Brain Fertilizer

There's a bunch of good crunchy stuff for New Thinkers* in this article about Einstein.

The story starts in the late 19th century, when the scientific establishment believed in an eternal and unchanging universe. This was a neat theory of cosmology, because a universe that had always existed did not raise any awkward questions, such as "When was the universe created?" and "What (or Who) created it?"

Just the question Newtonian atheists don't want asked. So they turn to explanations like "Big Bang" to exclude the possibility of God.

Maybe they don't know the history of the theory:

The Big Bang model was initially ridiculed by the scientific establishment. For example, one of its pioneers, Georges Lemaître, was both a cosmologist and an ordained priest, so critics cited his theology as his motivation for advancing such a crackpot theory of creation. They suspected that the model was Lemaître's way of sneaking a Creator into science. While Einstein was not biased against Lemaître's religious background, he did call the priest's physics "abominable." It was enough to banish the Big Bang model to the hinterlands of cosmology.

Well, what was Einstein's take?

Gravity seemed to be incompatible with an eternal, unchanging universe, and Einstein certainly had no sympathy for the alternative view of a collapsing universe, stating that: "To admit such a possibility seems senseless."

Einstein was reluctant to invoke God, so his solution was to fiddle with his theory of general relativity, adding an antigravity force alongside familiar gravity. This repulsive force would counteract gravity over cosmic distances, thereby maintaining the overall stability of the universe. There was no evidence for this antigravity force, but Einstein assumed that it had to exist in order to provide a platform for eternity.

Yep, you got that right. Without any proof, mathematical or otherwise, he postulated. That's Science! for "made crap up", and waited for other scientists to find more evidence to prove or disprove his idea. God, however, is right out. Even if it is perfectly in line with the theories of quantum mechanics...

But Einstein was brilliant, and even crap he just makes up has got to be true, right?

However, in 1929 Einstein was forced to eat humble pie. Edwin Hubble, working at Mount Wilson Observatory in Southern California, showed that all the distant galaxies in the universe were racing away from one another as though they were debris from a cosmic explosion. The Big Bang model seemed to be correct. And, while it would take several decades before the theory was accepted by the scientific establishment, Einstein, to his credit, did not fight on. "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened," he said, and even called his repulsive force the biggest blunder of his career.

But there's a twist in the tale:

If gravity pulls everything together, then the expansion of the Big Bang should be slowing, because all the receding galaxies would be attracted to one another. In 1998, however, when astronomers tried to measure this deceleration, they were astonished to find that the universe is in fact accelerating. The galaxies are apparently moving apart faster and faster as time passes.

What is the best explanation scientists can come up with? The existence of an antigravity force. Theorists call this repulsive effect "dark energy," but it is exactly the sort of force that Einstein posited to maintain the stability of the universe. Antigravity is now back in fashion some seven decades after he abandoned it.

Yep, we're back to "making crap up without any real evidence". Don't get me wrong: you have to have a working theory in order to help direct search for more evidence and greater understanding. You can't just gather data and expect it to make sense. You have to sort it into "supporting" and "undermining" groups based on your paradigm. So for all my joking around about "making crap up", I do understand the necessity of it.

But Science! adherents** would have you believe that "current theory" is more than just theory, that it has been proven there is no God, that the universe has been demonstrated beyond doubt to be clockwork and automatic and needs no creator. No. Emphatically no. We are just starting to understand some of the aspects of the universe, and our theories are rudimentary at best, if not outright nonsense. But ya gotta start somewhere.

The problem for Science! adherents is that to look at all the current evidence and postulate the idea of dark matter as being the only rational explanation is pretty much equivalent to the ancient Greeks seeing lightning and thunder and assuming Zeus is angry at Hera. It's a working assumption that works in an extremely limited understanding of the universe.***

Hat Tip to Dean. (I didn't have to register for the NYTimes article using his link).

*those arguing against a Newtonian, mechanistic, diety-exclusionary view of the universe

**the atheists who assert science has disproven the possibility of God, the people who find a "God with no beginning or end" less possible than a universe with no apparent origin, those who have taken science for their "god", whether they admit it or not.

***anyone who thinks the scientific understanding of the universe is still anything but "extremely limited" isn't paying attention to the evidence.