Timothy Birdnow

On Facebook a man who lives up to his name sneers at the friends of Marcus Goyne for being ignorant and stupid.

The appropriately named Mark Snarski (sans Snuch) bloviates:

Hold on and I'm not taking any prisoners here. Marcus, look we get on fine as you know but that comment is akin to opening a bowling alley called Ignorant and Stupid. Let's start with Galileo who was contracted to invent the telescope and pointed it towards the heavens. I'll skip a few centuries and a Belgium priest George Lemaitre came up with The Big Bang Theory. He called the atom the cosmic egg, the primeval atom. He was a priest. Albert Einstein disagreed with him when he said that the universe was expanding and later he retracted it. You should all watch this great documentary by the BBC called The History of Science because what I've read on this thread is stupid, ignorant and generally pretty fucked up.

I retort:

I disagree; you make some factual errors here.

First, Galileo did not invent the telescope. That was the brainchild of Hans Lippershey, who in 1608 produced the first "spy-glass" using lenses from eyeglasses (which were invented in 1285 by Salvino D'Armate). What Galileo did was use a telescope to look at the planets and, by virtue of being the first man to do it, discovered the moons of Jupiter as well as Saturn's rings.

As to Einstein and the Big Bang, I would add that Einstein also rejected quantum physics and pushed the notion of a cosmological constant to clean up the mess his General Theory of Relativity work. He later said it was the biggest blunder of his life.

And Einstein made not one but TWO rookie errors in his calculations. http://rubyhawk.expertscolumn.com/article/einstein-and-big-bang-theory Russian mathematician Alexander Friedman pointed this out to Einstein, who did not enjoy being corrected (he divided by zero in one equation) and so the Great Man simply ignored his booboo. He eventually conceded his error, but would never accept the Big Bang despite considerable evidence.

At any rate, Einstein added the cosmological constant solely as a way to make the math allow for a static universe - poor motivation for a world class mind. He approached the matter out of pride and not scientific detachment.

At any rate, I do not understand your claim of "effed up" comments. Most of them are acknowledging exactly what happened with Einstein; Science should be open to debate. Had everyone just accepted Einstein's word for it we would still be stuck in the flat-earth universe.  (Yes, the CC has renewed interest since it comports with Dark Energy, but that's a whole other story.)

At any rate, the BBC is hardly an objective source of information. It is fine you are getting some from them but need to balance that off with other sources. Using one media outlet for any information is a serious mistake.

Oh, by the way, the mechanical clock was invented by Galileo after he saw church candle holders swaying after being lit. He never built it though, but he drew up plans for it. Galileo was a first rank genius even if an obnoxious ass who insisted on calling Copernicanism "settled science". He was lucky there because at the time it was NOT settled science; it did not eliminate the problems of epicycles in planetary motion (that would come later with Kepler and eliptical orbits.) I would add the much maligned Middle Ages produced some tremendous science and scholarship. That was because the Church saw the importance of science - and in fact the scientific method and the university were developed by Churchmen. We downplay that these days because materialism and atheism are taught and this repudiates the false narrative of Medieval superstition.

A whole lot of technology was invented during the Medieval period; the chimney, the ship lateen sail (which allows for tacking into the wind), the blast furnace, the mechanical clock, gunpowder, and the printing press, to name a few.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:55 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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