Still Learning

[AT7iLA]

So still learning about the atheism thing...

Science is the knowledge or study of facts about the natural world through observation and tests through experiments that can be repeated.

Gravity is a scientific theory being it can be observed and tested over and over...

But what do we say if asked about the big bang?

It was never observed cause people weren't around when it happened.

Answers anyone?

---

Darn, did I just post this on the wrong sub forum?...

[Kayenneh]

So still learning about the atheism thing...

"Lack of belief in gods". That's it, really.

Gravity is a scientific theory being it can be observed and tested over and over...

Actually, gravity is an unbreakable law, and one of the four fundamental forces.

But what do we say if asked about the big bang?

Background radiation.

And MinutePhysics have some really nice videos on YouTube worth watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mZQ-5-KYHw

Darn, did I just post this on the wrong sub forum?...

Yup, but I can move it, if you'd like

[Rahul]

Well the pure language in physics lies only in mathmatics. But I don't speak that. So we have to use layman terms. But one of the big indicators is that everything is moving away from each other. Well not everything. We have clusters of galaxies that are locked together by gravity but all the clusters are flying away from each other. Actually the space between them is expanding. Plug in the mathmatics, throw the current process in reverse, and everything comes to a single point about 13.7 billion years ago.

[popeyespappy]

No one saw the meteor that made Meteor Crater either so that big ass hole in the desert must not really be there.

[Rahul]

No one saw the meteor that made Meteor Crater either so that big ass hole in the desert must not really be there.

I got to see it just last November! I had always wanted to see it.

[AT7iLA]

Yup, but I can move it, if you'd like

Lol whatever. If this is supposed to be in another sub forum...

No one saw the meteor that made Meteor Crater either so that big ass hole in the desert must not really be there.

Yea but then people can come up with all kinds of explanations for it...

---

Well a friend of mine who is a Christian and also a Scientist was explaining to me what the difference was between science and belief and then stated this:

"If you think the big bang happened it springs from belief and not science because the big bang was never observed, tested, recorded, or repeated."

In which I said... "I have to poop. See you later."

[Minimalist]

But what do we say if asked about the big bang?

It was never observed cause people weren't around when it happened.

I always point out that no one was around to see their fucking 'creation' either.

[popeyespappy]

No one saw the meteor that made Meteor Crater either so that big ass hole in the desert must not really be there.

Yea but then people can come up with all kinds of explanations for it...

Yes they can, but if those explanations conflict with repeatable observations they can be discarded.

Well a friend of mine who is a Christian and also a Scientist was explaining to me what the difference was between science and belief and then stated this:

"If you think the big bang happened it springs from belief and not science because the big bang was never observed, tested, recorded, or repeated."

But I don't believe in the Big Bang. I believe the Big Bang theory as modified by inflation is the most widely accepted model for the early development of the known universe. It is the most widely accepted model because it is the one that most closely matches current observations. Hopefully one day new observations will either confirm the Big Bang or lead to another theory that matches our observations better than the Big Bang model does.

[Cyberman]

But what do we say if asked about the big bang?

It was never observed cause people weren't around when it happened.

In science, there is direct and indirect observation. Direct observation would cover watching an object fall to the ground and then testing for the cause.

Indirect observation applies when we see a remnant of an earlier event and then work out what caused our observation. If you were to see a smashed goldfish bowl on the floor, a wet carpet and a contented looking cat, you don't need to have been present at the event to work out what happened.

In the case of the Big Bang model, it was the observation that galaxies are flying away from each other proportionate to their distance (a galaxy twice as distant is receding twice as fast and so on). By postulating what we would expect to find if we wound back the clock, it was worked out that at some point in history all those galaxies should have been aggregated together at the same point. All else in Big Bang Cosmology flows from that basic principle.

For instance, at that point we should expect the proto-Universe to be unbelievably dense and insanely hot; a high-energy plasma state, basically. As the singularity (as it became known) cooled to the point where particles could combine to form atoms, photons that had previously been trapped in the dense fog of particles were suddenly able to escape and the Universe became transparent. The prediction of all this physics was that this light should still be visible, permeating the entire Universe. Since spacetime had expanded over the thirteen-billion-and-some-change years, the light radiation will also have expanded, stretching its wavelength; in fact, past the infrared end of the spectrum into the microwave region. So, the prediction stated, the Universe ought to be saturated with microwave background radiation.

That was precisely what was discovered, completely accidentally by Bell Lab technicians Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. This was in 1964, and creationists still haven't caught up.

[Cinjin]

But what do we say if asked about the big bang?
Answers anyone?

"I don't know how the universe began. That doesn't mean that we default to wizard's gardens, dirt men and talking snakes."


I always liked that answer.