How many of you atheists believe in the Big Bang Theory?

[Astreja]

I don't "believe" in the BBT. I provisionally accept it as the current front-runner in cosmological theories, as it's supported by phenomena such as red shift and the cosmic background radiation.

[Astreja]

Hey no one is going to faith shame you here, come on bring that big beautiful big bang science fiction religion my way. Its okay its the most widely accepted scientific theory out there and its absolutely ridiculously garbage, also it was made by a Jesuit, so really you should be thinking 'is this Roman Catholic Propaganda?' in which case you'd be right the Roman Catholic Church has made a living fooling people for thousands of years, now is no different.

Don't be so fucking disingenuous. Your poll is disrespectful, straw-manning, false-dichotomy crap and there are no genuine options to vote on.

[Pat Mustard]

It's not a case of believing in the big bang. It's a case of accepting what is currently humanity's best sxplanation for reality (based on known evidence) or rejecting reality.

Until better evidence comes along which points to a more accurate explanation, I'm going with the big bang.

[pocaracas]

Sometimes, the absence of forethought on some people is just baffling.
At least have a read through the intro on the wiki page for this thing that you don't really know.

The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature.[1] It was first proposed in 1927 by Roman Catholic priest and physicist Georges Lemaître. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale form.[2][3][4] These models offer a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large-scale structure. The overall uniformity of the Universe, known as the flatness problem, is explained through cosmic inflation: a sudden and very rapid expansion of space during the earliest moments. However, physics currently lacks a widely accepted theory of quantum gravity that can successfully model the earliest conditions of the Big Bang.

Crucially, these models are compatible with the Hubble–Lemaître law—the observation that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away from Earth. Extrapolating this cosmic expansion backwards in time using the known laws of physics, the models describe an increasingly concentrated cosmos preceded by a singularity in which space and time lose meaning (typically named "the Big Bang singularity").[5] In 1964 the CMB was discovered, which convinced many cosmologists that the competing steady-state model of cosmic evolution was falsified,[6] since the Big Bang models predict a uniform background radiation caused by high temperatures and densities in the distant past. A wide range of empirical evidence strongly favors the Big Bang event, which is now essentially universally accepted.[7] Detailed measurements of the expansion rate of the universe place the Big Bang singularity at an estimated 13.787±0.020 billion years ago, which is considered the age of the universe.[8]

[no one]

Show me anything, outside of your stupid book, that proves your stupid book? Anything at all.

[neil]

I'm new to this forum, and this is my first post - I don't identify as "atheist", but rather as non-religious (I have my reasons).

To me, there seems to be a rather glaring problem with this so-called theory.

Since this is a forum about atheism, let me begin by pointing out the fact that the concept of the Big Bang originated from someone who was not only religious, but was also a Roman Catholic priest & this in itself ought to be considered for making an assessment on religious bias, since the idea that there's some sort of beginning to the universe involved in that.

Aside from that, there are plenty of (other) problems with this so-called theory:

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Link removed per 30/30 rule.

Personally, what I have an issue with is the use of the Doppler effect (DE) to explain the redshift; in other words, I don't get why the redshift necessarily implies that there's a DE involved.

What if instead of a DE, there's another possibility? Here's what I have been wondering about: the redshift in question stems from the cosmic background microwave radiation (CBMR), which is essentially photons, so let's consider Planck's equation (or "relation") for photon energy (E=hf, where E is the energy, f is frequency, and h is Planck's constant); basically, when there's less energy, there's a redshift, and we can see that from this formula since red is a lower frequency than blue; what if this is the real reason for that redshift we observe from CBMR?

After pondering this, I decided to try to do some cyber-exploring to see if I could find something that might corroborate this; I did find something interesting & it seems to support what I'm wondering about:

Administrator Notice
Link removed per 30/30 rule against posting outside links till you have been a member for 30 days and have made 30 posts.

[Deesse23]

To me, there seems to be a rather glaring problem with this so-called theory.

Theory, not "so-called theory"

Aside from that, there are plenty of (other) problems with this so-called theory:

Theory, not "so-called theory"

Personally, what I have an issue with is the use of the Doppler effect (DE) to explain the redshift; in other words, I don't get why the redshift necessarily implies that there's a DE involved.

I bet you have been told this at school very often (at least i must admit that i have!): You not being able to understand stuff, does not necessarily mean stuff is wrong, it usually means you are too stupid to understand. You got "issues" with redshift and DE? Why go to an atheist forum, and not an (astro) physicist forum?

What if instead of a DE, there's another possibility? Here's what I have been wondering about: the redshift in question stems from the cosmic background microwave radiation (CBMR), which is essentially photons, so let's consider Planck's equation (or "relation") for photon energy (E=hf, where E is the energy, f is frequency, and h is Planck's constant); basically, when there's less energy, there's a redshift, and we can see that from this formula since red is a lower frequency than blue; what if this is the real reason for that redshift we observe from CBMR?

Can you rephrase this so-called possibility/idea in a way that someone outside your mind can understand what you mean? What exactly do you think is the so-called" real reason?

[neil]

To me, there seems to be a rather glaring problem with this so-called theory.

Theory, not "so-called theory"

Aside from that, there are plenty of (other) problems with this so-called theory:

Theory, not "so-called theory"

Personally, what I have an issue with is the use of the Doppler effect (DE) to explain the redshift; in other words, I don't get why the redshift necessarily implies that there's a DE involved.

I bet you have been told this at school very often (at least i must admit that i have!): You not being able to understand stuff, does not necessarily mean stuff is wrong, it usually means you are too stupid to understand. You got "issues" with redshift and DE? Why go to an atheist forum, and not an (astro) physicist forum?

What if instead of a DE, there's another possibility? Here's what I have been wondering about: the redshift in question stems from the cosmic background microwave radiation (CBMR), which is essentially photons, so let's consider Planck's equation (or "relation") for photon energy (E=hf, where E is the energy, f is frequency, and h is Planck's constant); basically, when there's less energy, there's a redshift, and we can see that from this formula since red is a lower frequency than blue; what if this is the real reason for that redshift we observe from CBMR?

Can you rephrase this so-called possibility/idea in a way that someone outside your mind can understand what you mean? What exactly do you think is the so-called" real reason?

Let me simply state that I don't matter, and I don't care about ad hom attacks; whether or not the "Big Bang Theory" is correct or not is all I'm interested in discussing on this thread. I also didn't start this thread, so if you have some sort of problem with a discussion about a thread on the "Big Bang Theory", then I suggest you take it up with the OP. Have a day.

[Angrboda]

I'm new to this forum, and this is my first post - I don't identify as "atheist", but rather as non-religious (I have my reasons).

To me, there seems to be a rather glaring problem with this so-called theory.

Since this is a forum about atheism, let me begin by pointing out the fact that the concept of the Big Bang originated from someone who was not only religious, but was also a Roman Catholic priest & this in itself ought to be considered for making an assessment on religious bias, since the idea that there's some sort of beginning to the universe involved in that.

Aside from that, there are plenty of (other) problems with this so-called theory:

Administrator Notice
Link removed per 30/30 rule.

Personally, what I have an issue with is the use of the Doppler effect (DE) to explain the redshift; in other words, I don't get why the redshift necessarily implies that there's a DE involved.

What if instead of a DE, there's another possibility? Here's what I have been wondering about: the redshift in question stems from the cosmic background microwave radiation (CBMR), which is essentially photons, so let's consider Planck's equation (or "relation") for photon energy (E=hf, where E is the energy, f is frequency, and h is Planck's constant); basically, when there's less energy, there's a redshift, and we can see that from this formula since red is a lower frequency than blue; what if this is the real reason for that redshift we observe from CBMR?

After pondering this, I decided to try to do some cyber-exploring to see if I could find something that might corroborate this; I did find something interesting & it seems to support what I'm wondering about:

Administrator Notice
Link removed per 30/30 rule against posting outside links till you have been a member for 30 days and have made 30 posts.

I don't know that the redshift and the CMBR are related in the way you think. The first evidence for the redshift came from stars. To answer your question, the red shift was ascertained because the light from a star does not come from one single wavelength but consists of a spectrum of wavelengths. Depending upon the material involved, this spectrum will have peaks at specific wavelengths. These peaks form a specific identifiable pattern that, like a fingerprint, can be matched with the element they were derived from. Because the pattern is unique, a spectrum that shows the same pattern but shifted along the spectrum can be determined to have been the result of the Doppler effect, rather than having come from some process that emits a different wavelength of light. I don't fully understand what your concern about the CMBR is.

[HappySkeptic]

Personally, what I have an issue with is the use of the Doppler effect (DE) to explain the redshift; in other words, I don't get why the redshift necessarily implies that there's a DE involved.

A Star's photosphere has a blackbody spectrum that indicates its temperature, and a galaxy contains stars of a range of temperatures that will be some averaged blackbody curve.

But, redshifts are about spectral lines, not about blackbody curves (except for the very faintest far-away galaxies, where spectral lines can't be measured).  Atomic absorption and emission lines exist from absorption or emission (respectively) of photons from gas above the stellar photosphere, or from interstellar gas.  

Emission wavelengths from ionized atomic hydrogen and oxygen can be seen in galaxy spectra, and it is these spectral lines that we measure the redshift on.  We know their wavelength in a rest-frame.  Those are determined by the laws of physics.  Only the relativistic doppler shift will cause them to shift (gravitational redshift isn't a thing, as the gas isn't on the edge of a black hole).

Here's what I have been wondering about: the redshift in question stems from the cosmic background microwave radiation (CBMR), which is essentially photons, so let's consider Planck's equation (or "relation") for photon energy (E=hf, where E is the energy, f is frequency, and h is Planck's constant); basically, when there's less energy, there's a redshift, and we can see that from this formula since red is a lower frequency than blue; what if this is the real reason for that redshift we observe from CBMR?

The CMBR is a completely different thing.  CMBR is radiation left over from when the universe first became transparent to photons, that has been redshifted by the expansion of the universe.  It is blackbody radiation that used to be hot.

Many references will explain that the CMBR is "cold" now because the universe has expanded, but this is equivalent to there being a relativistic Doppler shift.  There is no "new" mechanism happening.  The CMBR will indeed "cool" as the universe gets older, but that is because we will be seeing it from farther away and receding faster as the universe gets older.