Mike wrote:
Tom Roberts and his friends do not like dialog. They are dognatic.

You got it BACKWARDS. Tom Van Flandern is being dogmatic, in making
claims about the world and expecting Nature to conform to his claims.

Understanding current physical theories, and recognizing that no
experiments refute them, and also recognizing that crackpot theories do
not agree with the experiments, is NOT "dogmatic". That is part and
parcel of science.


TVF is not a crank, IMO. But hsi insist to present an all encompasing
theory of everything makes appear to some as one. He is otherwise a
very good physicist with solid credentials.

You have not followed his utter confusion about GR. Re-read his exchange
with Steve Carlip and see how poorly he understands GR. "Credentials" do
not matter, understanding is what counts. For someone who claims to be
an "expert" on gravitation, and to have studied it for decades, he has a
very poor understanding of modern gravitational theory.


"Juan R." González-Álvarez wrote:
Tom van Flandern did a remark about causality, Every effect has an
*antecedent* cause.

His claim is MUCH stronger than that, and is violated in every modern
fundamental theory of physics. Modern theoretical physics has a stronger
version of causality than merely "antecedent": no action or field
outside the past lightcone of point P can affect any field or happening
at point P. But this is QUITE DIFFERENT from Van Flandern's dictum.


Science is a dialog with Nature.

Hmmm. Watching a movie is a better metaphor than "dialog". While there
may appear to be an exchange, in actuality our theories merely color our
own interpretations of Nature, but do not affect her at all.


Tom Roberts