Mike, a Shawnee, KS father and Sun­day school teacher pass­es us a note about an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion at this church’s Adult Sun­day School. There’s some food for thought in there, but I’m afraid I filled up on An Open let­ter to the Board of Edu­ca­tion, about The Atom­ic The­o­ry of Mat­ter:

… We ask for a spir­it of true open-mind­ed­ness in sci­ence, and a will­ing­ness to ques­tion estab­lished authority.

In that same spir­it, we pro­pose that the oth­er the­o­ry that should be recon­sid­ered is the “atom­ic the­o­ry of matter.”

An open mind­ed and fair hear­ing of the fol­low­ing argu­ments will show why the State Board of Edu­ca­tion should con­sid­er requir­ing the teach­ing of alter­na­tive the­o­ries of the nature of mat­ter, just as they are con­sid­er­ing alter­na­tives to the the­o­ry of evolution.

First, it should be not­ed that the mod­ern devel­op­ment of this the­o­ry has led some physi­cists to adhere to a num­ber of log­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble and absurd asser­tions. For exam­ple, there is the wide­ly held “uncer­tain­ty prin­ci­ple,” which says it is phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble to know both the exact loca­tion and speed of a par­ti­cle. This prin­ci­ple defies com­mon sense. Sim­ple obser­va­tion of a dust par­ti­cle shows the loca­tion – right in front of your eyes – and the speed — very slow. [TfK empha­sis. This cracks me up. I’m not sure why.]

Even stranger is the notion in quan­tum physics that par­ti­cles have no def­i­nite exis­tence until they are observed. This kind of think­ing was reject­ed by the great­est sci­en­tist of all time, Albert Ein­stein, who famous­ly said; “God does not play dice with the universe.”

Sec­ond, most of the so called “evi­dence” for the atom­ic the­o­ry of mat­ter does not hold up to close scruti­ny. For exam­ple, Ben Franklin did not actu­al­ly see any elec­trons, he just saw a flash of light. (Lucky for us he lived long enough to claim to have invent­ed elec­tric­i­ty). No else has ever seen elec­trons, peo­ple can see only light. And the fact that we get sparks when we rub our feet on the car­pet and touch met­al doesn’t prove any­thing – the muf­fler on my car sparks as it drags across the pave­ment, and no one claims that is proof of the exis­tence of “elec­trons.”

The atom­ic the­o­ry of mat­ter ignores the exis­tence of a supreme cre­ator. A few sci­en­tists claim that mat­ter “came into being” in some mys­te­ri­ous process at some indef­i­nite time after the “Big Bang.” (Don’t get me start­ed on that!) That’s not what the Bible says. In fact, I read the Bible once, and I don’t remem­ber any­thing about any atoms any­where in it. (Well, I only read the first few pages – but that’s where the sto­ry of cre­ation is, anyway.)

…

In con­clu­sion, Kansans won’t tol­er­ate queer­ness in our mar­riages; so we not should tol­er­ate it in our physics either.

Yours,

Mor­timer Sim­plex, B.S., M.S., PhD;
Exec­u­tive Direc­tor
Kansans for a Chris­t­ian Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion
Our Mot­to: Aude sapere via reduc­tio ad absurdum.

I think it says some­thing that even Kansans have trou­ble tak­ing this non­sense seri­ous­ly. There are tru­ly some things that can only be dis­cussed through satire. And this pret­ty much does what can be done. ID is an extend­ed argu­ment from increduli­ty jus­ti­fied by argu­ments from igno­rance. (Argu­ments from igno­rance do not require that the arguer be igno­rant, just that there be a gen­er­al­ized igno­rance about a top­ic, a gap to fill with speculation.) 

Note that the author of this teach­es in his Sun­day school. This isn’t an attack on reli­gion, just an attack on bad reli­gion mas­querad­ing as bad sci­ence. (Or vice versa.)