Wednesday, November 13, 2002

Two readers responded to my article "Ignorance of Science in Georgia," and I wish to acknowledge their concerns and clarify why creationism isn't a science in any sense of the word via a few concrete examples of what science and mathematics is able and unable to clarify.

Both readers appeal to "authority figures" to bolster their claims. Through history, however, appeal to authority figures for answers to questions without careful analysis of their assertions has lead to silly dogmas passed down through generations of students. I described an experiment in my prior article where you climb a tall tower and drop a 10 pound bag of flour and a 5 pound bag of sugar. Careful measurements of time and distance will lead you to the conclusion that both bags hit the ground at the very same time. The church for hundreds of years, before this experiment, relied on Aristotle's claims about falling objects and taught students that bodies of different weights fall at different rates.

Both readers quoted authority figures individuals, a dictionary and the Bible to justify their arguments for creationism. This is always a good clue that the arguments aren't based on facts culled from nature itself. I gave, for example, several recognized ways to measure long times to show that the Earth is extremely old older than scripture indicates. Devotees of creationism must refute, on scientific grounds, that all these time measurements schemes are fundamentally flawed. A reader points out that some other method of time measurement is known to be invalid which only switches the topic. The point is that careful measurements can reveal nature's secrets, and measurements are far more useful than personal opinions, no matter who or what the source!

Here is a concrete example of how simple measurements can help decide the veracity of a particular Biblical claim. (1) Look up in your favorite version of the Bible the story of Noah and the ark. (2) Write down the measurements of the ark as presented in scripture. (3) Convert these measurements into familiar volume units, cubic feet for example. (4) Spend an afternoon at the Atlanta zoo and take approximate volume measurements of all the animals. (5) Compute the total cubic volume of the animals. (6) Compare the total volume occupied by the Atlanta zoo animals with the room allotted on the ark. (7) Now consider the total biomass in Noah's time (total volume of all living matter on Earth) and compare this to the room on the ark.

You are able with junior high school mathematics to determine for yourself whether or not all the animals really did, two by two, climb on board the ark.

A reader, a high school student, asserted several times my ignorance of basic facts. I must admit that I am extremely ignorant about many things and in fact have no idea how to remedy this personal lack of knowledge. Here are a few examples:

(1) Astronomers have located over 80 planets. I don't know whether there is, or isn't, life on any of them. I don't even know how to define "life" so I could recognize it. (Are all life forms carbon-based?) How can I say that God did, or didn't, create all life when I don't know what it is?

(2) I can write numbers down like this: 11, 101, 1001, and continue to include more zeros as I go. I can prove that 11 and 101 are "prime numbers." Are any of the other numbers in this sequence prime? Nobody at present knows!

(3) It is often claimed in the Bible the God is infinite. Georg Cantor in 1874 proved the existence of many, very many infinities. How can I decide which infinity belongs to God? Who owns the others?

My personal ignorance weighs heavily on me on many nights. I lay awake and ponder: (1) Current cosmology theory gives an age for the universe and astrophysics gives an age for the oldest stars. The stars are older than the universe; so one or both theories need fixing, but how?

(2) The discovery of non-Euclidean geometry banished forever our certainty of a privileged space in which to live. Likewise, does the discovery of the independence of the Continuum Hypothesis in set theory by Paul Cohen in 1963 make current mathematics less certain?

I urge the students of Georgia to ponder the unsolved problems of science and mathematics and not waste precious mental effort on discredited ideas such as the Flogiston theory of heat or the Creationism theory of life. There are many wondrous discoveries to be made in the world of ideas. Become famous, become rich: prove that there is an infinity of twin prime numbers or clean up the mess in elementary particle theory.

Peter Duran

Fayetteville