The universe appears "old", but it is still less than 10,000 years old

[Statler Waldorf]

[quote='Alex K' pid='607779' dateline='1393053574']
As far as creation cosmologies go, they by definition are worthless because God can predict everything and nothing.

By definition? What definition? Which cosmologies are you referring to? I’ll need an actual name.

So, the most important reasons why the scientific consensus says "there is a substance called Dark Matter", are:

Scientific facts are not established by consensus opinion. Even though no such consensus even exists concerning dark matter.

It explains rotation curves of galaxies nicely

This in no way means it actually exists; especially considering that fact that such rotations can be explained without using dark matter. The discrepancy is more likely due to a weakness in the cosmological model than the existence of some magic particle.

Together with vacuum energy, it produces a perfect match with the CMB power spectrum. No other known hypothesis does this.

Same as above. Needing something to exist in order to save a cosmological model is not evidence that something indeed exists. Where’s the actual evidence?

Fits to the first maximum of the CMB power spectrum and supernova data yield an excess in matter over the observed baryonic matter content of the universe

I disagree. The most recent Boomerang data collected containing the amplitudes in the angular power spectrum of the anisotropies in the CMB radiation suggests that the universe contains mostly baryonic matter and not dark matter.

We can observe the gravitational effects of dark matter via gravitational lensing, and observations like the Bullet cluster show that this cannot be taken care of by (only) modifying the laws of gravity

Yes, and they could “observe” the gravitational effects that dark matter had on Mercury’s orbit prior to General Relativity. Of course this was actually due to a weakness in Newtonian Physics and not due to the actual existence of any exotic matter. The notion of such matter is entirely unscientific. This is what happens when people marry themselves to a scientific paradigm with such religious devotion, they begin to postulate ad hoc rescue mechanisms in order to save the paradigm rather than participating in proper scientific inquiry.

Simulations of structure formation in the early universe using the dark matter hypothesis produce realistic late time structure

Simulations cannot be used as evidence to support the existence of something otherwise empirically undetectable.

Note, the cold/warmish dark matter hypothesis explains all of these, and the second point should really count as a few dozen observations, since we are not only reproducing a number, but a highly nontrivial spectral curve. As a theoretical aside - dark matter is not a complicated or far out hypothesis at all. We already know three particle species which contribute to dark matter, and all one needs is one new type of particle not much unlike the ones we already know, with slightly higher mass (depending on how it's produced in the BB). It's really uncontroversial.

Whether or not something is controversial is irrelevant. How do you know it’s a particle? Why not fairies? Unicorns? Perhaps magic gnomes? Angels? Magic balloons? A genie? Simply postulating a new particle in no way makes it anymore scientific than anything I listed above.

Try applying this to your own delusions.

So believing in dark matter is a delusion?