What If We Have It All Wrong

As I was sitting on the toilet this morning contemplating the ways of the universe, as I do most mornings, I wondered if north was really north and south was really south. What if God was looking down upon us yelling, “No! No! You have it all wrong! That pole is north and that pole is south! You’re upside down!” This got me thinking on what else we might have wrong.

Speaking of having it wrong: This is not how you Facebook buddy.

Lets take a look at some of the multitude of things scientists have told us to be fact and then later we find out to be completely untrue. I will skip the first few thousand years of science, you know the earth is flat and the Earth is the center of the universe stuff, and move straight to the past hundred years.

DNA was discovered in 1869 but it wasn’t until 1952 that scientists finally discovered that it held the blueprints of life. What did science teach about DNA for the first 83 years? DNA was just another of the many molecules found in the nucleus of a cell that may or may not have something to do with heredity. You see back in the old days they believed that the cell was just a big blob of protoplasmic goo with a nucleus filled with different goo. Go science!

Basically a cell full of green snot.  Someone pass me my spoon.

For all intense and purposes John Dalton discovered what we know today as the atom around 1803 and science taught that it was the smallest particle there was and nothing was smaller (hence the term atom means the smallest particle of matter that cannot be broken down any more). Of course about a hundred years later they found out that the atom was made up of the electron, proton and neutron and just like that we have a new winner in the “I’m the smallest in the universe” contest and a new scientific fact was put into the high school science school books. To everyone's surprise someone found that there are even smaller particles called quarks.  Now science has promised that the quarks are the smallest particle in the universe so we need to trust them. They promise. Really.  At this point I would trust the boy who cried wolf over these clowns.

I would trust this guy over many scientists.

The Brontosaurus was discovered in 1874 and has been one of the most beloved dinosaurs ever since. Well, until they determined that the scientist who dug it up couldn't find the head so he just put another head he found a few hundred yards away in its place and poof... brontosaurus. Oops! Recently, in the news, we learned that the Triceratops never actually existed either. What they thought to be a Triceratops was actually just a younger version of the Torosaurus who, apparently, looks just like a Triceratops but bigger. You mean to tell me that in the over 120 years since the discovery of the two not one paleontologist could figure out that the smaller one might be the baby of the big one?  The five year old neighbor boy could have saw that one and he has glasses the size of coke bottles. So if we put a puppy and an adult dog together are they going to tell us that these are two different species? Apparently in paleontology they do.

Speaking of dinosaurs...

When I was a youngster learning how to multiply and divide the most important rule was that you could not divide by zero. If you did apparently the whole universe would collapse around your pencil and your mother would cry as you were sucked into the very black hole you created. I half expect them to tell me, any day now, that this is now possible and that they were wrong all along.  They will probably tell is that the Tyrannosaurus was dividing by zero and that's what wiped out the dinosaurs.

This guy divided by zero and look what happened to him.
His mother is now in a nursing home crying her little eyes out.

I have noticed that the longer I live the more I see how science is not the huge rock of facts that we are all taught it is. Science, as it stands today, is just a group of people in white coats that like a particular theory and then teach the rest of the population that that theory is fact. If you mention that said fact is just a theory and should not be taught as fact you are obviously not as intelligent as they are and should be publicly flogged in the town square with an organic carrot.

I ordered a few science books and this is what arrived.

All of this makes me wonder about what else in this universe we “know” today as fact and a few years down the road we will just be told it wasn’t true… like cheeseburgers being bad for you. I’m still waiting on that one to be changed.  Someone needs to get on that one.