Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

Rand,

Deranged is right. Wow.

Posted by Jim Rohrich at November 22, 2004 07:41 AM

Unless the crucifix moves across the moon, it would not be visible from earth except when the side of the moon that has the crucifix is facing the earth.

Am I missing something here or besides having a warped political view, Greg Zsidisin does not understand much about space?

Posted by Charles Rodgers at November 22, 2004 07:57 AM

Huh? I think you are missing something. The moon is tide locked...it always shows the same side.

Posted by sjvan at November 22, 2004 08:15 AM

If the evangelicals would accept a big cross on the Moon in lieu of "evolution is only a theory" stickers on our textbooks and prayer in public school, frankly I'd say build the cross.

Posted by Bill White at November 22, 2004 08:20 AM

Ummm, Bill, evolution *is* a theory, just as relativity is a theory. To teach otherwise is to teach something totally against the scientific method. Today's students are often scientifically illiterate enough without further hindering them. It reflects a sad state of affairs when textbooks are so unclear on the point that some group has an opening to place such a sticker. It is also unfortunate, though, that so many people confuse 'theory' to mean 'speculation'.

- Eric.

Posted by Eric S. at November 22, 2004 09:59 AM

WOW, is right, that dude needs an beer or a tranquilizer.

I am so tired of hearing that the Christian Right got Bush re-elected. I heard last week that some poll found that 42% of 2004 voters were regular church attendees, the same percentage as in 2000.

My problem, I have yet to track down that poll for my holiday arguments with liberal friends. Does anyone know who did that poll?

Posted by Steve at November 22, 2004 11:42 AM

er .. "evolution *is* a theory, just as relativity is a theory"
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0411/feature1/

quote:
The notion that Earth orbits around the sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus in 1543, is a theory. Continental drift is a theory. The existence, structure, and dynamics of atoms? Atomic theory. Even electricity is a theoretical construct, involving electrons, which are tiny units of charged mass that no one has ever seen. Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence.

Posted by kert at November 22, 2004 11:44 AM

It is truly a shame when even National Geographic can't get it right. Any "knowledgeable" expert that accepts a theory *as a fact* is an idiot. Theories are ALWAYS subject to testing and verification, even if only to push the number of significant figures out one decimal place further. Further, the Earth orbiting the sun and continental drift are both *observations*, not theories.

- Eric.

Posted by Eric S. at November 22, 2004 01:46 PM

Heh-heh! poor poor Crazy Greg

I know what upsets Greg the most. He reveals it in the first paragraph of his hateful 'satire'. What really bothers Greg isn't the Bush/Republican victory, what bothers Greg is that Greg was wrong wrong wrong about Bush's committment to the Vision for Space Exploration.

The VSE wasn't phony, wasn't just P.R. to sucker some voters, Bush really does intend to push the policy forward. And it burns Greg to no end that his hated enemy Bush will really lead America into a space-exploring future.

Posted by Brad at November 22, 2004 01:48 PM

A big "W" would probably tee them off even more.

Is spontaneous human combustion a theory? Would the big 'W' count as towards 'science in space' grants if it was a study of spontaneous human combustion?

Posted by Al at November 22, 2004 01:57 PM

The irony of this piece by Greg was it demonstrated he was a true moonbat.

Posted by Mike Puckett at November 22, 2004 02:02 PM

Kert,
OK I am confused a little. Not sure which way you were falling in the discussion.

The things you state as scientific "fact", have been examined, re-examined and agreed upon. However, evolution, as far as I know, has not been proven.

I know there is a species of moth in England that are darker post industrial revolutions, than they were before. The darker moths hide on soot covered tree and walls, next to lighter colored moths of the same species, the lighter ones are easier to see and get eaten first by predators. That's natural selection.

There is a crab species in Japan that looks like it has a Samurai Warrior's face on its shell. BECAUSE the fishermen throw back all the ones that look like they have Samurai Warrior's face on their shell. Those Samurai Warrior Crabs get to reproduce and further carry on producing Samurai Warrior Crabs. The other crabs get eaten and don't get a chance to reproduce. Ending lines of crabs that don't look like Samurai Warrior's. That again is natural selection.

I am not an Evolution scoffer mind you. I do belive in evolution in some ways, but religiously I have my faith that tells me otherwise. How, do I rectify this? I am just not sure how long Gods days were. 7 days at 24 hours per each day, seems very short for the wonders of the universe. And the big kicker, the last time I checked there is seldom a bang, BIG or small without there being light. (Gen 1:3)

And the Big Bang has been examined and re-examined and has been agreed upon.

Posted by Steve at November 22, 2004 02:05 PM

"Any "knowledgeable" expert that accepts a theory *as a fact* is an idiot. "

How long does a theory stay a theory ? Has theory of relativity been conclusively proven to be correct ? Has theory of electricity ?

"Further, the Earth orbiting the sun and continental drift are both *observations*, not theories."
How so ? Have anyone stood by the sun, watching the earth circle around him ? I will postulate that atomic theory is actually a bunch of baloney, after all we cant see the atoms, touch them or observe them directly, we just believe our instruments. What people unlocked in project Manhattan was actually the mighty wrath of Cthulhu.
There goes the theory ...

"The things you state as scientific "fact", have been examined, re-examined and agreed upon."
Agreed upon but not by everybody. Some would definitely have you believe that electricity is some form of higher magic.

Im reminded of Asimov's "Reason". I felt very sympathethic to good misters Powell and Donovan trying to convince the robot whom they had just put together that he wasnt created by God.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_%28Asimov%29

All im saying is that there are theories, there are observations, but its very hard to draw a hard line where theory stops being a theory but an established fact. IMHO, we have had tons of proof about Darwin being correct, more direct proof than one could ever have about atomic theory. But thats just my opinion.

Posted by kert at November 22, 2004 02:42 PM

Help! Help!, The Christians are coming.

Posted by Rich at November 22, 2004 03:00 PM

Between fossil evidence and comparative genetic analysis, the theory of evolution has the same degree of evidence in support of it as things like the theories of continental drift and relativity. The only real point of contention is with regards to the very first organisms, as we don't have fossils from this period and haven't yet been able to fully reproduce this process in the laboratory.

Posted by Neil Halelamien at November 22, 2004 03:39 PM

> How long does a theory stay a theory ?

Until it's disproven. A fact is an empirical observation. A theory never "becomes a fact."

In biology, there is both the "fact of evolution" (changes in genetic frequency -- an observable fact) and the "theory of evolution by natural selection" (commonly called the "theory of evolution). The theory originated as a hypothesis to explain the observed facts of evolution. There were other theories of evolution (now descredited) that preceeded it.

Of course, the real issue here has nothing to do with whether evolution is a theory, a hypothesis, or a fact. It's who will control what is taught in public schools. Controversies like this would never arise on the Federal level if not for the public school monopoly, which came out of 19th Century Harvard unitarian social-ist movement, which wished to use the schools as an instrument of social indoctrination (and largely succeeded).

Posted by Edward Wright at November 22, 2004 04:02 PM

Kert,

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Nowadays we can directly observe Earth's orbital motion ten ways to Sunday. Stellar parallax, Doppler shifts of signals from pulsars and deep space probes, the list goes on and on. And no, the theory of (special) relativity is *still* being tested. However, since folks are actively discussing just what 'mass' is and whether it derives from some other property/process (rather than being intrinsic), there's still more work to be done than just pushing out the significant figures. Anyway, it is still the *theory* of relativity, not the *fact* of relativity.

Furthermore, special relativity is far better characterized than something like evolution. For one thing, some aspects of evolutionary theory regarding how distinct species arise are all but impossible to observe. We can know great details of DNA and the biochemical mechanisms involved, we can observe genetic changes over many generations (of shorter-lived species) and thereby test some aspects of evolutionary theory, but there are other aspects that require much work still.

The really sad part is that, in many ways, prying this body of knowledge from the natural world is harder than disciplines like astrophysics. (Nobody was around to witness eohippus become a pony.) It *should* make great material for teaching how science is done and the proper scepticism a researcher should keep. Unfortunately, our education establishment is too enamored with non-disciplines like "Pick your favorite ethnic group" Studies and can't be bothered (for the most part) to publish good texts on math and science.

- Eric.

Posted by Eric S. at November 22, 2004 05:35 PM

Furthermore, special relativity is far better characterized than something like evolution.

Here I would disagree with you. Relativity (either of them) has major problems, namely that it is not a quantum theory and that it cannot accomodate a theory of electrodynamics.

On the other hand, anyone with experience in computer simulation and a reasonably fast computer can prove that natural selection can cause new species to arise with only slightly more trouble than needed to prove that the first 17 digits of pi are 31415926535897932.

Darwin's major conclusion can be taken to be "natural selection can account for the variety of species observed on the Earth, given any form of life, even unicellular life, 600 million or more years ago." This conclusions has a scientific stature among informed scientists roughly equal to the Newtonian equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass. That is, there are very few things more reliably true.

The proposition that, although evolution could have produced the variety of life we observe over 600 million years, in fact it did not because God created it all 40 million years ago, or 4000 years ago, or 40 minutes ago,
is an untestable statement. It could be true, it could be false. We'll never know.

The evolution of life qua life from inorganic material is equally certain, but the scale of time required is far less clear. But unless you want to argue that it exceeds 13 billion years, you still don't need divine intervention to have life. Of course, once again, this does not prove God didn't create life, only that He didn't need to.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 23, 2004 04:41 PM

"Here I would disagree with you. Relativity (either of them) has major problems, namely that it is not a quantum theory and that it cannot accomodate a theory of electrodynamics."

Incorrect. Special relativity works quite well with quantum electrodynamics. And while the quest to unify general relativity with quantum theory has been tough, that does not diminish the predictive capability of GR. Both special and general relativity have mountains of actual, measured numbers. OTOH, many of the most important aspects of evolution theory are difficult to experimentally verify.

"On the other hand, anyone with experience in computer simulation and a reasonably fast computer can prove that natural selection can cause new species to arise with only slightly more trouble than needed to prove that the first 17 digits of pi are 31415926535897932."

I'm going to have to ask you to provide citations. Since nobody knows just how new species arise, it should be interesting to find out how this was simulated. And how, exactly, does one verify such a simulation?

"This conclusions has a scientific stature among informed scientists roughly equal to the Newtonian equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass. That is, there are very few things more reliably true."

I'm a fairly informed scientist (I try to keep up with things other than physics, etc) and I'm pretty confident that, based on the nature of the gaps I see in evolutionary theory, you've overstated the above. There is much more work needed before evolutionary theory has the predictive capacity of something like relativity. And that's OK. As I said last time, in many ways it's a harder nut to crack.

- Eric.

Posted by Eric S. at November 23, 2004 08:04 PM

On reflection, I can't believe I actually posted something in an evolution-is-a-theory thread. I'm sure there's some kind of inverse Godwin's Law that applies to situations like this. Once the subject has been raised, the thread never dies. . .

Anyway. With respect, I disagree. I spoke sloppily when I said SR/GR "can't accomodate" a theory of electrodynamics. I didn't mean that quantum theories can't be made relativistically invariant, of course. What I mean is you can't go the other direction: you can't derive a theory of electromagnetic force from relativistic considerations of geometry and symmetry, the way AE did for gravity.

To my mind this is significant, if merely esthetic . One of the best aspects of GR to me is that mass and gravity are logically required once you posit a spacetime that need not be flat. By contrast QED has at bottom this philosophically distasteful ad-hockery of positing elementary charges and forces with fundamental types and constants that (so far as I know) come out of nowhere. I speak under correction, as I know almost nothing of high-energy physics beyond QED.

For your OTOH, I couldn't begin to suggest where to begin. Maybe go here and type in "evolution bacteria" and start reading? What I think you'll find is that almost all of what biologists know about genetics and use daily is inextricably tied up with evolutionary theory. Enormous amounts of data are simply inexplicable without this theoretical framework. To question the basic principles of evolution in biology is like questioning whether energy is conserved in physics. It's a show-stopper.

As for observing evolution in action, unsophisticated creationists are occasionally flummoxed by the simplest version: From where did the AIDS virus come? No one ever died of the disease before 1950. So either one of the few things God has actually created since Genesis was a hideous virus, or else it evolved from similar viruses (as anyway they can be seen to do in the petri dish). Forced to pick answer Ugh or Ouch, some of them break down and resort to name-calling instead.

Sophisticated creationists have no trouble with this, of course -- they rarely deny what they call "microevolution." But once you've admitted microevolution, then "macroevolution" is just a matter of changing your time scale to fit the time between generations of larger organisms. I would think to a physicist the notion that the basic principles change when you merely change length and time scales would be a little uncomfortable.

You can also study the process by computer modeling. This is what genetic algorithms are all about. Now, granted, the "organisms" that are evolving are often highly abstract, but the principles are the same. It's the same concept as modeling nonpolar fluids with hard-core potentials, or modeling star interiors with simplified equations of state. The "fluids" are abstract, but no one doubts the applicability to real fluids, just because they're being modeled on a computer with certain unimportant simplifications.

And, again, once you admit the principles, then you must admit that, given enough time, evolution of any species you like is possible. You can then argue that the Earth's lifetime is insufficient (which the panspermists probably argue, too) or make the rather scientifically undignified pleading that, while evolution is possible, it might not actually have occured, like OJ might not actually have done it.

My problem with either is that, if evolution did occur, it would leave a fossil record and (more importantly these days) genetic relation between the species very much like what we find. Coincidence? Could be. But Occam's Razor suggests the good scientist assumes not. By me a special act of Creation is simply an inelegant, anthropomorphocentric and needlessly complex explanation. Sure, it could be true. But it's a damn sloppy way to run a Universe. I expect better from God, myself.

The most sophisticated creationists I know simply suggest that our understanding of the power and subtlety of God's handiwork has evolved -- oops, I mean changed as we discover more about it. Primitive men believed God created each individual life. When we discovered the connection between sex and birth, we realized God was more subtle: He needed only to create Adam and Eve and let nature take its fascinating course. Now, when we have noodled out evolution, we realize He was yet more subtle: He simply created the physical universe and let nature take its course. Some go so far as to suggest that God may simply have created theoretical reality and let nature take its course. That is, He created simply the possibility of existence, and, as we will realize when we work out the correct physics, the possibility of existence logically implies its exact nature as we experience it.

I find this more appealing, because I believe in a God of infinite subtlety.

Posted by Carl Pham at November 24, 2004 01:03 AM

I find this more appealing, because I believe in a God of infinite subtlety.

Uh oh.

The above is pretty much exactly where I stand concerning God.

Go figure that! ;-)

Peace.

Posted by Bill White at November 24, 2004 06:00 AM

London-born rapper Sway is to be honoured at the BET Hip-Hop awards in the US...

Posted by Fred Yu at December 13, 2006 12:38 PM

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