Further to “BICEP2: Why it matters if those gravitational waves were just dust,” Nature, now informs us: “No evidence for or against gravitational waves” – Two analyses say they are too weak to be significant:
The astronomers who this spring announced that they had evidence of primordial gravitational waves jumped the gun because they did not take into proper account a confounding effect of galactic dust, two new analyses suggest. Although further observations may yet find the signal to emerge from the noise, independent experts now say they no longer believe that the original data constituted significant evidence.
Well, there’s a multiverse that just won’t fly. A chicken will fly first. In fact, a chicken will fly first class.
See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (cosmology). Why they can’t just give all this multiverse nonsense a rest. By now, we should all wonder.
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The behind the scenes politics & backbiting over who will get to take credit for the discovery of gravity waves is fun to watch. There are competing teams from Harvard and Princeton and others all searching.
Is it a slam dunk that the observational evidence is 100% dust? Nope, don’t know that for sure either.
“All we are is dust in the wind”
Kansas
The only reason for gravitational waves is that Einstein was staunchly against the idea of nonlocal interactions, i.e., “spooky actions at a distance” as he called them. He insisted that nothing can move faster than the speed of light, including gravity and EM waves.
We all know Einstein was wrong about the spookiness of quantum physics but the political Einstein movement is as powerful as it will ever be. Only a Kuhnian revolution can bring it down. Won’t be long now.
Prediction: The whole gravitational waves hypothesis is no more valid than the flat earth hypothesis.
Mapou:
Actually, there is very good empirical evidence of gravitational waves: the orbital decay of binary pulsars (due to the emission of gravitational energy). Its disoverers, Hulse and Taylor, were awarded a Nobel Prize 21 years ago, and I don’t think anyone has questioned their explanation since, or proposed a preferable one. What BICEP2 allegedly detected was not gravitational waves as such, but a particular pattern produced by gravitational waves generated during cosmic inflation.
Piotr, since you are a Darwinist, I don’t think you have a clue as to what good empirical evidence really is since you have ZERO empirical evidence for Darwinism, yet you dogmatically defend it as if you did!
The Law of Physicodynamic Insufficiency – Dr David L. Abel – November 2010
Excerpt: “If decision-node programming selections are made randomly or by law rather than with purposeful intent, no non-trivial (sophisticated) function will spontaneously arise.”,,, After ten years of continual republication of the null hypothesis with appeals for falsification, no falsification has been provided. The time has come to extend this null hypothesis into a formal scientific prediction: “No non trivial algorithmic/computational utility will ever arise from chance and/or necessity alone.”
http://www-qa.scitopics.com/Th.....iency.html
If someone calls them “gravity waves” (like I did in my post), you know they are clueless. Hey, at least I know I’m clueless.
BA77, since you are an IDiot, the only thing you can do in a discussion is go off on a tangent, as in the post above.
Piotr, ad hominem does not negate your gross empirical deficiency in substantiating your Darwinian claims!
Piotr @4,
It’s all a bunch of baseless speculations and biased interpretations. IOW, voodoo science.
BTW, did you know that nothing can move in Einstein’s spacetime by definition? This little known truth always take Einstein’s worshippers by surprise, especially physicists. Try explaining to a student how gravity can curve something that is not only motionless, it cannot exist for this very reason.
BA77
Isn’t #5 an ad hominem argument?
Is it right to accuse someone of doing something we also do?
BA77
[OT]
Christ was accused of doing things He didn’t do, but He took those false accusations quietly, even though He had the power to wipe out His accusers with just a single word.
We want to imitate Him, not His accusers. We want to be like Him, not like His accusers.
Those who possess the stronger arguments must be the most magnanimous.
If we are in Christ, then we have the strongest argument of all. However, that argument only persuades those whom God chose to be persuaded. We don’t know who they are. Only God knows. But we want to reflect Christ’s love for the lost. Whatever we do or say, we treat others with respect, because God loves them as much as He loves us. Constantly I have to remind myself that I was lost, but now I’m found. Was blind, but now I see. By God’s grace.
Please, note that I don’t consider myself a YEC or OEC or ID proponent. I’m simply a sinner who has been forgiven by God’s amazing grace, through my saving faith in Christ’s redemptive death and His resurrection. There’s nothing I have done or could do that qualifies me for God’s forgiveness. Piotr and you are better persons than I am. This salvation thing is really mysterious. But I believe it’s true. Whoever genuinely believes it, gets saved too. God’s love is totally underserved.
You may want to carefully read again 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 and 1 Peter 3:8-17 and think about it.
Rev 22:21
No, it is not ad hominem! He is in fact a Darwinist! Though it may come off as derogatory on UD, the name is in fact a proper name for the position that he defends so dogmatically! In fact I could have called him a Neo-Darwinist, and still have been within my rights, since he defends the modern synthesis and that is the proper name for that position. He, on the other hand, called me an IDiot which is certainly a derogatory term meant to attack the man and not the argument. But most importantly, I attacked the main issue of his position in saying that he had no empirical basis. Which is certainly focusing on the argument and not on the man, whereas he refuses to honestly engage the argument and attacked the man instead!
William Lane Craig and the Meaning of Ad Hominem Attacks – William Lane Craig – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrVGuUsL2PM
But you’re obviously a Creationist 🙂
And that disqualifies you from serious consideration.
You’ve just contradicted yourself. 🙂
But I understand your sentiment.
BA77
I see your point, but if you realize that the discussion is going nowhere, then simply skip it and move on to something else. Remember that your comments could be read by many visitors who don’t post comments. That’s sufficient to justify the effort.
Dionisio
“but if you realize that the discussion is going nowhere, then simply skip it and move on to something else”
Such as this one??? 🙂 Okie Dokie
‘Til Tuesday – Voices Carry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uejh-bHa4To
Dionisio, perhaps this song is more fitting,,,
2CELLOS – Thunderstruck [OFFICIAL VIDEO]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT3SBzmDxGk
Dionisio, re BA’s’ #5, Piotr:
‘…. since you are a Darwinist, I don’t think you have a clue in fact,’
… while it sounds rancorous, it is merely a bald statement of fact.
When the palpable nihilistic vacuity of someone’s position is absolute, it is virtually impossible to couch one’s admonitions in normally-agreeable terms, as if there were a moral equivalence between truth and falsehood, each being quite unexceptionable.
That evolution is a compendium of Just So stories, is even attested by a bedrock of statistical truths exposing even the remotest the possibility of evolution as infinitely(sic) far-fetched.
In Pauli’s day, to his amazement, they hadn’t even bothered to check statistical probabilities. It is not inconceivable that, if this was not the inspiration for his ‘bon mot’,: ‘It’s not even wrong’, it surely seems highly likely to have been a factor in its eventual formulation. Note that he found it impossible to respond to the student without sounding satirical and completely dismissive.
Indeed, there is a weariness to its tone, isn’t there? Pauli doesn’t sound to have been an uncharitable man, in the least. Quite the contrary.
How do you tell a scientifically-trained adult repeatedly that two plus two do not make five, and not get to sound a little tetchy and your rebuttal just a tad satirical?
This forum is necessarily a political one at bottom, since almost all of the atheists are incorrigible (not a value judgment, but a matter of observed fact), so the effectiveness of the truth is limited.
Churchill once opined that some truths are so valuable that thy must be protected by a bodyguard of lies. I very much doubt that, however politic it might be with an eye to the common good, to hold back a particular truth. Nevertheless, satire strikes me as both justified and effective.
Nobody in the history of secular or religious literature ever delivered more virulent, indeed, incandescent diatribes against the purveyors of falsehoods with dire and baneful influences, than Jesus, our ultimate model. So, they are getting off lightly. In fact, Jesus did, in some of his parables, target our habitual foolishness, not without a satirical edge.
Axel, I am always reminded of Elijah vs the prophets of Baal. Elijah was a funny, sarcastic man – telling them that “maybe your god is asleep, shout louder!” Etc.
When people are so blind to the absurdity of their position (nothing x nothing = everything; self assembly from chaos to great order, etc.) then sarcasm is somewhat inevitable.
Thank you, guys, for reminding everybody that ID is a religious movement, notwithstanding its scientific pretences.
BA77:
The first paragraph of your post was gratuitously rude. I didn’t provoke you in any way. I’d written about well-known evidence for the existence of gravitational waves (Nobel-Prize-class evidence, in fact, in case you have doubts about my scientific literacy). It’s a completely neutral subject from the point of view of the evolution/ID controversy. What piqued you about it?
Your second paragraph was off-topic.
Apparently if you indulge in ad hominem, it’s fine and dandy, because your opponent is the type of person who deserves it (a “purveyor of falsehood”, to quote Axel). If he replies in kind, just echoing your deliberate insult… Ouch! that’s real ad hominem! Mom, it hurts!
I hope any lurkers reading this appreciate your hypocrisy.
Piotr:
The exact same thing can be said about Darwinism and materialism. And the more you deny it, the more it’s true.
Speaking of religion, pseudoscience and superstition, you have to admit that, given a choice between “God did it” and “Dirt did it”, most sensible folks will choose the former.
Piotr, Hmm so you don’t like being called a Darwinist?
As to my claim that you have no a clue as to what good empirical evidence really is, I resolutely stick by that charge and challenge you to present empirical evidence that Darwinism can actually do what you claim for it and thus vindicate yourself of that charge!:
“The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain – Michael Behe – December 2010
Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain.
http://behe.uncommondescent.co.....evolution/
Michael Behe talks about the preceding paper on this podcast:
Michael Behe: Challenging Darwin, One Peer-Reviewed Paper at a Time – December 2010
http://intelligentdesign.podom.....3_46-08_00
Yes, Dr JDD, I love the sarcasm of the Jews from early times, but a touch of barrack-room humour too, did old Elijah have, didn’t he?
‘When people are so blind to the absurdity of their position (nothing x nothing = everything; self assembly from chaos to great order, etc.) then sarcasm is somewhat inevitable.’
Spot on. And hilariously expressed: 0 x 0 = everything. Even maybe 1 x 0! And the more I look at ‘self assembly from chaos to great order’, the more utterly farcical it sounds. Truly, truth is stranger than fiction.
No infant would be foolish enough to imagine or believe that nothing could produce anything, never mind everything. In fact, we call it, ‘magic’, don’t we? The conjuring profession depends on the young child being baffled how something could happen, when, to his eyes, it clearly did – but couldn’t have.
So basically, we are dealing with inadvertent, wannabe conjurors, who don’t even realise what a fatuous area they have strayed into.
I used digits instead of the words from laziness. Or tiredness. Or both.
I also like it that Christ called Herod, ‘that old fox.’ Not exactly rancorous, but the wisdom of the serpent to the fore, rather than the innocence of the dove.
How is it, Piotr, that you are unable to distinguish between an ‘ad hominem’, addressed directly at an individual putatively by way of argument, and a statement of fact (or ‘perceived fact’) addressed to a third person? There is a world of difference.
An ‘ad hominem’ is a putative argument, a remark, as irrelevant as it is evasive, and wholly eristic in intent’.
Nothing like a plain, factual or putatively factual statement, in a uncontentious conversation between two people thinking along similar lines, no matter how disparaging its import might be.
Technically, we can all invite disparagement by earning it. It doesn’t have to be contentious.
Phil Collins – I Dont Care Anymore (Official Music Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLpfbcXTeo8
You just got to luv the crocodile tears Darwinists shed at the slightest hint of being put down when they themselves are notorious, not only for vicious ad hominem, but for ruining peoples careers (and lives) if they do not toe the Darwinian party line.
Casey Luskin points out that the following anti-ID philosopher even goes so far as to publish a paper saying that the bullying tactics of neo-Darwinists are justified since many ID proponents are Christian:
Anti-ID Philosopher: “Ad hominem” Arguments “Justified” When Attacking Intelligent Design Proponents – Casey Luskin – June 4, 2012
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....60381.html
“In the last few years I have seen a saddening progression at several institutions. I have witnessed unfair treatment upon scientists that do not accept macroevolutionary arguments and for their having signed the above-referenced statement regarding the examination of Darwinism. (Dissent from Darwinism list)(I will comment no further regarding the specifics of the actions taken upon the skeptics; I love and honor my colleagues too much for that.) I never thought that science would have evolved like this. I deeply value the academy; teaching, professing and research in the university are my privileges and joys… ”
Professor James M. Tour – one of the ten most cited chemists in the world
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....evolution/
Top Ten Most Cited Chemist in the World Knows That Evolution Doesn’t Work – James Tour, Phd. – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB7t2_Ph-ck
Darwinists protesting too much (Over “Darwin’s Doubt) – Telling signs of a worldview in trouble – By Subby Szterszky | July 23, 2013
Excerpt: “Their online followers echo the disrespect in even harsher tones; any rare voice of dissent in support of Meyer is promptly browbeaten into silence. The attitude is not unlike a bunch of insecure schoolyard bullies, closing ranks and reassuring each other by trading insults aimed at the uncool kid across the yard.”
http://www.focusinsights.org/a.....g-too-much
Even atheists themselves, who break ranks with the Darwinian ‘consensus’ party line, are severely castigated by Darwinian atheists. There was even a peer-reviewed paper in a philosophy journal by a materialist/atheist that sought to ostracize, and limit the free speech of, a fellow materialist/atheist (Jerry Fodor) who had had the audacity, in public, to dare to question the sufficiency of natural selection to be the true explanation for how all life on earth came to be.
Darwinian Philosophy: “Darwinian Natural Selection is the Only Process that could Produce the Appearance of Purpose” – Casey Luskin – August, 2012
Excerpt: In any case, this tarring and feathering of Fodor is just the latest frustrated attempt by hardline Darwinians to discourage people from using design terminology. It’s a hopeless effort, because try as they might to impose speech codes on each another, they can’t change the fact that nature is infused with purpose, which readily lends itself to, as Rosenberg calls it “teleosemantics.”
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....63311.html
As well, an esteemed Philosophy professor, who is also an atheist, suffered much the same fate as Fodor from the hands of Darwinian atheists for daring to question the sufficiency of the reductive materialism of Darwinism to account for conscious experience (which is his specific specialty of study):
The Heretic – Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him? – March 25, 2013
http://www.weeklystandard.com/.....07692.html
Censor of the Year: Who Will It Be? – David Klinghoffer January 17, 2014
Excerpt: Charles Darwin himself, whose birthday is commemorated on the day bearing his name, insisted that getting at the truth, sorting true from false, requires an unimpeded airing of views: “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” Ironically, it is his latter-day advocates and defenders who are the most eager to muffle dissenting opinions, and the most unashamed about doing so. And again, not just unashamed, but proud. A victory in shutting down a college class, punishing a teacher, thwarting a law intended to protect educators from administrative reprisals, intimidating a publisher into a canceling a book contract, erasing words from the wall of a public museum — such things are not merely done, they are candidly, brazenly bragged about.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....81261.html
EXPELLED – Starring Ben Stein – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-BDc3wu81U
Slaughter of Dissidents – Book
“If folks liked Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” they will be blown away by “Slaughter of the Dissidents.” – Russ Miller
– Amazon
Slaughter of the Dissidents – Dr. Jerry Bergman – June 2013 – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v5nAYU2GD0
Of related interest: neo-Darwinists now have a fairly long legal history of trying to suppress free speech in the courts of America of anyone who opposes their view:
On the Fundamental Difference Between Darwin-Inspired and Intelligent Design-Inspired Lawsuits – September 2011
Excerpt: *Darwin lobby litigation: In every Darwin-inspired case listed above, the Darwin lobby sought to shut down free speech, stopping people from talking about non-evolutionary views, and seeking to restrict freedom of intellectual inquiry.
*ID movement litigation: Seeks to expand intellectual inquiry and free speech rights to talk about non-evolutionary views.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....50451.html
as well,
Atheism and the Law – Matt Dillahunty
Excerpt: “… whether atheism is a ‘religion’ for First Amendment purposes is a somewhat different question than whether its adherents believe in a supreme being, or attend regular devotional services, or have a sacred Scripture.” “Without venturing too far into the realm of the philosophical, we have suggested in the past that when a person sincerely holds beliefs dealing with issues of ‘ultimate concern’ that for her occupy a ‘place parallel to that filled by . . . God in traditionally religious persons,’ those beliefs represent her religion.”
“We have already indicated that atheism may be considered, in this specialized sense, a religion. See Reed v. Great Lakes Cos., 330 F.3d 931, 934 (7th Cir. 2003) (‘If we think of religion as taking a position on divinity, then atheism is indeed a form of religion.’)”
“The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent to a ‘religion’ for purposes of the First Amendment on numerous occasions”
http://www.atheist-community.o.....php?id=742
Evolution Is Religion–Not Science
Excerpt: Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality,,, Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.
Darwinian atheist Michael Ruse – Prominent Atheistic Philosopher
If an atheist saw a fakir performing the Indian rope trick, he wouldn’t wonder how the trick was performed, he’d say to himself: ‘One day scientists will understand how those guys are able to actually climb up a rope and vanish.’
I love a good bit of hypocrisy now and then!
Piotr, as to gravity waves and 4-D space-time in particular,,, although the evidence that I’ve personally seen for gravity waves, thus far, is not that impressive, with Dr. Sheldon’s position becoming stronger and stronger as far as I can tell, the evidence we have for the time dilation of the 4-D space-time of Special Relativity and General Relativity is far, far, stronger than any tentative evidence for gravity waves thus far:
This following confirmation of time dilation is my favorite since they have actually caught time dilation on film
(of note: light travels approx. 1 foot in a nanosecond (billionth of a second) whilst the camera used in the experiment takes a trillion pictures a second):
And, As with any observer accelerating to the speed of light, it is found that for any ‘hypothetical’ observer falling to the event horizon of a black hole, that time, as we understand it, will come to a complete stop for them. This is because the accelerative force of gravity at black holes is so intense that not even light can escape its grip:
And as with the ‘tunnel curvature’ we see in the space-time of a black hole, there is also tunnel curvature in space-time for any hypothetical observer accelerating to the speed of light. Please note, at the 3:22 minute mark of the following video, when the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape as a ‘hypothetical’ observer moves towards the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light, (Of note: This following video was made by two Australian University Physics Professors with a supercomputer.).
It is also very interesting to note that Special Relativity and General Relativity reveal two very different ‘qualities of eternity’ (as predicted in Christian Theism). In particular, Black Holes are found to be ‘timeless’ singularities of destruction and disorder rather than singularities of creation and order such as the extreme order we see at the creation event of the Big Bang.
Needless to say, the implications of this ‘eternity of destruction’ should be fairly disturbing for those of us who are of the ‘spiritually minded’ persuasion!
Moreover, in stark contrast to Darwinian claims of which we have no direct observational evidence, we have actual observational evidence from Near Death Experience testimonies of eternity and of people going through a tunnel to a higher heavenly dimension,,,
As well, A man, at the 7:00 minute mark of this video, gives testimony of falling down a ‘tunnel’ in the transition stage from this world to hell:
In light of this dilemma that the two very different eternities present to us spiritually minded people, and the fact that Gravity is, in so far as we can tell, completely incompatible with Quantum Mechanics, it is interesting to point out a subtle nuance on the Shroud of Turin. Namely that Gravity was overcome in the resurrection event of Christ:
Moreover, as would be expected if General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (QED) were truly unified in the resurrection of Christ from death, the image on the shroud is found to be formed by a quantum process. The image was not formed by a ‘classical’ process:
Personally, considering the extreme difficulty that many brilliant minds have had in trying to reconcile Quantum Mechanics and special relativity(QED), with Gravity,
I consider the preceding ‘quantum’ nuance on the Shroud of Turin to be a subtle, but powerful, evidence substantiating Christ’s primary claim as to being our Savior from sin, death, and hell:
That eternity would be confirmed by both physics and direct ‘observational’ evidence, and that there are two different ‘qualities of eternity’ to be concerned about, should make any normal person who is not right with God shake in their boots. Myself, since I have entrusted my soul to Jesus to be my mediator before the judgement seat of almighty God, I sleep well at night knowing that my sins are atoned for by Christ’s perfect sacrifice! i.e Paid In Full!
corrected link:
Particle Radiation from the Body – July 2012 – M. Antonacci, A. C. Lind
Excerpt: The Shroud’s frontal and dorsal body images are encoded with the same amount of intensity, independent of any pressure or weight from the body. The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image. Radiation coming from the body would not only explain this feature, but also the left/right and light/dark reversals found on the cloth’s frontal and dorsal body images.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19tGkwrdg6cu5mH-RmlKxHv5KPMOL49qEU8MLGL6ojHU/edit
Axel:
Ah, the irony. I love how in his now classic book on evolutionary theory The Biotic Message, Walter ReMine opens with a discussion of magic tricks and likens evolutionary theory to the misdirection of the magician.
Simply unforgettable. That and the smorgasbord!
Must try and get it if its not to steep, mung.
Axel,
Please do me a favor, would you mind taking a quick look at the last comments in this link? Thank you!
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-502637
bornagain77
Please do me a favor, would you mind taking a quick look at the last comments in this link? Thank you!
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-502637
Mung
Please do me a favor, would you mind taking a quick look at the last comments in this link? Thank you!
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-502637
Mapou
Please do me a favor, would you mind taking a quick look at the last comments in this link? Thank you!
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-502637
Dr JDD
Please do me a favor, would you mind taking a quick look at the last comments in this link? Thank you!
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-502637