Category: Science

Fasting Notes

at the dance studio
If you follow me on Facebook, you may have seen that I’ve recently been chronicling my weight loss journey there, and there’s been a lot of news to report! (The picture is one of me now that I can fit into a shirt that just has an L on the label–no X or XX.) Update: I’m now wearing medium shirts, so I’ve changed the picture.

A few months ago, at the suggestion of my physician, I began to practice intermittent fasting, and it’s really accelerated my weight loss. At the time of writing, I’ve lost 29 lbs 38 lbs 47 lbs 58 lbs 69 74 lbs 84 lbs (it may be more by the time you read this), it’s produced other health benefits (including improved sleep and energy), and it’s been surprisingly easy (very little hunger at all).

I plan to do a blog series about my experience in the new year, but folks on Facebook have been asking a lot of questions, so I thought I’d jot down a few notes here until I can launch the series.

 

You’re really fasting?

Yes.

 

Really?

Yes.

 

Are you hungry all the time?

Not at all. I was surprised at how little hunger I’ve had. I had some for the first few days after I altered my eating pattern, but they went away quickly.

I called a friend who does a lot of fasting, and he said his experience is that hunger is largely a matter of habit. When your body is used to getting a new influx of calories, that’s when it sends the “It’s time to eat now” hunger signal. If you ignore that signal when it comes, it will re-set to the new normal and stop sending you the hunger signal at the old times.

I later asked my doctor about this, and she said it has also been the experience of her patients who have tried intermittent fasting.

 

What do you do when hunger does come?

I may drink non-caloric beverages to fill up my stomach (water, tea, coffee, no-calorie sodas with stevia [a natural, non-caloric sweetener]).

I also just ignore it, because hunger isn’t a constant. It comes in waves, and my experience has been that if I ignore it for 20 minutes, it will go away on its own.

Really, though, I’ve been amazed at how little hunger there has been.

 

Jimmy, I’m concerned for you. This sounds unsafe.

Thank you for your concern, but please don’t worry.

First, my doctor was the one who recommended it.

Second, I’m doing it under a doctor’s care, so all the right things are being monitored.

Third, it’s actually very safe (see below.) Fasting is actually a normal part of human experience. We’re designed for it. It’s just not part of our culture (which is a big part of our culture’s problem with weight management and various health issues).

Fourth, in case of problems, fasting is the easiest thing in the world to stop (also see below).

 

Won’t fasting slow down your metabolism?

Not if you’re doing it right. Calorie restriction will slow down your metabolism, but calorie restriction and fasting are two different things, and the body responds to them differently.

If you reduce the number of calories you eat at each meal but you continue to eat 3-7 times a day then your body will think food is in short supply, but that you do have a supply of it. In that case, your body will adjust your metabolism to the supply it thinks you have. You will get sluggish, irritable, and may feel colder than you otherwise would.

But if you stop the calories, your body will think you don’t have a food supply and that it needs to start burning fat, which is what the fat is there for.

Your body doesn’t know that we aren’t still living in caveman days, so if you aren’t putting new calories in, it think that your food supply has run out and that you need to go kill a bison or something.

It therefore does things to help you be a better bison hunter, like keeping your metabolism revved up.

 

Won’t fasting cause you to burn muscle instead of fat?

No. We can show that people who are fasting aren’t burning muscle because when the body burns protein (the stuff muscle is made of), there is a byproduct known as urea. When people are eating normally, they have substantial levels of urea in their blood from the protein they eat. But when they start fasting, the levels of urea in their blood plummet, showing that they are not burning protein–either from food (which they aren’t consuming) or from muscle.

See this video for more info on that.

Bottom line: You need muscle to go hunt bison, so your body burns the fat and preserves the muscle. The purpose of the fat is to be burned as fuel, so that’s why the body burns it. The purpose of muscle is to help you catch bison, so the body leaves it alone. It will only turn to burning muscle if you’ve used up all your fat and it has no other choice.

 

Won’t fasting make you mentally fuzzy or give you headaches?

No. You need mental clarity to hunt bison, so your body has an incentive to keep you clear headed. Giving you less clarity or headaches would interfere with a successful bison kill, so your body won’t do that to you.

Or that’s been my experience. If you are used to consuming something (e.g., coffee) that will cause headaches if you stop, and if you then suddenly stop, then you may get headaches. However, it’s not the lack of calories that’s causing the headache. It’s the lack of the specific thing that’s causing the headache.

Also, since coffee is a no-calorie beverage, you can have it when you fast! (Just don’t add cream or sugar.) So you can avoid the problem.

People generally report more mental clarity when fasting, not less, which makes sense if your body is preparing you to go kill bison.

 

Isn’t fasting unsafe?

For the vast majority of people, no. See previous answers.

Also, billions of people fast, at least occasionally. Catholics, Jews, and Muslims all practice intermittent fasting.

And we’re built for fasting. Our bodies are made to put on fat in times of plenty so they can use it for fuel when the food runs out. That’s why it’s there in the first place. Feasts and fasts are normal parts of human experience, historically speaking, and our bodies are built to handle them.

However, there are some medical conditions in which people either should not fast or should do so under a doctor’s care. This is particularly the case when you are on medications that you may need less of when you fast. For example, diabetics are likely to need less insulin, people who take blood pressure meds are likely to need smaller doses. If you don’t adjust your dosages, your blood sugar or blood pressure might go too low. Therefore, consult your doctor.

However, needing less of these medications is actually a good thing. It means your health is improving! Yay!

More info on these conditions in the resources recommended below.

 

So what kind of fasting are you doing?

Currently I am eating one meal a day with no snacks. (BUT SEE HERE ON SNACKING.)

The one meal I eat is not calorie-counted, but it’s obviously way less than what I would eat during the course of an ordinary day of eating.

It’s also usually low carb/high fat, though I don’t have to be as strict about that as normal.

I eat it in the evening, but you can do it whenever in the day would suit you.

I also stay hydrated and take my normal vitamins/nutritional supplements.

 

How is eating a meal a day fasting?

It’s an intermittent fast–meaning that I do take some food on a regular basis (in my case, currently once per day).

It’s not a long-term, unbroken fast.

 

Are long-term, unbroken fasts dangerous?

Well, you will eventually need new calories, but people can go for much longer than they suppose and be perfectly healthy on a fast.

Some individuals literally fast for weeks or months.

The longest fast on record was a Scottish gentleman who–under his doctor’s care–only took water and vitamins for 382 days (no food for more than a year!) and was fine. He also went from over 400 lbs to under 200 lbs, which was the point.

 

I’m interested in fasting, but I’m afraid to start all at once. Is there a way to work into this easily and gradually?

You bet! That’s what I did. I took it in stages:

  • I started with a low carb/high fat diet so that, without the carbs, I wouldn’t have the insulin spikes and the resulting hunger they cause (this is why people are famously hungry an hour after eating Chinese food: the high carbs lead to high blood sugar, that leads to insulin release, that leads to a blood sugar crash, and that leads to hunger to get the blood sugar back up)
  • Then I cut out all snacks, so I was eating only three meals a day.
  • When hunger did come, I would drink non-caloric beverages or just ignore it since I knew it would shortly go away on its own (see above).
  • Then I dropped breakfast (the idea it’s the most important meal of the day is not true, which is why so many people find it easy to skip).
  • Once I was used to eating two meals a day (lunch and a late dinner), I started moving lunch later and later in the afternoon, to narrow the window in which I was eating and extend the period each day in which I was fasting.
  • Once “lunch” was within a few hours of dinner, I dropped “lunch.”

This stepwise approach was so successful for me that, the day I first went to one meal, I wasn’t even hungry at dinner time. But it was when I had determined to eat, so I did.

 

I don’t think I could do low carb. Would that stop me from fasting?

No. Fasting is just not eating, so you can do fasting no matter what diet you normally prefer.

 

What if I encounter problems fasting?

I love the way the book I recommend below puts it:

What happens if you do get hungry or don’t feel good while intermittent fasting? Ummmm, hello, McFly? You eat something! This isn’t rocket science, people (The Complete Guide to Fasting, p. 21).

 

What are some of the benefits of fasting?

They include:

  • Weight loss
  • Lower blood sugar
  • Lower insulin resistance
  • Lower blood pressure
  • Lower inflammation
  • It may provide added protection against cancer
  • Greater mental acuity
  • You don’t spend as much money on food
  • You don’t spend as much time procuring, preparing, and consuming food
  • You get the chance to practice self-discipline

More info on some of these here.

In my case, I also found my sleep improved (which is noteworthy, because I’m a lifelong insomniac).

 

If we’re built for fasting and if it has all these benefits, why don’t we hear about it more?

Several reasons. Among them:

  • Big Food has zero interest in not selling you food. It spends enormous amounts of money in advertising trying to get you to buy stuff to eat.
  • Therefore, when its “eat all day by adopting a grazing strategy of three full meals plus three or more snacks” causes people to gain weight and have health problems, it’s solution is not going to be “don’t eat.” It’s going to be “eat something different” (e.g., expensive diet products or the latest fad’s “superfood”).
  • Big Pharma has zero interest in not selling you drugs and medical procedures. Therefore, if you’re suffering from obesity and medical problems, their solution is not going to be fasting but “what kind of drugs or medical procedures can we sell you to address or manage these?”

As the result of economic incentives like these, fasting has virtually disappeared from our culture, though it used to be the norm. Fortunately, it’s being rediscovered, and studies are backing up its health benefits.

 

Where can I get more information about fasting?

I recommend this book: The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting by Jason Fung, MD, and Jimmy Moore.

I also recommend this video as an introduction:

For more detail, check out Dr. Fung’s epic, six-part series on the science of fasting here on his YouTube channel.

And here’s a web page you can read: Intermittent Fasting–Questions and Answers.

 

Are you recommend that I fast?

As part of your religious duties on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (assuming you’re Catholic), yes–unless you have a medical reason not to.

Otherwise, no, I’m not making recommendations here. I’m explaining what my experience with fasting has been and answer common questions people have asked me.

If you think fasting might be for you, great! It’s certainly helped me! But, as noted above, be sure to check with your doctor, particularly if you have medical conditions requiring things like insulin or blood pressure meds.

God bless you, and stay positive in the combox, folks!

 

UPDATE 1: For more on my experience with fasting, including many common questions, click here!

UPDATE 2: Here’s info on why newspaper diet advice is usually horrible, focusing on a piece in The Telegraph that completely botches the issues of “skipping breakfast,” “snacking and grazing throughout the day,” and intermittent fasting.

UPDATE 3: Snacking and Intermittent Fasting (the news is better than you might think!)

UPDATE 4: Fasting Update: The Soup and Noodles Solution

UPDATE 5: Body Fat Testing and Weight Loss Targets

UPDATE 6: Does Fasting Cause Loose Skin?

UPDATE 7: Here’s a video of me and Cy Kellett discussing the spiritual and physical aspects of fasting on Catholic Answers Live:

Is God showing us a fictional past?

Wouldn’t it be great if scientists invented a device that enabled us to have a window into the past–so that we wouldn’t just have to read about the past in books?

Instead, with the new device–let’s call it a Time Window–we could actually see events occurring in the past in real time, with our own eyes?

That would be awesome, wouldn’t it?

The exciting news is that scientists have invented this device!

That’s right! The Time Window is real!

What’s more, they invented it just over 400 years ago, so they’ve had the chance to mature the technology to the point that now it’s really, really good.

For comparison, imagine how good an iPhone would be today if Steve Jobs had invented the first one 400 years ago.

The only problem is that they missed a great marketing opportunity.

Instead of calling it the Time Window ™ they gave it a much more boring name . . . the telescope.

 

How the Time Window Works

The reason that the Time Window–er, telescope–lets us look into the past and see it with our own eyes is that it takes time for light to reach our eyes. The speed of light is not infinite.

Technically, this means that any time you see anything, you are technically witnessing something that happened in the past.

Since light travels so fast, however, if you see someone across the room pick up an iPhone, that happened only the tiniest fraction of a second ago. In fact, you started seeing it while it was still happening. That’s not long enough ago to make it an exciting glimpse into history.

But things get more interesting when you take a telescope and point it at something really distant.

 

By Jove!

For example, back in 1609, Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope at the planet Jove–er, Jupiter–and discovered that by it there were several moons.

Now the thing is, depending on where Earth and Jupiter are in their orbits, Jupiter is between 33 and 54 light minutes away from Earth.

Let’s just say it’s an average of 44 light minutes away for the sake of simplicity.

That means, it takes 44 minutes for the light from Jupiter to reach an astronomer on Earth.

So when Galileo looked at Jupiter through his telescopes and saw its moons, he was seeing where those moons were 44 minutes ago.

He was viewing actual history that occurred 44 minutes in the past!

Woo-hoo!

 

Party Like It’s 1879!

The same thing keeps happening when you look further out.

Back in 2008, scientists used one of their spiffy modern telescopes to capture the light in this image . . .

This is an image of the solar system HR 8799.

It’s got a single star in the middle, and we can see that it has at least three planets orbiting it.

What’s more, it’s 129 light years away from Earth.

That means that this image, which was taken in 2008, is of events taking place in 1879.

This is an image of where those planets were in the year that the apparition at Knock, Ireland took place, that the California Constitution was ratified, and that Thomas Edison unveiled incandescent light to the public.

It’s an image of things happening in that year.

Now let’s look really far into the past . . .

 

An Earth-Shattering Ka-Boom

Also in 2008, astronomers captured an image of a supernova known as SN 2008D.

Here’s a time-lapse image of the supernova happening, both in x-rays and visible light. Take a moment and watch it:

Hoo-eee! It blowed up real good! (Particularly in x-rays.)

Now here’s the thing: SD 2008D is in the galaxy NGC 2770, which is in the constellation Lynx.

It’s also 88,000,000 (88 million) light years away.

That means that when you’re watching the supernova explode in the images above, You Are Watching an Event That Took Place 88 Million Years in the Past.

That’s right. Dinosaurs were roaming the earth when this event took place. It was the middle of the Cretaceous Era.

 

So What’s This Have to Do with God? 

Historically, many people have thought that the universe was only a few thousand years old, based on the most common understanding of Genesis.

Modern science has suggested that it is much, much older.

If the above picture reveals an event that took place 88,000,000 years ago, then the view that the universe is only a few thousand years old can’t be right.

So what alternatives do we have in resolving this situation?

Here are three . . .

 

Option 1: We’re Really, Really Wrong

One option would be to say that we are really–desperately–wrong in our understanding of science today.

Either light doesn’t travel at the speed we think it does or SN 2008D isn’t as far away as we think it is–or something.

This cannot be ruled out on theoretical grounds. The best scientific thought of the day has turned out to be really, really wrong before.

But how likely is this?

At this point we seem to have very, very good evidence about the age and dimensions of the cosmos, about how fast light travels and how far away things like supernovas are.

 

Option 2: God Is Showing Us Fictions

Another option would be to say that, when the world began a few thousand years ago, God created light already en route from what appeared to be more distant galaxies.

If that’s the case, then any event we see that appears to be happening more than a few thousand light years away is a fiction.

Beyond a certain point, we’re watching God’s Imaginary Astronomy Show.

Mixed in with God’s Real Astronomy Show that’s taking place closer to home.

Hmmm.

That doesn’t seem consistent with God’s Truthfulness.

At a minimum, an advocate of this view would need to provide an explanation for why God would do this, why it wouldn’t be inconsistent with his Truthfulness.

Some have tried to mount such an explanation by saying that God created the world with an “appearance of age,” the same way that he created Adam and Eve as full-grown adults rather than babies.

That is the way Genesis seems to depict the creation of our first parents, since they are both apparently created on Day 6 of the creation week in Genesis 1, and since they are married as soon as Eve is created in the second creation narrative in Genesis 2.

If you think that God used evolution to make the bodies of the first humans (of course, he made their souls directly and immediately) then this issue doesn’t arise–at least not in the same way.

But what if you think that God literally created an adult Adam out of earth and an adult Eve out of Adam’s side? Does that provide much support for the “appearance of age” explanation of distant astronomical events?

I have never thought so.

It’s always seemed to me that, if God were to directly create the first humans as adults, there would be a very good reason for that–namely: Babies Cannot Take Care of Themselves.

Without the presence of other humans–or near-humans–to take care of our first parents, they would need to be adults (or at least teens). Either that, or God would have to run his own, direct daycare service, and Genesis doesn’t suggest that he did.

So I can see a reason why God would make the first humans as adults. That’s because of the incapacity to care for themselves that human infants have.

But that doesn’t give us any reason why God would need to plant false dinosaur bones in the ground or false astronomical images in the sky, let alone mix them up with real ones.

He could have just let God’s Real Astronomy Show play in the sky each night.

The sky wouldn’t have had quite as much stuff in it each night, but it would all have been true stuff.

 

Option 3: God’s Word in the Heavens and in the Bible Is True

The best approach would seem to be the classic one of saying that God’s word in nature and God’s word in the Bible are both true.

They have to be understood in harmony with each other.

Thus if we have good evidence from God’s word in nature that the universe is quite old then that helps shed light on the meaning of God’s word in the Scriptures.

This is the approach taken by the Catholic Church.

Concerning the creation narrative in Genesis 1, John Paul II stated:

Above all, this text has a religious and theological importance. It doesn’t contain significant elements from the point of view of the natural sciences. Research on the origin and development of the individual species in nature does not find in this description any definitive norm [General Audience, Jan. 29, 1986].

And the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

283 The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man.

These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers.

With Solomon they can say: “It is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements. . . for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.”

And:

337 God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine “work”, concluded by the “rest” of the seventh day.

On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation, permitting us to “recognize the inner nature, the value and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God.”

Having said that, I’m looking forward to seeing more events from distant history–with my own eyes–through the amazing Time Window! (Er, telescope.)

What’s wrong with The Principle?

concentric-shellsThe Principle is a documentary promoting geocentrism, or the idea that the earth is at the center of the universe.

In a previous post, I looked at how well it worked as a film. (I gave it * * 1/2 stars out of 5.)

What about the content of the film? How well does that stand up?

It depends on the level you are talking about.

At the highest level, the film contains a message that science and faith are not enemies and should not be pitted against each other.

Fine.

But that doesn’t mean that the earth is at the center of the universe, which is what the film wants to suggest.

The summaries that The Principle provides about the history of astronomy also are generally accurate, though I was amazed that the filmmakers let Michio Kaku get away with saying that Giordano Bruno was burned alive “for simply saying that there are other worlds out there.”

This is not true, and the filmmakers should have provided a voice setting the matter straight. Even Wikipedia’s page on Bruno is more accurate than The Principle is on him.

The film’s discussion of recent physics is also largely fine. Even some of the critiques it offers of modern scientific ideas are good (e.g., that we shouldn’t overplay the idea of a multiverse). But again, these don’t prove geocentrism, which is what the film is interested in advocating.

 

“What If . . . ?” Advocacy

We should note the way in which The Principle advocates geocentrism. It does not come out and say, in a straightforward way, with the full editorial voice of the film, “The earth is at the center of the universe.”

Instead, it uses the kind of breathless “What if . . . ?” style of advocacy that you find in documentaries inviting us to consider whether—just maybe—Jesus Christ might have been married to Mary Magdalene. Or whether—just perhaps—he never rose from the dead. Or even—just maybe perhaps—he was a space alien.

Despite framing their theses in the form of questions, the viewer understands which points of view they’re advocating.

Know what I mean?

Now: What arguments does the film offer concerning geocentrism?

 

Alternate Interpretations

A good bit of the film just tries to poke holes in current cosmological ideas by proposing alternate interpretations rather than making a positive case for geocentrism.

This happens when they note that you could explain the fact that almost all galaxies appear to be moving away from us either by proposing an expanding universe, in which almost all galaxies are moving away from each other, or by proposing that our galaxy is at the center of the universe and everything is moving away from us.

Fine. Either one of those works.

What the filmmakers don’t point out is that these aren’t the only two options. While you could pick our galaxy as the center and see everything moving away from it, you can equally well pick any random location in the universe and use it as a reference point.

If you did that, the same exact thing would result: Almost all the galaxies would seem to be moving away from that randomly chosen point.

Since there are an infinite number of random points you could choose, you need to give the viewer a reason to pick our galaxy—and, more specifically, our planet—if you want us to suppose that we are at the physical center of things.

 

A Baby’s Smile? The Finale of a Symphony?

It’s hard to know what to make of some of the things in The Principle. For example, there is an opening montage in which you have multiple figures talking about whether the earth is or is in a “special” place, with many of them denying that it is.

The earth very obviously is a special place (it has life, liquid water, breathable oxygen, and it’s where I keep all my stuff), so when the film talks about the earth being or being in a special place, it seems to be using the word special to mean something like “central” or “at the center.”

But then why is Kate Mulgrew telling us that the earth seems special because nowhere else in the universe do we see a baby’s smile or the finale of a great symphony being performed?

That’s not evidence that the earth is at the center of anything. Indeed, there could be babies smiling everywhere in the galaxy and symphonies finishing all over the universe and we wouldn’t know it because we don’t have telescopes powerful enough to see them. “Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence.”

It’s hard to think that the filmmakers meant this to be taken seriously. Presumably, they put it in to give the viewers a warm fuzzy, without making a serious argument.

 

Concentric Shells?

The film seems to attempt only two serious arguments in favor of geocentrism. The first is based on the findings of physicist John Hartnett, who claimed to have discovered that there are regularities in the speeds that the galaxies appear to be moving away from us.

According to Hartnett, the galaxies seem to cluster around particular redshifts (i.e., particular speeds at which they are retreating). This can be visualized as a series of concentric shells (see illustration) with a center “somewhere cosmologically near our galaxy’s position,” in Hartnett’s words.

It should be noted that, although Hartnett himself thinks that our galaxy has a central location in the universe, he does not believe in geocentrism, and he believes that the producers of The Principle misrepresented his position in the film.

Further, Hartnett notes that even his galacto-centric interpretation of his data is not the only way of looking at it:

[T]he existence of concentric shells could be interpreted as some sort of oscillation in the expansion rate of the Universe. This view does not place any special significance on the centre of the large-scale structure being found exactly at the observer. This is because if cosmological redshift results from cosmological expansion then we only appear to be at some local centre.

Physicist Alec MacAndrew agrees. After noting that Hartnett’s data has been challenged and may not be accurate, he considers a proposal made by several scientists that the expansion rate of the universe changes over time in a way that makes the galaxies seem to cluster around particular speeds. He states:

In that case, observers will see preferential clustering of galaxies as a function of redshift, in concentric shells exactly centred on themselves from wherever in the universe they make the observation. Just like the recession of galaxies in a uniformly expanding universe always appears to be exactly centred on the observer, so universal oscillations in the expansion rate would leave a signature in the redshift data precisely centred on the observer, wherever he is [italics in original].

The argument based on the apparent speeds of the galaxies thus does not prove geocentrism (or even galacto-centrism).

 

The Cosmic Microwave Background

The other major argument that The Principle proposes for geocentrism is based on an analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)—a low-level radiation that fills the universe and that is commonly thought to be the “afterglow” of the Big Bang.

The argument that The Principle makes is difficult to summarize concisely and without computer animations, but it can be put this way: If you look at the sky, there are tiny temperature fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background, and if you analyze these, you find features that seem to align with the plane of the solar system and the tilt of the earth’s axis. These seem to suggest that the earth is at the center of the universe.

Physicist Alec MacAndrew has written a technical takedown of the claim, which you can read here.

David Palm provides a somewhat less technical summary here. Here are a couple of takeaway points provided by Palm:

  • “Although you would never know it by reading geocentrist literature, the alignments which the new geocentrists highlight in the CMB are far from exact – they are only approximate.  It is true that any apparent alignments are interesting to physicists if they are expecting randomness.  But the inexactness of the alignments certainly does not create anything like a sound foundation upon which to build the extravagant claims of the geocentrists.  It is precarious, at best, to argue that the CMB data are actually ‘pointing to’ the earth when those alignments are off by 7, 14, even 16 degrees according to the most recent, most precise measurements.  The geocentrists are again playing fast and loose with the facts.  They demand we accept that God intentionally made the earth motionless at the exact center of the universe.  Yet, they’re content with supposed evidence that God is an extremely sloppy architect and cartographer who can’t manage to ‘point’ to the earth with a margin of error of less than 16 degrees.
  • “But it’s worse than that for the new geocentrists.  Because, as Dr. MacAndrew demonstrates, the CMB data don’t point at anything. As MacAndrew says, ‘the CMB multipole vectors give directional information but no positional information. If you were an astronomical distance away from the Earth, you would not be able to use the CMB multipole vectors to navigate to it.’  The claims of the new geocentrists that somehow the CMB ‘points at the Earth’ is completely fallacious.”

 

“Nothing Special”?

One of the most frustrating things about The Principle is a fallacy seemingly embraced by both the geocentrists and the non-geocentrists in the film.

Remember the opening montage I mentioned, where the question of whether the earth is or is in a “special” place kept being posed? Parties on both sides of the question seemed to be harboring the idea that if the earth isn’t in a special place then mankind is nothing special.

The geocentrists then seemed to suggest that since mankind is special, the earth must be or be in a “special” place. At one point, apologist Robert Sungenis says: “It’s tremendous to be human, so why wouldn’t we want to be in a special place in the universe, made by a special God?”

One of the problems with this argument is that what we want isn’t relevant. Another is the ambiguity of the word “special.”

The earth is a special place in ways that have already been noted: It has life, it has liquid water and breathable oxygen, etc.

The earth is also in a special place, because it’s in a location where those things are possible. If we were—say—at the distance from the sun that the planet Mercury is, that wouldn’t be the case.

Mankind is special because man has numerous qualities and abilities that are unique among all the living creatures on earth. From a theological point of view, man is also special because of his unique relationship with God.

But what does any of this have to do with being “special” in the sense of being at the center of the universe?

Nothing.

If God put the earth and mankind at the farthest point from the physical center of the universe (assuming the universe even has a physical center), none of the things that are special about them would change.

Just because something is special in one sense (having liquid water, having life, having intelligence) doesn’t mean that it is special in other senses (having liquid methane, having wings, being at the physical center of the universe).

This is simply fallacious reasoning.

As many have recognized.

But it’s the central—and fatal—fallacy of The Principle.

 

The Principle: A Movie Review

the principleRecently the Register asked me to review The Principle—a documentary that promotes geocentrism, or the idea that the earth is at the center of the universe.

This film is much smaller than most of those the Register reviews. Indeed, at the time of this writing it has only reported $16,826 at the box office—half of which was made in a single theater on its opening weekend.

But the film is being disproportionately discussed in conservative Catholic circles, so I agreed.

Like any documentary, this one can be looked at more than one way. One perspective concerns the production values and how well it is executed. Another concerns the content of the film and how successfully it argues its case.

In this piece, we will look at how well The Principle works as a documentary film. In a subsequent piece, we will look at its content.

So how does it work cinematically?

It’s not the worst documentary I’ve ever seen.

That would be Overlords of the UFO (1976). You can watch it here. It’s hilarious.

While The Principle is better than Overlords of the UFO in many ways, the two have at least one thing in common, which is that they contain footage of people who were profoundly embarrassed by the film and who subsequently disassociated themselves with the project.

In the case of Overlords of the UFO, physicist and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman was horrified by the film’s use of footage from an interview he gave to a television station, making it appear that he was in support of the loony ideas promoted by the producers.

In the case of The Principle, multiple figures distanced themselves, including physicists Lawrence Krauss, Michio Kaku, Julian Barbour, and mathematician George Ellis (see here, for example).

Also disassociating herself from the project was actress Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager), who read the narration for the film (see her comments on her Facebook fan page).

Setting aside the fact that multiple individuals associated with the film feel that they were misled by the producers and misrepresented in the film, how does it hold up cinematically?

Some have said that they were impressed by the production values, and these are not bad.

In addition to the interview segments, a good deal of the film is made up of stock footage and outer space photographs. These days, though, anybody can get some stock footage from Shutterstock and some Hubble telescope images, load them into Final Cut Pro, put pre-existing music under them, and produce montages of the same caliber.

There are some video effects that were produced specially for the film, and many of these do look good.

What looks less good are the two-dimensional animations produced for the film, particularly those depicting historical figures. To produce these, illustrations and photographs of well-known historical figures (Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Albert Einstein, etc.) were redrawn or retouched and then animated in a clunky way that is basically a step above the cutout animations that Terry Gilliam produced for Monty Python.

These animations in The Principle move in ways that are unintentionally comical.

Sometimes, though, the filmmakers attempt comedy with them, but the result is disappointing and, in one case, comes off as juvenile.

This happens in a sequence in which astronomer Edwin Hubble is depicted sitting at a telescope, smoking a pipe. The animation awkwardly leans forward and back, observing distant galaxies. Then the narration indicates that Hubble’s observations were consistent with or suggestive of geocentrism, but he couldn’t accept this fact.

At this point the animation of Hubble gets an absurdly exaggerated expression of shock on its face. It falls over backward in its chair, and the still-smoking pipe spins around in mid air, defying the law of gravity, before it too plummets out of frame.

Classy, guys.

How does the film’s pacing work?

It begins with a general discussion of “the Copernican principle” (the idea that the earth is not the center of the solar system or the universe) and hammers the idea that this theory suggests that there is nothing special about mankind.

It then backs up to give a short history of astronomy and astrophysics and how they moved through different phases, leading up to the present. This segment depicts science and faith initially being in harmony, then diverging, and now possibly moving back together.

In the end it suggests that there are reasons to question (read: reject) the Copernican principle and that science and faith may have a more fruitful encounter than they did following the Galileo incident.

This is the kind of structure that you would expect in a film of this sort, but the timing in the film is problematic. With a run time of about 90 minutes, the film seems simultaneously too short and too long. Many viewers will find it confusing and boring.

It will come across as confusing because it is too short to adequately explain all the concepts it throws at the viewer.

Unless the viewer is a scientist or—at least—someone who reads science books for fun (as I do, including multiple books by Lawrence Krauss and Michio Kaku, both of whom were interviewed for the film), he will have a hard time keeping up with many of the concepts in the film.

Lots of terms get thrown around—either with no definition at all or with a definition so brief that a normal viewer will not be able to absorb and remember it.

Multipoles? Dipoles? Octopoles? Ecliptic? Isotropic? Anisotropies?

These are not terms that will be familiar to most viewers, and if you want the viewer to understand what is being said, you need to slow things down and really explain these terms so that the viewer can grasp and remember them.

The film doesn’t do that, and so significant sections of the film will come across as confusing and impossible to follow for the normal viewer.

It’s not that they don’t make an effort to explain some of the terms. In fact, there is a goofy holographic-computer-interface-dictionary-lady-who-speaks-with-an-apparent-British-accent who pops up occasionally to define a term for us, but it is not enough for a viewer not already familiar with the jargon used in the film.

With significant sections of the film being unintelligible to a typical viewer and with the film at 90 minutes running time, many will feel parts of it boring.

Thus, in a way, the film seems too long.

It either needed to cut these sections and deliver a shorter, more intelligible film, or it needed to expand its length—explain the concepts involved—and become a more intelligible miniseries.

Artistically, judged simply as an example of documentary filmmaking, The Principle might get * * 1/2 stars out of five.

In the next post, we will look at the content of The Principle and how well it stands up.

Darn. Beaten to Another Great Idea.

bio-suitI keep having really cool ideas that someone else has had before.

When I was five, I was talking with a girl I knew whose father was an atheist, and I thought of the cosmological argument.

Unfortunately, Plato had thought of it first.

When I was in fifth grade, I realized that there was a relationship between the length of the sides and angels in a triangle, which is the key insight of trigonometry.

Unfortunately, Hipparchus thought of it first.

I also thought, before such things were made, of combining an ATM with a gas pump so that you could pay at the pump.

But I was a kid and had no way of acting on it, and someone else undoubtedly made a lot of money patenting that.

Well, it happened again this morning.

While getting ready to go to work, I was listening to an old science fiction novel on audiobook, and there was discussion in the book of a freefall gymnasium.

These are staples in certain kinds of science fiction, because if you are spending a great deal of time in zero or low gravity, your bones and muscles will atrophy, so you’d need to do freefall exercises to fight that.

And I thought: Wait a minute . . . couldn’t you at least blunt that muscle and bone deterioration by building a suit which resisted your movements so that you’d simulate the resistance that gravity provides?

The suit could be built with springs, rods, or fibers embedded in it to make it stiff at strategic points so that you’d exercise by resisting the suit instead of resisting gravity.

It might not completely eliminate the need for freefall exercises, but it would help.

Then I googled “free fall resistance suit” to see if anyone had already thought of this.

They had.

Oh, well.

What Is the Difference Between Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design?

cosmos
What’s the difference between creation, evolution, and intelligent design?

 
Creationism, Evolutionism, and Intelligent Design are three of the major positions on the question of how we got here.

What’s the difference between these positions?

That seemingly straightforward question proves surprisingly controversial.

Let’s take a look at it . . .

 

The Basic Question

The basic question at issue in the contemporary origins debate is whether or not the world was created.

It could be tempting to simply put participants in the discussion into two groups—creationists and evolutionists—and leave it at that.

Some on both sides of the issue would like to do exactly that.

In fact, some of the people who most readily identify themselves as creationists or evolutionists often speak as if these are the only two options.

 

Name Calling

Some creationists dismiss everyone who doesn’t hold their view as an “evolutionist” (using this term in a negative sense).

Some evolutionists dismiss everyone who thinks that the world was created as a “creationist” (using this term in a negative sense).

When this happens, the two camps are using prejudicial language. They’re calling each other names, and that doesn’t advance the discussion.

They’re also distorting the issue, because there are clearly middle positions on this question. In fact, there’s a spectrum of them.

 

The Spectrum

It’s possible to divide up that spectrum in different ways. In fact, it’s possible to divide it into a mind-numbing array of fine-tuned categories.

That gets unwieldy, though, and it seems that, today, most participants in the origins discussion would say that they advocate one of four major positions:

  • Creationism
  • Intelligent Design
  • Theistic Evolution
  • Atheistic Evolution

How can we describe these positions?

 

Creationism

KEEP READING.

Is God telling us fictions about the past?

Wouldn’t it be great if scientists invented a device that would let us look into the past and see it with our own eyes? Guess what! They have!

Wouldn’t it be great if scientists invented a device that enabled us to have a clear window into the past–so that we wouldn’t just have to read about the past in books?

Instead, with the new device–let’s call it a Time Window–we could actually see events occurring in the past in real time, with our own eyes.

That would be wicked awesome, wouldn’t it!?

The exciting news is that scientists have invented this device!

That’s right! The Time Window is real!

What’s more, they invented it just over 400 years ago, so they’ve had the chance to mature the technology to the point that now it’s really, really good.

For comparison, imagine how good an iPhone would be today if Steve Jobs had invented the first one 400 years ago.

The only problem is that they missed a great marketing opportunity.

Instead of calling it the Time Window ™ they gave it a much more boring name . . . the telescope.

 

How the Time Window Works

The reason that the Time Window–er, telescope–lets us look into the past and see it with our own eyes is that it takes time for light to reach our eyes. The speed of light is not infinite.

Technically, this means that any time you see anything, you are technically witnessing something that happened in the past.

Since light travels so fast, however, if you see someone across the room pick up an iPhone, that happened only the tiniest fraction of a second ago. In fact, you started seeing it while it was still happening. That’s not long enough ago to make it an exciting glimpse into history.

But things get more interesting when you take a telescope and point it at something really distant.

 

By Jove!

For example, back in 1609, Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope at the planet Jove–er, Jupiter–and discovered that by it there were several moons.

Now the thing is, depending on where Earth and Jupiter are in their orbits, Jupiter is between 33 and 54 light minutes away from Earth.

Let’s just say it’s an average of 44 light minutes away for the sake of simplicity.

That means, it takes 44 minutes for the light from Jupiter to reach an astronomer on Earth.

So when Galileo looked at Jupiter through his telescopes and saw its moons, he was seeing where those moons were 44 minutes ago.

He was viewing actual history that occurred 44 minutes in the past!

Woo-hoo!

 

Party Like It’s 1879!

The same thing keeps happening when you look further out.

Back in 2008, scientists used one of their spiffy modern telescopes to capture the light in this image . . .

This is an image of the solar system HR 8799.

It’s got a single star in the middle, and we can see that it has at least three planets orbiting it.

What’s more, it’s 129 light years away from Earth.

That means that this image, which was taken in 2008, is of events taking place in 1879.

This is an image of where those planets were in the year that the apparition at Knock, Ireland took place, that the California Constitution was ratified, and that Thomas Edison unveiled incandescent light to the public.

It’s an image of things happening in that year.

Now let’s look really far into the past . . .

 

An Earth-Shattering Ka-Boom

Also in 2008, astronomers captured an image of a supernova known as SN 2008D.

Here’s a time-lapse image of the supernova happening, both in x-rays and visible light. Take a moment and watch it:

Hoo-eee! It blowed up real good! (Particularly in x-rays.)

Now here’s the thing: SD 2008D is in the galaxy NGC 2770, which is in the constellation Lynx.

It’s also 88,000,000 (88 million) light years away.

That means that when you’re watching the supernova explode in the images above, You Are Watching an Event That Took Place 88 Million Years in the Past.

That’s right. Dinosaurs were roaming the earth when this event took place. It was the middle of the Cretaceous Era.

 

So What’s This Have to Do with God? 

Historically, many people have thought that the universe was only a few thousand years old, based on the most common understanding of Genesis.

Modern science has suggested that it is much, much older.

If the above picture reveals an event that took place 88,000,000 years ago, then the view that the universe is only a few thousand years old can’t be right.

So what alternatives does we have in resolving this situation?

Here are three . . .

 

Option 1: We’re Really, Really Wrong

One option would be to say that we are really–desperately–wrong in our understanding of science today.

Either light doesn’t travel at the speed we think it does or SN 2008D isn’t as far away as we think it is–or something.

This cannot be ruled out on theoretical grounds. The best scientific thought of the day has turned out to be really, really wrong before.

But how likely is this?

At this point we seem to have very, very good evidence about the age and dimensions of the cosmos, about how fast light travels and how far away things like supernovas are.

 

Option 2: God Is Showing Us Fictions

Another option would be to say that, when the world began a few thousand years ago, God created light already en route from what appeared to be more distant galaxies.

If that’s the case, then any event we see that appears to be happening more than a few thousand light years away is a fiction.

Beyond a certain point, we’re watching God’s Imaginary Astronomy Show.

Mixed in with God’s Real Astronomy Show that’s taking place closer to home.

Hmmm.

That doesn’t seem consistent with God’s Truthfulness.

At a minimum, an advocate of this view would need to provide an explanation for why God would do this, why it wouldn’t be inconsistent with his Truthfulness.

Some have tried to mount such an explanation by saying that God created the world with an “appearance of age,” the same way that he created Adam and Eve as full-grown adults rather than babies.

That is the way Genesis seems to depict the creation of our first parents, since they are both apparently created on Day 6 of the creation week in Genesis 1, and since they are married as soon as Eve is created in the second creation narrative in Genesis 2.

If you think that God used evolution to make the bodies of the first humans (of course, he made their souls directly and immediately) then this issue doesn’t arise–at least not in the same way.

But what if you think that God literally created an adult Adam out of earth and an adult Eve out of Adam’s side? Does that provide much support for the “appearance of age” explanation of distant astronomical events?

I have never thought so.

It’s always seemed to me that, if God were to directly create the first humans as adults, there would be a very good reason for that–namely: Babies Cannot Take Care of Themselves.

Without the presence of other humans–or near-humans–to take care of our first parents, they would need to be adults (or at least teens). Either that, or God would have to run his own, direct daycare service, and Genesis doesn’t suggest that he did.

So I can see a reason why God would make the first humans as adults. That’s because of the incapacity to care for themselves that human infants have.

But that doesn’t give us any reason why God would need to plant false dinosaur bones in the ground or false astronomical images in the sky, let alone mix them up with real ones.

He could have just let God’s Real Astronomy Show play in the sky each night.

The sky wouldn’t have had quite as much stuff in it each night, but it would all have been true stuff.

 

Option 3: God’s Word in the Heavens and in the Bible Is True

The best approach would seem to be the classic one of saying that God’s word in nature and God’s word in the Bible are both true.

They have to be understood in harmony with each other.

Thus if we have good evidence from God’s word in nature that the universe is quite old then that helps shed light on the meaning of God’s word in the Scriptures.

This is the approach taken by the Catholic Church.

Concerning the creation narrative in Genesis 1, John Paul II stated:

Above all, this text has a religious and theological importance. It doesn’t contain significant elements from the point of view of the natural sciences. Research on the origin and development of the individual species in nature does not find in this description any definitive norm or positive contributions of substantial interest [General Audience, Jan. 29, 1986].

And the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

283 The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man.

These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers.

With Solomon they can say: “It is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements. . . for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.

And:

337 God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine “work”, concluded by the “rest” of the seventh day.

On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation, permitting us to “recognize the inner nature, the value and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God.”

Having said that, I’m looking forward to seeing more events from distant history–with my own eyes–through the amazing Time Window! (Er, telescope.)

Why We Should Be Cautious Using the Big Bang Argument

Since it was proposed by Fr. Georges Lemaître, the Big Bang has been common in discussions of the existence of God.

The reasons are obvious. The Big Bang looks like a plausible beginning for the physical universe. Things that begin need causes. The beginning of the physical universe would need a cause, which would seem to lie outside the physical universe. This coheres well with the Christian claim that God is a non-physical being who created the physical universe.

The argument has been elaborated various ways, but that’s the basic idea.

One of its fans was Pope Pius XII, who elaborated a version of it in a speech about this to the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences back in 1951.

It’s basically a version of the Kalaam cosmological argument that uses evidence from modern cosmology to support the premise that the universe had a beginning.

It even resonates with the “Let there be light” moment in Genesis.

I think that there is a proper role for the Big Bang in discussions of God’s existence, but it has to be used with some caution.

Here’s why . . .

 

“Let There Be Light”?

One temptation is to identify the Big Bang not just as the moment of creation but specifically as the creation of light in Genesis 1. That’s problematic because Genesis does not portray the creation of light as the moment the world came into existence. Let’s look at the text:

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

In the text, the earth already exists in a formless and empty state, with a deep of waters that has a surface, which the Spirit of God hovers over. Then light gets created.

So Genesis depicts the creation of light happening when the heavens and the earth and its waters already exist. At least that is how the text depicts it. You can argue that this isn’t to be taken literally, but that only makes the same point another way: We shouldn’t be too quick to identify the Big Bang with the creation of light in Genesis. We have to be careful about mapping Genesis onto modern cosmology.

In fact, Pope John Paul II warned specifically against trying to draw scientific conclusions from the creation account in Genesis 1:

Above all, this text has a religious and theological importance. It doesn’t contain significant elements from the point of view of the natural sciences. Research on the origin and development of the individual species in nature does not find in this description any definitive norm or positive contributions of substantial interest [General Audience, Jan. 29, 1986].

 

The Moment of Creation?

There is another thing we need to be careful about, which is identifying the Big Bang as the moment of the physical universe came into existence.

It may well have been. I would love for us to find a way to prove that scientifically.

But we’re not there at present.

We just don’t understand it. The evidence shows that it happened, but not why it happened. We have very little clue about that scientifically—and there may well be no scientific answer. It may be that God just did it, and did it in a way not susceptible to scientific study.

But that’s not the only option. There are others that cannot presently be ruled out on scientific grounds. For example, the visible universe we see today may have budded off of a larger universe that we cannot see, and the moment it budded off may have been the Big Bang. There are other options, too.

Implications

If we one day get solid evidence of something physical existing before the Big Bang, what would the implications be?

From the viewpoint of the Christian faith, if there was a physical universe before the Big Bang then it would mean that God created the universe—from nothing—even farther back in time than we can currently see.

From the viewpoint of discussions of God’s existence, it would mean that one of the premises in the Kalaam cosmological argument would lose its scientific support–unless, of course, new science pointed to a beginning even further back. (And there are those who have argued on scientific grounds that the universe cannot extend back infinitely far in time.)

Losing scientific support from the Big Bang would not disprove the existence of God. It wouldn’t even disprove the Kalaam cosmological argument. It would just mean that the premise in question would have to be supported some other way.

If it were to turn out that the Big Bang was not the beginning of the physical universe then this argument in apologetics would have to be revised.

That’s nothing to be ashamed of, though. Apologetics, like the physical sciences, is subject to revision based on the evidence available at the time.

New Science?

Some scientists, such as the iconoclastic Roger Penrose, have already claimed to have found evidence of a pre-Big Bang universe, though his claims are disputed by other scientists.

Plans are afoot, though, for a new set of scientific projects that may let us discern something about the state of the universe before the Big Bang (if there was one). More info here.

It will be interesting to see what the results of these are.

For now, though, the Big Bang still looks like the beginning of the physical universe, and it has a legitimate place in discussions of God’s existence.

It just should not be presented as if we had absolute proof of creation in time, because we don’t.

That’s something that Pius XII pointed out in his 1951 speech.

While hailing the discovery of the Big Bang, he also cautioned that “the facts established up to the present time are not an absolute proof of creation in time, as are the proofs drawn from metaphysics and revelation.”

So, while the idea of the Big Bang is consistent with the idea that the universe was created a finite time ago, and while the Big Bang may be that moment of creation, we should not present this as if it were definitively established.

Did Dinosaurs Die Before the Fall?

Did animals die before the Fall of Man?

St. Paul tells us:

“For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:21-22). 

Does this mean that there was no death–of any kind–before the Fall of Man?

Would that mean that no animals, plants, or microbes died?

What about animals that are carnivores?

Were lions vegetarians? How about alligators? Or sharks?

How about carnivores like Tyrannosaurus Rex?

Let’s take a look at the subject . . .

 

A Key Concept

To set the stage, I need to introduce a key concept: entropy.

Entropy is a very important concept in the sciences. Put simply, entropy is the tendency of things to run down or break down over time.

Systems that are subject to entropy tend to dissipate energy and lose organization over time.

Entropy is the reason why the stars shine, and it’s the reason that you get hungry.

As stars burn their fuel, the heat and light they produce spreads out into the universe. It dissipates.

If stars weren’t subject to entropy then all the energy they generate wouldn’t dissipate. It would stay bundled up in the star.

As your body burns fuel (food), you dissipate energy, too–partly in the form of body heat. That’s why you need to eat, to replenish your body’s fuel.

If you weren’t subject to entropy, your energy would never flag, and you wouldn’t need to eat.

Now here’s the thing . . .

 

The Whole Material Universe Is Entropic

The entire physical universe, so far as we can tell, is entropic, or subject to entropy.

All material systems run down or break down over time.

A seeming, partial exception is life. Living things, in some respects, seem to gather energy and create organization.

Thus some have tried to define life in terms of a kind of weird anti-entropy.

But the exception is, at best, partial, because all living things die. Ultimately, entropy overcomes every living organism.

So what about death before the Fall?

And what about our prospects for immortality after the General Resurrection?

KEEP READING.