Nanoseconds after the Big Bang

[AgingYoung]

or the point that Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic) made...

• For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Gene

 

[AgingYoung]

However as you say accuracy and interpretations of the bible are not the same thing. Enough of the bible in a science and maths forum.

Lothian,

The single point I've made from the bible is the idea there is a similarity between the ideas of a creative God stretching out the heavens and the expanding universe we imagine we see. Everything else has been an attack on my right to have a biblical perspective.

I've twice bumped a question to Schneibster if you'd care to field it.

Gene

eta:

I'd like to add there's a slight difference between

• However as you say accuracy and interpretations of the bible are not the same thing.
• What is seen as the most accurate and what actually is could be two different things.

The first point you attributed to me wasn't something I said. I was speaking to your point concerning various biblical interpretations not a difference between accuracy and all biblical interpretations. I'm not sure if you noticed the difference but it's there.

 

[AgingYoung]

Schneibster,

4. Finally, if the rate of the passage of time varies, why would this measure not vary right along with it, rendering such variation undetectable?

If the universe were moving backward toward the big bang with of course you in it your measuring method would vary with the regression. The variation would be undetectable. That isn't something that could happen though. What we do is take a standard that we either don't calibrate and superimpose it on the past or we attempt to recalibrate it periodically as we regress and there are the inherent inaccuracies in that.

It might not be a good analogy but inflation of currency is something that comes to mind. If you measure the economy of 1900 with today's unadjusted dollars you won't get a good picture of the economy of 1900.

What do you think?

Gene

Gene

 

[Folly]

What do you think?

I'm not psychic, so this is only a guess, but I'm guessing that if someone decides not to answer you after you ask a few times, they're either busy or don't feel like answering you. In either case, I'm sure quoting yourself a few more times won't help get an answer more quickly.

If I was feeling particularly willing to take a risk, I'd make a further guess that Schneibster has decided answering you is a waste of time.

 

[AgingYoung]

Folly,

Those are probably good guesses. I know when I look at a thread I look at the end first and decide whether to read up or not. I didn't repost the quote several times imploring an answer, only to put it at the end of several ranters insisting on forcing their philosophies on me.

I do know that from time to time people ignore others. For instance I have you on ignore. I noticed your comment because I can see it when I'm not logged on.

I'm sure I could ignore the arrogance of someone that imagines they can dictate my expression and thought but for some reason I just can't resist defending my right to think for myself.

Incidently I do recall why I have you on ignore.

Gene

 

[AgingYoung]

If I was feeling particularly willing to take a risk, I'd make a further guess that Schneibster has decided answering you is a waste of time.

I think you're projecting. What makes me think that is this recent post...

I knew this was goin there. OK, I'll post on this shortly; not tonight, too busy, and maybe not until the weekend, but I'll post on it.

...from Schneibster on another thread. I frankly don't think he's read this derail yet.

Gene

 

[Schneibster]

Schneibster,

If the universe were moving backward toward the big bang with of course you in it your measuring method would vary with the regression. The variation would be undetectable. That isn't something that could happen though. What we do is take a standard that we either don't calibrate and superimpose it on the past or we attempt to recalibrate it periodically as we regress and there are the inherent inaccuracies in that.

The timing of events of the types used as yardsticks for the passage of time is a matter of physical law, dependent upon underlying constants whose variation would have the direst imaginable consequences, consequences that would have effects that would last until the present. These consequences are not observed; therefore, these constants have not varied; therefore, the yardstick events took as long back then as they do now. These things don't epistemologically dangle by themselves; they are interdependent upon one another. You can't vary one without consequence.

YECs, for example, go around claiming the speed of light varied in the past, without considering the accompanying variations in the permittivity and permeability of the vacuum that a variation in the speed of light would imply, which would in turn affect the strength of the electric force, which would in its turn affect not only the arrangements of orbitals and shells in atoms and therefore their resonant frequencies, but also the operation of the weak nuclear force and the fine structure constant, and change interactions in such a fundamental manner that it could not fail to be noticed even on astronomical scales. We can, therefore, literally look and see it's not true. (I'm not accusing you of YECism; merely noting that the same argument is fundamental to one of their positions, which fails for the same reason.)

 

[Ben Tilly]

The timing of events of the types used as yardsticks for the passage of time is a matter of physical law, dependent upon underlying constants whose variation would have the direst imaginable consequences, consequences that would have effects that would last until the present. These consequences are not observed; therefore, these constants have not varied; therefore, the yardstick events took as long back then as they do now. These things don't epistemologically dangle by themselves; they are interdependent upon one another. You can't vary one without consequence.

You have, I think, overstated your case that constants do not change. See http://cerncourier.com/main/article/43/2/13 for a serious discussion of how some fundamental constants may have changed in the past. For instance there is reason to suspect that our official definition of a second may have measured a different length of time in the distant past.

However while constants may have changed, there is very good reason to believe that they have not changed dramatically. Certainly not dramatically enough to throw off our current cosmological estimates.

YECs, for example, go around claiming the speed of light varied in the past, without considering the accompanying variations in the permittivity and permeability of the vacuum that a variation in the speed of light would imply, which would in turn affect the strength of the electric force, which would in its turn affect not only the arrangements of orbitals and shells in atoms and therefore their resonant frequencies, but also the operation of the weak nuclear force and the fine structure constant, and change interactions in such a fundamental manner that it could not fail to be noticed even on astronomical scales. We can, therefore, literally look and see it's not true. (I'm not accusing you of YECism; merely noting that the same argument is fundamental to one of their positions, which fails for the same reason.)

Note that YECs are posulating massive changes within the last few thousand years. This would have consequences that are so absurd that we can easily rule it out. However ruling out such extreme changes doesn't mean that there might not have been miniscule changes. (But, I admit, the miniscule ones that we think there might have been are far too small for AgingYoung's rhetoric to make much sense.)

Cheers,
Ben

 

[Folly]

I think you're projecting. What makes me think that is this recent post...

...from Schneibster on another thread. I frankly don't think he's read this derail yet.

You appear to be right in this case that my opinion was not shared, which is nice. I would still say that posting your question four times in one day, three times on one page, is unnecessary. [/derail]

 

[Schneibster]

Well, pardon me, I assumed that large changes were being discussed. At a distance of thirteen billion years, a part in a million makes very little difference at our current level of understanding.

That sounds snide, Ben, and I didn't mean it that way. I can't think how else to say it, though. Please accept my assurance that snide was not my intent.

 

[Ben Tilly]

Well, pardon me, I assumed that large changes were being discussed. At a distance of thirteen billion years, a part in a million makes very little difference at our current level of understanding.

That sounds snide, Ben, and I didn't mean it that way. I can't think how else to say it, though. Please accept my assurance that snide was not my intent.

No apologies, I understand completely. And you'll note that my post was peppered with comments indicating that the differences I was raising were unimportant on the scale of events being discussed.

I responded mainly because you had stated something in a categorical way that we think is wrong. I hate seeing misstatements like that. Particularly when they touch on things I find interesting. And it is doubly hard to resist when it allows me to introduce some neat science to a thread that had been badly derailed into sophmore religious philosophy.

But with that said, it was irrelevant to the main thread of this discussion. Please ignore me and carry on with your futile attempts to inform AgingYoung about a topic that he isn't really trying to understand.

Cheers,
Ben

 

[AgingYoung]

...Please ignore me and carry on with your futile attempts to inform AgingYoung about a topic that he isn't really trying to understand.

Cheers,
Ben

I find this wooish and manipulative attempt to play the psychic insulting. You have no idea what I am or am not trying to understand, Ben Tilly. Stop pretending to be psychic.

Gene

 

[Schneibster]

I'm not psychic, so this is only a guess, but I'm guessing that if someone decides not to answer you after you ask a few times, they're either busy or don't feel like answering you. In either case, I'm sure quoting yourself a few more times won't help get an answer more quickly.

If I was feeling particularly willing to take a risk, I'd make a further guess that Schneibster has decided answering you is a waste of time.

Actually, I hadn't noticed it- I've been busy a lot, only really have time on the weekends any more. Sorry to gainsay you.

I'm still deciding whether it's a waste of time or not. I'll await further information before I make that decision, I think. In general, it usually is when they've taken that tone; but you never know, and there was a nice opportunity to inject, as Ben notes, some science into a thread sorely lacking it. Not that Ben didn't jump in and immediately smack me upside the head for overgeneralizing.

 

[AgingYoung]

Schneibster,

Thank you for responding. When I read your posts I have to do it slowly. I usually read them several times. There is no doubt you have a qualified opinion. Again, thanks for the response.

Gene

 

[Roboramma]

I find this wooish and manipulative attempt to play the psychic insulting. You have no idea what I am or am not trying to understand, Ben Tilly. Stop pretending to be psychic.

I find this rather silly. A person doesn't have to be psychic to have an informed opinion of your motives based on what you post. That opinion may be wrong, but it's based on an interpretation of your posting history in this thread. No one is pretending to be psychic.

That said, people have misinterpretted my posts before. I try (and sometimes fail) to give other posters the benefit of the doubt, and I'm not trying to suggest that Ben's comments are true. But to suggest that it's impossible to know anything about you from your posts is, again, silly.

 

[Roboramma]

or the point that Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic) made...

• For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Gene, I don't really understand your point here - or Mr. Jastrow's. What reason do we have to believe that what he says is true?

You mention that the bible says that God stretched out the heavens with his hand, and you compare this to the expanding universe. That comparision doesn't make any sense to me. I don't see how the two relate to each other at all.

Could you clarify the connection?

 

[Ben Tilly]

...Please ignore me and carry on with your futile attempts to inform AgingYoung about a topic that he isn't really trying to understand.

Cheers,
Ben

I find this wooish and manipulative attempt to play the psychic insulting. You have no idea what I am or am not trying to understand, Ben Tilly. Stop pretending to be psychic.

Gene

How psychic do I need to be to interpret a statement like, "Either way relativity be damned"?

That was your response to me at http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2389132#post2389132 to the point that physics in general, and general relativity in particular, has to be concerned with how things are measured from within the universe because we do not have any knowledge of any reality external to the universe which we could compare the universe to. Given this response to the best theories that science has been able to muster, it is safe to say that you don't have much interest in learning about what science has to say about the history of the universe.

This impression is doubly confirmed by your repeated insistance that everything that science thinks it knows is wrong because the physical standards that it has to measure against - measurements of elapsed time and distance according to the local reference frame of the matter in the universe - are all off because of physical constants inflating. This conclusion that you offer is offered with no reference to any evidence that might back it up, is maintained in the face of several people (me, Scheibster, Dr. Kitten, ~enigma~, etc) pointing out that it has no support, and is accompanied by plenty of references to your religious beliefs.

None of this presents a picture of a person who has any interest in trying to learn. You have an axe to grind and you haven't even tried to conceal that fact.

Regards,
Ben

 

[Ben Tilly]

Bump.

..Please ignore me and carry on with your futile attempts to inform AgingYoung about a topic that he isn't really trying to understand.

Cheers,
Ben

I find this wooish and manipulative attempt to play the psychic insulting. You have no idea what I am or am not trying to understand, Ben Tilly. Stop pretending to be psychic.

Gene

How psychic do I need to be to interpret a statement like, "Either way relativity be damned"?

That was your response to me at http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2389132#post2389132 to the point that physics in general, and general relativity in particular, has to be concerned with how things are measured from within the universe because we do not have any knowledge of any reality external to the universe which we could compare the universe to. Given this response to the best theories that science has been able to muster, it is safe to say that you don't have much interest in learning about what science has to say about the history of the universe.

This impression is doubly confirmed by your repeated insistance that everything that science thinks it knows is wrong because the physical standards that it has to measure against - measurements of elapsed time and distance according to the local reference frame of the matter in the universe - are all off because of physical constants inflating. This conclusion that you offer is offered with no reference to any evidence that might back it up, is maintained in the face of several people (me, Scheibster, Dr. Kitten, ~enigma~, etc) pointing out that it has no support, and is accompanied by plenty of references to your religious beliefs.

None of this presents a picture of a person who has any interest in trying to learn. You have an axe to grind and you haven't even tried to conceal that fact.

Regards,
Ben

I'm somewhat disappointed that you haven't responded to this at all. So I thought I'd bump the thread as a reminder.

Regards,
Ben

 

[AgingYoung]

I don't need a reminder, Ben Tilly. It was amusing to see you quote yourself. I think I might have started something.

Gene

 

[AgingYoung]

... This conclusion that you offer is offered with no reference to any evidence that might back it up, is maintained in the face of several people (me, Scheibster, Dr. Kitten, ~enigma~, etc) pointing out that it has no support, and is accompanied by plenty of references to your religious beliefs...

Since I'm looking at this Ben Tilly, could you kindly bump any mention Dr. Kitten has made. I'd like to review her comments.

Gene