31 March 2010

Scientific literacy of USA religious

It really amaze me to find so many religious completely mistrust scientists.

If you try something, it did not work and nothing has changed. You won't use the same method again. You would try something else. That's because there is evidence that the previous method did not work. Repeating the same method over and over again will not change the outcome. If it did not work, it would not work. People know that. That's obvious. That is decision based on evidence.

How is it possible that when it is a matter of religion, things are the opposite?

We used to believe that the earth is flat. We used to believe that we are at the centre of the universe. Now both ideas were rejected because evidence just do not support such view.

When astronomers observe the stars, put the star light through a spectroscope and look at the spectrum. While similar to those found on earth, the star spectrum shifted slightly towards the red. They call this red shift. This is observable anywhere, anytime by anybody. [Granted there is a nearby galaxy which exhibit blue shift instead of red shift.] Can religious deny such observation fact? It seems to be they do. They do not *believe* that. Correct use of the word "believe" because it is not based on evidence.

Ultimately, the red shift is one of the key factor pointing to an expanding universe and hence supported the big bang theory.

Using the god hypothesis - that god created the universe and everything in it in 6 days, what does that god hypothesis gives us? Nothing. It does not explain the red shift. It does not explain why when the TV stations are turned off, you see the random noise on the TV screen. On the other hand, the big bang theory explains both the red shift and the cosmic background radiation, the direction of the latter to 1 part in 100,000. If the flood has really occurred during the time of Noah, it would be unthinkable that men at the time would be able to build an ark large enough to hold 2 of every animals on earth. It would not be done today. The size specified in the bible is hardly large enough! It is definitely impossible some 3000 year ago, both in terms of the material and the ability to travel around the world to collect all the animals. If the flood water was global, where has the water gone?

In light of these contradictions, what I would expect from the religious is that they will claim the stories in the bible are metaphorical. We should not interpret every word of it literally. You guess what, no, many still claims the bible to be true literally. OMG! (Oh, my goodness!)

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