(March 4, 2014 at 12:25 am)Stimbo Wrote: 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.

HAHA... This reminds me of a story involving my sister. I ate all her chips ahoy cookies, then I put the plastic container that it came in by the dog's cage and when she saw that, she actually believed that the dog ate it. She wasn't there to observe the fact that it was actually I who ate the cookies. I'm mean.

(March 4, 2014 at 12:46 am)Cinjin Wrote: "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.

I guess what my friend was trying to say is that the big bang is based on belief just like creation is based on belief because there wasn't anybody around to actually see it happen. He doesn't believe that "a dot can just come into existence without something living already existing to cause the dot to exist."

Idk... Whatever, I guess.

(March 3, 2014 at 10:38 pm)AT7iLA Wrote: 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?

The big bang is an explosion that is still ongoing (in that the unverse is still expanding). We can see that other galaxies are moving away from us. We can also detect the left over radiation from the initial bang.

Every event you see happened in the past, as light has a finite speed.



I think most of us would agree this is an explosion, even though we haven't seen the moment it started.

(March 3, 2014 at 10:38 pm)AT7iLA Wrote: But what do we say if asked about the big bang?

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

The stars can be seen to be exploding/expanding/inflating with fairly rudimentary telescopes and accurate record keeping. It is as independently verifiable as any other scientific test.

By the way, the big bang is still occurring.. it only started billions of years ago. We only know anything about it because it is still occurring.

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(March 3, 2014 at 10:38 pm)AT7iLA Wrote: Gravity is a scientific theory being it can be observed and tested over and over...

Pfft, which gravity? Have you ever seen a graviton?

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(March 3, 2014 at 10:47 pm)Kayenneh Wrote: Actually, gravity is an unbreakable law, and one of the four fundamental forces.

No it's not, not a single scientific law is absolute.

(March 5, 2014 at 5:36 am)Aractus Wrote:

(March 3, 2014 at 10:38 pm)AT7iLA Wrote: Gravity is a scientific theory being it can be observed and tested over and over...

Pfft, which gravity? Have you ever seen a graviton?

This is what I wanted to say, too.

Sure, you can observe what you've been told is Gravity. What if Intelligent Falling is what's really happening?
What if when you drop a pencil, it falls because the Earth is magnetic and there is enough metal in all things on Earth to attract everything on it?
If gravitation is real, how to bumble bees fly? Hmm? How does anything fly against gravity?

OK, done with the stupid bit.

But, I know we all know what gravity does, but how many of us actually know what it is? How does it work? Why does it work?

(March 4, 2014 at 12:25 am)Stimbo Wrote:

(March 4, 2014 at 1:52 am)AT7iLA Wrote: 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.

HAHA... This reminds me of a story involving my sister. I ate all her chips ahoy cookies, then I put the plastic container that it came in by the dog's cage and when she saw that, she actually believed that the dog ate it. She wasn't there to observe the fact that it was actually I who ate the cookies. I'm mean.

That's where investigation and testing comes in. It's the classic Columbo plot (I'm on a Peter Falk kick atm): murderer sets up an alibi and shoots his business partner, then arranges the scene of the crime to make it look like a burglar did it. At face value, the police and everybody else sees exactly what the killer wants them to see. It's only when Columbo pieces the clues together, gathering evidence and picking holes in the 'official' story to determine what really happened, that he can finally make the arrest.

(March 4, 2014 at 1:52 am)AT7iLA Wrote: I guess what my friend was trying to say is that the big bang is based on belief just like creation is based on belief because there wasn't anybody around to actually see it happen. He doesn't believe that "a dot can just come into existence without something living already existing to cause the dot to exist."

And do you still consider this an accurate representation of Big Bang Cosmology?

The problems with the Big Bang Cosmology is that it still requires "empty space" to exist (and as we know empty space doesn't exist, thus it requires something to exist as the starting conditions and not nothing), and that the mechanism for the imbalance between matter and antimatter has yet to be theorized let alone observed (theoretically you need some kind of subatomic particle that buzzes around and prevents antimatter from forming or if there's some fundamental difference between the two states of matter). It also requires a single state of matter, a concept incompatible with general relativity as we know it, and also theoretically incompatible with QM.

(March 5, 2014 at 8:44 am)Aractus Wrote: The problems with the Big Bang Cosmology is that it still requires "empty space" to exist

Really? It was my understanding that the universe is a kind of 3D version of Koch's Snowflake, the expansion doesn't really happen outwards (as we humans perceive it), but there is infinite room within to expand into.

(March 3, 2014 at 10:38 pm)AT7iLA Wrote: 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?

I'll have to dig this site up but, there's this list of predictions made on the premise that the big bang model is valid, with one side showing the date of the prediction dating as far back as the 1910s, but most of them coming from the 1930s.

On the other side of this list is the dates of the ones that have since been verified. Some starting in the 1960s, but the biggest 'boom' coming between the 1980s and 1990s. (They couldn't be tested from the 1910s to the 1930s because we didn't have the technology then)

Many of the major predictions have been dead on.