource. If you don’t think your time will be well spent by reading a certain book, don’t read the book.
I am presently convinced of both common descent and that the age of the earth is about four and a half billion years. I have told you why I am convinced.
If you have new evidence for me to consider, I am open to changing my mind.
How can the age of million-year-old soft tissue be determined?
The presence of soft tissue conflicts with the evidence that that bone is actually millions of years old. The scientists who found it verified that it was indeed soft tissue, but refused to submit it for the common standard test for soft tissue, C-14 dating. Why? Because the bone is too old. But — what if the hypothesis that the bone is that old needs to be re-examined?
I think that the most sensible conclusion is that the tissue is not associated with the bone, or that tissue can be preserved for millions of years via unknown methods. This is what I currently accept about the soft tissue discovery.
The way I understand radio-isotope dating, if you know the initial amount of the isotope in an object, and the average fraction of this isotope that decays over time, you can divide the amount currently present by the initial amount and figure out how old the object is. It must be assumed that no amount of the isotope is being added.
If the object is very old, the fluctuations in the amount may be larger than the value of the average, and any measurement will not be reliable.
For this bone and tissue, the initial value of C-14 is unknown, any fluctuation in C-14 abundance would be much greater than the anticipated average C-14 abundance, and it is unknown whether C-14 has been recently added to the object.
Why should I trust C-14 measurements to render an accurate age of the bone?
If the age were determined by C-14 to be significantly less than 30000 years, then the simplest conclusion is that the tissue is not associated with the bone. This may indicate fraud. Is there any reason to suspect fraud?
This is what happened.
The tissue was found and was determined to be soft tissue, with academic agreement that it did in fact contain hemoglobin cells (going from memory, will find references when I have more time).
A group of researchers said it couldn’t be soft tissue since the bone was too old and soft tissue doesn’t last that long. So they hypothesized that it was a biofilm that grew in the cavities of the dino bone.
That group did C-14 testing and found the material to be of recent origin.
Bingo – they said they provided evidence that the material was not dinosaur soft tissue.
The woman who found it disagreed and said that it IS dino soft tissue because she had done a round of testing to verify that and stood by her claim.
But she won’t submit it for C-14 testing.
Doesn’t add up. The only hypothesis they won’t consider is that they are both right about the material, but wrong about their conclusion. It’s soft tissue and it’s of recent origin. Why? They are afraid of admitting creationists are right. That’s bad science. It shouldn’t matter, only the truth should matter.
Like I said, I’m not sure. But I would have had more trust in the evolutionary scientists if they’d just admitted that it’s OK to explore the data wherever it takes you, honestly. With a circus like that, one doesn’t know what to believe. Seems like they only want to believe data when it fits a predetermined conclusion. (Which you should guard against yourself in assuming the age of the bone is a fact.)
This is why I accept that the earth is old: There are a variety of methods to date geological strata. These methods result in similar dates, typically within one error bar of each other. I estimate the probability that all of these methods are sufficiently wrong to allow for a young earth to be about 1 in 10^26601. Whatever the probability of fraud or contamination in this case is, it is much higher than the probability that all the other dating methods are wrong by tens of millions of years or more.
It seems more likely that the discoverer is concerned that the soft tissue might be a contamination and does not want the discovery invalidated.
Given the strong evidence in favor of an old earth, it would take a significant series of strong new discoveries from different areas all supporting a young earth in order for me to consider that alternative more seriously than I currently do.
Ace:
Probability estimates are useless in this case, since we have exactly one Earth, therefore one biosphere, in our sample size.
Let us imagine for a moment that the reported consilience of various radiometric dating techniques were true.
If one were to discover, in an eighty million radiometric year strata, a dinosaur bone which presented soft tissue, collagen, and blood cells, then of course the consilience of the dating techniques would be falsified.
No matter how persuasive a given consilience, it must be abandoned.
Such bones have now been found in scores upon scores of samples, from locations all over the Earth.
Were evolution a scientific research program, such bones would have been carefully subjected to tests designed to date organic material (C14 carbon dating).
Since evolution is not a scientific research program (it is instead a metaphysical research program), contrary data points such as Cretaceous bones presenting soft tissues and collagen, proteins and blood cells, are not carbon dated.
In fact the suggestion that they be carbon dated is met with a degree of fury and hysteria which is in itself a psychologically interesting phenomenon.
We have come to trust science because science, if it *is* science, is self-correcting; that is, science is always rigorously seeking to falsify that which it thinks it knows.
Darwinism, however, as Karl Popper insightfully noted forty years ago, is not a scientific program,
It is not, as a scientific program is, dedicated to falsifying what it thinks it knows through rigorous crucial experimental test.
Darwinism is a metaphysical research program, dedicated to the defense and elaboration of the evolutionary hypothesis.
Unless and until the observed “red dot” anomalies of of Cretaceous samples repeatedly presenting organic materials is *scientifically* resolved, the evolutionary hypothesis ought to be assessed on metaphysical grounds.
It simply is not a scientific theory.
Rick,
Maybe the tissue cells are very recent and the bone is very old. Maybe the tissue is not dinosaur tissue.
If the tissue is dinosaur tissue, then why not accept that tissue cells can be preserved longer than was originally believed, and that C-14 has been introduced into the system a short time ago?
Both of these explanations seem far more likely to me. Why shouldn’t they?
How would I rule out these alternatives?
Imagine the tissue is C-14 dated, based on a calibration that is somehow reliable, and the tissue is found to be 100 years old.
Should I accept that the dinosaur died a hundred years ago?
Or that the tissue is not dinosaur tissue?
Or that somehow the tissue recently acquired some C-14?
Ace,
You should read this: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002808#s3
I have read the abstract. If I have more time I will read through the rest of the article.
The conclusion is very disappointing. The “tissue” is not dinosaur tissue, but a biofilm. Maybe they are mistaken. It would be far more interesting if this were somehow real dinosaur tissue.
If DNA could be extracted, even if highly degraded, imagine what we could learn about the great lizards!
Have the conclusions in the article you link been effectively challenged?
I am confused about one thing. This team dated the tissues using C-14. I thought you said that people were refusing to perform C-14 measurements on the tissue?
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1722/3209.full
Apparently this is still under active debate. Maybe it is dino tissue!
It is an active debate, but in this debate I have lost confidence in the “science” of certain evolutionists.
The scientist who found it stands by the claim that it is soft tissue, and refuses to submit the sample for C-14 testing. She also cites the article I linked above and neglects to mention that the samples were C-14 tested. Ignores the data.
And she published it in Science after the biofilm people did their work.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/5927/626.abstract
Like I said, it doesn’t add up.
If we call it biofilm, the C-14 data is accepted and published in the academic community as legitimate data.
If we call it soft tissue, the C-14 data is rejected and that is accepted as a legitimate action.
Which is it? Like I said, it would be better if the hypothesis that 1) it is of recent origin, and 2) it is soft tissue were at least explored. This is a viable hypothesis based on the data.
Ace:
It is unquestionably dinosaur tissue.
The biofilm hypothesis has been definitively refuted.
The issue is well-defined.
We have organic tissues presenting in scores upon scores of Cretaceous fossils from all over the Earth.
These samples have been denied C14 dating (apart from the samples that were C14 dated by the “biofilm” team- even more distressing, since C14 dating was allowed in order to debunk the notion of dinosaur soft tissues, but is denied in order to possibly confirm it).
This is a scandal, a huge scandal, for anyone who still believes that evolution is a scientific research program.
For those of us who listened to Karl Popper and have known for decades that evolution is metaphysics, not science, it is merely confirmatory evidence of the fact.
Ace:
If you are interested I have a blogpost on this issue that includes links to relevant papers:
http://magisterialfundies.blogspot.com/2012/01/marys-bones.html
“It is unquestionably dinosaur tissue. The biofilm hypothesis has been definitively refuted.”
Where is it claimed that the biofilm hypothesis has been definitively refuted? What reasons are given for this refutation?
The C-14 dating that was performed would date the fossils to <50 years old. Do you believe that this measurement is accurate?
If you do believe that this measurement is accurate, do you think that the dinosaur bone is from a dinosaur that died less than 50 years ago?
If you do not believe that this measurement is accurate, why not? Why would you believe any future measurements?
There is another more exciting alternative. Maybe the tissue is actually dinosaur tissue.
Why not accept that tissue cells can be preserved longer than was originally believed, and that C-14 has been introduced into the system a short time ago?
I fail to see a scandal. I just see interesting and unanswered questions.
Ace:
I had to chuckle when reading the conclusions section of your link (thanks for that btw):
“We conclude that it is now possible to non-destructively map organic compounds and reveal the chemistry of biological structures preserved from fossil organisms up to at least 50 Myr old.”
In other words, we conclude that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is to be ignored, given the fact that we have soft tissue in fossils we insist must be 50 million years old.
Nothing to see here, move along folks……
I do not think anyone can fail to be astonished at the cynical perversion of the scientific method here.
Stacy,
What if it is soft tissue, is very old, and the C-14 was somehow acquired not long ago?
My goal is not to convince you of an old earth. I am just trying to show you why I am convinced of an old earth.
Do you understand why I think that the earth is old? If so, I have accomplished my goal. If not, how can I help to make it clear?
“Where is it claimed that the biofilm hypothesis has been definitively refuted? What reasons are given for this refutation?”
See SciAm Dec 2010 “Blood From Stone”, by Mary H. Schweitzer
Relevant excerpt:
“Our papers detailing the sequencing work, published in 2007 and 2008, generated a firestorm of controversy, most of which focused on our interpretations of the sequencing (mass spectrometry) data. Some dissenters charged that we had not produced enough sequences to make our case; others argued that the structures we interpreted as primeval soft tissues were actually biofilm—“slime” produced by microbes that had invaded the fossilized bone……..
“As we had hoped, we found cells embedded in a matrix of white collagen fibers in the animal’s bone. The cells exhibited long, thin, branchlike extensions that are characteristic of osteocytes, which we could trace from the cell body to where they connected to other cells. A few of them even contained what appeared to be internal structures, including possible nuclei.
“Furthermore, extracts of the duckbill’s bone reacted with antibodies that target collagen and other proteins that bacteria do not manufacture, refuting the suggestion that our soft-tissue structures were merely biofilms. In addition, the protein sequences we obtained from the bone most closely resembled those of modern birds, just as Brex’s did. And we sent samples of the duckbill’s bone to several different labs for independent testing, all of which confirmed our results. After we reported these findings in Science in 2009, I heard no complaints.”
Indeed, the biofilm hypothesis is definitively refuted.
“The C-14 dating that was performed would date the fossils to > The C14 dating was a bit of self-serving poppycock. Obviously the test was measuring modern contamination. But this was allowed, since it served to strengthen the biolfilm hypothesis.
Now that the biofilm hypothesis has been definitively refuted, no further C14 testing under strict, rigorous, multi-sample conditions is allowed.
Shameful.
“If you do believe that this measurement is accurate, do you think that the dinosaur bone is from a dinosaur that died less than 50 years ago?”
>> See above.
“If you do not believe that this measurement is accurate, why not?”
>> Beacause we can reasonably conclude that the dinosaur in question did not die approximately last Tuesday. Further examination of the testing protocols shows that standard precautions against modern contaminants were not adequately observed.
The samples should be multiply blind-tested, different labs, just as would be the case in any authentically scientific dating of organics.
“Why would you believe any future measurements?”
>> Because these would, if scientific, observe standard protocols against modern contaminants, and submit the samples for blind tests in multiple labs.
That is what a scientific research program would be doing.
“There is another more exciting alternative. Maybe the tissue is actually dinosaur tissue.”
>> It certainly is dinosaur tissue.
“Why not accept that tissue cells can be preserved longer than was originally believed, and that C-14 has been introduced into the system a short time ago?”
>> Because this involves the replacement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics with Magical Collagen Fairies which intercede only in cases o0f Cretaceous fossils, to preserve them against the otherwise universally-demonstrated propensity of organics to degrade over a tiny fraction of the scores of millions of years asserted.
It is an hysterical case of special pleading.
Ace:
It is really simple.
We have organics in Cretaceous fossils, which is impossible under the Second Law of Thermodynamics (I link to the calculations in my blogpost, and there are numerous footnotes in the various Schweitzer papers on this score).
Now.
One of the first things we ought to do is establish whether the organics still present C14.
This can be done through a rigorous program of multiple, blind tests, observing standard protocols to eliminate modern contaminants.
If we were dealing with a scientific research program, these tests would have been done a decade ago.
Since we are instead dealing with a metaphysical research program, Magical Collagen Fairies are invoked.
Rick,
Could you sum up your theory on how everything came about in 500 words or less?
Mjek:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth……..(continue for 490 words).
I’m still not confident that this isn’t biofilm contamination. All the publications I can find say that the debate is still ongoing, and the reason that the structures both look like and act like tissue was addressed in the article Stacy linked. The authors claim that often biofilms will take on characteristics similar to tissue cells because of the shape of the bone. As far as I understand that explanation, it seems plausible. Maybe it is like when I put clay on a porous rock. The clay takes on little bumps.
If this tissue is found in many fossils, then maybe some group will run a C-14 test, in order to determine whether the biological material is contamination or not.
Also, more exciting, what if these cells really are tissue from dinosaurs? In this case, if there is C-14, then the C-14 may have been acquired recently. Also, how would the tissue survive for such a long time?
There is mention of the second law of thermodynamics. I don’t understand. How is the second law of thermodynamics involved? How is it violated?
Ace:
I gave you the link above, to “Mary’s Bones”.
Check it if you like.
Having already established that scientific refutation will not suffice for you, there is really nothing else I can do except address any factual matters that might come up.
The scientifically certain facts are these:
1. Soft tissue has been found in scores of Cretaceous era fossils.
2. The biofilm hypothesis has been fully refuted, by experimentally verified presence of antibodies specific to hemes, and never found in bacterial contaminants (“biofilms”).
(Just to make this point clear, the previous sentence constitutes conclusive scientific refutation of the biofilms hypothesis, which is why the hypothesis has been abandoned in light of Schweitzer, et al, 2009 and sequelae).
3. There is a continuing refusal to subject these organics to carbon dating procedures.
Just the facts.
Rick, you are right about the tissue; it really does appear to be dinosaur tissue. Amazing!
Currently, the evidence strongly favors this conclusion, although nothing in science is certain.
But for now, there is confidence that these are really dinosaur tissues that we can study. I wonder how did they survive for so long without falling apart?
http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/04/30/dinosaur-proteins-cells-and-blood-vessels-recovered-from-brachylophosaurus/ provides a good explanation of the facts and the story of discovery.
Fun.
When one group tried to use C-14 to determine the age of the tissue, they got an answer of less than 50 years. Wouldn’t that suggest C-14 dating in this case is unreliable? Why would I believe any future C-14 results for this tissue?
Umm, Ace, just out of curiosity, why do you ask questions that I already answered, above, and at the linked blogpost?
I will reproduce the answers as they appear above:
The C14 dating was a bit of self-serving poppycock. Obviously the test was measuring modern contamination. But this was allowed, since it served to strengthen the biolfilm hypothesis.
Now that the biofilm hypothesis has been definitively refuted, no further C14 testing under strict, rigorous, multi-sample conditions is allowed.
Shameful.
“If you do believe that this measurement is accurate, do you think that the dinosaur bone is from a dinosaur that died less than 50 years ago?”
>> See above.
“If you do not believe that this measurement is accurate, why not?”
>> Beacause we can reasonably conclude that the dinosaur in question did not die approximately last Tuesday. Further examination of the testing protocols shows that standard precautions against modern contaminants were not adequately observed.
The samples should be multiply blind-tested, different labs, just as would be the case in any authentically scientific dating of organics.
“Why would you believe any future measurements?”
>> Because these would, if scientific, observe standard protocols against modern contaminants, and submit the samples for blind tests in multiple labs.
That is what a scientific research program would be doing.
Ace asks:
” I wonder how did they survive for so long without falling apart?”
Wrong question.
Here is the right one:
“Are we sure these bones are as old as the radiometric techniques suggest?”
If I can conclude that the dinosaur not die less than 50 years ago, and C-14 decay tells me that the dinosaur tissue is less than 50 years old, why should I believe the C-14 results?
How can I have confidence that the future test isn’t of tissue that acquired C-14 recently (in the last 50,100,1000,10000 years)? How can a test provide confidence this alternative explanation isn’t correct?
This is what I don’t understand.
The dinosaur tissue does not cause me to reconsider the age of the earth at this time.
Ace:
Modern contamination, of course, is the answer to your question.
Obviously, a truly scientific program of research would involve dating, not scrapings from the bones alone, and in a single lab, without demonstrated adherence to sample preparation techniques designed to remove modern contaminants from the sample.
In the case of the 2008 “biofilms” paper, the ridiculously obvious modern age was allowed to be published, since it lent credence to the “biofilm contamination” hypothesis.
As has been established, this “biofilm” hypothesis” was definitively refuted in 2009.
Therefore, the organics should be tested in a rigorous program involving:
1. Multiple samples.
2. Multiple labs
3. Blind tests
4. Strict protocols for sample preparation to remove modern contaminants.
But this has not been done.
Indeed, all attempts to have it done have been rejected with a certain….hysteria.
Perhaps one reason is the independent results on tests of Cretaceous bones which show drastically younger C14 ages than would be possible to render consistent with the timeline of the theory of evolution:
http://www.dinosaurc14ages.com/carbondating.htm
To me, 30000 years ago seems almost as ridiculously modern as 50 years ago. We must be open to the possibility of either, even if the probabilities are exceedingly tiny.
It is difficult to imagine what number C-14 dating could come up with that I would find believable, or what technique would rule out possible recent C-14 acquisition.
If many labs get together and perform this C-14 testing of many samples, and each comes up with ages between 30000 and less than 50 years, it would seem to me as though C-14 was acquired in different samples at various times between 30000 years and less than 50 years ago.
Even if many labs achieved an age of 10000 years, this would suggest some sort of common C-14 acquisition of the tissues 10000 years ago.
The most scientifically useful result possible would be if all samples are C-14 dated and all of them are found to be less than about 50 years old. This would strongly suggest that the “tissue” is really biofilm contamination.
Therefore, if it is unlikely for C-14 measurements to affect my opinion or probably the opinion of the scientists in the field, why would they spend the time to perform the tests?
If someone wanted to convince me that the earth is young, she would have to come up with an explanation for the current radiometric dating methods large inaccuracies. If there were strong evidence, for example, that radioisotope decay rates are not constant, but were much higher in the past, I would accept that some geological strata are quite possibly much younger than is currently believed.
Ace:
I applaud your open-mindedness, but this has nothing to do with probability.
C14 tests, properly conducted in accordance with decontamination protocols, multiple labs, and blind testing, is a very accurate dating technique (far more precise than radiometric dating techniques).
It is really not relevant whether we find something “ridiculous”, when it is a question of scientific experiment, rather than scientific narrative.
One of course comes to accept a given narrative based on many factors, but this is not narrative, this is hard science.
Either the bones present measurable C14, or they don’t.
According to the results obtained in the link above, they do.
Multiple samples.
Multiple areas of the globe.
Multiple geological formations.
Multiple species.
But the Schweitzer group- in possession of the most amazing samples yet obtained; samples which actually present indisputably soft and proteins tissue samples in fossils allegedly 65-million-plus year old- refuses to conduct a rigorous, careful C14 study of the bones.
It is not relevant to imagine what C14 tests would yield.
They would yield, crucially, the answer to a very simple question:
Is measurable C14 present in multiple samples, from multiple finds, of multiple species, from multiple formations, from multiple locations across the globe?
If the answer to that question is “yes”, then the theory of evolution has been falsified.
The bones in question cannot be even remotely as old as they theory insists they must be.
The resolute failure to conduct these tests indicates that evolution is not a scientific research program, but is instead a metaphysical research program.
The crucial difference, as Karl Popper pointed out 40 years ago, is that a truly scientific research program is dedicated to falsification.
A metaphysical research program is dedicated to confirmation.
It would be a very good thing for science, if the bones were C14 tested.
It might be a catastrophically bad thing for the metaphysical world view which depends upon Darwinian evolution for its credibility.
For whatever reason, the tests have not been done, and it is insistently declared that they will never be done.
One can draw whatever conclusions seem appropriate.
I conclude that Darwinism is no longer a scientific research program (if it ever was).
“Multiple samples.
Multiple areas of the globe.
Multiple geological formations.
Multiple species.”
If all these tissue sample reveal different C-14 abundances indicating ages between 30000 years and less than 50 years, wouldn’t the most likely explanation be that they all acquired C-14 recently, but still are probably very old?
The dating method would be very precise. It would tell us precisely when the C-14 was recently acquired.
That is metaphysical, not scientific, thinking, Ace.
We do not cook up plausible explanations for getting rid of data points that contradict our assumptions.
All scientific progress begins with an observed departure from expectations under existing theoretical frameworks.
When we instead employ cooked-up special pleading in order to avoid the necessity of *experimentally* establishing what can, in fact be experimentally established…..
Well.
We are now doing metaphysics, not science.
As I have exhaustively indicated by multiple response and link, the 2008 test was bogus. It was not taken of the bone itself, but of scrapings of unidentified ,aerial on the bone.
Standard procedures to decontaminate modern C14 (these exist and are extensively discussed in the links above) were not followed.
Only one lab was consulted.
Only one sample was provided.
The result was, shamefully, accepted even though it was obviously wrong- the result would only have been consistent with the “biofilms” hypothesis.
That hypothesis now having been scientifically refuted (Schweitzer, et al, 2009), we are left with a simple set of facts.
1. Cretaceous fossils have yielded soft tissue.
2. The soft tissue is not biofilm contamination.
3. Therefore the soft tissue can be C14 dated in a rigorous program involving multiple labs, multiple samples, multiple finds, and multiple strata.
4. It has not been.
If you find this not at all troubling, rejoice and know that you are doing metaphysics.
If this bothers the **** out of you, rejoice and know that you are doing science.
Ace, I’m a mathematician, scientist, and philosopher of science with a PhD and I am telling you Rick is right. There are lots of holes in the received view. The Catholic faith puts the pieces together.
Come on over to Rome, old friend.
I still don’t understand why I would believe the C-14 results could possibly be evidence for a young earth, and not my alternative explanation. It doesn’t seem as though you have an answer.
I’m simply interested in the truth, and will accept the explanations that have the best evidence and that make sense to me. If trying to make sense of the world is metaphysics, that’s fine by me. I’m just interested in learning more about reality in whatever way I can.
Jeff, I don’t care about your qualifications.
If you can show me strong evidence and arguments that make sense to me, I’ll change my mind.
I currently see no reason to change my mind about the age of the earth or about evolution. The evidence suggests to me that all species evolved from a single common ancestor around 3.5 billion years ago, and that the earth is over 5 billion years old.
My goal is not to convince you of anything. I’m always open to learning more, so if you would like to try to change my mind, show me the evidence and arguments.
“We do not cook up plausible explanations for getting rid of data points that contradict our assumptions.”
Aren’t you doing worse than this when you ignore the radiometric dating? If you do not ignore radiometric methods, how do you explain them?
Whatever explanation you have, how is this not simply cooking up a plausible explanation for getting rid of a data point?
How is your using the tissue as evidence for a young earth, in spite of radiometric dating any better than me using radiometric dating for an old earth, in spite of the possible C-14 results?
Explaining the C-14 results to favor an old earth seems to make more sense, given the amount of evidence for an old earth.
“All scientific progress begins with an observed departure from expectations under existing theoretical frameworks.”
It seems that 50 million year old tissue would qualify as an observed departure from expectations. A very exciting one at that.
A: “Aren’t you doing worse than this when you ignore the radiometric dating? If you do not ignore radiometric methods, how do you explain them?”
>> Since I have not ignored radiometric dating, but instead have explicitly pointed to it, your objection here is misguided.
The point of scientific interest is, that we have only dated the rocks- not the bones. This was done on the *assumption* that no dateable organic material could be present in the dino bones, therefore an indirect dating was all we could get, based on the radiometric ages obtained for the rocks in which the fossils were found.
The remarkable scientific anomaly here is the discovery of exactly that organic soft tissue which the radiometric ages *cannot account for*.
In such a case of directly contradictory data points, the issue should be resolved experimentally- that is, by direct dating of the *bones themselves*, and comparison of the results with the expected null C14 outcome we would expect from the radiometric dating.
A: Whatever explanation you have, how is this not simply cooking up a plausible explanation for getting rid of a data point?
>> The above explanation involves zero cooking, and one hundred per cent experimenting.
This was, in a better age, called “the scientific method”.
A: How is your using the tissue as evidence for a young earth, in spite of radiometric dating any better than me using radiometric dating for an old earth, in spite of the possible C-14 results?
>> I have “used” the evidence as nothing other than what it is- a direct challenge to the assumed timeline of Darwinian evolution.
If the bones are tested, the results speak to the age of the bones, not the earth.
But the Darwinian fears these tests, since, should it be determined that the ages assigned based on radiometric dating are wrong, the entire evolutionary timeline collapses.
The question of the age of the earth would then have to be carefully revisited, this time with, hopefully, a less metaphysical and more scientific approach.
For example, we would have to address the question of how C14-organic bones got inside 65-plus million year old rocks, wouldn’t we
A: Explaining the C-14 results to favor an old earth seems to make more sense, given the amount of evidence for an old earth.”
>> All evidence for an old earth is based upon an assumed identity between radiometric datings and ages of strata.
A true scientist would be fascinated to discover an opportunity to directly *test*, as opposed to *assuming*, this identity.
Those interested instead in defending a metaphysical world view would rather talk about probabilities, intuition, likelihoods- none of which are scientific experimental data.
A: It seems that 50 million year old tissue would qualify as an observed departure from expectations. A very exciting one at that.
First let us experimentally determine whether the tissue is, as it appears to be, orders of magnitude less than 50 million years old.
That once having been *experimentally* established, we have a firm foundation upon which to proceed, as opposed to a selective choice of metaphysical wagon-circling.
How would dating the bones suggest anything about the radiometric testing?
Why would we expect the bones to be of a very different age from the rock surrounding them? What mechanism would account for this, and what evidence would we have for this mechanism?
I still don’t understand about the C-14. Why would I believe the C-14 results since they have been unreliable before? If these bones are actually much younger than the surrounding rock, what other ways could we test the age? Maybe some future observations will suggest a way to get an age for the material.
I don’t see how I could believe the ages given by C-14 in this case.
If there existed a longer lived isotope (imagine halflife of 100,000 years) and we could be relatively confident of its calibration, and the isotope abundance suggested the bones were 10,000 years old, this would be more plausable. If there were multiple such isotopes that could be measured, and they all determined an age of 10,000 years, then I would accept that age.
But not one isotope. And definitely not with such a short half-life.
I suppose we may simply have different interpretations of the possible data.
Interpretations of “possible” data?
No.
Actual data first, interpretations second.
But that, again, requires a commitment to science, instead of to the defense of a pre existing metaphysical world view.
The rest of your questions having been answered, multiple times, I think there is little left to say, other than “thank you” for allowing an exploration of the differences between a scientific and a metaphysical research program.
Thanks for presenting an interesting different perspective.
It is a fun excercise to think about these things in new ways.
Ace,
You’re a good sport, I like you. We enjoy heavy debates and I appreciate the dialogues. Rick makes a very strong case, and that’s what Jeff was saying. They both know what they are talking about. Now do you understand why I’m “age-nostic”? I do wonder, and am concerned, about the honesty in science among some groups.
Anyway, hope you stick around. There is actually quite a diverse group of opinions that get discussed here, in good faith.
“Now do you understand why I’m “age-nostic”?”
I understand that you are an “age-nostic” in large part because you worry about the intellectual honesty of many scientists involved in calculating the ages of things, and therefore you do not trust that their current presentation of the evidence is the whole story.
Is my understanding correct?
I think you understand my reasons for confidence in the old age of the earth.
Maybe I will stick around, especially if there are other interesting science posts in the future. My training is in theoretical physics, but I have a great interest in all things science, especially unique theories and surprising discoveries.
Also, do you understand why I would not find C-14 dating of dinosaur tissue to be evidence of a young earth?
Rick,
Could you sum up your theory on how everything came about in 500 words or less? I read your website but couldn’t find any information
My reply is posted above, Mjeck.
See my answer above.
I enjoyed the exchange, Ace.
The scientific method requires the utmost in detachment from metaphysical pre-assumption.
The greatest problem facing science (and theoretical physics especially), is its (mostly unexamined) abandonment of the scientific method in favor of probability/plausibility arguments- all of which necessarily amount to doing theology under a counterfeit label that sells better.
Science- real science- is worldview neutral (its great virtue!) because real science is always prepared to falsify what it thinks it knows, and that falsification is never in the form of an argument, but always in the form of a reproducible experimental outcome.
Rick,
I want to accept and understand reality. If there is good evidence and arguments for the earth being much younger, I will consider the evidence and arguments, and will change my mind accordingly.
I do not understand the C-14 dating of dinosaur tissue argument, and so I cannot accept it. If that means I’m not a scientist, then I’m don’t want to be a scientist.
My interest is in finding out what is real. Currently, I think the earth is really 4.5 billion years old.
Do you understand why I accept this? Do you understand that it’s based on evidence and my understanding of the evidence?
Ace:
I understand completely why you accept the Darwinist metanarrative.
But this is not relevant, as a matter of science.
It is merely relevant as a matter of metaphysical world view.
Why is it not relevant?
Because the bones will either prove to present C14 or they won’t.
The results will be the same whether one is Hindu, Catholic, Buddhist, or atheist.
Science exists to experimentally test all of its assumptions, ceaselessly.
One need not abandon one’s metanarrative, or even so much as grant the possibility of changing it.
But one must never refuse an experimental test of anomalous data (and soft-tissue presenting Cretaceous fossils is an *extraordinary* anomaly).
Once the choice is made to refuse such experimentation (you are correct, by the way, in stating that you do not understand the significance of C14 dating, but I have already supplied links which will definitively explain this to you should you choose to investigate them)- once the choice is made to refuse an experimental test because it might threaten the metaphysical narrative…..
We have departed science.
Karl Popper was far more brilliant than even suspected.
He correctly diagnosed the evolutionary research program as a metaphysical, not a scientific, enterprise decades back, and had he lived to witness the astonishing “circle the wagons” refusal to C14 test soft-tissue presenting bones……..
I doubt he would be happy, but he certainly would be shown to have been correct.
The empirical evidence now demonstrates- the refusal to conduct crucial experiments indicates- that evolution is not now a scientific research program (if it ever was).
“Because the bones will either prove to present C14 or they won’t.
The results will be the same whether one is Hindu, Catholic, Buddhist, or atheist.”
And the result will be as irrelevant to the age of the earth whether I’m Hindu, Catholic, Buddhist or atheist.
The data will be the same for everyone. Interpretation of the data may not be. After all, in every field of science, all the researchers have access to the same data set, but there is not just one set of theories explaining everything that everyone agrees on. How can this be, if everyone has the same results, and doesn’t think that the world works in exactly the same way?
You may interpret it as meaning that the tissue is young.
I would interpret it as meaning that either the tissue really isn’t tissue or that C-14 was acquired by the tissue relatively recently.
I think I understand C-14 dating. I do not understand why you think the results should be interpreted to be connected with the age of the bone.
You have not given me an answer that I understand about why I should accept that the bone is young, and not that the C-14 was acquired by the tissue recently.
If you think that my reasons for holding to the old age of the earth are wrong, or based on bad data, or on a bad interpretation of the data, at least you understand why I think the earth is old. We should celebrate different interpretations in science, and try to rule out our own interpretations through experimentation and observation.
If you think my reasons for holding to the old age of the earth are metaphysics, then you don’t understand what I’ve been saying.
I’ll happily answer other future questions or points of argument, but I want one question answered:
Why do you think I accept that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old?
That’s an easy one, Ace.
You accept the metanarrative:
Big Bang
Inflation
Decoupling
Light element synthesis
Expansion
Heavier elements from novae and supernovae
Solar system formation from condensation of matter and gas
Earth formation
Abiogenesis
Descent from single cell primordial ancestor
Which is a lovely fairy tale but has nothing whatsoever to do with science, since we have established that the fairy tale proceeds from a metaphysical, not a scientific, research program.
But it has the advantage of being a fairy tale perfectly designed for the modern mind.
Stacy and Rick, after re-reading some of the responses and thinking about it, two questions came to mind.
Rick said that he was only talking about the age of the bone, and not the age of the rock the bone was found in. The age of the rock has been determined by various radiometric dating methods.
Do you think that the radiometric dating methods are accurate? Don’t these methods show that the earth is very old, regardless of the age of the bone?
If C-14 testing is performed on the tissue at some point in the future, and no C-14 is detected, would you accept that the bone and tissue are millions of years old?
“Do you think that the radiometric dating methods are accurate? ”
>>Apparently not, since soft tissue should not exist in fifty to sixty five million year old biologicals samples.
It is impossible for this to occur (as has been established in the links and the footnotes to Schweitzer’s paper).
To allege a fifty million year old preservation of soft tissue is to invoke magic in place of the scientifically established Second Law of Thermodynamics.
“Don’t these methods show that the earth is very old, regardless of the age of the bone?”
>>No. The presence of the soft tissue indicates that, given the solid foundation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and the utter lack of foundation for Magical Collagen Fairies Who Only Work On Dino Bones, the radiometric dating techniques proceed from one or more incorrect assumptions.
“If C-14 testing is performed on the tissue at some point in the future, and no C-14 is detected, would you accept that the bone and tissue are millions of years old?”
>> C14 testing has already been done on some samples, and has shown drastically younger ages than would be consistent with the predictions of the strata dating in which they have been found.
This is a direct, red dot scientific anomaly, one of the greatest in history.
Since no C14 testing has been done on the actual soft-tissue presenting samples, would you agree that the Darwinist fairy tale is not based on science?
Rick,
I read your website and all your replies, but couldn’t get a full understanding of your world view. For example: Are you saying that metaphysical science is bad? Or that “Non-Catholic, Non-Godly” metaphysical science is bad?
Are you a young earth creationist? Geo-centrist? Flat earth? Adaptation, but no evolution? That time and space were different 10,000 years ago, and that’s why we see light from galaxies billions of light years away?
On your website, you take on the Standard Model, Darwin and Einstein. Are you saying there is a conspiracy? Did you come to these conclusions by yourself, by your own observations? Or are you making your observations and conclusions fit a Catholic world view?
The way you describe the scientific process, it’s almost like you don’t acknowledge that many of our scientific breakthroughs and discoveries were made through accident, imagination and hunches.
So this is why I ask: Could you sum up your view on how we all came to be, in 500 words or less?
I would prefer to not make any assumptions. Such as, that you are a follower of Kent Hovind.
“I read your website and all your replies, but couldn’t get a full understanding of your world view.”
>> Did you read this one?
http://magisterialfundies.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html
“Are you saying that metaphysical science is bad?”
>>Metaphysics masquerading as science (or vice versa) is bad. In fact it is the foundational problem facing the “modern” world view at this moment.
“Or that “Non-Catholic, Non-Godly” metaphysical science is bad?”
>> See above.
“Are you a young earth creationist?”
>> Yes.
“Geo-centrist?”
>>Yes.
“Flat earth?”
>>No.
“Adaptation, but no evolution?”
>> I am not a Darwinian. Further specificity requires precision in definition of terms.
“That time and space were different 10,000 years ago, and that’s why we see light from galaxies billions of light years away?”
>> Assumes redshift is cosmological. Evidence shows it to be also Doppler, also gravitational, and, given Arp’s observations, also intrinsic.
In other words, your question assumes what it first ought to be required to demonstrate.
“On your website, you take on the Standard Model, Darwin and Einstein.”
>> A lot of people take on the Standard Model, Darwin, and Einstein. I think that’s a good thing. Don’t you?
“Are you saying there is a conspiracy?”
>> A loaded term. I would say that it is exceedingly difficult to challenge mainstream theories, since so many PhD’s and so many research dollars depend upon the perpetuation of existing paradigms.
“Did you come to these conclusions by yourself, by your own observations?”
>> By my own examination of the facts.
“Or are you making your observations and conclusions fit a Catholic world view?”
>> I accept Catholic theology and metaphysics, and therefore I accept the validity of reproducible experimental outcomes. In other words, I do not confuse metaphysics with science, which enables me to loopk at the scientific data objectively.
I interpret that data in accordance with my metaphysical world view, just as the standard model, Darwin, and Einstein interpret the data in accordance with theirs.
One difference is that I acknowledge this fact.
“The way you describe the scientific process, it’s almost like you don’t acknowledge that many of our scientific breakthroughs and discoveries were made through accident, imagination and hunches.”
>> Quite to the contrary. Every scientific discovery- one involving the discovery of an actually operative physical principle- came about as the result of a “flash of insight” in exactly one mind; this “flash of insight” consisting in the realization that the then-current scientific paradigm was false or incomplete.
The crucial next step is what defines *science*- the insight must be demonstrated via crucial, reproducible experiment.
This having been accomplished, valid scientific knowledge has been obtained.
Its interpretation will depend upon the metaphysical world view into which the principle is adopted.
Ace,
When I discuss this work, I feel like I’m discussing something based on a shortage of facts. When I read Mary’s work and explanations about how soft tissue was preserved, I found it just, well, wild.
I learned that a scientist is supposed to take an unexpected finding or result and first – first and foremost – submit it exhaustively to the standard rounds and batteries of tests to establish a baseline understanding of what you’ve got.
It’s soft tissue. How do they determine the age of soft tissue? C-14, with controls, and run along side other materials, repeated tests to verify results, etc.
Then and only then, do you start theorizing.
It blew my mind that they wouldn’t even do that. I’d just like to see the testing done and see the results.
The only thing I could find when I went searching (because I thought to myself, “Surely someone did the standard test!”) was the biofilm people’s work. It was odd that when they called it biofilm, the academic community accepted the C-14 testing (which was pretty minimal though) and accepted the age of the material as young. It was peer-reviewed, published, accepted.
But when it’s soft tissue, as Mary insists it is, then the C-14 was rejected. It’s really, really disturbing to me that this happens. It’s insane.
I told you, we’re Catholic. No matter what the answer is here, it won’t disprove that God created everything out of nothing and it won’t disprove that God created the human soul. If it did suggest that the earth is not old enough for evolution alone to make sense as the sole explanation for all diversity of life, we aren’t afraid to admit that either. Doesn’t change our dogma one bit. It can’t.
But some evolutionists? They are, it seems, terrified to admit that maybe they are wrong. Otherwise they’d just do the test and see what’s up.
I predict at this point the testing will never be done, and we’ll never really know. It’s a shame.
Stacy and Rick:
What I’d really want to know is what would you have to see in order not to be an agenostic anymore?
Would the result of any test be enough to convince you that the earth is 4.5 billion years old?
If so, what would that test and results look like?
If not, how dare you treat your position as if it’s based on science?
Ace:
No experiment has ever demonstrated any particular age of the earth.
Your 4.5 billion figure is the only one which has been advanced, and that figure proceeds from the metanarrative outlined above.
It is a metaphysical assumption- a world which begins at a singularity, and in which all subsequent events proceed according to assumptions introduced to bridge the difficulties (inflation, dark matter, dark energy, abiogenesis, descent from common ancestor).
Not a single one of the concepts in parenthesis above are scientific objects.
None have been observed, none have been demonstrated in a laboratory experiment…
So,
Science is that excellent thing which subjects metaphysical assumption to crucial experimental test.
Since the Darwinists don;t do science, we see that they are proffering a metaphysical world view.
It is my opinion that the metaphysics are drastically inferior.
Unless and until the Darwinists commit themselves to C14 testing of the age of soft-tissue presenting Cretaceous fossils, this is a battle between two metaphysical word views.
But only one side is refusing to do the science, which, I suggest, provides excellent grounds for skepticism concerning the metaphysics underlying their world view.
Ace,
“What I’d really want to know is what would you have to see in order not to be an agenostic anymore?”
As it relates to the age of the earth, there really isn’t a way for anyone to know for sure. It is always going to require a leap of faith in indirect evidence. Like I said, I’m not overly concerned about it. I’m more concerned with the present and the future. The perversion of physical science, and science in general, is disturbing.
“Would the result of any test be enough to convince you that the earth is 4.5 billion years old?”
See above. No such test exists.
“If not, how dare you treat your position as if it’s based on science?”
Whoa. Maybe you’d better define how you are using that word then. What is science, Ace?
Rick,
Very interesting Rick. One thing I think you’ve struck onto is that everyone creates their own reality.
I enjoyed yours, thank-you. Mine is pretty weird too.
My pleasure, Mjek.
I would take the following issue with your comment; it is true that we create our own world view, but reality exists independently of our world views.
The proof of this, interestingly, is provided by the fact that science allows a definitive choice to be made between two world views on a given point, by means of crucial hypothesis and reproducible experimental validation.
Of course, when science lacks the ability to experimentally demonstrate something, it tends, especially since the advent of quantum theory, to simply assert a metaphysical world view as if it were an experimentally verified fact.
For example, every time you hear the words “inflation”, “dark matter”, “dark energy”, “abiogenesis”, or “descent from a common ancestor”, notice that these fictions are treated as indistinguishable from scientific objects.
But they are not scientific objects.
Rick,
Is there any possible experiment that would convince you that the age of the earth is billions of years?
Would time-travel, if it was possible, convince you that the earth is very old?
Could any possible discovery in the future challenge your belief that the earth is young? If so, what would it look like?
Ace:
Any “possible” experiment?
I have no idea what that means.
What I do know is, that no *actual* experiment has ever demonstrated the age of the Earth, or of the cosmos, or of the solar system, or of the sun, or of certain soft-tissue presenting Cretaceous fossils in the possession of Team Schweitzer.
There is something different about that last item, however.
In the case of Mary’s Bones, *we are in a position to directly and scientifically answer one exact question*:
Are the bones less than approximately 60,000 carbon years (in the case of some modern AMS testing labs, less than approximately 100,000 carbon years) of age?
Now *that*, Ace, is a legitimate scientific question, which is susceptible of an actual, scientific, experimentally reproducible *answer*.
The rest is metaphysics.
Science first.
Interpretation second.
It occurs to me, reading your questions again, that we may have a difficulty in our respective understandings of the term “science”.
Science consists in the experimental validation or refutation of crucial hypothesis via reproducible outcome.
There exists no experimentally-testable hypothesis for time travel, probably because “time” is a metaphysical, not a scientific, concept.
Were we to accept Liebniz’ (generally superb) metaphysics, we would define time in scientific terms; that is, the metric of change of position of objects.
In this metaphysical view, time travel would consist, exactly, in reversing the positions of all objects in the universe to a previous position.
I will not hold my breath awaiting the development of suitable technology for such an experiment, but please let me know if some extremely smart person comes up with something.
In the meantime, the question is meaningless except as a matter of metaphysics, in which case I personally like Liebniz (and remain intrigued by the utterly astonishing modern development of this hypothesis by Dr. Julian Barbour).
As a point of interest, here is a link to one of Dr. Julian Barbour’s essays:
http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/360/
Abstract:
“A review of some basic facts of classical dynamics shows that time, or precisely duration, is redundant as a fundamental concept. Duration and the behaviour of clocks emerge from a timeless law that governs change.”
Ace, something else to keep in mind: C-14 dating will only ever give you results up to about 50-60,000 years, if I remember correctly. If something’s older, it simply will give you results within the range that it’s capable of. It’s like trying to measure the Sears Tower with a meterstick and saying it must be a meter tall, since that’s what you’re capable of measuring. I’m not sure that you even need to worry about a mechanism by which C-14 might have been added to the sample.
Another thing that is fatal to Rick and Stacy’s position is that they’re putting so much confidence into C-14 dating which is based on the exact same principles as other kinds of radioisotope dating…which they reject. Always strikes me as so strange that all of the other dating that clearly points to an old earth gets ignored.
Anyway, good for you for sticking it out so long here – these conversations can be super frustrating, so I admire your tenacity!
Michelle:
Strange, I find nothing frustrating about the exchanges. They have been unusually enjoyable, in fact.
If you are frustrated by rational discussion, perhaps this is because you find your worldview threatened by some aspect of the discussion?
As to the question of dating, C14 is *always* used in the face of soft tissue, since carbon is taken in by living creatures until the moment of death, and the ratio of C12 to C14 provides us by far the most accurate means of dating the moment at which this transition occurred.
It is actually absurd to propose anything *other* than carbon dating in the face of soft tissue.
But I am sure that the possibility of obtaining a positive C14 result on a fossil alleged to be orders of magnitude too old to provide such a positive result is….
Frustrating?
Michelle,
You got that analogy from the ever-so-tame PZ Myers.
It’s a bad analogy because you can see that a building is taller than the meterstick with your own eyes. It’s a circular argument.
It’s millions of years old.
C-14 can’t measure things millions of years old.
Therefore, C-14 won’t work.
Because…[start over]
No one has ignored the other data either. I remain perplexed that a scientist actually refused to do standard testing, and that scientists defend that action on the grounds of science.
Do the stupid test already.
Michelle,
Can you explain why the biofilm C-14 data was accepted and published?
crickets chirping……….
Michelle:
Since you have adopted PZ Meyers’ ridiculous and false argument, and since you are unable to carry the obligation of rational discussion on your own, may I suggest that you invite your guru Professor Meyers here, to carry the flag?
Honestly, it appears you could use the help, and how wonderful it would be to engage Professor Meyers on this question, where no power of Memoryholing exists.
Please consider this an honorable challenge, in the interest of honest debate.
As I say, it is apparent you could use the help.
Rick,
I am fascinated by your intent to maintain young earth and Geo-centrism. You have a need to hold fast to a non-scientific book to answer your scientific inquiries. You hold fast to a book that has talking snakes and donkey’s, but chuckle at dark matter. Truly fascinating.
All this modern “metaphysical” science has brought us to the moon and back. Modern medicine is based on evolution. There really is no debating that modern science (evolution, the standard model, string theory, etc) is a tool that works.
But what about your ideology as a tool? What does it imply? How do you qualify this idea (where is the proof in the pudding)? How does it benefit society? Would you really have us return to a pre-Galileo world without modern medicine?
I’m just curious if you’ve ever asked yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s just something i find curious, because I used to also be a young earth creationist. At the time, I really, really, REALLY wanted it to be true.
Modern science is limited, it’s often political, but would you rather go to the doctor and have your leg sawed off? Would you rather be riding a pony to work? Would you rather believe that the stars are holes in the flooring of Heaven?
I also noticed you didn’t answer my question, to sum up your idea on how the world came to be in 500 words or less. So, what does your world view imply for me? I’m left with my assumption.
Mjek says:
“I am fascinated by your intent to maintain young earth and Geo-centrism.”
>> Yes. You are.
“You have a need to hold fast to a non-scientific book to answer your scientific inquiries.”
>> False. I understand the correct relationships of theology, metaphysics, and science, which you do not (your above sentence provides this insight).
“You hold fast to a book that has talking snakes and donkey’s, but chuckle at dark matter. Truly fascinating.”
>> Quite to the contrary. God is able to employ talking snakes and donkeys; this is a theological and metaphysical datum, just as dark matter is a metaphysical datum. Both are perfectly consistent within their metaphysical assumptions.
Neither are scientific objects, except that we have an eyewitness account which includes references to talking snakes and donkeys, but no one has ever reported observing dark matter.
“All this modern “metaphysical” science has brought us to the moon and back.”
>> There is precisely nothing involved in any of the science which brought us to the moon and back which demonstrates the age of the earth, or whether it is moving.
I cordially invite you to attempt to refute the above sentence, but please understand that it will not be possible for you to succeed, unless you are in possession of scientific evidence never before published.
“Modern medicine is based on evolution.”
>> False. Evolution (defined as neo-Darwinism; that is, descent from common ancestor via mutation and selection) has nothing whatever to do with any of the science which got us to the moon and back. Evolution has nothing to do with medicines, has nothing to do with cel phones, has nothing to do with computers, has nothing to do with any of it.
Evolution, as has been shown, is not a scientific research program.
Evolution is a metaphysical research program.
It doesn’t even have talking snakes to bear witness to its never-observed, always experimentally-refuted hypothesis of descent from common ancestor.
“There really is no debating that modern science (evolution, the standard model, string theory, etc) is a tool that works.”
>> Yet here I am debating it. It mappers we have another refuted hypothesis of yours on our hands
“But what about your ideology as a tool? What does it imply? How do you qualify this idea (where is the proof in the pudding)? How does it benefit society? Would you really have us return to a pre-Galileo world without modern medicine?”
>> Red herring.
“I’m just curious if you’ve ever asked yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s just something i find curious, because I used to also be a young earth creationist. At the time, I really, really, REALLY wanted it to be true.”
>> The difference between us is that I am only interested in whether science has provided us evidence that it is not true.
It hasn’t.
It has instead provided us with the cooked outcomes of a metaphysical research program, all dressed up as if it were science.
This program has marvelously bamboozled you.
As was intended.
Nope, not getting into this again. Of what I’ve read, Ace has done a good job. I can argue all day, but it’s futile to try to debate young earth creationists, and I applaud Ace’s efforts. We don’t speak the same language, and when you start with the Bible and then seek to selectively promote research that you believe supports your (scientifically unsupported) position, you are being intellectually dishonest. You have a double standard for evidence; little bits of questionable evidence that “support” your position are deemed conclusive, mountains of evidence that doesn’t is tossed aside in favor of evidence you like better. It’s honestly excruciating to watch. (Rick, feel free to misinterpret this as “Michelle has conceded that I am right!” since I know you love to do that.)
“Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts. …the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness.”
— Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution” (1973)
Umm, Michelle, this has nothing to do with Catholic doctrine.
It has to do with the refusal to conduct C14 tests on tissue-presenting dinosaur bones.
But thanks for playing.
Michelle,
That came out of nowhere and doesn’t reflect anything that’s been discussed. Did you read what I already wrote in the post?
Michelle–
I applaud you’re zeroing on the real truth: “You have a double standard for evidence; little bits of questionable evidence that “support” your position are deemed conclusive, mountains of evidence that doesn’t is tossed aside in favor of evidence you like better.”
Or, as Stacy put it before: “First, the only way to convince me of something is to first earn my trust. It doesn’t make any sense to try to consider the arguments of an untrustworthy person. I don’t trust anyone who calls for ridicule of Catholics and Catholic beliefs. That’s like asking me to trust someone to tell me the truth after they ridicule my mother. ”
They’ll never admit it–but it is just intellectual dishonesty.
And arguing with them is as usefull as yelling at paint to dry faster.
“the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness.”
What an astonishing blunder.
It seems that if Dobzhansky’s theory is false, it means the Creator has systematically deceived him.
What incredible hubris.
No wonder the metaphysical research program called evolution refuses to conduct experiments which might expose systematic deceitfulness on the part of…….
Evolutionists.
One thing is certain.
The refusal to C14 date soft tissue presenting samples is systematically deceitful.
“it’s futile to try to debate young earth creationists”
>> Try a better argument.
“We don’t speak the same language”
>> That’s because you don’t speak the language of science; that is, the language of experimental test rather than metaphysical pre-assumption.
“when you start with the Bible and then seek to selectively promote research that you believe supports your (scientifically unsupported) position, you are being intellectually dishonest.”
>> A remarkable sentence, considering the fact that it is you who has started with the Bible in this exchange.
“You have a double standard for evidence; little bits of questionable evidence that “support” your position are deemed conclusive,”
>> It is hypocrisy squared to accuse us of claiming anything “conclusive”, since it is we who ask that an experiment be done, and you who are pathetically determined to prevent it from being done.
“Conclusive evidence” can only be *experimentally obtained* evidence, and it is the Darwinist who fears the experimental evidence.
All in all, Michelle, I think you are wise to disengage on this.
Your every syllable only digs you into a deeper hole.
I think Michelle is right about one very important point. It at least seems to us, and probably to other readers, that the “agenostic” case is quite partisan and religious in nature.
The signs to me are:
1) The fact that no one seems to take this argument seriously except Christians, and not just any Christians, but Christians who favor the young earth view.
2) Many of the particular claims made here (for example, that it is “certain” that the bio-material is not a contaminant) are contradicted by the most recent publications, which treat these alternatives as real possibilities, and the issue as still open and controversial. (See, for example, http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1722/3209.short)
3) To my knowledge, no one but creationists have ever suggested applying C-14 dating to the age of anything believed to be over tens of thousands of years years.
But the most significant sign that Stacy and Rick take the C-14 argument seriously for entirely religious reasons, and not scientific reasons is that
(4) They will not accept any evidence of an old earth as convincing.
Ace,
This is where I need to remind you to reread the original post. It is poorly understood (which is why I wrote it) that nothing about a scientific claim regarding the age of the earth or the descent of man’s material body would ever conflict with Catholic dogma.
It’s very weak to make up easy arguments to shoot down because the real argument requires more thought and effort.
The abstract you linked says they are exploring new models for how skin material became fossilized by studying the composition of it. Those tests don’t determine the age of the material.
Can you explain why the biofilm C-14 data was accepted and published?
Stacy,
Science is a systematic method of finding things out.
Science, the method, consists of:
1) Making something up
2) Finding out what the idea you made up implies
3) Looking for the implications in nature in a careful systematic way
If the implications are there, keep the idea. If the implications are not there, keep the idea until a better idea comes along. Then accept the better idea.
It doesn’t matter what Step (1) involves, whether religion or metaphysics or art or poetry. Whatever helps people to be creative. Step (2) involves a great deal of creativity, but ultimately the connection between the idea and its implications must be built out of solid logic. Step (3) is based on rigid logic and careful observations.
Sometimes a new discovery is made, or people have a different philosophy about how an idea is connected to observations. At this stage, any new idea or speculation is fair game, and should be explored experimentally. This is why nothing in science is certain.
Science always has to be practiced with the premise that everything I believe is possibly wrong.
Ace,
That is not exactly how I understand science. If that’s what scientists did, disciplines would not develop.
Science means “knowledge.” It is a body of systematically, methodically developed knowledge about a unitary object.
This notion of infinite doubt is a rather modern idea from the philosophers who thought that everything could be questioned and nothing could be certain.
So I take exception to your number one, “make something up.” A hypothesis should never be a blind shot in the absurd dark. It has to be based on already acquired knowledge, and it has to be reasonable. In practical sciences, it ought to seek the solution to a problem. In theoretical sciences, it ought to seek an explanation for a observance.
“Can you explain why the biofilm C-14 data was accepted and published?”
Stacy, I’m no expert, but it looks like good data to me. It should be accepted and published, and if another group finds something that disagrees with it, they should publish. This already seems to have happened many times over. And it’s only a couple years old. Who knows what new work has already been done on this?
I don’t remember who said it that at least 50% of all published journal articles are wrong. That’s fine. There are a lot of wrong ideas in any interesting conversation. Who knows what crazy new ideas will be in the presses next?
“nothing about a scientific claim regarding the age of the earth or the descent of man’s material body would ever conflict with Catholic dogma.”
Most Catholics think that the earth is old. Pope John Paul II thought that the earth being old had nothing to do with Catholic dogma. So it’s not dogma, right?
Mjeck asked what our “ideology” implies as a practical tool.
Dear Mjeck: it implies Mother Theresa.
And Edith Stein, and Maximilian Kolbe, and…
Wait, just start with those, read up on them.
That’s what our ideology implies in practice.
The saints.
Ace,
Then given everything you’ve written here, on what basis do you conclude that a battery of C-14 testing of an anomolous observation not be done?
I’ve explained to you throughout that I don’t question this as a matter of religion. I question it on scientific grounds. You asked me what would it take to convince me that the earth is billions of years old and I answered. I guess I’d like to know why do you care how old the earth is?
If it’s just innocent intellectual curiosity, then why not be open to the results of standardized testing?
Regarding Blessed Pope John Paul II, he worked hard to clarify the relationship between reason and faith, science and religion. I work hard to learn from him. What he believed is consistent, of course, with what the Church has always tried to see – Truth, the world as it is.
“Then given everything you’ve written here, on what basis do you conclude that a battery of C-14 testing of an anomolous observation not be done?”
I think it would be an interesting test to be performed.
No matter what the results are, they won’t convince me about the age of the bone. But they might convince me about certain properties of the tissue.
“I guess I’d like to know why do you care how old the earth is?”
Because there is evidence that it is old, and the evidence is convincing to me. The age of the earth is part of reality. Whatever age the earth is, that’s a truth about the earth, and I want the truth.
You say that this issue isn’t of religious importance to you, but I’m not convinced, and for a couple reasons. I don’t know of a single non-religious person who thinks that the earth may be young. More than that, you cannot even think of possible evidence that would convince you that the earth is old. Whether your motives are religious or not, they do not seem to be very objective or open.
“If it’s just innocent intellectual curiosity, then why not be open to the results of standardized testing?”
I am open to the results of the testing, not in terms of determining an age for the bone, but in terms of maybe understanding biofilms better, or maybe toward understanding late-term C-14 acquisition. Or maybe it will not be detected, and then there will be nothing to explain.
I’m open to the possibility that the earth is young, but not based on C-14 dating.
There is this study of Polonium halos that showed promise, but for some reason was not continued. If this study really developed, and if evidence were found for an isotope decay rate that was much more rapid in the past, then that would be strong evidence for a young earth, and I would seriously reconsider my position. I’d at least become an agenostic.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/184/4132/62 about the Polonium halos.
I have great admiration for John Paul II, and his Encyclical Fides et Ratio. He has contributed very positively to the discussion.
“No matter what the results are, they won’t convince me about the age of the bone. But they might convince me about certain properties of the tissue.”
>> Fascinating. So. It has been conclusively established that antibodies react to hemes in tissues that present osteocytes, cells, and even apparent nuclei, and yet you are prepared to suggest that what the tissues tell is not relevant to the bones which underlie them?
I am afraid this is not logical, it is not scientific, and is in fact precisely the kind of thing you have repeatedly accused your interlocutor of:
“But the most significant sign that Stacy and Rick take the C-14 argument seriously for entirely religious reasons, and not scientific reasons is that
(4) They will not accept any evidence of an old earth as convincing.”
I think we have been talking past each other for some time now, so I wish you well, and close with what, in a better era, would be an entirely non-controversial statement:
Science consists in experimental validation or refutation of crucial hypotheses.”
It is a crucial hypothesis that Cretaceous bones can be reliably dated by having recourse to the radiometric ages of the strata in which they are found. The presence of (entirely anomalous) soft tissue in Cretaceous samples allows this hypothesis to be tested. The Darwinist refuse to do the test.
Evolution is not a scientific research program.
It is a metaphysical research program.
Its goal is not scientific advancement.
Its goal is the preservation of a metaphysical world view against any and all challenges.
The commitment of the Darwinists to the defense of their metaphysical world view greatly exceeds to commitment of the confused, disoriented, tentative, and uncertain Catholic Church to defend the Truth.
It is not a pleasant thing to have to admit, but it is the reason the Darwinists have won.
Jeff,
Firstly, it’s interesting that Rick did not address my post and that Stacy has my posts monitored for approval. What is Rick and Stacy afraid of?
Secondly, to start with Mother Theresa …is a horrible example. She believed that suffering brought the sick of Calcutta closer to God. Even with her access to $millions and the ability to cure the sick with modern medicine, she instead preferred them to die of sepsis and dysentery in a filth ridden cot.
Again, I’m left with my assumptions.
Mjek:
Rick having responded to your post, you are invited to consider that Rick has responsibilities, like most folks, which sometimes require his attention.
Please rest absolutely assured that Rick is delighted to respond to Mjek, in fact Rick finds Mjek very interesting as a correspondent/interlocutor.
Why should such slander stand on this thread?
“she instead preferred them to die of sepsis and dysentery in a filth ridden cot”
Where is your evidence for this psychological diagnosis-at-a-distance?
I would expect that such vile slander, unsupported by rigorous *proof*, as opposed to merely insinuating one’s own motivations onto a person who spent her life caring for the sick and the poor which the rich bankers, governments, and instituions of the world *certainly did not expend their resources upon*….
I would expect that unless proof is forthcoming, such slander constitutes a de-rail from the subject of the thread.
I suppose it provides an insight into the deep hatred and detestation of charity of the mind from which it proceeds.
I suppose this slander is allowed to remain on this basis?
Good points, Rick and Jeff. It’s horrible what they said, and I almost asked for evidence, but like Jeff said, I don’t even want to engage with people who say things like that. My husband would go through the roof if someone visited us and spoke like that, so would I.
The only evidence they’ll produce is something pulled from an atheist site (I’ve seen them before) and twist her words, cherry-picked, out of context. I don’t even want to hear it.
I guess I’ll leave it and see if either will respond to you Rick.
Mother Teresa, pray for us.
We named a daughter after her, and I have a large painting of her I’m getting ready to hang in the dining room.
It is slander. That’s horrible a thing to say about someone who gave so much.
Mjeck,
I took you off moderation, and there’s only one comment I have not approved. You know which one it is. I am under zero obligation to allow you to say nasty things about my children on my blog. Any such comments will be unpublished, and I don’t care whether you think your words are nasty or not. I will be the judge of that so think before you type.
That last one about Mother Teresa is nasty too. I’ll let it stand if someone wants to address it, but be warned. This is a Catholic site, if you want to dialogue, do so respectfully.
Stacy,
If you create debating rules on your blog, I will follow them. Rick’s comments to Ace and Michelle are quite heavy handed. I don’t see why I need to be any more or less different.
What i said about Mother Theresa is true. You only need to read her own words on suffering and her mission in Calcutta.
Mjeck, there’s a double standard here, which is why I’m not willing to engage in further discussion with Rick or Stacy on this topic. We’re branded as “nasty” but Rick is allowed all the condescension and sliminess in the world.
Have you seen “Hell’s Angel”, about Mother Teresa? Pretty interesting stuff. I’ve had arguments about her before, and from what I understand, the general consensus is that because she wasn’t a doctor, her worse than substandard care is permissible and admirable. Blech.
Mjeck wrote, “If you create debating rules on your blog, I will follow them.”
I believe she just created one:
Don’t use Stacy’s blog to publish nasty things about her children.
Some people would say that it goes without saying, but now that she’s written it, I’m glad to see you write that you will follow it.
Hi Rick! Hi Stacy!
So many comments, humm? Let me add another one: I’m interested in links (papers) about evolution as a metaphysical enterprise. I would like to know more about your views on creationism: I always took for granted that the earth is very, very old and I’m still struggling with the idea that soft tissues in dinossaurs would destroy the other evidences about the correct datation of the earth. Could you provide me links to papers addressing those topics?
I’m interested in evolutionary analysis in social sciences, an idea that is central to my doctoral dissertation and all the discussion conducted by both of you may have an impact…
Ana:
Please contact me through my blog, I would be very happy to provide you with resources which, I expect, you would find very interesting for your thesis.
It is nice to see someone thinking about these things in academia.
magisterialfundies.blogspot.com
Ana,
Rick introduced me to the soft tissue problem, and everything I read checked out. Click on the link to his blog on one of the comments (click on his name) and he has a couple of posts about it.
The metaphysical nature of evolutionary theory is something I read about for the first time in a book by the late Fr. Stanley L. Jaki, The Saviour of Science. He explains that science (physical, biological, etc.) is limited to what can be 1) observed and 2) measured. Evolution fits neither of these. That doesn’t mean that evolution is false, indeed living things evolve. It just means that science (as defined) can’t determine whether that is how all diversity of life emerged.
If you are interested in Jaki’s book, I’ll see if I can find the pages where this was most concisely discussed. He also says that the natural selection and genetic mutation alone don’t account for how all species evolved. He says there is also a need for a directive force.
I’m short on time just now, so I’ll stop typing before I mess this all up and get confusing, but I’ll get you some reading suggestions.
I’m sorry Stacy, I wasn’t expecting the attacks on Mother Theresa.
I have no interest in commenting on them. You’re free to remove the whole topic including my comment.
It is of course necessary to debunk saints, Jeff.
After all, it is only spiritual power, and not endless metaphysical debates, which will convert this darkened civilization.
The debates merely prepare the ground.
May God send us saints (and He will).
Ana:
A small insight.
String Theory consists in the proposition that an infinite entity which we can neither see, nor hear, nor taste, nor touch, nor ever observe in any scientific way whatever (the multiverse), is responsible for the generation of all that we *can* see, taste, touch, hear, and scientifically observe.
I am sure you will notice that the String Theory simply transposes God for the multiverse.
This insight having been obtained, it is necessary to proceed to an examination of which metaphysical hypothesis, God or the multiverse, is logically consistent.
Warning: pursuit of this question will convert you to Catholicism.
Rick,
You still didn’t answer my question, Rick. …well, you did… by saying you’re busy, then jumped over to Mother Theresa. What are you afraid of? That I read all the creationist books you did and see your affectation?
I asked, what your world view implies. Jeff “derailed”, as you put it, by suggesting that your world view implies Mother Theresa… and some other Saints. I’m not sure how the two are connected. How does your science imply Mother Theresa?
Mother Theresa believed that suffering brought the sick closer to God. How exactly is that slander?
If Geo-centrism and young earth implies that I should suffer in life, why exactly should I enjoy, subscribe or promote this world view?
And lastly, the double standard and failed logic i see in your arguments is that you are not able to keep the same expectation of rigorous criteria against Catholicism, the bible, your faith or Geo-centrism. If you applied your studies against your own beliefs, you’d be an agnostic by the end of the day.
Mjek says:
“You still didn’t answer my question, Rick. …well, you did… by saying you’re busy, then jumped over to Mother Theresa.”
>> I have answered each and all of your questions, Mjek.
“What are you afraid of?”
>> Certainly none of your questions, Mjek.
“That I read all the creationist books you did and see your affectation?”
>> You have no knowledge of what books I have read. You assume this knowledge, which you do not possess, and then proceed to retail it here.
Profoundly dishonest.
“I asked, what your world view implies.”
>> It implies, for purposes of this thread, that experimentally reproducible outcomes are the mark of scientific knowledge.
It is perfectly understandable that you seek to derail the discussion from this implication.
After all, it constitutes a mortal threat to your worldview.
“Jeff “derailed”, as you put it, by suggesting that your world view implies Mother Theresa… and some other Saints.”
>> More precisely, our worldview produces Saints.
Always has.
Always will.
As a point of interest, consider what it as that converted the barbarians in the first place.
It certainly wasn’t force of arms (they had conquered Rome when they converted)…it certainly wasn’t theological persuasiveness (since the barbarians were neither theologians, nor were they impressed by theological debate).
They were converted by the display of spiritual authority of a feeble old Pope who rode out to meet them at the gates of Rome.
They were converted by an irrefutable display of spiritual power, just as this dark world shall be, when it pleases God to do so.
“I’m not sure how the two are connected. How does your science imply Mother Theresa?”
>> It is our worldview which Jeff specified. You conflate this with science (which simply confirms what you had already shown; that is, you do not correctly distinguish between theology, metaphysics, and science).
“Mother Theresa believed that suffering brought the sick closer to God. How exactly is that slander?”
>> It is not. You perversion of truth, in diagnosis-at-a-distance slander specified above, is the slander.
“If Geo-centrism and young earth implies that I should suffer in life, why exactly should I enjoy, subscribe or promote this world view?”
>> You will suffer in any event. Whether your suffering has value or not, will depend upon whether it brings you closer to God.
“And lastly, the double standard and failed logic i see in your arguments is that you are not able to keep the same expectation of rigorous criteria against Catholicism, the bible, your faith or Geo-centrism. If you applied your studies against your own beliefs, you’d be an agnostic by the end of the day.”
>> Gibberish.
“Warning: pursuit of this question will convert you to Catholicism.”
Or, that you need to update your view of what God is?
We know what God Is, both by reason and by revelation.
Reason alone suffices to show us that the multiverse cannot stand in for God, and Ana, you, or anyone else who proceeds to examine carefully whether the multiverse is a logically consistent substitute for God, will find that it is not.
This is why I pointed out to Ana that the multiverse is simply a stand in, a substitute, for the logically necessary existence of God.
However, the multiverse is incapable of answering the very difficulties it is advanced to answer.
It cannot account for the “nothing” it proposes as the self-generating source of Everything.
Its “nothing” is not nothing, it is something; that is, it is space, energy, and the law of gravity.
Since all of these must be accounted for, we see that the multiverse is a devastating self-contradiction.
IOt proposes that we call “nothing”, that which is something.
A fatal self-contradiction of this magnitude is conclusive; no further proof of the inadequacy of the metaphysical hypothesis is required.
Rick,
You didn’t answer any of my questions. Would you like me to copy/paste them? Or move on?
I asked you to sum up how everything came to be in 500 words or less. I also asked what your world view of young earth and geocentric-ism implies for me.
I am aware that Catholics place 90% of the world in the eternal suffering of hell. So what do Catholic’s understand about easing the suffering of the world? Near zero.
Mjek says:
“You didn’t answer any of my questions.”
>> I answered all of them.
“Would you like me to copy/paste them? Or move on?”
>> It is a matter of perfect indifference.
“I asked you to sum up how everything came to be in 500 words or less.”
>> I did. You asked June 28, I answered June 29. It is strange that you cannot simply scroll up and see.
Everyone else certainly can.
“I also asked what your world view of young earth and geocentric-ism implies for me.”
>> It implies that you ought to take the theology and metaphysics of Traditional Catholicism seriously.
Since science has provided us zero experimental basis upon which to reject either a young earth, or a geocentric cosmos.
Recent developments, including the CMB Axis and the discovery of soft tissue in Cretaceous samples, provide interesting new data points in support of both theses.
“I am aware that Catholics place 90% of the world in the eternal suffering of hell.”
>> As we have seen, you are “aware of” a great m,any things that do not exist apart from your “awareness”.
This is another example.
“So what do Catholic’s understand about easing the suffering of the world? Near zero.”
>> Since the Catholic Church has done more for the suffering of this world than any institution in human history, I suppose we shall have to agree to disagree on tho score.
Got any more pizza, Mjek?
“This is why I pointed out to Ana that the multiverse is simply a stand in, a substitute, for the logically necessary existence of God.”
This I will agree with you, Rick. This is a substitute for “God”.
But does this imply that Catholicism is correct?
For me it doesn’t.
Why does it for you?
It implies theism is correct.
From there, one can proceed to an examination of the monotheistic religions, of which only Christianity provides the profound motive of credibility of the Resurrection.
From there, one can proceed to an examination of the various Christian denominations, of which only Catholicism satisfies the prophecies of Jesus Christ.
I would love to see your scientific approach towards the resurrection. You have no evidence to actually test, except anecdotes… not very scientific. Nor does it meet your own criteria. I love the leaps in assertion that you allow yourself, but no one else.
You’re an interesting guy, Rick. I’ve never met someone who was so confident in what they believed, yet go limp in a conversation about said beliefs.
Hmmm.
Well.
There are some metaphors better left unencouraged, Mjek.
“Going limp in conversation” is definitely one of them.
It stopped being fun a while back, and it just stopped being interesting, so thanks for the conversation and all the best to you.
Catholics on suffering: “That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.”
― Thomas Aquinas
Good old St. Thomas!
Now there’s a fellow who understands justice.
What sort of God would it be Who did not allow the mass murdered victims of bloodthirsty killers, slaughterers of children, of women, of families; who did not allow these to know, in eternity, that evil is punished, and good is lifted up to the heights?
Only the evil hate justice.
Adam,
If Stacy would like to apologize for her comments about homosexuals, then I will apologize for my comment about her children.
If Stacy is going to misrepresent atheists on her website, then the least she can do is create a set of rules of debate.
“I am afraid this is not logical, it is not scientific, and is in fact precisely the kind of thing you have repeatedly accused your interlocutor of:
‘But the most significant sign that Stacy and Rick take the C-14 argument seriously for entirely religious reasons, and not scientific reasons is that
(4) They will not accept any evidence of an old earth as convincing.’
”
Except that I will accept evidence that the earth is young. I have listed two scenarios where I would accept that the earth is young, and I consider both of the scenarios to be possible, however unlikely.
If there is evidence radioisotope decay changes over time, I will accept the new calculated times.
What evidence would you have to see, in order to convince you that the earth is old? So far, it seems you say that no evidence will convince you.
Maybe I am not practicing science as you define it, but if you can’t accept any possible evidence that the earth is old, why not just admit that your position is a matter of religious conviction?
I wonder why Stacy will not admit this also.
“…but if you can’t accept any possible evidence that the earth is old…”
Misquote alert!
You need to go back and read what I wrote, in the original post and in answer to that question.
I don’t know how old the earth is.
I don’t think any of us will ever absolutely know.
I also don’t think it matters all that much. I’m (again) more interested in the present and the future, and I told you what my main concern was with this issue. Bad science.
Ace:
Let me try and make this absolutely clear.
The radiometric ratings of strata *definitely* present us with evidence that the strata are old*, assuming of course that they proceed from the Big Bang hypothesis (metaphysical world view).
This is a legitimate scientific data point.
The discovery of soft tissue in Cretaceous fossils *definitely* presents us with evidence that the *bones* are young.
This is another legitimate scientific data point.
We notice that the bones (apparently young) are found in the strata (apparently old).
Here we have that most precious thing in all of science:
A *possible* contradiction.
All such apparent contradictions are precious, since they provide us the opportunity to experimentally distinguish between two contradictory data points.
Science proceeds as follows:
1. Establish the age of the soft tissue through C14 testing.
2. Establish the ago of the strata through other forms of radiometric dating.
3. Determine whether the two radiometric methods present an *actual* contradiction (in other words, do the soft tissues test positive for C14).
If the answer to #3 above is “yes”, then the scientific method requires us to recognize that the *bones themselves* are much younger than the *strata in which they have been found*.
At this point science can go to work.
Also, perhaps the bones will *not* test positive for C14 (highly unlikely, given the fact that scores of other Cretaceous fossils have already been shown to test positively for C14).
In that case, we can reasonably proceed to an examination of how soft tissue could be preserved for much longer ages.
But to proceed directly to this, *without testing the bones themselves*, is a perversion of scientific method, and the mark of a metaphysical research program; that is, one which is determined to uphold a metaphysical world view, rather than subject it to crucial experimental test, with *the intention of possibly falsifying it*.
Thank you Rick.
Ace, just to sort out your terminology. Yes, we are creationists, but probably not in the pejorative sense atheists like to use that word.
We believe God created everything from nothing. It’s a logical inference. There’s much written about it, but, simply, that’s the gist of it.
http://www.acceptingabundance.com/nobody-made-it-can-you-tell-what-is-created-and-what-is-not/
Stacy:
“Misquote alert!
You need to go back and read what I wrote, in the original post and in answer to that question.
I don’t know how old the earth is.
I don’t think any of us will ever absolutely know.
I also don’t think it matters all that much. I’m (again) more interested in the present and the future, and I told you what my main concern was with this issue. Bad science.”
If I’m misunderstanding you, then you should be able to answer my simple question.
What possible evidence would cause you to accept that the earth is old? Please, use your imagination. What could you imagine observing that would sway you?
If you won’t accept any possible evidence, then it seems most likely to me that you are agenostic for religious reasons. Maybe you do not realize that motivation yet? I’m unsure.
I have no objection to the idea that God created the universe. That sort of creationism may well be true, and there is even some evidence for it (and no evidence against it, that I’m aware of).
———-
Rick:
“Also, perhaps the bones will *not* test positive for C14 (highly unlikely, given the fact that scores of other Cretaceous fossils have already been shown to test positively for C14).”
If the tissue does not test positive for C-14, will you accept that the bones are millions of years old?
It would not be scientific to conclude they were millions of years old, since the Second Law of Thermodynamics should not allow soft tissues to preserve for even a fraction of the ages assigned to the strata.
It *would* be scientific to conclude, however, that they were older than approximately 60,000 carbon years.
And now of course the reciprocation:
If the tissue *does* test positive for C14, will you accept that they are much, much less than millions of years old (indeed, probably in the tens or scores of thousands)?
Comment
Just to clarify my position with respect to creationism:
As Stacy notes, all Catholics (all Christians, and ultimately all thesis) are creationists to the extent that they believe (metaphysical/theological world view) that God is ultimately necessary to account for the existence of the world (they are correct in this- it is a metaphysical certainty).
However, the Tradition of the Catholic Church- and let us be perfectly honest with each other, the face-value reading, *and the unanimously accepted patristic interpretation of*, Scripture itself, sets forth a creation which is relatively very young indeed.
This position has been for practical purposes abandoned by the (especially) post-Conciliar magisterium of the Catholic Church.
This has always bothered me a very great deal- in fact it is the reason I began researching this question in the first place.
The Catholic Church makes for herself certain very extraordinary claims, chief amongst which is that She is incapable, by virtue of the protection of the Third Person of the Trinity, of ever falling into error concerning matters of Faith and of morals.
In fact, the Council of Trent *explicitly rejects any interpretation of Scripture* that contradicts a unanimous consensus of the Fathers.
The above sentence is why I originally decided to look at the scientific evidence from within the *authentic*, Scriptural, apostolic, and patristic understanding of Scripture- and that understanding is *unquestionably* that the Earth is very much younger than the alternative, Big bang metaphysical narrative proposes.
Because the Church has essentially “abandoned the bastions” of this ancient patristic interpretation of Scripture, there are very few *Traditional* Catholic creationists (although the number appears to me, from my internet experience, to be expanding very rapidly).
Everything I have written concerning this issue stems from my determination to examine whether there really *is* any scientific basis upon which to abandon or modify the Traditional understanding of Scriptures which the Catholic Church unquestionably upheld *unanimously*- always, everywhere, and by everyone- until very, very recent times.
So my position should not be confused with the official position of the Catholic Church.
It should be understood to identify exactly, however, with what the Catholic Church always and everywhere believed, from the very beginning, up until a decision was made to abandon this belief (to declare it not a part of the Faith) in the face of what is apparently considered to be scientific proof to the contrary.
There is a very great deal to be considered here, and the purpose of my blog (when I get time) is to examine it.
I remain what would be called a “young earth” creationist, precisely because the appropriate hierarchy of knowledge proceeds *downward*:
Theology
Metaphysics
Science (what was once called “natural philosophy)
All thee have their legitimate autonomous operational domains.
The ,legitimate operational domain of science *has not* established the question of the age of the Earth.
It is my personal conviction that Catholic teaching requires of me the resolute defense of the actual, patristic and Scriptural (theological/metaphysical) teaching on this question, once it has been established that the scientific (experimentally reproducible) evidence cannot contradict it.
Rick,
Please enjoy another crushing blow of your pseudo-science:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2168557/Higgs-boson-Scientists-God-particle-40-year-search-momentous-day-science.html
“God” will need to fall a little deeper into the gaps, yet again… sorry ’bout that, mate.
Mjeck,
I would love for you to put this discovery into your own 500 or less words.
Thanks!
The Never Ending Comments. I can see those comments going on and on for years. 30 years from now, Mjeck and Rick at that time probably best friends, sharing a beer, taking some snacks, still discussing about science epistemology, age of the earth, theism, agnostic view, big-bang and Higgs boson, that odd dinosaur and its soft tissue tourned out like a pet for them. Mjeck decided that he had gone too far by attacking Stacy’s kids, and made amends, receiving Stacy’s forgiveness… Maybe Mjeck is called Uncle Mjeck by the children. Ace decided to call them both as best men in his marriage. Ace came to Brazil for his honeymoon, receiving some very good tips from me.
In the end, Mjeck and Rick share the epitaph: A man who passionately looked for the truth.
And those of us, if still alive, will say: good fellows, humm? Good fellows indeed.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Why am I saying all those silly words? Because I made a terrible, terrible mistake: I checked that “Notify me of follow-up comments by e-mail” and I’ve no idea how to get rid of those (funny, at least to me) never ending comments and e-mails…
LOL!!!!
Believe me, Ana, I sympathize
I promise not to have any more go rounds with Mjek, we had a nice conversation and it reached its logical conclusion, only about fifty posts before it ended.
I have an outstanding question for Ace, we will see whether he answers it.
Other than that……
I am at least as confident that this thread is over, as CERN is that they have found the Higgs boson.
Four sigma, baby!
Good one Ana! Welcome to what we call “comboxing.”
I think there’s a way to unsubscribe in the emails you get. Yes, the comments are never-ending. But I like your ending a lot. Maybe it’ll come true.
Hi Ana! This is waiting for you in your mailbox!
Stacy,
Scientists have discovered (with 99.99999% accuracy) a particle that gives mass to existence, as predicted by the Standard Model.
Pretty cool stuff.
Hi Mjeck,
There’s a way to get rid of all those e-mail!s!!! All I have to do is modify my subscription option!
Uhuu!
By the way, I said that in less than 500 words.
Just kidding!
Going to read about Higgs bosson. Quite interesting indeed.
Mistyping my name. Again. If I can’t even type my very simple name, how am I Going to understand those advanced physics topics?
They are very sure they found a new particle, Mjeck, and they think it is the theorized boson that explains why objects have mass. I don’t see how that deals a crushing blow to anything???
I found this wording odd from WaPo:
“The CERN physicists did not see this new particle directly, because it disintegrates too quickly. Rather, they divined its existence from sifting through the debris of millions of high-energy subatomic collisions and then searching for clues that the Higgs had been there.”
Divined its existence? What does that mean?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/scientists-discover-new-subatomic-particle-at-the-center-of-everything/2012/07/04/gJQADi8nMW_story_1.html
Stacy,
Yeah, “divined” … I don’t know what that means, either. The media also calls it: “The God Particle.” I don’t know what that means either, and scientists hate that term as well. Sounds sensationalistic to sell magazines.
As you know, I am not an atheist, so it doesn’t make some crushing blow against God for me. However, it does give a crushing blow against whatever theory Rick would like to put forward about modern science or Geo-centrism.
Basically, scientists predicted 50 years ago that a particle existed, built some crazy 27km, underground machine and then proved it’s existence 4 years after it was turned on.
That’s a pretty amazing human achievement.
What does this imply about God? Absolutely nothing. This project didn’t even need the existence of God to understand or prove the basics of our reality and creation.
This is a discovery that within the next hundred years, like “electricity” and “computerization” could change our life.
“However, it does give a crushing blow against whatever theory Rick would like to put forward about modern science or Geo-centrism.”
>> Really?
Gosh, I must have missed that part.
Could you point it out for me?
Rick,
I don’t know, Rick, because I’m left to my assumptions. For example, I assume that, according to your presumptions, that: Since the earth is the center of the universe, the galaxy wobbles around the earth, which means I’m curious as to the physics required to send a rocket to Mars or the moon, or even Voyager.
Second, “metaphysical science,” as you put it, means either that scientists are either practicing witchcraft, or that your presumptions of the future are wrong, therefore you’re a false prophet.
Again, I’m left to my assumptions, because you are not able to articulate your ideas, when challenged.
Yes, your assumptions are what you are indeed left with, Mjek.
Now I think the solution here is baby steps, and since your assumptions allow you to embrace the pantheon of scientific heroes, I will leave the first baby step in your instruction to Dr. Einstein:
“The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS [coordinate system] could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, ‘the sun is at rest and the earth moves’, or ‘the sun moves and the earth is at rest’, would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS [coordinate systems].”
—”The Evolution of Physics: From Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta, Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, New York, Simon and Schuster 1938, 1966 p.212
Now.
Take that little bitty mind bomb there, and run with it.
Consider the reasons why Einstein was required by the consequences of his own theory to advance it.
Then if you like come on over to my blog and we can address some more of your assumptions there.
Mjek, you are indeed left with your assumptions.
Your question concerning navigation above, involves one of them. You are going to have to abandon this one (if you wish to be scientific, of course).
Here is what a fellow who is alleged to know a thing or two about these matters has to say about your navigation question above:
“The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS [coordinate system] could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, ‘the sun is at rest and the earth moves’, or ‘the sun moves and the earth is at rest’, would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS [coordinate systems].”
—”The Evolution of Physics: From Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta, Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, New York, Simon and Schuster 1938, 1966 p.212
“”Basically, scientists predicted 50 years ago that a particle existed, built some crazy 27km, underground machine and then proved it’s existence 4 years after it was turned on.
That’s a pretty amazing human achievement.”
>> Yes, it is. But on the other hand, we now get to witness idiocy such as “the God particle has been found”, and even when this PR hooey is not successfully able to penetrate basic logical defenses (as in your case) we still have:
“This project didn’t even need the existence of God to understand or prove the basics of our reality and creation.”
>> Quite to the contrary. This project cannot account for the existence of the “bump in there somewhere we think is the Higgs”, nor can it account for gravity even if it is the Higgs, nor can it account for the observed universe without adding in 99% of its mass by hand in the form of entities never observed (and they have been looking for dark matter, the least exotic of these entities for longer than 50 years with no success).
“This is a discovery that within the next hundred years, like “electricity” and “computerization” could change our life.”
>> One hundred year predictions are very safe things to make of course.
But if you understood String Theory, you would also understand that there can be no Higgs boson.
The Higgs boson is merely a harmonic in a vibrating string in (most recently) eleven dimensions, eight of which can never be observed.
Were we to grant every syllable of this in advance, we would still have no way to account for the “nothing”, which is actually “something”- energy, space, and gravity- from which “everything” is proposed to have self-emerged.
So yay for the remarkable announcement that they think they have found something right where the Higgs ought to be (since they had not found it all the other places it was supposed to be)…….
And let us all now praise mighty men and their publicity agents.
Rick,
You incited the “God particle” and “Gravity” within your first two sentences; which means you do not understand this discovery, nor what it implies.
It neither explains God, or gravity.
You also used the words “Dark Matter” in there as well, which means you also do not understand this theory or discovery at all.
This is my issue… if you’re going to hate science, at least get it right.
I love science, Mjek, which is why I prefer experiment to assumption even when it challenges the Darwinian world view (as the presence of soft tissue in Cretaceous samples most certainly does).
But your objections above are illogical.
The Higgs boson, while certainly an object of apparent religious fervor amongst some, does not possess as one its asserted properties that no other element of standard theory be discussed in its presence
I have had the pleasure of discussing both String Theory and dark matter with scientists who have been associated with the most advanced research concerning both, and I rejoice that the most dogmatic of all of them is, in comparison to yourself, a paragon of scientific detachment.
Rick,
Einstein was a Deist, you lose again.
LOL!!
The single funniest non sequitir I have heard in weeks!
Well, off to the fireworks.
Cheers, Mjek, I wish you well as you grow up with your assumptions.
“I have had the pleasure of discussing both String Theory and dark matter with scientists who have been associated with the most advanced research concerning both, and I rejoice that the most dogmatic of all of them is, in comparison to yourself, a paragon of scientific detachment
”
In this comment you actually accomplished in saying nothing at all.
I would love if you articulated your ideas, but it seems you are not able, without some anti-social implication.
Great fireworks!
Kinda puts the whole “antisocial implications” thing in the proper perspective.
I bet you love the smell of jackboots too, don’t ya, little fella
Rick,
Off to see the fireworks?
Is this your debate strategy? Always halfway out the door proves your argument? Interesting guy, Rick is…
Rick,
“If the tissue *does* test positive for C14, will you accept that they are much, much less than millions of years old (indeed, probably in the tens or scores of thousands)?”
No. The absence of C-14 will not be evidence for the age of the bones any more than the presence of C-14. If there were good evidence that the earth was 10,000 years old, finding tissue with no C-14 would not convince me that the earth was more than 10,000 years old. It would make me question the calibration.
The C-14 would not have an impact on what I accept about the age of the earth, either way.
There is evidence that I would accept for the bones being young. I do not think the C-14 can possibly qualify as evidence.
I think each of us have said what needs to be said on this subject.
“No. The absence of C-14 will not be evidence for the age of the bones any more than the presence of C-14″
>>I am afraid that is catastrophic for you on two fronts, Ace.
First, it proves my initial point- you are prepared to reject scientific data in favor of a metaphysical world view.
Second, it proves you yourself are guilty of precisely what you accuse me of: you will accept no evidence at all that challenges your metaphysically-obtained age of either the bones, or the earth.
All in all, a very interesting exchange, but it has certainly reached its logical conclusion.
Dear Stacy and Rick,
I have read enough and have come to a conclusion both about the C-14 testing and about the scientific merit of your position.
I would accept certain possible evidence for a young earth, although the C-14 dating is not a part of this set of possible evidence. It appears as though there is no possible evidence that would convince you of an old earth. This indicates that my position is based on science, and your position is based on something else, and Rick at least seems to admit as much. This, as he points out, does not make the argument weaker. In fact, there may be methods of knowledge that far surpass science in terms of broadness and depth and certainty.
At the end of the day, I do not think it would be a good use of my time to discuss science with you in the future.
I do see some good reasons for accepting Christianity, and at some time would like to discuss this with you. I am impressed with your patience and clarity in the discussion, and found the direct answers to my questions to be a refreshing change of pace, compared to other discussions I’ve had on this and other topics on the fringe of science.
If you can bring the same clarity to discussion on Christianity, it may be helpful to me, so I can determine whether the Christian position is true. For this topic, your non-scientific attitude may be a great advantage. The claims Jesus makes, whether true or not, are far too profound for an exclusively scientific treatment. Metaphysics will be necessary.
To close my participation on this topic:
My deep thanks and regard for your patience and charity in this discussion with me.
Hope to discuss religion/spirituality/metaphysics with you both in the future!
I get it, Rick. Science is hard and instead of hitting the books and learning about how it works, it’s much easier to make shortcuts to fit your own personal world view.
Also, you will need to re-think your idea on the “Metaphysical” science of Dark Matter: http://www.nature.com/news/dark-matter-s-tendrils-revealed-1.10951
Ace,
Whether dinosaurs lived millions of years ago or tens of thousands has very little to do with how old the earth is. I think people forget that in these discussions.
I consider it healthy and good to remain open and unconvinced one way or the other on a topic I can’t possibly ever know for sure. I look forward to hearing more from you and from Rick, and anyone else who enjoys these discussions.
But Ace, I do bristle at being told that an open mind is un-scientific.
“If you can bring the same clarity to discussion on Christianity, it may be helpful to me, so I can determine whether the Christian position is true.”
^^^That matters much more to me, because you, as a person, matter so much more than rocks and bones.
Awe and wonder!
Stacy,
I do not believe that you have an open mind on this subject. If you did, then you should be able to imagine a way your mind might be changed. There would have to be some possible new evidence that would sway you.
If your mind is open, what possible evidence would convince you? If no possible evidence would convince you, how can you say that your mind is open?
You may bristle all you like, but I do not see how I can currently reach any conclusion other than that your approach is not that of a scientist. At least, not in the way I understand science.
I invite any rational refutation of the following, earlier outline of the *actually scientific* method wrt the anomalous discovery of soft tissue bearing Cretaceous samples:
The radiometric ratings of strata *definitely* present us with evidence that the *strata* are *old*, assuming of course that they proceed from the Big Bang hypothesis (metaphysical world view).
This is a legitimate scientific data point.
The discovery of soft tissue in Cretaceous fossils *definitely* presents us with evidence that the *bones* are *young*.
This is another legitimate scientific data point.
We notice that the bones (apparently young) are found in the strata (apparently old).
Here we have that most precious thing in all of science:
A *possible* contradiction.
All such apparent contradictions are precious, since they provide us the opportunity to experimentally distinguish between two contradictory data points.
Science proceeds as follows:
1. Establish the age of the soft tissue through C14 testing.
2. Establish the ago of the strata through other forms of radiometric dating.
3. Determine whether the two radiometric methods present an *actual* contradiction (in other words, do the soft tissues test positive for C14).
If the answer to #3 above is “yes”, then the scientific method requires us to recognize that the *bones themselves* are much younger than the *strata in which they have been found*.
“Second, it proves you yourself are guilty of precisely what you accuse me of: you will accept no evidence at all that challenges your metaphysically-obtained age of either the bones, or the earth.”
Except that that’s not right at all!
There is a lot of evidence I would accept that would alter the scientific conclusions I have reached about the age of the earth. I have listed them.
The C-14 dating is just not part of that set of evidences! I don’t accept the C-14 dating as evidence for the age of the bones either way.
If evidence existed that radioisotope decay rates change rapidly over time, I would change my views on the age of the earth. If it turned out that certain radioisotopes used to decay many orders of magnitude faster than they currently do, I would revise my views on the age of the earth to accept ages of as low as ~10,000 years. If, on the other hand, the radioisotopes used to decay much more slowly, I would not change my views on the age of the earth, because the earth cannot be older than about 10 billion years. It cannot be older than the universe.
There is no possible circumstance where you would change your beliefs on the age of the earth, because your beliefs are based on your religion. The same as with Stacy. There are possible circumstances where I would change my beliefs on the age of the earth, because my beliefs are scientific. The circumstances simply do not include something you think they should include.
Does this make sense to you? Do you understand what I am trying to say?
These points speak to a different question, the age of the earth.
It is the age of the bones we are now in a position to directly establish via well-established scientific demonstration.
You fear the test, because you understand what the consequences might be to your metaphysical beliefs concerning a 4.5 billion year old earth.
This is wrong.
One need not grant more weight to a given experimental outcome than that to which it is logically entitled; that is, you need not ascribe any direct relationship between the age of the bones, and the age of the earth.
In fact it would not be scientifically admissible to do so.
But the specific act of denying the applicability of C14 testing to soft tissue presenting samples *on the assumption you already know how old they are* is a quintessential insight into why the claims of the Darwinists are to be received as metaphysical, not scientific, assertions.
The Darwinists do not do science.
They insist that they will not do it, and tell you why, because they think they already know what in fact they have never demonstrated via scientific experiment……
That is, the age of the Cretaceous samples, of Mary’s Bones.
In my opinion, using C-14 to try to date dinosaur fossils is like using a rusty spring to try to determine the fine-structure constant.
You could use the string, try to estimate an answer somehow, and would probably get a result that is many orders of magnitude different from what labs have measured. You could argue that the spring disproves the lab results.
What you have really done is used the wrong tool.
As far as I understand the scientific issue with the dinosaur tissue and C-14 dating, this seems like a fair analogy. That’s why I wouldn’t accept time-scale inferred from the C-14 results, no matter what that time-scale is.
If a different metric were being used (i.e. a different element), and if the metric were of the appropriate scale for the problem, I would accept that metric’s time-scale.
“I wouldn’t accept time-scale inferred from the C-14 results, no matter what that time-scale is”
>> I had to chuckle, because the only other time I have ever encountered such a rejection of the scientifically well-established procedures of C14 dating, was from a certain fundie YEC who was long on faith and short on science.
Oh, the irony……..:-)
“In my opinion, using C-14 to try to date dinosaur fossils is like using a rusty spring to try to determine the fine-structure constant.”
>> Pardon me, Ace, but this is not a matter of opinion.
Your objection here is illogical, precisely because you *assume* what is instead *at issue*; that is, you *assume in advance* that you know the age of the bones.
You don’t.
The *bones* have never been tested.
Only the *strata* has been tested.
Your opinion is, I am sorry to have to say, irrelevant as a matter of scientific knowledge.
I invite you, seriously, to go through my re-post above, step by step.
I have laid out the scientific procedure as it has yielded *every true scientific advance in history*.
Your counterproposal is not scientific, precisely because it assumes what has never been demonstrated….and what is much worse, it proposes *not to test* that which is assumed, when the opportunity is presented.
This is *exactly* what Karl Popper was talking about, as the distinctive difference between a metaphysical and a scientific research program.
Which was my point in the first place.
If possible, I’d like to take a step back. Forget the bones for a moment. Pretend they don’t exist, just for the sake of argument. We talk so much about them and act as if the fate of evolutionary theory rests on a single data point, but we should require more evidence either way. So forget the bones, for now, and answer this if you can:
What is your evidence for a young earth and for taking Genesis literally?
I am genuinely curious.
Michelle:
I welcome the opportunity to step back from positions already demarcated, and so will respond in a reciprocal spirit.
The evidence for a young earth proceeds from three sources:
1. Theological data
2. Metaphysical data
3. Scientific data
As to #1, the face value reading of the Scriptures, and the unanimous interpretation of them by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, clearly presents us a picture of a cosmos and Earth far younger than does the competing metanarrative of the Big Bang and Darwinism.
As to #2, the face value readings of radiometric dating of strata, *from within the metaphysical framework of the Big Bang and Darwinism*, clearly presents us a picture of a cosmos and Earth far older that does the competing metanarrative of Traditional Catholicism.
As to #3, we have many conflicting data points; places where strata contain fossils that should not be there, strata are deposed in the wrong order, discrepancies between theory and observation with respect to atmospheric helium, saline content of the oceans, and many other similar conflicting data points.
Recently, an absolutely astonishing new data point has arisen, in the face of Cretaceous samples radiometrically determined (from strata in which they are found) to be in the scorews of millions of years old.
These samples are now presenting, in scores upon scores of finds, the utterly anomalous fact of soft tissue.
This is a directly contradictory data point to the predictions of the Darwinian time line, under which these tissues should have degraded completely in a tiny fraction of the >65 may assigned to the fossils by the dating of the strata.
Therefore, we have a remarkable opportunity to do what Popper calls a “scientific research program”.
We take the data points, we establish each of them to the greatest obtainable degree of experimental accuracy, and we then determine whether we have an *actual* contradiction between two radiometric dating methods.
If we do, we are on the verge of a tremendously important breakthrough in science, because we are now faced with exactly the kind of well-defined, scientifically rigorous *contradiction* from which all scientific progress has its genesis.
If the bones are very much younger than the strata, we know, for sure, that:
1. C14 testing is wrong;
2. Long-age radiometric testing is wrong
3. Our theory of how fossils are deposed in strata is wrong
But make no mistake, Michelle.
It either #1, #2, or #3 in such a case.
Opinion matters not a whit, as to which one we think most plausible *in advance*.
Our opinions will be determined by our metaphysical world view.
The experimental results will not.
This is exactly why the refusal to C14 test the Cretaceous samples is proof that Darwinism is not now a scientific research program, if it ever was.
1. Theological Data
….aaaand you can stop reading right there. Rick has no evidence. Don’t take away his bone. It’s all he has left.
Obviously, the mere fact that on e’s metaphysical world view excludes the possibility of theological data, constitutes no basis whatever upon which to conclude that there is no theological data.
This is another example of the pre-determined assumptions which underlie the world view of folks who would deny testing of soft-tissue presenting fossils, whilst draping themselves in the trappings of “science”.
In fact the worldview rejects science, since it prefers assumptions to experimental outcome.
Which was the point of my initial post.
Actually Rick, you’re the one that excludes theological data. You exclude every theology except your own.
Are you able to step outside of your own metaphysical world view? If you cannot, then do not ask others to do what you are unable/unwilling to do yourself.
But that is exactly the difference between us, Mjek.
I do not exclude the metaphysical possibility of a Big Bang universe, nor do I exclude the possibility of an old earth.
Unlike my opponents here, I take great care to acknowledge all of the data points.
Even the ones which contradict my metaphysical assumptions.
It is not me who is denying, as Ace is, the effectiveness of radiometric dating techniques involving C14 (even though these are by far the most accurate dating techniques we possess).
And it certainly is not me who is denying, as you do, the absolute *necessity* that the scientific method be granted full autonomy within its legitimate domain.
You deny this by denying science’s obligation to directly test what can be directly tested.
In this, you reveal your a priori commitment to assumptions over experimental outcomes- exactly what Karl Popper identified as the mark of a metaphysical, rather than a scientific, research program.
Which was my initial point.
Comment
Rick, thanks. What I was asking, though, is what evidence you use to support your literal reading of Genesis. Your points #2 and #3 don’t actually support your conclusion, and neither does the scientific consensus. Leaving the bones out of it still, what was the most convincing evidence to you that led you to find the literal reading of Genesis to be the most sound explanation for the origin of earth and life?
Michelle:
I have provided several among many data points which support the young earth position.
Indeed, the existence of soft tissue in Cretaceous samples is just such a supportive data point.
Given the fact that the Darwinists have explicitly affirmed Popper’s analysis that they are not pursuing a scientific research program, we must assess Darwinism as what it is- a metaphysical research program.
It ignores and refuses to experimentally test contradictory data points, and hence is not in a position to scientifically refute the alternative, young earth creationist metaphysical world view.
Since I accept that God exists, and that He has revealed theological truth to us in Scripture and apostolic Tradition, there is no reason at all for me to abandon the Traditional Catholic metanarrative for the Darwinian Big Bang alternative.
In fact, recent discoveries are providing the strongest evidence yet in support of the former, and in contradiction to the latter.
So.
In the end, we faced with a contest between two metaphysical world views, only one of which can logically account for the existence of the universe in the first place.
But I remain thoroughly committed to an actually scientific research program, involving rigorous scientific experimental test of all metaphysical hypotheses.
I think you have me all wrong regarding my metaphysical world view. Science is interesting, but it’s only a hobby for me. My passion is finding God. And I’m only here on this blog to find out if Catholic’s are moral people.
If you want to truly acknowledge all of the data points, then you will need to read Buddhism like a Buddhist, Darwin like a Darwinist, Atheism like an Atheist, etc… Otherwise you misrepresent the data and enter into the realm of intellectual dishonesty.
I wish you all the best in your passion.
This is the wisest thing I have ever seen you post.
Clearly, you have managed to isolate the truly important question.
May God grant you the desire of your heart.
Comment
I think that there is still a key misunderstanding between us.
I will try to explain my reasoning by providing a scenario.
Imagine that the biological material found on the dinosaur bones is tested independently by many research groups. The residual C-14 implies an age of 1000 years. Therefore, either:
1. The biological material is dinosaur tissue, and the dinosaur is 1000 years old.
2. The biological material is dinosaur tissue, and acquired C-14 recently.
3. The biological material is not dinosaur tissue, but is a contaminant, and for some unknown reason behaves in certain ways as though it were tissue cells.
4. Some other explanation that hasn’t been considered yet.
I would not accept (1), because radiometric dating implies that the geological layer that the dinosaur bones were found in is millions of years old, and there is no known mechanism for getting young bones into an old layer.
I would tend to accept (3), because it is difficult to imagine how tissue would survive for millions of years, and easier to imagine how bone morphology may impart certain functional characteristics on the surface biological material. It seems to be a fascinating possibility.
My ranking for probability would be 3 > 4 > 2 >> 1.
This is not metaphysics. This is science.
It may be bad science. It may be that I don’t really understand the method or the underlying causes or the biology or physics involved, but my conclusions are still based on objective and open-minded assessment of the facts as I am capable of understanding them.
There would be a couple ways for the C-14 testing to convince me that the age of the bones is young.
A. Maybe C-14 dating is somehow developed to the point where even some sort of impression of C-14 presence can be detected, and then C-14 can be measured back through 17000 half-lifes. The calibration is somehow well established, the tissue is established somehow to definitely be dinosaur tissue, and the dating mechanism turns up with the answer of 1000 years. Then I would have to accept that, somehow, this dinosaur bone is 1000 years old.
B. There was a mechanism for getting the young bone into old rock. If such a mechanism made sense, and if there was strong evidence that it happened, then I would accept that the bone is young but that the earth is old.
Otherwise, my scientific conclusion is that the C-14 will not indicate age of the bone in this case, but rather something different that is also of scientific interest.
This is science. Not metaphysics. Not religion. Not art or poetry or music or anything else. It’s just science.
Or, at least, it is what I understand science to be. My definition is, admittedly, somewhat different from your and Stacy’s definition. (For example, I reject Popper’s strict falsification criteria and his definition for science).
Ace says:
“I think that there is still a key misunderstanding between us.”
>> Indeed, and I am happy to be able to cut to the very bottom of your post and provide it in perfect clarity:
” I reject Popper’s strict falsification criteria and his definition for science”
>> I thank you for this, it conclusively establishes the basis of our disagreement.
We do not agree on the definition of science, and therefore it were impossible for us to agree on any aspect of the controversy.
As to the rest of your post, probabilities are metaphysical, not scientific, data points.
I thank you- we are certainly at loggerheads, I am utterly persuaded that Popper and Einstein are right, and you are wrong, with respect to the proper understanding of the scientific method.
All makes perfect sense now.
I do note again that you reject C14 dating, which is a position at very serious odds with any acceptance of other forms of radiometric dating.
Thanks for the conversation, it has certainly reached a satisfactory logical conclusion for me.
Mjeck,
What is morality?
Instead of asking whether we are moral, why not ask whether the things we aspire to and the teaching from Divine Revelation are morally true?
We will always disappoint you because we are not perfect.
Google Leah Libresco. She and I have exchanged some emails and blog posts, and I have a great deal of respect for her. She has considered the morality question in depth and I think you’ll enjoy her writing at “Unequally Yoked.” She was a popular and talented atheist blogger – who just announced her conversion to Catholicism.
Rick, tell me what else besides the dinosaur tissue has led to your belief that Genesis is literally true; I assume you believed it before the dinosaur bones. On what facts do you rest your conclusions? If you’ve said it elsewhere, I missed it. Thanks!
Michelle:
Yes, I did mention several, here:
“….places where strata contain fossils that should not be there, strata are deposed in the wrong order, discrepancies between theory and observation with respect to atmospheric helium, saline content of the oceans, and many other similar conflicting data points.”
Rick, why is it that that led you to Genesis, though? Why not just “we aren’t quite sure yet, but there’s probably a natural explanation”?
I’m not seeing the connection between Bible and facts in your reasoning.
Ah.
Let me see if I can make this more clear.
When I became a Catholic I was not a Traditional Catholic.
I was not a young earth creationist.
I was not a geocentrist.
I did have a great deal of respect for Sir Karl Popper and his devastating critique of the Darwinist enterprise as a metaphysical, not a scientific, research program.
But the Catholic Church was very comfortable entertaining long-age hypotheses, and was busily promoting the work of theologians such as Stacy’s already-referenced Fr. Jaki, who had developed more or less defensible attempts at adapting certain elements of the Darwinian worldview so as to render them amenable to the “Nouvelle Theologie” development in Catholic theology, especially after the Council.
I became a young earth creationist and a geocentrist as a direct consequence of coming face to face with the testimony of Scripture and Fathers concerning both the age of the Earth, and the very significant question of geocentrism (or, more precisely, the condemnation of Galileo’s heliocentric hypothesis by St. Bellarmine in 1615 and the Holy Office in 1633).
Examination of these elements led me in turn to a detailed look at the state of scientific play in regard to both hypotheses.
The results of that investigation are what I share here and elsewhere, including at my blog.
So, just to get to the bottom of this: you are not a young-earth creationist/geocentrist primarily because of the science. You did not examine the evidence and find that it led you to the Bible; you read the Bible and then found evidence that seemed to support it?
Do you believe that anyone could be led to a literal reading of Genesis purely based on the scientific knowledge that we have at our disposal?
“So, just to get to the bottom of this: you are not a young-earth creationist/geocentrist primarily because of the science.”
>> To the contrary. In the case of the age of the earth, I find the scientific evidence inconclusive, and place a great deal of importance on the scandalous refusal of the evolution research project to C14 soft-tissue presenting samples, and other independent positive C14 tests of Cretaceous samples, as adequate basis upon which to support catastrophism over uniformitarianism; that is to say, young earth creationism over abiogenesis and descent from common ancestor by mutation and selection.
In the case of geocentrism I find the scientific evidence best fits the geocentric hypothesis, on experimental grounds alone.
“You did not examine the evidence and find that it led you to the Bible;”
>> Actually, I did exactly what you say I did not do. I did not become a Christian until my mid-20′s, and not a Catholic until fifteen years after that.
In other words, I examined all the evidence, for my whole life, and it led me to the Bible.
“you read the Bible and then found evidence that seemed to support it?”
>> See above. My acceptance of the Bible occurred long after my formation in the Darwinian world view as is compulsory under public education laws.
Indeed, even after my conversion to Catholicism, I was allowed perfect freedom to adopt a long-age hypothesis, by the Church’s own teaching.
It was the comparison of the two metaphysical world views; Big Bang/Darwinian and Traditional Catholic, *precisely with respect to the actually scientific (that is, experimentally reproducible) evidence*, that resulted in my adoption of young earth creationism and geocentrism.
“Do you believe that anyone could be led to a literal reading of Genesis purely based on the scientific knowledge that we have at our disposal?”
>> Of course. Many are. I was.
I hope you don’t mind, Rick, if I interject re: Michelle’s question.
The key to Rick’s position is the link to Karl Popper.
Popper takes 2 positions that are relevant to your question. First, he does not believe in inductive science. The idea that you see one white swan, then another, and yet another, gradually coming to assert “all swans are white” is simply not how science works.
Evidence does not lead to theory. We go the other way, from theory to evidence. Which is what Rick does consistently.
Second, Popper does not recognize the relevance of the context of discovery (Reichenbach’s term). Philosophers distinguish between the source of a theory (the context of discovery) and the process of evaluating a theory (the context of justification).
Philosophers like Popper will tell you that where a theory originates from (a dream, a fortune cookie, a fairy tale) has no bearing whatsoever on it’s truth value. All that matters is the process of assessing the truth value of the theory.
But because induction is not fruitful, the only route to confident knowledge is through falsification. We can’t prove a theory is true, but we can prove a theory is false.
A theory that stands up to ruthless critical scrutiny deserves some kind of truth value. Popper used the term verisimilitude to reflect the idea that we can be more confident in a theory that has been ruthlessly tested by the harshest criticism.
Therefore, when some folks here tell Rick he is going overboard by criticizing “settled science”, he is actually taking a very informed, principled, and modern stance by stating that he is the true scientist because he views evolutionary theory with a ruthless critical eye.
And it is simply not a valid criticism of Rick to say that he received his theory from the Church Fathers. The context of discovery is a non-factor. It is actually irrational to rule OUT a theory based on where it came from.
That’s why I am a big fan of Rick. I don’t know the physics at all, so I butt out of those discussions, but when the question is raised about whether he knows how science works, I quite assure you he is basing his points on very mainstream philosophy of science. Sadly, it’s not taught in our universities. Why this is the case is another discussion for another day.
Jeff:
Thank you.
You have said it far better than I have
Jeff,
You provide a very good summary of Popper.
I accept the first part of Popper’s view, that it doesn’t matter where the original idea comes from, and that this positivist scheme of induction fails.
I reject Popper’s strict falsificationism. I lean more toward the philosophy of science of one of his students, Paul Feyerabend, and his scientific anarchism.
Jeff, thank you for putting that into words. I’m a big fan of Rick’s too, for the same reasons. Absolutely, the same reasons.
Thank you both.
And wait…I don’t mean to imply I knew all that stuff Jeff said, I just check it all out, read it, and go WOW. It makes sense.
“Evidence does not lead to theory. We go the other way, from theory to evidence. Which is what Rick does consistently.”
Yes, Rick does do that consistently, but I do not believe the rest of your statement is true. From Wikipedia (the source of all truth!):
A theory is “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment.” You make observations and formulate theories based off of them. They are explanations of observed phenomena. You start with hypotheses, not theories, and make observations, and from there theories can be formulated. What I see Rick doing is starting with a theory, and cherry picking evidence (mainly the bones, which he loves so much) to support it, and disregarding all evidence that does not support his preconceived ideas. Disagreement or uncertainty is seen as damning, not as something that needs to be investigated further. That is not an intellectually honest way to do science.
Yes, theories need to be ruthlessly examined, and we should not be afraid to refine them when necessary or acknowledge when they may not be universally applicable (Newton’s Laws, for instance). Criticizing settled science is fine; ignoring the evidence that has led to that, and that has convinced people who make their careers out of studying it, is unwise. Skepticism is wonderful, but when you grasp onto single data points that you like even when mountains of evidence support a theory you don’t like, you are doing it wrong.
Jeff, while I disagree with your assessment of Rick, I do appreciate the relative clarity of your writing. Thank you!
Rick, you seem to be deliberately misunderstanding me – if you can find me one person who reviewed the scientific literature and was led to believe that the Biblical account of creation (as opposed to the scientific consensus) is true, I will be thoroughly shocked.
I’m going to drop out of this conversation in favor of doing my work, but thank you all for the discussion.
“Jeff, while I disagree with your assessment of Rick, I do appreciate the relative clarity of your writing. Thank you!”
>> Jeff, I heartily assent to the part about clarity
“Rick, you seem to be deliberately misunderstanding me”
>> No, Michelle. I understand you. I just don’t agree with you, and in ways which you find…shocking.
“– if you can find me one person who reviewed the scientific literature and was led to believe that the Biblical account of creation (as opposed to the scientific consensus) is true, I will be thoroughly shocked.”
>> Be shocked. Here I am. There are many, many others, although one would suffice to fulfill your demand.
I thank you also for the discussion.
Many interesting and valuable points were considered.
Every scientific discovery of actually demonstrable physical principle has taken the form of a crucial “flash of insight” on the part of exactly one mind, Michelle.
There are no exceptions to this.
Albert Einstein did not advance Relativity based on observations: no observation of the foundational postulate of relativity is possible even in theory.
It is a metaphysical hypothesis, from which certain logical consequences necessarily follow (these necessary logical consequences are not being confirmed by observation of the universe on its largest visible scales).
The theory is exactly as right as experimentation shows it to be, and it thoroughly falsified by even one experimental result in conflict with its irreducible assumptions.
Albert Einstein advanced Relativity precisely to resolve a well-defined *actual contradiction* between well-conducted experimental results.
Michelson and Morley directly established, through repeatable experiment, that the Earth most definitely was not moving through the aether in an approximately 30 km/sec orbit around the Sun.
There were two (actually three, but the third was incorporated into Einstein’s theory as the “Lorenz contraction”) possible interpretations of this experiment.
The first interpretation, consistent with the evidence, was that the Earth was not in fact orbiting the Sun.
The second interpretation, inconsistent with all prior evidence, but consistent with a radically new metaphysical conception, “space-time”, was that no experiment could ever measure absolute motion.
The second interpretation was adopted on metaphysical grounds, and, not coincidentally, provides one hundred per cent scientific confirmation and support for the very wise decision of there Holy Office in 1633, which decision correctly declared each and all of Galileo’s “proofs” to be in error.
On this latter score modern science and the Holy Inquisition agree:
Each and all of Galileo’s heliocentric proofs were wrong, as a matter of *science*.
Rick,
“I do note again that you reject C14 dating, which is a position at very serious odds with any acceptance of other forms of radiometric dating.”
I accept using C-14 dating, when it’s the right tool for the job.
I accept radiometric dating only when there is some confidence about the initial conditions, when the amount of the isotope remaining is more abundant than the limits imposed by rate equation methods, and when the date agrees with other radiometric dating results. If five measurements suggest an age of 60 million years, and one measurement suggests an age of 1000 years, then it seems most reasonable to conclude that the object is 60 million years old, and that there is a natural cause for the one divergent measurement.
It is possible, in limited cases, to date an object when the amount of the remaining isotope is too low for rate equation methods to be very accurate. Stochastic modelling becomes necessary. Stochastic methods involve the statistics of random numbers, and to you this is metaphysics, correct?
So wouldn’t the whole C-14 dating result, based on statistical arguments, be a matter of metaphysics and not science?
Ace:
The entire point is that we are presented with an *anomaly* in the case of soft tissue bearing Cretaceous fossils.
Your endless speculations are precisely what science is intended to replace with actual results.
There is no justification for your position here.
C14 is either present in measurable amounts in a properly prepared and decontaminated sample, or it is not.
Simple.
The fact that differing radiometric techniques agree, *or not*, is precisely the point of the test, *given the anomalous presence of the tissue which requires and makes it possible in the first place*.
The refusal to C14 date soft tissue presenting samples is a scandal, one of the greatest scientific scandals in history.
It will eventually be seen as such.
No way around it.
Science ultimately will trump the metaphysical special pleading and logical absurdities which underlie your post above.
Rick,
Thanks for this final response. I now understand your position, and think we have reached a resolution about the science.
If I knew you better, I’d bet you a cool £20 that either the C-14 will be measured in the next 5 years, or that the lack of measurements will be a minor scandal at most. We will have to wait to know for sure.
Rick and Stacy,
I agree that we have reached a resolution about the science, for the most part.
I would now like to discuss something on the philosophy of science. You both claim that you accept Popper’s idea of falsifiability. Before we examine this idea further, I’m not convinced you really accept the principle of falsifiability.
I understand the principle of falsifiability to be “logical possibility that any scientific statement can be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of a physical experiment.”
Condider this statement: “The earth is less than 1 billion years old”.
Is this statement a scientific statement or a metaphysical statement?
If you say that it is a metaphysical statement, then you may accept the principle of falsifiability, and there is nothing more to discuss about the age of the earth. We can turn our attention entirely to discussing the philosophy of science.
If you say that it is a scientific statement, then how can it be falsified? If you say that you can imagine an observation or experiment that could falsify the statement, please tell me what that observation or experiment would be. If you say that you cannot imagine an observation or experiment that could falsify the statement, and you still accept the statement to be scientific, how can you say that you uphold the principle of falsifiability?
Ace:
There exists no crucial, single, experimental test of the hypothesis “the Earth is under 1 billion years old”.
Just as there exists no single, crucial experimental test of the hypothesis that “the universe is over one billion years old.
We only have one Earth.
We only have one universe.
There is no way to subject that one earth, or that one universe, to a crucial experimental test by direct observational result.
We are required, in such cases, to carefully limit our scientific claims to what *can* be demonstrated experimentally; i.e. “radiometric dating shows such and so an outcome for such and so a sample”.
If radiometric techniques provide an *actual contradiction*, say, by assigning a 65 million year radiometric age of the strata, and a 30,000 radiometric year age for the bones found in them, then we have a *well-defined contradiction*; that is, the most precious thing in all of science….
A solid scientific basis upon which to conclude that one or more of our crucial assumptions concerning reality are *certainly wrong*.
That is where scientific progress begins.
All scientific progress begins precisely here.
Always has.
Always will.
It is the exact nature of science, to progress when forced to re-consider our assumptions about reality, what we *think we know*, in the face of direct experimental contradiction of those assumptions.
Endlessly.
Science is never finished overturning what it thinks it knows.
It is the nature of science to ceaselessly overturn what it thinks it knows.
That is exactly how science progresses.
Once the above is fully considered and verified (it is absolutely certain), we now see why the hierarchy of knowledge cannot proceed upward, from science to metaphysics to theology.
It proceeds downward.
From theology to metaphysics to science.
There exists a painting, on the Vatican walls, by Raphael, entitled “The School at Athens”.
In the center Raphael shows us Plato and Aristotle, with Plato pointing up, to the source of his “top down causation”, and Aristotle extending his pam downward, to the source of his sense perceptions.
It is this debate which lies at the heart of Western civilization.
As Whitehead has aptly noted, all of Western philosophy (and natural philosophy, or science, is a branch of philosophy), consists in a series of footnotes to Plato, the first and most significant being those of Aristotle.
Reality (apologies to the Higgs Team) can never be adequately modeled by attempting to dig down to some fundamental particle.
This is because particles are not the fundamental building blocks of reality.
Plato understood this.
Modern science is about to re-learn the lesson.
Rick,
I do not understand your response. It may help to go step-by-step, more slowly.
Let’s start with:
Condider this statement: “The earth is less than 1 billion years old”.
Is this statement a scientific statement or a metaphysical statement?
It is a metaphysical statement.
No experiment exists which can establish the truth or falsehood of that hypothesis.
We weren’t there, and there is only one Earth in our sample size.
Therefore it is a metaphysical statement.
Stacy,
Are a group of people, who gaze upon a torture device with fervent pleasure capable of moral acts? This might be an interesting blog post for you to explore.
Rick,
Can you falsify the computer you are using to post your comments? What about a GPS coordinate system? An MRI? Can you falsify the real world applications that have been created?
Modern Medicine is based on Darwinism; can you falsify all the cures to diseases that have been achieved in the last 100 years?
And so this comes back to my original question: What does your world view imply? Based on your criteria of 1.Catholic Theological data, 2.Catholic Metaphysical data and 3. Scientific Data; everyone should return to the middle ages and ponder how many angels can stand upon the head of a pin.
Mjek:
The GPS system constitutes the most devastating evidence *against* Special Relativity that we currently possess.
As Wang and Hatch have shown, the GPS is pre-programmed with a Sagnac effect correction which has the effect of rendering the speed of light constant in *one and only one reference frame*; that is, the observer frame, that is, the Earth frame.
Medicine has *absolutely nothing whatsoever* to do with the postulate of descent from common ancestor, and all experimental evidence shows the impossibility of descent from common ancestor, since all attempts to induce mutations, even in the lab, have run up against the species barrier; as in Dobzhansky’s fruit flies, after several generations, even induced-mutations disappear from the breeding sample, and the original genetic template is restored.
Other than that, we have already established that you hate justice; that is, you detest in the core of your being the notion that evil shall be punished, and this certainly sets you in direct enmity with God.
Rick,
Thanks for the answer about the age of the earth. It has the virtue of being entirely consistent with Popper’s view (what little I understand of it).
I suppose that, if you knew what I worked on, you really would think that I’m doing metaphysics! Maybe 90% metaphysics, 10% “real” physics. Meh.
At least the math is beautiful.
I’ll let Mjeck take the first stab at your philosophy of science. I’ve read Popper’s “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, but I’ve read almost nothing about his philosophy of science. I’d want to read more before asking sensible questions about your philosophy of science.
Ace:
My long-since adopted mentor Karl Popper is a great philosopher of science and I greatly look forward to discussing your thoughts concerning his work as you encounter his devastatingly brilliant insights into the scientific method.
“I suppose that, if you knew what I worked on, you really would think that I’m doing metaphysics! Maybe 90% metaphysics, 10% “real” physics. Meh.
At least the math is beautiful.”
>> Interestingly, one of the questions I have asked about seven or eight of the world’s most prominent cosmologists over the last year or so is this one:
“What percentage of cosmology is science, and what percentage is metaphysics?”
Your suggesion “90% metaphysics, 10% science” is about in the middle of the sample.
The truly interesting issue you raise is with respect to the (utterly astonishing) observed correspondence of mathematical symmetry to physical experiment.
It is truly one of the most interesting aspects of reality.
One might be tempted to consider mathematical symmetry the actually fundamental ground of being (as Max Tegmark in fact does consider it).
If one had the courage of this conviction (Max certainly does)…one would proceed to the logical conclusion; a mathematical multiverse where computable mathematical algorithms are the only actual ontological reality.
A seven year old can demolish such an hypothesis, completely.
Stacy,
I think you should write a post someday about what you think science really is, and then different people can respond with their views.
I can give you a more complete version of my view.
Also, it may be interesting at some point to write something about why people of varying personal philosophies should accept Christianity.
It would be interesting to see if Christianity is compatable with my understanding of reality. Is it a great missing piece in my life, or is it just an unnecessary or redundant piece to the puzzle, better to be thrown away than to be used?
Ace:
1. “Science is never finished overturning what it thinks it knows.
It is the nature of science to ceaselessly overturn what it thinks it knows.
That is exactly how science progresses.”
and
2. “Once the above is fully considered and verified (it is absolutely certain), we now see why the hierarchy of knowledge cannot proceed upward, from science to metaphysics to theology. It proceeds downward.
From theology to metaphysics to science.”
Once these two theses are adopted as certain, the rest is simply a matter of distinguishing between the various religions and metaphysical systems.
I found exactly one which resolves all of the evidence into a resplendently coherent and living whole.
Rick,
How did you establish that I hate justice? And more importantly, how did you establish that you love justice?
How do you falsify this observation of evolution:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html
Mjeck, that is excellent evidence for evolution!
I just also make the observation that, for most philosophers of science, the term “falsifiability” applies not to observations, but to statements.
The observation cannot be falsified. The observation is absolute and undeniable. The observation also cannot verify anything.
The observation would only falsify some other idea. So, from Popper’s view (as I understand it), this scientific paper you link would falsify certain alternative explanations to evolution, but not others.
According to Popper, nothing will establish evolution, and a single experiment or observation can falsify at least part of evolutionary theory (or else it is not Popper’s idea of a scientific theory).
If it is falsified, often people will just invent a new theory, Evolution-Prime, that is the same as Evolution, but with an exception to match the new experiment or observation.
Mjeck, I think an indication of Popper’s ideas being full of crap is that his ideas allow for all of Rick’s shenanigans. Popper’s view may be the way he and some philosophers wish science would be, but it’s not the way science is.
At least, it’s not the way science is done at my university, or in my field.
“According to Popper, nothing will establish evolution, and a single experiment or observation can falsify at least part of evolutionary theory (or else it is not Popper’s idea of a scientific theory).”
>> Yes, and yes. Like Popper, Einstein was educated in that much better era, where actual scientific discoverers received a rigorous education, as opposed to the astonishing miss mash of hooey passed off as philosophy of science today.
Here is the direct proof that Einstein thinks like Popper, and thinks exactly in opposition to the way you think:
“No experiment can ever prove me right. A single experiment can prove me wrong.”——Albert Einstein
Comment
Rick,
I think I’m starting to catch on. Basically, you don’t need to prove anything. All you need to do is falsify everything else, and what’s left standing is your pet theory. I like this. I’m going to create my own.
1. Inter-dimensional aliens data (Aliens built us)
2. Metaphysical data (We are created and destroyed 2 billion times every nanosecond, shifting us slightly into another parallel universe each time)
3. Scientific Data (You can’t prove me wrong, because I’ll just falsify anything you say, therefore, I win)
Mjek:
Willful misrepresentation of your opponent’s argument is a logical fallacy, the “straw man”.
You are very deeply infected with a proclivity toward this logical fallacy.
Comment
Ace:
It is evidence of adaptation, not of evolution.
The necessary ruse of the evolutionist is to conflate the two.
It has worked quite well in the short term, insofar as bamboozling the ignorant and feeding at the trough of public funding is concerned.
But science, as I have shown, is self-correcting in the long run.
Data points emerge which can only be ignored and suppressed for so long.
Take Mary’s Bones, for example………
Since everybody is quoting some author, it would be nice if you could provided the name of the book. Por example, Poppers discusses Darwinism in a book called Unended Quest.
Concerning the traditionalist catholic view, I’d like to know if that view is really traditionalist or is simply outdated view.
For example, catholic view on contraception is a traditionalist view, in the sense that the Church always defended that position and actually defends it.
A geo-centric view, however, it is apparently just outdated. It was considered the correct vision, because the narrative in Genesis was interpreted literally. Contemporary hermeneutics, if I am correct, doesn’t interprets Genesis literally.
Pope Benedict XVI wrote he following text about, among other things, creationism and evolutionary theory: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html
He has written an interesting book about Genesis: In the Beginning.
If understand correctly, Catholic Church accepts evolutionary theory because that theory doesn’t contradict catholic faith.
I don’t think the Bible can be seen as a definitive view about the earth. Genesis wasn’t written as a scientific paper. There’s also a book by Joseph Ratizenger discussing some of those points: it’s called Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures. In the preface, Marcello Pera quotes Galileo: “it is the intention of the Holy Spirit to teach us how to go to heaven, not how heaven goes.”
@Mjeck: you’re looking to catholics, in order to see if we are moral human beings. Maybe you’re facing the problem backwards. We’re christians first, in the sense we believe Christ is God with Father and the Holy Spirit. Catholics believes are summarized in the Credo. We act morally because we’re following Christ. Our actions reflects our faith in God. But following Christ’s example doesn’t mean we are going to present good moral standards all the time, or, better saying, we’re going to follow the commandments without failures.
As Saint Augustine has pointed out, there’s concupiscence. Saint Paul said it beautifully: “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”‘(Romans 7-19).
Since we are sinners, we can act immorally, but that doesn’t provide a refutation of Christianism. The truth(Jesus himself) is not altered by our immoral acts. It’s still the solid rock we can lie upon on. We show our faith through our lives and actions, but the truthness of the faith is not altered by our behavior. It continues to be true.
Ana:
I have stated on numerous occasions on this thread that the “Nouvelle Theologie” has attempted to adapt aspects of the Darwinian worldview so as to render them amenable to the Nouvelle Theologie.
Certainly Catholics are free to proceed exactly as the magisterium has indicated.
There is absolutely nothing that any Pope or Council or act of the magisterium has said, that reverses, falsifies, or declares contrary to the faith, that unanimous consensus of the Fathers concerning geocentrism, which stands as an authentic act of the magisterium to this day, in the form of the 1633 decree concerning Galileo.
Geocentrism is more than just a “permitted opinion”.
Geocentrism is the unanimous interpretation of Scripture of the fathers, and hence the question is whether or not it is consistent with the scientific evidence.
It is.
Comment
Ana,
Ok, maybe a better question is, Are Catholic’s more moral than Atheists?
Rick,
You can’t actually prove what you’re saying, you can only put stop signs and detours in front of what other people have been proving and applying to our lives over the last 100 years.
Mjek:
To the contrary.
It is you who cannot refute what I have said, concerning:
1. The GPS
2. The conflation of descent from common ancestor with adaptation
3. The vindication of the decree against Galileo in the form of the Michelson Morley, Sagnac, and related experimental outcomes.
You are left with rhetorical sophistry, and this is impotent.
Rick,
Yes I can. If the world took your assertions as truth, we’d never have a GPS system to speak about; we’d never have a microscope to view adaptation and everyone who questioned your authority on the matter would be in prison, tortured or forced to sign an apology for their arrogance.
“I don’t know” and “It’s complicated” are also acceptable answers to life, Rick.
Mjek:
Please understand (it is a matter of basic truthfulness), that you have not addressed, much less refuted, the following scientific assertion:
“The GPS system constitutes the most devastating evidence *against* Special Relativity that we currently possess.
As Wang and Hatch have shown, the GPS is pre-programmed with a Sagnac effect correction which has the effect of rendering the speed of light constant in *one and only one reference frame*; that is, the observer frame, that is, the Earth frame.”
Now.
Refute this, or stay in the peanut gallery.
Your choice.
Comment
Aliens did it, Rick: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/05/at-long-last-gravity-probe-b.html
Now let’s see something from your Research Institute, actually proving something and not just a bunch of naysayers.
Sorry I missed this one earlier, Mjek.
Now what exactly is it that you imagine that Gravity Probe B has demonstrated?
You *do* understand that Gravity Probe B purports to have *experimentally confirmed* the following postulates of Einstein, don’t you?
“One need not view the existence of such centrifugal forces as originating fromthe motion of K’ [the Earth]; one could just as well account for them as resulting from the average rotational effect of distant, detectable masses as evidenced in the vicinity of K’ [the Earth], whereby K’ [the Earth] is treated as being at rest.” –Albert Einstein, quoted in Hans Thirring, “On the Effect of Distant Rotating Masses in Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation”, Physikalische Zeitschrift 22, 29, 1921
“If one rotates the shell relative to the fixed stars about an axis going through its center, a Coriolis force arises in the interior of the shell, that is, the plane of a Foucault pendulum is dragged around”–Albert Einstein, cited in “Gravitation”, Misner Thorne and Wheeler pp. 544-545.
“The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS [coordinate system] could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, ‘the sun is at rest and the earth moves’, or ‘the sun moves and the earth is at rest’, would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS [coordinate systems].”
—”The Evolution of Physics: From Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta, Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, New York, Simon and Schuster 1938, 1966 p.212
Now.
It has been said that no modern experiment more perfectly affirms the observation that data, sufficiently tortured, will confess to what is demanded of it, than does the remarkable history of Gravity Probe B.
But if the torture extracted an actual confession, the confession is exactly what you read above, experimentally confirmed.
Ana,
This is for you. It is from a book Jeff recommended to me and I find I refer to it almost daily. It was written (I believe) in 1954, and has been updated from time to time (again, I believe). The book is Dr. Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, and this is an excerpt from the very beginning of the section “The Divine Work of Creation.” It’s a different perspective than Rick’s and I appreciate both. So I’m not sharing this to refute Rick, but just to add it to the conversation.
I’m interested in Jeff’s analysis of this too. I enjoy Rick’s writing and arguments, and I think a lot of people misunderstand him. The part about the “consensus of the Fathers” (part a) is interesting and all I really can say right now is that I understand both sides. I don’t know where I come out yet though. That’s also one reason I’m a fan of Rick’s — he challenges you to think about something you may not have considered.
OK, the excerpt.
1. General Principles
In order to solve the difficulties deriving from the apparent contradiction between the results of natural science and the Biblical narrative of the Creation the following general principles are to be observed:
a) Even though all Holy Writ is inspired and is the Word of God, still, following St. Thomas (Sent. II d. 12 q. 1 a. 2), a distinction must be made between that which is inspired per se, and that which is inspired per accidens. As the truths of Revelation laid down in Holy Writ are designed to serve the end of religious and moral teaching, inspiration per se extends only to the religious and moral truths. The profane facts of natural science and history contained in Holy Writ are not inspired per se, but only per accidens, that is, by virtue of their relation to the religious-moral truths. The data inspired per accidens is also the Word of God, and consequently without error. However, as the hagiographers in profane things make use of a popular, that is, a non-scientific form of exposition suitable to the mental perception of their times, a more liberal interpretation, is possible here. The Church gives no positive decisions in regard to purely scientific questions, but limits itself to rejecting errors which endanger faith. Further, in these scientific matters there is no value in a consensus of the Fathers since they are not here acting as witnesses of the Faith, but merely as private scientists.
b) Since the findings of reason and the supernatural knowledge of Faith go back to the same source, namely to God, there can never be a real contradiction between the certain discoveries of the profane sciences and the Word of God properly understood. The Vatican Council declared: Nulla unquam inter fidem et rationem vera dissensio esse potest. D 1797.
2. Decisions of the Bible Commission (30/6/1909)
a) The first three Chapters of Genesis contain narratives of real events (rerum vere gestarum narrationes quae scilicet obiectivae realitati et historicae veritati respondeant), no myths, no mere allegories or symbols of religious truths, no legends. D 2122.
b) In regard to those facts, which touch the foundations of the Christian religion (quae christianae religionis fundamenta attingunt), the literal historical sense is to be adhered to. Such facts are, inter alia, the creation of all things by God in the beginning of time, and the special creation of humanity. D 2123.
c) It is not necessary to understand all individual words and sentences in the literal sense (sensu proprio). Passages which are variously interpreted by the Fathers and by theologians, may be interpreted according to one’s own judgment with the reservation, however, that one submits one’s judgment to the decision of the Church, and to the dictates of the Faith. D 2124 et seq.
d) As the Sacred Writer had not the intention of representing with scientific accuracy the intrinsic constitution of things, and the sequence of the works of creation but of communicating knowledge in a popular way suitable to the idiom and to the pre-scientific development of his time, the account is not to be regarded or measured as if it were couched in language which is strictly scientific (proprietas scientifici sermonis). D 2127.
e) The word “day” need not be taken in the literal sense of a natural day of 24 hours, but can also be understood in the improper sense of a longer space of time. D 2128. Cf. the whole letter of the Secretary of the Bible Commission to Cardinal Suhard, dated 16th January, 1948 (D 3002).
This is the specific sentence, but it needed context:
“Further, in these scientific matters there is no value in a consensus of the Fathers since they are not here acting as witnesses of the Faith, but merely as private scientists.”
Stacy:
The absolutely crucial question is this:
Was the magisterium correct in 1633, when it explicitly identified geocentrism as a matter of Faith, *because* a matter of unanimous interpretation of the Fathers?
Or is a private theologian named Ludwig Ott, in a manual, correct when he contradicts this unanimous interpretation of the Fathers?
Alas, there is no escaping, in the end, the logical necessity of grappling with this question.
In the end, either God protects the authentic magisterium, or He doesn’t.
If He does, then geocentrism is true as a matter of Catholic theology.
I sincerely apologize for having no recourse but to truthfully inform you of something you would have less trepidation had you followed the logical course yourself, and in your own time.
“Was the magisterium correct in 1633, when it explicitly identified geocentrism as a matter of Faith, *because* a matter of unanimous interpretation of the Fathers?”
I know — that question is at the heart of it.
Rick,
I’m happy to disagree with Einstein. It is sometimes refreshing to see that smart people can be very wrong. He was wrong about quantum mechanics, also. I also reject his views on socialism and am agnostic about his deterministic philosophy.
My sole criterion for determining truth is whether there’s good evidence for something, and whether it makes sense. Famous names and impressive titles, or letters after a name, or ancient and powerful institutions and fancy costumes (like the Vatican or graduation day at Harvard?) do not impress me.
You said something much more interesting about math, and how it’s amazing that it works to describe the physical world. Makes me think of Wigner. “The unreasonable efficiency of mathematics in science is a gift we neither understand nor deserve.”
I have no good explanation for this. I can’t even start a good explanation of my own. A religious or spiritual solution may be most likely at this point.
The effectiveness of mathematics in describing the physical world almost makes me want to be a Spinozist.
Wonder, curiosity, “spooky action from a distance”
This is why I love Science.
Thanks for this, Ace
Sure thing, Mjeck.
The world is a lot more fun to explore without assuming the answer before starting. My opinion.
Your reference to Wigner is emphatically acknowledged.
There is an eerie correspondence between mathematical symmetry and physical experiment.
It is weird.
It is important.
Spinoza is devastatingly wrong, for the same reason that Tegmark can be refuted by a seven year old.
Rick,
“The observer, situated on Earth, constitutes the absolute reference frame in GPS.”
Which part of earth would this observer be situated at? Different parts of the earth will yeild slightly different answers to the question.
Also, the speed of light is constant over all inertial reference frames. The reference frame where the center of mass of the earth is stationary is a non-inertial reference frame. How can the Sagnac effect imply anything about the validity of relativity?
Or are you just refering to special relativity?
“The GPS system constitutes the most devastating evidence *against* Special Relativity that we currently possess. As Wang and Hatch have shown, the GPS is pre-programmed with a Sagnac effect correction which has the effect of rendering the speed of light constant in *one and only one reference frame*; that is, the observer frame, that is, the Earth frame.”
So devistating that no one in the field considers it devistating?
There is a proposed probe for modified Newtonian gravity (among other theories) to be launched. It will not be orbiting the earth (like a satallite), but will be orbiting the sun. It will be treating the center of mass of the Earth-Sun system as the absolute reference frame. If the project is approved, will the probe crash because of a discrepency between the Earth-Sun COM and some absolute reference frame? We will find out. I’d bet £100 on this one.
Another question. Is the absolute reference frame on earth? If so, which part of earth? Different parts of earth move with respect to each other. Is it the center of the earth? Is that the magnetic center, gravitational center, or geometric center?
Or maybe the entire cosmos revolves around Rome?
Ace: The observer, situated on Earth, constitutes the absolute reference frame in GPS.
Any observer moving (whether because he is in an airplane or because he is experiencing an earthquake) will measure the speed of light as c +v.
This is the absolutely certain meaning of Wang and Hatch’s research.
Please check.
As to the correct interpretation of Genesis, it is a unanimous consensus of the Fathers that Scripture teaches a literal twenty four hour Day in Genesis 1.
Unanimous.
The sole dissenter is St. Augustine, who proposes various positions over his career, and who ultimately proposes a single Day, whilst admitting that his dissent is personal, it derives from his difficulty in accounting for the creation of the angels, and hence self-admittedly *does not proceed from apostolic Tradition*.
Moral or moralist?
I was reading a book called Morale de L’évangile, by C. D. Dodd. It’s the french edition of a book originally called Gospel and Law in English. I’m a terrible translator and neither french or english are my mother languages, but I’ll try to quote him, in a free translation: “Christian Religion (or Judaism, for giving another example) is a moral religion in the precise sense of the word, since it does not recognize any fundamental difference between serving God and the behavior towards our neighbors”.
So, christians are supposed to act morally.
If you’re asking, however, if an atheist needs faith to act morally, my answer is: no, he does not. I like to quote Ratzinger because he is genius: “In the age of the Enlightenment, the attempt was made to understand and define the essential norms of morality by saying that these would be valid etsi Deus non daretur, even if God did not exist. . . . We must . . . reverse the axiom of the Enlightenment and say: Even the one who does not succeed in finding the path to accepting the existence of God ought nevertheless to try to live and to direct his life veluti si Deus daretur, as if God did indeed exist.” (Christianity and The crisis of cultures)
I think you’re facing a problem already posed by some philosophers. Sartre has quoted Dostoievski famous statement “If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible” to explain that such view conducts to existentialism. It is a nihilistic view.
But I personally don’t think atheists are incapable of acting morally. I’m saying that because I believe humans share a moral grammar. This is a concept developed by some moral philosophers and psychologists, based on the concept of universal grammar presented (but not yet proved, it’s a theory so far) by Noam Chomsky. John Milkhail, professor at Georgetown Law School, has been studying such topic. I also believe there is truly a natural law, a law that can be discovered by reason, as Thomas Aquinas taught. The concept of natural law was surpassed by positivist accounts of law. It’s quite difficult to find someone, outside catholic circles, defending natural law nowadays, but I follow Aristotle on this subject: natural law is superior to positive law.
Well, I’m quoting too much, and this conversation is beginning to look very pretentious, don’t you think? I don’t think atheists are bad people because they don’t have faith, because being unable to believe is not a sin (at least YouCat says so). However, I don’t have all the answers and I’m not trying to develop a moral philosophy.
Maybe you should talk to a moral theologist to get some reading recommendations and discuss the subject with someone more prepared to answer your questions. I don’t think I can present a complete and well developed argument, only those glimpses.
I hope it helps.
Ana,
Natural law? I guess I would say I follow that as well.
Are Catholics capable of being moral people if they already assume they are moral people?
Catholic: Am I a moral person? Answer: Yes, the church tells me I am, therefore I will do this action without questioning the moral implications of my action and assume the outcome is moral.
“being unable to believe is not a sin (at least YouCat says so). ”
>> Where, exactly, please?
YouCat is a disgrace and I am always interested to identify new and conclusive instances.
Rick,
“The observer, situated on Earth, constitutes the absolute reference frame in GPS.”
Which part of earth would this observer be situated at? Different parts of the earth will yeild slightly different answers to the question.
Also, the speed of light is constant over all inertial reference frames. The reference frame where the center of mass of the earth is stationary is a non-inertial reference frame. How can the Sagnac effect imply anything about the validity of relativity?
Or are you just refering to special relativity?
It is Special Relativity, precisely, which is falsified by GPS.
Every observer, situated anywhere on Earth, and stationary, will report a constant speed of light.
Every observer, on Earth, and in motion, will report the speed of light as c + v.
This constitutes a conclusive experimental refutation of the foundational postulate of Special Relativity.
Comment
“being unable to believe is not a sin (at least YouCat says so). ”
>> Where, exactly, please?
YouCat is a disgrace and I am always interested to identify new and conclusive instances.
Thanks, Stacy! Very nice explanation.
Rick,
The phenomenon is well-explained by general relativity. The g_{00} element of the metric can be treated as the “speed”.
Special relativity works for what it was intended to work for: macroscopic objects in inertial reference frames. General relativity works for macroscopic objects in non-inertial reference frames. Quantum Electrodynamcis works for microscopic objects in inertial reference frames. Nothing works for microscopic objects in non-inertial reference frames.
The big bang and cosmic inflation “falsify” general relativity and quantum mechanics. This can be demonstrated on a mathematical level. The quantum field theory that incorporates the standard model actually predicts the energy at which it will fail. It’s part of the formalism.
Alas, Ace, Michelson Morley was interpreted in accordance with SR (GR lay years in the future).
It is of course unnecessary to point out that your definition:
“Special relativity works for what it was intended to work for: macroscopic objects in inertial reference frames.”
Refers to no objects anywhere in the universe
Of course, your formalism does nothing to refute the experimental falsification of the foundational postulate of SR.
The speed of light *is not constant in all reference frames*.
It is instead constant in one.
Earth’s frame.
GPS does not use a g_(00) element of the metric.
GPS uses a Sagnac correction which *physically* transforms the system so that “c” is constant only in the observer (Earth) frame.
GR falls apart, of course, on any scale larger than a stellar cluster. It is so wrong that “wrong” does;t really express the matter.
One must enter 99% of the universe’s mass in by hand, in the form of entities never observed, in order to bridge the astonishing 99% gap between theory and observation.
But you certainly know all this.
Rick,
YouCat question number 357, and refering to CCC 2127-2128. But remember, I’m using a portuguese version. It states that it is not IF someone can not believe in God, after trying or
IF someone does not know God.
Not very clear, humm? You’re right about that.
“Catholic: Am I a moral person? Answer: Yes, the church tells me I am, therefore I will do this action without questioning the moral implications of my action and assume the outcome is moral.”
I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. This isn’t catholic at all. We are suppose to examine our actions, use our conscience: One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.
I think it depends on the concept of morality you’re adopting. Being a moral person means that we are capable of discernement, of knowing the difference between right and wrong. It doesn’t follow that we can act perfectly all the time. If we were able to act perfectly all the time, we would be saints and the entire mistery of redemption would be useless. Even the original sin wouldn’t have happened.
In the sense I’m using it, Morality encompasses both moral and imoral actions.
Take a look at Moral entries on Stanford enciclopedia of Philosophy. They’re very good.
I need to take my bus now…
There’s a difference between moral actions (both good and bad actions, moral and immoral) and amoral action.
“One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.”
Agreed. This to me is morality for me.
“I think it depends on the concept of morality you’re adopting.”
Agreed. And this is where my problem lies: What concept of morality do Catholics adopt? Must it always include academia and perfection?
For myself, I like the golden rule. I can only understand the world by my own experiences and observations.
So why is Rick so angry at the arrogance of the Darwinist “metaphysical” world view, yet so arrogant about his own “metaphysical” findings himself? Why does Stacy forbid homosexuals to marry, yet allow herself to be married?
This is what I struggle with.
Why, that’s easy, Mjek.
Catholic metaphysics are logically consistent.
Darwinist metaphysics are absurd.
For example, Catholic metaphysics correctly see marriage as the unique, long term and stable union of the genders, from which union children commonly result, and within which union they are best nurtured.
The homosexual marriage advocate incorrectly sees marriage as essentially Friendship With Social Recognition for Benefits.
Easy.
If every question to a Catholic about morality is deferred to a historical quote, Church doctrine or a system of rewards and punishments that someone else created; how would a Catholic actually know if they are in fact a moral entity?
It seems, rather, that the shoe is on the other foot.
Since Catholic morality proceeds from God’s revelation, we know that morality is in fact something Someone else created.
What does the atheist propose as the source of morality?
“GPS does not use a g_(00) element of the metric.”
The g_{00} element of the metric in a rotating frame is the Sagnac effect. It’s (c^2 + w^2)^(1/2) = c + V.
The constant value of c can be declared so for any non-inertial reference frame. The earth is not special in this regard. After all, why not say that c = c’ – V, set c’ equal to whatever you like, and use that as the new reference frame?
General relativity accounts for Michelson Morley. Special relativity and general relativity both break down for any real object. They are incomplete theories. But they are good approximations for the scale they were intended to describe.
A ball rolling down a ramp can be described with good accuracy as a point object acted upon by gravity, using an inertial reference frame, with certain boundary conditions.
Ace:
“The constant value of c can be declared so for any non-inertial reference frame.”
>> Doubtless, anything can be declared. The question is whether it can be experimentally demonstrated.
“The earth is not special in this regard.”
>> Again, this has not been demonstrated.
After all, why not say that c = c’ – V, set c’ equal to whatever you like, and use that as the new reference frame?
Umm, maybe because if we set c’ to seventeen miles per hour, the planes would crash?
“After all, why not say that c = c’ – V, set c’ equal to whatever you like, and use that as the new reference frame?
Umm, maybe because if we set c’ to seventeen miles per hour, the planes would crash?”
Not at all. You just set V to compensate.
Choose a non-inertial reference frame, K (it can be the earth or any other non-inertial frame). Set velocity of light equal to c in that frame. For an object with rotation omega relative to K, v = c +/- V, where V = r x omega.
That’s it.
Rick,
It seems from my perspective, that in your transformation into a believer, you went from thinking, to exclusively learning. Not one thought after becoming a believer lead you away from Catholicism.
You chose a system that works for you and have only been learning how the system works from then.
So what about people whom the Catholic System doesn’t work? Since you defer your answer to someone else, how do you know you’re a moral person?
How do you qualify your decision to becoming a believer? If it’s because logic and reason, then a person who chooses another religion or system through their logic and reason; makes your beliefs no more valid.
And, as an abstract, Van Gogh wanted to be a Priest but failed. Instead chose to paint. Did he find God?
“It seems from my perspective, that in your transformation into a believer, you went from thinking, to exclusively learning. Not one thought after becoming a believer lead you away from Catholicism.”
>>Catholicism requires of me neither young earth creationism, or geocentrism, nor does it require of me a preference of Plato over Aristotle, of Popper over Lakatos, all of which which would seem, from my perspective, to indicate your observation is false.
I note that my perspective, in this case, would be more reliable, since after all I know what I think, and it is highly dubious whether you do.
“You chose a system that works for you and have only been learning how the system works from then.”
>> That would apply to everyone, whether they do so consciously or unconsciously.
“So what about people whom the Catholic System doesn’t work?”
>> I would expect they would either apostatize or decline baptism. However, since Catholicism is actually the True revelation of God, a third possibility emerges.
Perhaps the person who has concluded Catholicism doesn’t work “for them” will discover that the fault lies with them, and reconsider.
“Since you defer your answer to someone else, how do you know you’re a moral person?”
>> How could I “defer my answer to someone else”? Here I am giving you the answer.
The answer is that Truth necessarily consists in that which agrees with the Mind of God.
Since Catholicism is the actually True revelation of God to man, present as a continuation in this world of the historical fact of the Resurrection of Christ, it follows that *my answer* is, one is moral to the extent one’s conscience is formed, and directs one’s actions, in accordance with the revelation of God (also accessible to the conscience directly, via reason, as “natural law”).
“How do you qualify your decision to becoming a believer?”
>> Simple. I bet my eternal soul on it. That’s all the qualification a human being can present.
“If it’s because logic and reason, then a person who chooses another religion or system through their logic and reason; makes your beliefs no more valid.”
>> Faith is above reason. All religions get that part. Right reason is never in conflict with True Faith. That is the special corollary which renders Catholicism that most reasonable of all faiths.
“And, as an abstract, Van Gogh wanted to be a Priest but failed. Instead chose to paint. Did he find God?”
>> Not all are called to the priesthood. As to Van Gogh’s spiritual condition at death?
God knows.
^^^ I enjoyed that immensely Rick. You answer questions so well. No wasting words either.
“Simple. I bet my eternal soul on it.”
I need a “like” button like Facebook has.
Ace:
But this does not seem to work.
If we assign c’ as 17 miles per hour, how do we calculate omega for Earth?
We can’t.
We have nothing- no reference- by which to calculate omega, since our measuring rod c’ is orders of magnitude wrong.
How do we calculate v, if c’= 17 miles per hour?
What actual physical device could do the measuring of “v”, in a world where c’= 17 miles per hour?
I have some questions for you on Sagnac but I would appreciate seeing how you would calculate this.
“That would apply to everyone, whether they do so consciously or unconsciously.”
Yes, this is what I find with humans. I speak with Mormons and Atheists and Liberals and Conservatives and everything in between that are absolutely certain in what they believe, and no one can convince them otherwise.
How are you any different? Have you ever considered that there is something much bigger going on, which Catholicism only plays a small role in?
“Simple. I bet my eternal soul on it. That’s all the qualification a human being can present.”
I assume you mean Pascal’s Wager. You are holding onto a lottery ticket in hopes of a big pay off at the end.
“How are you any different?”
>> I do not confuse Faith with conservatism or liberalism or libertarianism, in the first place.
I am different from the Mormon, in that I have examined, directly, Joseph Smith’s “inspired version” of the Old Testament Scriptures against the Masoretic text, and I have noticed that Joseph Smith’s “inspired version” is a rewrite.
Game over.
Next.
I love the Mormons, though. Great people. Won Prop 8 for us in Cali.
But the Mormon religion is neck and neck with Scientology for the title of Religion Most Easily Shown To Be False.
Falsehood, by the way, has certainly never been an obstacle to occasional widespread acceptance in either of these two fields: religion and science.
I did not come to faith via Pascal’s wager.
My bet was based on very much greater certainty than his.
But as I say, Faith is above reason, though never in conflict with right reason.
If you find another religion which teaches that, may I say that you have found a much-better-than-average religion.
If you find the Catholic Church and the sacrament of baptism, you have found something infinitely better still.
You have found the spiritual *power* of Jesus Christ.
“Game over.”
How is it that I can see all the flaws in Mormonism, Scientology, Atheism as you, but also see the equal number of flaws in Catholicism that you cannot?
At some point, you and another person both started out; one chose Mormonism, the other chose Catholicism. I don’t see the difference.
If I were to choose a religion, I would give up my free will, and from what I can see, the ability to think for myself
The difference between us is that I have identified a crucial, conclusive flaw in Mormonism.
You have not identified any such crucial flaw in Catholicism.
You see a great many things which you are not able to objectively demonstrate, Mjeck, which is not at all unusual, since rigorous thinking is not taught in schools today, alas.
May I say that I respect very much the seriousness with which you take the obligation of conscience.
One should not lightly bind one’s conscience.
Conscience, after all, is the distinguishing moral characteristic of the human species.
If conscience did not exist, it were impossible for God to justly condemn the wicked to Hell.
In the end, your open mind, like your open mouth, will have to close upon something, or starve.
I suggest with all the meagre powers of persuasion at my disposal, that you seriously consider closing it upon Catholicism.
Mjeck,
Atheism says free will is an illusion.
I am able to see the beauty of Catholicism as well as the flaws. As I’ve said to Stacy before, my favorite writings are, The Desert Fathers, The Cloud of Unknowing, and Dante to name a few, …and without mentioning any artists.
If I am able to see the flaws and beauty of Catholicism, then I am able to do something you are not.
For me personally, and my experiences, the system of Catholicism does not allow for direct communication with God
“Atheism says free will is an illusion.”
I would agree with this statement. Rick is unable to NOT be a Catholic. That would be a quick proof for me.
How remarkable it is that Mjek, who knows me not at all, considers it impossible for me to fall from faith.
How I wish this were true.
It isn’t.
Which is why Christ has instituted the sacrament of penance.
I frequent it far more often than a good man should, and far less often than I should.
But Mjeck,
If you have no free will, then you have no ability to reason and form conclusions. You have no more control over your actions than a water molecule has when it decides to go be part of a cloud.
And if that’s the case, why are you here arguing? Should we argue with determinate clumps of molecules?
Stacy,
If every discussion ends with Rick concluding that Catholicism is true, no matter what he is faced with, is he able to reason and form conclusions? Is he a moral person?
To consider some of the things you are suggesting, Stacy, is too much for people to handle.
Mjeck:
All we can do is examine the teachings of the catholic Church, and examine whether or not they can be shown to be *false*.
So far you have not attempted, much less accomplished, this.
You simply assume, perhaps as the consequence of a bit of underdone potato, or something, that it *must* teach falsehood.
Come, then.
Show us the false teaching.
You should worry about your conclusions, and let Rick worry about his.
“If we assign c’ as 17 miles per hour, how do we calculate omega for Earth?”
What are you using as your reference frame? If you use a particular part of the earth surface as your reference frame, then omega for that part of the earth will be zero.
Consider an inertial reference frame, K_0, centered at the earth’s center of mass. In this reference frame, omega for the earth is approximately omega_e = 0.26 radians per minute. Consider a satellite moving around the earth at omega_s = 1 radian per minute w.r.t. K_0. In the non-inertial reference frame, K, where the earth’s rotation is omega = 0, the satellite is at omega_s = 0.74 radians per minute. In the non-inertial reference frame of the satellite, K’, the satellite is has the value of omega_s = 0.
For K_0, g_{00} = c^2
For K, g_{00} = c^2 – (0.74 rad/min)^2 r^2
For K’, g_{00} = c^2 – (1 rad/min)^2 r^2
If we place the origin for each coordinate system at the earth’s center of mass, then the measured speed of light, v_c is:
For K_0, v_c = 299792458 m/s
For K, v_c = 299792448 m/s
For K’, v_c = 299792439 m/s
Any of these can be considered the “value of c in the absolute reference frame” and the other values of v_c can be calculated from that one.
The Sagnac effect does not require a preferred reference frame.
Special relativity requires that the speed of light, c, be constant in all inertial reference frames. Since the Sagnac effect involves non-inertial reference frames, general relativity is necessary.
Rick,
I cannot convince or talk you out of anything. Only you can do that. If you applied your rigorous expectations to Catholicism as to everything else, you’d be an agnostic by the end of the day.
I’ve never been able to talk a Mormon out of his beliefs either.
All the best, then, Mjeck.
I am honestly puzzled, Mjeck, why you think that I did not subject Catholicism to exactly as rigorous a test as I subject Darwinism.
The truth is I subjected Catholicism to a much more rigorous test.
Fifteen years, thirteen of them having been spent mostly in the company of evangelicals who could not agree, any two of them, on the meaning of this or that passage of Scripture, but *all of whom could agree on one thing*- they were all ex-Catholics.
That poor Jesuit up in Santa Barbara who used to meet with me every Saturday, in order to undergo my bludgeoning (dear God please remember this kind and patient priest!)……..
Look, mjeck, I took fifteen years and I made a decision and I went all in and so far you certainly have given me not the slightest quiver of a reason to suspect that the decision I took was the wrong one.
What really seems to bother you, from my viewpoint, is the notion that there could actually exist, in this world, a direct, physically-existent Sign of an actual Revelation from God.
If you reject this possibility out of hand, you might try Buddhism.
Or String Theory.
Pretty thin gruel if you ask me……
Ace, I thank you for a very complete exposition of the calculation, but I notice that it renders c at approximately 299,792,458 m/s.
My question was how one could calculate any of these values given c’ of approximately seventeen miles per hour?
It does not appear that we could even observe rotations or relative motions of satellites in the radians-per-minute range, given c’= 17 miles per hour.
So I still do not think this works, where you say:
““After all, why not say that c = c’ – V, set c’ equal to whatever you like, and use that as the new reference frame?”
I mean, of course you can move around the mathematical symbols, but that is not the question I am asking.
But I do have, if you are willing, some questions I would like to ask concerning Sagnac wrt GR (thank you for acknowledging that Sagnac contradicts SR- it is more important than you admit, by the way, to acknowledge that Einstein’s initial SR interpretation of Michelson Morley was wrong).
First off, you say:
“The Sagnac effect does not require a preferred reference frame.”
However, the author of the experiment, Sagnac himself, disagrees with you.
He states:
“It has been very easy for me to find at the outset the evidence for the ether by causing a small optical circuit to rotate. A frequency N of 2 revolutions per second (successively in each direction) has furnished me a degree of relative whirling of the ether of 4πN or 25 radians per second. A uniform clockwise rotation of the interferograph produces, relatively, a counter-clockwise ether wind….The distance between the fringes is here from 0.5 to 1 millimeter….The observed interference effect is clearly the optical whirling effect due to the movement of the system in relation to the ether and directly manifests the existence of the ether, supporting necessarily the light waves of Huygens and of Fresnel.”
You say, if I understand you correctly, that the Sagnac effect is caused by acceleration and, thus, is properly handled by the General Theory of Relativity.
I reproduce a few comments by Dr. Robert Bennett, in his chapter concerning the Sagnac effect from “Galileo Was Wrong”:
“The latest new Global Positioning System satellites are capable of inter-satellite tracking, which verifies the Sagnac effect. But the Sagnac effect should not exist in a freely falling frame without gravity…..
“All high precision GPS applications correct for the Sagnac effect, indicating that the speed of light is not always constant to the moving observer. The Sagnac effect in the GPS operations are in conflict with relativity theory. GPS computations locate moving receivers by including the v ± c Galilean model.”
I wonder if you would respond to these points; that Sagnac interpreted his experiment as establishing a preferred frame, and that GPS does not work without the equivalent of a Galilean transformation c +/- v for a moving receiver.
“My question was how one could calculate any of these values given c’ of approximately seventeen miles per hour?”
Consider an isolated planet or star. Treat K_0 as the inertial reference frame with the origin at the center of mass. Imagine a satellite orbiting with a frequency of 0.01667 Hz, at a distance of approximately 0.12023922432118059 AU from the coordinate origin.
Consider a non-inertial coordinate system, K, also at the center of mass, in which the satellite has a frequency of zero. Treating the g_{00} term as the measurable v_c:
In K_0, v_c = c.
In K, v_c ~ 8.5 m/s ~ 19 mph.
All other quantities can be calculated from this reference frame in a way that is equivalent with any other reference frame.
Ace:
Thanks, I understand that one can move the mathematical symbols about to achieve an equals sign in the middle.
My problem with your example is that, in reality, the satellite would never be able to communicate over an approximately 0.12023922432118059 AU distance, its approximately 0.01667 Hz orbital cycle, given the time it would take for it to communicate over that 0.12023922432118059 AU distance, at 17 miles per hour.
0.12023922432118059 AU=11,176,934.162 miles.
11,176,934.162 miles divided by 17= ……well.
It would take about 657, 414 hours for each leg of communication between the satellite and the origin of the coordinate system.
About seventy five years.
Here is a very interesting thing, it seems to me.
You can use mathematics to create equals signs in between assumptions that, upon examination, cannot possibly have any relationship to a physical reality.
It is exactly this point that renders your discussion with Robert, concerning the Sagnac effect and its mathematical treatment in GR, so interesting.
“The author of the experiment, Sagnac himself, disagrees with you.”
Remember what I said about names and titles?
“The latest new Global Positioning System satellites are capable of inter-satellite tracking, which verifies the Sagnac effect. But the Sagnac effect should not exist in a freely falling frame without gravity… All high precision GPS applications correct for the Sagnac effect, indicating that the speed of light is not always constant to the moving observer.”
All of this is essentially correct, as I understand things.
Alternate speeds of light only appear in a non-inertial frame of reference where the speed of light is calculated non-locally. Depending on the desired precision, a distance of one meter or less could qualify as non-local. In this case, the rotating system is the one at which a certain patch of earth is treated as stationary, and the speed of light is being calculated with the coordinate origin either on the patch of earth or on the satellite. The separation between the two points is non-local.
There is no reason I can think of, other than a preference for inertial reference frames, to say that our value for c is preferred over other values, any more than an inertial frame of reference is preferred to a non-inertial frame of reference.
“All high precision GPS applications correct for the Sagnac effect, indicating that the speed of light is not always constant to the moving observer.”
This final statement is especially correct. The speed of light is not always the same between an inertial reference frame and an accelerating reference frame, or between two different accelerating reference frames.
The simplest example of v_c being different in different reference frames is that of the stars traveling around the earth. Proxima Centauri is 4 light-years away from us. It travels at about 200,000 times c; the speed of light from its surface clearly is not the same as c in this reference frame. From an inertial reference frame near Centauri A, Centauri B has a velocity of ~0.5 km/s, and c has the velocity of ~3 x 10^5 km/s.
““The author of the experiment, Sagnac himself, disagrees with you.”
Remember what I said about names and titles?”
>> Umm, no. But I must say that I do not in all honesty consider this an adequate response to what Sagnac himself said, about the experiment that he himself designed, conducted, and published in the literature.
The discoverer, who made a true discovery, something the human species did not know before, but knows now- *thanks to one mind, that of Georges Sagnac*- is somehow irrelevant to a consideration of the meaning of his discovery?
The eerie observed correlation between mathematical symmetry and physical reality is a two-edged sword.
Symmetrical mathematics often provide an excellent tool by which to express physical principles.
But symmetrical mathematics can express anything with an equals sign in the middle.
Why, one could, if allowed to follow this assumed correlation to an unjustified extreme, wind up imaging that, since math can give us 10^500 equals signs in the middle of 10^500 solutions to a given set of assumptions…………..
There must be 10^500 universes out there somewhere.
After all, the math says so.
“Proxima Centauri is 4 light-years away from us. It travels at about 200,000 times c; the speed of light from its surface clearly is not the same as c in this reference frame. From an inertial reference frame near Centauri A, Centauri B has a velocity of ~0.5 km/s, and c has the velocity of ~3 x 10^5 km/s.”
>> Ace, I have to say that one thing I really appreciate about you is that you have adopted the logical consequences of Relativity with eyes wide open, and you do not advance typical and illogical assumptions like “how could Proxima travel 200,000 times c?”
In Relativity 200,000 times c is, as you correctly note, simply the consequence of a choice of reference frame.
In reality, of course, we know that the light speed on Proxima is not 200,000 times different than it is here on Earth.
We know, instead, that either the Earth is rotating on its axis, or the firmament (space, ether) is rotating once per day around Earth.
If Relativity is true, there is no way to determine the difference.
In fact, as you show, if Relativity is true, there is no difference, other than a choice of reference frame for mathematical convenience.
I have very much enjoyed our discussion, and especially am enjoying yours with Robert.
Starting Monday I will have very limited time to contribute, but I will be following with great interest.
One final point:
The Sagnac effect, as I understand it, occurs in both rotating and non-rotating reference frames.
In a non-rotating reference frame, the Sagnac effect is a result of different transit lengths (L’ = L +/- Vt). In a rotating reference frame, the lengths are equal (L’ = L), but the effect is a result of different velocities of light (c’ = c +/- V).
“The Sagnac effect, as I understand it, occurs in both rotating and non-rotating reference frames.”
>> As Robert shows below, this is a profoundly important argument *against* your initial claim that Sagnac is not relevant under SR.
SR should be able to deal with Sagnac, in a freely falling frame with no gravity.
But it can’t.
And again, Georges Sagnac himself understood his own experiment to demonstrate the existence of a property of space which was *physically* impeding the transmission of the light waves.
This question of a “substance” of space is a crucial one, since it represents a direct contradiction between quantum observation and Relativity theory.
Rick,
Because the bible can also be read as a bronze age book and be understood with far more clarity. Because I need to believe in talking snakes and donkey’s. Because you do not have the original manuscripts of the gospel. Because I have to believe in an imaginary disease, sin, and an imaginary cure, salvation. Because there are Catholics, Baptists, Jehovah Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Orthodox, and on and on and on, who all claim to have the absolute truth. Why would truth be muddled with so much confusion? Christianity isn’t even the same today as it was 500, 1000 or 2000 years ago, nor is our concept of Hell.
Your decisions in life are based on your environment and your genetics. If you were born in a Muslim country, you would not even be debating the pros and cons of Catholicism before deciding, you’d have several wives and accept that bacon is illegal by divine ordinance.
Let me ask you this: If you had two children, and you put your 9yo in charge of your 4yo while you were gone, and in the kitchen there was a jar of cookies, and you tell both of them not to touch any cookies while you’re gone; then, after you leave, the 9yo convinces the 4yo that if it ate a cookie, nothing bad would happen (or that she’d get special powers, or whatever). …so the 4yo eats a cookie; and when you return, you banish your 4yo from the house.
Sound absurd? This is God’s logic in the genesis story of the snake, eve and the apple. A jealous, vengeful, petty God; who is all throughout the Old Testament, with genocide, infanticide… He comes across as a cruel King of antiquity.
This is a bronze age book, of people trying to explain their existence and maintain survival in an environment of “My God is stronger than your God, and so to prove it, I’m going to smash you over the head and take your women.”
The problem with organized religion, is that it always provides an answer, so that you never find a cull-de-sac or loose end that finds you spit out from the system. Soon, you’ll accept any answer, no matter how absurd.
If I were God, It wouldn’t take me more than an afternoon to think of a 1000 better ways to deal with humans and existence.
“Because the bible can also be read as a bronze age book and be understood with far more clarity.”
>> Your opinion. In reality, reading it as a bronze age book fails to account for its continued ability to withstand, in its creation account, in its historical aspects, and crucially in its prophetic contents, the combined onslaught of four centuries of Enlightenment rationalist attempts to debunk it.
“Because I need to believe in talking snakes and donkey’s.”
>> God is able to employ talking snakes and donkeys. God is even able to employ dark matter and dark energy. The difference is, no one has ever reported seeing dark matter or dark energy.
Please, please try and resist the temptation to confuse empty space with dark matter, as you have done in your “filaments” link. It is embarrassing.
Science does not consist in noticing a galactic formation which cannot be explained under current gravitational theories, and then simply ascribing a property (mass) to the empty space, so that the impossible formation becomes possible.
“Because you do not have the original manuscripts of the gospel.”
>> Neither do we have the original manuscript of Caesar’s “Gallic Wars”.
But you accept that Caesar fought them, on the basis of exactly 10 early Greek copies of the manuscript.
Then you reject the testimony of the Gospels, for which we have over 4,000 Greek manuscripts. along with 13,000 copies of portions of the New Testament in Greek!
You are floundering here, Mjeck.
You are clearly not assessing the evidence with any remote logical detachment.
I wish you well.
Mjeck,
I’ve never heard an atheist articulate Catholic doctrine correctly. It stuns me how people who don’t even know what they are rejecting do so with such confidence.
You don’t want to accept Catholic doctrine, so instead of actually figuring out what it is, you make up something silly so it’s easy to reject.
I challenge you to do better.
First learn what Catholic doctrine IS, then decided whether you accept it or not. Like Rick did. Like so many converts I know did. But first you have to make an act of the will to try to learn the truth. If you never try, you’ll never know, and it’ll always be easy to reject.
But you won’t have the satisfaction of knowing you ever really tried.
“First, the only way to convince me of something is to first earn my trust. It doesn’t make any sense to try to consider the arguments of an untrustworthy person. I don’t trust anyone who calls for ridicule of Catholics and Catholic beliefs. That’s like asking me to trust someone to tell me the truth after they ridicule my mother. Also, I have read some of his writing, and he lacks an understanding of what science actually is and is not.”
So–you criticize an atheist for not learning about catholicism but you are free to dismiss the opinion of anyone whom you don’t trust? In other words–refusing to learn about another’s point of view.
The hypocricy is stunning, but not at all surprising.
I would also like to add that Buddhism is not thin gruel. The first principle of Buddhism (I am not a buddhist), is that this life leads to suffering. It is easy from there to conclude: Ease the suffering of others, whenever possible.
That is a beautiful way to live, and would put anyone in the running for sainthood.
Stacy,
I can only know Catholicism by what is said on this blog. I start with the question: Are Catholic’s moral?
Since Rick saddles up with Mormons, a group he considers false and absurd, to defeat a second group who is asking for the same basic human rights that Catholic’s enjoy (prop 8), it raises another question: Is Rick capable of a moral act, if he believes that an ends justifies the means? Does he just want to be right, no matter what the cost?
Again, Mjek.
As a Catholic, we believe that morality has a source- God, the Creator.
It is His universe.
Since He is not some irrational pagan deity, we expect that what He tells us will be found to agree with the actual physical principles we can discover by reason, on our own.
For example, we notice that our species is constituted in two complementary genders, and both are necessary to procreate.
This obvious fact has resulted, logically enough, in the world-wide, history-spanning spread of a thing called “marriage”, which in every place and time and culture and religion, has consisted essentially in the long term, stable union of the genders, so that children have the best chance of being born into a family with a mother and a father.
Your worldview- astonishingly irrational- attempts to remove this constitutive element of marriage, and redefine it as, essentially, friendship with benefits. It attempts to write gender out of the reality of marriage.
This is beyond merely absurd- it is actually insane.
Now no possibility exists that such a mind-bending bit of irrationality is going to persuade a freely-consulted electorate (thirty three straight electoral defeats of the pseudo-marriage case in thirty three free and fair elections, where both sides were able to make their cases directly to the voters proves *that*)….
You respond by asserting what you cannot demonstrate; that is, that a “civil right” is somehow being violated.
What civil right?
It does not proceed from God.
It does not proceed from biology.
It does not proceed from law.
It does not proceed from custom.
It proceeds from your hormones.
Ace:
Yes, the Sagnac Effect (SE) occurs in both rotational and non-rotational. Ives showed this in 1938 by his hexagonal platform. But in order to explain SE in the non-rotational frame, you are using a Lorentz boost. In other words, acceleration is being handled in the Special Theory by successive infinitesimal Lorentz transformations (which also produce a Thomas precession because successive Lorentz transformations combine to form a single Lorentz transformation plus a coordinate rotation). But if the same logic is applied to the Sagnac experiment, no Sagnac effect should be seen, since the detector, due to the Lorentz boost, is always in an instantaneous inertial frame (with isotropic light speed), and thus the speed of light arriving at the detector from both directions ought to be the same at all times.
I submit to you that it is at best mere convenience and at worst invalid to introduce these Lorentz boosts to keep the speed of light isotropic with respect to the Sagnac detector. The empirical evidence of the Sagnac effect on GPS signals in transit proves that the Special Theory does not keep the light speed isotropic relative to the moving receiver.
“The empirical evidence of the Sagnac effect on GPS signals in transit proves that the Special Theory does not keep the light speed isotropic relative to the moving receiver.”
The Sagnac effect requires rotational acceleration. In general, I don’t expect the speed of light to be the the same between one non-inertial reference frame (satellite at rest) and another (earth at rest).
This is no problem for General Relativity.
Stacy, I’m unable to post. Don’t know what’s going on.
Mjeck, try reading Luigi Giussani books: The religion sense; At the origin of the Christian claim and Why the Church?. Those books are amazing.
My last suggestion.
It’s The religious sense.
Ana,
Sorry, I don’t know what happened.
Ace, your comments keep going to spam jail, but I have no idea why. I’ll keep an eye out and release them quickly if it happens again. Apologies!
Stacy,
The comments going to spam is my own fault. It is due to my attempting to delete a couple of comments that I thought were redundant.
It shouldn’t happen again. Sorry.
Ace, the funny thing about GTR in regards to the Sagnac effect is that you get as many opinions as you do theorizers. GTR advocate E. J. Post says about Sagnac: “The search for a physically meaningful transformation for rotation is not aided in any way whatever by the principle of general space-time covariance, nor is it true that the space-time theory of gravitation plays any direct role in establishing physically correct transformations.”
Be that as it may, Ashtekar and Magnon, like you, say that the Sagnac effect is caused by acceleration, but the problem is they have the chicken and the egg problem since they produce the Sagnac effect from rotation precisely because they don’t get an isotropic speed of light relative to the receiver at all times.
In other words, how can they (or you) admit to anisotropy of light speed in the Sagnac effect and then claim that this is due to acceleration of a rotating frame? You are assuming that the Sagnac effect is limited to acceleration, but earlier you admitted the Sagnac effect is not limited to rotating frames, and thus not limited to acceleration.
Robert,
The anisotropy of the speed of light only appears in the non-inertial frame, at least according to Landau and Lifshitz. According to them, when you start with an inertial reference frame, c’ = c and it’s the length that changes, L’ = L – Vt. I don’t know if or how that works out, but that’s what they say about it.
I just go with what works and makes sense. I can apply a simple metric, take the g_{00} component, and I get an answer that agrees with experiment, so I’m happy.
“how can they (or you) admit to anisotropy of light speed in the Sagnac effect and then claim that this is due to acceleration of a rotating frame?”
The Sagnac effect would always be limited to a non-inertial reference frame if we are talking about GPS corrections, because GPS would treat the earth or satellite as non-rotating, and the reference frame where the earth or satellite does not rotate is non-inertial.
Ace: The anisotropy of the speed of light only appears in the non-inertial frame, at least according to Landau and Lifshitz. According to them, when you start with an inertial reference frame, c’ = c and it’s the length that changes, L’ = L – Vt. I don’t know if or how that works out, but that’s what they say about it.
RS: But Ace, that’s exactly the problem. The Lorentz transform was created to shorten the length so c could be isotropic in an inertial frame. That’s like saying that a trip from NY to LA is 3000 miles but I only have enough gas for 2900, so I’ll shorten the length from NY to LA to compensate. (A non-inertial frame wouldn’t use a Lorentz transform, so that issue is moot).
Ace: I just go with what works and makes sense. I can apply a simple metric, take the g_{00} component, and I get an answer that agrees with experiment, so I’m happy.
RS: I hope you stay happy
But the happiness may be superficial if you have to apply a Lorentz boost to the 00 component to keep c isotropic. The math can be adjusted to look good with fudge factors, but the math may not represent the reality, at all. If, as Post implied, there is something intrinsic about space itself that causes the Sagnac effect, I’d feel a lot more comfortable with such a physical cause than having to depend on a mathematical boost.
Ace: The Sagnac effect would always be limited to a non-inertial reference frame if we are talking about GPS corrections, because GPS would treat the earth or satellite as non-rotating, and the reference frame where the earth or satellite does not rotate is non-inertial.
RS: I challenge that, Ace. I don’t know of any stipulation of the Sagnac effect that limits it to a non-inertial frame. Moreover, GPS clocks are set based on the earth being the inertial frame, and then the Lorentz transform is used to compensate for the 50 nanosecond delay between receding and advancing satellites. The way it works out is, the Sagnac effect will appear at any time the detector or clock moves in relation to the chosen inertial frame.
Thanks Ana, that actually sounds like an interesting read
Rick,
“God is able to employ talking snakes and donkeys.”
This is how I know you are no more rational than a Mormon or Scientologist. This is how I know you’ll accept anything you’re told.
“As a Catholic, we believe that morality has a source- God, the Creator.”
So the end justifies the means?
“God is able to employ talking snakes and donkeys.”
This is how I know you are no more rational than a Mormon or Scientologist.”
>> Actually, it were irrational to hold that God created the Universe and somehow could not employ talking donkeys or snakes.
You just don;t think logically.
You think based on what seems plausible to you, which is about as far away from thinking logically as it gets.
“As a Catholic, we believe that morality has a source- God, the Creator.”
So the end justifies the means?
>> See what I mean? This does not follow at all. There is no logical connection at all between the premise “Morality has a source”, and your utterly out-of-left-field conclusion “So the end justifies the means”.
There just isn’t any connection at all between the two statements.
“This is how I know you’ll accept anything you’re told.”
>> Exactly. This is exactly how you “know” that.
Now. What you ignored was an actual- as opposed to hysterical- example of reasoning from Catholic moral principles, in the case of marriage.
You cannot refute it, so you ignore it.
And respond with a museum quality specimen of straw man argumentation, featuring a museum-quality specimen of a non-sequitir.
As has been evident for a very long time, Mjeck, you do not believe in reason- or, to be more precise, you do not think logically.
This is why you cannot assess theology, or metaphysics, or science, or even something as foundational as marriage, on any grounds but those of foot-stomping hysteria.
Now don’t get me wrong- foot-stomping hysteria can go a very long way indeed in a confused and disoriented civilization like this one.
As you have no doubt learned.
“Actually, it were irrational to hold that God created the Universe and somehow could not employ talking donkeys or snakes.”
I see …so when you cannot explain something rationally, then, it’s magic! A snake magically changed his jaw and vocal chords, lips, tongue and spoke. Hey, why not? It says so in the bible and the bible says the bible is true!
What is the difference between you, a scientologist and a Mormon? Nothing. You all start with, 1. Theological Data. You just end with wildly different speculative answers.
“There just isn’t any connection at all between the two statements.”
Maybe you missed my question regarding your unholy union with Mormons. I was just wondering if that is how your world works.
Does the end justify the means? You cannot answer either yes or no, because that is Checkmate for you, my friend. Answering yes means your world view is not moral. Answering No means your actions were not moral.
If we are to define Marriage, then it should be polygamy, based on your Patriarch’s, and selling your daughter to secure cattle and property. We’ve already changed the definition of Marriage, sorry.
“I see …so when you cannot explain something rationally, then, it’s magic!”
>> Since God created the Universe by supernatural means, the detractor will conflate “magic” with “supernatural”, and consider himself to have somehow scored a point thereby.
In reality, all that has been accomplished is to confirm the illogic that is always present in any world view which attempts to limit itself to naturalism.
After all, no thing can be the cause of its own existence, and therefore that which exists in the natural order *must* have had a super-natural cause.
The irrational call this magic.
The rational call this God.
“A snake magically changed his jaw and vocal chords, lips, tongue and spoke. Hey, why not? It says so in the bible and the bible says the bible is true!”
>> The Bible says nothing about vocal cords, lips, tongue, nut of course these could as easily have been reshaped- after all, it is God we are talking about, and your rejection of the testimony is based on two logical errors:
1. The inductive fallacy (“I have never seen snakes talk therefore they cannot talk”)
2. There can be no supernatural intervention into the natural order (an obvious fallacy, since the supernatural order is required to bring the natural order into existence in the first place).
“Maybe you missed my question regarding your unholy union with Mormons”
>> Maybe you missed my answer to your unholy question
“I was just wondering if that is how your world works.”
>> An important difference between us is that I have a worldview to explain.
You have outrage.
“Does the end justify the means? You cannot answer either yes or no, because that is Checkmate for you, my friend.”
>> The question was based upon a logical fallacy, the fallacy of the excluded middle.
It were far more important to do you the service of pointing out your logical error, than to provide you with the completely obvious answer, accessible to anyone who reads the Catechism of the Catholic Church (I highly recommend you do this, it will preserve you from ever so many future blunders):
“1753 A good intention (for example, that of helping one’s neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just. The end does not justify the means.”
Some “checkmate”.
“Answering yes means your world view is not moral.”
>> We answer no.
“Answering No means your actions were not moral.”
>> How so? We have preserved marriage against an irrational assault, which demands to redefine it against the testimony of Scripture, of Reason, of biology, of law, of history, and of custom.
This would seem to be a very moral thing to do, especially since your irrational claim that a “civil right” is being denied, has never been supported by you in any way at all.
“If we are to define Marriage, then it should be polygamy, based on your Patriarch’s, and selling your daughter to secure cattle and property. We’ve already changed the definition of Marriage, sorry.”
>> Again, acquiring at least a basic knowledge of what we actually hold would assist you in dramatically curtailing the number and extent of your blunders here:
“Have ye not read, that he who made man from the beginning, Made them male and female? And he said: [5] For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh.
[6] Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”
Rick,
I don’t have outrage. You are the one that has to live in a world that believes in Evolution, Heliocentrism, and (very soon) Gay Marriage.
Science has doubled everyone’s life expectancy in the last 100 years. If you’re over 40yo, Rick, you’re living by “metaphysical” science, not by God or the Church.
You are not any more moral than a Mormon or an Atheist or a guy who knows as much about baseball statistics as you do about Catholicism. You have interesting, quirky ideas about our reality, I would love to learn about them; unfortunately, you attach a moral superiority.
BTW, you better not use Google anymore. They just started a worldwide campaign to promote gay marriage.
“You have interesting, quirky ideas about our reality,”
>> Yes, but the question remains, are they anywhere near quirky *enough*?
“I would love to learn about them; unfortunately, you attach a moral superiority.”
>> That’s OK Mjeck, come on back when you grasp that truth involves a moral superiority over falsehood, and anyone who does;t believe their ideas are true is certainly neither interesting nor quirky enough to bother about.
“BTW, you better not use Google anymore. They just started a worldwide campaign to promote gay marriage.”
>> They never see a nickel from me to begin with, so I am happy to oppose them on their own dime.
It was nice getting to know you, Mjeck.
Maybe we will pick it up at a later date.
“You are the one that has to live in a world that believes in Evolution, Heliocentrism, and (very soon) Gay Marriage.”
>> But that is the exact function of the Catholic Church in the world- to be a Sign of contradiction to the spirit of the age.
Heck, if things break just the right way I might even luck out and get arrested, tried for antisocial tendencies (or some cooked up substitute), and who knows?
Maybe I can be given a choice between recantation and a reeducation camp?
I am sure that would warm the cockles of the hearts of the enemies of God, of Reason, of Biology, of Law, of History, and of immemorial custom, known as “Gay Marriage” activists.
I doubt I deserve the actual grace of martyrdom, but who knows?
Anyway, all in good time.
As for me, I intend to do my utmost to politically roll you guysso unforgettably this November that you will be a decade just trying to figure out what hit you.
Cheers!
I’m way late in weighing in on the critical question that Rick posed.
I’m in complete agreement with Rick and Stacy that Bellarmine’s statement in 1633 (declaring geocentrism a matter of faith (de fide)) is of utmost importance.
Stacy you asked what I thought.
First, I have read Bellarmine’s letters to Fr. Foscarini in which Bellarmine stated that what he was specifically condemning was the assertion of heliocentrism as a proven position rather than a hypothesis.
Bellarmine’s intent as I have understood it was to find that Galileo’s results did not prove the reality of the thing itself, but merely “saved the hypothesis”. This is as far as science can go. It can model phenomena mathematically to save the hypothesis but cannot dictate the nature of reality.
With Bellarmine, I can and do believe that the mathematics of heliocentrism fit the data. But I believe it is not within the ambit of science to construct an image of the universe. This is what Bellarmine — in my opinion — intended in his condemnation.
I was also strongly influenced by Pierre Duhem who affirms that the enterprise of science is restricted to assigning quantities to entities and their properties and using mathematics, science is a descriptive enterprise, not a privileged view into what is real.
I don’t believe that the sticks and balls used by schoolkids to make models of molecules exhaust the exhaust the reality of any particular molecule. These models are a tool, like mathematics are a tool. They must not lead the scientist to form an overly concrete image of how things hang together, of the real. Similarly, the equations of modern astrophysics must not cause a scientist to imagine what the universe must look like from God’s perspective — and then to claim that they possess privileged insight into reality by virtue of the equations.
I think I’m not too far away from your position Rick, and I don’t think it’s a semantic issue either. I believe there is a gap the size of the Grand Canyon between a scientific model and the God’s eye reality.
Hi Jeff:
Oh, boy.
This is the most interesting topic to emerge on this thread yet, and I won;t be able to pursue it in any depth due to a monster week coming up.
First, St. Bellarmine’s censure was in 1615, and I would agree with you in the main, that he essentially rejected the notion that Galileo had provided any actually scientific proof for his claims.
He did leave the door open, in theory at least, to the possibility that such a proof might be forthcoming, but a very careful reading of his argument leads me to conclude that this was essentially a “sop” to Galileo, an encouragement to him to acknowledge the distinct domains of knowledge, rather than trying to assert a superior basis for his theorizing.
As important as this is, it is nothing compared to the 1633 formal condemnation of Galileo by the Holy Office.
This latter act is an authentic act of the magisterium, and it has never been reversed to this day.
Here we have something quite different.
Here we have a condemnation of the heliocentric system as *formally heretical*, precisely *because* it contradicted the infallible teaching of Scripture, as unanimously interpreted by the Fathers (what we today would call “infallible under the ordinary magisterium”.
This is quite significant, and it was the crucial point that led me to re-examine the entire question from the standpoint that this was no mere disagreement over evidence- this was a formal act of the authentic magisterium binding and loosing based upon the Faith.
Now.
This is one of the most unusual and anomalous situations in the entire history of the Church (it is my personal opinion, and nothing more than that, that the decline of the persuasive power and internal logical consistency of the magisterium can conveniently be traced to the decision of the Church, in the 19th century, to essentially abandon this teaching, and ultimately directly contradict it, by teaching at a lower level of authority inJP II’s famous address to the Pontifical Academy of Science that *this was not a matter of Faith at all*, and that “theologians” (unidentified) had actually been in error in condemning Galileo.
It is certain that JPII’s speech does not involve any exercise of infallibility, and it involves the lowest level of magisterial authority (an allocation addressed not to the Church, but to a group of scientists).
It is also certain that the magisterium in 1633 *did* assert that heliocentrism involved a contradiction of *de Fide*, specifically the Truth of Revelation in Scripture, as unanimously interpreted by the Fathers.
It seems to me that the Catholic Church cannot be asserted to have erred in 1633, by a Church in 1994 that chose not to exercise its magisterial authority in reversing the 1633 decision.
That was my starting point.
Imagine my shock to find that each and every observation, ever since, advanced as “definitive proof” of heliocentrism, has been *scientifically falsified* by *direct experiment*.
If Relativity is true, then Ghalileo was wrong and the Church was right; this is a matter of Faith, not of science.
If Relativity is false, then the best *experimental* evidence we have supports geocentrism.
Something to keep in mind as we witness the astonishing recent statements of Princes of the Church to the effect that we must somehow change our teaching to accommodate homosexual *relationships*.
Wish I had more time.
Bottom line:
If the Church can be claimed to have erred in 1633, then it is also logically necessary to admit that the Church could also have erred in 1994.
What a drastic mistake it was to assert the error in the first place.
The scientific evidence favors the Holy Office.
The theological evidence favors the Holy Office.
By their fruits you shall know them.
Rick,
What’s your academic background? I’m curious. We know Stacy’s a PHD in Chemistry; Jeff is a mathematician and philosopher of science; Ace’s background is physics. But what about yours? I was wondering if you sleep or have time for doing anything else. It seems to me that you devote a great amount of time to study science and its impact on traditional catholic doctrine. You quote equally Church’s documents, new and ancient, and scientific papers…
By the way, I’m not criticizing, just curious. If you do have time for having a job or another professional activity and also a family, I’m going to schedule an appointment with a psychologist and starting a therapy. I’m unable to cover so many topics with that depth…
Ana: When I have time I blog. I have done a lot of research so I can blog pretty efficiently.
I have a full time real-world project which, when it requires my undivided attention, requires it for sixteen to eighteen hours a day.
Starting tomorrow, it will require my undivided attention for sixteen to eighteen hours a day, of at least the next three weeks
My academic background is…..quirky
It would be true to say all of these things:
1. I never attended second grade
2. I never attended high school
3. I attended two years of college, but only because the state authorities required that I not leave school before the statutory age of 15 years and nine months
4. Having achieved that age, I left school and have never returned.
So, you can refer to me as a “tenth grade dropout”, and I will certainly not gainsay you.
Umm, one correction- I actually did return to college, for a brief time, at age twenty.
I wanted to understand what the heck was going on in John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” solo.
It was the only music (apart from the atonal serialist garbage, of course, but I do not consider that music) I could not comprehend what was going on.
I discovered the tricks of be-bop (it was actually invented as a way to confound jazzers who showed up at clubs to “jam”- be bop was precisely intended to render them befuddled).
This having once been accomplished, I was finished.
OK, last post for a while.
I live in a world where Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Well Tempered Clavier”, as performed by the great and good genius Andras Schiff, is played, for free, over the air, on our local classical music station here in Los Angeles.
Am I to concern myself over the collapse of this civilization?
No.
Every civilization must collapse.
It is a logical consequence of Adam’s sin.
What is important, is to bear witness to the Truth, and the Truth is that our species is capable of beauty.
I hear it, right now.
I thank God and all people who have struggled, and suffered, and sweated, and strained, so that I might be transformed by the beauty (it is greater than science) of Johann Sebastian Bach.
This was quite an extraordinary thread.
Stacy, thank you.
Wow! Now, I’m even more impressed! It’s amazing what you have accomplished by yourself. Self-taught. Probably the best academic degree one can present.
“RS: I hope you stay happy
But the happiness may be superficial if you have to apply a Lorentz boost to the 00 component to keep c isotropic.”
No Lorentz boosts necessary; the g_{00} component of the global metric for the problem is (c^2 – omega^2r^2). The metric also has non-zero g_{02},g_{20} components that depend on r. The intrinsic curvature for such a metric, R_{ijk}^{l} does not equal zero. It’s non-inertial, and matches observation and experiment.
In general, you wouldn’t expect light to be the same for different non-inertial frames of reference. The frame of reference GPS devices use is non-inertial. It is the reference frame where the earth has a rotational frequency of zero. Non-inertial forces appear in such a frame.
Ace: No Lorentz boosts necessary; the g_{00} component of the global metric for the problem is (c^2 – omega^2r^2). The metric also has non-zero g_{02},g_{20} components that depend on r. The intrinsic curvature for such a metric, R_{ijk}^{l} does not equal zero. It’s non-inertial, and matches observation and experiment.
RS: One can plug any numbers into the metric to make it conform to “observation and experiment.” That’s why GTR has survived despite the fact that it’s counterintuitive. But the math doesn’t prove that the GPS is running by GTR rules. The issue raised above in which you claimed that GTR can solve Sagnac because Sagnac is an acceleration is the issue you need to be addressing. Sagnac appears in rotation and non-rotation. GTR cannot answer the non-rotation, and STR cannot answer either the rotation or non-rotation.
Ace: In general, you wouldn’t expect light to be the same for different non-inertial frames of reference. The frame of reference GPS devices use is non-inertial. It is the reference frame where the earth has a rotational frequency of zero. Non-inertial forces appear in such a frame.
RS: But the GPS and Earth are not non-inertial. They are two inertial systems that correct for time delay by the Lorentz transformation. As Ashby (head of the GPS mechanics) says:
“The receiver must then keep track of its own motion during this receiving interval and make appropriate corrections. These corrections are again proportional to 1/c2, that is to say, they are also relativistic ….Historically, there has been much confusion about properly accounting for relativistic effects….In the special case of two inertial frames in relative uniform motion, these are the familiar Lorentz transformations.” (Neil Ashby, “Relativity and the Global Positioning System,” Physics Today, May 2002, p. 8)
You can’t escape this by saying that a rotating frame is accelerating and thus makes it non-inertial, since the Sagnac effect is not limited to a rotating frame but to any frame in which the receiver is moving, whether uniformly or accelerating.
But the GPS and Earth are not non-inertial. They are two inertial systems that correct for time delay by the Lorentz transformation. As Ashby (head of the GPS mechanics) says:
“The receiver must then keep track of its own motion during this receiving interval and make appropriate corrections. These corrections are again proportional to 1/c2, that is to say, they are also relativistic ….Historically, there has been much confusion about properly accounting for relativistic effects….In the special case of two inertial frames in relative uniform motion, these are the familiar Lorentz transformations.” (Neil Ashby, “Relativity and the Global Positioning System,” Physics Today, May 2002)
Ashby does not claim in your quote that the reference frame where the earth is at rest (or GPS is at rest) is inertial. If he does claim this elsewhere, then he’s wrong.
GTR cannot answer the non-rotation
GR can answer for the non-rotation. Some claim SR can as well, but I do not understand how. That is probably a failing on my part.
Those who work with GPS will always find a non-isotropic speed of light, if the software programmer takes as his or her reference frame the one in which earth is stationary, because that is a non-inertial reference frame.
The inertial reference frame would seem to be very inconvenient for GPS calculations, because the locations on the surface of the earth would be at very different coordinates at different times. You would have to explicitely include time with the rest of the coordinates.
According to Landau and Lifshitz, if you went to an inertial reference frame (which GPS does not use), you would have to keep track of the locations of places with the coordinates (r,theta,phi,t) (radius, two angles, time). If this was accomplished, c’ = c, and the effect is a matter of different lengths, and not different values of c.
Like I said, I do not understand how this works out, but Landau and Lifshitz claim it does. Their argument is in Section 90 of their “Classical Theory of Fields”. They don’t discuss this problem until they have introduced most of the mechanics for GR. They do curiously make the point that, technically, this problem cannot be dealt with explicitely without some inclusion of GR, because the rotation is bound by the gravitational force. I wonder if this is true…?
Sagnac appears in rotation and non-rotation.
The Sagnac effect appears in both rotating and non-rotating reference frames.
Within an inertial reference frame, the Sagnac only appears for rotating systems. The Sagnac effect does not appear for light emitted from an object travelling in a straight line at a constant speed, for example.
I said that GR explains the Sagnac effect when rotation is zero, and it does. When omega = 0, the metric becomes (1,-1,-1,-1), which is the metric for SR.
Ace: Ashby does not claim in your quote that the reference frame where the earth is at rest (or GPS is at rest) is inertial. If he does claim this elsewhere, then he’s wrong.
RS: Ashby and all GPS engineers consider the Earth a quasi-inertial frame because they account for diurnal and translational movement ahead of time. Note here from Wikipedia: “Earth-centered inertial (ECI) coordinate frames have their origins at the center of mass of the Earth.[1] ECI frames are called inertial in contrast to the Earth-centered, Earth-fixed (ECEF) frames which rotate in inertial space in order to remain fixed with respect to the surface of the Earth….ECI coordinate frames are not truly inertial since the Earth itself is accelerating as it travels in its orbit about the Sun. In many cases, it may be assumed that the ECI frame is inertial without adverse effect” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth-centered_inertial)
As such, Ashby says: “Computations of satellite orbits, signal paths, and relativistic effects appear to be most convenient in an ECI frame. But navigation must generally be done relative to the Earth’s surface. So GPS navigation messages must allow users to compute the satellite positions in a fixed-Earth, rotating coordinate system, the so-called WGS-84 reference frame”
Ace: GR can answer for the non-rotation. Some claim SR can as well, but I do not understand how. That is probably a failing on my part.
RS: Earlier you said Sagnac is due to acceleration and/or rotation. You then account for the acceleration/rotation through GTR, since GTR deals with acceleration. So how do you account for GPS time delays by GTR when there is no acceleration?
Ace: Those who work with GPS will always find a non-isotropic speed of light, if the software programmer takes as his or her reference frame the one in which earth is stationary, because that is a non-inertial reference frame.
RS: If an inertial frame is one which is either non-moving or in uniform movement, how is a stationary Earth non-inertial?
Ace: The inertial reference frame would seem to be very inconvenient for GPS calculations, because the locations on the surface of the earth would be at very different coordinates at different times. You would have to explicitely include time with the rest of the coordinates.
According to Landau and Lifshitz, if you went to an inertial reference frame (which GPS does not use), you would have to keep track of the locations of places with the coordinates (r,theta,phi,t) (radius, two angles, time). If this was accomplished, c’ = c, and the effect is a matter of different lengths, and not different values of c.
Like I said, I do not understand how this works out, but Landau and Lifshitz claim it does. Their argument is in Section 90 of their “Classical Theory of Fields”. They don’t discuss this problem until they have introduced most of the mechanics for GR. They do curiously make the point that, technically, this problem cannot be dealt with explicitely without some inclusion of GR, because the rotation is bound by the gravitational force. I wonder if this is true…?
The Sagnac effect appears in both rotating and non-rotating reference frames.
Within an inertial reference frame, the Sagnac only appears for rotating systems. The Sagnac effect does not appear for light emitted from an object travelling in a straight line at a constant speed, for example.
I said that GR explains the Sagnac effect when rotation is zero, and it does. When omega = 0, the metric becomes (1,-1,-1,-1), which is the metric for SR.
RS: As I understand it, the Sagnac effect occurs any time an observer or measuring instrument moves with respect to the frame chosen as the isotropic light-speed frame. But SR claims that the speed of light is always isotropic with respect to the observer. SR will dilate time and decrease the distance in order to make it so. But the GPS (i.e., the observer) moves with respect to the chosen light-speed frame, thus it shows the Sagnac effect.
Question for you: Do you know of any pure inertial frame as opposed to a frame adjusted by the Lorentz transform or Sagnac effect?
Wow, this is great. (Don’t take that to mean I understand everything you are saying.) I appreciate the conversation — thanks Ace and Robert!
You are welcome!
This stretches the limits of my understanding of the Sagnac effect, and then some! It’s not something that is often used in my field.
It has been educational.
What Stacy said.
This is a good one
ECI frames are called inertial in contrast to the Earth-centered, Earth-fixed (ECEF) frames which rotate in inertial space in order to remain fixed with respect to the surface of the Earth
I thought that GPS uses ECEF frame (or a similar reference frame, but with the origin not at the center of mass)? I agree that ECI is inertial, but for ECI, the coordinates of London and New York are not fixed. They move around in a circle, and a time-coordinate needs to be introduced in order to locate them.
According to Wikipedia, GPS uses the “Geotetic System” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodetic_system , which is similar to ECEF in that the frame of reference is non-inertial (it moves with the earth’s rotation relative to ECI, which is inertial).
So, to sum up, ECI is an inertial reference frame (or as close as you are going to get to one, pretty-much). Geodetic System is a non-inertial reference frame, because it is rotating at a frequency, omega, with respect to the ECI reference frame.
This is my understanding, at least.
So how do you account for GPS time delays by GTR when there is no acceleration?
Something has to accelerate for there to be the Sagnac effect. You need to have something moving in a circle.
As I understand it, the Sagnac effect occurs any time an observer or measuring instrument moves with respect to the frame chosen as the isotropic light-speed frame.
This is not my understanding. If you have one inertial frame, K_0, in which c is isotropic, and another frame, K, that moves at constant velocity w.r.t. K_0, c will be isotropic in both K and K_0.
Question for you: Do you know of any pure inertial frame as opposed to a frame adjusted by the Lorentz transform or Sagnac effect?
I do not understand this question. Comparing two inertial reference frames K and K’ (one at velocity v and v’, say, relative to inertial reference frame K_0) requires a Lorentz transform between them.
Ace: Something has to accelerate for there to be the Sagnac effect. You need to have something moving in a circle.
RS: No, that is not the case. The Sagnac effect occurs in both circular movement and linear movement. It’s a misconception that Sagnac is cause by rotation. That is why I previously made reference to Ives’ use of a hexagonal base. He showed that when the detector is moved along a cord of a hexagon-shaped light path (as opposed to rotating the entire apparatus), it still shows a Sagnac effect (see Herbert E. Ives, Aug 1938, “Light Signals Sent Around a Closed Path,” Journal of the Optical Society of America, Vol. 28, pp. 296-299). There is also a paper by Ronald Hatch you might be interested in reading titled “GPS and Relativity.” He runs NavCom in CA and uses the JPL software of the GPS for John Deere tractor navigation.
RS: As I understand it, the Sagnac effect occurs any time an observer or measuring instrument moves with respect to the frame chosen as the isotropic light-speed frame.
Ace: This is not my understanding. If you have one inertial frame, K_0, in which c is isotropic, and another frame, K, that moves at constant velocity w.r.t. K_0, c will be isotropic in both K and K_0.
RS: But that is precisely what the GPS is not showing. It is showing a non-isotropic light speed of 50 nanoseconds and thus the GPS computers have to be pre-adjusted. It just so happens that the 50 nanosecond discrepancy is compensated for by a Sagnac correction in the GPS computers. There are three GPS satellites and a ground station involved in every calculation. They are all communicating with one another by triangulation and linear light direction. They are all moving at uniform speed. As noted, you can’t claim that the system shows the Sagnac effect due to acceleration/rotation since the Sagnac effect is not limited to rotation. That means that the Sagnac effect has a more basic cause.
RS: Question for you: Do you know of any pure inertial frame as opposed to a frame adjusted by the Lorentz transform or Sagnac effect?
Ace: I do not understand this question. Comparing two inertial reference frames K and K’ (one at velocity v and v’, say, relative to inertial reference frame K_0) requires a Lorentz transform between them.
RS: What I’m getting at is, since according to STR and GTR everything is moving in the universe, and there is no way to tell which objects are moving uniformly, there is no pure inertial frame; and thus the only way we can even designate an inertial frame is by incorporating the Lorentz transform between two moving objects. Would you agree?
No, that is not the case. The Sagnac effect occurs in both circular movement and linear movement. It’s a misconception that Sagnac is cause by rotation. That is why I previously made reference to Ives’ use of a hexagonal base. He showed that when the detector is moved along a cord of a hexagon-shaped light path.
A hexagon is not a line.
Are you sure the effect comes from the linear motion? If it does, then the same effect should be measurable in solely linear motion. Do you know of a case where the Sagnac effect occurs when an object is moving in a straight line at constant velocity?
But that is precisely what the GPS is not showing.
Because acceleration is involved. The satellite is moving in a circle, and not a straight line.
They are all moving at uniform speed.
A GPS satellite is not moving at constant velocity with respect to an inertial reference frame. The velocity is changing all the time. The acceleration is also not constant. The acceleration is changing all the time. In fact, you can take as many derivatives of the velocity as you like, with respect to time, and you will never achieve a constant value.
There is no pure inertial frame… would you agree?
I agree.
A purely inertial reference frame is a conceptual tool. Any reference frame that I choose may appear inertial to a good approximation in a certain region of space and at a certain time. But it’s not purely inertial. For one thing, there will be a gravitational field no matter where in the universe I go.
RS: No, that is not the case. The Sagnac effect occurs in both circular movement and linear movement. It’s a misconception that Sagnac is cause by rotation. That is why I previously made reference to Ives’ use of a hexagonal base. He showed that when the detector is moved along a cord of a hexagon-shaped light path.
Ace: A hexagon is not a line.
RS: Correct, but a chord is a line. The Sagnac effect was seen in the individual chords. Rotation had only second order effects. As Ives notes in his paper “It is clear that it is then indifferent whether the shell rotates about the center 0, or is stationary.”
Ace: Are you sure the effect comes from the linear motion? If it does, then the same effect should be measurable in solely linear motion. Do you know of a case where the Sagnac effect occurs when an object is moving in a straight line at constant velocity?
RS: Besides Ives, Wang has a whole section on it (http://web.stcloudstate.edu/ruwang)
RS: But that is precisely what the GPS is not showing.
Ace: Because acceleration is involved. The satellite is moving in a circle, and not a straight line.
RS: They are all moving at uniform speed.
Ace: A GPS satellite is not moving at constant velocity with respect to an inertial reference frame. The velocity is changing all the time. The acceleration is also not constant. The acceleration is changing all the time. In fact, you can take as many derivatives of the velocity as you like, with respect to time, and you will never achieve a constant value.
RS: Ok, but in the GPS system, BOTH the emitter and the receiver are accelerating with respect to the inertial frame of reference. In the Sagnac experiment, the light’s point of entry is the same as the point of exit, hence BOTH points are accelerating. Likewise, a GPS ground station and a GPS satellite are BOTH accelerating with respect to the inertial frame that is co-moving with the center of mass of the Earth. So, in that sense, Ives’ principle that rotation isn’t necessary for the Sagnac effect holds.
RS: There is no pure inertial frame… would you agree?
Ace: I agree. A purely inertial reference frame is a conceptual tool. Any reference frame that I choose may appear inertial to a good approximation in a certain region of space and at a certain time. But it’s not purely inertial. For one thing, there will be a gravitational field no matter where in the universe I go.
RS: Understood. So let’s conclude that the Lorentz transform is added to our equations in order to give us inertial parity between two moving objects. But how did the Lorentz transform assume such a lofty position? Wouldn’t it have to be proven to be the reality before we use it to create inertial frames? Was it proven?
Ace, so that you don’t have to plow through Wang’s site, here is the URL that takes you to his paper about the Sagnac effect found in linear motion. http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0609/0609235.pdf
RS: Correct, but a chord is a line. The Sagnac effect was seen in the individual chords.
Wang doesn’t measure the effect for an object moving in a straight line at a constant velocity, at least according to his paper here: http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0609/0609202.pdf
“The phase-conjugate Sagnac experiment can be repeated and the one-way Sagnac experiment can be conducted using the PCM. We can expect that the phase shift is φ = 4πvL/cλ in the one-way Sagnac experiment with path length L and speed v, even with an increasingly larger radius of the rotation.”
But he still needs a finite radius of rotation. In other words, the object in question is not moving in a straight line at a constant velocity. But he has found something that could potentially challenge Special Relativity. He proposes:
“Based on these and the experimental fact of the generalized Sagnac effect, it is very important to examine whether there is the same phase shift for the test of the one-way speed of light and the phase-conjugate first-order experiment in a system moving uniformly in a straight line.”
And that’s what is needed. In order to make sure that you aren’t picking up non-inertial effects, you have to test the speed of light from an object moving in a straight line from point A to B (and not in a closed path!).
For myself: in order to accept that somehow the Sagnac effect occurs in linear motion, I would need to see the results of an experiment that starts at point A, ends at point B, the object travels from point A to B, and in what is close to a straight line. If there are Sagnac fringes, then I will have to seriously investigate Special Relativity, and my understanding of it.
Also interesting, Sagnac fringes are detected in the LHC (which is a circle) experiment, but not in SLAC (straight line). At least, to my knowledge, this is the case. Why would you expect this?
Ok, but in the GPS system, BOTH the emitter and the receiver are accelerating with respect to the inertial frame of reference. In the Sagnac experiment, the light’s point of entry is the same as the point of exit, hence BOTH points are accelerating.
Precisely. When in a reference frame that is rotating at the same angular frequency as the object in question, g_00 = c^2 – w^2t^2, which means that the measured speed of light will be v_c = c +/- Vt. In the case you describe, GR gets the right answer.
Understood. So let’s conclude that the Lorentz transform is added to our equations in order to give us inertial parity between two moving objects.
I’m not sure I understand your point.
It is necessary to perform a Lorentz Transform between two inertial reference frames which differ in velocity.
Metrics are Lorentz invariant.
I will be willing to discuss this new topic, once we have decided that the discussion on the Sagnac effect is resolved (even if we do not agree at the end of the day).
EDIT: Precisely. When in a reference frame that is rotating at the same angular frequency as the object in question, g_00 = c^2 – w^2r^2, which means that the measured speed of light will be v_c = c +/- V. In the case you describe, GR gets the right answer.
I will be on a trip in Europe, and will likely not have good e-mail access for the next week.
I will check back on July 24, to see what has been said here, and depending on the amount of content, I will likely comment only on what I find interesting.
It has been a good discussion. I thought to leave you with the main reason I accept special relativity.
If a proton travels at 0.999 times the speed of light, Newtonian physics says that the proton has an energy of 468.20 MeV.
If a proton travels at 0.999 times the speed of light, Einstein’s physics says that the proton has an energy of 20,047 MeV.
In a particle accelerator, protons up to ~1,000,000 MeV travel at velocities less than the speed of light. Newtonian physics would predict that particles of such energy would travel at ~50 times the speed of light.
Einstein’s theory of special relativity predicts the observed energies of particles travelling at near the speed of light. Currently, it is the only theory that has successfully predicted this and many other phenomena in particle physics.
Ace: Wang doesn’t measure the effect for an object moving in a straight line at a constant velocity, at least according to his paper here: http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0609/0609202.pdf
“The phase-conjugate Sagnac experiment can be repeated and the one-way Sagnac experiment can be conducted using the PCM. We can expect that the phase shift is φ = 4πvL/cλ in the one-way Sagnac experiment with path length L and speed v, even with an increasingly larger radius of the rotation.”
But he still needs a finite radius of rotation. In other words, the object in question is not moving in a straight line at a constant velocity. But he has found something that could potentially challenge Special Relativity. He proposes:
“Based on these and the experimental fact of the generalized Sagnac effect, it is very important to examine whether there is the same phase shift for the test of the one-way speed of light and the phase-conjugate first-order experiment in a system moving uniformly in a straight line.”
And that’s what is needed. In order to make sure that you aren’t picking up non-inertial effects, you have to test the speed of light from an object moving in a straight line from point A to B (and not in a closed path!).
For myself: in order to accept that somehow the Sagnac effect occurs in linear motion, I would need to see the results of an experiment that starts at point A, ends at point B, the object travels from point A to B, and in what is close to a straight line. If there are Sagnac fringes, then I will have to seriously investigate Special Relativity, and my understanding of it.
Robert: I wrote to Wang about this. He says you are misunderstanding him. To clear it up, he cited two other papers he has written, and he pointed out the following excerpts from them:
“Our finding is that there is a travel-time difference Δt=2vΔl/c2 in a fiber segment of length Δl moving with the source and detector at a speed v, whether the segment is moving uniformly or circularly.” (“Modified Sagnac experiment for measuring travel-time between counterpropagating light beams in a uniformly moving fiber” at http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0609222)
“Experiments were conducted to study light propagation in a light waveguide loop consisting of linearly and circularly moving segments. We found that any segment of the loop contributes to the total phase difference between two counterpropagating light beams in the loop. The contribution is proportional to a product of the moving velocity v and the projection of the segment length Δl on the moving direction, Δϕ=4πv•Δl/cλ. It is independent of the type of motion and the refractive index of waveguides. (“Generalized Sagnac Effect” at http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0609/0609235.pdf
There is also these statements from the Modified Sagnac paper:
“We designed a modified Sagnac experiment to examine whether the travel-time difference only appears in rotational motion, or if it also appears in uniform motion. Our experiment is important because it shows that the time-difference effect also occurs for uniform motion….The travel-time difference of two counter-propagating light beams in moving fiber is proportional to both the total length and the speed of the fiber, regardless of whether the motion is circular or uniform. In a segment of uniformly moving fiber with a speed of v and a length of Delta l, the travel-time difference is 2vΔl/c^2.”
Ace: Also interesting, Sagnac fringes are detected in the LHC (which is a circle) experiment, but not in SLAC (straight line). At least, to my knowledge, this is the case. Why would you expect this?
Robert: Did you mean “Why would you NOT expect this”? If so, rotation is just a lot easier when detecting the Sagnac effect since you have a small area to deal with, besides the fact that no one ever tried to measure the Sagnac effect in a linear field until Ives in 1938 and Wang in 1990s. Everyone else (including Ashby who heads the GPS) thought it came only from rotation.
The chord of the hexagon in Ives’ table is like the distance between one GPS satellite and another. In fact, the GPS can be compared to a quattagon (24-sided figure) since there are 24 of them that circumscribe the Earth. Between each satellite there is at least a 1000 mile distance. As the light beam in Ives’ apparatus traveled along the chord and measured a Sagnac effect, so the light beam traveling between GPS satellites is traveling along a chord of 1000 miles and produces a Sagnac effect.
In this arrangement, the rotation of the GPS around the Earth is incidental, especially since both satellites are moving at the same speed. The fact remains that the light beam from GPS ‘satellite A’ is traveling in a linear line to GPS ‘satellite B’ since the quattagon always has the same dimensions. But it is precisely this light beam from A to B that experiences the Sagnac effect.
Ace: When in a reference frame that is rotating at the same angular frequency as the object in question, g_00 = c^2 – w^2t^2, which means that the measured speed of light will be v_c = c +/- Vt. In the case you describe, GR gets the right answer.
Robert: Well, all I will say at this point is that GRT may get the right answer for an accelerating frame, but that doesn’t prove that the physics of GRT is correct. It only means the math can be molded to the situation.
Ace: It has been a good discussion. I thought to leave you with the main reason I accept special relativity.
If a proton travels at 0.999 times the speed of light, Newtonian physics says that the proton has an energy of 468.20 MeV. If a proton travels at 0.999 times the speed of light, Einstein’s physics says that the proton has an energy of 20,047 MeV. In a particle accelerator, protons up to ~1,000,000 MeV travel at velocities less than the speed of light. Newtonian physics would predict that particles of such energy would travel at ~50 times the speed of light. Einstein’s theory of special relativity predicts the observed energies of particles travelling at near the speed of light. Currently, it is the only theory that has successfully predicted this and many other phenomena in particle physics.
Robert: I agree that the math of SRT and GRT gives you what you want, but the math doesn’t provide the actual physical reality. 2 + 2 = 4 but so does 3 + 1 = 4. I assume you are using the E = mc^2/Lorentz transform as opposed to K = 1/2mv^2 for Newton. But this is precisely why I have been questioning you on the validity of the Lorentz transform.
Whatever the physical substance is that is causing the Sagnac effect between Sat A and Sat B is the same thing that is causing the increased inertial mass for the .999c proton.
Newton’s formula is obviously not enough. He doesn’t give us the physical reason for either gravity, inertia or even centrifugal and Coriolis forces. Einstein didn’t give a physical reason either; rather, he insisted that time dilation and mass increase are merely inherent in motion, and he conveniently made c always to be c by the Lorentz transform.
The upshot is, it isn’t necessarily time dilation or mass increase but a physical resistance against the EM wave that causes the Sagnac effect between Sat A and Sat B; and the same physical resistance that causes the .999c proton to go to 20,047 MeV. Since the rest energy of the proton is 938 MeV, a physical resistance of 19,109 MeV results in 20,047 MeV.
In essence, SRT uses the acceleration from the EM wave to increase the rest mass, and then says this increase is equivalent to 20,047 MeV. In the alternative model, the EM wave is used to overcome the physical resistance which then produces 20,047 MeV on the proton.
Newton would also have to take the physical resistance into account. So, F = ma would then be F of EM minus the F of physical resistance = ma.
If you haven’t figured it out already, the physical resistance is caused by what has traditionally been understood as ether. As you know, the Lorentz transform originated with Lorentz’ ether-based model, and Einstein simply took away the ether and turned it into time dilation (although I am not proposing Lorentz’s model).
The further problem for SRT is that it claims the results are covariant in inertial frames. But in the proton frame, the proton is at rest and the Earth is moving at .999c. So the Earth should have 20,047 MeV by just flipping the equation. Something is not right.
I am skeptical of Wang’s interpretation of his own experiment. But I am open to being convinced.
The reason I am skeptical is because currently Wang still only measures Sagnac effect over a closed path. A path cannot be closed without acceleration, and in all of Wang’s experiments, the acceleration term is nonlinear. How can Wang be so sure that the Sagnac effect is not a result of the nonlinear acceleration?
The example I gave for proton energies has the proton energy being measured and the velocity being measured. The energy seems to increase to infinity as the velocity approaches the speed of light. The rate at which the energy increases when velocity increases looks exactly like the Lorentz transform.
Let’s say you have an alternative theory of some sort for this. If you want to convince me that relativity has serious problems or is wrong, this is what I need to see:
1. Show that the alternate theory produces the same relationship between energy and velocity as the Lorentz transform.
2. Show that the alternate theory makes unique predictions.
Here is an example of (2). Let’s say that the alternate theory predicts that light is non-isotropic in a reference frame where the emitter is moving at non-zero velocity.
To test this in a way that would be convincing to me, you or Wang would need an experiment where you have an emitter that is stationary in the laboratory frame. It emits light in opposite directions simultaneously in the laboratory frame. The speed should be measured to be c in both directions. Then observe the emitter when the emitter is moving at a constant velocity V with respect to the laboratory frame, and it emits light simultaneously with respect to the laboratory frame. If you can show that the measured velocity in either direction does not equal c, then I would accept that the speed of light is non-isotropic between different inertial reference frames.
But this is what I need to see, or else I will not be convinced.
The further problem for SRT is that it claims the results are covariant in inertial frames. But in the proton frame, the proton is at rest and the Earth is moving at .999c. So the Earth should have 20,047 MeV by just flipping the equation. Something is not right.
Technically, the earth would not have an energy of 20,047 MeV. Rather, any proton that is at rest in the laboratory frame will have an energy of 20,047 MeV in the frame where the high energy proton is at rest.
It is true that, in the rest-frame of the high-velocity particle, any particle that is at rest in the laboratory frame will have the same energy as the high-velocity particle in the frame where the high-velocity particle is at rest. But this was true for Newtonian physics as well. It is just that the shift in energy for Newtonian physics is quadratic instead of asymptotic. If Newtonian physics were accurate, and I perform a Galilean transform of reference frame, to a velocity V, then anything at rest in the original reference frame will now have a velocity -V, and a kinetic energy 1/2mV^2.
The change between reference frames in Einstein’s physics is asymptotic, but the principle is the same.
All flipping the equations means is that a proton with E = 20,047 MeV that runs into a proton at rest will experience the same effect as a proton at rest getting hit by a proton with E = 20,047 MeV. Of course the equation can be flipped. It is a symmetry that I would expect in nature. And it occurs also in Lorentz’s model, or in any model where momentum is conserved.
This is an extraordinary exchange.
Imagine, that the most interesting discussion about fundamental aspects of our word view, should be most interestingly and perilously engaged, throughout the whole web…..
Here.
Man, if I had popcorn I would be popping it up right now.
This is fabulous.
This is the best thing we can aspire to, honest minds seeking the truth in honest dialogue.
Just reading this makes me feel clean.
Ace: I am skeptical of Wang’s interpretation of his own experiment. But I am open to being convinced. The reason I am skeptical is because currently Wang still only measures Sagnac effect over a closed path. A path cannot be closed without acceleration, and in all of Wang’s experiments, the acceleration term is nonlinear. How can Wang be so sure that the Sagnac effect is not a result of the nonlinear acceleration?
Robert: Here is Wang’s response: “If one really understands why we do FOC experiments with different lengths (e.g. Fig. 1c of the attachment), I am sure that he or she will not say that the linear Sagnac effect we found is a result of the acceleration.”
According to Fig 1c in his paper on the “Modified Sagnac Experiment” (which looks like a conveyer belt with each “belt” having a long linear distance between two pulleys), I think what he is trying to say is that the closed path is incidental since it contains various lengths of linear fields that are not affected by acceleration. It’s the same reason that Ives said the chords in his hexagonal closed path show a linear Sagnac effect. Wang’s “chords” are just much longer.
As I said earlier, the linear chords are analogous to the linear distances between GPS satellites that exchange EM waves. In the EM exchange between these two linear points, there is no acceleration.
Be that as it may, I think the bigger question is the Sagnac experiment itself. If rotation is the cause, why did rotation affect only one beam and not the other? In other words, shouldn’t acceleration affect both beams in a rotating table, so we really shouldn’t see just one beam with time delay if GRT’s analysis is correct? Both should be delayed equally. If not, then there is a directional preference at work, and doesn’t that suggest an absolute frame? It’s similar to the directional preference Maxwell saw in the magnet and the induction coil.
Ace: The example I gave for proton energies has the proton energy being measured and the velocity being measured. The energy seems to increase to infinity as the velocity approaches the speed of light. The rate at which the energy increases when velocity increases looks exactly like the Lorentz transform.
Robert: Understood, but the “infinity” is the same problem the Standard Model has. The Lorentz transform produces a proton with infinite energy similar to ST producing an electron with infinite rest mass. The real rest mass is 0.511 MeV, so they are forced to “renormalize” the infinity to 0.511 by hand, based on the idea that a “positive infinity divided by negative infinity” is an indeterminate value and thus 0.511 is just as good as any other figure to add in by hand. Obviously, energy cannot “increase to infinity.”
I’m suggesting that the Lorentz transform is of the same breed – appearing like a legit solution but eventually showing its true colors when carried to its logical conclusion, that is, producing an absurd answer, infinity. Something is obviously amiss.
So this brings me back to the Lorentz transform as the cause for the problem, not its solution. It was invented as an answer to the Michelson-Morley experiment (MMX), after which it became the basis for Special Relativity. Whereas Lorentz used only longitudinal contraction to answer MMX, Einstein added time dilation and mass increase. But they both went down the wrong track. There is no length contraction, time dilation or mass increase.
Ace: Let’s say you have an alternative theory of some sort for this. If you want to convince me that relativity has serious problems or is wrong, this is what I need to see:
Robert: The alternate theory is that there is an ether drift going east to west over the Earth, the inertial frame. This drift causes delay for EM beams traveling west to east, and advancement for EM beams going east to west, which is precisely what the GPS shows, and what Hefele-Keating showed.
Ace: 1. Show that the alternate theory produces the same relationship between energy and velocity as the Lorentz transform.
Robert: In the ether model there is definitely a relationship between energy and velocity, but the Lorentz transform has nothing to do with it. The Lorentz transform was invented based on the idea that MMX got a null result, but MMX did not get a null result. They saw enough resistance to the EM wave to account for the east to west drift I mentioned above. Sagnac saw the same, as did Michelson-Gale in 1925, and about a dozen other experiments, including Dayton Miller’s, the real thorn in the side for Einstein.
If, as I am led to believe based on Anderson/Dirac that the ether, at its initial level, is a moving net of electron-positron pairs substrated by Planck particles, the mass increase of an accelerated proton would then be similar to how the SM claims the Higgs field gives mass to atomic particles. The faster the acceleration through the ether field, the more mass the particle will attain. The analogy to SRT’s “time dilation” is that the accelerated particle will be slowed down by ether resistance and thus take longer to arrive at its target. In other words, time is not dilating, the particle is actually slowing down.
Ace: 2. Show that the alternate theory makes unique predictions.
Robert: Understood. One thing for sure is that the alternate theory does not predict infinite energies. It will be a simple proportion of velocity against ether resistance. The ether resistance will inhibit processes long before the particle gets close to infinity. As for terrestrial issues, the theory predicts that an MMX done on the moon will show a high positive result, ten times what MMX found on Earth. It predicts that the GPS will have a Sagnac effect that is not due to rotation. It predicts that gravity is instantaneous, not limited to c. It predicts why c is always c, especially in Maxwell’s ether-based equations, but it also shows why c cannot be used as a clock, thus showing that SRT is based on a misleading premise. It can predict why all clocks at sea level measure the same ticks, and why clocks at higher altitudes run faster than those at sea level.
Ace: Here is an example of (2). Let’s say that the alternate theory predicts that light is non-isotropic in a reference frame where the emitter is moving at non-zero velocity. To test this in a way that would be convincing to me, you or Wang would need an experiment where you have an emitter that is stationary in the laboratory frame. It emits light in opposite directions simultaneously in the laboratory frame. The speed should be measured to be c in both directions. Then observe the emitter when the emitter is moving at a constant velocity V with respect to the laboratory frame, and it emits light simultaneously with respect to the laboratory frame. If you can show that the measured velocity in either direction does not equal c, then I would accept that the speed of light is non-isotropic between different inertial reference frames. But this is what I need to see, or else I will not be convinced.
Robert: Well, all I can say is that I believe what you’re looking for is precisely what the GPS shows. An EM wave pointing east to west to a GPS satellite on the western horizon goes slower than one pointing west to east on the eastern horizon.
“If one really understands why we do FOC experiments with different lengths (e.g. Fig. 1c of the attachment), I am sure that he or she will not say that the linear Sagnac effect we found is a result of the acceleration.”
Then maybe Wang is correct, and I don’t understand.
Theories are made to be discredited by experiment. But the discrediting must be definitive, so that we can figure out where the theory went wrong, and then move forward.
I personally will not be convinced that there is any such thing as the linear Sagnac effect until anisotropy in the speed of light is observed over a non-closed path. If Wang’s understanding is correct, then we would expect this. So someone should build the experiment.
All that I see that Wang has shown is that there is a correlation between different shapes of closed paths and the Sagnac fringes. Why is this? I do not know (and it is an interesting question in itself). But I do not think it really challenges SR. Not until Wang (or someone) can show that light changes speed in open paths.
Be that as it may, I think the bigger question is the Sagnac experiment itself. If rotation is the cause, why did rotation affect only one beam and not the other?
I don’t understand what you mean.
Regarding the Sagnac effect, the measured speed in one direction is v_c = c + V, and in the other direction is v_c = c – V; this result is identical to the Newtonian calculation and to basic intuition.
Understood, but the “infinity” is the same problem the Standard Model has.
The singularity in the Lorentz Transforms is not a UV divergence.
I’m suggesting that the Lorentz transform is of the same breed – appearing like a legit solution but eventually showing its true colors when carried to its logical conclusion, that is, producing an absurd answer, infinity. Something is obviously amiss.
This could be validated by finding an object of non-zero mass moving at the speed of light. Currently, experiment validates this particular infinity (which does not need to be subtracted out). Currently, the faster an object travels with respect to the laboratory frame, the higher the energy that object has, and the energy increases with speed with the exact same functional form as the Lorentz transformation.
One thing for sure is that the alternate theory does not predict infinite energies.
Can you produce a plot of velocity vs. energy? Can you show how, in this alternate theory, energy should increase with velocity? If there is a divergence between your theory and Einstein’s (in other words, if your relation doesn’t match a Lorentz transform), and the divergence is significant for energies less than 1 TeV, then your theory is wrong. Experiments already have invalidated it. If the divergence is significant at energies higher than 1 TeV, then future experiments will probe these energies, and the effect may be seen. If a divergence is seen at the energy you predict, that will be very exciting, and your alternate theory will warrant serious consideration.
Ace: All that I see that Wang has shown is that there is a correlation between different shapes of closed paths and the Sagnac fringes. Why is this? I do not know (and it is an interesting question in itself). But I do not think it really challenges SR. Not until Wang (or someone) can show that light changes speed in open paths.
Robert: Are you saying then that the 1000 miles a GPS signal must travel between two GPS satellites, and Ives’ linear segments are merely a “correlation between different shapes of closed paths” that you cannot explain but do not infringe on SR? But I do agree with you that Wang would do himself and us a service if he showed the same results on an open path.
Ace: Regarding the Sagnac effect, the measured speed in one direction is v_c = c + V, and in the other direction is v_c = c – V; this result is identical to the Newtonian calculation and to basic intuition.
Robert: I phrased that incorrectly. I meant to say, “why is one beam affected differently than the other?” In the one direction we have c + v and in the other we have c – v. The Sagnac effect is seen when we calculate the difference: (c + v) – (c – v) = 2v. In other words, the effect is doubled. I don’t believe Newton provided that effect and neither does our intuition.
Ace: The singularity in the Lorentz Transforms is not a UV divergence.
Robert: Not quite sure how the UV issue applies here.
Ace: This could be validated by finding an object of non-zero mass moving at the speed of light. Currently, experiment validates this particular infinity (which does not need to be subtracted out). Currently, the faster an object travels with respect to the laboratory frame, the higher the energy that object has, and the energy increases with speed with the exact same functional form as the Lorentz transformation.
Robert: Well, as you wait for Wang’s open path experiment, I’ll wait for a non-zero mass moving at c
Just to clarify, what you mean by “non-zero mass” is a non-zero rest mass due to the fact that the “object” is never resting, correct?
As for ‘energy increasing by an LT factor,’ what I’m after here is acknowledgment that the original basis for LT was to compensate for the non-detection of the Earth’s 66,000mph revolution around the sun. So, when we transpose that non-detection factor into the speed of a proton near c, we can us the same LT. We would expect such a transposition. But that doesn’t prove that LT is the reality. It only proves that if we plug in a compensating factor (e.g., like Einstein plugged in Lambda into G = 8piT) we get what we want.
Ace: Can you produce a plot of velocity vs. energy? Can you show how, in this alternate theory, energy should increase with velocity? If there is a divergence between your theory and Einstein’s (in other words, if your relation doesn’t match a Lorentz transform), and the divergence is significant for energies less than 1 TeV, then your theory is wrong. Experiments already have invalidated it. If the divergence is significant at energies higher than 1 TeV, then future experiments will probe these energies, and the effect may be seen. If a divergence is seen at the energy you predict, that will be very exciting, and your alternate theory will warrant serious consideration.
Robert: My theory won’t necessarily differ from the results of the LT. My theory will simply give the real reason why the alternate theory sees an LT. The reason is that LT was invented to compensate for the reality that was undetected (a moving Earth). But in thinking they had the physical reality (i.e., LT) they failed to see that they had no proof. LT, without physical proof, is only a fudge factor to explain the undetected (a moving Earth). But believing LT was the physical reality, they then made it into the basis for a new theory about subatomic particles (i.e., that subatomic particles gain energy and mass when they travel near c). You know the rest of the story.