A Misconception

A List of Unsolved Philosophy Problems

2010-09-17T16:23:00.000-07:00

"This is a list of some of the major unsolved problems in philosophy. Clearly, unsolved philosophical problems exist in the lay sense (e.g. “What is the meaning of life?”, “Where did we come from?”, “What is reality?”, etc.). However, philosophers generally accord serious philosophical problems specific names or questions, which indicate a particular method of attack or line of reasoning. As a result, broad and untenable topics become manageable. It would therefore be beyond the scope of this article to categorize “life” (and similar vagaries) as an unsolved philosophical problem. Similarly expansive “questions” shall also be omitted, as will fields (e.g. bioethics, feminist ethics) which pose philosophical problems without being philosophical problems themselves."

The Philosophy Problems here after the jump

Aesthetics

Essentialism
In art, essentialism is the idea that certain concepts may be expressed organically in certain media. Each medium has its own particular strengths and weaknesses, contingent on its mode of communication. A chase scene, for example, may be appropriate for motion pictures, but poorly realized in poetry, because the essential components of the poetic medium are ill suited to convey the information of a chase scene. This idea may be further refined, and it may be said that the haiku is a poor vehicle for describing a lover’s affection, as opposed to the more organically correct sonnet. Essentialism is attractive to artists, because it not only delineates the role of art and media, but also prescribes a method for evaluating art (quality correlates to the degree of organic form). However, considerable criticism has been leveled at essentialism, which has been unable to formally define organic form or for that matter, medium. What, after all, is the medium of poetry? If it is language, how is this distinct from the medium of prose fiction? Is the distinction really a distinction in medium or genre? Questions about organic form, its definition, and its role in art remain controversial. Generally, working artists accept some form of the concept of organic form (although philosophers like Rudolf Arnheim have added support), whereas philosophers have tended to regard it as vague and irrelevant.

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“The medium is the message”
Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase, “the medium is the message”, was first introduced in his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, and further explored in his playfully titled book The Medium is the Massage. McLuhan’s thesis, that electric-

technology modularizes our minds, whereas the river-of-story-we-evolved-in formed our minds differently, has so often been quoted and misunderstood that, “You understand nothing of my work”, has become a catchphrase for the Canadian philosopher (viz. his cameo in Woody Allen’s film, Annie Hall). While summarizing McLuhan’s argument is fraught with danger, it is safe to claim that the general understanding (perhaps not McLuhan’s intended meaning) of the phrase is that the study of media rather than media content will provide more substantive research results. An extreme version of this idea proposes that the effect of media is unrelated to its content. Therefore, any two radio shows will have an identical effect on their audiences, regardless of what the radio shows may be. If one were to seek contrast, it would not be between radio shows, but between radio and television, for example. There is substantial research demonstrating that media has considerably more effect on audiences than message-oriented artists generally concede. Nonetheless, the extreme perspective is widely disregarded. The effect media has on audiences continues to be explored, and the precise nature of the relationship between media and message continues to elude philosophers.

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Art objects
This problem originally arose from the practice rather than theory of art. Marcel Duchamp, in the 20th century, challenged conventional notions of what “art” is, placing ordinary objects in galleries to prove that the context rather than content of an art piece determines what art is. In music, John Cage followed up on Duchamp’s ideas, asserting that the term “music” applied simply to the sounds heard within a fixed interval of time. While it is easy to dismiss these assertions, further investigation shows that Duchamp and Cage are not so easily disproved. For example, if a pianist plays a Chopin etude, but his finger slips missing one note, is it still the Chopin etude or a new piece of music entirely? Most people would agree that it is still a Chopin etude (albeit with a wrong note), which brings into play the Sorites Paradox, mentioned below. If one accepts that this is not a fundamentally changed work of music, however, one is implicitly agreeing with Cage that it is merely the duration and context of musical performance, rather than the precise content, which determines what music is. The question, then, is what the criteria for art objects are and whether these criteria are entirely context-dependent.

Epistemology
Epistemological problems are concerned with the nature, scope and limitations of knowledge. Epistemology may also be described as the study of knowledge.

Gettier problem

Main article: Gettier problem
Plato suggests in his Theaetetus, Meno, and other dialogues that ‘knowledge’ may be defined as justified true belief. For over two millennia this definition of knowledge has been reinforced and accepted by subsequent philosophers, who accepted justifiability, truth, and belief as the necessary criteria for information to earn the special designation of being “knowledge”.
In 1963, however, Edmund Gettier published an article in the periodical Analysis entitled “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”, offering instances of justified true belief that do not conform to the generally understood meaning of “knowledge.” Gettier’s examples hinged on instances of epistemic luck: cases where a person appears to have sound evidence for a proposition, and that proposition is in fact true, but the apparent evidence is not causally related to the proposition’s truth.
Numerous subsequent philosophers have offered modified criteria for “knowledge”, in response to Gettier’s article. There is no general consensus to adopt any of the modified definitions yet proposed.

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Molyneux problem

Main article: Molyneux’s Problem
The Molyneux problem dates back to the following question posed by William Molyneux to John Locke in the 17th century: if a man born blind, and able to distinguish by touch between a cube and a globe, were made to see, could he now tell by sight which was the cube and which the globe, before he touched them? The problem raises fundamental issues in epistemology and the philosophy of mind, and was widely discussed after Locke included it in the second edition of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
A similar problem was also addressed earlier in the 12th century by Ibn Tufail (Abubacer), in his philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (Philosophus Autodidactus). His version of the problem, however, dealt mainly with colors rather than shapes.

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Pyrrhonian regress
Overlooking for a moment the complications posed by Gettier Problems, philosophy has essentially continued to operate on the principle that knowledge is justified true belief. The obvious question that this definition entails is how one can know whether one’s justification is sound. One must therefore provide a justification for the justification. That justification itself requires justification, and the questioning continues interminably. The conclusion is that no one can truly have knowledge of anything, since it is (due to this Pyrrhonian regress) impossible to satisfy the justification element. In practice, this has caused little concern to philosophers, since the line between a reasonably exhaustive investigation and superfluous investigation is usually clear, while others argue for coherentist systems and others still view an infinite regress as unproblematic due to recent work by Peter Klein. Nevertheless, the question remains theoretically interesting.

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Münchhausen Trilemma
The Münchhausen Trilemma, also called Agrippa’s Trilemma, purports that it is impossible to prove any certain truth even in fields such as logic and mathematics. According to this argument, the proof of any theory rests either on circular reasoning, infinite regress, or unproven axioms.

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Qualia

See also: Distinguishing blue from green in language
The question hinges on whether color is a product of the mind or an inherent property of objects. While most philosophers will agree that color assignment corresponds to light frequency, it is not at all clear whether the particular psychological phenomena of color are imposed on these visual signals by the mind, or whether such qualia are somehow naturally associated with their noumena. Another way to look at this question is to assume two people (“Fred” and “George” for the sake of convenience) see colors differently. That is, when Fred sees the sky, his mind interprets this light signal as blue. He calls the sky “blue.” However, when George sees the sky, his mind assigns green to that light frequency. If Fred were able to step into George’s mind, he would be amazed that George saw green skies. However, George has learned to associate the word “blue” with what his mind sees as green, and so he calls the sky “blue”, because for him the color green has the name “blue.” The question is whether blue must be blue for all people, or whether the perception of that particular color is assigned by the mind.

Ethics

Moral luck

Main article: Moral luck
The problem of moral luck is that some people are born into, live within, and experience circumstances that seem to change their moral culpability when all other factors remain the same.
For instance, a case of circumstantial moral luck: a poor person is born into a poor family, and has no other way to feed himself so he steals his food. Another person, born into a very wealthy family, does very little but has ample food and does not need to steal to get it. Should the poor person be more morally blameworthy than the rich person? After all, it is not his fault that he was born into such circumstances, but a matter of “luck”.
A related case is resultant moral luck. For instance, two persons behave in a morally culpable way, such as driving carelessly, but end up producing unequal amounts of harm: one strikes a pedestrian and kills him, while the other does not. That one driver caused a death and the other did not is no part of the drivers’ intentional actions; yet most observers would likely ascribe greater blame to the driver who killed. (Compare consequentialism.)
The fundamental question of moral luck is how our moral responsibility is changed by factors over which we have no control.

Philosophy of language

Moore’s disbelief

Main article: Moore’s paradox
Although this problem has not received much attention, it intrigued Ludwig Wittgenstein when G.E. Moore presented it to the Moral Science Club at Cambridge^{[citation needed]}. The statement “Albany is the capital of New York, but I don’t believe it” is not necessarily false, but it seems to be unassertable. The speaker cannot simultaneously assert that Albany is the capital of New York and his disbelief in that statement. (Moore’s explanation of what appears to be a contradiction when we assert that a proposition is true but claim not to believe it draws a distinction between what is asserted and what is implied. To claim that the capital of New York is Albany makes an assertion which is either true or false. Someone making this assertion implies that they believe it. When they go on to assert ‘but I don’t believe it’, they contradict not the original assertion but the original implication. Moore realized, however, that it is the contradiction between the assertion and the implication that gives the expression the appearance of nonsense.)

Philosophy of mathematics

Mathematical objects

Main article: Mathematical structure
What are numbers, sets, groups, points, etc.? Are they real objects or are they simply relationships that necessarily exist in all structures? Although many disparate views exist regarding what a mathematical object is, the discussion may be roughly partitioned into two opposing schools of thought: platonism, which asserts that mathematical objects are real, and formalism, which asserts that mathematical objects are merely formal constructions. This dispute may be better understood when considering specific examples, such as the “continuum hypothesis”. The continuum hypothesis has been proven independent of the ZF axioms of set theory, so according to that system, the proposition can neither be proven true nor false. A formalist would therefore say that the continuum hypothesis is neither true nor false, unless you further refine the context of the question. A platonist, however, would assert that there either does or does not exist a transfinite set with a cardinality less than the continuum but greater than any countable set. So, regardless of whether it has been proven unprovable, the platonist would argue that an answer nonetheless does exist.

Metaphysics

Sorites paradox

Main article: Paradox of the heap
Otherwise known as the “heap paradox”, the question regards how one defines a “thing.” Is a bale of hay still a bale of hay if you remove one straw? If so, is it still a bale of hay if you remove another straw? If you continue this way, you will eventually deplete the entire bale of hay, and the question is: at what point is it no longer a bale of hay? While this may initially seem like a superficial problem, it penetrates to fundamental issues regarding how we define objects. This is similar to Theseus’ paradox.

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Counterfactuals

Main article: Counterfactual conditional
A counterfactual is a statement that follows this form: “If Edison had not invented the modern incandescent light bulb, then someone else would have invented it anyway.” People use counterfactuals every day; however, its analysis is not so clear. Edison, after all, did invent the modern incandescent light bulb, so how can the statement be true, if it is impossible to examine its correspondence to reality? (See correspondence theory of truth.) Similar statements have the form, “If you don’t eat your meat, then you don’t get any pudding.” This is another clear if-then statement, which is not verifiable (assuming the addressee did eat his/her vegetables). Two proposed analyses have resulted from this question. First, some philosophers assert that background information is assumed when stating and interpreting counterfactual conditionals. In the case of the Edison statement, certain trends in the history of technology, the utility of artificial light, and the discovery of electricity may all provide evidence for a logically sound argument. However, other philosophers assert that a modal “possible world” theory offers a more accurate description of counterfactual conditionals. According to this analysis, in the Edison example one would consider the closest possible world to the real world in which Edison did not create the modern incandescent light bulb. When a counterfactual is used as an argument to justify a wrongful act, it is known as the ‘dirty hands argument.’ For example, “if I didn’t sell him drugs then someone else would have, and those drugs might have been cut or more harmful.”

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Material implication

Main article: Material conditional
People have a pretty clear idea what if-then means. However, in formal logic, if-then is defined by material implication, which is not consistent with the common understanding of conditionals. In formal logic, the statement “If today is Saturday, then 1+1=2″ is true. However, ’1+1=2′ is true regardless of the content of the antecedent in the conditional. The statement as a whole must be true, because the one way conditional only refers to a particular case, it says nothing of the truth value of the antecedent. Formal logic has shown itself extremely useful in formalizing argumentation, philosophical reasoning, and mathematics. However, the discrepancy between material implication and the general conception of conditionals is a topic of intense investigation. The two opposed camps are basically these: those who think the problem is an inadequacy in formal logic, and those who think the problem lies in the ambiguity of ordinary language. A third opinion, championed by H.P. Grice, asserts that no discrepancy exists at all.

Philosophy of mind

Mind-body problem
The mind-body problem is the problem of determining the relationship between the human body and the human mind. Philosophical positions on this question are generally predicated on either a reduction of one to the other, or a belief in the discrete coexistence of both. This problem is usually exemplified by Descartes, who championed a dualistic picture wherein the conceivability of one’s self at one’s own funeral seems to imply that the self and the body are separate and distinct. The problem therein is to establish how the mind and body communicate in a dualistic framework, or to disregard dualism in favour of monism, or materialism, which would solve the problem, as it states that the human mind is purely physical. Neurobiology and emergence have further complicated the problem by allowing the material functions of the mind to be a representation of some further aspect emerging from the mechanistic properties of the brain. The brain essentially shuts down the portion which generates conscious thought during a deep sleep, and reactivates on dreaming or waking; the ability to restore this pattern is still a mystery to science and is a subject of current research. Neurophilosophy takes this view which is not universal among neurobiologists.

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Cognition and AI
This problem actually defines a field, however its pursuits are specific and easily stated. Firstly, what are the criteria for intelligence? What are the necessary components for defining consciousness? Secondly, how can an outside observer test for these criteria? The “Turing Test” is often cited as a prototypical test of consciousness, although it is almost universally regarded as insufficient. It involves a series of questions, by which a sentient entity can theoretically provide answers where a machine could not. A well trained machine, however, could “parrot” its way through the test, and such devices have proven hard to tell from a real person^{[citation needed]}. This raises the corollary question of whether it is possible to artificially create consciousness (usually in the context computers or machines), and of how to tell a well trained mimic from a sentient entity.
Another question in this heading is an ethical one: “If a possibly (but unconfirmed to be) sentient computer begs you not to turn it off, should you listen?” This question is a convoluted one, as it delves into whether an artificial entity could have what has traditionally been called a soul: something that cannot be recovered when an entity “is shut off”, or dies. Can an artificial entity die, or will its next reboot generate an identical entity?
Important thought in this area includes most notably: John Searle’s Chinese Room, as well as Hilary Putnam’s work on Functionalism.

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Hard problem of consciousness
The hard problem of consciousness is the question of what is consciousness and why do we have consciousness as opposed to being philosophical zombies. The adjective “hard” is to contrast with the “easy” consciousness problem, which seeks to explain the mechanism of consciousness (“why” versus “how,” or final cause versus efficient cause).

Philosophy of science

Problem of induction

Main article: Problem of induction

Intuitively, it seems to be the case that we know certain things with absolute, complete, utter, unshakable certainty. For example, if you travel to the Arctic and touch an iceberg, you know that it would feel cold. These things that we know from experience are known through induction. The problem of induction in short; (1) any inductive statement (like the sun will rise tomorrow) can only be deductively shown if one assumes that nature is uniform. (2) the only way to show that nature is uniform is by using induction. Thus induction cannot be justified deductively.

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Demarcation problem

Main article: Demarcation problem

‘The problem of demarcation’ is an expression introduced by Karl Popper to refer to ‘the problem of finding a criterion which would enable us to distinguish between the empirical sciences on the one hand, and mathematics and logic as well as “metaphysical” systems on the other’. Popper attributes this problem to Kant. Although Popper mentions mathematics and logic, other writers focus on distinguishing science from metaphysics and pseudo-science.

Some, including Popper, raise the problem because of an intellectual desire to clarify this distinction. Logical positivists had in addition the aim of overthrowing non-scientific disciplines such as metaphysics and theology that purport to describe the physical world but, being unverifiable, were thought to be lacking in meaning. Others have more practical aims. In a country such as the USA, which officially attempts to separate church and state, religion is not to be taught in the public schools, but science is. So the practical question becomes what to count as science (for example, is ‘creation science’ appropriately named?).
Source : http://en.wikipedia.org

ATTN: All with a broken heart...

2010-09-17T12:59:00.000-07:00

Is this you? I know I have felt like this before and damn, I hated it. It sometimes feels like all the effort you put into that relationship was in vain. For nothing, only heartbreak... As if you were setting yourself up for it. This clip is therapy for me because I at least know that I am not the only one out there that feels this way. Hope it does the same for you guys!

The Big Bang Theory Is Just Religion Disguised As Science

2010-09-17T01:18:00.000-07:00

     A good article found on whatreallyhappened.com This article describes how the "Big Bang" theory is flawed and how the laws of physics completely debunks it. It also describes how the church capitalized on these flaws of the "Big Bang" theory to prove that a being of "Intelligent Design" does exist.

The article can be found here after the jump.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was this guy named Aristotle. Pretty sharp fellow; he thought up a lot of good things. But, occasionally he made a mistake.

One mistake he made was to toss an orange up in the air and watch it come straight back down to his hand. Aristotle reasoned that if he was moving, the orange would have flown off to one side as soon as it left his hand. Because the orange did not do so, Aristotle concluded he was not moving. On the basis of this one observed fact, and the assumption that there was no other explanation for what he observed, Aristotle concluded that the Earth does not move and that therefore the rest of the universe had to move around it.

Aristotle was a very sharp guy, but the fact is that there was another explanation for why the orange fell back into his hand, and it would wait about another 2000 years before another smart man, Sir Isaac Newton, explained just what it was Aristotle had overlooked, set forth in Newton’s laws of motion.

But for the early church, Aristotle’s conclusions fit in rather well with their theology, which had the Earth created as the center of the universe, unmoving, with the rest of the cosmos spinning about it.

Of course, there was empirical evidence available to all that cast doubt on the church-approved version of the Cosmos. One could see during eclipses that the Earth was not flat. The curved shape of the Earth’s shadow as it crossed the moon was the same no matter which place in the sky the eclipse took place. A spherical Earth was the only shape that could produce such a result. Ships sailing over the horizon clearly vanished over a subtle curve ( an observation which eventually inspired Columbus’ voyages). Nobody could explain the behavior of a Foucault’s Pendulum other than by the Earth spinning beneath it.

But by far the most troubling problem for the geocentric (earth centered) universe was the strange behavior of the planets. In an age before TV, or even books, the night sky was something every person was quite familiar with, even those who were not sailors or fortune tellers. Watching the night sky over time, the paths of the planets were easily seen to occasionally pause, move in reverse for a time, then proceed forward. This behavior was called retrograde motion. Ah, but this was a problem. The church did not have an explanation for this behavior. Indeed in the King James Version of the Bible, the word “planet” appears only once, and then only as an object to be sacrificed to.

There is a very simple explanation for retrograde motion. As the Earth, moving in its inner orbit, overtakes an outer planet, it will appear to hesitate, reverse its path across the sky, then resume its normal path. But the idea that the Earth moved was contrary to Church Dogma and to Aristotle. What education was tolerated by the church was “encouraged” to find some way to explain retrograde motion in a way that did not conflict with the religious needs for a universe centered on an unmoving Earth. Rather than re-examine Aristotle’s basic claim, the learned men of the day grabbed onto a suggestion made by Claudius Ptolemy called “epicycles”. This theory explained retrograde motion around a motionless Earth by suggesting that the planets moved in large orbits called deferents, upon which were superimposed smaller orbits called epicycles which produced a “wobble” as seen from Earth.

Epicycles were extremely popular with the church, and scholars at universities with religious affiliations were “encouraged” to refine this theory. And it needed refinement, badly, because the epicycle theory did not accurately predict what was being seen in the sky. Generations of effort was expended trying to figure out why the models did not predict the actual motions of the planets. At one point, it was even suggested that the epicycles had epicycles. No matter how many times the observed results did not match the predictions, the approved course of action was to refine the theory, but never to question the basic assumption. Those who dared point to the evidence suggesting that Aristotle (and by extension the church) were in error in postulating a geocentric universe were “discouraged”. Galileo was tortured into recanting his conclusions that the Earth moved. Giordano Bruno was burned alive at the stake for suggesting that the sun was really just another star, only close up, and that the other stars had their own planets.

In recent times, our expanding technology has confirmed that Galileo and Bruno were right, and Aristotle and the church were flat out wrong. The Earth does move. There are no deferents or epicycles, or even epicycles on the epicycles. The models of the universe which are based on a moving Earth are quite accurate and able to predict the behaviors of the planets as evidence by the fact that we send spacecraft to those planets on a regular basis.

The theory of a geocentric universe and the theory of epicycles were not science. It was religious doctrine masked as science.

The church has never really dealt with the reality of the universe very well. They only apologized for their treatment of Galileo recently and still refuse to discuss Bruno. The Bible, presumed to be the perfect word of a perfect God, still teaches that the Earth is flat, rests on pillars (Job 26:11), and does not move (Psalms 19:5-6 93:1 96:10 104:5).

It seems that some mistakes are destined to be repeated again, despite our technological prowess.

In 1929, a Cal-Tech astronomer named Edwin Hubble observed that objects which appeared to be much further away showed a more pronounced shift towards the red end of the spectrum. Scientists building on Hubble’s discovery concluded that the farther an object was away from Earth, the faster it was receding, and calculated the relationship between distance and velocity, called the “Hubble Constant” and concluded on the basis of this one observed fact and the assumption that there was no other explanation for that observed fact that the universe was expanding.

Religious circles embraced the idea of an expanding universe because for the universe to be expanding, then at some point in the past it had to originate from a single point, called the “Big Bang”. Indeed, the concept of the Big Bang did not originate with Edwin Hubble but was proposed by a Catholic Monk, Georges Lemaître in 1927, two years before Hubble published his observations of the Red Shift. The “Big Bang” coincided nicely with religious doctrine and just as had been the case with epicycles (and despite the embarrassment thereof) religious institutions sought to encourage this new model of the universe over all others, including the then prevalent “steady state” theory.

Then history repeated itself. Evidence surfaced that the “Big Bang” might not really be a workable theory in the form of General Relativity, and its postulation that super massive objects would have gravity fields so strong that even light could not escape, nor would matter be able to differentiate. Since the entire universe existing in just one spot would be the most super massive object of all, the universe could not be born.

Needless to say, this suggestion that the Big Bang could not happen provoked the same exact reaction as the suggestion that the Earth might not be the center of everything. Instead of questioning the basic assumption, great effort was made to find a way to evolve the new data in terms acceptable to the assumption of a universe spawned in a single moment of creation. A complex Cosmology theory sprang up, encouraged by those invested in the “Big Bang” to explain why the basic foundational principles of physics behaved differently in the first few milliseconds of time. The math work is impressive, as impressive as that which supported the theory of the epicycles, but it is really just a polite way of saying “The rules just didn’t apply when we need them not to apply”.

An attempt was made to prove the Big Bang by searching for the “Cosmic Background Radiation”, the presumed energy echo from the primordial explosion. and indeed a radio noise signal was picked up. Like Aristotle, and like Hubble, the discoverers of the Cosmic Background Radiation assumed the signal meant what they thought it did and could have no alternative explanation. The discovery of the Cosmic Background Radiation was then heralded as final proof of the Big Bang theory, and those institutions invested in that theory celebrated.

But just as the theory of epicycles did not accurately predict the observed motion of the planets, the Big Bang Theory turned out to be less than accurate about the radiation signal detected in space.

For one thing, there is the “Horizon Problem”. At present, the known universe spans 28 billion light years and is assumed to be 14 billion years old. (Obviously unless we actually ARE the center of the universe, it may be assumed that the universe probably extends even further in at least one direction). Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so there is no way heat radiation could have traveled between the two horizons to even out the hot and cold spots created in the big bang and leave the thermal equilibrium we see now.

When the satellite COBE was sent up to analyze the Cosmic Background Radiation, it discovered instead of the smooth featureless glow predicted by the cosmologists a highly complex and detailed structure. Yet again, rather than question the prime assumption that the signal being analyzed was actually from a supposed “Big Bang”, research was encouraged to find a way to fit the data into the existing theory, again on the assumption that the signal detected could not be from any other source. And yet, an alternative explanation for the signal was right at hand, indeed literally on all sides.

Our Solar System and planets have heavy elements (without which you would not be here) because at some time prior to the creation of our Solar System another star in the immediate vicinity exploded, creating the heavy elements and scattering them into the universe. Every star that explodes creates a planetary nebula, such as the one easily seen with amateur telescopes in the constellation Lyra. A planetary nebula is a bubble of debris in space, and given the presence of heavy elements in our own Solar System, then somewhere out in space there must be the tenuous remains of a billions of years old planetary nebula, the result of the not-so-very-big bang, viewable from our unique point of view near the center. This model of Earth lying at the center of the remains of a supernova predicts exactly the sort of structure that COBE found in the presumed Cosmic Background Radiation. But as was the case with Galileo and Bruno, challengers to the “approved” creation myths face a tough time, albeit funding cuts have replaced torture and being burned alive at the stake.

So pervasive is this bias to see the universe as created in a Biblical-consistent “Big Bang” that when William G. Tifft submitted his first article on the quantization of the observed Red Shift to Astrophysical Journal, the Journal published it because they could not find errors in it, yet still felt compelled to editorially distance themselves from the conclusions.

The conclusions derived from quantized red shift are devastating to the conventional view of the universe created in a single Big Bang, as devastating as Galileo’s first telescope was to the theory that the Earth was the center of the universe.

Georges Lemaître (like Aristotle) assumed there was no other explanation for the red shift he observed than the motion of the observed objects relative to Earth. But given the theory that the universe is expanding uniformly, the amount of red shifts would have to be uniformly and randomly distributed.

But they aren’t.

The observed red shifts in the sky are quantized, falling into discreet intervals. This is not explained by the theory that the red shift is produced solely by relative velocity. Some other effect is at work. And that means that the assumption that the universe is expanding based solely on the red shift is invalidated. Some other effect IS at work that explains the observations, quite possibly one that triggers a quantized red shift over vast distances without respect to relative velocity.

Which means the universe is not expanding. Which means there was no moment of creation, no “Big Bang” with an epicycle-esque cosmology to explain why the greatest black hole of all didn’t behave like a black hole. Which means that the background radiation mapped by COBE which didn’t quite fit the Big Bang model is probably the remnant of the stellar explosion that created the heavy elements making up that computer you are reading this on.

But the lesson for our time of just how much our society remains dominated by religious superstitions is revealed by the fact that the quantized red-shift is NOT a new discovery. The first article regarding the observed data appeared in 1976, a quarter of a century ago. Since then, scientists as much in the service of superstition as were those scientists who “studied” epicycles have repeatedly tried to disprove the observations of Tifft and Cocke, only to confirm and re-confirm the truth, that there is a quantized red-shift, which casts doubt on the theory of an expanding universe and a “Big bang” creation.

Yet even though hard evidence exists to warrant a full re-examination of the basic assumption of the expanding universe, our science classes and TV programs still promote the “Big Bang” view, just as the erroneous theory of Aristotle continued to be promoted even after Galileo proved it wrong, because one theory fits into a theology, and the other does not.

Man’s progress is not measured by the reaches of his science but by the limits of his superstition. The truth is known. But the truth is unpopular.

The assumption that there must be a beginning to the universe is merely a human invention. We believe that we see things have beginnings and ends before us, but in truth we are seeing matter change form. A particular configuration may have a beginning and an end, but that the actual matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed is an axiom pf physics. Miss April may be only 20 years old, but the atoms in her heavenly body are indeed heavenly bodies, being the remains of ancient exploded stars, and in THAT form for billions of years.

Ancients believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. But while we grudgingly admit that Earth orbits the sun and that our sun is nowhere near the center of the milky way, the idea that Earth is the center of all remains at the heart of the assumptions of the Big Bang theory. The “Bangers” describe the furthest objects we can detect (currently 13 billion light years) and from that calculate the age of the universe (currently set at 14 billion years).

But that only works if we ASSUME that the Earth is the center for all the cosmos that we can see. It is true that we are seeing objects out to the edge of our technological limits
and we are seeing them in all directions. We do not see an obvious end to the universe. Logically, the odds are far greater than what we can actually see is really just a tiny bubble in a truly
infinite universe, rather than we just happen to be that one in trillions of worlds that wound up at the point of origin for the expanding field of debris from the Big Bang (i.e. the location of the original singlularity). And if we abandon the assumption that we see most of the the universe from a fortunate position near the location of the original singlularity, then we cannot really know how large the universe really is, and the mathematics by which we claim to know the age based on the size break down completely. We truly are trying to calculate the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

PROOF THE BIG BANG DID NOT HAPPEN

Perhaps the biggest contradiction with the Big Bang Theory is the question of the singularity. The “primordial egg” had to be a super-massive black hole. Therefore no amount of “bang”, no matter how big, is going to thrust the universe out into, well, the universe.

Cosmologists eager to promote the Big Bang Theory have hit upon the “explanation” that the laws of physics, gravity., etc. simply did not apply in those first few moments of the universe. The present Cosmology theory is that the universe enjoyed a period of “rulelessness” of about 3 seconds, after which the elements formed and the fundamental forces of the universe, gravity included, were functioning as we see them today.

Ah, but there is a problem. The singularity formed by the primordial egg turns out to be rather large.

Estimates of the total mass of the universe vary wildly, given that the ends of the universe have not yet been determined. One estimate is found at http://www.rostra.dk/louis/quant_11.html of 2.6*10⁶⁰.

From the mass, you can calculate the diameter of the event horizon by finding the distance from a point mass that will have an escape velocity of c. Use sqrt(2GM/r) where M is the mass of the hole (the entire universe in this case) and r is the radius (classical), and G is the gravitational constant. Work it backward starting at c and you get c^2=2GM/r.

This works out to an event horizon light years across!

In short, at the moment in time when the Big Bang theorists claim the universe was functioning as it does today, complete with all fundamental forces, the entirety of the universe’s mass was still well within the event horizon of its own gravity well. That the well was not the product of a true singularity is irrelevant, Newton’s equation provides an equivalent gravity field for a singularity or a super dense mass in a localized region.

Therefore the Big Bang, as currently described, could not have produced the universe as we see it today. At three seconds, the time the theorists claim the universe started operating as we know it, it would have come under the influence of its own gravity and unable to reach an escape velocity exceeding that of light, collapsed back into itself.

ANOTHER PROOF THE BIG BANG DID NOT HAPPEN

For the purposes of this thought experiment, let us assume that God waved a magic wand and the universe popped into existence from a Big Bang, and that “somehow” the universe escaped from it’s own gravity well. With the entire 2.6*10⁶⁰ mass/energy of the universe confined to that small region, the temperatures and pressures amount to a super-supernova. We already know that in the cataclysm of a supernova, the heavier elements are created. That is where all the heavy elements in your body were created; inside an exploding star. Therefore, in that moment of super-creation called the Big Bang, as the universe started to operate by the rules we know today, the expanding universe should be creating all the known heavy elements.

So, how to explain the Population II stars?

Population II stars are stars with no heavy elements in them. When they explode at the end of their life cycles, heavy elements are created. These are swept up by stars that form afterwards creating Population I stars, usually with planets around them. Population I stars have heavy elements. Population II stars do not.

If the Big Bang had happened, the universe would be filled with heavy elements created in those first few moments the universe started to operate under the rules of physics we know today. There should not be any stars in existence devoid of those heavy elements. And yet there are.

The existence of Population II stars, devoid of heavy elements, directly contradicts the theory of the Big Bang.

YET ANOTHER PROOF THE BIG BANG DID NOT HAPPEN

The Big Bang is currently imagined to have occurred 14 billion years ago.

The farthest object seen in the sky by the Hubble and Keck Telescopes is 13 billion light-years distant, and is assumed to have been created when the universe was just 750 million years old. It would take at least that long (if not longer) for the material from the theorized Big Bang to coalesce into stars and for those stars to form a rotating galaxy.

But here is the problem. We are seeing that object 13 billion light-years distant not as it is today and where it is today but as it was and where it was, 13 billion years ago, 13 billion light-years distant from earth.

In other words, for this galaxy to lie 13 billion light-years away from Earth only 750 million years after the Big Bang, it would have had to travel 13 billion light years in just 750 million years’ time. That requires the galaxy in question to travel more than 17 times faster than the speed of light, a speed limit which according to the Big Bang supporters was in effect from the moment the universe was 3 seconds old.

do the findings of Tifft and Cocke undermine the redshift-distance relationship? The answer might be YES
Report on confirmations of the observations. Note the reluctance to follow the data through to a conclusion.
“The Big Bang Never Happened” (Book ad at Amazon)
“Seeing Red” (Book ad at Amazon)
Discovery By UCSD Astronomers Poses A Cosmic Puzzle: Can A ‘Distant’ Quasar Lie Within A Nearby Galaxy?

The Flower

2010-09-17T00:39:00.000-07:00

This video proves a good point. It shows how prohibition ruins society and the potential benefits that legalization can bring. Here is a little description of the animation by the uploader of the video

"The Flower contrasts a utopian society that freely farms and consumes a pleasure giving flower with a society where the same flower is illegal and its consumption is prohibited. The animation is a meditation on the social and economic costs of marijuana prohibition."

Shout outs to blackmustachecom, a youtube user that I found this video from.

Animation by Haik Hoisington

http://www.blackmustache.com

Music & Sound Design by Ion Furjanic

http://lavajumperstudios.bandcamp.com/

You can download the music here:

http://lavajumperstudios.bandcamp.com...