Double Kill Shot Dealt to the Religion of Scientific Materialism
November 18th, 2010This reminded me of the Pioneer anomaly:
The Pioneer anomaly or Pioneer effect is the observed deviation from predicted trajectories and velocities of various unmanned spacecraft visiting the outer solar system, most notably Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11.
Both Pioneer spacecraft are escaping from the solar system, and are slowing down under the influence of the Sun’s gravity. Upon very close examination, however, they are slowing down slightly more than expected. The effect can be modeled as a slight additional acceleration towards the Sun.
The anomaly has no universally accepted explanation. The explanation may be mundane, such as measurement error, thrust from gas leakage or uneven radiation of heat. However, it is also possible that current physical theory does not correctly explain the behaviour of the craft relative to the sun.
Via: Technofascism Blog:
Since the technocracy needs to reduce everyone to a controllable, predictable material entity, it obviously favors a worldview that considers human beings to be nothing but trousered apes. To be properly denigrated, humans must be reduced to nothing more intrinsically important than a temporary, biological cog in the giant mega-machine’s creeking march toward greater progress and control over nature.
Unfortunately, to the dismay of the apostles of technocratic nihilism, this summer two findings, largely ignored by the mainstram media, were published that dealt devastating blows to the materialist philosophies that justify the technocracy’s agenda: 1) the conclusive evidence that Carbon-14 and other radiometric dating methods are invalid; and 2) strong evidence that the once universal and finely-tuned physical constants now actually vary throughout the universe.
The implications of one of these findings alone is enough to rewrite history and our place in the universe. But taken together, they seem to be almost a beacon from a lighthouse outside of time and space cautioning us not to venture further into the rocky crags of materialist philosophy.
Some readers who think that evidence for varying isotope decay and physical non-constants might not be a big deal would do well to remember that ALL scientific knowledge we have about the origin of the universe and life on earth is based on the assumption that radioactive decay is constant and that the physical laws are not different in different places in the universe. When these assumptions are shattered, we should be very skeptical about the versions of history that are currently being taught in schools as though they were the final truths of reality.
So, because some people invent belief systems based on incomplete evidence, that means there is a “beacon from a lighthouse outside of time and space”? Okay, that’s a start. But now let’s give it a face. How about something with a halo? Here’s an idea: a baby born in a manger. We’ll call him “Jesus, the Beacon from a Lighthouse Outside of Time and Space.” Hmm, maybe a little too wordy. How about, “Jesus, the Light of the World”? Better, right? How about it? All in favor?
Yes, interesting times all around!
Let’s see if we can make both ‘science tough
guys’ and watery-eyed new-agers angry:
From the science side, the usual caveats apply:
(1) the magnitude of the changes in both the
decay rates and the fine structure constant
are quite small relative to what would be
needed to destroy chemistry, or C-14 dating
as we know it. And (2) the fine-structure
experiment in particular is quite new and
it’s not been fully peer-vetted. I would
not be surprised to hear the results were
solely a case of equipment uncertainty, or
incorrect statistical analysis. Caution would
dictate we wait and continue to run experiments.
(And put wider uncertainty bars around the C-14
dates we have in hand.)
From the Woo Woo side, “Science is wrong!”, which
is always a cause for celebration, because that
means whatever we’ve been saying about “Magic
interdimensional soul transmigration” and “Free
galactic energy delivered via NetFlix” might
actually be right. 😉 Seriously, we should have
a bigger dose of respect for the Unknown and
indeed, the Unknowable. This is a great
reminder to stop effing w/Mother Nature the
way we do. Pride goeth before a fall, and a
haughty spirit before destruction. Plus, it’s
*cool* to think about alien life forms that
might exist under the altered chemistry rules
operating under an altered fine-structure
constant. It’s even more cool to think about
our Galactic Overlords coming to save us!
For my money, I cheered at hearing both of these
results, not so much because they overthrow
anything, or make anyone right or wrong, but
rather because they distinctly highlight we
don’t have anything close to a complete and
fully workable atomic theory. And that, in turn,
means there is a lot of cool science and cool
magic to be discovered in our future.
Aren’t I a little ray of sunshine? 🙂
Lol. Without the “religion” of scientific materialism, we would never detect the holes and flaws in its THEORIES, as opposed to orthodox dogmas. The nice thing about so-called scientific dogmas, is that they can eventually be disproved or modified as new evidence emerges; new evidence that is discovered through the development of more refined and sensitive tools, tools created using the scientific method, not whining cringing demands to deities that may or may not exist, and ultimately, may never be proven to exist conclusively, and are thus perfect tools for political oppression.
In my experience, people who see themselves as finite, material beings tend to value life more highly and have more compassion — because of how improbable, fragile, and transient we all are in that worldview. To the materialist, war is far more evil than is to one who believes in an afterlife and ultimate justice.
It’s too easy to rationalize destruction of nature and exploitation of people when you believe that at least all will be well in the netherworld.
nemo,
Which do you think is more likely to be used effectively as a tool for political oppression in the 21st century: the dogma of religion of the “science” of global warming?
Obviously science can do many things religion can’t — God didn’t create this computer I’m typing on (or did He??), but look at how it functions in the present: kinda similar to how religion functioned in the past, no?
Anyway, to draw a sharp either/or distinction seems sort of dogmatic to me.
Moreover:
“and also i would say this deal where you have to choose between science and religion, reason and faith, fact and fantasy, obama and palin, is just jive. no one gets along in this world without constantly reasoning and without constantly believing things for which he has no reasons.
what’s actually disturbing is the way Science serves power: the way people purport that whatever policies they think should be in place are not their own doing but that of Reality. obama actually takes this tack constantly, like his forebears john kerry and al gore…
we had better think about the epistemic hierarchy we are constructing. if all the truth is held by harvard professors and none by persons of other sorts, then of course you could ignore tea partiers or merely ridicule them. for one thing, all the harvard professors are leftists. however, you probably have no more stable grasp on the deliverances of particle physics or brain scanning than the rankest tea partier, so you don’t know anything either. all you do is recite what these people say they know. it takes a lot of gaul to go from that sort of position to the amazing conclusion that Science exclusively determines truth and all other values. but i tell you that the structure i’ve just described is a religion.”
http://eyeofthestorm.blogs.com/eye_of_the_storm/2010/09/cb-asks-what-role-if-any-do-you-think-the-scientific-method-should-play-in-the-world-well-actually-i-have-respect-for-the.html
@Druff-
I’m well aware of the evils caused by pure science; the development and needless proliferation of nuclear weapons, for instance, the privatization of life-forms through the process of patenting genetic engineered but sterile life-forms that replace the naturally developed ones.
That being said, what could prevent the destruction of all life and civilization on Earth by a giant asteroid collision, the construction of tool to prevent such an event from happening, or prayers and wishful thinking directed at a deity?
This may surprise you, but a lot, not all, of corporate rape happens because the management was converted to some tailored strain of fundamentalist Christianity that leads them to believe they can mine the Earth indefinitely through what I like to call “magic Jesus power” based on passages in Genesis where God promises an Earth with a never-ending bounty.
But I digress.
Before science served power, religion served it as a form of proto-science. Religion developed tools of persuasion and manipulation that psychologists refined upon. Religion is applied psychology developed over thousands of years. Additionally, religious institutions used the principles of science to better carry out their aims of manipulating and subjugating populations. Before there was the movie theater and haunted house horror show, there was the cathedral. Everything in the cathedral is calculated to have an effect on the person who enters it.
A personal relationship with the divine is a whole different kettle of fish, and one that is less problematic, although one invariably encounters the lone nutcase who kills or otherwise creates a nuisance because he hears allegedly divine voices in his head.
The principles of science can be understood by anyone who takes the time to learn them, not merely some Harvard professors, who, by the way, if they were actually leftists, would be living in some commune, giving away their work for free to the proletariat, and not merely selling it to a wealthy, connected elite.
I’m also aware that scientists try to defend theory as dogma for awhile, either out of fear, self-interest, or some combination thereof; but they must bow to actual “evidence.”
People were scared that the “climate change” phenomenon would lead to some sort of eco-fascism, until the various affected industries pumped shit-loads of money into calling into question the evidentiary foundations on which global warming is based. That sort of thing can be proven or disproven, in the grand scheme of things. With sufficiently sophisticated equipment, we can measure things like temperature on a continuous basis, and compare them to previous measurements. One of the weaknesses of the evidence in support of global warming is that we’ve only measured temperatures for a relatively short time, and only in a relatively few locations, and not continuously. Another weakness is the equipment we used to measure it. The most important weakness is the fact that the earth is but a mote in the universe, and is subject to so many known influences, and unknown influences, that it becomes mind-bogging to untangle all the causes and effects that affect the climate, and thus give us a model that allows to make predictions from which can then plan our lives around.
That’s why a lot of people just say “fuck it” and pray to God at the end of the day, because they just can’t wrap their brains around the problem.
But given His track-record, I wouldn’t look to Him to be bailing our asses out, especially when it’s a mess of our own making.
Good luck proving or disproving whether or not an all-seeing, all-powerful deity exists. Such a being can appear and reappear at a whim, only to the elect of course, and never to the non-believer, who must be smote for his lack of vision, belief, or delusion. That’s the diabolical genius of religion; it can never be completely disproven, only discredited when its worst excesses are brought to light.
I also cheered out loud when I read this.
I love what science shows us about this world. It blows my mind regularly. I also love what my heart perceives about reality. That stuff blows my heart, so to speak. Both give me cause for humble reflection. Both provide input and challenges to my understanding.
@ LtColonelNemo: There is that oft ignored verse from Revelation 11 about how God will destroy the destroyers of the earth.
@ Cloud: It could also be argued that those who believe in the eternal believe in the profound significance of their actions and choices. From ‘Gladiator’: “What we do in life echoes in eternity.”
@Dennis
With all due respect, why bother destroying the destroyers of the Earth? I’m assuming he’s destroying them after they destroy the Earth. Why not prevent them from destroying it in the first place? Why not help them see the errors of their ways with a sign or too? Why not good empower people to prevent such destruction instead of having them jump through time-wasting hoops? God is supposed to be all-knowing and all-powerful, after all.
The problem with religion is, a lot of people just accept these statements without asking any questions. The more questions you ask, the more the thing starts to break down into bullshit.
And if the Bible is the word of God, why doesn’t it just magically appear with a snap of the fingers? Why does it take technology to bring it into existence? What about all the editing? The Apocrypha? Gospels that were left out of the canon for obvious political purposes?
I could go on all day.
All this articles tell us, which we’ve known or suspected all along, is that through science and observation, we find evidence that supports the conclusion that our universe is even more complex than our primitive scientific models predicted.
I guess I must have read too much Hard Speculative Fiction.
@ltcolonelnemo “The more questions you ask, the more the thing starts to break down into bullshit.”
I think it’s more like, The more presumptions you make, the less you will understand. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions, but asking questions like a lawyer doesn’t help discovery.
Nemo,
Well, what’s the answer to my question? Science or religion as most likely political oppressor in this century? I think you dodge because you know.
And if religion is mainly for those who can’t figure out science, it stands to reason that all of today’s top scientists are atheists. Do you think that’s even close to the truth? Are you smarter than the scientists whose views you base your worldview on? Or i suppose you do all your own lab work and analysis, since you say you don’t need to depend on experts to ‘know science.’
For the record, i’m not religious.
@LtColonelNemo
I wasn’t trying to push scripture at you. I have a large number of questions in my ‘inbox’ about the bible. I was simply trying to touch on the logical inconsistencies of those believers in ‘magic Jesus power’ you spoke of who claim the bible as their authority.
From what I understand so far, they don’t actually destroy the planet before God ‘cuts them down’. In fact, there’s a strange prophecy that says that if not for God’s apocalyptic intervention no life would have survived. Also that attempts to wake ’em up prior to that are numerous, wide-ranging and, eventually, extreme. Would (or will) signs make a difference? If you believe the stories about Jesus, he provided signs galore, kept his nose clean and argued his case clearly and powerfully but that didn’t stop the powers that be from wanting him dead, discredited and out of the picture. I cling to the belief that all people desire to change for good but I am horrifyingly confronted by the possibility that some have absolutely no yearning to do so left in their being.
The problem with religion is less about not asking questions than it is about believing the little bit imperfectly comprehended is the complete picture and therefore sufficient grounds for accurate examination, judgement and dismissal of whatever doesn’t seem to agree with it. In this, many scientists, religious and holders to various ‘ ~isms’ can similarly be labeled fundamentalists. When I was a boy I asked someone talking about religion where God came from. It seemed to me like a clever question then but after several decades of life and learning…not so much. I wrestle or have wrestled with all of the questions you have asked. Some of the questions I asked I couldn’t have understood the answers to if I’d been given them earlier but now some things that were formerly incomprehensible to me seem not only logically consistent but also logically necessary.
I agree with what you wrote about the significance of this article but I would add that the more we discover, the more amazing the universe is revealed as being.
The scientific method is a tool. The most important characteristic of knowledge we claim to be rooted in science is that it is falsifiable. Two parties interested in the same subject can, once they have agreed upon assumptions, construct tests to examine the validity of each others’ claims.
To be sure, this is fraught with difficulty. Assumptions are stated in language. Except perhaps in the case of mathematics, human language suffers from vagueness, from inexactness. It can be very hard to determine whether the same language has the same meaning for all concerned. But provided this can be done, it is (at least theoretically, dependent of course on access to materials, time, and understanding of the subject) possible for everyone involved to evaluate based on repeatable observations whether one party’s conclusions are valid.
To say that science is a major source of troubles in this world is absurd. It is like saying a hammer is the cause of most houses built in this century. The scientific method can be practiced to (with some luck) increase knowledge about specific subjects. In some cases, this increased knowledge can be used by those with the inclination to increase their power and/or wealth in society. Does this make science itself bad?
The scientific establishment – those who represent themselves as practicing science – consist of the same sort of human beings as the rest of us. There should be no surprise that some of them are rotten apples. There should also be no surprise that some of them are lousy scientists, in the sense that their command of the scientific method and associated practices is poor.
To regard any group of people with the same level of unquestioning respect often claimed by officials of organized religion is to bind yourself as a servant to them. The scientific establishment is no different. If you will not retain your own independence of thought over the domain such a group claims, you put your life in their hands. What might give you more hope for the information derived from publicized science are the expectations that:
(a) practitioners of a scientific field have a vested interest in proving or disproving their colleagues’ assertions. In many cases it’s far more advantageous to prove your peers wrong than right.
(b) scientific knowledge is cumulative and further exploration of any field often makes painfully clear where earlier theories failed. This is why we generally believe that over time our understanding of a phenomenon becomes, if not absolutely right, at least less incorrect.
There are certain inherent differences between the religious beliefs with which I am familiar and the scientific training I had.
* Religion, as I experienced it, was about acceptance of pre-determined dogma. Questions were answered from a cookbook. Thoughtful times with an ordained religious person greatly resembled a soul-searching call to tech support. (“So…you’ve rebooted your faith in Jesus…”)
* Science, as I was trained in it, was about examining previous discoveries, following (and replicating, if possible) the train of experiment and reasoning that led to currently accepted theories, then preparing yourself to investigate beyond the boundaries of knowledge which these theories could not explain. No theory is beyond re-examination. No law is immune to construction of a test. In fact, scientists usually delight in constructing new tests for old theories. Moreover, theories for which no practicable test has been constructed are generally held to be interesting, but not to be taken too seriously.
For example, string theory gets lots of publicity, but everyone else in related fields is still waiting for a good test to be devised that will help weed out the competing variants, much less provide a means to prove or disprove the whole thing.
Science is a tool whose practice can enable you to predict some very small subset of future phenomena. That this is astoundingly useful cannot be denied. That it is all-powerful, or that it renders its practitioners immune to mistakes or greed is absurd.
If a person chooses to base his expectations for the future on religious dogma, then that is his choice. From my point of view, that is no more interesting or useful than flipping a quarter every time you have to make a decision.
Zeke
Uranian’s post at https://cryptogon.com/?p=18652 regarding the following should probably be mentioned here.
http://www.jsasoc.com/docs/JSE-LST.pdf
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/LST_Exploration.html
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/analysis/longwave/
And I’ll throw this into the mix:
http://www.holoscience.com/
which was touched on by Miraculix at
https://cryptogon.com/?p=2651