I am not so much pushing a certain point here, but rather seeking coherence, good logic, and honest answers.
I have a reasonable understanding of practical physics, but I don't see redshift as proving that the universe is expanding, and I don't see how an expanding universe would prove the big bang.
Remember, the fact that something could have happened a certain way is not proof that it did happen that way. (Unless, of course, a thing is proved to have happened, and all other possible methods have been positively disproven.)
While velocity does produce Doppler red-shift, it is possible that other things (besides velocity) can cause red-shift. Now I'm not saying that other things can cause redshift, but only that it is possible.
Just as an aside, there are a couple things we know about light. One is that the shorter wavelength/higher frequency light has more energy per photon. IR warms us nicely, but doesn't harm us on account of its properties as light. UV, on the other hand, sunburns us and actually disintegrates all sort of solid objects. Xrays are even worse. (If you put your hand in the rays of a running germicidal lamp for 3 seconds then smell it, it will smell like burning skin, just as if you had touched a red-hot burner. I've tried both, incidentally.)
Now consider this: We know that light passing through a gas interacts with it in some way, because it is slowed and refracted where appropriate. What if a photon, as it passed over an extremely long distance, through lots of sparse gas atoms -- what if it lost a little bit of its energy, causing a lengthening of wavelength -- this would also be redshift, not as a result of velocity, but as a result of distance and passing through giant gas clouds.
So red-shift could be caused by other things.
As to the expanding universe, if it were proved, how does this prove the big bang? Lets learn a little bit about dat der big bang. Quoting from Berkley we read that "Physical laws as we know them did not exist due to the presence of incredibly large amounts of energy,.."
Okay, so we're being asked to believe that there was a time when the laws of physics as we know them did not exist. Now that sort of takes, well that really takes quite a lot of faith!
So let us assume that it is proved that the universe is expanding, if we don't accept any idea of causation that doesn't require faith, then we just don't know.
But if we decide we can accept some things as a faith, two new opportunities arise: We can then have faith that the big bang (which violates the known laws of physics and was never witnessed) and we can also instead have faith that God created the universe and set it in motion and expanding.
Ahah!, one might say! Jesse's just attributing to God something because there is no other known possible cause. That's not even scientific!
Well, true enough. But the big bang is exactly the same thing, in that it also is an unproven story made up to explain the expanding universe (and even the source of all matter), because there is no other known possible cause.
Let us briefly examine the word and concept of "Supernatural."
The universe either came to be or it always or never was.
It obviously is, so it either always was or came to be.
But if either of us believed that it always was, we would not be having this conversation, so that leaves one thing: It came to be. Thus arises the question, "how."
Considering that the universe came to be, it either came to be by natural means (that is to say conforming to the known natural laws of physics) or it didn't.
If it didn't come into being solely by the natural laws of physics, then it came in a way that was beyond natural -- or literally -- super natural.
So whether it's the big bang or special creation, either way it is a super-natural event.
So I believe, as part of my faith, that God created the world in 6 twenty-four hour days, but I freely admit that it is a faith.
But mine is no more a faith then for those who believe in the big bang, it's just that they generally won't admit that it is a faith, and they say that it is scientific fact.
The big bang has not even been proved possible!
(And we know that just being possible isn't even proof of being true.)
So who am I going to believe? A bunch of evolutionists who believe that all came to exist randomly for no reason, and who believe that there's no such thing as wrong? Or the Bible, which teaches that wrong does exist, and that lying is wrong?
Well, at least the Bible sets forth a reason that lying is wrong, and that it is true, whereas the pure strict naturalistic evolutionist believes that there is no such thing as wrong because it all came to be without a purpose, and that there is no law greater then mans law, that no such thing as wrong exist (and therefor lying is not wrong) -- the only rule is that of the jungle, specifically don't get caught.
But so many people believe in evolution. They can't all be wrong, can they? Remember, truth is not determined by popular opinion. So yes, they could all be wrong.
Thus it is entirely possible, and even likely that thousands of evolution-believing professors and teachers teach it as absolute true proven fact, when they know themselves that they take it as a faith, not as proven science.
The result is that all their students end up not knowing evolution but believing it, being confident that their professors and other experts know it to be true.
So, without resorting to faith, how does redshift really give evidence that the universe is billions of years old or that the big bang happened?
Thanks and keep up the good work,
-Jesse
I brought up the red shift as one example of *evidence* (note: I did not say “proof”) of an “old” universe. I did not intend to dwell on it. Please just forget I even brought it up.
Sure, the Big Bang theory could certainly be incorrect (and, while a good chunk of of astronomy would need to be revisited, it’s certainly not impossible to provide for other causes of expansion), but why would that prove Evolution to be false, or the universe to be young?
We have plenty of proof that the world is old, after all, and so much of science - science that has proven valid through contributions to the world - is reliant on an old earth, that it would require a miracle to explain why these sciences worked.
God could have created the world with the appearance of age, I suppose, but that would involve God deliberately deceiving us. That, in turn, would lead me to only one rational conclusion (ignoring, of course, the possibilities that God is malicious or incompetent); that God WANTS us to believe that the world is old, for reasons unknown, in which case I ought treat it as such.
In short, I believe you to be railing against a position not represented amongst normal believers in evolution. Certainly, the extreme naturalist god-hating crowd believes in evolution (other than one or two who have found their own answers to life, I suppose), as well as an old earth and the big bang, but none of these positions are incompatible with God. One can believe both, and they certainly work very well together; isn’t a grand design spanning billions of years that works so perfectly, with such simple mechanisms, not proof of a higher hand at work? And wouldn’t such a work demonstrate the hand of its designer to be perfect?
Some people worship Science, but that doesn’t mean one MUST worship science to accept certain facts and theories about the universe to be true. Nor does acceptance of such facts and theories force one to accept a set of ethics, any more than the motion of tectonic plates requires us to relocate every year or our observations of cats require us to toy with our food before we eat it, regardless of what some may say.