God -- The Bible -- Science

PREFACE

What follows are my opinions.  They are not intended to prove anything and certainly not intended to offend anyone.  I view myself as a Christian but many of my Christian friends would disagree due to various doctrinal conflicts.  I don’t think God is exclusive to any specific religion and  is present in all religions.  It is not my intent to prove that God exists but rather to ask the Atheist to prove that He doesn’t.

What follows is my simple comparison of the Bible’s description of the creation to what science currently believes.  The important thing here is that while the Bible requires faith it is the same for science because neither can prove their positions.

God--the Bible – and Science

The atheist doesn’t believe in God but he believes in science and challenges those who believe in God to prove He doesn’t exist.  But when challenged to prove that God doesn’t exist the atheist cannot offer any scientific proof.  In fact Richard Dawkins – the High Priest of Darwinism – when challenged to explain how the complex DNA and RNA molecules came into existence as a random event he admitted he could not explain it.  Instead he said “it must have happened because we are here.”  The idiocy of this statement is lost on the atheist whose faith is in science.  But to believe that some random combination of chemicals could produce these complex molecules would lead to the logical conclusion that they could have just as easily combined into a birthday cake.  So it seems that science requires the same level of faith as faith in God requires.

Allowing for some poetic license it seems that the Bible describes the Big Bang or “First Cause” pretty well.  The Bible says that God created the heavens and the Earth and the Earth was without form and void..  Science tells us that all energy was created with the Big Bang and was a swirling incredibly hot cloud of particles that eventually coalesced into the stars and the earth.  Then God separated the waters from the waters and divided the waters from under the firmament from those above the firmament.   According to what science believes the energies released began to coalesce into mass laden molecules and ultimately into the stars and planets.  Given some latitude for poetic license the Biblical description of the second day seems to track science.

On the third day God gathered together the waters into one place and let the dry land appear and the seas.  This seems to track the scientific belief that the Earth was formed out of the swirling mass of particles into our planet which was  incredibly hot and surrounded by gas.  As the Earth cooled the gases cooled and formed the seas and atmosphere.  The Bible and science seem to agree up to this point but then the sequence of events begins to diverge.  The Bible claims the next step was the creation of grass and trees  but the fossil record shows no plant life of any kind in the Cambrian or Pre-Cambrian beyond something akin to pond scum.  The Cambrian fossil record shows an abundance of sea life but grasses and plant life first appear in the Ordovician period.   In fact the sequence of events between the Bible and the fossil record greatly differ from this point on, but it is the sequence not the actual events.  The Sun and the Moon are created after the Earth but science claims that the Sun was created first and the Moon after the Earth.  The first life appears in the Cambrian Seas and the Bible and science agree on this point but the Bible claims that flying fowl were created at the same time but once again the fossil record doesn’t show any flying animal until much later. 

This brings us to the sixth day which roughly equates to the Devonian period when land animals first appear.  The Bible lumps the rest of creation into this sixth day ranging from the creation of the first land animals to the creation of man.   The fossil record shows the evolutionary history of the Earth in much more detail than the Bible but roughly they parallel the development of life on Earth.    The huge difference comes with the creation of man.  The Bible is very clear that God created man in His image while the scientists point to the fossil record that shows a path from primitive apes to modern man.  This fossil record for mankind has some questionable entries and assumptions but even so the record is very clear that man did not appear fully formed as we know him today.  To accept the Biblical explanation would require God to look somewhat like Michelangelo’s version of God which would mean that God is tangible, Heaven is tangible or at least a physical place, and that Hell exists.  Furthermore, once God is accepted as real then Satan must be real as well.  

Since the Bible was written people have believed that if God created man in his image that when they look into the mirror they see an image similar to God.  But science tells us that everything in the universe is energy and that the Big Bang created all of that energy.  That would lead to the conclusion that God is energy and that when He created man he created man as an energetic image – which we know as our soul.  Our physical bodies are mere shells – containers for our souls while we serve our time on Earth.  Certainly it would be asking too much for science to accept this explanation because it would require accepting God, but viewing man ‘s soul as the image of God then the creation story in Genesis seems to closely parallel the scientific view of the creation.

As I said at the outset these are just my opinions and I have no proof of anything.  I simply looked at the Bible and compared it to various scientific articles and descriptions and found what I saw as parallels.  You may or may not agree.

Social Engineering Vs Science

Today we find in the news the alarming statistic that 600,000 people died this year from side smoke, not from actual smoking but just from being exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). But virtually no one questions this “fact” because it is based on a “scientific” study. But isn’t the number itself a little suspicious? Couldn’t it have been say 601,000 or maybe 559,000? The even number tells you that this is an estimate and not a real number but as an estimate its accuracy is entirely dependent on the methodology as well as the qualifications of those making the estimate. Who was studied is another key component governing the accuracy of this finding. In the original A Priori study people in primitive conditions using indoor charcoal cooking stoves were included along with survivors of the Hiroshima atomic blast. In addition as an A Priori study all findings counter to the initial assumption were discarded even though many of those studies showed no correlation between ETS and cancer.

In spite of there not being any empirical connection between ETS and cancer the crusade against tobacco and smokers in general continues and is growing in intensity. In fact there is no known cause of cancer. It could be genetic, it could be environmental, it could be viral, but no one knows. What is known is that some people smoke their entire lives and never develop lung cancer while some people die of lung cancer never having smoked tobacco in their lives, but it is these people who are deemed to have died of tobacco related causes. What no one seems to notice or question is that virtually everyone on the planet has been exposed at some time in their lives to “side smoke” be it from tobacco or camp fires. The logical conclusion is that 99.9% of all deaths are smoke related, but that is just statistics or logic -- not science. And that’s the point because the author of the EPA’s report on ETS admitted that there is no science behind the report and that the entire program against ETS is – in his words – a social program.

The fact is that with the death of critical thinking the social engineers have run amok. These social engineers have killed off any semblance of personal responsibility. Teachers can no longer fail students or hold them back for fear of damaging their “self esteem”. This policy has given us high school graduates who cannot read or are functionally illiterate. We have people in college who cannot spell properly or even write a simple declarative sentence with no grammatical errors. But the social engineers haven’t stopped with these simple policy programs, they have actually degraded science to the point that there is no science behind many of these programs.

Perhaps the most egregious example of social engineering masquerading as science is the epidemic of obesity. We are total that obesity is epidemic in the United States and that this is a disease that must be addressed by the government. Social Engineers are very big on government coercion in order to enforce their ideas on how the rest of us should live. Of course the operative word here is “disease” because if a person is over weight it isn’t his fault because he has a disease. How one contacts this disease isn’t noted but it appears to be related to fast food, sugary cereals, tasty high fat foods, and other foods not approved by the social engineers. The solution to this epidemic obesity is to force schools to serve approved healthy foods which the kids won’t eat, to force purveyors of fast food to either go out of business to change their menus so they are only serving approved healthy foods which no one orders. It's much like forcing the auto manufacturers to build electic cars than no one buys. Since these socially engineered programs seemed to have failed no one seems to be calling for more research into how the obesity disease is caught, instead the call is for government intervention. Where is the science behind this epidemic? There isn’t any, but the finger isn’t being pointed at the individual as being responsible for his situation due to his poor decisions – it is pointed at the sellers and advertisers.

Another equally outrageous abuse of science is the disease of alcoholism. People actually die of alcoholism so something must be done to curb this disease. A person doesn’t become a drunkard through irresponsible behavior – he is simply the victim of a disease. Science can demonstrate that consuming alcohol is bad for you and abuse of alcohol can have fatal consequences. But rather than hold the alcoholic personally responsible for his situation the social engineers have decided that the alcoholic suffers from the disease of alcoholism. Unlike tobacco the social engineers aren’t calling for an outright ban on alcohol, after all they do enjoy their wine so banning alcohol isn’t considered. Even though there is a direct and known link between alcohol and several fatal health issues the outrage and call for action focuses on tobacco. The hypocrisy of the social engineers is palpable.

The social engineers are running out of control and it just isn’t about how they are using or attempting to use government to enforce their opinions on how we should live, they are corrupting science. While true empirical science remains it seems to be shrinking while the data miners using statistics are creating the foundation for these social engineers and they are growing in size and power. And all of this is possible because critical thinking seems to be lacking and no one ever seems to question the statistics used by the social engineers.

GOD, Physics, and the Hadron

The world of science is beside itself with anticipation that the new Hadron Collider will finally demonstrate the non-existence of God. This marvelous machine is intended to demonstrate the existence of the Higgs Boson which is a particle that gives mass in some magical way to all other particles. Of course the real problem is that there really are no particles at all, that is none of the particles that scientists like to play with and that are discussed and taught around the world really exist. The Hadron Collider is not only supposed to locate the Higgs Boson but it is also expected to give insight into what happened in the instant of the Big Bang. Unfortunately the real objective is to understand the “science” behind the Big Bang without having to actually come to grips with God, because the truly important questions will remain unanswered.

Prior to the Big Bang there was no space, no time, no energy, no particles, nothing – nothing at all. So what was there? Well no one knows – that is no scientist knows and certainly no atheist knows – there was nothing. So the first question if there was nothing then what triggered the Big Bang? Remember the first thing that the Big Bang had to do was to create space itself because the expanding universe had to fit into something and that was space. Once there was a space then there was a place for all of that incredible energy. So the second question must be what kind of energy was initially created? Well it must have been light (does that sound familiar), heat, and radiation plus other forms of energy but not necessarily gravity, because there was no mass because there were no particles – just energy.

Now this energy was expanding and filling space at an incredible speed, but less than the speed of light. But somehow all of this energy began to coalesce into particles – subatomic particles but precisely how this was done is mostly speculation because there were no particles so there couldn’t be any gravity, but then light has mass because it is composed of photons but were photons created as part of the Big Bang? Light has some really mysterious properties because while it has mass and can be bent by gravity it also acts as a wave so was the light emitted in the Big Bang a wave or a burst of particles? Apparently almost immediately after the Big Bang the released energy began to form particles, a process that apparently remains hidden since it is not ongoing and cannot be duplicated. So once these sub-atomic particles formed they immediately began to join together to create protons, electrons, and neutrons. These are the universal particles that make up the entire universe and everything in it, except of course dark matter—whatever that is- gravity, and the other forces and particles that remain invisible. The really important point is that everything in the universe is pure energy and why that energy has mass is unknown. Of course this what the Higgs Boson is supposed to do – it is supposed to the particle that produces mass in these energy fields called protons, photons, neutrons, and electrons.

The theory is that in the instant following the Big Bang all of this energy began to take on mass and coalesce into particles and then atoms and then molecules, which produced the various elements, which collected together under the influence of gravity which ultimately created all of the stars and planets. All of this can be explained by science even though parts remain speculative. Unfortunately some very uncomfortable questions remain, not the least of which is what caused the Bib Bang in the first place and where did that pin point of energy come from? Beyond that is why do things that are virtually invisible have mass? If every proton, electron, and neutron in the universe is identical why do some have life? Why do some think and some do not? How did life begin? These are the questions the Higgs Boson is supposed to provide the pathway to answers.

Of course it doesn’t take much of a stretch if you subscribe to the myth of God, to come up with some rather simple answers. When you read the first chapters of Genesis you get a pretty accurate, if somewhat poetic, description of the creation of the universe and life on Earth. Somehow I think the Hadron Super Collider will produce some interesting observations but no answers to any of these questions.

Science and Astrology the Meta-Science

Science continues to scoff at Astrology as anything more than superstition while continuing to insist that what they do and speculate about is real science. Thus we are treated to dark energy which no one is really sure what it is, dark matter which must exist because our equations don’t work otherwise, a big bang which must have happened although no one knows exactly how or why, evolution without any understanding of how life began and certainly no way of duplicating it which is the “real” test of science. Instead all examples of life after death are dismissed as endorphins in a dying brain, reincarnation as wishful thinking, and astrology as nothing more than a parlor game at best. Therefore, science is really not as exact and precise as they would have you believe and much of it is really as dependent on faith as religion and other meta-physical studies. For this reason Astrology can be called a meta-science because it doesn’t meet the rigors of the scientific method but then it offers some startling examples of accuracy so how it works or even if it works remains shrouded in mystery – just like the big bang and the origin of life.

Astrology is the study of how conditions in the universe affect everything in the universe, but especially the Earth and the people and events on the Earth. This study and the Zodiac go back to the earliest recorded histories and may actually go back even further given that Atlantis pre-dates most ancient history. Astrology was dignified as a serious study for thousands of years prior to falling out of favor in modern times when “science” became the answer to all questions and the “scientific method” became the litmus test for reality. That is, if the postulation could not be repeated or demonstrated mathematically, then it didn’t exist or was in fact – false. In the parlance of modern science 2 + 2 always equals 4, but then science also says that nothing can travel faster than light, but how do they know? If something is moving faster than light how would they know? Recent studies seem to indicate that things exist beyond the speed of light – imagine that? Perhaps one of these things is ESP or even Astral Rays ???

Astrology can be thought of as a study of events in space-time that consider the Sun, the Moon, and the Planets as the astral-harmonic of a particular moment that marks that event (birth) with a pattern that persists permanently. It is this effect of the stars that is challenged by science because it cannot be demonstrated, but is that really true? A research scientist was working with oysters to see how they would adjust to a changing environment. He had these oysters flown from the Atlantic Coast to Illinois laboratory. At first the Oyster’s attempted to open and close in time with the tides on the East Coast but within two weeks they were opening and closing with high tide in Illinois had Illinois been next to the ocean. Since the Moon is the driver of the tides, the Oysters seemed to be influenced by the Moon as it passed over Illinois.

Michel Gauquelin a French Scientist conducted some statistical studies of the positions of the planets at a person’s birth and their subsequent professions. He looked at the planetary positions when rising and when overhead. He found statistical correlations that people with Mars rising tended to become doctors, scientists, soldiers, or athletes rather than painters or musicians. His study was attacked because other studies did not confirm his findings but the subsequent studies looked at the general population rather than just professional athletes. The assumption was that everyone in the general population with Mars rising should have been an athlete. This represents a fundamental flaw in how science views Astrology and what makes it a Meta-Science. Astrology does not fix people into a set groove because there is no such thing as “destiny” there is only free will. Therefore, a person with Mars rising might be a doctor, soldier, or a scientist and not an athlete at all or none of these things. However, the potential for the person to succeed at any of these things is present. It is this potential that cannot be measured because individuals may choose to go in a totally different direction and decide to do things where they will have to work harder at being successful.

Ironically many of those skeptical scientists know their sun sign and check their horoscopes. Of course they explain that this is just “fun” and they don’t believe in any of it and will cite examples where their daily horoscope in the paper was wrong. This isn’t surprising because the Sun is only one of the astral sources that influence us each day and any reading that attempts to encompass everyone cannot be as accurate as one that looks at all of the planetary influences for a specific person. Even then a daily horoscope can only show the potentials for that day and these may or may not come to pass due to daily decisions and events. For this reason any meaningful study must be conducted using the natal charts because these can be analyzed over the life of the subject.

Is Astrology a science? The answer on the basis of repeatability ala the scientific method must be no, Astrology is NOT a science. But then it isn’t a pseudo-science either because it has some demonstrated predictability, so it falls into the realm of Meta-science. It is more than philosophy because it is more practical and demonstrable but it is less than Chemistry. It falls into a category similar to psychology which is more than guess work but not totally fixed either.

Astrology Science or Pseudo-Science

Frankly I don’t know if Astrology is “science” or a “pseudo-science” but I do know from personal observation that psychic capabilities are real and that what passes for astral influence may be nothing more than a manifestation of psychic ability by the Astrologer. . (I am not an astrologer so I speak from limited knowledge here). Today Astrology is largely regarded as a pseudo-science and ignored as a topic of scientific investigation by scientists on the basis that it has not survived any test using the scientific method. But this has been true of psychic phenomena as well and there are many skeptics who maintain that it is hogwash, even in the face of demonstrated cases.

The crux of the argument against Astrology seems to rest on the lack of evidence of any known mechanism that would present a causal relationship between celestial bodies and events on Earth. Of course the operative phrase here is “known mechanism” because it is quite possible that – don’t laugh now – that we don’t know everything about the universe or the mechanisms that drive it. After all scientists are already struggling to explain what “dark matter” and “dark energy” are although they are pretty sure that these are not evidence of any divine influence. At a more mundane level there is still some gaps in our understanding of gravity, magnetism, and light. So it would seem that it is possible that there are some energy flows that are yet unknown.

A well known French skeptic (Gauguelins) conducted a critical analysis and discovered a statistical correlation between athletes and the position of Mars in their natal charts. This was described as the “Mars Effect”. In follow up studies the Mars Effect was not demonstrated but these results were disputed because the sample included people of mediocre athletic ability rather than athletes of recognized ability. Gauguelins also found statistical correlations between the position of Jupiter with actors and Saturn for scientists. Although Gauguelins findings were later demonstrated by the Belgian Committee PARA, but these were later rejected on a technical basis regarding how the position of Mars was determined and the controversy rages on. Skeptics maintain that the accuracy of astrological predictions is no greater than chance and that people tend to emphasize the positive “hits” while ignoring the “misses”.

The skeptical view is fully understandable but it seems to me that Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle seems to apply here, because Astrology like all other predictive techniques only show the “potential” for something to occur and do not describe the absolute. In the case of Natal Astrology the position of Mars cannot be taken in a standalone fashion but it must be evaluated in relation to all of the other planets. In astrology each planet has specific influence but must be viewed in relation to all others. However, any horoscope only presents the situation at that time but the future is always uncertain so accuracy can never be 100%. The Natal Horoscope is slightly different because it describes the individual’s personality, character traits, and potentials but contrary to the skeptics it does not provide a “cast in stone” view of the individual. Because these variables exist the scientific community dismisses Astrology because it fails to meet the scientific expectation of repeatability and verification. But the reality is that the future is not fixed and destiny does not exist because each of us is granted free will so our decisions – both great and small – determine our future and our condition.

The result of all of this is the dismissal of Astrology by the scientific community as “pseudo-science” because it cannot and never will meet the rigors of the scientific method, because of its innate variability. Therefore, Astrology rightfully cannot be described as a “science” similar to Astronomy or Astrophysics but then it should not be dismissed as fakery either. Therefore, I view Astrology as a “meta-science” similar to “metaphysics” because metaphysics investigates reality that transcends traditional science and explores the intangible and the realms outside of physical science – just as Astrology does. Science cannot demonstrate or prove precisely how the universe came to be or why. Science cannot prove many aspects of science so dismissing Astrology because it cannot be proven doesn’t mean it has no validity, it just moves it into the realm of meta-science.

Metaphysics deals with the nature of reality, why the world exists, and does the world exist outside of our mind. In effect metaphysics deals with God, the inner person, and the purpose of it all. So it isn’t much of a stretch to think that Astrology, which deals with the inner person, life potential, and purpose, is all that different from metaphysics.

The Decline and Fall of Science

What has happened to “science”? Does it exist anymore or has the pressure on professors to “publish or perish” become so intense that the long and arduous effort necessary to do effective research is being bypassed in favor of “statistical” studies many of which are simply data mining activities with no scientific basis. Worse we are being bombarded by “studies” that are so ridiculous that one must wonder if they were intended as joke or a satirical comment on other similar studies. One of these ridiculous studies was recently published that purported that the brains of political liberals were more developed and had greater reasoning ability than the brains of political conservatives. That isn’t a joke, so stop laughing – this was a serious study conducted by a --- dare I say it --- professor --- now don’t roll your eyes like that – he really was a professor at NYU.

This was a real “scientific” research project that consisted of showing students a card with a design and then flashing that design on the screen for a tenth of a second and the student had to push a button if the designs matched. This experiment was divided into two phases. In phase one the designs matched every time and in phase two they never matched. The objective of the experiment was to determine the ability of the individual to make snap judgments in limited time. Once the results were tabulated it seems that all of the students got 100% right in the first phase but in phase two those students who professed to be “liberal” only make errors 34% of the time while those students who classified themselves as “conservative” made errors 44% of the time, thus demonstrating that the “liberal” brain is more capable of making quick and accurate decisions than the “conservative” brain. Stop laughing – really now – I did not make that up. Furthermore, this experiment was based on a total of 43 students with half (please stop laughing – I KNOW that 43 is a prime number so there wasn’t an even division) of the students being selected from a West Coast University and the other half (maybe they used two midgets and classed them as one person – you never can tell when it comes to professors) were from Eastern Universities. Where they found conservatives in these bastions of learning and group think is beyond me, but the professor assures us this was a balanced study.

Of course this entire exercise – which you can be assured, was paid for in some way by the taxpayers – is completely laughable. Not only is the total number of students studied miniscule to the point of being statistically irrelevant the selection of students only from East and West Coast universities further compromised whatever this was. Of course the difference of 10% points on such a small sample further compromises any the activity but the most ridiculous point was the conclusion that liberal students are more capable of making considered and reasoned decisions than conservative students who simply react like trained monkeys. This same experiment run with different students across the country and incorporating smaller colleges and universities, including military cadets, would undoubtedly yield a different set of results – most likely showing that there is no difference in the brains of people or how they use them. Although the brains of college professors might actually be smaller and more ossified.

This brings us to the other popular liberal cause and that is global warming, which has replaced the hysteria over global cooling so those giant liberal brains have now connected the two and assure us that global warming is driving global cooling and the warmer it gets the more it will cool – or is that vice versa – the colder it gets the warmer it will become. It really doesn’t matter because none of these liberal cause apparatchiks really research any of this stuff anyway. The thing that amazes me is it is widely believed that much of the Earth was once covered by ice. This was called the “ice age” and there appear to have been several of them. During this period animals grew long hairy coats and in spite of PETA the human let their hair grow and wore fur clothes which they took from these poor defenseless animals. This tendency to grow long hair in times of stress can be observed on most college campuses – especially on the East and west Coasts.

However, the ice ages did occur and glaciers did appear to have covered much of North America. The long haired animals seem to have disappeared along with – are you ready for this astonishing observation -- the ice!! The ice sheets and glaciers are gone and we are left to speculate on where they went. Of course we are left with only two possibilities migration or melting – I choose melting. Now I guess we could assume that all of those cave people built big fires to melt all of that ice but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of that while there is evidence that the entire climate got warmer. Sort of a Paleolithic global warming that occurred seemingly without any human assistance since the earliest of these occurred before humans graced the Planet. In fact, there is evidence that this warming was so great that Antarctica was NOT covered by ice.

Of course these are the inconvenient facts not addressed by the deep thinkers who are determined to indict Western Civilization for all of the ills of the world as they demand The US sign the Kyoto treaty before it is too late. What they aren’t telling you is that the Kyoto Treaty will not reduce CO2 nor will it have any impact on Global Warming at all, it just redistributes who can make the CO2 so the total remains the same. Just remember when you hear these ridiculous claims that they are coming from the same universities who gave us Ward Churchill and the scientific proof that liberals are smarter.

Pathetic Science

There are many engineers and scientists who labor in the bowels of corporations who generally remain anonymous and rarely publish anything because they are there to create a competitive edge and profits for their employers. Then we have the “popular” scientists who inhabit the halls of academia and who regularly publish articles describing their latest scientific finding with great fanfare. These “findings” usually run along the lines of “Scientist discovers a link between Twisted Tail Porcupine Poop and marriage”. It seems that women who regularly apply Porcupine Poop to their bodies have an 82% chance of not becoming pregnant. Of course they have a 90% chance of not having any male come within smelling distance but like most of these “scientific discoveries” based on statistics salient facts are left out and thus it is with the latest finding coming out of Academic Science.

The academic scientific community is losing all credibility as they move from empirical science and the scientific method to data mining and statistics. But worse than this shift from science to data sampling is the insufferable arrogance and supercilious air that characterizes the academic scientists. Challenges to their beliefs are no longer accepted and foremost among these beliefs is the denial of a supreme being. Science is becoming more and more of a religion with its practitioners expected to embrace it uncritically and with complete faith. This attitude is most commonly associated with Evolution which is no longer viewed by these scientists as a “theory” but as a “fact” even though all of their evidence is simply evidence of adaptation and not evolution in the sense that a new species is created. But most recently we have the popular science academics all in a lather about “global warming (or cooling depending on the year)” What they ignore in their rush to judgment is that no one denies that global warming is a reality, the dispute is over the cause. The scientists who actually study climate and climate changes are ignored while scientists in other fields are being quoted by the popular press as if they knew what they were talking about.

Now the academic scientific community has managed to combine their denial of God, their overweening arrogance, and total acceptance of Evolution into one finding, and THAT is that a belief in a supreme being is the result of Evolution. Washington University Anthropologist Pascal Boyer in his drive to determine why people who seem otherwise perfectly rational choose to believe in God rather than the more rational non-belief of atheism, has concluded that this characteristic is the result of Evolution. Indeed, he and a gaggle of other atheistic scientists have written a variety of books debunking God. These books include such provocative titles as “The God Delusion”, “The End of Faith”, “Breaking the Spell”, and my personal favorite “God is NOT Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”. These books and these “scientists” view faith in God as some sort of mental flaw or aberration, but fail to see their blind faith in (non-empirical) science as tantamount to the same thing. Faith based science seems very like faith based religion and both require total belief with each denying any facts or evidence presented by the other group.

Boyer takes the position that even though he is an atheist his objective is not to debunk God but simply to present his findings, which sound more like opinions than facts. The academic community believed that as civilization advanced and societies based on science became the norm, religion would disappear, but surprisingly this hasn’t happened and approximately 97% of the population continues to persist in their irrational belief in God. Therefore, the only logical conclusion according to these atheists, is that a belief in God is some sort of Evolutionary defense mechanism. That this belief in a supreme being provides a framework for social behavior – such as working together and fighting off enemies, that allows individuals to survive in a hostile environment and it extends the life expectancy of the group and individuals within that group. This latter point was based on a study of Mormons in Utah but the scientists do admit that this correlation between belief in God and longevity among the Mormons might also be attributed to their relatively healthy lifestyle, which includes no alcohol (not even the highly touted red wine so dear to the hearts of many academics), tobacco, drugs, and unmarried sex. In effect this was not an unflawed study.

What seems to have escaped Boyer and his fellow atheists is that if their theory is correct and that a belief in God is driven by evolution, then there can only be two logical conclusions. One is that those who believe must be higher on the Evolutionary scale than those who don’t believe. Or alternatively the atheists among us are more highly evolved because they no longer require the approval of others, teamwork, or cooperation with the society, and they can exist as totally independent entities. It is fairly obvious which of these alternatives the scientists believe, but they seem to ignore that if Evolution is not a theory but a fact, then we are in fact highly developed animals. In the animal world, those individuals who are different, flawed, or unusual are shunned, driven from the group and ultimately die off leaving the gene pool cleansed of the deviants. therefore, it would be the atheists who are deviant and would be eliminated by natural selection. Their small number would seem to bear this out.

These scientists are so driven by their religion of atheism, that they are blinded by the illogic of their position. They ignore the first singularity that initiated the big bang, they ignore all of the findings of Quantum Physics, they ignore all metaphysical studies like near death experiences, but instead postulate a position and a conclusion that God doesn’t exist without offering any facts in support of their belief. I am reminded of the famous graffiti “God is Dead – Nietzsche” “Nietzsche is Dead – God”

Chicken Little and Global Warming

We are being bombarded today by such eminent intellects as Al Gore, the Media, and a gaggle of “Scientists” who maintain that Global Warming is not only a fact, but that if we don’t do something to reverse this trend we are doomed because the planet is doomed. The underlying premise is that the industrialization of society has changed the planetary climate dynamics forever and that as a result Earth will become uninhabitable. Of course this is precisely the position taken by Chicken Little who was convinced the Sky was falling because something fell on his head. Critical analysis was never part of Chicken Little’s world just as it isn’t part of the current gaggle of alarmists who are convinced that civilized nations are essentially evil and are greedily destroying the planet at the expense of those poor people in Africa and other places not under the sway of industrialization.

The reality is that there is absolutely no proof whatsoever that supports the current positions regarding global warming. While it is generally acknowledged that the Earth is warming there is virtually no evidence that mankind is responsible or even that any actions by man can even affect the climate. Most recently it has been determined that the Martian polar caps are melting and the surface temperature of other planets e.g. Pluto is also increasing. How industrialization has had this impact in our solar system is unexplained but I’m confident these gifted scientists and intellects will ultimately find a connection to American Industry. In fact, these anti-industrialists have been sounding the global warming – or is that cooling -- alarm for some time Beginning in the 1970”s and into the early 1980’s the media supported by a group of “scientists” with no specified credentials in Climatology became concerned almost to the point of panic that the climate of the Earth was changing and we needed to do something drastic and immediate. The public was aroused to near panic and the congress was pushed to take action, to sign the Kyoto Treaty, to demand that the Auto Industry (Ford, GM, and Chrysler – never a foreign manufacturer) take immediate action to reduce carbon emissions before we entered a new Ice Age. That’s right – those same scientists supported by the same media were citing examples of glacier advances, lowering temperatures, and the imminent disaster facing us as arable land was lost to frost and snow. The world was about to starve because of carbon emissions and it was all due to Western Democracies (read America) polluting the atmosphere with capitalist driven industrial carbon pollutants coming from our factories and automobiles.

Today nothing has changed except the failure of the Ice Age to appear as predicted. In fact the same evidence is presented by the same people using the same media to predict the Earth is warming, the ice caps are melting, and we (America) is destroying the planet through greed and rampant industrialization. Proof of this is warming trend is cited as the habitat of the Polar Bear shrinks the bears are immediate danger of becoming extinct. The census conducted by rhe Canadian government notes that the actual population of Polar Bears has increased is glossed over -- apparently because the factual data does not support the faith based science regarding man's destruction of the planet. Unfortunately the geologic record shows that the Earth has gone through climatic cycles since the beginning of time. At one time Antarctica was tropical and at one time Europe and large portions of North America were covered in Ice and all of this occurred before Man was even a gleam in God’s (or is it Darwin’s) eye. In fact there is solid geologic evidence that there have been mass extinctions of life throughout geologic history brought on by a variety of causes but none (sadly) tied to Mankind or America. The scientific reality – supported by empirical evidence – is that a single volcanic eruption can do more to affect the climate of the Earth than everything ever done by Mankind since God (or some enterprising ape) created man.

Scientists do not totally support the alarmists about global cooling or global warming because they fully realize that Earth’s climate is cyclical and has always been so. The Earth’s temperature demonstrated a cooling trend from 1940 to about 1965, why this happened is unknown but then that trend began to reverse and today it is acknowledged that the temperature of the Earth is increasing but why is not known. Of course at the height of the global cooling scare Fortune Magazine stated:

[F]or nearly half of the current century mankind was apparently blessed with the most benign climate pf any period in at least a thousand years. During this kindly era the human population more than doubled....[It]began with a pronounced warming trend after about 1880. Mean temperatures peaked in 1945 and have been dropping ever since.

This statement is fascinating for a number of reasons, first because the thousand years indicates that climate change cycles are far longer than the alarmists are using to justify their attack on the industrialized nations. The second interesting point is that virtually none of the things which the global warming / cooling alarmists point to as the cause even existed for much of this thousand year period. The industrial revolution didn’t even start until the 19th Century and the automobile, which is cited as the primary cause of climate change didn’t come into widespread use until well into the 20th Century. During this period around 1970 virtually all of the media and “scientists” agreed that “we have been living in warmer than normal times – and we may have to face an increasingly cold future (Popular Science). Then we have Newsweek which stated

“The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions (which is to say global warming) the Earth’s climate seems to be cooling down."

At this point it seems clear that no one knows why the Earth goes through climate change and any data – even data going back a hundred years is of no value. To use data collected only in the last hundred years to predict catastrophic climate change is laughable and certainly not scientific. In fact the “scientists” who are in the forefront of the global warming /cooling school of thought generally do not have any credentials in Climatology and are attempting to use these scare tactics to get approval of the Kyoto Treaty which would dramatically impact American Industry, which appears to be their hidden agenda.

Political Science

As incredible as it may sound, the reality is that Global Warming is in fact a hoax, not the warming part because it is commonly agreed that the Earth is growing warmer, but in the cause. Those outstanding scientists, Al Gore and Bill Moyers have declared that it is humanity in the industrialized world (read America) who are destroying the planet and should be stopped. In fact, these champions of the Constitution and supporters of every left wing cause are calling for Nuremberg style trials for anyone who has the temerity to challenge the fact that global warming is the direct result of human activity. The fact that these left wing politicians have no credentials whatsoever seems to be lost in the rhetoric just as their support for this gross abridgement of free speech is ignored. Where is the hue and cry from the ACLU or the media as these icons of the left attempt to equate skeptics of global warming to the perpetrators of the holocaust? In fact Mr. Gore refers to these skeptics as “global warming deniers” in a veiled attempt to equate this term to “holocaust deniers”. Of course no one is denying that the planet is growing warmer but it is the cause that is in dispute. But this is the “inconvenient fact” that is ignored by this group of left wing non-scientists who cannot separate the fact of global warming from the cause. It is the CAUSE that is disputed not the warming.

Roger Pielke a Climatologist at Colorado State University points out there has never been an actual debate regarding the causes of global warming and that they hysteria surrounding the issue of Global Warming is being generated by people such as Al Gore who have no credentials and no real knowledge of the science. But Professor Pielke isn’t the only reputable scientist who harbors doubts about the source of the warming. The Alfred P. Sloan Professor at MIT, Richard Lindzen does as well. Professor Lindzen acknowledges that global warming is real and even accepts that carbon emissions might be causing global warming but then – he inserts his heretical caveat – they also might not be responsible. He compounds this heresy with this comment ``We do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change". If this wasn’t enough to convince Moyers and Gore that Lindzen should be burned at the stake he adds to his crime of announcing other inconvenient facts such as ``the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940," and ``the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average," and finally and ``Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why."

Based on these statements Professor Lindzen has been demonized by the left – not on the basis of his science – but on the basis of his temerity in speaking our against a politically correct if not scientifically sound – position. Professor Lindzen maintains he has been subjected to a Congressional Star Chamber proceeding conducted by (then) Senator Al Gore. The left has accused Professor Lindzen of being on the payroll of the auto companies ( he accepted a $10,000 fee as an expert witness years ago) in an effort to discredit him. However, no one has yet challenged his science or the facts he has offered to support his statements.

But there are other skeptics like Professor Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Professor Reiter’s name appeared as one of the scientists endorsing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Reiter called the report a sham and said that it included the names of scientists whom he knew did not agree with the exaggerated claims made in this report. He had to threaten a law suit to have his name removed. Professor Reiter is an expert in malaria and this report attempted to tie the increase in malaria to global warming, which Professor Reiter denies. In fact Malaria has been on the increase since Rachel Carson’s book “A Silent Spring” was used by the left wing non-scientists to ban DDT. Carson’s work and book were later unmasked as a hoax but the damage was done and DDT remains banned and Malaria, which was nearly wiped out by DDT is now on the rise again, especially in Africa. But this is simply an earlier example of how these left wing pseudo-scientists like Gore and Moyers seize on some politically correct position and use their celebrity to do great damage.

Chris Landsea, one of the world's foremost experts on hurricanes, resigned from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in January 2005, in protest over their bias. It seems that IPCC Fourth Assessment Report claimed that the 2004 hurricane season was caused by greenhouse gases and this was announced in a press conference. Landsea in an open letter, stated: "To my knowledge none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin."

There are many other examples of scientists being intimidated, threatened, and demonized by the politically correct left wing non-scientists. As it turns out there is little dispute among scientists that the Earth is growing warmer but is the cause that is in question. However, those who attribute this Global Warming to the Industrialized West (read America) quote these scientists who acknowledge that the Earth is warming as agreeing with them, which is patently false. The hoax is that global warming is being caused by greenhouse gases, which has not been proven and has little support among reputable scientists. This is a vivid example of how science has become politicized and corrupted by individuals with an agenda and a public persona.

Science Evolution and Magic

Somewhere I once read that the American Indians had a saying that “to name a thing is to know it”. This is a pretty profound statement especially when you view it in terms of science. The field of science is littered with terms that are little more than names because no one really knows what they are or how they work, among these we find gravity, magnetism, black holes, great force, weak force, and of course evolution. Of course most scientists toss these terms about as if they really understood what they are and how they work but the reality is that they are actually describing the effect of these things without actually understanding what they are or how they work. This is especially true of Evolution which we are assured by the most reputable of scientists is a factual reality. In support of this we are offered numerous examples of “evolution” which on inspection turn out to be examples of adaptation. That is the species is modified but remains the same species. The reality is that there are no examples of one species becoming another and that there are no transition fossils found in the fossil record.

Charles Darwin was a product of his time. His Theory of Evolution was clearly an extrapolation of the Charles Lyell’s Theory of Uniformitarianism, which postulates that things change gradually and that those changes occur over long periods of time. This geologic theory held sway for a very long time but as the science of paleontology matured it became obvious that the geologic periods ended in abrupt – catastrophic changes with mass extinctions. This gave rise to the Theory of Catastrophism which vied with Uniformitarianism but these quickly and easily melded together to form a picture where geologic processes were uniform for long periods but then each period ended abruptly with catastrophic events. What triggered these abrupt changes was unknown but recent discoveries indicate that some of these if not all, were triggered by collisions with meteors or large volcanic eruptions. So these findings go a long way toward explaining the mass extinctions and abrupt endings to geologic epochs but it really doesn’t address the creation of life, evolution, or speciation.

The Pre-Cambrian is almost devoid of fossils and what fossils there are tend to be slime, tracks, or other similar evidence of simple worm like animal forms. But in the Cambrian we find some very sophisticated life forms with trilobites being the most well known. And from this point on every geologic epoch is filled with ever increasingly complex life forms, some of which go extinct while others live on, like the shark or ant, into modern times. Evolution doesn’t address the origin of life but simply addresses how life has divided and subdivided into this myriad of life forms ranging from worms to mankind. At this point it is important to note that Evolution may in fact be true, but the issue is that it remains a unproven theory and is not a demonstrated fact. Certainly, Evolution is not supported by the fossil record and therein lays the problem, which plagues paleontologists. If the fossil record does not show any transitional life forms, such as something between the Pre-Cambrian worms and the Cambrian Trilobite, then evolution as a process remains simply a possibility and with some significant hurdles for the paleontologists.

To solve this problem of no transitional fossils, Gould and his protégé Eldredge have postulated punctuated equilibria. Essentially this new theory says that a species splits off from the parent species in a very short span of time – no more than a few thousand years so no fossils are likely to be found. But the punctuated equilibria theory does allow for older forms of a species to co-exist with newer forms, which conveniently eliminates the problem with Eohippus. Initially Eohippus was cited as an example of evolution because it could be demonstrated that the horse evolved from a relatively small mammal into the current horse. Unfortunately it turned out the early fossils of Eohippus were not related to the horse and that older forms as well as newer forms of the horse co-existed. Although it was ignored the fact was that even if the fossils were all related they would all still be horses and not an example of one species becoming another. But scientists valiantly carry on because evolution cannot be abandoned without having to answer some very difficult questions regarding the origin of life, so the current effort is to demonstrate that punctuated equilibria is really evolution at work.

The primary thrust of this argument is that even members of the same species are not identical and variations occur. This is described as stasis meaning that variations occur and that these variations advance and reverse through time, which accounts for some of the variations in the fossil record which show recent fossils may be more primitive than earlier ones. This observation is then used to point out that these variations may be of the moment and not carried through time, but some are and it is these variations that lead to speciation Essentially the theory is that these variations lead to identifiable groups within a species that reproduce within their own sub-group but elect to not mate with closely related members of the same species and gradually this leads to a new species which is unable to reproduce with members of its parent species. This process is theorized to occur over a relatively short period of time – perhaps thousands of years rather than millions. It is this short period of time which is believed to account for the lack of any transitional fossil forms and to explain the sudden appearance of various life forms in the fossil record. In essence we can take a Hippopotamus lay our imaginary hand on its forehead and utter the magic word EVOLVE and we have an elephant. But this is more extreme than the theory postulates.

Essentially the Punctuated Equilibria Theory points out that the fossil record indicates that a species through time will develop sub-species and these do not reproduce with each other, hence we have variations with the species that lead to new species. Alas while this argument may be sound the reality is a trilobite is still a trilobite, a mollusk is still a mollusk, and a bird is still a bird. However, this is the foundation of the argument that man, ape, and chimpanzee all are related and that mankind has indeed split off from a common ancestor that was in fact an ape. The problem of where did that first ape come from remains and in fact if we start with primordial life in the Pre-Cambrian we must accept that we are slime derived, essentially our most ancient ancestors were pond scum.

So there is no explanation offered for the explosion of highly developed life forms in the Cambrian and there are no transitional life forms in the fossil record to indicate exactly how pond scum became fish or fish became reptiles and reptiles became mammals. Certainly Punctuated Equilibria may provide an explanation as to how animals species have so many variations and sub-species but it really doesn’t explain the march of life from the simplest forms to mankind. The conclusion can only be that Evolution remains a theory and that Punctuated Equilibria is a theory that offers a partial explanation for speciation but it too must remain a theory. The only conclusion we can draw is that science has many theories for the origin of life but they have no solid proof. And as Puck observes in “Midsummer’s Night” “Oh what fools these mortals be”.

Science -- Scmience

Usually I am slamming the liberal media and the lunatic left in Calif, but have you noticed how politicized the NIH and CDC have become. Ironically these organizations have been stuffed with left leaning, Harvard educated, progressives who now seem to be in bed with "big business" in the form of the drug companies. These progressives are so intent on running everyone's life that they have sacrificed their principles regarding the evils of profit and are working hand-in-glove with the drug companies. What on Earth am I talking about - you ask? Well I am speaking of the "epidemic" of diabetes and obesity, cholesterol, and finally that supreme evil -- tobacco.

Why has diabetes suddenly become an epidemic? I'll bet everyone reading this has recently had his doctor tell him/her that they are diabetic and need medication to "control" it. Well the reason for this epidemic is that the NIH has LOWERED the threshold for diabetes. So suddenly thousands more people now have to take medications cleverly sold by those evil drug companies. It also gives the progressives another reason to police our food and insist we stop eating anything THEY deem is bad for us. How about obesity? Everyday we see pictures of overweight people on the (liberal) news as they lecture us on how our children are all overweight and we need to take everything kids like to eat out of the schools and replace it with carrot sticks. What goes unsaid is that the measure for obesity has been changed by the government (NIH, CDC). Now virtually all of the NFL and NBA athletes are overweight -- obese by definition --plus the majority of Americans are obese and need to stop eating fattening (fast) foods. The solution in the view of the progressives is that we need to immediately ban McDonalds, all fast food, soda, and anything the food police feel is bad for us. HOWEVER, this doesn't include wine which the progressive left has managed to declare HEALTHY. Of course the only difference between wine and grape juice is the alcohol so technically grape juice should do the trick but then grape juice is too sugary and therefore, bad for all of you diabetics. It is OK to be an alcoholic but not to be a FAT alcoholic.

Then we have cholesterol. Not too many years ago the count was 220 as normal but this was the average for most Americans so the drug companies needed more sales. The government accommodated by lowering the threshold and sales went up. They lowered the threshold again and sales went up even more. They have justified this on the basis of a statistical study showing the "relationship" between diet, cholesterol, and heart disease. Of course anything can be proven statistically, the studies actually show that diet has only a minimal impact on cholesterol, and that cholesterol levels below 200 show a strong correlation to colon cancer. A small fact that generally goes unmentioned but then sales are up. Besides there is no drug available to cure colon cancer so why bother with statistics?

And finally tobacco and all of those "tobacco related deaths", which of course are all statistical. The actual report on side smoke written by the EPA is over 1000 pages ( I have read every single page and it was pure torture) and states that the studies DO NOT REACH STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE. This is actually stated in the report and discussions with the author (conducted by my wife with the author of the report) elicited the comment that there is no science behind the conclusions because it is just a SOCIAL PROGRAM. One of the studies used to justify the correlation between tobacco smoke and cancer was the "Hamster Study". In this study the Hamsters were exposed to smoke over an extended period but those hamsters DIDN'T develop cancer as they should have. However, the "scientists" conducting the study decided that "had the hamsters breathed properly they WOULD have developed cancer". Therefore, this study was used to support the (obviously prior) conclusion even though the hamsters didn't actually develop cancer. There were other studies similar to this one that were flawed even to the most untrained eye, but then how many people have actually read the EPA study? We were unable to find anyone in the press or in the government who actually read the report even though they were quick to cite it in support of their right to strip smokers of their rights.

Now I am not a smoker, but it seems to me that a lot of rights of smokers have been taken away because a few wine sipping progressives don't like smokers. To belabor this report further, notice that the number of smokers has declined dramatically but the incidence of cancer and heart disease has not changed. Furthermore, there has never been a death certificate written that says a person died from tobacco smoke.

Everything is "related" and now that "cause - effect" relationship is being applied to food as the progressives launch their attack on McDonalds and make no mistake that is their target -- not you or your health. The time has come for everyone to demand that science be returned to the decision making process and that the voodoo "science" called "Epidemiology" be eliminated.

Photons have mass?

So the question that was raised initially was how does the classic physics equation of F=MA apply if M is the mass of a photon, which has zero mass. The response was that a photon has zero mass at rest but has mass in motion giving it “momentum”. The definition of momentum follows:

Momentum, also linear momentum, in physics, fundamental quantity characterizing the motion of any object (see Mechanics). It is the product of the mass of a moving particle multiplied by its linear velocity. Momentum is a vector quantity, which means that it has both magnitude and direction. The total momentum of a system made up of a collection of objects is the vector sum of all the individual objects' momenta. For an isolated system, total momentum remains unchanged over time; this is called conservation of momentum. For example, when a batter hits a baseball, the momentum of the bat just before it strikes the ball plus the momentum of the pitched baseball is equal to the momentum of the bat after it strikes the ball plus the momentum of the hit baseball. As another example, imagine a beaver jumping off a stationary log that is floating on water. Before the beaver jumps, the log and the beaver are not moving, so the total momentum is zero. Upon jumping, the beaver acquires forward momentum, and at the same time the log moves in the other direction with an equal and opposite momentum; the total momentum of the beaver plus the log remains at zero.

Conservation of momentum is one of the most important and universal of the conservation laws of physics; it holds true even in situations where modern theories
of physics apply. In particular, conservation of momentum is valid in quantum mechanics (see Quantum Theory), which describes atomic and nuclear phenomena, and in relativistic mechanics, which must be used when systems move with velocities that approach the speed of light (see Relativity).
According to Newton's second law of motion—named after the English astronomer, mathematician, and physicist Sir Isaac Newton—the force acting on a body in motion must be equal to its time rate of change of momentum. Another way of stating Newton's second law is that the impulse—that is, the product of the force multiplied by the time over which it acts on a body—equals the change of momentum of the body.


With that understanding of Momentum we turn to the Physicist’s explanation which follows – read carefully.


While light does indeed have no rest mass, it has momentum. It also has a relativistic mass, but this is concept is rather outdated. The term mass in modern terminology 'mass' refers to the invariant mass, which is zero for photons. This invariant mass is defined by

m = sqrt(E^2/c^4 - p^2/c^2)

where E is energy, c the speed of light, and p the momentum. In the case of light, p = E/c, so the mass is zero. But you already know that. The important thing is that light has a non-zero momentum despite having zero mass.

In an atom, there are electrons orbiting a nucleus in discrete energy levels. This just means that there are only certain distances from the nucleus an electron can be. When an electron becomes excited due to something transferring energy to it, the electron goes to a higher energy level, where it will stay there for an extremely short time. When the electron falls back to its original energy level, it emits a photon, and sometimes the photon is in the visible range of the spectrum. If you search for "Bohr atom" or "spectra" online, you should find some nice diagrams that illustrate this.

As for a light bulb, well, that's filled with an inert gas, usually argon. The bulb also contains a (usually) tungsten wire that carries the electric current. In a solid conductor, the current is generated by the movement of free electrons through the wire. The electrons bump into atoms along their way, and excite the bound electrons, causing them to go to a higher energy level. When the electrons return to their ground state, a photon is emitted. Metals tend to emit in the infa-red, which is invisible to humans. However, if heated to a high enough temperature, the metal will emit in the visible range of the EM spectrum.


This explanation seems very glib to me and smacks of the usual scientific game of naming things without actually understanding them. The fundamental problem here – in fact there are several fundamental problems. Consider that light has no mass at rest – because light is (presumably) never at rest. However, light does in fact have mass and this has been demonstrated (Einstein) because light bends when passed through a strong gravitational field. If a “photon” is emitted when an electron takes on energy that moves it to a higher shell and then returns to its natural state it gives up a photon – the photon has energy but no mass – except that it does have mass. In fact the electron has mass, better still the universe is essentially all energy and that energy has mass. This leaves with these questions:

• If the electron takes on energy and changes its state why doesn’t it take on Mass?

• If the electron gives up a photon when returning to its natural state where does the photon’s mass come from?

• If the electron never took on any mass when moving to the higher state and never lost any mass when returning and the energy level remained the same throughout then where did the photon’s mass come from? Why doesn’t the law of conservation of energy apply?

• If the free electron bumps into bound electrons why isn’t there any loss or gain of energy?


It seems to me that when two objects collide there is an exchange of kinetic energy but with electrons this doesn’t seem to apply – why? If that exchange is the photon and all it receives is energy then that energy has mass – but where did it come from since the electrons neither gained nor lost mass.

Obviously I am not a physicist and my questions might (probably do) parade my ignorance, but this whole explanation of the mass of a photon doesn’t ring true. I think – intuitively I admit – that photons have mass and that light can be captured and weapon-ized (Star Trek’s Photon Torpedoes). I think this is an illustration of how science is structured to fit the thinking of the scientists without any real explanation of what or why.