{"id":649,"date":"2008-06-23T12:13:58","date_gmt":"2008-06-23T12:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/2008\/06\/23\/torah-and-relativity-attack-of-the-jewish-cranks\/"},"modified":"2008-06-23T12:13:58","modified_gmt":"2008-06-23T12:13:58","slug":"torah-and-relativity-attack-of-the-jewish-cranks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/23\/torah-and-relativity-attack-of-the-jewish-cranks\/","title":{"rendered":"Torah and Relativity: Attack of The Jewish Cranks"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE(9\/1): In a move that, frankly, astonished me, the author of the piece that I mocked in this post has withdrawn the article, because he’s recognized its errors. And he didn’t just withdraw it – he came back to this blog to explain the withdrawal. I’ve never seen a fundamentalist writer admit to errors this way. Most
\nauthors of what I consider bad religion\/science\/math either ignore their errors, or silently pull the erroneous articles and pretend that they never existed. The way that
\nMr. Bar-Cohn handled this is an excellent example of how honest people with genuine integrity behave. Mr. Bar-Cohn has earned a great deal of respect for me by doing this.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Since I’ve been writing GM\/BM, I’ve frequently mocked Christian
\nfundamentalists who make stupid arguments based on bad, or (even
\nworse) no math. I’ve also taken on some Muslim idiots a couple of
\ntimes. But I’ve frequently receieved emails asking why I’ve never done
\nthe same thing to Jewish idiots. (Actually, it’s usually not really
\nasking<\/em>, but more making accusations that I go easy on Jewish
\narguments because I’m a Jew. Usually as a part of some nasty screed
\nabout how I’m part of the Great Jewish Conspiracy to Take Over the
\nWorld.)<\/p>\n

The real reason that I haven’t dealt with Jewish fundies before is
\njust because people don’t send me good links<\/em>. Until now, I haven’t
\nknown of any particularly good Jewish fundy nonsense to write about.
\nThe only major bit of Jewish bad math that I knew about was the infamous “Torah
\ncodes” or “skip codes”<\/a>, which had been well and thoroughly done to
\ndeath long before I started blogging.<\/p>\n

Then, a few weeks ago, someone sent me a great<\/em> link to a
\nrelativity denial thing, arguing that the Torah demonstrates the
\nfalsehood of relativity using some really<\/em> wretchedly bad
\nmath. It managed to combine a bunch of my favorite kinds of lunacy,
\nall in one hysterical package: religious stupidity, horribly bad math,
\nrelativity denial, gematria, bizzare interpretations passed off as
\nliteralism – it hit pretty much all the buttons! It was glorious, the
\nkind of stupidity that I really relish! I didn’t immediately write
\nabout it, because I wanted to wait until I had time to do it justice.
\nA quick off-the-cuff mocking wasn’t enough for such high-grade insanity.
\nAnd then, being an idiot, I lost the link!<\/p>\n

Yes, I really am an idiot sometimes. I could have sworn that put
\nthat link in my “crackpottery” folder in my Safari bookmarks. But no,
\nit’s not there. And I only keep one week of history in my browser, so
\nit’s not there either. I lost one of the best cranky links ever to
\ncome my way! If anyone happens to come across an argument from
\ngematria on why relativity can’t possibly be true, please<\/em>
\nforward it to me. I really want to find that gloriously idiotic
\nmess!<\/p>\n

But fear not – all is not lost. (Looking at this as I’m doing a
\nfinal editing pass, I’ve got to say that I’m sounding like Orac<\/a> lately. But hey,
\nhe’s the guy who inspired me to start GM\/BM, so how bad could that
\nbe?) While googling to try to find it, I found something almost – not
\nquite, but almost – as good. It’s a website run by an organization
\ncalled the “Torah Technology Institute”, which features an article by
\nDavid Bar-Cohn, called Kehushah and Time
\nDilation<\/a>, which attempts to argue that there’s a connection
\nbetween relativity and the presence of God: they argue that a literal
\nreading of the Torah shows that the presence of God has a relativistic
\ntime-dilation effect.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The starting point of this incredibly idiotic argument is two
\nverses from the Torah. One of them says that the western lamp of the
\nMenorah in the temple in Jerusalem stayed lit longer than the others,
\ndespite all the lamps being fueled with the same quantity of oil.
\nThe second describes a loaf of bread from a sacrificial offering as
\nstaying warm and fresh for a full week. Mr. Bar-Cohn claims that these
\nare strange events that require some explanation: there must be a
\nreason why one particular lamp’s oil lasted longer that the others,
\nand there must be a reason why the bread stayed fresh for so long.
\n(Apparently explanations like “different lamps can end up burning fuel
\nfaster or slower depending on minor variations in how they’re built,
\nairflow, etc.” don’t fly.) No, it can’t be anything mundane: it must
\nbe a miracle!<\/p>\n

Further, in both cases, these “strange” events are related to the
\nspecific placement of the objects: the western lamp of the menorah is
\nclosest to the ark, and the bread in the sacrifice is placed immediately
\nin front of the ark. So obviously<\/em>, it must be<\/em> the
\npresence of the ark that is having some kind of miraculous effect
\non the lamp and bread!<\/p>\n

So he sets out to try to figure out just what the ark could
\npossibly be doing to cause this effect. And that’s where the fun begins!<\/p>\n

Part of what makes this article so much fun is the way that the
\nauthor makes such an effort to superficially follow the scientific
\nmethod. He takes a naive, but adequate, description of the scientific
\nmethod: (1) Make observations. (2) Develop a hypothesis that explains
\nthose observations. (3) Test the hypothesis. So that’s what he does.<\/p>\n

The hypothesis is: the thing that the two examples have in common
\nis that they’re close to an artifact containing the presence of God.
\n(He consistently uses “Kehushah”, which is a hebrew term for “the holy
\npresence”.) He then considers what could cause this effect, and argues
\nthat the most likely explanation is time dilation:<\/p>\n

\n

Now we must ask, what is it about Kedusha that would cause things
\nto be preserved? One might speculate that as Kedusha\/the Presence of
\nHa’Kadosh Baruch Hu is life-imbuing and energizing that the oil and
\nbread drew extra “Shefa” from this source, and were essentially
\n“supercharged” as a result. (For more on the connections between
\nKedusha and energy, see Rav Chaim Zimmerman’s book “Torah and
\nExistence” as well as my own article, “Dynamics of Kedusha and
\nBracha”).<\/p>\n

One possible problem with the “energy thesis” in this particular
\ninstance is the following: Imagine bread exposed to some sort of
\nenergy\/radiation for one week, such that it stayed warm. If our own
\nexperience with heat and time is any indication, the bread would
\nhardly resemble something fresh out of the oven. It would be more like
\nbread that’s been sitting in the toaster too long! Given this
\ndifficulty, an alternative explanation may go like this: If the bread
\nis described as fresh and warm as if hardly any time elapsed, maybe in
\nfact hardly any time elapsed. That is, the effect of preservation via
\nKedusha\/Shechina is due to a local slowing of time. Or expressed as a
\nrule: Time slows as Kedusha increases.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So, our intrepid author has already developed one hypothesis for
\nwhy the events happened, and then discarded it, because it failed to
\nadequately explain things. Very scientific, eh? (Ok, so it’s not,
\nbut it makes it look<\/em> like he’s trying to be scientific.)<\/p>\n

Then he found a better<\/em> hypothesis for why these events
\nhappened, and he’s very happy with himself. The next step is to test
\nit. How do you test a scientific theory? You look at your hypothesis,
\nand use it to make predictions. Predictions can be “If I do experiment
\nX, my hypothesis says that the outcome will be Y.”, or they can be “If
\nI look in the right place, I’ll find evidence X that my hypothesis
\nsays should exist”. Mr. Bar-Cohn takes his version of the latter: he
\npredicts that if his hypothesis is true, then there should be
\nother<\/em> instances in the Torah of apparent time dilation
\nassociated with the presence of God. So he looks to the Torah again,
\nand – suprise! – he finds a list of other events that he argues show
\ntime dilation.<\/p>\n

Of course, he misses one of the most important parts of the real
\nscientific method. See, in real science, you don’t just<\/em> come
\nup with a set of tests that confirm<\/em> your hypothesis. You
\nactually try to find tests that could disprove<\/em> your
\nhypothesis. That’s a very important distinction: in science, real
\nscience, you try<\/em> to prove that your hypothesis is
\nwrong<\/em>. You specifically come up with lists of everything that
\ncould possibly be wrong with it, and then design your tests with those
\nin mind – trying to devise experiments that would disprove your
\nhypothesis if any of the potential flaws were real.<\/p>\n

That’s not the approach of Mr. Bar-Cohn. No – he takes the classic
\ncrank route: he only<\/em> looks for evidence that his hypothesis
\nis correct, never for exidence that it’s wrong. And his idea of
\nevidence is “more stories in the torah that could, if they’re twisted
\njust right, be interpreted as supporting my hypothesis.”.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to waste space going through all of them; I’ll just
\npick out one particularly funny one as an example. He tries to justify
\nthe extreme lifespans cited for figures that appear in the early
\nsection of the bible. Y’see, there’s this residual presence of God,
\nleft over from the garden of eden. And that slows down time for the
\npeople living then. So they live for a thousand years, because time is
\nmoving more slowly for them. People later don’t live as long, because
\nthe residual presence faded. (Of course, if this were the case, then
\nthe folks who lived for a thousand years didn’t really live for a
\nthousand years; they subjectively lived no longer than you or I, but
\nfor people outside<\/em> of the zone of residual presence, they
\nappeared to live a really long time. And that would blow away a ton of
\nother Jewish fundie arguments about the long lifespans – provided this
\nbozo actually understood what relativity means<\/em>. But he
\ndoesn’t. So he appears to think, for example, that you could have
\npeople living in a time dilation field age more slowly than other
\npeople, while still experiencing the same amount of subjective time as
\npeople outside of it. So Abraham could have his first child at an age
\nof more than 100 – and have 100 years of experience, etc.)<\/p>\n

And now, finally, he gets to the relativity part. And that’s
\nwhere it just keeps getting funnier. He tries really hard to put
\na mathematical facade on his argument; but since he doesn’t actually
\nunderstand what the theory says, or how to do the relevant math,
\nhe ends up just sort of randomly sputtering and spouting nonsense:<\/p>\n

(For the following, “Olam Haba” means, roughly, heaven.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

We can say that Olam Haba does exist in space & time,
\nonly it is a different space-time continuum. That is to say, it only
\nlooks eternal when viewed from our perspective. Time-dilation in
\nSpecial\/General Relativity is experienced as follows: A observes B’s
\nclock as running slower, while B experiences a normal passage of time
\n(and in fact perceives A’s clock as running faster).<\/p>\n

So Olam Haba is “eternal” when seen from our perspective. We observe
\nOlam Haba’s “clock” slowed down to nearly a dead stop. Someone
\nstanding in Olam Haba however, sees time as running normally. On the
\nother hand, our world\/history (Olam Hazeh) goes by in the blink of an
\neye from the Olam Haba perspective. As it says, “1000 years in Your
\neyes are like a bygone yesterday” (Tehillim 90).*<\/p>\n

*If we take this pasuk literally, “k’yom etmol” means “as it is today,
\nyesterday,” meaning exactly 24 hours ago. Now we can translate the
\npasuk in quantifiable terms: “1000 years (of Olam Hazeh time) = 24
\nhours in Your eyes (Olam Haba time).” For 1000 earth years to elapse
\nin approximately 24 hours, Olam Haba would have to run at just about
\n99.999999999625% of the speed of light (approx. 299,792.4599988758
\nKm\/sec). This also means that from the Olam Haba perspective, all 6000
\nyears of recorded human history goes by in 6 days. (Calculations made
\nusing an on-line time-dilation calculator and a time conversion
\nutility.)<\/p>\n

Also, we have the idea that Hashem is Rishon & Acharon (sees
\nthe entire picture). There is also the notion that Adam Ha’Rishon in
\nEden saw from one end of the world to the other. All of these can be
\nexplained if we speak in terms of time dilation, where Olam Hazeh time
\nruns exceedingly quick from the vantage point of Olam Haba.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s really amusing just how similar this is to the “Koranic speed
\nof light” that I wrote about last week. It’s the same kind of silly
\nnonsense. What exactly does in mean that “Olam Haba would have to run
\nat 99.999999999625%? Is heaven rushing through the universe at
\nphenomenal speed?<\/p>\n

And again, we get his very strange misunderstanding of time
\ndilation. We have the statement that Adam could see from one end of
\nthe universe to the other, taken literally, in terms of time dilation.
\nThe problem with it is, that’s not how time dilation works. It’s a
\nfairly typical example of trying to understand a complex phenomenon
\nthat is really described mathematically, believing that you understand
\nit and can work with it using nothing but informal prose.<\/p>\n

When relativity talks about time dilation, what it’s talking about
\nis a mathematical description of a system with certain kinds of
\ninvariants – in fact, certain kinds of mathematical symmetries. For
\nexample, no matter how fast you’re moving, no matter where you are,
\nthe speed of light is a constant. If I’m moving towards you at 500
\nmiles an hour, and I shine a flashlight at you, the light is moving
\naway from me at 186,000 miles per second, and the light is moving
\ntowards you at 186,000 miles per second. There’s no 500 mile per hour
\ndifference caused by our differing speeds. Time dilation is the
\nphenomenon that describes how that can work. When you’re moving
\nrelative to some other object, time moves at a different apparent rate
\nfor you and for an observer at that different point, and the different
\napparent rate of time passing makes things work out so that the
\nobserved speed of light is the same from both positions. <\/p>\n

The math of it is incredibly elegant. But it’s far from intuitive.
\nThere are some very surprising effects that work out incredibly
\ncleanly when you do the math, but which are very strange from an
\nintuitive perspective. For example, suppose that we’re both in
\nspaceships. My spaceship is stationary, and your spaceship is moving
\nat C\/2. Whose time is moving more slowly? Obviously, you are. But what
\nif we say that your<\/em> ship is really the stationary one, and
\nI’m the one moving at C\/2? Then my<\/em> time should be the slower
\none. It turns out that they’re both<\/em> valid ways of describing
\nthings: as long as neither of us is accelerating, both viewpoints are
\ncorrect. But it works out – once you factor in the speed of light and
\nthe time it takes for information to get from one of us to the other,
\nyou can make it work equally well for both reference frames. There’s
\nno way to tell which one of us had “slower” time than the other. You
\ncan see from this paragraph that it really doesn’t seem to make sense
\nintuitively. But if you saw the math, it would all work out
\nbeautifully!<\/p>\n

But back to the original example. I’m going at 500 miles per hour
\nrelative to you. Because of time dilation, the speed of light is the
\nsame for both of us; my subjective time is slightly slower than
\nyours. But<\/em> – we’re both there at the same time. We both
\nsee me shine the flashlight at you. What our fundie nutter would like
\nto say is that Adam could see the entire history of the universe from
\nthe viewpoint of his seat in the garden of eden, because of time
\ndilation. And then after he was done, and he left eden, he joined the
\nuniverse outside of it, and became part of the universe that he
\nwitnessed. Mr. Ben-Cohn is basically arguing – without realizing that
\nit’s what he’s arguing – that relativity allows Adam to be two places
\nat the same time; that relativity allows you to both experience the
\n“slow” time flow in a dilated region, and the “fast” time flow in a
\nnon-dilated region simultaneously.<\/p>\n

And even this amount of silliness isn’t enough. He needs to go a
\nstep further, and tie in “space dilation”. Space dilation is his
\nclueless interpretation of relativity. He doesn’t understand it –
\nit’s all just words to him. He’s heard something about “space warping”
\nand relativity, so it must be “space dilation”.<\/p>\n

\n

Time-dilation by definition comes with a corresponding space-dilation.
\nIn Special Relativity, space is shortened in direction of travel. In
\nGeneral Relativity, space is curved around point of gravitation.<\/p>\n

The Word “Olam” itself connotes both space (ha’olam) and time
\n(l’olam). Thus discussion of different Olamot (Hazeh\/Haba or Asiya,
\nYetzira, etc.) definitionally speaking refers to differences in space
\n& time. When we speak of an Olam that is more “ethereal” or “eternal”,
\na “higher realm”, we can define this quantitatively as an alternate
\nspace-time continuum, one which runs on a slower clock.<\/p>\n

Also regarding the space-time connection, the Talmud describes the
\nAron with its winged Kruvim as being too big to fit in the Kodesh
\nKedoshim (Bava Batra 99a). That is to say, since the Gemara
\nessentially cites space-dilation, we should expect time-dilation. In
\nfact we find that time-dilation in the preservation of the oil &
\nbread.<\/p>\n

Thus, the concept of space-time dilation helps to demystify Kodesh
\nspaces and phenomena. Rather than describe them in metaphysical terms
\nsuch as “eternal” and “holy” we can use the language of energy and
\nspace-time. And the explanation appears to fit the Torah material,
\nwhich is an important litmus test.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As usual, we’ve got the typical result of not doing the math.
\nSpace dilation, in relativity, is gravity<\/em>. The kind of time
\ndilation effects that he’s arguing for here are<\/em> legitimately
\nconnected to space warping effects. But those space-warping effects
\nare called gravity<\/em>. They can’t be separated.<\/p>\n

The effects that he’s arguing for would be accompanied by
\nincredible gravity. To get the time dilation effect that he wants for
\nthe ark – to keep bread oven-fresh and warm for a week – would entail
\nan absolutely astonishing gravitational field, and tidal forces that
\nwould tear the earth apart.<\/p>\n

Of course, there’s an easy out for our flaky author, after all,
\nfor a religious nut, whatever God wants to do, he can do – physics be
\ndamned, literally! But that would totally contradict the supposed
\nbasis of this entire article. After all, the point of the article is
\nto not<\/em> just decree that “God did it”, but to “take as a given
\nthat it happened and try to understand how it happened”. Relativity
\ndoes nothing to help: it solves a small problem (why a loaf of bread
\nsupposedly stayed warm) and replaces it with a much bigger problem
\n(why the earth didn’t shatter into a new asteroid field due to tidal
\nforces of a massive localized gravity field). <\/p>\n

It’s also typical of what always drives me crazy about
\nfundamentalists. Why can’t a loaf of bread staying warm just be
\na bit of poetic license? Why can’t talk of how long a day is for an
\nangel just be a bit of poetic phrasing, instead of a bogglingly
\nstupid way of talking about the speed of light?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATE(9\/1): In a move that, frankly, astonished me, the author of the piece that I mocked in this post has withdrawn the article, because he’s recognized its errors. And he didn’t just withdraw it – he came back to this blog to explain the withdrawal. I’ve never seen a fundamentalist writer admit to errors this […]<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-physics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-at","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","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=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}