Atheism, theism and science

Today, the world’s population is divided between two competing, irreconcilable systems: atheism and theism. They are irreconcilable, because they start from opposite fundamental axioms (God does not exist and God exists). The approximate distribution of the population is this:

• About 10% convinced atheists, willing to defend their ideas.
• 10-20% convinced theists, who try to live according to their beliefs.
• 10% agnostics, who in theory don’t accept either of the two axioms, although in practice they tend to approach one of the two opposite poles.
• 60-70% indifferent, either because they don’t care about the debate; or because they live as if God does not exist, without considering whether He exists; or because they have beliefs, but don’t let them affect their way of life.

Scientific predictions for 2020

Arthur C. Clarke

It is well known that future forecasts are all the more risky the further in time they go. Readers of my blog know that I love keeping scientific forecasts to use in the future, so as to check them when the corresponding dates arrive. Sometimes I have waited for half a century to perform these checks, which in general prove that the forecasts tend to be unsuccessful, generally due to too much optimism, although sometimes they are correct. In this previous post, I checked some of the predictions made by such distinguished popularizers as Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.

The three predictions I’m going to check today were made for the year 2020, with less time to go: 25 years in the first, just 10 years or a little above in the other two. Let’s look at them:

What does mathematics say about time travel?

On September 21st, an article on time travel by Germain Tobar and Fabio Costa was published in the scientific magazine Classical and Quantum Gravity. This article has been given considerable coverage by the mass media. The article argues that time travel would be possible if certain mathematical restrictions were fulfilled that would eliminate the paradoxes. In a previous post in this blog I explain those paradoxes and their different types.

In relation to this we must distinguish two different things:

1. What the article actually says: it only mentions the grandfather paradox (the time traveler who returns to the past to kill his grandfather as a child, which would make his own existence impossible), and specifies a mathematical equation that supposedly prevents it, without making the traveler's freedom of action totally impossible. The equation is this:

Illusion or ignorance?

Every civilization is blind to some things, while others are seen more clearly. This has the consequence that there are problems that a civilization strives to solve, although it is possible to show that they have no solution. This happened, for example, to the Greco-Roman civilization with the problem of squaring the circle with ruler and compass. It fell to the next civilization (ours) to show that it cannot be solved.

On the other hand, we have an evident tendency to deny the existence of what we don’t understand. This is happening to our civilization with two concepts with which we’ve got stuck, that we insist on explaining (away), but don’t have an obvious solution: the flow of time and human self-consciousness. In both cases, many thinkers of the last two centuries have said that both concepts are illusions; that they don’t really exist. Let’s look at it in more detail:

Chesterton speaks to us today

G.K. Chesterton

I don’t need to introduce Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Everybody knows him. Or everybody should know him. Everyone has read him. Or everyone should read him. Chesterton is one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century, but sometimes he seems to speak for the 21st. To prove it, I have chosen some of his quotes. A few are well known, others less so. Let Chesterton speak for himself:

“Progress” is a useless word; for progress takes for granted an already defined direction; and it is exactly about the direction that we disagree. (The works of Charles Dickens, ch. 8, 1911)

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. (The blunders of our parties, Illustrated London News, 1924)

We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press. (Orthodoxy, chapter 7, 1908)

If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence. (What's Wrong With The World, part 1, ch. 3, 1910)

The tragedy of the modern woman is not that she is not allowed to follow man, but that she follows him far too slavishly. (The Victorian Era in Literature, ch. 2, 1913)

It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. (Orthodoxy, ch.3, 1908)

The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. (Heretics, ch. 20, 1905)

Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities. (What's Wrong With the World, part 4, ch.6, 1910). See my post Plans, forecasts and estimations in this blog for E.F. Schumacher’s view on this question.

The old parental authority [will be replaced] by the far more sweeping and destructive authority of the State. (Illustrated London News, 24 Nov. 1928)

Many a school boasts of having the last ideas on education, when it has not even the first idea. (What's Wrong With the World, part 4, ch. 6, 1910)

If individuals have any hope of protecting their freedom, they must protect their family life. (The well & the shallows, "St. Thomas More", 1935)

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it. (A Short History of England, ch. 10, 1917)

Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern. (Utopia of Usurers and Other Essays, The New Name, 1917)

As this is a popular science blog, I will add a few more quotes, somewhat related to science:

Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution. (The Everlasting man, Part 1, ch. 1, 1925). See my post Is man just an animal? in this blog.

It is absurd to say that you are advancing freedom when you only use free thought to destroy free will. (Orthodoxy, ch. 7, 1908). See my post On intelligence in this blog.

There had begun that easy automatic habit, of science as an oiled and smooth-running machine, that habit of treating things as obviously unquestionable, when, indeed, they are obviously questionable. (The Victorian Era in Literature, ch. 4, 1913) See my post What’s a scientific theory in this blog.

Suppose something of the type of... contraception really stalks through the modern State, leading the march of human progress through abortion to infanticide... One of the chief features of the state of Peace we now enjoy is the killing of a considerable number of harmless human beings. (The well & the shallows, "Where is the paradox" and “Killing the nerve”, 1935) See my post This is what science says about human life in this blog.

Frank Sheed said this about Chesterton:

When a man is as right as that in his forecasts, there is some reason to think he may be right in his premises.

A fully scientific conclusion.

The same post in Spanish
Thematic Thread on Politics and Economy: Previous Next

Manuel Alfonseca

A few more things about dietetics

In a previous post I questioned that dietetics is a science, because it seems to follow quite often what can be considered alternatives of fashion, and I gave some examples. In this article I’m going to add a few more, along with a general consideration.

• The expiration date of yogurts. A few years ago, there were several books published and speeches made, asserting that yogurt should never be eaten just one day after its expiration date. Of course, no expired food should ever be used to help poor people. However, any quality expert knows that expiration dates always include a safety margin that can sometimes be quite long (days, weeks, or even months). Therefore, some kinds of very recently expired food are probably within that safety margin and can be eaten without problems. Not to mention the fact that there are products (such as yogurts) that don’t need an expiration date, as their substance is not spoiled, even though it may lose nutritional or flavor properties. This is why lately, in this type of products, there is no longer talk of an expiration date, but of a preferred consumption date.

Timeline

Poster of the film based on Timeline

In 1999, Michael Crichton published his novel Timeline, a typical science fiction novel about time travel, whose plot can be summarized as follows:

A research company has developed a procedure to travel into the past. Using it, they sent to 14th century France, in the midst of the 100 Years War, a history professor who is conducting archaeological studies in ruins near the medieval fortress of La Roque. His collaborators, who do not know what is happening, find among the ruins a call for help from the professor, which when subjected to carbon-14 dating turns out to come from the 14th century. Picked up by the company that sponsors their studies, they are sent into the past to save the professor, who cannot return on his own.

In another post in this blog, I discussed the paradoxes that can be caused by traveling into the past, and various procedures invented by scientists and writers to escape them. In the novel, Crichton mentions two: