Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

KANSAS CITY,KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

Burdett added: "Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."

Founded in 1987, the ECFR is the world's leading institution of evangelical physics, a branch of physics based on literal interpretation of the Bible.

According to the ECFR paper published simultaneously this week in the International Journal Of Science and the adolescent magazine God's Word For Teens!, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise.

The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue "so they can make an informed decision."

"We just want the best possible education for Kansas' kids," Burdett said.

Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein's ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. This fact, Intelligent Falling proponents say, proves that gravity is a theory in crisis.

"Let's take a look at the evidence," said ECFR senior fellow Gregory Lunsden."In Matthew 15:14, Jesus says, 'And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.' He says nothing about some gravity making them fall—just that they will fall. Then, in Job 5:7, we read, 'But mankind is born to trouble, as surely as sparks fly upwards.' If gravity is pulling everything down, why do the sparks fly upwards with great surety? This clearly indicates that a conscious intelligence governs all falling."

Critics of Intelligent Falling point out that gravity is a provable law based on empirical observations of natural phenomena. Evangelical physicists, however, insist that there is no conflict between Newton's mathematics and Holy Scripture.

"Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein's general relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world," said Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry. "They've been trying to do it for the better part of a century now, and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they still don't know how."

"Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work," Carson said. "What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that 'gravity waves' and 'gravitons' are just secular words for 'God can do whatever He wants.'"

Some evangelical physicists propose that Intelligent Falling provides an elegant solution to the central problem of modern physics.

"Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the 'electromagnetic force,' the 'weak nuclear force,' the 'strong nuclear force,' and so-called 'force of gravity,'" Burdett said. "And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus."

http://theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2

Like I have said before-if you can't explain it- "god works in mysterious ways" ;)

...or even if you can explain it as is the case with gravity and speciation.

Guy at worked showed me this and strangely about the same time as i read it on here... The patterns!! cant you see it, its everywhere... I am the Messiah I am the Messiah *coughs*

Sorry got caught up in it all for a moment

Intelligent Falling...............
I would guess that on the moon, where we have less gravity, we have Less-Intelligent Falling.
By their thinking, in space, we would have No Intelligence Not Falling.


They spoke of the Oral Roberts University, I remember years ago when his tent revival was taken off t.v., when he was found out to have been using shills as healing subjects during the service.

I feel so sorry for the children in Kansas....even that it is just an idea in Kansas. Poor Kansas............

Originally posted by Blob
Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

KANSAS CITY,KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

Burdett added: "Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."

Founded in 1987, the ECFR is the world's leading institution of evangelical physics, a branch of physics based on literal interpretation of the Bible.

According to the ECFR paper published simultaneously this week in the International Journal Of Science and the adolescent magazine God's Word For Teens!, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise.

The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue "so they can make an informed decision."

"We just want the best possible education for Kansas' kids," Burdett said.

Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein's ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. This fact, Intelligent Falling proponents say, proves that gravity is a theory in crisis.

"Let's take a look at the evidence," said ECFR senior fellow Gregory Lunsden."In Matthew 15:14, Jesus says, 'And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.' He says nothing about some gravity making them fall—just that they will fall. Then, in Job 5:7, we read, 'But mankind is born to trouble, as surely as sparks fly upwards.' If gravity is pulling everything down, why do the sparks fly upwards with great surety? This clearly indicates that a conscious intelligence governs all falling."

Critics of Intelligent Falling point out that gravity is a provable law based on empirical observations of natural phenomena. Evangelical physicists, however, insist that there is no conflict between Newton's mathematics and Holy Scripture.

"Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein's general relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world," said Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry. "They've been trying to do it for the better part of a century now, and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they still don't know how."

"Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work," Carson said. "What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that 'gravity waves' and 'gravitons' are just secular words for 'God can do whatever He wants.'"

Some evangelical physicists propose that Intelligent Falling provides an elegant solution to the central problem of modern physics.

"Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the 'electromagnetic force,' the 'weak nuclear force,' the 'strong nuclear force,' and so-called 'force of gravity,'" Burdett said. "And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus."

http://theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2

hahahaha

These evangelical scientists are wasting their time. Just from the fact that nothing that ever came out of the institute has ever had any impact on the global science scene, it is obvious they are fighting a fruitless battle. Science is global (a point I commented on before), and for that reason along cannot be influenced by any single religion.

On a side note. I don't understand how they can use the word "refute". In order to refute theory of gravity, they need to actually demonstrate that it does not predict some motions correctly. They merely pointed out angels can fly, but cannot produce such an experiment because--surprise--there is no angel to be found.

Originally posted by MotherKali
I feel so sorry for the children in Kansas....even that it is just an idea in Kansas. Poor Kansas............

MK...The Onion is a satirical newspaper...

That's a complement to the onion, not an embarrassment to Mother Kali, that she took it for real. Indeed the embarrassment is all intelligent design theorists

Intelligent Design: Theory of Theories
Written by Joe Mariani
Friday, August 12, 2005


The Intelligent Design debate continues, fueled by President Bush’s recent comment that “Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought.” The problem is that Intelligent Design theory (or ID for short) is not a scientific theory at all. ID is an attempt to “prove” that God (or, in some versions, space aliens) created human beings, using the fact that we don’t yet know everything about the universe. It’s a philosophical belief, not a scientific one.



It’s depressing that some people feel there is a competition between science and religion. Science is merely a tool like any other, or a method of using our intelligence to investigate the world around us. It’s not science’s fault that liberals have tried to use it to “prove” that God is non-existent or irrelevant. Of course, it isn’t possible to prove such a thing; all a religious person has to ask is, “So who wrote all the laws of Nature that scientists are trying to learn? Who determined the value of Pi, the speed of light, or Planck’s Constant?”



ID is an attempt to disprove the idea that humans evolved through natural selection, by pointing out the fact that there are questions the current theory of evolution doesn’t answer. The general argument is that some things are so complex that they must have been deliberately designed; they cannot have evolved naturally over any length of time. There is no actual proof of external interference, however. ID proponents claim that since evolution by natural selection cannot explain everything, the theory must be invalid or incomplete. While that’s certainly possible, it doesn’t mean that those things can’t possibly be explained by further scientific investigation.



Unfortunately, that’s precisely how scientific advancement works--by finding ways to explain what current theories cannot. Science does not mean pointing out that something is not yet fully understood, and deducing that it must therefore have been authored by an outside agency.



Consider the history of another branch of science. Sir Isaac Newton is most well known for the discovery of the laws of gravity. In 1687, he published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, three books that forever changed the course of science. The first two dealt with the laws of motion and forces, the third with gravity. Falling objects accelerate at a rate of 30 feet per second, every second they fall--a rock dropped off a tall building will fall 30 feet, then 60, then 90, and so on until stopped by the ground, or an inconvenient passer-by. Newtonian physics seemed to explain everything very well for centuries.



As scientists dug deeper into the limits of the physical universe, cracks began to show at the edges of Newton’s laws; situations were found that the accepted theories couldn’t explain. No one could predict the relationship and interactions between matter and energy on the very large and very small scale using only Newtonian physics. Along came Albert Einstein, with a whole new explanation of physical science. Did that mean Newton was wrong? Did gravity suddenly stop working when quantum theory was discovered? Of course not. Under local conditions, Newtonian physics are just as applicable as ever. Force still equals mass times acceleration. He simply didn’t cover everything--a fault of the available technology of his time as much as anything else.



A century or so later, Einsteinian physics also begins to show cracks around the edges. There are some situations in which the known laws of quantum mechanics don’t seem to apply. Why does time itself seem to act differently under extreme circumstances, like in the presence of black holes? ID as applied to physics would simply conclude that black holes must be alien artifacts. Suppose a new kind of particle is discovered that travels faster than light, like the tachyon. Would that make Einstein wrong? Would his theories become garbage? Of course not. Einsteinian physics would explain and predict the normal interactions of matter and energy as well as ever. His theories simply couldn’t cover everything, again due--at least in part--to the limitations of his time and available technology.



Even today, Newtonian physics are more than adequate for most everyday situations. Falling objects still accelerate in Earth’s gravity at 30 feet per second per second. You don’t need string theory to calculate how long it takes a rock to fall, but the fact that such advanced theories exist does not invalidate previous ones. In fact, more advanced theories could not even exist without the groundwork they provide. And at no point should anyone decide that there are Things We Just Cannot Explain, and stop trying to understand them. The same holds true for evolutionary theory as physics.



The laws governing heredity were first published in 1866 by Gregor Mendel, a monk experimenting with pea plants. Plants, like animals, generally have offspring that almost exactly resemble them. He realised that some traits are inherited, but that some variations of those traits are dominant over others. The dominant characteristic would appear in all the results of cross-breeding with plants that had different traits. Even so, the recessive variations don’t disappear--they can return in later generations, if combined with another plant carrying them, though neither plant currently shows the recessive characteristic. Two brown-eyed parents might have a blue-eyed child, if each parent has a blue-eyed ancestor somewhere in their past. Mendel codified the rules by which farmers and breeders of all sorts of plants and animals had operated for thousands of years, without understanding the science behind them.



Mendel’s theories didn’t cover everything, however. As exploration of the Earth’s past progressed, ancient remains had been found that belonged to no living creatures... but which were similar in many ways. Obviously, there was some relationship between modern and ancient creatures, despite the differences. A link must have existed between animals past and present, with creatures slowly changing over vast amounts of time. Enter Darwin, and the theory of evolution by natural selection. Though the concept dates back to the ancient Greeks, Darwin codified the laws governing evolution as Mendel did the laws of heredity... and Newton and Einstein did for physics. Once again, science evolved from understanding the narrow focus and short term to the broad scope and long term, building on the work that had gone before.



Scientific evaluation of the past shows that as environmental conditions change over the course of millions of years, creatures slowly adapt; those who have a slight advantage live longer or better lives, and have more offspring. Due to natural variation, some of their descendants may be even slightly better able to survive, and so on. Did this invalidate Mendel’s theories? Were all horse, cow, and dog breeders put out of business? Did children no longer resemble their parents? Of course not. In the short term--hundreds of years, even thousands--the theory that inherited characteristics breed true is still solid. Your children will still look very much like you, or your parents. When people buy a dog, they don’t need to worry what its descendants will look like in a million years.



Now, more than a hundred years on, there are some questions unanswered by current evolutionary theory. So, does that mean Darwin was wrong--that nothing evolves? Does that mean we should burn that branch of science, and stop investigating our own past using scientific methods? Should we just mark that blank area on the chalkboard, “God did this part” and move on to something else? That doesn’t make any sense. That doesn’t agree with humanity’s history of using our intelligence to discover how things work. Like physics before the advent of Einstein or Stephen W. Hawking, evolutionary science is in need of more investigation when there are unanswered questions, not less. When unanswered questions arise, that’s when science takes the greatest leaps forward.



Today, we have access to tools of which Darwin could not even dream. We understand the workings of chromosomes and DNA, and have mapped the very genes that make us human. Turning our backs on knowledge has never really been an option, and deciding that an outside agency must have created us simply because we don’t have a more clear mundane explanation YET is not a step forward.

Originally posted by Tapeworm
Turning our backs on knowledge has never really been an option...

Au contraire.

For the superstitionist/religionist, it is a way of life.

________________________________

The "true believers" among us were, according to their mythology, once brought down by Knowledge long ago, and they have successfully avoided it for all the millennia that followed.

I would guess that on the moon, where we have less gravity, we have Less-Intelligent Falling.
:cool: marvelous