age/expansion of the universe

[shernren]

A "howler" sounds more like the pinata smasher.

...

I note that you went after a peripheral issue in the Arp article to try to discredit him. It certainly was not the main point of the discussion. But the argument was that on a minor point used for corroboration, he was ignorant. Not wrong or an informed dissenter, but ignorant, I think was the inference at least. Outdated is sort of the same idea. But, this is the usual method of attack.

Lets just look at what a hubble constant involves -- a selection of representative data to measure expansion.

Now, I have no problem assuming for the sake of argument that the "modern" figure arose from good intentions. I don't know the people and I needn't prove a crime to make the point. Indeed, the very formulation of what this "meausurement" is tendentious enough that no one should be "howling."

One of Arp's main points was about major changes in very basic physics. He was using other sources to make his argument, not his own work. If an atom yesterday is unlike an atom today, why exactly are we betting the ranch on big bang?

Oh, the irony. You're going to proclaim me a pinata smasher based on exactly one word I used in my reply to you. Then you say that the Hubble constant was a peripheral point in Arp's article.

I'm sorry, but this "peripheral point" was the one and only paragraph you quoted from that article in this thread. If it was so peripheral, why are you getting all worked up defending it? If there are far more important points in the article that bear consideration, why did you not quote them when you could have - and when you have had no qualms copying and pasting entire articles in the past? It seems suspiciously like you are trying to divert attention from this "peripheral" issue of Hubble's constant. I won't speculate why.

For a long time, creation science has been greeted here with mockery or angry indignation. I actually posted it while making extensive use of the ignore list and addressed it to no person in particular.

Apparently at the time the hubble revision was presented, they ignored published data on spiral galaxies and added others with excess redshift components.

See "Arguments for a Hubble constant near Ho = 55" ApJ 571, 615, 2002.

Apparently they also "corrected" their data under the pretext that there were peculiar motions in the excess redshifts.

Coincidently the 1 Oct. ApJ has a paper on intrinsic redshifts by Morley Bell where he mentions he obtains Ho = 58.

Someone named Sandage was also excluded from input.

Obviously, someone is helping me a bit with the references and basis for response.

Here is a link to the paper in question for those who are following this: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issues/ApJ/v571n2/15433/15433.text.html

I'll send this off to an astrophysics professor here at ANU for comments and criticism - I have some hunches of my own but I should check with someone who knows more. (You could even try to summon up KerrMetric if you dare. ) In the meantime, however, note two things:

1. The analysis essentially says nothing about the far more recent and accurate obtaining of the Hubble constant from WMAP data.

2. The paper says:

For field galaxies, peculiar velocities of the order of 1000 km s-1 are out of the question because they would blow apart the whole bottom third of the Hubble redshift

apparent magnitude relation.
​

However (and this is part of what I'll be checking with a professor), this seems to be an ad hoc rejection because there are indeed peculiar velocities on the order of 1000 km/s in the Virgo Cluster; indeed, there are actually blueshifted galaxies in the cluster - galaxies falling to the center so fast that relative to us, they're coming towards us (because they're falling faster than the center is receding). Data: http://www.seds.org/messier/more/virgo_gal.html

And what is this "bottom third" of the Hubble redshift-apparent magnitude relation?

I might be wrong, but it looks like the very bit that supports what he's trying to prove! Circularity, anyone? Looking at the data above and visually extrapolating the 72 line it looks like in fact that line would fit the data even better - there are far more points above the 55 line than below.

 

[mindlight]

Has anyone ever determined if the rate of expansion of matter in the universe has been constant throughout history? Has the accumulation of matter and energy in the universe ever created enough gravity and electromagnetic forces to slow down or speed up the rate of expansion? If the rate of expansion was once greater than it is now, can we really measure the age of the universe by measuring its current size? If the rate of expansion has been constant, then it would take x years for the universe to reach its present size. But if the rate of expansion has changed over time, wouldn’t the age of the universe be older or younger than it appears to be?

If the rate of expansion has changed, do we know how many different times it has changed? If you accept that the rate has not been constant and you don’t know the number of times the rate has changed (or the direction of each change), can’t you simply make the observed data from our time support whatever idea you want to believe about the age of the universe?

BTW: I’ve heard of the inflationary theory, but I haven’t studied it.

This is a good question and reveals how little we know.

If the rate of expansion is accelerating then the universe may we older than it appears. If it were declerating it may be younger. But what is it that causes it to accelerate. Could these same factors or others reverse these trends. Over the history of the universe has the rate alternated. If it has alternated how could we measure any calculation of age with any accuracy.

We live one small planet in one small solar system of one small galaxy and we believe that we can generalise from what we see in our tiny time frame about the age and size of the universe. BUt for all we know what we currently experience as an acceleration here is being experienced as a deceleration elsewhere in the universe even now for a whole host of reasons we have not even begun to discuss yet.

 

[busterdog]

This is a good question and reveals how little we know.

If the rate of expansion is accelerating then the universe may we older than it appears. If it were declerating it may be younger. But what is it that causes it to accelerate. Could these same factors or others reverse these trends. Over the history of the universe has the rate alternated. If it has alternated how could we measure any calculation of age with any accuracy.

We live one small planet in one small solar system of one small galaxy and we believe that we can generalise from what we see in our tiny time frame about the age and size of the universe. BUt for all we know what we currently experience as an acceleration here is being experienced as a deceleration elsewhere in the universe even now for a whole host of reasons we have not even begun to discuss yet.

I am trying to go through this in the debate with Willtor.
http://foru.ms/t5886017-formal-debate-busterdog-and-willtor.html&page=5#post39721928

You hit the nail on the head. Stripping away the technical jargon, indeed, what we have is a "tiny frame" to look at the age of everything.

Conventional science that most of the energy that there is -- by several orders of magnitude -- is "unseen". But supposedly what we can't see behaves so predictibly that it can't possibly have sorted everything out a few million years ago, let alone a few thousand. Both time frames are too short for evolution.

Lets say that geology suggests a few million years to create varves or limestone caverns, which I am not accepting, except for the sake of argument, we still have an insufficient amount of provable time for evolution to happen. Nor will I admit that geological time is even valid without clarity on the behavior of the cosmos and how the behavior of matter making up rocks is affected.

The age/expansion model is needed to make the evolutionary math work. The scale has to be broadened enormously to make something besides God the "ancient of days."

However, the material universe is largely an inference. Science says that, just here and now, we have mostly energy that we can't see and measure only dimly. As for matter, we can only infer about 95% of what there really is. That's a pretty crappy sample on which to define anything, let alone a 15 billion year timeline.

There are a number of whoppers that come out of this model: 1 steady state of 95% of all matter, which is unseen -- more or less; 2. the steady state of unseen energy so powerful that the energy of many stars is contained in a cubic centimeter of nothing; 3. taking our 60 year old telescopes we think we can speak conclusively about 15 billion years. (Well, lets be kind. The theory of a 15 billion year old universe is not a whopper, but just a theory. The whopper is that all other views are nonsense -- such as a plasma model for six days of creation.) But, the fact is, that we simply assume that 95% of everything behaves rather simply and placidly on the long term -- that is a kind of steady state, providing a more or less constant rate of either expansion or acceleration post-big bang.

And, we haven't even started talking about extra-dimensional values, which physics generally accepts as components of the big bang. They way it is largely unknowable and enormously powerful, but we know it's operation can be confined to a remote slice of time 15 billion years ago and just in one very small "spot".


As for expansion, contraction, etc., in the last 100 years there have been a series of changing views on the subject about whether we are expanding, accelerating, etc. All views depend upon the activity of a theorized energy no one has seen. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people6/Peebles/peebles-con5.html

And then convention essentially calls us creationists unreasonable for our failure to provide a scientific model for a six day creation. Their models are built upon enormous assumptions and we get killed for not following suit. Silly.

 

[KerrMetric]

You hit the nail on the head. Stripping away the technical jargon, indeed, what we have is a "tiny frame" to look at the age of everything.

Wrong. As usual I might add. What "tiny frame"?

Conventional science that most of the energy that there is -- by several orders of magnitude -- is "unseen".

Wrong again. Do you know what an "order of magnitude" is? Check it out!

But supposedly what we can't see behaves so predictibly that it can't possibly have sorted everything out a few million years ago, let alone a few thousand. Both time frames are too short for evolution.

And what flight of fancy or outright ignorance do you base this comment on?

Lets say that geology suggests a few million years to create varves or limestone caverns, which I am not accepting, except for the sake of argument, we still have an insufficient amount of provable time for evolution to happen. Nor will I admit that geological time is even valid without clarity on the behavior of the cosmos and how the behavior of matter making up rocks is affected.

More gobbledygook. Why the biology reference?

The age/expansion model is needed to make the evolutionary math work. The scale has to be broadened enormously to make something besides God the "ancient of days."

Don't be silly. Not a single cosmologist I know even thinks about biology in this context.

However, the material universe is largely an inference. Science says that, just here and now, we have mostly energy that we can't see and measure only dimly. As for matter, we can only infer about 95% of what there really is. That's a pretty crappy sample on which to define anything, let alone a 15 billion year timeline.

Only in the eyes of the ignorant. Do you know anything about the ACTUAL observations????????????

There are a number of whoppers that come out of this model: 1 steady state of 95% of all matter, which is unseen -- more or less;

Error #1. Get a fact checker!

2. the steady state of unseen energy so powerful that the energy of many stars is contained in a cubic centimeter of nothing;

Error #2. Heck - I even know why you are making this error and its the same reason you were completely out to sea on the "Beryllium" issue a few months back. If nothing else you are a consistent mangler of science. Check your facts!

3. taking our 60 year old telescopes we think we can speak conclusively about 15 billion years. (Well, lets be kind. The theory of a 15 billion year old universe is not a whopper, but just a theory. The whopper is that all other views are nonsense -- such as a plasma model for six days of creation.)

What on Earth has the age of a telescope got to do with anything? Again, do you know what the actual observations are?????

But, the fact is, that we simply assume that 95% of everything behaves rather simply and placidly on the long term -- that is a kind of steady state, providing a more or less constant rate of either expansion or acceleration post-big bang.

Completely misses the point. Again, as usual. For the 3rd time - do you know what the actual observations are? Do you know why this invalidates your argument?

And, we haven't even started talking about extra-dimensional values, which physics generally accepts as components of the big bang. They way it is largely unknowable and enormously powerful, but we know it's operation can be confined to a remote slice of time 15 billion years ago and just in one very small "spot".

Not only irrrelevant you cannot, as usual, even get the facts straight. Please go back to say Wikipedia or Ned Wrights Cosmology page and learn what the Big Bang Theory actually says. I know it's a novel concept to actually learn the facts but try it sometime.

As for expansion, contraction, etc., in the last 100 years there have been a series of changing views on the subject about whether we are expanding, accelerating, etc. All views depend upon the activity of a theorized energy no one has seen. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people6/Peebles/peebles-con5.html

Irrelevant. Do you know what an observation is? Because you seemingly ignore them.

And then convention essentially calls us creationists unreasonable for our failure to provide a scientific model for a six day creation. Their models are built upon enormous assumptions and we get killed for not following suit. Silly.

No you get killed for being scientifically ignorant and unable to do science. The difference is that your "heroes" make unfounded or downright stupid assumptions that are invalidated by data. Real science actually knows how to make valid assumptions and when they do or do not breakdown.

In other words - science knows how to do science, Creationists are seemingly a bunch of clueless biased wannabes!!!!!

 

[busterdog]

Just for the record, I am not reading or responding to some of the above posts. There is a long history of incivility and personal attack on this board.

 

[KerrMetric]

Just for the record, I am not reading or responding to some of the above posts. There is a long history of incivility and personal attack on this board.

There's an even longer history of complete cluelessness and inability to state the facts about what you are arguing against as well.

Not only are you anti-science - you butcher even what the science states.

It's not a personal attack but a statement of fact to say that you do not understand the material you are arguing against. In fact its to the point where it seemingly has become just stating falsehoods to make a point. People should not argue things where they cannot even understand the actual points they are arguing against. Case in point - you on any kind of cosmological or astronomical topic.

 

[mindlight]

I am trying to go through this in the debate with Willtor.
http://foru.ms/t5886017-formal-debate-busterdog-and-willtor.html&page=5#post39721928

As I understand this debate it centres on the issue whether scripture should be the source of our understanding of the physical universe or whether sense and reason can by themselves come to conclusions about the universe. If this discussion is focused on origins then my view is that sense and reason can only prove the inadequacy of sense and reason as a method of talking about origins and thus we must rely entirely on scriptures. The book of nature is corrupted and the clues to our origins found in the book of nature that we read are lost, corrupted or incomplete.

If on the other hand it is focused on the broad scientific endeavour then scripture sets some very broad limits and in terms of micro-level practical scientific method has very little to say beyond ethical issues so we should rely much more on sense and reason in doing practical science.

You hit the nail on the head. Stripping away the technical jargon, indeed, what we have is a "tiny frame" to look at the age of everything.

Agreed which makes the arrogance of many of those who argue against you all the more sickening. Jargonised professions protect their hierarchies with their own private languages and those who deviate from the script are marginalised and ostracised - but that does not mean that the one who dares stand against them is not correct.

Conventional science that most of the energy that there is -- by several orders of magnitude -- is "unseen". But supposedly what we can't see behaves so predictibly that it can't possibly have sorted everything out a few million years ago, let alone a few thousand. Both time frames are too short for evolution.

Lets say that geology suggests a few million years to create varves or limestone caverns, which I am not accepting, except for the sake of argument, we still have an insufficient amount of provable time for evolution to happen. Nor will I admit that geological time is even valid without clarity on the behavior of the cosmos and how the behavior of matter making up rocks is affected.

The age/expansion model is needed to make the evolutionary math work. The scale has to be broadened enormously to make something besides God the "ancient of days."

Infinite Multiverses up to 13-20 billion years old needed to explain the improbability of ubiogenesis by chance and then evolution as the process by which emerging life developed into its modern miraculous forms. All this rubbish does my head in - you need a lot more faith to believe the modern science priesthood than to be a rabid fundamentalist like myself!!!

However, the material universe is largely an inference. Science says that, just here and now, we have mostly energy that we can't see and measure only dimly. As for matter, we can only infer about 95% of what there really is. That's a pretty crappy sample on which to define anything, let alone a 15 billion year timeline.

Yes I do not need a professor of Physics to tell me I am ignorant of the universe - I know I am, but unlike the Hawkins and Dawkins crowd I also know that they are also!!

There are a number of whoppers that come out of this model: 1 steady state of 95% of all matter, which is unseen -- more or less; 2. the steady state of unseen energy so powerful that the energy of many stars is contained in a cubic centimeter of nothing; 3. taking our 60 year old telescopes we think we can speak conclusively about 15 billion years.

Yes your right they are guessing however sophisticated the maths.

(Well, lets be kind. The theory of a 15 billion year old universe is not a whopper, but just a theory. The whopper is that all other views are nonsense -- such as a plasma model for six days of creation.) But, the fact is, that we simply assume that 95% of everything behaves rather simply and placidly on the long term -- that is a kind of steady state, providing a more or less constant rate of either expansion or acceleration post-big bang.

The God I read about in the Bible moves quickly and this can result in miraculous or catastrophic change in a very short space of time. So that the vast bulk of the observable or theorised universe exists according to the rules of what we surmise is its current "Steady State" does not fit for me. We simply do not know how the broad bulk of the universe has behaved or is behaving.

I was reading an interesting article on Wikipedia about Dynamic Equilibrium.

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

This seems a more realistic catch all concept for a presently stable state with the proviso that a whole host of things could tip the balance of a whole of balanced forces in a multitude of different directions. Also that the present Dynamic Equilibrium does not explain its own origins as it is a far too messy mix of forces and trends that in practice are unobservable and unmeasurable.

And, we haven't even started talking about extra-dimensional values, which physics generally accepts as components of the big bang. They way it is largely unknowable and enormously powerful, but we know it's operation can be confined to a remote slice of time 15 billion years ago and just in one very small "spot".

As for expansion, contraction, etc., in the last 100 years there have been a series of changing views on the subject about whether we are expanding, accelerating, etc. All views depend upon the activity of a theorized energy no one has seen. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people6/Peebles/peebles-con5.html

And then convention essentially calls us creationists unreasonable for our failure to provide a scientific model for a six day creation. Their models are built upon enormous assumptions and we get killed for not following suit. Silly.

With a subject matter so large its hard to see how specialists in this area can talk with any authority about origins. Noone knows it all so can any one speak at all. If we do speak should it not be with a degree of humility and not with the absolute certainty of too many in the modern scientific world.

 

[Mallon]

With a subject matter so large its hard to see how specialists in this area can talk with any authority about origins. Noone knows it all so can any one speak at all. If we do speak should it not be with a degree of humility and not with the absolute certainty of too many in the modern scientific world.

You seemed pretty confident of your convictions earlier when you said:

YEC seems the best way to understand what the Bible says about Creation, was almost definitely Jesus view and was the view articulated by his disciples and Paul. It has been the view held by the historical mainstream of the church and the Jewish people before them for 3000 years. The burden of proof is on our opponents.

So yes I am YEC.

Do you feel we should be more humble concerning our view of the Bible's cosmogony as well?

 

[Mallon]

2ble post.

 

[busterdog]

You seemed pretty confident of your convictions earlier when you said:

Do you feel we should be more humble concerning our view of the Bible's cosmogony as well?

I don't. Actually, my main argument is the plausibility of alternatives which are rejected categorically and with no humility.

The guy states his position with conviction. Why should he apologize to anyone for that, especially here?

 

[shernren]

The main differences between me and KerrMetric is that he has far more wisdom and less patience in not stooping to your level of mangling science. But I don't. I'm addicted to pedagogy at heart and something inside me dies every time I see sound-minded, rational and clearly intelligent people like you mangle the science you don't understand.

The age/expansion model is needed to make the evolutionary math work. The scale has to be broadened enormously to make something besides God the "ancient of days."

So which of the Vatican's astronomers are supporting the Big Bang theory to overthrow God?

As for expansion, contraction, etc., in the last 100 years there have been a series of changing views on the subject about whether we are expanding, accelerating, etc. All views depend upon the activity of a theorized energy no one has seen. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people6/Peebles/peebles-con5.html

And then convention essentially calls us creationists unreasonable for our failure to provide a scientific model for a six day creation. Their models are built upon enormous assumptions and we get killed for not following suit. Silly.

The difference is that when modern science reforms its views, it reforms them on the basis of evidence. If you want to reform modern science's views, you need to present evidence. And the evidence to the contrary, sadly, is simply utterly lacking.

The rest of the post is simply busterdog saying "We don't know much about dark matter and dark energy therefore the scientists are talking nonsense and I'm right." A simple Google search identified two particularly helpful sources for this:

Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (PDF - non-technical)
Cosmology from Start to Finish (quite technical in the middle)

Essentially the evidence for dark energy comes observationally from two completely separate surveys: high-redshift supernova surveys and combined data from WMAP, AAT-2dF and SDSS. (Weird acronyms to be explained later.)

The supernova survey is pretty straightforward. Type Ia supernovae are good standard candles for which we can get a reliable distance. Plot observed redshift against distance. And what do we get? A graph in which past a certain threshold distance, the farther away the supernovae, the more their redshifts are above what you'd expect from Hubble's Law. (And don't get your hopes up: there's no quantization there.) In Brian Schmidt's words, they ended up in a portion of the graph "that didn't even exist for us back then - they were off the scale!" (So much for astronomers being resistant to new evidence.) Now, the best model we currently have for the Big Bang is a model called "Lambda-CDM" which I will abbreviate L-CDM (not knowing how to type Greek in Firefox) and using that model with the data they have, they came up with a Lambda of about 70%.

Enter WMAP, or the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. "Anisotropy" is a nerdy way of saying "uneven", and the probe was designed to do just that - measure how uneven the cosmic microwave background is. And boy, does it look bumpy!

Of course, this map was made with a sensitivity of 20 µK per 0.3° square pixel, and the temperature overall is 2.7-2.8K; we're talking a dollar in a million dollars' worth of bumpiness here. Nevertheless, what causes this bumpiness? One really big answer is something called "baryonic acoustic oscillations". According to the Big Bang theory, when the universe was a few hundred years old, its visible components were mainly a photon-baryon plasma - the photons couldn't get far because they were constantly absorbed and re-emitted by charged particles (which had too much energy to settle down into neutral atoms). Very broadly, pressure waves were set up in the plasma (reverberations of the original Bang, so to speak) and you could get little balls of coherently vibrating matter which would be more dense than the surrounding regions - however a region too large would be gravitationally unstable. (The PDF describes the same concept in different terms; it may be more helpful.)

Therefore there are roughly quantized values for how large an "acoustic peak" you can get in the CMB (which is a picture of the universe a moment before radiation decoupled from matter), in the same way that a string has certain resonant frequencies. And guess what WMAP (and other CMB instruementation) found?

Very (very!) roughly, this is a graph of how many "defects" you get in the CMB vs. their size. See that big first peak? Baryonic acoustic oscillations.

But we can also measure the topology of the universe from these measurements! How so? Here's a thought experiment: imagine you live on a sphere with an equatorial circumference of 4 units. (Thus, walking along the sphere, it takes at least 1 unit of distance to get from the North Pole to the Equator and another 1 unit to get from there to the South Pole.) You can start from the North Pole, walk 1 unit down to the Equator, make a 90-degree turn, walk 1 unit along the Equator, and make another 90-degree turn to come back to the North Pole - and you would return to the North Pole 90-degrees off from where you came. Now the path you walk would have been the same path light rays traveled on a curved universe - so an object 1 unit wide and 1 unit "away" (in terms of the sides of the triangle) would look 90 degrees wide in the sky. However, on a flat surface, a triangle with three sides of 1 unit each would have angles of 60-degrees - in a flat universe the same object 1 unit wide would look 60 degrees wide in the sky.

So we can compare the expected angular size of the defects in the CMB to their actual angular size dictated by theory. (How do we know the theory is right? Look at that one beautiful first peak - it's exactly what we would have expected if it was.) And guess what? The results show, just like for that triangle on a flat surface, that the Universe is pretty much flat on a large-scale.

Enter the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Anglo-Australian Telescope 2-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (SDSS and AAT-2dF respectively). Both are essentially big surveys of the galaxies around us and their redshifts, coming up with large-scale structure resolution like these:

(Only 30% of the data points from the AAT-2dF have been rendered here, presumably due to hardware considerations. Note that there is obvious large-scale structure - and note that it is obviously not quantization.) Essentially these surveys are able to measure the matter density of the surveyed areas, and very, very crudely (and I may be wrong) the matter density only agrees with CMB observations above of the topology of the universe if you insert ... 70% dark energy.

Wait a minute there!

High-redshift supernovae: ~70% dark energy.
CMB minus (low-)redshift galaxy surveys: ~70% dark energy.

Whaddya know! The two agree! Note that there is no observational reason for them to agree. They could only agree if the same theory predicted and explained them both.

You will point out, quite rightly, that the above analysis only makes sense if you assume the Big Bang theory. To which I reply, "That's precisely what science is about." Assume a theoretical foundation, make falsifiable predictions, and verify or falsify. The important question is: if Big Bang theory is false, why does it work? If there is something unaccounted for, why haven't we seen it? (In fact, to return to a strawman: no, scientists don't believe that the universe's expansion has always been accelerating. They think from the data that its acceleration only started relatively recently. So no, they aren't assuming that dark energy simply does its thing unmodified by the passage of time.)

Furthermore, this gives a good test for other theories as well. Take c-decay. If it doesn't subscribe to an initial Big Bang, then it can't explain baryonic acoustic oscillations. If it does: because the speed of light was much higher in the early universe, according to them, baryonic acoustic oscillations should be a lot larger than what we predict them today - but since we see the oscillations a lot smaller than they actually are, then the universe must be extremely negatively curved. (Positive curvature, like that on a sphere, makes angular sizes bigger than they ought to be; zero curvature doesn't affect angular size at all, and negative curvature, like on a saddle, makes angular sizes smaller than they ought to be.) And what produces negative curvature? Certainly not normal matter; only dark energy that accelerates the expansion of the universe can produce it! The upshot of it is that a c-decay theory needs more dark energy than the Big Bang itself! Pot, meet kettle.

Or take intrinsic redshift. Intrinsic redshift predicts that the high redshift of Type Ia supernovae is not due to velocity. So, the high-z supernovae survey data can't accommodate dark energy if you take this into consideration. However, intrinsic redshift doesn't affect the cosmic microwave background - and even if it did, it would only affect the energy of the photons emitted, not their spatial distribution, and hence it wouldn't affect the size of observations. Then you'd have the same discrepancy between CMB and galaxy surveys - and this time you wouldn't have the luxury of referring to dark energy because nothing else in your dataset could support it! Again, it raises more questions than it answers.

There are plenty of good reasons why conventional cosmology sticks with the Big Bang. None of them involve hidden, unproven, unfalsifiable conspiracy theories about the supremacy of evolution.

 

[shernren]

In brief: we know what we're talking about; and when we don't, we're candid about it. Brian Schmidt himself said "We have no idea what dark energy actually is" - mind, he's part of the team that, like, discovered the whole shebang. So much for scientists pretending to know it all! We're confident of knowing what we do know and honest to admit when we don't; and if you want to prove us wrong - well, show us the evidence.

As it is, we're just following the data for a ride. If we happen to take a few winds in the road that don't fit with your preconceived theology - that's your problem, not ours.

By the by, Ken Freeman speaking on dark matter at the ANU next Wednesday! Will keep you all posted. I heart ANU and the Black Hole Society.

 

[KerrMetric]

Agreed which makes the arrogance of many of those who argue against you all the more sickening. Jargonised professions protect their hierarchies with their own private languages and those who deviate from the script are marginalised and ostracised - but that does not mean that the one who dares stand against them is not correct.

The typical whine of those uneducated in a given area. And that is all it is - a whine.

My usual analogy is that laymen do not feel the urge to criticise a master craftsman with 40 years experience in his field but they have no problem criticising the professional physicist or astronomer or biologist with equal if not more time spent in their field. Funny that isn't it? Even more funny is the fact that the critics are for the most part people who could never have academically handled the science to begin with even if they tried.

Infinite Multiverses up to 13-20 billion years old needed to explain the improbability of ubiogenesis by chance and then evolution as the process by which emerging life developed into its modern miraculous forms. All this rubbish does my head in - you need a lot more faith to believe the modern science priesthood than to be a rabid fundamentalist like myself!!!

No appeals to infinite multiverses required I'm afraid. 13.7 billion year dating of the universe is driven by OBSERVATION and physical theory NOT some a priori need for solving a biology problem. The 13.7 billion number is not going to change if some biologist states it needs to be 100 billion for abiogenesis.

Why do you guys see conspiracy and fudging everywhere? Even more strange - how can you determine conspiracy and fudging when you are clueless about what the science even is behind all of this? Talk about the blind leading the blind.

Yes I do not need a professor of Physics to tell me I am ignorant of the universe - I know I am, but unlike the Hawkins and Dawkins crowd I also know that they are also!!

Ha - but there are different levels of ignorance. There is the ignorance defined by the limits of physics/astronomy and there is ignorance defined by an inability to progress past high school science. They are NOT the same.

Yes your right they are guessing however sophisticated the maths.

Of course we are - it's all guessing, that's why we can predict the outcomes of experiment and future observations because it's all luck.

Stop with the tripe.

So that the vast bulk of the observable or theorised universe exists according to the rules of what we surmise is its current "Steady State" does not fit for me. We simply do not know how the broad bulk of the universe has behaved or is behaving.

WRONG!!!!!!! But thanks for playing. Before coming to such hasty conclusions why not try reading up and maybe even understanding why we physicists and astronomers state what we do and what the actual data is.

With a subject matter so large its hard to see how specialists in this area can talk with any authority about origins.

Of course it is when you stopped at 10th grade general science class and basic algebra. Not all of us did stop there however.

Noone knows it all so can any one speak at all. If we do speak should it not be with a degree of humility and not with the absolute certainty of too many in the modern scientific world.

We do speak with humility on these topics it is just your understanding is so limited that it seems to lack humility because you flat out just don't understand how we put the information together and why we can be certain about many things. Basically it's like a caveman trying to understand a PC - it ain't gonna happen. Why not just accept this. I am not going to make a cherrywood table with detailed carving and inlay either but I don't go around saying it cannot be done just because I cannot do it. You guys who cannot do the science however somehow do go around stating what the limits of a field they have no expertise in are. Again, a very funny state of affairs.

 

[mindlight]

The typical whine of those uneducated in a
given area. And that is all it is - a whine.
My usual analogy is that laymen do not feel the urge to criticise a
master craftsman with 40 years experience in his field but they have
no problem criticising the professional physicist or astronomer or
biologist with equal if not more time spent in their field. Funny
that isn't it? Even more funny is the fact that the critics are for
the most part people who could never have academically handled the
science to begin with even if they tried.

Actually this is nonsense. A Master Craftsman produces a result.
People can view, experience or in the case of the things I make
actually use the thing produced. Peoples satisfaction with what is
produced can be measured by their continued usage or reference to the
thing that I create. Whereas with the theoretical physicist there
is no accountability in the ultimate sense except to like minded
peers. This in my view explains the wild flights of fancy you guys
take into the outermost limits of the universe. You only talk at the
levels you are innovating to each other and are accountable only to a
shrinking group of mad scientists! If you cannot share and
demonstrate your models to the likes of me on a level where I as a
reasonably intelligent layman could understand what you were doing
then these models either do not make sense or do not actually work.
You and your peers may just have been living in cloud cuckoo land for
40 years - can you prove to me that you have not?! I know I can show
people I have not because they are using what I have created. How
can someone use a theory about the origins of a 13.7 billion year old
universe and test its validity in any kind of practical way?

No appeals to infinite multiverses required I'm afraid. 13.7
billion year dating of the universe is driven by OBSERVATION and
physical theory NOT some a priori need for solving a biology problem.
The 13.7 billion number is not going to change if some biologist
states it needs to be 100 billion for abiogenesis.

Granted the dating of the universe and abiogenesis are separate
issues handled by separate disciplines in the modern scientific world (thanks for correcting my spelling by the way!!).
If the biolgical question relating to the probability of life
emerging from non-life in some kind of primeval soup cannot be
resolved within the physicists timespan however that is an evidence
that suggests either:
1) The earth must be even older than it appears to the physicists for
life to emerge spontaneously and in accordance with the "rules" of
the naturalistic paradigm or life must have an extra terrestrial
origin.
2) The whole theory is speculative rubbish and given the inability of
scientists to generate anything beyond basic amino acids in a
"primeval soup" does not satisfy the basic scientific criteria of
being duplicable by like minded peers in similar circumstances.

Why do you guys see conspiracy and fudging everywhere? Even
more strange - how can you determine conspiracy and fudging when you
are clueless about what the science even is behind all of this? Talk
about the blind leading the blind.

Ha - but there are different levels of ignorance. There is the
ignorance defined by the limits of physics/astronomy and there is
ignorance defined by an inability to progress past high school
science. They are NOT the same.

I am not saying you are involved in a conspiracy or even particularly
sloppy in the way you do science by the rules recognised by your
peers. I lack evidence about your own personal motives and am not
qualified to talk in the highest echelons of your physics "club". I
am saying that science at its current level is itself not the
appropriate tool to answer questions about the configuration of the
universe and its origins. The evidence you quote as the basis of
your observations is not reliable, cannot be substantiated in any
kind of practical way, is incomplete and some of it has in fact been
lost. So what you may read in the book of nature, however well you
are trained to read it , is in the end a distorted picture of what
actually happened. You were not there in the beginning and even if
you had been would have been unable to grasp the full significance of
what you were seeing.

Of course we are - it's all guessing, that's why we can predict the
outcomes of experiment and future observations because it's all luck.

A probability analysis made on the basis of faulty, incomplete or misread evidence is the kind of guess that I am objecting to.

WRONG!!!!!!! But thanks for playing. Before coming to such hasty
conclusions why not try reading up and maybe even understanding why
we physicists and astronomers state what we do and what the actual
data is.

Argue your case

Of course it is when you stopped at 10th grade general science class
and basic algebra. Not all of us did stop there however.

Which , if true, makes me the perfect detached observor of your activities - I do not share in the same levels of brainwashing that you have been subjected to.

We do speak with humility on these topics it is just your
understanding is so limited that it seems to lack humility because
you flat out just don't understand how we put the information
together and why we can be certain about many things. Basically it's
like a caveman trying to understand a PC - it ain't gonna happen. Why
not just accept this. I am not going to make a cherrywood table with
detailed carving and inlay either but I don't go around saying it
cannot be done just because I cannot do it. You guys who cannot do
the science however somehow do go around stating what the limits of a
field they have no expertise in are. Again, a very funny state of
affairs.

Now this is merely intellectual arrogance. You could not do what I do in my job but I could explain to you what I am doing and give you an understanding of it at a certain level. Indeed the process of justifying my activities to laymen is enshrined in my work practice since it is laymen who will pay for it. I as a tax payer (albeit not an American one) or I as a private sponsor am entitled to a reasonable account of your activities. If you have reached a position where you do not have that level of accountability then the checks on your activities have been removed and you could do just about anythign so long as you dressed it up with the appropriate jargon and huffed and puffed about laymens ignorance everytime anyone asked you a serious question.

 

[busterdog]

More like the renowned and accomplished tailor telling us the Emperor is not butt naked.

But, I would settle for some recognition of other astrophsycists who do speak the jargon -- without the big bang litmus test.

 

[shernren]

Whereas with the theoretical physicist there is no accountability in the ultimate sense except to like minded peers. This in my view explains the wild flights of fancy you guys take into the outermost limits of the universe. You only talk at the levels you are innovating to each other and are accountable only to a shrinking group of mad scientists! If you cannot share and demonstrate your models to the likes of me on a level where I as a reasonably intelligent layman could understand what you were doing then these models either do not make sense or do not actually work. You and your peers may just have been living in cloud cuckoo land for 40 years - can you prove to me that you have not?! I know I can show people I have not because they are using what I have created. How can someone use a theory about the origins of a 13.7 billion year old universe and test its validity in any kind of practical way?

Post #51. I object, by the way, to being told that in pursuing my profession I am joining a "shrinking group of mad scientists". And I think that telling people that they have been cuckoo for the past 40 years with wild flights of fancy is hardly the best way to elicit a reasonable description of they actually have been doing.

 

[KerrMetric]

Actually this is nonsense. A Master Craftsman produces a result.
People can view, experience or in the case of the things I make
actually use the thing produced. Peoples satisfaction with what is
produced can be measured by their continued usage or reference to the
thing that I create. Whereas with the theoretical physicist there
is no accountability in the ultimate sense except to like minded
peers.

And physics/astronomy produces equally valid results. The problem is that laypeople invariably lack the skill sets to determine the validity. That's not our fault - it is theirs. Some things just cannot be dumbed down enough - that doesn't make them invalid for that reason.

This in my view explains the wild flights of fancy you guys
take into the outermost limits of the universe. You only talk at the
levels you are innovating to each other and are accountable only to a
shrinking group of mad scientists!

Again - an appeal based upon personal incredulity and nothing else.

If you cannot share and
demonstrate your models to the likes of me on a level where I as a
reasonably intelligent layman could understand what you were doing
then these models either do not make sense or do not actually work.

Two points:

1) You have painted a classic false dichotomy here. If it doesn't make sense to you then somehow it is invalidated.

2) I honestly question the intelligent layman comment. Both you and especially Busterdog seem not to even understand the actual statements of modern science on these topics. I don't expect laypeople to follow the actual derivations of results but all I keep seeing on these pages is people unable to even characterise the result statements themselves. No wonder it all seems "flights of fancy" or "guesswork" when you don't even know the points you are arguing against.

You and your peers may just have been living in cloud cuckoo land for
40 years - can you prove to me that you have not?! I know I can show
people I have not because they are using what I have created. How
can someone use a theory about the origins of a 13.7 billion year old
universe and test its validity in any kind of practical way?

Just a redux of the above problems. You guys haven't even taken the time (or lack the ability) to even understand what physics/astronomy says about the universe. Yet instead of realising this you just trot out phrases like "flights of fancy" or "cloud cuckoo land". I don't see you doing this with condensed matter physics or quantum field theory - areas I'll guarantee you have no expertise in either. And remember - those fields essentially utilise the same skill sets and training in their practice as does astrophysics.

Granted the dating of the universe and abiogenesis are separate
issues handled by separate disciplines in the modern scientific world (thanks for correcting my spelling by the way!!).

Correct.

If the biolgical question relating to the probability of life
emerging from non-life in some kind of primeval soup cannot be
resolved within the physicists timespan however that is an evidence
that suggests either:
1) The earth must be even older than it appears to the physicists for
life to emerge spontaneously and in accordance with the "rules" of
the naturalistic paradigm or life must have an extra terrestrial
origin.
2) The whole theory is speculative rubbish and given the inability of
scientists to generate anything beyond basic amino acids in a
"primeval soup" does not satisfy the basic scientific criteria of
being duplicable by like minded peers in similar circumstances.

Just as long as you realise there is no conspiracy going on. Conspiracy theories are invariably the refuge of simplistic thinking.

I am not saying you are involved in a conspiracy or even particularly
sloppy in the way you do science by the rules recognised by your
peers. I lack evidence about your own personal motives and am not
qualified to talk in the highest echelons of your physics "club". I
am saying that science at its current level is itself not the
appropriate tool to answer questions about the configuration of the
universe and its origins.

It's far more appropriate than any other tool - certainly in regard to "configuration". That's just a function of accurate surveying and application of basic physics.

The evidence you quote as the basis of
your observations is not reliable, cannot be substantiated in any
kind of practical way, is incomplete and some of it has in fact been
lost.

How on earth can you say this??????? What skills are you bringing to the table that allow this statement of yours to be take seriously?

This is probably my biggest problem with people like you. You make blanket statements that physics/astronomy is wrong and that it produces a product that does not pass a personal litmus test. Yet you also admit you are not skilled in the physics. If that is also true then how can you then say the observations are unreliable and incomplete or unsubstantiated?????????

Do you not see the inherent disconnect in your statements that I see all too clearly?

So what you may read in the book of nature, however well you
are trained to read it , is in the end a distorted picture of what
actually happened. You were not there in the beginning and even if
you had been would have been unable to grasp the full significance of
what you were seeing.

No one is claiming a perfect undistorted picture. But the picture is still clear enough to make definitive statements in many areas. I don't need to put 20 decimal places on every possible measurement to still state with validity the upper or lower limit on some measured property. I can also still derive other interesting results based upon previously determined limits. I often think the problem is not as much peoples misunderstanding physics it is the general lack of mathematical and statistical abilities of the general public.

Many things, especially in astronomy, are known only to accuracies of 10, 20 or even 50%. To the general public this sounds poor but in many cases this is more than enough to get the job done and make valid inference from.

A probability analysis made on the basis of faulty, incomplete or misread evidence is the kind of guess that I am objecting to.

But you are objecting on the basis of inexperience. And you are forgetting about the fact that all results, or almost all results, are not measured or derived in a vacuum - there are usually many cross checks and sanity checks behind every stated result. As I said earlier - just because you don't have 20 decimal places on every piece of data does not mean the data cannot be used or trust placed in it.

Take a relatively simple measurement such as determining the mass of the Sun. There isn't just one way of doing this. Astrophysics like all science relies on concordancy.

Argue your case

Which point(s)? Give me specific examples of "flights of fancy" or measurements/observations that are "in cloud cuckoo land".

Which , if true, makes me the perfect detached observor of your activities - I do not share in the same levels of brainwashing that you have been subjected to.

No it does not. If you cannot do the math/physics then how on earth are you a perfect detached observer????
What brainwashing? Brainwashing is the usual pathetic objection of conspiracy theorists for people who don't share their viewpoint. This is even more pathetic when the people uttering the accusation have not the basic skill sets required.

How is, in my case, 30 years of mathematics/physics training brainwashing? There is no agenda in linear algebra, partial differential equations, statistics, complex analysis, quantum theory, relativity, particle physics, statistical mechanics, radiative transfer theory, electromagnetism, field theory etc etc etc.

That's the training and the job is application of that training. I don't see where brainwashing comes in. There isn't, despite the whines of those who find astronomy/physics unpalatable from religious grounds, some party manifesto to be followed or dogma regurgitated to fool the public. I'm tenured - I can write what the hell I want.

Now this is merely intellectual arrogance.

Arrogance or fact? And to be honest, as Muhammad Ali once said, it ain't bragging if you can back it up.

You could not do what I do in my job but I could explain to you what I am doing and give you an understanding of it at a certain level.

I agree - but some jobs are far more simplistic in an academic sense than others and lend themselves to similarly simplistic explanation.

I would tender that there are enough layman level explanations of astrophysics as well but I determine that the naysayers on here haven't even followed those. I base this on the statements they make quoting said laypeople explanations that are incorrect.

Indeed the process of justifying my activities to laymen is enshrined in my work practice since it is laymen who will pay for it. I as a tax payer (albeit not an American one) or I as a private sponsor am entitled to a reasonable account of your activities.

And those accounts at various levels of explanation are out there - but you can lead a horse to water but not make him drink.

Again for the umpteenth time - these explanations seem to have not been followed by many on here since they get them wrong.

If you have reached a position where you do not have that level of accountability then the checks on your activities have been removed and you could do just about anythign so long as you dressed it up with the appropriate jargon and huffed and puffed about laymens ignorance everytime anyone asked you a serious question.

But you are neglecting the fact that there obviously are non-specialists who do follow the work at a level where they deem the results interesting and worthy. We don't self fund ourselves usually. Governments, research foundations, university endowments seem perfectly content that astrophysics is not a conspiracy or flights of fancy or cloud cuckooland. Or are they in on the conspiracy too?

Which is more likely - the worlds astrophysics community and it's funding sources (not astrophysicists per se) and the intelligent general public who follow such things are all incompetents or co-conspirators OR the few naysayers, primarily religion driven, claiming its nonsense (despite no training at all and obviously not even following the lay accounts) are wrong?

Even without my bias on this question I'll guarantee the second group are out to lunch on this.

 

[mindlight]

I object, by the way, to being told that in pursuing my profession I am joining a "shrinking group of mad scientists". And I think that telling people that they have been cuckoo for the past 40 years with wild flights of fancy is hardly the best way to elicit a reasonable description of they actually have been doing.

I have the greatest respect for a very large number of scientists and what they do. The explorations of the Solar System and notably the Voyager space probes have captured the public imagination and raised the estimation of many astrophysicists in the eyes of the world and in mine also. The feat of remote controlling robots or probes on Mars or the surface of Titan and receiving messages back via interplanetary internet is truly amazing. The focus of this current debate is however on the question of origins and it is my view that physicists and indeed science exceeds its remit when it addresses these questions with anything but the greatest humility. And yes to speak of our origins and the age of the universe with the certainty that science can provide us with an accurate picture of these things does strike me as a form of mass delusion or madness.

 

[mindlight]

And physics/astronomy produces equally valid results. The problem is that laypeople invariably lack the skill sets to determine the validity. That's not our fault - it is theirs. Some things just cannot be dumbed down enough - that doesn't make them invalid for that reason.

Again you come back to your essential argument which is that science is the appropriate tool to consider our origins and only its high priesthood are qualified to interpret its results. I can marvel with the rest of the world at the Apollo missions, at the worlds satellite network, at X Ray machines in hospitals and at the Voyager missions without sharing in this speculative madness about the origins of the universe. Practical science yields practical respect without having to understand all the nitty gritty details of how you did it. But when you talk about the origins of the universe you are speculating.

I honestly question the intelligent layman comment. Both you and especially Busterdog seem not to even understand the actual statements of modern science on these topics. I don't expect laypeople to follow the actual derivations of results but all I keep seeing on these pages is people unable to even characterise the result statements themselves. No wonder it all seems "flights of fancy" or "guesswork" when you don't even know the points you are arguing against.
Just a redux of the above problems. You guys haven't even taken the time (or lack the ability) to even understand what physics/astronomy says about the universe. Yet instead of realising this you just trot out phrases like "flights of fancy" or "cloud cuckoo land". I don't see you doing this with condensed matter physics or quantum field theory - areas I'll guarantee you have no expertise in either. And remember - those fields essentially utilise the same skill sets and training in their practice as does astrophysics.

Again the intellectual arrogance accompanied ironically with another misreading of what I actually wrote! I am not even attempting to argue a scientific case here and you keep missing that point. I am saying that science exceeds its remit when it speculates about the unique event of creation. That the method of observing current trends and facts and then by a process of mathematical deduction speculating about dates and processes that go back billions of years makes the mistaken assumption that meaningful results can be obtained by such a process of observation and deduction. If you stuck to Nuclear power stations and trips around the solar system you guys would probably be my heroes but instead you have to go off into the impossibly murky question of our origins. The scientific method has achieved great things but I am describing a limit to it here. You are not the appropriate tool to consider our origins as your methods cannot resolve those questions.

It's far more appropriate than any other tool - certainly in regard to "configuration". That's just a function of accurate surveying and application of basic physics.

the surveying of what. When you speculate about the origins of the whole universe you do so from a very small data sample, you make the assumption that what you observe here will work elsewhere also and over time

How on earth can you say this??????? What skills are you bringing to the table that allow this statement of yours to be take seriously?
This is probably my biggest problem with people like you. You make blanket statements that physics/astronomy is wrong and that it produces a product that does not pass a personal litmus test. Yet you also admit you are not skilled in the physics. If that is also true then how can you then say the observations are unreliable and incomplete or unsubstantiated?????????
Do you not see the inherent disconnect in your statements that I see all too clearly?
No one is claiming a perfect undistorted picture. But the picture is still clear enough to make definitive statements in many areas. I don't need to put 20 decimal places on every possible measurement to still state with validity the upper or lower limit on some measured property. I can also still derive other interesting results based upon previously determined limits. I often think the problem is not as much peoples misunderstanding physics it is the general lack of mathematical and statistical abilities of the general public.
Many things, especially in astronomy, are known only to accuracies of 10, 20 or even 50%. To the general public this sounds poor but in many cases this is more than enough to get the job done and make valid inference from.

You make the assumption that there is enough observable evidence in the universe to make considered mathematical deductions about origins. I make the assumption that since "CUrsed is the ground...." and "creation is in bondage to decay" what you observe is not a reliabel basis to make these deductions. It is our assumptions that divide us not our skills. Even the best mathematician comes to a false result if he makes the wrong assumptions.

But you are objecting on the basis of inexperience. And you are forgetting about the fact that all results, or almost all results, are not measured or derived in a vacuum - there are usually many cross checks and sanity checks behind every stated result. As I said earlier - just because you don't have 20 decimal places on every piece of data does not mean the data cannot be used or trust placed in it.

Its not about having 20 decimal places or 1 its about the assumption that what you might be able to demonstrate in our solar system will also apply elsewhere when we have no experience of elsewhere. Also when our knowledge of the present dynamic equilibrium of forces in even our own solar system remains limited.

Take a relatively simple measurement such as determining the mass of the Sun. There isn't just one way of doing this. Astrophysics like all science relies on concordancy.

Had a look on wikipedia at this interesting question.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_mass
It seems that the formula they favour for doing this calculation relies on three main pieces of evidence.
1) The length of a year (known and measurable to an inhabitant of planet Earth)
2) The distance of the earth from the sun. Again a measurable piece of evidence
3) The gravitational constant - this is where it starts getting complex. There is a complex calculation to work this out. THat relies on knowing the mass of the object and the distance between the two objects being surveyed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant
The essence of the method used is then that observations are made and then calculations based on these observations that are made. This has worked fine in the context of our own solar system but remains untested outside it.

Which point(s)? Give me specific examples of "flights of fancy" or measurements/observations that are "in cloud cuckoo land".

Regarding the age of the universe being 13.7Bn years old:
1) Your evidence is limited to that collected in the environs of one star amongst billions in a single galaxy. So your evidence is limited.
2) Another way to talk about creations bondage to decay is entropy. If there is decay and the corresponding loss of information then that entails that your evidence is corrupted and is corrupting over time.
3) A mind that is not large enough to conceive a universe such as the one in which we live can hardly map its laws in their entirety or write its history.
4) The event of creation is a unique one. So to try to understand it by analogy to observations and deductions made from a presently rather small data set is naive.
5) All human beings make mistakes and it is human scientists who are conducting the investigations of our origins. Therefore we cannot trust the results of things which we cannot experientially test and confirm.

No it does not. If you cannot do the math/physics then how on earth are you a perfect detached observer????
What brainwashing? Brainwashing is the usual pathetic objection of conspiracy theorists for people who don't share their viewpoint. This is even more pathetic when the people uttering the accusation have not the basic skill sets required.
How is, in my case, 30 years of mathematics/physics training brainwashing? There is no agenda in linear algebra, partial differential equations, statistics, complex analysis, quantum theory, relativity, particle physics, statistical mechanics, radiative transfer theory, electromagnetism, field theory etc etc etc.
That's the training and the job is application of that training. I don't see where brainwashing comes in. There isn't, despite the whines of those who find astronomy/physics unpalatable from religious grounds, some party manifesto to be followed or dogma regurgitated to fool the public. I'm tenured - I can write what the hell I want.

There are many positive achievements to modern physics. But that does not mean you can go beyond your remit and apply the same successful methods to the question of origins.

Arrogance or fact? And to be honest, as Muhammad Ali once said, it ain't bragging if you can back it up.
I agree - but some jobs are far more simplistic in an academic sense than others and lend themselves to similarly simplistic explanation.
I would tender that there are enough layman level explanations of astrophysics as well but I determine that the naysayers on here haven't even followed those. I base this on the statements they make quoting said laypeople explanations that are incorrect.

The first question to ask is whether this is the right man for the job and that includes the question of whether the acquired skill set matches the task in hand. I think a theologian is better equipped to answer questions of origins than is a scientist for the reasons discussed above.

But you are neglecting the fact that there obviously are non-specialists who do follow the work at a level where they deem the results interesting and worthy. We don't self fund ourselves usually. Governments, research foundations, university endowments seem perfectly content that astrophysics is not a conspiracy or flights of fancy or cloud cuckooland. Or are they in on the conspiracy too?
Which is more likely - the worlds astrophysics community and it's funding sources (not astrophysicists per se) and the intelligent general public who follow such things are all incompetents or co-conspirators OR the few naysayers, primarily religion driven, claiming its nonsense (despite no training at all and obviously not even following the lay accounts) are wrong?
Even without my bias on this question I'll guarantee the second group are out to lunch on this.

Physicists have achieved great things and can talk with authority on a great many things which most people recognise and will attribute directly to their efforts. However they step beyond their remit when they consider the question of origins with anything but the greatest humility. I trust a competent eyewitness to the events of creation over a Old Universe theoretician and speculative scientist.

 

[gluadys]

Again you come back to your essential argument which is that science is the appropriate tool to consider our origins and only its high priesthood are qualified to interpret its results. I can marvel with the rest of the world at the Apollo missions, at the worlds satellite network, at X Ray machines in hospitals and at the Voyager missions without sharing in this speculative madness about the origins of the universe.

But the science you admire is the same as the science you object to. The data is the same, the evidence is the same, the methodology is the same.

Practical science yields practical respect without having to understand all the nitty gritty details of how you did it. But when you talk about the origins of the universe you are speculating.

Practical science (technology) is built on theoretical science. If you don't have the pure science right you can't apply it to practical use with success.

Again the intellectual arrogance accompanied ironically with another misreading of what I actually wrote! I am not even attempting to argue a scientific case here and you keep missing that point.

But you are trying to argue against some scientific conclusions from a non-scientific base. And you are mis-stating the science.

Science is falsified by better science, not by non-scientific considerations. And you need to know the science to find its true weaknesses and falsify it.

I am saying that science exceeds its remit when it speculates about the unique event of creation.

No, it does not. Because it does not approach the creation of the universe from a theological perspective. So it does not trespass on any theological perspective.

It is theology that speculates about the creation of the universe in the sense you are speaking of. But theological conclusions cannot cancel out scientific conclusions since they are of a different category.

Theology may ignore or deny science, but it cannot falsify science. IMHO good theology neither ignores nor denies science, but elaborates on science from a theological POV.

That the method of observing current trends and facts and then by a process of mathematical deduction speculating about dates and processes that go back billions of years makes the mistaken assumption that meaningful results can be obtained by such a process of observation and deduction.

This is an example of misrepresenting the science through ignorance of both the evidence and the methods. Much of what you think are "assumptions" are probably conclusions. But you need to take the time to learn the science well enough to understand the reasons behind these conclusions.

The scientific method has achieved great things but I am describing a limit to it here. You are not the appropriate tool to consider our origins as your methods cannot resolve those questions.

You are describing what you want to be a limit to the scientific method. But you put it in the wrong place. Now mind you, I also believe science has its limits. Science can tell us nothing about God, faith, salvation or eternal life. It can tell us nothing of the purpose of creation. It cannot tell us that God loves creation.

But science can tell us about the physical processes by which the elements and galaxies and planets came into being since the big bang. And it can do that with considerable accuracy.

When you speculate about the origins of the whole universe you do so from a very small data sample, you make the assumption that what you observe here will work elsewhere also and over time

And with good reason. Because this is what agrees with our experience and our evidence. When theoretical predictions are made on the basis of assuming the constancy and universality of physical laws, the predictions work. What other approach can claim that?

You make the assumption that there is enough observable evidence in the universe to make considered mathematical deductions about origins.

There is enough evidence to build theories that work in those practical applications you admire. And there is constant readiness to improve these theories as new evidence requires.

I make the assumption that since "CUrsed is the ground...." and "creation is in bondage to decay" what you observe is not a reliabel basis to make these deductions.

So basically you deny that the sense and reason God gave us as tools for perceiving and understanding the creation he put us in charge of don't work.

Are you prepared to offer better tools for understanding the world around us?

Note too, that your assumption is a genuine assumption. You have no data for it. You cannot even show that you have correctly interpreted the scriptural text you are using as a basis. You assume that you have the meaning correct. Yet all the text says regarding the cursing of the ground is that it will grow thorns and thistles when humans attempt agriculture. That is a long way from a comment on the reliability of physics.

Its not about having 20 decimal places or 1 its about the assumption that what you might be able to demonstrate in our solar system will also apply elsewhere when we have no experience of elsewhere.

Granted that other than the few manned trips to the moon, our only experience of the world beyond our planet is via telescopes and robotic sensors, it is still the case that what we find is consistent with the universal constancy of such forces as gravity, the speed of light, electromagnetism, etc.

Why does the universe, as we know it, act as if constants are constant, if they are not?

3) The gravitational constant - this is where it starts getting complex. There is a complex calculation to work this out. THat relies on knowing the mass of the object and the distance between the two objects being surveyed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant
The essence of the method used is then that observations are made and then calculations based on these observations that are made. This has worked fine in the context of our own solar system but remains untested outside it.

I think you are betraying again simple ignorance of what science has achieved in this field.

2) Another way to talk about creations bondage to decay is entropy. If there is decay and the corresponding loss of information then that entails that your evidence is corrupted and is corrupting over time.

This is a rephrasing of the old and thoroughly refuted canard that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics refutes various scientific conclusions. Again, you are simply displaying your ignorance of the actual science.

3) A mind that is not large enough to conceive a universe such as the one in which we live can hardly map its laws in their entirety or write its history.

Not an argument against current science since no such claim is being made for the present state of knowledge. Note, however, that partial knowledge can still be correct and accurate as far as it goes.

4) The event of creation is a unique one. So to try to understand it by analogy to observations and deductions made from a presently rather small data set is naive.

But the data set is continually enlarged. The conclusions we can reach in light of current knowledge are better than those reached a century ago and much better than those reached a millennium ago.

5) All human beings make mistakes and it is human scientists who are conducting the investigations of our origins. Therefore we cannot trust the results of things which we cannot experientially test and confirm.

Again, a common but mistaken prejudice that experimentation is the be-all and end-all of accessing scientific information. It is not.

There are many positive achievements to modern physics. But that does not mean you can go beyond your remit and apply the same successful methods to the question of origins.

It depends on what you mean by "remit". It is the remit of science to discover and describe physical nature by the scientific method. No scientific work on the origin of the cosmos goes beyond that remit.

Therefore no scientific work on the origin of the cosmos comments on the Creator or his purpose in creating. That would be to go beyond the scientific remit.

I think a theologian is better equipped to answer questions of origins than is a scientist for the reasons discussed above.

A theologian is indeed better equipped to answer theological questions about origins. But the scientist is best equipped to answer scientific questions. The scientist who makes unwarranted theological conclusions (e.g. that there is no God) on the basis of scientific observation is going beyond the scientific remit. But equally so, the theologian who tries to falsify science with theology is going beyond the remit of theology. Theology can give us reason to believe the universe is a creation. Science can tell us when and how that creation came to be.

However they step beyond their remit when they consider the question of origins with anything but the greatest humility. I trust a competent eyewitness to the events of creation over a Old Universe theoretician and speculative scientist.

Theologians as well as scientists, need to approach the questions with humility. Scientists show humility when they let their data direct their conclusions. Theologians show their humility when they recall that God has spoken in the physical being of creation as well as in scripture and that interpretations of scripture ought to be consistent with what God has wrought.

God is the only eye-witness to creation and he has not given us an indication of its age in scripture. He has given clear indications of its age in creation itself.