Most atheists do not know what science says about our origins

[Worm]

By the way, someone who actually knows stuff about physics beyond my fumbling attempts - feel free to point out if I'm getting this wrong.

 

[godless dave]

Phil didn't say what you think he said.

We have overwhelming evidence that the Big Bang happened.

Mathematical models using the currently understood laws of physics work all the way back to T+5.39121 × 10⁻⁴⁴ seconds

At T=0, they no longer work, because the laws of physics change under extreme pressure and temperature, and after a certain point we can't describe those changes.

So that suggests our understanding of the laws of physics is incomplete, which we already knew. It also suggests that we can't describe the universe at T=0, which we also already know. Neither of those is a problem for the Big Bang hypothesis.

 

[JEROME DA GNOME]

Last reply, becuase you just aren't getting it.

Phil is not wrong. Phil said what everyone else is saying. Phil didn't say that the physical laws are violated at the singularity T=0, he said the laws don't apply.

The laws of physics don't apply to the Big Bang theory.



You believe this theory is valid, why?

 

[JEROME DA GNOME]

At T=0, they no longer work, because the laws of physics change under extreme pressure and temperature, and after a certain point we can't describe those changes.

Please evidence the laws of physics changing.


ETA: You are now stating that the scientific laws of physics are not valid under certain circumstances. Please scientificly evidence the circumstances in which the scientific laws of physics are not valid.

 

[Fitter]

Please evidence the laws of physics changing.


ETA: You are now stating that the scientific laws of physics are not valid under certain circumstances. Please scientificly evidence the circumstances in which the scientific laws of physics are not valid.

Perhaps you could show us why the math doesn't work. I don't mean quote mine somebody, I mean show us specifically where and how the math fails. I, personally, may not understand everything you teach me but I'll rely on my classmate Woollery to ensure I don't fall to far behind.

 

[JEROME DA GNOME]

Perhaps you could show us why the math doesn't work. I don't mean quote mine somebody, I mean show us specifically where and how the math fails. I, personally, may not understand everything you teach me but I'll rely on my classmate Woollery to ensure I don't fall to far behind.

You don't trust Phil?

 

[Fitter]

You don't trust Phil?

You know those PHd types. He uses big words and all. Maybe you can dumb it down for someone like me who's not real smart.

 

[The Man]

Please evidence the laws of physics changing.


ETA: You are now stating that the scientific laws of physics are not valid under certain circumstances. Please scientificly evidence the circumstances in which the scientific laws of physics are not valid.

It is not that the laws of physics are changing or are not valid under certain circumstances; it is just that we do not have as yet a valid description of the quantum nature of gravity. The laws are there and applicable we just do not know them yet for those extreme conditions. Perhaps the LHC will shed some light on this. Our current understanding and general relativity work just fine up to that point. Quantum loop gravity is just one possibility to provide us with a more complete understanding of those conditions.

http://www.physorg.com/news126955971.html

ETA: Please remember that “the laws of physics” only represent our understanding of how the universe behaves and do not dictate that behavior. So when those laws are said to brake down it is just demonstrating the limits of our current understanding of how the universe behaves under those conditions. It is not that the laws of physics change it is that our understanding of those laws needs to change or some modification, which we have known for quite sometime since we still lack a quantum description of gravity.

 

[JEROME DA GNOME]

It is not that the laws of physics are changing or are not valid under certain circumstances; it is just that we do not have as yet a valid description of the quantum nature of gravity. The laws are there and applicable we just do not know them yet for those extreme conditions. Perhaps the LHC will shed some light on this. Our current understanding and general relativity work just fine up to that point. Quantum loop gravity is just one possibility to provide us with a more complete understanding of those conditions.

The Big Bang theory does not fit with our current understanding of physics and math.

We can not replicate the Big Bang.

We can not preform experiments to test the Big Bang.

At which point do we come to within the scientific method concerning the Big Bang "theory"? By the way, which definition are you using of theory here? We shouldn't be past step three when the theory violates the currently accepted scientific laws.


1. Define the question

2. Gather information and resources (observe)

3. Form hypothesis

4. Perform experiment and collect data

5. Analyze data

6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis

7. Publish results

8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)

 

[JEROME DA GNOME]

You know those PHd types. He uses big words and all. Maybe you can dumb it down for someone like me who's not real smart.

You can not understand these statements?

The problem is, right at that moment, at T=0, our laws of physics… well, they stall out.

The way the math works, that question doesn’t even make sense.

 

[Glen.Nogami]

From the blog to which you linked:

In other words, the math still works, even at The Big Moment.

And now the de rigeur appeal to authority:

You don't trust Phil?

 

[Achán hiNidráne]

OK, Phil is a member of the JREF forums. Could someone get him over here to answer this Creationist's lies?

 

[The Man]

The Big Bang theory does not fit with our current understanding of physics and math.

Yes it does, but as already stated our current understanding of physics and math is incomplete, no quantum description of gravity.

We can not replicate the Big Bang.

Would you really want to?

We can not preform experiments to test the Big Bang.

Sure we can and we do it all the time in particle colliders or mapping the CBR, among other things. The large hadron collider will be the most powerful accelerator tested and bring us closer to the energies of the big bang then we have ever been before.

 

[joobz]

Has DOC answered this question?

What is horizontal gene transfer and what does it imply?

I know he's said(in regards to the website he's referenced):

He believes the jury is still out with regard to LUCA and horizontal gene transfer and it not clear how it will be tested -- Translation: at this point in time it is an unprovable theory.

But, it isn't clear that DOC understands the words he just typed.

DOC, what is Horizontal gene transfer?
Is it a hypothetical occurance or has it ever been observed?
What implications does it have for evolutionary theory?

 

[arthwollipot]

Please explain why the laws of physics and math being violated by the Big Bang theory is acceptable.

Does anyone think there's a whelk's chance in a supernova of getting Phil to weigh in on this conversation? If I were Phil I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole, but I have a feeling that Jerome won't accept anything that doesn't come from the horse's mouth.

Let me have a go at it.

Okay. There are two fundamental pillars of modern physics - general relativity and quantum mechanics. Each is very very good at describing things in its domain.

General relativity describes very big, very heavy things. It has been tested to stupendous accuracy, and is one of the most accurate mathematical descriptions of the universe that we have.

Quantum mechanics describes very small, very light things. It has also been tested to stupendous accuracy, and is another of the most accurate mathematical descriptions of the universe that we have.

The problem is that the so-called "big bang" has conditions that lie outside these two domains. At the beginning of time, the universe was both very small (and thus should be describable by quantum mechanics) and very heavy (and thus should be describable by general relativity). So cosmologists need to combine the two theories to get an accurate picture of the beginning of the universe.

The problem is that the two theories are fundamentally incompatible. Most of the formulas of quantum mechanics produce an answer in the form of a probability. When the two theories are combined, many of the answers are infinity. This is the "dividing by zero" problem that Phil was referring to. A probability of infinity is nonsensical. It is a signal that the mathematics that we know and understand are insufficient to the task of describing the beginning of the universe.

The details are a little complicated, but this is the essence of the problem. Quantum mechanics states that the smaller the area you're looking at, the more uncertainty there is in your measurements. When your area shrinks below a certain size, the uncertainties grow so big that the cannot be contained. At zero size - a singularity - the uncertainty is infinite.

This does not mean that either quantum mechanics or general relativity is wrong. Remember, both have been tested to stupendous accuracy. Both are very successful at describing how the universe works. But they do not extend into the realm of the very small and very heavy.

Many great minds are presently working on theories that can describe these states. Loop quantum gravity has already been mentioned. Another contender is superstring theory. However, we don't yet have enough information to determine whether either is actually correct. Maybe neither of them is correct. We just don't know yet.

I repeat, this does not mean that the laws of physics are being violated. It means that the laws of physics are incomplete. It means that we don't know everything yet. Some of the greatest minds on the planet are still working on the problem. It's a pretty difficult problem.

Is that a little clearer?

 

[qayak]

Please evidence the laws of physics changing.

ETA: You are now stating that the scientific laws of physics are not valid under certain circumstances. Please scientificly evidence the circumstances in which the scientific laws of physics are not valid.

Jerome, are you really this out of touch with the subject you argue? The laws break down at singularities, of which, the Big Bang is a fine example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity

ETA: "Many theories in physics have mathematical singularities of one kind or another. Equations for these physical theories predict that the rate of change of some quantity becomes infinite or increases without limit. This is generally a sign for a missing piece in the theory. . ."

 

[godless dave]

Please evidence the laws of physics changing.

How about you read an elementary physics textbook instead. What I'm saying is not revolutionary.

Here's a taste: When you compress matter to sizes smaller than an atomic nucleus, electromagnetic interaction behaves differently - because the atoms are too close together to exchange electrons in the usual way. The weak nuclear force also begins to behave differently because the atoms are too close together, and eventually you reach a point where the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force combine into the same force, called electroweak interaction.

ETA: You are now stating that the scientific laws of physics are not valid under certain circumstances.

I never stated that.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

I stand by my statement. To imply that I did not read any of the 1007 messages that have been left in my thread up to that time when I have made 99 posts and most of them in response to other posts simply makes no sense. And then you add to that by speaking for what over 70 posters supposedly believe.{snip tangental whining}

My God man. Are you really this dense? Do you have an utter lack of familiarity with rhetorical questions? Sometimes I really have to wonder about you.

And I find it interesting that you put so much effort into bitching about minutae like this while you completely failed to address what I wrote about the actual topic at hand - which, in case you had forgotten, is not you or some perception of slight on your part, but is evolution and the origin of species.

 

[wollery]

All the evidence is that the Big Bang happened.

The recession velocities of the galaxies show that the universe is expanding, so it follows, logically, that it used to be smaller. Also, since looking further away in space is equivalent to looking back in time, and the further away the galaxies are the faster they are receding, it logically follows that the expansion of the Universe is slowing down. That makes sense, because gravity acts over very long distances and is only attractive in nature, and is therefore responsible for slowing down the Universe. It therefore follows that the Universe was at one time a lot smaller than it is now, and was expanding at very high speed.

Okay, so the Universe used to be small, but how small? Was it half the size it is now, the size of a galaxy, a star, an atom? Well, what we know about gravity is that it's only attractive, so if we start with a Universe half the size of our current one it won't expand, it will just start to contract, so it had to be smaller than that. Same applies to galaxy size, and star size. Gravity is just too strong for a Universe that starts on a large scale to expand. So the Universe had to start as a very small entity.

Now, if it did that then it must have been very hot and dense, and essentialy started as an explosion, and we ought to be able to see evidence of that. Guess what, a couple of guys, who weren't actually looking for any such evidence, stumbled across it. The Cosmic Microwave Background radiation - the remnants of the "primordial fireball". It's a perfect blackbody emission of energy at a temperature of 3K, almost perfectly uniform over the entire sky, exactly what you'd expect to see if the Big Bang theory were correct. But it doesn't stop there, as I said, it's almost uniform, but not quite. There are minute fluctuations, and these fluctuations are on exactly the scale you'd expect to form the galaxy clusters and streams that we observe today.

And the evidence continues to pile up, if the Universe started in a Big Bang then it follows that all the matter we see today was created in that event. So theorists tried to work out how much of each type of element such an event would produce. And they came up with an answer. So they compared that to the abundances we see today, and, allowing for stellar nucleosynthesis (for which there is abundant evidence), and production of heavier elements in novae and supernovae, the numbers they'd come up with agreed with observations to a stunning degree of accuracy.

So, to sum up - the Universe is expanding, so it used to be smaller, and applying logic to that fact and what we know about gravity, it must have been very small. Since it was very small it must have been dense and hot, and we should see evidence of that, which we do, the CMB. Also, it must have produced the elements in certain ratios, and, according to observations, it did.

To summarize the summary - The Big Bang happened.

We don't know how it happened, or why, but it did.

Insisting that because we can't describe or model the Big Bang shows that it didn't happen is bordering on the insane. It's like saying that because we don't have a working model of quantum gravity, that you can let go of a ball and it won't drop to the ground. It's like saying that because we don't have fossils of every single creature that ever lived, evolution didn't happen.

Saying that the Big Bang didn't happen because our maths isn't up to describing it is, simply put, silly.

Would you suggest that before Newton and Kepler provided the maths to explain planetary orbits that the Earth was the centre of the Universe? No, of course not, all they did was provide the description to what was actually happening all along.

Some day our maths may be sufficient to describe the Big Bang, but until then we'll just have to be satisfied with knowing that it happened. And it did happen.

 

[arthwollipot]

Would you suggest that before Newton and Kepler provided the maths to explain planetary orbits that the Earth was the centre of the Universe? No, of course not, all they did was provide the description to what was actually happening all along.

Let's not discuss phenomenology. It would only muddy the waters.