According to them they can tell just that or they wouldn’t be able to say the universe is expanding......
It seems that you don't understand HOW they reach that conclusion, since if you did, you would understand how your claim here is mistaken.
Let's go back to the ant on a balloon idea. Let's say you have several ants on the balloon, in various places, and they're just standing still. Now someone comes along and starts inflating the balloon. The first ant is going to see all the other ants getting further away. But each ant is going to see the same thing - that they are standing still and all the other ants are moving away. And that's exactly what we see when we look out at the distant stars and galaxies - all of them are moving away from us. So we are either in the very center of the universe - a mighty big coincidence if ever there was one! - or the universe is expanding, and when we look at the distant galaxies moving away, we are like one of the ants on the balloon watching all the other ants moving away from us.
Not to mention their pseudoscientific claims of blue and redshift from the CMB so that they can calculate our absolute motion against the background......
Yes, I'm sure that all of the cosmologists who have years of study and training and expertise have completely missed that it is pseudoscience, but you have figured it out perfectly...
As I agreed, all directions are “downstream”, or with the direction of expansion. There is no going against the current or expansion.....
Except unlike a balloon surface we have ants above and below, so ants from all sides must also be expanding “towards” ants on the other side of the balloon expanding away from those above them too.....
Yet this is not what is observed.....
Yeah, ants drifting downstream doesn't have the same mechanics as ants on the surface of an expanding balloon.
Afraid not.
I just said the ants are accelerating with respect to one another and therefore time dilation must be accounted for....
Actually, in post 60, I asked (with regards to your river analogy), "But the river is moving relative to the shore. If the universe is expanding, what is it moving relative to?"
And in post 62, you answered, "Something, or it wouldn’t be moving, would it....."
So even though you didn't specify what exactly the universe was moving in relation to, you clearly stated that it was moving in relation to "something."
They claim the CMB is an external reference and we can calculate our absolute motion relative to it due to blue and redshift. I say it’s pseudiscience as there is no absolute reference or frame....
Please, give me a single example when I said there must be something external to the universe which provides an absolute frame of reference.
By only considering the ants absolute motion through space while claiming there is no such thing as absolute motion? Therefore motion is motion weather it is caused by you firing rockets or space itself accelerating you. Both impart energy. Hence Einstein’s realization that acceleration (whatever the cause) was the same as gravity and imparted energy and changed clocks and decay rates.....
When did I say "absolute motion"? I have spoken of the motion of things relative to other things, but this is subjective motion, not relative motion.
Usually those who fail to see that claiming the ants absolute motion is all that matters while claiming absolute motion doesn’t exist do indeed fail to see. Motion is motion if there is no absolute motion and the ant is in motion regardless of the cause.....
As I've said, I am not claiming there is absolute motion, nor am I claiming that there is some external reference point by which to measure this absolute motion. If you disagree, then please show me where I said so.