Ethan Siegel has a genius for encapsulating what is wrong in science today:
String theory is perhaps the most controversial big idea in all of science today. On the one hand, it’s a mathematically compelling framework that offers the potential to unify the Standard Model with General Relativity, providing a quantum description of gravity and providing deep insights into how we conceive of the entire Universe. On the other hand, its predictions are all over the map, untestable in practice, and require an enormous set of assumptions that are unsupported by an iota of scientific evidence.
Ethan Siegel, “Why String Theory Is Both A Dream And A Nightmare” at Forbes
This is the kind of thing that Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, has been complaining about. What, apart from the fancy equipment and number-crunching, makes it science?
He concludes,
So long as we don’t have evidence that demonstrates string theory must be wrong, people will continue to pursue it. But disproving it would require something like demonstrating that no superparticles exist all the way up to the Planck scale, something far beyond the reach of experimental physics today.
Ethan Siegel, “Why String Theory Is Both A Dream And A Nightmare” at Forbes
Wait. We don’t have evidence that leprechauns don’t exist either. Does that make them believable?
See also: Post-modern physics: String theory gets over the need for evidence
I like Siegel’s title for his article, “Why String Theory Is Both A Dream And A Nightmare”.
Siegal’s title reminds me of Penrose’s critique of M-Theory, which is the red-headed step child of string theory.
Basically, string theory and m-theory are mathematical fantasies, born out of the unrestrained imaginations of mathematicians and theoretical physicists. Mathematical fantasies that are found to have no correspondence to the reality we live in. As Siegal noted in his article,
The fact that string theory itself turns out to be, basically, ‘illusory’, i,e, “Both A Dream And A Nightmare” that has no correspondence to reality, should not be all that surprising.
Assuming naturalism, instead of the Mind of God, as the primary substratum upon which all reality rests, in final analysis, renders all of reality illusory.
Thus, although the Atheistic Naturalist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Atheistic Naturalists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic naturalism has turned out to be.
Moreover, due to advances in science, particularly advances in quantum mechanics, the Christian Theist does not have to rely solely on the catastrophic epistemological failure that is inherent in assuming methodological naturalism, but the Christian Theist can now also appeal to advances in Quantum Mechanics itself to prove that the Mind of God must be the primary substratum upon which all reality rests.
Here are eight intersecting lines of experimental evidence from quantum mechanics that shows that consciousness must precede material reality
Putting all the lines of evidence from quantum mechanics together, the argument for God from consciousness can now be framed like this:
Perhaps the most direct falsification of the naturalist’s belief that consciousness is derivative from material reality, rather than material reality being derivative from consciousness, i.e. derivative from the Mind of God, is the falsification of ‘realism’ itself, which is the belief that a material reality can exist independently of our conscious observation of it.
The two main experiments that have falsified ‘realism’ are Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment and Leggett’s inequality:
And although the falsification of ‘realism’ itself is certainly very powerful experimental proof that the atheist’s assumption of methodological naturalism is false, the quantum zeno effect coupled with advances in quantum information theory add yet another lethal blow to the atheist’s metaphysial assumption of methodological naturalism.
Verse: