For 75 minutes, the professor mesmerized a standing room only audience as he laid out the remarkably stunning evidence that backs up the scientific understanding of the nature of the universe, and its theoretical underpinnings. Among many other slides he showed, he included the predicted vs. actual measured elemental abundances, the Planck Black Body curve of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), on which the actual measured values lie so close to the predicted curve that it is necessary to magnify the error bars on the measured data by a factor of 400 in order to even see them, and the Angular Power Spectrum of the Anisotropies of the CMBR as predicted by the Inflationary variant of the Big Bang cosmology, vs. the actual measured data, which fits the prediction to an extraordinary degree.
After the lecture, I personally thanked the professor for his generosity on driving an hour and a half each way to give the lecture, from which he derived no benefit by giving, and which he had no obligation to give in the first place, all without charging a red cent to do so. And then I came home and saw this thread.
The vast intellectual gulf that exists between what I saw and heard tonight, and what I read in the post that heads up this thread is so vast that words cannot begin to describe it. It is the gulf that lies athwart the divide between reason-based reality and fantasy.
Tonight, I saw the the starkly beautiful and majestic Universe that has been fathomed by scientists who have forced it to reluctantly yielded up its secrets. And then I saw this article that started this thread.
I am stunned beyond words. What utter tripe this is. The contrast is stunning.
Truly amazing. Nice to have such a match between theory and empirical measurement. Must have been extremely satisfying to the theorists.
But what does this have to do with the topic of the thread?
Thank you for that post. I'm not fully sure why but the knowledge that a scientist gave such a convincing and eloquent lecture lifts my spirits.
It reinforces my respect for the sciences to know that rational thought is common and well within reach.
I believe stupidity ought to be painful... but would prefer it were painful only to those who commit the stupidity.
I wish I had had the chance to catch that lecture.
Then turn to an abler tongue:
In search of this new world, whom shall we find
Sufficient? who shall tempt with wandring feet
The dark unbottom'd infinite Abyss
And through the palpable obscure find out
His uncouth way, or spread his aerie flight
Upborn with indefatigable wings
Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive
The happy Ile; what strength, what art can then
Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe
Through the strict Senteries and Stations thick
Of Angels watching round?
Paradise Lost is one of the greatest intellectual accomplishments of Milton's--or any--century. And yet...and yet Milton came under harsh criticism from his fellow Puritans because his character of Satan was too nobly drawn. A work of arrant genius was put before them, and all they were able to see was how it differed from their idea of their Bible.
(They had a point, however. The scene where Satan directs the construction of the city of Pandaemonium is probably the most moving and inspiring in all Literature; it reduced--no, elevated--me to tears.)
I would have enjoyed hearing that talk!