While browsing anti-science sites, I came across a peculiar looking webpage. It has a black background with bold text in colors like bright yellow, red, and green, which look very unprofessional. There are multiple links and phrases on almost every page that reminds the reader to "keep and open mind" and that some of the information provided will be "intellectually stimulating and emotionally disturbing to your present world view". On the homepage is the quote "May the God of all truth richly bless you". As you can guess, this is a religion based site rather than science based.An article that piqued my interest was one that explained the Expanding Earth theory. Before it even starts, the author tells you to "STOP and take a deep breath...set aside your biased academic points of view". Like the name suggests, the theory proposes that Earth's volume has increased since Pangea split into the multiple continents on Earth today. This obviously does not make sense if you have a fundamental understanding of plate tectonics. The authors insist that in order for Pangea to split, a cataclysmic event must have occurred to disrupt the Earth's "equalibrium*" (*equilibrium, they spelled it wrong). They include diagrams that show the Earth having no water and suddenly as the land splits, water can be seen and the volume of the Earth increases. But, due to the Earth's increasing volume, the gravitational forces it experiences would change and therefore alter the objects in space around it. This is just one reason for why the expanding Earth theory has been disproved by geologists.
Overall, the site and authors provide no links to scientific papers to prove their ideas. Instead, they link articles from other "omniologists" that try to explain phenomena using an open mind, which in their case is without any evidence. When coming across sites like these, definitely DON'T set aside your "biased" academic points of view.
Posted by Sierra Tyrol (C)
Sources:
http://omniology.com/ContinentalDreamin.html
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/EarthGrowth.jpg
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, however in the scientific world, for this to be true, you need to have at least some factual evidence to back up your opinion. What's interesting about this article is that you say it comes from a religious website, yet the author does not mention anything about God or creation in his explanation of how Earth "expanded." Does he mean that the oceans were spontaneously created and that is how Earths volume increased? If not, what is his explanation for where the oceans came from? The false information and spelling in this article along with the tacky graphics of the website are all red flags. This article should absolutely be disregarded in the scientific world.
ReplyDeletePosted by Taylor Irwin
This specific article does not mention God or anything religious but on the homepage and in other articles it is brought up frequently. There is no explanation for where the oceans came from either. Overall the information in this article is pretty confusing if you already have background knowledge on geology. I guess that's why he tells the readers to "set aside your academic points of view".
DeletePosted by Sierra Tyrol
I like how you pointed out that they even mention to set aside your biased academic point of view, as if admitting their article contains no real way to convinve you of their theory on its own. Although the theory in itself seems highly unlikely based on evidence of the working of plate tectonics, it would be much more credible if they actually included some proof as to how they decided this was the mechanism that created Earth today. But they don't, like you point out, why didn't gravity change, where did the oceans come from, etc.? You definitely hit a lot of great points, the mispellings are another huge red flag and from what it sounds like so was the formatting of the home page of the site!
DeletePosted by Jenna Lansbury
Exactly! If they provided credible information why would they have to constantly remind us to disregard any prior knowledge we have on the subject? The website formatting, spelling errors, and diagrams make this article seem very unconvincing.
DeletePosted by Sierra Tyrol
I have never heard of "omniologists" or those who try to prove something using an open mind. It kind of just sounds like these people can just make up anything without any evidence backing it up. Maybe I will go into this profession...just kidding. Hopefully because of the website design people would avoid using this website, or one can only hope.
ReplyDeletePosted by Leah DeLorenzo (group A)