The Big Bang: Why is it still being taught?

[Phrossack]

deleted

 

[timtofly]

But the Bible does measure in days and years and you can trace that back a few thousand years to creation.

That would depend on when time actually started. Is time related to a singularity event? Even most YEC'ers will give earth as we know it a 10,000 to 6,000 year time frame because there is a question on the dating methods, and does the age of Adam start when he was created or when he "died" also known as the fall and when creation was "changed".

Of course most would argue that is picking and choosing details and how they can be reconciled with the facts that are accepted today by scientist.

Even the time that light travels can be reconciled to today's standards. Although new findings which will rule out the current scientific proofs against creation are about to cross into the area of irreconcilable.

Scientist have nothing to loose that they can prove themselves wrong. If we find that there are new objects come to view, even the big bang would have to be revised or time adjusted again. When it comes to prove an idea as false with a false proof, does that mean we can prove people wrong with a false statement?

 

[Souron]

What I'm saying is that it is rational, or rather, that it can be. But if your religion is scientifically demonstrably false your religion sucks. A good religion helps us understand that which needs non-literal thinking to be understood, which involves any directed projection into the unknown or unknowable-but-still-resourceful.

But yes, otherwise, I agree.

Spoiler :

And what's the point really- Christianity can be perfectly scientifically compatible when done the right way so why not be a better Christian by being a good scientist? I think fundamentalism, modern fundamentalism being a modern reconstruction of religion despite what they'll have you believe, gets off on requiring its members to believe more and more fake stuff to prove their devotion to the group-identity.

Not being in direct contradiction with established science is not enough. Considering sources other than the scientific method as sources of knowledge about nature challenges the legitimacy of the scientific method. It chalenges the basic assertion that we shouldn't make stuff up without evidence.

Christanity is not compatible with science, because it adds superfluous details to the explanation of nature that does not come from observation. A Christian can be a perfectly good scientist, but there is a philosophical contradiction between the methods used in doing science, and believing in Christian doctrine.

PS:
There is another problem with taking the bible non-literally: How non-literally do you take it? Did God literally protect the Israelites, or did he just cheer them on? Did Jesus really live, and die, and rise again, or metaphorically? These questions aren't yet entirely answered by modern science, but similar biblical statements have. So how do you know to take these literally? The bible doesn't say. Perhaps none of the bible is literal, and there is no physical God?

 

[illram]

I think you can follow the basic gist of Christianity and still be an excellent scientist. You can believe in God and still maintain the scientific method. God or faith in a personal sense, as an additional layer of meaning on top of the observable natural world explanation, does not necessarily corrupt the science in and of itself. And the beauty of science is if it did, it would be trivial for others to spot and discard.

 

[timtofly]

Not being in direct contradiction with established science is not enough. Considering sources other than the scientific method as sources of knowledge about nature challenges the legitimacy of the scientific method. It chalenges the basic assertion that we shouldn't make stuff up without evidence.

Christanity is not compatible with science, because it adds superfluous details to the explanation of nature that does not come from observation. A Christian can be a perfectly good scientist, but there is a philosophical contradiction between the methods used in doing science, and believing in Christian doctrine.

There are a few problems with this. Christian doctrine was the first step in establishing a method for critical thinking to begin with. It did have objective thought processes backing it up. Without the methodology of Christian thought, science would have never taking off. I agree that it was the absurd doctrines of the church that held back science, but that was not Christianity it was the greed of the 1%.

The whole problem now is when scientist use their new found power to discredit the written past that can no longer be observed.

Using scientific methods in an unscientific way is the problem. One should not use science to back up their faith. And one should not discredit faith to back up their science. That is how the contradiction happens.

I grant that Christianity today is just a social group without much thought put into it, and it is carried on by indoctrination. That is not how it started. There was method and there was a way to prove the viability of that method. Even science can become corrupt if it no longer accepts that it can not be falsified, which would make it just another doctrine.

It all depends on how one views the truths that back up the methodology. There are still some facts that cannot be denied even in science.

The contradiction is not in using methods. The contradiction comes when trying to apply the outcomes of those methods in the wrong way.

 

[Souron]

Christianity certainly had a large historic roll in the study of nature. It was Christian monks who had the time to study nature in a systemic way.

But the methodology that started with the Royal Society of London is empirically superior to prior approaches that included church doctrine as part of the body of knowledge. It is more sound to accept theories based on empirical evidence then on musings based on the Bible. This suggests that wherever the Bible makes claims that are also in the domain of science, that is part of nature, then the scientific approach is superior. This includes claims such as the existence of God and the eternal soul.

 

[Bugfatty300]

Christian doctrine was the first step in establishing a method for critical thinking to begin with.

So, for instance, the pre-Christian Greeks (who were calculating the earth's earth's circumference, building analog computers, laying the foundations for modern medicine in place of superstition) where living in a scientific dark age until Christians came along with their holy book that said Pi=3?

 

[Souron]

I think you can follow the basic gist of Christianity and still be an excellent scientist. You can believe in God and still maintain the scientific method. God or faith in a personal sense, as an additional layer of meaning on top of the observable natural world explanation, does not necessarily corrupt the science in and of itself. And the beauty of science is if it did, it would be trivial for others to spot and discard.

I agree. But it is a contradiction to believe in the scientific method as a source of knowledge and the Bible as a source of knowledge at the same time. One has superfluous, unverifiable details, while the other rejects anything that is not directly supported by natural evidence. Believing in both is not a logically consistent world view.

 

[History_Buff]

The whole problem now is when scientist use their new found power to discredit the written past that can no longer be observed.

Are you of the opinion that evolution can never be demonstrated because nobody saw apes evolve slowly into man? Do you think archaeology is nonsense? How about history in general?

 

[illram]

I agree. But it is a contradiction to believe in the scientific method as a source of knowledge and the Bible as a source of knowledge at the same time. One has superfluous, unverifiable details, while the other rejects anything that is not directly supported by natural evidence. Believing in both is not a logically consistent world view.

I think that depends on how you define knowledge. The Bible says a lot of interesting things about how to be a good person, how to practice compassion and forgiveness, etc. There are lessons in the Bible about how to live in the world that I would definitely call "knowledge," or actually wisdom. Same with other religious teachings. Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, all of them have wonderful lessons for how to be good people.

Perhaps there is some sort of scientific explanation for all these things (e.g. Dawkins' theories about the selfish gene and altruism, etc.) but to me they sort of come at the same thing from different angles. If I look at your brain and explain all the chemical and molecular reactions going on when you, say, meditate, or pray, or go to church, there might be a scientific, provable observation I could point to and say "this is why you feel the way you feel when you do that." And that would be fine. That would be a scientific observation. But a person doing those things based on a spiritual practice would gain something very different from doing those things that the scientific explanation, the "how", simply fails to provide. It would be missing something, it would be dry. A spiritual practice exists in that gap. I dunno, that's the best way I can explain it.

 

[Tahuti]

Christanity is not compatible with science, because it adds superfluous details to the explanation of nature that does not come from observation. A Christian can be a perfectly good scientist, but there is a philosophical contradiction between the methods used in doing science, and believing in Christian doctrine.

You take Christianity too literally.

An Orthodox Jewish doctrine - which may very well be appropriate to any other religion in this case - is that science and religion cannot contradict each other; if there is an apparant contradiction, it is due to human fallibility. Perhaps, that fallibility would be taking scriptures letter by letter literally.

 

[El_Machinae]

I heard a Rabbi explain that, it was actually really elegant. The essence of the faith is that there is a god that is due deference, but that people can make mistakes. All those mistakes in the Scripture? Just people making mistakes trying to give God deference.

He viewed the process as iterative truth-seeking, in the same way science is. You can only get closer and closer.

 

[Kyriakos]

So, for instance, the pre-Christian Greeks (who were calculating the earth's earth's circumference, building analog computers, laying the foundations for modern medicine in place of superstition) where living in a scientific dark age until Christians came along with their holy book that said Pi=3?

+1

If anything, Christianity ******** science, although it was on a serious downward spiral already with the fall of the Greek hegemonies (as in Egypt or Asia Minor, or Syria), despite still having many more figures of worth than in the middle-late aeons of Christianity's spread.

That said, there was progress in the mid-Byzantine era (8-9-10th century more obviously). Also exchanges between Byzantines and Arabs, in math and so on. The encyclopedias/other monumental literary works created at the time (eg the Souda, or the bibliotheke of Photios), also signify a high cultural era.

From my own readings it would seem that the high era for science in antiquity was roughly at the time of Roman expansion to Sicily (that Archimedes died as direct result of that is another point in favor of such a general claim). Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Eukleid, Apollonios of Perga, many others, were highly notable mathematicians and astronomers of the middle-late Hellenistic period.

 

[timtofly]

I did not say the science itself did I?

I said the methodology.

Are you of the opinion that evolution can never be demonstrated because nobody saw apes evolve slowly into man? Do you think archaeology is nonsense? How about history in general?

Apes did not evolve into humans. According to biology, they are cousins with the same origin. There is a difference? I am not calling anything nonsense. That is my point. It is how one interprets the facts, not the science itself. If no one ever wrote down their thoughts, we would have no insights of the past at all. Would you declare all thoughts false? It would be doing that that nullifies history.

 

[luiz]

Well the Big Bang model doesn't actually state that the universe hasn't existed forever. What it does say is that before our universe looks like it does, it used to look like that huge, dense ball of energy, and we can't say what was happening then, or what happened before, because we don't really know much about how things work at those preposterously high energy levels. I personally suspect we never will, and that that totally doesn't matter.

The original (relativistic) concept of the Big Bang is that before it there was nothing, simply because the concentration of all mass of the universe in a subatomic particle warped time completely, that is, there was no passage of time. Now I think this is relatively "benign" for theists.

Today there are a bunch of theories postulating that the Big Bang which happened 13.7 billion years ago may not have been the first, that the universe is constantly expanding and collapsing, or indeed that our universe is merely an offshoot of an older universe, and will spawn other universes itself. Those theories seem far more damaging to religious narrative than the "classical" (actually relativistic) Big Bang theory.

 

[El_Machinae]

Yes and no. I mean, they mostly posit a 'Really Big True Universe' of which our universe is a subset. That's not much different than believing that God exists in a way that's 'more' than our universe.
Heck, a reasonable number of those theories leave the door open to the idea of our universe being created intentionally.

 

[warpus]

Scientist have nothing to loose that they can prove themselves wrong. If we find that there are new objects come to view, even the big bang would have to be revised or time adjusted again.

Hasn't this actually happened with the Big Bang Theory? Isn't Inflation Theory the theory that is supposed to "replace" The Big Bang Theory, in that it explains more?

 

[El_Machinae]

The Big Bang theory will need to be modified over time. We've not even reconciled General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, yet!
That said, in spirit of the OP, I'm not sure how teaching children that Joshua conquered Canaan will help with that.

 

[peter grimes]

We have spent many decades looking fr things such as "dark matter", "Dark energy" and other things that are basically fudge factors and violate known physics.

You're very confused here.

First of all, DM is not a fudge factor. It's the name given to the phenomenon that causes galaxies to behave the way we observe them to be behaving. A fudge factor would be something like assuming that the word "day" has a different meaning based on which verse of the Bible it's used in.

The only thing we're not yet sure about is what particle(s?) are responsible for the gravitational interactions we see.

Rather than defying known physics, instead this is a case of well established physics and 25 years of experiments and observations saying "we know it can't be x, you, or z. So we should focus our attentions on W and V."

The situation today is analogous to the 18th and early 19th century's understanding of electricity and magnetism. They knew certain phenomena could be produced in certain circumstances, but they couldn't explain *how*. Various things were proposed and subsequently ruled out when experiments weren't consistent with the predictions. If you were alive in 1802 your reasoning here would mean that you'd argue against "electrons", since it had never been observed.

In the same way, we've been ruling out DM candidates and are down to just a handful. From what I understand, WIMPS, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles are the strongest candidate. So far observations of the Milky Way strongly support this, but observations of our dwarf galaxies will really solidify this theory.

No sign of dark matter in underground experiment
LUX, the most sensitive dark matter detector yet, fails to capture mysterious particles.

Because the detector is built to certain tolerances, and if the particles require different tolerances to be detected, then you won't find any. And this shows us where to focus our efforts in the design of the next detector. In science a negative result is interesting and good - in fact, all clean results are interesting and good.

 

[uppi]

Not being in direct contradiction with established science is not enough. Considering sources other than the scientific method as sources of knowledge about nature challenges the legitimacy of the scientific method. It chalenges the basic assertion that we shouldn't make stuff up without evidence.

The world, and even science, would not work if the scientific method was the only source of knowledge. There are many question where you cannot rely on an answer validated by the scientific method. There can be various reasons for that:
- the question cannot be addressed by the scientific method (right now)
- a scientific validation would be require unethical procedures
- the problem could be addressed by science, but not by you or anyone willing to work with you
- you could test it with the scientific method but you lack the time and/or resources to perform the validation.

If you considered science as the only source of knowledge you would either have to give up or make a totally random decision. However you are far better of if you consider other sources of knowledge, whatever they may be.