Colbert

I noticed that Jesus managed to go about his business with minimal third party collateral. He tossed some money changers around, but he did't stop them changing money, in fact, its unclear exactly how much weight he really tossed around. Otherwise he managed to go about his kingdom of god without hurting or destroying people, without leaving sadness and/or destruction in his wake. Pretty elegant for the most well known political rebel before Che Guevara and the Founding Fathers.

What happened to this technique? pretty sordid history from Augustine onward on that whole application of force, and breaking people down to save their souls thing.

Paganism, And Christianity. Dates and Theory.

While this guy isn't exactly tactful, or even necessarily correct on where all these names come from, he does bring up a good point. So much of what we think of Christianity today was co-opted from pagan rites. The best known, and most beloved is the Christmas tree. The tree was originally a druidic tradition, meant to celebrate mother nature. Ever wondered why Christmas falls when it does? nobody knows the exact age or birthdate of Christ, so why celebrate it then? ever noticed how it sits right on the winter solstice? yet another pagan ritual grabbed for PR in Christianity's early days. The list goes on, incense was a largely pagan tradition before it was used by christianity.

Also one last thing, a "theory" is a set of observations or processes which we have a solid evidence base or logical train of conclusions that heavily suggest they are true. What separates it from a law is scope applicability, a law is simply an observation and is undeniably true, a theory explains things and could potentially be false, but the observations it rests upon must be true.

Seriously, where do you dig these people up? Every time I see one of these wackos like red crossed out man here, it just drains a little more of me and replaces it with cynicism and bad attempts at dry wit.

When in Rome, Hope the Ancient Romans are Gone.

I don't think people often do enough justice to what a political rebel Jesus truly was. he didn't come from a position of power politically, he didn't have laws (the laws of nations anyways) or armies (human armies anyways) backing him up, he just went out there and stuck it to the Romans because Rome was the America of then. Those guys you love to hate they were oppressive and hegemonic. Can you imagine how happy he'll be to see those guys are gone and now we're here?

Saturday morning breakfast cereal for everyone

I wouldn't feel right without leaving some Saturday Morning Breakfast cereal lying around, so here's a relatively new one.

has anyone ever really considered what a weird dude Jesus really was? People are hungry? He decides to bust the rules of division instead of like, enriching Palestinian farm land. Got some free time? goes around touching people's feet and washing them. About to endure brutal death at the hands of an indifferent empire when you supposedly have the entirety of heaven on speed dial? "Nah guys, it's cool, I got this.", he couldn't have thought of something... i dunno... less torture to go through for his kicks and giggles? Not to mention, a crown of thorns is really just tacky with robes. Personally I don't find this comic so far out of the range of possibility.

Commedy, Social Message, and Deadpan Snarking. What's not to Love?

Going along with that little West Wing clip with snarky crap I wish I could get away with,here's Russel Brand taking on the Westboro Baptist Church, those wonderful people who trash tolerance and love, and funnily enough get none. Take 'em down a peg for me please Russel.

They should've known better than to try and take on a guy who could likely beat Jesus in a Jesus-Look-Alike contest.

MC Hammer time:

Have a giggle on the house with some mormon doctrine put to that most famous of 90's songs. man why did the 90's stop?

Alan Alda

Speaking of Alan Alda in a post or two back, I though I should do some credit to the man I count as my hero in life. He gave this brief essay in response to the question, "What have you changed your mind about":

Until I was twenty I was sure there was a being who could see everything I did and who didn't like most of it. He seemed to care about minute aspects of my life, like on what day of the week I ate a piece of meat. And yet, he let earthquakes and mudslides take out whole communities, apparently ignoring the saints among them who ate their meat on the assigned days.  Eventually, I realized that I didn't believe there was such a being. It didn't seem reasonable. And I assumed that I was an atheist. 

As I understood the word, it meant that I was someone who didn't believe in a God; I was without a God. I didn't broadcast this in public because I noticed that people who do believe in a god get upset to hear that others don't. (Why this is so is one of the most pressing of human questions, and I wish a few of the bright people in this conversation would try to answer it through research.) 

But, slowly I realized that in the popular mind the word atheist was coming to mean something more: a statement that there couldn't be a God. God was, in this formulation, not possible, and this was something that could be proved. But I had been changed by eleven years of interviewing six or seven hundred scientists around the world on the television program Scientific American Frontiers. And that change was reflected in how I would now identify myself. 

The most striking thing about the scientists I met was their complete dedication to evidence. It reminded me of the wonderfully plainspoken words of Richard Feynman who felt it was better not to know than to know something that was wrong. The problem for me was that just as I couldn't find any evidence that there was a god, I couldn't find any that there wasn't a god. I would have to call myself an agnostic. At first, this seemed a little wimpy, but after a while I began to hope it might be an example of Feynman's heroic willingness to accept, even glory in, uncertainty. 

I still don't like the word agnostic. It's too fancy. I'm simply not a believer. But, as simple as this notion is, it confuses some people. Someone wrote a Wikipedia entry about me, identifying me as an atheist because I'd said in a book I wrote that I wasn't a believer. I guess in a world uncomfortable with uncertainty, an unbeliever must be an atheist, and possibly an infidel. This gets us back to that most pressing of human questions: why do people worry so much about other people's holding beliefs other than their own? This is the question that makes the subject over which I changed my mind something of global importance, and not just a personal, semantic dalliance.

Do our beliefs identify us the way our language, foods and customs do? Is this why people who think the universe chugs along on its own are as repellent to some as people who eat live monkey brains are to others? Are we saying, you threaten my identity with your infidelity to my beliefs? You're trying to kill me with your thoughts, so I'll get you first with this stone? And, if so, is this really something that can be resolved through reasonable discourse? 

Maybe this is an even more difficult problem; one that's written in the letters that spell out our DNA. Why is the belief in God and Gods so ubiquitous? Does belief in a higher power confer some slight health benefit, and has natural selection favored those who are genetically inclined to believe in such a power — and is that why so many of us are inclined to believe? (Whether or not a God actually exists, the tendency to believe we'll be saved might give us the strength to escape sickness and disaster and live the extra few minutes it takes to replicate ourselves.)

These are wild speculations, of course, and they're probably based on a desperate belief I once had that we could one day understand ourselves. 

But, I might have changed my mind on that one, too.

West Wing Style:

One of my all time favorite TV series, the West Wing, today offers us this little gem. If you think you've ever ranted and raved, you might want to sit down for this. For context, martin sheen there is playing a fictional democratic president, who nonetheless has always been religious. That's all fine and good until his secretary, perhaps the person he was closest to in the whole west wing, gets hit by a drunk driver, after the service he lets this one fly: 

I mean, I've been mad before, but never Latin Mad. 

The latin incidentally translates to: 1:10 - "Thank you, Lord"  and 2:32 - "Am I really to believe these are the acts of a loving god? A just god?" a wise god? To hell with your punishments! I was your servant here on earth. And I spread your word and did your work. To hell with your punishments! To hell with you!" 

Its a powerful piece of television. 

Bonus: Martin Sheen saying everything I've ever wanted to in exquisite style to boot: 

Always remember kids, the president doesn't like it when you don't stand, and he will use his religion to tear the kneecaps off yours. 

Tom Lehrer's Quick How-To on Catholicism

Seeing as final's week is here, and both procrastination and important work are here in staggering amounts , the rest of these post's will likely be short, quick, and not at all sciencey. With that being said, here's something to make you laugh, courtesy of one of the funniest mathematicians of all time, Tom Lehrer, who was once reviewed as having his muse "not fettered by good taste"

For your consideration, The Vatican Ragtime:

I have to admit, the line about the friday-meat inconsistency makes me laugh more than it should.

and for funsies here's some of his other sorta related stuff, including his Sunday Plans and the love of his life:

This man ranks up there with Alan Alda and Neils Bohr as one of my heroes.

Instant Depression, Just Add Fundamentalism

This goes outside of my regular scientific bent towards this blog, but I've found what may be the single most depressing anything christian anywhere. It's a site known as "Fundies Say the Darndest Things". Welcome to the best quotes from the wide world of ignorant debate, bigotry and hatred.

http://www.fstdt.com/QuoteArchives.aspx?Archive=1

Just hit the "Random Quotes" link up top and enjoy the whirlwind of hatred and ignorance. To believe that just some small portion of a "christian" population believes this is all the fuel my cynicism will ever need. The list of people who can and will be offended, horrified, and/or shocked include: people with liberal politics (myself included), the entirety of the LGBT community, women, people of African or Middle Eastern descent, women again, anybody who knows anything about science (evolution seems to be a particular sticking point, as is ussher's chronology), and atheists and agnostics (myself included under the agnostic territory).

If you keep reading though occasionally you come across extremist feminists, or extremist socialists or even extremist atheists. To be sure the christian population isn't the only group with these kinds of extremist views. in fact, i don't even know that you can cal it "extremist" as simply opposed to another view. I know it sickens me to think of somebody telling somebody else that their way of thinking is offensive or ignorant, but what happens when the right to think as you wish defends those who hate and those who are misguided and closed-minded?

On another note, go watch Inherit the Wind with Spencer Tracy and Gene Kelly. Great movie on similar ideas.

(Ninja edit: some of the quotes could be extremely offensive to Catholics as well, forgot about that.)

Ussher Chronology or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Radiation

Speaking of the overlap between scholarly and ecumenical pursuit, sometimes it does't fly too well. The one that comes most readily to mind is the various chronologies of the world and creation that have been put forth by various figures. So pretty important names have tried to chronologically establish just when it was genesis 1 happened, people like Newton, Kepler, and St. Bede. Perhaps the most famous of all these attempts at putting calendar dates to biblical creation is that of Bishop Ussher, a 17th century bishop, who postulated that based on names times and dates available in the bible that creation began on Sunday the 23rd, 4004 BC.

The problem is that that's physically impossible.

Let us for starters talk about the age of the universe. OF course any discussion about age, is a discussion about time, but one of the fundamental discoveries of late 19th century, early 20th century physics, is that space and tie are fundamentally connected (a la Einstein).Like I've mentioned before, the universe likes things to stay below a certain speed, making things go shooting off towards infinity in terms of mass and energy in the relevant reference frames. This speed of course, is the speed of light. Having a fixed speed of light does some interesting things  seeing as we need light to well... see, the light emitted by an object takes some time for to travel to us and for us to see it. in most cases this is a relatively short delay. going from the sun to the earth would take 8 minutes at light speed, so any light traveling from the sun takes 8 minutes to get here, meaning the light we see the sun by was created and shot off towards here 8 minutes ago. This is a pretty well known fact. Going further we can apply this same logic to the stars and other objects in space. We can prove using a little trigonometry, or the the properties of the shift of the light spectrum to prove that stars in the night sky are incredible distances from us. But because we can see them, it means that light has traveled from these places all the way here, at the speed of light, and however long the a distance that was, has a specific time it would take the light to travel that distance ( we simplify these distances into light-years, or the distance light can travel in one year, meaning a distance of 15,000 light years means it took light 15,000 years to cross that distance). Long story's short with all this, because we can see the light emitted from hundreds of thousands of light years away, it means it must have traveled all that time, and the universe could not possibly be 6000 years old as Ussher would have said, as we would never see  any light from anywhere more than 6000 light years away.

So how old is the universe actually? to answer this question, we are led by the above facts to a startling conclusion, the further we look out into space, the longer it takes light to traverse that distance, and therefore the older we are seeing things. So instead of asking, how old is everything? we can ask, how far away is it all?

This is the Hubble Extreme Deep Field. Each of those dots of light? they're Galaxies. They contain millions of stars bigger or smaller than our sun. And to think heights make my head spin. Image courtesy of wikimedia Commons

That right there ladies and gentlemen, is the Hubble Extreme Deep field, a photo taken by aiming the Hubble space telescope at a relatively dark chunk of nowheresville deep space, messing with the focal length quite a bit, then opening the shutter for 23 days to gather all the light pouring in. Based on the Light these things give off, they're more than 13.2 billion light years away. This is about as we can see optically with the telescope power available to us, but this means the universe is at least 13.2 billion years old. Bishop Ussher was only off by several orders of magnitude. But it gets better.

This is the result of the WMAP experiment. In essence what you are staring at is a picture of the universe relatively soon after the big bang did its thing. Image courtesy of wikimedia commons.

While we can't necessarily "see" any farther than Hubble's Extreme Deep Field Exposure at the moment, we can do other experiments. This is the Cosmic Microwave background. Its a little technical, and I'd need to do more research to explain it perfectly, this is what was left over from the big bang essentially and it's characteristics reveal it to be by far the some of the oldest anything in the universe. In fact using this and some of the laws of cooling as they apply to the big bang has allowed us to put the age of the universe at around 13.8 billion years old plus or minus around 37 million years! Because I'm pretty crappy at explaining this, here is the details of it in all its wikipedian glory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe

The obvious next question is: well then how old is the earth? Ushers chronology could be made to explain just the earth. but here Ussher falls short as well from a different type of radiation. 

Living things as you might now are by in large made up of carbon. The problem is not all carbon is created equal, some carbon is created as what's known as an isotope, meaning they have extra neutral "hangers on". In carbon's case, the most typical thing to find is that it has two extra neutrons, and exists as something called carbon 14. Living things tend to create and store carbon 14 in their bodies during their lifetime, but when they die these processes tend to stop and the amount of carbon 14 becomes fixed and starts to decay. Because of the properties of radioactive materials, the rate of decay of carbon can be categorized under one important measure, half-life. Half-life is essentially the amount of time it takes for half of the radioactive isotopes to decay (lose their radioactivity, extra particles, and energy). This half life stays constant no matter what, so by knowing carbon 14's half life, and knowing what ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 (the normal version of carbon) you can expect in plants or other organic matter, it becomes possible to "count backwards" and figure out how long something would have to decay to become like it currently is. We can use this to establish a pretty good age on old organic matter on the earth. the upper end of this age testing scale? 60,000 years ago, until natural amounts of carbon 14 in the air start messing with things. And this is just organic matter, we can perform all sorts of similar radioactive dating tests with rock and meteorite samples the world over, knowing what to expect in terms of radioactive elements in newly formed rock. doing this we can place the age of the earth 4.54 billion years ago plus or minus 50 million years!

so Ussher's chronology as a valid scholarly crossover between the christian traditions and our understanding of physics? Ussher loses out big time, and we can prove he was wrong by huge orders of magnitude in almost all cases.

The Magnificent Albertus Magnus

So here's something I did not know, apparently I have a patron saint, one Albertus Magnus.

Albertus Magnus, saint, genius extraordinaire, scientist decade ahead of his time, and  apparently a  big fan of Cincinnati   centuries before any European even knew that was a thing. Image courtesy of wikimedia commons. 

He is apparently the Patron saint of natural scientists (chemists, biologists, physicists  astronomers, etc) and the students of said sciences, medical technicians... and Cincinnati, Ohio. I spent about a minute after reading that trying to find a connection, it's hard enough believing Ohio is blessed by anything. Going over his life, apparently he was the teacher of one Thomas Aquinas, a familiar name, during his life he was a geologist, zoologist, logician and chemist. He was an avid translator and critic of Aristotelian physics, going so far to translate them out of Arabic in a time when the crusades were the form of recreation for the clergy and nobles. He was a Dominican and bishop as well, and one of only 35 people in the history of the Catholic church to be endowed with the honor Doctor of the Church. Apparently he was also a scholasticist, a school of medieval thought focusing very heavily on logic. Seems like a cool dude.

Are We Sure God Loves Physicists?

There comes a time in everyone's life where you have to sit back and reflect on things. For me today that consisted of the stunning realization that I spent most of today trying to rationalize the surface integrals of square loop-magnetic field interactions so as to properly get magnetic flux and determine the magnitude of the resulting ring current. If that made no sense to you, imagine how I felt sitting around trying to figure it out in my head. Throw on some obnoxious second order differential equations to try and figure out the characteristics of series of capacitors and inductors, then applying that knowledge to capacitor-inductor-resistor circuits and it became very clear to me why it is I don't have the Nobel prize. Also why it is physicists always seem to have the crazy hair, i suspect some of their brains may have exploded.

Anyways, relevant SMBC:

God's sense of humor is a little different I guess. And a little dickish.  Guess where credit to for this. 

Somebody once said god was subtle, and while I guess I can agree with that to the furthest extent my agnosticism alows, that doesn't mean he isn't frustrating and difficult I guess.

After Break Bonanza: Expading the Nerdom of God

I know this one is usually outside my purview, as i don't usually do the whole programming thing, but i thought i would go ahead and post an XKCD on programming the universe. For those who don't know, LISP and Perl are two computer languages (the code your computer reads and runs). LISP is the great grand-daddy of coding language, developed in 1958, exceedingly complex, very sturdy and logical, and still in use today. Perl on the other hand is much more modern, much more simple, and some would argue, a little more ramshackle. So what would god write the universe in?

For once i get to say this one is not from SMBC, but instead all credit and rights go to Randall Munroe at XKCD.com

After Break Bonanza: I Just Find This Funny to be Honest

Speaking of New Religious Movements, what do you suppose mainline Christianity will look like in millennium  2? 3? we sure wouldn't recognize first century Christianity today, it would be a far different place. Here's SMBC's take on it.

Guess

After Break Bonanza: Logic Disputes

Personally i want to see the pope's cage match.
Bet you can guess this came from Zach Weinersmith over at SMBC without me telling you. 

In all the years that people have been discussing god, theology and Christ  it is notable that we have precisely no accepted proof on the nature of god. What gives? You would think that after some thousands of years the logic or mathematics of this would have become one way or the other at least. I mean, shouldn't something so fundamental show up in the most fundamental of all of things, logic, math or physics? I suppose to me, that  none of these disciplines can offer me a solid argument on what's going on up there with beardy is a pretty troubling thing. Christ lived, and was real (at least that is the accepted theory), yet the people of his time couldn't figure him out. So what gives? Why isn't this much simpler? And what would happen to all of us i we knew one way or the other? In continuing with the feast for thought I guess.

After Break Bonanza: Relativistic Rocks

There are fundamental Constraints on the universe. You probably know the most famous on, the speed of light. try as you might you cannot get something over the speed of light, the reasons are a little complex, but in essence whatever you are "pushing" trying o get faster, will actually gain mass as you do it (making your "push" less effective) and time for that object will slow down, and space as that object would see it, expands.  This was essentially Einstein's genius, was coming up with the way this worked. Other things are fundamentally limited too, for instance we can only know where and how fast an object is to a certain tolerance, most notable when dealing with small objects. any attempts to figure one out exactly are doomed to failure and mess up the other value so incredibly completely that we lose hold of the thing entirely. But god by definition is limitless...

SMBC, Zach Winersmith, legal rights all belong to them, yadda yadda yadda

So then how do the physics of such a thing work? physics as we know it is constrained, but god is not. What happens to the physics of a situation that is subject to god's unlimited nature? For instance in the above, by creating something infinitely massive, you essentially destroy space-time. By going faster than the speed of light you can manage to violate causality, by disobeying quantum effects... well actually the universe makes more sense doing that but a great deal of technology would fail. More food for thought.

After Break Bonanza:Theodicy

So i asked in my last post how we can rationalize god with all of the (sometimes cruel) elements of the universe, and i think once again Zach Weinersmith gives a pretty decent way of explaining it with side trips into what can only be described as "theological gallows humor"

It sometimes surprises me at all that we try analyze our theology more closely, you'd think it would give the same response as trying to touch something hot when you were a kid. You learn not to do it again. Courtesy of SMBC and Zach Weinersmith

I'm gonna kinda go out on a limb and justify this by calling logic a branch of math.

After Break Bonanza: Why?

Given plenty of time over break to regain a horrid sense of humor, I'm going to start this off with this

God's taking his children leaving home pretty harshly apparently. Image Courtesy of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and for the umpteenth time all rights go to Zach Weinersmith.

All jokes aside however, the common judeo-christian theological standpoint places a whole lot of responsibility directly at god's feet for the various things of this universe, explained or not. For example, why is only the tiniest imaginable sliver of the universe suitable for humans? Could've at least mentioned that during genesis or something, seems appropriate to me. Also, the whole "god moves in mysterious ways" thing doesn't really satisfy me in terms of the whys of things like disasters, or the various extremely hard to decipher things in the universe. I mean, earthquakes floods and thunder and lightning seems pretty old testament punkish to me, and at least throw us a clue on some of the inner workings of the universe man. Just food for thought i guess.

Georges Lemaître's Big Pyrotechnics

Jumping forward a little in the history of physics comes the name Georges Lemaitre. Georges Lemaitre was a catholic priest that you would perhaps know best for that well known explosion: the Big Bang.

Georges Lemaitre at work at the second holiest place for him, a black board.  Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Georges was born in Charleroi, Belgium, in 1894. Growing up he was interested in both science and theology, but before he had a chance to act on either of these things, he and the rest of Europe were greatly inconvenienced by the first world war. After serving as an artillery officer and witness to the first poison gas attack in history, Georges got himself ordained and studied theoretical physics abroad, eventually obtaining his PHD in america from MIT no less. He continued to be both priest and professor the rest of his life even serving as president of the pontifical academy of sciences from 1960-1966.

The work that made Georges famous occurred in 1927 when he published a paper on solutions of systems of general relativity for expanding universes. Meaning he went to the drawing board, said "huh, wonder what happens if the universe is expanding" worked with general relativity a bit, and came up with a good idea of what was going on. What he concluded was of course, that if the universe was expanding, then rewinding the clock meant that at some point in the past the universe ad been smaller, going back even further meant that at some point the universe had been even smaller, and if you kept going back, at some point the universe had been a speck of infinitely small size and incredibly density and energy. This revelation was ignored. Supposedly he was told by no less than Einstein that his math was perfect, but his physics was terrible.

This was up until another (astro)physicist/astronomer going by the name of Edwin Hubble (yeah the guy they named the telescope after), proved conclusively through extensive examination of distant galaxies that they were indeed all flying apart at a speed proportional to their distance.

This was enormous. Lemaitre had in essence discovered the beginning of time! What's more he in essence had created an incredibly valid theory that meshed with both sides of his personality, it worked for him theologically (indeed perhaps theology inspired him to think of a beginning of time in the first place) and it fit Hubble's observations accordingly. Interestingly enough though, when pope Pious XII tried to call this proof of the catholic faith, Lemaitre tried to separate the religious and scientific portents of the theory, working with theologies instead of validating them.

Waiting on the other apple to drop.

He's only staring because he's concerned you don't understand the gravity of the situation.  He's concerned he doesn't either. Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons.

Issac Newton was born on December 25th, 1642. Funny enough the man could tell you all sorts of things about being gifted. He was born and raised an insecure boy, owing to parental abandonment ( his mother remarried to a minister of all the ironic things), something that would leave a mark on his psyche the rest of his life. His life was relatively uneventful, and found being a farmer's son incredibly dull so a relative recommended him to a university (Trinity College), where he lived on a sort of work study program. While trinity college essentially taught some of the the same things you could have heard from Aristotle  centuries earlier, by this time the heliocentric model of the solar system was fell founded and regarded in upper level European academic circles. this set something off in newton and he began to imagine the universe as a giant machine, impersonal and obeying rules, not unlike a clock. It is a viewpoint physicists today still cling too with reverence. It was relatively early in his life that newton started coming up with the ideas that would start define mathematics and physics for the next century, it was during these initial college years. Returning to trinity though as a fellow, he was required to become an ordained priest, something he was loathe to do on account of certain theological revelations that would continue his legacy.

Newton seemingly revolutionized every field he put his hands to in his time at Trinity. He is credited with independently developing the techniques of differential and integral calculus (quite independently of Leibniz). He invented most of the principals of dynamics and mechanics in physics (the rules for regular moving objects). He is credited with contributions to optics (remember those cool prisms?) and other amazing things. these things helped newton pass the time until his later life where his theological ideals caught up to him.

Newton was a prodigious writer of theology as well. He wrote numerous tracts on the literal interpretation of the bible, and works criticizing and doubting the trinity as a religious object. Newton's views were so radical and heretical it is easily questionable as to whether or not he even believed in the divinity of Christ at all. We do however know that he did as a part of his physical revelations believe in some sort of god who had created it. Newton was also an extreme occultist,

One of These Things is not Like the Others

Very busy this week so I figure I'd leave you with more crappy jokes. 

Credit and Copyright and all other sorts of fun legal ownership goes to Zach Weinersmith over at SMBC. Of Course

And as much as I should be apologizing for this, it does make a very legitimate point. Physically, the laws of the universe are sublime and, while initially impenetrable, beautiful in their simplicity. It seems strange to perhaps affiliate things like obtuse and arbitrary moral codes, somewhat bewildering or confusing in their catechisms, to what is metaphorically a symphony of perfect logical interaction of matter and energy. Put another way, doesn't seem a little bit funny in religion, that whoever penned the simple expression for gravity, f=GMm/r^2, decided that also that homosexuality is not okay? One is this statement of amazing universal equality and power, another, this arbitrary law of social conduct, it just.... doesn't seem to mesh. 

Perspective

For what must be the millionth time, All Copyrights to Zach Weinersmith over at SMBC. 

Seeing how wordy my last post was, I'll try to keep this one simple. Perspective is weird.

Determinism, Dear Augustine

A brief aside on broader concepts.

Reading about Augustine, his seminal philosophy is the idea of predestination, from start to finish what is going to happen to you is already laid out in stone, and well, you're in or you aint. It is a little disturbing a concept to believe that free will doesn't matter for beans in Augustine's world, However there is a physics concept that goes directly hand in hand with this idea, it's known as determinism (it's very related to the idea of causality).

The idea behind determinism is simple, if you know the rules of how things work with absolute certainty, and you know the initial conditions perfectly, it is entirely possible to predict mathematically the whole of the unfolding scenario. Think of it this way, we know the rules for pool balls colliding, so if i set up a pool table (ideal and friction-less of course, because this is physics and it cant be too real) and rolled one of the balls at a group, you could using the rules of how pool balls move and collide to perfectly mathematically predict where all the pools would go and would be at any point in time. Given enough paper, time, and boredom, you could actually plot in advance how this would all work out. However interpreting this further, the whole system is completely determined (hence the name determinism) before hand, there can be no deviations and under these conditions this is the only possible way it can go down, no deviations. In other words the future is set and solid.This is very similar to Augustine's idea's since he feels he know how humans started, and roughly the rules of god, and thinks the future is set and solid, you are either in or you aren't and that's already been done for you.

For the most part determinism is a pretty good model for the universe. If you knew roughly the laws of special relativity, newtons laws, basic mechanics, had a good idea of the velocities and accelerations of the stars and galaxies (and dust and rocks and atoms, whatever), and had a computer the approximate size of Manhattan run on magic fairy dust, you could sit and run the 14 billion years of cosmological history backwards and show us at any point what was going on.

The problem with this kind of view is that it simply doesn't work at small scales. At a small enough scale perfect Newtonian determinism breaks down. We can't tell you with absolute certainty what's going to  be where. Repeated measurements for exactly the same experiment yield a probability curve, not a discrete answer. Plainly speaking, the best i can do to tell you where an electron is going to end up at any second in time, is a really good guess, and a couple of percent-chances. In case that sounds like crap and totally counter-intuitive (welcome to quantum physics by the way), this probability theory of quantum mechanics is maybe the best proven theory of science around (partially because you only have to prove probabilities  not discrete answers).

So what? Well what happens if determinism breaks down? well that means that at some scale we can't predict with absolute certainty what is going to happen to you (as I understand it a favorite grad student problem is to predict the probability based on quantum theory that you find that you wake up on mars one day, and the probability exists its just so ludicrously tiny in scope that  its hard to express just how laughable it is). Furthermore, suddenly Augustine takes a scientific dive, at some scale, predestination works on the idea of determinism, Augustine knew the rules and the starting conditions of your soul, and he could tell you whether or not you should learn some harp chords, but determinism just isn't a set facet of reality, it only works at certain scales, with certain things as a nice approximation.

So on philosophical-scientific grounds, Augustine's dependence on determinism for his ideas of predestination simply is a logical fallacy, and at least scientifically he can't be right.

"light" reading on the concepts of determinism and causality:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality_(physics)
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism#Quantum_mechanics_and_classical_physics

The God Particle

See the Higg's boson in there? or God? This is one of the collisions that went into the discovery of the poorly named "god particle". Courtesy of wikimedia commons.

Some of you may have heard over the summer the discovery of the Higgs Boson, the so called "god particle". Surprisingly for a particle given that name it has very little to do with god or religion or Christianity in particular. Here's an article with a christian take on it:
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2012/07/why-scientists-dont-like-the-term-god-particle-for-the-higgs-boson.html

As you see, the title god particle is just a misnomer given to it because an editor wouldn't put up with the verbosity of one physicists frustration with it. God is at best incidental to the particle bearing his title.

For the curious among you as to what this discovery actually means, the physics behind it is actually much more godly than anything about its detection or naming. The idea behind the Higgs (as i understand it so give me some leeway) is why things are so dense. why do they have mass? why are atoms heavy and other things not? professor Peter Higss (an atheist by the way) proposed in the 60's that this is because particles have an interaction with a field, known as the Higgs field. This interaction is a lot like dragging string through syrup where the field likes to clump around around whatever is going through it depending on what it is and how big (the other analogy is a celebrity and a nobody walking through a party, you see people clump around the celebrity but not the nobody). This field, because of quantum weirdness, can be expressed in smallest terms as a particle, known as a boson, in this case, Higgs' boson. I don't know about you but even as an agnostic something seems ... perhaps divine... or at least amazing about that.

Quantum physics and god

I found another interesting article on the relationship between physics an Christianity:
http://www.renewingyourmind.com/Articles/Quantum_Physics.htm

A physics professor was asked whether quantum physics has renewed or brought faith in a christian god, and he asked both a christian and non-christian colleague. while both agreed that quantum physics has really not brought anyone closer to Christianity, many people have found that the extreme orderliness of nature and the lack of proof to at least keep the possibility of a god open. The way he says it, scientists have an awe of god but are not wowed by simple traditional explanations of god. While calling the big bang a proof of genesis 1 may not sit well with physicists, it is hard to deny the beauty and extreme miracle of nature when shown the mechanics of equations of it, it is not too hard to find god in the math there.

On the Other Hand

Somewhat contrary to my last argument, you have to be careful about what parallels one draws between physics and theology, as this article so aptly demonstrates:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2007/06/11/frank-tipler-says-physics-proves-christianity/

No, there is no grand unified theory of everything, not even close to what we would want in a grand unified theory. The fact that the universe started in a singularity is in fact widely accepted, this is known as the Big Bang (a church sponsored view I might add), however this is really not great proof for god, unless you want to bestow divinity upon what essentially was a universal black hole. Also while I'm at it, the advent of better computing is not necessarily a sign that revelations has come upon us and the alpha and the omega are about to hit the fan. Quantum computing, the next level of computing being discussed here, has only so far managed to calculate 5x3=15, a fair bit away from an AI causing Terminator. My personal favorite, from somebody who professes to be an expert no less,"Walking on water is accomplished through a particle beam and dematerialization through the multiple universe model implied by quantum theory.". Let me break that down for you, Tipler claims that Jesus through the power of bunches of really fast highly charged particles (about 19 or so centuries before the first particle accelerators, without a physical reason to be there)  somehow managed to use this in conjunction with "dematerialization" which in essence is teleportation (which only practically happens at a scale that makes atoms look pretty big, otherwise the probability of it happening is pretty much like winning the cosmic lottery for four years in a row around the world) to somehow make himself extremely buoyant. Beats me how he thinks high energy physics (hypothetical extremely sketchy physics in the case of the "multiple universe model") all combined to make Jesus walk on water.I mean does he think that suddenly particle beams exerted such energy on Christ's feet to keep him standing straight? its baffling. 

The conclusion to be drawn here though, is that the philosophy of Christianity and Physics is perhaps not so irreconcilable, trying to make physical law into a biblical explanation, doesn't work well. I've mentioned it before but it seems the laws of the universe are secular. 

Beauty

I found an interesting article on the crossovers between theology and the christian traditions at:
http://www.cslewis.org/journal/physics-and-christian-theology-beauty-a-common-dialect/

The author discusses the search for beauty as a major talking point between the two ideals. Physicists are always looking for a simple expression, a symmetry, a grand underlying principle from which you can derive things. To them (us?) this is what makes a system beautiful, simple expressions and no chaotic or un-neccessarily complicated principles or equations describing a system. For example, most of electro-statics is well defined and derived very simply from single equation, Coulomb's law. For the followers of the christian tradition beauty has also been a target, a kind of beauty in the worship of god and messiah, a beauty in salvation, a community coming together. Many things describe the christian world's beautiful, just as many things describe the physical beauty of the world, maybe there is overlap to be found.

Physics Jokes Part 2: Anthropomorphical Boogaloo

Seems unlikely that Physics ought to prefer a Methodist to a Presbyterian or something similar no?  Taken from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, all rights go to Zach Weinersmith.

There is a principle in physics that is highly hated, and adhering to it gets you a lot of crap, known as the Anthropomorphic principle. The argument goes a lot like roughly saying "we exist, so the universe was made this way so it could happen." This is bad science. This is putting results before reasons, and arguing that implication works in reverse, logic simply does not work like that. Furthermore, if we say that our physics, that allow so beautifully for us to exist, argues design, who's design? Carrying this argument suddenly becomes vary precarious. Did god design physics for the Christians or the Hindus? how far do you you want to take it? Did he design physics for Catholics? The fact is that mathematical and physical sciences are nearly entirely secularized in their truths. However this needn't be a disproof of the entirety of faith, as many feel. Instead, perhaps this is a reason for unity of faith, no-one of us is any more favored than another.

Mister Leibniz, You Should Have Gotten a Copyright

Gottfried Leibniz, Mathmatician, Philosopher, Prominent Lutheran -Cathlic Reconciler. Hair included.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 

   Gottfried Leibniz was born on the first of July 1646 in Leipzig. His father was a Professor of moral philosophy, a fact that would later influence his development as a philosopher and a religious figure. For the most part the Polymath was self taught, not really attending any schools after his father had died. His resume was exceedingly impressive, including self taught Greek and Latin  and logic.  He entered the University of Leipzig as a law student at the age of fifteen. Fifteen. For the most part he seemed to want to study philosophy and law, but it was likely during this time he became acquainted with the scientific and mathematical works of Kepler, Galileo and Descartes. Leipzig refused him a law degree, but leaving his hometown he received his doctorate in 1666, not yet even 21 years old. He was even offered a professorship, that he turned down.

  Leibniz found employment under what was known as the "elector", a position designed to defend the fractured German states and principalities. For example, Leibniz spent some of his time writing under the guise a catholic priest as to why a German noble ought to have the kingdom of Poland  from a mathematical stand point. Leibniz later found his attention turned towards France  who had grown aggressive toward Holland and Germany, and Leibniz wrote the French Secretary of Sate tying to funnel aggression away from Germany and into a holy conquest of Egypt or the like. Leibniz was invited to Paris and was informed that Holy Wars had gone out of Fashion with St Louis some centuries earlier, but thank you anyways. Leibniz continued to try and convince them to go forward with this neo-crusade but it didn't really happen until napoleon. 

    Leibniz's time in Paris was not without merit though, he spent some time meeting with the philosophers there and he wrote an essay both defending the new Mathematical explanations of nature, and reconciling them with the new methods of philosophy. He also defended the Trinity claiming that the study of Mathematics almost required divinity to be a thing.  

   However more importantly it was during this time that he met a Mathematician by the name of Christian Huygens. This became a time of huge discovery both for math and science but for Leibniz as well. by 1673, in between political missions to London and being inducted into nearly scientific organization under the sun for discoveries in math, natural science, optics, philosophy, hydro-statics, pneumatics and even early computing, Leibniz stumbled almost at once onto perhaps the most famous discovery of his career, the formulation of differential and integral calculus. 

   For those of you who know the history of calculus, most of you will protest that it was in fact Issac Newton (another famous christian physicist-mathematician, but we'll get to him later) that discovered calculus. well it appears quite separately and a little before Newton, Leibniz discovered the exact same thing, but received little to no credit for it for various reasons, except for having his name on the common d/dx notation. The most fundamental discovery in math in several centuries, and he forgot to write about it extensively and claiming it for his own. Sure he was in it for the discovery, but the irony is still astronomical.

   Returning to Germany in 1673, Leibniz found found employ under the Duke of Brunswick, Performing many Chancellor duties for the duke. He traveled and composed the Brunswick family, studying even Vatican records (despite being Lutheran) where he was offered custodianship of the Vatican library on condition of his conversion.

   Speaking of which, during his 40 years under the Brunswicks, a great deal of his time was spent on his scheme for the reunification of the Lutheran and Cathlolic Churches. Various writings and meetings upon which he implored them to recognize their differences, but the English revolution in 1688 destroyed his scheme in Hannover and Leibniz reunion fell apart.

   Leibniz's last great contributions came between 1690 and 1716, in philosophy. They were for the most part preliminary sketches. But they hinted at something far larger and greater.

  So what can we learn from Leibniz? his was a life of reconciliation of math philosophy and divinity of all stripes. 

Literalism

What happens when you take a straight forward literal physical-sciences interpretation of the bible? Well its the kind of bad joke I should likely apologize for before hand.

Zach Weinersmith (and yes that is his name), The creator of the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal web-comic, shows what might happen if we throw fusion together with the Bible. All rights for the image go to Zach Weinersmith, I didn't make this, bla bla bla. 

Quite frankly things fall apart with full literal interpretation and physical explanation of the miraculous acts of the bible. What Zach depicted here quite frankly would happen if one were to fuse together alcohol out of its constituent elements. Can a physicist still believe in this case? Did Jesus ignore our normal laws of conservation of mass an energy when he made dense wine out of less dense water? Did he create mass when he fed all these people? Do we accept that perhaps there are flaws in physical laws of the universe tat perhaps divinity or Christ or whatever can exploit? The principles of Induction would argue no, but science is by no means complete. On the other hand (or cheek for those of you in a literal mood) do we completely right off thousands of years of tradition? Of explanation and comfort and say that these tales are flawed? Exaggerated  Allegories?

And here's the big one. Is it necessary to do either?

Plenty of men have managed to be both be scientists and religious, despite knowing full well the apparent contradiction of applying everything we know to a religion. Perhaps the most famous view (and my personal favorite) comes from Einstein, that there is something divine to the science itself, he called it seeing "the mind of god". Perhaps that is the best framework to make the two exist, if a little lopsided. 

Christianity and The Mathematical Sciences

   I found a pretty broad article concerning the debate I've mentioned previously over Heliocentrism in the early years of Physics (although relatively recent for Christianity). Actually the intro to the article grabbed my attention the most because it explained the reason for the close growth of these Mathematical sciences and Christianity had a lot to do with the analytic analyses tradition applied to the bible. It also name drops both Galileo and Copernicus and how they felt their work, despite being seen as nearly heresy at the time, was instead a work of faith for them. One guy (who  i will most likely write on in depth), one Johannes Kepler, even has a pretty good quote about "Geometry" (read: math) being the mind of god.

Can be found here: http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Heliocentric.html

The Science of Structure, Form, and Relationships

   I found this article discussing the relationships between Math and Chrisitianity. I found it rather interesting because the parallels of some of the religious truths to axioms, and the philosophy that being a mathematician and a christian it is hi job to believe in what is true, not necessarily what he has believed. There is not necessarily a philosophy of mathematics laid forward here, but the interplay of truth as a mathematical concept and a religious concept is heavily delved into and i found it fascinating.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~craigenr/PWP/mathchrist.html

Galileo Figaro Magnifico

   All the wrath that Copernicus managed to avoid from the church, Galileo Galilei managed to get full bore.

Galileo Galilei, Astrophysicist, Devout Catholic,  and Awesome Beard Owner. Shown here presumably staring down the inquisition. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

   Galileo was born February 15, 1564, 21 years after the death of Copernicus, in Pisa, and he is perhaps the seminal example of the church clashing with a physicist and mathematician. Galileo was the son of musician, and received much of his formative education in a monastery in Vallombrosa (part of Florence), and subsequently at the University of Pisa. he was taught the traditional catholic supported ideas of motion and celestial bodies, which he upheld for a while. However, because of a few financial difficulties he was forced to take a minor teaching position at the University of Pisa, where he published his Du Motu, a work on the mechanics of motion and falling (the famous examples being a dropped object retains its original velocity, and objects of differing mass fall at the same rate). This would be his first departure from the classic Aristotelian views.  

   It wasn't long before his discoveries came into conflict with his Aristotle and Catholic Church tinted views. He immediately jumped ship to Copernicus's viewpoint, declaring the earth goes around the sun, not the other way around. This was still a contentious issue for the Catholic Church. 

   In his desire to vindicate himself and push the boundaries of the science of that day he learned of the primitive magnifying glass objects that existed in Europe, and created the first modern telescope. In another audacious move, he turned it towards the heavens, and began to study whatever he could see (which was far more than any other European of the time thought possible). He studied the moon, sunspots, phases of Venus  and even managed to discover four satellites of Jupiter, a leap in discovery that would have done the likes of Einstein and Bohr proud. in 1613 he wrote a student of hi saying in essence that the bible was flawed on the Aristotle's view of the universe, because it was an earthly document and his scientific observations and body of evidence for Copernicus's view was more accurate. 

   By 1616 the letter had gone public, the Inquisition had jumped, and declared the Copernican view heresy, and instructed Galileo to keep silent on his views and quit teaching them. Galileo managed to do so for seven years, partly to make his life easier, mostly because at heart he was still catholic. 1623 saw a friend of Galileo's be elected Pope Urban VIII, who encouraged Galileo to continue research and teaching astronomy, so long as he did not advocate the Copernican view of heliocentrism. Galileo (rolling his eyes, I can only assume) proceeded to do his best to stay within the contradictory guidelines set forth for him, published a "neutral" document, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, in 1632. He put forth the arguments governing the debate of Copernicanism, making Aristotle's view seem idiotic. 

   The church, and in particular the Inquisition was none too pleased.

   Galileo was summoned to Rome before the Inquisition (a Church body tasked with seeking out and punishing heresy, for those who don't know), where they proceeded to threaten him with all the thunderbolts and lightning and very, very frightening they could summon up. The hearings lasted nearly a year before the threat of torture made Galileo admit that he support a heliocentric view. The year was 1633, and he was convicted of heresy and sentenced to house arrest, where he died blind and ill in 1642. He continued to publish his views, works, and theories until the day he died. 

   The church however couldn't se to withstand the sort of scientific onslaught brought on by Galileo. 1758 saw a lift on the ban of heliocentric scientific works, and 1835 saw the removal of all opposition to heliocentrism. by 1992, the pope expressed regret on how Galileo was treated.

Taken From:
1. http://www.biography.com/people/galileo-9305220
2.http://galileo.rice.edu/bio/tov.html

"A Supreme Cause"

   Physics and mathematics deal with the fundamental nature of how the universe works, on a logical (although upper level math tends to stretch that term) and physical (duh) level. The run-ins with religion, and especially Christianity are entirely inevitable. The adaptation process between Belief and Theory, Faith and Fact is an interesting interplay between the two. Interestingly enough i found a transcript from, 1985, with the pope mentioning specific branches of physics (in particular high-energy and atomic physics, two very math heavy branches of physics) enhancing the faith. It can be found here:

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~nmcenter/sci-cp/sci85071.html

Perhaps the Christian tradition would do well for particle physics in return? Jesus has had so many different representations, but i rather like nuclear physicist Jesus. 

De Revolutionibus

Nicolaus Copernicus, Mathematician, Astrophysicist, Canon.
(c) Wikimedia Commons

   People today are often forced to draw a line between faith and science. Where does one end and the other begin? Are the two exclusive? The history of physics and mathematics would suggest almost the opposite, that the functional development of the physical sciences and organized faith required each other. No where is this more apparent than in the life of one Nicolaus Copernicus.

   Copernicus began his life as a the son of a wealthy merchant in Poland  where his connections to the upper class allowed him to attend the prestigious Krakow University where he got his introduction to both astronomy, physics, and mathematics, and began to take an interest in the heavens, both in a cosmological and spiritual sense. After graduating his uncle landed him a Canon's position which he would proceed to hold for the rest of his life. He managed to day to day fulfill his ecclesiastical duties but keep studying his beloved subject of astronomy. It was during this time spent as a Catholic Canon that Copernicus would come up with an idea that would turn the 16th century on it's head. Copernicus proposed that perhaps it was not the earth that was the center of the universe and the solar system as everyone to this point had assumed, but instead the sun. This however did not sit right with the Roman Catholic Church. They already officially supported what was known as the Ptolemaic system of the solar system which held that the earth was the center of the universe. Such a view went very well with a special and divine humanity created in god's image.

   And to tolerate such a view from one of their own Canons could have been nearly too much.

   Copernicus wasn't cowed by the potential obstacles he would face from the higher authorities of Catholicism however, and he set about proving his claims true. Using the time and studying that being a church administrator had afforded to him, Copernicus began using a small makeshift observatory to begin staring at the stars at night. The result was first a paper of 40 pages or so "Commentariolus" (which rather ironically means small commentary) that established his claims and passed among his colleagues. After more work, and substantial mathematical proof, was De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium ("On the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs").

   It was even dedicated to Pope Paul III

   Initially it caused little controversy, everybody dismissed or laughed it away, but as the astronomers began to be swayed by the compelling arguments, in what must have been the premier example of mathematical-physics of its time, De Revolutionibus found itself smack in the middle of another revolution. Protestants had just appeared on the scene and had provided some of the earliest push back against Copernicus's ideas calling little more than mathematical guess work, and stating that pondering the cosmos was the realm of philosophers. Protestants ironically would also be the first to convert to the new ideas, given the emphasis on bearing some of the hierarchical views of Catholicism and bringing some of new freedom of thought to the church, heliocentric was easier to believe, especially for the educated. Catholics, of which Copernicus had counted himself (remember that whole "canon to the day he died" thing?) were much more staunchly against it. Catholics were already somewhat upset to be losing hold on the beliefs of Europe given Martin Luther's recent revolution, to lose their place in the universe would understandably be upsetting. The Catholic educated would continue to argue out against this idea (even the mathematically inclined) well past his death into the 17th century when Galileo would prove once and for all just where we stood, and just where we orbited.

   Sounds classic on the surface doesn't it? A revolutionary idea with mixed negative reception from the church? How was this good for physics and math, and the church?

   Copernicus never could have studied and looked skyward were it not for the education he had received from being of the clergy. Had he not spent his life dedicated to the church, who can say if he would have had the motivation to contemplate the heavens he could see? Were it not the time that being a church administrator afforded him, who could say if he could have ever written his small papers on big revolutions? And really who can argue that the church today would be any healthier, any more "sacred" if we still believed that the earth sat still and the sun wound its way around us? It should also be noted and remembered that then, Geocentrism versus Copernicus's Heliocentrism was as much a moral issue as are/were many other scientific issues, if the church could be taught to rationalize their faith with the world around them and roll with the punches while still being faithful, who's to say it couldn't happen again?

Sources:

1. "Nicolaus Copernicus Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 22 Jan. 2013.

2. Helden, Al Van. "The Galileo Project | Science | Copernican System." The Galileo Project | Science | Copernican System. Rice University, 1995. Web. 22 Jan. 2013.