bitterisataste . . . words and ramblings . . . v.6.0

Sunday, April 19, 2009

this entry brought to you by yeah yeah yeahs, "down boy"

I was reading a Christian website called ICR.org and, under the heading "Get the Evidence: The Effect Problem", the site attempted to use the scientific method to back up the existence of God, which I wanted to discuss here. I'll try to be as succinct as I can without going into tangents.

Quoting from the site:

There are two other "Universal Laws" that we see demonstrated in everything we examine in the world around us.

1. There is no new mass/energy coming into existence anywhere in the universe, and every bit of that original mass/energy is still here.

2. Every time something happens (an event takes place), some of the energy becomes unavailable.

The First Law tells us that matter (mass/energy) can be changed, but can neither be created nor destroyed. The Second Law tells us that all phenomena (mass/energy) continually proceed to lower levels of usefulness.

In simple terms, every cause must be at least as great as the effect that it produces—and will, in reality, produce an effect that is less than the cause. That is, any effect must have a greater cause.

When this universal law is traced backwards, one is faced again with the possibility that there is an ongoing chain of ever-decreasing effects, resulting from an infinite chain of nonprimary ever-increasing causes. However, what appears more probable is the existence of an uncaused Source, an omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, and Primary, First Cause.

While the first two universal laws stated are true, I would like to study this logically and deconstruct the falsity of the methodology.

Firstly, the law of cause and effect described here, that all things have a cause, and that the cause of every thing must be greater than the effect, can easily be described with a game of billiards. That is, if you take billiard balls and put them in a row, then knock a cue ball into them gently, the first ball will knock into the second ball, the energy will transfer to the second ball, move it forward, and hit the next ball, and so on. Which each passing of the ball the energy transferred lessens; for example, perhaps the first ball might move one inch to knock into the next ball, which might move half an inch to knock into the second ball, which moves one fourth of an inch to hit the next ball, and so forth, until a ball does not move perceptibly. In the above analogy, the final ball that does not move would be life itself, and therefore, the first knock on the first cue ball with the pool stick would be that of, in this particular case, a God.

However, this is false science, and I'll explain why.

Firstly, every reaction does not require a greater cause. Quantum theory explains this very concept, that many small things can cause something greater. However, as I am a layman and do not understand and cannot fully explain quantum theory, I can explain this with a few easier concepts. Firstly, with the Butterfly Effect. I won't get much into it because is a simplified analogy that doesn't really happen in nature, but it's a concept we can all understand-- that a butterfly flapping its wings in America can cause a hurricane in, say, the South Pacific. However, since this is just a thought and nothing concrete, the best real-world demonstration of the phenomenon of a very small cause having a greater effect is electric storms. Electric storms are basically a series of electrons in the sky becoming charged and then agitated-- on an atomic level this almost couldn't be any more tiny and simple, yet it creates dramatic effects. So, in the case of my above example using billiards, say you set up the balls on the table and hit one with a cue, and suddenly cause an explosion that sets the table and billiard player on fire. Somehow, the electrons in the felt on the table were all rubbed with static in the exact right way to cause a spark of some sort, and perhaps there was a C02 leak somewhere, which caused a spectacular explosion. These are all just atoms, which almost can't be divided any smaller than they are, and yet, through an astonishing combination of statistically irrelevant events, a giant explosion was caused.

Furthermore, let us say that the first assumption, that every event has a greater cause, is entirely true. If you take life itself as being, in the first example, the final ball where energy is transferred but does not move and then go backward to an originating cause, it is first a giant leap to assume any traits anywhere close to what the Bible describes. Even if it were the biggest first cause in the universe, that wouldn't necessarily mean that it would have to be omnipotent or omnipresent-- it could be omnipotent, or it could be omnipresent, or it could be none of the above. As stated in the above analogy, everything doesn't need a greater cause, but even if that is true, the greatest cause of all imagination doesn't need to be the very first-- that is, just because we can't imagine a creator that isn't omnipotent and omnipresent doesn't mean that an originator had to be. Something larger than the entire universe would be needed, in this model, to start the universe, but that would only require that it has more energy than all the universe combined-- but that doesn't mean it needs to be anything more than a big, dumb, ball of energy. It could be the God equivalent of a retarded child playing with rocks. And that's still assuming that everything needs a greater cause, which is does not.

Secondly, if this model does prove that an omnipotent, omnipresent being had to have started the universe, then that still does absolutely nothing to prove any validity for anything in the Christian Bible, and it even further doesn't prove the existence of the Christ Messiah, or give any validity to any of the book of Revelations. If we were to assume that science does dictate that an all-knowing, all powerful God created the universe, it could still be an all knowing, all powerful absolutely anything else other than the Biblical God, or even a God that had been conceived by any man.

But of course, the very existence of such a creature requires so many leaps in logic as to nearly negate any possibility of its existence.

Here's my point in writing all this. I am not a college graduate. In fact, I've never been to college at all. I am a high school graduate, and, to be honest, I graduated half a year behind the rest of my class. After high school, I didn't do any extra-curricular science study, other than recreational reading of science websites and the occasional documentary on The Discovery Channel. I don't even consider myself a science guy. I consider myself an artist, and, hopefully soon, a comedian.

If I, a mere high school graduate with no background in science whatsoever, can point out the obvious flaws in the "science" behind Christianity as was described in the opening paragraph, I ask this: Why do they even bother with it? Why do they continue to attempt to legitimize their beliefs with false science? I am not criticizing someone's faith, at least, not in this deconstruction. If they choose to believe something irrational, then that is their choice as a free person living, just as a superstitious person is still allowed to look through chicken guts to predict the future. But the reasoning above is false. It is bad science, and worse, it is obviously bad science, faulty even to a mere high school graduate with no science background. This means that the person teaching this information isn't just wrong, but is being misleading, or else such an idiot that they can't see the obvious erroneous science that even a high school could punch holes through, or else no one in charge of this logic has gotten beyond a high school education. But I'm willing to bet it's not the latter two.

If you are falsifying information to back up your agenda, or you are leaving out information because it does not back up your agenda, then you are being misleading. And misleading for your agenda is morally bankrupt. I'm not saying that scientists never falsify information to back up an agenda-- it happens. But science isn't the one claiming moral superiority.
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with love from CRS @ 10:51 AM

Sunday, April 19, 2009

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