Home » Posts tagged 'Community' (Page 8)
Tag Archives: Community
The Science of Fake News
Thousands gathered on the grounds of the Washington Monument this past Saturday for the “March on Science.” What were they advocating? Well, in a word… science.
What can we expect next? Doctors for Hospitals? Lawyers for Jurisprudence? Mammals for Oxygen?
To be fair, there is a real issue here. Namely, the exploitation of science for political advantage. In a perfect world, scientific data would be apolitical, serving as a nonpartisan lodestone for guiding public policy. Facts are facts, and the only debate should be about what they mean, not what they are.
But our world is far from perfect, and the problem is not that we don’t have faith in science. It’s that many have found good reason to lose faith in scientists.
Case in point. Last February, John Bates, formerly of the National Climatic Data Center, charged that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association had manipulated global warming data to advance a political agenda. So here’s the question: if climate change poses as grave a danger as scientists say it does, why do they have to fudge the data to prove it?
HOW TRUE ARE THE FACTS?
The arrogance of scientists is evident nowhere more than in their zealotry against religion. Every thinking person knows that the world came into existence through Big Bang and that life developed through evolution. Anyone who questions these axioms is living in a world of denial and delusion.
Right?
Not necessarily. More than a few members of the scientific community are uncomfortable with their colleagues’ blind worship before the altar of science.
If you ask a professor of physics what existed before the Big Bang, you’re likely to hear that Big Bang created time as well as space. Since there was no time before the Big Bang, the question is “scientifically irrelevant.”
Writes Bob Berman in Astronomy Magazine, the truth is that “nobody has the foggiest idea what happened the Tuesday before the Big Bang.” So why not simply say so?
Evolutionary theory – or, perhaps more accurately, evolutionary hypothesis – is riddled with unanswered questions. The first premise is spontaneous generation, the appearance of life where there was none. According to science, this is impossible.
So how did life begin? In 1954, Nobel Laureate George Wald of Harvard wrote in Scientific American: “One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are – as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.” Dr. Wald then went on to clarify his definition of “impossible.”
It gets worse. There’s the dearth of fossil evidence. Dr. Gerald Schroeder points out that wings, for example, appear fully formed in the fossil record. There should be countless examples of macroevolution – intermediate stages of change from one species to another. Evolutionists love pointing to apteryx, a prehistoric flightless bird with hairy feathers, as one such intermediary link. So here is one piece of evidence where they should have hundreds. Where are the rest?
Yet another problem is exemplified by bats, which have echolocation — they navigate by sound. To do that, observed the late Michael Crichton, they would have had to develop simultaneously specialized vocal apparatus to make sounds, specialized ears to hear echoes, specialized brains to interpret the sounds, and specialized bodies to dive and swoop to catch insects. Without any one of these, the other three are worthless. How did evolution “know” to bring about all four faculties at once?
Returning to the cosmos, we have to deal with the expansion of the universe – which is accelerating, in contradiction to the laws of physics. How does science explain that one? Again, Bob Berman provides the answer: “It’s not galaxy clusters that travel outward,” the professor will say pedantically, “but space itself that grows larger. The galaxies don’t actually move.” So here I am thinking, wait a minute. Are we at a Daffy Duck convention?
SO MANY QUESTIONS
Educated adherents of religion feel no need to reject evolution or Big Bang completely. But it’s difficult to take seriously scientists who demonstrate such utter certitude in the face of unrelenting mystery. Why aren’t there more scientists as honest as Harry Cliff? Unlike so many, the particle physicist with CERN is unafraid to observe that “maybe for the first time in the history of science, we could be facing questions that we cannot answer, not because we don’t have the brains or technology, but because the laws of physics themselves forbid it.”
So when it comes to climate change and other matters that may affect the future of mankind, perhaps the scientific community should consider how much their own hubris has damaged their credibility before they blame the public for questioning their conclusions.
The Talmud teaches: One who speculates upon these four things – what is above, what is below, what is before, and what is after – would be better off never having been born.
This does not mean that we are forbidden to ponder the vastness of Creation and the mysteries of the universe. Rather, it cautions us that, as J.B.S. Haladane observed, the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
We would all do well to remember that there will always be more for us to know, that the truth may not be what we want it to be, and that humility is the first step toward wisdom.
The evil of economics
It takes a big man to admit he’s wrong.
There are few men bigger than Alan Greenspan. And there are few men who have gone wrong in such a big way.
Although he stands shy of six feet tall, the former Federal Reserve Chairman was the colossus of the business world as he oversaw the longest economic boom in American history. But when financial collapse swallowed up the bulls of Wall Street like the cows in Pharaoh’s dream, Mr. Greenspan’s reputation deflated along with the economy.
To his credit, the erstwhile guru humbled himself and confessed the error of his ways. In October, 2008, Mr. Greenspan gave testimony on Capitol Hill before the House Oversight Committee concerning the economic meltdown that ravaged the country. This was the takeaway:
“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”
In other words, despite all logic to the contrary, people cannot be trusted to do what is in their own best interest.
The question is: why not?
St. Patrick’s Day — Searching for the way out of exile
Every year on St. Patrick’s Day I revisit these thoughts from 1999. Things have gotten better in Ireland, where both sides have finally recognized that peace requires sacrifice and compromise. Not much has improved in Israel, where leaders on one side continue to oppress their people, holding them hostage as political pawns so they can keep their own hold on power.
At first glance, the soggy, green downs of Ulster bear little resemblance to the parched and craggy hills of Israel. But a gentle tugging at the cultural fabric of either place unravels an unmistakable common thread: two peoples, impossibly close geographically, impossibly distant ideologically, with more than enough fuel for hatred between them to burn until the coming of the Messiah. Tromping over hills and through city streets, however, first in one place and then in the other, I discovered a more compelling similarity: the bitter struggle of humanity in exile.
“Which are the bad parts of town, the ones I should avoid?” I asked the owner of the bed-and-breakfast where I passed my first night in Belfast.
She dutifully pointed out the Shankhill neighborhood on my map, cautioning me to steer clear of it. I thanked her and, with sophomoric self-confidence, proceeded there directly.
It was the summer of 1984, in the midst of “the Troubles,” and central Belfast exuded all the charm of a city under martial law.
Incivility: the new gold standard
“Are you still beating your wife, Mr. Secretary?”
That was about the only question not leveled at White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer by the ill-mannered woman who accosted him in an Apple store over the weekend.
“I wanted to speak truth to power,” Mr. Spicer’s assailant explained, after her Periscope video went viral and made international headlines.
Indeed, here was a rare moment of opportunity, a chance to catch a high-ranking official in an unguarded moment and engage him free from the filters of the national press corps and the censors of the nightly news.
So how did our heroic citizen capitalize on her unexpected access to Mr. Trump’s confidant as she streamed it live from her cellphone? What were the penetrating questions she posed to solicit a candid discussion with a representative the president’s inner circle? Here they are:
The Limits of Imagination
Yesterday, Jews around the world celebrated the Festival of Purim. In Jerusalem, the same celebration takes place today. So I’m taking the opportunity to revisit these thoughts from 2009.
According to a survey — before the recent economic downturn — about 20 percent of Americans believe themselves to be among the wealthiest one percent of the nation. Another 20 percent anticipate that they will one day claim membership among the wealthiest one percent. In other words, two out of every five Americans believe that they are or will possess enough wealth to be in the top one out of a hundred.
One might describe this kind of rosy optimism as wishful thinking. One might better describe it as delusional.
The potency of imagination powers the engine of human achievement. Whether we aspire to fight for civil rights, to seek a cure for cancer, to write the great American novel, or to win the New York marathon, we never take the first step until we envision our own success, no matter how certain or improbable our chances of success may be. But as the line between reality and fantasy grows increasingly blurry in Western society, imagination does not spur us on toward success but prods us blindly toward the precipice of self-destruction.
Such was the myopia of the Jewish people under Persian rule 2,365 years ago when King Ahasuerus and his viceroy, the wicked Haman, conspired to annihilate the Jewish people. The Jews had thought to appease the king by attending his party, a banquet conceived to celebrate their failure to return to Israel after 70 years of exile. They thought to appease Haman by bowing down to him and the idolatrous image he wore upon a chain hanging from his neck. They thought appeasement and compromise and contrition would preserve the comfortable life they had grown used to in exile, far from their half-forgotten homeland.
Despite all their efforts, the axe fell. But the executioner’s blow never landed, checked in mid-swing by the divine hand, which concealed itself within a long series of improbable coincidences.
In the world of superficial cause-and-effect, the Jews appeared to owe their salvation to the random workings of fate. But it was no coincidence that their reversal of fortunes hinged upon the very moment when the invocations of Mordechai and Esther rallied their people to cast off the yoke of assimilation, no matter how imprudent such an act of defiance may have seemed.
It wasn’t wishful thinking that turned the hearts of the Jews back toward their Creator; it was the clarity that remained after all their schemes had failed and they were left staring into the cold, harsh light of reality.
Today, however, the light of reality shines neither cold nor harsh enough to make us open our eyes. Millions rally for an illusory peace to be won by appeasement before an expanding international culture of terrorism. Voices cry out against the leaders of democracy and in support of the enemies of mankind, urging us to walk the path of peace by laying down our arms before our enemies. Their anthem, it seems, echoes from a generation built on dreams and surviving on pure fantasy:
Imagine there’s no countries,
It isn’t hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…
Like Marxism and countless other utopian visions, it’s a lovely notion. Like its title, however, it is a dream existing only in imagination. Like its author, it is nothing but fantasy destined for tragedy.
Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…You may say I’m a dreamer,
But I’m not the only one,
I hope some day you’ll join us,
And the world will live as one.
The world will indeed live as one, but not by wishing or imagining utopia into existence. Simple answers to complex problems rarely yield lasting solutions.
The holiday of Purim teaches us that peace comes only with the triumph of good over evil, a triumph that must be bought and paid for by standing up, speaking out and, when necessary, taking action against evil.
Yonason Goldson 