As long-time readers know, we at UD often disparage Wikipedia for its left-wing bias. Still, you have to give it its due. For a quick lookup of non-controversial facts, it has its uses.
Uses to which, apparently, Bill Nye has not put it. If he had looked up Wiki’s entry on Ptolemy’s Almagest (published in around 150 AD), he would have known that the ancients understood very well that the universe is incomprehensibly vast. Here is the Summary of Ptolemy’s Cosmos from that article:
The cosmology of the Syntaxis includes five main points, each of which is the subject of a chapter in Book I. What follows is a close paraphrase of Ptolemy’s own words from Toomer’s translation.
The celestial realm is spherical, and moves as a sphere.
The Earth is a sphere.
The Earth is at the center of the cosmos.
The Earth, in relation to the distance of the fixed stars, has no appreciable size and must be treated as a mathematical point.
The Earth does not move.
The “the ancients thought the universe was tiny” myth and the “the ancients thought the earth was flat” myth are both refuted by the Almagest. The persistence of these myths is difficult to explain given that it takes about 30 seconds on Google to find the Wiki article.
But apparently Bill Nye is so busy spouting his anti-Christian propaganda, he does not have 30 seconds to spare.
UPDATE: It occurs to me that Nye’s ignorance is all the more inexcusable because it is not like he is unaware of Ptolemy. Nye once said:
It was curiosity that drove Ptolemy to study the stars and eventually develop the theory that the sun revolved around the Earth, and it was curiosity that eventually led Copernicus to challenge him centuries later and suggest it was actually the other way around.
Yes, Ptolemy was wrong about that. But he was right about other things, like the fact that the earth is a sphere and that the universe is very very large.
SECOND UPDATE: JAD posts this comment, which is spot on:
In the same spirit as Bill Nye, Carl Sagan wrote:
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?’ Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Sagan has written else where that he has no problem having a sense of awe and wonder even “reverence” because of “the magnificence of the Universe.” Why would the belief that the Creator is an eternal, transcendent Mind make any difference?
I also disagree with Sagan that theists have tried to keep God small. I have no doubt that young David watching over his father’s flocks of sheep at night was awe struck by the star filled sky. Indeed, that is what he said.
In a Psalm 8 he wrote:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
He marveled then at the immensity of the universe. I have no doubt he would have marveled even more if he knew what we living today know. After all I am a theist that is how I feel.
It might help if you explain what Bill Nye is supposed to have said. The only recent thing I can find on UD is Nye quoted as saying (in 2010) that he’s insignificant and sucks, but no quote showing his understanding of history.
Here, bob
Thank you, Joe. That’s the post I referenced, the one that doesn’t quote Nye as saying anything about historical views on the size of the universe.
Bob, if you are unable to draw obvious inferences there is not much I can do to help you. Move along.
Barry, you could help me by pointing me to where Nye made these observations. I assume you have 30 seconds to spare to dig out a link.
Bob, which part of “move along” do you not understand?
Actually, contrary to the popularly held belief that the Copernican principle has rendered any belief in the special status of the earth in this universe, and for humanity in particular, null and void,,,
,,contrary to that popularly held belief, the fact of the matter is that both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have themselves now overturned the Copernican principle and/or the principle of mediocrity as being a valid principle in science.
Particularly, In the 4 dimensional spacetime of Einstein’s General Relativity, we find that each 3-Dimensional point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe,,,
,,, and since any 3-Dimensional point can be considered central in the 4-Dimensional space time of General Relativity, then, as the following articles make clear, it is now left completely open to whomever is making a model of the universe to decide for themselves what is to be considered central in the universe,,,
Einstein himself stated, The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS [coordinate systems].”
Fred Hoyle and George Ellis add their considerable weight here in these following two quotes:
As Einstein himself noted, there simply is no test that can be performed that can prove the earth is not the center of the universe:
Here are a few more references that drives this point home:
Even Stephen Hawking himself, who once claimed that we are just chemical scum on an insignificant planet, stated that it is not true that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong,,, the real advantage of the Copernican system is simply that the equations of motion are much simpler in the frame of reference in which the sun is at rest.”
In fact, when taking into consideration anomalies in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation which line up with the earth and solar system, then the earth should once again, contrary to the Copernican principle, be considered ‘special’, even central, in the universe once again:
Here is an excellent clip from “The Principle” documentary that explains these ‘anomalies’ in the CMBR that line up with the earth and solar system in an easy to understand manner.
Moreover besides the earth and solar system lining up with the anomalies in the Cosmic Background Radiation, Radio Astronomy now reveals a surprising rotational coincidence for Earth in relation to the quasar and radio galaxy distributions in the universe:
Even individual people, as the following article makes clear, can be considered to be central in the universe according to the four-dimensional space-time of General Relativity,,,
,,, In fact, when Einstein first formulated both Special and General relativity, he gave a hypothetical observer a privileged frame of reference in which to make measurements in the universe.
Whereas, on the other hand, in Quantum Mechanics it is the measurement itself that gives each observer a privileged frame of reference in the universe. As the following article states, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”,,,
Because of many such experiments as this, Richard Conn Henry, who is Professor of Physics at John Hopkins University, states “It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe.”
Thus, contrary to popular belief, humans, and the earth beneath their feet, are not nearly as insignificant in this universe as many brilliant people, including many Christians, have been falsely led to believe by the Copernican principle and/or the principle of mediocrity.
Moreover, on top of the overturning of the Copernican principle by the CMBR anomalies, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics, in the following video physicist Neil Turok states that we live in the middle, or at the geometric mean, between the largest scale in physics and the smallest scale in physics:
And here is a picture that gets his point across very clearly:
The following site is also very interesting to the topic of ‘centrality in the universe’;
The preceding interactive graph and video points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which ‘just so happens’ to be directly in the exponential center of all possible sizes of our physical reality. As far as the exponential graph itself is concerned, 10^-4 is, exponentially, right in the middle of 10^-35 meters, which is the smallest possible unit of length, which is Planck length, and 10^27 meters, which is the largest possible unit of ‘observable’ length since space-time was created in the Big Bang, which is the diameter of the universe. This is very interesting for, as far as I can tell, the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions than directly in the exponential middle.
Thus all in all, the findings of modern science paint a very different picture than the one promulgated by atheists, via the Copernican/Mediocrity principle, that the “human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet”,,,
,,, A very different picture than ‘chemical scum’ indeed. The findings of modern science reveal a universe where humans have far more significance than anyone dared imagine just a few short decades ago.
I read the post about Bill Nye. The line, “Nye’s audience laughed approvingly, no doubt because they believed that “I suck” really means “religion sucks” was written by the blog author, Mike Keas, not Nye.’m going to listen to Bill’s speech now to see what he said that might have prompted the OP.
OK, I watched the last of Nye’s speech. I didn’t think it was very good, but I don’t see any place where he said, or implied, that ancient people didn’t think that the universe was vast. Of course, he has a different perspective on the meaning of that fact than Christians do, and maybe he really thinks “religion sucks” (although that’s not what he said at all), but I don’t hear him saying anything about ““the ancients thought the universe was tiny” myth and the “the ancients thought the earth was flat””
So I agree with Bob that I don’t understand what prompted the OP.
Bill Nye has said,
“We are just a speck, on a speck, orbiting a speck, in the corner of a speck, in the middle of nowhere.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kBbEQvgJec
Obviously if that’s true then Mr. Nye is just a meaningless speck who has nothing meaningful to say. (How could a meaningless speck ever say something meaningful?) On other hand, how as just a speck how does he even know that? Knowing for a fact that you are a speck requires some kind of transcendent universal knowledge. The truth is he doesn’t really know he’s just a speck. That’s what he believes.
The problem is that Nye’s belief that he is just a speck are the domain of philosophy and religion not science. Nye apparently doesn’t understand that distinction either. Maybe he should sign up for a philosophy 101 course.
Hazel – thanks for checking that out. I wonder if Keas was using “the artistic license to lie”.
To continue on from posts 7 & 8 where I showed that both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have themselves now overturned the Copernican principle and/or the principle of mediocrity, and to further refute the Atheistic presupposition that any real significance, meaning, purpose, and value for ours lives is illusory, I will reiterate my case for Christ’s resurrection from the dead providing the correct solution for the much sought after “Theory of Everything”.
As the following article states, “The first attempt at unifying relativity and quantum mechanics took place when special relativity was merged with electromagnetism. This created the theory of quantum electrodynamics, or QED. It is an example of what has come to be known as relativistic quantum field theory, or just quantum field theory. QED is considered by most physicists to be the most precise theory of natural phenomena ever developed.”
Richard Feynman (and others) were only able to unify special relativity and quantum mechanics into Quantum Electrodynamics by quote unquote “brushing infinity under the rug” with a technique called Renormalization.
This “brushing infinity under the rug” with QED never set right with Feynman.
In the following video, Richard Feynman expresses his unease with “brushing infinity under the rug” in Quantum-Electrodynamics:
I don’t know about Richard Feynman, but as for myself, being a Christian Theist, I find it rather comforting to know that it takes an ‘infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do’:
The reason why I find it rather comforting is because of John 1:1, which says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” ‘The Word’ in John 1:1 is translated from ‘Logos’ in Greek. Logos also happens to be the root word from which we derive our modern word logic.
So that it would take an infinite amount of logic to know what tiny bit of spacetime is going to do is pretty much exactly what one should expect to see under Christian presuppositions.
In fact, as a Christian Theist, I find both the double slit and quantum electrodynamics to be extremely comforting for Christian concerns.
Interestingly, “Although quantum field theory is fully compatible with the special theory of relativity, a relativistic treatment of quantum measurement has yet to be formulated.”
In other words, this particular renormalization in QED where ‘infinity was brushed under the rug’, just so happened to also “brush the measurement problem under the rug” and thus in the process also “brushed conscious observation itself under the rug.”
As should be needless to say, conscious observation is a rather important detail to be left on the cutting room floor in that particular renormalization of infinity.
But anyways, whereas special relativity, by ‘brushing infinity under the rug’, has been successfully unified with quantum theory to produce Quantum Electrodynamics, no such mathematical ‘sleight of hand’ exists for unifying general relativity with quantum mechanics.
General relativity, as the following articles show, simply refuses to be mathematically unified with quantum mechanics in any acceptable way. In technical terms, Gravity has yet to be successfully included into a theory of everything since the infinities that crop up in that attempt are not renormalizable as they were in Quantum-Electrodynamics.
The irreconcilable infinity problem between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, and how it relates to Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, is dealt with in a little more detail in the following video.
And as was also touched upon in the preceding video, I believe that the reconciliation of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ was accomplished in Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead when Jesus bridged the infinite divide between the infinitely holy God and sinful man:
There are two important issues that need to be addressed in laying out the plausibility of Christ’s resurrection from the dead providing the correct solution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’. The first is the false belief, via the Copernican/Mediocrity principle, that such a vast universe has rendered any real meaning, purpose, significance, and value for the earth, and for humans in particular, illusory. The second issue is the issue of Agent Causality vs. Mechanical Causality. ,,
As already mentioned, the first issue was dealt with in posts 7 & 8 of this thread where I showed that both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have themselves now overturned the Copernican principle and/or the principle of mediocrity. As to the second issue, Agent Causality vs. Mechanical Causality, Atheists employ what is termed Methodological Naturalism to try to rule agent causality out of bounds before any scientific investigation has even begun, As Paul Nelson states in the following article, “Epistemology — how we know — and ontology — what exists — are both affected by methodological naturalism (MN). If we say, “We cannot know that a mind caused x,” laying down an epistemological boundary defined by MN, then our ontology comprising real causes for x won’t include minds.”
Yet this denial of agent causality, as imposed by the artificial imposition of Methodological Naturalism onto science, is completely unwarranted.
For prime example, it is important to note the catastrophic failure in epistemology that is inherent in the Atheist’s worldview in the Atheist’s denial of his own Agent Causality and/or free will.
Specifically, in the atheist’s denial of their own free will they forsake any right to the claim that they are making a logically coherent argument in the first place.
As Martin Cothran states in the following article, “By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order.”
Moreover, besides the sanity of science itself demanding the reality of free will be let into the picture, quantum mechanics itself now demands that agent causality and/or free will be let ‘back’ into physics.
Specifically, advances in quantum mechanics, with Contexuality and/or the Kochen-Speckter Theorem, now confirm the reality of free will within quantum mechanics.
In regards to the Kochen-Speckter Theorem we find, as leading experimental physicist Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
And with contextuality we find, “In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation” and “Measurement outcomes depend on all the other measurements that are performed – the full context of the experiment. Contextuality means that quantum measurements can not be thought of as simply revealing some pre-existing properties of the system under study. ”
Moreover, the final ‘free will’ loophole in quantum mechanics has now been closed. As the following article states, the “creepy” and “far-fetched” possibility that the “physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector’s setting” and that “a particle detector’s settings may “conspire” with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure”,,,
,,, that “creepy” and “far-fetched” possibility, (which is exactly the “creepy” and “far-fetched” possibility that atheists hold to be true), has now been, for all practical purposes, closed.
Anton Zeilinger and company have now pushed the “free-will loophole” back to 7.8 billion years ago using quasars to determine measurement settings.
Moreover, here is another recent interesting experiment by Anton Zeilinger, (and about 70 other researchers), that insured the complete independence of measurement settings in a Bell test from the free will choices of 100,000 human participants instead of having a physical randomizer determine measurement settings.
Moreover, besides free will being experimentally validated in quantum mechanics, “the experience of the now”, which is a defining property of the mind, is also now found, contrary to Einstein’s materialistic presuppositions, to be an integral part of quantum mechanics:
And now most importantly, by allowing agent causality back into the picture of modern physics, as quantum physics itself now demands, and as the Christian founders of modern physics originally envisioned, (Sir Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, and Max Planck, to name a few), then a empirically backed reconciliation, (via the Shroud of Turin), between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, i.e. the ‘Theory of Everything’, readily pops out for us in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
Besides the reality of ‘free will’ and/or Agent causality within quantum theory bringing that rather startling solution to the much sought after ‘theory of everything’, there is also another fairly drastic implication for individual people being “brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level (S. Weinberg)” as well.
Although free will is often thought of as allowing someone to choose between a veritable infinity of options, in a theistic view of reality that veritable infinity of options all boils down to just two options. Eternal life, (infinity if you will), with God, or Eternal life, (infinity again if you will), without God. C.S. Lewis states the situation as such:
And exactly as would be a priori expected on the Christian view of reality, we find two very different eternities in reality. An ‘infinitely destructive’ eternity associated with General Relativity and a extremely orderly eternity associated with Special Relativity:
Again, the everlasting and forever implications for individual humans are fairly drastic, i.e. eternal life with God or eternal death/hell separated from God.
Verse:
Because of such dire consequences for our eternal souls, I can only plead once again for atheists to reconsider their choice to reject God, and to now choose life, even eternal life with God, instead of death.
Supplemental notes:
i.e. We have far more observational evidence for the reality of souls than we do for the Darwinian claim that unguided material processes can generate functional information. Moreover, the transcendent, even timeless, nature of ‘immaterial’ information, which is the one thing that, (as every ID advocate intimately knows), unguided material processes cannot possibly explain the origin of, directly supports the transcendent, even timeless, nature of the soul:
Verse:
Hazel adds his name to the list of those who willfully refuse to draw obvious inferences. Sad.
Barry, I find it odd that you aren’t willing to state what the “obvious inference” is. I don’t intend to say more than this, though, as it appears to be your decision not to.
Hazel
I don’t know why you find it odd that I am unwilling to indulge your and Bob’s infantile obscurantism.
The only inference that I got from this, and it is a very weak one, is that Nye believes that the universe is vast and that humans are ultimately meaningless, and that the ancients thought that the universe was vast and thought that humans were critical to it.
Ed comes close.
But how on earth do you infer from Nye’s talk that he understands that the ancients knew the universe was vast? The whole point of the statement is to draw a distinction. And clearly the distinction is between smart people like Nye and his audience (his audience is critical) who understand the universe is vast and man is meaningless and rubes like the ancients who believed the universe is cozy and man is at its center.
BTW Ed, I very much appreciate your engaging the OP in good faith, even if I disagree with part of your analysis. It is a welcome contrast to some others who have posted above.
Barry, I pointed out that I didn’t see any place that Nye implied that the ancients didn’t know the universe was vast, which seemed to be what you were implying in the OP. I also pointed out that obviously Nye drew different conclusions about the vastness of the universe. I don’t see how my comments weren’t in good faith.
Barry @20 and 21. Thank you. But I did get a slightly different impression. I think that Nye has great respect for the achievements of the ancients given the extent of the knowledge of the day. They agree, more or less, on the vastness of the universe. But they strongly disagree on the importance and meaningfulness of humans within it. On the latter issue he has departed from a scientific discussion to a theistic/philosophical discussion. He is, of course, entitled to do so, but he shouldn’t be presenting it as a scientific and logical conclusion derived from the vastness of the universe. They are totally independent.
Ed,
Again, where in the comment does he say or imply that he knew about, let alone agreed with, the fact that the ancients knew the universe is vast?
Again, the context (i.e., his audience and the event at which he is speaking) is key to understanding. It is the nature of such self-adulatory events to draw contrasts between “what we smart people believe” and “what the rubes believe.” The whole point of the event is to promote aggressive atheism. And aggressive atheism is not supported by acknowledging that the ancients knew the universe was vast and felt that was not inconsistent with their theism. Aggressive atheism is supported by the myth that the ancients believed an anthropomorphic God created a cozy little cosmos, a view that is no longer tenable because it has been undermined by “science.”
In the same spirit as Bill Nye, Carl Sagan wrote:
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Sagan has written else where that he has no problem having a sense of awe and wonder even “reverence” because of “the magnificence of the Universe.” Why would the belief that the Creator is an eternal, transcendent Mind make any difference?
I also disagree with Sagan that theists have tried to keep God small. I have no doubt that young David watching over his father’s flocks of sheep at night was awe struck by the star filled sky. Indeed, that is what he said.
In a Psalm 8 he wrote:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
He marveled then at the immensity of the universe. I have no doubt he would have marveled even more if he knew what we living today know. After all I am a theist that is how I feel.
Barry
That is why I said that it was my “impression”, given that he didn’t say anything about the ancients believing that the universe was small. But, yes, I agree with you that the point was to promote atheism. I just don’t see how the size of the universe, vast or tiny, can be used to do this.
Ed,
I explained how in comment 24 and JAD explained in 25. Pay attention.
How can you be an observer in this space and not know that atheists are always very quick to cite the Copernican principle (also known as the mediocrity principle)? This is what Nye was doing without citing the principle in so many words.
Do you understand why atheists like Nye (he calls himself an agnostic, but he is a functional atheist) love to cite the Copernican principle?
JAD at 25. Excellent. I have added this to the OP.
Thanks, Barry. Here are some more thoughts from Sagan concerning the vastness or “bigness” of the universe:
In his 1985 Gifford Lecture, which are prestigious lectures on natural theology sponsored by Scottish universities, Carl Sagan had some interesting things to say about science, the universe and religious experience.
According to Sagan,
“The word ‘religion’ come from the Latin for ‘binding together,’ to connect that which has been sundered apart… And in this sense of seeking the deepest interrelations among things that appear to be sundered to be sundered, the objectives of science and religion, I believe, are identical or very nearly so…
By far the best way I know to engage, the religious sensibility, the sense of awe, is to look up on a clear night. I believe that it is very difficult to know who we are until we understand where and when we are. I think everyone in every culture has felt a sense of awe and wonder looking at the sky. This is reflected throughout the world in both science and religion. Thomas Carlyle said that wonder is the basis of worship. And Albert Einstein said, ‘I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive in scientific research.’”
Sagan then shows, and comments upon, several pictures of astronomical objects that invoke in him a sense of awe and wonder. As an amateur astronomer many of them are very familiar to me. Indeed, as an amateur astronomer I personally share Sagan’s experience of awe and wonder.
However, Sagan then ends his lecture in an odd way. After showing us what an awesome and wonderful world we live in he writes:
“as Ann Druyan [Sagan’s wife] has pointed out an immortal Creator is a cruel god, because He, never having to face the fear of death, creates innumerable creatures who do. Why should he do that? If He’s omniscient, He could be kinder and create immortals, secure from the danger of death. He sets about creating a universe in which many parts of it and perhaps the universe as a whole, dies… There is a clear imperative in Western religion that humans must remain small and mortal creatures. Why?”
To me this seems to be totally contradictory. As long as the God of traditional religion doesn’t exist the universe is a place of awe and wonder. But then He show up and suddenly those wonderful thoughts and feelings disappear. The cup suddenly goes from more than half full to more than half empty. My question also is why? Why would it, and does it, make any difference?
It appears to me that as human being we are “hardwired” to think and believe a certain way.
For example, why do people, like Ann Druyan, who do not believe in immortality think about it and ponder it? Why does she get upset with a Creator she does not believe exists? Or, why do atheists, like Sagan, ponder whether or not the universe has some kind of higher meaning or purpose? Are those who seek out E.T. intelligent beings (who may after all be more advanced and therefore wiser than us) really seeking a God substitute because that is the way they are hard wired? On naturalistic evolution why would we be hardwired this way? Is it all just an accidental fluke?
Barry @ 27 – it’s clear that Ed reached another “obvious inference” about Nye’s speech, and also that your “obvious inference” requires a lot of context (including knowing what speech you were referring to!). I hope you now appreciate that what is obvious to you may not be obvious to other people.
I asked in good faith what you were referring to, because I was genuinely puzzled – you didn’t give any indication in your post what comments of Nye you were thinking of, so I had no context at all from which to draw any “obvious inference”. How could I when I didn’t even know what utterances of Nye’s you were referring to?
Bob @ 30,
Or you could have taken me at my word. Or failing that you could have spent two minutes on Google instead of insisting on being spoon fed. I can certainly understand why you didn’t. Googling is hard work and two minutes is a long time.
Here is another article which makes reference to the atheist thesis that the vastness of the universe is a compelling argument against the classical theological concept of an eternally existing transcendent Creator.
https://www.newsweek.com/science-prove-god-doesnt-exist-vastness-space-indicates-700688
Barry @ 31 – I’d prefer not to guess what you’re writing about. I could have googled, but if I google Bill Nye and “the ancients thought the universe was tiny”, I get 3 results: two point back to this page, and the third to Denyse’s twitter feed. If I google Bill Nye and “the ancients thought the earth was flat” I get the same 3 results, plus a link to a 2013 blog post with the title “Insults Do Not an Argument Make” that doesn’t mention Nye (his name crops up in a link). I’m afraid I’m having difficulty working out what I’m meant to google.
If you’ll go back to my original post, you’ll see that I had actually found what you were referring to, but couldn’t figure out if it was what you were referring to, because it didn’t seem relevant. Hazel also had difficulties, and Ed George didn’t reach your conclusion either (I can’t see him commenting on what Nye thought the ancients knew, though).
If you want to persuade people of your view, then I’m afraid you might have do do a bit of what you think of as spoon feeding. We don’t know what you know, or what you expect us to know, and if you assume knowledge that we don’t have then we have to resort to either guessing or asking for clarification. Is it really so bad to want to understand what you are trying to say?
Bob,
Why are you so interested in a topic you don’t understand?
JAD – because I’d like to understand it? And the reason I didn’t understand it was because I hadn’t been presented with enough information, so the solution was to ask for more information.