I shall preface this by stating that I am not a scientist. That will become painfully clear to any actual scientist who reads this essay. But I know a little about logic, and when a proposition is uttered by a powerful member of our society that tears and tortures my sense of logic, the balance of inferences and consequences that anchor me in this world, I become troubled and sometimes even speak out. So I’ve pulled an empty chair up next to this computer and I am posing a few questions to the air within.
On September 27, 2012, at the Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell, Ga., U.S. House Representative Paul Broun, a doctor, said he “believes” the earth is 9,000 years old. He said he does not believe in evolution or the Big Bang theory, saying they are "lies straight from the pit of hell." I’m sure you all know that he is a republican-appointed member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
I'm not naive. I know that a large section of our populace echoes Rep. Broun's belief. A Gallup poll conducted in June, 2012, found that 46 percent of Americans believe God created earth and humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. But I was stunned that a medical doctor and member of the House Science Committee would be so wilfuly ignorant. It's not really a "belief," truth be told. It's sheer, bold ignorance. It dismisses all the technological advances we've made as a species, and especially the last 200 years of scientific progress.
It is sublimely ironic for people to reject fundamental properties of science and technology via--and while they rely upon--computers, cell phones or any other media. Someone recently observed that it is like "telling somebody (by way of speech) that you are not talking!" [sorry, I cannot attribute the quote]
A scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment." Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge. This is significantly different from the word "theory" in common usage, which implies that something is unproven or speculative.
Adapted from National Academy of Sciences (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1998).
For example, there is the "Theory" of Gravity. It's not just a speculation, an idea--we can measure it and predict things like how fast an object will fall or when the moon will orbit the earth. There's the Theory of Relativity which I don't understand but which, like Rep. Broun, I will discuss despite my ignorance.
Here are the questions for the empty chair next to this computer, in which sits the ghost of Rep. Broun:
Is the earth 9,000 years old?
Have you ever seen photos from telescopes such as the Hubble of distant galaxies? Do you believe that these photos depict billions of stars revolving around a central mass? Scientists tell us that they can measure the distance to these objects using the speed of light. That is 186,000 miles per second. Do you believe in the speed of light? If not, I suggest you throw away your electronic devices because they all depend upon the speed of light, especially that GPS in your taxpayer-funded Lincoln.
We are able to observe, to actually "see," galaxies that are billions of light years from us. That means the light took billions of years to leave all those stars and arrive here on our planet. If our planet is only 9,000 years old, and if there was darkness until the command was given that there be light, then those galaxies and stars can't be billions of years old or trillions of miles away. It follows that they must be small clusters of bright objects, a few thousand or million miles away. Surely our far-ranging space probes such as the Voyagers have passed close to these mini-galaxies. They were launched in 1977, 35 years ago. They are 11 billion miles away. By the way, "A signal from the ground, traveling at the speed of light, takes about 13 hours one way to reach Voyager 2, and 16 hours to reach Voyager 1." http://www.space.com/... Either that or these probes are another gigantic hoax perpetrated upon us by those devious scientists.
Einstein's theory of relativity includes the proposition (and now the observation) that the faster an object travels, the slower its relative experience of time. Without plunging into this deep pool, suffice it to say that GPS satellites adjust their positioning based upon relativity--the speed at which they orbit has a tiny effect on how they count time. It's slower for the satellites than for us. And our position is based upon the speed at which we receive and triangulate transmissions from the satellites. If the satellites didn't adjust for the difference, then the GPS system would give us wrong results. We'd be in Tampa and be told we're in Saint Petersburg. So, if other galaxies exist and if the speed of light (Braun’s SOL) is real, then the universe has been around billions of years. About fourteen billion, to name a figure.
Relatively short time spans, up to around 50,000 years, can be measured by the decay of carbon-14 (C14) within an organic object. Do you believe in radioactivity, Rep. Broun? Have you ever relied upon x-ray films to diagnose and treat injuries or illnesses? Ever wear a lead apron? What about atomic bombs, do you believe in them? But I digress. Our atmosphere contains a consistent amount of C14. During the lifetime of a plant or animal, it ingests foods that contain C14 and carbon-12 (C12) which reflects the amount in the atmosphere. When an organism dies, it stops taking in carbon. And the C14 in the organism's tissues starts to decay at a precise speed, but the amount of C12 stays the same, since it's not radioactive.
There's a ratio between the C14 and C12 that changes after death. And we can measure it. The longer the time, the less C14 the object contains, relative to C12. There is 50% less C14 in a dead object after 5,730 years than was present when the object was alive. This is called the "half-life" of C14. In another 5,730 years, the remaining C14 is reduced by half. And so on. At around 50,000 years the amount of C14 gets too small to accurately measure. Even though 50,000 is about 5 times as long as earth's age of 9,000, we can go back even farther. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 700 million years. Radioactive isotopes like potassium-40 and rubidium-87 have half-lives in the billions of years.
In different parts of the world, scientists have recovered remains of “modern” humans up to 200,000 years old, their age measured by the radioctive decay of elements within the fossils. (I'm obviously avoiding the older, 3 million year old bones of our predescesors, fruit for another discussion) So, if we believe there is such a thing as radioactive decay, and if we can actually measure it, then these 200,000 year old fossilized skeletons, anatomically identical to us, are sufficient to prove that we've been here more than 9,000 years.
What about evolution, Rep. Broun?
Do you get flu shots? Have you reflected upon their purpose? The flu virus evolves. It changes. Hence we need to create new vaccines. If the virus does not evolve, then where do these new strains come from each year? Are they just hidden and do they have a schedule that lets them become active one-after-the-other instead of all-at-once? What about bacteria that keeps changing, evolving, so that our antibiotics become ineffectual?
In the 200 years since Darwin, scientists have never discovered a single fossil that disproves evolution. Old rocks are found under new rocks, old fossils under new ones. Viruses and microorganisms evolve at an alarming pace, animals at a much slower one. Even stars and galaxies evolve.
On August 27, 2012, Bill Nye posted an online statement decrying the rejection of evolution in the US. He said, "Here are these ancient dinosaur bones or fossils, here is radioactivity, here are distant stars that are just like our star but they're at a different point in their lifecycle. The idea of deep time, of this billions of years, explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your world view just becomes crazy, just untenable, itself inconsistent." He also said, "Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. It's like, it's very much analogous to trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates. You're just not going to get the right answer. Your whole world is just going to be a mystery instead of an exciting place."
I’ll close by telling you, Rep. Broun, that I hope neither I nor my family has cause to seek your medical services. If you do not believe in the speed of light, radioactivity, x-rays, or the evolution of pathogens that require new medicines, then I’ll just ride my dinosaur on out of here.