I want to use an example of a scientific/mathematical theory, and show you why some other things do not quite stand up to the term ‘theory’.
Question: If you could fold a piece of paper in half 100 times, how thick would it be?
I guarantee that if you go and ask your family and friends this question right now (assuming they don’t already know the answer) you will receive a multitude of different responses, ranging from a few inches, a few meters and even miles in thickness.
Everyone will have an image in their mind of how a piece of paper folded 100 times would look; essentially, everyone will have their own ‘theory’.
This isn’t a bad thing, everyone looks at the world through a different lens, each person has different experiences and references and this affects their ability to absorb and formulate ideas.
The reason I chose this question is because it has a funny way of tricking your brain, you will realise this too when I tell you the answer. It tricks us because of how mundane it all sounds – let me explain:
• A piece of paper
What do you think of? A size of A4 plain paper, perhaps A3 or A2, what ever you think of it’s boring and it’s small, and this thought, in part, dictates what your answer will be.
• 100 times
100, again boring, small, £100 is hardly anything in today’s society, 100 is not a big number; you could count to 100 in a very short period of time.
• Folding
We fold stuff all the time, it’s no big deal, folding is easy.
So the components of the question dictate in your mind a sense of scale, and as such most answers will fall within a scale that is easy to comprehend and that matches our previous experiences, which is why many of you would not have landed anywhere close to the answer.
A piece of paper folded in half 100 times would be roughly 13 billion light years thick. You can check out the mathematics behind that theory here and here.
So what is my point? Well as humans we apply the same thought process to the rest of reality, including the big questions like how we got here in the first place, but in doing so we are limited by our own imagination and ability to process the complexity of the world around us.
One thing to note about the above example is that it cannot be tested; we cannot fold a piece of paper 100 times to confirm the theory. So we take what we already know, observe what we can, test where we can, and use mathematics to go where our physical tests cannot take us. A consequence of this is that many of you reading will not believe the theory, some may even come up with your own theories about folding paper, you will look for supposed inconsistencies, you may even find like-minded people and form a group, you might start campaigning for your theory to be taught alongside this theory or even in-place of the current one. Sound familiar?
Evolution has undergone the very same mathematical and observational experiments that every scientific theory has had to go through to be recognised, but just because it seems implausible to you and many others makes not a jot of difference to the truth of the claim.
No amount of campaigns, signs, angry protests, pithy memes or Holy Scriptures is going to be able to challenge the amount of hard work, peer reviews, mathematical simulations, observations, DNA analyses etc. that science has been carrying out for years.
Yes, there are inconsistencies and gaps in the theory, most of you will be aware of what these are, and I believe these need to be challenged in order to strengthen or break a theory, but if you claim to have all the answers, that your God made all this, that aliens begat life on earth or that in the beginning FSM created a mountain, some trees and a Midget, then you need to do an awful lot of work if you wish to be taken seriously.
Many of you reading this will see it as an attack on Creationism and part of the Evolutionary propaganda that lots of people think exists. To be perfectly clear I am not attacking any world view, but what I am suggesting is that if you think you have an alternative answer, for anything, not just Evolution, and wish to replace the current one, then evidence and reasoning needs to take precedent and that not every claim of knowledge can be considered a ‘Scientific Theory’.
Question: If you could fold a piece of paper in half 100 times, how thick would it be?
I guarantee that if you go and ask your family and friends this question right now (assuming they don’t already know the answer) you will receive a multitude of different responses, ranging from a few inches, a few meters and even miles in thickness.
Everyone will have an image in their mind of how a piece of paper folded 100 times would look; essentially, everyone will have their own ‘theory’.
This isn’t a bad thing, everyone looks at the world through a different lens, each person has different experiences and references and this affects their ability to absorb and formulate ideas.
The reason I chose this question is because it has a funny way of tricking your brain, you will realise this too when I tell you the answer. It tricks us because of how mundane it all sounds – let me explain:
• A piece of paper
What do you think of? A size of A4 plain paper, perhaps A3 or A2, what ever you think of it’s boring and it’s small, and this thought, in part, dictates what your answer will be.
• 100 times
100, again boring, small, £100 is hardly anything in today’s society, 100 is not a big number; you could count to 100 in a very short period of time.
• Folding
We fold stuff all the time, it’s no big deal, folding is easy.
So the components of the question dictate in your mind a sense of scale, and as such most answers will fall within a scale that is easy to comprehend and that matches our previous experiences, which is why many of you would not have landed anywhere close to the answer.
A piece of paper folded in half 100 times would be roughly 13 billion light years thick. You can check out the mathematics behind that theory here and here.
So what is my point? Well as humans we apply the same thought process to the rest of reality, including the big questions like how we got here in the first place, but in doing so we are limited by our own imagination and ability to process the complexity of the world around us.
One thing to note about the above example is that it cannot be tested; we cannot fold a piece of paper 100 times to confirm the theory. So we take what we already know, observe what we can, test where we can, and use mathematics to go where our physical tests cannot take us. A consequence of this is that many of you reading will not believe the theory, some may even come up with your own theories about folding paper, you will look for supposed inconsistencies, you may even find like-minded people and form a group, you might start campaigning for your theory to be taught alongside this theory or even in-place of the current one. Sound familiar?
Evolution has undergone the very same mathematical and observational experiments that every scientific theory has had to go through to be recognised, but just because it seems implausible to you and many others makes not a jot of difference to the truth of the claim.
No amount of campaigns, signs, angry protests, pithy memes or Holy Scriptures is going to be able to challenge the amount of hard work, peer reviews, mathematical simulations, observations, DNA analyses etc. that science has been carrying out for years.
Yes, there are inconsistencies and gaps in the theory, most of you will be aware of what these are, and I believe these need to be challenged in order to strengthen or break a theory, but if you claim to have all the answers, that your God made all this, that aliens begat life on earth or that in the beginning FSM created a mountain, some trees and a Midget, then you need to do an awful lot of work if you wish to be taken seriously.
Many of you reading this will see it as an attack on Creationism and part of the Evolutionary propaganda that lots of people think exists. To be perfectly clear I am not attacking any world view, but what I am suggesting is that if you think you have an alternative answer, for anything, not just Evolution, and wish to replace the current one, then evidence and reasoning needs to take precedent and that not every claim of knowledge can be considered a ‘Scientific Theory’.
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