the Universe does not care about Ken Ham

Creationist huckster, Ken Ham, spent a good part of his recent debate with Bill Nye babbling about the made up terms “historical science” and “observational science” to lay the groundwork for his claim that the Bible's creation myth is the best explanation for the origins of the universe*. He claims that because we weren't there, we can't know. He admits the observable laws of physics still apply, but the universe only looks old because god wants it that way. So god is Ashton Kutcher, and he's trying to punk us. Great.

Put simply, science is the analysis of observations in order to answer questions about our environment. Without even knowing, each and every one of use uses science at a rudimentary level on a minute-to-minute basis every day to make decisions. From that arises the Scientific Method and from that arises all of the combined scientific knowledge of human kind. Pretty damn cool. None of that knowledge indicates any type of intelligence created the universe. Not one piece. This is why science doesn't bother with the supernatural. There ain't no evidence for it!

When asked from where everything ultimately arose, Bill Nye answered simply and honestly, “We don't know.” This answer prompted a smattering of triumphal scoffs from the creationists in the crowd. “Ha!” they must have thought, “The egghead scientist doesn't know! Therefore everything else he thinks he knows is wrong! Therefore god did it!”

The problem is, creationists of all religions (as well as spiritualists of all types of woo) conflate the term theory with the term hypothesis. The Theory of Evolution does not concern itself with the origins of life, but with the interpretation of the fossil record. Nothing more. The Big Bang Theory concerns itself with explaining the observable universe and doesn't even attempt to explain what came before. Because we can't see that yet.

Ham and other creationists wiggle themselves into this crack, plug their ears and holler “It's just a theory!” as if it was just a wild guess pulled out of science's ass. Gravity is a theory, too, folks. Science ain't like a revealed text; you don't get to ignore the parts that don't fit your world view. Just sayin'.

I can understand why primitive people believed a violent storm was the act of an angry deity. I can understand why Bronze Age tribesman looked up at the sky and thought the sun circled the Earth and that the moon was a source of light rather than a reflector of sunlight. I cannot, however, understand why three hundred freakin' years after the Enlightenment, people still cling to magical thinking like this. It's holding us back, ferchrissake! 

*This is ridiculous. The Bible's creation myth is certainly not the most plausible (and definitely not the most interesting!). If anything intelligent created this mess, all evidence points to it being a competing gaggle of petty, vicious narcissists.

 

chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga, woo! woo!

So, while dicking around on the Facebooks early this morning, I came across a post on this crackpot, Dr. Masaru Emoto, who stuck some wet grains of rice in jars and had people say positive things to one and negative things to another. According to his “results,” the rice in the negative jar rotted faster, “proving” that human thought can manipulate the physical world. This led me down a rabbit hole of comments and into chambers of the internets that just might have made me dumber for visiting.

Credulous people have passed this “scientific proof” of the power of positive thinking around the internets as if it were actually science, justifying their already woo-woo belief that their brains have special powers that just need to be unlocked. Worse, this charlatan sells “enchanced water” and other related crap to poor, unsuspecting people who just want to feel better about themselves. Their money could be better spent in Colorado or Washington. Or, you know, over at Joe's apartment over in Lowry Hill. Just sayin'.

That more than two hundred years after the publication of Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, people still cling to this kind of woo is just depressing. Of all human impulses, credulity is second maybe only to violence in its negative impact on our societies. People want to believe, so they do. And it holds back progress.

In the 1960s, the Hippies rebelled against the stuffy, Calvinist nature of American spirituality (ferchrissake, even the Catholics in this country are kind of Calvinist). This, on its face was a good thing. Calvinism sucks. However, rather than embracing skepticism and reason, they turned to other forms of “spirituality.”

Some turned to Native American religions and gave up their given names for the names of “spirit animals.” Some turned to Eastern religions and mysticism; others to neo-paganism, and still others to new-age crackpot stuff like Scientology and whatever that crystal energy baloney is that seems peculiar to the American Southwest. They passed these notions of “spirituality” on to the next generation, and 50 odd years later, skepticism and reason still suffer. Me and Tom Paine need a fucking drink.

All-in-all, they leapt from the frying pan and straight into the fire. I know it's difficult for humans to accept that we aren't special; that the universe is boundless, cold, and uncaring and that our souls are nothing more than a collection of electrochemical impulses in our nervous systems. But when you do accept this, it is enormously liberating. The universe becomes an even more wonderful and mysterious place. And you're less likely to fall prey to charlatans like Dr. Emoto.