Brainwashing and Extremism

The term ‘brainwashing’ gets thrown around a lot, especially when it comes to dealing with terrorism, extremism and general intolerance. It even gets thrown around when someone just doesn’t agree with your point of view. But how can we define it?


My current line of thinking points towards a definition such as, “forcing a person to commit to a set of beliefs or principles which they may not choose to follow if they were given free choice.” In my mind, there is an element of it not being of the person’s freewill (one dictionary defines it as “to cause one to alter their beliefs” but I do not feel this is strong enough). Most definitions even suggest the involvement of torture.


There are some dangers here. People believe all sorts of things of their own free will, and yet it is all too easy to just throw the ‘brainwashed’ label at them. This is often said about religion. Just because someone has decided to commit themselves to a particular set of beliefs and principles, it does not mean they were forced into it.


But also, look at it from another perspective: the education system. When a parent sends their child to school, they are allowing the government to educate the child into a particular way of thinking. If a parent does not wish this for their child – opting for home-schooling – then there are various checks to make sure that the required governmental standards are being met. Education in the UK is compulsory, and it is government controlled. Every child is essentially ‘brainwashed’ into UK society.


The irony here is that if a person chooses not to conform to the standards of the society, then they are labelled with ‘brainwashing’, ‘extremism’ and even ‘terrorism.’ But what makes the standards of society correct?


UK is a place where people supposedly have various ‘freedoms.’ And yet there are restrictions. We are free to study – as long as it is not to study bomb-making. We are free to speak – but this gets restricted when it comes to various topics.


The other problem is that the laws change. Someone who upheld the law 25 years ago might be branded a criminal now, should they wish to continue upholding those laws. Just because a particular point of view might be ‘outdated’ in the eyes of society, that – by itself – does not make that point of view incorrect.


UK also aims to be a ‘tolerant’ society: a place where we allow people to follow their own religion and beliefs. And yet, if a person uses their ‘free speech’ to say that they think a particular action is wrong, they are easily branded ‘intolerant’, possibly an ‘extremist’ and the phrases ‘brainwashed’ and ‘the grass-roots of terrorism’ will probably not be too far behind.


People use examples from the past of how religion (often Christianity) held back the advances of science because it could be seen to contradict the religious traditions. However, UK society is now at a point where the pursuit of science has led to the ridicule of people who follow religions. Where religion once used to be ‘intolerant’ of science, science (and so-called ‘free-thinkers’) has now become quite intolerant of religion.


The problem is that society is ultimately brainwashed. It could be argued that a free society is one where people can be educated if they want to. Everything could be done on the basis of if you want to. However, that is also a brainwashed society: the dominant ideology being that this ‘freedom’ leads to a better community. But, due to parental responsibility, any education will be built upon the parents ideology. This can actually be seen in society today: a parent who has contempt for their education may well bring up a child to also have contempt for education.


So, I do not really think that we can avoid brainwashing, but what we can avoid is using the word as a way of demeaning (or bullying or harassing) people who thoughtfully disagree with us. And we certainly need to avoid labelling people as ‘extremists’ because they do not see our point of view.


It seems to me that the next ‘religious war’ has already been started by the atheists with their intolerance to people who believe in higher powers. The irony here is that as things escalate, the accusation is thrown at the religious people for their intolerance and reluctance to change their point of view.


So, who is the extremist?

Carbon Dating

Carbon dating was invented in the late 1940s (from the end of the second World War), and so it is only about 70 years old.

It relies on carbon-14 isotopes. To understand this naming: the common carbon-12 isotope has 12 nucleons: 6 protons, 6 neutrons; whereas the carbon-14 isotope has 14 nucleons: 6 protons, 8 neutrons. (An isotope is a different form of an element, having the same number of protons and electrons, but with differing numbers of neutrons)

Carbon-14 is unstable, and decays radioactively through beta decay. Scientists say that carbon-14 is constantly produced (cosmic rays (rays from the sun) collide with atoms to produce an energetic (fast-moving) neutron, which collides with a nitrogen-14 atom, producing carbon-14 and a proton), and has reached an equilibrium state where the percentage of carbon-14 atoms in all the carbon atoms is now a constant value.

Scientists say there is one carbon-14 atom in 1 trillion carbon atoms.

This would give the percentage of carbon-14 compared with normal carbon-12 as:

0.00000000001% (US trillion (1 with 12 0s)) or,

0.00000000000000001% (UK trillion (1 with 18 0s)).

Scientists say that carbon-14 has a half-life (the time it takes for half of the atoms in a given space to decay) of ‘about’ 5,700 years. This means that the process has been around for 1.23% of one half-life (the process being around for about 70 years).

Scientists say that the ratio of carbon-14 atoms to carbon-12 atoms is constant in all living things (and in the air), and that when a living organism dies, the carbon-14 stops being produced. Therefore, by knowing the half-life of carbon-14 decay, the age of the remains of the living thing can be found by back-tracking from the amount detected to the original constant amount.

Scientists also say that carbon-14 dating is only ‘reliable’ for objects up to 60,000 years old. That’s roughly 10 half-lives.

For objects older than 60,000 years, other radioactive dating must be used:

Uranium-235 (half-life = 704 million years)

Potassium-40 (half-life = 1.3 billion years)

Uranium-238 (half-life = 4.5 billion years)

and so on.

Carbon-14 dating is considered the most reliable since carbon is present in almost every object, living or inanimate. Although radioactive isotopes of other elements can be used, the amount of the radioactive isotope present in the object is significantly less than carbon-14.

At this stage, it might be worth posing a few questions:

1.         Considering the process has only been around for about 70 years, how reliable is it to assume that the amount of carbon-14 is constant in all things, and that this value has been constant since the birth of the universe?

2.         Every measurement has with it an element of inaccuracy. Given the already tiny quantities being used, what is the extra level of inaccuracy introduced due to the equipment?

3.         Given that other forms of radioactive dating are less reliable due to even smaller quantities of the required isotope, what inaccuracies are introduced?

4.         Radioactive dating has been around for about 70 years. As mentioned earlier, this is 1.23% of one half-life of carbon-14. For uranium-235, this would be 0.000009943% of one half-life. Can scientists really measure that accurately and reliably?

Note:

Carbon dating came into use in the late 1940s. Codenamed ‘Trinity,’ nuclear testing began in 1945, and within 20 years at least five countries were performing nuclear tests. This has an impact on the radioactive makeup of objects: more so for the immediate areas of the testing, but the effects can be far-reaching, especially due to the wind carrying the fallout.

Hence, this begs the question of the reliability of any method of radioactive dating.

By way of an example, consider the dinosaurs. These beasts are commonly believed to have lived around 65 million years ago. This means that carbon-14 dating is inaccurate for this time-frame, and so the following calculations will be performed using uranium-235 which has a half-life of 704 million years.

Half-life equations are of the form: 

Where: N is the number of radioactive atoms remaining

            N₀ is the initial number of radioactive atoms

            t is the elapsed time since death (in years)

            T_½ is the half-life of the radioactive isotope (in years)

In order to get the percentage of radioactive atoms remaining, we need to find: 

This can be done simply by rearranging the equation. For our example of using uranium-235 with the dinosaurs:

            t is 65,000,000

            T_½ is 704,000,000

Therefore:            

       and then simplifying

                   and then rearranging

 

                       

          

   and then solving

      

              

           

So, for the dinosaurs to be 65 million years old, there will be 93.8% of uranium-235 still present in the material being used to date them.

Now, assume the dinosaurs only lived about 6,500 years ago (in-line with a literal reading of Genesis 1, the Christian creation story). Then the result would be:

          and then simplifying

            and then rearranging

and then solving

 

   

              

                       

Taking the difference between these values, this shows that there is only a loss of 6.8% of the uranium-235 atoms to place the dinosaurs from being 6,500 years old to being 65 million years old.

To better help understand how a small percentage error in the measurement of uranium-235 can vastly change the perceived age of the dinosaurs:

Percentage of uranium-235	Age of dinosaurs (in years)
100 %	Died this morning
99.9994 %	6,500
99 %	10,200,000
98 %	20,500,000
97 %	30,900,000
96 %	41,500,000
95 %	52,100,000
94 %	62,800,000
93.8 %	65,000,000

Assumptions made:

• Uranium-235 is present in a dinosaur’s body.
• Uranium-235 decays in a similar method to carbon-14.
• Uranium-235 having a half-life of 704 million years is a reliable fact.
• The tiny quantities of uranium-235 present can be measured to a high degree of accuracy.
• Nuclear testing has not altered the results in any way.

Purpose (raison d'être)

The reason for this blog is to air some of my many questions and thoughts. Many thoughts pop into my head and I wanted somewhere I could put them.

It's not so much that I feel I am the answer to the world's problems, or that my voice is the one every person should listen to...

If anyone wants to respond to the posts, I would be interested to hear other thoughts.

Feel free to prove me wrong... part of my hope is that someone more intelligent than me will be able to clarify things and show me the errors of my thinking.