Explore

Where materialism logically leads

by

Photo: Museum of Modern Art, made available by Wikimedia Commons starry-night
Figure 1: (Caption excerpted from Ref. 1) Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Starry night’ painting blends reality with an other-worldly starry universe.

First there was dark matter, then came dark energy, then dark photons and now there is talk of dark stars, dark planets and even dark intelligent life, in a whole dark galaxy within our Milky Way galaxy.

In an article musing on such claims,1 where the van Gogh painting “Starry night” is highlighted, in the caption to the painting is written, “Perhaps he knew something about the nature of the universe that we are just beginning to understand.” As much as I like the paintings of Vincent van Gogh, I don’t think he knew or envisaged, in the swirls illustrated in his painting (Figure 1), anything about invisible dark matter or a dark galaxy within ours. To suggest otherwise surely must be a joke, because physicists today know nothing about so-called dark matter and dark energy. It is called dark not because of what they don’t know, but because of what they do know.

The suggestion is even made that a dark universe, comprising dark galaxies, with dark stars and planets and even a dark form of life evolved on those dark planets.

This ludicrous situation has developed in astrophysics because of the initial assumption of materialism (matter and energy is all there is) and the dogmatic insistence that it must be rigorously applied to the origin and structure of this universe. As a result when physicists observe the rotation speeds of stars—not only in our own galaxy but also in many thousands of other spiral galaxies—they find that the stars in the spiral disks are moving too fast. They are moving so fast that in the assumed lifetimes of the galaxies, of the order of 10 billion years, the galaxies should have been eviscerated because their stars should have flown away from the galaxies, which could not hold onto them.

To fix this, the standard approach is to posit the existence, around every galaxy, of a spherical halo of dark matter (see Figure 2), that has just the right density, distribution and gravitational properties to solve the conundrum but neither emits nor interacts with electromagnetic radiation. Because astrophysicists cannot explain these high rotational velocities with standard tried-and-tested Newtonian physics, they have concocted the notion that galaxies really comprise between 80% to 90% dark matter—stuff that is everywhere but we cannot see or detect it by any method.2 The article1 states that the majority of today’s physicists believe this. That may well be the case, but I don’t and I’m sure I qualify as a real physicist.3 In any event, truth is not determined by majority opinion.4

Beginning about 200 years ago, scientists started to abandon the Word of God as authoritative in such matters as the creation of the universe and hence it follows today that they believe in materialism—that there is no Creator and the universe just created itself from nothing.5,6 The alternative to accepting the materialists’ explanation is to hypothesize new physics—at least on the scale of galaxies—which some have done,7,8 or, consider the possibility that the universe is not as old as they imagine (13.8 billion years) and that it was created only 6,000 years ago.9 For those fast stars this would mean they have not had time to fly apart.

Materialism’s parallel universe

darkmatterconcept

Figure 2: Alleged spherical halo of dark matter around a typical spiral galaxy.

It seems that in order to solve an increasing number of deficiencies in the materialistic big bang, there is now a suggestion that there may exist a parallel universe10 or, more precisely, an invisible mirror universe within our visible universe. The article states:1 

“Now physicists wonder if dark matter might be as complex as the visible matter in the universe, capable of forming dark atoms and molecules that can be influenced by unknown forces, much like visible matter is affected by nuclear forces and electromagnetism.” (emphasis added)

The suggestion is even made that a dark universe, comprising dark galaxies, with dark stars and planets and even a dark form of life evolved on those dark planets.

“If this is the case, ‘you can imagine a kind of mirror universe that is identical to ours, with stars and planets and even intelligent life,’ says Professor Are Raklev at the University of Oslo.”1 (emphasis added)
“Such a universe could have had forces similar to those we know, like nuclear forces and electromagnetism. The dark stars could emit a form of radiation—dark light, or light that we cannot see or measure in any way.”1 (emphasis added)

Dark light? That is an oxymoron. It defies the concepts of basic testable physics. We use the term ‘light’ in the sense of all electromagnetic radiation, meaning that we can detect it by some means, whether it be ultralow frequency radio waves or standard radio waves, or microwaves, or infrared, or optical, or ultraviolet, or X-rays, or gamma rays. Here it is suggested that there exists a whole new dark universe of (dark) matter and (dark) energy that cannot be detected using electromagnetic radiation that we are familiar with. The stuff emits dark light that we cannot detect in any region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Sounds more like science fiction than science fact!

However there is still some moderation there.

“But the professor says we shouldn’t get too carried away in imaging this dark parallel world.”1 (emphases added)

Maybe he meant ‘imagining’? By definition, it is impossible to image a dark galaxy or dark star, so one is only left with imagining.

Intelligent matter in Switzerland

The article ends with a comment by the same professor stating that he believes that experiments at the CERN LHC particle accelerator in Switzerland11 will be able answer “a lot more” questions about the nature of dark matter particles “within the next ten years”. But it is pure faith—blind faith in materialism that it has all the answers to not only the nature of the universe but life itself. The article ends with the ludicrous statement:1

“This is an exciting time to be studying dark matter.”

Quite obviously if you can’t detect it—and it hasn’t been for want of trying for 40 years—then how can you say it is exciting studying it?

To start with, science cannot prove anything to be true, but only prove a hypothesis false.

Several years ago I was funded to do a three-year search for what might be called dark matter particles, not WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) but WISPs (weakly interacting ‘slim’ particles). They were hypothesized particles in the dark sector and called ‘slim’ because they were theorized as not being heavy enough to be dark matter. That is, even if detected their existence would not solve the dark matter crisis. Nevertheless hundreds of thousands of dollars of funding was made available, though we never detected anything. We essentially were ‘shining light through a wall’12,13 and looking for the products of putative WISPs, which were theorised to decay back to normal microwave photons which were ‘shined on’ the other side of the wall in this experiment.

But the funding to the LHC at CERN is colossal by comparison to that and it is partly driven by the desire to construct conditions similar to the alleged big bang. Again the worldview here is pure materialism. It drives this science, at least, in searching for dark sector particles.14,15 Of course, constructing conditions similar to those alleged to have existed at the time of the big bang does not prove that the big bang actually happened. To start with, science cannot prove anything to be true, but only prove a hypothesis false,16 but, furthermore, asserting that constructing these conditions confirms the big bang is simply affirming the consequent, a logical fallacy.

Conclusion

It is because of a prior commitment to materialism that this situation has arisen. Dark matter, dark energy, dark light, dark planets, dark stars, dark galaxies, a dark universe all seem like one of those ‘absurd constructs’, ‘unsubstantiated just-so stories’, or ‘counter-intuitive’ and ‘mystifying’ ‘explanations’ that Richard Lewontin linked to the imposition of the constraint of materialism on the interpretation of data in science.17 Dark matter is the unknown god, the ‘god of the gaps’ for the big bang evolutionary theorist.18 They say it is not science to include the Intelligent Creator when they define Him out of the equation. Instead they place their faith in a dark god, who might have created a dark universe, with dark stars and planets and even dark intelligent beings. To me such ideas are starting to strongly resemble demons and the dark sector, which accurately yet figuratively describes the realm of the dark lord and the other rulers of darkness (Ephesians 6:12). This is the ultimate outcome of materialism.

Published: 31 May 2016

References and notes

  1. Bazilchuk, N., Dark matter: how can we know if it exists?, ScienceNordic.com, April 2016. Return to text.
  2. Hartnett, J.G., Why is dark matter everywhere in the cosmos?, creation.com, March 2015. Return to text.
  3. Howard, Mark, Fallacy: creationists can’t be scientists!, creation.com, July 2015. Return to text.
  4. Howard, G., Can all those scientists be wrong?, Creation 36(1):20–22, January 2014. Return to text.
  5. Hartnett, J.G., The history of the rise of materialism in Western society Creation 32(2):215–17, August 2018.Return to text.
  6. Hartnett, J.G., On the origin of universes by means of natural selection—or, blinded by big bang blackness, creation.com, October 2014. Return to text.
  7. Hartnett, J.G., A 5D spherically symmetric expanding universe is young;, Journal of Creation 21(1):69–74, April 2007. Return to text.
  8. Hartnett, J.G., Starlight Time and the New Physics, Creation Book Publishers, 2nd Ed., pp.21–27, 2010. Return to text.
  9. Hartnett, J.G., A biblical creationist cosmogony, Answers Research Journal 8:13–20, 2015. PDF available here. Return to text.
  10. Hartnett, J.G., Have scientists found evidence of a parallel universe?, creation.com, December 2015. Return to text.
  11. Humphreys, R, The Large Hadron Collider (LHC): will a black hole swallow us?, creation.com, September 2008. Return to text.
  12. Povey, R.G., Hartnett, J.G., and Tobar, M.E., Microwave cavity light shining through a wall optimization and experiment, Phys. Rev. D 82(5):052003, September 2010 | http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.82.052003. Return to text.
  13. Parker, S.R., Hartnett, J.G., Povey, R.G., and Tobar, M.E., Cryogenic resonant microwave cavity searches for hidden sector photons, Phys. Rev. D 88(11):112004, December 2013 | doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.88.112004. Return to text.
  14. Hartnett, J.G., Dark radiation in big bang cosmology, creation.com, November 2014. Return to text.
  15. Hartnett, J.G., Dark Matter and the Standard Model of particle physics—a search in the ‘Dark’, creation.com, September 2014. Return to text.
  16. C.L. Bennett, Science Title Misstep, (PDF available at www.psych.nyu.edu), “THE TITLE OF THE 6 MAY NEWS OF THE WEEK story ‘At long last, Gravity Probe B satellite proves Einstein right’ (p. 649) made me cringe. I find myself frequently repeating to students and the public that science doesn’t ‘prove’ theories. Scientific measurements can only disprove theories or be consistent with them. Any theory that is consistent with measurements could be disproved by a future measurement. I wouldn’t have expected Science magazine, of all places, to say a theory was ‘proved.’” CHARLES L. BENNETT, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. E-mail: cbennett@jhu.edu. This is followed by Colin Norman, Science News Editor’s response: ‘Bennett is completely correct. It’s an important conceptual point, and we blew it.’ Return to text.
  17. Lewontin, R., Billions and billions of demons (review of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan, 1997), The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997. Return to text.
  18. Hartnett, J.G., Stars just don’t form naturally—‘dark matter’ the god of the gaps is needed, creation.com, September 2015. Return to text.

Helpful Resources