Re: [Phys-L] Relativity labeled as a liberal theory

[Ken Caviness <caviness@southern.edu>]

This is a sad, sad list.  It never ceases to amaze me how people confuse relativity and relativism: moral, philosophical or other.  No, Virginia, relativity does not tell us that everything is relative:  sure, some things turn out to depend on the observer -- but we already knew that some things were observer-dependent:  velocity, for example!  Relativity simply changed _which_ things we think depend on the observer and which things are the same for every observer.  If anything, relativity of is a theory of absolutes.

I can't answer JC's general question about fundamentalist universities, but I do teach at a fairly conservative church-sponsored (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh-day_Adventist_Church) university, and have contacts at others.  So I'll answer for SDA universities:  

I don't know of any SDA universities where anyone teaches that relativity is wrong.  

Cosmology is a different question -- two common views in the denomination are:  the universe may indeed be old but life is young, the universe is young but was created looking old.  (Not my preference:  how can you prove it wasn't all created last Thursday at 2PM, with everyone's memories in place?)

I've never heard anyone in any teaching or administrative position at an SDA university give the impression that science is to be feared, shunned or rejected.  

But I did recently attend a lecture at a state school, with no church affiliation, no "fundamentalist tag", where a physics professor said that he would trust a (possibly revised) Newtonian explanation for cosmology in preference to an explanation based on relativity.  

I was surprised.

caviness @ southern.edu


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phys-l [mailto:phys-l-bounces@phys-l.org] On Behalf Of John Clement
> Sent: Monday, November 12, 2012 11:28 AM
> To: Phys-L@Phys-L.org
> Subject: [Phys-L] Relativity labeled as a liberal theory
>
> See: http://conservapedia.com/Counterexamples_to_Relativity
>
> "The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions.
> It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism
> and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.[note 1] Here
> is a list of 44 counterexamples: any one of them shows that the theory is
> incorrect."
>
> My question is:  Do the religious right schools also try to teach that relativity is
> wrong the way they teach that standard cosmology and evolution is wrong?  I
> knew that eventually the antiscience attitude would get to physics.  It is
> already attacking math when the popular "Beka Book" denies that math is a
> creation of our minds and claims that set theory is wrong.
> Do the funadamentalist universities try to preven the teaching of either
> relativity or set theory?
>
> John M. Clement
> Houston, TX
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Forum for Physics Educators
> Phys-l@phys-l.org
> http://www.phys-l.org/mailman/listinfo/phys-l