The Big Bang is NOT Scientific

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The theory that space and time were created with the big bang does not make sense at all.

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I disagree with this statement. I disagree with this for a very trivial reason: Big Bang does not really refer to an event. Big Bang is the name of a theory that is based on observations that we can make today, and using the known laws to physics to determine the implications of those observations.Here is a brief (and probably inaccurate) description of Big Bang. I welcome any corrections from those who actually have any knowledge of this subject.It is an observational fact that the spectra of distant galaxies are red shifted. It is a standard interpretation of such a red shift that these galaxies are receding from us.It is an observational fact that the amount of the redshift is proportional to their distance from us. A reasonable interpretation is that the universe itself is expanding. This is reasonable since General Relativity, a well-verified scientific theory, itself makes the prediction that the universe must either be expanding or contracting -- unless one adds an ad hoc kluge to prevent it.So, assuming that the universe is expanding, we can then, mentally, "run the clock backwards" to see what the universe was like in the past. Well, galaxies must have been closer in the past. The universe must have been denser, and, using the known laws of physics, we can determine that the universe was hotter in the past.Eventually, we get to a point that the universe was so dense and so hot that the known laws of physics are known to be inadequate to accurately describe the universe. At this point, we cannot continue to extrapolate backwards, and so we can only guess at what the universe may have been like, what processes may have been occurring.These are not idle speculations -- we can test whether there is any validity to this theory. For instance, if the universe is really expanding, it must have been very hot in the distant past. If it were very hot in the distant past, the universe must have been filled with a "blackbody radiation" that was indicative of this situation. As the universe expanded to our present day, this radiation, by our known laws of physics, must have retained its blackbody temperature, but "cool" down, becoming indicative of a cooler temperture: it must be mostly microwave radiation. In other words, if Big Bang is correct, the universe must be filled with this microwave radiation. We do, in fact, observe this radiation -- a confirmation of a prediction of this theory, in the best traditions of science.What the Big Bang does not do is describe the actual beginning of the universe, if it does indeed have a beginning. As I have stated in other threads, our present laws of physics are not adequate to describe the universe before a certain time after the creation. Right now scientists are trying to improve our understanding of the laws of physics so that we can understand the universe at these earlier times, but for now any discussion of the origin of the universe can only be speculation. It may always be only speculation. It may be that our knowledge of the laws of science will always be inadequate to understand the nature of the origin of the universe, if it does have an origin.

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Science - the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding

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Okay, so you are using a definition of science that is different from the commonly accepted definition. The definition of science that most people around here use is the body of models and the data used to test the models by means of the scientific method.First, I do not agree that the Big Bang is not science even by the definition that you are using.Second, I don't find the question of whether Big Bang is or is not science according to your definition is an interesting enough question to continue the discussion.--

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If I drop a pencil 10 times I can guartee that the ten times i drop it it will go to the ground defying all outliers.

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What does it mean to "defy all outliers?" I think that this is an indication that your thoughts on this subject may be a little unclear, and that you don't know as much about this subject as you seem to think that you do.This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 28-Apr-2005 04:22 AM

Actually, what I meant was that the phrase "defy all outliers" is meaningless. One can defy authority, one can defy expectations, but I have never heard of anyone defying an outlier. Unless by "outlier" one means the particular person in a position of authority who is out lying in that field. While I am not necessarily against a creative use of language, I am always suspicious when a person who is arguing against the scientific consensus uses terms in a non-standard way -- it sets off my "crackpot" alarm.

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Whats wrong with arguing with the dictionary?

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Nothing is wrong with using a dictionary. In fact, I appreciate that you clarified what you meant by "science". However, you are using the word "science" differently than we understand the meaning of "science" here in these discussion forums. Which means that there is the possibility that either we already agree with you (and there is nothing more to discuss), or that we find the particular point that you are raising to be uninteresting.--

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...it will float in the air for a little....

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I don't think that I am the one who needs to take a trip back to third grade science. I assure you that the pencil will not float in the air for a while. It will travel in a parabolic path until it strikes another object.--Let's get back to your response to a previous message of mine:

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This is reasonable since General Relativity, a well-verified scientific theory, itself makes the prediction that the universe must either be expanding or contracting

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There is actually NO evidence for this theory scientists have been trying to prove it for over 50 years yet still there has yet to be evidence.

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Well, you can believe that there is not evidence for General Relativity if you want. You can believe that mass does not cause space to warp, but starlight will take a bent path around the sun just the as the General Theory of Relativity exists. You can believe that a rotating mass cannot actually drag space itself around, yet the perihelion of Mercury will continue to precess at the rate predicted by GR. You may believe, if you wish, that space cannot be stretched and compressed, yet we will continue to observe that closely orbiting neutron stars will undergo an increase in orbital period, and at exactly the rate that matches the loss of energy by radiating waves composed of these types of distortions, as predicted by GR.So GR predicts phenoma that we actually observe, and that these phenoma have no other explanation except by the bending, stretching, and otherwise warping of space-time itself. Furthermore, GR also predicts that the universe itself should be expanding and contracting, and, indeed, we observe that the galaxies are receding in the expected manner. Why, then, should we doubt that space itself is expanding?

This is sounding a little like "brane theory". Is that what you are talking about?At any rate, I don't see anything in your post that contradicts mine -- you seem to be proposing another cause for Big Bang.

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I hope you know what you're saying by this. Has it ever occured to you that outliers may be because of human error or miscalculation?

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I hate to derail the thread over a semantics issue, but you misunderstand my point. The point is the phrase "defy outliers" is meaningless. One never "defies outliers". Outliers are never "defied".Unless you give the phrase some meaning. You can tell us what you meant by "defying outliers". Then you will be creating a new word (or, at least, a new meaning for an old word). It's allowed, but until you define "defy outliers" you cannot expect the rest of us to understand what it means.

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I have a reason to believe that you (evolutionists) believe that the big bang was an explosion.

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Yes, you are correct: you did have reason to believe that evolutionists think the Big Bang was an explosion. And some evolutionists may have gotten their information from the same books that you did, and so some evolutionists do think that the Big Bang was an explosion.However, your books are wrong. Cosmologists who study the early universe do not believe that Big Bang was an explosion.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

I will also add to what Percy has just said.According to the General Theory of Relativity, space must either be expanding or contracting. Observations show that it is actually expanding. So, it actually is the case that the gravitational attraction of the two pencils must overcome the fact that the space between them is expanding. If they are too far apart, then the gravitational attraction will be too weak, and the expanding space will bring them further and further apart.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

My apologies to crashfrog for butting in, but:

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Something cant come out of nothing.

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Big Bang does not say that something came out of nothing.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

That is exactly what I did say. Big Bang is (at least not yet) a theory about origins. It is a theory about history. Big Bang (to sum it up in a sentence) merely says that the universe is expanding, and if you "run the clock backwards" it must have been very, very hot and very, very dense.So far, our current understanding of the "laws of physics" are incomplete, and we do not have any theories as to origins; at least no testable theories.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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I get nervous when it is used around "something from nothing" arguments with the Big Bang.

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I've also never liked it when people actually use it to explain the origin of the universe. Quantum fluctuations is a phenomenon that happens within the universe; it always seemed to me to be a bit dodgy to use it as an explanation for how the universe came to be, or why the universe exists, or whatever the correct question is. Sort of like expecting that the actor who is playing a carpenter in a play actually built the stage on which he is acting.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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Dont even try to understand it.

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Heh. That pretty much sums it up, eh?

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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It has always been my understanding that LTD is assumed to be applicable for the universe until shown otherwise and that what is observed in our own galactic environs is the primary model we have for other regions of the cosmos.

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The universe is under no obligation to behave according to "rules" that we arbitrarily assign. All laws of physics are simply statements about what we have observed about the universe. The laws of thermodynamics just tell us what we have observed so far. It is entirely possible that new observations will require that we modify or abandon these laws as descriptions of how the universe works.It is pretty straight forward. The universe is expanding, and in the distant past the universe was very hot and very dense. If this implies that the laws of thermodynamics are not absolute, or that they do not apply to the early universe, then we have to accept that. If this merely implies the possibility that the laws of thermodynamics are not absolute, then we are justified in examining the implications of this.Notice the ifs. So far, we do not yet know whether the laws of thermodynamics have been violated.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

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We are looking at the universe as an entire entity.

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Psst. The buzzword is "Fallacy of Composition".-

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It may sound like I am arguing from authority (mine) but the alternative is to call me a liar or incompetent. Neither are acceptable

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Actually, it is acceptable. But it is only acceptable if and when someone can bring up actual observational evidence that contradicts your claims, and/or provides a well-reasoned alternative interpretation of the evidence that exists.Simply stating that what you say contradicts what they want to believe and therefore you are simply wrong is indeed unacceptable, at least in the science forums.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)

Remember that even if we accept that there was a t=0 before which there was no time (a "beginning" of time itself), the laws of thermodynics may be completely valid and still not contradict the idea of a "beginning" of the universe.The conservation of energy says that the amount of energy must be the same at any two points in time. Even with the idea of the universe having a "beginning", this remains true; there has never, even under this idea, been a point in time when the universe contained a different amount of energy.And if we ignore, momentarily, the statistical nature of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the 2LoT simply says that the total entropy at a later time will be greater than at an earlier time. t=0 was the earliest possible time, and so this would be the point when entropy was a minimum. There was never a time prior when the entropy was greater.This is also ignoring other facts, like the points cavediver was making about the difficulties in applying our concepts of "time" and "energy" to the universe near the singularity. Or the fact that when our understanding of physics becomes such that we can investigate the universe near the singularity, we may very well find that the laws of thermodynamics CAN be violated under certain circumstances. Or that our laws of physics may not apply to whatever, outside of what we know of the universe, "caused" the universe (if the universe can be said to have a "cause").And never mind that if we are talking about the origin of time itself, "before" which there was neither time nor space, I don't even know what "cause", "creation", or "beginning" even means any more.

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"Religion is the best business to be in. It's the only one where the customers blame themselves for product failure."
-- Ellis Weiner (quoted on the NAiG message board)