==I’m sorry, GGG, but the Big Bang theory was developed by a Christian to explain observed facts.
Did I not make it abundantly clear that I was referring to evo-atheists like Stephen Hawkings et al who openly admit that they scrapped the empirical observations of Lamaitre et al (which point to our galaxy being at or near the center of the Universe) for purely ideological reasons?
GodGunsGuts in his 12th century goat-herder's tent is apparently unaware of the fact that Hawking and the "evo-atheists" didn't throw out the geocentric model of "Lamaitre" (sic), Lemaître himself did when he realized that a big-bang model was a far superior model.
Lemaître incidentally was a Roman Catholic Priest and an honorary prelate (a "Monsignor"), and was never to my knowledge accused of being an "evo-atheist."
“Did I not make it abundantly clear that I was referring to evo-atheists like Stephen Hawkings et al who openly admit that they scrapped the empirical observations of Lamaitre et al (which point to our galaxy being at or near the center of the Universe) for purely ideological reasons?”
—No. :-) Well, at least not in the post I was responding to, but I pretty quickly glanced over earlier posts in the thread.
What observations by Lemaitre are you referring to? I’ve read some of his writings - although certainly not all, and they aren’t an easy read - but I’ve never seen anything from him to suggest that we’re in a special place in the universe. In fact, I’m pretty sure the first publication of his to talk about the “Big Bang” theory was the paper titled: “A homogeneous Universe of constant mass and growing radius accounting for the radial velocity of extragalactic nebulae”.
If you have something of his that suggests we’re at the center or some special location, I’d love to see it.
This is also interesting - it’s an early 30’s article in Popular Science on Lemaitre’s recently proposed theory... it’s remarkably similar to modern descriptions of the Big Bang. It starts off with a graphic that’s essentially the ubiquitous “balloon analogy” (which, of course, is used to explain how we’re not in a special place in the universe!):
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2007/01/11/blast-of-giant-atom-created-our-universe/