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So I asked a Fundamentalist Christian Physicist how the Earth Formed...

today. I think I'll spare giving his name, as I talked to him on facebook. But I looked him up on the schools website he claimed to be a PhD student at (Australian National University) and it did indeed have him listed as a PhD student. He's a PhD theoretical physics student, but what I'm about to post may shock and horror you. After a lengthy conversation which involved many other areas where he seemed strangely uneducated for his position in school, I asked him how he thought the Earth formed. Keep in mind that he told me that he accepts that supernovas, planetary nebulas, and helium and carbon burning inside stars occur (sounds like a silly thing to ask someone if they believe or not, but you'd be surprised how necessary it was to ask). Now then, for his answer to how he believes the Earth formed;

"I think God used heavy elements and made it by his hands. heavy elements could be from supernova of some other star. Our sun is too young and not hot enough can only make carbon. So the universe is older than the earth. But the earth is only 10000 years old."

I was at a loss of words. This guy is seriously a PhD theoretical physics student.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jacob Dawson on July 26, 2011 at 11:51pm

I definitely don't think English was his first language either. Looking on his profile I saw he spoke English and Korean, so I assume Korean was his first language. However, regardless of how well he speaks english, his feelings on the subject were quite clear. Considering he's a PhD theoretical physics student and said something like that just boggles my mind.

I do want to mention something that may be in a bit of bad taste though, and I apologize if it is. He was Asian, and from my experience Asians can be some of the most hardline fundamentalist christians you'll ever meet. You may never meet one because they're so rare, but when you do...whoa buddy. I don't want to delve to deep into this but; from my understanding gained in my Japanese history classes, Asian from the East who immigrate West or stay home and come in contact with were and still can be extremely susceptible to anything "westerners" feed them. This includes religion, and I vividly remember talking in class about how the Japanese absolutely ate up what the Portuguese missionaries were selling when they came over without thinking twice, because they felt as though the "westerners" were better than they and had superior beliefs. Just an observation.

Permalink Reply by Nerdlass on September 25, 2011 at 3:39am

The Japanese take what they like and make it their own, so far as I've seen. Carebears, for instance, are extremely popular merchandise, but no one knows the cartoons or even character names. They just like the cuteness of it.

Permalink Reply by HotMess on July 27, 2011 at 1:32am

This is what accreditation is for. Any institution can call itself a university and pass out degrees.
Besides, how do you know what his grades are like, or if he's even telling the truth?

Permalink Reply by Philipp Schaub on January 4, 2012 at 6:40am

"Any institution can call itself a university and pass out degrees"

What? Not anywhere in Europe, and I sincerely hope not in the US, either.

Permalink Reply by Susan Stanko on January 4, 2012 at 7:46am

Yeah, we have something called diploma mills.

Permalink Reply by Clarence Dember on July 27, 2011 at 11:02am

Hi Jeremiah. This serious physics PhD student sounds like he discounts fossil evidence. If this is the case I blame it on the lack of rigor in his curriculum up to this point. May be he transferred to a major educational institution from one of those colleges where by dropping large endowments one attains degrees of human letters, or worse. It is troubling that he could have such beliefs this far along. Compartmentalization is ugly enough when it harbors racism; but this kind of a blind spot is grotesque.

Permalink Reply by Ben Roth on July 27, 2011 at 2:21pm

This is precisely why you shouldn't take a PhD as proof that someone knows what they're talking about *unless* that PhD is in the particular subject under discussion. Theoretical physics is all about quantum mechanics and subatomic particles and such with lots of math involved, but evolutionary biology and cosmology are fields distinct from theoretical physics--especially in the mind of a believer. If this guy believed that the Higgs Boson had a brother named Charles, then I'd be surprised, but the fact that he has erroneous beliefs in other fields isn't that shocking.

Noam Chompsky (whether you agree with him or not) pulls this same trick when he talks about politics while his PhD is in linguistics. Ron Paul (again whether you agree with him or not) does this when he talks about economics while his degree is in medicine. Obviously not having a degree doesn't mean you can't be right, but you shouldn't be shocked if someone with Dr. in their name from one field gets things wrong in a different field.

Permalink Reply by Anne Atheist on September 16, 2011 at 4:03pm

Sorry about juming into this discussion this late, but I have just resently "found" the Nexus and joined this group today and am looking through the discussions. And being a physicist myself...

Physics is a very wide field and no one can have detailed knowledge of all of it. Theroretical physics is just a short step away from philosopy, and the border between philosophy and religion is faint at places. I can easilly see that a physicist who dwell in the theoretical area can have some knowledge on the origin of the Universe (which is an evolving theory) and only rudimetary knowledge on the formations of galaxies and stars (also an evolving theory), and thus focuses on the sentence "we are not certain how galaxies and stars formed in the early Universe" (as the early Universe seems to be too smooth for galaxies to form) and concluding that as some things are uncertain, a god could have helped creating the Earth. The physicist in question might have forgotten or might not even have known that Geology exists.

If you did a head count on the number of religious people amongst sciencetists, I suspect you'd find few biologists and geologists, some more chemists, and even more physicists, and the highest number amongst mathematicians (if that is how it is spelled).

Permalink Reply by Nerdlass on September 25, 2011 at 3:44am

Yeah, not surprised at the last one. One of my dear friends has a quantum mathematics degree and is at least loosely Christian and absolutely theist. He finds the idea that there wasn't an intelligence that brought us into being frightening. I'm not sure why, though. I would have thought that given the sheer amount of stars and galaxies that the probability of intelligent life developing isn't too extreme to chance... you know? And I'm not the math guru.

Permalink Reply by Craigart14 on September 24, 2011 at 5:35pm

Many people with doctorates are religious, but few are fundamentalists or evangelicals. I can't say a lot about the "hard" sciences, but in the humanities doctoral students learn more about methodology than about facts. We learn how to learn, and we continue learning after we have completed our degrees. Doctoral candidates are often autodidacts to begin with; we learn independently, and we evaluate what we learn with clear thinking skills developed over decades of learning both in and out of school. One of my professors once said that the students he liked best were the ones who didn't need him. I feel the same way. Brilliant professors find connections between different fields. When Chomsky speaks, I listen, but not uncritically; when Ron Paul speaks, I listen for a minute until he shows that he knows far too little about history, or he wouldn't have any faith in laissez faire capitalism or libertarianism. When Rand Paul speaks, I hang in there until my laughter drowns him out.

Permalink Reply by Johan Fruh on October 10, 2011 at 3:41pm

The only response I could fathom in this case is:

"Hahaha! That's a good one! No but seriously..."

Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on December 22, 2011 at 3:35am

Jeremiah, this is the issue that forced me to get off the knife edge and declare that god does not exist. I sat on that sharp edge for several years, thinking a scientific stance of never say never was appropriate. Learning the religious faction in town try to get Intelligent Design into our public schools convinced me I want science taught based on evidence and critical thinking. I don't want chemistry taught one hour and alchemy the next, or astronomy in the morning and astrology in the afternoon. There is no reason to think there might be someone/thing that acts as puppet master, or as judge, jury and executioner, and if there is to be a Jubilee, I won't go.

Lawrence Krauss convinced me. He has a way with words and concepts that builds a strong foundation and scaffolding upon which to build a life of moral strength, ethical perspective that has nothing to do with dogma or sacraments or scripture, or stories. It is more like finding one's internal compass.