be alert the country needs lerts

 

"I believe in science," proclaimed a passing atheist grandly.

When he had gone I smiled ruefully at the thought of the religion he was proposing.

Of course different people mean different things when they mention science.

His definition and mine would doubtless be quite different.

For me science is a field of study of the nature of reality which has arisen from the Judaeo Christian tradition's ten commandments and the attendent democratisation of knowledge which has followed that tradition wherever it is espoused.

The atheist thinks science is something else arising from some other source.

His notion of science as something he believes in is what interests me today.

What are its tenets?

I mean if it is worth believing in, it must surely say something.

I suppose Albert Einstein's equation "E = MC squared" is a basic principle of what many atheists would think of as science.

E = MC squared in plainish English means: "Energy is the same thing as Mass multiplied by the speed of light multiplied by itself."

Presumably Albert intended this most celebrated pseudo equation to apply to a particular mass and a particular sample of what we conceive of as energy contained in that mass.

Otherwise it would make no sense.

And it makes little enough sense as it is.

The speed of light adds a nice bit of voodoo to the idea.

For it is possible that light has no speed.

No one has ever successfully or precisely defined what light is.

As we observe it, light seems to take some time to have its effects on one place or another.

Taking time to get from one place to another is indeed an attribute of speed.

But for an object to have speed it must have mass,

Light has no mass so it can have no speed.

And we don't even know if time itself is a meaningful concept so the time we ascribe to light's diffusion may have no meaning either.

That is to say we don't know if time is a medium or is measurable in anything other than an inductive metaphorical sense.

E = MC squared is completely untestable and unverifed by experience.

What a marvellous act of faith atheists make in espousing such fooboon and presuming to call it science.