Dear friends,
Mr. Chaudry accuses me of "adopting rather
convoluted method" to knock down the article that he submitted. The
article was a celebration of Antony Flew's conversion from atheism.
Antony Flew has always said that Gerald Schroeder has been one of
the biggest, if not the biggest, influences on his decision to forgo
atheism. I find it a very direct approach to analyze the quality of
the scientific scholarship of Gerald Schroeder in this case. After
all, Schroeder boasts on his website (and the claim has never been
denied by Flew) to be responsible for Flew's conversion. Antony Flew
frequently cites (or maybe used to cite since I have heard that he
now refrains from doing that) Gerald Schroeder as the one who
convinced him of scientific basis for the existence of an
intelligent creator and Bible having some scientific miracles in it.
Is it not relevant to see that the authority Mr. Flew presents is a
person who says that masers can fire a single atom?
What I find convoluted is the following. An
atheist philosopher, Antony Flew, who has no evolutionary biology
credentials, forgoes his atheistic ideas and makes a nonsensical
statement about a-biogenesis, not evolution, and Mr. Javed
Chaudry presents it to us under the title, "Another blow to the
evolutionists". Mr. Chaudry has steered totally clear of this major
point in his response. Mr. Chaudry has narrated to us 270 words long
story of what happened one day in a grocery shop and yet not a
single word on what makes Antony Flew's conversion a blow to the
evolutionists.
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Mr. Chaudry tells us that my assertion that mass
and weight are not the same is correct but so is Schroeder's
depiction. In his support he has quoted the following
National Institute of
Standards and Technology notes that "in commercial and everyday one,
and especially in common parlance, weight is usually used as a
synonym for mass"
and
The National Standard of
Canada, CAN/CSA-Z234.1-89 Canadian Metric Practice Guide, January
1989:
5.7.3 Considerable confusion exists in the use
of the term "weight." In commercial and everyday use, the term
"weight" nearly always means mass. In science and technology,
"weight" has primarily meant a force due to gravity. In scientific
and technical work, the term "weight" should be replaced by the term
"mass" or "force," depending on the application.
Exactly!!! In commercial and everyday
use, mass and weight are interchangeable but not in a book that
is trying to prove the existence of God thru science written by a
Physicist holding a Ph.D. from MIT.
On the hf = mc2 front, Mr.
Chaudry has the following to say.
"First of all, equation (2)
is not called Planck's equation, (Mr. Aamer has decided to call it
that for some reason) this is also, Einstein's equation.."
The reason I decided to call it Planck's equation
is because it is Planck's equation. Some references that I
dug up quickly going thru my bookshelf. I'm sure I could find more
by visiting a library.
|
"When an electron jumped from one
allowed orbit to another of lower energy, the difference
energy, E, was given off as radiation of a
sharply determined frequency f, determined by
Planck's E = hf"
(Eddington's search for a
fundamental theory by C W Kilmister page 82)
"By Planck's equation, energy
carried by a radiation, E = hf."
(Hypothesis on Matter: A
preliminary study by Nainan K. Vergheese page 149.)
"The energy of photon depends on its
frequency according to a formula first guessed by Max
Planck. The formula is very simple; it says that the
photon's energy is proportional to its frequency. We can
write down this formula relating the energy of photon,
E, to the frequency, f, of the light as
follows
E = hf
Photon's energy E = Planck's
constant h times frequency f"
(The New Quantum Universe by
Tony Hey and Patrick Walters. page 22)
"The German physicist Max Planck
was examining the blackbody radiation curve to see what
assumptions would be necessary to correctly derive it.
He found that if he abandoned some classical ideas about
the emission of electromagnetic energy by the atoms of a
solid, but instead assumed that they radiated energy in
tiny chunks, called quanta (singular, quantum), he could
derive a formula that fit the experimental curve very
accurately at all wavelengths. Each quantum emitted had
to have an energy proportional to the frequency of the
electromagnetic radiation. If E stands for the
energy of one quantum, then
E = hf"
(Introduction to Light: The
physics of light, vision and color by Gray Waldman
page 23)
and finally,
"Thus, denoting the coefficient of
proportionality by the symbol 'h', Planck was led
to accept that the minimal portion, or quantum, of
energy transferred was given by the expression E =
hf."
(The New World of Mr. Tompkins
by, none other than, George Gamow and Russell Stannard
page 92) |
As to what I mean by variable energy, let me have
another stab at it. Schroeder suggests the equation hf = mc2.
The left side is the energy of a particle which is variable
depending on particle's momentum. The right side assumes no momentum
and it is rest energy which is constant for the particle. There are
two situation where this equation can be acceptable
1) If one takes E and m in E
= mc2 as relativistic quantities but that would be
irrelevant in the context Schroeder used it (I don't want to go into
the detail of why is that because then I'd need to write a lot more
than I intend to in this post. One can pick up Schroeder's book to
see the context and if there is disagreement, I can discuss that)
2) The equation hf = mc2 is
valid for annihilation of particle-antiparticle pair but then E
in E = hf won't mean deBroglie energy but the energy of gamma
photons emerging as the result of annihilation. Again, its
irrelevant in Schroeder's context.
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Mr. Chaudry says that its convenient that
evolution pre-supposes life and takes the story from there. Its not
a matter of convenience. Its just a matter of following the
available facts. I guess in Mr. Chaudry's opinion, Einstein should
have withheld his Theories of Relativity till the time the Theory of
Big Bang was formulated since till that point, physics was not
giving us all the answers. The physicists till that point
were wrong to tell us how the world worked without telling us how it
came into being. Similarly, evolution shouldn't tell us how life
works without telling us how it began. Mr. Chaudry questions if it
is a rational approach to accept evolution without a valid theory of
a-biogenesis. I would answer the question with a 'yes'. Following
the available facts and withholding belief on facts yet uncovered
is the rational approach. Its better than filling the gaps of
human knowledge with unknown entities like god (and by the way, how
convenient is that). It seems that religionists want to give
only two options to science; either give them all the answers to all
the question they pose today or accept that god did it. To be
fair, they don't do that to everything. They don't do it to the laws
of thermodynamics, for example. They do it only to the theories that
go against their dogmatic beliefs. Unfortunately, evolution happens
to be such a theory and their opposition to it is not on scientific
but dogmatic grounds. What we are witnessing is the same mindset
that made Galileo recant his assertions and say that earth was the
center of the universe. We all know which view prevailed at the end
of the day.
Instead, Mr. Chaudry presents us a god-did-it
book as an alternative to scientific inquiry. A book that is
supposed to have foretold scientific principles more than a 1000
years ago although none of these claims pre-date the actual
scientific discoveries. They were miraculously discovered after
the discoveries thru some creative translation techniques in my
opinion. The same book says pretty unscientific things too but
nothing too difficult to be explained away thru creative
translations and strange interpretations like "prophetic past
tense". The book containing divine wisdom that allows husbands to
beat their wives is supposed to have told us that human embryo looks
like a leech in its early stages although the word that is now being
translated as "leech" used to mean "blood clot" all thru the time
till science explained the embryology and opened the possibility of
translating alaq as leech. That, I might add, is nothing
unique to Muslims. Hindus believe Bhagvad Geeta foretold scientific
facts and Christians believe Bible did but somehow none of these
religions actually helped science to come up with those facts. I
can't count how many religionists I have met who miraculously
discovered that the religion they already believed in was
somehow validated by science. But I am digressing. I wanted to write
about the claim by Mr. Chaudry that a-biogenesis is already a
discredited theory (its neither a theory nor discredited) but I am
sure I will have many opportunities of doing that in future.
Regards,
Rafi
11/30/05
