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Somebody really needs to clue the Vatican into recent events and thinking in physics and astronomy.

The big bang idea was never based on anything better than the idea of an expanding universe which itself was never based on anything better than a misunderstanding of cosmic redshift. In real life, the universe is not expanding, and there never was a big bang.


http://cosmologystatement.org/



http://www.haltonarp.com/



http://www.electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm



http://www.spaceandmotion.com/cosmology/halton-arp-seeing-red-errors-big-bang.htm



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halton_Arp



http://bigbangneverhappened.org/

That's the scientific view of the thing. Nonetheless a rational person shouldn't even need science to reject the big bang idea; it should have been rejected on philosophical first principles on day one. Having all the mass of the universe collapsed to a point would be the mother of all black holes. How in hell is anything supposed to "bang" its way out of that?

Moreover, how is this supposed to have happened at a finite point in time 17B years ago? The expanse of time prior to that would be infinite...

Likewise, there is a question of yuppies claiming that "There wasn't any time before the big bang"... That's basically idiotic. Does that mean that my Japanese Timex watch wouldn't work before the "Big Bang(TM)"?? I mean, the thing came with a guarantee...

Likewise I hear Christian yuppies claiming that they like the big bang idea because it amounts to a creation story of sorts, and must somehow or other be compatible with the creation story of Genesis.

It isn't. Big Bang is bad physics and bad theology rolled into a package. I don't picture a supposedly omniscient and omnipotent God all of a sudden deciding that creating a universe would be a cool thing to do while the idea had never occurred to him previously, and whether that is supposed to have happened 6K or 17B years ago doesn't matter. The evidence indicates that the universe, like God, is eternal, and that the creation stories we read refer to the creation of our living world, as per Genesis, something like 6K - 10K years ago. The Earth viewed as a collection of rocks is older than that.

The other part of the thing which is junk science is the idea of black holes based on gravity, which is by many orders of magnitude the weakest force in nature. Merely asking gravity to hold our sun and Alpha Centauri together is like asking gravity to hold two microscopic dust motes together from four miles distance; how in hell is this same weakest force supposed to collapse whole major cosmic objects into black holes??

Wendy, firstly, read what the pope actually said ""The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe,"" --> he talks about big-bang THEORIES. At no point does he acknowledge them in any way. This is the MSM's by now tiresomely obvious spin, writing up headlines -- if you read what he actually said, you get a completely different picture, like "Contemplating it (the universe) we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God,"

Oh, bibtut — do you think that the universe was created on October 23, 4004 BC?

If those beliefs give you comfort, then that is fine. I do not hold to those myself. The Pope has views on this subject very close to mine, thought I am, as I said not a Catholic, though consider myself Christian...