Article image.
Article image.
One can say the same thing about Darwinian evolution.
The whole thing really cracks me up. For me, big bang = “let there be light.”
Let there be Light.
“By claiming that inflationary cosmology lies outside the scientific method, IS&L are dismissing the research of not only all the authors of this letter but also that of a substantial contingent of the scientific community.”
I’m embarrassed for Guth, et al. that they would even write this. Which sort of rhetorical fallacy is it, “appeal to authority”, or “argument by consensus”? It certainly isn’t a scientific argument.
It shouldn’t have taken professors at Princeton and Harvard to recognize the difference between mysticism and science.
But there’s no grant money in discernment along those lines, is there.
The big bang is like abiogenesis. No scientist can even begin to explain how or why it happened, so it is an article of faith that it did happen. Just like the creation story.
The difference is that religious people know they are accepting creation on faith, where scientists huff about in self-righteous indignation that anyone would dare question “science”.
If the Universe is ‘expanding’, what is it ‘expanding’ into?.............
Neither;
Scientific
or
American.
Discuss.
The Big Bang theory cannot seriously be questioned, due to the enormous volume of evidence. But there are gaps and inconsistencies which suggest we don’t fully understand it. Inflation is one “patch” that seems to cover most of those gaps, but lacks empirical evidence other than conveniently explaining the lack of clumpiness that mathematical models otherwise produce. We can see from the microwave background a certain amount of clumpiness that shouldn’t be there as well. Science isn’t perfect, but what are the alternatives?
Like global warming, cosmic inflation is settled science. Fire those three physicists who dared to question it! Revoke their degrees. And ban them from working in the field, ever again.
That is, after all, the accepted way of handling dissent these days.
If that picture doesn’t get you thinking... nothing will.
So much fertile ground for the advancement of knowledge.
Question anything you want, as long as it’s not anthropogenic climate change.
It's fair to say that neither the BBT, nor Genesis can be falsified; and, therefore, neither are scientific theories. However, that says nothing about the truth of either story. Both are, essentially, part of different faith-based belief systems.
Put another way; from a "scientific" perspective, the BBT and Genesis carry equal claim to validity. If you're a believer in Genesis; next time you're facing sneering condensation from someone claiming to wear the mantle of "science" -- just point out that their position is amusingly naive, and unsophisticated.
OK, first of all the "where would it leave us if..." argument is open to the same kind of sentimental charge the article made against the number of papers argument for those defending inflation.
Secondly, Rejecting inflation is not the same thing as rejecting the Big Bang model, much less fitting the creation of the universe into the ~6000 year time frame that is inferred by many from the Genesis narratives.
Thirdly, the Big Bang model was in its origins a Christian idea, not a secular one--in so far as it was first proposed by a Christian Theist who was initially accused by many of tainting science with religious ideas. For philosophically speaking, if it were true, it would be a death blow to the fundamental prediction of Atheism and Materialism--that the universe was eternal into the past. The attempt to reframe it by people like Kraus and Hawking and like minds in a Materialist system did not start until decades of Atheists and Materliasts trying to find alternative theories that tried to keep this fundamental prediction alive--in short the ideas of multi-verses and something coming from nothing are only entertained as last resorts to salvage what is left of the credibility of Atheism after every attempt to avoid having to embrace possibilities so absurd had failed.
Fourthly, the inference of a ~6000 year old universe was not universal in Christianity before modern times. And even Christians who argue for such a young universe are rather selective by their own rules of taking the early Genesis narratives literally. I know of nobody who maintains that Satan is literally a snake. And I know of nobody who maintains that somewhere on Earth there is the western gate to the Garden of Eden which we would be able to get to except for a flaming sword darting back and forth wielded by a Cherubim.
The IC”R” is an amusing organization.
The Big Bang Theory is a theory. It implies that should anyone wish to question it’s basic premise and replace it with something more plausible and defensible, they are free to do it.
“God made it” is an entirely defensible theological argument - but it is not science, nor should it be.
The IC”R”s modus operandi is to take doubts in a theory (and any honest scientist discloses these - and there have been many disclosed on this topic) and because there is not cocksure certainty claim it “falls apart”.
Nobody claims to have all the answers on this. It is posited at a theory with much information and actual research backing it up - but the IC”R”s attempts to cast it as some sort of heresy is always laughable.
The problem I have with IC”R” is that they have neither faith, nor scientific proficiency.
If they had faith, they’d not be searching for science to give them the answer. If they were actual scientists, they’d posit actual data that is compelling enough to overturn the presently accepted theoretical understanding.
Godless and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
A yes, the ICR? First place I turn to be told what to think as a scientist. This drivel is not worth the bandwidth.
Observationally speaking, they don’t really have evidence of “inflation”, only of “movement”. We literally have not been “observing” anything for a statistically significant amount of time to be able to come up with a positive determination of what is actually happening.
There was no “Big Bang”, there will be no “Big Crunch”. Just an ever moving ever recycling Universe... Without end.
Only ICR takes a lack of knowledge as proof of anything.