Probably no topic so divides science and the “new age” as UFOs. A recent column in Astronomy Magazine entitled, “Let’s cut the UFO crap,” makes the point that it is only naivete about the cosmic distant scale than allows people to believe in UFO’s. This is a powerful argument when one considers distant scales. The closest star to the Earth other than the sun is Alpha Centauri, which 4.37 light years — or over 25 trillion miles away. An extremely fast spacecraft traveling at 100,000 mph (the record for a manned spacecraft is just under 40,000 mph) would take about 28,000 years to reach the Alpha Centauri planet. And this is the closest possible one. So from this perspective, the notion that alien spacecraft are roaming the sky, darting in and out of our vision, waiting for the right moment to land, seems preposterous. The scientific case builds...
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A hologram is an illusory three-dimensional image formed by the interference of laser beams. The key feature of a hologram is that it is an illusion; the thing depicted as occupying three-dimensional space is not solid or “real,” but it has the appearance of being real. Scientific American provides a helpful short video of the concept here. As strange as it may sound, the notion that the entire Universe is Really a Hologram seems to be picking up steam in the scientific community. In an August 2003 article in Scientific American, Jacob Bekenstein, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, writes “our universe, which we perceive to have three spatial dimensions, might instead be “written” on a two-dimensional surface, like a hologram. Our everyday perceptions of the world as three-dimensional would then be either a profound illusion or merely one of two alternative ways of viewing reality.” Continuing this line...
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“I have no need of that hypothesis.” Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827) in reply to Napoleon’s inquiry of why Laplace had left God out of his book on astronomy Our leading scientists are not disclosing all of the facts about what we know and don’t know about the Big Bang theory and are covering up evidence that the universe is in fact finely-tuned. Why is this important? Because a finely tuned universe leads to the conclusion that there is a mind or intelligence behind creation. This conclusion would then mean that science must evolve to incorporate intelligence into the scientific world picture. And I am not talking about what is commonly called, “Intelligent Design.” Rather, I am saying that we must move beyond both science and religion and build a new worldview where mind ¾ our mind ¾- is placed front and center into any explanation of natural phenomena. Using the tools of...
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In his book, Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics has Betrayed the Search of Scientific Truth, Jim Baggott sets out six principles that he believes should serve as criteria to judge a credible scientific theory. One of these is the Copernican Principle, which he describes as follows: ” The universe is not organized for our benefit and we are not uniquely privileged observers. Science strives to remove “us” from the centre of the picture making our existence a natural consequence of reality rather than the reason for it. ” In my interview with Jim Baggott on October 21, 2013 (Conversations Beyond Science and Religion) we talked a little bit about the validity of this principle and I want here to expand on a few points I did not have time to make during the show. As an initial matter, Copernicus did not invent the Copernican Principle. Rather, he is credited for...
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‘We all agree that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.” Niels Bohr Modern physics is at a crossroads. Since the time of Einstein, it has pursued a quest to unify the laws of physics using a naïve realist or materialist approach. This viewpoint holds that there is a real world independent of the scientific theorist, that ultimate reality is a material thing (matter) rather than a mind, and that the mind has no influence on the world. Most theorists likely assume that discarding the realist perspective is too crazy. And that’s the problem: modern science will not be able to unify the laws of science working within the box of materialism. Instead, as might be expected, it will need to go outside the box to arrive at a unified theory Front-page announcements such...
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In a recent article, What is Real?, published in Scientific American, Meinard Kuhlmann, Professor of Philosophy at Bielefeld University in Germany, breaks the news: the world is not made out of particles after all. This conclusion may come as a shock to the vast field of particle physics and the thousands of physicists working at the $6 billion Large Hadron Collider in Europe. As Professor Kuhlman writes, “one must conclude that ‘particle physics’ is a misnomer: despite the fact that physicists keep talking about particles, there is no such thing.” Quantum theory, in fact, spelled doom for particles almost 100 years ago, but modern physics has not quite absorbed this point into its worldview. Quantum theory, as Professor Kuhlman writes, is based upon on the fundamental precept that no such thing as a particle can be localized in a particular place or time; Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle forever dispelled the notion that we...
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Here is a letter to the editor of Newsweek, commenting upon Lawrence Krauss’s article, The Godless Particle, published in the July 16, 2012 issue of Newsweek. The Higgs finding illustrates a serious problem with modern physics and cosmology: scientists want to bedazzle the public with the latest discovery of “the secret to the universe” and the consequent vanquishing of God, but remain tight-lipped about the assumptions embedded in their theories and the mysteries remaining. While Lawrence Krauss and others triumphantly proclaim that the Higgs particle (assuming it has been found in fleeting collisions of elementary particles) solves the mystery of mass, they remain silent about how the Higgs field itself arose. As the more forthright Nobel prize-winning physicist Martinus J.G. Veltman notes, with the Higgs particle “ignorance about the origin of mass is replaced by the ignorance about the particle-Higgs couplings, and no real knowledge is gained.” In other...
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Materialism, the doctrine that the entire cosmos and all living things can ultimately be reduced to mindless stuff, has many fundamental flaws. Here is one of them: Even in the mindless, God-less, designer-less worldview of materialism, a mind is still present. Where is this mind? In the head of a scientific theorist who imagines that the intelligence and organizational ability of matter is much more creative than it could ever be on its own. Let me provide a bit more detail. At bottom, material scientists believe they can explain the entire universe using only matter and the laws of nature. The laws of nature are necessary to give order and regularity to the dust that would otherwise scatter in the wind. For example, the laws of gravity, chemistry, quantum theory, and nuclear fission are considered among those responsible for sculpting the large-scale structure of the cosmos, such...
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In a recent article on Scientific American’s website, entitled Consolation of Philosophy, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-philos&page=2, Professor Lawrence Krauss expounds on some of the themes in his book, A Universe from Nothing, and concludes that philosophy has nothing of importance to tell us about the real world, and that only physics can lead us to truth. Professor Krauss, in rejecting philosophy, fails to acknowledge that he is promoting his own brand of philosophy known as scientific materialism. So what he really seems to be saying is that scientific materialism is the final truth, and we should not bother considering any other alternative. But scientific materialism – the view that a real world of matter exists independently of consciousness – has a number of fatal flaws. Two of them are (1) several great thinkers, such as Bishop George Berkeley, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, showed that we can never prove that such a real world of matter...
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In books such as The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins), Knocking on Heaven’s Door (Lisa Randall), and The Grand Design (Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow), our modern science writers set up an easy straw man when promoting materialistic orthodoxy. Modern scientists believe that their only opponent to control the debate over the origin and evolution of the cosmos is organized religion. They are wrong. Another opponent is rising, and they will soon have to deal with it. Materialism is the view that the entire physical universe can be reduced to mindless particles in motion. It holds to the belief that there is an objective world, independent of perception and independent of mind. The great mystery of materialism is how this material world sprang from the void and evolved itself into a picture-perfect universe. Material scientists have the mathematical laws of nature, the scientific method, and a lock on all of the...
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