The Galileo Effect

According to Science Held Hostage (Van Till, Young, Menninga), Galileo didn't get into trouble with the Roman Catholic Church until two of his enemies in the secular universities convinced the Pope that geocentrism was a theological issue (until then, the Pope had OK'd Galileo's forthcoming book). What? Didn't learn that in school? That's OK - you're not alone.

Anyway, there are many lessons to be learned from this, to wit:

• Opposition to Galileo's findings was initally from the secular scientific establishment defending the current "scientific" paradigm. Having no success in proving him wrong through science, they resorted to censorship through those in power.
• The Church should be wary of being or wanting to be in power.
• Scientific endeavour and the Church share a common problem: people.
• History repeats itself.
• (more here)

The Galileo Effect is multifaceted. The prevailing general ignorance regarding Galileo's enemies in the scientific establishment and their pivotal role in his persecution is but one aspect which must be considered. The corruption and transformation of the incident into a myth for popular consumption - laying all of the blame on the Catholic Church - is another. The incident is also a reminder that the practice of science is not as impassive and objective as most believe, but is, as all human undertakings, riddled with power plays, philosophical preferences, and emotion:

... and, sometimes, just plain carelessness, shoddiness, laziness, and even dishonesty. (This link will be quite shocking to those involved in Scientism.)

I offer this page because of my love of science. Paradoxically, I will try to persuade you that science today has not changed as regard the Galileo Effect: although much good has been accomplished, there is still an intolerance that manifests itself in shoddy peer review, lost jobs and grants, and ridicule without sufficient cause. Without this realization on the part of the scientist and non-scientist, much time and money will be wasted. More tragically, the greatest minds of our time might also be wasted on the wrong track, as was Sir Arthur Keith's, discovering after 40 years that he had been betrayed by Piltdown Man. Today the same scenario may be playing out in the lives and work of scientists the world over: hobbled by current scientific dogma, whether in the fields of biology, astronomy, anthropology, linguistics, and indeed any other specialty touched by the philosophy of naturalism.

In doing so I will perhaps have the honor of introducing to you possible Galileo's of our time, and to encourage further serious evaluation (leading to confirmation or debunking) of their work. And, along the way, I hope to be a stepping-stone to persuading you that the best explanation for what we have discovered about reality seems to be Christian theism.

You won't always agree with me or the stuff on this page or the links ...

I can only promise you it'll be incredibly interesting ... and that it's incredibly important stuff to be ruminating about. Well - there'll be some relatively unimportant fun stuff, too. See "Pet Peeves". (Here's one - why is the period on that last sentence supposed to be inside the quotes?) Come back soon! These pages will change often - that's the plan, anyhow.

Email me here! Sign my Guestbook here! View my Guestbook here.

Whoa, man, this stuff is too heavy right now. Take me somewhere a little lighter ...

And now ... the larch!

Reality Breaking Through? The Torah Codes

"Here's how I got involved in the whole thing. [My cousin] went to Israel for a mathematics conference. There he met an old friend from college: Daniel Michaelson from UCLA - a confirmed atheist. Lo and behold, he sees that Daniel Michaelson is now wearing a yarmulke. So, my cousin goes over to him and said, 'Danny, is that you? What happened to you?'

"He says, 'Well, they showed me the codes.' Everyone in mathematics in Israel knew what 'the codes' were, apparently. ... "

Intro to the Torah Codes
A Word of Caution (Torah Codes)
The Official Torah Codes Home Page
My hurried review of Satinover's book - sorry


Biology and Black Boxes: Death-Knell for Darwinism

"The rotary nature of the flagellum has been recognized for about 25 years. During that time not a single paper has been published in the biochemical literature even attempting to show how such a machine might have developed by natural selection. Darwin's theory is completely barren when it comes to explaining the origin of the flagellum or any other complex biochemical system."

"It was a shock to people of the nineteenth century when they discovered, from observations science had made, that many features of the biological world could be ascribed to the elegant principle of natural selection. It is a shock to us in the twentieth century to discover, from observations science has made, that the fundamental mechanisms of life cannot be ascribed to natural selection, and therefore were designed. But we must deal with our shock as best we can and go on. The theory of undirected evolution is already dead, but the work of science continues."

For many years, evolutionists have been getting away with overly simplistic "explanations" for the origins and complexity of life. Darwin's "eye sequence" is a good example of the hand-waving that has been passed off as "science" in the past but must needs be discarded now. What Lubenow has dubbed the "magic wand" of evolutionists may finally be broken with the advent of molecular biology and its revelations about what Behe calls the "irreducible complexity" of biological structures and processes. Claims that such complexity as the blood clotting cascade and the bacterial flagellum with its "outboard motor" were produced by chance must now be laid to rest as intellectually and conceptually indefensible - science must march on.

More importantly, that insufferable cartoon in the Smithsonian purporting to explain the origins of life may finally be retired.

Darwin's Black Box, with responses to critics - fun, fun, fun.
Review of Behe's book


Non-Theists Attack Evolutionism

Although I don't share their religious views, Cremo & Thompson have produced an astounding compilation of anomalous evidence in support of their belief in the antiquity of man, i.e. evidence of the presence of man millions of years before he should have arrived on the evolutionary scene. (I interpret the data differently, of course.) It is a well-documented, well-researched look at how scientists are able to ignore data that contradict their personal beliefs.

The main point that must be gleaned is that Darwinism never gained popularity by virtue of scientific observation; rather, it was a systematic glossing over of horrendous obstacles in the form of contradictory data and theoretical conundrums rooted in a philosophical "need" for naturalistic explanations that drove its acceptance.

I present the first link as an introduction to the material in their book. The third link has more material, if the other links on that page don't bother you too much ...

Excerpt from Forbidden Archaeology
Reviews of Forbidden Archaeology
A shinier presentation
Cremo responds to a critic


Cosmology & Physics: Whodunits

"Commonsense would suggest that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology ..."

Even worse, the Anthropic Principle, manifested, for example, in the finely-tuned physical constants such as the balancing between positive and negative charge, prod the thoughtful skeptic to ask: could there be a Designer, after all?

Important Design Tips for Creating a Universe
The Anthropic Principle (1)
The Incredible, Balanced, Big Bang
Something for Everybody (to Disagree With?)

Although I would be perfectly content with the current Big Bang theory, I don't recall a good explanation for discordant red shifts and interacting galaxies. Does this deserve further study? Or is Arp's interpretation of the data flawed? Is he a Galileo or a Gould?

I don't buy into the Steady State model - the proposal that the universe is infinitely old doesn't hold water and, frankly, seems a desperate attempt to avoid a point of creation - but that doesn't mean anomalies can then be ignored. For example, the COBE results do show ripples in the background radiation, thus addressing the "too smooth" contention, but there are still questions to be answered, such as the source of those inhomogeneities.

And what about those superclusters (see "Megawalls" link)?

Redshift Anomalies?
A complaint from Burbidge
Another steady-stater
An Arp page: peculiar galaxies
The answer to Arp?
Another answer to Arp?
Megawalls Across the Cosmos
More on the "Great Walls"

Has this one been resolved?

Megawalls and the age of the universe


Darwinism: Against the Law?

Phillip E. Johnson, the Jefferson E. Peyser Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, examines Darwinism from a lawyer's standpoint in his book "Darwin on Trial," and concludes that as far as evidence is concerned, it hasn't got a legal leg to stand on.

Intro Page at ARN
Darwin's (and Dennett's) Dangerous Delusion


Galileo's of Our Time?

I offer these topics guardedly yet wholeheartedly. These are to do with individuals who have gone against the prevailing grain for, as far as I can tell, reasons of professional integrity. Only time will tell if they are correct, but they deserve a fair hearing in the courts of science. Any feedback or new knowledge about these would be appreciated.

Suggestions or nominations for entries here will also be helpful.

I have followed more of the links at the Duesberg site. The only thing more amazing than the claim itself - that drug use and lifestyle rather than HIV may be the cause of AIDS - is the apparent amount of support for it. Note, however, that almost all of these statements are pre-1997.

Peter Duesberg: the Myth of the AIDS Virus?
1000-pound reward for HIV Virus!

Are antineoplastins a real hope for a cancer cure? For more opinions and information, search on "Burzynski." Infoseek found 679 pages.

Dr. Burzynski's cure for cancer?


More Interesting Stuff

Christian Apologetics Site
Access Research Network: Origins, etc.
Mazzaroth: The Boat Astrology Missed
Pathological Physics: Shoddiness in Science (gasp!)

• Get a Real Job ... or Start a "Jesus Seminar" and Write a Book About It Every Easter
• Relatively Unimportant Stuff: Legalizing Drugs, Global Hot Air, etc.
• Got a Pet Peeve? (Newspeople chatting and calling each other by their first names on the air or asking "How do you feel about this tragedy", etc.)
• Original art/cartoons and song lyrics, butchered lyrics, archery, aviation ...

• The Biotic Message (Remine)
• Inventing the AIDS Virus (Duesberg)

Also, no more fava beans. Sigh.

It's a little complicated, but here goes. I was born in the year of the fire horse, so I'm a horse-man, get it? ... It's a Chinese thing. Also the Japanese hinoe-uma. Anyway. Chiron is the mythical centaur, with whom I happen to share some interests. And in his wounding and sacrifice, he was a type of Christ. In the book of Kells, individual letters were sometimes decorated such that they filled almost whole pages, in particular, the letters CHI-RO, which, to the scribes, represented Christ, the reality behind the Chiron myth. Hence: ProtoChiron.

Chiron is also identified with Saggitarius (whose element, by the way, is also fire. What does it matter? Beats me.); my sign is Virgo, which contains the decans Coma and Centaurus (check out this development). Cool, eh. Of course, I don't subscribe to astrology; I think the stars have a different meaning altogether, if at all. See Mazzaroth links.

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page