3/11/2004

idiot son

Mr. Saad Gabr Al Tamimi is a self-styled Arab cosmologist who claims, on purely empirical reasoning, that there was no need for a Big Bang:

"There was no small or big bang behind the creation of the universe. The secret of creation lies in the divine spinning and rotational forces and their different speeds as controlled by a master plan", says an Arab cosmologist.
[...]
"The diameters and spinning speeds of the 12 cosmic bodies of our solar system (11 planets and their sun) are not the same. Nor are their orbiting speeds. This proves that the creation and formation of our solar system is governed by a divine master plan, created by a unique supreme creator. It was neither random nor accidental. The backbone of the plan is the divine control of the speed of spinning and rotation of the cosmic bodies of our solar system. There was no need for a big or small bang", he says.


Apart from evident confusion on the difference between the Solar System and the Universe as a whole, he also might want to read up on Kepler's 2nd Law.

Ibn al-Haitham
, Mr. Tamimi is not.

Look, I do believe in a divine creation of the Universe, and rationale for its existence. It's why I was able to appreciate the cleverness of Jim Holt's recent three-part series in Slate about the end of the universe, where interviews with famous cosmologists are sprinkled in with insightful yet fanciful logical constructs such as this one:

Why should we want the universe to last forever, anyway? Look�either the universe has a purpose or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then it is absurd. If it does have a purpose, then there are two possibilities: Either this purpose is eventually achieved, or it is never achieved. If it is never achieved, then the universe is futile. But if it is eventually achieved, then any further existence of the universe is pointless. So, no matter how you slice it, an eternal universe is either a) absurd, b) futile, or c) eventually pointless.


Holt does not intend for the above to be a serious analysis, of course. But it does at least take the problem of the Universe's origin and ultimate end seriously from a scientific perspective. The problem with our addled Mr. Tamimi is that he has fixated on a religious argument of faith and is trying to extrapolate a scientific conclusion.

I do believe that all science and all religion is a subset of knowledge within Truth, and that the boundaries of Truth are also divine. But there are limits to what understandings you can squeeze from ether intellectual framework. Mr. Tamimi is simply not intellectually honest enough to resist the temptation of buttressing his religious argument with the false authority of pseudoscience - and is frankly a fool to even try to peddle his franken-construct on the scientific side of the aisle.

No comments: