Fr. Z's calculation of the world's creation off by approx. 123 million years

In a recent post, entitled "Happy Birthday Universe!" (Fr. Z's Blog, April 27, 2016), Fr. Z writes:

On this day in 4977 B.C., the universe [was] created, according to German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler ....

He goes on to relate a great many fascinating details about the life and times of Kepler, including the fact that he is sometimes considered the founder of modern science. In his concluding sentence, however, Fr. Z writes:

As for Kepler’s calculation about the universe’s birthday, scientists in the 20th century developed the Big Bang theory, which showed that his calculations were off by about 13.7 billion years.

Now please forgive me, but I take a fiendish delight in responding to such statistics by pointing out glaring errors when I find them. In his case, as any astro-physicist worth his salt knows, the figure cited above is off by a little over 100 million years. The exact figure can be inferred from the epiriometrics of the brilliant research scientist, A.D. Sokal, in his landmark essay, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" (1995), from which we can conclusively show that Fr. Z's figure is off by 123,857,487 years. The critical calculation is:


In light of which we are compelled to conclude that the Big Bang (and, omnia sint paribus, the creation of the world) occurred approximately 13.8 billion years ago, not 13.7 billion -- or, to be exact, 13,823,857,487 years ago at precisely 3:26 in the afternoon, Eastern Standard Time (anachronistically assuming Greenwich Mean Time existed then). I believe it was raining that afternoon.

In the interests of fair disclosure, my 'fiendish delight' in pointing out such errors stems from my studied skepticism regarding the philosophical conclusions inferred by scientists from their empiriometric and empirioschematic calculations, which are often presumptively taken for reality itself, as amply demonstrated by the physicist Anthony Rizzi in his book, The Science Before Science: A Guide to Thinking in the 21st Century, and by the Gifford Lecturer and Templeton Prize winning physicist, Stanley Jaki, in Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth. My skepticism also extends to the metaphysical claims either stated or implied in "The Grand Evolutionary Story" reiterated ad nauseam by contemporary textbooks of biology, parts of which Alvin Plantinga famously called "pure arrogant bluster."

So thank you, Fr. Z, for allowing me at your expense to skewer a bit of contemporary 'scientific bluster' with a bit of playful bluster of my own. I suppose you could claim that you covered yourself by the insertion of the cautionary term 'about' since 13.8 billion is 'about' 13.7 billion; and that might be true. Then again, would we really have any conclusive way of knowing whether we weren't off by 6-11 billion years, give or take a few hundred million? Or we could just take Stephen Hawking's word for it that it all happened "about 15 billion years ago."

Cosmological paradigms: doubters and true believers

Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310-230 BC) was the first known astronomer to present a heleocentric cosmological theory. This theory wasn't picked up again until the theories of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) led to what came to be known as the "Copernican Revolution."

The dominant theory before Aristarchus and after him, until the time of Copernicus, was the geocentric paradigm promoted by the theories of Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Claudius Ptolemy (c. AD 90-168).

If you've read anything about scientific "paradigms" -- for example, in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) -- you know something about how fundamental paradigms are in providing the regulative ideals by which scientists conduct their work.

In fact, Kuhn shows that, contrary to the views about the foundations of science promoted by the father of Scientific Positivism, August Comte (1798-1857), science cannot prove its own presuppositions and depends on assumed paradigms, scientific progress has not consisted in a steady and incremental "growth in knowledge," but rather a haphazard movement that advances by fits and starts and even accidental discoveries of new paradigms.

I don't know about you, but I love to watch what happens when ideas and theories are proposed that rock the boat of prevailing orthodoxies. This is one reason I enjoy all the recent theories that question "Climate Science" or "Evolutionary Theory," for example. What I find particularly amusing (I know, it's my perverse and fallen sense of humor) is how exercised and upset the "true believers" and self-appointed guardians of prevailing dogmas and orthodoxies become over these unorthodox theories.

Appeal to authority is the weakest form of argument, just as ridicule is the last resort of bad arguments. And what is fascinating is how quickly "true believers" stoop to ridicule based on the prima facie "absurdity" of the "doubters" -- anyone who questions the authority of the prevailing wisdom of Climate Scientists (remember: Al Gore was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2007 for his promotion of "knowledge" about global warming), the Evolutionist theories of Richard Dawkins, et al., and the currently regnant cosmological paradigm of heleocentrism.

So, for anyone interested in something completely "unorthodox," something prima facie totally "absurd" and "ridiculous," but explicitly appealing to scientific "data" in ways that drive "true believers" insane, I present for your enjoyment the latest "doubters" of the heleocentric paradigm:

Darwinism and Darwin: "A Dull Plodder"

Terry Scambray, in "A Genius for Destructive Change" New Oxford Review (May, 2014), reviewed Paul Johnson's Darwin: Portrait of a Genius. Interesting review.

In response to Scambray, Laszlo Bencze writes the following letter to the editor, "A Dull Plodder," in the current issue (July-August 2014):

As Terry Scambray makes clear in his review of Paul Johnson’s Darwin: Portrait of a Genius (May), Charles Darwin was hardly the scientific giant of present-day adulation. In fact, flattery of Darwin has reached its apogee now that he is often called the greatest scientist of all time, the man who had the “best idea” in the history of mankind.

Yet the truth, as Scambray points out, is that Darwin was very much a man of his time — and a dull plodder at that. He spent eight years writing a four-volume study of barnacles. Yet, oddly enough, barnacles are never mentioned in The Origin of Species. Why? Was it impossible to discern evolutionary evidence in these complex and obscure creatures he knew so well? Instead, he devoted almost every bit of his magnum opus to tedious examples of artificial selection in domestic animals. He brushed away the glaring advantage of artificial over natural selection with rhetoric along the lines of “I see no reason why” natural selection might not have fashioned the eye or any other organ or living thing. For such schoolboy ineptitude he was roundly criticized by his contemporaries, all of whom are now consigned to history’s dustbin, regardless of their skills and biological competency.

As for Darwin having honestly formulated his theory based on slowly accumulating evidence, his own private notebooks reveal that as early as 1844 he proclaimed that he would “transform the ‘whole [of] metaphysics.’” We will not find such words in the works of Newton, Pasteur, or Einstein. Perhaps they were not genius enough.

Scambray wisely warns against laying “yet another coat of bronze to the iconic figure of Darwin.” It’s too bad Paul Johnson felt he had to take on the role of literary foundry man.

Needless to say, defenders of the reigning orthodoxy, like Arthur M. Shapiro (in the same issue), were not happy.

"Another evolutionary biologist rejects the bogus theory of Evolution"

Dean Kenyon, Emeritus Professor of Biology at San Francisco State University recounts the steps that led to his growing doubts and rejection of Evolutionary theory.


Interesting, isn't it.

[Hat tip to Alex Naszados]

The Church's objections -- yes, objections -- to Evolution

Boniface, "Evolutionary Theology and More" (Unam Sanctam, May 13, 2014):

Have you heard the refrain from conservative Catholic apologists that the Church has "never had a problem" with evolution? Or perhaps that theological objections to evolutionary theory are based solely in rigidly literalistic interpretations of Genesis 1 or are primarily Protestant concerns? This new exhaustive article on evolutionary theology on Unam Sanctam Catholicam's website will demonstrate that the opposite is in fact true; the Catholic Church was one of the first Christian bodies to object to evolution, doing so in 1860, only one year after Origin of Species. And the fundamental objection was not centered on literalism in Genesis 1 - although that was a concern - but on the question of substance and how creatures could be said to have substances expressed in 'natures' if everything was in a constant state of change. How could we speak of "being" when evolution teaches that there is only "becoming"?

Click here to read "Solemn Enthronement of Evolution" on Unam Sanctam Catholicam.

Read more >> [Spoiler alert: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., and the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger take hits in this critique, as well as Cardinals Agostino Casoroli, Avery Dulles, and Chrostoph Schönborn.]

[Hat tip to L.S.]

Does 'Evolution' disprove Adam & Eve?

"The Parent Flap: Darwinists Argue That Adam & Eve Have Been Disproven. Molecular Geneticist Ann Gauger Does Not Agree" (Salvo, Fall, 2013).

[Hat tip to JM]

Evolution: the debate that will not die

Albert Mohler, "Bill Nye's Reasonable Man -- The Central Worldview Clash of the Ham-Nye Debate" (February 5, 2014):

Last night’s debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham attracted a huge international audience and no shortage of controversy—even before it began. Bill Nye, whose main media presence is as “The Science Guy,” and Ken Ham, co-founder of Answers in Genesis and founder of the Creation Museum, squared off in a true debate over one of the most important questions that the human mind can contemplate. That is no small achievement....

The initial controversy about the debate centered in criticism of Bill Nye for even accepting the invitation. Many evolutionary scientists, such as Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, refuse to debate the issue, believing that any public debate offers legitimacy to those who deny evolution. Nye was criticized by many leading evolutionists, who argued publicly that nothing good could come of the debate....

... A protege of the late Carl Sagan and the current CEO of the Planetary Society, Nye was in full form last night, wearing his customary bow-tie, and immaculately dressed in a very expensive suit....

Ken Ham is a veteran debater on the issue of origins, and he was clearly prepared for the debate. Ham’s arguments were tight and focused, and his demeanor was uniformly calm and professional....

... The clash of ultimate worldview questions was vividly displayed for all to see. Read more >>

Then there are the following comments from Frank Sheed's Genesis Regained from more than four decades ago, which seemed so tame back then but now ly in the face of the far more urgent rumblings of the Zeitgeist:

Those scientists who work on human origins, most of them at least, find it difficult to see the human race as all descended from one couple. Men trained in palaeontology, anthropology, genetics, are practically unanimous in feeling that the frontier between animal and man could not have been crossed by one single individual or pair from whom all the existent races of men have descended.... For those not trained in any of these fields such unanimity must carry great weight.

But can we simply accept it? We lend them our ears, we cannot give them our minds – if for no other reason than they cannot give us theirs. They cannot give us the years of experience.... which have strengthened and enriched their minds, the habits grown instinctive, the reactions grown spontaneous. We can but weigh as much as they can convey to us… We can no more simply swallow scientists than we can swallow historians or theologians.

What we are hearing is the scientific orthodoxy of today, but scientific orthodoxies, like religious, have been known to change....

About the cradle of every religion, said Thomas Huxley, lie extinguished theologians like “the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules.” Surely extinguished scientists are as frequent....

[They tell us] to allow the descent of all men from one pair would go against all [proper scientific] mental habits. But belief in God, in immortality, in God-made-man are not among those habits; we cannot be certain of the judgments, even the unanimous judgments, of minds which omit such habits ....

A geneticist tells us that the emergence of a single pair is “infinitely improbable”; if we have followed his arguments we may agree, but with a proviso “unless God intervenes.” Is God’s intervention improbable? Our geneticist may ... well be irritated, even if he happens to be a Christian: God is not part of his scientific habit. To his scientific formation, so much has been contributed by the insights of men who regard God as irrelevant.... (p. viii).

[Hat tip to JM]

Scientific materialist arguments' penchant for self-demolition

Ross Douthat, "The confidence of Jerry Coyne" (NYT, January 6, 2014).

T'would be laughable if it weren't so pitiful.

[Hat tip to Prof. Echeverria]

"Evolution"

... in quotes, because the word is notoriously ambiguous. It is best broken down into component theses, as Alvin Plantinga once did in an essay (e.g. ancient earth thesis, common ancestry thesis, naturalistic origins thesis, etc., some of which there is evidence for, and others for which there is none whatsoever). But here this is beside the point, since nearly everyone seems to think of "it" as some sort of settled simplicity that any credible intellectual worth his salt must simply assume as a matter of course to be taken seriously (witness Ben Stein's well-known documentary).

As such, "it" has become a matter that just won't go away. A recent article by Carol Glatz, "Human evolution: Science, faith explore the mysterious emergence of man" (Catholic News Service, April 25, 2013), reports that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences recently brought together world-renown scientific experts, evolutionary biologists, paleoanthropologists, archaeologists, neuroscientists, theologians and philosophers to discuss the major physical and cultural changes that occurred during mankind's evolution. The article states:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Evolutionary science is still grappling with understanding how the human species, with its unique capacities for language, culture, abstract reasoning and spirituality, may have emerged from a pre-ape ancestor.

Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, declared that theology and philosophy "must not engage in a losing battle to establish the facts of nature that constitute the very scope of science"; rather, they "should ask themselves how they can find a meeting point with and become enriched by the naturalist viewpoint of science, starting from the assumption that the human being is already a speaking, questioning being," he added.

The CNS article continues:

How that speaking, questioning being emerged from a 5 million-year-long lineage of other primates is still a matter of much debate.

"It is?" responds Rorate Caeli, in "The inerrant word of God does not 'evolve'" (April, 28, 2013), adding: "Sadly, even modern Churchmen have succumbed to the false religion -- and poor science -- of evolution. I say modern Churchmen, as the Church doctors never sat around wondering if their ancestors -- Adam and Eve -- lived in trees and ate bananas."

Rorate interestingly offers two links, adding: "Que this traditional, learned priest -- who is also a trained scientist. Give them a listen, and discuss:

• Evolution: a False Religious World View Masqueraded as Science; and this:
  
• Big Bang Fizzles, Moses Sizzles

Richard Dawkins v. Cardinal Pell: debate

Richard Dawkins and Australian Catholic Cardinal George Pell discuss religion, morals and evolution on Q&A. (April 10, 2012 ABC TV):


There are a number of things I like about Cardinal Pell, including some things he has written and said about the Catholic Church and her traditions in the past. This debate, however, is not one of them.

Some may think he scores a number of clever points against Dawkins, but even then he spends more time lurching lamely into defensive postures than should ever be necessary with the likes of Dawkins, whose arguments could be shredded into confetti with a few quick strokes by any reasonably well-educated Catholic philosopher, which shouldn't be hard to find.

What would be hard to find these days, however, is a Catholic reasonably well-educated as the the relation of science to the Bible, and particularly to the early parts of the Book of Genesis. Cardinal Pell embodies this pathetic state of affairs himself, by lurching into indefensible speculations about the descent of human beings from pre-human progenitors, perhaps in South Africa, and trying to reconcile such speculations with the early chapters of Genesis by unnecessarily conceding that most of the accounts related in these texts are mere myths.

Dawkins' arguments are so lame that he barely constitutes a threat to the theist. But Cardinal Pell does the Church no service here by practically painting the Catholic into a corner of near irrelevance in the discussion. Lame. Lame. Lame.

Shucks, I suppose the Cardinal deserves some credit for being willing to go on TV and at least attempting to defend the Catholic faith.

An example of much better arguments and counter-arguments, with few exceptions, is provided by this discussion between Robert Lawrence Kuhn and Alvin Plantinga.

A most remarkable miracle

Got this from one of our resident faculty priests today, who writes: "There are lots of other links (including secular news outlets) to verify this if you do a Google search of the names involved."

Check it out. Pretty interesting.

http://www.cbn.com/media/player/index.aspx?s=/vod/SAF13v5_WS

More interesting still will be what the viewer's reaction tells him (and us, if he's willing to share it in a comment) about himself. Believers will forever appear to be a credulous bunch of fools to the unbelieving: "What won't these idiots believe!!!" On the other hand, the unbelieving will forever appear to be incorrigible knuckleheads to believers: "What will it take??? Does God have to smack you over the head with a two-by-four???" As Francis A. Schaeffer used to say at L'Abri in Switzerland, even if all the stars of the heaven arranged themselves so as to spell "Jesus saves!" there would still be those who responded by scratching their heads and remarking: "Wow! What a coincidence!"

[Hat tip to Fr. D.J.]

Stephen Hawking: God did not create the universe

Time to cash in your chips, folks. The jig is up. The guessing game is over. Science has spoken. Heh.

Don't you just love when scientists speak as "experts" about subjects totally outside their competence? Laura Roberts, "Stephen Hawking: God was not needed to create the Universe" (Telegraph.co.uk, September 2, 2010), writes:

In his latest book, The Grand Design,an extract of which is published in Eureka magazine in The Times, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”

What would Mr. Hawking think if the tables were turned? If he were to watch a Bible-thumping televangelist on a TV show insist that the world was created only a little over 6,000 years ago (4004 B.C.), based on Ussher's Bible chronology, do you think he would come to his senses and convert to Biblical Fundamentalism?

Sheesh. Why does this stuff continue to be reported seriously under the rubrics of "scientific news"? This is actually not at all uncommon. It's actually astounding how much "scientists" have to say publicly about "theology," "metaphysics," and "ethics"! Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth(1999) by the late great physicist and theologian, Fr. Stanley L. Jaki (pictured left) offers abundant and telling examples, from Heisenberg to Watson & Crick.

Frozen human embryos "not life forms" . . .

. . . declares S.Korean court: "South Korea's Constitutional Court has ruled that human embryos left over from fertility treatment are not life forms and can be used for research or destroyed, a court spokesman said Friday." On whose authority? On its own authority. Now that's really credible, is it not? This is what "public reasoning" has come to in the name of scientific advancement: the abnegation of reason.

And note: "Following the ruling, shares related to stem-cell research surged on the local market." Thusly, the "good" is defined by sheer reference to "desire" and party "interest." Dictatorship of Relativism run amok.

Young Einstein on God, physics, metaphysics of privation

[Hat tip to S.S.]

Rampant Evolutionist fideism

"Missing Link Found, 'Eighth Wonder of the World'" (Sky News, May 20, 2009) and "Scientists Unveil Missing Link In Evolution" (SkyNews, May 20, 2009).

If this were a Pentecostal revival tent meeting, it would be one thing; but it's not. It's an Evolutionist revival tent meeting, with true believers waiving their arms in the air, babbling in tongues, rolling in the aisles, and falling in dead faints in front of the klieg lights and cameras.

These supposedly sober men of science have just unveiled a fossilized skeleton of a monkey that was actually found over 20 years ago. Why precisely now, during the bicentenary of Darwin's birth? Well, there's money to be made in all this hype, of course; and, given waxing interest in such "horrors" as Intelligent Design theory, it's high time for a new springtime in the New Evolutionist Evangelization, to shore up the flagging faith of the true believers. It's not likely they're really interested, however, in discussing these facts.

Oh, no, they breathlessly tell us, they've been secretly preparing to unveil the "eighth wonder of the world"!!! "[P]roof of this transitional species [they KNOW this, of course!] finally confirms Charles Darwin's theory of evolution"!!! Darwin "would have been thrilled" to have seen this fossil"!!!!

Unconfirmed reports continue to circulate that, according to reliable eyewitnesses, Richard Dawkins became so excited upon hearing this report that he soiled his trousers.

Dubbed "Ida," the fossil "tells us [FINALLY!] who we are and where we came from"!!! Right. And the fossil is precisely "47 million years old!" The scientific researchers, of course, KNOW that the figure could not have been, say, 42.3 million years, or 24.5 million years. This is HARD SCIENCE, after all ...

If you find that you have some difficulty mustering the kind of stratospheric leaps of faith called for by these true-believer Evolutionist pulpiteers, when they invite you, with every head bowed and every eye closed, to get up out of your seat and walk that sawdust trail up to the altar of self-congratulatory "scientific" enlightenment, you may want to try something a bit less emotional, more rational and level-headed.

I recommend Mortimer Adler, The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1993).

Every bit as timely now as when it was first written, this is a remarkably well-researched book ... No, that is far too modest: the research is of breathtaking breadth, such as only a polymath intellectual like Adler could muster.

Adler phrases his title advisedly, precisely in the way he poses the problem. By focusing on the "difference" of man from non-man, he shows that the question at issue is of the sort that cannot be answered by any single discipline. Traditionally philosophy and theology have monopolized the subject of human nature; but neither philosophy or theology cannot presume to answer the question alone, as they cannot claim exclusive jurisdiction over the broad-ranging aspects of the question. Many facets of the question must be addressed by various special sciences, he shows, including biology, paleontology, neurology, psychology, and even computer science and research in artificial intelligence. But then, none of these special sciences is competent to reflect with epistemological self-consciousness upon their own first principles. That requires a philosophical mind, if not one versed also in matters of theology.

It is the single, most level-headed and most thoroughly researched discussion of the question I have seen. Highly recommended.

[Oh, then again, Adler is so gauche as to use the word "MAN" in his title. So what could he possibly know?]

Of related interest

• Mortimer J. Adler, Intellect: Mind over Matter (1st Collier Books Ed edition, 1993), a version of The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes rewritten by Adler in more accessible terms, as kindly called to our attention by Dr. Max Weismann.

The Magi, the Star, and Benedict on mathematical science

A wonderful discussion in his Epiphany homily by Pope Benedict XVI on the "intelligent structure governing the universe": Sandro Magister, "Faith By Numbers. When Ratzinger Puts on Galileo's Robes" (www.chiesa, January 9, 2009).