To be clear, @Klax’s link was to rationalwiki.org, not Wikipedia. They are both based on the same platform (MediaWiki) and use mostly the default styling, hence the resemblance, but they are unrelated. Wikipedia enforces a “neutral point of view” while RationalWiki is intentionally written from a particular POV.
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My bad - thanks for the correction. And after I bragged on Wikipedia over it too! Now that I check, Wikipedia only appears to have other entries on that phrase, and not that specific one. Just as well that way too, I suppose.
From what I’ve seen, Rational Wiki doesn’t have even a modicum of tolerance for pseudoscience – it’s sometimes amusing how non-neutral they are. 
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Yeah, “particular POV” was a charitable phrase, to say the least! Lots of sarcasm and snide remarks about anything they deem irrational. Here is a typical example that I came across during my research of AiG.
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Wow, yeah… it might be funny but would also likely alienate people who were looking for a more sincere examination of public figures and ideologies.
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It’s for the beleaguered. The rational bobbing alone in an ocean of irrationality. Like Dickie Dawkins’ superb The God Delusion.
I genuinely cannot tell if this is sarrcasm or not, either way i wanted to ask you as to what your take is on russia invading ukraine and do you think they will stop with ukraine or continue to try and reclaim old territory?
Well, that sums up how difficult it is for new ideas to take root. I’m not qualified to explain the Electric Universe concepts and don’t have the time to try, and it’s pretty obvious that most defenders of BioLogos don’t want to take the time, to investigate the peer reviewed papers either, which is no surprise. All this EU stuff challenges what is considered to be facts to the Big Bang beginnings of the cosmos. Electrical currents connecting galaxies and stars is considered just another idea like the flat earth idea. Or as one post here said, they don’t believe gravity exists and don’t think the theory of relativity works. I have not seen that anywhere in the EU info.
So the Big Bang theory lives on. This was my point previously as to why the narratives of current cosmology and evolution will live no matter what new evidence is presented.
Many at BioLogos have excellent backgrounds in physics, some with PhDs, and can tell at first glance that EU is a crock. It is not a ‘new idea’ that has even the slightest chance of ‘taking root’ except with conspiracists, the same sort that disregard other established science that modern culture, medicine and technology depends on.
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Practical applications, Eugene. Practical applications.
Some of us take mainstream science seriously because we use its “narratives” to Get Things Done. If you’re going to bring new concepts and ideas to the table, your new concepts and ideas need to do the same.
“Peer review” is meaningless if your “peer reviewed papers” are all published in predatory journals. Instead, point us to patents, practical applications, and companies that are turning your “new ideas” into profits through selling actual products that demonstrate that your “new ideas” actually work.
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What peer reviewed papers? With what scientometric scores?
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Well, yeah! Because it makes sense of lots of stuff, whereas the EU ‘theory’ … doesn’t.
Let me ask you this: would you drop your current preoccupations and spend lots of your time giving answer to a flat-earther’s challenges? Presuming that you would join most of us in not dedicating much time to that effort, the flat-earther can then gloomily declare: “well, I guess ‘round-earthism’ lives on.”
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I did go to the EU site and sorry but when their conclusion is “scientists lie” they go right into my dust bin.
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The Flat Earth theory challenges what is considered to be facts about the shape of the Earth. Just because something challenges established theories does not mean it has merit.
No one has been able to predict the orbit of planets using electrical currents. No one has used eletrical currents to plan the path of spacecraft. No one has used electrical currents to predict the effects of time dilation. If another theory is going to be considered it must at least make predictions that are on par with the current explanations. EU does not.
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The papers are not even peer-reviewed. There is a whole article (in a laughable 12-part series) on the Thunderbolt’s website explaining why they reject peer-review:
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/11/25/common-misconception-4-wheres-the-peer-reviewed-research/
Here is where they reject general relativity:
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/11/29/common-misconception-9-who-disproved-einstein/
Finally, where they reject the existence of black holes:
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/09/21/common-misconception-3-wheres-the-math/
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It could be the worldview equivalent of “Calvinball”. And since Calvin* is a math atheist, one would expect that any math is shunned.
*Calvin, in this context being the six-year old with his tiger friend, Hobbes.
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The only permanent rule of Calvinball is you can’t play it the same way twice!
Brandolini’s law states it takes ten times the effort to debunk rubbish as it takes to produce it.
It takes an investment of time just to stay up to date up with the incredible discoveries continually made in astronomy. Just this week we have a report on a neutron star hyperburst. Who knows what the James Webb Telescope will deliver? Why distract oneself to investigate [ derogatory adjectives here ] ideas which make no sense even given the Ohm’s law you learned in high school? The Electric Universe cosmology is completely fanciful to explain crater formations. We have impactors sitting in museums; there is an iridium layer covering the globe from the Chicxulub event, we witnessed in Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hitting Jupiter right before our very eyes.
One of the immediate tip offs that one is dealing with pseudo science is that there are proposed solutions for phenomena where there are already well established solutions, and problems are proposed where there is no problem to begin with. I grant you, I do not have time, patience, or sense of obligation, to engage in any depth with Electric Universe, flat earth, and such cosmologies. That does not make me close minded. That just reflects a understanding of science available to any reasonably informed lay person.
Sometimes, the more efficient cure for nonsense is not refutation but rather valid information. I would suggest you learn more about stellar formation and processes, and what is happening in cosmology. There are plenty of good resources at a lay level; even BBC and PBS documentaries would be a step in the right direction. An annotated picture book of Hubble photographs is a start. You can see for yourself that gravity defines the large scale structures in the universe.
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That is also the one where they reject the relevance of mathematics.
@Geneo I’m sorry, but if you don’t take mathematics seriously, don’t be surprised when no-one scientifically literate takes you seriously.
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Ha! Love it. XD (I may have heard of it before and just have forgotten it in my geezerhood. It does sound vaguely familiar. ; - )
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