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Settled Science?
Last March, scientists believed they had discovered evidence of the Big Bang. Early this year, analysis raised new doubts about the soundness of the Big Bang Theory altogether, according to an article in Quanta Magazine.
The issue here is not whether to believe in Big Bang. I have no skin in the game, since Creationism can work with or without it. The real issue is the unshakable certainty of so many in the scientific community despite a history of mistaken hypotheses that goes back at least as far as Aristotle.
Whether it’s Big Bang, evolution, or climate change, it is disingenuous for ideologues to quash open debate by proclaiming any of these as “settled science.” They are not. Each faces serious logical and scientific challenges that may not refute them but certainly demand acknowledgment and honest investigation. To claim “case closed” when so many legitimate objections remain unanswered is hardly a responsible application of scientific method.
Which begs the question: why are so many in the scientific community afraid of the truth?
Read the whole article here. Here are a few excerpts:
No one has devised an alternative to inflation [the exponential expansion of the universe following the initial “big bang”] that explains so many observations with so much economy. For a decade, Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, an early pioneer of inflation who has since become one of its most vocal critics, has championed the “ekpyrotic model,” a cyclical picture in which the universe executes an eternal series of expansions and contractions. In this scenario, any unevenness that develops in the cosmos as it expands gets compressed as it contracts. The slate is wiped clean for each cosmic rebirth, accounting in this way for the exceptional uniformity observed early on in this latest iteration.
But the ekpyrotic model has few subscribers. It hinges on the idea that the universe will bounce, rather than bang, each time it shrinks to a point. The theoretical arguments for why it should bounce strike most experts as highly speculative. And the non-bounciness of black holes suggests it would not do so.
At present, inflation has cornered the market on Big Bang theories, and yet there is still room for doubt. “The fact that we don’t have an alternative doesn’t mean we know the truth,” said Avi Loeb, a theoretical astrophysicist at Harvard University.
The theory’s triumphs are undercut by a strange detail: If inflation works the way it’s supposed to, it seems that it should never have happened at all.
Inflation now seems less likely than ever, the critics say.
The New Narcissism
Have we finally reached the point where narcissism is no longer an epidemic but an institution? Is this the legacy of the “Me Generation” of the ’70s, bequeathing a cultural norm of such enormous self-absorption that self-absorption has itself become a virtue?
Joe Holleman asks the question. I fear that the answer is self-evident. The mantra of our generation has become:
Ask not what you can do for others; ask what you can demand that others must do for you.
Visionaries and Ideology: a study in contrasts
Who knew a trip to New York could be so emotional?
I didn’t want to go in the first place. As my 92-year-old student likes to quote: Travelling is for peasants.
But my wife convinced me with simple arithmetic. Four tickets to bring three kids and son-in-law home or two tickets to visit them. No-brainer.
So I went grudgingly, confirming in the end the truism that some of life’s most profound moments come not only unexpected but against our will.
Our first stop was the 9/11 museum. I marveled at the artistic vision that had conceived the memorial pools, the water channeling down in rivulets that mirrored the face of the fallen towers, the continuous downward rush balanced by the redemptive feeling of water — the source of life — returning to the heart of the world. Here there was solace, closure, and consolation.
But a very different feeling accosted me inside. Almost upon entering the doors a single word brandished itself across my mind’s eye: Holocaust.
Let me explain.
Read the whole article here.
The Grateful Whale
Swimmers worked an hour to free this humpback whale tangled in fishing net. To see the whale’s reaction, skip to 6:40 on the video. Perhaps the display was one of sheer elation at being freed, or perhaps an unbridled expression of gratitude.
This whale knows something too many of us have forgotten. Our society has embraced the culture of convenience, entitlement, and victimization to the point where we barely feel appreciation anymore. In a world where everything is supposed to be available and instantaneous, we’ve responded with the attitude that everything takes too long, takes too much thought, takes too much effort. Our expectations are so high that we are forever frustrated and disgruntled.
In biblical Hebrew, the term for gratitude is hakoras hatov — literally, “recognizing the good.” Before we can appreciate, we have to look for the good in our lives, see it as good, recognize how we have benefited from it as good; once we have that recognition, not only can we experience true appreciation but we inevitably will feel appreciative. How can we not, with that which has benefited us so clear before our eyes?
“The wise man’s eyes are in his head,” says King Solomon in Proverbs. Only if we see through the lens of our minds’ eye can we truly perceive, truly understand, and truly achieve the lofty human reactions that should be uniquely ours, but which sometimes we have to learn from the creatures with which we share our world.
How sad for us if they get it and we don’t.
Just who are “we”?
Tonto: What is wrong, Kimosabe?
Lone Ranger: We’re surrounded by bloodthirsty indians, Tonto. What are we going to do?
Tonto: What you mean, “we,” white man?
Thanks to Jay Livingston for this post on behalf of the Montclair State Sociology Department. He paints a compelling picture of how the collective language of “we” has been increasingly conscripted by modern politicians to create — or fabricate — an impression of common purpose and common allegiance.
With politics dividing us more deeply than ever, it might seem beneficial to employ rhetoric designed to bridge the ideology gap. In practice, however, disingenuous expressions of harmony and unified vision can do a lot more harm than good.
For one, when a demonstrably divisive leader — a U. S. president, for example — claims that he is the leading advocate of unity and cooperation, he makes himself a lightning rod for accusations of hypocrisy and manipulation that breed cynicism in place of optimism. For another, by claiming the high ground, he implicitly vilifies all who oppose him, even if they do so from positions of principle. Either way, the ideological rift grows wider, not narrower.
Perhaps worst of all, the collective “we” diffuses responsibility from the individual onto the collective: since all of us are responsible, none of us is responsible. This produces the effective equivalent of such politicalisms as “Mistakes were made.” Somewhere, someone did something wrong. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but nowhere for it to stick.
In short, fake unity achieves the opposite of unification.
But when there really is cohesion, whether within a team, a business, a community, or a society, the collective “we” becomes a priceless asset, including the lowly with the high, the rank and file with the leaders, the grunts with the visionaries. Like it or not, we’re all in it together. And the more we try to shoulder our collective burdens with one mind and one heart, the more we will succeed.
Church vs. State
Here’s a quiz question: When was the phrase “separation of church and state” first introduced into American jurisprudence?
a) 1789; b) 1800;
c) 1840; d) 1947
Most of us would answer 1789, with the ratification of the United States Constitution and the First Amendment, guaranteeing religious freedom.
Guess again.
According to Columbia law professor Philip Hamburger (cited by Eytan Kobre in Mishpacha Magazine), the first use of the phrase was during the presidential election of 1800, when defenders of Thomas Jefferson responded to attacks that their candidate was anti-religious by invoking the “need to separate religion from politics.” Jefferson himself used the phrase in a letter in support of Connecticut Baptists who feared political oppression. Jefferson’s overture was ignored by religionists who could not imagine the absence of religion from public life, even in their own defense.
Around 1840, when Catholics in New York City began claiming access to funding for religious schooling, Protestants responded by asserting church and state separation, eventually seeking a new constitutional amendment to that effect in the 1870s. When that effort failed, reinterpretation of the First Amendment became their next strategy.
But it was only in 1947 in Everson vs. Board of Education that, despite a 5-4 split in the Supreme court ruling, the justices agreed unanimously that a “wall of separation between church and state” was implicit in the First Amendment. The majority opinion was authored by Justice Hugo Black, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama.
Thus, the origins of a tradition that everyone thinks believes goes back to the framers — most of whom would be horrified by the popular outlook that has come to define the First Amendment, in the words of Joseph Lieberman, as protecting not freedom of religion but freedom from religion. The “wall of separation” has been critiqued by Justice Clarence Thomas as “born in bigotry,” by Justice Potter Stewart as “nowhere to be found in the Constitution,” and by former Chief Justice William Rehnquist as “a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.”
Writes American University law professor Daniel Dreisbach: “Indeed, this wall has done what walls frequently do — it has obstructed the view. It has obfuscated our understanding of constitutional principles…”
End of an Icon
Darrell Winfield, one of the original Marlboro Men who rode on horseback across the western countryside in cigarette ads, has died at age 85.
The image of rugged individualism is credited with the most successful advertising campaign in history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, transforming an obscure brand into the world’s number one seller.
Which should make us ask ourselves: what are the influences that drive us in the decisions we make? As Eric Fromm wrote, everyone knows that the blonde in the ad doesn’t come with the sports car, but the mere possibility that the buyer might end up with her makes the sale anyway.
The questions extend far beyond cigarettes and cars; they apply to every aspect of our lives: What are we being sold? Who are the salesmen? How much are we paying?
Integrity
Of course, it’s easier when you know that Someone is always watching.
Why we love conspiracy theories
In short, we want the world to make sense, so ideological cabals and aliens offer a more attractive solution to the appearance of randomness than does randomness itself. On the one hand, we have to temper our impulse to impose order on chaos by reining in our imaginations with common sense, logic, and civil discussion.On the other hand, this reveals our deeply rooted conviction that there is a purpose to our existence and that there is true meaning in our lives and in our world.The Aroma of Ideology
A NYT op-ed cites a study by social scientists at Brown, Harvard, and Penn State that people we agree with smell better to us.
For a theological critique, see my article, The Scent of Spirit.
Yonason Goldson 