Most atheists do not know what science says about our origins

[bokonon]

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.

Maybe not. I think the latest observations suggest that the expansion is speeding up; that's the whole "dark energy" thing, if I'm not mistaken. The fact that more distant galaxies are receding faster is something I've heard explained as "there's more space expanding between us and them," so naturally they're receding faster than nearby galaxies.

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.

This line of reasoning kind of doesn't ring true for me. Even if it started smaller, to get to its current size it would have had to pass through "half the size of our current one." If that size dictates collapse, it seems to me that it should have collapsed. For that matter, the smaller it is, the stronger it seems to me the gravitational forces would have been. Maybe "dark energy" has been the expansive force all along.

 

[arthwollipot]

This line of reasoning kind of doesn't ring true for me. Even if it started smaller, to get to its current size it would have had to pass through "half the size of our current one." If that size dictates collapse, it seems to me that it should have collapsed. For that matter, the smaller it is, the stronger it seems to me the gravitational forces would have been. Maybe "dark energy" has been the expansive force all along.

This is the kind of thought that led to the Inflationary model of cosmology. It's a little more complex and detailed, and would probably only confuse poor Jerome.

 

[bokonon]

This is the kind of thought that led to the Inflationary model of cosmology. It's a little more complex and detailed, and would probably only confuse poor Jerome.

It would probably confuse me too. Cosmology is on my "too big to worry about" list. I try to keep abreast, but not enough to really understand it; somewhere between the "USA Today" version and the "Scientific American" version.

 

[zooterkin]

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.

You'll be in DOC's ignore file now, with such ad-homs (in his opinion).

 

[Ocelot]

Doc,

I have to congratualate you. I may disagree with many of the things that you say. What's more I despise the denialist tactics that you use to avoid addressing the issues that simply prove you wrong but I have to admire how effective they are.

It's patently obvious to anybody who studied the polls that athiests have a slight tendancy to be better educated than theists. That atheists tend to have a better idea what science says about our origins than theists. Anybody with a halfway decent education, atheist or theist, knows that all life on earth has a shared genetic inherritance. Not only do they know that Darwin (and his contempories) deduced this and why but if they have taken a recent interest they will see the idea being upheld as this shared inheritance is being definitively examined through modern techniques of DNA sequencing.

By focusing on the minutae of details at tthe forefront of scientific specualtion you've fostered the appearence of dissent. This shared inherritance does it boil down to one single celled ancestor that was the first cell on earth. Perhaps the ancestral genes hail from a time before cellular life? Perhaps cellular life was well extablished at the time of the last universal common ancestor. What is life anyway, does it start when the first strand of RNA, DNA or only once cellular membranes have developed. Science doesn't know. Atheists don't know, Many atheists however do have a good idea what science says though. Certainly the idea that most atheists don't know that plants and animals are related is laughable.

And yet the thread drifts to the big bang. Some atheists are convinced that the big bang did happen, science knows that the universe was once in a hot dense state and has expanded since that time. Thanks to the finite speed of light we can actually see the universe as it was then. Science knows this, athiests know this. The forefront of scientific speculation deals with what happened before then, was there a singularity, did we bud off from another universe, was there a prime mover or was the universe initiated by a spontaneous event congtingent only upon it's own possibility. Science doesn't know this. Many atheists do however know what science does have to say on the matter. Some may for their own reasons place different levels of confidence in certain speculative aspects of the surrounding theories.

And yet though this apparent dissent is emptionally very resonant, though it is very effective at disguising the fact that most atheists do infact know what science say about their origins the truth of this is that such an argument would not even be possible all participants didn't know a great deal about the core facts.

And yet it looks to the unprobing mind like nobody knows what they're talking about. Fantastic. Well done DOC, another triumph of rhetoric over logic.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

In all fairness to DOC, it's Jerome that led this thread into the Big Bang rabbit hole (from what I can see, I have him on iggy).

I'm tempted to report him and request that all Jerome/Big Bang tangents be split, but at this point theer's just too many of them and I wouldn't want to make the mods mad at me.

(Otherwise, great post and agree completely.)

 

[Upchurch]

I am sorry that you feel that you wasted your time posting links. I read your links and responded, you have declined to answer.

I haven't declined to answer. I'm asking for clarification.

Are you genuinely interested in learning something new or are you certain that your position that the Big Bang cannot possibly be correct?

 

[wollery]

Maybe not. I think the latest observations suggest that the expansion is speeding up; that's the whole "dark energy" thing, if I'm not mistaken. The fact that more distant galaxies are receding faster is something I've heard explained as "there's more space expanding between us and them," so naturally they're receding faster than nearby galaxies.

But the general observation still holds true.

This line of reasoning kind of doesn't ring true for me. Even if it started smaller, to get to its current size it would have had to pass through "half the size of our current one." If that size dictates collapse, it seems to me that it should have collapsed.

True, it had to pass through the "half the current size" stage, but if it started at half the current size it would either have had to start from a state of rapid expansion, which is unlikely, or it would collapse under self gravity.

For that matter, the smaller it is, the stronger it seems to me the gravitational forces would have been. Maybe "dark energy" has been the expansive force all along.

Not if it starts with a high enough expansion rate. The energy of the Big Bang was sufficient to reach approximately escape velocity. Dark energy appears to be weaker than gravity on the short range, only having an effect on the intergalactic scale, so in the beginning it would have had very little effect.

 

[Meadmaker]

So, you are discounting the laws of physics and math?

Only in one sense. What we call "the laws of physics" aren't really laws at all, are they? They are mathematical representations of the observations we see in the real world. They seem to work. They work so well, explaining so many observations, that we act as if somehow the universe must "obey" them.

In reality, we made them up to explain what we see, and they do a great job. In fact, if we look at the universe as it is, we can use those "laws" to extrapolate back to point when the universe was a teeny tiny little thing, but very very hot.

Unfortunately for those who want to explain everything, they can't go back all the way to T=0, because the equations become undefined at that point. Our "laws" can't explain why the Big Bang happened, but using those laws, we can say that if the Big Bang did happen, the universe would look exactly like it does today. From that, we infer that it did, in fact, happen.

 

[JEROME DA GNOME]

In all fairness to DOC, it's Jerome that led this thread into the Big Bang rabbit hole (from what I can see, I have him on iggy).

I'm tempted to report him and request that all Jerome/Big Bang tangents be split, but at this point theer's just too many of them and I wouldn't want to make the mods mad at me.

(Otherwise, great post and agree completely.)

The Big Bang was presented by the defenders of abiogenesis. You would be reporting your compatriots. Besides, is not the Big Bang related to the origin of life?

 

[Mashuna]

Besides, is not the Big Bang related to the origin of life?

Well, I'm no fancy edumacated sciencey sort, but I'm fairly sure the Big Bang is thought to predate the origin of life by quite a bit. So no, not really.

 

[bokonon]

True, it had to pass through the "half the current size" stage, but if it started at half the current size it would either have had to start from a state of rapid expansion, which is unlikely, or it would collapse under self gravity.

I'm far from being an expert in this area, but I don't see why it's any more unlikely that it started from a state of rapid expansion as a fairly large object than that it started from a state of rapid expansion as a tiny singularity. There may be good reasons for thinking so (i.e., just making stuff up here, maybe the cosmic background radiation snapshot today is only consistent with "tiny" and contradicts "halfers"), but "rapid expansion unlikely" doesn't seem to me to tip the balance either way.

 

[wollery]

I'm far from being an expert in this area, but I don't see why it's any more unlikely that it started from a state of rapid expansion as a fairly large object than that it started from a state of rapid expansion as a tiny singularity. There may be good reasons for thinking so (i.e., just making stuff up here, maybe the cosmic background radiation snapshot today is only consistent with "tiny" and contradicts "halfers"), but "rapid expansion unlikely" doesn't seem to me to tip the balance either way.

Well, that would require it to suddenly come into existence with galaxies already formed, rushing away from each other. That's pretty unlikely.

 

[JEROME DA GNOME]

Well, I'm no fancy edumacated sciencey sort, but I'm fairly sure the Big Bang is thought to predate the origin of life by quite a bit. So no, not really.

Then why is the Big Bang being used in this thread to evidence that abiogenesis must have occurred?


The true believers are having a hard time correlating their thoughts on the topic of the origin of life it seems. The premise set forth in the OP is consistently being validated in this thread.

 

[Meadmaker]

Then why is the Big Bang being used in this thread to evidence that abiogenesis must have occurred?


The true believers are having a hard time correlating their thoughts on the topic of the origin of life it seems. The premise set forth in the OP is consistently being validated in this thread.

I disagree, as I'm sure others do. The only marginal relevance this has is that, according to the consensus of modern scientists, at one time there was no life, and later there was life. As a consequence of that, we infer that it is possible that life came from non-life.

Even if somehow this statement turned out to be false, that is the current understanding of "what science says" about the origin of life. It came about as a consequence of organic chemistry.

Modern scientific consensus also says that at some point in the distant past, there was a single cell that was an ancestor of every living thing on the planet today. On that point, there isn't quite universal agreement. Some people think there was so much gene swapping that went on among independently arising similar proto-organisms that it would be impossible to find one single cell which contained ancestral DNA of every single organism on Earth today. So, it might be the case that instead of one single cell that was a common ancestor, there was a pool, or colony, or some collection of cells that shared DNA, and everything else came from that pool or colony, but not necessarily from just one cell.

I, personally, lean toward the one cell theory. In fact, it is highly possible that you could go smaller than that. It may be that there was one, single, molecule.

So, that's what science says. That there may have been one molecule, or one cell, or maybe one small collection of cells, that was the universal ancestor. The OP seems to think that we atheists don't understand that. I'm trying to figure out why DOC thinks that. What is it that he thinks we don't understand?

 

[Upchurch]

Then why is the Big Bang being used in this thread to evidence that abiogenesis must have occurred?

The only marginal relevance this has is that, according to the consensus of modern scientists, at one time there was no life, and later there was life. As a consequence of that, we infer that it is possible that life came from non-life.

That was, in fact, my point in an earlier post in response to a claim that life must come from other life.

As Jerome pointed out in his Bad Astronomer link, we have a very good description of what the universe was like a very small fraction of a second after the Big Bang. There could not have been any life within those conditions. Heck, there was barely enough coalesced matter for life to be made out of. Whatever version of abiogenesis turns out to be correct, we know that at some point life must have arose from non-life. Biology is not really my field, so I can't argue the finer points of that argument.

 

[DOC]

Has DOC answered this question?

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


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?

Yes, I understand what horizontal gene therapy is, do you forget I have a computer and google. It has been observed, but its just a theory with regard to LUCA, and as the author stated he's not sure how it can be tested. The author of the previous cited article also stated "As far as we can tell, life on Earth arose only once". If you have any evidence to the contrary bring it in.

 

[joobz]

Yes, I understand what horizontal gene therapy is, do you forget I have a computer and google.

I know you have google and computer, but I am not certain you understand the science of the issue and why (because we know it occurs) we can't say for certain that the LUCA was a single solitary entity or a simultaneously developed population of near similar entities.

It has been observed, but its just a theory with regard to LUCA, and as the author stated he's not sure how it can be tested.

of course not. We can't really test much of what happen in regards to life 4-5 billion years ago.

Good. The author of the previous cited article also stated "As far as we can tell, life on Earth arose only once". If you have any evidence to the contrary bring it in.

I see no reason to, as that statement is factually true. A similarly factual statement is ,"As far as we can tell, life doesn't require a creator to exist."

 

[godless dave]

The author of the previous cited article also stated "As far as we can tell, life on Earth arose only once".

"Life on Earth arose only once" does not equal "All life on earth is descended from a single one-celled organism".

The first life may not even have had cells.

 

[Meadmaker]

Yes, I understand what horizontal gene therapy is, do you forget I have a computer and google. It has been observed, but its just a theory with regard to LUCA, and as the author stated he's not sure how it can be tested. The author of the previous cited article also stated "As far as we can tell, life on Earth arose only once". If you have any evidence to the contrary bring it in.

But what is the point?

Certainly it is possible that there was a single cell which could be pointed to and said, "This is the ancestor of all life." The more I think about the issue, the more likely I think this to be. Even if no one, single, such cell exists, there are at most a small number of cells that contain all the ancestral DNA, or smaller self replicating molecules.

So? What part do you think we don't get?