faith in science

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faith in science

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Submitted by terren on 11/10/2003 - 13:51

One thing that really irks me is when I hear or read statements in the media, such as: "The universe is 13.7 billion years old."

The problem is the confusion of theory with fact. A more honest statement would be, "we currently believe the universe to be about 13.7 billion years old." The ideas and assumptions that have led to the above statement also have yet to be proved scientifically with observation. Is this just semantics? Not at all. As soon as you take a scientific theory and present it as fact, you've turned science into a religion.

To say that we know the universe is 13.7 billion years old requires an act of faith that the currently accepted theory of cosmology is true. And science is not a religion, it's a technique, nothing more, nothing less. Scientific models are just models - not reality. We must not confuse the map with the territory.

Many people are apparently ready to accept this theory as true based on the findings from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), an outer-space microwave measuring apparatus. WMAP has provided the first detailed picture of background microwave radiation, postulated to be left over from a 'big bang' event. Patterns in the radiation allow scientists to infer the amount of time that has elapsed since the initial explosion - the age of the universe. The consistency of these patterns allows a certain precision in the guess.

But a precise guess is still a guess. It's obvious the theory is being fitted to the data. Why else would the theory require that 96% of the universe be comprised of stuff we can't measure, called dark matter and dark energy? You can't make up a theory, based on observations, then claim that the theory is right, because it fits the observations. Scientific proof of the theory necessitates the observation of novel phenomena predicted by the theory. Einstein's Theory of General Relativity was proved true because it predicted something that nobody had observed yet - then they went ahead and observed it. But until that fateful day when a total solar eclipse allowed for a test of the theory, Einstein's theory received massive skepticism.

Why shouldn't the current theory receive the same skepticism? We're being asked to believe that the overwhelming majority of our universe is made up of stuff we can't detect. Which is funny, because almost every system of human cosmology besides science asks us to believe the same basic thing, but it's usually called spirits, ghosts, God, or whatever other terminologies exist.

Science has always relied exclusively on observation to settle differing accounts of the universe. It has always rejected theories involving unobservable phenomenon. It's why medicine has evolved from evil spirits to bacteria and viruses. It's why the theory of General Relativity is accepted as fact - predictions made by Einstein's theory have been observed to be true.

So why should the current theory be any different? Perhaps the theory is true, and someone will find a way to detect dark matter and/or dark energy. Then, I would be among the first to hop on board. But until then, it's just a theory. Can we stop making the same mistake of hubris we've been making since humans claimed to be the center of God's universe?

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: Function call_user_method_array() is deprecated in /home/terren/mmmmbacon.com/includes/theme.inc on line 211.

: Function call_user_method_array() is deprecated in /home/terren/mmmmbacon.com/includes/theme.inc on line 211.

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: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. Please use the date.timezone setting, the TZ environment variable or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Los_Angeles' for 'PDT/-7.0/DST' instead in /home/terren/mmmmbacon.com/includes/common.inc on line 773.

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