Administration official: "Big Bang" is just a theory

You’ve heard, I hope, about NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who the Bush administration tried to silence when he called for reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases. Cosmology, as it turns out, is not exempt from the radical anti-science agenda. The New York Times, via Atrios:

In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times.

The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose resume says he was an intern in the “war room” of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen’s public statements.

In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word “theory” needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.”

It continued: “This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most.”

Emphasis added. Draw your own conclusions, I’m feeling a bit of outrage fatigue at the moment.

Update: Phil Plait has extensive comments at Bad Astronomy Blog. Also Pharyngula, Balloon Juice, Stranger Fruit, Gary Farber, Mark Kleiman, World O’ Crap, and Hullabaloo.

Update again, for our new visitors: Folks, of course the Big Bang model is a theory, and of course it is also correct. It has been tested beyond reasonable doubt: our current universe expanded from a hot, dense, smooth state about 14 billion years ago. The evidence is overwhelming, and we have hard data (from primordial nucleosynthesis) that the model was correct as early as one minute after the initial singularity.

Of course the initial singularity (the `Bang’ itself) is not understood, and there are plenty of other loose ends. But the basic framework — expanding from an early hot, dense, smooth state — is beyond reasonable dispute.

It’s too bad that scientific education in this country is so poor that many people don’t understand what is meant by “theory” or “model.” It doesn’t mean “just someone’s opinion.” Theories can be completely speculative, absolutely well-established, or just plain wrong; the Big Bang model is absolutely well-established.

163 Comments

163 thoughts on “Administration official: "Big Bang" is just a theory”

  1. don't understand

    I don’t get it… the big bang is NOT a “theory,” there just happens to be a “theory” for the big bang.

  2. don't understand

    they turn it around on you,, they say something like “the evolution theory.” when clearly it is “the theory of evolution.” how many things are theories? a theory is everything?,,, then why aren’t I just typing, theory theory ,,, theory…theory!!!

  3. Fascinating thread. At least, until Chris(96) chimed in.

    Iraq elected Hamas? Wow! Now that’s news.

    Wasn’t one of the results of Vatican II the reconcilliation between Christianity and the Big Bang Theory? If I recall correctly, the conclusion was that big bang is consistant with both ID and Christianity.

    It’s my experience that Christians argue against the Big Bang theory only in order to give credence to the many other, less defensable and less credible tenets of their beliefs. There are too many to mention but let’s begin with the great flood and Noah’s ark. Adam and Eve come to mind as well. To be a good Christian requires the denial of nearly all scientific standards.
    Carbon dating, genetics….all false. Carbon dating says that dinosaurs were on the planet long before humans. The bible says that many of it’s figures lived to be over 900 years old in addition to the fact that the entire planet is decended from Noah and his family. Genetics would indicate otherwise.

    Reasonable people disagree.
    Irrational people disagree also, just more loudly.

  4. The motive seems rather silly. The fact of the matter is that it is a “theory” though.

    Unresolved problems like “dark matter”/”dark energy” or the negative energy accelerating the universe means that there are all kinds of possibilities in the model and reason for background radiation although a photon dominated period would definitely be implied. The nature of these early singularities have too many “unknowns” other than the fact that certain energies might need to approximate some universal or combinatory energy for the existance of some exotic forces and particles. One interesting question that is often incorrectly answered with what appears to be an obvious answer to those not familiar with cosmology is “why is the sky dark at night?” This is some evidence for an “open universe”.

  5. I think at one time is was nice to have a starting point(where is this) but now this becomes a little confusing once you understand the relationship of “particle reductionism” and “cosmological considerations.”

    So now there is a wider perspective(geometrical enhanced view) that encompasses the question. One would had to have known some of this before taking hold of the God given claim, that the universe began there at the big bang, that this was indeed just part of a wider cyclical perspective.

    Gabriele Veneziano helped here.

  6. I would prefer if Sean (95) did not try to discredit Rhymes With Silver (93)’s points of faith, particularly when he is coming across as particularly rational in justifying his non-exclusive faith in both religion and science. For the record, he stated his believe NOT that Earth was present at the instant the universe came into being (or even as of the admittedly fuzzy demarkation between the “initial” period, and the “understood” period after the Big Bang in which commonly understood rational physics takes over as a reasonably complete explanation of the underlying forces from that point forward). He was instead lining up a congruence between literal components of the holy scriptures with the scientifically accepted facts. It is quite debatable what an Earth “formless and void” constitutes, but that lies in the realm of the theological, and I feel that each individual is free to believe whatever they want, ESPECIALLY when, as in this case, he is not denying or attempting to suppress the views of others.

    That being said, in normal conversation, I tend to define myself as being about as anti-religious as possible. I so often forget that by virtue of the simple willingness to allow people their personal beliefs, I am in fact far less extreme. When I saw what’s-his-name (I can’t be bothered to scroll back to his inanity, but the individual I’m referring to was flaming Leonidas and that appears to be what brought Ben into the discussion) suggesting that all religious prelates and representatives should commit suicide in some expedient manner, I was struck by that unique pain you get when someone who, by all appearances, ought to be on my side was in fact debasing my own beliefs and lowering the level of discourse to that of a drunken brawl.

    I strongly believe that everyone has the right to unashamed belief in whatever form of spirituality appeals to them, whether they arrived at those beliefs through simple upbringing, or (hopefully) by contemplation and self-questioning. In any case, my lack of faith in any religion, afterlife or divine being (creator or otherwise) is no excuse for belittling their faith. In fact, it is the most natural thing for a sentient being to adopt some form of belief system to deal with (or more accurately, to avoid dealing with) the impenetrable philosophical/logical void that arises when you contemplate death. I myself could be accused of similar folly; I have, at a mostly subconscious level, a deep faith that we have reached the critical point where the scientific ability to extend life will begin to outpace aging, such that after several series of lifespan-increasing innovations, a person of my age may be able to live on indefinitely. Consciously, logically, I find this notion doubtful, but at some deep level I believe it anyway, as a simple defense mechanism against some of the more painful questions of a finite life.

    Where I have a problem, and what causes me to so often define myself as “anti-religion” is rather in the area of organized religion. I don’t think there is any organized religious body that is sufficiently removed from corporeal, financial, political and simple power concerns to truly represent the faith of their believers, with faiths that overtly include “conversion” figuring as the worst offenders. Religious bodies are outmoded, their original beneficial purposes are all gone, replaced by modern society, and we in turn need to move beyond them. Our society must reach a point where religious organizations are no longer afforded the unqualified right to exist; the right to function as exceptions to tax laws, anti-hate laws, free speech laws, and so many other laws of our society. Our society must sever the ties, and no longer feature special exceptions for any religion over other religions, or over the non-religious, and we must eliminate laws which are passed for the religious groups to force their codes over the rest of society.

    If we eliminate all these things, religion WILL survive. Faith will survive, and true faith will be strengthened rather than diminished by giving everyone freedom from their edicts. If your faith says to avoid alcohol, don’t seek to ban alcohol. The legality of alcohol means that your personal decision not to drink will mean more.

    But obviously the latter part of this elongated comment ties back into the discussion. Religion cannot be allowed to take precedence over science: in the long run, their attempts to block truth (or more accurately, their attempts to block the search for truth) will fail. But that doesn’t mean we should let them win any of their anti-science battles in the meantime. Education is the most important part. We can’t let them teach the biased and the unjustified as being equal to actual knowledge. You don’t have to be an atheist to see that what the ID movement is doing is wrong. We, as thinking, wondering, critical members of society, have a responsibility to fight against enforced ignorance in all its forms.

  7. gah, yer right. My bad on the messed up facts, that was palestine.

    But, regardless of that fact, I find it rather convenient that on that basis alone the united states government wants to essentially halt communications until they elect someone that the US deems more appropriate.

    It just seems like the world is reaching a critical boiling point, one that needs to be prevented if at all possible. its rather worrisome. I keep hoping that peak oil slams us soon, so that the bulk of the carnage happens at once rather than in a slew of terrible events one after another 🙂

    again, my bad on the wrong-o facts there. Got a little heated , and re-reading the post after the fact I did get a little outta hand there 🙂

  8. I’m all for adding the word “theory” after “Big Bang” — as long as we add the word “fiction” after “intelligent design”.

  9. ‘The Big Bang’ as a theory is relative to the African post-volcano holiday known as ‘Kwanzaa’; the images of the ancient African apocalyptic event are yet viewable within the contents of a mucousal oracle-bead chronicle (a tiny archaeological artifact). As is the truth with most events which happened in prehistoric times, such as the formation of the planet Earth, those can only be addressed with theories which use the ‘Big Bang’ as a tag. Images of ancient human social settings also preserved within the oracle bead are accessible to wildlife at the present time, giving such classics as the “Parallel Lives”, termed as historical ‘intelligent design’ scenarios, to other species as direct visual input transmitted.

  10. thinkingallthetime

    This is very interesting discussion. I think I got farked here. I am not as eloquent or skilled in typing about this stuff as you folks but I’d like to add an opinion and some personal experience.

    As a kid I loved both science and god. I grew up a New England Catholic with a blue collar Irish step dad. A brief trip to Hong Kong with my biological, (atheist) father at the age of 12 opened by eyes to the idea the some people are born into religions similar or alien to Christianity. I visited a Buddhist Monastery and a Taoist temple. I read a book on the world’s major religions while there. An overnight heretic I returned to my family and the States with a question that needed answering. Since there are so many people all over the world from the most primitive people, to the most advanced that belief in some faith or another.

    So, the question is, in my adolescent mind, “who is really in charge? who is right? whose story is the real deal?

    ” Really, considering the antiquity of religions like Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism, the Abrahamic religions are new kids on the block. So after spending time, lot of time, reading the Creationist mythos of a variety of religions. I spent the next 10 years of my life in a whirlwind of conversions and earnest attempts to practice different religions for various lengths of time and use my faith and my mind and my experience with the different pantheons and ideas as a laboratory, after a fashion.

    I practiced (don’t laugh..ok laugh. I was a kid)

    Protestantism, Judaism (Kabbalah) Satanism, Wicca, Druidica, and a variety of old Celtic paganism. I pondered Karma and studied Confucius and knelt with Buddhas and I whirled like a dervish. At some point continuing my search, I started immersing myself in Zen Buddhism and Shrine Shintoism which led to pure Zen with no Buddhist or Shinto overtones. At this point the practice of religion is not. It’s pure, focused contemplation for prolonged periods of time on fundamental questions often in deep seclusion. The need to master meditation caused me to seek further refinements until finally I studied Taoism and Taoist Esotericism.

    The oldest and most fundamental Taoist practice is living meditation. It is the ‘esoteric’ branch of religious Taoism. The ‘real’ Taoism is a practice where you bring the rigorous attention to self awareness and ones environment out of seclusion and isolation and sitting for 1000 hours on end, to mediation all day, anywhere, whether doing dishes, driving a car, practicing martial arts, sitting by a burbling brook or having sex.

    After dedicating myself to living Taoist meditation I practiced for a number of years with the dedication of scientist or a monk. It was all I did, all the time. I began to wake up, in stages.

    One day during a very long session of sitting meditation, everything in my being just settled and settled and settled and slowed down and my awareness became clearer and clearer and clearer suddenly, I was just fine. The persistent suicidal depression that had caused me to attempt to kill myself 6 times during my life lifted, never to return. The deep despair over the condition of life itself lifted from me. All internal desire and motivation to find some kind of external power to ally myself with and to believe in faded from me never to return. Many of my odd idiosyncrasies and neuroses and fears and attractions and aversions all faded like leaves falling from a tree. Since then I have been clear and focused and productive in life. All the things I did to myself and to others while I was mentally ill seemed to be the memories of another person.

    All I wanted was some clear sign or proof. During my teens, I was a spiritual ronin. I offered my soul for all eternity to the first god to burn a bush for me and it never happened Not Allah, not Yeshua, not Krishna, not the Horned God or the Earth Mother. The one entity I wanted most to see for myself was ‘Satan’ but he never answered any of my calls.

    After practicing meditation for many years I am convinced people need religion, the so-called opiate of the masses to deal with deep spiritual fear of reality and death, as well all the unanswered questions of creation and the universe. There is deep , deep internal need in human beings to vest belief in some kind of higher power.

    From the Fire God of the ancient peoples to modern Catholicism. People seem to need a higher power to turn to. Many , many cultures that I have learned of have at some point in its history, created some form of religion to guide a community and to provide answers, farfetched, true or not.

    What profound spiritual meditation and a near death/out of body experience will teach you, one, over time, the other instantly, is that there are no gods of any kind and there never where. Religions are a human creation and so are the mythos and lore and structure of all religions. We made them. We made them to explain things we couldn’t understand, we made religions to feel better when people die, or to explain away ‘bad’ or ‘good’ things that happen to us. It all hubris and fear folks. It really is.

    It would nice if the universe really worked that way, in one sense. Your belief in god would amount to an insurance policy for a spiritual afterlife. Whether you are the highest of the high or the lowest of the low.. be good, be nice and believe, and paradise is yours. End of story.

    Unfortunately if there really was a god of, say, one the major religions, life on earth could be sheer terror fear and submission. If you take the time to really read all the different religious bibles, they are filled with stories of various gods acting like children,, showing favoritism, making irrational laws. Demonstrating selfishness, throwing tantrums and stroking their vanity. They have been documented in these bibles as provoking wars and taking sides, making demands and threats. Life would be absolutely awful, a race to kiss ass the most. Constant fear of not being worthy enough not pious enough not good enough. Fear of sin and commandments fear of pissing of your god and getting struck down by force of nature that god manipulates to punish you. Fire, meteor, lightning, tsunami. People perhaps might become totally insane and irrational.

    Now who qualified to say which religions are real? whose gods are legitimate?

    Anyone who has done some research on religions in general can see the trend that religions and their respective practices have evolved somewhat as civilization marches on. People at once time believed in various forms of elemental or cosmological polytheism. Many remote places developed ‘hippy’ faiths the believed in spirits or powers or forces in the stars, in animals, in terrestrial objects and weather phenomena. Some empire cultures made a jump to monotheism, dispensing with ideas of demigods, spiritism or ‘the force is all around us’ type ideology to all powerful singular ruler beliefs. Allah or Yahweh for example. You have a spiritual ‘king’ of everything and he sets the rules, the thou shalls and the thou shall nots, and He holds wrath and punishment in one hand and mercy and paradise in the other hand..funny that..the resemblance in power of God and kings, all encompassing. Monotheism rules today. It’s a very attractive idea in some regards.

    However, all the behavior attributed to gods, came from the minds of the creators of the books and the ideas, and they were all too human with the potential for greed, selfishness, irrationality and the need to be recognized and to have attention. Our gods are only as good as we make them and they come with all the flaws of their creators.

    A trained, focused, disciplined and awakened mind is a more stable and real force in the world than any god. We are the gods folks, and we are getting godlike as science marches on. Its fun to watch.

    So two things.

    You can use meditation to free yourself of any and I mean any kind brainwashing, conditioning, and any need to for a religious belief of any kind.

    Now that you know this, you have to decide, do want you to keep Alice in wonderland? Do you prefer a religious fantasy based on your people’s indigenous culture? or do you want to see how far the rabbit hole goes?

    Meditation, serious serious prolonged intensive meditation, will do that to you. Once you start down a path of self awareness and self enlightenment you go on a ride. At the end of that ride, you can never ever be made or convinced of the need or legitimacy for any religion at all ever for anyone. You will acquire an unshakable ‘belief’ in yourself and your human spirit and the spirits of all humans really. You become the master of your own destiny. There is no higher power then the self and its awareness.

    You achieve a state where you accept full responsibility for the decisions you make, and the things you do. You no longer blame anything on karma, your Astrological chart and the planetary alignments, or on ‘temptation’ and the works of evil entities. “Well the feng shui of my house gave me bad luck.” Well I am prone to this behavior or that tendency because I am an Aquarius” or “the devil made me do it.” or “the angels whispered to me in my dreams and told me so it must be true”.

    None of these are ever acceptable answers for human behavior anymore. You accept good fortune and misfortune with total equananimity and balance..shit happens. There are no confessions to make. no sacrifices and rituals or prayers for this or that. You live each moment to the fullest.

    You can use meditation to overcome mental illness. and Im working on a book about meditation and defeating suicidal depression and mania.

    During the times I was the most devout and the most intensely believing in the power of religion, was about age 10, and I was a member of the Third Order of Franciscans. At 20 I was a practicing new age ‘pagan’ with an eclectic mishmash of Gypsy, Druid, and Witchcraft practices.

    The time between the age of ten and twenty was the most fearful, chaotic, unpredictable and very often violent times of my life and when I was the most suicidal and mentally ill.

    Since then, and over the last ten years I’ve spent practicing meditation, I have evolved and grown up and I have become convinced that;

    Deep down I believe and I feel, that the belief and practice of any religion is a sign of mental or spiritual illness to a greater or lesser extant, Be it subtle or overt.

    The more fanatical the belief or the zeal, the deeper and more profound the mental illness and cognitive errors are rooted. Its really a kind spiritual illness, which if it festers, can sometimes foster mental illness. I feel like I can almost guarantee that too. I might be wrong though.

    Take from this what you want.

    For what its worth all my life my favorite sciences were Astrophysics and Particle physics.

    If I hadn’t been a suicidal, homicidal, lunatic as a teenager bouncing from group homes to foster home to residential schools, might have gone on to a real college trajectory and become a scientist. Instead I ended up a philosopher and I teach meditation.

    For you up and coming scientists. You guys have to unriddle gravity. I have deep feeling it will dot the Is and cross the Ts of a lot of ideas. Its my favorite of the known forces to read about in science books.

    About Bush and the fundamentalists and the ID people. Worst case scenario. Dark Age for science, and it would not be the first time. Dark ages don’t last forever folks. Reason will win in the end. I can feel it. The Bush admin and Co. are too scared that genetics research will unravel god. So its unlikely they will try to breed the need to know and learn and question and experiment out of humans in the near future because you’d have to fund a lot more research in science to do that. Which means real science will be back.

    About that comment on Dawkins from Rob . I had to laugh out loud for that comment. I am American and I agree, Dawkins is too harsh for Americans to listen to, but I do..

    Also, what’s up with protesting over 2000 dead US side in the war? Read up on deaths figures for troops and civilians of various Allies and enemies in WW I and WWII.. we’ve lost a lot of backbone when it comes to prosecuting a war. We can use technology and be surgical and push buttons but its still war folks, people die in wars not just enemies side.

    Finally. The absolutely scariest thing in the world to me, is religion and serious, deep faith and fanaticism. You know there is a lot of arrogance in both and science and religion. However some scientists will admit when they are wrong. Their theories get disproved, or research is invalidated. Some scientists, humbled, will return to the bench and begin again. Develop a new theory. Try new experiments.

    Deeply religious people do not seem to ever contemplate the fact that their god(s) have not be ‘proven’ at all. That they might in fact, be wrong.

    Despite this lack of proof they will do things in name of faith in an unproven idea/entity/force and do amazing things in the name of that belief. Some really wonderful things have been done and accomplished in the name of religious and that’s cool and that’s great. However as long as people will immolate themselves, or blow themselves up or others, torture people or protest over religious issues.

    Really which is scarier? Bush declaring that God put him office to fight terrorists, or Muslims praying and protesting and rioting over Koran burnings or Muhammad cartoons? Seriously folks.

    The scientist in my heart thinks that is very very very very wrong and very scary. There is a whole lot of growing up to do for a lot people and lot of cultures. Come on folks, 6000 years, no one has concretely proven that god exists and yet still you believe. Its a paradigm shift perhaps, to believe me when I say that that kind of belief and behavior is mental illness, it really is. What if you folks are wrong? What if there no god and therefore Bush did NOT get put in office to fight terrorists. What if there is no Allah and your so-called jihad is nothing but the testosterone rampage of kids not getting their own way? What if Allah exists and doesnt believe suicide bombings are the way to go? What if the Universe just happened and it is not intelligently designed at all, just damn hard to fully fathom at this level in our science. What you are really afraid of, is not having any faith not having any belief not having a heaven to go to you are afraid of being all alone on planet earth with no supernatural Daddy or King to give you all the answers. You are afraid of the dark still but of especially of dying.

    Think about the consequences if there is no god. All those holy wars, the Crusades the Jihads…all for nothing. All the religious, ethnic cleansings, all for nothing There are no gods that authorize jihads and cleansings and no god to care if you do! You cant follow that line of reasoning because it means everything being done in the name of religion is madness and insanity. That also includes ‘good works’ like feeding the poor and building hospitals with donation money to heal sick people.Those are nice things to do but do them because its the right thing to do because human generosity can be a beautiful thing, but not because God compels you to or because it will earn your Grace in Heaven. Thats lunacy. You wont go there though. Thats where I went. That is how I see it.

    You religious folks scare the hell out of me quite honestly. In my fear of you, should I start a movement for all agnostics, aethists and heathens to round up all religous people and start the gas chambers? Im rightly afraid that you religious (mentally ill) people will allow your unproven beliefs to influence your judgement in courtrooms, schoolrooms and labs and laws and so on?

    You are a possible threat to my safety, my way of thinking, my way of life and my family and people that think like I do. Your beliefs or things you may be inclined to do for that belief are a threat to me and my kind, to my tribe, my clan. Should I declare a pogrom on religious people everywhere to ensure a madness, religion free future for my children? No, that would not solve anything, I would not enlighten or convince anyone that I am right that way..

    Rather I have to let you all take your sweet time coming to the same conclusion that I have, and sit back quietly and hope you dont exterminate my godless ass in the meantime, or teach my children nonscience fearology.

    In the mean time I can teach meditation to spiritually troubled people and if they are really serious about wanting to know themselves, they can take responsiblity for their own thinking and learn to meditate and practice on thier own until they become free.

  11. anonymous on Feb 5th, 2006 at 1:51 am was amongst many interesting posts in the fervid quest to find out how EVERYTHING started.

    It is an extraordinary thing that only humans seem to have the ability to completely delude themselves despite any great evidence to the contrary. I believe after 50+ years of research into the aetiology of such things, that it is the fault of language.
    Especially the great depth and richness of the English language ( not Amer-English, but English-English), which allows astounding prevarication and dissembly.

    BIG BANG and CREATIONISM and INTELLIGENT DESIGN are three very similar theories. THEORIES. Vis: not fully formed hypotheses even, merely theories. Speculation on possibility, supported by carefully selected “proof” that is often mere lower theory, propounded by adherents to that theory.

    For a disinterested observer, there is not much more justification to support any current Origins THEORY:
    Remember, we “scientifically” still have Steady State ( my fun favourite), as well as God-in-7-days, Intelligent Design, Reciprocal Exchange (oldest theory, sanest still,) and Big Bang ( biggest copout and silliest), all with strictly equal claim.

    Let us try not to confuse Big A Authority with authority.
    The second most intelligent person I ever met was Jesuit. The third a Chinese Taoist-almost to-Alchemist.
    Both subscribed to the “leaking universe” THEORY on the grounds that ALL rational scientific actual evidence supports the concept of a very practical no-waste universe – a perpetual motion machine.
    But all leave us with the same conundrum:
    If there is no “original?” god, what was/is there?

    Dear people, postulate all you will, but unless you have proof – practical, verifiable proof, your “Science” has no more valid a claim that that of the Australian Aborigine who tells you that “the universal rainbow serpent creates itself and us in a never-ending self-perpetuating circle”. Because that’s what the men from the sky told them and they should know “because they could fly, baby”(?).

    Pacem en Terra

  12. thinkingallthetime:

    Now that you know this, you have to decide, do want you to keep Alice in wonderland? Do you prefer a religious fantasy based on your people’s indigenous culture? or do you want to see how far the rabbit hole goes?

    I think you write very well.:)

    Even in the Alice’s story there is a profound shift in thinking, as one progresses, about the many possible pathways.

    Indeed if gravity was your concern, then what influence would such journies be if the photon went this way, or that?

    I wonder as well, being a layman while trying to dispell my illusions. I would have been guilty of invoking “heaven” in the God of the Gaps. Dimensional proclivities( to harmonic backgrounds).

    I would be lying if I didn’t think about this in our everyday decisions, being the master of our destiny. Why “clear color” is very important to me, and the spectrum.

    Which leaves, what “always existed” and why string theorists abhor infinities. 🙂

  13. Interesting Feb/2006 Physic’s Today had an article about Ben Franklin and the lightning rod. And of course, the religous right in his day claimed the Lightning Rod was interfering with God’s will to basically burn down your house, and all the rest of their tiresome rhetoric. Franklin, anticipated them, and claimed it was God’s desire that we know about these things. All you right wing Republican’s please enlist in the Army go to Iraq, and let evolution continue to weed out the dummies amongst us.

  14. Having googled “george deutsch nasa”, I am struck by how the press releases feature our Mr. Deutsch along with an Erica Hupp from “NASA HQ” and then some other person from JPL, Goddard or another of NASA’s divisions as if they were “primary authors” of the press release.

    It’s as if he was an expert on about 100 different types of project, able to write about them in detail. But when you go to the link provided “for more information”, you find exactly the same information as in the press release in those resources. I guess PR people do this, but plagiarism of NASA’s technical staff, who obviously wrote the sources that became the press release, as if you were involved in the project and understood the material, is still plagiarism even though you work within NASA. Each release gives both the NASA HQ phone number for George and the other HQ “author” for contact, and a number for whichever NASA section actually was involved, but is he really the spokesperson for NASA on all of these projects? It looks like he presents himself to be, but should he?
    (It’ll look good on his CV, I guess.)

    (signed) marc

  15. Here we are debating religion and science again, what you dont realize is that GW BITCH is trying to be the center of the universe. The A$$hole needs to be removed from power before he nukes the world. The stupid monkey.
    Calling abortion, MURDER in a medical building,
    BUT dont give a F@CK about killing Iraqi children.

    What a hypocrit!!

  16. IF ANYONE HAS ANY PROOF OF ANY GOD OR DEMIGOD OR CREATOR- NOW IS THE TIME TO BRING IT FORTH

    Thanks for that, LIFE_OF_BRIAN.

    I am as offended as all of you are about this situation. This is not Mr. Deutsch’s place, trying to interject his own religious beliefs into purely-scientific organization like NASA. It is not NASA’s job to corrupt its pure data with interpretations on either side of the fence. That’s our job, to interpret the findings that NASA has come upon.
    However, I would like to call your attention to the religion of Christianity, which I am a member of. I became a member of this religion at a young age, but in the past few years have investigated thoroughly many other world religions. Yet here I am still a Christian. You know why? It’s because Christianity provides the most hope for the future. It shows the most openness to the world; in fact, it encourages us to be a part of the world around us while also being pure and holy. Therefore, I live my life in a respectable manner while also enjoying all the natural aspects of the universe. It’s mind-blowing, in fact, how intricate the universe is compared to how tiny this rock we live on actually is…yet how complex the Earth is compared to how tiny humans are…yet how complex we humans are compared to…and so on and so on. You see where I’m going? Complex people in a complex world, with a pattern of repeatability and scientific glory? That’s Science, but it’s also beyond that. I enjoy being able to commit science to my mind with a positive outlook to the future. Think of how far we can go, looking at how far we’ve come! I can’t wait until I’m in college! Because of course, I haven’t made it that far yet (many people think I’m 30, but I’m actually a mentally-overdeveloped 18 year old).

    Anyways, I love both aspects of intellect. Because, of course, religion is intellectual as well as spiritual if you do it right!

    Tim

  17. Debate rages on and on. “Intellectuals” use big words to prove they are actually intellectual. “Religious” people quote scripture to prove they are religous. And yet a simple question has not been asked:
    “Do I personally want to be accountable?”

    Accountability is the driving force behind both sides of this debate. Pure scientists who blatantly brush off the idea of a creator or intelligent force behind the universe simply don’t want to be accountable to anyone for their life. It is like if I were to give you a beautiful sculpture as a gift, that gift requires taken care of or else you will have to answer to me when I come over your house and look at it. It is much easier to say. “No thanks”, and not accept the gift than to become accountable for how you care for it.

    Life is the most precious gift of all. It is very easy to say, “I just came out of primordial soup, so it doesn’t matter what I do with my life”, than to accept that everything you have is a gift, and sooner or later you will be called to account on how you have used it.

    Sadly, this view has also been adopted by many so called religous people. They resort to perfunctory worship to either appease their own conscience, or to be seen at church so they don’t lose the religous status. These types of people have lost sight of accountability, much like most pure scientists refuse it outright.

    So, we all have the same 2 choices, either we want to answer to someone for how we live, or we dont.

  18. It is very easy to say, “I just came out of primordial soup, so it doesn’t matter what I do with my life”

    Would it really?

    Funny, but I don’t know anyone (atheist or theist) who says that. Seems like a rather strange principle on which to organize one’s life.

    While I agree that religion can be a powerful moral guide in many people’s lives, the sad lesson of History, is that it has been far from a uniformly positive force.

    As Steve Weinberg likes to say,

    To get bad people to do bad things is easy.
    To get good people to do good things is also easy.
    But to get good people to do bad things … that takes Religion.

  19. Scott, Newton’s Law of Gravity was superseded by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. We use the Theory of General Relativity to explain observations like the orbit of Mercury or the time differential experienced between GPS satellites and GPS receivers on the Earth, which Newton’s Law of Gravity fails to explain. In summary, laws are not more certain than theories. Law is a historical term for what we today call a theory, nothing more.

  20. Scott,

    The Big Bang is an ongoing event that scientists watch every day, observing the recession of galaxies from us with regular telescopes and seeing light from it directly with microwave telescopes.

    “Why would we need new physics to describe what happened before and around the Big Bang time?”

    Your post focused on matter and energy, which we have a good handling of, but the Big Bang is much more than that: it’s the origin of spacetime. What is the meaning of “before” in a context without time?

  21. Pingback: rantavation 3.0 » Funny little things called news…

  22. Another Tim,

    That’s a good question, but you’ve got the answer reversed. Since atheists lack the illusion of an afterlife, they realize that nothing matters more than what they do in their lives. It’s the theist who evades accountability by imagining an afterlife that allows him or her to avoid the accountability of real life and death.

    The pernicious belief in an afterlife leads suicide bombers into sacrificing their lives to murder others for an imaginary reward. It’s also what leads fundamentalist Christian mothers like Andrea Yates, Deanna Laney, and Dena Schlosser to think they’re saving their children by murdering them.

  23. Update to this story–apparently George Deutsch is not even a college graduate! See here.

    BREAKING NEWS: George Deutsch Did Not Graduate From Texas A & M University

    Through my own investigations I have just discovered that George Deutsch, the Bush political appointee at the heart of administration efforts to censor NASA scientists (most notably to prevent James Hansen from speaking out about global warming), did not actually graduate from Texas A&M University.

    The idea that NASA let a 24-year-old journalism major, with no experience in science or technology, other than writing a few articles about video games, determine what scientists were able to communicate to the public was pretty bad. The fact that he was censoring scientific information on global warming and the big bang made things more interesting.

  24. Pingback: Coyote Mercury » Blog Archive » Made or Just Happened? Intelligent Design Infects NASA

  25. Another update–George Deutsch has just resigned, possibly over that research by a blogger I mentioned in my last comment that showed he never graduated from Texas A&M. Story in the New York Times here:

    A Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA

    George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters’ access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word “theory” at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.

    Mr. Deutsch’s resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.

    Officials at NASA headquarters declined to discuss the reason for the resignation.

    Mr. Deutsch’s educational record was first challenged on Monday by Nick Anthis, who graduated from Texas A&M last year with a biochemistry degree and has been writing a Web log on science policy, scientificactivist.blogspot.com.

    After Mr. Anthis read about the problems at NASA, he said in an interview: “It seemed like political figures had really overstepped the line. I was just going to write some commentary on this when somebody tipped me off that George Deutsch might not have graduated.”

    He posted a blog entry asserting this after he checked with the university’s association of former students. He reported that the association said Mr. Deutsch received no degree.

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