Big Bang Problem

Do they have to be? Did you know that when you look into the sky, you're looking billions of years into the past?

Because the speed of light is not infinite. This can be demonstrated in any college-level physics class (as a number of my friends have done.)The stars in the sky are not close, but rather, distant objects as massive as our own sun - sometimes moreso. Again this is an observation that anyone with sufficient expertise can make.Finite speed + extreme distance = a very, very long time for the light of distant events to reach us. The farther away you look, the farther back in time you're looking.So we don't have to "be there". We can look out and see the light from back then, now.

Can you clarify for me which it is that you're opposed to - the teaching of any religion in schools, or just the teachings of religions that aren't yours? Your post doesn't make it clear. (Leaving aside the point that if science is religion, then you've made the term "religion" essentially meaningless.)

Not that I disagree, but people who spell the possessive pronoun "its" with an apostrophe shouldn't throw stones.

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to guide it to it's happy home.

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{Adminnemooseus says: I used to waffle between "its" and "it's", and the such. I may well be wrong, but I vaguely recall sources of good authority that advocate the use of "it's" in such situations.}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 04-21-2004]

Not that I'm any kind of authority, but possessive pronouns, like his, hers, and its never have apostrophes. "It's" is only a contraction of "it is". The situation your authority may have been referring to was the contraction, but surely couldn't have been the possessive pronoun.The UW-Madison style guide has a page of common apostrophe errors at Page Not Found - University of Wisconsin—Madison. They have this to say:

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Apostrophes indicate possession for nouns ("Jim's hat," "several years' work") but not for personal pronouns (its, your, their, and whose).

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I'm not trying to be a grammar Nazi (I make the same apostrophe error a lot), but everybody's writing could stand improvement. Plus I owe a karmic debt for having my own errors pointed out while I made fun of someone, once.

I'm not trying to be harsh; it's just that the general rule here appears to be that we only correct the writing of those who are criticizing someone's writing. It's OT and I'm sorry.

Nobody's writing is so good that it can't bear improvement. And I would think that reasonable people would come to the conclusion that if you can remove obstacles (like poor communication) that keep you from getting your point across, that's just one more step towards fruitful debate.

Do you think that if you don't know everything about something, you don't know anything about it?Our knowledge about the universe is limited. But even with our limited knowledge a rational person can see that the inflationary cosmological models are a much better description of what we see than anything in the Bible.

Evidence. Evidence, evidence, evidence.What I mean is, no Bible, no authority, no scientist is to be taken over observations of the universe. What we see in the universe is the ultimate authority.Now, you need to be careful about keeping track of what you see in the universe, and what you think you know about the universe. And sometimes you need special equipment to make the sort of observations that are relevant to science. There's plenty of creationists that I respect as good people, like my parents, or Mike the Wiz who posts at this board.But if one is a liar, or a charlatan, I don't care what they believe - they're not a good person, evo or creo.Liars are bad. Not all creos are liars. Some evos are liars. Good people are good people. Nobody hates you for your beliefs, Des, just your actions. You lie and say hypocritical things. Maybe you're not aware of doing it but the ignorance defense only goes so far.Maybe some creationists have you brainwashed. Maybe they've made it so that you think telling falsehoods doesn't matter if you're doing it to spread the Bible, because the Bible is true, so how could it be lying? That's what I think Kent Hovind, Carl Baugh, Phillip Johnson, and others like them believe. It doesn't matter what they say or if it's true, because they're doing it for the Bible, and since the Bible is true, nothing you say to defend it can technically be a lie.That's bs, of course. Lies are lies. Don't be like those guys. They turn people away from Jesus because they're not truthful.

Well, here's the deal.You have to know that your statement is false to be a liar. So, say for instance I encounter a man on the street shouting "New Mexico isn't a state!" (My parents are from there - beautiful state - so I'm aware of the occasional controversy over NM's statehood. )Now, that's an obvious untruth. But he might just be unaware. So I go up to him and say "pardon me, but you might not be aware that New Mexico has been a state since 1912." So, now he knows.But the next week I see him making the same claim. Now I know he's a liar, because he's making statements that I know he knows are false - I know because I told him so.If you keep making claims without rebutting counterarguments, you become a liar. Like, microscopes. You can't observe the cell with your eyes alone - you need a tool to make that observation. Some of the conclusions of astronomers may seem weird to you, looking at the stars with only your eyes, but they make a little more sense when you can see with the instruments that scientists sometimes have.

But being able to recognize that we can know about the universe helps scientists to create technologies.Your way leads to nothing at all because you give up before you even start: "I'm not God so I can't ever know anything at all."

So don't. Remember when I told you that evolution didn't contradict belief in God? That's still true. And it's true for the Big Bang and other scientific theories.Nobody's asking you to think that God is false. We just want you to know that science is true.

My guess is, random peturbations in spacetime due to quantum effects, which would have disturbed the equilibrium and caused "clumping."The situation of balanced graviational equilibrium you describe is negatively stable; it falls apart into clumping at the least touch. Quantum peturbations provide that touch.

I think so, yes. I was thinking specificly of the phenomenon they call "quantum foam", and wikipedia has this to say on the subject:

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The quantum in quantum foam comes from quantum mechanics, and the foam comes from the idea that at extremely small distances (of the order of the Planck length), spacetime itself ceases to be smooth, and resembles instead a kind of rapidly changing foam. This is all thanks to the uncertainty principle.

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The importance of quantum foam is that it is thought to give rise to a sea of virtual particles that pop into existence for an instant, that is, for a period of time that is less than the period of time known as Planck time. These virtual particles make their existence known by the Casimir effect.

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So, yes, its all based on uncertainty. I believe that they are actualy spacetime disturbances, albeit extremely small ones. And they would indeed be amplified by the inflation of space.But we've way exceeded my knowledge of the subject.