As regular readers know, I run about seven recorders simultaneously to pick up as much information as I can. About a year ago, I hooked up a Tivo to see how it worked. It's hard to change habits, but I decided to convert all my recording to Tivo. As I didn't really have the knowledge to hook up all the various sets, I had a couple of guys come out and install them. I keep a set of my books on top of the console that holds the recording equipment and they started to get interested in what they were about.
The chief installer wasn't too interested at first, but the assistant, having a little time, became very interested. He wanted to know what the basis of the books was. I said that I was an anti-Newtonian. He said, you mean the guy that discovered gravity. I said sure. He said, how could you disagree with someone that discovered something so obvious.
I took a screwdriver and dropped it and asked him, what made it drop. He said gravity.
I asked him what gravity was. He said it was what made the screwdriver drop.
I said Newton said that the screwdriver dropped because it was a property of the matter in the Earth for the screwdriver to drop. I then pointed out that before Newton said the screwdriver dropped because it was a property of matter for it to drop, Aristotle, who had been followed for several thousand years, said the screwdriver dropped because the Earth was the center of the universe and everything in the universe dropped toward the center.
I then asked him, does he know any more about gravity by Newton saying it was a property of the matter to make it drop than that it dropped because it was dropping to the center of the universe.
He said, no, he didn't.
At that point, the chief installer laughed and said it's like electricity. His assistant asked what he meant. The chief said electricity is a moving charge and that tells us as much about electricity as it does about gravity. Neither of these guys had set a foot in anything above highschool and yet they knew more about reality than empirical scientists with prestigious degrees and awards from everywhere empirical science can create a degree and an award.
The assistant asked me to give him another example of something that science doesn't know. That was about as easy as could be. I asked him if he knew what the popular picture of an atom was, with a nucleus and orbiting electrons. He said sure. I then asked him what was making the electrons orbit the atom.
That got a good laugh out of him. He said he'd never given it any thought. Of course, readers of these columns know that what makes the electron orbit is a question that will get a promising scientific student kicked out of school.
The assistant then asked where all this fits in with religion.
I responded, as I have many times in this column, that there are certain questions that are a matter of belief. I pointed out they were installing some of the most sophisticated technology that existed and that discussing where the universe came from, whether it be the creation of a god or a big bang or any other notion someone wants to believe, would not affect the technology they were adept at. I pointed out that what he believed and what I believed about where the matter in the universe came from, how big the universe was, when it began or when it would end, had no affect on the physical quality of our lives. He could believe what he wanted and it wouldn't affect anything and that's the way it should be. Beliefs are a private matter while the science of technology should be a matter of public record because the definition of science is reality and reality means dealing with the physical things in our existence, the mechanical causes of the forces that cause the movements in our existence. Religious wars are the tools of the ignorant.
The chief installer sat down for a rest and asked, what would knowing the mechanical description of gravity do for us. I pointed out that if we could eliminate weight, we could eliminate a lot of fuel consumption. The assistant popped in and said, sure, think of the friction of generators, which was something I hadn't thought about. Then the chief pointed out the obvious, the transportation savings that would be involved.
The assistant wanted to go back to the religious implications of what I was saying. I pointed out that the bible had stories in it, many allegorical, others fairly factually, and others absolutely factual because they could be verified by stories from all over the world. He asked which ones could be verified by stories from all over the world.
I replied with the most obvious one, the flood story. While it appears in the bible, the story from the bible was basically borrowed from the story of the flood in Babylonian texts. In addition, there are approximately 600 verified flood stories, all identical, from every point on the globe and recited in every known language.
Well, the assistant asked, where did the floodwaters come from? I replied that knowing the answer to that question went back to what gravity was. So, the chief installer asked, what is gravity.
Now at this point, I usually get run out of the room, although it was my room. But I said, what the heck. I explained that gravity was a dynamic force. It held us to the surface of the Earth. It made objects fall to the Earth. It caused us to spend a lot of time and effort overcoming its effects. I then said, why would anyone think a dynamic force would be the product of a property like color or texture or hardness?
The chief agreed but asked again what was it if it wasn't a property of matter.
I replied, quite hesitantly, that it was the result of what matter was doing rather than a static property of the existence of matter.
What was matter doing that produced gravity, he asked.
I said the only thing matter is doing is cooling in the empty coldness of space. I pointed out that when something cools, like the sun is cooling, it is emitting an electromagnetic emission field. Both the chief and the assistant were familiar with electromagnetic emissions simply because they were basically electricians. I then reminded them that gravity diminishes inversely with the square of its distance from its source and that's exactly what the electromagnetic emission field does.
So, the assistant asked, what does all that have to do with the flood.
I said the moon is about a quarter the size of the Earth. There is no reason to think that both weren't formed at the same time. That meant they both started cooling off at the same time. I pointed out that there were ocean beds on the surface of the moon with no water in them. Empirical science, and I was starting to get technical because these guys were no dummies, says that because gravity is a static property of matter, whatever water was ever on the moon would still be on the moon because the gravity would have held it there.
As there is no water on the moon, there was never any water on the moon and the seas and ocean beds we can easily see with our naked eyes are the result of some mysterious process which empirical science doesn't bother to address.
However, if gravity is a dynamic product of what matter is doing, cooling, then as the moon cooled off and its gravity lessened in relation to the Earth.
At this point, the assistant asked, you mean you think there was life on the moon.
Now I was getting into real stuff. I pointed out, as I had done in The Cooling Continuum, as well as in many of these columns, that life is the driving force of the universe, that it is the motion of the matter in the universe that sets up the electrical flows around which atoms and molecules of atoms organize themselves into life. I pointed out that, while I had no idea whether there were humans such as ourselves on the moon at one time, there was, as a specific process of the cooling process, an atmosphere and an atmosphere that eventually condensed water and when water is condensed onto the surface of a planet, it provides the telluric currents with the needed atoms and molecules of atoms to produce life.
This didn't sit too well with the assistant who was clearly religiously motivated in the sense that life on Earth is a product of God and is unique. Shaking his head, he said, how could the water, if it was on the moon, get to the Earth.
Here I got a surprise. I'm accustomed to having to explain and explain and explain against total opposition, much like flinging words at brick walls.
However, the chief installer took over. He said it was easy to see. The moon had water and was cooling off in space. As it was cooling off in space, its gravity was lessening. Meanwhile, and this is from the chief installer, he said the Earth was still hot and had a stronger gravity. As the moon cooled, the water would collect on a single side and eventually be pulled off the surface by the Earth's gravity.
The assistant said, how in the world could the water get from the moon to the Earth.
The chief installer said, there's nothing between here and the moon. It just moved through space.
The assistant said, come on, that's really stretching things.
The chief installer said, come on, it's the most logical thing I've ever heard. The water had to come from somewhere and that's the best explanation I've ever come across.
Other than the fact that I was amazed that two regular Joes who work all day long just to put food on the table were interested in what I was talking about, I was more interested in an issue that I had been struggling with all my life.
I have always felt that the average person has innate common sense that guides them through life. I have always had a feeling that the pundits, the scholars, the movers and shakers create what we know as history, but that there is the vast group of all of us that all we want to do is find work we enjoy and feed ourselves, go home at night and relax with the family we love and, well, simply enjoy life, the people that basically populate the planet.
I've always felt that this vast majority, which I think includes myself, are sensible people, intelligent, capable of making judgments and form the basis of civilization, the unsung, I don't want to use the Marxist word masses, but the unsung citizens of the planet that are good hearted people and want nothing more than to live in peace and happiness.
In our newspaper driven society, all we get is the worst of the worst and then commentary that makes the worst of the worst even worse. I was beginning to doubt the basic intelligence of the people that populate the planet because of the educated few who would have us believe we are all living in hell.
The fact of the matter is, talking with a couple of technicians about topics that are supposed to be denied to those who don't have advanced degrees, and recognizing that they were as intelligent as anyone I would want to meet, restored my faith in the belief that we are all here doing the best we can.
Now I have to figure out why there are such a few who want to screw everything up for us when we have the potential, with our production ability and reserve banking systems, to spread prosperity to everyone.
Peter Bros is the author of the 9 volume Copernican Series and is President of The Far Museum of Dallas, an actual history museum, which will house its collection of 50,000 rare Eastern Mediterranean manuscripts and artifacts together with actual history displays and tours in a full-sized replica of the Egyptian Temple at Dendera to be built in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. Email:peterbros@therealskeptic.com