Just how stupid are Fundamentalist Christians?

The BBQ Pit
21

One other thing while I’m here.

There is one aspect of QM that I find liberating. I classical mechanics, the actions of every partical are determined by their interactions with every other partical according to strict rules of causality. This might lead one to think that every action, including all human behavior and choices are predetermined by the initial conditions of the universe. However, the acausal nature of such phenomena as radioactive decay belie this grim deterministic picture, and allow free will to be philosophically plausible again.

22

Yet again - great topic! What would I do without SDMB [probably my work :)].

At the moment I’m reading a great book called ‘In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat’ by John Gribbin. I’d say anyone with an interest in science and some basic knowledge of mathematics should be able to understand the book, and it’s not a ‘QM for idiots’ book either - it just lays it out. It will take some work (it’s taken me a fair bit), but it is well written enough to give a good background. I only did one year of physics in high school, yet I’ve become obsessed with it in the last year or so.

An idea in the book is that a major problem with Quantum Physics is that people have tried to make it more understandable by using words in relation to it that are familiar to us from real life. The problem is that there’s little connection between the world we ‘live’ in (of large objects and people) and the quantum world, and how things behave. A small example is that there is a term ‘spin’ used to describe the way a particle can act, but unlike a ‘spinning top’ which spins once to get back to where it started, particles ‘spin’ twice. This is hard to comprehend because we’re using the word ‘spin’, which has a tangible meaning in our minds. Gribbin suggests using the language of Jabberwocky, or nonsense words, to stop this sort of confusion.

Another point is that Quantum theory was basically established in the 1920’s, and nothing since then has caused scientists to decide they should scrap the idea completely. The fact that little progress has been made just suggests the complexity of the uncertainty principle, and the paradoxes of not being able to trust completely readings from an experiment, because of the idea of the disturbing observer. The idea of Schrodinger’s cat itself is a mindblowing one:
if a cat is in a box, along with a vial of poison,
which is only released if a particle covering the
top of the vial decays, until we open the box to
look at the cat, it’s in a state where it is both dead
and alive - it only becomes definitely dead or alive
when we observe it.
This obviously goes against common sense, but this uncertainty has been proven over and over in experiments and inventions that depend on quantum activity. After all, what is common sense, other than believing what you see?

HenrySpencer.

23

Your OP makes about as much sense as if I were to post a link to a site proclaiming that aids is transmitted by homosexual behavior, then asking “Just how stupid are homosexuals?”

24

And these Scientists are being ridiculed as “stupid”, by those that do not understand what they are disagreeing with.
Oh, I am not saying they are “right”, mind you, if indeed they ARE saying that QM is false, but they do not seem to being saying that. They say that they do not understand & do not agree with the “deep implications of QM for the nature of reality”, which even Einstein, Feynman & Bohr agree with, to some extent; that it goes against “common sense”, which it does. So how does that make them “stupid”? Oh, now I get it, they are not “stupid” because they do not fully understand the implications of QM, NOBODY does; they are not “stupid” because they say it makes “no common sense”, every expert in the field concedes it doesn’t;, no, freinds, they are “stupid” as they dare to mention Religion in a Scientific discussion. And that’s just it, isn’t it? If they were just some physicists that held a minority view in this field, they would be thought of as “free-thinkers”, or perhaps “radicals”, “non-conformists”, or even just plain “wrong”; but as they are CHRISTIAN physicists, they are “stupid fundamentalists”. There is a word for this- we call it “prejudice”.

25

Daniel,

If you’re last post was directed to me, you will notice that I never called them stupid because they were christians, my objections to them was that they were deliberately misinterpreting reality. I assure you I would have been just as vexed if they had been athiests.

Their problem wasn’t that they were perplexed with the philosophical implications of Quantum Mechanics. If that had been the case, the answer would have been “welcome to the club.” Instead they wanted to replace QM with a new theory. This theory was barely explained, They never made any predictions, nor did they attempt do describe well known physical phenomena. Instead they did what we have seen creationists do: Set up philosophical straw men,(which Satan enumerated) knock them down, and procalaim themselves rebel geniuses. I find this attitude highly annoying.

Again, I think Mr. Wilkinson is mistaken on one point. I do not think these people are hard core bible thumping fundamentalists like the creationists we are all to familiar with. They mention the Judeo-Christian world view, but it does not seem their main issue. Their main issue seemed to be that QM didn’t appeal to their notions of what nature should be liike. Well as I asked before, Why is nature obliged to follow anyone’s idea of Common sense?

Incedently, If you want to read a worthwhile Christian physicist, I reccomend the works of J.C. Polkinghorne. He studied under Dirac and was a professor at Cambridge for awhile. In 1979 he left to become an Anglican minister. He has written a good semi-popular intro to Quantum mechanics, as well as several books reconciling Christianity and Science. (I forget the titles.)

26

Sorry, this is a long and probably pointless refutation, but I just had to get it out of my system…

I didn’t read a whole hell of a lot of the site linked in the OP, but what I did read contained no references to the Bible or Christianity. What it did contain was purely bad science. Quantum mechanics has made the Bayer corporation quite a bit of money. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle may have inadvertently created the need for Prozac. But the simple fact of the matter is that they are both good solid scientific theories, in that they explain existing phenomena simply and elegantly, and make predictions about previously unseen behaviors that were later observed. Einstein, for one, hated the idea that the universe didn’t behave in the nice deterministic way he believed it should. In that regard, our friends over at CSS are in good company. He and others similarly inclined tried to find theories about the quantum world that didn’t involve the ideas of random chance, theories that would explain the apparent randomness in terms of “hidden variables”, but they never could come up with anything convincing.

Anyway, Bell’s Theorem proved that if these particles were indeed behaving at the dictates of hidden variables, they would behave differently than they actually do. Experiments have borne this out. Take an electron and fire it through a screen with two slits. You get an interference pattern, as if it had gone through both slits. This is because it did. Now, let’s pull Schrödinger into this. We want to actually watch this happening, so we put some sort of detector around both slits, so that we will register the electron as it passes through. Surprise, surprise, it went through one or the other, but not both! All that’s changed is the fact that we’re measuring the experiment differently, but we wound up collapsing the wave-form into one or the other of the two possibilities, just as Erwin said we would. You can read about this experiment in any good encyclopedia, the CSS guys apparently missed it. Or how about their assertion that quarks have never been seen? Uh, I hate to break this to you, but they have. And even if they haven’t, there has been enough observation of the behavior of particles at high speeds that the idea of the quark is almost entirely irrefutable. If it isn’t a quark causing that behavior, something’s doing a damn good impression. Once again, bad science. They oversimplify matters to the point that the idea of a world without quarks is plausible, even sensible. Unless you knew better, you wouldn’t know how wrong they were. What it all comes down to is that “quarks” and “electrons” and such don’t even really exist as physical particles, they’re models we use to explain phenomena, and so far, they’ve done a smashing good job of it. Anyone who says otherwise can just take it up with the experiments that aren’t supposed to work if you apply “common sense” to them.

Anyway, you know what really gets me? The idea that mathematical models are somehow worthless. As a dedicated math major, this stabs deep into my number-crunching heart. That they doubt the validity of mathematics says a lot about the viability of their theory. Isaac Newton devised his theories of motion and gravity to show how things fall when you drop them, but then somehow extended this to show how the moon stays up in the sky. There is no obvious physical connection between the two, in fact, in the Aristotelian model popular back then, they were completely different things. How did he figure this out? He did the math. If more people would just do the math, the world would be a better place.

27

[Egregious religion bashing comment deleted in spite of extreme temptation]

There is in fact quite a bit of conflict within modern physics these days. On one hand we have Einsteinian relativistic physics (which is an extension of Newtonian physics), and on the other quantum mechanics (which nobody wanted but was forced on us by the evidence). Both are well substantiated by experiment. They occasionally make conflicting predictions, unfortunately in a size/energy range that cannot yet be directly probed with high energy particle accelerators. In the past this sort of thing has been an indication of something very interesting under that there rock.

That gap is in the process of being bridged by supersymmetric superstring theory. I will spare you the gory details, but the theory postulates 10 (or maybe 11) physical dimensions, time as another dimension, and little bitty tiny standing wave strings vibrating in different resonant modes as fundamental particles and force carriers. This new theory is a strange world, but promises to reconcile the differences between the older theories. Unfortunately, many of the testable predictions from string theory also fall outside accessible energy ranges. Some of that is due to change soon when the CERN particle accelerator goes on line. This unit should be able to recreate conditions not seen in this universe since an instant after the big bang.

So for a short time, the mathematical theorists are in fact leading the experimentalists in the field of physics. However, the theories are not some random pipe dreams; they are carefully consistent constructs that agree with all known physical data. Currently something like four or five competing versions of the theory are being investigated. People way smarter than me who hate each other are forced to agree the theories are internally consistent, as far as they currently go.

Some of the conflicts, such as the point particle/angular momentum contradiction, are resolved by the new theories which predict a very small but non-zero size. Other issues, such as the particle/wave behavior of subatomic particles, are just the universe refusing to go along with human ideas of how things should work. On another subject, it does indeed appear that the fundamental forces are transmitted by carrier particles which are different string vibration modes.

We should take a fine scalpel here and draw a line between what and why. These theories are entirely concerned with a detailed description of what happens. That sort of information comes in handy for building death rays, new materials, etc. I am perfectly fine with leaving the why of it to the pulpit thumpers.

28

If the creators of the site are Fundamentalist Christians, why do they insist on a pragmatic world-view that, if taken as they would wish it to be, would not include miracles?

Christ performed miracles, don’t ya know. (Taking full advantage of the loop-holes in QM.)

29

Larry Borgia said:

“You are of course correct, as are the “common sense science” site, that QM doesn’t make sense. But ask yourself this: Why is the universe obliged to conform to limited human ideas of “common sense?” It seems to me that the cosmos is whatever it is, and if it doesn’t coincide with “common sense” so much for common sense.”

This quote sounds a little like a creationist’s defense.

30

Well, these guys at “commonsense” may be radicals, or they may just be wrong. I’m figuring that they are just plain wrong, but despite my science degree, I do not know enuf about their proposals to say they are for sure. But I DO know a few things: 1. They are NOT “stupid”*. 2.They are not spouting a fundamentalist line. 3. They are not saying ALL of 20th century science is wrong, just a tiny bit of theoretical physics (which may be the basis for everything, true, but if those theories had not come up, still: Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Medicine, and regular Physics would still have advanced). 4. They have never claimed anything is wrong on account of the Bible. 5. You might argue that the Bible is Myths, mixed in with History, but it’s not “fairy stories”; no fairies for one thing. 6. the Bible was written in Hebrew 1st, not Yiddish (the very sort of mistake an anti-semitic might make), 7. Our versions now were translated from the Greek, or Hebrew, not the latin.

So, the question that remains is : How stupid does this idiot think us “pitizens” are?
*You can be wrong as Hell, and still not be stupid, as the “Phlogiston” theory showed.

31

Danielinthewolvesden:

When Colin Wilkinson wrote that “most of which have been translated from Yiddish to Greek to Latin and then to English,” I don’t think he was being anti-Semitic. Sloppy in his research (and he was certainly insulting in the title for this thread), but not anti-Semitic.

32

Perhaps it displays a cynicism unworthy of me, but I find myself mistrustful of the very term “common sense,” as it is bandied about today (I defer to the judgment of history for the trustworthiness of Thomas Paine’s pre-revolutionary pamphlet of that name). And my bullshit detector goes into low sensitivity mode when I encounter someone using the term in the name of their organization, as though the presence of the words “common sense” should automatically reassure me that only verifiable factual truth could possibly come from such a source. It’s just so facile.

My serious scientific training is no more than rudimentary, I must disclose this from the start. Yet, when I was thirteen years old, I learned two things about science that made such a profound impression on me that I still profit from the lesson. One of them is that a diagram does not prove anything. The other is that in science, nothing is obvious (elucidation upon request). I think I will add the following insight to my trove of scientific evaluation tools: common sense is not a relevant property of scientific pursuits.

As to the question of whether these folks are fundamentalist Christians, I will state that, having taken the guided tour all the way to the end (no I didn’t read the entire site), I gleaned references to Cornerstone TeleVision. Acting on the principle that one can be known by the company one keeps, I found this organization’s mission statement with a Yahoo search:

Mission Statement (in part – kd99)
Cornerstone TeleVision is called by God to serve and excel as a media ministry to bring glory to His name. In obedience to the great commission of Jesus Christ, Cornerstone TeleVision seeks to provide entertaining means to evangelize and edify the general public in our viewing area.

I also found their Statements as to Biblical Unity somewhat revealing:

Statement of Biblical Unity
Because Biblical unity and harmony among Christians will bring glory to God and help advance the Gospel, Cornerstone TeleVision seeks to promote unity and harmony among the various Christian communities using as its basis for coming together in agreement the belief that the scriptures — both the Old and New Testaments — are verbally inspired of God in the original writing and are God’s special revelation of Himself and His creation. (Ephesians 4:1-16)

and, concomitantly:

*Essentials To Biblical Unity
I. The Bible
*The 66 books of the Bible are God’s inspired, infallible, and inerrant word for all men everywhere for all time.

II. God

A.* There is one God eternally existent in 3 distinct persons; the Father, the Son, Jesus Christ; and the Holy Spirit.

B. The Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God:

*Born of a virgin
*Lived a sinless life
*Died on the Cross to save sinners
*Rose bodily from the dead
*Ascended to the right hand of the Father
*Will come again as King of Kings and Lord of Lords

III. Man

*God created man in His own image, and man by his own will chose to believe the lie of Satan to disobey God. As a result of sin, mankind was separated from God by spiritual and physical death.
*Man’s only hope of reconciliation with God is through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

A. Salvation:

*Repent of sin - the works of the world, the flesh and the devil.
*Faith through grace … not of works.
*Receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior - becoming a member of the body of Christ, which transcends denominational barriers.
*Confess Christ.

Judgment:

*All will be judged according to what they did with Jesus *Christ as well as to their works done while here on earth.
*The believer will rule and reign with Jesus forever.
The unbeliever will be condemned to a conscious existence in eternal damnation with Satan.

I have deleted the biblical citations that the site presented with each bulleted item.

Lest I be accused of argumentum ad hominem, I will also reveal that the last page of the guided tour of the commonsensescience site listed several documents authored by the men “developing” the science, the titles and descriptions of which leave little doubt as their attitudes toward the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.

I vote for allowing them the title of fundamentalist Christian.

33

Sox fan,

How so? In fact it is the opposite of a creationists defense. My statement is just a statement of the obvious; that the universe is what it is. However it is an “obvious” that many people seem to ignore. People seem to forget that the Universe is not limited by their petty conceptions of what it has to be like, whether these conceptions arise from their holy books or from their notions of common sense.

KaylasDad,

You followed the links much further than I did, so I’ll reject my earlier guess that these guys are not fundamentalists. however my objection to them is still not that they are christians but that they are wrong.

34

Oh, I agree, that he probably is not, but that IS the sort of mistake an anti-semitic would make. Does not make HIM one, of course.

Kayla: Christian-yes, no doubt, but an ad from a Christian TV station shows only that they are freindly, not nessesarily 'solidarity".

35

Danielinthewolvesden wrote:

> Oh, I agree, that he probably is not, but that IS the
> sort of mistake an anti-semitic would make.

Then why bring up the issue at all? This strikes me as going out of your way to imply something that you can’t back up with facts. Granted, Colin acted like a jerk in titling this thread, but that’s no reason to be a jerk in response.

In any case, mixing up Yiddish and Hebrew actually doesn’t sound to me like the sort of thing an anti-Semite would do. It sounds to me like the sort of thing a lazy person would do. An anti-Semite would probably have done a little more research.

36

Larry: Being only marginally qualified to make a judgment as to whether these folks are “wrong” on their “science”(although I am willing to grant odds on that eventuality that I would be delighted to find at the track), I deliberately addressed only the matter of awarding them the label of “fundamentalist.” I respect and agree with the fact that your objections to their assertions are based solely upon their demonstrable scientific unreliability, and not upon their religious convictions.

Daniel: My reading of the Cornerstone TeleVision site, especially their statement on Biblical Unity, and the accompanying statement on the Essentials of Biblical Unity persuades me that Cornerstone TeleVision will accept affiliation only at the level of solidarity; anything less would put the candidate on the wrong side of the “if you are not with me, you are against me” paradigm. Ergo, the people behind “Common Sense Science,” being unmistakeably affiliated with Cornerstone TeleVision, are Fundamentalist, Literalist, Inerrancy-Insisting, young-Earth Creationists: Q.E.D.
That said, the thread title, while certainly provocative, and possibly uncalled-for, did have the effect of getting the attention of a few people, which is really the point, isn’t it? The OP, as has been pointed out, probably overstates the causal link between the holding of certain beliefs and an inability to engage in good science, and in overgeneralizing its assignment of scientific ineptitude to all (or even most) Christians does a disservice to many scientists who are both good scientists and men and women of faith. Still, Drs. Barnes, Bergman, et al cannot be held wholly blameless in such an overstatement having been put forth. After all, they are the ones who have embraced (an aspect of) ignorance, and have gone to the trouble of creating a web site for the purposes of promulgating this embrace, and inviting others to do the same.

37

dad: if you read their site, you will know they cannot realy be strict Fundies. And a couple of our candidates spoke at Bab Jones Univ.; altho this does say some pretty poor things, re that candidates judgement, it does not mean they understand, believe in or exspouse the radical Beliefs of BJU. I have seen ordinary products advertised on the Christian cable channels. The fact that the commonsense folks accept $ from the channel, does not prove anything, other than a basic freindlyness.

But you can read anything into whatever you want, it does not make it anything other than YOUR opinion.

38

have it your way. You are, of course, correct that the line of reasoning I have given does not prove anything. And my statement that this is my VOTE should clearly mark it as my opinion. As for me (and my house ;)), I believe I have made it clear that AFAIAC, those involving themselves in matters of science would do well to be slow in using terms such as obvious, common sense, and, for that matter, prove. And it strikes me that the best scientists tend to be.

My only interest in contributing to this thread has been to address the questtion of whether “Fundamentalist Christian” is a fit label for the commonsense crowd. Okay, it may be an immature, superficial, and misguided motivation for me to act upon, but I’m all right with that. It’s not like anything I do here is really important to my existence. In any event, I’ve seen enough of their stuff to form an OPINION (one satisfactory to me) to the effect that they are not above beginning their “science” with their desired conclusion, and tailoring their data to fit that conclusion. This makes “bad scientists” probably a more fit label for them.

Ta-ta. Enjoy your discussion.