Why I Don’t Believe in Photons

It hit me like a ton of bricks while jogging in the park. Sure, light exists. I was surrounded by it, I experienced it first hand. But this silly notion of photons as the bundles of energy that give us light…well, that’s just superstition. And hence my deconversion from a faith in mass-less blobs of nothingness to an emotionally healthy level of disbelief.

I had been indoctrinated since my first physics class. The professor stood up there and spoon fed me the same theories of light that he was fed since he was a young physics student. I was so taken by his scientific expertise that I never thought to question a word of it. And so this vicious cycle continues…for most people. The only reason why people continue to accept these bogus scientific theories is because they were raised to believe them. They never once question it for fear of being laughed at and ridiculed by the other kids raised in that environment of scientific agendas. In my opinion, it’s a form of child abuse to cram this crap down kid’s throats. Why not just teach them to believe in spaghetti monsters, or pink unicorns? After all, you can’t prove that they DON’T exist.

I really cannot think of one reason to believe that photons exist. I have never seen, felt, heard, tasted, or smelt one. They are completely absent from my sense perception. And why shouldn’t they be? After all, they are massless (isn’t that convenient). At least that’s what they tell us. This way they don’t have to actually show us a photon. They can just show us some experimental effect, and then attribute that effect to a photon. But I could just as easily make up my own cause for the observed effect. Maybe a mass-less leprechon is responsible for knocking an electron off a piece metal. Did you ever think of that?

The ability to demonstrate how a photon acts contradicts the physicist’s own Heisenberg uncertainty principle which states that it is impossible to simultaneously measure the position and momentum of particles that exist on the quantum level (as if they even exist at all). The accuracy of one must be sacrificed for the other. Thus, the ability to explain the nature of photon, and by extension its very existence, eludes even those most dedicated to the scientific agenda.

Once you point these problems out, the typical science zealot will try to obfuscate the issue by bringing up the particle/wave duality of the photon. So now I’m supposed to believe that a photon can act as both a particle AND a wave? Those are two completely different things for crying out loud. What a bunch of metaphysical hocus pocus. But alas, that is all we’re left with. Why? Because they feel a certain necessity to explain the nature of light.

The fear of not understanding the nature of light motivates them to come up with an explanation even if that explanation takes us to the brink of insanity. I believe that we have the ability to someday demonstrate the very nature of light, and just because that day hasn’t come yet doesn’t mean we should force upon ourselves, and our children, a bogus theory rooted in insecurity and overactive imaginations.

The day will soon come that we will have a legitimate explanation for the nature of light, and when that day comes, I will be quietly sipping from my cosmic tea cup, and smiling.

Attention Catholic Voters

George Weigel has something to say about prudential judgement. Go here to find out what it is.

…and Robert P. George drives the point home here.

Got Hope?

That was all they had.

The Sham That is the BCS

Once the Utah Utes scored 11 points in the final2 minutes to beat Oregon St., the Mountain West Conference moved to 6-1 on the PAC-10 for the season. Clearly, the PAC-10 is inferior to MWC this year, so why are they allowed to maintain BCS status while the champion of the MWC will probably be luckyto get a BCS bowl game, and a national Championship game is a virtual impossibility under the BCS system.

Here’s a crazy idea: Lets let the players on the field decide who the next national champion should be and let the BCS bureaucrats lobby for something they can’t get rich on…like legitimate academic restrictions for player eligibility.

Crisis of Another Sort

As politicians try to figure out how to handle the current economic crisis I am left wondering how such a crisis ever came about. I guess the situation doesn’t really suprise me. On more than one occasion I have been known to ask how people can afford those multimillion dollar homes that have been growing ever higher along the Wasatch front here in Utah. Then there are those people making $30,000 dollars/year who just want to get into a house, and were told they could afford it. I can’t blame them. It’s hard to throw money away at renting as housing values continue to soar (at least, did). If they didn’t get in soon they may never be able to get in. The pressure to get into a house now or never, especially for families, combined with unscrupulous lenders creating a false sense of security seems to have created the perfect storm to take down our economy. But I think there is more to the story than that.

We live in a society that has been trying desperately to purge religion from the public square. A society that wants to tell us that religion can only slow us down, and keep us from making any real discoveries about ourselves and the world around us. That only that which can be mathematically or scientifcally demonstrated is real and any metaphysical reality must simply be a product of our imagination. Whether we wish to admit it or not, this collective mindset permeates our culture and is rarely deflected by even the most ardent church goers. Our politicians have done little to nullify such an outlook in our society as they continue to regulate religion out of the public square as they prefer the more fashionable tact of protecting the government from religion rather than religion from the grovernment.

So as we continue to hollow out our mind and fill it with simple matter that chose to arrange itself in such a way as to give it consciousness, we have lost any meaning in our existence. For what value could we place on our accidental existence? We can only fabricate our own meaning, and in doing so we must draw on what we can do and on what we have. This must be the case because we are unable to demonstrate scientifically any intrinsic value as that is impossible to measure and therefore does not exist. Only our extrinsic worth can demonstrate our value, and we will go to great lengths to convince ourselves of that value.

This is the bankruptcy that concerns me. That our own moral standing can only be pinpointed to something outside of us. And as we cling so desperately to those things that surround us, we have truly forgotten what we are, and why we exist. Our contentment eludes us. Why? Because at the core we are not dealing with a financial crisis. No, this is really about an identity crisis.

Obama’s Strategy on Palin

What, When, and Why

Modern genetics can be summed up in an elementary creed as follows: in the beginning is a message, and the message is in life, and the message is life. A veritable paraphrase of the first sentence of a very old book that you know well, this creed is still the creed of even the most materialistic geneticist. Why? Because we know with certainty that all of the information that will define the individual, that will dictate not only his development but also his subsequent conduct, we know that all of these characteristics are inscribed in the first cell. And we know this with a certitude beyond any reasonable doubt, because if this information were not entirely encapsuled therein, it would never arrive, for no information enters into an egg after its fertilization….

But one will say, at the very beginning, two or three days after fertilization, nothing exists yet but a tiny mass of cells. In fact, it’s only one cell to begin with, the one that results from the union of the ovum and the sperm. To be sure, the cells multiply actively, but that little mulberry that will nestle in the wall of the uterus, is it really different from its mother already? I should think so: it already has its own individuality, and, almost incredibly, it is already capable of controlling the maternal organism.

This minuscule embryo, on the sixth or seventh day, while just one and a half millimeters in size, immediately takes charge of the biological operations. He and he alone stops the periods of his mother by producing a new substance that obliges the corpus luteum of the ovary to function.

Tiny as he is, he is the one who, by a chemical command, forces his mother to offer him her protection. Already he is having his way with her, and God knows that he will not give this up in the years to come!

Fifteen days after the period is missed, that is to say, at the actual age of one month, since fertilization took place fifteen days before that, the human being measures four and a half millimeters. His minuscule heart has been beating for a week already; his arms, his legs, his head, and his brain are already roughly formed.

At sixty days, that is, at the age of two months, or one and a half months after menstruation stops, he measures some three centimeters from the head to the tip of his buttocks. Folded up, he could fit into a nutshell. Inside a closed fist he would be invisible, and that closed fist could crush him inadvertently without anyone noticing it. But open your hand; he is practically finished: hands, feet, head, organs, brain, everything is in place and will do no more than grow. Look at him more closely, and you will already be able to read the lines on his hand and tell his fortune. Look even more closely, with an ordinary microscope, and you will make out his fingerprints. Everything needed for a national identification card is there right now….

The incredible Tom Thumb, the man smaller than my thumb, really exists: not the one in the fairy tale, but the one that each of us once was.

But the brain, someone will say, will not be completely developed until around he fifth or sixth month. No, you’re wrong; it still won’t reach its final form until birth, its innumerable connections will not be established until the age of six or seven years, and the totality of its chemical and electric mechanisms will not be running smoothly until the age of fourteen or fifteen years!

But does the nervous system of our Tom Thumb function already at two months? But of course: if his upper lip is brushed with a hair, he moves his arm, his body, and his head as though to escape….

At four months he fidgets so vigorously that his mother perceives his movements. Thanks to the quasi-weightlessness of his space capsule, he makes a lot of somersaults, a stunt that will take him years to perform again in the atmosphere.

At five months he grasps firmly the tiny stick that is placed in his hand, and begins to suck his thumb while waiting for delivery….

Then why the discussions? Why should we wonder whether these little human beings really exist? Why rationalize and, as a famous bacteriologist has done, pretend to believe that the nervous system does not exist before the age of five months?! Every day, science reveals to us a little more about the marvels of this hidden life, the world teeming with life and even more charming than the tales told in the nursery. For the make-believe tales were based on this true story; and if childhood has always been enchanted by the adventures of Tom Thumb, it is because all of us, whether children or adults, once were like Tom Thumb in the womb of a mother.

                                                -Jerome Lejeune MD, PhD

Taken from Life is a Blessing, a biography of Jerome Lejeune 

 

 

 

Me Gots the Precious

It’s been about 2 weeks since my iphone has arrived and I have yet to morph into Gollum, so I guess I’m doing OK. Having the world at my fingertips is a powerful feeling, but I’ve managed to control the temptation of being completely consumed by this thing. My wife, however, needs to be closely monitored as the power of the iphone is proving to be a great burden on her.

I have to admit, this phone is just about the coolest piece of technology I have ever owned, and if Frodo owned one he could have easily found his way to Mount Doom with the GPS in the Maps application. He could have also made his burden lighter by downloading the Universalis application. It’s a bit expensive, but is also the equivalent of 5,000 pages of text. Most importantly it would have kept the whole journey in perspective.