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Author Topic:   Creation cosmology and the Big Bang
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 56 of 305 (664215)
05-30-2012 12:50 AM
Reply to: Message 55 by zaius137
05-30-2012 12:36 AM


Re: Far behind the times
Creation Ministries International, Arguments we think creationists should NOT use:
quote:
Which arguments should definitely not be used?
. . .
‘Missing solar neutrinos prove that the sun shines by gravitational collapse, and is proof of a young sun.’ This is about a formerly vexing problem of detecting only one third of the predicted numbers of neutrinos from the sun. Also, accepted theories of particle physics said that the neutrino had zero rest mass, which would prohibit oscillations from one ‘flavour’ to another. Therefore, consistent with the data then available, some creationists proposed that the sun was powered one-third by fusion and two-thirds by gravitational collapse. This would have limited the age to far less than 4.5 billion years. {See subsequent article ‘Missing’ neutrinos found! No longer an ‘age’ indicator Ed}.
However, a new experiment was able to detect the ‘missing’ flavours, which seems to provide conclusive evidence for oscillation. This means that neutrinos must have a very tiny rest mass after allexperimental data must take precedence over theory. Therefore creationists should no longer invoke the missing neutrino problem to deny that fusion is the primary source of energy for the sun. So it cannot be used as a young-age indicatornor an old-age indicator for that matter. See Newton, R., Missing neutrinos found! No longer an ‘age’ indicator, TJ 16(3):123—125, 2002.
Even other creationists know that your claim is out-of-date and no longer usable.
Edited by dwise1, : bbcode clean-up

This message is a reply to:
 Message 55 by zaius137, posted 05-30-2012 12:36 AM zaius137 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 111 of 305 (665164)
06-08-2012 10:12 PM
Reply to: Message 107 by zaius137
06-08-2012 7:43 PM


Re: W and Z
Now for God created to become the dominate view.
Whatever makes you think that it isn't? That is not a rhetorical question!
In the general public, most are theists and I believe that Christians enjoy a bare majority in the USA and Canada. Which would mean that most believe in "God" (whatever that might mean in the many different forms of monotheism out there) as "the Creator". Which would make "God created" the dominant view.
Several years ago, I met on-line a fundamentalist Christian, Carl Drews, who is an opponent of "creation science". He and his family had found a fundamentalist church that they liked and whose outreach programs they really liked. But when his pastors advocated the teaching of outright lies (ie, "creation science"), he found that he had to leave that church. His entire story, in his own words, are at http://www.theistic-evolution.com/mystory.html.
Part of his story concerns his earliest exposure to this "issue" (in quotation marks, because any "controversy" is purely of creationist manufacture) -- of course, since you have the link to that page, you can read it in its entirety rather than have to rely on my abbreviated quoting of it:
quote:
I went to good public schools. I remember Mr. Reed, my 8th-grade science teacher, explaining to us about science and religion. He told us that science is not qualified to speak on matters of faith, and demonstrated this with a few gedanken (thought) experiments. He explained some of the differences between the two realms.
It wasn't until sometime in high school that I first heard the idea that the theory of evolution and the Bible are in conflict. This idea puzzled me. "What's the problem?" I thought. "God said, 'Let there be light, earth, plants, and animals' and evolution produced all these things." I didn't know it at the time, but that was my first simple definition of theistic evolution.
I graduated from Stanford University in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, with a concentration in Computer Science. I've worked professionally developing software ever since.
In about 1985 I was attending a Young Singles Bible Study at my church when creationism first came up. Someone had brought in a small pamphlet attacking evolution. It was a comic book featuring an overweight goateed college professor and a clean-cut handsome male student who easily refuted all the professor's teaching about evolution. "I've seen that one!" reported a friend named Rick gleefully. "That guy really slams evolution!" I volunteered to check it out and report back to the group. My attitude was, "I knew that evolution had some holes in it. Let's see what he found." I went to the public library to look up the references that were cited in the pamphlet.
The first citation wasn't quite what the original source had said. The second one contained some distortion, too. So did the third. It got worse and worse. None of the original authors would have agreed with the conclusions drawn in the pamphlet. I was shocked and upset! This Christian pamphlet contained substantially wrong information! I was able to locate most of the references, and all the ones I found had twisted the meaning of original information. I remember that in one example the author had neglected to mention the chemical benzene that was involved in an experiment to form oil quickly.
I brought my findings back to the Young Singles group and presented them. I tried to be gentle, but the writing was on the wall. The group was shocked, surprised, and angry. Afterwards Rick said in a small voice that he thought that somewhere there was some information that could disprove evolution.
I wrote to the publisher of the pamphlet and asked them why a Christian would put together such a poor pamphlet. I got a fairly lengthy response that admitted no wrong, misinterpreted several things I had said, defended the pamphlet, and supplied additional examples to replace the ones I had rejected.
This experience was so upsetting to me that I refused to discuss evolution for many years after that.
Basically, religion tells you "what" happened and "who" had dunnit, while science tells the "how." Science cannot and does not have anything to say about religion, but it most definitely has a lot to say about how the universe works. You want to promote a "God created" viewpoint? OK, fine, so do it! Science has nothing whatsoever to say about it, though people and groups with views that differ from yours may have something to say, though when they do so then they also are dealing outside of science. Though, of course, when you make false statements about what science should show if your particular excessively narrow religious ideas were true, then you should not have the audacity to act surprised when the evidence contra-indicates your claims.
To reiterate, what Carl Drews was taught was that while religion deals with "who dunnit", science deals with "what actually happened, including how it was dun." As a basic approach, I think that should work well to show that there really isn't any actual conflict between science and religion. The only conflict happens when religion decides to decree that reality must be different than it actually is, which is now the standard creationist position.
BTW, that pamphlet Carl mentioned was the original Chick Pubs tract, Big Daddy? I had also read it, back circa 1970; since then, a second edition has come out which appears to have been written by Kent Hovind. Back circa 1970, my high school best friend's mother and a few other family members converted to Christian fundamentalism as part of the "Jesus Freak Movement" of that time. As "fellow travellers" (a term I borrow from McCarthyism's anti-Communism -- though HBO's most excellent Hemingway and Gellhorn, currently showing, indicates that the term also applied much earlier, both before and during WWII), we not only learned what fundamentalism taught (and which we disagreed with), but we also were free to peruse their propaganda, including countless Chick Pubs tracts. Those were the most hilarious things that we had ever read! Many years later, I found some Chick Pubs tracts in public restroom stalls. My reaction was that they were sorely inadequate as an alternative source of TP -- I have receive instruction on how to convert a page from the Sears and Roebuck's catalog to serve as TP; you need to crumple it up a lot.
OK, so more scientists are skeptical than is the general public. But how much is that due to religionists' falsely insisting that any naturalistic explanation is an argument against God? You want to falsely force scientists to choose between God and science? You know what's going to win! Instead, why not couch it in real terms?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 107 by zaius137, posted 06-08-2012 7:43 PM zaius137 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 112 by zaius137, posted 06-09-2012 3:07 AM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 196 of 305 (666216)
06-24-2012 2:06 PM
Reply to: Message 189 by Chuck77
06-23-2012 8:10 PM


Re: Big Bang violates physics
Typical creationist diversionary tactic. You try to change the subject with a challenge that is at best vaguely related to the discussion. Though the challenge doesn't need to be at all related to the discussion. A local creationist activist refers to it as "rabbit trailing", alluding to a tracking dog being thrown off the scent he's following by a passing rabbit that he then chases, losing the trail he was following. That creationist warns his followers to not let "evolutionists" pull that trick on them, denouncing it as thoroughly dishonest, and yet in reality it is a favorite creationist trick; in repeated attempts to discuss his claims with him, that activist would invariably and hypocritically "respond" with nothing but yet another "impossible question" rabbit-trail challenge.
Rabbit-trailing is thoroughly dishonest and sadly typical of creationists, practically archetypical of them. Why do creationists wonder that they have such a bad reputation?
The subject was Zaius' failed attempts to prove that the Big Bang violates physics; it's even the subtitle of this thread in the topic. Now that discussion has started winding down with observations that Zaius' objections have been answered and shown to be wrong and that he has not responded to those criticisms, but rather just continues to make his assertions which have been shown to be wrong. Now to NoNuke's Message 187, which states:
Nonsense. You oppose the big bang because you don't like it. You accept contrary crank hypothesis and dismiss criticisms of those hypothesis without regard for the evidence.
, you respond with a "rabbit trail" challenge, an attempt to divert attention away from the actual discussion, which is Zaius' misunderstanding of physics and his reasons for rejecting the evidence.
Here are two questions:
quote:
1. What is the evidence for the Big Bang?
and
2. What is wrong with this claim that attempts to disprove the Big Bang?
Those are two very different questions that call for two very different responses. In responding to the first question, the respondent would be expected to provide evidence in support of the Big Bang. But in responding to the second question, the respondent would be expected to address the claim in question and to show what is wrong with it and why it fails in its attempt. For example, if the claim were that if the Big Bang were true, then there should be herds of purple unicorns on all the earth's continents, but purple unicorns don't exist so the Big Bang is false. The proper response is to demonstrate that that claim's assertion about the necessary existence of purple unicorns is wrong.
To put it in a different setting, consider a murder trial in which John is the defendant. The prosecution claims that John committed the murder. How should the defense respond? Obviously, the defense should respond by demonstrating that the prosecution's claim is wrong, that John did not commit the murder. However, you would demand that the defense abandon that approach and instead find the real murderer and prove that murderer's guilt. The approach that you would demand is clearly wrong.
Now, if you really want to know what the evidence for the Big Bang is, then research it. A particularly useful approach would be to trace the history of its development. What observations led to its formulation and guided its development. What other theories were proposed to explain those observations and why did they fail? Work through that process so that you can understand where the current conclusions came from.
And I would strongly suggest that you do not use creationist sources in your research, because creationist sources will only lie to you, as they always have in the past.
Edited by dwise1, : removed vestigial last line

This message is a reply to:
 Message 189 by Chuck77, posted 06-23-2012 8:10 PM Chuck77 has not replied

  
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