I don’t think anyone on the planet would call the World Net Daily a liberal news organization — in fact, the word "news" hardly applies since the articles there are so slanted they practically twist into the fourth dimension. Ultra-conservative would describe them better, and it’s easy to see why. Reading the articles there is an astonishing look into the far-far-right mind. I would think (and I sure do hope) that the stuff there is well outside the Republican mainstream of thought.
But it does reflect a segment of the population, a segment that is increasingly loud, and increasingly damaging to our society.
They posted an interesting poll result on August 9… did I say "interesting"? I meant to say holy *&*#^%$@*&! — and I mean that literally:
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A BILLION HERE, A BILLION THERE … |
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How old do you think the universe is? |
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TOTAL VOTES: 3256 |
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Bearing in mind that some answers are ironically self-contradictory ("billions and billions" is rather the same as 13.7 or 15.6 billion), there is little rhyme or reason to this. More than half the respondents say the Universe is 6000 years old due to biblical inerrancy. 3.5% think it has to be 10,000-100,000 years old to fit with science. Say what? This makes them bad at both science and biblical fundamentalism. Only 2.18% got the answer right. That’s practically in the noise; indistinguishable from 0 given the sample size.
This survey doesn’t surprise me (especially since another survey just came out showing the US ranks near the bottom in understanding evolution, just above Turkey). But it does make me think two things:
- We have a long, long way to go.
- If I were a Republican, I would be screaming from the rooftops to make sure I disowned these people.
Whenever I post something like this, I inevitably get email from conservatives claiming I am over-generalizing their party when it comes to suppression of science or the promotion of antiscience. Well, the problem here is that this is the path chosen by the Republicans in power, both in the government and in the media. If you don’t like hearing about it, don’t blame me. Talk to your reps and talk to the media. They’re the ones promoting this crap.
And I’ll say this again, because it doesn’t seem to be clear to some of the emailers: I know that there is antiscience on the Democratic side as well. You can probably find several examples. But I guarantee that you don’t want to compare that list with what’s going on with the Republicans in power right now. Your list will look mighty skimpy. When and if the Dems get back in power, and when and if they abuse science, I’ll be there. Count on it.
Until then, seek not the mote in your brother’s eye. You’ve got a redwood tree in your own.
August 10th, 2006 at 11:08 pm
Nah- this poll represents a self-selecting tiny minority of people interested enough to take a poll on a right-wing website. I suppose you would get similar numbers if you asked about civil-rights on a racist website.
There will always be a small percentage of people who have truly horrifying views of reality. As long as they don’t bother me or infringe upon my civil liberties and right to an education I mostly just ignore them. I can’t fight everyone all the time.
I’m much more disturbed about the survey showing that the US public are near the bottom in the league table when it comes to accepting the evidence for evolution.
August 10th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
So are the fundamentalists putting drugs in our water or what? Armageddon here we come! Or The Handmaiden’s Tale. Pick one or both. Everyone’s welcome at the irrationalist’s tent revival.
Are you SURE that George and company, believing as they do, aren’t trying to nudge the Middle East along here….
Jess Tauber
August 10th, 2006 at 11:30 pm
Undoubtedly there is a poor understanding of science by the readership of WND, but Phil has a great point that many of the poll options were contradictory. A better designed poll might have said:
1. I believe in a literal interpretation of the bible: the universe is about 6000 years old
2. I agree with the scientific consensus: the universe is about 12-14 billion years old
3. Other
This basically asserts that there are two major viewpoints: that of fundamentalist Christianity and that of Science, and leaves room for the off ‘other’ response.
Polling with the options they did, they may have confused those looking for the ’science’ answer. If they had polled with my revised method, I think we might have seen something more like a 60/40 spread in favor of the fundies – far, far better, but still abhorrent.
(Note: I base this on an introductory knowledge of political science and common sense)
August 10th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
“Ultra-conservative would describe them better…”
Reminds me of a Laugh-In skit:
Dan Rowan: There are conservatives, liberals and ultraconservatives but no ultraliberals. Why not?
William F. Buckley: The New York Times won’t allow it!
Seriously, I agree with you totally.
August 11th, 2006 at 1:28 am
Go Europe Go!!!!! That second poll about evolution clearly shows us Europeans at the top, with the added company of Japan!!
The first poll is a classic self fulfilling prophecy.
+It’s published on a particular website with certain “views”
+It WASNT published in other areas. If the good ol BA published the same poll, the results would be overwhelmingly (I hope) in favour of the old universe, and as such just as invalid.
+Atomised polls are always used by people trying to prove a point. Take what is basically two options (For or Against) and atomise the one you don’t like into as many pieces as possible, thus watering down the competition even further. Laughably Predictable!!!
Keep up the good work!
August 11th, 2006 at 2:29 am
But was there once a discovery where they found that there were stars, older than the age of the universe?
I vaguely remember in Creationist circles this was flagged.
Did they work out that paradox?
August 11th, 2006 at 3:03 am
I believe that 4.5 billion years is the scientific consensus, not 12 – 14 billion.
August 11th, 2006 at 3:21 am
Sticks, that’s right: Kelvin put the universe at several million years on the basis of thermodynamical arguments around the turn of the century. (This presented a serious problem for Darwin, by the way.) Then they found evidence that stars were much older than that, and this put theoretical physics in the hot seat at the time.
Luckily, quantum mechanics came and saved the day.
August 11th, 2006 at 3:53 am
talk to the media.
Not that I support conservative yahooism, but as a person who publishes in a public forum you ARE the media (more correctly, “a medium” I suppose… I bet that would torque them up all by itself
) so they should whine at you the same as they whine at newspapers and TV.
August 11th, 2006 at 3:58 am
I believe that 4.5 billion years is the scientific consensus, not 12 – 14 billion.
Our solar system, and more specifically, our planet is believed to be somewhere near 4.5 billion years old. Consensus has the universe at about 13-14 billion years old, however.
The first 9 billion years of the universe were just Earth-free
August 11th, 2006 at 4:14 am
…I’m starting to seriously think most problems nowadays are caused by religion and creepy hateful stories in some book.
People are clinging to wish they were more than what we are: NOT the center of all creation.
Come ON! What does it take to make them all realize what the facts are? And WHY are people just saying “Yea? Well science is the new religion!” to me when I say stuff like that? It’s pure, raw ignorance.
August 11th, 2006 at 4:32 am
The 4.5 number is based on a combination of meteorites, earth, and moon samples. The age of the pre-solar grains found in some primitive meteorites is a hot topic amongst cosmochemists at the moment.
August 11th, 2006 at 4:33 am
Well, looking at it from another standpoint to make it not AS horrible.. If you lump the three “generally correct” answers together, it’s about 13.6% of the survey-takers that at least agree that the age of the universe is somewhere in the billions, as opposed to the… err.. 6 thousand year range.
This also appears to be a classic example of a biased poll, as well. Have one main question that you think is the “right” answer, and divide the answers you don’t want to hear among several questions, to dilute the results. As Alex said above, if they had asked the question using the two main arguments, the results would have been different. Although I would have added a third, other than the “other”, older than 6k years, but younger than 13 billion.
One other thing that strikes me (as she jumps around from topic to topic) is the wording of the first answer. “I believe in the bible – literally – and it says that the universe is 6k years old”. I know plenty of Christians who *do* believe in a literal interpretation of the bible who acknowledge that using the geneologies written in the Gospels is *not* the most accurate way to determine the age of the universe (which is where most of the 6k’ers tend to base their arguments).
e.
August 11th, 2006 at 4:40 am
And leave it to me to forget something.
By “Generally Correct Answers”, I was referring to:
1. As the late Carl Sagan might have said – billions and billions and billions
2. This new research suggesting the universe is 15.8 billion years old has convinced me
3. I’m sticking with the scientific consensus – 13.7 billion years
Speaking personally, I probably would have given the “Carl Sagan” answer, simply because… well… I always get a kick out of hearing him say “Billions and billions”.
August 11th, 2006 at 4:57 am
As this will get more “hits”, I would like to, maybe again, promote reading of a marvelous science book:
The View from the Center of the Universe–Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos by Joel R. Primack and Nancy E. Abrams:
“We will change when we accept our cosmological truths, when we identify with and honor the forces of the early universe as our oldest ancestors. We will change when we see ourselves moving outward from the Cosmic Spheres of Time to become ancestors worthy of honor a thousand or a million years from now. When with our minds and hearts we grasp that we are central to the expanding universe (as the Sovereign Eye), we will have connected. Then we too, like our ancient ancestors the world over, can say once again with confidence and commitment that we uphold the universe.”
You gotta read this book!
August 11th, 2006 at 5:09 am
I noticed that they had a number of polls about Mel Gibson’s latest drunken rant too, but I didn’t see a poll answer like “Don’t care what Hollywood yahoos say”.
The site is just sensationalist. We’ve probably given them a spike in their hits just from the readers of this blog post.
August 11th, 2006 at 5:17 am
=======
Speaking personally, I probably would have given the “Carl Sagan†answer, simply because… well… I always get a kick out of hearing him say “Billions and billionsâ€.
=======
Carl Sagen never said “billions AND billions”. Johnny Carson did it in an impersonation of Sagen!
August 11th, 2006 at 5:42 am
Kaptain K,
Odd.. could have sworn I heard him say it on Cosmos just recently. Something to do with the number of stars. Eh. I could be wrong, but I know I’ve never heard Johnny Carson do it.
August 11th, 2006 at 5:54 am
As a Republican, this stuff does annoy me, but then there is a lot of stuff from the far right, as well as the far left, that annoys me. We can’t ignore it, we need to correct it, if no where else other than in our own circle of influence.
This is a problem that will not go away overnight, but will slowly disappear as the older generations pass on. You are not going to convince anyone over the age of 60 that everything they have believed in for all their lives is wrong. There are younger people who do take the bible literally, and we can try to educate them, but the vast majority of people who do take the bible literally are our older generations.
August 11th, 2006 at 6:18 am
The problem is that the younger generation ISN’T learning these things. We have xian schools that deliberately omit the scientific view in favorable of the biblical. Even worse, there is homeschooling. Not even the public schools are safe – in the south in particular teachers who attempt to teach science (even though it’s in the curriculum) often find it “detrimental” to their career.
It’s not just the older folks, unfortunately. The xian fundies are doing a good job of preparing the next generation.
August 11th, 2006 at 6:44 am
Any guesses what “other” might entail? Last-Thursdayism?
August 11th, 2006 at 6:46 am
Having just recently watched all thirteen episodes of Cosmos, I can offer my personal testimony that I don’t remember hearing “billions and billions” in any of it. And since I first saw Cosmos after reading the book where Sagan claims he never said it (and that Johnny Carson is the guilty party), I expect I’d take special note if “billions and billions” did make an appearance.
August 11th, 2006 at 7:08 am
Ok.
If IMDB is to believed, the quote is actually “A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars – billions upon billions of stars.”
UPON rather than AND. Heh. I guess I wasn’t listening to the little joiner word, and just enjoyed how he pronounced the world “billion”.
And I wasn’t doubting that Johnny Carson was the one who inserted the AND. Just that JC would not have been the source where I heard it, as I personally have never heard that sketch.
Hm. Has this dead horse been beat long enough?
E.
August 11th, 2006 at 7:21 am
“I don’t think anyone on the planet would call the World Net Daily a liberal news organization — in fact, the word “news” hardly applies since the articles there are so slanted they practically twist into the fourth dimension.”
So their existence can be observed as a line from their creation to their eventual demise?
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
August 11th, 2006 at 7:45 am
I used to be a Republican, but it will take a lot before I consider trusting that outfit again. It’s easier to be a Republican in Berkeley, where the “right” is kinda like the Democratic party most places in the country. Now that I live in Tennessee, things are different. Once upon a time, I had this idea (delusion?) that the Republican Party held as its core values individual freedom and individual responsibility. Now, it seems to hold as its core values (a) creationism, (b) anti-homosexuality, and (c) disastrous unilateral USA jingoistic foreign policy.
Hell with those guys.
On to the science:
But was there once a discovery where they found that there were stars, older than the age of the universe?
This “age problem” existed for a long time in Cosmology. The oldest globular clusters are 12+ billion years old. Meanwhile, in the last 1-2 decades of the 20th century, increasingly plausible measurements of the Hubble Constant were giving us an upper limit on the age of the Universe that was 10 billion years or less. This was a problem….
The resolution came with the discovery of the accelerating Universe. It turns out that if the Universe is speeding up, you can have a larger Hubble constant without making the Universe too young.
It is hard to explain without pictures and waving my hands around, but I’ll try.
First, if the expansion rate of the Universe has always been constant, you can easily figure out how old the Universe is. Consider an analogy: you see a car 100 miles away. You use a radar gun to measure its speed to be 50 mph. How long ago was the car right next to you if it’s always been moving at that speed? Two hours.
Next, suppose that the car hasn’t had a constant speed, but has always been slowing down. If that’s the case, it used to be going faster than it is now, so it covered some of the early distance in less time than it would have if it were only going 50mph. That would mean that you knew the car started right next to you less than two hours ago.
If, on the other hand, the car is accelerating, then you know it used to cover distant at a lower rate than 50 mph, so it was next to you more than two hours ago.
If it started out at a given speed, decelerated for a while, then accelerated again… well, you can get less than two hours, equal to two hours, or more than two hours, depending on the rates of deceleration and acceleration, and when the switch happened.
It was similar with the Hubble Constant. In the early-mid 90’s, we seemed to be converging towards a Hubble Constant that gave a Unvierse age that had to be less than 12 billion years, if the Universe’s expansion had always been decelerating. Once the acceleration was discovered, the rate of that acceleration and our best esimate of when it turned around gives us a Universe which is nicely consistent with the ages of the oldest globular clusters.
-Rob
August 11th, 2006 at 7:49 am
Re: Carl Sagan and never having said “billions and billions”, Kirk also never said “Beam me up, Scotty!”
Humprey Bogart’s caracter in Casablance never said “Play it again, Sam.”
Lady Macbeth never says “Out, damn spot!”
Al Gore never said “I invented the Internet.”
Lots of iconic quotes from various people (real and fictional) were never actually uttered…. However, frequently, those quotes are something very much like something they did say.
-Rob
August 11th, 2006 at 8:37 am
Bless you Phil… thanks.
August 11th, 2006 at 8:41 am
Lady Macbeth never says “Out, damn spot!â€
Other than once in Act 5, Scene 1, no she never says it
Enter Lady Macbeth with a taper.
Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise, and, upon my
life, fast asleep. Observe her; stand close.
DOCTOR. How came she by that light?
GENTLEWOMAN. Why, it stood by her. She has light by her
continually; ’tis her command.
DOCTOR. You see, her eyes are open.
GENTLEWOMAN. Ay, but their sense is shut.
DOCTOR. What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.
GENTLEWOMAN. It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus
washing her hands. I have known her continue in this a
quarter of
an hour.
LADY MACBETH. Yet here’s a spot.
DOCTOR. Hark, she speaks! I will set down what comes from her,
to
satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.
LADY MACBETH. Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One- two -why then
’tis
time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier,
and
afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call
our
power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to
have
had so much blood in him?
August 11th, 2006 at 8:44 am
=======
Carl Sagen never said “billions AND billionsâ€. Johnny Carson did it in an impersonation of Sagen!
=======
He said “billions upon billions”, which is close enough. Seriously… *eyeroll*
And since we’re being anal, it’s SagAn, not SagEn.
August 11th, 2006 at 8:56 am
Hooey results! The opening to the first answer “I believe the Bible…” eliminates the survey’s ability to get their real opinion. Why did they have to through the Bible at their 6000 year figure? Why are the other values approximate but the scientific answer not (even though science gives a margin for error)?
The misleading article which accompanies the survey (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/NEWS/ARTICLE.ASP?ARTICLE_ID=51395) is, no doubt, influential on the results, too.
“Researchers, who measured the distance to a pair of stars in a nearby galaxy, said they’ve identified an error in the Hubble constant that suggests the universe is 15% larger and 15% older than previously thought.
…
‘This is the farthest distance that anyone has been able to measure directly,” team member Norbert Przybilla at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, told New Scientist. “It’s the cutting edge of what can be done with these telescopes.’
The 15 percent divergence between the measured distance and the calculated distance to the nearby galaxy has implications for the universe’s size and age.”
Are supernova not direct measurements?
So, first cast a shadow on science with an ambiguous scientific article, then do a poll which gives an answer which allows one to stand for the Bible. It’s disingenous at best. I recall Bible forums which showed more accurate results and with fewer favoring a 6000 year age.
August 11th, 2006 at 8:58 am
oops, that’s “throw the Bible”, not “through the Bible”.
August 11th, 2006 at 9:13 am
Will someone please explain to me the idea of an accelerated expanding universe?
I make a habit of re-reading Hawking’s “a Brief History of Time” every two years or so, and he discusses at length the current models of the universe as proposed by Alexander Friedmann. According to Friedmann, there are three ways the universal expansion might be playing out.
Quote:
“1. The universe is expanding sufficiently slowly that the gravitational attraction between the different galaxies causes the expansion to slow down and eventually stop. The galaxies then start to move towards each-other and the universe contracts.
2. The universe is expanding so rapidly that the gravitational attraction can never stop it, though it does slow down a bit. Eventually the galaxies in the universe are moving apart at a steady speed.
3. The universe is expanding only just fast enough to avoid re-collapse. The speed of the galaxies is always decreasing, but never reaches zero.”
Hawking writes in length about these models, but the idea of accelerated expansion never comes up.
Now it was my understanding scientists had observed that the overall universal expansion was in fact slowing down, the only accelerated expansion was observed is small, remote, and isolated areas. The accelerated expansion in these areas was enough to pose an interesting physics question, but not enough to make the statement that the universal expansion was accelerating.
Is my understanding not correct? If so, can someone please explain why I am incorrect, or at least direct me to a scientist with the data to contradict Hawking?
August 11th, 2006 at 9:46 am
Phil, why are you surprised? Whorled Nuts Daily has had articles promoting
banning Henry Potter books on the grounds that they glorify devil worship
the entire site is more of a shopping / paid access content (the G2 report) – looking to see if they are still touting magnetic therapies…
August 11th, 2006 at 10:12 am
Sadly, a poll like this portrays a percentage of human beings who really don’t understand what the universe is. I guess they have other things on their minds…
August 11th, 2006 at 11:30 am
There’s an assumption that the bible says the world is 6K years old. It doesn’t. This is Bishop Usher’s calculation based on his interpretation of the bible, using ancient texts where available, and calibrating dates of key events with external sources. His scholarship on the archeological record was apparently well done. The interpretation gets real fuzzy when the events are earlier than his earliest sources. That’s where the interpretation gets a bit interesting – i.e. arm waving with many assumptions. Change your assumptions appropriately and the bible ’says’ 13.7 GY (or perhaps 4.5 GY if it’s the solar system the bible talks about).
August 11th, 2006 at 11:54 am
Max Fagin, the expansion is (as we currently understand it) driven by vacuum (dark) energy. How? That’s still a mystery. Hawking didn’t know about dark matter and dark energy when he wrote the book. It’s getting a bit out of date now.
August 11th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
I’m sorry, but this is swiftly becoming the site of bad skepticism, and I don’t mean that in a good way like Bad Astronomy.
Web polls as the source of any sort of accurate information was debunked about two hours after Berners-Lee released the HTML 1.0 spec. Therefore getting excited about web poll results is utterly pointless.
Y’all pick on the woo-woos for using bad or corrupted data, but then you turn around and do the same thing. THIS IS NOT HELPING OUR SIDE!
August 11th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Phil Plait said:
>Bearing in mind that some answers are ironically self-contradictory (”billions and billions” is rather the same as 13.7 or 15.6 billion),
Actually, I would have problem with that answer. “Billions and billions and billions” gets to be a little too many billions, to me. I’d probably “other” that one with a write in, too.
August 11th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Only 2.18% got the answer right.
Hey… be fair! It’s true that only 2.18% chose the best current estimate, but you have to remember that this poll is connected to an article about new data that seems to contradict the best current estimate. If I were taking this poll, my thought process would go like this:
+ Over the last decade, I’ve heard a lot of estimates of the age of the universe. Most of them fell between 10 and 20 billion years.
+ Some astronomers claim to know the age of the universe to three significant digits, but now, another group of astronomers has come out with a different three-significant-digit estimate — one that disagrees by 15%!
+ I don’t know enough about how these estimates are made to decide that one is better than another.
+ In the face of all this uncertainty, I think the best answer is an order-of-magnitude estimate: “billions and billions and billions.” Unless our understanding of cosmology is radically wrong, this answer is certain to be right!
That’s why I find it encouraging that “billions and billions and billions” did so well — it seems to show a very nice balance between trust and skepticism, and a respect for both the results and the uncertainty.
What does disturb me is that the new proposed age of 15.8 billion years did more than 1.5 times as well as the concordance age of 13.7. Why are people willing to put more trust in brand-new research, hot off the presses, than in tried and tested conclusions from several years ago? Is this a “newer-is-better” mindset talking?
August 11th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Right PK, I understand the claim about Dark Energy. But the scientists of Hawking’s day didn’t need to know about energy in a vacume to make accurate measurements of the universal expansion.
My question remains. Is the dark energy (Accelerated) expansion truly universal, or is it only an isolated thing. Can someone please direct me to a reputable scientist who explains this?
August 11th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
@Max Fagin:
One place to start is Ned Wright’s cosmology tutorial. I found an entry in his FAQ for Why do we think that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating?; a much longer piece of recommended reading is this 1999 article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Quoting a paragraph from the latter:
The Universe as a whole is expanding, and that expansion is accelerating. It was just too hard to tell until a few years ago, and so before then people hadn’t taken the time to think or write about such a preposterous possibility!
Other stuff I can find on the Web. . . The Cosmological Constant by Sean Carroll and Fundamental Physics: Where We Stand Today by John Baez both look worth reading.
August 11th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
HAL9000, this survey still shows us exactly what kind of bad thinking is out there, and what we all need to fight. Sure, it’s not representative of the population as a whole, and I implied that in the entry (by saying it’s not even representative of Republican thinking). But some people do think this way. It’s a good idea to keep that in mind.
Remember, poepl like the Discovery Institute do not represent mainstream thinking in America, but they are a loud voice, and people think a loud voice is the one they should listen to. Or, at least, a loud voice gets air time (especially on places like Fox news). So it’s easy to marginalize crap like that, but I think it’s best to air it out. Let soime sunlight on it, and get enough people to look at the noisomeness of it, and maybe it’ll wither.
August 11th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
You know- I never heard of that word ‘noisomeness’ before (in BA’s post above)- but apparently it does exist (I had to look it up). Live and learn (or not as the case may be).
August 11th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
They also had a previous poll, “Were the billions spent on the Apollo space program a good investment for America?”
40% answered “Yes, the technological spinoffs have enriched the world tremendously.”
I can’t figure why this rated so high. Otherwise, the rest of the polls and their results look pretty scary.
August 12th, 2006 at 2:38 am
Carl Sagan may never have *said* billions and billions but he certainly wrote a book called ‘Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millenium.’ There’s a copy on one of my bookshelves, I can send a digital image if there are any doubting Thomases out there require one
August 12th, 2006 at 6:59 am
Max, I suggest reading Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos (which I’m reading right now actually) for a more up-to-date and digestible explanation of the accelerating and expanding universe. For me it explains a lot that Hawking didn’t, a lot due to advances made in the roughly 15 years between the publishing of Hawking’s book and Greene’s.
August 12th, 2006 at 7:07 am
Everyone is entitled to there opinion. Its nothing to worked up about. I am a conservitive and I love science. The science community is full of heated arguments. I remeber watching a show about Pluto and wheather it was a planet or not. Some people from each side thought the other side was crazy. Just like you guys think the people in that poll are crazy. I believe in God but i also believe in science. Its possible to do both.
August 12th, 2006 at 8:03 am
># PK Says:
>August 11th, 2006 at 3:21 am
>
>Sticks, that’s right: Kelvin put the universe at several million years on the basis of >thermodynamical arguments around the turn of the century. (This presented a >serious problem for Darwin, by the way.) Then they found evidence that stars >were much older than that, and this put theoretical physics in the hot seat at the >time.
Errr…no you’re thinking of Kelvin’s arguments about the age of the Sun and Earth (about 30 million years) not the universe. This presented a problem for Darwin because he thought evolution needed 300 million years.
Accurate ages of stars were known only recently. The paradox re: age of stars and the universe did not appear, IIRC, until the late 1990’s. The paradox was resolved by measurements with HST and the Hipparcos satellite.
>Luckily, quantum mechanics came and saved the day.
Uhhh…NO.
August 12th, 2006 at 8:26 am
Of course everybody is entitled to an opinion. That is not the issue here. Let me try to explain. Saying one believes in science but reserves to opt for 6000 year old universe (or Earth) is exactly like saying one is trusting science completely, except for say… chemistry is not based on one 100+ elements forming chemical compounds, but rather on just four – earth, fire, air and water while oxygen, nitrogen etc are just different forms of “air”, carbon and aluminium are different forms of “earth”, and of course iron can be turned into gold.
This concept can be somebody’s opinion, but since it is not substantiated by evidence, research or methodical observation – it is not science, and science and non-science shouldn’t be confused.
August 12th, 2006 at 8:42 am
As for Kelvin and the age of the Sun, Kelvin disputed Darwin’s evolutionary explanation of biological diversity arguing that Sun could not burn long enough to accomodate timescale of process of evolution described by Darwin – unless some energy source unknown to him and other Victorian era scientists was found to exist.
Of course, Kelvin calculated Sun’s lifespan based on burning of finest English coal, while radioactivity and nuclear processes that operate in Sun’s interior were discovered only much later.
August 12th, 2006 at 10:34 am
I recall taking a Psychology course in college in which the authors of the textbook recommended making poll questions something ‘a 4th grader could understand’, good advice since the tendancy might be to write questions at a college level and many who take the survey might not be up to that level. Now here is a poll that appears to be written by 4th graders! Instead of trying to get a feeling for what people really feel it biases the respondants to get the result the poll takers want to see.
August 12th, 2006 at 11:52 am
I know i am gonna be flamed, but i dont really care.
I personally beleive the bible 6000 years ago answer. Does this make me some sort of evil person? Before anyone states “look at this conflicting evidence.” let me point out thats what i am doing here in the first place. I like this site. I enjoy reading the articles. However i would caution anyone who considers themselves rational to avoid degrading anyones view just because you a) dont beleive it yourself b) Dont agree with what a few people of that view point may or may not FURTHER beleive.
August 12th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
Ian: The major problem with a 6000 yr Earth lifespan is
1) It doesn’t SAY THAT ANYWHERE in the bible, in ANY bible!!!
It was a calculation done by a catholic bishop ( Ulshur) based mainly upon the assumed ages of the Genesis elders(ie, Methiselah, Adam, etc).( HAving been raised a Lutheran I am totally skeptical of ANYTHING a catholic priest came up with.)
2) It completely disagrees with ALL the PHYSICAL evidence,( ie radioactive decay rates, star and galaxy ages derived from H2 fushion rates, etc)
3) So that we are left with the proposition that either
a) god is a deceitful being, trying to monkey with our minds or
b) some humans have some serious misunderstanding of the accuracy of a catholic bishops analyses.
Take your pick,,,
Gary 7
August 12th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
There is no cure for stupid, liberal or conservative. If science is the new religion perhaps we should change the Constitution to include separation of Church, State and Science. I enjoy your blog, love the information but can’t see the place for your political commentaries. If you are going to attack, attack on a specific point. Do not insult the intelligence of your readers with general comments. The government is not to support the sciences. That is why we have universities..
August 12th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
Both sides use the same evidence but come to a different conclusion.
No Creator + billions of years + the evidence = Evolution
Creator + few thousand years + the evidence = Creationism
Many times we can take the evidence but based on previous beliefs will look for ways for that evidence to fit with our “bias.” Since I wasn’t there billions of years ago, I can’t say what happened all those years ago and neither can anyone else. Isn’t scientific discovery based on repeatable experiments? Go in a lab, conduct an experiment, and observe the results? The science conducted on both sides of the argument does follow that process but the results are applied based on their bias. Heck, to start another argument, why can’t the weatherman get it right 3 days from now but…..
Tom
August 12th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
No, though this is a common misconception. It’s based on repeatable observations. That’s a subtle distinction, but an important one.
Take plate tectonics, for example. We have massive amounts of evidence demonstrating that the continents were all in different places long ago; observation of various features provides the evidence. Those observations can be replicated by anyone who cares to look. It’s impossible to repeat the process whereby the continents came to their current positions, but that doesn’t make the question outside the purview of science.
When you turn on the tap, you can predict the overall flow of water — it goes down the drain. However, you’ll find it nigh-impossible to predict the path that a particular drop will follow. Weather prediction is akin to determining the path of that drop.
August 13th, 2006 at 4:30 am
Yes, of course you’re right.
Yes it did. The explanation for how the sun can burn for such a long time is inherently quantum mechanical.
August 13th, 2006 at 4:54 am
Ian says:
No, this does not make you evil. But I do suspect you’re prejudiced towards the 6K, because the evidence (which you correctly identify implicitly as the deciding factor) is overwhelming if you care to check it out.
By the way, what does evil mean, anyway?
August 13th, 2006 at 10:18 am
For what it is worth, I thought I would find my old college bible, as I seemed to remember that each page had at the bottom, the age of the period as written. I was right of course, but I checked various books of the bible, and had never remembered that those ‘ages’ were out of order as listed.
I’m not surprised, as I have always believed it to be a collection of writings, not unlike one would find in any other library, which I have long regarded the bible to be – a library. Biography, history, genealogy, drama, not much humor, but it does have fiction. Sometimes it is difficult to tell which is which! That it has been mis-, and re-, interpreted down through the ages, it is little wonder there are discrepences.
But why do the creationists keep talking about a 6000 year age? 4004 and 2006 equals 6010. Given that they are really behind the 8-ball, I would have thought they would go for accuracy at least, seeing they have to cram all of the Universe’s history into so little time, and any little extra would be welcome.
I wonder if we will get an invite to their 1 000 000th anniversary? Hey, that should be a big occasion, if only for the drinks. I suggest our 13 800 000th party will be a beauty anyway, or have I already missed it?
Ivan.
August 13th, 2006 at 10:44 am
And talking about the Flat-earthers, why do they deny the curvature of the Earth’s horizon, while we who cannot actually see the curvature of Space, do acknowledge it?
Ivan.
August 13th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Sigh… It was stupidity like this and other issues that made me quite voting Republican and stop calling myself a “conservative” all together. (These days I prefer the term “small-l-libertarian. i.e. While I’m a social “liberal,” I still tend to support free markets over command economies.) It disgusts me that there are people who are willing to politicalize science, from evolution to environmental issues, merely because it contridicts their world view especially when the facts say otherwise.
Yeah, WND tends to cater the “far right” but I find that there are too many “mainstream” conservatives who are willing to defend or sympathize with loons like this largely on the basis that “at least they aren’t liberals.” Also, most mainstream conservative feel that religion (well, Judeo-Christian religion that is) has a “civilizing” influence on society. Therefore, anything that damages Christianity’s credibilty damages the “moral fabric of socity” no matter how insane the holy rollers get. To the average conservative, even religious extremism is better than the appearence of atheism.
August 13th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
EDIT: It was stupidty like this and on other issues that made me quit voting…
August 13th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
“However i would caution anyone who considers themselves rational to avoid degrading anyones view just because you a) dont beleive it yourself b) Dont agree with what a few people of that view point may or may not FURTHER beleive.”
Pot, kettle, black.
August 13th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
pot kettle black?
How have i degraded anyones view point? Or are you assuming i have due to the fact i disagree? The only view point i feel like insulting is the one that makes someone feel like its ok to look down at others due to disagreement. Oh well.
August 13th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Tony, I’m 73 and I’m convinced. I simply can’t be the only “elder” who has enough brains to read and think!
August 14th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
Believing the world is 6,000 years doesn’t make one evil, but it does make one ignorant. To the extent that multitudes of people disregard the discoveries of science we as a nation and civilizaton fail to progress. If we believe the world is flat voyages to other continents aren’t possible if we believe the earth is at the center of the universe voyages to other worlds aren’t possible. Think straight about biology is important as well, biology is having profound implications on how we live. What you don’t know can hurt you.
August 17th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Having survived Catholic school (and turning into an atheist as a result), one of the things I’ve always noticed about the people that push the “6000 yr old Earth” take everything, and I mean EVERYTHING in the Bible as literal fact. The most obvious reason that comes to mind is that if you imagine it as a house of cards: if you “disprove” a particular item in the Bible, i.e. Noah’s Ark, age of Methusela, Adam & Eve, talking snakes, et al – then you have to remove a card. Remove enough cards and the credibility (house of cards) comes crashing down.
Its not that they WON’T believe the evidence…they CAN’T believe it…because if they do…”Well hell, if THAT’s wrong in the Bible, what ELSE is wrong?” and the cards come crashing down.
My favorite topic to throw at the “Have you been saved?” idiots on my front porch is to ask them how many human diseases can they think of…and then ask them how all those sick people survived on an Ark for weeks on end. Because, after all, according to them, God had a really bad hair day and killed 99.999% of the world’s human population with a flood – who ELSE would they catch the disease from, eh?
The looks I get on that one are priceless…
August 18th, 2006 at 6:26 am
Phil, you say “I would think (and I sure do hope) that the stuff there is well outside the Republican mainstream of thought.” Sadly, as Mark Siefert says, it isn’t. (Though I’d love to get into a discussion with Mark about whether a person can be a supporter of market economies and still believe that there is a prominent place for government acting as a counterveiling force against the danger of too much power in the hands of corporations, but that’s for another place.)
I could point to commentators such as Malkin, Limbaugh, and the LGF crowd, or politicians such as Brownback, Tom Coburn, John Cornyn, and Ken Blackwell — for a truly scary example of what I can only call Christian Maoism, read his “Uncommon Sense” on the official website of the Ohio Sec. of State.
All of these are not considered wild fringe elements, but people within the mainstream of Republican ‘thinkers.’ (This has been one of the scariest of the changes over the past fifteen years, the melting away of the wall between the ‘fringe crazies’ and the ‘acceptable conservatives.’)
But I’ll make my point with just two words…
Ann Coulter.
Prup
August 18th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
My own take on the age of the Universe depends on the day of the week. Clearly, the Universe was created Last Thursday. God is lazy, and creates a one-light-week radius Universe every Thursday. Beats creating a 46 billion+ light year radius Universe even once. So, yes. God created the fossil record to ‘fool us’, and yes, God created WMAP.
I didn’t take the survey, because i couldn’t find a response that matched the TRUE age of the Universe very well.
If we still remember this survey next week, then God will have created it. It is not the work of humans. Who can fathom the mind of God?
September 7th, 2006 at 10:25 am
I really wonder why these people take the Bible literally?
I mean, I’m a Catholic, but I believe that the Bible is full of statements which we are not to take literally, like the 6000 year old Earth! Duh?!