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Where is the Special Relativity Train Taking its Scientific and Religious
Believers?
Part I
The debate over Special Relativity takes us into a morass of religious
fears and beliefs, and financial and psychological compulsion. Is there a way
out?
by Mary-Sue
Haliburton
Pure Energy Systems News
Copyright © 2006
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Throwing down the gauntlet
a) A Physicist Blogger Alleges Fraudulence
b) SR Train Tickets for "God-botherers"?
2. The Galileo Galilei Syndrome
a) We Know the Pope Was Wrong Don't We?
b) Putting the Inquisition in Perspective
c) Personal Intransigence and Pride
3. SR's Entrainment of
Religions
a) Thought-Police on the SR Express
b) Boarding the SR Train: Islam
c) Christian Passengers on the SR Express
d) One foot on the station platform: Baha'i
4. Should Spirituality
and Science Merge?
a) Are We Doomed to Repeat Past Errors?
b) A Question of Logic: Eternal Now vs
"Space-Time"
c) Breaking Out of Interpretation Straitjackets
d) Humanists in the SR Dining-car
5. "Infallible"
Theory Breeds Rebels and Neo-Inquisitors
a) Historical Nazi opposition to Special Relativity:
Buried
b) Facing the Conventional-Scholarship Inquisition
c) Head-Butting: A Modern Pope and Galileo, Reloaded
6. Opposites in Balance
and Shades of Grey
a) A Physicist
Blogger Alleges Fraudulence
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In a contentious blog, Sepp Hasslberger alleges intentional cover-up by
physicists. The allegation is serious, namely that they knowingly promote a
theory that they do not believe themselves. He contends that experiments
actually prove the existence of the ether, which Einstein dismissed from science
by fiat. Eminent physicists ignore the "obvious fraudulence" of
Einstein's Special Relativity Theory, argues Hasslberger, because they
"loved the prospect of having their clocks and rulers once again keeping
the correct time and measuring the correct length." Especially appreciated
was Einstein gift to them of a world in which "slow running clocks and
contracted matter would only happen to the other relatively moving guy." (Ref.
1)
These objections raise a major question: "Is a scientific theory still
deserving of the name "scientific" if it's been elevated to the level
of a religious "truth? Or, from a strictly scientific perspective shouldn't
one even say, "demoted" to a religious level from the scientific?
However you describe it, once an absolute status is conferred on a theory, no
one is supposed to look for, nor to find, holes in it anymore. Because this has
occurred in the case of Special Relativity and closely-related concepts such as
the Big Bang, people tend to refer to all of these concepts as factual. As a
foundational belief system, SR may function below the conscious thought
framework within which experiments are devised and interpreted. As a mythology
with religious implications, it engages the realm of philosophy, logic, and
emotion.
Hasslberger further opines that this theory was attractive to Einstein's
colleagues because it allowed them to dismiss the "vibrating blob of
supra-natural ether" and take back control of evolution and origin of the
universe from "the mystics and God botherers." Ironically, physicists
then become, in effect, mystics themselves.
If a theory is religious in origin, tone, and purpose, and only secondarily
scientific in language and trappings, the religious instinct draws people to it
without their being aware of the nature of the attraction. Whether this is wise
or based on SR's intrinsic merits as a belief system must be examined.
b) SR Train Tickets for
"God-botherers"
It seems that "God-botherers" are as involved as ever in this
apparently scientific debate. In response to the "All Aboard!" call
from the Special Relativity Train's conductor, people from various traditional
religions have cheerfully clambered on board, bringing all their baggage.
But do we normally board a train just because it's there? Shouldn't we be asking
some questions? Such as: Why should we accept this invitation? What is the
train's destination? Is that a place that we would choose to go if we apply our
own criteria to the issues? Who owns this train? And, probably the most
important: "What is the price of taking this journey?
It's no accident that the name of this means of transportation is part of a
psychological term. "Entrainment" refers to the pulling along of
weaker minds by a stronger one. One example of this occurs in the original Star
Wars movie, when Obi-wan Kenobi says, "These are not the droids you are
looking for" and the dim-witted imperial guards just let them go by. The
key understanding is that it's not the un-powered cars coupled to the train that
are in control, but the locomotive that is pulling everything along under its
own steam.
Both scientists and believers of many stripes are with few exceptions queuing up
to take the ride.
Note that this is not the first intellectual train that has pulled religious
people along behind it. To refer to a relatively well-known if not
well-understood example of how intellectual entrainment serves to derail a
religious thought framework and confuse that faith-community's members, let us
look at a famous case that is always trotted out as the great example of
scientific freedom versus religious oppression.
a. Everyone
"Knows" the Pope was Wrong
As everyone "knows", Signor Galileo Galilei was judged by the Roman
Catholic Inquisition to be in error for the heliocentric views expressed in his Dialogue
of 1632. And as a devout Roman Catholic, Galilei had taken care to have all of
it approved for publication in advance and had made changes as directed. So what
went wrong? Insofar as the popular version of events is distorted by
oversimplification, we must consider some corrective details from history as
documented in the beautiful book Galileo's Daughter (GD) by Dava Sobel.
In the thirteenth century, due to the enthusiasm of St. Thomas Aquinas for the
theories of Ptolemy and Aristotle (GD, p. 152) the Roman Church had got aboard
the Geo-Centrism Train. These Greek philosophical concepts then took on nearly
the authority of Holy Writ, and reciprocally imposed a template for interpreting
sacred texts to make them fit the theory.
Later, "running scared" after widespread Protestant defections, in
addition to the "index" of banned books the Roman Catholic authorities
imposed new restrictions in fear that even more adherents would defect. In
reaction against free-wheeling Protestant interpretations, the 1616 Council of
Trent forbade Catholic believers to interpret scripture themselves, or to hold
any doctrines different from those of the Church Fathers. This denied to Signor
Galilei the option of using scriptures to defend his position, as he had
cheerfully done in the past.
His earlier "Letter to the Grand Duchess Cristina" gives Biblical
references in reply to her arguments. The Medici matriarch had grilled him over
the meaning of Psalm 104:5 (Ref 3), claiming that it means
the Earth cannot move. Overflowing with emotional and highly stylized language,
this poem celebrates divine ruler-ship over all aspects of nature. If read
literally, another psalm contradicts this one by referring to mountains skipping
like rams. (Ps. 114:3-7) In that one, the psalmist celebrates God's power
manifested in some terrestrial cataclysm that the Jewish people must have
witnessed. None of these poems is a technical treatise on cosmology, The genre
is wrong. These are songs to be performed or spoken prayerfully as an act of
worship, not picked apart for scientific data.
Maffeo Cardinal Barberini, who later became Pope Urban VIII, had studied
astronomy (Ref 4), and
contrary to popular disparagement had indeed looked through a telescope himself.
In today's parlance we might even describe him as a "fan" of his
friend Galileo's discoveries of "wondrous new celestial phenomena." In
a 1620 poem titled "Dangerous Adulation" Barberini referred to
sunspots as "a metaphor of dark fears in the hearts of the mighty" (Ref
5) almost as if that were an inadvertent prophecy of his own future
attitude.
Due to his handling of political and military complications of the Thirty Years
War, Pope Urban VII ended up fearing that he might be poisoned. (Ref
6) Though there's no surviving evidence that any toxic chemicals got to him,
the toxic attitudes of various enemies of Signor Galilei did fill Urban's ears
with rumors, and contributed to the Inquisition's crackdown on the hapless
mathematician and philosopher.
 Putting
the Inquisition in Perspective
But was this solely the fault of a hidebound Church? In rejecting the geocentric
system for the heliocentric, didn't Galilei make the same mistake as the Church
did when it adopted the geocentric universe?
Signor Galilei had once cited St. Augustine's advice on "moderation in
piety and caution in judgment." If he'd lived by this principle himself, it
might have led to a different outcome. St. Augustine was warning the church
against the outright rejecting a new hypothesis that could later be shown not to
be contrary to sacred texts (GD, p. 68), implying strongly that scriptural
interpretation must evolve with human understanding. Paradigm-shifting ideas
need to be introduced gently so as not to upset the applecart, er, train.
Prior to writing this dramatized analysis of astronomical observations, Galileo
had consulted Urban VIII, who had urged him to present the data as being merely
another possible hypothesis. He specifically requested that his friend reiterate
an idea from "The Assayer", one of the mathematician's earlier works.
Urban had really liked his conclusion that there could be so many ways in which
the Creator's work could be explained, that it would never be possible to
understand them all. (GD p. 108-9)
But because of new evidence seen in his telescope, however, Galilei forgot who
was giving him this advice, and concluding that heliocentrism was factual, he
got over-enthusiastic. In the Dialogue, he made the character (obviously
resembling himself) espouse the Copernican cosmology with such wit in
contrast to the more disparaging portrayal of his opponent "Simplicio"
who had to defend Ptolemaic theory that readers easily perceived the
author's true intention. Thus it was not whether observations through the
telescope were verifiable, but truculent one-sided argumentation that annoyed
the Pope. Combining the resentment about papal advice being ignored with a
narrow interpretation of the line in a psalm about the earth being "firmly
fixed", the Inquisition banned Galilei's Dialogue despite its "nihil
obstat" status.
The actual official position that a theory belongs to the realm of
hypothesis and should not be treated as absolute truth was not so
unreasonable. That is not so far off the ideal of scientific objectivity,
either. Though the church in question does not wield the same power to humiliate
and to block publication, there exists still today an Inquisition-like power to
do all of that, and with the same purpose of enforcing compliance. So, we have
not actually made any progress over four centuries, and must be wary of the same
pitfalls that trapped our predecessors.
c. Personal Intransigence and
Pride
Galileo Galilei is universally regarded as hero as if he were standing up for
freedom of thought against a hidebound religious institution. It's not quite
that cut and dried. As a devout Catholic himself, he should have been more aware
of possibly being found in error. After all, some parts of the Dialogue,
such as his guess that tides were caused by the motion of the earth, have not
stood the test of time. Not admitting to insincerity, Galilei confessed instead
to vanity and wanting to appear clever beyond the measure of other writers. (GD
p. 262) It was this intransigence and pride that the Inquisition wanted to rein
in, pointing out that he'd written in an insulting and polemical manner that
rendered the technicality of compliance in the concluding statement of little
weight.
Since the decision came from the Inquisition office, no connotation of
"infallibility" was attached to their decision, and most expected that
eventually this would be reversed (though they didn't realize it would take 200
years). With that in mind, some dissident clerics felt justified in supporting
Mr. Galilei. Not least was Archbishop Piccolomini, who risked Urban's
displeasure by treating the disgraced as a respected houseguest and restored
his self-respect by having him tackle engineering problems and engage in
scientific discussions at dinner with visitors. (GD p. 318) This churchman's
compassionate action was instrumental in enabling Signor Galilei to recover
enough to write his final work on motion, interpreting and preserving for
posterity the careful observations he made at a time when hardly any standards
existed for time-keeping or length-measurement.
Yet, where was the reconciliation that should have been possible within this
religion that is supposed to be founded on God's love and forgiveness? Merely
human emotions reigned instead. On both sides, it was a story of arrogance and
stubbornness, laced with resentment. When his former friend violated his
directive not write about the Copernican theory unless he could keep it strictly
hypothetical, Urban VIII took it personally. He maintained a ban on all future
books despite the care the chastened Galilei gave to making his later work
non-controversial. Unfortunately there was no one above the Pope (at least not
in the earthly realm) who could call Urban on the carpet to repent for this
vindictiveness!
The ongoing punitive treatment that was dished out in place of forgiveness
and restoration of a penitent remains an indelible blotch on the escutcheon
of Christianity as a whole.
a) A 21st Century
Train of Thought-Police
When any religious groups or individuals endorse a scientific theory as
"proof" of the veracity of their holy books, they are not doing so
from a position of strength or authority. Rather, they are inadvertently making
the religion subordinate to, and dependent on, the human intellectual constructs
instead of on their own claims to prophetic voice speaking from a higher
spiritual level.
Thus, like the passenger cars of a train, they are making the truth of their
religions dependent on the continued high status of a given theory, here taking
the role of the locomotive. And when that theory, its supporting evidence, and
its philosophical underpinning are called into question, the religion can well
be seen as weakened along with it. Both can end up being shunted into a sideline
of thought.
In this way people end up defending with religious fervor a
"scientific" theory as if it were absolutely true, and off track as
far as their religion's own priorities are concerned. Roman Catholicism lost
momentum when it found itself hooked onto the Ptolemaic train that ended up off
the main track. To work the metaphor back to more direct expression, the
human-based "scientific" theory drags the religion off its own turf
into intellectual territory where other criteria predominate.
Most important, the theory's consequences have not been explained in advance, so
that in accepting it the religious person may not see that it entails limits. In
the case of SR, these limits determine how energy is defined and used, who is
allowed to make these decisions, and who profits from them. By getting on the
train, the believer abdicates the right to question these consequences of the
theory.
b) Boarding the SR Train: Islam
Islamic spokesmen claim that six of the Prophet Mohammed's sayings accurately
express concepts of Special Relativity, or at least as modern interpretations
construe those sayings. For example, angels -- understood to be light beings
are described as flying in a day the same distance as the moon travels in a
month. This results in confirming the number 299,792.458 km/s as the speed of
light in a vacuum.
Substantive intellectual gyrations are involved in attaching this prophetic
saying to Special Relativity. To get the numbers to work, the earth and moon
have to be moved so far from the sun that its gravity no longer affects the
moon's speed of travel in its orbit. With that done, sidereal (stellar) and
synodic (solar) time frames would match. If sidereal time is used, they arrive
at a calculation showing that Quran 32:5 confirms the speed of light in a
vacuum, which Einstein identified as a constant. (Ref. 7)
This is an intriguing result, and taken at face value would seem to confer on
their founding prophet a mantle of higher knowledge.
Since the length of current lunar orbits (29.531 days) multiplied by 12 results
in a year of 354.372 days, without moving the planet off into outer darkness in
order to arrive at the12000 lunar orbits that they need, the numbers would have
to be rounded off. This may be why they have chosen to ally themselves with
Relativity and make this cosmic adjustment.
It would have been easier to use this calculation of light-speed prior to 700
B.C. when the calendar was 360 days, and the lunar month 30 days, easily giving
the needed number of orbits in a millennium with no rearrangement of the solar
system. A Christian website helpfully provides the ancient set of orbital
numbers which would make the Islamic speed-of light-calculation possible without
the Einsteinian conditions being added. (Ref. 8) Was the
prophet actually tuning into this earlier state of the world?
Even if angels are said to travel at the speed of light, it does not necessarily
mean that the Qurans teaching about angels was meant as a confirmation of any
intellectual theory such as SR. Though making this connection may give believers
a boost of confidence in their holy book, it also indicates a change of
direction for the faith to depend on an non-prophetic scientific hypothesis to
confirm its truth (unless, of course, you regard Einstein as divinely
inspired
).
Although there is no conflict theologically between Islam and scientific
reasoning, in the thirteenth century certain Islamic leaders rejected
cause-and-effect reasoning and mathematical analysis. An Imam of that time
referred to reason as being like wine, an intoxicant that leads away from faith
in Allah. Interviewed on Muslim Chronicles, a Muslim physicist cited the
disproportionately low number of Muslims publishing papers in his profession
worldwide, attributing this to a lingering effect of the extreme orthodoxy
attitude within Islam. As part of the struggle to modernize Islamic education
and restore the science and creativity that reigned prior to the orthodoxy
period, an Iranian Imam recently issued a fatwa (teaching) to separate science
from religion. (Ref. 9) The advocates of SR as confirming
prophetic utterances seem to be trying to recombine them, both unwise and
unnecessary.
Less convincing because it depends on a further intellectual association is
their assertion that the jinn being invisible but having weight can be equated
with "dark matter". "The six Heavens superimposed above the
lowest one with visible light contain the illusive [sic] Dark Matter."
(Ref. 10)
The so-called dark matter is one of the mathematical constructs that have been
proposed as an explanation for some problematic observations, that in themselves
have been questioned. Still, if dark matter is illusory, removing it from the
equation would take nothing away from the spiritual teaching about the jinn, but
would only remove this rather awkward and superfluous linkage to a contemporary
theory.
Interfering with humans psychologically, as beings created from "smokeless
fire" the jinn appear to be analogous to demons in Christian thought. As
such, it would be their role, rather than any alleged scientific implication of
their nature, which is important in the spiritual text. Even if the "dark
matter" concept could never be disproven, pinning down the entities called
jinns to an inert scientific definition may be unwise in the long run. Doing so
could weaken the force of a scripture which is primarily a warning against being
led astray by negative influences.
c) Christian
Passengers on the SR Express
This same Islamic website accuses the Christian Bible of being inaccurate
compared to their holy book, setting the description of the size of God's Throne
in the Quran against a New Testament verse which does not mention this at
all. The Islamic site goes on to argue:
"The Christian Bible says that the universe was created less than ten
thousand years ago. Science says that the universe was created 13.5 billion
years ago. We can actually observe galaxies 13 billion light years away; that
is, light already traveled 13 billion years before it reached us. This alone
proves their Bible wrong. To fix this problem, they need the speed of light
to decay (to slow down over time); that is, light was faster and covered
that distance in much shorter time. But the theory of relativity says that the speed
of light is constant... Since the theory of relativity contradicts their
Bible, they reject it. They need the theory of relativity to be wrong for
their Bible to be correct." (Ref. 11)
Though argued from logic, the above paragraph is not true in several ways.
First, the Book of Genesis may refer only to creation of earth and
"heaven" (consisting, when written, of those stars visible from earth
with the naked eye) and not to creating "the universe" as a modern
concept. Second, the statement that light has traveled 13 billion years is not
in the Quran, meaning that they are arguing from a non-religious basis
(Relativity) against their own somewhat faulty interpretation of different
religion.
Third, the assertion that Christians reject the theory of relativity is not at
all true. A "Bible-Believer" website set up to defend creationism and
neo-orthodoxy argues that the "Big Bang" theory is a scientific
"proof" of their position. A major article lists many other Relativity
concepts as supporting the Bible (or at least their interpretation of it).
Included as if they were facts are many concepts based on mathematical theorems:
e.g. the existence of black holes is the 15th "proof" for the Big
Bang. (Ref. 12) Yet in successfully predicting major
discoveries of the space age, plasma cosmology does not require such
mathematical inventions as the Big Bang, dark matter, dark energy, and Black
Holes. (Ref. 13) Even the idea of time dilation is a
mathematical construct for which there are contrary arguments.
The Protestant Creationist website glosses over the Roman Catholic origin of the
Big Bang, introduced courtesy of a priest named Abbι Georges Lemaξtre. His
purpose was to connect Einstein's relativity to the (apparent) evidence for an
expanding universe, and to work God into the equation. Though his idea handily
married science to religion, a divorce may be necessary! According to others who
contest the expanding universe due to interpreting space observation evidence
differently, no "Big Bang" ever took place. If their arguments are
accepted, all arguments tying science to religion on this basis are negated, and
any sacred texts used to make this association then would also appear to be
undermined.
d) One foot on
the train-station platform: Baha'i
Due to the relatively recent context from which Baha'u'llah emerged, the
conceptual language he used is more like that of today's scientists. This
founder, understood by his followers to be Maitrya Amitabha Buddha, the fifth
after Gautama, takes the stage with a re-conceptualized version of the Buddhist
Void. To traditional Buddhists, this void was unborn, unknowable, uncreated and
unformed, a profound mystery, and also a Universal Mind.
Expressing a similar idea in more modern words, Baha'u'llah states that
universal mind is divine, receiving the light of the mysteries of God. This is
specifically "not a power of investigation and of research" as in the
typical intellectual work of investigating the "the properties of
existences". Being beyond nature (which is created) the "heavenly
intellectual power" embraces and is cognizant of things, and is aware of
mysteries and "concealed verities of the Kingdom." (Ref.
14)
With that defined as the source of his knowledge, when the great sage of the
Baha'i faith states that the universe is of infinite age, and that ether is a
spiritual reality similar in nature to the human soul (Ref.
15), logically it would seem that his followers are not free to embrace
Special Relativity, the Big Bang, the expanding universe, an inert space with no
ether, nor any mathematical concept based on Einstein's version of reality.
However, some Baha'i are attempting to do just that. In an essay titled
"How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Big Bang" one Dale E.
Lehman finds in another of Baha'u'llah's voluminous statements from prison one
that appears to justify his stance. "That which hath been in existence had
existed before, but not in the form thou seest today" For him, this closes
the gap between relativity and an eternally-existing universe. (Ref.
16)
According to Lehman, it's a matter of viewpoint. If he's considering God's
eternal sovereignty, the whole of creation has to be eternal. Within a greater
creation that has "neither spatial nor temporal limits", however, a
certain part of it must have assumed its present form at a point in time, and
therefore its size might also have a limit. He says that Bahα'ν cosmology can
therefore allow for a singular beginning from which the universe the one
that is visible to us gradually evolved.
He does admit, though, that others of his faith are prepared to "wait until
science catches up with Baha'u'llah."
a) Are We Doomed to
Repeat Past Errors?
To the extent that we don't know what the errors of the past were, it does seem
that everything is happening again. To bind an interpretation of scripture to a
human-based mental construct is a philosophical trap.
In a first-year university tutorial class I attended in 1969, the leader posed
for discussion the question, "Which is higher, logical reasoning or
worship?" Students wrestled for some time with arguments trying to prove
one side or the other. I listened with increasing dissatisfaction to a debate
that went not only back and forth but increasingly in circles, and finally
asked, "How can you even compare two systems which have a different
definition of the word "higher"? The tutorial leader said, "Aha.
There's the answer: the question is unsolvable!" and he sent everyone home
for the day. (Ref. 17)
It appears that many people have not even heard this question, nor the fact that
it represents a protracted and unresolvable conflict persisting throughout human
mental history. The fight for the top of the heap between Reason (based on
science and human self sufficiency with the ultimate purpose being to control
our physical surroundings) is at loggerheads with the age-old knowledge that we
are mortal beings and that we must therefore have been created by a higher order
of Being or Source, and that the purpose of life is to live by higher principles
so as to return whence we came.
One of the strengths of spiritual texts is that interpretations evolve along
with human society. New meanings can be read into them that will strike a chord
in human hearts in every era, nurturing resolve to do right and to aspire to
love their fellow human beings. This flexibility and "refresh rate" of
the sacred texts can be lost when permanently tied to scientific baggage, which
will narrow the meaning to one that gives no such spiritual uplift.
b) A
Question of Logic: Eternal Now vs "Space-Time"
By denying the existence of any "eternal now" (spoken of through the
ages by mystics and in our era by some "near death experiencers"), the
Special Relativity theory gave us instead an ersatz-mystical concept of an
elastic "space-time" without which it would impossible to compress
both space and linear time into a singularity (a boldly imaginative conceit in
itself), from which everything including time itself is then described
as magically and explosively emerging in a single "creation" act.
Further, all elements thus created also magically organize themselves by random
molecular forces into the vast complexities of amazing variety and beauty that
we know as the structure of the visible universe, including myriad life forms on
our planet.
To believe that idea requires tremendous faith, and I confess myself a skeptic
on the subject.
Space-time befuddles more than any religious mystery. No laypersons that I have
ever asked have been able to explain why they believe in the Big Bang.
Apparently not knowing its religious origin and status, people will say that
Relativity is "scientific" and that makes it OK by them.
On logical grounds, even a religious person might ask, "How could the Big
Bang be true?" If God is understood to be Eternal, but as another doctrine
says that He hadn't bothered to create anything until a certain "time"
(which also contradicts the concept of "eternal now"), then wasn't God
being inconsistent in suddenly deciding to make a universe out of nothing? One
does not have to be a Baha'i to think of this objection.
c) Breaking Out of
Interpretation Straitjackets
If one ignores the Big Bang as unnecessary theologically, this eternal Deity can
equally well be understood as eternally re-shaping any part of the universe or
re-assembling its constituent elements.
If analyzing Chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis in a purely verbal manner with no
prior philosophical constructs or scientific filters imposed, and we look only
at the words in front of us, what emerges is not really the creation "from
nothing" of the universe. The second verse, "the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the water" (Gen 1:2) implies that "water" (or
some matter) is already in existence, though the planet is unoccupied (or
virtually so). Neither water nor earth is described as being created "from
scratch" here; in this passage, both are being rearranged.
If a major ice age was just ending at the calculated time -- say, ten thousand
years ago -- with extensive flooding, it makes sense to describe water being
separated from land so that dry ground could appear (Gen 1:9). To a theoretical
observer with no preserved memory of more ancient times, this would have been
equivalent to an original creation. From our perspective, this blending together
of water and earth (understood as "elements" in ancient literature),
and the absence of humans or animals could just as well be taken to indicate
that there had been a cataclysm prior to the time at which this is creation
or re-creation was said to have taken place.
We might imagine also an atmospheric disturbance which would have made the stars
invisible; the description of separating the waters above from the ones below
would then also make some sense (Gen 1:7). Or these "waters" might
refer to something entirely different from physical water, such as energy fields
in the aether. And what is the "firmament"? Ancient cosmologists
conceived of spheres enclosing the world. If the layers of electromagnetic force
enclose the planet like layers of an onion, this idea could be applied in a
similar manner to the ancient idea of "spheres" nested like Russian
dolls, in which the earth, whether seen as flat or spherical, was the core. The
ancient human author of Genesis might under inspiration have spoken better than
he knew. (Ref. 17b, optional)
Other interpretations have been proposed, such as that the "light" in
Genesis 1:3 actually refers to some higher spiritual light and not the
physically-perceived light of the created sun (not yet mentioned in this mythic
account. (Ref. 18) This creation, or re-creation story,
would aptly describe a process of post-ice-age human life and societies
beginning to re-appear, as were different species from those that predominated
in eras prior to the ice-age.
The above-suggested interpretation would entirely remove the cavil that the book
of Genesis forces Christians to believe that the whole universe was created from
nothing only a few thousand years ago. I don't think the wording or the genre of
writing supports that short time frame. Although intriguing artifacts and
sub-oceanic structures are said to predate the ice age (Ref.
18b), neither written history nor human memory reaches back before that
epoch. Thus, with as its founding story a symbolic description of the planet
becoming habitable again, a new culture develops with the slate of history
essentially wiped clean. Such a reading does no violence either to logic or to
science. This is not presented as "definitive", but merely to show
that various interpretations are possible; another way may be more suitable in a
different century. It lies outside the purview of science to judge the spiritual
and mythic force of this story, nor does the spiritual text have to conform to a
given scientific theory of origin being studied at any time in history.
Tying scientific theories to religious dogma does not bring science onto holy
ground, nor does confirm the truth of any religion to claim that its spiritual
insights represent scientific data. Instead, both science and faith are dragged
onto thin ice over a swamp of confusion by trying to blend them. If the theories
are falsified by newer evidence or analysis, the ice cracks, and believers fall
through it and thrash about, feeling threatened. If a person's faith depends on
these data and theories in place of interiorized experience of God, it's poorly
founded.
d) Humanists in the SR Dining-Car
People who don't regard themselves as religious in a traditional sense my be
feeling smugly that none of the above applies to them, and that it's perfectly
OK to adopt a theory to whatever degree they wish. Doing so at the theory's apex
of respectability can even be good for one's career.
Even strictly humanistic thinkers who adopt a religious mindset of elevating
scientific theories to the status of truth are risking their entire foundation
of thought by the very fact of repudiating their own objectivity. They then
become religious thinkers themselves. This gives rise to the deep resistance to
admitting alternative interpretations of data, and can cause exclusion of
phenomena from a data set, if these are likely to threaten the stability of a
broad foundational theory.
The late Eugene Mallove quotes from a videotaped lecture in which Caltech
Professor David L. Goodstein asserts that Special Relativity has been so well
verified that it is promoted to the status of "simple, engineering
fact", and that its merit is proven because nuclear particle accelerators
work. This professor even rejects the truism that if even one experiment
disagrees with a theory it must be considered disproved, claiming that such a
statement represents "a wrong theory of knowledge." That assertion is
breathtaking in its audacity, as it tries to wipe out all possibility of
challenging a mindset as entrenched as that of the papacy. (Ref.
19)
Lifting a comprehensive, religiously-charged theory such as Special Relativity
or Evolution to absolute status leads scientists to pontificate -- as if indeed
the mantle of infallibility has been transferred (kindness of Abbι Lemaξtre)
from the Roman Catholic Church to a Priesthood of Science, or even Scientism.
This is how a neo-Inquisition can be founded.
C.S. Lewis pointed out that the religious and the secular mind always apply
different interpretations to the same phenomena. (Ref. 20;
The Weight of Glory. pp. 104-5), and that when it comes to materialistic
and spiritual minds, ne'er the twain shall meet. Except, that is, when a
scientific mind becomes a religious mind by promoting its intellectual musings
to absolute status. What is valuable about spirituality appears only within the
paradigm of a higher perspective that presupposes a higher plane of existence.
This is then either believed or rejected, often by methods other than reasoning.
a)
Historical Nazi opposition to Special Relativity buried
In his discussion of how SR became so entrenched, Mallove dismisses the
Nazi-inspired, anti-Semitic tracts against relativity that were published in the
1920s, which disparaged Einstein's relativity theory as "Jewish
science.". This is an historical detail of which I had been unaware until
reading this line. Could anyone today still be intimidated by this
largely-forgotten and unconscionable oppression, to the point that in our day to
question Einstein still automatically classes the person as anti-Semitic? It
seems extremely unlikely to impossible.
Since he was Jewish himself, that smear-label hardly fits Mallove, nor does it
apply to the brilliant Russian Jew Immanuel Velikovsky, seen as an upstart for
directly challenging the basis of Relativity. His adventurous theories caused a
firestorm of opposition, and financial backlashes against publishers who allowed
him access to the public mind. When asked, as he often was, "What made you
so strong that you could persevere in the face of a concerted opposition of the
entire scientific establishment, and to do it for so many years?"
Velikovsky would say, "Whether this is the true ground or not, I usually
answered, It is the obstinacy of my race, the race of Marx, of Freud, and of
Einstein'."
Though an emotional sense of passionate partisanship of a semi-religious nature
enters into defending Special Relativity, allegations of anti-Jewish racism seem
to be absent from those questioning the theory. Any factor of overcorrecting
against WWII Nazi propaganda should by now have been put to rest; however,
remembering that this kind of politically-driven abuse can happen should help us
to be alert to symptoms of its reappearance.
The Special Relativity debates of today either specifically deal with the
evidence and its interpretation, or discuss the overall philosophical field of
whether and how far science and spiritual teachings in general should be merged,
rather than attacking one of the historic great religions as somehow being at
fault.
b) Facing the
Conventional-Scholarship Inquisition
Assuming that the inertness of space was incontrovertible fact, the majority of
astronomers and historians were furious with Velikovsky for writing about the
planets as electrically active. Despite regarding themselves as having authority
to refute his book, most refused to read it. Even Pope Urban VIII was not that
closed-minded! How is it that the "scientific" minds could have become
more rigid than the proverbially rigid orthodoxy of Rome?
The purely gravitational nature of the solar system, in which they believed
absolutely, precluded the possibility of orbital instability, so it was not
necessary to sully their minds with what must obviously be nonsensical. One
said, "
if Dr Velikovsky is right, the rest of us are crazy." (Ref.
21)
Not Crazy, Just indoctrinated.
But they were so fully inducted into the faith of SR that they were unable to
recognize the depth of their subjugation, nor the emotional incongruity of
reacting with so much anger to what should have been simply a coldly-reasoned
intellectual debate, if it was all purely scientific.
As an intellectual renegade, when he had tried to get his theories tested,
Velikovsky was refused access to the apparatus of science at every turn.
Trusting his sources (including the Hebrew Bible itself) and in his own analysis
of them, he nonetheless published his research. And, without any of the
confirming technical evidence being available, he asserted that Venus was hot,
and that it had hydrocarbons in the atmosphere, and that Jupiter emitted radio
noise at a time when everyone "knew" the opposite was true.
Perhaps evincing a greater mental stature or at least a more robust psyche than
most, Albert Einstein did not feel as threatened as his followers. Though far
from pleased to meet him, he had at least treated Velikovsky with enough respect
to reply to letters, and to discuss the issues with him. Throughout his last
years, Einstein continued to hold to his gravitation-only universe. Records of
correspondence between the two opponents, available online, make interesting
reading. (Ref. 22)
c)
Head-Butting: A Modern Pope and Galileo, Reloaded
In a letter written after their first brief and not-too-friendly encounter,
Velikovsky opening charge at the great icon of Relativity pours out in a massive
run-on sentence, a literary device that can be used legitimately on rare
occasions as a way to emphasize the piling up evidence:
" The sun has a general magnetic field, the solar spots are magnets, the
solar prominences return on an oblique line to the place on the solar surface
from where they erupted, the cometary tails are repelled by the sun in a manner
and with velocities which the pressure of light cannot explain; the earth is a
magnet; the ionosphere, the polar light, the ground currents, the terrestrial
magnetism react to solar disturbances; cosmic rays are charges that travel in
magnetic lines of force; meteorites come down in a magnetic state; the position
of the moon influences the radio reception (Stetson); the position of the
planets influences the radio reception (Nelson of RCA); the fixed stars are
strong magnets (Babcock)."
He then poses his questions. "In the face of all this is it true or wrong
to insist that only gravitation and inertia act in the celestial sphere? And if
the electromagnetic fields are not invented by me for the solar system ad hoc in
order to explain the phenomena and their interpretation as found in "Worlds
in Collision," then may I ask: Who is in conflict with observed facts, the
astronomers that have all their calculations concerning the planetary motions
perfect on the assumption that there are no electromagnetic fields in the solar
system, or the author of "Worlds in Collision" ? (Ref.
23)
Einstein's first brief reply showed Velikovsky that it was not merely one man's
mind but a kind of natural massif that he was attempting to shake, "a
formidable structure erected by the greatest minds, proven correct by the
supposedly most minute observations of the motions of celestial bodies."
Though along with red shift and the bending of light, the precession of Mercury
was believed to prove General Relativity. Velikovsky boldly challenged the
bending-of-space concept by arguing for electromagnetic influence as the cause
of Mercury's orbital anomaly.
From 1953 up to the time of Einstein's death in 1955, the two men debated both
in person and in writing about the possibility of colliding worlds, Einstein
still insisting that sun and planets have to be electrically neutral and space
free of magnetic fields. On hearing that Jupiter does emit radio noise, however,
he is said to have offered to use his influence to get experiments done that
Velikovsky had proposed. But within days, Einstein died, leaving Worlds in
Collision lying open on his desk." (Ref. 24)
What would have happened if the great icon of the gravitational universe, whose
influence had often been used symbolically to move projects or call attention to
problems, had spoken to the press about the significance of radio noise from
Jupiter? We will never know. Perhaps his last illness spared him from having to
admit that he might have erred. Or, since he died of aortal failure, it may have
been the stress known to affect the heart that pushed him over the edge.
6. Opposites in Balance
and Shades of Grey
The ideal stance is probably close to the position of Cardinal Barberini: that
is, to explore the natural phenomena, but not to give to science an absolute
level of belief. This seems to stand between the extremes of suppression on one
hand, represented by the Inquisition, versus an egotistical assumption of being
right while everyone else, from the top on down, is wrong, represented by the
Galileistic rebellion of a Velikovsky.
But in practice it is difficult to keep opposites in balance. Much easier, for
most of us, is to embrace one or the other side of a debate, for better or
worse. And too often for worse. Humans have innate tendency to run amok when
fuelled on absolute belief.
If religion denied its role as enlightening humanity in presenting principles
and thoughts said to filter down from a higher dimension, something else will
assume that role. If science is writing the Myths, and arrogating to the mortal
mind the role of writing the rules for spirituality, is this destructive debate
going to die down? It's not likely. What we see happening over the promulgated
doctrine of Relativity is the usual polarization, with intellectual arrogance,
fears of loss of identity in disintegrating foundations, and refusal to listen
to the other side taking their usual toll. This means that the shades of grey,
intermediate positions which can give rise to future modifications, and that
sometimes result in phasing out of a theory for one that is more workable, tend
to be ignored or undervalued.
This is why it can take centuries, not decades, for a Galileist rebel to be
fully recognized.
# # #
In Part 2, we will look at the various levels of compliance and abstention
exercised by dissenters toward the dominant mind-set of the age.
REFERENCES
Ref 1. http://blog.hasslberger.com/2006/03/relativity_fraud_the_complicit.html
Ref 2. Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of
Science, Faith, and Love, by Dava Sovel. Viking, The Penguin Group, 1999. All
citations are from the hardcover edition by page number. "Galileo" was
only his first name; I choose instead to use his family name, as is customary in
referring to scientists and authors, except in circumstances where socially his
first name might be used by other personages who were friends (at the time).
This insightful and highly-recommended book includes translations of letters
written to her father by Suor (Sister) Maria Celeste, nιe Virginia Galilei. A
remarkable relationship of a caring father and his literate and devout daughter
is portrayed. He supported her and the Poor Clares convent with personal gifts,
many of which he grew in his garden. And she upheld his dignity on a practical
level by making and cleaning those white collars he wears in all portraits, and
on other levels with supportive letters and earnest prayer. (Who knows whether
those prayers might have resulted in his being able to return home to write
another book, instead of remaining in the Inquisition's prison?)
Ref 3. All quotations are from Holy Bible: From the
Ancient Eastern Text, Translated by George M. Lamsa from the Aramaic "Peshitta"
text (HarperSanFrancisco edition.) The Peshitta is the oldest complete Bible
document in existence, and this version is prepared by a rare native speaker of
the language.
Verse 5, "Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be
removed for ever." cannot be taken literally, as verse 32 of the same Psalm
mentions the earth trembling. Other books of the Bible even say that heaven and
earth shall pass away. (Matthew 24:35) Does this "contradict" the
Psalm, or represent evolving beliefs?
Ref 4: GD pp. 136-7 There is even a story that Urban
in the early years would not have supported the original decree against
Copernicus, had he been Pope at the time, Astronomy was a very popular pursuit,
not least because Galilei himself was manufacturing and selling telescopes, with
instructions on how to use them, to Italian and foreign buyers. (GD, pp. 39-40)
It was like the latest fad gadget; everybody who was anybody had to have one.
Ref 5. GD p. 102 When he was still a Cardinal,
Barberini (later Pope Urban) signed his letter to Galileo as "your
brother" indicating a strong friendship.
Ref 6. GD pp. 223-4 Given his taxes on the
population, this was probably a well-grounded fear!
Ref 7. http://www.speed-light.info/islam/relativity_quran.htm
Ref 8. http://www.direct.ca/trinity/360vs365.html
"360 vs. 365" credited to Guy Cramer, though part of its argument
reads as if cribbed from Worlds in Collision (uncredited). Velikovsky's ideas
appear to have permeated far into public consciousness, even without official
support.
It is not known whether the earth slowed down in its orbit, or whether something
happened around 700 B.C. to shift it slightly farther from the sun, thus making
the orbit longer. Whatever the cause, five days and a ragged fragment had to be
added to the previous tidy 360, leaving us with the complication of
"leap" years to even out the numbers.
At <http://www.direct.ca/trinity/orbital.html>
to remove the issue of temperature change, the same author offers the radical
idea that the Sun could have moved instead. What is not credible is the
oft-heard assumption that the ancients who were able to build pyramids with
remarkable mathematical perfection and pinpoint the positions of stars and
constellations would not have been able to count the number of days in a year.
Something must have shifted in their external world.
Ref 9. Muslim Chronicles, interview televised 1 April
2006, with Pakistani physicist Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, "Science is science,
Islam is Islam". The program's producer is based in Toronto. <http://www.jafry.com/>
Sometimes science is not so scientific when it begins to throw a mantle of
infallibility over its major theoretical constructs. The article looks at how
the dogmatizing of Special Relativity is drawing traditional religions under its
sway, which may lead to unforeseen repercussions for both religion and science.
Ref 10. op. cit. http://www.speed-light.info/islam/relativity_quran.htm
The word "illusive" seeming to be derived from
"illusion" which would mean "unreal" ("illusory"
is the more usual adjectival form of this word) -- is probably an unintended
slip, a typo for "elusive" which means "hard to locate or to
capture." From the context I have to assume that this was the intended word
here.
Ref 11. http://www.speed-light.info/islam/relativity_quran.htm#Pulsar
Ref. 12. http://www.reasons.org/resources/fff/2000issue03/index.shtml
Bible-Believers endorse Big Bang theory as Biblical.
Ref.13. http://www.thunderbolts.info/synopsis.htm
Ref. 14. Some Answered Questions" quoted by
Dr. Jack Coleman, in "Common Grounds Between Buddhism, Quantum Physics, and
Baha'i Faith" at http://www.bahai-library.org/essays/common.ground.html
Ref. 15. Also quoted by Jack Coleman: This ether,
according to Baha'u'llah, has "the closest likeness to the human
spirit." (Tablets, p 146) This ether, consisting of primary matter together
with the active force that fashions it, becomes the "empty void" as an
invisible power known only through the forces it exerts, such as electromagnetic
radiation. This ether is an eternal reality that is spiritual in nature and
corresponds to the constituent substance of all things, including that of the
human spirit, that is fashioned with all of the names and attributes of God.
Ref. 16. http://www.bci.org/abssciencereligion/Lehman_2005_Talk.htm,
This was further summed up as: "His creation had ever existed beneath His
shelter from the beginning that hath no beginning, apart from its being preceded
by a Firstness which cannot be regarded as firstness and originated by a Cause
inscrutable even unto all men of learning."
Ref. 17. Author's notes from McMaster
University,1969. This instructive incident has remained in active memory after
most other course material has been forgotten. At the time, I thought,
"What a rip-off! Why pay all this tuition if I have to figure out the
answer myself?
Ref 17b. OPTIONAL Some modern mystics still speak
of solid layers around the planet, such as the notion of "etheric ice"
http://educate-yourself.org/zsl/zslethericice16sep02.shtml
It's possible, as proposed by Callum Coats, that there are layers of water in
the atmosphere which are frozen. The temperature varies with altitude and is
sub-zero at some levels.
Ref 18. Many scholars distinguish the word
"Mythic" to mean "of great mystical and psychological
significance" (and therefore carrying possibly a higher level of truth, not
necessarily in opposition to known facts of material existence) from a similar
word "mythical" used in popular speech to imply "imaginary,
invented, or untrue".
Ref 18b. Hidden archaeology, e.g. submerged
monolithic structures shown by underwater photography at http://www.templeofmu.com/
or <http://www.altarcheologie.nl/index.html?underwater_ruins/yonaguni/tour_temple_of_mu.htm>
Ref. 19. "Breaking Through Editorial: The
Einstein Myths Of Space, Time, and Aether" by Eugene F. Mallove, Sc.D.
Originally Published July-August, 2001 In Infinite Energy Magazine, Issue #38
http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue38/einstein.html
Ref. 20. The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses,
by C.S. Lewis. P. 104-5.
Original copyright 1949, renewed by Harper Collins in 2001. Lewis writes:
"The brutal man never can by analysis find anything but lust in love; the
Flatlander never can find anything but flat shapes in a picture; physiology
never can find anything in thought except twitchings of the grey matter. It is
no good browbeating the critic who approaches a Transposition from below. On the
evidence available to him his conclusion is the only one possible."
A "higher plane" could theoretically exist. As Callum Coats reflects,
"imprisoned as we have been led to believe within our physical
reality by the speed of light (299,739,000 meters per second or m/s) and since
we are also concerned with certain dimensionalities, it might be more useful
were we to attempt to express what may be even vaster differences between the
various planes of the higher realities by using squared, cubed, quadrupled, etc.
multiples of the speed of light c expressed in meters per second. At the same
time we might also begin to get some notion if the primary, creative and
formative supremacy of such high, yet extraordinarily subtle energies
."
In his chart c squared is energy, and c to the fourth power is design, and so on
up to the infinitely creative mind. (LIVING ENERGIES, p. 75)
Ref. 21. THE VELIKOVSKY AFFAIR Part One,
"MINDS IN CHAOS" by Ralph E. Juergens. p. 28. Pdf file, Q-CD vol. 15
obtainable from http://www.grazian-archive.com/quantavolution/QuantaSeries.htm
Ref. 22. http://www.varchive.org/bdb/main.htm
Ref 23 Letter of August 26, 1952, http://www.varchive.org/bdb/lake.htm
In this letter Velikovsky also mentions a Christian who based all his cosmology
on whether it was compatible with the words of Jesus of Nazareth, showing that
two world conceptions functioned side by side in his mindone mathematical,
the other based on faith. Velikovsky compared this to astronomers having two
conflicting systems in their minds. On the one hand they are admitting to the
magnetic and electrical properties of the sun and its spots, and to the Earth's
magnetic field. On the other hand, when motions of planets are mentioned, they
are still rooted to "pre-Faraday Laplace and Lagrange, and actually
postulate sterile electricity and impotent magnetism, which do not act at
distances, and which do no more than produce a Zeeman effect."
Ref. 24. Juergens, op. cit. p. 46.
See also
Page posted by Sterling
D. Allan April 6, 2006
Last updated April 08, 2006
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