Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Making my head hurt

As long-time readers know, I'm building a house. Actually it's built, and I'm finishing the inside now. Taping and plastering a ceiling yesterday I observed a strange phenomenon. A mysterious force causes the glop to fly off the ceiling and hit the floor.

I did a little research and I found that according to the theory of the late A. Einstein, this happens because the geometry of space-time is deformed by the presence of nearby massive body, in this case a huge ball of rock with a molten iron core. This seemed preposterous so I looked into the matter more deeply. According to Mr. Einstein's theory, the universe would collapse into itself, so he made up a number called the cosmological constant to fudge the data and stop that from happening. Yeah, right. But then a guy named Edwin Hubble looked through his telescope and decided that the universe consists of billions of separate agglomerations of billions of stars (or actually billions and billions, according to one of the leading proponents of this nonsense) most of which are rushing away from us at speeds of thousands of miles per second, which he deduces from the fact that the light they give off is redder than it ought to be. Therefore, the universe is expanding and the momentum of this expansion stops it from collapsing.

Yeah right. It follows from this fantastic premise that a long time ago, the whole thing must have been smooshed together, and after they do the math that turns out to have been about thirteen and a half billion years ago. So all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, this infinitely hot, infinitely dense ball of who knows what started furiously expanding. They figure that a few hundred thousand years later it must have cooled off enough to become transparent to light, and they claim that some radio waves that appear to come from all directions prove that happened.

But wait, it keeps going. Out of the pure energy of the early universe, they deduce by some magical incantations that only the elements of hydrogen and a little bit of helium would have condensed. Then the gases collapsed into stars, underwent nuclear fusion to form heavier elements, then the stars exploded and spewed these elements into space, where later they condensed into new solar systems and some of them condensed into planets and it wasn't until that happened that earth was possible, which was many billions of years after the whole thing started or, specifically, four and a half billion years ago. . .

Well it goes on and on. Evolution. Quantum mechanics. (No that's even more ridiculous than Scientology.) This is plainly nonsense. First of all, this universe is purposeless. Why would it go on for 13 1/2 billion years before we showed up? We're the real point of the whole thing, after all. Second, it just leaves too many questions unanswered. Why did it happen this way? Whose idea was it? How did the whole thing start, and how will it end? If you can't answer those questions, what good is your theory? And this business about the deformation of space time -- I can see for myself that it isn't deformed, stuff just falls, that's all. I mean, duh.

Now, compare this to the Bible. The Bible answers all those questions, and you scientist guys can't. The Bible makes sense, and your ideas are just crazy. QED.

Update: But seriously,

Bill Nye, the harmless children's edu-tainer known as "The Science Guy," managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun. . . . [N]othing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: "God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars."

The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.

At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled "We believe in God!" and left with three children.


Seriously.

No comments: