Ian Chesterton <ichesterton@spfd.com> wrote in news:430688E9.6E1A@spfd.com:
Here are four ideas that were put forward by theists in the past:
1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Well a certain group of theists. This is immediately contradicted by the
empirical evidence. The "Heavens" were around long before the Earth
existed.
2. God created man as a unique creature, different from all other forms
of life because he was made in God's image.
Contradicted by empirical evidence. Man is not qualatively different from
the rest of living things on Earth. Easily classified as:
Eukaryote, Metazoa, Bilateria, Deuterostomia, Chordata, Craniata,
Vertebrata, Gnathostomata, Sarcopterygii, Terrestrial Vertebrate, Amniota,
Synapsida, Therapsida, Mammalia, Eutheria, Primate, Catarrhini, Hominidae,
Homo, Homo sapiens (sp).
It is not until you get to the species level that humans are unique but
that is true of all organisms. Humans nest in the tree of life on earth as
do all other life forms we know of.
3. Man's evil brought about God's judgement in the form of a worldwide
flood that fully explains the existence of the geologic column.
False. There is no evidence of a global flood in the last few thousand
years. There are even human civilisations that existed before and after the
claimed time of this flood. It is ruled out by history even before you get
to the physical evidence.
4. The universe and the life within it were created less than 10,000
years ago.
Contradicted by empirical evidence from just about every science.
<SNIP stuff in light of above>
It is thus remarkable that when the evidence for the big bang began to
make itself known through scientific observation and experimentation,
the atheists began to panic as they watched the believers in a deity
start preparing plates of crow for them to eat.
Eh? What nonsense. What atheists were panicking.
Despite their
insistence that their atheism was not a faith nor a belief, their
reaction to the religious implications of the big bang theory were
remarkably similar to that of the creationists when Charles Darwin wrote
'The Origin Of Species.' Just as the creationists went into denial and
then began to look for ludicrous ways that some of the evidence for
change could be dismissed, the atheists also went into denial over what
the big bang seemed to suggest and then began looking for equally
ludicrous ways to explain away the evidence so that it could be viewed
as something other than a justification for believing in a deity. No
less of a figure than Albert Einstein was so shocked by what his own
equations told him that he introduced a "fudge factor" to eliminate the
implications of his own evidence.
You've got this arse about face. When Einstein formulated GR he was not
aware at first that there is no stable solution to G=8piT for the universe
as a whole. When this was realised. He introduced the cosmological constant
to explain what was believed at the time by astronomers, that the universe
appeared to be static at large scales. When Hubble discovered that the
Universe was in fact expanding that meant the cosmological constant was NOT
needed. In other words the Big Bang hypotheses REMOVES the need for the
cosmological constant. G = 8piT is compatible with an expanding universe as
it stands. Recently the High Z supernova research team have announced that
the expansion of the universe looks to be accellerating. They have
explained this by reintroducing a form of the cosmological constant that
Einstein threw out. Science gets excited when new things are discovered.
Why would anyone panic about the chance for a visit to Stockholm?
Sir Fred Hoyle, who coined the term
"the Big Bang," also sought to avoid the implications of the evidence by
coming up with the steady state theory.
Wrong. Hoyle came up with the Steady State theory because he believed that
was what the evidence showed. His theory was killed off for most people
when the CMBR was discovered but as far as I know Hoyle was never convinced
of the BB (although as you say he coined the term). His position was based
on serious flaws in the BB theory that have not been fully resolved to this
day. That is the so called horizon, flatness and monopole problems. Guth
came up with his inflation theory to resolve some of the issues but
although it works well, it is rather too ad hoc for my liking. The last
word is far from being written.
And consider the harsh
criticism received by agnostic Robert Jastrow when he wrote the book
'God And The Astronomers' and explained that the evidence for the big
bang seemed to justify the theologians' belief in a deity. If atheism
is not a faith, then why the sudden rush to deny, explain away, and
attack?
Idiot. As above the BB is fully compatible with the EFE - Einstein breathed
a sigh of relief when Hubble announced his findings as it alllowed him to
drop the cosmological constant. The only thing science is in a rush to do
is explain empirical evidence to hand.
It is a fact that the big bang model shows a beginning for this
universe, and before Plank Time physics is unable to peer back any
further to tell us what existed prior to 10 <-43> seconds.
Modern physics cannot even get anywhere close to that. We have no particle
accellerators that probe to even trillions of times longer than that
interval. It is obvious by inspection that quantum field theory and general
relativity are out of their domain when it comes to this:
QFT: G=0, c=c, h=h
GR: G=G, c=c, h=0
So what we
have here is a classic case of two ideas, more appropriately called
faiths, that are at war over what the evidence for the big bang tells
them.
Bollocks.
Atheists commonly insist that without facts nothing can be said
to be true, and yet with their own science telling them that they cannot
use naturalism beyond Plank time to explore anything, they nevertheless
stick to their faith that there is no deity, despite the evidence that
says the universe did indeed have a beginning.
Scientists whether they be atheists or no, say we don't know yet. That is
the only true answer. Saying we don't know, therefore a goddidit, is a non
sequitur.
<Remaining god of the gaps nonsense dismissed and snipped>
Klazmon.
.
