Below the fold is an e-mail I received this morning from Victor Senchenko, human space navigator, and his “Media Team.” According to his website, Senchenko can explain why homosexual humans exist (OK), why God doesn’t exist (not clear whether this is the Abrahamic tantrum-tosser or something more sophisticated) and why time also does not exist (and right there, we hear the fuses blow).

Greetings Blake,

Considering your involvement with science, the following Press Release may be of interest to you.

As an astute person, you probably would agree that for a long while humans – especially the scientists – had been claiming that they wanted to solve all the mysteries of physical existence. They have also repeatedly indicated that they wanted to understand the causes of human behavior.

I don’t know many scientists who’ve claimed they want to solve all the “mysteries of physical existence.” We’ll settle for solving one mystery big enough to get us tenure; the others are left as an exercise to the interested reader.

You may have also expressed similar sentiments, even if only to yourself.

I’m not a person of deep secrets: at a guess, I’d say that about eighty percent of my thoughts on a randomly chosen day are about books, things I could write in a book, assorted science topics, songs I have stuck in my head, food I’m cooking and the like. Rest assured, my sentiments won’t be expressed only to myself — they’re either too important to keep secret, or too trivial to bother with concealment.

But would you really want to obtain all this knowledge, were it available? Would you really want to learn the physical truth of everything, including that of why humans think and behave as they do?

I actually don’t think that “physical truth,” in the sense of “fundamental laws of physics,” has much to do with human thought, emotion and that stuff. The neurochemistry which underlies our mental processes is consistent with physical law and bound by physical law, but there’s too much history and contingency involved for those processes to be directly predictable from physical law.

The test of whether you would, or not, can be assessed by the following announcement that the knowledge-of-all is available in a new book, ‘Revelations of a Human Space Navigator’, by Victor Senchenko.

Quick as a flash, the level of your disbelief has just probably risen into stratosphere.

Actually, it was already cruising the tropopause.

That’s because:
A. You may presume that humans already know nearly everything there is to know. After all, look at all they have achieved.

What does a straw man fetch on the open market these days?

B. You may presume that such knowledge is unattainable, so that the idea of obtaining such knowledge is preposterous.

Getting better all the time.

C. Perhaps, despite not having examined the book for yourself, you can’t believe that a single person, especially one you’ve never heard of, could possibly provide such knowledge out of the blue. It has to be some hoax.

“Hoax” isn’t quite the right word. And frankly, demanding that I read the book for myself before I make a judgment — particularly when we’re already seven paragraphs into a press release without the slightest touch of actual science — is rather like forcing me to eat an entire egg before letting me say that it’s rotten.

D. Many other variations of those above, accompanied by expletives.

Well, of course they’ll be accompanied by expletives. I am, as Denyse O’Leary so astutely pointed out, illiterate and ill-tempered.

These, of course, are natural human reactions. Reactions to dismiss outright a claim without having it first examined. Such reactions are understandable. They occur because current humans do not know who and what they are.

See above.

They don’t know what? Is this some stupid joke? But wait a second…consider the following realities that currently apply to human knowledge, which you may object to:

Could it be? Are we approaching some actual science? Be still, my foolish heart.

1. The very basics of most current human knowledge are flawed, because current science of physics and chemistry were founded on erroneous presumptions. Oh, the atoms exist, alright, but what these atoms are made of, and their fundamental structures and behaviors, are quite different to what they are currently presumed to be. This can easily be proven. For instance:

Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump. . . .

Were an electron to be a “negative” while a proton a “positive” – as current science upholds – then the negative electrons and positive protons would instantly unite, because opposites attract. Similarly, electrons, as “negatives”, would disperse, as similar negatives would repel each other. So how then do they remain together, without either uniting or dispersing? This is just a single example of all the flaws in current sciences.

Ah, er, uhm. . . Electrons and protons do attract. That’s what holds atoms together. Why don’t the electrons all fall on top of the protons and sit there in a lump? Ask Herr Heisenberg! If an electron is sitting right on top of a proton, not moving, both its position and momentum are well-defined — position, right on top of proton; momentum, zero — which violates the Uncertainty Principle.

This is really, really basic stuff. Here in the U.S. and A., it’s explained verbally in high-school chemistry, and in any decent history of TwenCen science. (I heartily recommend Asimov’s Chronology of Science and Discovery. It’s not flawless, and it’s a few years behind the times by now, but it’s still one of the best big books you could have on your shelf.) The mathematics is developed in the first term of quantum mechanics.

The application of sufficient pressure can squeeze electrons and protons together. That’s what happens in a neutron star. And going the other way, an energy input can separate protons and electrons — that’s ionization.

Victor Senchenko is apparently an atheist, but his caricature of atomic physics reminds me of nothing so much as that Chick tract where we are told that Jesus holds the nucleus together.

2. The reason that the knowledge-of-all is still unknown by humans is because humans still do not know exactly who and what they are. Because humans do not know who and what they are, they misunderstand themselves and everything they do; the consequences of which is their current environmental plight, resulting from what they had been doing to each other and to this planet. This situation is very real: already more advanced that it is realized, making it very threatening to the extension of human survival as a species.

OK, we are pretty good at trashing our only home, but what does that have to do with inadequate self-knowledge? Your heart’s in the right place, but I’m not so sure the head is following.

Besides, we only know about all the damage we’re doing to this planet because we do science. It’s a bit of a gyp to accept the science of anthropogenic global warming or ozone depletion but reject that of atomic physics. Rowland and Molina couldn’t have figured out that CFCs were a problem if they didn’t know chemistry!

3. Because current humans misunderstand themselves from not knowing who and what they are, they fail to obtain the knowledge-of-all – knowledge that has no connections to any spirituality, aliens, or any other human devised mumbo-jumbo – knowledge that provides:

All right, I’m with you on the “human devised mumbo-jumbo” part. What’s for sale, then?

• PROOF FOR THE NON-EXISTENCE OF GOD (yes, that is correct),

and reveals:

WHO AND WHAT HUMANS ACTUALLY ARE.

“Featherless biped with lower back pain” isn’t an adequate definition anymore?

The only problem is that to acquire this knowledge requires courage and fearlessness of inquisitive individuals. Courage and fearlessness to overcome their prejudices and self-opinions towards knowledge currently unknown to them: knowledge that is bound to shatter their current notions and beliefs, be those of science or religion. Courage and fearlessness to examine and assess – without fear or favor – the ‘Revelations of a Human Space Navigator’.

I don’t have a religion to shatter, and so far, the only science mentioned here has been a rather impotent wrecking ball.

Now then, as an astute person, would you still want to obtain all this knowledge?
If you do, it is availably. If you don’t, it shall still remain available, for it is not going away. For as long as humans exist.

OK, so (a) why hasn’t it been found yet, and (b) why does it have to be sold for $38.50?

In defending the uniqueness and originality of these revelations, the author issues a challenge to Any and Every person on the planet who purchases this book: were that person to provide the author with a physical proof that his revelations had already existed at any period of the Human Age, (as knowledge not derived or sourced from this book), then the author, himself, will refund that person the full purchase price of the book.

Now I is confused. This “knowledge-of-all” will last as long as human beings do, but it didn’t exist before 2007?

Furthermore, the author challenges any human – be it any professor of physics or chemistry, any professional psychiatrist, any academic or any student, or any human at all – to examine these revelations and repudiate them by means of their current knowledge. The reason that none shall do so is because this cannot be done.

It’s funny how you don’t see this sort of challenge in the abstract of most research papers.