Category: Science

I am a Scientist

I am a scientist.  Now that’s hard to explain since I don’t have a Ph.D. in a scientific discipline and work doing science experiments.

When most people say they are something, they are referring to a religion.  I’m not religious.  I’m an atheist, but I don’t like of thinking of myself in terms of what I’m not.  I am a person that believes science is the best cognitive system for explaining reality.  Period.  I’m not sure if there are any other contenders.  I’ve written off religion, so what is there?  Philosophy and art?  Scientists used to be called natural philosophers because they studied nature.  It wasn’t until the 1800s that they began to be called scientists.

For years now I’ve been wondering if philosophy had much to contribute towards our knowledge of reality.  I argue about this with my friend Bill who says no, and I defend philosophy with a maybe.  Now The Atlantic has a wonderful article on this very subject, “Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?”

People claim they want to know the truth.  As far as I can tell, science is the only system that has any justification for providing the truth, all other intellectual systems fail in comparison to science.  That’s why I say I’m a scientist.  I believe in science.  I put my faith in science.  However, science isn’t a philosophy or religion.  It’s a system for testing reality and developing a consensus about the results.

Currently, I don’t think science can answer all our questions.  Aesthetics and ethics are two such areas outside of the domain of science, at least for now.  Mathematics is the tool of science, and its own discipline.  Mathematics is the only abstract cognitive system that works well with reality, and thus provides a tool to science.

Religion has no relationship with reality.  It’s purely based on abstract ideas, all theoretical.  Many religious people attack science, or refuse to believe or accept what science has learned about reality.  Philosophers try to embrace science and keep their favorite abstractions.  They hope to connect ideal forms with reality, but that is very hard to do.  Justice is a philosophical concept, as well as a religious concept.  People naturally want justice.  It’s a deep seated desire.  But there is no justice in reality.  If a gamma ray burst hits the Earth and life on this planet is sterilized, does that reflect some kind of justice?  The best we can do is create ethics and laws based on what the consensus of the population wants.

Right now philosophy can claim some value in logic, rhetoric, aesthetics and ethics.

There are two kinds of people on this Earth.  Those who recognize reality, and those who live in fantasy.  But even the fantasy believers accept science to a degree.  How can you get on an airplane or go in for brain surgery without accepting science?  Our houses, cars and gadgets are all products of science.  The food we eat exists because of science, as does the medicine we take, the clothes we wear, and most everything else we come into contact with in our daily lives.

Science won a long time ago when it came to explaining reality, it’s just most people haven’t realized it yet.

When it comes to explaining how things work, science is the only legitimate tool we have.

JWH – 4/24/12

SETI: What Can Aliens Tell Us That We Don’t Know?

First off, decoding any messages from the stars will be difficult.  Just think about what aliens would have to figure out if they received Morse Code from us?  First, there’s the code, and then there’s the language behind the code.  Any kind of pattern recognition program would figure out the code quickly enough, and even discover the alphabet behind the code, but then what?  They might number our alphabet 1-26.  So they end up with a word like 7-18-5-5-14.   Of course, they don’t know that A=1, so the sequence 7-18-5-5-14 could be 26 different words if they knew the order of our alphabet without the starting point, and a whole lot more if they don’t the order at all.  But isn’t alphabetical order even an illusion for us?  Words are far more than letters.  Writing itself is a code, and language is hardwired in our brains.  Could we ever communicate with a differently evolved life form?

Would it be any easier if they got a radio signal with our voices without any kind of coding?  If they heard us say “green” would that be any use to them?  Okay, let’s go to video and have someone point to a color chart and say green.  Now we’re getting somewhere, we need video to have a visual Rosetta Stone.

Now imagine we get TV from the stars, what can aliens tell us that we don’t know?

Religion

Unless our bug eyed friends tell us about a God that’s just like one of ours, we’re going to think anything they say about religion to be just another one.  But what if they smugly inform us they rejected religion 100,000 years ago?  Or they draw a complete blank when we ask about their gods?  After thousands of years, we’re discovering that religion is make-believe, so any religion we hear about from the stars will probably be just as make believed.  But what if they try to convert us to some big-ass wild and wooly story about a creator that looks like living 1955 Buick?

If you want to read about alien religions there’s plenty you can hear about from anthropologists.  But if birdmen from Arcturus  emphatically state that metaphysical realms don’t exist, and neither do metaphysical beings, will the people of Earth believe them?

Ultimately, there are only so many outcomes to expect in this area, here are a quick handful of replies we might get over our SETI TV.

  • There is no God
  • There is a God, but our God is better than your God
  • Our God is much like your God
  • Our God says you should serve us or be destroyed
  • Hello God, you finally answered our call
  • Who do you think you’re talking to, we are God
  • What the heck are you guys talking about, we don’t comprehend

Philosophy

Like religion, philosophy is on the decline in our world, so why would we value the works of an alien Plato?  Would we embrace highly developed alien works of rhetoric, logic and ethics?  Wouldn’t it be bizarre if our new friends have a philosophical tradition that went through similar phases as our philosophers?

What if our new alien buddies give us something to think about that we’ve never thought about before?  Is that even possible?  What if their philosophy only works in the context of their biological framework and environment?  Has anything imagined on Star Trek for alien ways of thinking ever been new?  Earth people have thought of some crazy shit over the centuries.

And how many philosophical practices and disciplines do you follow now?  How often do you read Northrup Frye, Michel Foucault or Ludwig Wittgenstein?  Compared to what you know now, to what you could know if you studied, you could make many quantum leaps in your knowledge without SETI.

Mathematics

This is one area that scientists expect us to be in full agreement.  Will we become depressed if we find all the answers to the mathematical puzzles we hoped to solve ourselves for the next thousand years on an interstellar web site?  What if they give us the answer to the grand unified theory of the universe, and we can’t understand it, ever!

Again, is any BEM math we could get from SETI any less far out than all the math you ignore now?

Science

Shouldn’t their science just correlate our science and vice versa?  The whole idea of science is it should be reproducible anywhere.  To the average citizen of the Earth that pays no attention to science now, will it matter that our science will be validated by alien science?

If our new friends have been around millions of years longer than we have,  should we expect them to have science that makes us feel like dinosaurs?

Technology

Alien technology is what we want.  Movies like Contact (1997) and This Island Earth (1955) imagine getting a signal from another star with blueprints that tell us how to build super-science gadgets that will help us travel to the stars.  Would our far away friends trade the specs for a spaceship for the design for the iPad?  We want the tech to hotrod it out of the solar system.  Will we be disappointed if we don’t get it, either because it doesn’t exist or because their Federation bars them from giving it to us?

Art

Will the creatures from afar care about Monet or Breaking Bad?  Will they want to groove to Lady Gaga and Arcade Fire?  Will we want to read their version of Anna Karenina?  How many Japanese pop hits do you play while reading Vietnamese novels?

Does it Matter?

I think it will matter greatly when we discover we’re not alone in this universe, but beyond that, I tend to think we concentrate on very immediate surroundings and ignore the far away, so will stuff that’s very far away really matter that much?  Most Americans pay little attention to illegal aliens from Mexico, so why care about creatures from Epsilon Eridani?  Think about it, we have excellent science for global warming and evolution but most Americans reject those ideas for some stories they heard as kids at Sunday school.

Our world is full of alien concepts we’ve never explored, far out science and math we’ve never learned, mind blowing technology that’s beyond our current comprehension.  What do we do with this cornucopia of knowledge now?  Yeah, I thought so.  We spend most of our time figuring out how to rub genitals or some other physical impulse programmed into our DNA, so do we really expect to be uplifted by video from the stars by super beings?

Science Fiction

And if we do find SETI pen pals, what will they make of our science fiction?  Our dreams are so much bigger than our beings.  If intelligent life on nearby planets pick up this video on their SETI dishes, what will they think?  What if they don’t know it’s fiction.  What if the SETI signals we receive are their science fiction?

What if the most exciting stuff we get from the stars will be alien Sci-Fi?

JWH – 4/10/12

Should We Preach Science to the Faithful?

Now there are two ways to interpret my question:  Should we preach science to the faithful?  First, the religious right in America already believe atheists are trying to convert them through liberal education, so the question becomes:  Should we not teach science to protect people’s faith?  The second way to look at that question is to assume the faithful have a war on science which turns the question into:  Should we teach science so everyone will understand that faith is fantasy?

Evangelical America already knows secular American has declared war on them.  Liberals say, “Oh no, not us,” but I think they are avoiding the issue.  Most liberals are not atheists, or even agnostics, and cling to bits of religion, mysticism and theism.  They want to be modern, educated and embrace science, but deep down they want God and heaven to exist.  They want everything science can give them, like brain surgery, GPS, television,  computers, cell phones, antibiotics, and so on, but they don’t want to let go of God.  The conservative religious right have always known deep down that science invalidates religion.  That’s why they want to do away with The Department of Education, change goals for higher education and rewrite K-12 textbooks.

For decades liberals have embraced the idea that all we need to do is embrace the separation of church and state and the religious will be protected and the liberals can keep science and education.  They see this as fair, ethical, legal and most of all high minded.  Sadly, this is completely clueless as to what the faithful want.  They want America to be a Christian nation.  Liberals have no idea what this means, or what it implies.

It would be fantastic if religion was a personal belief that was never political and always personal, but that’s not the case.  For decades the religious have wanted to take over politics to get what they want.  They are pushing their agenda so I’m asking should liberals push back?  Of course, the faithful will claim we’ve been pushing them for decades and they are only defending themselves.  It’s a complicated issue.

Nevertheless, we have to ask:  How hard should we teach science, skeptical thinking, and evidence based reasoning?  Essentially, the faithful are saying, “God says things are like this…” and we’re saying “There’s no God, but science tells us this….”  As much as some people want to believe that God and Science can coexist that’s just not true.  Early humans embraced metaphysical fantasies long ago and it’s taken millennia for some people to break out of those fantasies.  Our choice is accept the fantasies or accept the truth about reality – there is no sitting on the fence.

I’ve never liked proselytizing.   I’ve always thought the idea of missionaries traveling to other cultures to convert those people away from their own religion as offensive.  I’ve always been a skeptic, an unbeliever, an atheist, and I’ve never wanted to go convert the faithful to my way of thinking – until now.  What’s the harm in letting people believe in God, or believing they will go to heaven and meet all their old relatives and friends.  It’s a wonderful dream to dream.  What harm could there be in leaving people alone to believe in religion and all the things religion promises them?

But the Republicans are forcing me to make a choice.  They have made their religious goals political.  They have put education and science in their gun sights.  They have essentially made the two political parties Democrats=Science and Republicans=Religion.

I use to believe it was important to let people believe whatever they wanted until I realized the faithful had begun an anti-Education campaign.  Conservatives believe liberals are pushing education as a way of destroying their religious beliefs.  Many liberals disagree with this, and even I don’t think it’s a conscious agenda, but I do think a good education tends to dispel religious beliefs.  It’s natural for the faithful to fear higher education and to want to control the K-12 curriculum.  I think liberals are being disingenuous not to recognize that a good education does erode religious belief.

But I think the faithful and conservatives need to realize that attacking the Department of Education, Higher Education, and the money we spend on K-12 schools is equal to the idea of liberals wanting to do away with Churches.  The educational system is essentially the secular church of liberal beliefs.  Now fundamentalists know this and that’s why they are attacking the educational system.  Liberals have their heads in the sand if they don’t see this.  Atheists believe in science and education, it’s not a religion, but it a belief system.

I know conservatives can’t understand this, but liberals and most atheists are very big believers in the freedom of religion, and they don’t want to challenge religious thinking directly, and especially not politically.  But conservatives don’t see that, and they have decided to attack the educational system.

The faithful feel its their duty to spread the word of their faith and to attack evil where they see it.  Of course, Muslims and Mormons believe this too, and they are growing faster than Christianity.   All the aggressive faiths are in a battle for the hearts and minds of the people of Earth.  My question is:  Should atheists, skeptics, free thinkers, and other non-believers get in on the action by converting new recruits?  Among the religious the war for souls is really a battle for who describes God best.  Even though most Christians and Muslims hate each other, they do share the concept of God. 

If atheists become missionaries for science, it will become a battle for God versus Science, and that could lead all religions to band together, and they’d have a big majority.  Lucky for believers in science the faithful don’t get along.  However, does that mean we need to make scientific converts to win the battle for scientific thinking?

When you think about it though, isn’t that what’s already happened around the world?  Fundamentalism is pushing back against the secular all across the globe, in a disunited front?  I think the recent rise of atheism is a retaliation to that movement.  Maybe it’s time we all put our cards on the table and be honest.  There are many Christians out there that want America to be a Christian theocracy.  I think they are jealous of Islam innate relationship with politics.  I want politics that’s based on reality and science.

On the surface Republican politics appears to be about reducing taxes, especially for the rich.  And the rich members of the party see reducing the size of the Federal government as the best method to this goal.  Below the surface are the religious members of the Republicans, and they’ve latched on to making a smaller Federal government as their method to undermine liberal education.   The reason all candidates fall all over themselves claiming to be the one true conservative and the reason why they fear being called a moderate is because they are united in in their goals even though they want to achieve different outcomes.

For 2012, the question becomes:  Are there enough pro small government voters to elect a small government president?  Conservative politicians think they represent the majority of Americans but I can’t believe that.  We’ll find out in November.  Who are you going to vote for – the Party of God or the Party of Science?

JWH – 3/11/12

Understanding Reality

Think about cockroaches.  How much do they know about reality?  They have compound eyes that see the world poorly.  They can sense vibration, and they have a sense of touch.  Do they smell and taste the world around them?  I don’t know.  Cockroaches are little biological machines that eat and replicate.  They survive.  Between roaches and humans is an array of animal life with ever improving senses that understand more of reality.  To get some idea how an animal thinks watch “My Life as a Turkey.”  Humans do not have an exclusive hold on consciousness, but our consciousness lets us explore reality far deeper than any other creature we know.

I tend to doubt animals understand their environment in a conscious way.  They react to it, and even develop rudimentary calls that can be language-like that can relate to others of their kind about locations, events or things in their environment.  But I don’t think they ever ask:  who, what, where, when, how and why?  Maybe some higher forms of animals might pine for who, what and where, but I doubt they cognitively ask.

I believe we have a number of cognitive tools that help us analyze, map and understand reality.

Language

Words let us break down reality into parts.  Grammar lets us describe actions with nouns and verbs.  The origin of language let us work with who, what, where and when.

Theology

Theology introduces abstractions that attempt to answer how.  Theology was our first tool that lets us ask why are we here.  Unfortunately, theology is all based on imaginary concepts.  Theology distorts reality.  Theology lets us think we see things that aren’t there.  Theology has imprisoned humans for tens of thousands of years in a pseudo-reality.

Philosophy

Philosophy introduced rhetoric and logic and attempts to understand reality through deduction.  Sadly, philosophy was tainted by religion and sought to reconcile reality with ideal forms of the mind.  It took philosophy centuries to throw off trying to make reality shoehorn into a preconceived concept.

Mathematics

We started counting with language and commerce, but mathematics came into its own with philosophy.  At first mathematics was used in philosophical interpretations of abstractions and ideal forms, but eventually we applied it to analyzing reality.  It became our first tool where consensus and validation was important.

Science

Science is a system for testing reality.  Answers only count if they are consistent, reproducible and universal.  Mathematics became the cognitive tool of science.

Technology

Technology allowed us to expand our senses.  Telescopes and microscopes see further than our eyes.  Other technology allowed us to look into the reality where our senses can’t perceive.

The first three cognitive tools we developed, language, theology and philosophy often distort reality, or create illusions and fantasies.  Most humans never get beyond those three tools and even though they perceive reality far greater than a cockroach because of their superior senses, language, theology and philosophy often just confuses their minds.  Our brains are so powerful that they let us see what we want to see.  Our minds can override our senses and alter reality.  Theology has always been more powerful than any drug, especially combined with the power of our imagination.

The Limits of the Mind

Math, science and technology have expanded our awareness of reality out to infinity in all directions, including time.  How much of this reality humans can comprehend is yet to be determine.  Most humans on planet Earth cannot get beyond theology which blinds them from seeing true reality.  Most religions have incorporated bits of philosophy to make their religion logical and understandable by rhetoric, but its foundation is based on illusion and quicksand.  In recent years theology has even attempted to incorporate science but its been a pathetic failure.  Those people whose only cognitive tool for understanding reality is theology cannot comprehend how science works, if they did, it would destroy their theology.

There are many other tools for understanding reality, such as art, literature, history, journalism, poetry, drama, etc.  They are all subjective, but they have their pros and cons.

JWH – 3/6/12

A Universe From Nothing Lawrence M. Krauss

As far back as I can remember I’ve often contemplated why there is something rather than nothing.  And by nothing, I don’t mean empty space, because even that would be something.  I finally decided that nothing can’t exist.  That it’s impossible for “nothing” to exist, because if it could, we wouldn’t be here, and there would be nothing.  I concluded that reality is all the possible some-things coming into being. 

When I first saw a copy A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss I wondered if he had a scientific theory to explain why nothing cannot exist to support my own philosophical theory.  Sad to say, he doesn’t actual work with the same concept of nothing as I imagined it, but I think he’s getting close.  Theology has always been burdened with the question that intellectual pesky kids eventual ask, “Who created God?”  Smart kids will also ask scientists, “What created the Big Bang?”  Sooner or later the ontological question has to be:  “How did something come from nothing?”

Cosmology has always invaded the territory of theology and Krauss does not shy away from this conflict.  In fact, Christopher Hitchens had promised to write the introduction to A Universe From Nothing, but he died too soon, so Krauss got Richard Dawkins to write the afterward, which uses the science in this book to attack theology rather sharply.

It seems like every popular cosmology book I read has to reiterate all the cosmological discoveries since Edwin Hubble figured out that nebulae are galaxies existing outside of the Milky Way, and they are speeding away from us.  For a short 224 page book, Krauss gets the background covered quickly and moves on to the title topic, but it requires the reader to grasp quite a bit of recent research.  To understand nothing requires understanding a lot of some-things.

Now here is where I wish I had the writing skills of Brian Greene, my current favorite science writer.  Of course, if I had such writing skills I’d end up writing a book much like what Lawrence M. Krauss wrote – however, I’d still like to summarize what I learned from reading A Universe from Nothing.  I’ve lost count of how many books I’ve read on cosmology, or documentaries I’ve seen, but I feel the need to summarize just to get things straight in my head by listing them on paper.

And if Krauss and Dawkins are right, and cosmology deposes theology, then the average person needs to learn a lot to catch up with science.  Cosmology is science’s Book of Genesis.   But unlike the Bible myths, cosmology explains how the universe came about by studying the evidence, a lot of evidence, a whole lot of evidence.  And for some concepts, like the Big Bang, there are multiple paths that prove the theory that makes the scientific research more and more definite.  This is a lot of learn and its no wonder that most people prefer the Bible to answer their origin questions.

Here’s quick and dirty study guide to modern cosmology.  The more you know will make understanding A Universe From Nothing easier to understand and comprehend.  Also, it’s impossible to understand cosmology without understanding particle physics.

Now this is a lot to learn, and even after reading many books I only have a vague layman’s idea of what’s going on, but what’s fascinating is how everything interconnects.  Reading A Universe From Nothing just inspires me to read more, to keep putting more puzzle pieces together to get the big picture. 

Just take what we’ve learned about the cosmic microwave background radiation in my lifetime.  Reading The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg and The Very First Light by John C. Mather tells the long story of how the CMB was theorized, discovered, and measured to finer and finer accuracy.  The Very First Light is about building the COBE spacecraft to measure the CMB.  Then I read about the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe that studied the CMB with even more accuracy.  Then there was Planck spacecraft that explores even deeper.  If you aren’t familiar with the cosmic microwave background radiation then I beg you to study it.  It’s a near perfect example of how science works.   Just look at the list of the major experiments studying the CMB.  This history shows how experiments are constantly refined and evolved to find more evidence, or how to look for evidence from other sources, or from other approaches.  Science is a beautiful Chinese puzzle where the pieces interlock in elegant ways.

Don’t worry about not knowing mathematics to enjoy reading about cosmology.  Most of the popular science books are about the men who invented the mathematics, and their stories are told by the experimental evidence.  Their numbers are validated by real world experiments and applied engineering.  Did you know that GPS systems in your smartphones depend on mathematics that involve relativity?  Without Einstein’s equations they wouldn’t work.

Back to the book – does Krauss explain how something comes from nothing?  No.  But he does explain the current theories on dark energy, which suggests that powerful forces come from apparently empty space.  Of course, once we understand how dark energy, and dark matter work, they won’t seem like nothing anymore – they will be some-things.

The nothing Krauss is talking about are just some-things that science can’t see right now.  The nothing I say can’t exist is pushed further back into the unknown, into the multiverse.  Like the kid who asked who created God, I’m asking what created the multiverse, but if science could tell me, there would still be another layer of unknown to explore.  It’s still turtles all the way down.

Other Reviews:

JWH – 2/24/12