The Big Bang: Why is it still being taught?

[emzie]

CH makes one post and then excuses himself and never follows up in the thread.

I think we call that trolling.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I don't think he does it to get a rise out of people.

 

[Crezth]

crotchety old Mr. Gruff

 

[Borachio]

They're only so sad when some religious nutter bangs on their door for the umpteenth time, asking if they've ever heard of Jesus.

Spoiler :

WELL, YES, ACTUALLY I HAVE!!

And I'm not an atheist, btw.

Why do you keep banging on my door? Making me think it's something/somebody important, and/or interesting?

 

[Leoreth]

CH makes one post and then excuses himself and never follows up in the thread.

I think we call that trolling.

I think it's very nice that he stops posting when he runs out of arguments. Most people who are immediately proven wrong aren't that gracious.

 

[Borachio]

Most people who are immediately proven wrong don't start another thread on exactly the same subject within three days.

 

[useless]

I think it's very nice that he stops posting when he runs out of arguments. Most people who are immediately proven wrong aren't that gracious.

We usually call this a [Crap] and run though. It seems he didn't any arguments beyond the op (which got destroyed pretty quickly)

 

[Leoreth]

Most people who are immediately proven wrong don't start another thread on exactly the same subject within three days.

You mean people who accept that they're proven wrong?

 

[Borachio]

Um. I suppose I mean both, really. People who accept it and people who don't.

 

[Leoreth]

I guess it's obvious that people who don't accept it would start threads with the same premise over and over again.

 

[Borachio]

It's not obvious to me. If I say something, and it meets with what I think is blank incomprehension (though others think they've proven me wrong), I tend to give up after a couple of attempts. I believe I'm not unique. (In any way, btw.)

 

[Leoreth]

Okay, fair enough.

 

[Kyriakos]

See Borachio? Leoreth gave up on defending being wrong after only 3 times

 

[_random_]

Wasn't it a pretty big thing in the Orthodox Church? I remember a Russian Orthodox sect, the Old Believers, believed in absolute biblical literalism but I can't remember the Russian Orthodox church reformed away from that point or the Old Believers broke away to emphasize the Biblical literalism.

There certainly have been some trends toward Biblical literalism among the Orthodox at some points, but I don't think they've ever represented the consensus of the Church. It certainly wasn't the consensus of the holy Fathers. There have been a few proponents of creationism among modern Orthodox (and come to think of it, I suspect my priest is a creationist, although he's fortunately never really made a point of it), but I would argue that it's really more reactionary to Darwin's foundational role in modernist thought. Especially since Marxism uses a lot of evolutionary language, and there's kind of some bad blood there. And a lot of good blood.

But yeah, not really in line with how the Holy Fathers approached scripture. Even St. Augustine (Yes, I know he wasn't that influential in Greek-speaking Christendom but I'm making a point) explicitly believed the Genesis account to have been allegorical. In most other discussions of Genesis from the first few Christian centuries, there isn't much said about whether it's to be interpreted literally as much as there is about what it says about God and Christ and the world and us. St. Basil the Great is a minor exception, as a part of the Hexaemeron defends literal interpretation rather than allegorical. But I suspect an intellect of his calliber would accept evolution if the evidence were available and properly presented to him, and the meat of his teaching on Genesis is still applicable under an allegorical view. Regardless, the fact that he takes time to address allegorical interpretation at least indicates that it happened.

The Old Believers weren't at any rate a mainstream sect. If I am not mistaken, the Old Believers broke away to protest the mainline Orthodox Church's Caesaropapism (as the Czar was the supreme authority of the church ever since Peter the Great).

Nah, they broke away before Peter the Great, as Patriarch Nikon wanted to bring the Russian practice in line with the Greek practice, as they'd developed some of their own things in the meanwhile, like saying Alleluia thrice instead of twice. Which is a big deal, apparently. Regardless, you're correct in noting that they represent the fringe of Russian Christianity.

 

[Borachio]

See Borachio? Leoreth gave up on defending being wrong after only 3 times

Dammit! He beat me to it. I was just about to give up myself.

 

[Birdjaguar]

All valid reasons why there are some questions the scientific method can't (yet) answer (apart from the unethical one, which never seems to stop anybody). However, recognising that science can't answer everything doesn't mean you can instead use MAGIC AND MAKEBELIEVE to answer those questions. Or at least, if you do, that you have any reason to have the remotest faith that any answers arrived at in such a manner mean anything at all.

Even empirical data, which might concern something we have no understanding of whatsoever, is still scientific because it's based on measurements of what DOES happen. "Science" isn't just this esoteric thing that exists in isolation to logic and reason, it IS logic and reason. If you can come up with an "answer" for something that doesn't come from logic and reason, and isn't based on any empirical data, then it's nonsense.

Certainly not true (bolded part). Such conclusions may not be scientific, but that does not make them nonsense. Do you think that observation and reason are the only source of knowledge and that all other sources are false/nonsense? Is everything nonsense until proven by science? Doesn't our (human) physical dependence on the electro magnetic spectrum bias our options towards what is real and true? Might there be things we cannot see because of our observational bias?

"If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

 

[Flying Pig]

Well, a more accurate way of putting it would be 'there's no way to judge whether it's true or false', which we usually take to mean 'it's not worth believing in it' - after all, if believing in it allowed us to make more and better conclusions, then that in itself would be a logical, rational reason to believe it. It's also the basis of all science, really - we don't know that there are things called matter, energy and forces, but modelling the universe as if those things existed helps us make testable predictions about what it's going to do. If believing in a creator allowed the same to happen, then it would be a good idea.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Then again the existence of something which is not set at infinity and remains unchanged, is not defined by the existence of something which does. Or the opposite. However such examples do exist in math.

For example the Fibonacci spiral will in infinite turns become identical to what the Golden spiral is at all times. In that sense you could claim that the latter spiral is the infinity of the former, or the former at an unchanged moment in time, which also has the trait that it exists at an infinite number of turns of that other spiral

(i once based something on this, but for the time being i am not examining it more).

 

[Jehoshua]

It doesn't matter who suggests a hypothesis, it might as well have been Jesus himself. What matters is whether the hypothesis stands up to scrutiny, whether attempts to falsify it fall short, whether it predicts future events accurately, whether existing data does not contradict it, and whether it makes the leap and in the end becomes a theory.

You are of course correct that the factuality of a theory is what determines its merit not who proclaims it. However my point in pointing out Lemaitre produced the theory is not to say "aha, its a proof of creation I say" but to point out that the statement certain persons (such as useless) made that "aha, the big bang disproves Christianity" is utterly absurd. The fact the theories originator was a priest in this case is particularly poignant.

Incidentally to say or insinuate I said that the big-bang proves Christianity is to fall into the strawman fallacy, I merely noted that at the time of its promulgation atheists opposed it on principle on the basis of it allegedly being produced to support the Christian notion of an a priori creation (Lemaitre being a priest, being accused of producing the theory to advance the religion). That said I do maintain, and indeed I wrote, that logic dictates that something which has a beginning must have a cause, and since the universe is observably contingent (and adding pre-existing not-observable universes before that doesn't resolve the problem) something uncontingent (ergo eternal, that is beyond time) is necessary as a first cause. Ergo God in the basest philosophical sense, although of course whether this is the Christian God is another question.

 

[Flying Pig]

^Then again the existence of something which is not set at infinity and remains unchanged, is not defined by the existence of something which does. Or the opposite. However such examples do exist in math.

That's more a possibility than an existence, though. We say that numbers go on ad infinitum, as long as they remain theoretical - that doesn't extend to saying that anyone has ever assembled an infinite collection of anything real, or that anybody ever could.