This just in: Fools. Money. Parted.

I wish there were some details as to what people think she has done. Read here.

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Kotaku on JT's NIU Claims

School shootings are horrible tragedies. I want to be clear right from the start that no one should be made to endure a loved one's murder or suicide, particularly in such a painful and public manner.

In the aftermath of such an event, we all want to know why it happened. But speculating about motives before we have concrete information is foolish in the least and can be harmfully misleading. Mere speculation, though, can be forgiven. Using a tragedy to advance a wholly unrelated agenda cannot.

It is with this in mind that we watch a video of one infamous Florida attorney, whom we followers of video game culture sometimes call He Who Must Not Be Named. Inexplicably, this man is allowed on Fox News to throw out his claims that major tragedies are caused by video games. The shooting at NIU on the 14th was no exception.


An analysis of the claims in this clip has been made by Brian Crecente of Kotaku, which I will reproduce for you here.

1. We find from brain scan studies out of Harvard that if you get started playing, for example, violent video games you can more likely copy-cat the behaviors in the games.
   Verdict: False
   Evidence: While the study of adolescents by Harvard and Indiana university researchers found that video games can spur "emotional arousal" and lower self-control it never made that final leap. In fact David S. Bickham, a research scientist at the Center on Media and Child Health at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, told the Washington Post that the study, while interesting, wasn't conclusive.


2. The disturbing thing that keeps popping up in many of these as in Va Tech, Columbine, Paducah, where I represented the six parents of the three girls shot and killed, is that you can rehearse these types of massacres on simulators which are called video games. And you can therefore made more proficient in doing this.
   Verdict: False
   Evidence: Va Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho only had a passing interest in gaming years before the shoot[ing]. A lawyer tried to draw a connection between the game Doom and Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, but that was tossed out by a federal judge. Paducah shooter Michael Carneal also played Doom, but that was found to not be connected to the shooting. Video game as murder simulator and training tool just doesn't hold any water.


3. The worst school shooting in history until Va Tech, was by Robert Steinhauser in Erfurt, Germany who trained on Counter-Strike Half Life. That's the game that Cho at Va Tech trained on in High School.
   Verdict: Not exactly true
   Evidence: While it is true that Steinhauser and Cho both played Counter-Strike at some point in their lives, with more than a million copies sold, that could probably be said of a lot of college students. Saying that Cho "trained on" the game is a bit of a stretch.


4. And um the effect, the affects the psychological affect of the shooter, plus his attire is suggestive of a couple of the games in which the "hero" wears this type of attire.
   Verdict: Likely false
   Evidence: The description by those present don't make it sound like he had a flat affect. One person said "It looked like a theatrical thing the way he walked onto the stage." Others described his behavior leading up to the shooting as erratic. Not surprising of a man who had recently been dumped by his girlfriend and had stopped taking his medication, possibly anti-depressants. Simply wearing black doesn't mean he was dressing up like the "hero" from Counter-Strike.


5. I lost my train of thought. I wrote a book...
   Verdict: True
   Evidence: Jack did indeed write a book, and I think he lost his train of thought about two decades ago.

Wonderful skeptical analysis of an opportunist. Kudos to Crecente, and I wish I had wrote it myself.

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Self Contradictions from Sal Cordova

After a nice vacation, creationist Sal Cordova has posted a few new articles on his blog Young Cosmos. He takes ad hominem potshots at PZ Myers and writes meaningless arguments from authority (here and here). There is a little fun, though, when he waxes philosophical on a young vs. old universe and makes claims about what would prove ID true.

Sal says that in his recent modern physics class he "went through the major experiments which led to the development of modern physics." That's good; that's what a physics class should teach a student. He also says

My experience in class only reinforces the fact that the claim that “Darwin’s theory is the central theory of science” is a falsehood promoted by Darwin’s followers. It has no basis in truth.

Hmm, I don't really think he learned that in his modern physics class. I think it's much more likely that the class made zero mention of Darwin or evolution and Sal's confirmation bias twisted that actual class discussion into support of his evolution denial.

We also see that, while Sal may be a good student of science history and facts, he hasn't absorbed the methods of science

An assumption of Einstein’s relativity is that the speed of light is constant. If we accept Einstein’s theory as is, or even Maxwell’s equations as is, then the cosmos must be old and not young. Accepting an old cosmos was not a problem for me in class, because the assumption of an old cosmos is reasonable (unlike Darwin’s ridiculous idea that Darwinian processes can evolve a fish into a bird, and a cow into a whale).

I can accept old-earth ideas as a working hypothesis. However, if Einstien’s theory and Maxwell’s equations can be amended to allow temporal-spatial variations of the speed of light, then various YEC cosmologies can succeed without being inconsistent with present operational physics. I look forward to exploring the possibility of variable speed of light (VSL) and will blog on developments in VSL periodically…..

In effect, he says he'll accept scientific facts until he can get a degree, then cherry-pick evidence to support his discredited pet hypothesis. Sal presents himself as being open to whatever comes out of his "exploration," but typically people do not name their blogs after ideas that they're ambivalent towards [hint, it's named Young Cosmos].

There is more evidence of ideological bias and a blatant false dichotomy in the final paragraph.

I can, as a Christian, accept an old cosmos if that’s the way it really is. However, if the universe is young, and if a VSL cosmology succeeds, it will not only prove ID, but also special creation. It will also strongly suggest the Intelligent Designer is the Christian God. It will affirm the geneology of Jesus Christ in Luke chapter 3. I pray that if the Cosmos is Young, God will help the search for evidence along those lines.

Sorry, Sal. Even if there is evidence that the speed of light can change, that says zip zero zilch about ID. Any theory must stand or fall on its own merits and evidence, and ID has nothing behind it. It cannot just ride the coattails of a possible but improbable idea in an unrelated field. And under what tortured logic could a variable speed of light support the existence of a particular god? What does that have to do with the family tree of one organism out of trillions on one planet around one star out of millions in one galaxy out of billions? I think Sal has delusions of grandeur about his delusions.

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Another Post re: Sal Cordova

I really wasn't going to write about Sal Cordova's latest misunderstanding of quantum mechanics. Even though it's a long article, there didn't seem to be enough there to give me anything of substance to write about. But thanks to Blake Stacey's comment on my last post on Sal Cordova showing me that Tyler DiPietro had written a bit about the new post, I had enough to go on.

Remember this equation from before? It was never explained what any of this means. In Sal's recent article, we get something almost a little like mathematical information about the equation.

Sal writes,

That conceptual merging of all quantum systems is represented by the quantum system of the universe, or (for lack of a better term), the Universal Wave Function. Taking the Schrodinger equation and generalizing it for the entire universe, we have the universal wave function as derived by Barrow and Tipler: [picture] where the indexed Psi’s are the individual quantum systems, and the O’s are the “observations."

There is zero probability that Sal didn't just copy that out of a book. Why else would he capitalize "Universal Wave Function"? Does he know what a wave function is? Does he know what "observation" means? I sure don't, not in this context anyway.

Let's analyze this equation for a bit. Why would you multiply a wave function with this "observation"? Why sum them up? In fact, every time we see an index i we see a k, yet i and k are summed separately. Why? The product is over n, yet n only appears in the "observation." Why? What are these indices supposed to mean? What does any of this mean? Perhaps Sal should understand that math doesn't just pop out of nowhere like a child's birthday magic show: it needs to be derived. And preferably explained.

Sal then cites a respectable, peer-reviewed geocities page when he says, "Jenny Nielsen explains this beautifully in A Report on 'The Delayed Choice Experiment'.” Wait, did I say "cites"? I meant "reproduces the entire article."

For physically actualized systems, it appears then a measurement is essential for the system to be actualized.

I can only infer from this that Sal thinks before humans were around measuring everything, nothing in the universe is "actualized." When we're not looking, everything ceases to be.

For example, we see measurements defining the boundary conditions of a quantum system such as illustrated by the Nobel Prize winning experiment known as Stern Gerlach.

The Stern-Gerlach experiment has nothing to do with measurement, and everything to do with demonstrating spin. Well, I guess it does trivially have to do with measurement, as one needs to measure something to get any information from the experiment. However, I can assure you, the Stern-Gerlach experiment would run the same way whether someone was watching or not. The point of the experiment is that there is an intrinsic angular momentum to the electron and that it is quantized.

[John Barrow and Frank Tipler's book Anthropic Cosmological Principle] was hailed by the prestigious scientific journal Nature. However, in 1996, when Tipler came forward and said the “Ultimate Observer” was to be identified with the Judeo-Christian God, Tipler’s ideas were immediately ridiculed and his pay was cut.

In fact, I've found the review in question. But my university's online subscription to Nature only goes back to 01-01-87, and this article was published on 08-14-86. So close. I'll have to go to the library and track it down later.

In a comment on Tyler's article, Blake Stacey writes about a different review of Tipler.

Actually, a review of Tipler's Physics of Immortality, published in Nature, called that book "a masterpiece of pseudoscience ... the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline". It's funny Cordova doesn't mention that review, isn't it?

So, another day, another butchering of quantum mechanics. Expect another soon enough.

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Lizzette Reynolds + Commenter

The Austin American-Statesman has an interview with Lizzette Reynolds, the Texas education official with the itchy keyboard finger involved in the Christine Comer case.

She still thinks Comer expressed an opinion in her email. The only sentence in the email expressing an opinion is the first one; it says, "I thought that you might like to know that Barbara Forrest will be speaking..." Everything else is completely factual.

Lizzette Reynolds' email expressed plenty of opinions, including the opinion that Comer's email was "an offense that calls for termination." Well, Lizzette, I have to quote your own words from your interview when I say, "I realize that people have their opinions. If you want to do that, Yahoo is free. Get a Yahoo account."

After the jump, I look at an anti-evolution commenter on the Reynolds article.

This is completely unrelated to Lizzette Reynolds, but I found it on the same page. One of the comments on the Reynolds interview is full of standard creationist babble, so I had to reproduce it here for evisceration. It comes from commenter David, who says,

What are you evolutionist-types afraid of? Is your “theory” so flimsy that you must censor all other talk or discussion about origins?

How did it all begin?

The Theory of Evolution cannot account for that - it can only account for an evolution of the species. True enough. The biology and zoology seem to point to that.

But what about beginnings? What if one wanted to start an intellectual discussion on beginnings. Or purpose? Or telos? Where would they go?

Science or philosophy?

If Philosophy, then it is clear that the Theory of Evolution is not robust enough to handle the question of origins.

Pro-evolutionists: Stop the censorship. Let the discussion being. (sic)

In a modern pluralistic state, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Shame, shame, shame.

Let all sides talk and then let the intelligent minds think for themselves.

I'll take care of the easy one first. Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life. Absolutely not a single thing. Evolution presupposes replicators with differential abilities to survive or replicate based on their characteristics; once those things exist, evolution predicts the general pattern one would see. It has zero to do with how those replicators came to be in the first place. Zero.

That takes care of about half the nonsense in this comment. Before taking down the other part, I have to switch off my irony-detector before my head explodes.

Chris Comer was fired because of a phantom opinion she expressed about an evolution supporter.

...and we are censoring them?

You have the audacity to suggest that the supporters of evolution will not allow a discussion to take place on the very same website where an interview is being conducted about a woman who was fired for allegedly supporting evolution. What nerve you have. What nerve and absolute ignorance. Aside from the fact that your argument is crap, you post it on a page about a series of events that would turn your ideas over and give them a good spanking if you would only take the time to read and understand them. The mere suggestion that Chris Comer might be breaking the delicate and sacred neutrality between solid science and the logic of a four-year-old is enough cause for her to lose her job, even though she didn't do any such thing. But we are stifling debate. We aren't allowing both sides to be heard.

Well, sir, I've let both sides be heard. I have reproduced your words in my arena. I can only hope that you follow your own advice. "Let all sides talk and then let the intelligent minds think for themselves." Please do think for yourself.

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In Which I Take on a Long Commitment

Once again I come late to the party, and if you want to be well versed in this subject you might have to read all the backstory. And, to paraphrase Colin Meloy, as I tell this sorry tale / in harrowing detail / its hollowness will haunt you. Sorry about that.

Here we go. First, a little history, courtesy of Mark Chu-Carroll at Good Math, Bad Math. Sal Cordova used to blog over at the ID mecca Uncommon Descent.

Not too long after that, Sal made a fairly big deal about the fact that he was returning to grad school, and had to stop blogging at UD because the dastardly darwinists would damage his academic prospects if he continued. He played the standard creationist-martyr role, poor guy, persecuted by all the horrible non-believers. Naturally, it didn't last long. He's got his own blog now, called "Young Cosmos", where he writes his usually pathetic quote-mining, plus what he calls "Advanced creation science".

Enough history. Sal wrote a post entitled "Fundamental Theorems of Intelligent Design". He proceeds to not tell the reader what these theorems are. What a letdown. He does post a few equations, however. ...or, he sort of does. I'll show you.

This is the first equation. Looks really pretty, doesn't it? Do you want to know what it means? Me too! Sal doesn't tell us diddly about what this equation means, save that it was "derived by the renowned physicists John Barrow a (sic) Frank Tipler from Schrodinger’s equation of quantum mechanics." Wow. That's sexy.

We have less information about the second equation. Sal provides a reference, saying it's on page 25 of a PDF he links. Well, there are several not-numbered equations on page 25 of that PDF with very little explanation.

The reader is left wondering what this means. Sal won't leave you hanging, though! He says, "The exploration of these fundamental theorems will take a year’s worth of blogging. They make feasible the theory of ID, and a theory of ID leads to the possiblity of theories of special creation, which make possible theories of a young cosmos."

Sal posted a second article, "Fourier Transform and Schrodinger’s Equation part I", which starts with

Various theories of Intelligent Design and Advanced Creation Science depend heavily on Schrodinger’s equation of Quantum Mechanics [as I pointed out in Fundamental Theorems of ID].

Thus it makes sense to cover a little bit about Schrodinger’s equation over several threads and hopefully after some lenghty derivations, I can connect basic physics to theories of ID and Advanced Creation Science.. To my surprise, I discovered there is a relationship of Schrodinger’s equation in physics to the Fourier Transform of math and Electrical Engineering.

I hope Sal isn't reading anything of significance into this. A lot of fields study waves, which are governed by second-order differential equations. If the solutions to these equations are periodic, Fourier series (and their associated transforms) are a great way to go. They simplify a second-order differential equation into a simple quadratic equation. So most kinds of wave motion can be made simpler by Fourier series. There is certainly nothing of cosmic significance to this, it just means Fourier came up with a great tool that a lot of people use.

A few bloggers picked up on this story, including Blake Stacey of Science After Sunclipse, Tyler DiPietro, and the aforementioned Mark Chu-Carroll. Then PZ Myers at Pharyngula passed on the links, which is where I found it all. Like I said, late to the party.

Sal's put up one more post since then, "Schrodinger vs. Darwin". As pathetic as the other two articles have been, this one takes the cake. The thesis is, in a nutshell, "Schrodinger is a real scientist and Darwin isn't because Schrodinger could do math and Darwin couldn't!" I'm not kidding.

Several ad hominems and non sequiturs follow.

Ironically the Darwinists are whining that the US is falling behind in math and engineering education and that if we don’t teach more Darwinism, the country will fail. Acually, it is apparent from Darwin’s own writings we should not follow in Darwin’s footsteps if we wish the USA to excell (sic) in math and engineering.

The nation will advance in science and engineering if more students understand the Schrodinger’s work than that of the math-challenged puppy beater, Charles Darwin…..

Wow. I'm pretty sure no one wants kids to learn evolution to be better at math. I was thinking maybe it would be about biology. Biology, as a science, doesn't always involve math. It doesn't necessarily have to. Living things are incredibly complex, so simple math can't always fit their behavior. A science doesn't have to be as mathematical as physics to make testable predictions that hold up under evidence. Biology does, ID doesn't. The end.

And as to the puppy-beating, PZ has something to say about that.

I plan to stick with this sideshow series Sal is posting. Someone has to. Hopefully he'll eventually write something that needs a physicist to take apart, rather than the collections of fallacies and quote-mines we've seen so far. And, to be completely fair, he may actually say something of scientific worth. I'll present you the evidence as it comes.

---

UPDATE: More ad hominems from Sal's new post. He can't get over the fact that Darwin once said he was bad at algebra.

Also, Blake Stacey has another example from last June of Sal attributing evidence for ID to his misunderstanding of physics.

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It Makes Me Want to Tear My Hair Out, But I Can't Stop Listening

I've been listening to the The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe for about a year and a half now. A few months ago I decided to go through the archives; I really should have done this when I first started listening since they now have twice as many episodes as then, but such is life. One upside is that I know some good things are still to come (though there are also some very bad things).

Today I've gotten to my favorite episode: Skepticast 51. The Neal Adams interview. If you've never listened to the show, at least listen to this one. It's a classic.

Neal is a proponent of a plate-tectonic-denying expanding earth theory. He holds that matter is constantly being created inside the earth which expands as a result. A theory such as his more or less requires a complete rewriting of every branch of science, including but not limited to geology, planetary science, particle physics, astrophysics, cosmology, and even biology. Yes, Neal Adams seems to fancy himself as seeing basic facts that have somehow eluded every single working scientist for at least the past fifty years.

On the show you can hear his responses to several basic scientific challenges. The first one to jump out is the fact that matter can't be created, and you have to hear his response to believe it. But my favorite challenge is a different one, which I will quote here.

Bob Novella: Let me just try to see some ramifications here. If the earth had less mass in the past, therefore it was less massive and had less gravitational pull, correct? If that's the case, if the earth's mass is increasing, why is the moon moving away from us instead of coming closer to us as the gravitational pull inevitably increases?

Neal: (condescending) Be-cause the moon is getting bigger, too. They're all growing.

Bob and Steve, together: That would make it even worse!

Neal: Not really, no. Because... it sorta works like this. ... (sigh) ... You have to understand the whole theory. There's a whooole massive theory to this.

Bob: Gravity is gravity.

Neal: (condescending again) Well, gravity is not necessarily gravity, is it? Gravity could be electromagnetic in nature, couldn't it?

Bob: No.

It goes on, but you can get the gist of the interview from that passage alone. Trust me, it's worth a listen. Of course, in the wonderfully skeptical words of LeVar Burton, "You don't have to take my word for it!" Just listen for yourself!

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Prepare for a Long One

Reading Pharyngula the other day, I saw a short post in which PZ Myers pointed his readers to an article arguing against special relativity. I thought that might be right up my alley, so I bookmarked the link for future reading.

Today I see that Mark Chu-Carroll at Good Math, Bad Math has read the article and put up a review. I'm sad I didn't read it earlier because this article is just pure fun. I always highly recommend you read the original (or skim at the very least), but in this case I go over so much of it, you'd just be bored. In fact, my response is so long, you might want to grab a snack and a blanket before jumping in. This is going to be a long one and I want you to be comfortable.

Back now? Great. Prepare to dive into a Scrooge McDuck moneybin filled not with gold but with sloppy thinking. Right from the first paragraph we see that author Darrell Williams doesn't know how science works.

Many notable scientists such as the French mathematician, Henri Poincare rejected Einstein’s Theory of Relativity due to it’s lack of sound mathematical procedures, absence of clearness of vision or rigorous arguments.

Wow, Poincare rejected relativity? Really? Hot dog, I guess it must be bunk! Seriously, though, arguments from authority don't mean anything when placed against evidence. Relativity works. It makes predictions that are confirmed. Those predictions are better than other models. Oh, but wait, Darrell doesn't understand models either.

MATHEMATICAL MODELS are abstract, idealized, imaginary models which contain characteristics and assumptions which cannot exist in reality (such as points, lines, triangles, spheres, etc.) These models can be purely logical, purely mathematical, geometric, kinematic, dynamic or electromagnetic. All of these models are based on the LAWS OF MATHEMATICS (symbols, equations, formulas etc.) which only approximate the physical LAWS OF NATURE. These mathematical models produce deductive conclusions which only apply to the idealized mathematical models.

PHYSICAL MODELS are real models composed of physical objects which are used in empirical experiments. By repeating identical (as far as possible) testing with these models, inductive conclusions can be made. These inductive conclusions, because they are the results of physical experiments, are the fundamental method used by science in an attempt to understand the LAWS OF NATURE. Knowledge about the real Universe must come from physics and not from mathematics. Experience has always been the primary guide in human reasoning concerning physical facts.

METAPHYSICAL MODELS are sophistic models which contain both mathematical characteristics and physical characteristics. These are mingled or mixed models. Neither mathematical deductions nor physical inductive conclusions can be produced from these models because they cannot exist in reality. These are pseudoscience models which result from “thought experiments”. These are purely imaginary mental creations. Any conclusions whatsoever that these models produce are completely irrelevant to anything. They cannot produce any valid understanding of reality. A sophist is someone who deceives people based on clever-sounding, but flawed arguments or explanations. However, these fallacious theories do produce popular imaginary science fiction tales about time travel (Back to the Future, motion picture) and spaceships that travel at the speed of light (Star Trek, motion picture).

The distinctions Darrell makes among MATHEMATICAL MODELS, PHYSICAL MODELS, and METAPHYSICAL MODELS are arbitrary and made up. Nothing about what he says is supported in either the philosophy or practice of science. In fact, he's making claims about how science works in a sweeping intellectual sense when he obviously doesn't have a clue how science works in even the most basic, everyday sense.

Physical models are mathematical models. Math is not restricted to an mystical realm of lines and points moving around Euclidean planes. Math is simply a consistent set of rules and definitions. We can apply them to our universe because our universe is also consistent. If reality were not consistent, we could, for instance, have four dollars suddenly becoming fifty dollars; as awesome as that would be, we wouldn't be able to use math in that universe. We do live in a consistent universe, so we can use math as a tool to describe it. Even saying "I have four dollars" is using math.

Typically, when we make physical models, we abstract physical objects into mathematical objects. We can then use the preexisting knowledge of the math to derive greater understanding of the original system. Sometimes the approximations you have to do are good, sometimes they're bad. But we wouldn't be able to understand anything at all without math. To quote Blake Stacey from a comment on the Mark CC article,

When you're driving along the highway and you say, "I can get another hundred miles on this tank of gas," you're using a mathematical model. From the angular position of the gas-gauge needle, you judge how much fuel is remaining in the tank, and based on the assumption that you consume fuel at a fairly constant rate (so-and-so many miles per gallon), you judge how far you can go without stopping to fill 'er up.

So, we've established that insights into math inform our scientific intuition and understanding (the reverse is sometimes true, such as the development of calculus or the Dirac delta function, but often the math comes first). Sadly, Darrell doesn't agree.

False conclusions may be produced by applying the deductive conclusions from the math models to the physical models. This cannot be done legitimately because the two models are intrinsically different. Any analogous comparison between any two models can only suggest possible or speculative outcomes. Only by testing physical models can similar outcomes be verified. Analogous conclusions cannot be assumed.

He's right, if you take out the word "similar," when he says "Only by testing physical models can similar outcomes be verified." But the testing is done with math. First, a mathematical model is constructed to fit observations we have made. Then we make predictions by extending the math to areas about which we haven't made actual observations. We then test the real model and make those new observations. If the prediction is verified, and this process is repeated many times in different ways, we consider the model a good model. Absolutely none of that happens without both math and real-world data.

Let's shift now to Darrell's real point. He starts out attacking models in general, but he's got a special one in mind. He wants to go hunting for the big bad boogey-man of special relativity! Scary, I know.

Prepare for rapid-fire quotes and responses.

In Relativity, there are no rigorous mathematical models.

Wha? This is just nonsensical. Relativity is a mathematical model, so how are there none within relativity? In analogy: in Oak there are no deciduous trees.

[In relativity] there are no relevant physical models which can be tested experimentally. (Real trains don’t travel at the speed of light and apparently no one has yet created a Time Machine, like H. G. Wells imagined).

Straw man. Relativity is perfectly capable of being tested at all speeds. It's just that the slower the speed, the higher the precision we need to test it. Plus, particle accelerators routinely shoot particles around at approximately the speed of light, and relativity is indispensible to their calculations.

In Relativity, all conclusions are derived strictly from imaginary metaphysical models.

Wrong. In relativity, just like in all science, evidence wins the day.

Einstein did not conduct any physical experiments.

Einstein was a theorist. He worked with models and predictions. He used data from other people in creating his model, and left predictions for still others to test. Science is collaborative; one person doesn't have to do everything.

(Fallacies are the most common form of human deception. There are over 174 different ways to create a fallacy).

...and 258 ways to make up a number.

Einstein’s methodology was almost totally based on analogy abuse, metaphors, allegories, unjustified assumptions and metaphysical models.

Perhaps in his public speaking Einstein relied on analogies and metaphors to convey his ideas to nonexperts. However, in his science writing, Einstein was as precise as a person can be. Don't confuse the popular distillation of the subject for the actual subject. And what assumptions were unjustified, pray tell?

The Michaelson-Morley experiment in 1881 was conducted in an attempt to prove [luminiferous ether]’s existence. This experiment failed to detect anything. From these results, Einstein drew a false conclusion. He interpreted the results as proof that there was no privileged frame of reference for the entire Universe. Upon this assumption he constructed the Theory of Special Relativity.

I don't know where Darrell got his history, but this is all wrong. I could go on for pages just about these few sentences, but instead I refer you to the wikipedia article on the history of special relativity. (Interestingly, I read there that Poincare had done most of the work before 1905, and Einstein didn't cite that literature. I don't think that would fly today.)

However, the Big Bang theory implies that there is a fixed (Central) frame of reference in the Universe. This fixed frame of reference for all (Absolute) motion is the physical location of the Big Bang. It is the location from which all universal expansion began.

No. This is wrong. There is no location at which the big bang happened, because there was no space before the big bang. It wasn't anywhere because that concept had no meaning prior to this event. Or, looking at it from our perspective, the big bang happened everywhere. It's hard to visualize, but it's true. There is no center. In every location in the universe you could look out and see stars arrayed around you, apparently evenly distributed. And you'd be right.

It is from this location alone that the constant speed of light can be defined (or any motion of any object).

He really does like the ether, doesn't he? The speed of light is constant with respect to everything. And the motion of objects is defined relative to other objects. That's sort of the point of relativity.

Astronomers have measured the movements of the stars in our Milky Way galaxy in order to approximate the center of the galaxy. Even for our local galaxy, this method only produces an approximate location. This is difficult to do with the billions of galaxies for the entire Universe, but this is the only way to hypothetically predict the center of the Universe.

Well, no, you can't even hypothetically predict the center of the universe that way. We can't see the entire universe, we can only see objects that are at maximum 13.6 billion light years away. But even just looking at the objects we can see, if we were to do this, where do you think the center would be? I'd say odds are it'd be here! And if you were to get into a rocket and perform the same experiment somewhere else in the universe, you'd also see that location as being the center. For a cool pictoral analogy, see here.

Einstein’s observation that the speed of light is constant was probably correct, but without a fixed frame of reference, there is nothing for it to be constant in relation to.

Nothing? I believe the word you're looking for is "everything."

The classical methods of the addition and subtraction of velocities of moving objects was based on inductive conclusions of repeated empirical experiments. These general mathematical laws are only approximations but they also agree with so-called common sense. When the Special Theory was adopted, these inductive conclusions and common sense ideas should not have been so hastily abandoned.

Aww, somebody call the waambulence. Relativity doesn't follow Darrell's common sense, so it must be wrong.

Common sense is of course not always correct...

Damn! Ad hominem foiled again!

...but it is a judgment based on physical experience which should not be discarded without verifiable physical demonstrations. It should not be abandoned solely based on metaphysical models.

Oh, great! Darrell does believe in relativity! It is, after all, heavily supported by actual data. Even everyday experience: if you've ever used a GPS device, you've benefited from relativity. Without relativistic corrections, they wouldn't have the accuracy they do.

I think this is a great place to stop. Darrell managed to convince himself that relativity is correct because it has "verifiable physical demonstrations." Or, at least, he would be thoroughly convinced if he stopped trying to disprove Einstein long enough to read a textbook or ask a damned question.

Oh, what the hell, one last juicy tidbit. I'll let you bask in the glory that is Darrell's concept of science. Quick synopsis: Darrell thinks time is defined by his watch.

Einstein never defined real time, he only discussed mathematical time. Mathematical or isochronal time is an idealistic abstraction in which units, such as minutes, are equal. In reality, no clock can exist which has these characteristics. Also no two clocks can exist which are identical. Any real clock will always either run slower or faster than another clock. In fact, one clock does not even measure identical units itself because like all matter it is continuously changing it‘s molecular structure or aging. (The moving mechanisms of any clock are constantly changing physically.) Einstein’s discussion of both equal units of time and isochronal clocks was totally mathematical and not physical. (Remember, that mathematical deductions cannot be applied to physical objects because the systems are intrinsically different).

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