Terahertz

Almost a month ago now I signed up to receive a set of emails from Perry Marshall entitled “cosmic fingerprints.“  These emails promised to prove god’s existence.  Unfortunately, they failed.

The first email was entitled “Einstein’s Big Blunder.“  Not exactly a sellar of a title to me – there’s enough relativity denialists out there already.  But this isn’t what the email was about.  This one is more about using big bang cosmology to set up for the First Cause argument.

He begins by screwing up basic history:

100 years ago, Albert Einstein published three papers that rocked the world. These papers proved the existence of the atom, introduced the theory of relativity, and described quantum mechanics.

One for three. First, the papers demonstrated the photoelectric effect (and that therefore light was a particle or photon), special relativity (general relativity was described later) and Brownian motion (that matter was made up of subatomic particles, the atom was first postulated by the Greeks and discovered by Rutherford and a combination of people described quantum mechanics, namely Bohr, Heisenberg and Shrodinger).

A rocky start, but Marshall continues:

His equations for relativity indicated that the universe was expanding.  This bothered him, because if it was expanding, it must have had a beginning and a beginner. Since neither of these appealed to him, Einstein introduced a ‘fudge factor’ that ensured a ‘steady state’ universe, one that had no beginning or end. [emphasis added]

The word “beginner” refers to someone who is new at something, like I’m a beginner at skateboarding, not a creator or a cause.  But setting grammar aside, we still have a misrepresentation here: he presents no evidence that this is why Einstein implemented a cosmological constant, more likely he added it because the consensus was that we live in a steady state universe, and its difficult in science to predict something completely out of line with fundamental assumptions (and rightly so, because as Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”).  So by putting forth General Relativity with a fudge factor that made it compatible with established science, it was easier to accept (even for Einstein, who probably assumed it first).  The issue of needing a god to get things going likely didn’t play into this issue.

Marshall continues:

Not only does the universe have a beginning, but time itself, our own dimension of cause and effect, began with the Big Bang. That’s right — time itself does not exist before then.  The very line of time begins with that creation event.  Matter, energy, time and space were created in an instant by an intelligence outside of space and time.

Hold on there Mr. Marshall. You made a big jump out of no where. Time did not exist before the big bang, yes. However, “matter, energy, time and space” do not necessarily require an external creation event. There is ample evidence that the total energy of this universe is zero (within some quantum uncertainty), this includes all the matter (which can be converted to energy, thanks again to Einstein for that prediction). And we do predict that matter/energy can “pop” into existence in our own universe via Hawking Radiation. So its not necessary that external creation had to occur. The beautiful result of quantum mechanics is that not every event has a cause (good example: the spontaneous emission of photons from an atom)!

Marshall finishes his first email with the appeal to authority quote mine that attempts to show a deistic/theistic side of Einstein:

About this intelligence, Albert Einstein wrote in his book “The World As I See It” that the harmony of natural law “Reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
He went on to write, “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe–a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”

Was Einstein spiritual? Definitely, but he was likely more of a pantheist than a deist or theist. Basically following the ideas of Spinoza that the universe itself is beautiful and worthy of worship, and may even be the manifestations of god. To put it simply “the universe (and its laws) is god.”

Since Marshall staggered his emails over five days, I’ll try to spread my responses out too. Look for part 2 tomorrow.