It’s important to separate “problems with the [Big Bang] theory” with problems with your understanding of the theory! Your questions about the Big Bang theory reflect your own confusions, not problems with it. (For one thing, who told you that the rate of expansion has been accelerating the whole time?)
Despite the fact that I am a physicist, my own ignorance of cosmology (or even all of astrophysics) is pretty broad. So, I am certainly not the best person to explain it. However, I suggest you get a good popular account of it (e.g., “The First Three Minutes” by Steven Weinberg). And, it is also important to keep in mind that behind this popularized explanation of the theory is a lot of mathematics.
It is true that we don’t know what happened “before” the Big Bang…or even what “before” means in the sense that the Big Bang was an explosion of the entire space-time continuum. (Padeye: I don’t think you are correct that the quantum fluctuation hypothesis is really the “favored theory” but I could be wrong.) I suppose that there’s always room for God if you are flexible enough to fit Him in with the increasingly refined views of how He created.
And, by the way, Lib is good at finding the extremes in scientific circles. Yes, there may be a few serious scientists who believe there are problems with Big Bang theory but they are a fairly tiny minority. Complete unanimity in science is no more possible to achieve than complete unanimity about anything among a large group of people. One can still talk about what the scientific consensus is.
At any rate, even in the very unlikely event that the Big Bang theory was wrong, we would not be significantly closer to any sort of “young universe” hypothesis … There is just way too much evidence the other way. (And that’s not even getting into the fields of geology and biology!)
Finally, there may be “faith” displayed in the Big Bang theory in the sense that not all those who believe it (including myself) are well-versed on the details. But, this is more a sort of “faith” in the scientific process and a willingness to concede that experts who have engaged in this process can understand them better than those of us who have not, rather the sort of faith from divine authority that religion involves. [And, of course, the big difference is that if you want to “test” your faith in Big Bang, you can go and read Steven Weinberg’s book and then even study more serious books in astrophysics and actually learn more about it and gain a deeper knowledge of the science yourself so that you don’t have to take it on faith.]
If a poster stated “famous scientist X says the BB happened so I accept it,” you’d be right. However if one’s acceptance of the BB comes from research and understanding, then faith is not involved.
I don’t understand the connection between conclusive evidence and best theory. Best theory just means best matching the evidence on hand, and not contradicted by any evidence. (Loosely, I’m not interested in a philosophy of science debate right now.) One can measure the degree of faith by asking what happens if solid, contradictory evidence is found. If someone says that he’d drop the theory, and try to come up with something better, he doesn’t have faith. Provisional acceptance seems a much better term. You think that the degree of provisional acceptance should be higher for evolution than for the BB. I’m not sure I’d agree (or even how to compare the two) but I would not say you have “faith” in evolution since it seems you have looked at the evidence.
Cool. Since you made an accusation of faith I’ve seen many times from theists, I assumed you were one. My bad.
Well, okay, Lib, I know that science doesn’t technically work by consensus … It works by provisional acceptance of theories that fit the data which grows stronger over time as they are tested more rigorously and all that.
Still, as a practical matter, one has to take stalk of where science is on certain issues from time to time (particularly when they intersect with public policy). You have this tendency to give lots of weight to what are, frankly, fairly bizarre theories that have next to no support in the refereed scientific literature. Unlike politics, all scientific viewpoints are not equally valid! And, for every scientist who comes up with an idea that is “correct” but initially has some trouble finding adherents, there are probably 1000 out there who are having trouble finding adherents for damn good reason!
But Lib provided the top ten contradictions based on known science.
If I recall correctly, the big question arising from the big bang theory was whether the universe would eventually contract due to gravitational force. To find out now that the expansion this late in the “history” of the universe is actually accelerating was not predicted or predictable at this stage.
With regard to your question as to who told me the acceleration was taking place the whole time, my answer is no one. But it takes a force to accelerate the expansion, and I don’t believe that God suddenly decided “Let Us add an additional force to the universe.”
But I am a theist (I think). My religious faith is not dependant on the science.My “accusation” of faith once again was directed at posters. My reading of popular science journals over the years is that scientists are having a field day with the hypothesis, but the degree of acceptance is no where in the same league as evolution.
Many (perhaps most) religions link from first causes - by assertion. A Christian, or an adherent of any religion, who says that a first cause on the other side of the Big Bang is evidence that their religion is correct needs to indicate how their god thingy’s description of the origin matches what has been discovered about it. In this respect Christianity fails big time.
I’m still wondering if you admit that acceptance of the Big Bang is not a matter of faith. You seem to be avoiding this point.
That last wasn’t my question. As for the first, you need to distinguish the details of various theories and hypotheses. That the universe began 12 - 15 billion years ago is pretty solid. I’d say the fate of the universe is a lot less solid. Inflation looks pretty solid, especially finding the variations in the cbr. I don’t think any of the proposals of why the universe started are anywhere close to theory stage yet.
In evolution, evolution itself is pretty solid, punc eq probably less so, and the details of the evolution of man (but not that man did evolve) much less so.
Maybe the question of expansion is about where the dinosaur extinction hypothesis is - we keep on finding out new things, and when the ink on the latest guess is still wet, it is a bit early to call it a theory, or to put too much confidence in it.
There is also a big difference between two theories that both match the evidence, and two theories, one of which matches the evidence and the other does not. (That’s not grammatical, but it’s late.) There is also a difference when the evidence is scarce (in which case hypotheses predict what should be found if they are correct) and when there is a lot of evidence, in which case a hypothesis predicting evidence out of line with the existing evidence is much less likely to be published.
I showed you how we “go from a first cause argument to Christianity”.
You weren’t asking (at least not then) for a first cause argument. You were establishing the first cause argument as given, and were asking what links such a first cause to Christianity.
I referred you to documentation that identifies Jesus Christ as the first cause. Therefore, despite your present wiggle-waggle, you have been given the definitive response to your assertion.
Your earlier protest that you wanted a “good” response was either disingenuous or ignorant. And your present attempt at morphing your argument into an attack on first cause qua se is frankly bizarre. Usually, it is the opponent, and not the proponent as in this case, who offers strawmen.
Admit? Not? Avoiding?
Perhaps you presume that you can do with cheap rhetoric what you cannot do with reason. Did you mean to mean to ask this question: “Is acceptance of the Big Bang a matter of faith?” If so, the answer is yes.
Despite that you’ve been corrected repeatedly, and even provided a link to Popper’s own lecture on the matter, you still seem to believe that the soundness of a scientific theory is in proportion to the evidence that supports it. You have it completely backwards.
I would have thought that you were familiar with the first cause argument, perhaps I was wrong. It is, simply, that since all things have a cause, there must be an uncaused cause for the creation, and that cause is god. It is not that religion X says that god Y created the universe, which is simple assertion and uninteresting.
I won’t go into the flaws of this argument, but it is one of the better ones for the existence of a god.
The question was, given that, how can you connect this prime causer to the god of a particular religion, especially considering that all the religions have gotten the creation story totally wrong. Speaking of strawmen, nothing in my previous posts have been an attack on the first cause argument.
And connecting Jesus to it because John said so is utter garbage. Remember, the first cause argument is supposed to give evidence for a god, and assuming the correctness of John to justify that Jesus is god is circular reasoning at its finest. Even when I believed in God, I never believed in Jesus. I read Genesis 1 in Hebrew, and I certainly don’t remember any mention of Jesus in it. Yes, I know the standard Christian arguments, which would do the Ministry of Truth proud.
Well, at last. Now, what would you suppose the scientific community would do if provided firm evidence that the Big Bang did not happen - such as something that showed the universe oscillates without going into a singularity? If the answer is that they would close their eyes to the evidence and keep on supporting the Big Bang, generation after generation, then you would be right. However, anyone even remotely familiar with how science works knows that, while some scientists wouldn’t be able to give it up, cosmology as a whole would follow the evidence. And that is why acceptance of the Big Bang is provisional, and is not faith.
No I don’t but neither is the soundness of a theory proportional to its falsifiability. This is not a relevant discussion to this thread. You might be interested in knowing, though, that Popper is not universally acclaimed anymore.
At least you finally answered my question, I have to give you that.
Apologies to all involved in this discussion for butting in, (and technically hi-jacking), but I have a few questions I was hoping someone could provide good answers for:
What is the mainstream Christian belief about the nature of God prior to the creation? i.e. Who created God / where did He come from? What was He doing before creation?
And, as Irishgirl posted above
If some Christians believe in the progressive steps of complexity in evolution as stated here, how is this reconciled with the Biblical idea that “God created man in his own image”.
The first question was asked as, if the Big Bang is being forwarded as requiring a cause, why should God escape this question? Occam’s Razor and all that.
But I don’t want to go into all that now (mainly as I don’t know enough to formulate a good argument)
If God sits outside of creation (the Big Bang), and was unaffected by His creation, He must exist in some manner. Perhaps we are unable to comprehend the complexity of His existence, I don’t know. Maybe the question is meaningless (from our perspective). But I still feel eternity prior to the creation of the Universe must have enabled God to hone his creation skills / create previous Universes etc… rather than be doing nothing before the creation of our Universe.
The second question was asking (those Christians who believe in Evolution) whether God created primitive life and let it evolve complexity in its own terms as necessary to survive, or whether God tracked the path of evolution to its final echelons of Man.
Do you then believe that evolution has completed its journey on arriving at the image we hold now?
Thanks again. Just trying to understand the complex nature of beliefs.
I know what the question was. I reprinted the question for you (three times now). I answered the question. Jesus was in the beginning with God, and everything that was made was made through Him.
Have someone explain this to you: That ties Christianity to a First Cause argument.
Then you wouldn’t know it because you wouldn’t know science if it bit you in the ass.
And your blatherings about faith are? The hubris.
Random tripe and nonsense.
You’ve given me far more than that. You’ve given me that you don’t understand the first thing about science, its history, or its methods. You’ve given me that you do not shy away from debating with reckless fallacies. And you’ve given me that you find dodging, cheating, and cowering to be acceptable debate tactics.