The Copernican Myths by Mano Singham

Given the discussions generated by yesterday’s post about how the location of heaven changed with advances in science, I decided that an article that I published back in 2007 in Physics Today on December 2007, p. 48-52 might be relevant because it discusses why it was that the idea of a heliocentric universe led to the inference that the universe might be infinite and thus left no room for a heaven. (Doing so continues my program of putting on this blog my published articles for easier access.)

The Copernican Myths.

Nonbelievers are making their presence felt in politics

The atheist movement in the US, and skeptics generally, has advanced to the stage where for many it is no longer sufficient to simply be public about one’s disbelief in gods and the supernatural. The next stage is what one does in practical terms and it is encouraging that the skeptical community is now much more focused on becoming politically active on a wide range of causes. They are transitioning from making their presence known to making their presence felt.

While skeptics belong to all political persuasions, they tend to be much more on the left-liberal end of the spectrum, which is not surprising with the rise of the religious right and their reactionary political agenda.

When members of the small Pennsylvania chapter of Secular Democrats of America log on for their monthly meetings, they’re not there for a virtual happy hour.

“We don’t sit around at our meetings patting ourselves on the back for not believing in God together,” said David Brown, a founder from the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore.

The group, mostly consisting of atheists and agnostics, mobilizes to knock on doors and make phone calls on behalf of Democratic candidates “who are pro-science, pro-democracy, whether or not they are actually self-identified secular people,” he said. “We are trying to keep church and state separate. That encompasses LGBTQIA+, COVID science, bodily autonomy and reproductive rights.”
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How did heaven first end up in the sky and then nowhere?

One of the things that made me into a disbeliever in the existence of gods (and anything supernatural) was the fact that science seemed to have ruled out any location where such things might exist. The answer usually given that ‘God is everywhere’ but could not be detected seemed like a cop out. And the idea of dead people’s souls wandering around that could observe you but you could not contact (except through people with special powers) also seemed weird.

But during the time that I was a believer, I did struggle with the question of where a god and heaven could possibly be. In this article, Stephen Case explores how ideas about heaven have changed over the last two millennia.
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Strategies for solving Wordle

The popular daily puzzle game Wordle requires one to identify an unknown five-letter word selected from a pool of around 2,300 common words. One tries to guess the word in as few tries as possible, with a maximum set at six. After each guess, you get three kinds of feedback: a letter is highlighted green if it is the right letter in the right location; yellow if it is a letter that is used in the word but appears in the wrong location, and grey if the letter is not used at all. I wrote about this a few weeks ago.

Some enthusiasts were not happy about the recent news that the word of the day, rather than being randomly selected, had begun to be curated by a human. (This may have been prompted by the fuss that occurred when the word of the day during the abortion crisis was FETUS.) This had resulted in some recent words being connected to a current event, so that the word last Thursday (Thanksgiving day) was FEAST and the day before that (the busiest driving day of the year) had been DRIVE. As a result, some people who were aware of this change had managed to guess the word on the first try. But it did not make them happy. I can understand why, because it shifts the puzzle from one involving logic to one in which you try to guess what is in the mind of the editor based on some current event, which is much less interesting. I had not been aware of this change, and there is some ambiguity as to whether, due to the criticisms, the puzzle has gone back to being random. I hope it has.
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Can the swastika be reclaimed?

In Sri Lanka, one would occasionally come across the swastika symbol in various places. This had nothing to do with Nazis. The swastika predates the rise of the Nazis by millennia and is a religious symbol for many people around the world and even in the US. It only became a hate symbol with Hitler.

The equilateral cross with its legs bent at right angles is a millennia-old sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism that represents peace and good fortune, and was also used widely by Indigenous people worldwide in a similar vein.
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The symbol itself dates back to prehistoric times. The word “swastika” has Sanskrit roots and means “the mark of well being.” It has been used in prayers of the Rig Veda, the oldest of Hindu scriptures. In Buddhism, the symbol is known as “manji” and signifies the Buddha’s footsteps. It is used to mark the location of Buddhist temples. In China it’s called Wàn, and denotes the universe or the manifestation and creativity of God. The swastika is carved into the Jains’ emblem representing the four types of birth an embodied soul might attain until it is eventually liberated from the cycle of birth and death. In the Zoroastrian faith, it represents the four elements – water, fire, air and earth.
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Trump’s white supremacist allies put his Republican enablers in a bind, again

The Republican party is in a dance with death with its leader Donald Trump, as he keeps going further and further in his ties with the worst elements of American politics, consisting of racists, misogynists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis. His dinner with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West/Ye has forced even the more servile members of the party criticize him.

House and Senate Republicans are speaking out against former President Donald Trump’s dinner last week with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, and white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.

“There is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday. “And anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, are highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States.”
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The leaders’ reactions to the dinner came a day after former Vice President Mike Pence said that Trump should apologize for even sitting down with Fuentes.

“Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and Holocaust denier a seat at the table,” Pence said in an interview with News Nation Now. “And I think he should apologize for it, and he should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric without qualification.”

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Same-sex and inter-racial marriages get an extra layer of protection

The US Supreme Court has said that bans on same-sex marriage and inter-racial marriage are both unconstitutional. So why did the US Senate yesterday by a 61-36 vote pass the Respect for Marriage Act that protects what seemed to be already legal? It is because the overturning of the Roe v. Wade precedent that gave constitutional protection to abortions had created fears that the current US Supreme Court might overturn those other hard-won freedoms as well. Justice Clarence Thomas has openly voiced his disagreement with the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage.

All Democrats voted in favor of this bill, and it was supported by 12 Republicans. The House of Representatives will now have to pass a similar measure so that Joe Biden can sign it into law.

While the bill would not set a national requirement that all states must legalize same-sex marriage, it would require individual states to recognize another state’s legal marriage.

So, in the event the Supreme Court might overturn its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage, a state could still pass a law to ban same-sex marriage, but that state would be required to recognize a same-sex marriage from another state.

That is a good move. It is disappointing that 36 Republican senators voted against it.

A much-needed takedown of Musk, Zuckerberg, and SBF

Readers may recall Adam Conover as the genial host of the TV series Adam Ruins Everything where in each episode he debunks popular myths and misconceptions. In one episode on the myths about the Copernican revolution, he used my research into that topic to make his case.

In a new podcast, he channels Jonathan Pie to deliver a blistering attack on Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Bankman-Fried (the founder of the now bankrupt crypto exchange FTX). He discusses the failures of these so-called geniuses and says that they represent much that is wrong with our society, that we tend to uncritically accept the grandiose claims of people with ordinary abilities. He says that there are many people who are frauds like these three, privileged and incompetent, children of wealthy parents who attended Ivy league schools and claim to be able to change the world, when they are merely people who just got lucky at one point in their lives and then were able to fool enough people to buy their bullshit and get fawning coverage from the media and the moneyed classes.