Do Most Atheists Know that science..... Part 2

[Ryan O'Dine]

You're correct.
I was wrong in my above posts to limit things to expansion.

In retrospect, given the old theories that the universe would collapse if there was enough matter, this should have been obvious to me.

In my first post in this thread, I stated that when you run the BB movie backwards, the first forces to merge would be the strong and weak nuclear forces. This is wrong. The first would have been the weak and electromagnetic forces.

Many of us in this thread are capable of recognizing and fessing up to mistakes when we make them -- especially when confronted with legitimate sources that show us our error. Certain posters, however, apparently find this too much to ask.

The perpetual inability to recognize one's own mistakes is one of the surefire behaviors demonstrating the presence of an agenda.

 

[DOC]

Posted by Ryan O'Dine
DOC, getting all your science info from religious apologists with an agenda to grind isn’t going to cut it.


Posted by DOC
Making a false statement like this, can make one think you're the one with an agenda.

I’d be happy to be proven false. So what resources on physics do you use that weren’t written by people with a religious agenda?...

It's important to be accurate in these threads, "especially" when making derogatory statements about someone. Your derogatory statement was obviously false especially in light of the several non-religious scientists I cited in Part 1 of this thread.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95977

In Part 2 I've quoted at least 2 non-Christian Physicists. I gave 4 quotes from the famous agnostic physicist and cosmologist Robert Jastrow.

 

[joobz]

It's important to be accurate in these threads, "especially" when making derogatory statements about someone. Your derogatory statement was obviously false especially in light of the several non-religious scientists I cited in Part 1 of this thread.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95977

Quoting out of context doesn't count. Especially when you received a clarification from the source stating that your interpretation of the quote was wrong.

In Part 2 I've quoted at least 2 non-Christian Physicists. I gave 4 quotes from the famous agnostic physicist and cosmologist Robert Jastrow.

Quoting an apologist quoting a scientist out of context doesn't count either.

 

[Ryan O'Dine]

Posted by Ryan O'Dine
DOC, getting all your science info from religious apologists with an agenda to grind isn’t going to cut it.


Posted by DOC
Making a false statement like this, can make one think you're the one with an agenda.




It's important to be accurate in these threads, "especially" when making derogatory statements about someone. Your derogatory statement was obviously false especially in light of the several non-religious scientists I cited in Part 1 of this thread.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95977

I never participated in that other thread. All my comments have been about this thread.

More importantly -- are you seriously denying you have a religious agenda here on JREF?

In Part 2 I've quoted at least 2 non-Christian Physicists. I gave 4 quotes from the famous agnostic physicist and cosmologist Robert Jastrow.

You lifted a 30-year-old quote from an astronomer cited in a book by Christian apologists. That the best you can do?

I’ve already mentioned that that quote predated string theory, M-theory, and the COBE data. What I neglected to mention was that it also predated inflation theory (1980) -- surely the greatest paradigm shift in BB thinking since the theory was first proposed.

So what else you got? Who was the second non-Christian physicist, if you don’t mind? Have you read the entirety of any non-biased books on cosmology? Journal articles? Physics Today, Scientific American, anything?

Last question. Could you specify which of my observations you found derogatory? I’m not trying to be snarky, I just want to understand you clearly here.

 

[DOC]

I never participated in that other thread. All my comments have been about this thread.

More importantly -- are you seriously denying you have a religious agenda here on JREF?

My agenda is facts, if those facts lead to more evidence for Christianity than for atheism, then so be it.

You lifted a 30-year-old quote from an astronomer cited in a book by Christian apologists. That the best you can do?

I’ve already mentioned that that quote predated string theory, M-theory, and the COBE data. What I neglected to mention was that it also predated inflation theory (1980) -- surely the greatest paradigm shift in BB thinking since the theory was first proposed.

Well actually I have given (not lifted) a total of 5 quotes from the agnostic Jastrow and one from Eddington who thought the idea of a beginning was "repugnant" and he would like to find a loophole.

And the string "theory" has received a lot of criticism, and to my knowledge has never been proven. And I mentioned the inflation "theory" in the very first post in this thread (Part 2).
In your opinion how would the inflation "theory" described in post 1 of this thread have changed Jastrow's view that the beginning was supernatural in nature.

 

[Mark Felt]

If your agenda is facts why did you turn down the offer of free books which contain the answers to all of the questions you've been asking?

And why do you consider Jastrows views relevant? He's not talking about the science, he's talking about his beliefs.

 

[Ryan O'Dine]

My agenda is facts, if those facts lead to more evidence for Christianity than for atheism, then so be it.

Fair enough. I just wish your facts were more up-to-date and on target. It would make you appear less as though you were cherry picking what you liked and discarding the rest.

Well actually I have given (not lifted) a total of 5 quotes from the agnostic Jastrow and one from Eddington who thought the idea of a beginning was "repugnant" and he would like to find a loophole.

So nothing but fairly nebulous opinions from people far from the cutting edge. No actual science at work here. Have I got that right?

And the string "theory" has received a lot of criticism, and to my knowledge has never been proven.

It doesn’t have to be proven. It only has to be possible in order to show that the BB can potentially occur without God.

And I mentioned the inflation "theory" in the very first post in this thread (Part 2).
In your opinion how would the inflation "theory" described in post 1 of this thread have changed Jastrow's view that the beginning was supernatural in nature.

Fair question. Honestly, I can’t say that it would. However, if his mind didn’t change after learning about inflation, and string theory, and M-theory, and the COBE data, etc., etc., then I’d have as much problem with his views as I do with yours.

 

[joobz]

Well actually I have given (not lifted) a total of 5 quotes from the agnostic Jastrow and one from Eddington who thought the idea of a beginning was "repugnant" and he would like to find a loophole.

Quotes are not magical. If the ideas in them are wrong, it doesn't matter who says them, they are wrong.

 

[joobz]

And the string "theory" has received a lot of criticism, and to my knowledge has never been proven.

as science theories typically do. That's what allows us to vet them and see if they hold true.

 

[Hokulele]

Quotes are not magical. If the ideas in them are wrong, it doesn't matter who says them, they are wrong.

And apparently DOC didn't learn anything from the Jefferson thread about the importance of primary sources and to be skeptical of cherry-picking when it comes to providing quotes. Several of the quotes DOC has posted have clearly been edited (note the ellipses), most likely by the secondary source. Such a practice is fundamentally dishonest, as FireGarden has shown by providing the original quotes by Eddington in context, and by the way Ryan O'Dine has provided the background to Einstein's cosmological constant.

 

[joobz]

And apparently DOC didn't learn anything from the Jefferson thread about the importance of primary sources and to be skeptical of cherry-picking when it comes to providing quotes. Several of the quotes DOC has posted have clearly been edited (note the ellipses), most likely by the secondary source. Such a practice is fundamentally dishonest, as FireGarden has shown by providing the original quotes by Eddington in context, and by the way Ryan O'Dine has provided the background to Einstein's cosmological constant.

Exactly.

between the quote mining and poor defining of words, I wonder if "great apologist" is code for "hackneyed sot".

 

[DOC]

And apparently DOC didn't learn anything from the Jefferson thread about the importance of primary sources and to be skeptical of cherry-picking when it comes to providing quotes. Several of the quotes DOC has posted have clearly been edited (note the ellipses), most likely by the secondary source. Such a practice is fundamentally dishonest, as FireGarden has shown by providing the original quotes by Eddington in context, and by the way Ryan O'Dine has provided the background to Einstein's cosmological constant.

Leave it to Hokulele to generalize about an entire thread (Thomas Jefferson's Admiration and Financial Support of Christianity)of over 2200 posts and a thread where I left over 500 responses. Just another example where the #1 priority is to say anything negative about Doc, even it you have to go off topic to do it.

And no one is stopping you from doing some research and showing how an author's use of an ellipse changes the meaning somehow. Are you saying atheist authors don't use ellipses.

 

[Hokulele]

And no one is stopping you from doing some research and showing how an author's use of an ellipse changes the meaning somehow. Are you saying atheist author's don't use ellipses.

No, I am saying that an ellipsis indicates a portion of the quote has been removed, often changing the point of the quote altogether. This is an incredibly dishonest practice regardless of who is doing the quote-mining.

For example:

Eddington made the above quote in 1931:
http://darwiniana.com/2007/04/27/eddington-anti-chance/

The article was called "The end of the world: from the standpoint of mathematical physics". And he's talking about "end" as in boundary. (you can read the first page of the article here:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3606671 )

So yes, by omitting the context and several intervening passages in Eddington's quote, Geisler did change Eddington's meaning.


ETA: Just to annoy joobz, I would like to point out that the singular is ellipsis, not ellipse. An ellipse is an oval.

And no one is stopping you from doing some research and showing how an author's use of an ellipse changes the meaning somehow. Are you saying atheist author's don't use ellipses.

 

[DOC]

If your agenda is facts why did you turn down the offer of free books which contain the answers to all of the questions you've been asking?

No one is stopping the people who have read the book to come in here explain those answers.

And why do you consider Jastrows views relevant? He's not talking about the science, he's talking about his beliefs.

So are you saying that the Founder of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, Jastrow, is not talking science when he says this:

"That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact."

 

[Hokulele]

So are you saying that the Founder of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, Jastrow, is not talking science when he says this:

"That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact."]

Yes. That is exactly what several people are saying. It is not science.

 

[zooterkin]

Exactly.

between the quote mining and poor defining of words, I wonder if "great apologist" is code for "hackneyed sot".

Steady, I'm not sure we have any evidence that he drinks.

 

[FireGarden]

I think it's important to highlight that the original quote is blatantly wrong.

But Einstein's fudge factor didn't fudge for long. In 1919, British cosmologist Arthur Eddington conducted an experiment during a solar eclipse which confirmed that General Relativity was indeed true- the universe wasn't static but had a beginning.

Eddington's solar eclipse experiment had nothing to do with cosmological constants and static universes. It was a test of Relativity's predictions regarding the amount gravity would bend light. Eddington's experiment was consistant with General Relativity exactly as Einstein had chosen to describe it -- ie: static.

Friedman published, in 1922, a solution to Einstein's field equations in which the universe was not static. (I don't know why expansion is favoured in the wiki article). But here's the important thing: Eddington's solar eclipse experiment is also consitent with that solution to the field equations.

There are many solutions to Einstein's field equations. Godel came up with one which included a particular method of time travel. But his solution required the universe to be spinning and isn't consistent with expansion.

The calculations Einstein did, referred to by DOC's source, are like solving the differential equation:

dy/dx = 2x

Only much harder!
There are many possible solutions. Which one you pick depends on choices other than pure maths. To rule out all but one answer, you need boundary conditions, often expressed as initial conditions.

Eddington wasn't satisfied that these boundary conditions can be understood to the extent of explaining all the structure in the universe today. Some scientists of his time were. He didn't like the "loophole" they used. (His word).



The reason people have abandoned the static universe solutions to the EFEs is because Hubble showed the universe was expanding in 1929.

After that, steady state theory was still popular. It was only blown out of the water when the microwave background radiation was discovered. Eddington was dead by then. To criticise him without understanding that would be a bit unfair.


btw,
Eddington believed in God, as evidenced by the title of one of his books: "Why I Believe in God: Science and Religion, as a Scientist Sees It"

 

[FireGarden]

No one is stopping the people who have read the book to come in here explain those answers.

Some of us are trying, Doc.
See my post above. Your source is definitely wrong to link Eddington's experiment in with proving the cosmological constant was a fudge or mistake of any kind. Hubble's observations, leading to his law, gets that honour.

You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Stanley_Eddington#Relativity

And, from the later section on cosmology:

Eddington was also heavily involved with the development of the first generation of general relativistic cosmological models. He had been investigating the instability of the Einstein universe when he learned of both Lemaitre's 1927 paper postulating an expanding or contracting universe and Hubble's work on the recession on the spiral nebulae. He soon became an enthusiastic supporter of an expanding universe cosmology, pointing to the nebular recession as evidence of a curved space-time.

Eddington's support of an expanding universe had nothing to do with his solar eclipse experiment of 1919. So your source is wrong.

Lemaitre's work was of the same flavour as Friedman, who published in 1922.

 

[Hokulele]

The calculations Einstein did, referred to by DOC's source, are like solving the differential equation:

dy/dx = 2x

Only much harder!

It is highly unlikely DOC's source would be able to integrate e^x.

/snark

 

[DOC]

btw, Eddington believed in God, as evidenced by the title of one of his books: "Why I Believe in God: Science and Religion, as a Scientist Sees It"

I noticed that book was written in 1930 over 10 years after his eclipse experiment. Maybe it was his study of Science that made him a believer in God -- notice the title.