Big Bang Debunked?

[lostsheep]

Lily wrote

Mog, you and your atheist cohorts here are ignorant and content to be so. The distinction between magic and the supernatural is clear, known to all thinking people in disciplines that deal with one or both, and completely non-controversial. Your ignorance can't change that.

Yeah, Mog, get with it. For christ's sake EVERYONE who's anyone KNOWS that there is a clear difference b/w christian magic, which is called supernatural, and other religions' magic, which is called magic. You are so ignorant.

This reminds me of of the intellectually stimulating discussions with Xans, who insisted on redefining various terms to suit his ideological agenda:

killing vs. murder: Killing is okay if Xans thinks the person being killed deserves it otherwise it's murder

Person: a human cell

[Philboid Studge]

Two funny Pope stories, with a lesson:

As we all know, the Catholic Church was all over the Big Bang theory because they thought it confirmed their idiotic creation myth. In 1951 (long before BB theories were consensus among scientists), Pius XII issued an Encyclical that gushed over this as "proof" that Sky Captain exists, huzzah:

Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, [science] has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the cosmos came forth from the hands of the Creator.

... Hence, creation took place in time. Therefore, there is a Creator. Therefore, God exists! Although it is neither explicit nor complete, this is the reply we were awaiting from science, and which the present human generation is awaiting from it.

Shortly after this , the 'father' (har har) of BB Lamaître met privately with the Pope to tell him to shut the fuck up about Big Bang theories, because all this was far from proven and if he put all his Easter eggs in one basket it might blow up in his face.* (I believe his exact words were "Ixnay on the Ig-bay Ang-bay, Big Papi") Pie-hole 12 never mentioned it in public again.

Fast forward 30 years ...

Following a talk wheelchair guy Stephen Hawking gave at a Vatican conference, Pope John Paul told Hawking that it was fine to study evolution of the cosmos but that scientists shouldn't inquire into the BB itself because that was the "moment of Creation and therefore the work of God."

Hawking later wrote: "I was glad then that he did not know the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference—the possibility that space-time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation." (BHT, p 120)

Shorter Hawking: Suck it, Jesus.

The lesson is that science and voodoo ugga-bugga don't mix. Jeetards like to claim that science and theology explore different "realms," but they still insist on integrating them when they think, incorrectly, that science supports their unfounded and ludicrous beliefs. That's why morons who think there's something remotely convincing about Kalam and other cosmological arguments would do well not to invoke the sciencey bits, because it will invariably bite them in the heinie. The end.

*This only seems like a mixed metaphor. If the egg basket blows up in his face, then there will be egg on his face.

[ubs]

Philboid Studge wrote

... but such people must suspend their beliefs while wearing the lab coats.

Every scientists walks around with paradigms. That is, no one enters the lab "pure," and so all of them must suspend their preconceptions to conduct experiments - not just the theists.

Furthermore all of science is based on a concept of faith - the unprovable position that everything that is going on inside your head actually exists outside of your head.

Quoting Murdoch now dude. WTF!

[Philboid Studge]

right ubs, they all must have "faith" that the Matrix is just a movie.

[ubs]

Philboid Studge wrote

right ubs, they all must have "faith" that the Matrix is just a movie.

Yes. That is an act of faith. And an unprovable position.

FYI. Sopolism proceeds Hollywood.

[Philboid Studge]

Even if you believe solipsism is true (which no one in the history of time has ever done except crazy people), it wouldn't change how you behave in a lab, since the physical laws are consistent -- even in your own private Idaho. But you must discard god from the equations because divine interference puts all observations into doubt (whereas solipsism would not).

[ubs]

Philboid Studge wrote

Even if you believe solipsism is true (which no one in the history of time has ever done except crazy people), it wouldn't change how you behave in a lab, since the physical laws are consistent -- even in your own private Idaho. But you must discard god from the equations because divine interference puts all observations into doubt (whereas solipsism would not).

If it's all in your head than anything can happen. If it's all God anything can happen. I think a strong argument can be made for sopolism or belief in the supernatural making you a better scientist.

You would be less likely to toss data that didn't fit a particular model. Something that isn't supposed to happen in the lab, but happens all the time.

It's not the idea of a world or powers beyond our reconnoitering that is the problem. Its the rigid preconceptions of our origins and EVERYONE walks around with preconceptions about our origins. And everyone is rigid.

[Captain Relativity]

"And everyone is rigid." Yes, but not like when I was in my teens.

[ghoulslime]

Notice how the cow happily made the transition from historical documentation of the atrocities committed by her religious organization to vague defense of belief in the supernatural? Even a shit-spin specialist like Lily can't wrap enough bows and ribbons on the Dark Ages to make it a good Mother's Day gift.

[ghoulslime]

dogpet wrote

Baptism, last rites, exorcism, blessings, saints. woowoo woo woo woooo. Hocus-pocus, magic crackers. The only difference is when the priest says abracadabra, nothing happens. It's like a talent show ventriloquist with lips like a feeding fish. The crazy thing is, if something did actually happen, many of the audience would call smoke & mirrors, but they are happy to believe the crap magic they can't see

"Woowoo woo woo woooo" pretty much sums up all the Lily says.

[ghoulslime]

Mog wrote

I think we should just play a new game. That is: how much bullshit paragraphs can Lily come up with to counter our more sensible smaller posts?

I mean Lily posts 3 paragraphs claiming that belief in magic and the supernatural are 2 different things. Guess what, Lily. They aren't! Claiming that the supernatural and magic are 2 different things because one is allegedly in our control and one isn't is just baloney. Furthermore, my point wasn't just that Christians used magic, but they clearly believed in it. You have the story of Simon Magus, for example? What did Simon Magus use to fly, perchance?

Of course, that 3 paragraphs can't match the huge and ultimately unpersuasive diatribe that Lily makes about Obama. Can our 7 guest users handle it? (seriously, why don't I ever see her posts on PZ Myers or something?)

Lily applies the same tactics to her communication as she does to her appearance. She disguises utterly inane assertions with lots of flamboyant fluff in hopes that her fellow self-deceivers and plain stupid people will think she said something profound. How much makeup do you suppose she needs to cake on her wrinkled and fat mug in order to keep random people in the supermarket from throwing up?

ubs wrote

If it's all in your head than anything can happen. If it's all God anything can happen. I think a strong argument can be made for sopolism or belief in the supernatural making you a better scientist.

You would be less likely to toss data that didn't fit a particular model. Something that isn't supposed to happen in the lab, but happens all the time.

It's not the idea of a world or powers beyond our reconnoitering that is the problem. Its the rigid preconceptions of our origins and EVERYONE walks around with preconceptions about our origins. And everyone is rigid.

You aren't alone among atheists who understand that-- though few will admit it. One who has is the biologist Richard Lewontin (one of yours). I recently read a quite wonderful excerpt which has got me going off and looking at what else he has written (there is a ton online so I don't have to spend money!). In any case the bit in question was this remarkable passage:

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its extravagent promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated, just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. ... It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, ... Moreover, the materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.(quoted in the book The Deep Structure of Biologyp. 223 and available on Google books.) That whole last chapter is on the supposed conflict between religion and science.

He is not alone among the intellectually honest secularist/materialist/atheists. Too many of you don't want God to be true as one of your better known philosophers has admitted quite candidly:

... I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God... It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem ... is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism [my two favorite words--Lily] of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about human life, including everything about the human mind.-- Thomas Nagel in The Last Word (Oxford University Press, 1997 (p.130-131)

Can I get an AMEN!!

[Irreligious]

Evidence, Lily. That's all I require. And, so far, all of y'all making allegations about a supernatural ain't come up with diddly in the way of evidence.

It's stupid to talk about "not wanting" an evil god to exist. Who the fuck would want that? I'm sure you don't want to believe that the entity Muslims claim is god is real, either. But that ain't the point. You simply ain't got the goods. You don't have any objective evidence that you have access to an alleged supernatural realm or that such a thing even exists.

Bottom line.

[Tenspace]

"... the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about human life..."

I can understand the derision against armchair evo-psych, or the use of non-empirical speculation to explain human life, but...

Evolutionary biology is as important to the understanding of human life as stellar theory is to astronomy. To paraphrase Dobzhansky, "nothing in the humand mind makes sense except in the light of evolution."

Irreligious wrote

Evidence, Lily. That's all I require. And, so far, all of y'all making allegations about a supernatural ain't come up with diddly in the way of evidence.

It's stupid to talk about "not wanting" an evil god to exist. Who the fuck would want that? I'm sure you don't want to believe that that entity Muslims claim is god is real, either. But that ain't the point. You simply ain't got the goods. You don't have any objective evidence that you have access to such an alleged supernatural or that such a thing even exists.

Bottom line.

How can it be the bottom line when you can't grasp the simple fact that the "entity" the muslims believe in *is* God? I have repeatedly told you that there is only one God and that various religions apprehend him more or less correctly? Obviously and for historical reasons that I have spelled out at length, I think Christianity is true; if I did not, I would look elsewhere. I do have "the goods". But you want material proof of the immaterial. Good luck with that. You will never get it.