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Thursday, August 06, 2009

Dark Energy Darker Science

While empirical science continues to exist, it has largely been replaced by pseudo-science based on statistics. As we have dumbed down our schools and shifted our universities into centers of political correctness and indoctrination, science is under attack from the intellectually lazy who resort to writing papers that make outrageous claims with no factual basis. These have largely been restricted to the medical field where are regularly treated to claims that mayonnaise causes cancer, that poverty causes crime, and apples will kill you, all based on statistical analyses of a sample of four. As low as the medical field has sunk, it seems that other scientific areas are succumbing to the need to make ridiculous claims just to keep the public aware and the money from Washington flowing.

Carl Sagan seems to have launched this trend of stating theories as facts, with his passionate defense of evolution, the origin of life, and interstellar life. To hear Sagan you would think that evolution is an absolute fact, especially since he was successful in convincing the majority of the media. The reality is that Darwin’s book “Origin of Species” never actually addressed the origin of species and all of the examples used to substantiate the claim of evolution are in fact examples of adaptation and not speciation. Then the claim that there is life on other planets is based entirely on the statistical probability that given enough planets around enough stars, that some must be oxygen/carbon based and thus life must have evolved. Of course the a priori position here is unstated and that is that life evolved on this planet and thus must have evolved on other planets as well. Now indeed, it may have but there is no proof of that fact and many people today believe that life on this planet is unique and divinely created. Certainly there is no proof of this position either but in that case neither position should be viewed as factual. But all of these are really topics for another day, because this creeping destruction of science seems to be impacting physics and quantum physics as well.

Cosmology and Quantum Physics exist in a realm where proving anything is almost impossible so those who study these areas rely very heavily on some very esoteric mathematics to describe and substantiate their theories. At first glance this seems to be not only logical but should lead to hard answers, but does it? Do these equations actually describe reality or do they describe a reality that only exists in the equations? First you must agree that science has indeed been able to determine the weight of every object in the universe and the total amount of energy existing in that universe. Of course the assumption here is that the speed of light is a limitation and that we can see to the edges of the universe, which of course we can’t. So if the universe is expanding and accelerating objects at the edge would be invisible to an observer on Earth. Therefore, these equations must rest on assumptions that cannot be verified except through the balancing of these equations. So what’s the problem?

The problem lies in the fact that the equations require some fudging in order to balance. This means that constants (of whatever value is necessary) are required but even with these constants the scientists are left with some big problems – assuming their initial assumptions were correct. The equations indicate that only 5% of the observable universe is visible. There is not enough energy nor is there enough matter to account for what the equations need to balance. This leads to that great flaw in modern science which is to name the unknown and thus give the impression that it exists and that we know about it when in fact it only exists in the minds of these scientists and their equations. These two great unknowns have been given the names of Dark Energy (70%) and Dark Matter (25%), of course these could be called anything but the term dark was chosen because they cannot be observed. The irony here is that Dark Energy could just as easily be called the “Mind of God” and Dark Matter “the Souls of Man”. I am not saying this is the case, I am merely pointing out that the latter nomenclature is just as valid as the former because neither can be verified and the equations would work either way.

But current physics and cosmology all begin AFTER the Big Bang. The belief (it is belief and not factual) is that at some point and with no other causative factor the universe sprang from a primordial speck that contained all of the energy and matter in the universe today. Precisely where this speck was is unknown because space did not exist prior to the Big Bang. Of course there is the POSSIBILITY that God exists and that the causative factor was in fact God. But this would mean there is intelligent design to the universe and life, which is totally rejected by science even though increasingly science is faith based rather than factual.

2 comments:

Al G. said...

"Then the claim that there is life on other planets is based entirely on the statistical probability that given enough planets around enough stars, that some must be oxygen/carbon based and thus life must have evolved."
Anyone who has passed courses in prob & stat knows that probabilites are based on statistics, collected facts. With no facts to base a probability on it is nonsense to claim that there is a XX% probability that son-and-so will happen.
With no living organisms discovered on any but this planet, it is nonsense to claim that there is a so-and-so percent chance that life has arisen spontaneously on other planets. We don't even know how many other planets exist in the cosmos. We have no real idea, just wild speculations, how many galaxies there are, much less stars and planets.
We don't know how anything got here, either. From whence cameth the primordial speck? No one knows. Was there a primordial speck? No one knows. Just mathematical constructs with goodly dollops of fudge. Just do a good job of faking it and you can get a good living extracted out of the dumb taxpayers.

Royce said...

You are absolutely correct. I have written about this several times. I am currently in a debate over Atheism versus Theism and have just finished another essay titled "Faith Based Science". While condemning religion because it is faith based the same scientists actually rely on their faith in science which has no solid factual foundation on the origin of anything.