{"id":370,"date":"2007-04-02T21:14:39","date_gmt":"2007-04-02T21:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/2007\/04\/02\/george-shollenberger-returns-to-prove-his-innumeracy\/"},"modified":"2007-04-02T21:14:39","modified_gmt":"2007-04-02T21:14:39","slug":"george-shollenberger-returns-to-prove-his-innumeracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/02\/george-shollenberger-returns-to-prove-his-innumeracy\/","title":{"rendered":"George Shollenberger Returns to Prove his Innumeracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, I revisited George Shollenberger<\/a>, the creator the alleged “First Scientific Proof of God”, and commented on his pathetic antics on amazon.com, trying to explain just why no one had bothered to post a single review of his book. (If you’ll
\nrecall, according to George, it’s because everyone is too busy considering the impact that his proof is going to have on their activities.)<\/p>\n

Normally, I wouldn’t revisit a two-bit crank like George after such a short interval, but he showed up in the comments again to specifically point at a post he made on his own blog<\/a>, which he claims<\/em> justifies his position that all of mathematics needs to be reconsidered in light of his supposed proof.<\/p>\n

And it’s just too silly to pass up.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There are two parts to it; but the second one is really just a reiteration of the first, expanded with even more nonsensical babble. Here’s the first part<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Last evening, I listened to a video presented by Professor Muhammad al Mahdi on the first Muslim scientific proof of God. Click Although the audio was bad, I could understand enough of the words used by al Mahdi. In general, this Muslim proof of God is based on Einstein’s relativity theory. For instance, if you are on a moving train and are walking in the same direction as the train, a person standing still outside of the train will say that you are moving faster than the train. But, if you are walking in the opposing direction , the person standing outside will say that you are moving slower than the train.<\/p>\n

The Muslim proof deals with the motion of a particle of light (a photon) and its motion to our planet from the sun. If the photon has mass and moves from the sun to our planet at the speed of light, the mass of the photon would increase to infinity and destroy planet earth. Only if a photon has no mass, can light appear in our world. The truth is that each photon travels to planet earth in a fraction of a second.<\/p>\n

Physicists identify a photon as a packet of light energy. But, if a photon has energy, Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc2<\/sup>, applies. If a photo has energy, at the speed of light the mass of the photon is approaching infinity and a photo would destroy our planet. Obviously, today’s physicists have made an error on defining a photon. The Muslim scientists correct this error by removing akk mass from the photon. When all mass is removed, the massless photon becomes an attribute of God where it is pure energy rather than physical light energy. So, biblical statements such as ‘let there be light’ have been correct.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So, first… He utterly botches relativity. The gibberish he describes has absolutely zippo, nada, nil, nothing to do with the actual<\/em> theory of relativity. In fact, what he describes is nothing more than the concept of “frame of reference”, which dates back to roughly the time of Isaac Newton. But you know what? Botching relativity isn’t that big a deal: so few people actually have a clue of what it mnd it’eans that it’s hard to be overly critical of a dumb old guy for getting it wrong.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, there’s the next paragraph. There’s no excuse for that.<\/p>\n

How long does it take for a photon to reach the earth? Well, photons move at
\n186,000 miles\/second. The average distance from the earth to the sun is about 93 million miles. So it takes about 500 seconds – or somewhat over 8 minutes<\/em> for a photon to get from the sun to the earth. And that’s not hard math, nor is it exactly esoteric knowledge – I learned how long it took for light to get to the earth in 4th grade. This is profound<\/em> ignorance, and likewise profound innumeracy – anyone who had any clue<\/em> about the speed of light, and the rough magnitude of the size of earths orbit (which should<\/em> include anyone who claims to have revolutionized all of modern math and physics) – would pretty much instantly be able to tell that it takes far more than an instant for a photon to reach the earth.<\/p>\n

And then, he tries to play games with the old e=mc2<\/sup> equation – which, once again, demonstrates total and profound innumeracy and scientific illiteracy. e=mc2<\/sup> has absolutely no relation<\/em> to what George is talking about. There’s nothing in that equation that says anything<\/em> about anything<\/em> approaching infinity. It’s just that George remembers hearing somewhere that relativity says mass increases as you get closer to the speed of light, and he thinks that e=mc2<\/sup> is<\/em> relativity. But he obviously doesn’t even understand the
\nnotation of the equation – because anyone who can even read an equation can see that the that equation says nothing<\/em> about anything approaching infinity. Nor does it say anything<\/em> about whether or not photons have mass.<\/p>\n

That equation tells you how much energy<\/em> is equivalent to a particular amount of mass. It does not<\/em> say that anything with a particular amount of energy has a particular amount of mass. There is no legitimate way – if you actually understand the equation – to read that as saying that a photon must have mass because it has energy.<\/p>\n

So how’s old George holding up here, in his claim to be supporting the idea that we need to re-consider the foundations of mathematics in light of his discovery? Not good at all. This little argument of his is not just supportive of his claim, but by demonstrating the sheer depth of his innumeracy, it utterly destroys any claim that he might have to understand anything that he’s talking about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, I revisited George Shollenberger, the creator the alleged “First Scientific Proof of God”, and commented on his pathetic antics on amazon.com, trying to explain just why no one had bothered to post a single review of his book. (If you’ll recall, according to George, it’s because everyone is too busy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-physics","category-debunking-creationism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-5Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}