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Wednesday, September 3, 2008

EXPOSED: Gravity is Absurd

If Newtonism were true, we would all be dead right now; obliterated by the Moon.

Update
If, after reading this article, you are still a fundamentalist Newtonist, feel free to try to prove gravity exists to win $25.

Introduction

When Google Chrome came out today, thirty minutes before my class, I had a dilemma: go to my physics class and listen to an interesting lecture on the way our universe works, or stay at home and play with a shiny new toy from Google. I'm fairly confident in my choice of the latter. In this new toy, I decided to spend a few hours of listening to creationists debunking evolution. I was sufficiently convinced by their arguments and have, myself, become a creationist.

Having my fundamentalist belief in evolution broken by the great iconoclast Kent Hovind, I chose to apply my new found skepticism to other absurd so-called "scientific" theories that I had always assumed to be true. After much though, I have rejected the theory of gravity using the tools Dr. Hovind and Dr. Comfort have given me. I urge my fellow Raytractors to abandon their faith in gravity by considering the following...


The theory of gravity is absurd. It doesn't merely seem absurd; it is absurd. Here's a little history lesson to start off with.

The History of Newtonism
The theory of gravity, or Newtonism, was hypothesized by Isaac Newton in 1687 in his work Principia Mathematica -- that was over four hundred years ago and not much has changed since. I am not saying Newton was a dumb man, of course not. Newtonism was a brilliant theory in his day.

But let's not forget: it was just a theory formulated over four hundred years ago. Just as Darwin didn't have access to the modern technology that we have and didn't know of the complex structure of cell, Newton was even more ignorant, through no fault of his own. Calculus hadn't even been formally established and, as such, Newton's work rested on geometric proofs -- a math far below our current accepted standard of calculus.

Besides the sketchy historical basis of Newtonism, its historical impact has been grave. There is no denying that Newtonism has been the source of many social ills throughout history. The Nazis themselves believed in Newtonism and made is a central part of their quest to exterminate the Jews. As Ben Stein once famously said, "Science leads you to killing people." Indeed, this is what we say in Nazi Germany as they put Newtonism into practice to kill people. Using the idea that things are accelerated towards the Earth, they not only threw people off of high points to kill them, they also dropped bombs based on calculations made with Newtonism. This is the ugly truth of Newtonism that the scientists refuse to include in their physics books.

The Character of Newton
Before we examine the theory itself, it's important to understand the character of Newton. Just as in a courtroom where you establish the credibility of the witness before considering their testimony, we must first establish Newton's credibility before considering his theory.

The believers of Newtonism have a blind devotion to Newton, making him a deity of sorts. As such, they have whitewashed much of his history. There is a large amount of evidence that Newton was a sexual deviant; a homosexual. He never married or even dated. There is no evidence whatsoever that he ever had sex with a woman. He was also a very miserable and unpleasant man by all accounts. He conducted himself in an arrogant, pompous, and selfish manner which caused many quarrels with intellectuals of his time.

Gravity wasn't the only absurd unscientific theory he came up with; he was also deeply involved with alchemy and eschatology. In fact, it seems his interest in occult studies contributed to his theory of gravity, as he could not otherwise account for the concept of "action-at-a-distance" (another absurdity of Newtonism). As mentioned, he was interested in alchemy -- the idea of transforming common materials into gold and creating an elixir of life -- and also eschatology -- writing on the end of the world, even putting for the date of 2060 AD.

Newton is often credited with the discovery of calculus. This is another example of his followers whitewashing history and also ascribing to him the great accomplishments of others. Calculus was actually discovered by Gottfried Leibniz in 1684. Newton published the full version of his work on calculus in 1704 -- twenty years after Leibniz had already published his. Newton blatantly plagiarized Leibniz to try to take credit for calculus.

How can we believe anything that this plagiarizer has to offer?

Problems with Newtonism
All the problems discussed so far haven't even dealt with the problems of the theory itself. You may say the above is merely circumstantial evidence -- that it says nothing of the theory itself. The theory, though, falls flat on its own merits.

Newtonism doesn't even explain the observed fact that inertial and gravitational masses are the same for all bodies. Furthermore, it doesn't explain the precession of the prehelion of the orbits of the planets. For example, there is a 43 arcsecond per century discrepancy between what Newtonism predicts and the observed precession.

Examples could be continued, but explanations by Newtonism disagree with the observations. That's a fact, but that doesn't shake the faith of the dogmatic Newtonists.


The Absurdity of Gravity
Newton himself acknowledged the absurdity of gravity. He wrote in Principia Mathematica on this absurdity:
That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one another, is to me so great an absurdity that, I believe, no man who has in philosophic matters a competent faculty of thinking could ever fall into it.
I have already exposed the glaring flaws in the so-called "scientific" theory of gravity. I will now expose the glaring absurdities in this theory tale.

Newtonism is improbable.
Newtonism states that if you drop a ball from a height of 1.5m (~ft) that it will take .553 seconds to hit the ground. If you drop it from the same height again from the same position again, Newtonism states that it will hit the same mark in .553 seconds again. If you do this a billion times, Newtonism states that it will hit the same mark in .553 seconds every single time.

This is statistically impossible to have such recurring precision. It would be like flipping a quarter a hundred billion times and having it come up heads every single time. The probability of the ball dropping from a height of 1.5m taking .553 seconds to hit the exact same location is roughly one in 2.04 x 10390. That is absurdly impossible.

Newtonism neglects mass.
To compound the absurdity, Newtonism states that objects fall at the same rate regardless of mass. What?! Perhaps he didn't have them handy, but if you go to the top of a tall building and drop a feather and a bowling ball off at the same time, the bowling ball will hit the ground much sooner than the feather. The idea that objects fall at the same rate regardless of mass is palpably absurd. This is demonstrably false, and yet Newtonists remain blind to this overwhelming evidence.

Newtonism cannot explain orbiting satellites.
I have already debunked Newtonism showing that it cannot account for the orbits of the planets due to a discrepancy. The absurdity of gravity does not stop there. Gravity cannot explain how satellites, the moon for example, remain in orbit. If objects of mass are attracted to one another, then why hasn't the Moon come crashing down to Earth?

If Newtonism were true, we would all be dead right now; obliterated by the Moon.

Source of Matter.
Gravity hinges on the existence of matter. If there were no matter, there would be nothing for gravity to work on. But Newtonism doesn't explain where this matter comes from. Are we to believe it gravitated itself into existence? Preposterous.

Blind Precision?
I have already discussed the problem of precision with Newtonism. Newtonism states that gravity knows how long to keep things in the air, when to land them, and where to land them. But how does it know? How does it know to accelerate an object from 1.5 meters high 9.8 meters per squared second towards the Earth, landing it in a position after .553 seconds? Just as Darwinism cannot explain how organisms know what mutations to create, Newtonism cannot explain how objects know when, where, and how to land.

The Alternative
Having now disposed of all the facets of Newtonism and exposed gravity as the fraud that it is, I will now advance the only rational explanation for the orbits of planets and the theory of what goes up must come down.

As Newtonism cannot account for the Moon orbiting Earth, what then? What is holding it in place? Well, it seems obvious to me that if the Moon is being held in place, there must be an Intelligent Holder. How else can one account for the perfectly circular orbits of the planets and the high precision and predictability of the paths of projectiles?

While we Intelligent Holder proponents do not define who the intelligent agent is, we know that, due to the impossibility of the contrary, this Intelligent Holder is the Flying Spaghetti Monster, thrusting objects downwards with the guidance of his noodley appendages.



RAmen.

16 comments:

Debunkey Monkey said...

I still have not tried Google Chrome. The license scares me.

However, you are absolutely right to compare creationism to a denial of gravity. They are both quite ludicrous from a scientific perspective. :)

DisComforting Ignorance said...

Good to see you here again, Kaitlyn :-) As a "happy atheist scientist" with an interest in computers, you should be ashamed of yourself for not trying Google Chrome. What kind of technophile didn't contribute to Google Chrome gaining 1% of the market share on the first day?

And don't let the license scare you. We're talking about Google here, not Microsoft. Google's motto is "don't be evil," so it must therefore be true.


And agreed on the comparison :-) What I was specifically going for was how the arguments they use against evolution could just be as easily applied to gravity, such as attacking Darwin's character, arguing against the theory as it stood 150 years ago, misunderstand and misapply it, appeal to puzzling probabilities, inappropriately incorporate other sciences against it, etc. So, I tried to hit all those points.

I'm working on creating a challenge (with a cash prize) to anyone who can prove gravity. I should have that up by the weekend :-)

Ranting Student said...

I tried Google Chrome. I'm using it right now to comment.


I loved this post, and wanted to comment sooner. It has now topped my top DI favorite post (Which used to be the Death Match).

I've been thinking... Just how accurate will these arguments be according to what creationists think if somehow gravity was a threat to their religion? My guess is very, very close.

Anonymous said...

You converted me from my gravitational atheism, I was completely deluded, thinking it was a natural phenomenon. All hail... Noodly Appendage... blah blah blah.

Loved the post.

Plus I beat my 14 year old son to Google Chrome by half a day, yeeees! First time I wasn't the techno runner up - yeahh!

And it's great.

Somnambulator

Debunkey Monkey said...

Fine... I'll download and compile Chrome. It's basically a webkit application, so I sort of know what to expect already. :P

As a developer, I like Firefox a lot due to its extensions. I need my browser to allow me to alter my GET and POST requests to test my applications for vulnerabilities.

DisComforting Ignorance said...

I've noticed a few problems so far with Google Chrome, but hopefully they're just present because it's beta.

And thanks everyone for the kind comments.

@RS: The Death Match remains the most frequently viewed post on this blog. It got over 3k visitors its first day and still gets hits.

I'm rather fond of this post, though. As I was watching all these creationist videos, I realized how much their arguments could be made against gravity as well (since most of the time they are either attacking Darwin himself or the theory as it stood 150 years ago).

I think creationists don't care how solid their arguments are; they just look for any argument that looks like it supports their ideas. If you ever read sites like over at Debunking Atheists, these people just repost from sites like Answers in Genesis without even bothering to investigate the claims. In the same vein as this post, I'm going to start a satirical series on Biblical Sciences.

DisComforting Ignorance said...

@kaitlyn:

You're a developer? I imagine Google Chrome will be quite a popular browser (especially once it gets extensions going), so you'll have to use it eventually to verify sites for the users. And I definitely agree on the Tamper Data extension. FireFox has been a Godsend for developing websites. I don't know if you also focus on designs, but I have found the IETester to be particularly useful to make sure it looks and functions correctly in the various versions of IE.

So let me get this straight... you're a happy atheist scientist, atheist blogger with an interest in Ray, technophile, and web developer? While I have to remain strictly agnostic on this, I believe I love you :-D

Anonymous said...

Now that is good satire. Of course, we Rational Thinkers know that the FSM, as full of Noodly Goodness as He is, is not the Intelligent Holder. It's turtles all the way down.

Jorgon Gorgon said...

Excellent!

Ladicius said...

2008-1687=400+....?

Anonymous said...

In all of your rationalizations and arguments you fail to account for a number of other forces which contribute.

When you drop a feather and a bowling ball from a building, do it in a vacuum with no wind resistance.

.553 provides for only 3 decimal measurements. Your claim would be correct that each drop would not be EXACTLY the same if you had gone into more numerical detail (more decimal places). Of course, you will never be dropping the object from the exact same height twice in a row, assuming you wish to be mathematically perfect to the Nth degree. Also keep in mind that the effect of Earth’s gravity on an object does change as the distance from the center of the Earth changes (as well as the movement of all other celestial bodies). This means that any experiment that you run would not be 'perfectly' comparable to a following experiment, as the environment will ALWAYS change slightly.

The truth of the matter is the same problem that the 'giants' of physics have always had. We still do not have the technology to measure in such great detail. Humanity's 'experiments' have not yet been applied to the larger (celestial) extremes of space, which would provide for a lesser margin of error while using our limited technology. Our inability to measure the extreme cases of both very large numbers and very small numbers is the retort to most of your claims.

Orbits are not perfectly circular; they are elliptical. They are also not perfectly elliptical, meaning that the path of a body or object in orbit is in a path that is constantly changing based on the gravitational forces exerted on it. Think of a downward spiral in a toilet bowl. Your 'object' around the edges will eventually get to the middle. The timeline that this takes for celestial bodies is beyond our levels of computation. Just because you haven’t seen much planetary movement in the 400 year period that you encompass in your article doesn't mean that over a period of 40 billion years there is no movement of those bodies. It just means that we (humans) are too small to see and measure it.

For the record, I am an Atheist, a scientist, and a ‘techie’. I do not use Firefox or Google chrome because I don’t really care.

Jared said...

"1. Use sound logic and avoid fallacies."

If rule #1 on my blog was to avoid fallacies I would be a bit embarrassed to have an entry which is essentially an enormous straw man fallacy, with some red herrings and a few ad hominem fallacies scattered throughout... just saying.

Of course, it will probably by excused as "witty satire".

Anonymous said...

Oh dear I hope this is satire...

Newtonism at best was a LAW anyways. Einstein blew gravity into theory territory. Plus the theory doesn't explain WHERE matter comes from, like evolution doesn't explain where life comes from, it assumes it's already present.

But I'm assuming you already knew this :P

Anonymous said...

Are you for real?
Almost everything on this page is complete rubbish !!
I am surprised that you can read, or use a computer.
Please educate yourself. If you can disprove gravity you will get a Nobel prize.

Anonymous said...

Are you for real?
Almost everything on this page is complete rubbish !!
I am surprised that you can read, or use a computer.
Please educate yourself. If you can disprove gravity you will get a Nobel prize.

Anonymous said...

Seriously, you past few commenters need to get bent. It's a piece satirizing arguments against dogmatic "Darwinism." Oh, this article doesn't disprove gravity? I think that's kind of the point, you dolts.