Turtle begat Turtle, who begat Turtle, who in turn begat Turtle…
Seriously though… what’s wrong with just admitting, “We don’t know?” …BTW, to me, that does not mean being Agnostic. Why bring God, an ancient myth, into the question at all? IMO, it’s rather pointless to take the position of:
“Welp-- either a God created all that exists, OR we simply can’t/don’t know the ultimate origin of everything. One or the other! I just can’t decide which, so I’m Agnostic!”
That position would be better characterized as “dithering Theist”. After all–how can one “not be sure” if God exists or not? After all, every God-believer creates God to his or her own liking–to one’s own personal taste. To any believer, in their own mind, God (the God of their own mind) indeed exists.
Then there’re those other people who do *not *create a personal God, and are therefore left with no God at all. I would guess that most of them are OK with this state of affairs.
What I can’t understand is someone who has not fashioned their own version of God being perched on the fence vis-a-vis His existence. I’d say to that person: “Have you your own version/vision/concept of what God is? If not, then from your standpoint–in your Reality, God does not exist. Simple as that. You can finally rest.”
For me, I just can’t see the need for a person to fashion their own personal story of a magic being who created All That Is, although I suppose I can imagine the impetus for doing so. Still though, can’t you just admit that you don’t know–that indeed nobody knows the origin of the Cosmos?
But, if you can’t handle that, then if you haven’t already, just form your own concept of God and anoint him as Real. Problem solved by Creation Myth #65,344,302,711. You can come down off the fence now.
See this is another case where you feel smug and superior because of inferior understanding.
I am making an argument related to the OP. Your argument is off-topic. This topic IS NOT whether the Big Bang is real. I’m sorry if you are incapable of comprehending what thread you are posting in, and think that personal attacks are justified. You of course will not be warned because you are a mod, and as such can do whatever you want.
I don’t specifically avoid learning about the Big Bang. It’s just that if I am going to read about science, I’d rather read about cognitive neuroscience than cosmology.
The point of this thread is that the Big Bang is NOT OBVIOUS. I’m sorry that staying on topic is such a trial for you, and that you’d rather follow me around insulting me.
Would you agree or disagree with this statement?:
“Given the observation that the Universe is expanding everywhere, it seems obvious that at some point in the past, everything was all lumped together.”
No. Because matter works differently at different scales, and time is measured by the movement of matter in relationship to other matter.
For all I know the Universe breathes, and we observe an expansion because we are in an exhalation period, maybe it will contract at a later time. Perhaps there are limits on how far apart elements can get from one another, and limits on how close together matter can be. So maybe a billion Earth Years ago all the matter in the universe was closer to all the other matter than it is today, but not necessarily all compact and snug.
I am skeptical that the Universe ever began. That is one of the most commonly shared reliigous faith-based ideas, that the Universe has a beginning.
mswas, if you have questions about the rules or moderating, take them to ATMB and don’t call people names. Everyone else is also advised to make sure this argument does not become personal.
Umm what? Are you kidding me? I didn’t call anyone any names.
That’s some blue shield hypocrisy right there.
Why should I go to ATMB? So that you guys can just turn it into another pit-thread pile-on? Whatever, **Czarcasm **gets to violate the don’t be a jerk rule whenever he wants. It’s cool, I know the score. He’s a mod, he doesn’t have to contribute meaningfully to the discussion, he can call me stupid and ignorant for actually debating ON TOPIC, while he harangues me for assumptions he makes regarding something that is NOT on topic.
I am not going to fall into the trap of your hijinks. You are not asking this question in good faith. And it’s irrelevant to the topic.
If I said ‘friction’ you’d just say, ‘ORly the force resisting the relative lateral (tangential) motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, or material elements in contact.’, is ‘obvious’?
If you are arguing the affirmative position, take a stand. I am arguing the contrary, so all I have to do is falsify a hypothesis. So the BBT IS NOT Obvious. If you think it’s obvious then you need to prove that it’s obvious.
On the “obvious” question in the OP I think we can safely say very little is fundamentally “obvious” to anyone. Almost everything we do is learned. Would a baby raised by wolves intuit that 1+1=2 as a mathematical concept (such that they can then extend it to 1+2=3 and so on)? Probably not. 1+1 is obvious to us because we were taught it.
I think the question is better phrased as what should be obvious to anyone with a basic, modern education? Pretty sure at some point the Big Bang Theory is mentioned in school and while they may not delve into the nitty-gritty they will give you the broad outlines.
As students we accept that our teachers are telling us the best information available as provided by the human race’s current knowledge base. As such Big Bang Theory should be accepted outright if you choose to do nothing to further your understanding of it. It is the consensus opinion of the vast majority of cosmologists and physicists and other scientists. It has been out there for 80 years and subject to numerous experiments and observations which continue to reinforce the idea rather than detract from it. As such this is what we teach in schools.
If you think BBT is too much to swallow then you can go educate yourself and put forward criticisms to poke holes in it. Indeed some scientists have (and all have failed so far but who knows…maybe the next person will have an epiphany that upends it).
So, from the stance of “common” knowledge imparted to the public BBT is absolutely “obvious” (unless you can show me where Steady State theory is taught except as a footnote to the history of BBT). If it is not obvious to someone it is because they are uneducated or willfully ignorant. That is their fault though and does not lessen the obviousness of this information.
Why do pictures from space making a non-obvious thing obvious differ from something like a movie of a simulation of the universe expanding? Perhaps you don’t believe in the movie, but you can also think the picture is part of a round earth conspiracy, since you’ve never been to space yourself.
Things are obvious given insight and facts. Haven’t you ever had the experience of figuring out something, after which an intractable problem became obvious? I have, and even better, other people considered the answer obvious too after hearing my solution. It happens all the time.
I don’t really want to debate (though I don’t have a problem with clarifications the way the moderator did), but since the other thread was closed, here goes:
There’s no such thing as “right” and “left” or “conservative” and “liberal”. No political map that has only one dimension can accurately reflect the actual diversity of viewpoints. There’s no logical reason for a political viewpoint having to do with gay marriage to be paired unilaterally with a political viewpoint about taxation.
Bodyweight has at least a much to do with metabolism and other factors as eating behavior. This becomes clear to anyone who actually watches the eating habits of real people who aren’t on talk shows, watches the development of people over time, and observes the bodies of people who are related to each other by blood.
Evolution.
Equal rights and lack of discrimination against gays will not have and cannot logically have any negative affect on heterosexuals or heterosexual marriages.
Both the global average temperature and CO2 levels have skyrocketed in the last century more quickly than ever before.
Criminalizing consensual acts of adults has the burden of proof of necessity. It’s almost never necessary, and where there are problems, regulation is generally preferred over strict criminalization.
The police force needs to be replaced by a new organization which has an inherently positive mission rather than an inherently negative one.
Racial differences are clines, not groups.
Communism / socialism are not the opposite of democracy, they are the opposite of capitalism. Totalitarianism or fascism are the opposite of democracy. (I’m actually not sure sure of the terminology, but you get what I’m aiming for here).
Most largescale differences between people are more culturally based than biological.
Ugly couples have, on average, longer marriages.
Infant circumcision not done for medical reasons is mutilation.
Birds are animals. Reptiles are animals. Gravity is not caused by the spin of the Earth. You cannot actually time travel by traveling across time zones.
“Theory” means something entirely different in scientific parlance than it does in common parlance.
Deregulating the banking system is mostly the cause for the current economic crisis. The solution is mostly reregulation.
All money needs to be taken out of politics. No monetary donations of any kind. No lobbyists.
There is simply no logical reason to be offended by someone wearing a hat indoors.
Some customs are based on genuine respect or consideration of others, but many customs are just arbitrary traditions which can’t be taken overly serious in a heterogenous society.
“You see, everything I know, I learned from my dad / He learned it all from his / And his dad just happened to be / Wrong about everything”
H1N1 is way overhyped.
People who claim you can prove a negative don’t understand what is actually meant by the phrase.
Restriction or regulation of arms is not the same thing as banning of arms. People have the right to arm themselves, but weapons should be at least as regulated as motor vehicles.
[NOT Speaking In Mod Mode]it seems to me that this thread is mimicking the entirety of the Great Debates forum itself. Maybe folks should start their own threads on each subject?[/Ditto]
mswas is right: the Big Bang is not obvious. How can “something came from nothing” be obvious? How can “space and time started with the Big Bang, so there is no before the Big Bang” be obvious? How about “The Big Bang is the start of everything, space and time expanding, but not expanding into anything.” What? Not obvious at all. Everything we know about “expansion” means there is something to expand into. Even the models used to explain the expanding universe have this failing - the balloon model expands in the 3rd spatial dimension, the raisin cake expands into the space around the raisin cake.
I don’t think anything in cosmology is “obvious”. It is bizarre, it is counter-intuitive, it is just plain weird. Quite apart from whether one accepts it or not.
Whack-a-Mole said:
There’s a quote about that assumption somewhere.
In other words, just because something is happening now and at a particular rate doesn’t mean we can assume it always will happen that way or that rate. Extrapolating from the current condition is fraught with error.
Whack-a-Mole said:
You are using words in a funny way. The Big Bang was the start of our current space-time pocket. We call that space-time pocket “the Universe”. There is no “before” the Big Bang, because time did not exist. Correct? That’s certainly what all the physicists say on the matter. Given that, how is the Big Bang not the beginning, the origin?
It’s just the “agnosticism vs atheism” argument reframed for this topic. “An agnostic does not believe god exists or god does not exist - he withholds conclusion pending further evidence either way. An atheist concludes that God does not exist based on a lack of evidence.” It’s the same argument as “A true skeptic does not pick one side or the other, he withholds belief until the evidence can be evaluated.”
He’s claiming that he doesn’t refuse to believe BB, he just isn’t convinced. That’s not quite the same thing.
Voyager said:
I think you misunderstand his, admittedly poor, explanation.
Snarky_Kong said:
What mathematicians use to rigorously define and prove their systems is not particularly relevant to how people intuitively grasp things. With a few “common sense” understandings of “1” and “2” and “addition” (putting items with each other), 1 + 1 = 2 is pretty “obvious”.
5 year olds struggling with that is hardly a fair measure of how obvious it is not. If 5 year olds found it obvious, it would be evidence it is obvious, but since 5 year olds aren’t known for being particularly bright or informed or mentally developed, the fact that some of them have problems grasping something is not a fair benchmark for the obviousness of that item as a whole.
suranyi said:
I’ve had 5 year olds give me a blank look when I ask them their name.
Whack-a-Mole said:
Isn’t there some famous quote where some famous scientist (Einstein?) said something like, “If you can’t explain the idea to a bright 10 year old, you don’t really understand it yourself”?
The point is an explanation serves to make something understood. Explanations have to be tailored to the knowledge of the recipient. If the recipient needs years of specialized training before some detail is understood, is it fair to call that detail “obvious”?
Unless you want to argue perspective. Something is “obvious” or “not obvious” depending upon your knowledge base. What knowledge base are we assuming?
I would argue that unless you are a theoretical (or experimental? ) cosmologist*, there is nothing “obvious” about the Big Bang. I mean, it’s not really even a “bang”. It is not an explosion by any sense of our understaning (e.g. fireworks).
Maeglin said:
On the basis of what “obvious” means? At least what mswas takes obvious to mean.
Maeglin said:
“Holding a book open in front of your face” does not equal “reading”. Regardless of movie lines.
I was going to say “theoretical physicist”, but then wanted to laugh about an “experimental cosmologist”. I’m not sure the final result works, though.
) cosmologist*, there is nothing “obvious” about the Big Bang. I mean, it’s not really even a “bang”. It is not an explosion by any sense of our understaning (e.g. fireworks).