Nobody Expects the Science Inquisition

This episode of James Burke's "The Day the Universe Changed" is particularly fascinating and well worth watching. Science snobs always hate this bit. Burke's description of the structure of scientific progress is straight out of Thomas Kuhn's seminal work "The Structure of Scientific Revolution" and Burke is dead on. It upsets those who adhere to the modern cult of sciencism to think that their religion would actually hang on to bad ideas and false theories, but it does. I mean how many college professors are comfortable standing up in front of their classes and telling them to pitch out the $200 book (written by the professor) that they all were forced to buy for his class last year is all wrong. What Ph.D, wants to tell his grad students that some basic concept he forced them to memorize last year wasn't true at all this year? That's why science advances in plateaus and then big jumps. It's a lot of trouble to change out the textbooks.

I love Burke's idea that computer technology could make elitist centralized governments obsolete. The spectre of a human-utopia yields in this fantasy to a machine-utopia. Both optimistically assume that humans or machines can make things perfect, without the pesky need for God or for his work on changing the human heart. This episode dates back 3 decades or more from the beginning of the personal computer revolution before the Internet rose to it's current power. Burke had little idea just how much the existence of a machine-based free market of ideas would rattle the great halls of human power, whether for good or evil.

Of course politicians hold politics in the same reverence that scientists and science fans hold science and with the same naivete. A person's belief system greatly influences how he sees the world and what he believes to be true can lead him to do some pretty appalling things. Burke was right. If you are not comfortable with what he said in the episode about science, then you probably aren't a scientist, but a person who treats science as a religion. I expressed this, as I thought, reasonable opinion in the comment section of the video and immediately got romped on and called "vapid" an "idiot" and a "troll"

One expects this sort of reaction from science true believers when you challenge their religious devotion to the idea of the purity of science. Thomas Kuhn ruffled plenty of science fan feathers half a century ago, when, in his book, he pointed out the Achilles heel of science - the human factor. This factor tends to be ignored by science fanboys with the same intensity that Catholics ignore pedophilia amongst the priesthood. Anything that violates your religious belief (and make no mistake about it, sciencism is a religion) is rejected with disdain. Science personality Neil deGrasse Tyson does this sort of thing a lot. His predecessor Carl Sagan at least left a little room for things science doesn't know - in my opinion making him a more honest practitioner of science than deGrasse.

If you've ever hung around scientists and are at all free from the grip of overwhelming science adoration, you will be disturbed to find that scientists can be as prissy, self-centered a gang of egotists as the college of cardinals or attendees at an international congress on climate change. It is ironic that the religion of science, which purports to be so objective, is so prejudiced against opinions which differ from the accepted canon of science. Truly objective science allows for data from all sources. It doesn't puff itself up and push away any idea which challenges it's own opinion. The truth is that whether it's the practitioners of some narrow religious dogma or the "I believe in science" true believer who believes that science is the only pure way, either group deliberately wears blinders to anything upsetting. It's a form of cowardice.

I have found that there also exists a group of folk in the world who are scientists, theologians, philosophers, farmers, philosophers, and teachers who are not afraid of knowledge or of the experience of others which may challenge their own preconceived ideas. Such folks are the most wonderful examples of Homo-Sapiens I've ever known. Whether it's science, theology, psychology or philosophy, there are individuals within each intellectual pursuit who tend to ossify around a set of core beliefs. They shout down anyone who challenges their belief.  

The best of those who practice these intellectual disciplines realize that whether it be the physical, spiritual, mental, or intellectual world, there are mysteries yet to discover. Anyone who decides their particular belief system and their core collection of beliefs is the only unchallengeable one, is missing the incredible intellectual crossover benefits one gets from examining data from other sources than the ones familiar to you. Newton established ground-breaking physics principles that held to be the standard for centuries until folk like Einstein noticed some holes in them. Newton wrote books on theology too. Einstein famously said that he did not believe God played dice with the universe. C.S. Lewis drew upon science in his great works on Christian apologetics. Freeman Dyson once said that it looked like the universe knew we were coming. The best of scientists, theologians, philosophers and psychologists tend to have the broadest minds.

Neither science, nor theology, nor psychology, nor philosophy is at it's best when it sits back on its haunches and confidently proclaims, "I am all there is that is worth consideration." This is a terribly narrow view for science especially, which relies so heavily on informed speculation to support its theories; theories which, by the way, have a disturbing habit of being over-turned every half century or so. Every advance of science, every great discovery, every miraculous advance in technology happens because someone dares consider an idea that the rest of the herd at first thinks is a load of claptrap and then fastens it into a web of knowledge that has been woven by generations of previous scientists who also dared to think independently.

It is disturbing to see how rigidly narrow so many Americans have become around the "I believe only in science" faith. We are, after all, the descendants of a culture which embraced physical science, medicine, philosophy and theology with such unbridled enthusiasm that we changed the world forever. It would be a shame if we abandoned that heritage to embrace an entirely too limited faith in science that rejects any other opinion or idea that challenges the narrow views of its adherents.

In the old days, they used to burn people with different opinions at the stake, imprison them, chop off their heads, banish them or whip them. It starts with calling anyone whose opinion challenges the status quo a "Troll".  I like James Burke. I don't agree with everything he believes (he's pretty sure global warming is on the way), but he does make one think, which practice is the thing that drives the increase of human knowledge.

Just one man's opinion,

Tom King © 2017

And The Ig Nobel Prize in Economics Goes To......

This year's Ig Nobel Prizes for Improbable Scientific Research were handed out Thursday night at Harvard. The top winners were an International effort that managed to partially unboil an egg and a couple of physicists that determined that all mammals empty their bladders in 21 seconds (Dr. Raston's drunk Uncle Larry was excluded as an outlier in the data collection process).

The guys that won the Literature prize, won for a study that proved that every human language has the word "huh" in it and that it always means the same thing. When I heard this, my first thought was, "Huh?" 

The Management Prize went to some guys that proved that CEOs who experienced natural or unnatural disasters like hurricanes, volcanos, tornados, plane crashes or terrorist attacks that didn't harm them go on to become risk-takers. They were unable to get any data on those injured or directly affected by these kinds of traumatic events. Apparently they're still hiding in their closets.

My favorite were the winners of the Economics prize. Using the "If you can't lick 'em join 'em" principle, the Bangkok Metropolitan Police [THAILAND] won the prize for a test study in which the department offered to pay policemen extra cash if the policemen refused to take bribes. Oddly enough it worked...........they think. No one can be quite sure really.

Who knew? For the rest of the odd, but strangely entertaining list of this year's winners check out the list here.

© 2015 by Tom King

Disproving God

(c) 2011 by Tom King

(Sorry this runs long - it's a long philosophical muse, written on a soft Sabbath afternoon.)

Someone recently told me with perfect certainty that God and all religion can be easily disproved.

Simply because you have not seen it, does not mean it does not exist.  You can say you are reasonably certain the thing does not exist, but I'm pretty sure an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient trans-dimensional being might just be able to avoid appearing on your radar without a lot of trouble if it suited Him.

Easily disproved?

Really?

And how is it you can disprove the existence of a thing anyway? Not having seen it yourself will not do. I have never seen an atom, but I'm fair certain they exist.  In "proving" the existence of black holes, for instance, you can only do so by observing what is happening around them to infer their existence. Physicists infer the existence of dark energy because something must be pushing the universe apart at ever increasing speed because otherwise it would be slowing down all the time due to gravity.

Physicists first postulated dark energy based things they observed in the heavens. Then, they sought to find mathematical proofs of their theory about dark energy, thereby building a case for its existence.

In the same way no one can prove the existence of a multi-dimensional, powerful being, save by observation of the world around us and the ways in which God (or whatever you wish to call him) impacts that world.

Plenty of eye-witness testimony, some of it contemporary, claims to have witnessed or experienced acts of God. I have a couple of my own experiences that are not readily explainable by either physics or psychology.

Does this mean that all who experience such events are liars because their conclusions about whether or not God exists differ from yours. I would hope, given most of you believe strongly in science, that you would wait for empirical evidence before drawing a conclusion.

Carl Sagan argued, that if God existed, he would surely provide unmistakable proof of His existence. This might not be so, if God were deliberately limiting man's access to such absolute proof for a reason – some purpose he had for insuring that the evidence of His existence remained deliberately thin on the ground. If this were true, you would only find hints of his existence in unexplainable phenomenon like dark energy, the properties of water, the exactitude of Earth's orbit, the presence of its moon to insure stability and perfect size and composition to promote life. As Freeman Dyson once said, “...it looks as though the universe knew we were coming.”

Given that even the scientific community remains divided over whether God or some vast intelligence exists, it seems to me a truly open-minded person would wait for the theory to be tested. Christianity is just such a testing procedure for the theory that God does exist and cares for us personally. I came to Christianity making a deal with God. "Prove to me you exist. I'll follow the program You've laid out to the best of my ability and you show me that You exist.”

I have tested the hypothesis that God exists to the point that I am convinced that He does. Unless you have thoroughly tested the hypothesis for yourself, you cannot say one way or another whether my own experiment is valid or not.

The fact that Christians squabble among themselves over points of doctrine or church practices means nothing. Scientists do the same thing over points of scientific doctrine. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating.

My experience has been that God patiently changes a person as a result of that person's on-going relationship with Him. I find that I am free of things that once held me down. I find that I do what I want more than what I was once compelled to do by my nature or upbringing.

Do people abuse power as Christian leaders? Absolutely.

Do scientists abuse their power? For sure!

Do politicians? Ya, you betcha.

The great controversy in this world is not God vs. Not God. It is between those who serve themselves and those who serve others.

If God wished to create an immortal race of individuals with complete free will; a people that God could be sure wouldn't mess things up again, who would do what is right, because it is right and not just when it suits their selfish purpose and, if, at the same time He could preserve the creativity, the energy and the vast potential of creatures with free will, how would He do that?

My theory is that God would plant those creatures alone on a planet, allow them to work out both sides of the argument - the mercenary vs the philanthropic approach to life and see what happens. Then at the end of it all, save the essence of who they are, grant them immortal bodies and turn them loose in the galaxy to live, love and create.

The only creature capable of such a thing would be one who exists beyond mere three dimensions, one who can see today, tomorrow and yesterday all at the same time, one to whom time and space are endless, who can work out ever detail so that in the end, the great goal is achieved -- a free people who, by their very nature, will never perpetrate evil upon each other or anyone else.

The idea makes sense, I'm not the only one who ever believed such an idea. Millions of Christians believe something along those lines. I can't think of any other way to make people with free will that won't wreck the universe. The Earth, I firmly believe, is a crucible in which free people are made. Everyone has a choice. Live for yourself and do what you want and you get this life and then die and disappear (Eccl. 9:5). The other choice means you accept the discipline and educational program God offers and you get eternal life and total freedom given back to you for completing the coursework.

I'm betting the second pathway is correct. Whichever way is correct, it shouldn't matter to anyone else. It is my choice and affects those who choose their own way not in the least. You may do as you wish, live as you want. The only thing I'll fight you on is if you try to limit my right to live as I choose.

It's a philosophical difference. It is not something you can play philosophical "Tag You're It" over. You believe one way or the other and it's hardly likely you'll ever agree. It comes down to majority rules in the end.

If religion is a fraud, it may perhaps one day be crushed by the preponderance of evidence. Or, Jesus may come back and settle the matter. As in science, the wisest thing to do is to wait for enough studies to come in before you plant your flag on one side or the other.

Tom King - Tyler, TX

Albert May Have Been Right

 – It Appears God Doesn't Play Dice With the Universe

by Tom King (c) 2010

In order for Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity to work, he had to force the equations a bit to fit what physicists believed about the universe at the time. To do this Einstein added a factor he called the cosmic constant represented by the Greek capital letter “lambda”. He later abandoned the idea of the cosmological constant and called it the biggest blunder of his life. Scientists have lately returned to the useful idea of the cosmological constant to explain what they are calling “dark energy”. Dark energy is the the unexplained force that is causing the increasingly rapid expansion of the universe.

Big Bang Theory predicted that the force of gravity would cause the expansion caused by the original big bang to slow and eventually reverse itself. When scientist Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University in Canberra and astrophysicist Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins surveyed distant galaxies to find out the rate at which the universe was slowing, they discovered to their immense discomfort that the speed at which the universe was expanding, in point of fact.

In the absence of a plausible reason for this expansion, the team “discovered” dark energy in 1998. Dark energy is a name for the force that is increasing the speed of expansion of the universe. Like the cosmological constant, dark energy is a name for something cosmologists don't understand. The more researchers looked at the data, the more it proved that what they were seeing was true. Something was pushing apart the universe faster and faster. A key expected consequence of the Big Bang Theory was missing in action.

Scientists, in an effort to resolve the problem, have retreated to Einstein's discarded idea that the vacuum of space has energy that acts repulsively – the cosmological constant. The multi-verse believers call it an accidental condition unique to our peculiar universe that probably doesn't exist in other parallel universes as though that somehow explains things. Either way, the point is the universe is being pushed apart at a steady rate – not too ffast and not too slow – and physicists and cosmologists don't know why.

I think do.

I can only think of one force in the universe powerful enough to be responsible for pushing apart galaxies.
Unfortunately, the scientific community has a bit of a blind spot there. Carl Sagan once complained that if God existed, he would give us irrefutable evidence of his existent. What if he has and we're just ignoring it because it's not the sort of evidence we expected?

As CS Lewis said in his classic Chronicles of Narnia, “He's not a tame lion.”

NASA Goes to the Stars Like We Used to Get Home from College

In essence, Daddy O. just took away NASA's wheels.  Beginning with the last space shuttle launch, NASA astronauts are going to be hitchhiking to space with Russians or private sector companies.  I know Burt Rutan is going to be happy about this, but what does that do for astronaut's careers you have to wonder - especially the pilots. Are NASA's finest going to be answering questions like "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" in a string of corporate human resource director's offices?

Seems a little sad to me.  There is, however, the slight chance that Obama has done the right thing with NASA- turning space exploration over to the private sector albeit for the wrong reasons.  What troubles me though, is this.  How long will it take him to realize that a heavily loaded rocket, properly pointed from space can cause a whole lot of hurt if someone decides to drop it on someone's town or house for that matter.

If he does let the private sector go to space, will space flight be one of those things rich people do and so be taxed to oblivion like the yachting industry has been?  It just seems that Obama and the private sector are  unlikely to be a successful partnership - as unlikely as GM & Obama or AIG & Obama or Bank of America & Obama or Health Care & Obama.

What do you think the chances are that Obama will actually resist the temptation to regulate the fledgling private sector space industry into oblivion?

Probably not very good!

Tom King

* In case you are wondering, the cartoon is Photoshopped from another cartoon by Dana Summers of the Orlando Sentinel.  I can't draw an astronaut worth a flip, so I borrowed his.  You can see the original editorial cartoon which is pretty funny all by itself at:  http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/ 

Put Your Fingers in the Dike People

Why I'm not worried about coastal flooding.

by Tom King

(c) 2009 - Some rights reserved

The government of Australia really has bought into the whole global climate change thing. They recently released a warning to Aussies that the ocean will rise 1.1 meters over the next 90 years endangering everything within 500 meters of the coast.

Okay, so somebody explain this to me.  1.1 meter is about 3 1/2 feet. You mean people built buildings along the coasts that are less than 3 1/2 feet above sea level.  What idiot did that? I've seen that surfing movie where they went to Australia to surf.  I know some of those waves are more than 3 1/2 feet tall.  So how come everybody's basement isn't full of water every time the surf gets a little gnarly?

And are you telling me that some guy with a 50 million dollar building in the flood zone is going to sit there while the ocean fills up the mezzanine?  You're telling me, he's NOT going to spend 50 or 60 grand to help build a 5 foot dike along the shore line to prevent flooding?  I mean it worked for the Dutch for crying out loud.  Why not for Australia?  Shoot, while we're at it, why not move the new dikes a bit farther out and add a little more expensive real estate to the coastline?

Are you telling me that in 90 years we can't move a little dirt down to the beach and raise the sand 3 and a half feet?  Plant a little grass?  Human beings are a bit more resourceful than the doom and gloomers think we are.  I think we can handle 3 and a half feet in 90 years.  We do have a lot of dump trucks and bull dozers.  Think of it as lots of new "green" jobs.  


Besides, apparently the leading global climate change scientists have been making data up all this time because - let me get this straight - they were afraid that if they couldn't get the data to prove global warming was happening in time, it might be too late by the time they did get it to stop it so in order to save us all from ourselves they lied about the data in order to frighten everyone into going along with a gigantic effort to stop global warming which they actually don't have any real proof for and then when the annual temperatures started to drop they renamed it global climate change hoping no one would notice it was getting cooler and so they kept on with the whole thing because, hey, even if the climate doesn't change, a massive socialist world government and redistribution of wealth will be good for everybody anyway.

Man, the 60's must have been really good to these guys......

The Heavens Declare the Glory of God

Physicists don't like coincidences. So says a recent article in "Discover Magazine On-line.*" Apparently one of the coincidences making them very uncomfortable is recent evidence that indicates that life is somehow central to the way the universe functions.

For more than a century, scientists have rested comfortably in the idea that life in this universe is the result of one big old accident. Recent discoveries, however, are forcing scientists - physicists in particular - out of their comfort zone. It appears that life, after all, may not be just some cosmic accident, an accidental byproduct of a random mixture of chemicals, heat and the odd lightning bolt – here today and gone tomorrow as the universe goes.

“In some strange sense, it appears that we are not adapted to the universe;” says the Discover article. “The universe is adapted to us.”

So, as Christians, who have long been made fun of for believing that same idea - do we get to start jumping up and down and singing “Nanny, nanny, boo, boo! We told you so!” I mean after all, it seems that the biggest problem in physics is now that the universe looks like it may not be accidental at all, but, in fact, may be designed for us.

Should we gloat? Of course not. It would be ungracious. Satisfying, but ungracious.

It's a really tough problem for modern science. If you accept what scientists have been observing about the universe lately, there are only two possible explanations:

There is a benevolent creator who designed the universe specifically to support life.

There are multiple universes – so many that one of them accidentally has all the characteristics necessary to supports life (sort of like the old postulate that if millions of monkeys randomly banged away at millions of typewriters long enough, one day, quite by accident, one of them would type up War & Peace).

Here are some of the facts that lead to what is for physicists such an awkwardly narrow pair of choices:

• If you change even small things about the universe and life cannot exist. If, for instance, at the atomic level, the mass of electrons is doubled or the strength of the interaction between protons and electrons is altered by even a small amount, life would literally disappear. The Discover article points out that there are three space dimensions and one time dimension? If we had four space dimensions and one time dimension, then planetary systems would be unstable and our version of life would be impossible. If we had two space dimensions and one time dimension, we'd be flatter than a sheet of paper and again, life would not exist.
• Brandon Carter, a physicist at Cambridge proposed the idea that the universe was made just for us—the so-called anthropic principle—in 1973. The anthropic principle asserts that the laws of physics themselves are biased toward life. Renowned physicist, Freeman Dyson, who is by no means a creationist, goes so far as to say that if we accept the strong anthropic principle then it looks like “the universe knew we were coming.”
• Matter clumping: If matter was more evenly distributed in the universe, it wouldn’t have bunched up to create planets, stars and galaxies. If it had been clumpier, everything would have piled up into massive black holes where life is impossible. Like Goldilocks with the porridge bowls, apparently this universe was selected to support life because matter is just lumpy enough and not too lumpy, just hot enough and not too hot, which brings us to our next “problem” for physicists.
• Uniform temperatures: Oddly enough, the temperature of space is 2.7 degrees Celsius above absolute zero everywhere astronomers have looked. According to the original Big Bang theory, temperatures should be more random. If the universe has been cooling since the Big Bang, different widely separated regions of the universe would have had to exchange heat like ice cubes in a glass of tea. But since according to Einstein, nothing—including heat—can travel faster than the speed of light, then according to the conventional theory there hasn’t been enough time for that to happen. Exchanging heat, even at the speed of light, there hasn’t been enough time for the universe to achieve even temperatures everywhere and yet everywhere the temperature is the same.
• In 1998 researchers found that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Theoretically, they expected the expansion of the universe to be slowing down and eventually stop altogether and then for the universe to actually begin collapsing in upon itself. Instead there is apparently some unknown “force that is built into the fabric of space and time that is pushing everything apart. For want of a better name, physicists are calling it dark energy. I call it "The Goldilocks Constant". What’s even more incredible for those who believe in random chance and chaos, the amount of energy is exactly enough to accelerate expansion, but not so much that it would cause the universe to rip itself apart. The amount of this so-called dark energy is coincidentally exactly right to allow for the existence of stars and planets and life. Nobel prize winner Dr. Steven Weinberg at the University of Texas*, says, “This is the one fine-tuning that seems to be extreme, far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident.”

So far the only acceptable conclusion physicists have formulated is that there are multiple universes and that this one accidentally won the cosmic crap shoot and precisely works the way it needs to in order to support life. The multiverse theory is impossibly complex. For many physicists, the multiverse remains a desperate measure, ruled out by the impossibility of confirmation. Scientists have held out hope in recent advances in string theory for a solution to the problem, but a 2000 study at the University of California at Berkeley* calculated that the basic equations of string theory have an astronomical number of different possible solutions; so many in fact that the theory could never be proved right or wrong.

The unacceptable conclusion - the idea that there is a Creator who designed the universe to foster life and who is pushing the universe’s boundaries ever outward - is one science is not prepared to accept. So much for scientific objectivity. There is a scientific principle known as Occam’s Razor, formulated by a 14^th century English logician and friar. Paraphrased it states, “"All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."

So given all the evidence, of the two solutions, an astronomical number of universes or a universe designed to support life by a creator, which seems simplest to you?

Easy answer if you happen to know the Creator personally.

Just one man’s observation.

Tom King

Flint, TX

* http://discovermagazine.com/2008/dec/10-sciences-alternative-to-an-intelligent-creator

Selling Indulgences for the New Catholic Religion

There is a new "Catholic" church in the world and I don't mean what you think I mean. The new "church" isn't exactly a church. It's almost an anti-church. It doesn't worship God the Creator, it worships the creation. Man is not made in the image of God. Man is a cosmic accident that isn't turning out to be such a good thing and (except for certain enlightened exceptions) will probably need to go extinct if the planet is to be saved.

I am, of course, referring to the church of environmentalism. Its theology embraces evolution, the doctrine of global warming, the belief that human non-interference in nature is the way to go and that America is the cause of most of the world's problems because we're too rich and complacent (except, of course, for the wealthy devotees of the new religion).

I call the religion "catholic" because that word "catholic" actually means "universal" or "all encompassing". Environmentalism we are told embraces everyone in a cloud of universal guilt. We all have sinned against our environment. This concept is being taught in schools, churches, magazines, television, radio and everywhere else its message can be spread. It is a religion, because its tenants are taken on faith and based on theories derived from evidence limited by the capacity of current science and the data on which it relies. We are to trust that science - the same science that once proclaimed the earth flat and told us straight-faced that there was a fifth element (in addition to earth, wind, fire and water) called phlogiston that made things burn. The idea eventually lost credibility to the point that a 60's rock group decided to drop "Phlogiston" and water from their name because (a) Earth, Wind, Fire, Water and Phlogiston was a bit much even for the sixties and (b) it violates the "Rule of Threes" (Never name more than 3 elements in literature, marketing or theology to make your point).

Like the worship of God, the worship of the environment is based on the idea that there is something greater than yourself that deserves your worship, sacrifice and devotion. In the same way, Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists base their own worship on the idea that there is a being or "force" that is greater than themselves, the environmental movement abases itself before the idea of an idealized "nature" which knows better than we do how to take care of itself.

Both "religion" and environmentalism rely on bodies of writers like Solomon, David, Moses, and Paul or modern authorities like Al, Rachel, Alec, Barbara and Michael for the tenets of their beliefs. Each of those writers tell of their experiences of either God or mother nature in order to reveal to believers, the character of their god.

What both of these styles of worship have in common is that there exists within each body of believers, individuals seeking power who are willing to utilize the devotion of the faithful to increase their power over the believers. This has happened throughout Christian history, Muslim history, Jewish History AND the history of the environmentalist movement.

What is at the base of it all is the lust for power. It was the cause of Lucifer's original downfall and it is the cause of all of the misery, the blame for which is laid (unfairly) at Christianity's door. In our world, it is not only Jim Jones, Osama Ben Laden and David Koresh, but also Michael Moore, Barbara Striesand AND Al Gore that take the slide down the slippery slope into blind fanaticism and drag their followers along for the ride. Theirs is a fanaticism that brooks no challenge to its theology. Those who disagree are singled out for ridicule, suicide bombs and machine gun fire. Brilliant, respected scientists who challenge the "universal" belief that man is single-handedly destroying the planet are shouted down. Educators, policy makers and pundits who challenge the science that purports to show that a global disaster is on the way if we don't all park our cars and start walking will find themselves quickly marginalized, castigated in the media and sometimes losing their jobs.

Groups like The Conservation Fund and Carbonfund.org make a tidy living planting trees to "offset" the carbon emitted by celebrities flying around in their private jets, cruising in their SUV's and burning the lights in their multi-million dollar mansions. They are as jealous of the dogma that protects their income as Jim Baker and Oral Roberts were. There is not a whit of difference between Scientologists milking Tom Cruise for financial support and the Conservation Fund milking Delta Airlines' corporate guilt to cover the agency's operating budget.

There is no difference that I can see between selling religious "indulgences" and environmental "offsets". Johann Tetzel, a Dominican monk, went about selling indulgences to wealthy 16th century Germans to fund the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Rome got money for more marble and the German jet set got a little guilt free debauchery. The Carbon Fund sells carbon "offsets" by planting trees in exchange for generous donations. In return, Al Gore can fly around to his well paid speaking engagements in a luxurious business jet instead of waiting on the runway for the snow to clear with the rest of us peons sitting for 7 hours in Jet Blue business class. Angelina and Brad can fly around the world adopting orphans, ostensibly without releasing more carbon dioxide through their afterburners than the trees they bought can clean up out of the air. Barbara can get to her concert in Rome where people are plunking down $1000 per seat and she can arrive in a time to have her wardrobe fluffed in a nice hot dryer - all without guilt because the Carbon Fund planted some trees for her.

Nice if you can afford it. Meanwhile people like me can't afford to buy enough trees to get to work and back.

Look, I'm not to saying that environmentalists aren't true believers in what they are doing. It's just that the leaders of their movement are not any more immune to the temptations of hypocracy, excess, greed and lust for power than are the leaders of churches, cathedrals, monasteries, mosques and synagogues.

So give it a rest. We grant you the right to believe what you want to believe. We ask for the same right. We may have to allow for the fact that what each of us genuinely believe may be, in some respects, repugnant to one another. You believe in "choice" and anything else is to you an abrogation of a woman's rights. Others believe abortion is murder and an abrogation of the right to life of an unborn child. Is there any way to solve that without one side forcing the other side to bow to its demands?

Not really.

Many Christians believe we were placed upon the Earth to till the soil, to garden and to take care of the animals. A vehement group of animal rights activists and Earth-First conservationists believe we need to leave the earth alone and let it take care of itself - as though nature had a mind of its own and knows best what is good for it. Can the two opinions be reconciled?

Probably not.

So how do we handle the fact they we have not just two sides, but a multitude of cultures, faiths and belief systems that are often totally at odds with one another?

We compromise. It's how we do things in America. We find a solution that allows everyone to retain his beliefs while acknowledging that others have a sacred right to their beliefs. The compromises are often unsatisfying to everyone, but they allow us to live together in relative peace. We allow a person to change his belief system as a result of rational discourse without being in danger of a beheading or banishment. Joe Bob goes to church on Sunday, I go on Saturday. Machmud goes on Friday while April Dawn communes with nature on the weekend. We disapprove of burning down churches, kidnapping people to make them join your church or passing laws that say you have to belong to any one church.

That leaves an awful lot of room for everyone to practice their faith. The case of Desmond Doss springs to mind. Desmond was a skinny Seventh day Adventist kid who got drafted at the outset of World War II. He was a concientious objector - refused to carry a gun or kill anyone because of his religious beliefs. He met his service obligation by becoming a medic. He was hated, reviled and tormented for not "defending his country", but he remained steadfast. Soon after his unit hit the islands in the Pacific, everyone learned a new respect for the skinny medic. One afternoon in Okinawa, he rescued 75 wounded men from an escarpment where they were pinned down. Bullets rained down on Doss, but he was never hit and kept standing at the edge of a cliff in full view of the Japanese, lowering one man after another to safety. One Japanese sniper later reported that his gun jammed every time he tried to shoot Doss. Corporal Doss won the congressional medal of honor for his action that day, was later wounded and was permanently disabled in the service of his country. The men in his platoon respected him so much that they all went back onto the battlefield under fire after he was wounded to recover his Bible.

We are a nation of many beliefs and values, but there is room for all of those values so long as there is tolerance as well. By tolerance, I do not mean that we must embrace and encourage all beliefs ourselves without question. One may believe that homosexuality is a sin and still fight for another's right to be gay if they want to be. You may believe that as a Christian I am an infidel and that is okay so long as you don't hinder my right to be one. We can argue and we can debate these issues all day long, but we each have the right to have our beliefs respected.

Shouting each other down in the public forum does no good to either of our causes. I'll go to my revivals and rallies and celebrate my beliefs. You go to yours. I won't throw rocks at you. You don't throw them at me. That's how we do it in America, okay?

Just one man's opinion.....

Tom King

Pluto: Planet with a Disability

Okay, now I'm mad! A dinky little group of elitist astronomers just voted to demote Pluto from a planet to something called a "dwarf" planet which is actually not a planet at all, but a "trans-Neptunian object". Can you imagine some third grader trying to say "trans-Neptunian object", must less memorize it!

Pluto is one of my favorite planets due to it's spunky out of kilter orbit. You've gotta love a planet that's sometimes the farthest planet out and then, part of the time it cuts inside of Neptune and becomes the next farthest out. It has a little moon called Charon that's almost as big as it is. How cool is that?

There ought to be a Planets with Disabilities Act to prevent discrimination against planets simply because they are size challenged. The term 'dwarf' planet unfairly labels planets of limited stature. What we need is to encourage astronomers to use "planet first" language. I propose we send an official letter to the International Astronomical Union to express our outrage at their discriminatory language toward Kuiper Belt objects like Pluto and demand the use of "Planet First" language. Dwarf planets are planets first, therefore People for the Ethical Treatment of Planets (PETOP) proposes the use of terms like "Planets with size challenges" or "Planets of dimuntive size". In this way we emphasize that objects like Pluto are planets first. Small planets are planets, not dwarfs. No planet should be defined entirely by its size. A planet of diminutive size may have as much or more character as one of those overblown blobs of methane like Jupiter and Uranus!

PETOP also proposes standards for equal accessibility to orbital paths for planets with size challenges like Pluto. These should include protecting a planet with size challenges from being jerked out of orbit or sucked into the gravity well of a gas giant. No planet should be forced to become a moon against its will.

How we'll enforce the PDA, I can't tell you, but, hey, when did that ever stop a bureaucrat from drafting a law.

Just one man's opinion...

Tom King