What is the evidence for the big bang.

[Jon55]

@Marley23

The better question is “What difference does Hawking’s opinion make?” He’s not rewriting scientific theories to prove there’s no god. He’s not the Pope of science, and science doesn’t work that way.

You asked for examples that was one.

@Marley23

Allah is the Arabic word for “God.” It’s not a different character.

My mistake I was trying to provide an example of why saying “Some people think God did it.” would be prejudicial and exclusive.
I should have used turtle.

@Marley23

Does Hawking say schools should teach students that there is no God?

Not to my knowledge. Would you be ok with it?

[Jon55]

@Voyager

You should be aware that Sagan was a planetary scientist, not a cosmologist. Plus, his popular writing and TV is now very much out of date. However his goal was to get people interested in science, so he succeeded with you.

I did not know how to classify Carl Sagan but I did know he did alot of practical science with NASA specificly your namesake Voyager.
Those pictures are still awesome today and yes he did have alot to do with my interest as did Hawking.

@Voyager

TV shows are just a start, but are terrible ways of getting the last word. Remember, those on commercial channels exist to sell ads, not to teach science.

The problems with ID are twofold. First, no one has shown a place where ID is required. Second, no one has ever demonstrated ID taking place in the natural world. ID happens all the time - it is called plant breeding and animal husbandry. Your dog is a product of ID. But there is no evidence of it in either the universe or the fossil record.
Behe, the inventor of the modern concept, keeps on looking for structures requiring ID, and keeps on failing. He accepts evolution by the way, but seems to have agreed to serve as the creationists poster child because I guess he get a lot more recognition than he would as a professor at Lehigh.
And of course science has plenty concrete to say about origins, even if you want to ignore this.

I don’t care about discrimination against atheists. I care about discrimination against the facts. If scientists discover X, and religionists want it to be Y, that is no reason to teach Y also.

If you want kids to get interested in science, the Big Bang is a lot more fun than F=ma and rolling things down ramps.

Dont shortchange rolling things down ramps!

[Yumblie]

@Jon55

He did however assert that there was no time before the big bang. How does he know that?

Here’s how the theory works. Matter is spreading out now, so if we extrapolate back in time, all matter must have been closer together in the past. If we keep going further and further back, the universe gets extremely dense. Further and further back, the density gets higher and higher, and at some point in time, matter is crunched into some exotic foamy stuff. Afterward (beforeward?), the density gets so high that the current laws of physics don’t know what to do with it.

This is what we call t=0.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that this was the beginning of time and the universe. But our whole concept of space and time breaks down at this point, so that it no longer makes sense to talk about any time before it. It’s possible that new physics will be discovered that will let us probe deeper back in time and be able to model time further back. But at this point, we’ve reached a theoretical barrier in time, and so we call it the beginning.

The basic idea is this: the “Big Bang” was not a singular event, but a process that has been happening, as far as we can tell, for 13.7 billion years. It may have been happening for longer than that, but according to current physics, probably not.

[tomndebb]

@Jon55

Slippery slope?
It is a valid concern but I think most ideas should measured on their own merits and this is one of them.

You posted this in response to an observation that Intelligent Design was bullshit.

It has already been judged on its own merits. It has been found to be unscientific, (actually, anti-scientific), and it is easily demonstrated that it is a tool used by various religious persons to sneak Creationism into public schools.

Its three primary “scientific” proponents are a lawyer who argues on irrelevant philosophical grounds that he does not like Evolutionary Theory, a theologian with a background in statistics that he seems to have forgotten while getting his degrees in theology, and a biologist who has made specific claims that have been demonstrated to be in error, yet persists in defending them to attack Evolution.

In the Dover ¶ Area School District lawsuit a few year ago, the Intelligent Design proponents were demonstrated to have been religiously based and their “scientific” expert (the biologist) was blown out of the water by actual scientific testimony, being forced to recognize the paucity of his own claims in court.

ID is bullshit.

[Voyager]

@tomndebb

Theistic Evolution is a different belief then Intelligent Design. In Theistic Evolution, the Creator sets the rules and intitiates the process, then allows the process to move forth naturally on its own. This creator might be a Deist’s clockmaker or a Theist’s personal God, but in neither case does the Creator tamper with the process of natural evolution on anything resembling a regular basis.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that the difference between theistic and naturalistic evolution was that in the former God rigged the game in some way in order that we humans (created in his image) would appear, while in naturalistic evolution we are accidental. Throughout the history of life there are a number of chance events, which led life down varying paths. God could have certainly rigged the dice to make us - from our perspective it is impossible to distinguish this from pure chance. I understand that natural selection applies in both cases, and there are no transformations requiring intervention as claimed by Behe. Whether God intervened during the process or magically loaded the dice at the beginning is immaterial, it seems to me.
The big difference is that theistic evolution is directed, though subtly and invisibly, and naturalistic evolution is not.

[Untoward_Parable]

Well there are plenty of flaws with the BBT Jon, but if you want to try to propose an even more flawed theory: That your bible is true and God wuvs you and made everything blah blah, well you need another title for your thread.

[Bryan_Ekers]

I’m trying to discuss science and politics and getting bible verses and no-true-Scotsman for my trouble. That’s it for me.

[Candyman74]

@Jon55

BTW wiki is having a 24 blackout the page says congress is considering legislation that will shut it down. Not sure what that is all about.

Wha - ?

How can you NOT know what that is all about? It’s the biggest news event on the planet right now, and is raging across the internet and causing massive upsets in Congress.

Empirical knowledge really ISN’T your thing, is it?

[Jon55]

@Bryan_Ekers

I’m trying to discuss science and politics and getting bible verses and no-true-Scotsman for my trouble. That’s it for me.

While I am pleased that maybe we can get back to the science side of things I am sorry that you feel I was using circular arguments. I admit that does sting a bit. I must have failed to adequately explain myself.

If you have any atheistic friends who have studied the bible or maybe just a friend you can trust to give you the straight dope please ask them if you can believe and obey the NT and go around killing people.

Thank you for the conversation.
Cheers

[Jon55]

@tomndebb

You posted this in response to an observation that Intelligent Design was bullshit.

I posted “slippery slope” in response to Marleys comment below.

[QUOTE=Marley]

While you may believe this personally, it is bullshit. Intelligent design is a vehicle for getting Biblical creationism into science textbooks. There would be no interest in it otherwise
[/QUOTE]

Although I think Marley would agree with your assesment of ID I dont think that was what was being conveyed there. I think that Marley was saying ID would be used to shoehorn in more religious ideas.

@tomndebb

It has already been judged on its own merits. It has been found to be unscientific, (actually, anti-scientific), and it is easily demonstrated that it is a tool used by various religious persons to sneak Creationism into public schools.

Is this not a slippery slope argument also? I think that slippery slope arguments can be valid but I disagree in this case.

@tomndebb

Its three primary “scientific” proponents are a lawyer who argues on irrelevant philosophical grounds that he does not like Evolutionary Theory, a theologian with a background in statistics that he seems to have forgotten while getting his degrees in theology, and a biologist who has made specific claims that have been demonstrated to be in error, yet persists in defending them to attack Evolution.

This is good evidence I have not checked it out yet but it is consistent with my personal experience. I dont dont know of the three individuals you mentioned but I have seen alot of creationist telling lies. The Paluxy dinosaur/man track in Glen Rose, Texas and NASA’s missing day http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/672/did-scientists-discover-a-missing-day-as-predicted-in-the-bible are just two examples out of the ten or fifteen I could name off the top of my head.

I find this stuff embarrassing but I can deal with that. I also find it very corrosive to the truth both the scientific facts and biblical truth. The bible says God is truth and some people think they need to lie to prove it.
I find that as illogical as I assume you do.

I cannot resist but to point out that it is easy for me to accept that you (in your two posts on this subject) represented the views of the three persons you used as examples.
And that the these three persons are representative of the majority of creationists.

While when I use examples of outspoken and respected atheists I get two answers.
He didnt say/mean that or that is just one of many and he is not the pope of atheism/science.

I could do you the same way but it would seem to me to impede the progress of the argument and I very much want to see it move forward.

@tomndebb

In the Dover ¶ Area School District lawsuit a few year ago, the Intelligent Design proponents were demonstrated to have been religiously based and their “scientific” expert (the biologist) was blown out of the water by actual scientific testimony, being forced to recognize the paucity of his own claims in court.

So why are you worried about ID being used as a tool to sneak creationism into schools? The science is getting better everyday the tools of technology are getting better everyday. The days when this kind of lying could squeeze out a decade or more of use before it got exposed are swiftly coming to an end.

I am asking for one page to be briefly discussed at the opening of the class. If you have better wording than mine I am all ears.

@tomndebb

ID is bullshit.

I agree…I believe in a very specific God.

I just would not want it sanctioned by the state. I have many reasons for that but the best one IMO is thats what the bible says.

[Jon55]

@Czarcasm

If you want to twist people’s words to make silly extreme examples, your assertion that Hawking meant that God didn’t exist when what he actually said was that God wasn’t necessary for the creation of the universe means that, since ice cream isn’t necessary for the survival of the human species, ice cream doesn’t exist.
Why do you hate ice cream?

I didnt twist anyones words. If you didnt “get” my silly extreme example please just ask for clarification.

I seriously doubt that Hawking hates anything he dosent believe in. He is far to intelligent for that kind of pointless emotionalism.
Did you watch the show?

[tomndebb]

@Voyager

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that the difference between theistic and naturalistic evolution was that in the former God rigged the game in some way in order that we humans (created in his image) would appear, while in naturalistic evolution we are accidental.

That’s not far off the mark, although there are several different flavors of Theistic Evolution and the only consistent point is that ultimately God is the Author. In several versions, God does not tinker with any aspect of physical evolution, simply infusing a soul into whatever happened to evolve to most appropriately accept it. “His Image” does not mean humanoid, but endowed with spirirtual qualities.

[Marley23]

@Jon55

Although I think Marley would agree with your assesment of ID I dont think that was what was being conveyed there. I think that Marley was saying ID would be used to shoehorn in more religious ideas.

ID isn’t a shoehorn, it’s a shoe. It is inherently religious. It’s true that you as an individual may be proposing a nondenominational type of intelligent design, but the ID movement is entirely Christian and wants Biblical creation taught in science classes. In addition to being wrong, their tactics are dishonest. Which is why I said they were bullshit.

[Jon55]

@The_Hamster_King

It’s not like there’s some grand council of scientists that determines when a theory is proven. As more and more evidence mounts up that confirms a hypothesis, more and more scientists agree that it deserves to be called a theory. Adding other terms won’t help that process.

Science is a tool to help the human race not just the select few who can understand the mathmatics and are fortunate enough to have a career that allows them to spend most of their time actively pursing knowledge.
Hawking and Sagan think/thought that they have a duty to be ambassadors to people just like me.
(Let me add Bill Nye (sp?) the science guy to that list.)
Laymen with an active imagination and a healthy curiosity.
While adding terms might not help them much I think it would help me and others.

Do you think it would cause harm?

The term dwarf planet was recently added to the list of objects in our solar system. That was prob more for people like me and less for theoretical physicists.

@The_Hamster_King

Exactly. Inflation is just a word that’s used to talk about a time when the expansion was particularly rapid. And scientists have agreed for decades that the expansion is ongoing.

Sooner or later. But some things are so far away there hasn’t been enough time since the big bang for the photons to get here.

Eventually the redshift becomes so extreme we can no longer detect the photons.

The farther away something is, the faster it recedes. We can see closer objects just fine.

I was reading about the farther away the faster it flees. And that it does so in jumps I dont remember the actual numbers but something like 2.7 km/sec for some of the closer objects and then 4 km/sec for the next group farther out but no speeds in between.
The explanation given for the faster speeds for the more distant objects was that it was just our obsevationary perspective.
I dont think any was given for the “jumps”
Do you have any hypothosis for them?

@The_Hamster_King

An anomaly just means “something that doesn’t agree with the theory”. It might be because the theory is wrong, or it might be because of a glitch in the experiment. The usual approach when an anomaly is observed is to run the experiment more times to try to figure out if the data is good or not.

For example, last year scientists announced they seemed to have detected neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. That’s an anomaly. Lots of other scientists are working now to try to figure out if it’s a real effect, or just a measurement error.

Thats very interesting and I had not heard of it.
As for the anomalies I think there are far too many of them to give so much weight to this theory.

@The_Hamster_King

You need something like inflation to explain certain observations. It’s a refinement to the big bang theory, but was not part of it originally.

Yeah but it really didnt work so well until inflation at least as I understand it.

When I started reading Sagan’s books I was something of an atheist myself in a very casual way meaning I didnt think about it very much.
I was so excited and I really studied it. I also read A Brief History in Time I think it was Hawking frirst book. I think at the time he got alot of laughs for thinking there could be actual black holes out there.

In time I realized that FTL travel was impossible and we are stuck on this rock unless we go by slow boat. Have you ever read Sagan’s idea of colonizing an Orrt Cloud object? Thats a great stuff.
But this realization caused me to lose interest to a degree I still read discovery mag and watched shows but I quit putting so much energy into it. I quit studying.

I relate all that so maybe you will understand that while I am not totally ignorant my knowledge is very much of the hit and miss kind. And alot of it is dated.

I really appreciate the help you have been.

@The_Hamster_King

Think closely about what you just said. If looking at distant objects is akin to time travel then we can DIRECTLY OBSERVE the past expansion of space. It’s not a guess or belief or interpretation. We can literally see it happening.

But we are looking at snapshots not video. We have to put the snapshots in the correct order, context, etc.
I know the men and women patching this mosaic together are extremely clever but there are just so many variables. That they may be missing something fundamental is one of my big concerns.

@The_Hamster_King

Not quasars. The cosmic microwave background. The CMB is the light coming from the cloud of hot plasma that defines the farthest back in time we can see.

I missed the boat on that one I thought you were talking about the Hubble Deep Space Field.

@The_Hamster_King

No, it’s scientists arguing over which theory best fits the evidence.

Understand that there’s near-universal consensus among physicists about the existence of the big bang. What they’re debating is the mechanics of the first few microseconds of the event. They’re trying to refine the theory so that it provides the best explanation for ALL the data.

I do understand.
But
Still not convinced and most certainly I still need to read up on some of the concepts you have left me with and see were I stand then.

[Jon55]

@Marley23

ID isn’t a shoehorn, it’s a shoe. It is inherently religious. It’s true that you as an individual may be proposing a nondenominational type of intelligent design, but the ID movement is entirely Christian and wants Biblical creation taught in science classes. In addition to being wrong, their tactics are dishonest. Which is why I said they were bullshit.

Would you like me to ask you to cite examples so that after you get your links I can say well that is just one religious persons opinion and they are not the pope of the religous world?

I will accept your assertion and drop the ID.

How about Cosmic Mind?

http://buddhism.about.com/b/2009/02/12/darwin-and-buddhism.htm

Even though Buddhists do not technically believe in a Creator God, they do join many Hindus, Jews and progressive Christians and Muslims in thinking that a kind of “Cosmic Mind” exists, providing the possibility of order in an otherwise chaotic universe.

[Marley23]

@Jon55

Would you like me to ask you to cite examples so that after you get your links I can say well that is just one religious persons opinion and they are not the pope of the religous world?

What? I understand that Stephen Hawking is a prominent scientist, and I realize that you were asked to provide a cite after you said he doesn’t believe in God. That being said, his personal opinion really does not matter for the reasons I gave.

How about Cosmic Mind?

How about it? It’s not a scientific theory and it doesn’t belong in science classes.

[Jon55]

@Marley23

What? I understand that Stephen Hawking is a prominent scientist, and I realize that you were asked to provide a cite after you said he doesn’t believe in God. That being said, his personal opinion really does not matter for the reasons I gave.

So why does Behe’s opinion matter?

@Marley23

How about it? It’s not a scientific theory and it doesn’t belong in science classes.

Cosmic Mind was in response to your assertion that “the ID movement is entirely Christian and wants Biblical creation taught in science classes”

Is your objection that it is not science or that it is entirely Christian?

[Marley23]

@Jon55

So why does Behe’s opinion matter?

I didn’t bring him up, but:

@tomndebb

Some ID supporters, (Michael Behe) accept that generally Natural Selection is the engine driving evolution, but insist that some evolutionary events just can’t be explained by random mutations and natural selection, so they have to invent a belief that some Designer steps in every once in a while and tweaks the process to keep it going. (Unfortunately for them, all their examples of events that could not possibly occur through natural selection keep getting disproven. Pretty nearly every single one of the examples in Behe’s proposed “irreducible complexity” have, in the short time since he first published his ideas, been proven to be further reduced and, in several cases, explained.) Behe has also demonstrated on many occasions that he is driven by religious belief. When trying to appeal to readers of science, he avoids talking about God, but when he addresses religious groups, he explicitly rails against the “atheism” of Evolution.

@Jon55

Cosmic Mind was in response to your assertion that “the ID movement is entirely Christian and wants Biblical creation taught in science classes”

Where is the movement to get Cosmic Mind taught in science classes? Where are the parents demanding textbooks give equal time to evolution and Cosmic Mind?

Is your objection that it is not science or that it is entirely Christian?

It’s not science. It happens to be entirely Christian non-science, but even if it was less obviously driven by members of a single religious faith, it still wouldn’t be science.

[The_Hamster_King]

@Jon55

I was reading about the farther away the faster it flees. And that it does so in jumps I dont remember the actual numbers but something like 2.7 km/sec for some of the closer objects and then 4 km/sec for the next group farther out but no speeds in between.
The explanation given for the faster speeds for the more distant objects was that it was just our obsevationary perspective.
I dont think any was given for the “jumps”
Do you have any hypothosis for them?

I’m not sure what you read, but the theory doesn’t say anything about jumps. The current rate of expansion is 74 kilometers per second per megaparsec. If a galaxy is a million parsecs away, its receding at 74 km/s. If a galaxy is two million parsecs away, it’s receding at 148 km/s and so on.

Imagine you’re an ant standing at one end of a rubber ruler. Someone pulls on the ruler, so that over one second it stretches from being a foot long to being two feet long. From your perspective, the 1-inch mark is now 2 inches away. It moved at 1 inch/second. And the 2-inch mark is now 4 inches away. It moved at 2 inches/second. And so on, up to the 12-inch mark that moved at 12 inches/second. Even though the ruler is stretching uniformly, from your perspective it looks like the parts further away are moving faster.

As for the anomalies I think there are far too many of them to give so much weight to this theory.

I would suggest to you that you know so little about the theory and the observations supporting it that you’re not really in a position to make an informed judgement.

Yeah but it really didnt work so well until inflation at least as I understand it.

Nope, the big bang was widely accepted long before inflation was added as a refinement to it.

I know the men and women patching this mosaic together are extremely clever but there are just so many variables. That they may be missing something fundamental is one of my big concerns.

The fainter a galaxy is, the more it’s red-shifted. And way out beyond the farthest galaxies, everywhere we look, there’s an opaque cloud of hot plasma with the largest red shift of all. So, just from those basic observations we can conclude:

1. The universe is expanding. It has been for billions of years.
2. There was a time before galaxies formed when the universe consisted of nothing but hot plasma.

Which of these conclusions do you disagree with, and why?

[tomndebb]

@Jon55

So why are you worried about ID being used as a tool to sneak creationism into schools? The science is getting better everyday the tools of technology are getting better everyday. The days when this kind of lying could squeeze out a decade or more of use before it got exposed are swiftly coming to an end.

Every time this nonsense gets accepted in a school, some number of students will be given erroneous/dishonest information that will inhibit their learning of the facts. Why would I ever want to allow nonsense to be taught as science? And, of course, every time Creationists try to sneak it into the classroom, people and school districts have to waste money demonstrating the errors and lies of the Creationists.

@Jon55

I am asking for one page to be briefly discussed at the opening of the class. If you have better wording than mine I am all ears.

I have little problem with a section on Evolution opening with a brief discussion of the errors of Lamarck, Haeckel, and (before he turned openly dishonest), Lysenko and then concluding with a serious demonstration that ID is bunk. Other than that, I see no reason to try to squeeze errors into science curricula as there is too little time spent on actual science, now.