Learn Quantum Jumping, get money and fame from alternate universes!

What to do, what to do ... some days I get sick of reading about Michelle Bachmann, Dominionism, child-molesting priests, the New Apostolic Reform, and atheist signs by the freeways.

I know, let's do some Quantum Jumping! We can all jump into an alternate universe and find out what other versions of ourselves are doing! I don't have to write a blog, I'll just find another version of Craig A. James who has more initiative and creativity than this version of me!

Welcome to the Infinite You

Quantum Jumping is a visualization process where you use your mind to ‘jump’ into parallel dimensions, and gain creativity, knowledge, wisdom, skills and inspiration from alternate versions of yourself.

... Max Planck, said that “all matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration which holds the atom together. ... If Quantum Theory is correct, it implies that to change your current reality, all you need to do is change the frequency of your thoughts.

Oh, wait, there's one more thing you need to do to change your reality. You need to buy the guy's DVD series for only $97 (price slashed from $397!).

I'm constantly amazed at how people can

God Can't Exist: The Vastness Argument

I've heard a lot of arguments why the Abrahamic god Yahweh can't exist, but here's one I thought of the other day. I'll call it the Vastness Argument Refuting God. I'm sure this isn't original, so maybe my faithful readers can point me to some earlier discussions.

Here is the proof:

• God made the universe, and then made humans to give it meaning.
• The earth is one star in the Milky Way galaxy
• Typical galaxies contain 10¹¹ to 10¹² stars
• There are approximately 10¹¹ to 10¹² galaxies
• There are thus about 10²² to 10²⁴ stars in the universe.
• Therefore, our sun represents 0.000000000000000000001% of the stars in the universe.

What an incredible waste! Imagine you hired an engineer and said, "Build me a bridge over this river," and you came back after a while and found that the engineer had built ten bridges. "You jerk, what the heck are you doing?" "I built a bridge, didn't I?" he'd reply. Well, yes, but you wouldn't say he was much of an engineer. But we're not talking about ten bridges ... if we found ten Earths around the universe that would only have reduced God's wastefulness down to 0.00000000000000000001%.

So if the Judeo-Christian-Muslim understanding of creation is correct, what are we to make of it? I can only find three possibilities:

Don't Call it the 'Theory' of Evolution!

What's in a name? A lot. How many times have you seen the argument, "Evolution is just a theory. It's never been proved!"

Evolution is, without a doubt, supported by more evidence than any other field in the history of science. Genetics, immunology, diseases and parasites, taxonomy, fossils, dozens of radiometric techniques ... the list goes on and on and on – thousands and millions of facts and observations, every one of them in agreement with the predictions of Evolution.

It's time to stop calling it a theory. It's Evolution Science.

Scientists use the word "theory" in a different way than the general population. To a scientist, a "theory" is a model that describes a system in an accurate and predictive way. But to the public, a "theory" is something uncertain, something tentative, something that may very well turn out to be false.

The valance model of chemistry is a wonderful theory (roughly, the "ball and stick" model of molecules). It describes a great deal of organic chemistry remarkably well, but falls apart when the electrons' orbitals start to span more than two atoms. Is it "just a theory"? Does the fact that the valence model breaks down for complex aromaticity, tautomers, metal bonds and hydrogen bonds, make it "wrong"?

No! The concept of right and wrong doesn't apply to scientific models. The right terminology is useful. The valence model is useful for most organic compounds, and beyond that, you have to use a quantum-mechanics theory – another model. Quantum mechanics are far more predictive, under a much wider range of atomic configurations, than the valence model, but even quantum mechanics breaks down under extreme heat (relativistic velocities), and doesn't tell you much about radioactivity. Is it "wrong"? No, it's just not useful outside the constraints of the model.

Here's where we scientists are doing ourselves a disservice. The concept of modeling a complex system is fairly esoteric philosophy. The average non-scientist wants to know, "How does it work?" Or, "Is Einstein right or wrong?" The concept of a model's domain (the conditions under which the model is predictive) is not something you're going to read about in the morning newspaper.

We need to start using the same terminology as the general public. It's time to abandon the Theory of Evolution. It's Evolution plain and simple, right alongside Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geology and Astronomy.

In the common parlance, evolution is a science. It's a model of a very complex system, the system of life on Earth. The basic facts of evolution have been proved so far beyond any reasonable doubt, that it would be fair to call it 100% certain. Sure, there are interesting details, we're still finding unusual species that force us to rethink some of the details. We're still filling in the corner cases and details. But to say that the core ideas behind evolution science are anything but 100% proved is a huge mistake.

So stop calling it a theory. And whenever you hear someone else say, "The Theory of Evolution," consider a gentle reminder that the proper term is "Evolution," or "Evolution Science."

Tags: evolution darwin theory science chemistry physics religion atheism