I’ve been thinking about launching a second blog for quite a while. The topic would be facts, or insights that are widely disputed or misunderstood amongst the public, yet important and known to be true. I believe I have identified hundreds of such facts so far. These facts and insights are not seriously disputed amongst the experts and scientists in the relevant fields and the evidence for their veracity is overwhelming. Therefore, verifying the accuracy of these facts and insights should not be difficult, just ask the respective expert community. However, finding the best way to express and explain these facts, determining whether they are important, and verifying that they are widely disbelieved may be more difficult.
One example of such a fact is that the Earth is a lot older than a few thousand years old (6,000 or 10,000 years old). Despite the fact that the scientific community states that Earth is 4.5 billion years old and that humans evolved over millions of years a 2019 Gallup poll, showed that 40% of US adults believe that God created humans in their current form within the last 10,000 years. The evidence from a large variety of scientific fields, biology, geology, paleontology, physics, astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, etc., contradicts young earth creationism whilst the attempts to discredit the old earth narrative have fallen short.
The reason for wanting to do this is not to prove anyone wrong, but because it is interesting, and it provides a growth opportunity for everyone including myself. In the past I believed false facts and I probably still do. Discovering these and learning about why you most likely are wrong could sometimes be unpleasant at the same time as it is an opportunity for growth and an opportunity to better understand the world. I am hoping to make the site interactive. Readers can suggest such facts, politely dispute my assessments, and add evidence. However, I should say I would like to avoid politics.
When I was a teenager, I believed that Earth and the Universe was 6,000 years old, and that evolution was a hoax. I read young earth books that appeared scientific, and which presented a long list of objections to the established scientific narrative. My religious background had something to do with it, but I also thought that I had the scientific facts on my side. I was interested in science, and I got accepted to “Naturvetenskaplig linje”, a Swedish high school program for students with good grades and who showed aptitude for science. This program was like taking lots of AP classes in math/calculus, physics, biology, and chemistry, and it prepared me well for my university level studies in engineering physics and electrical engineering.
In physics I learned about radiometric dating. Sure, that topic had been mentioned in the young creationist books as well, but they had insisted that radiometric dating was unreliable, and they had suggested that radioactive decay rates might have changed. Now I learned why radiometric dating was very reliable, why radioactive decay rates remained constant, about the physical laws involved, not to mention the facts that highly sped up radioactive decay rates would have resulted in not just a very radioactive world, it would have forced changes to physical laws that would have broken the world. In thermodynamics I learned that the claim that the second law of thermodynamics contradicted evolution was based on a very simple, in fact silly, misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics.
From astronomy and astrophysics, I learned that it takes 100,000 years for light to travel from the inside of the sun to its surface. I learned that distances between stars and galaxies were thousands, millions, and even billions of lightyears, yet we could see them. How can we see a galaxy whose light has been traveling for 10 billion years if the Universe is only 10,000 years old? The young earth answer to that was that light might have travelled at a much faster speed in vacuum in the past, neglecting the fact that the speed of light in vacuum is a universal constant that is part of a lot of formulas E= mc2 (energy content of mass), the ratio of the electric and magnetic force, time and space formulas, the size of black holes, Einstein’s gravitational constant (strength of gravity). 10 billion years versus 10,000 years means that the speed of light must have been a million times faster, gravity a trillion trillion (septillion) times weaker, and according to E = mc2 99.99999999% of the Universe’s energy must have vanished.
As time went on every single claim that the young earth creationist had made fell apart. In other words, knowing some science made the young earth narrative not only untenable but silly. To be honest with myself I had to give up the young earth belief system. Naturally, the universe could have been created yesterday, our memories could be implanted, and we could all be dreaming like in the Matrix. Science isn’t 100% certain, but some beliefs are much more plausible than others.
Young earth creationism wasn’t the only time I had been bamboozled. I think because I have a fairly strong science background combined with the facts that I have been bamboozled and I have accepted that reality, and the fact that my interests are so wide makes me a good candidate for launching this type of blog. I would like to present the fact and instead of arguing just give the reader a basic and understandable overview of the evidence with links to reliable sources. The reader can then sort it out for themselves. Again, I am hoping to get some help with suggestions and growing it to eventually thousands of examples/posts. Then I want to select, let’s say, the 100 best ones. Below are some examples of what I am interested in.
- We know that the world is a lot older than 10,000 years old and yet many dispute that.
- Evidence for evolution is strong, evidence against it is lacking, something many don’t know or deny.
- We know that economic externalities are real (market failures), yet market fundamentalists are unaware of this.
- Someone creating a duplicate account of you on Facebook does not mean you were hacked, yet many make that assumption.
- Wind power is not a major cause of bird death. Fossil fuels and cats are a lot worse (hundreds of times).
- We know that homeopathy does not work, yet it is widely used.
- Global warming is real and is known to be caused by us, yet many deny this.
- Plastic is not a big environmental problem for the US.
- Poverty, violence, child mortality has been sharply reduced worldwide to the surprise of many.
My question now is what should I call the blog? Super Facts, Deep Insights, Eye Openers, Transformative Facts, Bamboozle Medicine, Big Memos, ….
Leonberger Life 