Category Archives: Science

Relating to Science

Cosmologists Today: Tilting at Windmills

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I am I, Don Quixote!
The Lord of La Mancha, my destiny calls and I go.
And the wild winds of fortune shall carry me onward oh withersoever
they blow. Withersoever they blow.
Onward to glory I go!

So sings the title character of the hit movie and play Man of La Mancha based on the book Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote is the name adopted by Alonso Quixano a likeable, less-than-affluent, well read fellow, well past his prime who lives with his niece in the Spanish village of La Mancha. He reaches a point where all his days “from dawn to dark ” are spent reading his favored books: those of  the tales of chivalry and the deeds of errant knights from days long ago.  However being past his prime, and “with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits.”[1].  He was so immersed in the tales that with his waning faculties, he lost the ability to distinguish between what was fact and what was fiction.  To the point where he believed that “the whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true…”[2]

And thus Quixano decides to adopt the distinguished name of Don Quixote de La Mancha, become an errant knight and go off in search of adventures to right wrongs and fight injustice. Perhaps the most memorable of which is when he comes upon some windmills which he imagines to be giants, and begins jousting with them from his aging and arthritic horse. It’s from this scene we get the phrase “tilting [or jousting] at windmills” which originally meant to fight against imaginary or unimportant enemies or issues. But as a Yahoo aficionado points out, figuratively it has come to mean “a futile activity.”[3]

Which brings us to the current state of affairs in cosmology. Many cosmologists these days are like Don Quixote – jousting at imagined problems that are a result of their imagined theories in order to obtain great glory. Continue Reading

Lessons from Pluto

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New Horizons approaches Pluto

New Horizons approaches Pluto

On January 19, 2006 the “fastest spacecraft ever launched”[1] – the New Horizons space probe –  lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on a mission to Pluto.  In February of 2007  it collected data from Jupiter as it flew by for a gravity assist catapult as it continued on to Pluto. On July 14th, 2015, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto. Scientists have now had an opportunity to review the initial data and pictures from New Horizons about the dwarf planet[2] Pluto, and many have been forced into a stunning but unavoidable admission:  they’ve been wrong about Pluto for a long time.

What they found on Pluto was not at all what they were expecting to find. Scientists were expecting to find it heavily cratered,  “a flat, dead world similar to our moon.”[3]  Instead, what they actually found was:

  • Icy Volcanoes
  • The  heart shaped area (right side partially faded) visible in the picture above named sputnik planum, of which scientists note “…this Texas sized basin of ice appears to be boiling.” [4] Planetary scientist Jani Radebaugh likens it to “a lava lake in slow motion”[5] made of nearly frozen Nitrogen cooled until the texture is that of tooth paste.
  • Other areas feature a young looking surface, with no record of crater bombardment as expected. “These features are very, very young…Pluto is active today. That’s the headline.”[6] says Planetary scientist Dan Durda.
  • An active geology driven by heat
  • and “there’s pretty good circumstantial evidence that Pluto has a massive ocean in its interior”[7] says New Horizons mission principle investigator Alan Stern.

Secular Blindness

While scientists are willing to fess up to being wrong when confronted with objective data like that supplied to them from their own instruments aboard the New Horizons space probe, it is unlikely that they are willing to acknowledge error with regard to the below lessons, save the first, which they cannot deny without being accused of being science deniers. Continue Reading

Pulling Back the Veil – What Cosmologists are Hiding

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The Hand of God (nebula) behind the Veil of Science

The Hand of God (nebula) behind the Veil of Science

(Or: Big Bang Magic Part 3:
Pulling Back the Veil on the five biggest questions about the universe)

Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, cosmology these days is not an objective science, devoted  strictly to the scientific explanation of the origin of the universe. There is an agenda that rules cosmology. An agenda that has nothing to do with science as confessed by Richard Lewontin: Continue Reading

Radiometric dating: Science or Guesswork?

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F14 in catapult with full afterburners

F14 in catapult with full afterburners


Is radiometric dating accurate? It’s science and many believe “science” to be synonymous with “always true” and therefore don’t question the data given, even when it contradicts the Bible – which also claims to be always true in  information that it affirms. So when the two contradict – as they do with the age of the universe and the earth – many abandon the faith and reject the Genesis account because current science tells them that the universe and the earth is billions of years old, and disregard the biblical account – which indicates an age of about 6,000 years. The evidence many find persuasive:  radiometric dating. But is radiometric dating really the objective hard science many believe it to be? By “objective, hard science” I mean science that is  measurable, repeatable, predictable, consistent and accurate.  For instance I would could consider the physics of flight a “hard science.”  Here’s how those terms apply to the performance of an aircraft: Continue Reading

More Big Bang Magic Tricks – Shadows and Waves

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What casts no shadows besides vampires? Apparently, the big bang.

In theory, scientists are objective seekers of the truth, handling the data that is discovered with honesty and integrity.  Unfortunately particularly in sciences that have worldview implications, that is not the case. One of those sciences is cosmology – the science that attempts to determine the origin and development of the universe. With the possible exception of Darwinian evolution,  there are no sciences  that have larger worldview implications that cosmology.   Even without knowing how the origin of the universe came about, the psalmist is correct in his declaration “the heavens declare the glory of God.” (Ps 19.1)  Atheist cosmologists know that and have tried to mute that testimony by attempting to come up with a story of the creation of the universe that doesn’t involve God.  Because even if you haven’t formally studied apologetics or cosmology, everyone implicitly understands the Kalam Cosmological argument for the existence of God: Everything that begins to exist has a creator. The universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a creator. The only one powerful enough to create the universe is of course God, therefore God created the universe.

Such a simple, intuitive, easy to understand proof of the existence of God is anathema to atheist cosmologists because their own preferred theory of origins – the Big Bang theory – though incorrect nevertheless points to the fact that the universe had a beginning. Continue Reading

Intelligent Design’s Blind Side

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Intelligent Design’s Blind Side

William Dembski is a leader in the Intelligent Design (ID) community, so I read with initial interest a recent interview he did with Sean McDowell titled How is the Intelligent Design Movement Doing? Interview with William Dembski.  which is posted on McDowell’s blog. That initial interest turned to dismay as the adversarial attitude Dembski has toward revealed truth in general and Young Earth Creationism (YEC) in particular was made apparent. When asked how he assesses the reception of ID within the church, Dembski states:

“I would say that the church broadly and even the evangelical community has — on balance — been somewhere between useless and downright counterproductive to the success of ID.”

A most unfortunate assessment given the potential ID has to impact a culture that has largely fallen under the sway of the junk science put forth to support the materialist religion known as Darwinian Evolution. Even more unfortunate is Dembski’s  apparent blindness to how he (and other ID advocates with similar positions) has caused such a reaction from the God fearing, Bible believing faithful they’d like to gain support from. To unravel this mystery for them, let’s start with what both ID advocates and YEC advocates are trying to achieve. Continue Reading

Dark Matter: The Big Bang’s Missing Link

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Black holes – once again a candidate for dark matter. (Above: simulation of merging black holes. Click for animation)

 

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”[1]
Sherlock Holmes

Holmes, the famed fictional detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle popularized that statement of logic, and highlighted the power of deductive reasoning for solving problems.  As fans of Sherlock Holmes know this adage is a key tool in the forensic tool kit for catching criminals.  Applied to science, it is also very helpful, but it cannot always be as conclusive with scientific theory as it is when narrowing the field of suspects in a crime. That is because of two ambiguous terms that science has a hard time precisely defining. Those are:

  1. Eliminate the Impossible
     This is a doubly difficult task for science, because it assumes you first have the knowledge to identify all possibilities, then secondly, have the ability to identify (via testing if it’s to be scientific) that which is  not possible. Only then can you know that you’ve eliminated the impossible. But when it comes to cosmology as physicist and creationist John Hartnett quips:

    “To make such a claim, you would have to know that you have ruled out all other possibilities. In such a case—remember this is not a laboratory experiment—you would have to be an all-knowing god.” [2]
    John Hartnett
     

  2. Whatever remains
     We tend to think that “whatever remains” is a single identifiable cause, but in fact, there could be multiple causes that make up “whatever remains”

So before coming out with any definitive statements,  scientists must be sure that they have carefully accounted for each of these two often difficult to identify variables. Unfortunately, that has  not been the case when it comes to  scientific speculation on Dark Matter. In that regard there are a lot of scientists jumping to the conclusion that dark matter exists, and is out there, waiting to be verified (in a lab) by scientists. Why is that? Let’s take a look at why scientists are so intent on proving that Dark Matter exists, and why it’s prudent to be skeptical about their whole approach to the existence of dark matter.

The Problem: The Universe is not behaving as (we think) it should

Scientists have identified peculiar behavior in the outer reaches of the universe. Not all galaxies are moving as they should. To visualize the problem, consider: Continue Reading

Evolution: Not Science, Pseudoscience

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A duck dressed as a scientist is still a duck. And a pseudoscientific theory dressed up like real science is still pseudoscience.  That just leaves the question: is evolution pseudoscience?  Fortunately, that’s an easy question to answer: yes. And even better, you don’t need to be a scientist to recognize a pseudoscience, just as you don’t need to be a doctor to recognize the difference between a human and a non-human like a duck. Anyone who knows what a “human” and a “duck” is can easily discern the difference. And anyone who knows what “science” and “pseudoscience” is will likewise easily discern the difference.

As  you are probably already aware, a favored tactic of  proponents of evolution is to label both Creation and Intelligent Design disciplines as “pseudosciences.”  The irony of course being that it is a trivial matter to demonstrate that Darwinian goo-to-you evolution is the epitome of a pseudoscience.  Yet regardless of  how clear the evidence is, you will never, ever get an evolutionist to acknowledge that Darwinian molecules-to-man evolution is a pseudoscience. So in this article we’ll first take a look at how Darwinian evolution fits the definition of a pseudoscience perfectly; then press on to demonstrate how evolution breaks a number of the known laws of science further proving it to be pseudoscience in spite of their protestations that “it’s science.”

According to the bastion of popular secular knowledge known as Wikipedia, a pseudoscience is:

“…a claim, belief, or practice presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to the scientific method. A field, practice, or body of knowledge can reasonably be called pseudoscientific when it is presented as consistent with the norms of scientific research,  but it demonstrably fails to meet these norms.”[1]

So one cannot know whether something is a pseudoscience until one first understands the scientific method. Again, according to Wikipedia, the scientific method is:

“a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry is commonly based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as “a method or
procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.”[2]

Evolution fits the definition of a pseudoscience

Evolution fits every criteria necessary to be identified as a pseudoscience: Continue Reading

Games evolutionists play: The Name Game

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The Name Game

The Name Game: Evolutionists define “evolution” at least 6 different ways.
In order to avoid having evolution shown to be unobservable and unscientific, evolutionists resort to games when discussing it.

What do Captain Kirk’s solution to the Kobayashi Maru test, certain YouTube “prank” videos and a common defense of evolution made by evolutionists have in common? Keep reading.

Perhaps you’ve seen the YouTube videos where young ladies are “pranked” (read “tricked”) into giving the prankster a kiss. It’s a simple trick. The prankster (read trickster) gets the young ladies to agree to give him a kiss if he wins a coin toss. The trickster then pulls out a coin and says “Heads I win, tails you lose.”  The trickster of course wins the coin toss, and the young lady, aware she’s been tricked somehow, but not quite able to put her finger on how, keeps up her end of the bargain and provides a quick peck.

If it’s not immediately obvious the trick the prankster played, here’s the trick broken down. It has nothing to do with the coin. It’s all about how you define what constitutes a win: Continue Reading

Exposing the Big Magic behind the Big Bang

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Big Bang timeline, including unknown, magical origin.

 The Big Bang is full of carefully hidden magic. Have you spotted it?

The Big Bang theory has been the predominant, scientist favored theory for the origin of the universe for a number of decades. But you probably knew that already. You probably also thought that the Big Bang theory was all science, based on well established facts and observations. If so then the Big Bang magicians have you just where they want you: already believing the illusion they’re selling is 100% science. Like a person going to see a magic show believes he will see magic; a person hearing a story from a scientist believes he will hear science.  Since you already believe what you hear about the big bang is science, pulling off the illusion that it is all science with no magic mixed in is now a piece of cake. Continue Reading