There are 92 naturally occuring elements. 1-Hydrogen through 94-Plutonium (which occurs in trace amounts in uranium ore) with the exception of 43-Technetium and 93-Neptunium.
But that particular item “We know that everything is made of matter, which consists of the basic 92 natural elements” is incorrect. Atoms are not the basic unit of matter. Matter consists of quarks, bosuns and leptons, an observed resonance of quantum fields, or strings, or whatnot.
Another amusing quote from that site is “A science-fiction writer, *George Gamow, led out in promoting it to the scientific community. He used cartoons to illustrate it.”
George Gamow was a brilliant physicist who also wrote some books popularizing scientific ideas. Dismissing him as a “science fiction writer” is like calling Richard Feynman a “bongo player.”
This sort of pseudoscientific rubbish would make me laugh if so many ignorant people didn’t actually believe that they’re prolmugating scientific fact.
dishonest (this includes both people who know better, and those that are fooling themselves)
Stupid
Okay, I know this is coming a little late in the discussion but I just want to share. My mother is a creationist. Probably not in the same sense of the word that you are using, but she believes that before there was a universe, before there was space time, and before there was the first little one celled bacteria, there was God. She believes that God somehow started the process of creation and gave birth, as it were, to the universe. She also believes that she shouldn’t steal, kill, bear false witness, adulter (is that even a word?), dishonor her mother and father, etc. She also believes in evolution, chemistry, and physics. She believes that each step we take towards becoming more informed about the world around us is another step closer to the “divine” in all of us.
I disagree. I know that my position has changed in the course of my lifetime. I doubt that I am alone in this. Although you are unlikely to see the abrupt “conversion” one might see when a religious change occurs, people can change their views to rationality in a gradual manner. The slow pace helps ease the burden on the mind.
So I guess I am saying that it can be constructive to participate in things like the creation/evolution threads, if only to be a part of someone’s gradual learning process.
Incomprehensible. I’m unable to understand these points, much less refute them.
Quantum field theory shows that a vacuum field in a higher energy state that its “ground state” will cause vacuum to expand.
These points show a total lack of understanding of even Newtonian theories of gravity, much less General Relativity. Any small flaws in the density would naturally cause gas to clump by gravitational attraction.
True in a way. No elements other than hydrogen, helium and lithium were formed during the big bang. However the heavier elements were formed in supernova explosions.
Gravity.
Plenty of time. The whole process is predicted by fairly simple Newtonian gravity.
Like what? We know
how heavier elements are produced in supernova explosions.
Bullshit. Physics
explain it, again without even recourse to GR.
Any local collection of protostellar gas will have an average rotation. It would be more odd for the gas to be perfectly balanced.
They haven’t stopped. One or two occur every year in each galaxy.
A thousand years is a blink of an eye. And there’s quite a lot of evidence that in the early universe, stellar formation occurred much faster than at present because the universe was quite a bit denser.
Most modern big bang theories include a period of “inflation” (see #4) which would tend to create the observable characteristics of the universe.
Huh? Let’s see those calculations, and Mr. Peter’s qualifications.
Gravity.
Different theories predict different amounts of matter. The one that predicts the correct amount of matter will win.
[quote]
21 - Only hydrogen and helium found in super-nova explosions. The Big Bang theory requires that elements heavier than lithium were set free by super-nova explosions. But analysis of the Crab nebula (a gigantic super-nova explosion in A.D. 1054) reveals there are no elements heavier than light weight helium in the outflowing residual gases from it. Thus it appears that hydrogen explosions cannot bridge the mass 4 gap, no matter what the temperature of the explosion.—p
You have seen them. But you may not know it. You see, they know that science is one thing and religion is another. So why bother to wear their religion on their sleeves when they are discussing science. I can think of several regs who are theists who discuss evolution (and debunk creationists) with regularity.
In response to the OP, I don’t know that I’d call all creationists liars, stupid, or uninformed. I think some are just blinded by faith. Yes, there are some who are liars, stupid, and/or uninformed, but I don’t think they make up the majority. They may come off looking stupid when they repeatedly ignore evidence, but I think that’s just a symptom of the blinding effect.
Over and over, I have read creationists say; “How could we be an accident?” But that is not what evolution is based on. Take the old example of The Great Watchmaker. Jerry Falwell says; “You can’t throw the parts of a watch up in the air and have them come down as a watch”. Well, technically, there is a chance that it could happen. A tiny chance, but it’s possible.
And if one examines how every ecosystem on the planet works together, all systems have controls and mechanisms of keeping the other systems running smoothly.
So the “parts of the watch” had an attraction to one another and an interdependence that compelled them to form “a watch”. It happened that way because, taking the conditions into account, it could not have happened any other way.
“I mean, if you can’t wear panty hose in your hair, what’s the point?”
I didn’t completely read through this thread. I consider myself a Christian, and a resonable person that believes in science. I have not researched the pros and cons on this issue either. But I do have my own little hope as to how the situation can be reconciled, in my mind only. First of all I am not so concieted as to firmly believe that we are the only life forms in this universe. How could that be? How could life, even in all it’s complexities exsist only here on this tiny planet in this tiny solar system. God himself must be some kind of life form. We are told that “he lives”. Where’d he come from then? I also don’t have any problem what-so-ever with the idea that we share close genetic ties to apes. What’s wrong with that? Why does that upset everyone so? Now I also know that my fellow Christians will have a field day with what I call the “time issue”. But throughout the Bible, God doesn’t seem to have the same measure or concept of time that we humans do. It certainly doesn’t seem to matter much to him. I have a tendency to believe that perhaps we humans in our limited understanding just had to work this all out in the simplest terms possible. After all when we were created ours minds were like those of child. Does anyone honestly believe that we sprang fully grown from the dust? That sounds an awful lot like a similar Greco/Roman myth to me. You know where Diana sprang fully grown from Zeus’s head. (It was Diana wasn’t it? or Athena or something like that.) Anyway, I guess everyone can see what I’m getting at here. It may not be very scientific or very faith oriented but it works for me. And since we aren’t absolutely certain when and exactly how life began it would be nice in my mind to believe that God helped it along.
Anyway, I like this idea, it works for me. I don’t think I’ll go to hell for feeling this way. And let’s face it, Carl Sagan I ain’t. So I’m sure everyone will think I’m a little ignorant, both sides. I don’t care. And I would also appreciate it, as you continue your debate, that none of you address me directly and attempt to sway me. This idea makes me feel good and I’m sticking with it. I just felt like I needed to tell someone, that’s all. Ignore me, continue with your debate.
I just thought this needed to be resaid. Can you picture it as a sig line? Under that name?
Most of us do not have a problem with theistic evelutionists (what you are basically describing, Needs2know). Nor do we have a problem with people such as Zion, who answer contradictions between their beliefs and reality with a declaration of faith. The objection is to people who specifically claim that their evidence for young earth/creation is stronger than the evidence for traditional cosmology/evelution. I humbly suggest that we start using the abbreviation CreSci or something–I think people’s unwillingness to type the whole thing out in the heat of debate leads to a lot of dispute, and to the evelutionists appearing much more abrasive and close-minded than they really are, and a lot of time gets wasted correcting that opinion.
I just have in the back of my head this idea of what would have happened if God had dictated a literal history of the birth of the Universe to whatever poor schmoe got stuck with the job of transcribing it . . .
“But, God, what’s a lepton?”
“DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT. JUST WRITE IT DOWN. YOU GUYS WILL FIGURE OUT WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT LATER.”
“But, God, what’s a protein? What’s a . . . deoxy-ribonucleaic acid? What’s punctuated equillibrium?”
“**SIGH . . . OKAY, DON’T WORRY ABOUT THAT. LET’S START OVER. IN THE BEGINNING, WHEN I CREATED THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH . . . **”
“Oh, I like this much better.”
. . . .
Would a really literal version of Genesis gone over well at all in 4004 BC?
My point for the thread was simply to show that there are what appear to be logical refutes to the Big Bang Theory. I’ll be back to discuss this in about 10 years after I’ve read all the evidence.
SingleDad - You are right - I’ll continue to try to understand the entire theory. Man have I got my work cut out for me. Thanks for not making me feel like an complete idiot.
Now as for what The Ryan said about my three points not having anything to do with evolution, you may be right about that. But they have everything to do with the Big Bang. How does the universe bang into being and then eventually evolve people with souls. I don’t think any scientist can answer that one.
Well, the point Elleon is that debate about souls is not the venue of scientists. There is no physical evidence for or against the existence of souls (ever seen one? how much does it weigh? what color is it? etcetera . . . )
The talk of souls is best left to philosophers and priests. That is their territory.
Seems to be that the wrong things are being argued about. You can bring up distant stars and protons, etc, but the big picture is that science is supposed to be a search for truth. Yet scientists’ attitudes seem to be to separate religion from science.
If the thing you as a scientist are looking for is how did the universe begin, you have to consider all possible causes. However, the Scientific Method specifies that you can only use those things you can observe (i.e. things you can see) to come up with what you think is the cause of creation. This method, by its nature, rules out all possible causes for which there can be no observation, which means that you are theoretically ruling out some possible creative forces without having any evidence to back you up in doing so.
Creationists, on the other hand, assume that they are always reading the Bible right. There is nothing wrong with believing the bible is 100% accurate. That belief is the foundation of everything Christianity stands for, and that thinking is paralleled in other religions, for exampl, in Islam.
However, even if the bible is 100% correct, we as humans could be reading it wrong. This is why there are disputes within theological circles as to what the days of Genesis mean. Some say it is a 24-hour day, some say it’s a longer time period. Only one view is right. Which is it? Why should we assume we know for sure, then blast every scientist who disputes our possible flawed reading?
One extreme example really ticks me off. Several creationists insist that since they read the bible as 6000 years old, then dinosaurs must have been destroyed by the Flood. But the bible doesn’t say that. They are therefore becoming like the scientists they despise. Actually, they are worse, because they have nothing, neither Scriptural nor scientific evidence, to back them up.
Having said all that, I must ad that I was a science teacher, and in the academic community at the university I attended to train as a teacher, there was an unwritten rule that you will not allow for anything which might back up creationism. If you back up creationism with an experiment, then attempt to publish it, you stand little chance of being respected by your peers, regardless of the validity of your evidence. I think it’s a safe bet that this school is not alone.
We shouldn’t expect to understand an infinite God with a finite mind
There are a few competing ideas that answer some questions about the origins of the universe, and they also raise some of their own. The Big Bang is still the most widely accepted idea. But science always looks for more evidence and ideas. To be sure, after you get caught up on the 10 years of past esearch, you’ll need a few more to catch up on what you missed in that time.
That said, please do not decide that this means science doesn’t know what it’s talking about. A common creaionist ploy is to take healthy scientific debate - debate which is what makes the scientific method work as well as it does, and is an intregal part of it - and say, “See? They can’t make up their own minds! They don’t know what they’re talking about!” This is simply not true.
**
A very separate idea. And a third idea, abiogenesis, gets confused in ths issue as well. But all three are distinctly different ideas. All with lots of evidence which tells us what happened, no doubt, bot not the same thing.
**
I don’t think science can answer as to what a “soul” is. In fact, I don’t think you can either. If you can, please show me where my “soul” is. This comes down to faith as well.
That rules. One can reconcile science with their faith quite easily, and in fact most people do. It’s not really that hard.
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Elleon: Welcome to SDMB! We really are good-hearted people, appearances to the contrary. It’s nice to meet someone who’s open minded and ready to learn.
Not true. Evidence that supports something has to be observed, not just the observation of what you hypothesize is there!
Obviously, observation is nice, but one can also observe evidence which shows that something happened. For example, we do not actually SEE gravity, but we see how gravity effects celestial bodies. Does this mean that gravity doesn’t exist, that someone is simply making all of this happen with telekinesis? According to what you just said, the “Telekinesis Hypothesis” has as much credibility as Gravitational Theory!
**
If something is not testable, and you cannot get evidence from it or of it, then yes, they are ruled out. You think this shouldn’t be the case? “Intelligent Design” was shot down a long time ago.
**
Agreed 100%.
**
Bullshit. If there WAS some evidence, it would had come out, what with the dozens of people who call themselves “Creation Scientists.” There is no evidence which is not either lies, errors or a combination of the two.
If you find some, you will get the Nobel Prize. So where is it?
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Er, no. Christianity is based on the belief (in a tiny nutshell) that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and that the Bible is the Word Of God. Whether it is the “inspired” Word Of God or the “literal” Word Of God is not known. Some Christians believe that the Bible is 100% accurate, and others believe that it is figurative.
Sorry, back to the subject…
“I mean, if you can’t wear panty hose in your hair, what’s the point?”
It’s nice to meet someone who’s open minded and ready to learn.